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His uncle never said knowledge was a bad thing. Just that they needed to be careful about whose hands it fell in.
“You see, Hunter,” he’d explained once, indulgently, the first time Hunter had come in blabbering on about his idea of harnessing wild magic to cure- whatever was wrong with him, “to know is to control. Knowledge is power, and power drives obedience. But there’s only one person we should all be obeying - who?”
If he’d been the Golden Guard back then, Hunter would have known better than to answer. He’d have seen through Belos’ questions and known they weren’t cues- that he was being given a seat in the audience rather than an invitation to join Belos on stage.
But this was years ago, when Hunter was just some scrawny, half-witch kid carrying the blurry grief of losing most his family to wild magic, and the fear of losing the man who was left to an illness he wasn’t allowed to research. He’d been small and confused and dumb. So he’d answered.
“You, uncle.”
The emperor had laughed, and even though it’d been the wrong answer Hunter had still felt a small prick of pride. Stupid kid.
“My, you think highly of me. Or do you just think that way of anyone who has magic?”
“I-”
Belos had waved a hand, and Hunter’s mouth had snapped shut. Of all the powers his uncle had, this had always been the most impressive - how, without even speaking a word, he’d managed to silence all of Hunter’s own.
Then again, unlike all his other powers, Hunter had actually had a front row seat to see him gain it.
“The Titan, child. Everything we do is for the Titan. Even I’m just a mouthpiece for him - I’d never dream of taking his place.” A smile. “Just like you would never dream of taking mine.”
He’d leaned forward, and strands of gray had brushed his shoulders, dry as straw. Or dry as kindling, Hunter thought dimly - the kind of wood the scouts used to set up a fire in the mountains for warmth. The kind of wood Belos needed to harvest for palismen, for his survival.
His mouth had gone a little numb.
“The Titan,” his uncle continued, blue eyes bright and flat, “should inspire obedience for many reasons, not least because he’s given us his body to live on and his power to survive on it. He’s given us all the knowledge we need. But despite this, we keep looking for more. We hunt far and wide to find any secrets he may have hidden from us, and we learn, and learn, and learn… and then, Hunter, do you know what happens? When we start to harbor knowledge that was kept from us for a reason?”
This was a cue, and Hunter had learned his lines well. Still, the words came hoarse, and he realized, as if in a second skin, that the numbness had spread to his lips, to his face and head and hands. “We get hurt?”
“We get hurt.” The emperor had leaned back, briefly satisfied. Hunter tried to ground himself in the approval, and scold himself for the way his shoulders slackened now that Belos wasn’t so close. “Just like our family got hurt. Wild magic is a disease, and what’s more, it’s a disease of pride. Of wanting to know everything.” A sigh, and Belos really did care about the witches of the Boiling Isles - he really did care and he wanted to help make them better and he didn’t even hate them like Hunter did sometimes for surviving even when it was their magic that meant his own family didn’t. Belos was a good person. And Hunter couldn’t lose him.
“Sometimes, it’s as I said. It’s better to trust that things are hidden for a reason.”
“But if I helped,” Hunter tried. His scout’s uniform felt too large, and he shifted his weight, white fabric slipping and swallowing him. Like he was even more of a kid. Unable to even dress himself. “If I could take something so bad and research it, I could maybe use it for good! Like to heal your-”
“Enough.” Another wave of the hand, another thought stopped in its tracks. “I’m not letting you stoop to that level. Wild magic has taken away our family - I won’t let it take you too.”
His tone, at first sharp as bone, had softened, and Hunter’s will softened with it. Some of the numbness had slipped out of his skin, and he rubbed at it, willing warmth in its place. “But if I don’t do anything,” he’d whispered, and by the Titan he’d sounded so pathetic, “what if you…”
“Die?” Belos had laughed again, and Hunter wanted to record the sound to play every time he was scared. It was a laugh of reassurance - that Hunter was a total idiot, to doubt a man with a direct access line to their god. “Oh, Hunter. You think you could find out more about my condition than I already have?”
“No! No, of course not, I just-”
“You just need to keep doing what I tell you to.” The words were sharp again, laced with finality, and Hunter’s head had twitched into an instinctive nod. “And right now, I’m telling you to bring me more palismen. I’ve done all the research that’s mattered, and this is the best solution that stays in line with the Titan’s wishes. I’ll forgive you this… infraction, since it’s only your first time asking. But next time…”
His palm had tightened around the armrest of the throne, dark black goo seeping out from under and dripping to the ground. Hunter didn’t let himself shrink back this time - let himself imagine his cloak stained black, a mark of Belos’ anger that he couldn’t rub off no matter how hard he tried. His heart clenched in his stupid soon-to-be-soldier chest.
“Do you understand?”
“Yes, emperor,” Hunter said. His voice had cracked, and he could have kicked himself. Belos, mercifully, didn’t comment on it.
“Good.” He’d reached out, and Hunter knew better this time than to tense, but whatever he’d been expecting hadn’t happened either. His uncle had just flicked an overgrown strand of hair out of his face. “You know I only want to keep you safe. If you get sucked into this world of chaos we live in - I would hate to lose you.”
Hunter had nodded again, guilt simmering in his chest like steam. “I know. I’m sorry, I- don’t want to lose you either.”
His uncle accepted the fumble with a nod towards the door, and Hunter accepted the dismissal in turn, bunching his shoulders and heading for it. The fire lining the walls cast his shadow in over-large, pointy shapes as he did, and Hunter steeled his nerves and tried very hard to ignore the way they seemed to almost flicker out of sync with his own body’s motions.
This castle was Belos’, and the only thing stronger than Belos (even if something in Hunter, something small and blasphemous, still recoiled at the thought that anything could be stronger than Belos) was the maybe-long-dead Titan, but sometimes - well. Sometimes, when the shadows moved a little too quick, and the light didn’t cut all the way through the castle’s darkness, it wasn’t hard to imagine a second pair of eyes ingrained within its walls.
Hunter opened the door, and didn’t even realize his hand was trembling until Belos called out, “And, nephew?”
(The word was always funny when Belos spoke it, lilting, a little ironic. Hunter didn’t put much thought into it. Hunter didn’t put much thought into anything that mattered back then.)
“From now on, I would advise you to curb your research. The Titan has told me he has big plans for you. Try to put your faith in him.”
—
Hunter had tried to put his faith in the Titan. Hunter had tried to do as his uncle did sometimes, and clasped his sweaty hands together, and squeezed his eyes shut, and listened to the slight whistle of his breaths, and prayed. But Hunter also didn’t have the power to speak to what was dead, and Hunter had no magic that wasn’t gifted to him so he could be worth something as a right hand man, and Hunter was so many leagues behind in age and experience - he needed to catch up somehow.
And so what if maybe, deep down, he couldn’t shake the heretical feeling that maybe there was more to learn about Belos’s curse? He’d lost most his family already. He couldn’t stand to lose Belos too, either by Belos’ body failing on him or by Belos’ mind deciding Hunter hadn’t given him a good enough reason to be kept around.
The Titan was supposed to have given them all the knowledge they needed, but he also wouldn’t answer Hunter’s questions, so - so what if Hunter continued to read?
It’s like his uncle said. It wasn’t that knowledge was a bad thing. It was about the kind of knowledge - whose hands it went on to fall in. So Hunter hid and limited his research on wild magic, and instead picked up books on mindscapes, and Titans, and the flora and fauna of the corpse they called home, and Hunter made sure all of it was useful, and Hunter made sure his loyalty would never stray enough for Belos to see him as a ‘threat’ (Titan, imagine!) or ‘heretic.’
Belos, for his part, didn’t seem to mind. If anything, he seemed to view the information his nephew dropped at his feet like a cat dragging in a bird’s carcass. Like they were already slightly distasteful givens.
But still, his words ate at Hunter, and kept him from pouring too much of himself into his books - everyone knew too much, and got themselves hurt. It’s better to trust that some things were hidden for a reason.
Hunter decided early on, after that, that he didn’t want to know too much. Just enough to stay useful. Just enough to understand.
—
Then it turned out he didn’t understand anything actually not even himself and maybe he’d spent his whole life supporting the wrong side even if he still desperately didn’t want to believe it and maybe he’d been looking in all the wrong places for answers he hadn’t even known he’d wanted. And then the human was telling him he could stay with her and The Owl Lady, a criminal so pathetic without magic that his uncle emperor Belos hadn’t even seen the point in petrifying her (hadn’t he petrified one of Hunter’s predecessors in one of the memories? Had he been worth it? He wouldn’t have had any magic either), and Hunter couldn’t breathe right for what felt like ages and Hunter now lived in the Owl House.
The first days were a blur - Hunter didn’t speak to any of them if he could help it at first, and Hunter stayed out of their way, and Hunter skipped meals until they started being slid under his door like he was an untamed cat, something feral.
But then, piece by piece, the world fell back into place. Or rather, Hunter forced himself to adjust, like any good soldier would. Started to bring the dishes back to the kitchen himself, started to say good mornings and pleases and thank yous.
And then, a week later, when Eda The Owl Lady asked if he wanted anything from town, Hunter asked her if she could get him a book on grimwalkers.
—
In the Boiling Isles, things often weren’t what they seemed. Hunter had learned that early on. Small pixies would have the fiercest bites, and red-eyed roaring minotaurs just needed a scratch behind the ears to calm down.
Even he wasn’t exempt from the rule - the emperor’s prodigious Golden Guard was just some half-witch teenager, with a staff full of artificial magic and a stupid desperate need to keep what family he had left.
Belos was wrong about a lot of things (things Hunter couldn’t start to wrap his head around yet, much less accept), but he was right when he said the Boiling Isles were a place of chaos. Titan’s sake, there was a whole coven dedicated to making reality look different to what it really was.
So even if Hunter seemed like a normal witch, with pointed ears and warm skin and a heart that pumped blood through his chest - that was irrelevant.
That was just the surface.
Galdorstone
Palistrom wood
Stones l eper lu gs
Selki mus sc les
Bone o
The page is so frayed Hunter can barely even read it. Vaguely, he knows the human (Luz) (he also isn’t a witch) has an echo mouse, and he thinks about stealing it (borrowing it) (Luz would let him have anything he asked for and mostly just seems upset that he won’t ask) and setting it on the pages, but - no, what would be the point. The echo mouse wouldn’t be able to replicate what was lost. And the last thing he needs is for it to scamper off back to the others, running its mouth off with all of Hunter’s hard-earned findings.
(Everyone knew too much, and got themselves hurt.)
Hunter shoves the thought all the way to the back of his brain, and brings the light closer, squinting at the lettering. Getting hurt is the least of his problems right now, when the alternative is knowing so little. And this part of his research isn’t even meant to be the painful one.
He reads on. The galdorstones act as a grimwalker’s (as his) heart, apparently - the palistrom wood is keratin - Hunter doesn’t even feel sick at the thought, just distant, two-step-removed curiosity. Maybe a little sick about the fact that he doesn’t feel sick.
He should feel sick, right? That’s what anyone should feel when they find out they’re not even a person. Just a collection of robbed, rifled parts.
Hunter doesn’t want to die now (everything might be easier if he did, but of course he can’t even do that right), but it does cross his mind that when he does, maybe he should have someone dissect him the same way they made him, and ship the parts back to their original resting places. He’ll ask Blight, maybe. Luz and Eda The Owl Lady already seem too attached, and too horrified whenever he opens his mouth to mention something about the emperor or the palace or his one day off.
Whatever.
It’s just part of why he has to do this alone, past midnight, in the spare room Eda’s put him up in until they can ‘figure out something a little more permanent, kid.’
He sets the light down, pulls the book closer. A memory surfaces, distant, half-drowned: Belos telling him of the dangers of knowledge, Hunter staring at his dry hair and thinking about the wood he needed to survive. It’s kind of funny, honestly - that it turns out the wood is actually what makes up his hair, and his nails, and his skin.
He prods it now, experimentally, still shoving down nervous-bright laughter. His arm is scarred (how couldn’t it be) (each one was a test of loyalty, or a punishment, or his own mistake for being so clumsy), but still so soft - so warm. It’s skin. Nothing like Flapjack’s coating when he returns to totem form (of course Flapjack has been banished outside for this), nothing like the dozens upon dozens of palismen Hunter had collected to hand to the emperor before.
How did Belos do this? Hunter can’t even imagine trying to replicate. Thank the Titan he’s only trying to understand.
(It’s better to trust some things were hidden for a reason.)
He ignores that, too.
Instead, placing the book down (still open on the relevant page), he reaches over for the second thing he needs. This, he couldn’t ask the Owl Lady for - where the book got him some pity, a small ‘oh, kid, of course’, and a library card if he ever wants to use it, this would probably get him a good dose of suspicion instead. Not that he’d blame them for it - he’d tried to hurt them so many times in the past. Luckily, for this he hadn’t needed to ask anyone at all. Just slip into the kitchen when they were out and rifle through the cutlery.
Hunter pulls out a knife.
It’s small and sharp - good, all the easier to control. It’s like Belos told him. The dull ones always point to your fingers.
Hunter toys with the handle, mechanically eyeing up the blade to check for rust. The last thing he needs is this getting infected. He’s not trying to inconvenience himself, much less the others - he cringes into himself imagining the new walk of shame he’d have to do to find bandages and healing potions in this house, this time dripping blood all over the Owl Lady’s floors and carpets. A rookie failure. Luckily, this knife seems fine, so all Hunter has to do is take a breath and lie his arm flat on the ground, next to the page.
Palistrom wood
Functions as the GRIMWALKER’S keratin (protein in hair skin nails etc) & also internal organs and glands. The natural magic/spirit in the wood will substitute/provide the natural protein, protection, and work structurally as a building block as well as maintenance to keep up polishing…
Half of it is gibberish, and it frustrates Hunter to no end. This is the problem with research - not that it makes you know too much, or whatever Belos claimed. That sometimes it pales in imitation to experience, or is only best suited as a supplement. You’ve got half the picture, it’s up to you to fill in the blanks!
It’s always a dare. Just like everything’s ever been in Hunter’s miserable life - you’re half a witch, so you’ll have to work twice as hard. You’re the youngest Golden Guard, so you’ll have to fight to earn respect.
But just like every other time, Hunter rises to meet it.
His breaths are coming quick, and Hunter tries to pace them, calm his nerves enough to make sure Flapjack won’t sense them and wake up to throw himself chirping at the door. He doesn’t know for sure how deep his bond with the palisman runs, but just in case - just in case.
This is it.
He’s spent years trying to prize obedience over understanding, and part of him still wants to. But right now an even bigger part of him - the part that needs results, the part that kind of hates Belos for never letting Hunter try to just help in the only way he could, the part that made sure his palisman is sound asleep in his totem form and placed him carefully outside as he holds a knife over his forearm to figure out if they’re made of the same stuff after all - is nearly giddy with dissociated desire.
He needs to understand. He needs to know.
The knife comes down.
It slices through his skin like a ship at sea, and it should hurt, but Hunter’s body is too shocked to feel it and his mind is too invested - he cuts as cleanly as he can, then grabs a nearby rag to dab away any blood. The timer’s started, and he needs to work fast now, he knows that. He can’t start giving in to wooziness, not without a healing potion in sight - he’d hate the Owl Lady Eda for keeping them hidden in places only she finds obvious if he didn’t hate himself more for being unable to find them.
Vaguely, he wonders how Belos got his blood to be red. How he got his blood at all - if it developed naturally within him, or if it was stolen too. Well, if it was, they’ll just have to just deal with that, won’t they? Unless they’re a vampire.
The thought’s kind of funny, but he doesn’t have time to laugh. Instead, he digs his knife in again.
It’s easier this time. Harder, too, but for different reasons - now that the shock is wearing off, the pain is hitting, a bright burning cry. Hunter grits his teeth, and takes it the way he always does. Tries to put it on a shelf, to feel it when he’s done. It’s 50/50 when it comes to success, but right now Hunter needs to know much more than he needs to stop, and if this body isn’t his, it can at least do what he tells it to, and it works. The pain sputters and shrinks back, and Hunter presses on relentlessly, cuts again and again until it’s deep enough to prove his point. To provide answers.
Titan, he hopes he didn’t nick a vein. He thinks he’d know if he had, but - that’s the cost, his mind supplies helpfully. You want to know too much, and you get yourself hurt.
Shut up, he snaps back. And, for good measure, because he can’t and won’t have regrets already, Belos needed to learn all this too. He needed to learn first.
The voice doesn’t have anything to say to that. The pain tries to squeeze out, but Hunter slams the lid back on fiercely, and moves to the next part of his plan.
He doesn’t have retractors. But he does have a skilled set of fingers, and a pair of newly washed gloves.
The skin gets pried open, fingers parting hot, warm flesh, and Hunter has to bite his tongue to keep the nausea at bay - nausea not at what he’s doing, or maybe a little at what he’s doing, but mostly at how his heart (?) does an eager flip at it. At the way all the pain fades when he needs to know he needs to know he’s so close-
He leans in, desperately drags the arm closer to the light. Squints.
It just looks like flesh.
Hunter frowns. Palistrom wood… he’d confirmed the outside of his skin was skin, or felt like skin, but the insides? What even is keratin? His fingers dig in deeper, tease the flesh further apart, new blood welling up and running down his arm as he does. He sees pulsing muscle, he sees pink and red, but. It all looks so normal.
That can’t be right. Hunter wants it to be right - Titan, he should (and does, does does does) want it more than he’s ever wanted anything for himself. But if there’s one thing he knows by now, it’s that nothing in life is that simple. And that when you’re not getting the right answers, it’s because you’re looking for them in the wrong places.
Hunter’s head is starting to swim, a bit, vision turning blurry, but he doesn’t move to close the wound. Not yet.
Not when he’s not done.
This can’t be right.
He’d spent ages by Belos’ side, being good and grateful and only sometimes a little upset that he wasn’t allowed to map out his own future. And then he found out that his future was mapped out for him from even earlier than he’d thought. And then the Owl House people told him that that future didn’t have to belong to him at all. And Hunter doesn’t entirely know yet who he believes, but he does know that if there’s one thing that’s never failed him, it’s his books - books that now say he’s made of wood and scales and stone.
So where is it? What am I? Who am I?
He can’t answer the last two yet, but if he answers the first, maybe he’ll get closer. And to answer the first, he has to change track, he has to dig deeper, has to move.
(He's given us all the knowledge we need, but despite that, we keep searching for more…)
This time, Hunter’s too dizzy to push the memory back properly, and the spike of anger that follows is so strong it nearly makes him sick. It’s white-hot and blinding, the rage of an animal caught in a trap. If the animal had also been hand-fed by the hunter for years before. And that’s just another joke, isn’t it? That even in his mind, Belos takes on the role of Hunter’s own name.
But Belos isn’t here now, and if Belos never let Hunter research for him - well, he can’t stop Hunter doing it for himself. He can’t stop Hunter from getting himself hurt because he wanted to learn. Like he ever even cared about that. Like he gave a shit about Hunter as Hunter, and not just as the dead man he made him to be reminded of, or what he’d have to go through getting him replaced if Hunter looked too hard into himself and found out-
Hunter isn’t sure when he rolled his trouser leg up, but the next cut feels like the most rational thing in the world.
The skin is a little harder there, but the pain is a thousand miles away, and Hunter slices through furiously, this time not even bothering to wipe away the blood. It drips down his calf, and Hunter twitches at the wet, wrong feeling, at the way his fingers (gloves already slick with blood from before) (he’d trade them out if he wasn’t so stupid to only have one pair) won’t quite slip into the skin enough to split it, to see if it looks the same as his forearm’s, which - oh, right, that’s bleeding too, Hunter should probably do something about that. Not now though. Now, he’s still fighting himself, trying to pull out the truth.
“Come on, come on, come on-”
The words sound shrill and over-eager, and it takes Hunter far too long to place them as his. The fervency makes him think it might be the closest he’s actually come to prayer, and now he can’t hold back a small, bubbled laugh, damn whoever hears him.
The stupid cut still won’t open right, and Hunter feels a sharp warning stab in his calf as his fingers grapple inside it, enough to pierce through his painless haze and make him pause. But he can’t give up now, so- so maybe that was just the wrong place to look too. Maybe he needs to open a third one, on his thighs or stomach or chest or - his chest.
That’s it. The galdorstone he’s got for a heart, apparently, the root of his body's whole. All at once he can feel it, beating lazily inside him, and he hates it. Hates knowing that galdorstones are items the illusion coven uses to amplify their own magic, so what better use for one than to create the grandest illusion of all - a boy who thinks he’s a person, with a body to match.
Will this kill him? Probably, probably not. Hunter’s fear is barely a thought as he struggles to pull his shirt off, swearing as he knocks the light over and gets the blood from his arm onto the cloth and his pants and the floor.
“Stupid - come on, come on-”
The words this time are snarled, half feral, and again it takes Hunter way too long to feel them in his throat. His head is definitely lighter now, the world turning fuzzy around the edges, but Hunter isn’t letting himself pass out without an answer, without knowing if he’s real or not, so he just struggles harder with his shirt and feels like screaming- like screaming-
“Hunter? Hunter?”
At first, he thinks he’s losing it. He thinks, haphazardly, that maybe it’s that thing Luz calls a conscience berating him inside his head, trying to steer him on, keep him going. But then tapping joins along the voice, too irregular to be the blood dripping onto the ground, too solid to be a manifestation from inside his head- a high and panicky chirp - “Hunter? My Hunter open the door love you open the door? Fly in window get human?”
And Hunter’s blood turns to ice.
He’s on his feet before he can stop himself, and yelps at the torrent of red that gushes from his leg as he does, knee nearly buckling in half. All at once, the pain hits, all of his shelves crashing down on him - his arm, his leg, the cold, the exhaustion, lightheadedness -
“Don’t come in,” he says thickly, and he means it to sound authoritative, but just like all those years ago his voice cracks in all the wrong places. “I’m- I’m conducting very important - research-”
Flapjack is clearly unimpressed, just butting his little bird frame against the door again, twittering loudly. “Hunter hurting I feel it what did you do what danger in, getting human, getting-”
“No!” Hunter scrabbles for the cloth, tries desperately to tie it around his arm. A new river of blood comes pulsing out under the pressure, and a weak groan escapes him, one he instantly regrets when he hears Flapjack’s chirp of alarm. “No, don’t get the hu- don’t get Luz, I’m fine, I’m perfectly f-fine-”
He’s not fine. None of this is fine, what did he do- his shirt is in a bloodstained heap on the floor, his pants are splattered with it, and even if he’s clumsily tied up one of the cuts, he still has another open, dripping sluggishly onto the ground, right onto his… no.
The book, the one Eda got him from the library. Bright red has flecked the pages, smeared the diagrams (the same shade as Flapjack’s wings, some part of his brain notes), and he instantly drops to his knees, the pain jostling inside him like a jar of coins as he does. Grabbing his shirt, he tries to dab at the paper, but the shirt’s already so bloody and all that it does is smear it more, crimson blurring irrevocably into the lettering.
“No, no, no, no, please, please…”
Another prayer, again without an answer. Hunter’s feeling woozier and woozier, but now he doesn’t deserve to pass out, to opt for the bliss of unconsciousness over fixing what he’s done. He rubs helplessly at the pages, and nearly sobs as he watches the letters fade more and more under his attempts.
When did he start crying?
Hunter never cries. Well, maybe once upon a time, but he hasn’t for years, not since he was told how cruel it was. A ploy for pity when it’s not deserved, or an attempt at mercy without actually trying to make up your mistakes to the person you’ve wronged. But most importantly, crying doesn’t solve anything, so why is his body doing it - why won’t it stop-
Because he’s all alone, and he’s bleeding out from two wounds onto the floor of a room he was supposed to be set up in ‘only temporarily’, and he’s ruined a book, and he’s sore and he’s stupid and he still doesn’t understand anything about himself.
It’s pathetic. It’s pathetic, but Hunter’s alone, and he's run out of everything else to do, so- fuck it.
His body slams its fist on the ground and sobs. Hunter, abruptly both trapped in it and a casual observer outside of the realms of passion or pity, watches it.
All at once, he’s a kid again. He’s all the kids he ever was. He’s the Golden Guard, returning with a cracked vial of Titan blood and furious for losing the rest. He’s a scout, freezing on a mountain and hating himself for not being able to cast a single circle for warmth. He’s Belos’ nephew, flinching back like a rabbit each time he’s touched but still meaning it with every inch of his dumb, stolen heart when he says that he doesn’t want to lose him.
He hates Belos. He hates that he can’t hate Belos. He hates himself instead.
“Hunter? Hey, Hunter, is everything okay?”
The voice is distant, another world away, and Hunter doesn’t even try to answer this time. Just numbly shakes his head like she can see it, feels his shoulders shudder with silent gasps. Wishes Luz would leave.
But of course, nothing about today is his day, and the tapping on the door is replaced by banging, slow at first but then louder, louder, edged on by Flapjack’s both waterlogged and piercing chirps.
“Hunter, I totally respect your privacy but- but, uh, you’re not answering to tell me to stay out, and your palisman keeps pulling at my hair if I try to leave- so- I’ll give you til three, okay?”
He should have known Flapjack would get Luz, even when told not to. He's never been much good at following orders. Then again, it turns out he could say the same about himself - he feels his lips move slightly, and sees the smile on the pale, drawn face he’s somehow standing over.
Dimly, he wonders if this is the view Belos had of him as well.
“One…”
Blood drips down Hunter’s leg.
“Two…”
He can’t pass out. He needs to explain. He needs to understand. Hunter grabs his strength, and spits out his words.
“Three. We’re coming in-!”
“Wait- ”
The word is choked, cotton-mouthed, but it makes no difference anymore even if it wasn’t. Hunter might as well have saved his breath. The door slams open, and he doesn’t flinch until the cry that follows it, the way he hears Luz’s footsteps throbbing in his skull as she rushes to his side. Her hands feel too warm on his back, on his arm, and if Hunter was in his right mind, he’d push her away. As it is, he can only twitch pathetically against her. A stuttering pulse point, an exposed nerve.
“No, no no no, Hunter- ” She sounds panicky, horror rising high in her voice, and it’s all so embarrassing, Hunter wants to disappear. Far from staying awake now, he wants to pass out quicker. “Hunter, what happened - what did you do-”
The book is still open. She ignores it. Hunter swallows down a slight, awful feeling of disdain - that Luz would make a terrible scout, that already she’s failing at seeing the bigger picture.
It’s long past midnight, but the human (is he also part human? he still isn’t sure) is still wearing her cloak (he thinks he remembers her saying she hopes its magic will keep away bad dreams), and she slips it hurriedly off her shoulders, wraps him up in it like he’s a corpse ready for burial.
“I’ll get Eda,” she says helplessly. “You- stay with him, okay, I have to get Eda-”
That’s when Hunter remembers that Flapjack is here too, and his guilt grows, swells like the tides on a stormy day. He tries to blink back tears, and sees the palisman curled up by his bleeding leg, looking like he’s trying so hard to do something and getting no closer to it. Healing magic, maybe. Shame Hunter’s got none of his own to link it to.
He hadn’t realized Luz was standing until she towers over him, and Hunter’s self that’s also standing regards her in vague interest.
“What did you do?” Luz says again, and she sounds near tears herself, now. She doesn’t get it- Hunter isn’t sure he himself does, anymore.
His mouth moves. His mind speaks. “I just wanted to know.”
Mercifully, his exhaustion keeps him from hearing Luz’s response.
With a human’s cloak wrapped around his body and a palisman desperately nuzzling at his skin, the grimwalker passes out on a once-witch’s floor. It sounds like the start of a bad joke.
He wonders if his uncle would laugh.
-
His dreams are cold and dark and deep, but temporary. Thankfully temporary.
The grimwalker sees flashes of Belos cutting him open and taking his body parts to make a new one (galdorstones make great gifts for the emperor), smiling in the way he does when he’s pleased with him. The grimwalker wants Belos to be pleased with him so he helps, reaches into himself and pulls out and passes him his organs even if it hurts, hurts, HURTS HURTS HURTS
“Easy there, kid, I know it’s bad right now but no one ever said stitching skin up is easy, even for magic-”
The grimwalker stands proudly in front of Belos with his golden mask, he’s been promoted, he’s useful. Belos beckons him closer, and he has hawk talons for fingers, and the grimwalker feels like a prey animal offering itself up throat-first but he comes and Belos strokes his cheek and Belos rips his mask off, snaps it in half and inhales it the way he has the souls of so many palismen in the past, unravels the grimwalker’s essence sinew by sinew and consumes it
“- okay, right? Right, Eda?”
“He will be, if I’ve got anything to do with it.”
The grimwalker stands in a line with all the ones who came before him. A dozen faces. A thousand. They’re wearing their golden masks, but he knows they’re smiling at him, so he tries to smile back and one steps forward and places a hand on his head and says ‘You’re pretty short, aren’t you?’
And the grimwalker (the newest one) bristles and says I’m the youngest golden guard and the other one laughs and says ‘I’m glad you’re the one who makes it, then, you’ve got a whole life to live’
And the grimwalker suddenly remembers he’s
“-not bleeding anymore, at least, so just let him rest, okay? There’ll be plenty of time to talk when he wakes up, just- don’t crowd him.”
What am I? he asks the other grimwalker.
- GALDORSTONE
- PALISTROM WOOD
- STONESL EPER LU GS
- SELKI MUS CL ES
- BONE O
‘Put that manual away’ he tells him and then another one says ‘you wouldn’t describe a witch as FLESH and TISSUE and KERATIN would you’ and he says I still don’t even know what keratin is and they all laugh again and the grimwalker should feel patronized but he doesn’t, he feels at home. And the other grimwalker shrugs and says ‘I don’t really know what we are either’ and the grimwalker bursts Why don't you care? Why don't you care that we might be fake? and the other grimwalker is quiet for a really long time and then says
‘There’s nothing wrong with wanting to learn, and he was wrong to keep you from that. But you're real no matter what you're made of. Even if you found wood and scales and splinters - that means nothing except how you were brought into the world. What was needed to give us the gift that's you. And learning what's inside you won't explain what you want it to. It won't teach you who you are, and it won't change what you have to do next.'
And the grimwalker is the quiet one this time.
And the other grimwalker continues 'I know learning to be a person is scary. Are you sure you don’t just want to confirm to yourself that, because you were made with XYZ instead of ABC, you’re not actually one? Are you sure you don’t have a bias because you want to watch yourself fail?’
And it's quiet for a very long time.
And then the grimwalker says I hate it so much, and doesn’t say if he means Him or Belos or Being A Person or Not. And the other grimwalker says ‘you don’t have to hate it alone.’ And the grimwalker says I don't want him back, but- it was easier then and the other one says ‘this will get easier too, if you let it.'
And Hunter says Thank you.
And,
I think I’m ready to wake up now.
And his predecessor touches his cheek in a way that doesn’t hurt, this time, in a way that never will have to again, and says ‘don’t miss us.’
-