Chapter Text
The darkness of the forest is overwhelming.
Thick, thorny brambles tore at his breeches with every staggering step. There are no hoots or chirps or croaks within these woods— silence looms above all, blanketing the pitch black world with an absence of life.
Panting, Jungkook brought a hand up to clutch at his wound. A deep, bloody gash has made itself home on his side. Every stumble in his step made Jungkook see white from sheer agony.
He’s safe, for now, at least.
Anything, anything to shake off his pursuers—
Survival blinding him to all else, Jungkook had made the choice to run into this forest. The godforsaken forest where even men who wished for death hesitate to enter. He’s risking a lot right now just to rest, leaning against a gnarled tree bark. If he had a clearer mind to think he’d realize what a foolish decision he’d made; because as Jungkook rested he’s letting precious adrenaline ebb away. Robbing him of power and the ability to flight.
It’s risky; because his pursuers, whatever thing is chasing him right now, they’re not human.
Willing his erratically beating heart to calm down, he leant back against cold, mossy bark. It smelt revolting— just like lizard eyes left too long out of their jar. Jungkook bit back the instinct to gag.
It was dark, and terribly quiet.
An icy shiver slides through the forest, rustling treetops and making Jungkook tremble. He holds himself perfectly still, staring out into the dark. Somewhere in the pitch black, dry leaves laughed. It’s too isolated to be caused by a breeze, too deliberate to be anything but a taunt.
They are somehow catching up to him and Jungkook wanted to curl up small and whimper like a wounded dog.
Instead he ground his teeth and dropped unto the filthy floor of the woods, letting high wilted grass and ugly wild flowers shield him from view.
“Son of a bitch,” Jungkook hissed out, eyes watering, when the movement jostled his wounded side.
Of course the beasts would follow him here. Of course they are. Because he is Jeon Jungkook, and nothing less than life-threatening was ever meant for his quest.
Okay, how do I get myself out of this?
He’s injured, and he can’t hide. Jungkook knew that for sure. He can’t magic himself invisible, either.
… but Jungkook can turn into something else.
Most witches and mages despise transforming into their soul form. Because of this fact, few knew they could morph at all in the first place. He fiddled with the little kitten charm inside his pocket. He traced its open smiling mouth, thumb traveling and memorizing the kitten’s fangs and ears, the curve of its cartoonish back, its stubby tail.
He imagined his brother’s voice. Of course you can do it. Jungkook thought of his lazy blinking eyes and gummy smile. There’s nothing you can’t do.
… Gods be damned though, he hates shifting.
His left eye throbbed, blackened and swollen shut. Jungkook can’t exactly see out of it, but no matter. He doesn’t need sight for this spell.
Now how odd would you reckon a lone wounded rabbit in the middle of a rotting forest?
Hopefully not too odd at all.
“Fuck me,” Jungkook muttered lowly, raking a hand through grimy hair. Alright. Alright, he can do this. Here goes.
He took a deep breath, and casted.
“Vere absolutum.”
It’s slow and not really that magical; soul transformation, that is.
First comes the pain, hitting him with the force of a thousand military mares.
He fell on his knees. Clutching on to the front of his robes with muffled gargles of agony, Jungkook curled on himself. He dropped his bag as thumping noises overtook his ears— reverberating in tandem with his heart. The dead grass beneath him were unsympathetic. The skies are silent. He wanted to scream and sob, but Jungkook knows well he shouldn’t, so he bit his tongue and cursed the fucking heavens that hurt.
It always hurt like crazy; it always did, the feeling of all the cells in his body shifting and becoming something new, the compressing of his thoughts. His bones popped; his muscles shrank. Everything shriveled and tightened. There wasn’t enough space for half his mind, so he left it behind. The world become a much simpler place, with a lot more scents and surprisingly not enough noises.
The pain passed.
Jungkook struggled out of his prison of clothes, and out emerged a soft black bunny with loped ears.
A rustle, and the bunny froze, ears standing up straight.
Danger?
Were Jungkook a predator animal, he would raise his hackles and snarl at the threat. He would bare his teeth and pounce, sinking fangs into flesh and rip his stalker apart.
As it is, he is a prey. He’s in disguise to hide and not fight. Mind still logical enough to know the next action to take, Jungkook kicked at his clothes and stuffed them underside the tree root gaps. His bag is a lost cause— it is too bulky for him to do anything with, so he left it sprawled amidst tall grass, half hidden.
The earth shook beneath his paws. Two, no, three people. His ears twitched. Large, heavy footfalls. Metallic pieces were clanking noisily with each step— the monsters were armed.
Jungkook shuffled backwards into the tree roots and hid.
Once upon a time, as a child, his brother Yoongi liked to read him before sleep. Some of his stories were made up. Some other stories— his favorites, these ones; because they are real— were told from beyond. Beyond their coven, beyond their dingy little house that creaks ominously at night and barely fits the two of them.
He wasn’t the best story teller. Yoongi would made this “um” noises when he got stuck at a certain part of the tale, paused for way too long to recall or to make up some details; and other times, when Jungkook asks him “why does the story end like that?”, Yoongi would kiss his nose and bid him goodnight. Little Jungkook would stay up long after their candle light has been blown out, and wondered. He would dream.
The real story storytimes are not often. Yoongi doesn’t like to tell him about strange creatures in the dark and cannibalistic wolfmen. Jungkook was terrified enough in the absence of light— there’s no need to fuel that fear. But when the moon was full, and the night light was bright enough to cast shadows on the cushioned floors where they sleep, Yoongi would tell him.
About the forests, the mountains, and what hid within.
“You can’t be afraid forever. If you know your enemies, you’ll know how to escape them.”
“Why can’t I just learn how to fight them?”
Yoongi fixed his blanket. His eyes twinkled.
“You don’t have to, silly little brother.”
“But why?”
“Because I’ll fight them for you.”
Brothers look out for one another, Jungkook remembered Yoongi say.
It is, after all, the reason why Jungkook was prowling around as a rabbit in the middle of a rotting forest.
He’d come this far. He won’t go home alone.
Find him. He can save Yoongi.
Dry brambles snapped somewhere to his right. Jungkook’s fuzzy nose quivered.
In one story, he remembered; told in hushed whispers and overdramatic voice too big for his brother’s small body, was the Huntsmen. That night was bright, moonlight illuminating Yoongi’s blue hair turned silver. The Huntsmen despised small animals. Isn’t that good? You’re so small, Jungkookie, they wouldn’t even be able to see you.
They go by many names, in many countries; by many languages. Nobody could decide what to call them. Nobody dare to call their names in utter terror of what could follow in its wake.
Only in the Northeast people referred to the Huntsmen without fear. Their name was uttered with resignation and acceptance— nothing more than one simple word: Kui.
It meant ‘death’.
The winds stilled. Something wafted in the air; hostile, unwelcoming, violent.
Dangerous.
How do you describe a monster?
There’s very little chance of asking the survivors. Few lived through the encounter to tell. Few survived the panic and perpetual stress that follow. The sickness of mind that would claim and consume you whole, leaving you sweating bullets and screaming for mercies at dark corners. They lost their minds shortly after, seeking safety in bright lights and shutting out everyone who dared breathe near them.
Jungkook used to think the terror as irrational. How could you go insane just by looking at something?
He hadn’t seen the Huntsmen before. A fool he had been. He hadn’t understood. He hadn’t seen them and thus he hadn’t understood the fear.
The footsteps stopped.
If they weren’t rooted to the ground, Jungkook thought, the trees would fled, too.
The creatures were towering.
They are tall and grotesque with matted hair and scaly skin, reflecting what little light the night sky provided. In fact, Jungkook can only tell this because the contorted figures has eclipsed the moon. They stood on their hideous, knotted haunches and stooped low as their wrinkled faces sniffed at the ground.
Reptilian tongue darted out to hiss.
They had smelled his blood.
Behind slitted golden eyes was something that chilled Jungkook’s critter heart; something hungry, patient, and blood thirsty.
Insanity doesn’t sound so farfetched now, his mind— or whatever is left of it, supplied unhelpfully.
… Would they enjoy rabbit meat?
Creak.
One beast perched itself on all fours in front of his tree. Jungkook’s heart stopped beating in his chest. Oh god. Please don’t answer that question.
He wondered if they could smell his fear, taste the throbbing blood in his terrified veins. He wondered if they could tear through the wood he’s hiding in. It would be so easy for them. They could just reach in and crush all bones within this soft defenseless body containing his soul.
Through the gaps in the roots he saw a hand. Before, Jungkook had imagined the Huntsmen with long, deadly talons; but the hand that appeared before him was spindly. It was long and wiry and disgusting with too many fingers— like a malformed scaly spider attached to a stump of an arm.
He wanted to throw up.
“Little witchhh,” the creature hissed, voice nothing more above a rasp— like a sinister flutter in the bushes, cruel rustles of a cold wind. “Ssshow yourself.”
Immediately, unwelcomed, the scent of magic overwhelmed his nose. Not like Yoongi’s, not at all quiet and woodsy and warm. Theirs smell pungent; vile, like scalding, bubbling cauldrons caked with filth and rust.
Potent. Powerful. Terrifying.
Jungkook heard creaking metals and low, low laughter from the hunters. With sick glee and savage snarling sounds they tore apart his bag, spilling his magic ink and papers, fracturing potion bottles and snapping the strap just for the sake of rendering the thing useless.
Jerks, human Jungkook would’ve uttered.
“He’sss gone.”
“We ssshould have pounced,”
A clang of metal, and another savage hiss belonging to no animal Jungkook has ever encountered in his life.
“And crush the prey’sss bone? Fool.”
“We feassst whole or none at all.”
The hideous hand retreated. Were Jungkook a lesser witch, he’d cry from relief.
“Clever little cretin.”
“I sssmell new blood on the ground.”
“Mussst be a decoy.” A cruel foot kicked at his tree, and the bark caved in the slightest bit. Rotten bits fell on his fur. Jungkook shuddered.“Nothing here but a filthy little rabbit.”
The creatures’ lips pulled back in something resembling disgust. Rows of solid sharp teeth glinted yellow in the dim light.
“Worthlesss meat. We hate rabbitsss.”
“Yesss,” said the creatures as their heavy footfalls thumped away out of sight, yet not, never, out of mind. “We do, we do,”
Jungkook felt like he had been shoved inside of a sack and hurtled through space. The thing holding him paralyzed just now was neither magic nor thrall— it was simply fear.
At the thought of those creatures coming back to hunt human Jungkook down, the not-bunny thumped his back legs something awful. He scampered out of the tree roots. His heart was racing— as if someone had crammed several of said organ in the crevice of his chest and they were all beating out of rhythm with each other; desperate to escape the tight space of his ribs, desperate to escape to safety.
He can understand that wish.
Minutes later, after magic was spent and bones were crunched into something entirely new, Jeon Jungkook watched his hands tremble with very little emotion present.
He remembered the terror that tore into his heart, remembered the stupendous effort he has to use to hold himself still like a prey playing dead. It was like watching an old memory through a foggy window.
Shock, in a way, was pleasant as it gave someone an absence of panic.
He dressed very slowly in dirt stained clothes, noting the ripped sleeve and the drying blood. The soul magic he used for the transformation had healed him the littlest bit— sewing his wounds shut though they remained pink and tender, one bruised eye still aching and swollen but vision reclaimed.
His bag lays broken and pilfered several steps away.
He has no strength to walk those few steps to retrieve it. His knees felt weak and useless. His joints ached.
Everything was just… so much.
If someone had told him just two weeks ago that the witch prodigy Jeon Jungkook would pack up his bag and chase after a myth, he would have laughed in their face. But that was before.
He tried not to remember what they said. Because if he did, he would start to doubt himself.
There is no such thing as the Chaos Mage, Jungkook. You can’t heal Yoongi. He’s too broken to be saved.
He can’t afford to doubt. He can’t afford to leave his older brother to his fate; cursed and helpless; stuck forever with his own thoughts.
But Jungkook was so tired.
Exhausted, the witch curled into himself and shook beneath the force of a broken sob.
“Kim Namjoon,” his lungs heaved. Hot, fat tears rolled down his cheeks, landing on the dead ground like a prayer. “Will I ever find you?”
In the distance, somewhere far north; a windy mountain loomed over a dark valley.
It was cold and barren. Sharp chill penetrated into the very core of massive boulders strewn through the lands. It was the harvest season, so there were neither snow nor ice.
A nameless middle aged man trudged his way through the winds. The brisk caress smelled of a rotten forest. It’s a bad omen, he was sure, but the man had his mind made. There’s no going back from here.
A newly traded sword hung silent on his hip.
The lands they all live in fall under the rule of a sickly queen. She is just and kind, but because of her illness the queen tires easily. Lands under her rule were vast and not easy to maintain. Countless faraway corners of the kingdom were untouched by humans; their colors dipped in magic and glittering fairy dust.
But just like everything in life, magical things were not always beautiful.
The man felt a chill in his bones, something not from the cold winds, and looked down where the craggy cliffs lay still. It was far and faint with fog and smog, but he managed to catch a silhouette of a horned animal. Its eyes were nauseatingly blank.
Come, the dead animal whispered. The voice carries through the wind, sweeter than flowers. Come.
The man blinked, and it was gone.
“Don’t listen,” the man ordered to himself, tampering down nausea. Keep going.
The cliffs sing with magic. He made sure to keep his mind strong. He thought of his wife. His children’s laughter when he gave them each a burlap sack doll.
Not today.
The cliffs beckon.
You are not claiming me today.
He climbed.
Just ahead, carved into the mountain walls, he eyed a perch in front of a stone cave.
Giant, monstrous gouge marks were embedded in its floors and walls. Messy. Uncoordinated. As if a child had taken a hot bread knife and repeatedly hacked a block of butter with it.
It looked like a giant animal in struggle.
The nameless man felt a sliver of hope.
The dragon might be in pain.
He can steal from it, if it was in pain.
Cold air misted his breath. “A’right,” he spoke to himself, hand tight and awkward around the handle of an unfamiliar sword. “Alright.”
Thirty two gold coins, he was promised.
Thirty two golden pieces that he’d get to pocket, and all he had to do was sneak in a monster’s den and steal a vial of winter apple essence.
It was an extremely handsome pay. The man thought about his wife and three children at home, and how happy they would be once he bought home a new mattress and enough bread and honey to stuff them sleepy and drunk with sugar.
Thirty two gold coins are more than enough to start a small shop. He’d have no need to steal anymore. They wouldn’t have to huddle for warmth on top of straw mats every time thunder strikes and winter months came by with her cruel blanket of white.
His pocket crinkled. He took out the folded paper, wind whipping it out to reveal secrets lie within.
Winter apple essence, he remembered.
A single vial. That’s all his employer wants.
But.
The middle aged man let his eyes glaze over the words printed flawlessly on the canvas of crumpled paper. The calligraphy written on it was inhumane in its perfection. There isn’t a single pen error in the zeroes drawn, and though the man had never been one to pocket many coins, he knew that that amount of gold could burst an entire sack, and were he to mount that sack onto a donkey’s back, its legs would buckle with the weight of said reward.
Oblivious to his turmoil, the paper stared back at him unchangingly. Whipping in the wind. Just as much zeroes. The same command, the same illustration. The same dragon.
REWARD, the giant words read on top.
He thought of his wife. Poor, beautiful Adelaide, who suffered with him through cruelest winters and most terrible hunger. He thought of her rough hands, chiseled and rough from farm work, yet also wet and wrinkly from doing their neighbors’ laundry all night. His poor wife, ruining her beautiful hands for a couple of copper coins.
What would she looked like dressed in fanciful gowns and twinkling jewels? Would her tinkling laughter sound as sweet hidden behind a luscious feather fan just as it had behind a sheet of drying laundry? They both had never attended parties, but they knew how to dance. They could go attend a ball. Would she want that?
He thought of his three children. His oldest, Tom, had wanted to be a knight. More than that— he wanted to be the Queen’s guard. He played with sticks all the time, because wooden swords are too expensive for their starving pouch to afford. Liora wanted to be a witch’s apprentice. Little Miria can’t crawl well enough to reach the other side of the room let alone speak about her future, but her clothes and blankets were never new. Hand-me-downs are the best they could give.
This reward could change their lives.
With this amount of money, he could buy one hundred horses each with their own stables and a land spacious enough for them all to graze on.
Through the cloud of doubt, he imagined Tom graduating from the Royal Academy. He thought of his son, standing beside the frail Queen— his shoulders broad and plated with scarred iron, eyes fierce and loyal. Protective. The Head Guard. The Queen’s right hand man.
That morning, the man tugged on the reins of his donkey. “Come, Mac,” he called. “I’ll get you back, my friend. I promise.”
The donkey said nothing. It merely swished its tail.
He traded Mac away; a young, healthy donkey and his family’s share of harvest for a decent sword and several bottles of sleeping drugs.
The trader had eyed him strangely. “Sleeping draught,” she said, skeptical. “Four bottles of sleeping draught.”
“Yes,” the man replied, sight fixed on the faraway mountain.
“A mouthful is enough to knock out a mare.”
“Just give me my stuff.”
Her eyes narrowed, hand tightening around the reins of his donkey. Well, not his anymore, now.
“I know you, friend.” She said. “The only animal you own is Mac here, and you’re trading him away. What animal are you planning to put to sleep?” Her hand patted the donkey’s shoulder.
Miria had loved Mac. She loved his hide that always smelled of hay; loved the leather on his back. She liked to sit in one of those pouches meant to carry straws and munch on an apple, pudgy hands holding on to the yellow-red fruit.
The trader is still looking at him.
The man sighed. He doesn’t like to lie.
“I can’t tell you.”
“Oh, but you can.” Her tone changed into something sympathetic, almost pitying. The man hated that tone. “I don’t need a story. I just want you to reassure me. It has nothing to do with the dragon, right?”
He wiped his eyebrow and lied.
“No, not at all.”
The windy mountain judged him and his sin.
What was I thinking? The man started to shake. Weight of reality fell unto his shoulders. I have been nothing but a farmer and occasional thief my whole life. I don’t even know how to hold a sword. I have no armors.
A shadow fell over him. Clouds flying below the sun perhaps— sign of a rain, he has to toil his master’s land soon— he can’t make Adelaide work the farm alone. Not without Mac, surely, not without telling her about this dangerous quest he has taken—
What am I doing here?
As nature itself can’t bear to answer that question, the reward paper was yanked out of his hands by the wind. He stumbled after it, unthinking, mouth open as if he could call it back—
A cliff opened its maw right beneath his very feet.
Fuck!
He had fallen off of trees before. Broke his arm, once, as a child. He knew falling, knew the way gravity pulls you down.
But he doesn’t know death, does he?
Time ceased to exist in this window of space. He was suspended midair in a whisper of a heartbeat— not even enough time for his brain to process his upcoming doom.
The window passed, and he started to fall.
His blood left. At that moment, the man was sure he looked as pale as snow. He was tugged down into joining pieces of broken land far below— wind laughing at his graceless stumble— bottles of sleeping draught rolling out of his pouch, falling, falling, crashing—
And then the man choked on air as a giant object plummeted against his front.
“Agh!”
The ground on his back was hard and unforgiving. The surface was a little damp from morning dew but the nameless man couldn’t process that through that whiplash. He shuddered violently and turned, heaving on all fours.
Something slithered out of sight.
The man froze.
Was that…?
A tail?
“I don’t know why is it so difficult for people to understand,” a great rumbling voice thundered above him.
Oh, holy mother of the lake.
The dragon speaks.
“The first bunch of bandits who speared me in my sleep? I transported them away into a nearby lake. They were cold, freezing a little, but they lived.”
The beast was massive, a giant thing with the wingspan greater than the village’s church. His neck was long and arching, reddish purple scales glinting beneath the dull sun. The man doesn’t dare to glance up and study its teeth.
“An entire army came into my house last month. They claimed their intent to ‘slay the worm in the name of the queen’. But that can’t be. I know the queen. She knew me, knew my true form. The current head guard is a lying son of a whore.”
The man found his legs shaking. What? What true form? Does this dragon have an even greater form, does the dragon have the queen under his thumb?
“Countless fools had come into my home for the past half a year. I chased them all away. Some I took their memories so they wouldn’t return. Others I intimidated— I had to pretend I don’t know any speech. Can you believe how stupid I must have looked, growling and prowling like an oversized lizard?” the monster paused in its anger. “Do you think I look like an oversized lizard?”
Afraid for his life and not wanting to offend the monster, the man shook his head no.
The dragon squinted. The nameless man is surprised at the range of emotion that reptile-like face is able to show.
“You are lying.” The dragon said bluntly, turning his head away. “No matter. Please leave before I had to send you home in nothing but your undergarments.”
The man started forward, ignoring the warning that was so nonsensical it doesn’t even register as a threat. Send me home? Aren’t you the great dragon whom everyone feared? More than that, the man is confused with the dragon’s somewhat human nature.
Why did the beast save him just now from falling to his death?
“Wait,” he voiced, forgetting the sword sheathed on his side.
“Please,” the dragon said, tired. “Spare us all the humiliation. I can taste your inexperience in sword fighting. You are harmless. Go back and tell whomever it was that seek my blood— come after me themselves. Gold is a cheap way to lure men to their deaths slaying dragons.”
“You don’t understand.”
The creature laid down on its belly; its great long neck angled closer as if studying him.
“You don’t understand.” the man parroted, half crazed. “We were living for so long in poverty. We survived living one day only to starve the next. Gold could change that. We could have so much more. My family deserved so much more.”
The beast was quiet. He fluttered a wing, not unlike how a bird would shake off a tick.
Something fell before him. It froze midair just before landing and crashing unto the ground.
“Take it and leave,” the dragon rumbled. His breath smelled like burnt honey. “It is what you seek.”
The man was stunned. It’s a vial of winter apple essence.
“How do you know—”
The cold, solid stone beneath his feet cracked. From within the fissures, vines sprouted and wrapped themselves around the human. He flailed, crying out, but the hold was firm. The vines grew.
“No-!”
“Return to your family. Trade your animal back. Work earnestly and feed your children.” The growths were rapidly wrapping all around him, now. Up his calves, locking his knees, squeezing round his chest. Soon he wouldn’t be able to see.
“Why are you doing this!” The man shouted pitifully, having thought he was worthy of the dragon’s mercy. “You beast! You worm! Vile creature of the dark! You intend to kill me all along!”
“Don’t struggle now,” the beast said with closed eyes, neck curling around its own body not unlike napping felines back home. “It’ll hurt less.”
The ground opened its jaws with a sickening crack. The vines were its tongue, and entangled helplessly within, the man screamed and trashed about upon finding no escape. A violent gust of wind blew up from below, so strong that he couldn’t keep his eyes open. The wind should be impossible, considering the solid rock underneath, but the man had learned to fear magic today. Truly fear it, for the very last seconds he’s able to fear. He howled for his life.
“Please!”
“My name is Kim Namjoon.”
The blasted vines pulled him into the mouth and with a great grinding noise the man was gone.
He woke up in the fields. Trees swayed merrily above his head, shading him from the lazy sun. Slowly, feeling like he had just woken up from an ominous dream, the man sat up.
“Arloh!” someone called his name. He turned. It was his wife.
“I ran out of seeds. Let’s go home for the day.”
Mac made a sound of agreement. The donkey’s rein was tied to its usual post, on its back a few bunches of wheat. It’s their family’s share of the harvest.
Had he been dreaming?
His hand nudged something hard and cold. Arloh looked down.
It’s a vial of essence.
Wrapped around its neck is a length of vine.
“Are you coming or not?” Adelaide called.
Arloh brought the vial closer to his face, trying to examine it. It smelled like burnt honey.
“Kim Namjoon,” he whispered. “The fearsome dragon.”
Arloh went home that day with his donkey Mac and a basket full of warm bread.