Chapter Text
‘You know we could find this thing faster with a satellite system.’
Hunter rolled his eyes, not bothering to look up from the snapped twig he’d been staring at for two minutes, for motherboard knew why. ‘Yes, provided there wasn’t a storm that blocked their signal. Or clouds. Or they went down. And, y’know, if there were any satellites overhead.’
Dara’s eyes widened. ‘You’re kidding. Everywhere on Earth has satellites. It’s a whole grid! Each country has them.’
‘Not above the Sibillini Mountains,’ Hunter said with a shrug, getting to his feet. ‘This way.’
Dara raised an eyebrow in a flawless imitation of her father, her accent just as sharp and cutting. ‘You got that from a twig?’
‘I got that from a broken twig.’
‘Oh, because that makes the difference.’
‘It does, actually. Nature leaves a trail, and all we gotta do is follow it.’
Dara rolled her eyes, pulling her phone out of her pocket, grimacing at how slippery it was in her hands. She was melting out here! How did people live in these Italian temperatures? Zenith had prepared her for a great many things, but slogging through thirty-degree weather? No. Not in the least.
‘I can send a nanobot swarm to scour this whole forest,’ Dara pitched, grimacing as she had to elbow her way through the briars that were rather annoyingly leaving Hunter alone. ‘We’d have it in five minutes.’
‘You’d also scare the heck out of it.’ Hunter crouched again, inspecting some disturbed leaves. ‘Just let me take point here.’
‘Why did you even ask me to help if you were just going to ignore all my offers of help?’ Dara huffed, grimacing at a bug that had decided to use her as a landing pad. Then a blood bank. It was quickly liquified.
‘Change it back, D.’
Dara rolled her eyes, but snapped her finger, the bug’s molecules rearranging themselves into their former positions, leaving the poor insect to buzz off in confused circles, giving a wide berth to the irate fairy.
‘It’s been here…’
‘Oh, and now you’re getting this from leaves?’ Dara was getting sick of this. ‘Hunter!’
‘I didn’t ask you to help,’ Hunter replied calmly, answering her earlier question. ‘You were bored at the cave while our dads talked, so I thought maybe you’d have some fun coming out here.’
Dara flicked another insect off her. ‘This isn’t how I have fun.’
‘I know.’ Hunter stood, shooting her a mischievous grin. ‘Figured someone as uptight as you could stand to widen her comfort zone a bit.’
There were a few moments of incredulous huffing, before Dara found her voice. ‘Uptight? How dare you!’
‘How dare I be honest?’ Hunter turned his attention back to the forest. ‘I’m sorry, my lady. Didn’t mean to upset your delicately-crafted view of yourself.’
Dara tripped after him, mentally cursing nature. She saw now why Zenith didn’t have any of the stuff.
‘We won’t even find anything!’ she groused. ‘Quillcats are extinct, in case you happened to forget!’
‘Not according to Lira.’
‘Who?’
There was quiet, exasperated sigh from Hunter, and she could practically hear the eye-roll. ‘The rustic fairy that saw it. If there’s a quillcat still in these woods, we need to find it and make sure it’s safe from poachers.’
‘They’re extinct,’ Dara repeated, enunciating as though speaking to a small child.
‘Says who?’
‘The Zenithian internet!’
‘Well, give them my condolences when we prove them wrong.’
The forest was silent for a while as Hunter continued to examine various aspects of the forest, nodding and frowning as though it all meant something.
‘I don’t know how you make heads nor tails of all this,’ Dara said after a while, scratching irritatedly at one of her new bug bites. ‘It’s a mess!’
That finally seemed to get under Hunter’s skin. ‘It’s not a mess, Dara. It’s beautiful. It’s life.’
‘Well, I’m tripping over your bloody life! It keeps trying to eat me! On Zenith, everything is calibrated. It all works in harmony. Everyone knows what’s happening.’
‘Same here,’ Hunter rebuffed. ‘Nature works in perfect harmony.’
‘Animals eat each other every day; that’s harmony?’
‘Yes.’
Dara sniffed at the reply. ‘Zenith produces all its food by molecular rearrangement. Nobody gets eaten.’
‘Your planet got hacked last year…’ Hunter muttered, going right back to favouring the forest over her.
Dara flushed furiously, the remark kerosene to the match of her temper. ‘How dare you!’
‘You got hacked, by a kid on Magix in an internet cafe.’ Dara could hear the quiet, smug smirk in Hunter’s voice, and her blood boiled.
‘So? Our systems were back online by day’s end. You take out a tree, it won’t grow back for decades.’
‘It still grows back.’
‘So an extinct animal can break a branch that you can gawk at for ten million years? Honestly, Hunter! I understand that you have some strange attachment to this confusion of genetics, but, as I said, I can have nanobots swarm this place. We’ll have an answer as to whether this cat is here in a heartbeat.’
‘I said no, D.’
‘Why won’t you just listen to me?! I’m right! In case you forgot, leading is in my blood!’
Hunter raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, really?’
‘Yes! Just as following is in yours!’
Hunter apparently had no comeback to that, walking on in silence. Dara faltered slightly, getting the worrying feeling that she may have actually offended him. Was that too far? Oh, why did people have to be so complicated? When her laptop was malfunctioning, all she needed do was run a diagnostic. She couldn’t run a scan on Hunter. Well, not without offending him further and probably getting a lecture from her parents.
‘You’re entitled.’
Dara flinched at the quiet, harsh remark. ‘Excuse me?’
‘You’re entitled. You think you’re above other people. That you’re better than them.’
That stung a bit, but it wasn’t…entirely untrue.
‘Well, maybe I am. How many teenagers can program one of the most advanced artificial intelligences there is?’ She was right. She knew she was. She was smarter than Hunter. It wasn’t an insult. It was a fact. He had a great many skills, but she was simply more intelligent. And, to her, it made perfect sense that she should guide him on how best to use his skills to benefit the task at hand. He, apparently, did not feel the same.
‘Do you always have to boss people around?’
Dara held up her hand, gesturing to the black ring on her finger, the purple aura pulsing with her frustration. ‘I wear the Black Circle, Hunter! You don’t think that makes me a leader?’
‘Oh, here we go again…’ Hunter shook his head, leaning up against a tree as though Dara’s attitude was physically draining his strength. ‘Would you quit it with that? This whole…‘we are the next circle’ bullshit you’ve got from Nemesis knows where. It’s nice that your dad gave you that, but it doesn’t mean you get to boss me around just because Ogron got to give my dad orders. We’re two kids with historically-significant parents. You get that? We’re not the historically-significant wizards, Dara. Quit acting like it. The circle is broken, and you…you just need your own life.’
Dara recoiled, folding her arms. ‘I have my own life.’
‘No, you really don’t. You avoid everyone.’
‘Says the lone-wolf huntsman!’ Dara snapped.
‘At least I can give a damn about what other people think.’
‘I’d give a damn if what you thought was right!’ Dara was so done with this. Why couldn’t people just listen to her?! She was right, dammit! She spun on her heel, stalking into the brush. ‘You find your extinct cat; I’m going back and waiting for my parents to finally get sick of this heat and take me home!’
There was a small part of her that wanted Hunter to call out for her to wait. To say that he didn’t mean it. She wasn’t entitled. But he didn’t. Probably glad to have his tracking back to himself.
The cave was blessedly cool, and Dara found herself wondering why on Zenith she’d thought to leave in the first place.
‘Kids!’ Sibylla appeared in the archway. ‘Did you find…oh.’
Dara stalked past her. ‘I will be in your library. Your son is still on the hunt, and he can stay there for all eternity for all the damns I’ll give.’
‘Wait, what?’
Dara didn’t bother to give an explanation, striding into the library and promptly turning her phone on, tapping pointlessly at the screen as she was faced with precisely no reception. Ugh. She wanted to be hooked up to Zenith! Where things made sense! And people didn’t overreact. Honestly! What was wrong with this boy? She was right! She was right! So why did he insist on doing things his way?
‘Hey, Sapling.’
Dara looked up at her father’s voice, wincing as she noted her sulky posture. ‘Hi, Dad.’
Ogron raised an eyebrow at his teenage daughter throwing a huff. ‘What’s going on? You sounded like…well, like me twenty years ago.’ Dara perked up, and he sighed. ‘That’s not a good thing, Dara.’
‘…Oh.’
Ogron joined her on the bench she’d chosen to dramatically throw herself down on. ‘What did you say to Hunter?’
Dara immediately went on the defensive. ‘Why do you assume whatever happened was my fault?!’
‘Because,’ Ogron said with a deep sigh, ‘you keep trying to be me. And if you’ve been successful, that means you were probably the fire-starter.’
‘I…may have said following was in his blood,’ she muttered, twisting the Black Circle on her finger.
‘Oof. You know it’s not, Dara?’
‘Well, it is, isn’t it? Gantlos took orders from you.’
Ogron nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes, but, first of all, that relationship was not as healthy as it should have been, and secondly, he’s not a follower. Don’t call him that.’
Dara, despite knowing that such an expression served no purpose other than to make her look like a petulant child, pouted. ‘Okay, that was wrong. But I was upset! Hunter is a frustrating individual.’
‘And, pray tell, what did he do that was so frustrating?’
‘I offered my advanced search methods to find this extinct cat his mother is supposed to safeguard, and yet he insisted on staring at snapped twigs! And, to add insult to injury, I am covered in thorn scratches and bug bites! I hate nature!’
Ogron chuckled softly as she flopped against the wall, sulking rather dramatically. ‘Oh, they weren’t lying when they said kids turn out like their parents. You have your mother’s fierce adherence to logic, and my constant fumbling of empathy and understanding.’
‘I’m supposed to take charge,’ Dara muttered, turning the Black Circle over in her fingers. ‘Why won’t people let me?’
‘It’s annoying, I’ll give you that,’ Ogron sighed. ‘And swallowing your pride and listening never really gets easier, not when you’re as obsessive as we are. But sometimes, surprising as it probably sounds, other people know better.’
Dara shook her head. ‘But he doesn’t! If this is important, my swarm can take care of it in a few minutes!’
Ogron was quiet for a minute. ‘You’re right.’ Dara’s heart leapt. Yes! ‘You could get the task done quicker. Undeniably. But what you have to ask yourself is what’s more important to you.’
‘Huh?’ Dara sat up straight, frowning in confusion. ‘More important? Than what?’
‘Than Hunter. He likes how he does this, he’s more comfortable with his home the way it is, rather than swarming with nanobots you made when you were nine. And if you want to have a positive relationship with him, let him make his own choices. Sometimes you just have to be wrong. And you swallow that, because you love the people you’re being wrong for.’
‘…That makes no sense. Being wrong for someone would just put them at a disadvantage. It’s illogical.’
Ogron smiled softly, ruffling her hair and eliciting a squeak of irritated surprise. ‘You are so much like your mother…’
‘She was a heroine of the dimension. I think being like her is rather a good thing.’
‘Yes,’ Ogron acknowledged. ‘If you’re picking a parental role-model, I’d most certainly recommend settling on her. But Tecna learned this lesson too, to an extent. And she’d never have been a heroine without her friends.’ His expression twisted with mild disgust, and he facepalmed. ‘Oh god…‘She couldn’t have done it without her friends?’ Is this what I am now? There has to be a redemption line here, Ogron.’
A giggle finally tunnelled its way through Dara’s carefully-constructed wall of logic and frustration, echoing around the stone library. ‘You’re my daddy,’ she said quietly, wrapping her arms around him. ‘And right now, you’re smarter than me.’ She paused. ‘Well…’
‘We can just stop there,’ he jumped in with a teasing smile. ‘Oh, and, Dara?’
‘Yes?’
Ogron touched the top of her right arm where a twisting black tattoo peeked out from under her sweat-soaked t-shirt. ‘You don’t hate nature. You’re named after it. The Dara knot. The twisting roots of an oak tree. Strong, wise, and united.’ That was honestly a pretty big blow to her argument against nature. She’d got the tattoo when she was thirteen, wanting to more effectively channel the dark magic she got from her dad. The design had spoken to her through a desire to connect with her father’s heritage, so far from the frozen cities of Zenith. And now it was forcing her to admit that perhaps she might possibly be somewhat near to wrong-adjacent.
‘You know I hate being proven wrong,’ she grumbled.
‘You get that from both me and Tec,’ Ogron admitted. ‘Now go find your friend before I have to explain to Gantlos how I’ve somehow managed to raise a smaller version of myself.’
Hunter had better appreciate that she was doing this… Dara zapped a tree branch getting caught in her hair, turning it into mist. She probably shouldn’t tell Hunter she’d done that…
The temptation to simply freeze over the stream ahead of her was strong, but she was quite sure there were things living in it that she might very well kill, so, with a deep breath, she stepped through. Her feet were wet. Disgusting.
‘Hunter?’ Her voice echoed off the trees, but no words came in reply. ‘Hunter! I apologise for my earlier words! I…was wrong.’ The sentence made her stomach roil, but she reminded herself that she did want to be Hunter’s friend. So she had to put his emotions first.
She shrieked as there was a rustling in the bushes. What if it was some kind of wild animal?
‘Dara Magic Winx!’ Okay, so perhaps transforming based on some rustling was overkill, but one could never be too prepared. Sibylla had a giant lobster ghost living in her indoor lagoon. Who knew what else was in this place?
‘Come out!’
The bushes parted, and Dara instantly felt stupid standing there in her fairy form. Two big, golden eyes blinked up at her, while purple paws padded out from the undergrowth. The spines on the creature’s back and tail told Dara that she had best give Hunter’s condolences to the Zenithian internet; it had been proven wrong.
‘Oh…um…hello.’ How did one talk to fairy animals? She’d never needed to before. ‘Good afternoon.’
The cat, despite not possessing eyebrows, raised an eyebrow.
‘Hunter’s looking for you. I should find him. You don’t know who he is, of course, but he’s very nice, and he’s supposed to be keeping you safe. We’ll go find him, come on.’ She turned and started walking, but the quillcat didn’t move. Oh, for motherboard’s sake! Would nobody listen to her?! Was she supposed to prioritise a cat? No, she wasn’t putting her pride aside for an animal she’d just met.
‘Come on!’ she snapped. Nothing. Well, she wasn’t just leaving it here. She’d found the quillcat, so maybe that would help make a decent apology.
She knelt in front of the fairy animal, reaching out a hand. ‘Please. Just follow me. It’s logical.’ Her hand tentatively touched the surprisingly soft fur, and she gasped as a sensation like a thousand bolts of lightning coursed up her arm. Somehow, the feeling was not unpleasant. Rather, it was invigorating.
‘What are you doing?’ she demanded, confused.
The quillcat glanced at her disinterestedly. ‘We’re bonding. Fairies usually look more awed.’ Bonding? Dara remembered her mother speaking of this, describing when she’d bonded with Flitter. Well, that explained the sudden talking.
‘Why would I bond with you?’
‘I’d imagine something to do with our equal amounts of disdain for the human race,’ the quillcat replied, more focused on grooming than on Dara. ‘Oh, I’m Nyla, since you didn’t care to ask.’
‘Dara Rowan, since you couldn’t be bothered to ask.’
‘D?’ Dara jackrabbited upright to see Hunter staring at her and Nyla in confusion. ‘…What the heck are you doing?’
‘Bonding. Or so this cat informs me.’ Nyla shot a glance up at Hunter, looked unimpressed, and went right back to grooming. ‘She’s a rather taxing creature.’
Hunter’s eyes widened. ‘You found the quillcat!’
‘Yes.’ Dara took a deep, deep breath. She could do this. ‘And I didn’t have to use technology. My way wasn’t the best way just because it was mine. I was very unfair to you, and have been prompted to apologise. The prospect galls me deeply, but I do actually feel regretful towards how I spoke to you, so please accept my begrudgingly genuine apology.’
There were a few moments where Hunter just stared at her. Had she apologised wrong?
‘This your first time apologising?’ he asked after a minute.
‘…Yes. I would be open to constructive criticism to improve my skills.’
Hunter shook his head, but he was smiling. ‘You’re really something, D.’ Dara had no clue what that was supposed to mean.
‘So…do you accept my apology?’
‘Do you accept that I’m not your servant?’
Dara nodded, biting her lip. ‘Yes. I do.’
‘Then yes, I accept your apology.’
Dara felt a rush of relief. She hadn’t realised how concerned she’d been that Hunter might not forgive her. ‘…Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’ Hunter walked towards Nyla, bowing his head to the quillcat.
Nyla nodded approvingly, glancing disdainfully up at Dara. ‘For future reference, that’s how you greet a mighty fairy animal.’
Dara rather childishly stuck out her tongue at the animal that had apparently decided to glom itself onto her.
‘How are you gonna break this one to your parents?’ Hunter asked, his voice laced with amusement.
‘Break what? I apologised.’
‘Not our argument; you just got a bonded fairy animal. That means she’s gonna stick with you now.’
Dara’s eyes widened. ‘…Oh.’ Oh, this was going to be interesting…