Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Scar wiped the sweat from his brow using an old handkerchief. It’s a well-worn piece of fabric, clearly loved and often used. There’s an arrow embroidered on its corner. Scar pulls his dagger out of the body of the fallen beast below him and wipes the blood off of it with the same handkerchief.

The wolf the group tracked down was a tricky one. While the rest of the wolves that belonged to the same pack were easy enough to take down, this one had managed to evade them for almost a week now. It had continuously retraced its steps and moved at an uneven pace to throw them off. He had to admit, for such a vicious beast, it sure was smart.

The arrows lodged into the wolf's body were mostly broken; Scar figured it wasn't worth trying to salvage any of them. The group was going to be paid an extraordinary amount by the King anyway, he'd be swimming in arrows soon enough; though he was sort of peeved that all of the shots were mere centimeters away from vital organs, mere misses.

The woods around him were silent, almost scarily so. Usually, the birds would be chirping their heads off. Normally, he'd be worried that a predator was around, luckily he knew that the only one that was was now dead at his feet.

However, he takes a moment to look around the forest, just in case. He's about to chalk his nerves up to adrenaline and paranoia until he hears a rustling and snapping sound from up in the trees.

He whips around, swiftly pulling an arrow from his quiver and aiming his bow towards the sound, only to discover there's nothing there. He doesn't back down, though; he stays vigilant
He knows he heard something. Another rustling, but this time on the ground behind him. It has him redirecting his aim to ground level and almost firing before he sees a flash of red hair.

“Woah, woah!” Gem screeches high-pitched. “Don't shoot me!”

“Sorry, sorry!” He yelps quickly and carefully allowing the string to return to rest and putting the arrow back in its quiver. “I thought something else was there!”

“It's alright,” She says, letting out a deep breath. She looks at the wolf's body. “Thank God somebody finally caught it. I was worried we'd spend another week hunting it. Any signs of anything else?”

“Just some boar tracks. Let's get this guy back to camp, I'm sure the pelt will make a good coat. I’ll start tracking the boar once this guy is set up.” He decides. “Wanna help carry it?” He tries his best to use puppy eyes to convince her to help.

Gem glowers at him before sighing and giving in. “Fine, fine.” She waves away his thanks. She walks over to its body, bending down. “Oh, by the way, Bdubs thinks he found a harpy feather. Ren and Impulse are pretty convinced it just belongs to a hawk, Mumbos on the fence, and Zed didn't even look at it before agreeing that it was a harpy.” She tells him, picking up the front half of the wolf.

“What do you think?” He asked, picking up the back half and beginning to walk back towards the camp.

She hums. “I'm not too sure. The feather was pretty big, and it didn’t have any distinct markings like some hawk or other raptor feathers would usually have, but, harpy colonies are pretty rare this close to human settlements. Usually, they try to get as far away as possible, that's why harpy sightings tend to be so rare. Besides, some big birds don't have too many markings anyhow.”

“It’d be bad if it is a harpy,” Scar says, Gem nods her agreement.

The thing with harpies is everyone knows about them. They are the boogeymen in old wives' tales, they are the monsters in the stories parents tell children to make them behave. Scar himself had been at the receiving end of some of the stories when he was younger.

‘Careful, Scar, you’re so clumsy,  a harpy will notice and carry you off to feed its chicks,’ his mother would warn him. ‘Careful, Scar, if you don’t do your chores, we’ll send you out into the forest for the harpies to deal with,’ his father would say. ‘Careful, Scar, don’t go out at night, you never know if a harpy is looking for its next meal,’ his grandmother would warn.

Of course, now he’s fully aware that a harpy would never be stupid enough to live so close to a human settlement, never mind go into one in search of food, but younger him had been terrified of the thought.

The first time he had ever seen a harpy was when he was twelve.

A well-known hunter had just come back from a month-long trip early, and with him, he brought the body of a harpy. The thing was massive but short in stature. It was built like a tank, with wicked talons and soulless black eyes glossed over with death. It had human-like hands attached to its wings at its carpal joints and dagger-sharp teeth. The hunter had paraded the body of the harpy around, showing it off to anyone who wanted a look before he sold the thing.

That harpy and its hunter were what originally inspired Scar to go into hunting as a career. He was thirteen when he picked up a bow for the first time, and fourteen when his late mother gave him a handkerchief with an embroidered arrow. ‘For protection, and so your arrows always strike true,’ she had told him.

Though, of course, Scar had never seen a live harpy, but he swears that when he makes his childhood dream come true it’ll be the best day of his life.

---

As soon as Gem and Scar get back into the camp, a large, brown feather is shoved into their faces by an over-enthusiastic Bdubs.

“It's a harpy feather, right!?” the man practically yells. Scar can't even get his eyes to focus on it due to how close to his face it is.

“Alright, buddy, hold on. At least let them put down the wolf first.” Impulse pulls Bdubs back away from Scar and Gem.

“Thanks, Impulse.” She gives a sharp look directed at Bdubs, who is still beaming at them, a bright smile on his face as he clutches the feather tightly. Impulse gives him a firm pat on the back.

“No problem. Mumbo's just in his tent if you want me to go get him while you guys get this thing onto the butcher board.” He seems to appraise the large wolf before looking back up to Gem and Scar for a response.

“Sounds good.” Gem agrees, and the pair make their way over to a large wooden slab set up under a tarp.

They lay the beast down just as Mumbo begins his way over to them, buckets and tools in hand.

“He was a big fella, wasn't he?” Mumbo remarks, putting his tools down. “What are we thinking? Rug, blanket, boots?” He directs his question to Scar.

“Surprise me.” He beams.

Mumbo gives a hearty chuckle in response. “You'll regret that.”

“Me, regret telling you to make whatever you want for me? Never.” He denies.

“Oh, just you wait, I'll hide the teeth in the boots so when you put them on for the first time you get stabbed.”

“MUMBO! What is wrong with you?” Gem cries, but the boys just laugh.

“Well, I'll leave you to it! We're burning daylight, and I should go scout out where the wild boar have been.”

The other two wave Scar off, Gem staying to chat with Mumbo. Scar approaches Bdubs, intent on borrowing one of his horses.

“Oh, Bdubs~” Scar sing-songs.

Said man is currently half buried in a chest full of various traps. Scar's not sure how he manages to do that without emerging covered in mouse traps. He giggles at the mental image.

“What you want?” Bdubs narrows his eyes at Scar.

“Just looking to borrow a horse, of course! All the better for quickly tracking the boar.”

“Well, I guess you can have one.” He acquiesced as if he was ever going to tell Scar ‘no.’ He hops over to where the horses are tied up.

He undoes the slip knot holding a white mare in place and hands the reins over to Scar. “Now you return Snow in one piece, yes?”

“I promise, not a single hair will be out of place once I get back.” He holds a hand over his heart as he swears it.

Scar mounts the horse and begins his trek towards where he’s pretty sure he spotted the boar tracks, but not before thanking Bdubs for the mare.

What Scar wasn’t expecting when he finally located the tracks again was for blood to accompany them. It wasn’t just a few drops either; whatever creature had injured the boar did so well enough that it shouldn’t have been able to move very fast. Scar should have already come across the kill site.

The predator must have been playing with it. Something with enough confidence to allow its food to run away from it without fear of something else stealing it was a dangerous thing. He’d have to stay on high alert. He wonders if there were other wolves that the group failed to notice during the initial survey of the land.

The mare he’s riding keeps glancing around nervously, it’s clear she’s aware that something isn’t quite right about the situation. Scar was worried that one odd sound out in the distance could cause her to freak out and run. He really doesn’t want to end up face-planting in the mud because the horse bucks him off.

Finally, he comes across the corpse of the wild boar.

Its skin is marred with deep gorges formed by claw marks. The corpse is half eaten, and the rest is left to rot. The most concerning thing about the scene in front of him is the giant feathers littered around its body. Similar to the one that Bdubs had been shoving into his face only a half hour prior, the difference was the one Bdubs had was brown, and these were all various shades of fiery orange.

Scar dismounts the mare, who's still glancing around nervously, her ears pinned to the back of her head. He walks over to the body and collects some of the feathers littered around, intent on showing them to the others to get a more definite answer to what the creature that left them is. He has a sinking feeling that they are, in fact, dealing with harpies.

It’s as soon as he mounts the horse again that a rustling sound can be heard overhead, along with a few breaking branches. Snow rears back, almost knocking Scar off. It takes everything he has to not be thrown to the ground. This was exactly the thing he had wanted to avoid.

He manages to turn the horse around and begins galloping back towards the camp. No way was he coming back out here alone, not when there was a chance he’d get snatched right off the back of Snow and carried off to some nest to be fed to grotesque baby harpies.

It seems the horse isn’t concerned about taking the safest path at the moment because she keeps running practically through bushes and brambles that catch on Scar's legs, threatening to snag his feet and drag him off of the horse. He nearly gets smacked in the face with several tree branches.

He thunders down the footpath that’s beginning to be worn into the earth as the group keeps using it, and the sounds of a creature in the trees seem to follow him until he reaches the perimeter of the area that he and the others had cleared out. Once through the intangible boundary, all noise above stopped, but that didn’t stop the mare’s stampede into the center of camp.

The thundering hooves startle everyone; those not outside rush out to see the commotion. Snow is whinnying, rearing back, and doing what looks like her best attempt to throw Scar off. Luckily, Bdubs quickly rushes over to help calm the horse down.

Once she’s no longer freaking out and threatening to buck Scar off, he dismounts. Two hands on his shoulders bring his attention back to reality and force him to be aware of the fact that his breathing isn’t even, instead coming out in short, panicked gasps. It’s Gem who’s holding him. “Hey, Hey, what happened?” She’s asking him.

Before he can respond, Bdubs is screeching beside him. “What did you do to my horse!?”

Looking over, Scar sees a gash on the mare's side. For a brief moment, Scar convinces himself that it must have been caused by the creature that had been following them. Quickly, he comes to his senses and realizes that the creature had only been above them in the canopy and that the jagged line embedded into the horse's side was caused by a harsh brush with a tree branch.

“I-” He takes in a breath of air. “Found more feathers.” He hands them to Gem before placing both his hands on his knees and leaning over in an attempt to catch his breath. “Something-” Another gasp. “Killed a boar, a big one. Left all of those. It was following us.”

He hears worried murmuring from the people around him. Finally, with his breath caught, he looks up. Impulse is staring at him with a concerned look. “Mumbo, come look at these.” He’s ordering, holding out the orange feathers to said man.

Mumbo grabs them, looking them over. “These are covert feathers. If they were flight feathers, they could conceivably come from a bird of prey, but…” He pauses, looking over them again. “Definitely covert feathers. Without a doubt, they belong to a harpy.”

The group takes in the news. It was fun when it was a silly hypothetical, is it, is it not? Would they have to take down a deadly creature, or is it just a little hawk? But now, with the threat confirmed, the group would need to come up with a game plan. Harpys lived in colonies that could range from just a pair to hundreds. There was a chance that they would have to report back to the king that they were unable to clear the forest and lose any money they would have gotten from the job.

One wrong move and any one of them could wind up dead to the talons of the beasts. Scar smiles despite this. “Their feathers will make great arrows and make us a great amount of money.” The promise of wealth seems to raise the group's spirits.

“I’ll take a feather to give to the dogs. We’ll track down the beasts in no time.” Ren smiles back at Scar.

Zed gives a light-hearted sigh. “I’ll get the tent ready for any incidents.”

The larger group disperses, preparing for the big hunt ahead.

Chapter Text

The next day, the group was ready to try and locate the harpy nest and burn it to the ground. They more so resembled a mob rather than a group of elite hunters. This was the first time Scar was going on a hunt with the sole purpose of taking down a harpy, it was exhilarating.

While the mare Scar had ridden the day before was injured and recovering, the group had enough horses for each member of the party, which allowed for everyone to have a ride despite the injured mare as long as someone stayed behind. Mumbo usually did to mind the camp, and Bdubs chose to stay behind, too, to tend to the injured courser.

Scar led the group down the same footpath he had taken just a day prior. Impulse was riding right beside him, while Gem, Zed, and Ren stayed further behind. Ren was the farthest behind, keeping his dogs out of the way of the other horses. He’d take the lead once they reached the kill site so his dogs could sniff around.

It’s not hard to spot where the dead boar had been lying. There was a puddle of old blood along with scraps of fur and flesh. The rest of its body was gone, although a few of the harpy's feathers were still scattered across the ground.

The group of five halted their horses, and Ren dismounted, ordering his lymers to sniff around the site while the other dogs waited for further instruction.

“You said the boar was big, right?” Impulse is asking Scar, who nods enthusiastically.

“Giant boar could have easily killed one of us.” Impulse nods in response, staying on guard and keeping an eye on the canopy above.

“Would have been a big harpy, then.” He says.

“We’ve got a scent,” Ren announces. Looking over at him they see his dogs all standing alert, most of them all staring in the same direction.

“Let’s follow it then.” Gem is already beginning to move her horse forward to follow the hounds.

The others all agree and wait till Ren once again mounts his horse to follow. When they start moving again Ren is in the lead, following his pack. Impulse and Gem are close behind with Scar and Zedaph bringing up the rear.

They’re all moving at a considerable pace, fast enough that when the team of dogs splits in two they don’t have a chance to think about why, and can only pick a group to follow. Ren turns left, followed by Impulse and Zed, while Scar ends up steering right, following Gem.

Scar only has a brief moment to think about the fact that the dogs splitting up probably wasn’t a good sign, before they are once again splitting in two. Now there were only two dogs to follow as opposed to the original seven. Scar also realizes that Gem is no longer in front of him, meaning she’s following the other dog that separated.

He wonders if the same thing happened to the others.

This wasn’t good. The entire point of going on a hunt like this was that they had the whole group, all the dogs, and they could handle whatever creature was in the woods with them. But on their own? They were screwed. Scar only hopes that he doesn’t actually end up running into any harpies.

The two dogs Scar is following begin to slow down their run, sniffing around more as if trying to keep up with a fading scent. He brings his horse to a walk instead of the cantor which it had been at. The dogs fully stop now, sniffing at a very wide, very tall conifer tree.

The dogs place their front paws onto the bark and begin growling. Scar’s about to order them to stop when something hidden in the branches moves.

The tree branches groan as if tired from holding up whatever creature is perched there. Scar’s got a bad feeling about what it is.

Scar draws his bow, aiming it upwards. For some reason, Scar doesn’t expect to actually see what’s in the tree. Maybe because he had never actually seen a live harpy before. Maybe it’s because he had only ever heard the thing that had been following him and the white mare. Maybe it’s because he wasn’t expecting harpies to be a thing he actually had to deal with on this hunt. But whatever the reason is, when he sees a flash of red in the tree he startles, his hands begin to shake, his jaw clenches, and his body tenses.

He doesn’t expect the thing to come flying towards him claws first.

It’s a blur. Red and yellow wings take up most of his vision as scaly talons reach for his face. His horse rears back in panic, kicking out its front legs in an attempt to deter the attacker. Both dogs begin jumping up into the air to snap at the bird-like thing they had been tracking. Scar releases the arrow by accident, but it flies off into the woods rather than hit its target.

Despite the sudden mayhem, the harpies' talons strike true. Blinding pain erupts from Scar's face and shoulder as the beast's nails dig into his flesh. He screeches loud enough he’s sure the others heard him. With his hands off the reins to instead bat at the creature that has a hold of him, the horse bucks him off.

He drops the bow, it clatters to the ground beside Scar who lands hard enough to get winded. The harpies' talons are still firmly embedded into his skin. The horse takes off running, but the dogs are quick to leap into the fray, biting at the harpy.

Now overwhelmed and outnumbered, the harpy releases Scar and attempts to fly away, but not before the dogs bite at its wings and remove some of its feathers.

All Scar can do is lay on the ground dazed, exhausted, and in pain. The ragged deep claw marks made by the harpy burn something fierce. The dogs lie next to him, licking his sluggishly bleeding wounds in some attempt to soothe him, but they for the most part are unsuccessful.

That’s where Zedaph and Gem find him.

They rushed over to him, Zedaph practically flying off his horse and rushing to grab his first aid kit.

“Shoot, Gem, grab the dogs. I need to disinfect his wounds. Scar, Scar can you hear me.” He rushes, anxiety evident in his voice. Gem does as instructed and grabs both dogs by their scruffs, dragging them away from Scar.

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” Scar rasps, tiredly waving him away and attempting to sit up. He winces and Zedaph gently pushes him back to the ground. “Don’t move.” He orders.

Zed carefully and meticulously cleans out, disinfects, and bandages the wounds. Scar winces as the vinegar burns him, but he knows it’s necessary. Zedaph grumbles something about not having stitching materials.

“You’re sure you’re okay?” Zedaph asks again.

They had finally gotten Scar off the ground, and Gem had just handed the reins of Scar's horse back to him. Apparently, Scar owes one to the horse. Zed had explained that it had run panicked and ended up finding Gem who grabbed the stallion and then regrouped with Impulse, Ren, and Zed. When they all realized that Scar was still missing Zed and Gem ran to go find him, while Impulse and Ren made their way back to the camp with the remainder of the dogs.

“I’m fine, I promise. This just adds a few more scars to my collection.” Scar gives Zedaph a grin to help soothe his worries, he drops it despite still looking uneasy. Zed helps him back onto the courser, and they begin carefully making their way back to the camp.

It’s silent the whole way back, sans for the sound of hooves against the earth and the dogs following closely along.

Everyone who was already at the camp rushes to go meet the trio when they finally arrive back. Ren grabs his dogs to move them to where the rest of the pack is, and Bdubs grabs the reins of the horses to take them after the rider's dismount.

“What happened?” Impulse asks, helping Scar off of the horse. He has half a mind to be indignant but knows that the assistance is probably necessary.

“When the dogs split up I ended up following two of them and Gem followed the other, there must have been different trails of the same scent. I found one of the harpies.” He leans on Impulse for support a little more heavily than he means to, if he notices he doesn’t say anything.

Ren nods in understanding. “They must have caught the scent of at least four different harpies. The dogs we were following split too, ours seemed to lose the scent though.”

Mumbo hums from beside them. “We shouldn’t go out alone anymore if the harpies are so hostile, how about a buddy system?” He proposes.

Gem and Zed dismount and Bdubs takes the horses to the temporary pen he had set up for them. Scar thinks he hears Bdubs mumble something about him being a hazard as he leads the horses away.

“A buddy system for when anybody leaves camp is a good idea, we can assign buddies on a case-by-case basis depending on what we’re going out to do.” Impulse agrees easily enough.

“Let’s lay you down and get you some water, then you can tell me about the harpy, any information counts.” Impulse turns his attention to Scar, and he nods.

He leads him over to the medical tent, Zed following close behind. Most of the cots in the medical tent were covered in supplies as Zedaph took inventory, not anticipating having to use them. He quickly clears one, and Gem helps Scar onto it.

He’s handed a water bottle which he drinks with fervor.

“So, what happened after you and Gem split up from the rest of us?” Impulse asks him.

“Well… the dogs split into two more groups, Gem followed one of them and I followed the other two. You know Ren would get mad if we lost his dogs.” He relaxes a little bit as he sees the other two smile minutely. “The dogs I was following led me to a giant pine tree, I mean it was HUGE!” He opens his arms wide to help show what he means, the other two huff in amusement. “But then I heard something move up in the tree, and I went to shoot it but I- I missed.” He looks down solemnly.“ All the animals were freaking out. The harpy grabbed my face, I think it knocked me off the horse? But once I was on the ground the dogs managed to chase the beast off! I really owe them, Maybe I’ll give them some of my dinner scraps," he muses.

“What color were the harpies' wings?” Impulse asks him seriously. Scar isn’t entirely sure why that’s important.

“Red and yellow, why?”

He shakes her head worriedly, standing up from where she had sat down on the cot beside Scar. “The first feather we found that we thought was harpy was brown. The feathers you found surrounding the boar were orange, and you saw a harpy with red and yellow feathers. We’re dealing with several harpies that by the sounds of it are working together.” He explains.

“So, you’re saying we’re in a lot of danger?” Scar means it as a joke.

Impulse frowns, looking off into the distance. “Yes, we’re in a lot of danger.”

Chapter Text

Scar had been ordered to stay in the medical tent for at least a week. He was told that he shouldn't move around much or else he’d tear open the wounds that had begun stitching themselves shut.

Listen, Scar was a lot of things, patient could be one of them, but only when he wanted to be. Right now was not one of those moments, and he didn’t think that it would be physically possible for him to stay still for much longer. Most of the time Mumbo had been staying with him which made the monotony bearable, but he needed to get up and move!

So naturally, as everyone retired to their respective tents for the night, Scar was up and moving. He slid out of bed quickly but still tiptoed over to the tent door. He unfastens the strips of fabric meant for keeping it shut and slips out into the camp.

He had thought that getting out of the tent without anyone noticing would be the hard part, worried that someone would be waiting outside for him, but now that he was out, Scar wasn’t sure what he was going to do.

If he just walked around camp for a while, there was a good chance that Scar would get caught by someone. They’d hear a noise, go to investigate, and find Scar wandering around. He didn’t want to get told off for that.

Naturally, the next best option was going for a walk through the woods. Was this coincidentally also the more dangerous option? Yes. Did Scar care? No. The chances were that the harpies and anything else that lived in the woods were most likely asleep, so there was no way for anything to happen to him. He ignores the fact that it’s only evening, and that harpies are diurnal.

Gems tent was unfortunately nearest to the camp's exit. She was both the lightest sleeper and the person who stayed up the latest. He took extra care to sneak past her tent quickly, he swore that as he passed by it, he could hear the sound of her sharpening her sword.

Finally, he was out of the camp and into the dark forest. It quickly strikes him that he should have probably brought something with him. Whether that be his bow, his dagger, or even a lantern. Anything would have been helpful.

Now, Scar could have turned back. He could have decided to just go get something to either light his way or for him to defend himself against any of the many dangerous creatures that lived in these woods. But of course, instead, Scar decided that his only option was to continue to move forward with only the light of the moon to guide him.

He realizes that that might not have been the best idea when he nearly trips over a tree root. He could hardly see it, and when he went to catch himself, he felt his skin pull uncomfortably around the scabs that the wounds formed.

Scar continues forward. He shouldn’t, he knows he shouldn’t. His legs ache, and the wounds burn, and he can’t see a single thing more than two feet in front of him, but for some inexplicable reason, he continues forward.

He’s using mostly muscle memory to navigate, and he’s pretty sure he’s walking down the same path that he had found the dead boar on.

This is confirmed when he nearly trips again, but it’s not a tree root that he trips on. There’s something on the path.

It couldn’t have been the boar, though, because it had been gone when Scar had led the others to the kill site earlier that day.

Whatever it was, though, it was soft. It was pliant and had a slight give to it when Scar prodded it with his foot.

He crouches down, intent on getting a better look at whatever the thing is that’s on the ground. Then, to his horror, there are footsteps behind him. They sounded human enough, they were bipedal, and there weren’t any swooshing sounds to indicate anything flew in.

Scar figures he’s busted, that Gem found out that he had left and went to hunt him down. He would assume that she would have brought a lantern to light the way and then figures that she must have not wanted to draw any attention to herself.

He’s a little confused about why she hasn’t announced herself, but maybe she was just waiting for him to turn around. Scar puts on his best award-winning smile and stands up to face her, making a show of dusting off his legs as he stands.

“Well, guess you caught me, say-” He’s about to say something witty to get him out of trouble. Maybe Gem would laugh and call him an idiot, and then they would go back to camp as if nothing happened. But it’s not Gem standing there. It’s not Gem, it’s not Impulse, nor is it Zedaph, Ren, Bdubs, or Mumbo.

Now, Scar can’t see particularly well right now. He’s got bandages covering half his face, and it’s incredibly dark in the forest, but he’s all too aware of the fact that the creature he’s stood not even five feet from is a harpy. Its short muscular form standing completely still, beady black eyes reflecting the moon's light.

Scar’s kicking himself. He had no bow, no dagger, no horse, no dogs, no friends. He was going to die right here, right now, even after his whole party told him not to leave the medical tent. His heart had begun to beat faster as if it was trying to rip itself out of his chest.

The harpy takes a step forward. Scar can’t run, not when his body feels one small breeze away from collapsing. He braces himself, raising one arm high enough to cover his face while the other goes to block any blows to his chest. He waits for death to come.

He flinches when a hand caresses his cheek, rubbing up against the bandages. Its claws catch slightly on the rough texture, there’s a very quiet tearing sound as the harpy creates small rips across the wrappings.

Slowly, so, so slowly, Scar opens his eyes. He’s not sure when he closed them. The harpy is closer to him now, so close that Scar can make out its features.

The harpy has soft-looking blond hair. Its beady black eyes sparkle in the moonlight as it stares up at Scar, little lights like stars reflected in them as it stares at him with a quizzical expression. Its mouth is open slightly, revealing rows of sharp teeth meant for tearing flesh. The harpy’s feathers were red with yellow underneath them. It was the same harpy that had attacked him. Scar figures it’s just here to finish the job.

He closes his eyes again, and once again waits for death to come. It never does.

A shout echoes off the trees, it sounds like his name.

The harpy pulls back away from Scar quickly. It flaps its massive wings and disappears before Scar can even comprehend what’s happening. It’s only after the Harpy is gone and Scar is left staring at where it had been that Scar can scream as if his life depends on it. A little delayed on his part, but sue him.

Then there are hands on him, but these ones don’t have feathers or claws. He’s still staring at where the harpy had been only moments prior.

“Scar, you idiot! You could have been hurt! Or worse!” It’s Gem, and suddenly, Scar is blinking back into reality.

“I told you not to leave-” “Now we have to check to make sure you didn’t reopen anything-” “Gosh mate when Gem told us you were gone-” “Dude, that was seriously unsafe-” The cacophony of voices ricocheted inside of his skull. They had all come looking for him. Now he feels bad.

He’s not sure why he didn’t notice them all approaching sooner. They all had lanterns with them, which should have alerted him. Or were the lights that he had seen reflected in the harpy's eyes the lanterns? Is that why he was able to make out the color of its feathers?

Suddenly, Gem is grabbing his shoulders and dragging him down to eye level. “Scar. What if a harpy had found you? You’d be dead, those things are killing machines; it wouldn’t have even taken it more than a minute!” She was right, Scar should be dead. Why didn’t the harpy kill him?

“I’m sorry Gem! It’s just, that tent is so cramped! I had to stretch my legs!” He defends as if he hadn’t just come face to face with death incarnate.

Gem raises an eyebrow. “The biggest tent we have, made to fit eight people, is too cramped for you?”

“Well, yeah!” Scar continues, realizing belatedly that the group started moving at some point, and now they are walking back towards the camp. Gem was practically dragging him behind her with an iron grasp.

He should tell them that he had run into the harpy again. It’s important information, knowing the habits of the monsters would help formulate a solid plan to hunt it and its flock mates down. Something in him is fighting that logic, though. Why didn’t he want to tell his fellow hunters about it?

It has to be because he wants to hunt it down himself, right? Yes, that was it. He didn’t want to tell the others about the harpy because he was the one injured by it, he deserved more than anyone to be the one to put it down. Plus he had survived two encounters with the beast, surely he could survive more, and come out with its body in tow.

Scar decides right then and there that he’d sneak out again, this time with his weapons and a light source. He’d kill the harpy by himself and then bring it back to prove to everyone that there was no real reason to worry about him as much as they did.

Gem’s pushing him down onto the cot in the medical tent that he’d been forced to stay in for the past week. He wasn’t quite sure when they had gotten back to camp.

“And you stay here this time, alright mister?” She fixes a glare at him, to which Scar responds with a smile.

“I swear on my best bow, I won’t sneak out again.” He crosses his heart.

It's clear Gem doesn’t fully believe him in the way her eyes remain narrowed, but she leaves him be. For a moment Scar thinks that he’s gotten off scott-free until a tired-looking Zedaph is walking into the tent.

“We’ve gotta redo your bandages,” Zed mumbles, barely looking at him. His usually chipper demeanor is being washed out by exhaustion. Now Scar feels worse.

Scar casts his eyes downwards, muttering an ‘okay’ in response.

The process is fast, and Zed clearly wants to get it over with. Unwrapping the bandages was a task usually done in the afternoons just to check how well he was healing.

Pus had oozed out in the spots that Scar had felt his skin pulling against, but other than that he was perfectly unharmed.

Zedaph is staring at something on one of the bandages but doesn’t say anything about it, so Scar assumes he’s fine.

“Get some rest, Scar.” Is all he says as he gets up to go back to his tent.

Scar wishes him goodnight, but Zedaph gives no indication that he heard him. Scar sighs and rolls over on the uncomfortable cot, and does his best to go to sleep despite thoughts about the harpy circling in his head.

Why hadn’t it killed him?

Chapter Text

The others were finally letting him out of the tent.

They had been stricter with keeping him on bedrest since his ‘incident’ as they’d dubbed it, but finally, finally, they were letting him get out and about. He’d also been able to shed the bandages which had been wrapped tightly around him like a second skin.

His new scars were oddly shaped, one looked like a diamond, it was buried below his shoulder with three long tears on the top of it. His face had similar marks, three long lines above his eye and a puncture wound just below his cheek. They looked much redder than his other scars, some of which lay beneath the new ones, many of which had all faded to an off-white over time, though some still held a pinkish hue.

They’re still monitoring him from a distance. Scar hasn’t missed the way that he’s never last to retire to his tent and the way that he’s never the first up in the morning. He also hasn’t missed the way that if he stops whatever he’s doing and looks around he’ll always meet a pair of watchful eyes.

Scar decides that the next time he knows that no one is watching he’s going on another walk.

Sure, maybe that will prove to them that they were right about keeping an eye on him, but he is so tired of them that he doesn’t care. He could use some respite from the overbearing concern.

It’s three days later during the afternoon that Scar can practically feel the eyes finally slide off him. He’d been so on edge from the constant surveillance that he’d developed a sort of sixth sense to it.

Impulse, Gem, and Ren had gone out on a scouting trip further into the forest, leaving Zed and Mumbo to watch him. Luckily Zedaph thought that Mumbo was watching him, and Mumbo was never one to be overbearing.

Scar’s quick to grab his dagger, slipping it discreetly into its sheath permanently fixed to his belt. If he took his bow he’s sure that someone would be all too quick to notice.

He slips out of the camp as fast as possible.

He’s back on the same path again. He’s not sure why he continues down it time and time again, it just feels right.

The woods are alight with sounds. Birds sing up in high trees, and Scar thinks that if he listens he can hear the sounds of a woodpecker off in the distance. He hears the rustling of leaves as squirrels shuffle around and chipmunks chase each other. It’s a nice day for a walk, Scar thinks.

He continues along the path, now that he doesn’t feel so weak it’s a much easier journey. He manages not to trip over any tree roots or any more soft-squishy-probably-dead things.

Then, faster than he realizes, he’s run out of charted woods. The footpath simply stops where no one has traveled yet. The woods beyond that point somehow seem darker in energy, but physically they look no different from the woods where he’s currently standing.

He continues forward, past where the footpath ends.

This might be the dumbest thing he’s ever done, he realizes belatedly, already half an hour into his excursion. He’s already managed to get turned around in this unfamiliar environment.

He’s lost, alone, in uncharted territory which is infested with harpies, wolves, and a number of other things that would be more than happy to tear him apart. He doesn’t have his bow, and now that he thinks about it, he’s not actually sure how much good a dagger would do against an uninjured, defensive animal.

Scar decides to at least make an attempt to head back to camp, deciding that his safety isn’t worth proving some sort of point to the others.

Every single sound in the forest ceases.

Scar freezes, feeling adrenaline beginning to pump through his veins. He is not alone in the woods.

A sound from above, a familiar one.

All Scar can think is ‘Is this finally it?’ How many encounters could he survive, how many lucky breaks was he going to get until his good fortune ran out? Was this the final straw?

A feather floats to the floor. It’s red, the same color as the harpy he had met before. Another rustling into the trees, stopping again a little further ahead of where the first feather fell. A second feather floats to the floor, the same brilliant shade. Then another, A few paces away from that one, and then another.

Most of the feathers are the same bright red, though a few are the yellowed color of its inner wing.

The feathers keep falling. Sometimes they're the bright yellow that adorns the inside of the harpies wings, but mostly they're small red things, and Scar follows the trail that they form. Maybe it’s stupid, but Scar has already made so many poorly thought out decisions that it doesn't matter anymore. Plus, he’s already lost and if the harpy had really wanted to kill him it would have done so already.

Soon enough, and much to his own shock, he’s back on the foot path in the familiar part of the woods.

There’s one last loud sound up in the trees. It's impossible to miss the loud sound of branches being forcibly shaken and leaves being brushed against and rustled. Only minutes later life returns to the forest. Birds begin to chirp again, and the woodland animals on the forest floor once more once again begin to to scurry.

Scar can’t believe his eyes. He looks back at the trail of feathers leading back to where he had been lost. The harpy had led him back to the path, it guided him even though it should have killed him. Why didn’t it kill him?

Harpies were bloodthirsty, hungry things with only one thought at the forefront of their minds. This one didn’t fit that bill. Sure it attacked him the first day, but he had come after it on horseback with dogs and arrows, it was a fair reaction to being threatened.

Scar couldn’t think like that.

He was a hunter, he was hired by the king to clear these woods of pests and predators alike so that the kingdom could safely expand and have access to more natural resources than they had prior.

He was a hunter. It was his job to kill the harpy, no matter how helpful or merciful it had been. Scar couldn’t give it the same courtesy.

His march back to the camp was silent sans the sounds of crunching leaves beneath his feet.

Much to Scar’s horror, upon entering the camp, he realizes that the scouting mission must have ended early. Gem and Impulse were talking to a frantic Zedaph, Scar didn’t see Bdubs, Ren, or Mumbo, which didn’t bode well. What if they were already out looking for him?

Gem spots him first, whirling around at a breakneck speed, anger simmering in her eyes not unlike hot coal threatening a fire if something flammable were to come too close.

“Where were you?” She spits out pointedly, each word an arrow pointed directly towards him. Each hit its mark, and Scar shrinks under her glare.

“Just uh… y’know, needed a walk.” He tries to pull together some shreds of confidence to inject into his words, but it’s weak, and he knows he shouldn’t try and weasel out of the consequences this time.

“Scar…” Impulse starts, seemingly unsure of exactly what to say. It was obvious he was disappointed.

Maybe it was a little manipulative because Scar knew he shouldn’t attempt to talk his way out of whatever was coming, but maybe he could. It would be wrong, but he could.

He does despite himself.

“No listen,” he starts, slowly changing his tone from the meek faux confidence to something a little more real, a little more sure. “Zedaph medically cleared me, and you’ve all been keeping me cooped up and under surveillance! You can’t fault a guy for getting antsy and going for a walk when you kept him prisoner for so long!” He chastises.

Scar watches as the hot coals in Gem’s eyes lose their angry spark, and Impulse's disappointment shifts to something full of sympathy. Zedaph still looks apprehensive, but he’s outnumbered by those that have fallen for Scars words.

“And look.” Scar twirls around in a circle before going back to face the group. “I am a-okay, not a scratch on me.” He tries to soothe the lingering concern.

One by one, the others give in.

Impulse gives a heavy sigh. “We already had Mumbo, Ren, and Bdubs go looking for you.” Scar hears what’s not said. He owes the three of them an apology for making them worry. He’s sure they’re going to be frantic when they return to camp after being unable to find him.

“Should we go out to try and find them?” He offers.

Impulse shakes his head, “They’re tracking your scent, or at least trying to. It should lead them back soon enough,” and Scar has a moment of horror as he realizes that his scent would be accompanying a trail of harpy feathers. Somebody is going to suspect something.

He keeps his expression carefully neutral. There’s nothing he can do but wait and see how the situation unfolds.

Chapter Text

Scar was sitting in the center of camp, on one of the stripped logs surrounding the fire pit. Impulse set a pail of water over it to boil. There is silence as they wait for it to heat up, Scar has nothing to say and it seems no one else is in a talking mood either.

They were still waiting for Mumbo, Ren, and Bdubs to come back. Scar hadn’t thought he had been gone for so long, he’s not sure what was keeping the group and it makes him nervous.

He’s about to break the silence that had been growing more and more uncomfortable the longer it went on when he finally heard the sounds of them returning. He lets out a quiet sigh of relief, Scar hadn’t realized he’d felt so concerned over his friends, but now that they were back some of the tension that had been mounting on his shoulders dissipates.

Or rather, it would have dissipated if it weren’t for the three of them flying off their horses as soon as they made eye contact with him and tackled him into a crushing hug. All of their eyes seem misty and tinged red around the edges.

“Scar, oh my god you’re okay!” Ren cries, he’s practically lifting Scar off the ground, an impressive feat of strength considering he's hunched over to hug Scar who had still been sitting down.

“How dare you worry us! There were all these feathers, we thought you got eaten!” Bdubs shouts despite the look of relief on his face.

“Feathers?” Gem cuts in, her eyes narrow minutely.

“Yeah! We were following the dogs, but they were following this trail of feathers. We thought they had just gotten confused and had them restart tracking Scar's scent like three times.” Mumbo tells her, hands waving as he speaks, a clear nervous energy radiating off him.

“We totally thought you had been a harpies lunch.” Ren finally lets go of him, allowing for Scar to take in a full breath of air once he’s back on the log instead of being lifted off of it.

He glances around, every face he sees looks at him with concern. He smiles. “Must just be a coincidence! I mean, I went out a little far, sure! But I didn’t see any feathers. Sorry for the scare. And that you had to look for me.” He tacks on at the end, there, apology complete.

“You didn’t see them?” Impulse mumbles, more to himself than to Scar. “It was stalking you.” His eyes widened. “Scar it must have been stalking you, you can’t leave the camp anymore.”

“Woah, woah! Let’s not jump to conclusions here!” being confined to the camp would be just as bad as being forced to stay inside the tent to recover. “I’m sure that it was just curious, y’know, they don't see too many people that far out.”

“Wait, Scar, how far did you go?” Zed asks him, but he didn’t seem to be looking at Scar, instead his eyes were fixed on the ground, Scar could tell he was thinking.

“Just a little past where we’ve been, I just needed some new scenery.” He tries to reassure again.

“It followed you right up until you were back on the path,” Mumbo tells him.

“Oh, see then, it wasn’t stalking me.” Scar shakes his head, the smile that had begun to fade from his lips comes back full force. “If it were trying to eat me don’t you think it would have followed me all the way back? Clearly, it was just confused by my pre- prez- pence- by me being there.” He nods confidently to himself.

“I don’t know, Scar, that seems like a dangerous assumption,” Gem tries to reason with him. “And what if it just stopped dropping feathers at that point? We don’t know for sure that it stopped following you.”

He waves her off. “No, I’m sure there would have been other signs that it was following me. Plus we’ve already talked about this! I don’t need babysat, and I’m fully capable of defending myself, that’s the whole reason I was hired to begin with.” He can tell she doesn’t believe him. “Do you think the king would have hired anyone if he wasn’t a hundred percent sure wouldn’t die if they got left alone for a little bit?”

This finally got a reaction other than disbelief, an offended gasp. “Of course not! The king knows exactly what he’s doing!”

“Then trust me to know what I’m doing, you don’t need to watch me so closely.” Scar allows his smile to relax into something real and reassuring.

It was treason to question the king. Well, technically. The last king would have beheaded any peasant without hesitation if they even dared looking in his direction with anything other than unwavering loyalty.

The old king had died when Scar was a young child, and when his son took his place the kingdom seemed to get a little brighter, happier even. Since the new king took the throne there had been no public executions or even private beheadings. Scar had even heard that the king seemed appalled just by the idea of it.

Even still everyone remained weary, they still knew that it was a possibility. No one was going to take the chance and question the king's orders.

“I still think you should be careful.” Impulse practically whispers, but even still it sounds loud compared to the silence that has once again fallen over the campsite.

“I’ll try.”

And he will, Scar will do his best to be more cautious, and in turn, he really does hope the others let up a little.

---

It had been a few weeks since Scar had snuck out the second time. While no one was particularly happy with him, they did relent and stop keeping such a close eye on him. He, in turn, hadn’t snuck out at all and was a perfectly polite and wonderful team player, just like he promised.

The group hadn’t taken down anything bigger than a fox in all that time; most of their energy was going towards tracking and taking down the harpies, which was proving to be more difficult than anticipated.

While Scar wasn’t sabotaging that particular endeavor, he also wasn’t helping them, instead opting for tracking bigger game like boar and wolves that also still needed to be taken care of.

None of the others seemed eager to get him involved anyway, probably figuring he wouldn’t want to come face-to-face with the creatures again. That or it was for their own peace of mind. Either way, his lack of involvement with the harpy hunting meant he was out of the loop with what was going on with it.

“Hey, Scar?” Bdubs calls to him after the sounds of several large things falling onto the floor ring out into the otherwise peaceful area. The clattering continues even after the initial crash stops.

“Bdubs?” He calls back, making sure he’s heard over whatever noise Bdubs was creating. He gets up to go to Bdubs just in case he can't hear him. He sticks his head into Bdubs’ large tent.

“I set up some traps by that big tree where you got attacked. Do you mind checking them? Impulse asked me to stay here today. Something about a meeting? I don’t know.”

“Didn’t we get told not to leave the camp on our own?” Scar would normally say yes regardless especially considering some of his recent escapades, but he’s been yelled at enough the past few days.

Bdubs looks shocked, as if he had forgotten the rule they had all been following for the past week or so. “Well, I’m sure you’ll be fine, yes? I won’t tell.” Bdubs promises anyway, despite the danger he’s inadvertently putting Scar in.

“Well, I’ve been fine on my own so far..” Scar starts, still trying to fight the rational part of his brain that is telling him that this is a bad idea.

“So you’ll go?” Bdubs happily shouts. Scar is quick to cave.

“Yeah, of course, am I taking a horse?” Scar asks, almost innocently, as if he hadn’t traumatized the past two.

Bdubs glares at him, “Fine, but if one more comes back so much as spooked, you’re being stuffed into the wagon and not coming out until we go home.” He threatens with the most serious glare he can muster.

His short stature does not help him intimidate Scar. “I’ll do my best.” He promises.

He’s led towards the horse pen and handed the reins of a chestnut-colored stallion. He doesn’t know its name but is pretty sure this horse is usually reserved for Impulse. It’s strong, fast, and is fairly easy-going.

He thanks Bdubs, who shakes his head and tells Scar that he should be thanking him instead for doing him the favor. Scar calls them even. He mounts the horse and starts down the now well-worn path through the woods.

He’s moving at a swift pace now that he’s on horseback instead of walking. He makes sure to steer it in the same direction he remembers the dogs taking him.

The trap is obvious when he sees it, not hidden within tall grasses or sticks, at least not anymore. It was a bear trap with sharp, gleaming, red-stained teeth. The bait: a medium-sized boar, a harpie's favorite food Scar had come to discover.

Scar stops the horse, who, despite the sight, remains impassive.

The bear trap's teeth are glistening red.

The trap is not empty.

The boar seems to have been tossed from its previous placement once the animal realized it was trapped and was no longer interested in the meal.

Sitting with wings held uncomfortably, leg twisted and mangled from the trap's powerful jaws and coated in blood, was the harpy that had attacked Scar. Was the harpy that could have killed Scar. Was the harpy that led Scar back to the path when he was lost.

The harpy was trapped, exhausted from trying to break free, and completely at the hunter's mercy. Scar has his dagger on him, he should dismount, march over, plunge it into the beast's heart, and bring its corpse back to camp for everyone to see.

Scar is being paid to do this. He should kill the harpy. He needs to kill the harpy.

He dismounts and walks over to it. It’s looking at him with terrified and monstrous eyes but does not move. His dagger feels heavy where it sits on his hip. For a long moment neither he nor the harpy so much as blink. Then, using all of his might, Scar pries the bear trap's jaw open.

The harpy does not move even when it is free. It is exhausting, and it is hurting, and it cannot walk anymore.

Scar reached down to where his dagger was. The harpy watches his movement carefully, its eyes getting wider and wider as it sees Scar’s hand reaching down towards it. It looks like it’s ready to pass out with relief when Scar pulls a flask off his belt instead of the blade.

He crouched down across from the harpy, taking his handkerchief out of his pocket and unscrewing the flask. “We’ve really got to stop meeting like this.” He jokes, but the harpy doesn’t laugh in response and instead just leaves them suspended in awkward silence. He presses on.

“I’m going to wipe some of the blood away so I can assess the damage, okay?” He asks it, despite knowing it won’t respond.

Much to Scar's surprise though, the creature nods as if it can understand him. “Okay.” It whispered so silently that Scar could have sworn he imagined it.

He hates to admit it, but he spends a moment too long staring at the creature like it grew a second head. “I didn’t know you could talk.” He comments softly.

Something about the harpy speaking made something inside of Scar soften slightly. Without him knowing it, the harpy became less of a monster within his mind, less a creature to be slain.

He pours water onto the handkerchief and begins to clean gently around the bloody wound. He murmurs apologies whenever the harpy hisses through its teeth or flinches in pain.

The silence between them gives Scar a moment to think, and in that moment, he realizes that if the harpy can speak, as it probably does with its flock mates, it probably has a name.

Another wipe of the handkerchief, another shudder from the harpy. Scar pours a small amount of water directly onto the wound and continues his attempt at washing the blood away.

“What’s your name?” He asks it, focusing intently on his task, refusing to look the harpy in the eyes despite the way he feels its own burning a hole in his head.

It’s silent, and Scar continues working as if he’d never asked the question.

“...Grian.” It whispers to him, a secret carried by the wind. Scar catches it like a falling leaf.

“I’m Scar.” He tells it, finally meeting its gaze. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to get the rest of the blood out without hurting the harpy- Grian, further. “Do you know where shelter is? Or somewhere safe I can take you while you heal? I’ll grab bandages from camp and come back.” He promises. He’ll have to figure out how to sneak by Zedaph and the others with the stolen medical supplies. He doesn’t know how he’ll explain himself if he’s caught.

Grian looks stricken, like it’s caught between two places.

“Yeah. I can show you.” It tells Scar. Grian attempts to stand on its own, and though it tries to hide it, the pain is clearly visible on its face.

Scar is quick to come to its side and support it, maybe a little too quick. He brings Grian over to the stallion, who is staring at the harpy passively as if it isn’t a horrifying apex predator. He has the harpy lean onto the horse as he grabs the reins to begin walking.

“I gotcha, lead the way,” and Grian does.

Grian led Scar into a part of the uncharted woods, near where Scar had gotten lost. He hadn’t seen it before in his panic, but a little ways further ahead of where they currently stood was the mouth of a cave. Scar leaves the horse outside tied to a low-hanging tree branch.

For where it sits in the ground, it’s surprisingly warm inside, and the very back of it seems to have some sort of nest set up. Scar was fairly certain that harpies nested in trees, but he was learning all sorts of interesting things that day.

Apparently, Grian felt the need to explain anyway.

“It’s for when we can’t make it back up to the nest, if it’s too dark to see.”

Scar doesn’t comment, just helps it into the nest.

“I’ll be back, I promise.”

He takes a second to get reorientated with where he is before mounting the horse and beginning to canter back to the camp. It shouldn’t have taken him so long to just check a trap, so he’s trying to make up time.

He slows the horse to a walk before he’s able to see the camp.

He brings the stallion back to the pen where the rest of the horses were grazing. The white mare, Snow Scar recalls, looks up as he approaches with a distrustful look in her eyes. Fair, he thinks.

Bdubs isn’t far, and soon enough he’s taking the horse from Scar, and leads it into the pen, only to tie the reins to one of the rails instead of letting it free to go with the others. He appears to be looking over horse.

“See, not a hair out of place,” Scar tells Bdubs as if he shouldn’t have thought anything could have gone wrong. “The trap was empty by the way,” he tacks on.

“That’s a shame,” Bdubs frowns. “I swore that one was gonna work. Just have to try again!” He exclaims, already headed back to the chest full of traps to think up a new plan.

Scar leaves Bdubs to it, a silent wish that none of his future traps work either. Hopefully, Grian will be more careful moving forwards. Speaking of the harpy, Scar’s fairly certain he was supposed to go fetch medical supplies for it. He also realizes belatedly that he shouldn’t have given the horse back yet.

Maybe he could steal it.

Sneaking into the medical tent was easier than anticipated. Zedaph wasn’t anywhere to be found, and it seemed like a fairly quiet day at the camp.

He grabs gauze, bandages, and what he’s pretty sure is the vinegar for cleaning wounds, and shoves them into an empty satchel that’s been left out on one of the cots.

Steal medical supplies: Check.

Get back to Grian: Not check, need a horse.

He didn’t want to wait too long and risk allowing an infection to develop,

Bdubs is still looking through traps and muttering to himself. Scar hasn’t done anything to upset him today, it should be easy enough to re-borrow the good-natured stallion.

“Bdubs, I think I dropped my handkerchief by the trap you set, can I take the horse again?” He asks, the unplanned excuse effortlessly forming and falling from his lips.

Said man doesn’t even look up as he voices his agreement, he just tells Scar to be careful, and that he’s lucky Bdubs hasn’t unbridled the horse yet.

It’s easy from there. He mounts the horse again and takes off trotting down the footpath. It takes longer to get there than it did to get back, but soon enough he’s once again standing in front of the cave.

He enters cautiously and sees Grian sitting right where he left it, despite seeming a little worse for wear now that his adrenaline was most likely crashing.
The Harpy’s head snaps up when he hears Scar's footsteps.

“It’s just me, Grian,” Scar holds up his hands. “I brought some medical supplies for your leg.”

Despite the wariness in Grians gaze, it allows him to come closer. “Can I see it, please?” Slowly the harpy shuffles around so that its leg is extended out towards Scar. “Thank you,” Scar kneels down and takes the supplies out of the bag.

Despite getting a talon to the face before, and already attempting to clean the leg once, Scar hadn’t ever really gotten a good look at it. It was thick with muscle and had dark scales to match their avian relatives. The end of the leg was equipped with wicked sharp talons. He hates to admit it but it scares him a little bit. He tries to justify his fear to himself, that he was attacked by it and had every right to be afraid. He hoped that the harpy wouldn’t judge him for the fear if it found out. He takes a deep breath and continues his task.

Scar once again pulls out his handkerchief along with the vinegar. He dabs some onto the cloth and begins reaching forward towards the wound before thinking better of it, panicking internally when he realizes he had given no warning for what he was about to do.

“Grian, I want you to know that this is going to sting, but will enp- end- make sure that your wound isn’t infected,” he stumbles out, only to be met with immediate relief when the harpy nods in understanding.

It hisses when Scar presses the cloth to the wound. “We're lucky it isn’t broken,” he tries his best to soothe the creature who is just staring at him with tear-filled black eyes. Scars has been at the receiving end of the cloth countless times, he knows it hurts. “I’m sorry,” is the only thing he knows to whisper to it.

He continues working in silence. The harpy offers no conversation and Scar has nothing to say. Scar finishes cleaning the wound, and then moves on to wrapping the gauze and bandages around it.

“You should stay off your leg for a few days,” Scar tells it, the similar advice to what Zedaph had given him after the attack. Scar wouldn’t hold it against Grian if he didn’t listen, Scar didn’t either after all.

He managed to return the bag he stole and any extra supplies he didn't use to the medical tent without notice, and simply thanked Bdubs and let him know that he had found the handkerchief.

Over the next few days, Scar would go out on solo trips that nobody else knew about. One could perhaps call this sneaking out, but Scar preferred to think of it as a private excursion.

It was a long walk to the cave without a horse. During these trips out Scar would do his best to hunt down more of the boar that he needed to exterminate anyway, along with other animals that he thought would work well to feed the harpy.

Scar was lucky no one had caught on to what he was doing yet, lucky that no one saw how many arrows he was going through, lucky that everyone had finally relented and allowed him enough privacy to do the one thing they were worried about him doing.

The harpy opened up a little during Scar's visits. It spoke more often, thanked him for the food, and would answer any of the questions Scar had. He never asked about the other harpies, no matter how much he wished to. The less he knew the safer they all were.

He doesn’t know when he came to the realization that he was trying to protect the very thing he feared.

He should have known that things couldn’t end well.

Chapter Text

It was night and Scar had snuck out again. He had been making sure to take the long way out of the camp in order to avoid passing Gem’s tent. She’d always know if someone was outside, she’d always know if he was trying to leave.

With a rabbit in hand and the cave mouth in sight, Scar was ready to greet the harpy. He was fairly certain they would be able to take the bandage off and see if Grian could move around comfortably.

Over the past few days, Scar had been having conversations with Grian. It turned out that Harpies were much more complex than Scar would have ever given them credit for. It also turns out that Grian had never eaten a person, Scar had been pretty sure that ‘people’ would have taken up a good portion of a harpies diet, but apparently deer and boar were both less dangerous and more tasty than people. That, and according to Grian it would be kind of weird to eat something that has near identical faces to them.

---

“Hey, Grian?” Scar had begun, they were sitting on the cave’s floor Scar had brought Grian a fox that Bdubs had snared and was just going to discard. Scar had offered to dispose of it, and technically he did.

Grian looked up, mouth and razor teeth shiny with a red coating. “Yeah?” The harpy stops eating for a moment to tilt its head, solid black eyes staring through Scar’s soul. It’s stopped unnerving him so much.

“Have you ever eaten a human before? Like, before we came?”

Grian pauses eating fully, and makes a disgusted face “No, no, ew. You guys look too much like us, that’d be weird. Plus you were the first human I’ve ever met. But we all hear stories, and a few of my flockmates have had some nasty run-ins in the past. I heard you taste bad.” Grian looks back over to Scar, allowing them to meet eyes. “Why? Have you ever eaten harpy?”

“Uh, no it’s too expensive for me, I heard it tastes like chicken though... Not that I’d eat you! Scar cringed. “I’m sorry for trying to kill you,” he tacks on trying to make it better, “I swear I wouldn’t anymore.” Grian stares at him with an unimpressed expression. “I’ve never killed a harpy!” He exclaims, suddenly realizing what it sounds like. “I’ve just seen the bodies, y’know?”

Finally, and much to Scar’s relief, Grian starts cackling and holds up a hand. “Oh- Scar, you’re just digging a bigger hole for yourself.” Scar tries to rush out some sort of defense, but his words all blend together into ungraceful, indignant sounds. Grian laughs harder.

---

He’s walking briskly, purpose in every step, a smile already tugging at his face. He’s excited to see Grian, and has found himself beginning to look forward to seeing him a little more with each passing day. He wanted to tell Grian about what had happened earlier that day, Bdubs had managed to get a mousetrap closed around his eyelid and ran around screaming until someone could get him to sit still long enough to take it off.

The distinct thud of something hitting the ground behind him makes him freeze. Whatever it was is heavy. He feels his heart rate pick up and the hairs on the back of his neck begin to rise. A low growl-like warble sounds from behind him.

Scar slowly turns around, hand ready to grab his dagger to defend himself. A shiver goes down his spine when he has to look up to meet the beast's obsidian gaze.

A harpy, a head taller than Scar himself with muscles to match. Its feathers are a mix of several shades of greens, greys, and browns. It’s near-perfect camouflage in the dense woodland. The thought of a monster like that being able to hide so easily makes Scar shudder.

The goliath was missing an eye, part of its face was torn up, there was a massive chunk missing from its side, and it looks like its hand was missing from its left wing. Whatever fight it had been in, Scar would hate to see the other guy. Grian looked like a stuffed toy compared to this one.

Scar suddenly feels very grateful that the first harpy he had run into was Grian and not this giant. He knows intuitively that it’s faster and stronger than him, he couldn’t escape even if he wanted to. His dagger would be useless against this monster, and trying to grab it might end worse for Scar than if he just tried to talk to the thing. He raises his hands in submission.

“Hey, crazy thing I just got a bit turned around and! I seem to have ended up with this rabbit, how strange! Well, it could be yours for the low low price of letting me go.” Scar bargains, holding out the rabbit and praying that this behemoth accepts his offer.

Much to Scar's dismay the creature doesn’t answer, and instead approaches him, one thunderous step at a time. With each step the harpy takes forward, Scar takes two back in order to match its stride. His back hits a tree, and he knows he’s screwed.

The front of his shirt is grabbed and he’s slammed into the ground, both winding him and causing a harsh bolt of pain to shoot through his skull as it hits a rock that was hidden in the leaves. He thinks his vision goes dark for a moment. The monster leans forward, still one hand on his shirt collar and glares directly into Scar's dazed eyes.

The harpy speaks with a deep, echoing voice that reverberates through Scar's now aching skull. “Where is he?” It spits.

Scar's eyes widen in surprise. “I don’t know what you mean.” He tells it, but that’s the wrong thing to say. The grip on his shirt tightens, the beast glares harder, and suddenly he’s being lifted off the ground by his shirt and is slammed into the very tree he had backed up into, winding him yet again and causing another shooting pain through his head. It makes him dizzy, bile rising in his throat.

The monster growls. “We’ve been looking for him for days. I’ve seen you here multiple times. The rest of you kind doesn’t wander so far. Where is he? What did you do to him?”

Scar’s fairly certain the beast is using more effort not to squash him like a bug than it’s using to hold him off the ground with its one hand.

“Please, who are you talking about?” Scar feels tears of fear and panic begin pooling in his eyes. Scar hadn’t done anything.

“Useless.” The beast mutters, holding him up with the handless wing and reaching forward and grabbing Scar's face with its now free hand, which is big enough that its claws reach all the way to the back of Scar's head.

Scar has the sinking feeling that his shoulders are about to feel a whole lot lighter. He screws his eyes shut as he feels its nails begin to dig into the back of his skull. It hurts, it hurts so bad, it feels like the worst headache Scar’s ever had, and the pressure just keeps increasing. He feels like he’s underwater.

“DOC, STOP!” Someone screeches.

All at once the pressure is gone, and Scar is dropped onto the ground like a ragdoll. He curls into a ball, and gently takes his head into his own hands as if the gentleness he can offer will offset how cruelly it had been treated. It continues to hurt anyway.

Despite the pain and his apparent swimming vision, he peers up to where two harpies stand.

The smaller of the two: red, yellow, Grian. It's standing for the first time since its leg was caught. Even though the harpy is clearly favoring the other leg, Scar is elated. Grian’s yelling at the other harpy. There’s a ringing in his head, and Scar can only catch bits and pieces of what’s being said.

“If it weren’t for him-” “How was I supposed-” “Jumping to conclusions-” “It was a reasonable-” “I’d be dead-” “He would have-” “Not like that-” “Trying to protect you-” “been safe-” “everyone was worried-”

Finally, the ringing subsides, and when it does, he realizes that Grian’s moved to crouch in front of him.

“Hey, Scar, you okay?” Grian’s whispering and Scar is grateful because the next thing he’s aware of after the lack of ringing in his ears is the newfound horrific pounding in his head.

“My skull feels like it’s being split open.” He whines quietly, almost missing the glare that Grian throws Doc, who at least has the decency to look sheepish.

Scar attempts to stand up, staggering to his feet like a fawn. He quickly realizes that it’s a bad idea when his vision spins and his legs give out. The only thing keeping him upright is Grian, whose stature compared to his means Scar is partially slumped over.

“Doc-” Grians panic is met with another pair of hands on Scar.

The taller harpy is holding Scar up right now, but all of its- Doc's, attention is still on Grian. “And you’re positive?” Scar doesn’t understand the meaning behind it at first; it must have been something to do with the conversation he missed.

“He’s not like the rest of them.” Odd, that was the same sentiment that Scar had been feeling towards the harpy, but with the way Doc was helping him now and was so fiercely protective of the other harpy, Scar was beginning to think he might have been wrong.

“We have to get him back to the other humans. They can care for him.” Doc tells Grian, who’s frowning.

“He took care of me when I was injured.” Ah, so Grian wanted to be even. Scar understood not wanting to owe favors, not that Grian owed him anything to begin with of course, but the sentiment was the same.

Then Scar sees it, the body of the little brown rabbit that he had brought to feed Grian. He must have dropped it when Doc grabbed him. He pushes away from Doc, who lets him go easily enough. Scar stumbles forward, and Grian makes a half-aborted attempt to catch him. His head pounds every time his heart beats.

Scar goes to pick up the body and realizes that at some point, he’s ended up on the ground again. He takes the rabbit in his hands and holds it up. “I didn’t get to give you your food.” Scar frowns, head swimming again. “You’re hungry, right? You have to eat.”

One of the harpies says something that Scar isn’t able to catch. He’s being helped up again, despite how his legs refuse to work. One of them takes the rabbit, and Scar’s thankful that at least someone would eat it.

“-bring him back, we’ll be killed.” One of them says, “He’ll be safe in the nest.” The other replies. Whatever conversation went down while Scar was elsewhere seems to have ended in some sort of agreement.

He’s grabbed by Doc with one of its back talons. “If anything happens to him, it’s your fault.” It’s directed to Grian, who seems fairly certain Scar will be fine. Scar doesn’t appreciate the slight uncertainty he can hear in Grian's voice when he responds.

Without much warning, Scar is being lifted off into the air. He yelps and Doc tightens his hold, making sure it's impossible for Scar to wriggle free.

Scar wasn’t prone to getting motion sick, he’s never had an issue on horseback or when he was in a wagon, but for some reason the air rushing past him and the way the ground passed underneath him made Scar wretch.

Much to Scar's relief the harpies began their descent soon after they rose into the air. A spike of fear goes through him when he sees the giant nest nestled into one of the massive conifer trees. He was always told that when a harpy brought you back to their nest it was to feed their troll-like chicks.

There were no chicks in the massive nest, which looked like it could comfortably fit ten people. Scar was placed into the nest, and looked around it confused.

Grian peers at him. “What’s wrong?”

Scar struggles to look into Grian's eyes, his own sliding past without his say-so. “I thought birds only had nests when there were babies.”

Doc laughs loudly, the sound slicing through Scar's brain like a knife. It was painfully loud, and he flinches. “Good thing we’re not birds.” The harpy smiles wickedly, showing off its pointed teeth like a threat.

A wave of tiredness hits Scar. It forces him to lay down onto the mildly uncomfortable floor of the nest.

“Scar?” Grain calls from above him. He gives a noncommittal hum in response “You okay?”

“M’ sleepy,” He mumbles out in response, already slipping into the darkness of his subconscious.

He hears the sounds of feathers brushing against each other. Grians lays down next to him, one of the harpies wings presses up against his side. “Doc, is he okay?” is the last thing he hears, and without any further thought, Scar’s asleep.

Chapter Text

Scar wakes up suddenly to a gentle throb in his head. It beats against his skull uncomfortably and he’s left wondering if he was sick. He then realizes that what had actually woken him up wasn’t the headache thump-thump-thumping in his skull, but instead, shouting, which definitely didn’t help with his throbbing head.

Why was anyone shouting? Did somebody steal Gem’s sword again? Or maybe somebody offended Bdubs. That one was more likely. Did he do something? If it was Bdubs, there’s a chance the yelling was Scar’s fault.

He blinks rapidly as he opens his eyes, trying to will away both his headache and blurry vision, but his vision still swims regardless, and the ringing inside his ears is coming back. There’s something red standing beside him; he wants to say that it’s Ren, but for some reason, that explanation doesn’t sit right with him.

His head rolls as he tries to reorient himself and better see what’s happening. The other person in the room with them is yellow, Impulse then. Scar wonders what’s going on. Why were they arguing?

He tries to speak, but his speech is slurred, and he can’t figure out why. “Mwa M’ulse d?” He tries to ask Ren, frowning at his own lack of coherence.

When Ren doesn’t respond, Scar reaches forward to try and get his attention, although when he goes to grab what he thinks is the man's cloak, he’s instead met with the texture of feathers. Odd, Ren doesn’t have feathers on his cloak; it’s supposed to be made of wolf fur, and wool.

“Ren?” He groans, struggling to keep both his vision and words straight.

His fellow hunted crouches down to be eye level with him. That’s not Ren, Scar realizes a little too late. Ren's eyes aren’t a solid black, Ren doesn’t have light fluffy hair, Ren isn’t a harpy.

Scar wants to yell, to turn and run away from the monster in front of him, but the monster is looking at him with concern. The monster is worried about him. The harpy is saying something to him, Scar can see its mouth moving even if he can’t hear it over the blood rushing through his head.

Scar doesn’t yell because he realizes that the harpy in front of him is not a monster but instead Grian. He feels himself sag with relief, falling against the harpy who catches him easily.

Finally, the blood in his head isn’t so loud that he can’t hear the ringing in his ears, and finally, the ringing in his ears isn’t so loud that he can’t hear the rest of the world around him. He realizes that the yellow person, who must be another harpy, is speaking.

“Grian, he’s not a pet. You’re putting all of us in danger by keeping him here. What happens when his flock comes looking for him?” The yellow harpy says.

“It’s not like we can just return him. We’ll get killed if any of us sets foot into the human camp,” Grian argues back.

“Then just leave him outside of it. I’m sure when he stumbles back in, the others will take care of him.”

Scar dreads the idea of being left to stumble back into camp. He would never be trusted alone ever again, he was already on thin ice as it is.

Scar glances at Grian once his vision stops spinning so terribly. The harpy is frowning. “But-” it begins.

“And you can’t just stay with him in the nest until he recovers; you have to go eat at some point, and you’d have to feed him. We don’t have anything that he can eat I don’t think, and if you do go out looking for food for him and somebody who doesn’t know what’s going on sees him here, they’ll kill him.” A solid argument on the yellow harpies side. Scar would rather be monitored than dead.

He decides to try and voice his opinion. “M don wanna die,” he tells Grian.

“See!” The other harpy exclaims too loudly, and Scar whimpers as a stab of pain shoots through his brain.

“Jimmy,” Grian hisses, taking Scars head into his hands and cocooning him in the blanket of feathers that is Grians wing. The world is dark and comfortable within these appendages, and Scar thinks he’d be happy to fall back asleep here.

Whatever the other two are saying is lost on him now; his head feels too painful and too floaty to pay any more attention to anything.

He slips back into unconsciousness.

---

Scar wakes up again to more yelling. He’s still wrapped in the warm, feathery cocoon that is Grian, but he can feel Grain's chest vibrate as it snaps back at whoever irritated it. He can sort of hear what Grian’s saying, although the other half of the conversation is lost on him.

“He’s safe here.” “Would you rather I had died?” “No, he’s practically harmless; he’s had so many opportunities and has taken none of them.”

Scar decides this is a conversation he ought to be a part of. Getting free from Grian proves to be a struggle, even though the other isn’t really holding him tightly. He regrets leaving the darkness of the wings from the sudden change in light, which causes another sharp pain. He screws his eyes closed and groans in pain.

“Hey, easy.” Grian whispers to him, raising a wing to block any direct sunlight. Scar’s headache is slightly alleviated when the rays of light are no longer spearing him directly in the eyes.

He cracked his eyes open to look at whoever was speaking to Grian. It’s the yellow harpy form earlier, and with him an orange and red harpy. Scar frowned; these harpies didn’t seem to like him much, but he was discovering that outside of first encounters, harpies were perfectly lovely to be around.

Scar looks between the three. While the yellow and orange ones didn’t look happy, Grian looked downright pissed. That’s not right; Grian shouldn’t be unhappy.

“G, are these guys bothering you?” He turns to look at the two other harpies, not catching how Grian’s expression morphs into one of mild confusion and amusement. “Hey, you guys got nothing better to do than to bother my friend here?” He defends, glaring at the two offenders.

Much to Scars confusion, Grian giggles and the other two give amused snorts. “They’re not bothering me, Scar; they’re just concerned.”

Scar only gives a distrustful look in response before his head throbs again, and he decides that he should lie down as the world once again spins.

“Just let me know if I gotta deal with somebody,” he mumbles to Grian, slowly slipping back under. He thinks he feels himself being shaken by Grian's laughter.

---

The next time he wakes up the first thing he notices is that the sun is no longer so bright. The next thing is that there’s no more yelling. The third thing he realizes is that there are three other bodies around him.

It’s easier to see things in the evening, when the sun's light is no longer doing its best attempt to simultaneously blind him and rip his head in two.

Looking around, he sees that Grian’s sat next to him, staring off at something in the distance. It hasn’t noticed that Scar’s woken up again. The giant harpy is in the nest, too; its eyes are closed, and its chest rises and falls. The third harpy in the nest is the yellow one, it seems focused on running a hand through its feathers, removing any loose ones and fixing any that are particularly messy.

The yellow harpy notices him first. “Grian, your pet’s awake.”

Scar has half a mind to be indignant. He opens his mouth to protest, but Grian beats him to it. “He’s not my pet, Tim.” The harpy rolls its eyes and then turns its attention to Scar. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I got kicked in the head by a horse.” He grumbles. Grian makes a sound of sympathy.

“Yeah, Doc got you pretty good.”

Scar staggers to his feet. His balance is still off, and he sways in place. Both Grian and the other harpy, Timmy? were watching him carefully. He takes a step forward, then another, and then his foot hits something loose in the nest, and he loses his ability to remain upright.

He stumbles forward, trying to catch himself, and without realizing it, has ended up at the edge of the giant nest. He’s still involuntarily moving forward despite being at the edge.

He’s teetering, staring at the ground, which is mostly blocked from view by large branches and pine needles. Despite this, though, looking down is making him nauseous. Another step forward, half doubling over ready to vomit, and suddenly his feet are leaving the floor of the nest, and he’s falling out of it.

He can’t ever catch a break, can he?

His legs are grabbed, and he’s hauled back into the nest, although not before expelling anything he may have had in his stomach.

“Oh my god-” Timmy starts to say, but Grian interrupts him. “Scar, are you okay?” The harpy looks out of breath, it must have moved quickly in order to catch him.

“M’ dizzy,” is the only response Scar can give. The only thing he can see are the stars that dance behind his eyes. He’s half tempted to just fall over and lie down right there, but Grian guides him to a seated position.

The commotion seems to have roused Doc, who is now staring at Scar with an eyebrow raised. “This is why we should send him back to the other humans; he can’t fall out of their nests,” he points out.

Grian drapes one wing over him, blocking his line of sight. “He’s fine here.”

Scar can practically feel the unimpressed stare that Timmy fixes Grian with. “G, look, we know you like your pet-” “M’ not a pet-” “but he would really do better being taken care of by the other humans.” Scar’s interjection is ignored.

Scar couldn’t see Grian's expression, and the harpy didn’t say anything, but he had a feeling that a lot was being discussed with just body language.

The long moment of silence, paired with the warmth and darkness within the harpy’s wing, begins lulling Scar to sleep. Finally, someone speaks. “Fine.” It’s Grian.

Much to Scars dismay, the warm wing that had been wrapped around him is removed. “Alright, Scar, it seems like I’m taking you back to your flock,” The harpy tells him, grabbing him with one talon. It’s a bit awkward considering their height difference, but Grian is much stronger than Scar.

“Hold on,” Is all the warning Scar gets as Grian leaps from the nest, quickly grabbing Scar with his other back talon as he gains altitude. The sudden movement doesn’t help Scar, and closing his eyes only makes his nausea worse. There’s really no winning for him, he’s realizing.

When Grian finally lets go of Scar and touches down on the ground, Scar’s dizzy again, really dizzy. If he had eaten anything recently, he’s sure it would have already left him. He’s honestly surprised he’s still staying upright.

“Scar, can you make it back on your own?” He looks around at where he is, deep enough in the woods that in his dizzy state, it would be difficult to make it to the camp. He shakes his head and then regrets it immediately when his vision is once again swimming.

“No, I’m sorry, I don’t think I can.” He can’t get his sight to straighten itself out and has to take a knee in order to not fall over again.

“Okay, okay.” The harpy mumbled to itself, helping Scar back to his feet. “I’ll get you as close as I can, okay?” Scar nods to let Grian know he understood.

He’s helped back onto his feet, and they begin the slow, careful walk. Luckily, despite the sun quickly setting and darkness settling in, the short journey is easy, and they make it to the entrance of the camp.

The harpy is whispering now. “This is as far as I can take you.” Grian lets go of Scar, who sways now that he doesn’t have anything holding him up.

He takes his first steps forward alone since his headache started and regrets it immediately when each step sends a painful shockwave straight to his brain. He whimpers. “Grian I can’t do this.”

Scar looks at Grian who has a stricken look on his face. He opens and closes his mouth sort of like a fish, and Scar has to stop himself from giggling at the mental image of Grian with a cod for a head.

“I think I can get your flock to come to you, but you have to cover your ears.” Scar doesn’t have to be told twice and brings his palms up to the sides of his head to block out as much sound as possible.

Grian appears to take a deep breath and then lets out the blood curdling screech of a predator. Despite the hands over his ears the sound of the scream sends painful waves through his whole body and feels like knives in his brain.

Scar watches as Grian takes off into the air, flying towards the canopy.

The sudden movements and sounds have Scar falling to his knees, unable to remain upright as the ringing starts again and nausea claws at his stomach. He throws up nothing but bile, still clutching at his ears.

“Scar!” Someone shouts. It’s too loud and Scar tries to press his hands harder against his ears in a futile attempt to keep sound out. He thinks he hears himself whimper, but between the rushing blood and ringing he can’t be sure.

There are more hands on him. More shouting. The hands are removing his hands from his ears, allowing outside sound to filter through.

“-Scar, hey, you with me?” It’s Mumbo, blessed soft-spoken Mumbo.

Scar gasps, taking in air like a starving man, he feels like he’s going to suffocate.

“Mumbo, it’s too much, it’s too loud.” He whispers to the other man.

To his credit Mumbo doesn’t say anything else, instead running his hands around Scars head until his fingers brush over the scabs of the wounds that Doc's claws had left. Mumbo winces in sympathy when Scar lets out a pained hiss.

“Scar what happened? You have several puncture wounds and a bump on your head. Do- mate, do you have a concussion?”

Oh. that would explain the ringing and the dizziness and Scars swimming vision. Wasn’t there another symptom of a concussion? Memory loss? Scar was pretty sure he didn’t have memory loss, but he could lie, he could use it to keep Grian safe.

“I don’t think so?” Scar doesn’t have to pretend to slur his speech, though, he doesn’t have to pretend because his brain is fighting him on every movement he tries to make, every conscious thought is moving sluggishly, much like cooled molasses.

Mumbo makes a worried sound, “Come on, let's get you back to camp. Gem and Ren went to try and chase down that harpy we heard, but everyone else is still there.”

Well, no time like the present to play his cards. “Harpy?”

Mumbos' concern only grows, clouding that space between them. “Yeah, y’know, big scary bird-people who’ve tried to kill you multiple times because you keep deciding that wandering off is a good idea?”

Scar gives his best offended scoff. “I know what a harpy is,” Mumbo helps him to his feet. Scar sways as he stands, all of his brain power going towards keeping him standing rather than finishing his thought.

Mumbo must realize that Scar isn’t doing too well standing on his own and once again grabs him. “I just, there wasn’t one here I don’t think,” Scar manages to finish.

“There was definitely one here not too long ago.” Mumbo frowns, but doesn’t say anything else.

The walk back to the camp was short, slow, and deliberate. There were several times where Scar lost his footing and ended up using Mumbo as a crutch, though he was rarely prepared for it and ended up almost losing his own footing before struggling to keep both himself and Scar upright.

By the time Mumbo is dragging Scar into the medical tent they’re both exhausted. Scar is practically shoved onto the cot that he’s sure will be his prison for yet another week, and Mumbo is bent over trying to catch his breath.

“Okay, I’m going to go get Zedaph,” and then he’s gone, out of the tent where Scars eyes can’t track him.

With nothing to keep him preoccupied the exhaustion Scar had been feeling suddenly multiplied until it’s an all consuming mass which swallows him up like a black hole, eating his consciousness and forcing his eyes closed.

He drifts off into the darkness, and allows awareness to slip from his grasp.

Chapter Text

When Scar wakes up again his headache is still present. It beats at the lining of its cage, doing its best to break free from the prison it’s found itself in.
Unfortunately for Scar, that cage was his skull, and every thrum makes him want to curl up and go back to sleep. He sits up.

As far he’s aware there wasn't anyone near him. He wondered how long he’d been sleeping before waking up, and how long it was going to take until someone came to check up on him.
He hopes someone comes to check on him soon, his head really hurts and he could use a distraction despite the fog that’s seemed to have fallen over his consciousness.

Luckily for him, his prayers are swiftly answered via an exhausted looking Zedaph entering the medical tent. The man perks up as soon as he makes eye contact with Scar.

“Oh! You’re awake!” It’s too loud, Zedaph must notice him wince because the next words out of his mouth are a quiet apology.

“Scar, you’re pretty banged up, how did this happen?” It’s direct, straight to the point, a demand for knowledge that Scar is unwilling to give up.

“I, um.” Scar starts, staring dumbly at Zedaph before allowing his gaze drift to where his hands are clutching at the soft blanket that must have been draped over him sometime after he had fallen asleep for the upteenth time that day.

“I don’t remember.” He does his best to sound apologetic, and based on the defeated sigh from Zed, it works.

“Yeah, figures. You’ve got a concussion, Scar.” He breaks the news to Scar. Scar pretends he hadn’t already figured that out.

“Oh- that’s not good I don’t think.”

Zedaph gives him another exasperated sigh. “Listen, Scar.” He pulls a tool over to him and sits down.
“This is the third scare we’ve had regarding you. You keep going missing and freaking everyone out. We never know if you’re going to come back, or if a harpy is finally going to get you. I know you value your freedom, and you’re a grown adult who can take care of himself, but we can’t keep doing this. I talked to Impulse, and he’s currently deciding whether or not we should send you home or put you back under stricter supervision.”

They were thinking of sending him back to the kingdom? Empty handed and without the rest of his hunting party? He’d never get hired by anyone ever again if it became known that he not only failed a job given to him by the king, but also failed it because he was such a liability that his party had kicked him out.

If he got sent back, he’d be disgraced. If he got sent back he wouldn’t be able to help Grain. If he got sent back there’s a chance that they would kill Grain. He can’t get sent back. It would be over for him and for all the harpies.

“NO.” He gasps out, too loud for himself, his head throbs from his own volume. “No,” He tries again, quieter. “No, you can’t send me back. I’ll be good, I promise. No more sneaking off for ol’ Scar.” He promises, but Zedaph just shakes his head.

“We can’t be sure you’ll make good on your promise. I’ll talk to Impulse about it, he’ll probably come to talk to you before giving you a final verdict.”

Scar feels like his life is crashing down around him.

“Enough about that. You need rest, I’ll leave you be for now, I don’t think you’ll be able to do much sneaking off in this state anyway,” and then he’s gone.

He had really blown it, hadn’t he? He pushed his luck too far and now he was paying the consequences. Now all he had to do was wait for Impulse to come, and he was dreading it as if Impulse was the grim reaper. His life was basically over anyway, so he kind of was in a sense.

He was tired, he realized. Less than he was before, but still an ache sits deep in his bones all the same. He decides that whether he sleeps or not won’t have any effect on the decision Impulse makes, so he lays down and lets his thoughts war on as he tries to sleep.

---

When he wakes up again he feels better than he had before. His head doesn’t throb so viciously and the bone-deep ache doesn’t feel so much like lead, although the fog remains in his mind.

When he opens his eyes the room is bright, but not blindingly so and it doesn’t send such strong bolts of pain through him, though a dull throb does start up.

He turns his head to look to the side where the stool was pulled up and sees Impulse sitting there. He’s hunched over, hands clasped together as he rests his forehead against them. Scar sits up.

“Impulse?” He asks, the man looks up. There’s a deep exhaustion buried inside of his eyes which hangs heavy, drooping down below them and forming dark pools underneath his skin. Scar has never genuinely felt worse for his actions. Had he really caused his friend to look so tired?

“Hey, Scar.” He sighs. There’s a long pause where it’s obvious that he’s trying to figure out what to say. Scar beats him to it.

“I’m sorry.”

Impulse is silent, still thinking.

“I know I say it a lot, and I know it’s not always genuine, but Impulse? I’m really sorry.”

“I know, Scar.”

He’s grappling at things to say, to try and convince Impulse not to send him back empty handed, to not send him back alone and in shame. To not send him back so he can protect the harpies. God, he’s still going against orders, he’s still lying to them.

“Impulse-” “Scar, please.”

He shuts up. Scar knows nothing he says will convince Impulse to change whatever decision he had made.

“Scar, we can’t keep doing this.” “I know.” “You’re putting everyone in danger everytime you leave by yourself.” “I’m sorry.” “Scar.” “Yeah?” “You have to go home.” “Impulse-” “Scar, once you’re healed Gem’s going to escort you back to the kingdom.” “Impulse, please.” “Scar, this isn’t a debate.”

That was it, he was done, his life was over. What was he going to do now? “Please, I promise, I’ll stay with Gem for the rest of this trip, I won’t wander off again.”

“That’s not fair to Gem, or the rest of us for that matter. You’re done, Scar. I’m sorry.”

The worst thing? Scar knew Impulse was genuinely sorry, Scar knew that this was a horrible decision to have to make, and Scar knew that if given any other option Impulse would have chosen to let him stay. Scar knew he had blown it so bad that there was no other option.

He seems to do this a lot. He pushes and pushes and pushes until something breaks. Usually the thing that breaks is himself, one of his bones, a deep scratch forming a new scar over his constellation of other old injuries. Sometimes the thing that breaks is others' patience, where he’ll just talk and talk and talk until someone snaps. He made Impulse snap.

“Okay,” he whispers, no longer meeting Impulse's eyes, instead casting them down to the blanket covering him.

“Scar-” “No, you’re right.”

Scar doesn’t look up again, but he hears Impulse’s heavy sigh as he gets up and leaves the tent. Scar is alone again, in the medical tent again, sorry again. He wants to cry, but something nagging in the back of his head tells him he doesn’t deserve it. He’s tired again, not nearly as tired as Impulse must be.

He slides back into the bed, no longer having the strength to remain upright. Guilt claws at his consciousness, a tug of war against sleep. Eventually, he’s dragged back under. Maybe when he wakes up he’ll realize that this was all just a bad dream caused by his concussion. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Chapter Text

It took three weeks for Scar to recover. Three weeks for the dull throb to fully fade. Three weeks for his vision to stop spinning when he tried to stand up. Three weeks for him to think about what he’s done and what’s going to happen to him. Three weeks to regret.

During those three weeks, he had heard whispers from the others when they were standing a little too close to the tent for him not to overhear, or sometimes they’d tell him directly if they thought he deserved to be filled in on what was happening.

Apparently they’d pinpointed the general area where the harpy's nest was, he hopes it’s the one on the ground and not the one in the tree. He hopes that the harpies don’t think he ratted them out, he would never. Scar thinks it would have been better if all the harpies had allowed Scar to stay and recover in the nest, maybe then the nest wouldn’t have been found, or maybe it would have been worse.

He had overheard Gem and Mumbo talking about how much harder killing the beasts was going to be now that they didn’t have an archer, but Scar knew deep down that even if they were allowing him to stay he was never going to be able to shoot at any of them.

It was stupid, really really stupid of him to have such reservations towards the monsters that had hurt him, that had scarred him, that had given him a concussion. But he saw glimpses of who they really were, and despite how brutish they could be he knew they weren’t mindless animals.

It had been three weeks, and now he was out of the medical tent and in his own, gathering up all his belongings in the bag he used to bring them. They were sending him home today. It would normally be a week's journey, but Gem was hoping to cut that in half.

He walks out to the center of camp, everyone else is already there and waiting. Bdubs has two horses with him, Gems mare who he had never learned the name of, and Snow, who still looked at him with distrust but it isn’t as strong as it had been when they had their first unfortunate encounter.

Wow. Everyone including several of the horses didn’t trust him, he really was a screw up, wasn’t he.

“Ready to go?” Gem asks him.

“Yeah.” his gaze is cast downwards as it had been for the past three weeks.

“Scar?” Mumbo calls him. Scar looks up to see one of Mumbo's hands out-stretched, reaching out towards him. Before Scar can properly respond Mumbo is pulling him into a hug. “I’ll miss you, mate, I’ll see you when we get back.”

“Yeah, I’ll see you soon.”

He mounts the horse, and everyone shouts their goodbyes as he and Gem make their way in the opposite direction to the woods, away from the harpies and boar and wolves.

They walk in silence for a while, at least an hour if Scar were to estimate, apparently, this is too long for Gem who decides a conversation was in order.

“We found the harpy nest,” Gem begins, “Bdubs set up traps around it, a whole bunch. Some bear traps, nets, pitfalls into some sort of cage? Not sure how that one works if I’m being honest.” She shrugs. “Everyone’s going as soon as I get back, hopefully surprising them means we’ll be able to take them down easily.”

Something squirms in Scar's gut. “You’re sure about going so soon? We- you guys don’t know how many there are.”

“It’ll be fine, we have all the dogs, plus Mumbo’s been making some crossbows for us. We’re not good shots like you are, but the force of the bolts should make up for our lack of accuracy.”

Scar feels the color drain from his face. They were going to practically torture the harpies before killing them. They didn’t care about making their deaths painless, as far as any of his fellow hunters were concerned these were brainless animals, it didn’t matter how much pain they were in.

Just like the wolf he’d stuffed full of arrows before managing to end it. He was just as much of a monster as the rest of them. He’s condemning his friends for the very thing he participated in. Silently, he apologizes to the long dead wolf, and all those that came before it.

“That could damage them, they won’t sell for too much in poor condition.” He hopes that if he can convince Gem that the crossbows aren’t a good idea that maybe, just maybe, she’d reconsider.

“Mumbo’s going to process them at camp, and we’re being paid enough by the king for simply killing them that selling them doesn’t matter.” She says simply, as if the only concern Scar had was the harpies being damaged goods instead of suffering beings.

Scar’s thrown up a lot the past few weeks, but this is a different kind of nausea from the dizziness caused by his concussion, one mixed with horror and dread instead of swimming vision. He shouldn’t care so much for these inhuman things, but he does anyway.

They're going to kill the harpies, and there’s nothing Scar can do. His fellow hunters are going to kill Grian, and there’s nothing he can do. His friends are going to kill his other friend, and he can’t bear the thought.

He can’t let them do that.

He has to do something.

He has to.

He has nothing left to lose anyway.

Gems ahead of him, leading the way, she’ll notice too late to do anything but chase him.

Scar pulls on the reins of his beautiful white horse, turning her 180 degrees to face the direction they had come from, he gives her two gentle but firm kicks to her flank and holds on as tight as he can as she begins running like hell, leaving Gem in the dust. She gives a loud shout of his name which quickly fades behind him.

He thunders down the established path, back towards untamed wilderness. He doesn’t want it to be tamed, he can’t allow it to be tamed.

Realistically he knows that Gem isn’t too far behind him. It’s more than likely that she’s kicked her horse into high gear and is chasing after him. He knows that if Gem catches him he’ll be in for a world of trouble.

He thinks he hears distant echoing shouts of his name along with various half-hearted threats. He keeps moving, and despite his horse's initial distrust of him, she continues forward as fast as her legs can carry them.

The camp is only a few hundred feet ahead of him, he knows it would be a bad idea to cut through it to try and make it to the harpies quickly, and Gem is only so far behind him. If he doesn’t alert the others to the fact that he’s going directly against Impulse's orders, then Gem will tell them for sure. He has to make a choice.

The decision he makes is possibly the craziest one he could have come up with. Sure, he could have maybe just gone around the camp and continued onto the harpy nest to warn them. Sure, he could have run straight through camp to get to the nest faster despite it maybe alerting the others. But instead? He jumps.

His horse is fast approaching the camp. He takes his feet out of the stirrups, swings one of his legs over the side of Snow, and jumps.

If he were any more unlucky than he already was he’s sure his bones would have broken. If he were any less trained on how to move safely, and land correctly, he’s sure his concussion would come back with a vengeance.

Instead he hits the ground and rolls, he pops back up and starts booking it.

The horse isn’t going to change its trajectory, it’s going to charge right into the camp. Everyone is going to know that he’s both not with Gem and on the run, but they’ll have to rangle in the mare. Gem will hear the commotion and run into the camp herself to see if Scar had lost his mind and tried to go back.

He’ll be far enough ahead of them that he should be able to reach the harpy nest before they can even begin figuring out where he went.

His legs begin to burn from how much he’s pushing himself. He has to keep running, faster, faster, he can’t lose his footing, he has to keep going.

He’s far enough away he’s sure he can yell and the hunters won’t hear him.

“GRIAN! DOC! TIMMY!” He doesn’t know the names of the others, but hopefully hearing him shouting for any of them will catch the attention of even the harpies he hasn’t met yet.

Yet.

He was already planning on meeting all of the harpies. He cared about them, even the ones he hadn’t met. When did he start caring about the things he was supposed to hate? The second time he met Grian, he supposes the answer is.

Scar yells for the three of them again, desperately trying to get the attention of any of them. He’s mid scream, practically begging for one of them to answer him when his feet leave the ground without his say so.

The sound that was Grians name gets swept up with him, ending in a startled yelp. He’s being raised, higher and higher into the air. He feels talons digging into his shoulder.

Looking up he does not see the red and yellow of Grians feathers, nor the greens and browns of Docs. He doesn’t see the yellow of Timmys, nor the orange of the other one. No, this harpy had wings as white as freshly fallen snow.

He tries to yell over the sound of the wind rushing past them.

“HEY! CAN YOU LAND? I NEED TO TELL YOU SOMETHING IMPORTANT!”

The harpy lowers its head to glance at Scar, a look on its face somewhere between curiosity and surprise. It’s then that Scar notices that this harpy doesn’t have black eyes like all the other harpies, but instead a brilliant shade of blue.

Scar can actually see its pupils. Scar wasn’t aware harpies had those.

After a brief moment of silence it shouts back, “YEAH, SURE MAN!” Then, just like that, Scar’s stomach is in his throat because they are plummeting toward the earth at an alarming speed. Scar shrieks as they fall, he thinks he hears it laugh.

Right before they hit the ground, as Scar braces for impact, the harpy swoops up keeping them aloft. It’s once they’re moving at a stable slowish pace that the harpy drops him, and Scar is pleased to say that he only stumbled a little bit as he lands on his feet.

The harpy lands next to him, allowing Scar to appraise it. The harpy’s hair was black, a stark contrast to its sky-blue eyes and white wings. It’s nearly his height, only half an inch shorter at most.

He figures he should introduce himself, so he holds out his hand. “Well hello there, Scar Goodtimes at your service.”

The harpy stares at him dumbly for a few seconds before a sharp-toothed blinding smile breaks out across its face. “You’re Grians pet that Tango was telling me about.”

Scar sputters, letting his outstretched hand fall to his side. The orange Harpy must be Tango. “I’m not a pet!” The harpy just chuckles.

“The name’s Skizz, now you said you had something important you needed to tell me?”

“Oh- right.” He takes a deep breath, the harpy waits patiently for him to speak. There’s a look in its eyes resembling worry. “My- the-” how was he supposed to refer to his fellow hunters? Was he even a hunter anymore? The kingdom wouldn’t accept him as one, not when he got kicked from his party, especially not if they found out about his new fondness of monsters.

He supposes he’s not a hunter anymore, just a human, a stupid clumsy human who is only alive through sheer luck and happenstance.

“The hunters who came here with me, they know where your nest is, they’ve laid traps, they’re coming to kill all of you, I don’t know when, but soon.”

Much to Scar's alarm, the harpy laughs. “Please, you’re their archer, right? Without you, there’s no way that they could possibly knock us out of the sky. We’ll be fine. I’ll tell the others we have to move, but don’t you worry about us.” It tries to reassure, but it doesn’t know what Mumbo has made, it doesn’t know how willing Scar’s own kind are to maim the things they consider an animalistic threat.

“No, they have crossbows, powerful ones. They don’t care if their aim is good or not, they don’t care if you suffer. You have to leave, they’ll kill you.” He tries to plead.

The humor finally leaves the harpy's face. Scar knows he hasn’t painted a full picture, and he’s smart enough to know that Gem left out certain details of the hunt, he knows there’s more planned than he knows about, and he knows the harpies are even less safe than he’s making it out to be.

“Alright, I believe you.” It was music to Scar’s ears. “I’ll bring you to the nest so you can explain everything to whoever’s there, but most of them are probably out. You can stay to tell whoever comes back, and I’ll try to find everyone else.”

And Scar agrees, because what else was he supposed to do? The harpies, however human, were still animals. They came and went as they pleased and Scar doubts that they communicate where they're going with each other at any given time.

The sound of hooves in the distance startles both Scar and the harpy. “They’re looking for me,” Scar whispers.

In a flash, Scar is once again being lifted into the air, although this time without any screaming on his part.

The flight is at least a few minutes, and Scar is grateful that they’re flying in the opposite direction of the hunters.

When he’s put down in the nest he stumbles slightly from the slightly too-fast landing, but is quickly grabbed by a hand behind him. “Can’t have you fall out of the nest again.” Doc chuckles.

Skizz leaves quickly, apparently only flying by long enough to drop Scar into the nest. It doesn’t bother to say anything to Doc or Scar. He assumes that it’s going to try and find the other harpies as soon as possible.

Scar explains the situation to Doc. Luckily the harpy seems to take the situation more seriously than Skizz did.

“If they’re targeting both you and the nest then you can’t stay here.” Doc tells him.

“But if anyone else comes back and they don’t know what’s happening there’s a chance they’ll die.” Scar tells him, worry clear across his face.

“Then I’ll stay here and tell them. Let me help you down.” Doc decides.

Scar agrees once again, because what else could he possibly do? All of his belongings were left on the back of his horse other than his handkerchief and dagger, but compared to what the hunters have he’s defenseless. There’s nothing he can do other than warn the harpies.

Doc flies him down from the nest and points him in the direction that it thought it had seen Jimmy go (which was apparently its name, not Timmy.)

Scar begins walking, he’s not too sure where he’s going anymore, and he would yell out for any of the harpies, but he’s worried he’d draw unwanted attention. Apparently the harpies don’t have the same reservations because he hears a familiar voice bickering with another.

Jimmy, and the other must be Tango.

“Jimmy, Tango!” Scar continues to try and keep his voice down, but he needs to find the pair. The bickering stops and a hushed silence falls over the evening woods.

“It’s Scar!” He hopes they just didn’t recognize his voice and thought he was a hunter, not that they ran away. They wouldn’t be safe if they weren’t informed.

The worry that the harpies left is squashed by a thump from behind him.

“Good to see you’re up and about. Getting lost again?” Scar turns around to see the two harpies standing together. Relief floods his veins.

He’s fast to start explaining what he knows. He tells them about the hunt that’s about to take place, about how Skizz is trying to fin the others, about how Doc is still at the nest in case anyone comes back, and about how he came looking for them.

“We should do the same and try to rally everyone, if it’s really that bad we need to leave.” Tango reasons and Jimmy nods in agreement.

“Thanks for the heads up!” Jimmy shouts as they lift off, leaving Scar behind on the ground.

It’s just him again, and this time he doesn’t have a direction to go in. Scar’s quick to realize he’s never been in this part of the woods. It was evening, the sun was quickly setting and Scar was so deep in the woods that he was past the harpy’s nest, way past it. He was so helplessly lost, and with chaos on the horizon, he knew there was no help coming for him, not today.

He stands there in the woods, dumbly looking around like he will magically find the answers to what he should do next. To his surprise, he does.

The sun is gone now, sinking lower and lower and lower until it’s nothing but a faint smear of light, and then that too is gone. The light never leaves though. Despite the sky above filling with stars and darkening to a deep midnight color the light never leaves the horizon.

There’s a young conifer tree near him, its branches are low enough to the ground that he can easily climb it with no risk of injuries. When he reaches a high enough point in the tree he peaks out of the branches and off into the distance where the light is.

Black tendrils reach up from the forest where the light originates. It twirls and turns in the air as if it was dancing; as more and more tendrils rise they twist together until the smoke is billowing up into the night sky.

This was the part of the story he knew he was missing, the part of the plan Gem left out. To flush the harpies out, to make sure they could shoot them, to make sure they could kill them, the hunters had set the woods on fire.

Scar thought he had time to warn everyone, time to get the harpies and get out. Clearly the hunters felt the need to put their plan into action sooner rather than later. Luckily for him it was a rushed job, so despite the blaze he hopes the harpies got out.

Setting a fire like that was not a decision that was made lightly. Everyone knew the implications of a massive fire like this, the loss of natural resources would devastate the kingdom's ability to expand this way for a long time. Did the hunters really see the harpies as that big of a threat? Was it Scar’s fault for always getting injured?

Either way, his fault or not, he has to help. He’s descending from the tree and taking off running in the direction of the fire.

When he reaches it, It’s hard to hear over the roaring of the fire. It’s hard to see past the blinding light and smoke. It’s hard to breathe when he’s gasping for breath from running, and every inhale has smoke scraping against his throat.

It stings his eyes causing them to well with tears, and through them, he cannot see. He blinks, doing his best to clear them, and continues forward. Scar cannot afford to stop, he’s in too deep with this mess.

Panicked shrieking catches his attention.

It doesn’t matter if he can see or not, it doesn’t matter because he has to help whoever’s in distress.

Despite the blaze, despite the fire that bites at his heels, he goes to the shrieking. He’s sure he’s going to have more Scar’s after this.

He doesn’t recognize the harpy caught in the net, a trap Bdubs must have sent. Its wings are black on the outside and a brilliant reflective silver on the underside. With all the light that the fire’s producing the silver feathers may as well be acting like a lighthouse.

Scar pulls out his dagger, grabs onto a piece of the thrashing rope, and begins sawing. It takes an excruciating minute, a whole minute of fire licking his body and smoke shoving itself down his throat, but finally, the rope gives and the harpy is free.

Though of course, as per Scar’s luck, the harpy thanks him by shoving him against a tree.

He yelps. “Woah, woah, woah woah! I’m a friend, I’m-” he hates the words that are about to leave his mouth, “-I think you guys have been calling me Grians pet?”

The harpy is quick to let him go. “Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry, I thought you were one of those hunters!”

“It’s okay,” he reassures, just thankful he didn’t get another rock to the head, “Skizz, Doc, Tango, and Jimmy all know what’s going on already.” With the new, albeit short, distance between them, he has to shout over the roar of the fire. “They had all gone to regroup, you have to get out of here!”

“What about Grian and Joel?” Scar has no idea who Joel is, but he hopes that Skizz found both of them and got them out.

“Hopefully Skizz or Doc found them, I don’t think there’s any solid plan for where to meet up, but as long as it’s away from the fire I’m sure you’ll find everyone.” He tries his best to usher the harpy away, and tries to get it to flee.

“What about you?”

Scar’s a perfect stranger, one of the same species who just set her home on fire, and she’s concerned for him.

“I’ll be fine.” He reassures.

The harpy gives him a look like it doesn’t believe him, but then it’s gone, up into the sky where he can’t follow.

Now it’s just him and the fire. He’s inhaling too much smoke. He grasps at his belt to pull his flask off and takes out his handkerchief. Scar pours water over the cloth before slapping it over his mouth. Hopefully, it’ll buy him time.

There’s a muffled sound underneath the fire. It must be deafeningly loud if he’s able to hear it.

Scar’s legs carry him towards it. The closer he gets towards it the clearer the sound gets. It’s laughing, the sound is more akin to jeering instead of joy, and it fills his stomach with dread. Scar runs faster, his lungs burn and his legs ache but he continues forward.

The area he ends up in isn’t as smoky or on fire as the rest of the woods. A horrific sight greets him all the same.

Grian’s on the ground, bloody but obviously alive. Dogs surround the harpy, circling, waiting for an order. Everyone’s on horseback.

“Wanna do the honors?” Impulse asks Gem.

“I’d love to.” She says, sword already out and gleaming. She dismounts her horse and approaches Grian confidently, and slowly, a predator who knows its prey is too injured to defend itself.

She raises her sword.

“NO!” Scar screams, and without thinking his legs move to carry him in front of the sword.

He stands in front of Grian, arms spread in his best attempt to protect him.

“Scar, there you are!” Gem’s sword remains raised in the air, ready to swing. “We were worried you’d get caught in the fire.”

Not worried enough to not light it, Scar thinks.

“Good thing we found you now, but you have to get out of the way, Scar.”

He doesn't shift his weight, or so much as blink. He’d been defying direct orders the whole time he was here, and now he doesn’t even care to hide it. “No.”

“Scar, what are you doing?” Impulse focuses his attention on Scar. Zed’s standing next to Impulse with an odd look on his face, like he’s trying to piece together a puzzle.

“You can’t kill it.” He tells them, desperation seeping into his voice.

“It’s a monster, Scar.” Gem tells him, taking another step forward.

It. It’s a monster. Scar had been calling Grian, and all the other harpies for that matter, an it. Despite his shifting thoughts on them he still referred to them as its. Less than human. That was wrong. They were his friends.

“His name is Grian.” Scar forces out, his throat growing tight, from the smoke or anxiety he can’t tell. “His name is Grian, and he is not a monster.”

“The bandages.” Zedaph suddenly exclaims, and all eyes turn towards him. “Scar, the night you snuck out after you were attacked and we had to redo your bandages I noticed small scratches on the surface of them. I chalked it up to you getting scraped by a tree, but I had been so sure that it looked more like animal scratch marks. It was the harpy, wasn’t it?”

Scar nods. “It was.”

“Why wouldn’t you report it?” Impulse looks more confused than anything now, any blood lust that had been in his eyes is long gone.

“If Grian had wanted to kill me I’d be dead. He’s had countless opportunities to kill me, almost all the harpies have, and they haven’t.”

Gem’s sword lowers and Scar counts it as a small victory.

“All of them?” Ren jumps in, surprised.

“How many?” Gem demands.

It doesn’t matter if he tells them now, most if not all of them are already long gone, away from the blaze. “Seven That I know of, but I’ve only met six of them.

Someone gasps, but Scar’s not sure who. He can’t tell over the roaring fire which has begun to creep in around them.

“How can you defend them? Every time you came back after a solo trip, one we forbid mind you, you’d be injured, how can you defend them?” Gem demands.

“I got lost, I got lost and Grian led me back to the path.” He barks out, Scar’s sick of them trying to make him hate the harpies, who while a little rough around the edges, had been nothing but kind. “Grian got caught in one of Bubs’ traps, and I’m sorry for not telling you, but I couldn’t kill someone who had helped me, so I had been taking care of him until his leg had healed. One of his flock mates had been worried and attacked me because he thought I had hurt Grian. That’s where my concussion had come from, but Grian wanted to take care of me like I did him, and when he realized he couldn’t he brought me back to camp and made sure you found me.”

“The screech we heard, we thought it was attacking you.” Ren murmurs, catching on quickly to the full picture.

“Please, he’s not dangerous, no more than we are.” He pleads again, desperate to change their minds.

He sees Impulse lower his weapon, and after a short moment of hesitation Bdubs, Mumbo, and Ren follow suit.

“Okay.” Impulse nods once as if confirming his decision with himself.

Gem whips around. “OKAY? If the king catches wind of this he’ll have our heads for treason!” She snaps, looking around at everyone.

“The King doesn’t know there are harpies here, we didn’t even have the proper supplies to take them down anyway, that’s why it’s taken us so long, Gem. He doesn’t have to find out.”

She still looks uneasy but doesn’t say anything else about it.

In the time it’s taken for Scar to finally convince the others to not kill Grian the fires had grown more intense. Scar realizes his face hasn’t been covered, and he’s been inhaling the smoke. He’s suddenly very dizzy, and he’s sure everyone else is too.

“We have to go,” Mumbo calls, already turning his horse around to run back to the camp. The fire can’t reach it, they had cleared all the foliage out from around it once they were first settling in all those weeks ago.

Scar whips around, taking the damp handkerchief and covering Grian’s mouth to try and limit the amount of smoke he intakes.

He’s grabbed and dragged onto Mumbo’s horse. The sudden movement has him dropping the handkerchief. “WAIT!” He can’t leave Grian, not after all of this.

“Impulse is grabbing the erm- Grain? Was it?”

Scar doesn’t get the chance to respond as Mumbo gives his horse a swift tap on its flank. It takes off running, the rest of the group behind them.

Belatedly he realizes that he had dropped his handkerchief, he turns to look at where it must have been just in time to see the little embroidered arrow be swallowed by the flames.

Chapter Text

The eight of them had made it back to the camp safely, although the fire still lit up the sky as if it were only evening. Scar dreaded thinking about what must have become of so many creature's homes. He knows the nest is gone, he knows that all the birds and deer have fled. He knew many were probably caught by the raging fire. Scar can only hope all the harpies got out. At least Grian was going to be okay.

The air inside the camp had been tense. Grian was set up in the medical tent, but anyone who wasn’t Scar or Zedaph avoided it like the plague. The smoke seemed to take a bigger toll on the harpy than it did any of the humans, which paired with his injuries led to a slow recovery, but Zedaph was optimistic that he’d be up and about within the next few days.

Scar had burns which caused his skin to bubble and blister. He was lucky, they were at most second degree, all superficial, and had been bandaged and unwrapped only a week later. His new burn scars were layered over the gorges from Grians talons which layered over various cuts from so many incidents. It was hard to not feel broken, but Scar kept busy enough to ignore his marred skin.

Scar visited Grian every day, and when he wasn’t with Grian he was out trying to find game. The fire had scared off most of the animals, and none would come back to repopulate the decimated territory anytime soon. The more he went out to hunt, the less he found. He was getting desperate to find something, anything to feed to the harpy.

It was day two of unsuccessful hunting. Scar had found an abandoned warren which led to nothing but disappointment. He had resorted to borrowing one of Ren's lymers in a desperate attempt to find even a trace, a trail of an animal that might be around. He’d take even a chickadee if it meant getting any calories into Grian, he had eaten much too little and had become much too thin within the past week.

Even with the dog's help, he turned up nothing.

They were running low on regular people food, too. If they stayed here they’d starve. If they went home they’d have to abandon Grian. Scar knows that everyone else is only staying for his sake, if they had it their way Grian would be dead and they’d be making their way back to the king for their paycheck.

In the quiet, charred forest, the wingbeats were hard to miss. Looking up, Scar sees the other harpies for the first time since the fire. Doc touches down first, followed by Tango, Jimmy, Skizz, The avian he never got the name of, and one with emerald green wings and long green feathers in his hair who must be Joel. There are two others as well, one with many shades of green splattered across her wings like paint and curled fiery hair, and one who’s a pale pink who stands next to Joel.

Scar opens his mouth to greet them, but the black winged harpy interrupts him. “Where’s Grian?”

It’s intimidating being surrounded by eight creatures who all have at the very least double his muscle mass. He looks around at the harpies, the ones he hasn’t met, Joel included, are glaring at him with distrust. Scar finds it hard to look away from him, his heart leaping in his chest. He feels his fight or flight reflex kick in as adrenaline floods his veins. As far as his subconscious and body were concerned, Scar was in very real danger, and he was finding it hard to not think that way in his conscious mind.

The dog beside him growls. The fur on its back raises to make it look bigger as it bares its teeth at the harpies. Scar gives a gentle tug on the lead to tell it to stop. While the growling ceases, the fur on its back remains raised.

“He’s back at the camp, he inhaled quite a bit of smoke, and got a bit tossed around, but he should be okay to leave within the next few days.” He recites what Zedaph had told him, not breaking eye contact with Joel.

“The other humans didn’t hurt him?” Doc sounds curious, cautious, but somehow not surprised.

Scar lets out a nervous chuckle, finally forcing his eyes off Joel and to Docs. Despite his more intimidating stature Scar feels much more comfortable with him. “I mean, it took me jumping between him and a sword but no, they didn’t.”

Out of the corner of his eyes he sees Joel's and the other new harpies expression soften, another overly protective one he realizes, Scar wonders if all harpies are like that, protective and tribal.

“Good. We brought deer for him. Thought you humans would do a bad job feeding him.” Joel says in an arrogant tone, but something told Scar he was (mostly) joking. Internally though, Scar cringed because they had done a bad job feeding him, or at least Scar had despite his best effort.

Scar feels his shoulders slump in relief. “Good, that’s good. I’ve been struggling to find anything to give him, any food the others catch ends up going to us or the dogs.” He doesn’t think the others would really oppose the idea of feeding Grian, but at this point food was too scarce for them to want to put effort into it.

“I’ll show you the way to the camp so you can give the deer to him,” he offers.

While they hesitate for a long moment they all eventually agree. Scar begins leading the group back to the camp. He couldn’t lie, having a flock of harpies behind him made his hair stand on end, there was a nagging fear at the back of his mind that told him if he didn’t turn around right now he’d be torn to shreds.

The lymer clearly felt the same way, its fur was still raised and every few seconds it would glance behind them to keep an eye on the flock.

The walk was in relative silence until they reached the camp entrance. Suddenly Scar was unsure about how his party would react to an entire flock of harpies entering their safe space as opposed to just the one they’re keeping in the medical tent. Well, only one way to find out.

Bdubs is the first person to notice the group, and naturally the first to sound the alarm. The alarm is him screaming at the top of his lungs after staring in silence for a few seconds.

“No, no, Bdubs! Bdubs, calm down, they’re friends!” Scar tries to soothe, but it’s too late and everyone emerges from wherever they were with weapons drawn.

The harpies don’t take kindly to having swords and axes pointed at them Scar is learning, because now they’re growling a deep rumbling sound that sets the hunters even more on edge.

“Scar, why’d you bring them here?” Impulse asks carefully, weapon lower than the others. Scar knows Impulse must be searching for reason, an explanation for his absurd behaviour.

“They were worried about Grian, and they brought a deer for him, and it’s not like we’ve been doing a good job feeding him.” He bites back. It looks like Impulse is about to respond, but Scar steam rolls over him. “Plus Grian hasn’t done anything to anyone, right? He’s not like that, none of them are, the stories we heard were nothing more than that, just stories.” He’s pleading again now, desperately trying to get through to them.

“Scar, you kept coming back hurt,” Zedaph jumps in. He had been the most accepting of Grian, but even he remained wary.

“We came into their home with the sole purpose of killing them, of course they attacked me! I shot at Grian the first time I saw him for peats sake!” A clawed hand on his shoulder directs Scar’s attention to Doc who stands behind him.

“Breath.” The harpy grumbles, and all the sudden Scar’s realizing that he got so worked up that his breathing had become shallow and laboured.

“Fine.” Impulse says. It almost looks like Gem wants to protest but she doesn’t, if only because Impulse had already accepted what was happening.

The group of hunters parts, weapons still raised, but they allow them passage further into the camp. Scar leads the way to the medical tent. Grian’s sitting up when they enter, staring blankly ahead waiting for something to happen.

He had lost weight in his time there, Scar wasn't sure how many calories harpies were supposed to intake to maintain their weight, but he knew that they must have been way under. His eyes had deep bags which had begun forming under his eyes on only his third day there, and Scar’s sure the only thing stopping him from seeing his ribs and spine are the feathers that cover him. Grian perks up when Scar enters.

“Oh Grian~” Scar sing songs, holding the flap of the tent open for the other harpies to enter. Grian’s eyes light up. “Guess who I brought, and we have food!”

Scar’s too busy looking at Grian to see the way that his flock mates eyes light up with worry when they see him.

Doc extends the deer towards Grian. Scar is about to say something about not eating in bed, but before he can even finish his thought Grian moves faster than he had in days. He grabs the deer, claws sinking into it and pulls it towards himself. Blood oozes out from where his claws have sunk into its flesh. He sinks his fangs into the deer like a rabid animal.

Scar can’t tear his eyes off of the sight of Grian ripping the deer apart. It’s gross and messy and the white cot is no longer white, and the sight of a harpy acting so vicious, no, ravenous, has Scar thinking about all the stories he was told as a kid.

He realizes his heart had started beating faster, and his whole body was alight with nerves. He stomps down the panic as quickly as he can, and tries to avoid any signs of it showing on his face.

Grian pauses eating mid-bite, blood staining the entirety of his face. He swallows the mouthful of deer before speaking. “Are you alright, Scar?”

Apparently Scar did not do a good job concealing his panic, and Grian saw right through him.

“Yep, all good here! Happy to see you getting some food in ya, I was getting a bit worried there!” He gives Grian his most convincing smile, and luckily for Scar he seems to buy it.

Scar really needed to get a handle on himself, why was he panicking over a little blood? He supposses only a few weeks wouldn’t undo years of conditioning to be afraid.

“Are you going be good to fly?” Jimmy speaks up from his place behind Doc and next to Tango.

Grian once again pauses eating, glancing over to Scar for the answer.

“Zed said to give it a few more days to make sure, but if you want to leave now we can’t stop you.” He tells him.

“Good, cause we’ve got this awesome new forest, far away from these idiots.” Joel gestures towards Scar and the tent around them. “And plenty of food!” Skizz tacks on. “I’ve been calling it the fairy fort!” The pink harpy jumps in, smiling widely.

There’s a look on Grians face that Scar can’t quite distinguish, it’s somewhere between grief and joy, maybe it’s both.

For the most part the rest of the time Grian spends eating the rest of them is spent in silence. Occasionally the harpies will whisper amongst themselves. Scar goes to leave the tent, figuring he should let the flock catch up with one another.

“Wait, Scar.” Doc calls, and Scar turns around confused. The harpy extends his wing, there’s something balled up in its massive hand.

Scar reaches out in turn, opening his hand to receive whatever he’s being handed. Doc drops a small piece of cloth into his hand. The handkerchief. The embroidering is burnt off, leaving a black smudge where the arrow had once been, it’s fraying more than it ever had been, and it’s more stained than it’s ever been, but it’s still in one piece. He had thought it burnt to a crisp.

“How in the world-? Thank you.” He whispers.

“It was cold when I found it, it must’ve been wet so the fire didn’t burn it.” Doc says, already turning away to put his attention back on Grian. Without another word, the handkerchief cradles in his hands, Scar leaves.

Outside he sees his own group all huddled together. He can’t hear what they’re saying, but he can see the way their mouths move. It’s hurried and hushed and secretive. Scar knows they’re talking about him, about the danger he must pose to the group.

It’s Mumbo who notices him first, raising his head to look around and instead making eye contact with Him.

“Scar!” The man calls out, waving him over much to Scar’s surprise.

The tight circle the group had formed breaks apart, separating to create an additional space, one for him. He didn’t think he’d be included in such a thing. He joins the circle anyways.

“Now that you’re here, we were just talking about what to do. Since you’re… friends with the harpies we figured you could ask them to leave and not come back, and considering the fire there’s nothing else for us to clear. As soon as Grians gone we’re heading back to the kingdom. We have enough of the feathers to have proof that we encountered the harpies, and with all the other pelts we have from the boar and wolves we’ll be rolling in coins.” Impulse informs him.

Now, Scar knows he should feel nothing but relief. Not only were his friends not planning on killing Grian or any of the other harpies, but he was also being allowed back with the party to share in the wealth and success that they would be receiving. He wouldn’t be disgraced, he wouldn’t be jobless, he should be thrilled. Instead he felt mildly disappointed, about what he didn’t know. He did know that he had to respond though.

“Well that’s just wonderful!” He smiles wide. Something at the back of his mind makes his smile quiver, luckily no one notices. “I think Grian was actually getting ready to head off, I know Zed said to give it a couple more days, but he seems ready to go.” He ignores the odd pull in his gut that that sentence causes him.

“Oh, all the better! That means if we go back now we can set off tomorrow morning.” Gem cheers. Everyone else voices some sort of agreement or excitement about the prospect of returning home to their families and friends.

Everyone disperses fairly quickly after that, all leaving to go back their personal items before returning to help load the wagon and take down all the tents.

Scar returns to his own tent to start packing. He doesn’t have much: his sleeping bag, a metal tinderbox he had never touched, his bow, arrows, and quiver, his dagger, his flask, and his handkerchief. He can’t believe he nearly lost the handkerchief. The last thing his mother had given him. What would he have done without the harpies?

He finishes packing, and judging by the voices he once again hears outside of his own tent at least a few of the others had finished packing too. Scar exits his tent with his bag slung over his shoulder.

When Scar glances around the clearing he sees that the harpies had exited the medical tent with Grian in tow, and are talking to Zedaph and Mumbo. Or rather most of the harpies are talking to Zedaph. Much to Scar’s surprise it seems that Gem is in the middle of a conversation with the harpy he still hadn’t gotten the name of, and Tango and Skizz were in the middle of a conversation with Impulse.

He approaches the larger group, leaving Gem and Impulse to continue their private conversations. Zedaph spots him first.

“Scar, can you believe that they got deer guts all over one of my cots?” Scar’s surprised, only mildly, but surprised nonetheless that Zed isn't more upset over his bloodied cot. A warm buzz lights up in his heart over the fact that one of his party members is more than willing to accept the harpies as if they were just strange people despite his initial wariness.

This time his smile is genuine. “Did they now?” He passes them a disappointed look as if he hadn’t been there when it happened. Grian to his credit sees the lie for what it is and points an accusatory finger at him.

“You let me!” He yells.

“You looked so comfy! What was I gonna do, make you eat on the floor like some sort of monster?” Scar cries out in response.

The group breaks out into gentle laughter which is broken only by Ren approaching. “Dudes, I think everyones done packing, we just need to take down the tents and load them into the wagon.”

With all hands on deck it’s quick work to take down and put away all the tents, with the medical tent taking the longest. Soon enough, the clearing looked like no man had ever touched it at all, as long as you ignored the spots where something heavy had obviously laid.

Two coursers were already hooked up to pull at each of the two wagons, and both Impulse and Gem were already on theirs to lead the way. It was time to go.

Everyone was already on board, everyone had already said goodbye, everyone except Scar.

The harpies were still there, Gem had already said goodbye to the harpy who Scar had learned went by the name Pearl, and now it was time for Scar to say goodbye to all of them.

“Thank you,” is the first thing he says to them. He’s not even sure what he’s thanking them for. Thank you for not killing me? Thank you for helping me when I was lost? For helping when I was hurt and confused? Thank you for being my friend? “I’ll miss you.” Is the second thing he says. Most of the harpies give various peasantries in response, but Grian goes in for a tight hug in lieu of one.
The hug is warm, like holding a big stuffed animal. It feels a lot like he remembers his mothers being. Safe. Scar doesn’t really want to go home, not anymore, but he didn’t have a good enough reason to stay. He only knew Grian a few weeks, that was nothing in the face of the lifetime he had spent back in the kingdom, serving his king and his fellow countrymen. He had riches, good food, and a warm bed waiting for him when they got back. A far cry from the uncomfortable cots or sleeping bags and nonperishable foods.

Grian lets go of the hug first, and Scar stops himself from chasing it, and has to stop himself from hiding inside of the cocoon of wings. He wishes Grian goodbye for a second time before finally turning around and getting into the back of the wagon. Only moments later the horses begin moving, and he dares one last glance in the harpies direction. Most of them were already lifting off into the air, but Grian still stood there, watching until Scar was out of sight.

Chapter Text

It took just a day longer than a week to get home. They passed through several small villages and long winding paths before the gates of the central kingdom came into view. Scar could see the bell tower now that they were there, so tall that it could be viewed from anywhere inside the town and a little beyond it.
They entered without any fanfare. A few of their families had been there to greet them once word had gotten around that they were back, but they had to go meet with the king before any of them could go home.

The town looks exactly like Scar remembered it, not that he's very surprised, but it’s felt like such a long time since he’d been there. It had well maintained cobblestone streets, and street lights that were lit by the lamplighters every evening at six-o’-clock. The streets were bustling, much too busy for anyone to care about the returning travelers' presence. Tudor houses stretched the span of the entire town, each looking nearly identical to each other sans whatever decorations their owners put out to make them more homely.

Their first order of business was to report to the king. Bdubs brought the horses to a stop just outside of the castle. Impulse and Gem dismounted their horses as everyone else exited from the wagons. Mumbo grabs the wooden box which the group had filled with the harpies' feathers.

The knights open the castle doors as soon as Impulse begins approaching. A servant with wide eyes and a bright smile greets them enthusiastically before beginning to lead them to the king with a constant stream of chatter.

They make it to the throne room, and Scar sees the man sitting on the golden chair, heavy crown sitting on his head. Scar kneels on one knee without even thinking, and Everyone else is quick to follow suit. It had been ingrained in their heads from an early age that the sight of the crown means you must kneel until the crown’s either no longer in sight or if you’re given permission to move.

The king stands, a pleasant smile on his face. “Please, none of that. Rise.” He orders, and Scar follows like a puppet on strings. “What have you brought for me?” The king holds out his hands to receive the box, which Mumbo is quick to hand over with rushed, anxious movements.

He opens it, and takes in the contents of the box with a blank expression. “Harpies. How many?”

“Nine, your highness.” Impulse informs him.

“You killed all of them yourselves?” He gives them all an appraising look, something about the look in his eyes screams that he doesn’t believe them.

“Yes, though I do regret to inform you that there was a forest fire during our hunt against the harpies, we lost their bodies and most of the resources from the new territory.”

The king frowned, and for a horrible second Scar’s heart dropped to his stomach with the absurd fear that the king wouldn’t pay them, would punish them, because of the destruction they had caused. Not that the king knew that it had been on purpose. But Scar knew that the king was kind, well loved, he wouldn’t punish them for something he viewed as out of their control.

“We’ll wait till next summer to expand, then.” The king decides. He orders his personal servant forward, who without Scar’s noticing had gathered several heavy coin bags in his arms. “For your services.”

The bag Scar is handed feels weighty and solid in his hand. He dares a look into the bag and swears he feels faint. It’s enough gold to last him several years without ever taking another job., It made him feel like he accomplished something other than getting his head knocked around several times while disobeying orders. The feeling is hollow.

It was soon after this that the king dismissed them, and they loaded themselves back into the wagons. One by one they were dropped off home, collecting their things from the backs of the wagons before going inside.

Scar was the last to go home other than Bdubs who needed to return the coursers to the stables.

The first thing he notices when he enters his house is that it smells like dust. It’s dark inside, the shudders over his windows having been closed before he left for the hunting trip. Opening them allows streams of light to filter into the room, but also disturbs the dust that had settled there causing Scar to cough as it flies towards his face.

Finally being able to look around the room he sees it’s exactly how he left it. Empty, dusty wood chairs with a table to match. His cupboards were closed, but Scar knew they were empty, there was no one else there to fill them. Everything was covered in a thin layer of dust, he’d have to shake out his wolf skin rug and bed sheets. He tosses the bag of coins onto the table like it wasn’t an absurd amount of wealth and gets cleaning.

After the long, exciting adventure he had been on, the menial household chores felt mind numbing. At least he was busy, and by the time he was done cleaning he was tired enough that he could just fall into bed and pass out… except for the fact that he couldn’t sleep.

He tossed and he turned and he was tired, but he couldn’t sleep. He could hear the sounds of other people who were up at the late hour outside, most of them seemed to try and be quiet, but nothing could muffle the sounds of cart wheels bouncing on the roads, or the horse hooves that clip clop clip clopped down the cobbled streets.

It was a far cry from the sounds of the forest, the crickets, the gentle breeze, and occasional snort from a horse. Their hooves were always muffled by the soft ground.

He just needed a few nights to adjust, Scar decides.

It takes many more than a few.

Scar doesn’t know what his problem is. Well, he does, but he’s been ignoring it. The gold continues to sit on his table. He could hide it, but he hasn’t been leaving his home long enough for that to be important. For as much gold as he now had his home was still unbearably empty. He’s not sure how he never noticed prior to the hunting trip.

The one time he did try to go out he went to a tavern. It was loud and the people were smelly, and he didn’t know anyone well enough to quell the deep ache of loneliness that settled deep inside of his bones. If anything it made it worse.

He had gone on a whim. The night was young and he had more than enough money to spare, and it was a moment where the claws of desperation were sunk deep into his flesh. He needed something, someone, somewhere, he didn’t know but whatever it was he wanted to find it.

The moment Scar arrived at the tavern he could tell it was a bad idea. It was so loud in there, people were yelling, cheering, and singing, and it was all too much for him. He’s not sure why. Before he was the only one left in his house he had gone out all the time, it had never been an issue. But now? All the sounds made him want to scratch his ears off.

Instead of doing the sensible thing and turning right back around to go hide under his covers he decided it would be a great idea to go sit at the bar. He was already there, may as well try and make conversation, right?

The tavernkeep was new, or at the very least one Scar had never seen before. He shouts over the noise to get their attention. The man is dressed oddly, a bright lime colored fabric with patterns Scar had never seen. He looked more like one of those rich traveling merchants than a keep.

Scar slides a single gold coin over to him all the same. “Ale, as much as this’ll buy me, just keep them coming,” and while the keep says nothing his eyes go a little wide at the sight of gold being thrown around so carelessly, and eagerly accepts immediately sliding a full glass over to Scar.

He drinks it quicker than he meant to. The taste is familiar, even if he hasn’t had any in a while, and he welcomes it. His first drink is quickly replaced by another glass, then another, and then another.

Scar chooses to focus his attention on the stage. A man with bright blond hair and garishly bright poofy clothes is playing some sort of guitar. Adorning the man’s head is a feathered hat. He’s entertaining enough, and holds Scar’s attention long enough for him to forget about the claws of longing that are still sunk into his skin like meat hooks. That is until the alcohol starts to hit and his fixation is easily broken.

He’s not sure how many drinks he’s had if he’s being honest. Much to his word every time he finishes a drink another one is put in its place, and his previous glass gets taken away. However many it is though, he’s quickly realizing that he needs to stop considering it’s all starting to taste like water. Or maybe nothing? Did clean water even have a taste?

The tavernkeep hands him another, and Scar doesn’t have the wits about him to refuse. He does make sure to try and tell the man he’s done, not without becoming distracted first.

“Hey- I’m, I’ve got somthin you needa know.” He tells the keep, making sure he has his attention, but when the keep turns towards him and leans in to hear him better, all the thoughts in Scar’s head halt. The man is wearing a lot of lime, he’s nearly head to toe in it. If it weren’t for the fact that this man is obviously human then he’d mistake him for Joel.

“And what might that be?” The keep whispers conspiratorially, and suddenly Scar isn’t sure if he’s telling a secret or not, so he drops his voice to a whisper and leans in.

“You look kind of like Joel, Hey you know Grian?” He asks, something tells him he was supposed to be telling the man something else, but the words had been long since forgotten.

“Can’t say that I do, friend of yours?” Scar nods, frowning as the room tilts. He takes another sip of his drink. His drink, oh yeah, this was supposed to be his last one, that’s what he was supposed to be telling the keep.

“Oh, can, no more. Of these,” he waves the drink around, some spills from its sides as he pitches forward, unable to stop himself. He thinks some of it might get on the tavernkeep, but if it does that man makes little reaction.

“You want your change?” Scar shakes his head, the man has been so kind as to keep the drinks coming, and he looks enough like a friend that it’s okay if he keeps a few coins for himself.

“No, no, keep it,” and then he’s pulling back, last drink still in hand stumbling away from the keep and towards the performer he had seen earlier.

Without his say so, or realizing really, he’s standing in front of the colorful feathered man. Scar isn’t too sure what the man’s singing about, but it’s a beautiful song all the same.
As the man moves the feather in his hat bounces, Scar is mesmerized by it. He can’t help but think of the harpies he had left. It was a stupid thought, so unbelievably stupid. He had lived in this town, this kingdom, his entire life. He left for a mere two and a half months and suddenly he couldn’t stop thinking about the very creatures he was supposed to hate.

He’s shaken away from these thoughts by the bard ending his song with a final strum of his instrument, and a round of applause from the audience.

Scar realizes that at some point he’d finished his drink and leaves the empty glass on one of the tables. Suddenly the tavern is too loud, too bright, too smelly for Scar to handle, and he stumbles out onto the darkened streets.

At some point Scar manages to get home and fall into bed. He doesn’t exactly remember how he got all the way back, but it doesn’t really matter, he’s just grateful to be home.

When he wakes up late in the afternoon the next day he has a skull crushing headache that only serves to remind him of his concussion, and makes a promise to himself that he’s never leaving his house ever again. Despite his best attempt at drinking enough that he’d never have to think again, Grian is still at the forefront of his mind.

Chapter Text

Grian felt… odd.

At first, he chalked it to the change in scenery. He had lived in the same woods since he was barely older than a chick and now that he and his flock were forced to move it’s no surprise that he felt off. But despite helping to build the new nest, and spending nights sleeping with his flock, he felt something he never had before. It was similar to when he wanted boar but couldn’t find any to eat, like a craving.

He doesn’t mention it to his flock mates, too worried that they’ll worry over him, or try to fix an issue that Grian isn’t even really sure exists. Much to his surprise though, it’s Pearl who brings up the odd uncomfortable feeling first.

“I kind of wish Gem was here.” She begins. They’re the only two in the nest, everyone else was out doing something, whether it was hunting, just flying, or staking out their new territory. Whatever it was, they were the only two there, and for one reason or another, Pearl felt comfortable bringing up the topic with him.

“She seemed kind of mean,” Grian tells Pearl, a distinct memory of Gem with a sword pointed straight at him replaying in his mind, but Pearl's face screws up in a way that tells him she disagrees.

“I mean, she’s distrustful, but she was great when I was talking to her,” Pearl reassures him. “I know I only spoke to her once, but I miss her.”

They sit in silence for a little while before Grian speaks. “I think I’d like to see Scar again.”

Pearl’s faster to respond than he had been. “Makes sense, you spent a lot of time with him.”

Their conversation is interrupted by Jimmy dropping into the nest, and Grian prays he hasn’t heard anything. “Hey guys, what’s up?”

Grian’s prepared to lie to Jimmy, to pretend he and Pearl hadn’t been talking about, and god forbid, missing, the humans who had come into their home with the expressed intent to kill them.

Pearl doesn’t have the same reservations. “We miss the humans.”

Of course, Grian is the one who has to suffer from this information.

“Aww, G, you miss your little pet?” Jimmy coos at him, and Grian wants to rip every stupid yellow feather out of his head.

“He’s not my pet. I owed him a favour.” Grian hisses back. “He helped me, I helped him.” His eyes are narrowed on Jimmy, completely missing the way that Pearl has to stifle a giggle.

“Sure sure, so you totally don’t wish he were here or anything.” Jimmy nods enthusiastically.

“Exactly.” He huffs, looking away from the two.

As much as he hated to admit it, now that he was given a word to describe it, Grian did miss Scar. It was a stupid thing for him to feel, it was stupid of him to miss a human. Humans had proved themselves time and time again to be dangerous things, killers,  arsonists, and monsters, and Scar was a monster he missed very much.

“It doesn’t matter anyway, we’re not going to see them again.” He finally looks back at his flock-mates. There’s a look that crosses Pearl's face that scares him a little bit.

“We could totally go see them, though. We know vaguely where the human settlement is.” She says, and Grian can’t believe his ears. Jimmy can’t either judging by the incredulous look on his face.

“Pearl, we’d die.” Grian states plainly.

“Not if we’re reeeally sneaky.” She exaggerates, her wings spreading slightly showing off their silver interior. She might have been playing up her antics, but much to both Jimmy's and Grian's horror she was dead serious.

“Pearl we can’t!” Grian exclaims, wings flaring to either side of him, nearly hitting Jimmy in the face who gives an ungraceful yelp. “The humans will kill us on sight! One slip up and we’d be done.” Grian chastises.

“Oh come on, you want to, I want to.” She makes a gesture which seems a lot like she’s telling him to agree.

He won't, he can't.

Grian remembers when was a chick, when his parents still brought food for him and his nestmates. He remembers one cold rainy night when his mother was forced to stay in the nest instead of going out in search of food or spending time with the rest of the flock. She had spent the time telling stories.

A crack of thunder had roared overhead, and rain continued to pelt down onto the nest. Grian and his siblings huddled underneath their mother who held one wing over them to keep the rain from touching them.

“Did I ever tell you how I got this?” She asks them, tapping a bald patch at the juncture of her neck. Grian and his siblings had all shaken their heads. Their mothers give a thoughtful hum before beginning her story. “I was just a bit older than a fledgling,” she began, “I had just flown away from my parents' nest for the last time, and had wanted to branch out and find my own flock.” She pauses to think, Grian had tilted his head and her pained expression which he didn’t understand.

One of his siblings interrupted before their mother could continue. “Then what happened?” The question seemed to shake their mother out of whatever thought spiral she had ended up in.

“I hadn’t known about the human settlements that had grown on the eastern border of our territory. I flew over it in broad daylight and was spotted immediately. They fired sharp rocks attached to sticks at me, one of them hit me right here.” She taps at the scar again. “I was lucky to get away with only this scar. I’ve heard stories from the others whose partners weren’t so lucky.”

It was a short story, a simple explanation. She had clearly known it would stir up questions though. “What’s a human?” had been one of them, and Grian remembered how confused he was at the thought of a creature that shared their face, but lacked any feathers or talons. Their eyes were mostly white with little bursts of colour in the centers of them. Grian remembers how strange he imagined them to look, how dangerous he was told they were.

“Never get near one unless you're going to kill it, otherwise they might kill you first,” he remembers his mother telling them.

His prejudices against them were proven right the first time he had seen a human. He had ridden in on horseback, following two wolf-like creatures that were headed straight towards the tree Grian had hidden in when he heard the commotion near where Tango’s boar had been.

The man had pulled something out from a container on his back and pointed it upwards into the branches of the tree, aimed directly at him. Grian remembers the gleam of the flint tip, attached to a stick. It was the same weapon that had wounded his mother and had given her the very story she had shared to warn her chicks about the danger the humans posed.

Grian hadn’t thought twice about trying to kill the human, diving down with his talons poised to strike. It was kill or be killed, and he was not planning on dying. His claws didn’t hit where he wanted them to, instead of a face and a throat he ended up with half a face and a shoulder thanks to the horse rearing back.

The human had released his weapon, and Grian had heard it whizz past his ear, a whistling sound following it. A near miss. It made Grians heart pump harder in his chest. Grian meant to kill him, he really did, but the horse had run and the human fell, taking Grian with it. The humans wolves had begun biting at Grians wings.

He could have snapped the human's neck and run, but Grian had lost interest in doing that during the fight. Something inside him was just telling him to flee, that the human wasn’t a threat, and so Grian had flown off, leaving the human where he lay.

Grian was eternally grateful for the little voice that had made him let the human live because that human had been Scar. But that didn’t mean the other humans would be as kind as him, as forgiving. Just because Scar had been his friend didn’t mean the other humans wouldn’t kill them, Grian knew they would.

“What if I just go by myself then, huh?” Pearl threatens, and Grian knows that she will. They also both know how much more likely it is that Pearl would die if she didn’t have backup. His hand is forced.

“Fine, fine I’ll go with you.” He huffs, and Pearl gives a little victory cheer.

“I will not!” Jimmy cries, wide eyes staring at the two of them like they’ve made the most insane decision anyone's ever made. Grian doesn’t think that it’s an entirely wrong assumption.

“We should go, right now.” Pearl tells him, “It’ll be dark by the time we get there, they won’t find us.”

From what Grian could remember it would have taken the humans around a week to get back to their colony, but flight time should be much faster. Despite this Grian’s tempted to say no despite his earlier agreement, but whether he does or not Pearl’s made up her mind, and she will go on her own if he doesn’t go with her. “Alight, let’s go.” He’s sure Jimmy will tell everyone where they’re going.

Pearl is gone quickly, already pumping her wings to pull herself into the sky, Grian follows quickly behind, not before shouting a quick “We’ll be back!” to Jimmy and then scrambling to keep up. Luckily for him, he’s the better flier of the two and is capable of catching up to her quite quickly.

He’s following behind her; neither tries to speak, they both know the wind would swallow their words before they could reach the other.

For a long while Grian isn’t sure how Pearl knows where she’s going, or why she’s making some of the odd turns that she does. That is until they reach the scorched stretch of woods and Grian's able to easily see the path the humans had worn into the earth.

Now understanding how she’s navigating, Grian pulls ahead of her. She lets out a shout of indignation and moves faster to try and once again overtake him.

They both slow down when the steadily darkening sky reveals the bright lights made by the human settlement. Now flying slowly next to each other they’re able to converse.

“Do we think that’s it?” Pearl asks him.

“How many human settlements could there possibly be?”

This town was small, it had wooden houses with thatched roofs and very few of the buildings were big enough to house more than a single family.

They land just outside of it and speak around from the outskirts.

“There’s no way this is it.” Pearl shakes her head. “Gem told me that they were getting paid well for hunting, this doesn’t look like somewhere where you get paid well for killing things for other people.”

Grian could see what she meant. There was no obvious place for buying or selling goods, no obvious place where a person in charge would live and give orders from, and no obvious place where anyone other than farmers lived.

“Should we keep following the path?” He whispers to Pearl whose eyes are still narrowed staring at the small village.

“Yeah,” She replies, and just like that the both of them are back up in the air, clouds just above them and the earth far beneath.

The path changes from dirt to stones. The humans must have spent a long while making this particular path nice, they must be close to the main settlement. They pass by a few other small towns that look like the first, but both of them know to just keep going, they’ll know what they’re looking for when they see it.

They see the lights before anything else, it’s so bright that even from as far away as they were it was impossible to miss. Grian and Pearl glide closer to the town to get a better look.

This had to be it, there’s an obvious market currently devoid of wares or salesmen, but Grians was sure that come morning it would be bustling with life. There was also a ginormous building made of stone, flags waved on tall posts at every other point of each tower on the walkways surrounding it. There were humans stationed at each one, and as soon as Grian noticed he steered away from them.

Grian and Pearl land just beyond the town at the farthest point from the castle. They wait silently, listening for anything to happen. There’s a loud noise coming from somewhere inside the town, but beyond that, there are very few people around.

“What now?” Grian whispers to Pearl. There’s a sparkle in her eyes which tells him she’s just thought of a crazy idea, he regrets asking.

“Stay close to me, I’ll block you from view.” She whispers back, and to Grian horror, she begins moving forward. He rushes to stay right next to her so her larger form can block his colorful one from view.

They begin moving along the shadows closest to the walls of the houses. Occasionally someone would walk by and they’d freeze and hold their breaths so as to not make a single sound.

After one too many close calls, Grian waits till he’s sure they’re alone before whispering as quietly as he can. “What are we even looking for? This town’s so big we’re never going to find them.”

“Well…” she tilts her head in thought, “maybe it’ll be hard to find your human, he’s kinda… plain looking,” Pearl ignores the dirty look she’s given, “but Gem’s got this really bright hair, she should be easy to spot.” She chirps.

“This place is so big, we don’t know where she lives.” Grian shakes his head, he regrets agreeing to come here.

“Then we’ll stay for a while, in the woods surrounding this place. As long as we stay hidden we can observe, chances are we’ll spot at least one of the hunters, and then we just have to go visit them at night and they’ll tell us where Gem and Scar are.”

It’s a safer idea than trying to spend the rest of the night sneaking around the human settlement, so Grian agrees and the pair of harpies spends the rest of the early night finding a spot to set up their temporary nest.

Chapter Text

Something was different, Impulse could practically smell it. Ever since they had gotten back from the hunting trip things had been off, but it was so much more obvious now than ever. He really wasn’t sure what changed exactly, but he could feel the promise of a storm flicker through the air like static.

He had been doing his best to keep up with his party, Bdubs was spending a lot of time with his family, Zed was back to working at the clinic, Ren had been working as the king's houndsmen, Mumbo had gone off on a trip though Impulse couldn’t remember where exactly, and Gem had been spending a lot of her time teaching sword fighting to the town's children. Nobody knew what Scar was doing.

It was worrying, before the trip he had been very outgoing, almost always spending his evenings in taverns talking to whoever would listen to him, and his afternoons at practice ranges to hone his skills. Now though, last Impulse had heard Scar was seen only once at the tavern he used to frequent, and didn’t talk to anyone but the keep.

Impulse had half a mind to go knocking on his door, the only thing that stopped him was the feeling of eyes that seemed to follow him whenever he was outside. It was unnerving, and unfortunately for Impulse he knew he wasn’t crazy, he knew something was watching him and that it wasn’t just an off feeling. Whatever it was, he didn't want to risk it stalking Scar instead.

Ever since he had been a kid he had a sixth sense for danger. He always got this gut feeling when something bad was going to happen, it always unnerved people who weren’t familiar with him. Like the time he refused to cross a road only for a rogue horse to come stampeding down the road trampling several people, or when he’d be on a scouting mission and he had ushered everybody up a tree before a bear came wandering down the path.

There was also a time when he was only eleven years old and had this curdling feeling form in his stomach. It nearly made him want to vomit as his heart picked up its pace and his vision narrowed. He had followed that feeling in nearly a blind panic, running until he was standing in front of his house. Everything had looked fine until he burst through the front door only to be met by flames not yet visible on the outside.

His mother had been asleep upstairs, no one else was home. If he hadn’t felt that something was wrong he dreads to think about what might have happened to her.

He’s heard theories, conspiracies whispered when others thought he couldn’t hear, or even in some cases a rumor being passed on long enough that eventually somebody brings it up with him. Some people seem to think he’s been given a gift by god, others think that he’s secretly fae, and some say he’s a witch. If you asked Impulse he’d say he was just lucky.

Whatever the case is, there's a mixed bag of feelings on it. In any case, he’s always had the ability to sense when he or someone he cares about is in danger. It’s why he was always so good at keeping his team safe, It’s why he’s trusted to be in charge, and that’s why it irked him so much that he was never able to realize when Scar needed help.

He’ll be damned if he leads danger right to Scar’s doorstep, especially when he’s clearly already going through enough.

Impulse had been trying to keep a better eye out in order to catch sight of whatever had been following him, but each and every time he felt its gaze and looked around to meet it he was greeted with nothing.

It was never in busy public places either, always when he was near his home or stationed at the sentry station near the outskirts of the town, and always towards evening, but Impulse for the life of him could never see the eyes which stared back at him.

It had been the third day of feeling the eyes on him that he finally got fed up. He slung an axe over his shoulder along with keeping a crossbow hidden under his cloak and went to collect Gem.

She’s finishing a lesson when Impulse approaches her, the little girl who had been sparring with Gem takes her little wooden sword and scampers out of the town square.

“Impulse!” She greets, “What can I do for you?” Her smile dims at Impulse's serious expression.

“Someone's been following me, I noticed a few days ago but nothing’s happened. Whoever it is, I think they're in the woods.” He whispers to her despite not feeling the person's gaze, they never looked during the day, and he wasn’t sure why.

A dark look crosses her face. “Are they thieves?” She whispers back, but Impulse can only shake his head. It would make sense if they were, Impulse was sure word had gotten around that his party and him had gotten paid quite handsomely, they might be trying to memorize his routine. But that wouldn’t make sense.

“I don’t know, they’ve only been watching me in the evening.” He tells her. Despite the marginally crowded town square, it felt like they were the only two people there. Something about the situation made his view feel narrowed like he was being threatened. Like the curdling feeling was back in his gut even though it wasn’t.

“Let’s go then, we’ll get them right now.” Her voice raises in volume as she grabs Impulse’s hand and begins dragging him towards the woods. Her sword is still gripped tightly in her dominant hand.

“Woah, woah, woah!” He yelps, ripping his arm from her grasp. “We can’t just go get them guns blazing, we have no idea who we’re dealing with!”

“We totally can! If they’re just thieves then they probably aren’t well trained or experienced.” Gem reassures, but doesn’t move to try and grab him again. “We’ll be fine, and if anything happens we can just yell and the guard will come running.”

She had a point, Impulse thought. There were sentry stations all along the edges of the town, the whole point of them was to defend from anything in the forest. They should be safe from anything, so he agrees.

No one pays them any mind as they leave the crowded square, or even as they pass through the bustling streets. The most acknowledgment they get is from the sentry, a man impulse only sort of knows but has had conversations with in the past. He offers a smile as they pass by.

Gem only speaks once they’re between the town and the woods, where she is sure no one else can hear them. Even so, she whispers “Where do you think they are?”

Impulse doesn’t expect to hear anything, but he holds up his hand to ask for silence all the same. Coming from the woods he hears nothing but the trees swaying in the breeze and the birds chirping high up in the canopy. From the town, he hears the sounds of people and animals alike going about their days.

“I’m not sure.” He admits, and then all at once the feeling of eyes slide back over him. He tenses, and even as subtle as it is Gem seems to notice.

“Impulse?”

“Do you not feel it?” His whole life he had been the only one, he knows she couldn’t, but it was such an intense feeling that in the moment it didn’t seem plausible that she wouldn’t be able to feel it either.

She looks at him with an inquisitive expression before slowly shaking her head no.

“They’re looking.” He whispers, surveying the woods in an attempt to spot whoever’s been stalking him.

Gem begins moving forward, slowly, much like a big cat, strong and nimble remaining crouched with her focus narrowed onto where she’s perceived her prey to be. Impulse follows behind her, keeping guard.

The eyes continue to burn a hole in his head, Gem seems unaffected by the intensity of it, Impulse has no idea how he’s the only person who’s ever been able to feel it. It feels like something is going to go terribly wrong.

Gem freezes, and Impulse follows suit. The chirping of the birds ceases. A branch overhead shakes. A sharp spike of adrenaline shoots through him, and then all at once it dissipates as though his body has suddenly and arbitrarily decided that he’s actually not in danger at all.

“GEM!” a familiar voice yells as the person comes falling down from the treetops. If Gem had been any quicker, anymore prepared, she would have pointed her sword upwards to impale her attacker.

Instead, she’s tackled to the ground, and no matter how hard she fights against the dark mass on top of her she’s unable to shake them off.

“Oh my goodness! I missed you so much, hope you didn’t think you could get away from me that easily,” the person jovially shouts.

In that moment Impulse realizes that he knows the creature that had tackled Gem to the ground. “Pearl?” he asks, surprised. He had met her only once and was incredibly surprised when Gem took a liking to her as quickly as she did.

Both he and Gem had been one of the most wary of the harpies, they both knew how easy it would have been for Scar to be tricked by them. He was the kind of guy to bring stray cats home, he was the kind of guy to take care of a mangy dog until it was healthy again, it just made sense that he would find himself sympathizing with monsters even though it was a ridiculously stupid thing to do.

But when he brought the things into the camp, despite the fact that even just one of the harpies could have killed Impulse’s entire party, his danger sense never went off. He never got the sinking feeling of wrongness in his gut.

Then Pearl caught Gem’s eye, and they started talking, and after only a few minutes any wariness that Gem had felt melted away into friendly banter and comfortable conversations. When Impulse had looked around the camp that last day he saw groups that had formed, harpy and man, as if there had never been any bad blood between the two.
In that moment Impulse was left to wonder why there was so much fear inside of people when harpies were mentioned, in that moment Impulse had never felt so guilty about the deaths he had caused in the name of his kingdom. In that moment he regretted seeing them as anything other than equals.

“Oh- my god. PEARL! I could have killed you!” She chastises, sitting up as Pearl finally allows herself to be pushed off of Gem.

“Butcha didn’t!” Pearl laughs, and Impulse is left to wonder if she might be just a little bit crazy.

Then Impulse pauses and looks around the woods like there should be someone else there. The creeping feeling of danger slowly crawls back into his gut. “Pearl, are you alone?” He asks her. He didn’t know much about the behavior of harpies, even less than he thought he knew before meeting any of them, but he was fairly certain they were social enough that they wouldn’t want to travel alone.

“Oh, no, Grian…” She pauses, tucking her wings in and standing up straight. Pearl takes a moment to glance around at the trees above them, “well he was here.” She finishes, confusion evident in her voice.

A sinking feeling erupts in Impulse's stomach, danger back nearly full force. “Where did he go?”

Pearl cocks her head, her obsidian eyes peering curiously into Impulse's own brown eyes. If you looked closely enough you’d be able to see flecks of sulphur yellow embedded in his iris. “We came here because he wanted to see Scar.” She says in lieu of an answer.

Somewhere off in the distance, Impulse hears the sound of rolling thunder. Somewhere off in the distance a dark cloud blots out the sun.

Chapter Text

At some point over the past few hours the wind had picked up outside. He could hear it, but Scar’s windows had been shut for the past several days. If he cared a little more he might open it a crack to try to see how bad the weather was going to get, but whether he looks outside or not it wouldn’t change, however bad it’s going to be, so instead he remains in bed.

He didn’t quite know what was wrong with him. Ever since he had gone to the tavern and by some miracle had gotten back home, he just wasn’t interested in going out or doing anything. He was sure that most of his friends would be busy anyway. He knew Ren was working for the king as a houndsman, and Gem was teaching sword fighting to the town's children, and Mumbo was out on a trip to who-knows-where. He was sure Bdubs and Impulse had been spending quality time with their families, and that Zed must have gone back to working at the clinic, and then there was Scar.

Scar, who hadn’t left his house other than to get food from the market since the night he had gone out to the tavern. Not that he’d been to the market often, he hadn’t found himself hungry in a while.

Scar, whose friends were all busy and wouldn’t be there to spend any time with him, and he couldn’t even blame them because they had important things to do!

Scar, who had no family to spend time with. He missed his mom.

He’s wallowing in self-pity. He knows it’s not good for him. He continues to do so regardless.

That is until a knock at his door forces him up. His bones creak as he moves and his joints scream with disuse. He half hopes that by the time he makes it to the door whoever’s there will be gone and he won’t have to open the door.

Unfortunately for him, it doesn’t seem he can ever get what he wants because the knocking comes again, more urgently. This time it’s accompanied by a voice he knows all too well.

“Scar, open the door I know you’re home.” Impulse. Scar hadn’t seen him since the day they had gotten back from the hunting trip.

He takes a moment to look around the room, it’s presentable enough; he hadn’t been doing enough moving around to make a mess of the place.

Scar opens the door. Impulse’s eyes are wide open. “Scar, have you seen Grian?”

It took several seconds for his tired brain to catch up with the question, and when it finally did he was left confused. “No? Not since we left, why? Did something happen?” Worry blooms in his chest, and he can’t stop the horrible mental images of Grians corpse being paraded around town like a trophy, like his death would be something to celebrate.

“Gem and I just ran into Pearl in the woods, Grian was apparently with her and now he’s gone. I was hoping he’d come here, but-” The ringing of a bell interrupts him, it echoes throughout the town.

Scar’s brain stutters yet again. Grian and Pearl were here? How, and why? How did Impulse and Gem run into them? Then, he catches up with the fact that a bell was ringing. It was loud, and menacing, and ancient. It shook his bones and lit up his nerves with fear.

The bell hadn’t rung in ages. For as long as Scar could remember it had stayed still, dormant, waiting. It was a thing that rang only in children's stories and nightmares. It was a thing that went hand in hand with parents' warnings of outsiders and the dangers of magic. Scar remembers when the story was told to him, he was seven at the time.

The story of the bell goes like this:

Once upon a time there were two brothers. They were identical twins born to the King and Queen of the old kingdom. The only problem was that no one kept track of which of the brothers was born first, and thus no one knew who the rightful heir to the throne was.

The king decided that he would raise both to be his successor, and when they came of age he would choose which of the brothers was fit to be the next king.

At first the two were inseparable. They studied together in the same candlelight, with the same tutors, they spared together, and played together, and it was clear to the entire kingdom that they cared deeply about one another.

Until one day when something shifted. They got older, and one of the brothers, slowly but surely, became better at everything they did. He started to win every sparring match, he began to pull ahead in their studies, and above all else he was more outgoing than his brother. The people simply began to love him more.

Despite treating his brother no differently, his twin grew resentful. He knew that at the rate he was going there was no way he’d be chosen to ascend the throne, but he wanted to be king desperately.

One night the brother had a dream, and inside of it there was a voice that told him to travel into the woods and find the old shrine if he ever wanted to be king. Desperate, he listened and snuck out of the castle. He made his way into the dark forest, and when he was deep inside of it he found the shrine and met an old, shunned god with many purple eyes and gray tree-like skin. The god had been cast down to earth, and stripped of most of his power after attempting to steal power from the original gods, one and two, who created everything. He wanted to mold the mortal realm into a world where he would be in total control.

When the brother told the god of his plight the old god struck a deal with him. If the god gave the young prince all the magic he had left so that he could be the one to ascend the throne, the brother would in turn allow the god to rule besides him in mortal form.

The prince in his greed agreed to the gods' demands without a second thought. The god then imbued him with so much magic that it corrupted him, shattering his mind only to build it back up again every so slightly wrong. His hair, once a light brown, was now stark white, and his eyes, once a deep earthy brown, had turned bright purple just like the gods.

When he returned to the kingdom that following morning his brother was distraught, worried that he had been kidnapped or worse. Despite the physical changes that had happened overnight the beloved prince accepted his brother regardless, just happy to see he was alright.

But in the following months the white-haired brother became crueler. During sparring matches he hit harder than he needed to with his new otherworldly strength, and struck when his brother was already down. He’d snap whenever he was shown concern, and hated his brother all the more for caring.

Despite becoming smarter, faster, stronger, and for all intents and purposes better then his brother, he still felt like he was light years behind him. It made him angry that despite how much better he had become, he still managed to be second best. Everyone simply loved his brother more.

Then one day he lost it. When the king praised his brother for his kindness, for his selflessness, the white-haired brother grew jealous, and something wicked curled itself around his heart. The final straw came when the king said to his brother ‘You’ll make a fine king one day.’ In his hatred, without even thinking or knowing he could, he shot a bolt of lightning straight at their father.

The king died without ever truly naming his successor. Even though everyone knew who he would choose, without officially announcing it the kingdom was thrown into chaos.

People were divided. The majority went with the kind prince, the one who made public appearances and connected with his people. Some went with the white-haired prince, they feared his power and hoped that with his magic they would come out on top in a war.

For many years the brothers warred. The original kingdom crumbled, the first castle falling to ruins. Two new kingdoms were erected. At the center of both was a bell tower, it would ring whenever the lookout spotted an army on the horizon.

With each passing year, the white-haired prince lost himself more and more to the power that he was never meant to wield, and each passing year his people suffered more and more all because of his selfishness. Hundreds lost their lives to the war, and hundreds more from the evil prince’s kingdom died from starvation and disease.

Then one day, as anticlimactic as it was, the magic grew too much for the prince. He was alone with the god who made him when he succumbed to the power that flowed through his veins, and just like that the war was over.

The people, now free from the evil prince, scattered out from the second kingdom and formed smaller towns outside of the new capital.

With the war ended by default, the kind prince, now king, took in all those who had lived in his brother's kingdom and adopted them into his own. The kingdom prospered with it’s many bountiful resources gained by the smaller villages that had formed. The kind prince’s name had been Xisuma, and many kings since, including the current ruler, have shared his name. The evil brother's name had been lost to history.

The bell tower in the evil prince's kingdom rang one last time on the day it collapsed, and ever since it and the surrounding area were little more than haunted ruins. Some say that if you go there you may meet the old, now powerless god. Some say that sometimes the ghost of the evil prince will be there, ringing the bell, refusing to accept that the war is over.

The bell tower in Xisuma’s kingdom never crumbled, and was still upkept to this day. It hadn’t rung since the day the evil prince had died. It was a time of peace, and was only ever meant to ring during war.

But it was ringing now. Scar had never heard it before, but the way the chiming echoed throughout the town made his hair stand on end, and caused goosebumps to break out over his arms.

Both Impulse and Scar are frozen in the doorway of his home. Scar’s the one to break the silence. “Impulse, is that what I think it is?”

There’s a long silence before Impulse answers, one filled with the echoing of a bell. “Yes, yes it is.”

The town, already quiet as people took shelter from the storm that was rolling in, was now a ghost town. There was an unnatural silence that had fallen over the kingdom only broken by the slow ringing of the bell..

“No one would freak out this bad over a harpy, right?” Scar tries to reason, surely something else was going on and they weren’t about to break out into a pseudo war against a single harpy. “Grian’s okay, right?”

The bell stops ringing.

“Impulse?”

“Grab your bow, as far as anyone else is concerned we’re experienced harpy hunters, if there’s a hunt about to start they’ll let us join no questions asked.” He responds.

Scar doesn’t ask any more questions, doesn’t pause to think, he just retreats back inside his home only to emerge seconds later, weapon in hand.

Chapter Text

The sky turns ever darker as they run through the silent streets, and the howling wind masks the sounds of their footsteps.

The closer they get to the castle, the more obvious it is that something is very, very wrong.

Just outside the gates, the Captain of the Royal Guard is shouting orders too fast for Scar to understand what he’s saying, especially at this distance. He remains at Impulse’s side as they approach the man.

“Sir! What’s going on?” Impulse shouts.

The Captain turns him. “Harpies, a whole flock of them were spotted flying in with the storm! Those monsters are using their magic and bringing the storm to us, we're under attack!”

A whole flock? He’d thought Impulse said it was Just Pearl and Grian. Scar turns towards him, question at the tip of his tongue when he sees Impulse’s face. Fear, confusion, worry all in one. It was clear that he didn’t know about the rest of them either.

And did harpies even posses magic? It was a known fact that they were magical creatures, sure. The first harpies born from a human, cursed before they even lived, all because of their mother's actions. So yes, they were born of magic, but Scar was pretty sure that them being able to use any was just an old wives' tale. Though now that he thinks about it, there’s a big chance that harpies weren’t born out of a curse either.

“You and your party took down a couple of harpies a few weeks back, didn’t you?” The captain shouts over the roaring wind. Impulse nods, “Good! You’re hired.” The man tells them. “Ren’s getting his dogs. I’ll assign him and a troop to you, and I’ll give you the authority to recruit anyone else you want. We’re leaving soon.”

Just like that, Impulse was in charge of a small group. There was no way in hell that this was going to go well, between the weather, the strange soldiers, and the apparent presence of more harpies than just Grian and Pearl.

“Impulse, what do we do?” Scar whispers.

“We’ll figure it out.” Is not the reassuring response he was looking for.

The weather had been quick to turn. Soon enough the harsh wind turned to a light drizzle that threatened to turn into harsher rain. Despite the weather they were ordered to begin the search. The Captain hadn’t cared much for the complaints towards the changing weather, claiming that the ‘devils’ only grow more restless in storms.

Scar wasn’t sure how Impulse was planning on getting rid of the troops assigned to him, but they both knew he had to. If they were going to find Grian and the rest of his flock, then there was no way they could keep the soldiers without risking the harpies' lives or their reputation and loyalty to the kingdom.

Impulse was leading the group into the woods surrounding the town. Despite it supposedly being noon, everything was cast in a night-like blanket of darkness. Scar and Ren were flanking either side of him, whispering hushed conversation between themselves. With the howling of the wind and rain splattering ever harder against the ground, there was little fear in Scar’s mind that they would be overheard.

“Dude, Impulse, once my dogs get a scent we should send them in the other direction.” Ren suggests. Scar thought it was a pretty good idea, but Impulse shook his head.

“They’re not stupid. Most of them would see which way the dogs are signaling.” He responds. Then, Scar gets an idea.

“What if we make the dogs point in the wrong direction?” He jumps in enthusiastically. Ren tilts his head, intrigued, and Impulse looks at him encouragingly. “Yeah, I mean if you tell them to search for a different scent, let’s say me, and I walk the other way, then BAM!”

He might have said that last bit too loudly. Scar catches a few of the soldiers behind him giving the trio curious glances. Scar lowers his volume. “And then you send those guys the wrong way, and we get the dogs to track the right scent and follow it by ourselves.”

“Scar, that might just be the best idea you’ve ever had! Dude, you’re a genius!” Ren praises. “Wait, how are we going to get them to follow your scent? You can’t just leave.”

“Give me your handkerchief.” Impulse whispers, and so Scar discreetly hands it over.

Then, a look that Scar would call scary crosses Impulse's face. It’s the same look he gives Scar when he’s done something wrong. Impulse turns around to face Scar and stops moving. Ren and his dogs all pause, and the soldiers freeze.

“Again, Scar!” He’s not yelling, not quite, but it’s loud enough that everyone can hear the words crystal-clear even above the rain.

“w-Impulse, what?” Scar stammers out, taken aback by the sudden shift in tone.

“Every time! Every time, Scar. Why can’t you do anything right?” Impulse is animated, talking with his hands as he points a glare in Scar’s direction. It feels a lot more real than Scar knows it is.

“I, no, Impulse, it’s not like that!” He defends himself. “I know I ran everyone ragged and all of you must have been exa- enx- very tired, but I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“And you take no responsibility for your actions!” Impulse yells back. “Woah, woah-” Ren tries to cut in, both hands held up like a peace offering as he tries to step in between the quarreling pair, but Impulse pushes past him. “You’re irresponsible, and reckless, and all you do is put others in danger! I thought we had gotten over this, but clearly I was wrong. You have no place on this team. Go home, Scar, you’re out.” Impulse snaps.

Somehow, it feels worse than it did when this conversation was less harsh but way more real. Scar feels a burning sensation searing the back of his eyes, but he can’t actually tell if he’s started crying or not. If he does, the rain does a good job of hiding it.

“I didn’t do anything!” He feels the need to defend himself despite knowing it’s not real.

“You know exactly what you did.” Impulse practically hisses, and somehow it feels genuine.

Scar turns away from Impulse and Ren, and with his gaze fixated on the ground so he doesn't have to see their faces, he walks past the soldiers and into the woods towards the kingdom.

A curdling feeling had made its way into his gut and sits there unmoving. What Impulse said hurt. While it was played up for show, and nothing had actually happened, Scar knew it came from somewhere, that the emotions that Impulse let out were in some capacity real, and it hurt. It’s an embarrassing thing to have happen in front of a bunch of strangers, but hopefully Impulse will be able to dispel any rumor once everyone gets back. Anyone would take his word over a bunch of foot soldiers after all.

Scar takes a right, he can’t see very well through the downpour, but he’s attempting to take a wide circle around to regroup with Impulse and Ren once the soldiers are led astray.

He’s not watching too closely at where he’s going. ‘You know exactly what you did.’ And Scar did, didn’t he?

Something grabs him, and he’s ashamed to admit it, but he screams like a little girl.

“Scar, it’s me!

Grian.

“Oh my god- why? What? Impulse said you were missing!” Scar exclaims, grabbing onto Grian's hand, which was still holding him in turn.

Wait.

They were going to send the soldiers in this direction. With Grian here, they’d be sending them towards him. Scar really hates when his plans backfire.

Grian opens his mouth to speak, but Scar cuts him off. “Wait, Grian, the soldiers are coming this way! We have to go!” He takes Grian's hand into his own and begins booking it. The harpy shouts something in protest, but Scar can’t make it out over the rain.

Scar’s not sure where he’s going; it’s not back towards the kingdom, or back towards the soldiers. He’s not sure when it’ll be safe to slow down, but Grian’s legs weren’t made for running like this; they’ll have to stop sooner than Scar wants.

The rain pelts down hard. Grian's normally bright reds are soaked through and turned into a sad maroon, and his yellows are dampened to a wilting sort of color. It’s hard to see when thick, heavy raindrops distort the landscape before them, and where the rain doesn't block it, the darkness and trees do.

Scar runs into something, it’s solid enough that for a split second he thinks it’s a tree, but it’s softer than that. When he bounces back off the object he slips on the thin layer of mud beneath his feet, and begins falling backwards. He accepts his fate of becoming coated in mud when several pairs of hands shoot out to steady him.

Looking more carefully, he sees the greens and browns that would make up a tree, but it’s moving, shaking in a way that differs from the other trees which flail in the wind. It looks like it’s laughing. Then, over the wind, he hears it, chuckling, and a humoured ‘We have to stop meeting like this.’

Doc and the other harpies that the watchmen must have seen.

Grian gasps before Scar can speak. “Doc? What are you doing here?”

“I should be asking you the same thing,” he chastises.

“You didn’t know he was here?” Scar shouts in surprise at Grian. He’d thought they had all come together.

“What? No!” Grian looks as equally shocked as Scar does. “I came with Pearl because… well, I wanted to see you, honestly. I missed you, and Pearl really liked Gem and wanted to see her, so we went to find you. I didn’t know anyone else came!”

“We had to! The storm started near our new nest, and it’s not moving, it's just getting bigger!” Jimmy tells them.

“It’s unnatural, definitely magic, but it doesn’t feel like wind magic should.” Tango jumps in. He appears to shiver slightly, and Scar can’t decide if it was because he was cold from the rain which has seeped into his now burnt orange feathers, or because something was that wrong with the energy.

“We have to leave now before it gets stronger here, we’re hoping to outrun it and get to where the magic can’t reach.”

If the storm was just getting bigger there was a chance it wouldn’t stop, that it would just keep growing bigger and bigger and more violent until it swallowed everything. What if it just kept getting worse and worse until the kingdom was devoured and the harpies displaced?

“What if it doesn’t stop? We have to do something!” Scar shouts, but much to his dismay, most of the harpies just look at him like he’s lost it.

“Are you crazy man? We’ll get killed.” Doc says, concern clear in his voice. “We have to leave.” He stresses.

“I have to do something, I have to stop it.” He decides, with or without them. He wouldn’t stand for some malicious being using its magic to destroy his home, nor the harpies, especially after what he and the other hunters had already done.

Scar’s hand is still holding Grians. He feels the dread of having to face it alone for only a moment before the harpy gives his hand a squeeze. “I’ll come with you.” He says, and Doc's single eye goes wide.

“It’s a death sentence, you can’t!” Jimmy is quick to plead, and Tango nods next to him, “You’ll get caught in the storm, and then BOOM! Deadification!”

“If you don’t want to, don’t, but Scar’s right; we don’t know how big or bad it’s going to get, if there’s a chance we can stop it I have to. We lost one home already, I don’t want to lose another.” Grians obsidian eyes are fixed with a hard look, something akin to resolution and determination.

“I can’t.” comes the response from a horrified looking Jimmy, and the harpies all nod in agreement.

Doc, to his credit, looks like he’s fighting himself. “Good luck.” He offers.

In the brief silence that follows Skizz steps forward. “I’ll go. G’s right, we already lost one home. I don't want to have to give up another, and I’m going to stick by my buddies while we fight to save it.” He says determinedly.

Grian, Scar, and Skizz then, “Go now, before it gets worse,” Grian tells the others, and just like that they're gone, leaving Grian, Skizz, and Scar to weather the storm.

Scar doesn’t dwell on the departees much, focusing instead on the harpies in front of him. “We have to regroup with Impulse and Ren to let them know what’s going on, they’ll help!” Scar’s sure they will.

“What about Pearly-Pops?” Skizz asks him, concern evident.

“She should still be with Gem; hopefully they’ve found shelter!” Scar calls, already turning to make his way towards where he’s sure Impulse and Ren are, the harpies following close behind him.

Over the downpour Scar hears something coming their way. Many somethings. A slow stampede thump thump thumping in their direction, loud, steady, practiced footsteps marching towards them. There’s a steady stream of garbled chatter which follows ahead the footsteps.

Belatedly he realizes that he must have gotten turned around and began heading in the exact direction he had come from, and the footsteps were that of the soldiers.

“Shit.” He mutters under his breath.

Grian grabs his hand, stopping him from advancing. “Scar, what’s wrong?” and through the rain and his smeared vision from it he can see worry practically pouring out of the harpies obsidian gaze, it makes something sick coil in Scar’s stomach, it looks far, far too familiar.

“The soldiers- Impulse sent them my way to try and find you without them there, I’m so sorry I didn’t know you’d be here.” He practically feels himself pleading for Grian to forgive him.

“Apologize later!” Skizz shouts, just loud enough to be heard over the rain without alerting the soldiers to their location. Scar nearly forgot Skizz was there, but a hand grabs the back of his shirt, and drags both him and Grian away from the soldiers path.

“Come on, lead the way.” He encourages after Scar regains his footing.

“Right!” Scar spins in a circle to regain his sense of direction. The rain has picked up, no longer a drizzle, but not quite a down pour yet. In this weather everything kind of looks the same, but the direction he picks feels right and he prays he’s not leading the harpies astray. “This way!”

The ground had begun to grow soft with thick mud that had risen from the ground with the rain. Dirt mixes with dead plants and decaying matter to create a terrible smelling sludge which stuck to Scar’s boots and threatened to consume their feet.

Soon enough though They pass under a large oak tree, so big that its canopy is dense enough that hardly any rain seeps beneath the leaves, and the ground is more dry than not. It’s in this short reprieve from the rain that Scar’s able to gather his bearings. He blinks the excess water out of his eyes, and upon them refocusing sees Gem and Pearl already there.

“Oh, hey guys!” He smiles wide, but jumps slightly as the black winged harpy jumps to her feet and sprints past him.

“Grain!” Pearl shouts, completely ignoring Scar. “And Skizz?”

“Long story short, big magic storm, we had to run, ended up finding Grian and Scar, Scar decided we needed to stop whatever was causing the storm before we all die, and for some reason I agreed.”

“...What?” Gem says, confusion evident.

“Big storm!” Grian stresses. “Made of magic!” Gem nods slowly, “We gotta stop it!”

“And we need to find Impulse and Ren.” Scar tacks on.

“Alright then, let’s go save the world?”

The harpies all cheer, and Scar gives Gem his best reassuring smile as he helps her up. “Lets go save our homes.” He rephrases, and turns towards where he thinks Impulse and Ren last were. With his friends behind him, he leaves the safety of the canopy.