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‘Look what wild magic has done to your city!’
Toss.
‘My own family has been hurt by the darkness of wild magic…’
Turn.
‘I say, "The Titan has big plans for you," and he does what he's told…’
Groan.
‘Out of all the Grimwalkers, you looked the most like him…’
Hyperventilation.
Suddenly, the air was too thick. Too thick. He can’t breathe, he can’t, he can’t, he can’t…!
…Was he about to die? There was a lump in his throat, so unrelenting and stuck. It was never going to leave. It was never going to move.
What else can he do, except run? What did it matter? It would just follow him, no matter where he went. Even if he hid in the darkest, tightest corners of the rotting Isles, it would always be there to accompany him in his misery.
It would always hang over his head that he was absolutely worthless. No one ever loved him. No one ever saw value in him. No one ever cared. He was nothing but a fool for believing that any of it was ever real.
Run away was his only option. It’s all he could do to try and escape the crushing pressure on his chest.
He managed to twist the doorknob to his new room in the Owl House. It opened, but not quick enough. He was choking on the untranslatable storm of emotions in his chest. It was taking over, robbing him of everything he was dumb enough to think he ever owned.
His feet took him down the stairs. He doesn’t know where he’s going at all. He just needs to make it outside and get some fresh air. It was too stuffy in here. No matter how quickly he sucked air into his aching lungs, it was never fulfilling.
He can’t find the door. He’s doomed. He’s a goner, sinking into quicksand to be dismissed as nothing more than a clone to be slaughtered among the ones before him, because this was the only purpose he’s ever served.
He never meant anything to anyone. He’ll never mean anything to anyone, because that’s just how things were.
That was just the unlucky misfortune of being him. It was just the unfortunate, pitiful happenstance of having this body. This is just the curse he wound up with. What can he do? He can’t do anything. Nothing.
His vision spun when that thought settled in. What a shame, Belos had said to him in a mocking tone, emphasizing just how little he regarded him by flicking at his blond lock of hair.
Hunter remembers the tears that burned his eyes at that moment. His heart pounded and his gut wrenched and his blood boiled with the heat of a thousand suns. How could someone be so utterly cruel? Why does he have to feel this way? Why does the thought of Belos’ face make him want to curl up and sob until he runs out of tears?
Where is the door? He’s starting to panic. He sees everything, everything except the door.
There’s the silhouette of someone. Short and ruffled hair, sitting unmoving at the counter. It’s hard to see. There was only the faint glow of moonlight shining through the windows, but it was enough to see the round, bloodshot eyes that locked with his.
She’d been crying. She’d been crying for a while, too.
“Hunter, I—“ She began almost immediately. She uses an arm to wipe away the tears from her puffy eyes and stalks over to him. “What are you doing up?”
But he was shaking like a leaf, his vision was happening in snapshots. He can’t respond, even if he wants to.
She offers her hand out to him, but he shrinks away from it. Luz frowns.
Seeing her face comforted him, but made him spiral all at once. She understood, because she’d seen and heard all of the horrifying things he had.
But no matter how much she saw, she still wasn’t capable of helping him get rid of the ton of bricks on his chest, or the viscous lump in his throat.
He needed help and he needed it now, or else he might fall asleep and never wake up. …Which didn’t sound half bad, but not if this rapid heartbeat followed him. Not if his mind would continue to swirl after he’d gone, frozen in the same position forever and ever. The same thoughts, recurring for eternity.
He just got unlucky, right? That’s all. He was unlucky.
It seemed that Luz was unlucky, too. She was shaken by what she saw. She was stuck awake, too bothered by the memories to let herself rest. Things were bad. Things were getting worse, and it was starting to settle in deep.
Nothing was going right. All of her Titan’s Blood was gone. All of her sleep was stolen. Belos knew. Belos liked what he had stolen. The innocence of a child. None of it was good.
Suddenly, Luz wants nothing to do with the Boiling Isles. Yet there’s nowhere she can go to escape it.
It’s on her sides, in her sky, on the ground, all around. No escape.
There were no pockets, no cracks to another realm, ever. All sealed up and stolen away. Nothing, forever, and all of her memories and all of the things she’d seen would be gone, grasped in the iron fist of Philip Wittebane.
Why was he like this? What did the demon realm do to him? Why was he so utterly despicable? What did he get out of this…?
“Luz,” He shakily said her name again, for the second time ever. It felt so foreign on his lips, but comforting and reassuring, even though she was just as shattered as he was. “I— …I feel lost…”
She looked at him, unsure of what to think, let alone what to say. Her gaze is unfocused, glossy with tears and drowsy with sleep that she hadn’t had.
“What… w—what about you? Are you…? I feel like I’m gonna suffocate any minute,” He felt the temperature of his forehead with a hand and gave a laugh, completely void of even the tiniest speck of humor.
“I’m doing good.” She said earnestly, despite her aching body, so disturbed and so crushed. “It’s you I’m worried about. Do you wanna get some air?”
He nodded, and she put a hand on his back, guiding him toward the door.
She felt like a zombie with each step she took, her body taunting her with rest she couldn’t bear to imagine.
She can’t rest, not with the flashing memory of Belos’ palismen soul demon crying out in world shattering, gut wrenching despair. She can’t rest, knowing that the last of the Titan’s Blood was gone, her only chance of escaping this hellish nightmare.
But all she could do was take it step by step. Second by second. She turned the cold doorknob and opened up a world of fresh outside air for the both of them to steal for their greedy lungs.
Hunter’s frantic, whiny breaths had turned into longer, more fulfilling sighs within a few seconds.
“See? That’s a lot better. We can breathe now. Just breathe. It’ll help calm you down.” She coached him, taking in big breaths of her own. He nodded through it, muttering the occasional okay, or alright, I can do this.
Several minutes go by, and Luz and Hunter are stuck in this world where no one else exists except each other. They hold the others’ gaze, being as still as they can and matching up their inhales.
It doesn’t get better, but it becomes more tolerable for their small hands to grip. It becomes something they can tackle and gradually make episodic progress with. It shrinks into something that can be hidden until it inevitably decided to grow up again and invoke terror on its possessor. A vicious cycle.
It had been a week now, and things weren’t even marginally better.
Where on this cursed planet were they supposed to get help? Crying out into the sky would be like screaming into a void. There’s no one around to hear. No one cares. No one has anything that could possibly soothe this ache. No one can erase what they saw in the Emperor’s mind.
There’s nothing in the clutches of consciousness that can take away their trauma.
Nothing anyone could ever offer would alleviate the cruelty. No amount of anything could prepare the Boiling Isles for what Belos was planning.
Everything, all of it was but a lie. Luz and Hunter, with their small fraction of it, would just have to stand around and watch the world fall into absolute destruction.
It was worse on some nights more than others. Tonight though, the words had echoed endlessly in his mind.
‘Out of all the Grimwalkers, you looked the most like him…’ Belos had said so calmly, and even fondly. So utterly sickening.
What does that even mean? What is a Grimwalker? Who did he look like? How many other Grimwalkers were there? Why couldn’t Belos just love him for who he was? Why couldn’t they end this awful cycle?
Hunter’s body wracked with a warble that turned into breathless whines. Luz watched incredulously as he quickly fell into the rhythm of gasping and quiet chokes of tears.
“Oh no. No, no, no, no…! Hunter, you—… You have to breathe, remember?” She tried weakly, but he still fell forward, catching himself with his hands. He didn’t seem to hear her.
Tears rolled like a river down his face and puddled onto the floor as he sobbed.
Luz could only watch. She gets down on her knees in front of him, watching his frantic breathing and hiccuping. It was nowhere near calming down. It was nothing like they’d practiced every night with the fresh outside air.
Numbly, she pulls his face onto her shoulder. Her shirt quickly grew wet and itchy against her skin, but the sound of his despairing weeps shattered any valid or relevant complaints.
She could only stare blankly ahead, her brain automatically trying to block everything out.
The sound hollowed out a deep, dark and swelling pit of hopelessness in her stomach. The vibration of his cries on her skin shook her to her very core, the endless laments of feelings his words couldn’t articulate.
He shook and shook and shook, not able to catch even half of a decent breath. He weakly clutched at her sleeves, begging and pleading for something she’d never know. Something she could never give him.
So what else was there for her than to do the same?