Work Text:
"Wait."
Despite how much he knew he shouldn’t, Hunter looked back. His uncle lay in a broken heap on the ground, his white robes tattered and stained with his own vile fluids.
Belos' curse had been taking its toll while the youth was away, and either out of a lack of ability or a botched attempt at manipulating Hunter, The Emperor has let his body fall into disrepair.
Hunter’s shoulder was still denigrated from where Belos had sank his claws into the boy, but the bird fluttering by Hunter’s side helped him break away now, just as he had before.
The eyes coating the right side of Belos’ face softened as he plastered on a fake smile, the action now so painfully transparent to even Hunter himself.
“It’s not too late you know, if you come back with me now, I’ll have mercy upon you.”
His lies were even more obvious to spot.
Hunter turned away and forced his legs to move. Flapjack’s staff is a reassuring weight in his hands. Hunter holds his palisman gently, careful to never crush it like Belos would do to him and so many others.
Belos took in a rasping breath and cried out. “Brother? Brother, why are you leaving me?”
That made Hunter stop, and confusion already plastered across his face as he looked over his shoulder.
The Emperor had started slowly dragging his way across the ground, leaving behind a noxious trail of ooze the color of stardust. His voice lifted as he grew more frantic.
“Do you remember when we were children, and I had such short, short little legs? I could never-never keep up with you-!” Belos coughed up something that used to be blood.
“But, you waited for me anyways! Because I was your little brother and you loved me. I-I never thought I’d be taller than you one day-!”
Belos let out a laugh, sounding so utterly broken that there was no way this had to be a performance. Hunter’s throat clenched, and he felt like he was overhearing a mourner at someone else’s grave.
Belos kept rambling, not even waiting to give Hunter a chance to reply aside from his own need to gasp for breath.
“You waited for me because we were all the other had. And-it looks like it’s that way again brother. So won’t you wait for me? I can catch up!”
Hunter’s eyes were stinging, and Flapjack was already tugging at his hood to get him to go away before Belos could reach him again. But Hunter had one last thing he wished for.
“Why should I wait for you, when you left me to rot ?” Hunter said spitefully, every last syllable dripping with venom to twist the knife for the first, and last time.
Belos’ eyes widened, and welled up with the acrid burning bile of countless innocent creatures.
And Hunter left Belos alone to drown in his own sorrow.