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Beast Island presses in on him from all sides, from the way the humid air sits sticky in his lungs to the trees that loom over him, swallow him whole, stick their root-like fingers out from the ground and grab at his feet. The distant screaming, the too-close calls of animals he can’t see, faint rustles in the underbrush help heighten his paranoia.
He should have never believed Catra. Some part of him hadn’t, at first. Certainly Entrapta wasn’t capable of doing what Catra had accused her of. Then he had thought about it, and doubts had crept in. Entrapta had been over-eager to help; she had been, perhaps, a little too curious about what he was doing. Her questions had been a little too pointed, a little too knowing. And he had--he had been glad to share with her, a bright, brilliant mind that had no place on this backwater. It had been so, so long, after all, since anyone had understood what he talked about. Since anyone had shared his interest.
He had told himself that the suit and the soup and the way she had looked at him were just outliers. Bits of data that did not directly support his conclusion that Entrapta was working with the Princess Alliance all along.
Hordak had very nearly believed it, too; almost believed it completely, had rewritten everything in his head so her betrayal didn’t hurt as much.
But now here he is, on Beast Island with Adora and her sword and that damnable talking horse thing. Swift Wind, it had had introduced itself.
Hordak wished it would swiftly shut the fuck up.
Horde Prime had arrived as Hordak had hoped, an entire fleet behind him that blotted out what little of the sky could be seen from the Fright Zone (what was left of it after the incident with the portal, at least).
He had gone to meet the transport, Catra two steps behind him to his right. His second-in-command, tenuously faithful but ever ambitious. She had stuck close to him, those first few days after the near-end of Etheria. Had barked orders when he couldn’t bring himself to, had reestablished the chain of command amid the chaos.
Hordak had decided she was too useful to be rid of, for now. He would have to keep her leash short until she had proved herself unwavering in her loyalty, of course. It would be harder to keep an eye on her without Imp, but Hordak was sure he would manage.
He would have to manage, now that his brother had arrived.
“Where are we even going?” the horse asks for the seventh time in the past twenty minutes.
“To find Entrapta!” Adora informs them for the seventh time.
“And which one is she?”
“The one we abandoned in the Fright Zone!”
“Oh, right. Her.” Swift Wind pauses for a moment, ears swiveling back and forth. “But where.”
They had started out with a tracker pad that had stopped working the second they set foot on Beast Island. There had been a strong signal of first ones tech, a blazing beacon hidden amongst the danger. The closer they had gotten, the signal had split into several smaller ones scattered all over, some on the eastern and northern coastlines, but most of them toward the center of the island.
Of course, without a working map, there was no indication of where the center of the island was.
“Just--ugh, this way.”
Hordak thinks they might be going in circles. He can’t tell, exactly, because every murderous plant looks the same as the last. He isn’t about to bring that up to Adora; she’s in charge, much as he’s loathe to admit. He’s on thin enough ice as it is, and telling her he thinks she’s going the wrong way will never work out in his favor.
In this case, the backstabbing had been literal.
To be more specific, the knife Horde Prime liked to use for things of a more intimate nature found it’s way through Hordak’s exo-suit and into where one of his kidneys should have been. The one time his genetic failures work in his favor, and it’s as his brother betrays him.
“You’ve had years to sack all of Etheria, Hordak,” Horde Prime had rumbled, drawing the knife out ever slow. Wiggling it up and down as he did so, sending shockwaves through Hordak’s quickly numbing body.
Poison, he thought. Of course there’s poison.
“You’ve managed so little, in all this long time. I can’t truly bring myself to blame you, defective as you are. But it’s so much worse than I thought. It seems you’ve grown to love.” The knife came free with a slick squelching noise.
Horde Prime wipes it clean on Hordak’s back before sheathing it and standing.
“Get rid of him.”
Catra’s feet at the last thing he sees before everything goes uncomfortably dark.
As it happens, Best Island is named so because it’s an island.
And there’s beasts.
Large beasts with fangs as long as his arm, green-yellow goop dripping in fat globes. Quadrepedal, with scales that seem to absorb any light that makes it through the canopy overhead and twin forking tongues. The twelve multi-faceted eyeballs that lack pupils only add to their mystique.
Adora hefts the sword above her head as though it’s not a piece of valuable tech.
“For the honor of Grayskull!”
Hordak rolls his eyes at the flash of light and the change that accompanies it. She had never been this dramatic in the Fright Zone.
Hordak had made sure his prisons were as uncomfortable as possible when constructed, in keeping with Horde standards and policy.
It isn't like he had ever planned on ending up in one of the cells himself. In his head, there had been no scenario where he ended up where he found himself: chained to a wall in a cell on the lowest level of the prison complex, body feeling as though it was tearing itself apart from the inside out due to the prolonged absence of his suit.
Whoever had placed him in the cell had shortened the lead to the cuffs, leaving him with no choice but to stand with a shoulder braced against the wall. There wasn’t enough slack for him to even sit.
The door opened long enough to allow someone in. He’s certain it wasn’t feeding time yet, so he forced open his bleary eyes to face who has come to taunt him.
“Catra.”
“It’s Lady Catra, now.” Her tone is languid, tail swishing behind her as she leans against the wall nearest the door. “I’ve got your old job.”
“You seem to like making a habit of betraying those you work for. Has Horde Prime been informed?”
She rolled her eyes with a snort. “That power hungry maniac?” A shrug. “Who knows. It’s not like you’re going to tell him.”
“Who says I won’t?”
“Aw, now you just sound desperate. Is it really so bad, to get a taste of what you’ve built?”
Hordak didn’t answer her.
“You’ve been--how did you put it? Oh, right. Proven to be compromised, ineffective, and worthless,” Catra taunted. “You know, I used to be afraid of you. Big, bad Hordak, ruling the Fright Zone with an iron fist. Now I can see you’re nothing to be afraid of.”
“But you are afraid of Adora.”
Catra hissed, furious. The pain that accompanied it was sharp and blinding, and it took a few moments for Hordak to properly understand that she had dug her claws in his skin and down the side of his face. The way it set his nerves on fire left him weak and gasping, sagging against the wall.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her voice had been sharp, but the edges frayed. “I’m not afraid of Adora. I’m not afraid of anyone.”
It’s in the way she said the name. Adora. Voice wobbling, a brave front breaking apart as he listened. The way she backed up, blood dripping to the floor of the cell off her ever-sharp nails.
Hordak decided to change tactics. “Do you even know what you’ve done?”
She laughed, crazed, and then said something he hadn’t expected: “I sent Entrapta to Beast Island. She’ll be dead by now.”
On her way out, she kicked a pile near the door. His exo-suit, bloodied and discarded.
“I understand why Catra fears you.”
Adora glares at him over her shoulder, stubborn jut to her chin. Blue-black monster blood from the monstrosity she had just cut through effortlessly is laid on her skin, a spattered arc on her billboard of a forehead.
She hadn’t wanted him to come along on this jaunt--she had wanted, like Queen Glimmer and the boy in the crop top, to throw him in a cell and be done with it. But Shadow Weaver, for whatever reason, had bent the new Queen’s ear in his favor.
And here they were, traipsing about Beast Island like they were out for an afternoon stroll.
“Good,” the former Force Captain bites out, turning her head away. “And when I meet Horde Alpha, or whatever it is he calls himself, he’ll fear me too.”
Even after all these years, Hordak knows his brother. Knows that Horde Prime fears nothing, and especially will not fear a girl with a sword, even if she can turn into an eight foot tall warrior.
But Catra’s fear of Adora is a different kind of fear. He isn’t going to waste time explaining it to her, not when she isn’t willing to listen. She’ll just dismiss him as trying to manipulate her, might attempt to dispatch him on the spot despite being asked, politely, not to kill him while they’re gone.
Someday, Adora might understand:
Catra fears her because she loves her.
The rebels in Brightmoon did not have chains or a prison. They did not have interrogators trained to draw out secrets held deep from within, to make you doubt yourself, to earn your trust and gaslight you back into oblivion.
What they had was magic and a spare room devoid of most cushions. They also had Shadow Weaver and the righteous fury of the new Queen, Glimmer. Of course there was also Adora, with her shiny sword and indignant glare.
Shadow Weaver had wasted no time in gloating, delighted in the idea of her former liege on his knees before her, brought low.
The sparkly girl-queen had let her have two entire minutes of victory before she had taken a bite out of him herself. “What brings you to Brightmoon without your army, huh? Do you really think we’re going to fall for that kind of trick?”
There was not and would never be a good answer to that question, so Hordak had kept his mouth shut. Being snarled at by brats while sitting in the middle of an opulent-if-minimally-decorated room was far better than rotting in a cell in the Fright Zone.
At least these captors let him keep his exo-suit on, nor had they thought to stab him with a poisoned knife.
Really, if Hordak pretended he didn’t have three different angry women glaring at him, it was almost like he was on vacation.
“Well?” Glimmer demanded impatiently, hands on her hips and a scowl on her face. “Answer me!”
“Catra decided she would rather follow Horde Prime than myself.” It could have just as easily been the other way around, but Horde Prime hadn’t betrayed two others in the room for the sake of their own ambitions. “And then I ended up in a cell, very much unlike this one.”
“If you were in a cell in the Fright Zone, then how did you get out?” Adora asked.
Hordak bared his teeth in what he hoped was a smile at the memory. “Kyle.”
Something drops onto his head.
Hordak reacts as one does when unknown objects land unexpectedly upon their person: he grabs it with both hands and hurls it away as hard as he can.
It hits Adora in the back of the head with an unholy screech that Hordak would know anywhere. The girl yells, losing her footing and tumbling forward into a pit of mud. Swift Wind whinnies, prancing sideways in fright, wings flaring out in a feathery rainbow.
The creature sits up on his place on Adora’s back, chittering at him angrily, yellow eyes narrowed to slits. Hordak isn’t entirely sure he believes his eyes, until the blond forces herself up on her hands and knees and sends her hanger-on tumbling off of her back to Hordak’s feet.
He bends down scoops them up; Imp clings to his neck, nudges the top of his head up against his chin like a needy pet. Keeps up his angry commentary all the while, indignant at being tossed.
“What was--” Adora cuts herself off, blinking owlishly at the sight of Imp.
Imp, who Hordak hasn’t seen since before the fiasco with the portal.
“Where have you been hiding him?” Adora demands, wiping her muddy hands clean on her thighs.
Imp glares at her, tail lashing. Then he opens his mouth: “Day 97--98? I’ve. Lost count. Oh well. Regrettably, I have had to sacrifice Emily for the greater good. But! I--”
The jaws of his little beast close abruptly, almost like he’s doing so in retaliation for being thrown.
“Was that Entrapta? That sounded like Entrapta.”
If Hordak was still in charge of the Horde on Etheria, he would be embarrassed to find that one of his prized soldiers was so dense.
“Does that mean she’s alive?” Imp hisses at her, claws digging into the metal of Hordak’s exo suit.
It’s Hordak who says, wondrous, “Yes.”
It was three days before anyone thought to ask about Entrapta.
Hordak felt a pang in his heart that it took them so long to think of the Princess; he hadn’t brought her up himself, though he had wanted to. Oh, had he wanted. But no one had come to do anything more than taunt him, and he had been positive that they would have just laughed in his face had he asked for their help in finding the missing genius. Likely, they would have thought it was a ploy to get their attention elsewhere, so the Horde could catch Brightmoon off guard while everyone was in a tizzy.
He had to play the long game, even if it meant Entrapta’s end.
If she was still alive, of course. Hordak didn’t have much hope; hope was a currency frowned upon by the Horde, something to be squashed like a bug.
Adora had entered the ‘prison’ alone, sword nowhere to be seen. Had decided to stand before him, the toes of her boots just inches from the edge of the spell that kept him contained.
“I.” She stopped, uncomfortable, hands tucked up under her arms. “I saw the way you looked at Entrapta. The way she looked at you. You know, before Catra activated the portal.”
“Did you come for a heart to heart, or can I get back to being a prisoner in peace?” he asked dryly. He didn’t want to have this conversation, ever. Especially not with Adora of all people, who had destroyed so many of his carefully laid plans.
Feelings. Ew.
“I don’t think you would leave her in the Fright Zone.” It’s blunt, the way she says it. “And I don’t think she would stay if you weren’t there for all the tech in the world.”
“Is this a new habit of yours? Thinking?”
Adora was about ready to kill him, if the way she reached for a sword that wasn’t there was any indication.
“Where’s Entrapta!” she demanded, changing tactics.
“Catra sent her to Beast Island before the incident with the portal, and then lied to me about it.”
“She did what.”
“Really, Adora, you know I don’t like to repeat myself.”
“But no one comes back from Beast Island.”
“And no one survives the Crimson Wastes. One would think after everything you’ve been through, you would doubt the things you hear.”
Imp leads them through the foliage, down what could almost be called a path. It runs, zig-zag around the wide bases of the trees, under roots and over rocks.
And then it ends abruptly at the sheer face of a rock wall.
A rock wall that Imp flies through, no hesitation.
Adora skids to a stop, Swift Wind beside her. Hordak has no choice but to stop either, lest he wants a face full of pegasus butt.
“How do I know this isn’t a trap? That this isn’t some kind of elaborate, stupid plan you and Catra cooked up to--to--”
“To what? Steal the sword again? Take you captive?” They’re so close; he can feel his frustration mounting, building up by the second. “Horde Prime is already on Etheria. We don’t need the sword anymore. And you’re a fool if you think I would allow myself to be held prisoner in Brightmoon to advance one of Catra’s ideas.”
Hordak pushes himself past both Adora and Swift Wind, setting them both off balance as he strides confidently up to the rock face. Clearly, he thinks to himself, it isn’t solid.
He pushes a hand through, just in case. The illusion gives easily, hand dangling in open space on the other side that he cannot see. The rest of his body follows just as easily, the slight tingle he associates with magic accompanying him through.
On the other side, he’s met by a mob armed with sharp objects and. Well. Maybe he didn’t think this through all the way. After all, if there were survivors on Beast Island, almost all of them hated his guts. He had ordered them sent there, after all.
Honestly, Hordak wasn’t sure what he had expected. To find Entrapta, whole and hale with the island already bent to her will. Or to find her body. The odds, in his mind, had been fifty-fifty.
Bizarre, how things don’t seem to want to go his way.
Adora and Swift Wind are behind him before he can back out.
A murmur goes up, the only word he can properly make out his own name. Their voices are tinged with fear, postures wilting as their confidence flees.
“Oh good, you’re here!” a familiar voice calls out from his right. Hordak whips his head that way, so fast he nearly gives himself whiplash. “I’ve been needing a lab partner, and I don’t have to train you!”
A hank of Entrapta’s hair wraps itself around his arm and pulls him into the crowd, the sudden forced movement nearly making him trip over his feet.
That would be exactly what he needs--he’s already miserably hot and disgustingly sweaty, and he’s almost positive he smells. Why not trip over his own feet to add to his woes?
It’s also likely that the fear the denizens had when they had seen him ebbed about five percent at the sight of him being tugged along like a child. Not that he minds it, when Entrapta is the one tugging him along. It’s familiar in a way that makes him feel centered after being off-kilter for so long.
It feels like home, if he had to guess what home felt like.
“It took you long enough to get here, but there’s so much! There are countless deposits of First Ones tech, most of them inaccessible. But you brought Adora, and she can always get in. Though I think I might have to convince her to show me how, because it seems like a handy skill. We can’t always rely on her being around.”
“Entrapta.” His voice sounds weak to his own ears; they’re through the crowd. He’s so focused on the woman in front of him that he doesn’t look around.
“Oh! The animals! They’re mostly organic, but somewhere along the line they must have adapted--absorbed? I’m not sure, I’ll find out--to the First Ones tech! And I had to take Emily apart, unfortunately.” Entrapta’s quick clip stutters for a moment in memory of her fallen comrade. “There isn’t much to work with here, and I’ve had to get crafty. Solar power works, but it only runs things for so long. And no one has a charger for anything! They were using candles when I got here! Candles!”
“Entrapta!” he tries again. She stills, this time; turns to look at him with the curiosity he’s yearned for since she left.
“What?” she asks when he hasn’t spoken again. “Is there something on my face? Is one of my experiments on fire? Wh--”
He wraps his arms around her shoulders, crushing her body against his. Settles his still healing cheek against the top of her head and just. Breathes. In and out. Peaceful. She’s mostly immobile against him, body pliant, but warm and alive.
Achingly slow, Entrapta’s arms come up around him, gloved hands settling just below his shoulder blades. “I missed you, too,” she confides, voice muffled. Her hair comes up and wraps itself around them, binding them together.
He could spend a lifetime like this, wrapped up in her. The idea might have startled him, once. Before he met her, certainly.
But there won’t be a lifetime, not with Horde Prime on Etheria and Catra behind him.
Entrapta loosens her grip on him, leans back and tilts her face up. There’s a cut just above her left eyebrow, mostly-healed. She searches his face for a moment, smile tugging at her lips.
And then the moment is over, her hair detaching itself from him. She takes a step back, out of his arms; the sudden lack of heat where her body pressed against his registers as she announces, “To work, lab partner!”