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There’s fire and then there’s ashes and then the world opens up around him.
He sees a face. He doesn’t know why, but he wants the man behind that face to see him.
It’s one of Hunter’s first memories. He’s reaching out to his uncle, who looks tired—who looks pleased; who looks satisfied.
“Hello Hunter,” the man says, kneeling down to greet him. “It’s been a little while, hasn’t it? I’m glad to see you.”
Hunter is young, but not too young, maybe six or eight, which is a bit old for a first memory. Belos later says that losing his family might have made it hard for him to remember anything before then.
(Or perhaps he is brand new, just brought to life by Belos’ crooked hand. How much of his whole world has been a lie?)
“What’s—what’s going on? Who are you?” Hunter asks. He’s… unsteady, but not afraid.
(He should have been afraid.)
“My name is Ph—Belos,” the man says. “I’m your uncle. We’re going to do great things together, you and I.
Great things? Hunter feels his eyes widen as the idea takes root.
The m—Bel—his uncle, catches his little fingers in one of his rough hands, pulling Hunter’s arm out straight. The other hand, clothed in a great big black glove, comes to hover over Hunter’s thin arm.
A flash, and a golden symbol appears on Hunter’s wrist. It hurts, a little, but he’s too caught up in the sheer magic of this moment to notice the pain of the branding.
“What’s that?” he asks, always a bit too curious for his own good.
This time, the first time, before his stupid questions become nagging and repetitive, his uncle indulges him. “It’s your coven brand,” he patiently explains, setting the glove aside as he stands. “You’re part of the Emperor's Coven—my coven. It’s a big responsibility, because we’re in charge of everyone else, but I know you can do it.”
Hunter nods, clenching his fists at his sides as he stands up straighter. It doesn’t do much for him—he was never tall, even as a child, but his uncle notices.
A warm, pleased smile crosses his uncle’s face, and Hunter thinks that he would do anything to see that smile again.
My hands, he decides, young and foolish and still so tragically full of heart, are for making my uncle proud.
Hunter learns better, when he gets older. Other people's hands help the Emperor. His… only ever make things worse. He’s on a slippery slope, constantly in a desperate scramble just to keep from losing ground, and most days he can’t even manage that.
Sleep slips from his fingers.
One day, he stops feeling hungry.
That day is one of his better ones. Without that gnawing distraction he is better. Maybe… he’s even good. Not good enough to be great, not the way the Emperor knows he can be, but better.
He stops reading as much after that. More time is spent on his staff, on his training, on his missions. He rounds up wild witches, he tries not to watch their fluid, spontaneous movements with too much interest, tries not to match the patterns to the things he knows.
Hunter wants to be useful.
(He wants to be good, he wants to help.
Worst of all, he doesn’t want to hurt anybody.)
Belos’ curse pains him so much, and each time it forces him to lash out, Hunter’s heart fills with determination to stop it, to fix it, to save him.
Great things. The Emperor believes he can do this, so he can do this.
The slippery slope seems to even out.
(Or perhaps he’s just too tired to notice all the tiny signs of disapproval. His uncle was always a subtle man.)
Then, one day the human girl—Luz—holds light in her hands, cradling it delicately, as she shows it to him. It’s… not the first time he’s been allowed to see something precious, of course. He might not be as useful as he should be, but the Emperor offers him more trust than any other.
Yet… this feels… different?
Hunter does not like this. He cannot name what feeling sits low and soft in his stomach, what wraps around his forearms and makes his hands shake, but he knows it is treasonous, so he does his best to put it down.
It is… a poor best.
(But it’s the kindest thing he can do for something not meant to live in this world.)
His best has never really been good enough, anyway. The wild witches, like Eda the Owl Lady and the human girl, don't understand that he’s helping them, so they lash out, they run, they hide, like wild animals.
There is a reason he was named Hunter.
The thing about hunting is that one must be very, very careful. A predator treads a fine, fine line between worthwhile risk and foolishness, and that line always seems to slip away from Hunter.
He keeps his fingers on the pulse of that line, following the trail of the human girl, but he still manages to lose it.
Hunter wakes up in the Emperor’s mind. For a moment, he thinks: I can fix this, my uncle will understand.
Then, it all goes wrong.
There’s fire and screaming and—and—
For one horrible horrible moment, Hunter’s world dips like a wounded ship, and then it spins.
His thoughts whirl, around and around, The Emperor—his uncle—Belos the axis on which it tilts. If—if Belos is behaving cruelly, then—is it—is it even cruel? Maybe he was—and yet—
And yet.
The feeling is back. It grows this time, wrapping around and around and around and—
The kindest thing he can do for something not meant to live in this world is put it down.
Perhaps Belos is doing him a kindness, then? Nobody is perfect. Perhaps he is simply correcting a mistake and the most useful thing Hunter can do is lay down and die—
Hunter stands, frozen, a deer trapped in torchlight, wild and afraid as his Emperor darts toward him. Perhaps he can still retain some of his dignity, a noble death, standing by the principles ingrained in his mind and body and—
Of all the things, it is base animal fear that wins out.
Hunter does not want to die. He does not want to die, he does not want to lose Flapjack and that feeling when he touches the clouds and when Flapjack says I love you and doesn’t want anything back.
He does not want to lose Gus and Willow and Luz.
He does not want to lose this.
So he moves, because that is what happens. His world finally rights, the ship lurching up from the seabed, the whirling top coming to rest shakily on its side.
Belos is wrong, he thinks as he stands in the eye of the storm.
So he moves and he doesn’t stop.
Through hunger, then illusions, then through the way it feels like his very soul is being ripped out by his own uncle, who wants him dead-dead-dead, keep moving.
Hunter is not a hunter. He is a terrified little echo mouse, spewing up the knowledge he has consumed in a desperate attempt to stay useful, to stay good, caught in a cage of his own making, and it’s all his fault.
So he keeps moving and moving and moving—
Until he stands at the shore of his uncle’s desiccated corpse. There’s nothing of the man Hunter once reached out to, once looked up to, once served in life and mind and heart.
Grimly, he grinds Belos beneath his heel as he runs forward, fleeing desperately toward the portal. His hands are clenched in tight fists, and he looks up, ahead, toward the future.
After all, there isn’t anywhere else left to go, is there?
(Hunter knows that feeling well.)