Chapter Text
Mira knew something was wrong before her brain could register why.
Call it a Hunter’s instinct.
It always started with something feeling off, like a permanent fixture in the room had moved slightly to the left. Something about Rumi’s posture had shifted, imperceptibly except to those who spent every day memorizing her place in the world.
Then she had let out a breath, just a bit ahead of her usual rhythm, her face taking on a panicked look unbefitting of a calm evening reading in the penthouse.
“You-….how are you-?”
Mira frowned, standing up to approach her. She didn’t look like she was talking to either of them. Zoey also looked up, worried, trying to discern what was going on.
And then the honmoon rippled pink.
And Rumi cried out as her feet began to sink below it.
Mira sprinted toward her, instinctually summoning her gok-do. Zoey got to her first, grabbing her around the waist and furiously pulling her toward the couch as her legs dipped further below the floor.
Mira was a mere second behind Zoey, but their attempts to pull Rumi back into the room were futile, their own arms slowly sinking down below the honmoon with her.
“I can hear him!” Rumi cried, eyes squinted shut as if trying to block everything out. Her patterns flared wildly with a sickly pink that matched the honmoon’s distress. Mira and Zoey locked eyes, the same panicked but knowing looks passing between them. They kept pulling. Gwi-Ma pulled harder.
And all three of them plummeted below.
The next minutes were a blur that would only settle clearly in their minds after it was too late.
The three of them had read stories about what the demon realm was like, but those tidbits were immediately superseded by the ingrained training that kicked in when confronted with an entire horde of demons.
The trio formed up as usual, backs facing each other so nobody was exposed to surprise attacks. Beside her, Mira saw Rumi’s patterns begin to glow pink, a purplish hue washing over her clawed hands. Her breaths were still panicked, her form trembling as if fighting with itself. Mira had seen the progress Rumi made with her patterns and her demon side. This seemed like it was happening against her will.
“Rumi,” Mira said, trying to keep her grounded outside of her head. “We’ll hunt like we always do. We’ll get out. Then we’ll figure out what happened. Ok?”
Rumi nodded, her stance immediately becoming steady. “Right. Right.”
The half-demon hummed and moved her hand as if to draw her saingeom but was met with air instead.
“I can’t call my weapon…”
Zoey glanced back, holding a singular shin-kal in each hand that she had managed to summon before they were pulled here. “I can’t either!”
The honmoon doesn’t reach down here. Mira growled and positioned her gok-do in front of Rumi, shielding her from the demons that were slowly encroaching and licking their lips. She didn’t care that Rumi was stronger than both of them and had demon powers to help her. Fighting hand-to-hand against this many demons was dangerous no matter what.
“We need to get out of here now,” Mira commanded. “Zoey-”
Zoey also repositioned, stepping slightly in front of Rumi and taking aim. “I got it.”
At the first step the Hunters made, the mass around them exploded into a frenzy of clawed limbs. Mira’s gok-do became a compass pointing them home, shredding demons in its wake, as Zoey’s blades cleared a path for escape. Rumi fended off the stragglers, tearing into them with her claws as the three of them dashed toward the edge of the realm.
“We need to open the honmoon just long enough to get through,” Rumi instructed, her usual leader composure coming back despite the situation. “But we can’t let any demons out.”
That’s going to be easier said than done, Mira thought grimly as she watched demons converge on them from all directions. Some leapt out of dilapidated structures lining the area, descending from above. Zoey raced to pick them off before they reached the ground. Other demons ran alongside them, swiping and clawing, trying to slow the trio down. Mira didn’t even feel her skin breaking amidst the adrenaline, and she figured Rumi didn’t either considering neither of them slowed for a second.
They finally reached an endless barrier stretching around the landscape as far as eye could see, the honmoon’s iridescent ripples dancing across it.
Mira stole a glance back at the mob pursuing them. “Zoey, can you-”
“Open it!” the youngest yelled, facing the demons with her two shin-kal at the ready. “I can slow them down!”
Without another word, Mira plunged her gok-do into the waves of the honmoon. The honmoon shuddered in protest but gave way as she tore downward, leaving a gash big enough for a person to fit through.
“GO!” she yelled, immediately turning her blade back outward at the demons. And demons are indeed what she saw.
Brightly-colored waves of demon bodies cascaded over each other, now singularly focused on reaching the opening. Rumi and Zoey fought frantically to keep the creatures at bay, but with how greatly they were outnumbered, demons easily spilled around them.
Fuck. Mira swept her gok-do outward to cut down as many as she could, but more scrambled past her as others grabbed her arms and attempted to wrestle her weapon away.
“I can’t hold them all!”
“We need to seal it!” Rumi yelled, dashing for the exit. As she leapt through the honmoon, a large curved sword materialized in her hand, swiftly cutting down some of the demons that had managed to scurry out into the human world.
The three Hunters began singing, the honmoon resonating with their harmonies. Zoey ran a hand along the barrier, pulling more shin-kal and helping Mira hold off more demons from getting through.
Mira stole a glance back at Rumi, who was holding her own but had far too many demons to contain, some of them already starting to flee the scene. As Rumi pursued them, more demons came through the rift, running the other direction. The woman glanced frantically between them all, trying to calculate how to stop all of them.
“Zoey, she needs back-up! Go!”
“What about you?!”
“I’m right behind you, I promise!” Mira said through gritted teeth, fending off multiple demons that clawed hungrily at her.
Zoey fought her way back into the human realm, immediately throwing shin-kal in every direction once she was through, picking off demons before they could escape too far into the city. Mira beat back the demons in front of her, slowly seeing her efforts pay off as the number of demons dropped lower and lower. Once the honmoon was sealed again, they could finish off the demons that got through. There would be no casualties. They could stop them all.
They had to.
Mira wouldn’t let more people die after how hard they had fought to protect them.
The trio continued to sing as they hunted, the threads of the honmoon weaving together in response, primed to close shut behind the final Hunter. With the horde thinned enough to have breathing room, Mira turned, ran, and leapt for the opening.
A force collided with her side, sending her sprawling to the stony ground, a huge crimson demon pinning her and gnashing its teeth at her face. Her muscles strained as it pressed against the handle of her gok-do, breathing putrid breath in her face as it threatened to crush her.
She could hear Rumi and Zoey yelling something, but they sounded distant beneath the ringing in her ears. With a grunt of effort, she threw the behemoth off of her, stumbling to her feet and impaling it before it could get up. She frantically turned toward her escape route.
Just as the honmoon weaved shut.
The last thing she heard from her girls was terror, screams, her name, pleading.
The weight of those cries didn’t have time to set in, as a sharp sensation bloomed in her shoulder. She cursed and threw off the demon that had sunk its jagged claws into her skin.
The group of demons that still flooded the area now turned their attention fully toward the Hunter. She crouched, body coiled to spring outward as the crowd hurtled toward her.
Heaviest concentration of demons to the left. Approach. Hold the line. Disperse the crowd for Rumi. Zoey covers our right.
The empty space next to her pressed against her side. Her adrenaline wavered.
Refocused.
Shelter. The buildings. There would be hiding spots there.
Mira shot forward, veering toward the thinnest pack of demons. Planting her gok-do firmly into the ground, she vaulted through the air, soaring over the crowd below her. The moment her feet hit the ground, she took off sprinting.
Everything inside her tipped off-balance as she ran from her enemies instead of towards them, her gut simultaneously telling her to fight and to survive and how are those not the same thing?
With a headstart, she reached the edge of the strange town-like area before the horde caught up to her. She quickly dove into the first building she reached, immediately looking for other exits and connections between structures. She needed to lose their trail, make it impossible to tell where exactly she had ended up.
If she could lead them here and then slip past them all, she could make it back to the barrier undetected.
Her gok-do made it difficult to maneuver through the tighter spaces but sending it away wasn’t an option. She had no way to re-summon it here without the honmoon, and she was not going to take her chances fist fighting a whole crowd of demons if they found her.
After parkouring her way through a couple dozen houses, Mira found a perch up in the rafters that was obscured but had enough view of the front window to monitor what was happening outside.
She watched demons prowl the streets, searching but without clear direction. A good sign.
A couple of them gathered outside.
“Which way did she go?”
“I don’t know. Just search all of them.”
The door to the house swung open and a tall green demon crept across the floor below. Mira held her breath, shielding her gok-do’s blade between her back and the wall to dampen its glow as much as possible.
A low hiss escaped the demon’s lips as it wandered closer and closer, now almost directly below Mira’s hiding spot.
Mira prepared to run again. To where, she didn’t know. She couldn’t lead the demons toward the honmoon again and have them follow her out, especially if Rumi and Zoey weren’t there to reseal it with her.
Mira felt a faint trickle down her arm. In the chaos, she had forgotten she even got injured. A slow trail of blood ran down the length of her arm, gathering at the tip of her finger.
Fuck.
The demon wandered below her.
Keep walking. Just keep walking.
Another demon passed in front of the house outside, scanning the area.
Just keep moving-
A droplet of blood hung from her finger. Then fell downward, pricking the floor below.
The green demon turned its gaze toward the movement, slowly glancing upward.
Its pupil widened in realization, its mouth sliding open to alert the others just as Mira’s gok-do pierced straight through the dome of its head, dissipating it instantly. Her body followed, feet landing soundlessly, hands gripped tight around the weapon to halt its plunge a split second before the blade could clang against the ground.
Mira stole a glance at the front window to confirm the other demon was still looking away, oblivious to her presence, before sliding against the wall out of sight.
She breathed shallowly, standing as still as possible.
Ten seconds.
She heard footsteps move away from the building.
Thirty seconds.
More footsteps outside. Passing by. None coming inside.
A minute.
Two minutes.
Three minutes.
Until all sounds of demon feet and voices had cleared the area, rolling off into the distance.
Mira let out the first real breath she’d breathed in a long time, sinking slowly to the ground. Her senses slipped out of their heightened state, shoulder on fire, muscles aching, her thoughts drifting from singular focus into a web of tangled realities.
I’m in the demon realm.
Zoey isn’t here.
Rumi isn’t here.
How did we get here?
How did Gwi-Ma get to Rumi?
Are there other ways out?
I don’t know where Zoey and Rumi are.
I don’t know if they’re ok.
I don’t know how to find them.
I can’t seal the honmoon myself if I leave.
As Mira felt the adrenaline draining out of her system, it was replaced by a nasty clawing sensation in her gut.
Zoey isn’t here. Rumi isn’t here.
Her hand tightened around her gok-do, bracing it against the ground as a support. Her body trembled.
Why am I shivering? Was it always cold in here?
She stood up, peering out the corner of the window to ensure the coast was clear. Everything here had the illusion of normalcy, thinly veiling just how wrong it all was when she was paying attention.
How empty.
How cold.
How silent.
How do I get out of here?