Chapter Text
“Don’t come back until the creature is dead and you have Palismen in hand for me.”
Those final words still rang through his head as he slowly limped through the snow, clutching his right arm tightly, with his artificial staff, which was a brown rod with a white tip with a single gold and white wing extending from the side and a red orb on the top, shoved between his heaving chest and left upper arm. He winced when he heard a distant roar, and briefly looked back behind him. The trial of blood was getting thicker with each step he took. The lightheadedness had already set in. Hunter could just feel the pit of regret forming in gut just getting larger. How could he, the Golden Guard, Belos’s nephew, and leader of the Emperor's coven, have such a pitiful death? He reckoned the coven scouts had found the crash, and hopefully weren’t following his trail of blood through the snow. He needed to find shelter soon, Where he could at least rest and wrap his wounds up. He kept his right arm up, so the blood wouldn’t roll down his forearm and soak his gloves. He had taken off his left glove, keeping that stuffed between his arm where his staff was.
He just silently thanked the Titan Rascal wasn’t here. He had told him to leave and go find Luz, the owl lady, or anybody else who could protect the palisman better than he ever could. He no doubt suspected Kikimora had something to do with this, because she had tried before. And with Rascal not here, at least he could live on and get a more deserving witch.
As his mind was racing with so many thoughts, he didn’t see where he was going, and tripped over a large tree root. With a pained grunt, he collapsed into the snow as his foot caught on the root. His gold mask slid off his head and he dropped the staff and glove. But as he quickly, and very painfully, moved to get up, a small cave a short distance away caught his eye. Momentarily ignoring his wounds, Hunter quickly gathered the fallen items and hurried through the snow to the shelter.
Once his feet crossed the threshold of the snow to stony ground, Hunter’s legs finally gave way and he fell down against the cave wall. He had at least that could hide his small body from view. He dropped his staff and gloves into his lap and slipped his mask back on. The mask covered his entire head, so at least his face was mostly protected by the stinging cold.
Once he was out of immediate danger, he immediately began work on patching himself up. He had lost his backpack in the scuffle, so he didn’t have any medical supplies. But he did have a cloak. He pulled the end of his cloak from where it was pressed between his back and the wall, and tore off a couple strips from the end. He then bundled some strips to press against the laceration, and used the remainder to tightly wrap his injured arm. It wasn’t deep enough to need stitches, but was still quite bad. At least with the pressure on it, and the bundled cloth against the wound to absorb blood, he felt a little better.
He had a couple other cuts and a ton of bruises, but those had since at least stopped bleeding. Finally being able to rest for a moment, Hunter laid his head back against the wall and sighed heavily. He was sure he wouldn’t be able to sleep, with all the pain he was still currently in. And his right leg was still hurting extremely badly.
I probably fractured something, He thought with a wince. And that cut on his arm would surely scar as well. Just add it to the list.
He gulped, and gingerly laid against the rock. Almost as soon as Hunter did so, he could feel days off drowsiness and fatigue come crashing down on him as his body became heavy. Soon he didn’t have the strength to even twitch a finger. So he could do nothing but lay there, curled up pitifully in a corner, until sleep finally came to him.