Chapter Text
Before
He discovers the sky when he's in a prison cell.
Weak currents of air flow around the rock cracks of his cell walls. He feels it on his fingers as he sits in a corner. He can feel it flowing up, through the walls, through castle grounds, up to the freedom above.
Maybe because he's hurt, tired, thirsty, delirious with pain—maybe that's opened his mind. Whatever the reason for the timing, he feels the cool air, he breathes it, he desires the sky so much it hurts. So much his heart burns.
And he blinks, and he's above ground on damp grass.
And when he realizes the impossible has happened, he runs.
Here
Two years later
These hunters are better than most. Persistent. It’s been nearly two months and he hasn’t managed to lose them.
Fraying my last nerve, he thinks, jumping over a river through the interconnected trees. He hasn’t been able to breathe easy for weeks. Each time he thinks he’s safe, that he’s lost them, they reappear like a rash. He’s lost sleep. The weeks haven’t been kind to him; usually he would have some security this deep into the wildlands, but they’ve unerringly found him over and over.
He’s wanted dead or alive, but the bounty for ‘alive’ is higher. Not that being brought to the king is a kinder fate.
The hunters are stubbornly on his trail. It’s not like he’s quiet jumping through trees, and the spring leaves in the trees haven’t grown enough to hide him.
“There he is!” one shouts behind him. “We see you! There’s nowhere to hide, Dream—just turn yourself in—”
They’re trying to make him panic.
He won’t admit it’s working—the adrenaline and fluttering panic burn his nerves—but no, it’s fine, he knows this path. There’s an overhang over a ravine ahead. A quick plan forms in his head.
“He’s on the ground, he’s on the ground!”
His feet thumping on earth. Dream sees the cliff edge ahead. He spares a glance behind.
Three hunters. One in a hood with a sword, one in goggles with a bow, one in a headband and an axe. One readies a crossbow.
Dream turns around and steps off the edge.
His hands slide across the cliff’s lip as he fights to hold on until the last second. His nails flip and bend under rocks.
Scrabbling, sliding, he tries to angle his body forward as his feet dangle over a terrifying void. The weight and momentum are enough to send him rolling across the secured cave hidden beneath.
Dream winces, carefully flexing his hands. The skin’s broken around some nails.
Crouching, silent, he strains to listen for his pursuers.
“Did he jump? I saw him jump.”
“He can’t have.”
“No, he must be down there somewhere. He was a high guard, right, so they’re trained in stealth stuff.”
“Right, they’re like literally little—little tree frogs on a wall. Is he just hanging on to the side somewhere?”
“I can’t see him down there. There aren’t enough trees, leaves, things for him to hide in down there. My scopes can’t see anything.” Was that the goggles hunter?
“Okay, just look at the compass, stop wasting time—”
Compass?
Dream’s hands press against the edges of his mask, a nervous tic. They have an enchanted compass? They’re sent directly by the king, then. They probably want him dead, then, even if the bounty’s higher for being taken in alive. The king might have wanted him brought in alive, once, but after this much time and so many failed attempts the king likely wants to tie off loose ends and be done with it.
“Look, guys,” Dream faintly hears, “he’s definitely below us. It spins in a circle over this spot.”
I need to leave.
If he leaves the mineshaft, the hunters can pick him off with arrows. If he goes deeper into the tunnels, he has to fight off creatures that want to eat his flesh in the dark.
He goes into the tunnel.
The mineshaft is a goldmine, no pun intended. There are scattered chests filled with food, torches, and enchanted items. There’s a flint and steel that he uses to light one torch. He even finds a golden apple among the preserved bread.
There’s also a nice iron sword and leather sheath. Dream wraps it a few times in spare cloth and it doesn’t clink when he walks.
Okay, so they have an enchanted compass, he thinks, but that won’t be much help in a maze. I can lose them in here, spend the night.
The mineshafts plunge dangerously deep as Dream walks for a few hours. He’s not worried about getting lost, though. Some innate instinct has always told him where to go to find the sky. He can follow the air current seeping through the rocks and find another exit; he’s not too worried about that. The hunters are the bigger problem, and hopefully they won’t be stupid enough (brave enough) to venture so far in.
His energy’s flagging. His innate clock says that it’s time to sleep; he’s been running through the day.
He finds a natural alcove and spends half an hour piling dirt, rocks, and wood in front of it to keep out monsters. He’s left with a tomb-sized cozy bedspace.
“This is nice, isn’t it?” he mouths to himself. “It’s like a bedroom. You haven’t had a bedroom in a long time. Enjoy the luxury. And look! Pillows!” He pats his pack. Wheezing a bit at his own meager humor, he settles to sleep for a few hours.
* * *
Dream wakes in a panic at being enclosed in a small, dark space. He gets over it quickly and tears down the protective wall.
He sniffs out an exit quickly. The light is barely breaking, and it blinds him for a moment. He steps off a rock and his feet sink into something.
Dream looks down in shock. It’s cobweb. He’s walked into cobweb.
It’s been carefully wrapped and stretched across two sturdy sticks out of his reach.
They’d laid a trap.
They’d laid a trap.
He’s so stupid, of course they could see the other mineshaft exits! The ravine didn’t hide them at all! Had they trapped every single entrance?
They must have used branches to gather the webs, part of his brain notes, absorbing the new trick. They can’t’ve used their hands.
Dream’s hands are still free, and he looks around frantically for anything to get him out. He doesn’t see any hunters, but the ravine is exposed and if they’ve laid a trap then they’re watching for him—
He pulls out the iron sword and starts hacking.
It’s obscenely slow.
“It’s him!” he hears from a distance.
They’re on top of a cliff face at the distant end of the ravine. They must have camped atop for the night.
“Hah, he’s stuck! It worked!” one laughs. Dream growls under his breath.
“We’ve got to hurry, you muffinheads, where’s the rope to get down—”
Dream tugs at his leg. There’s barely any give.
Not like this. I can’t die like this, he thinks, not to a cobweb trick!
“Keep your bow on him, George! Hey you! Don’t move or we shoot!” Headband yells.
Dream ignores them, continuing to saw at the threads. Dead now or dead later, what’s the difference?
An arrow hits the ground by his leg. Dream grabs it to hack at his other leg. He’s made some progress.
The next arrow hits his shoulder at the joint of his arm. He whites out for a moment, coming to staring at his partially freed leg.
“I said stop!” the archer orders.
The other two have scaled down the side using rope. Dream can barely see them now that they’re on the ground.
His leg is almost free. Frantically, he pulls out the flint and steel and lights the end of the trap. It blazes up immediately, making the hunters shout in alarm. Hopefully it obscures him or confuses them enough to thwart another arrow shot.
He gives another tug and nearly cries in relief when his leg is free. The fire’s licking at him.
Dream scrambles up and darts back into the safety of the mineshaft.
* * *
The echoes are loud. He can hear nearly everything the hunters are saying.
“I thought you said your bow was on him!”
“It was! I shot at him twice. He’s got an arrow sticking out of his shoulder, you can check. He just kept going anyway.”
“Crazy son of a—”
“Watch it! It’s fine, guys, we’re close enough now. Look at the compass.”
They’re close enough that Dream can’t lose them in the maze. The compass tells them which immediate path he went down—besides that, they can probably hear his footsteps and muffled gasps.
His luck runs out.
It’s a dead end. His eyes dart around frantically, looking for tunnels above or below he can use. It’s no use; it’s purely stone, no wooden floors, no smaller tunnels to crawl through.
Dream spins, pulling out the sword.
They have him cornered in a half-circle.
He backs up until he hits the wall.
It’s a standoff.
“Are you Dream?” one asks. He’s wearing a heavy hood that shrouds most of his face.
Dream stares back, mind racing. He knows his mask is unsettling. It’s part of the appeal. He doesn’t have to say a word.
“We don’t want the wrong guy, okay? So if you’re not Dream, just take off your mask so we know.”
Beneath the mask, the brand on his face gives a painful twinge. There is no way in hell he’s taking off the mask. The brand is more identifying than the mask.
“Really, Bad?” Headband mutters. “It’s him. There’s no way it’s not.”
“Okay, well, we just have to be sure. If you don’t take off your mask, sir, then we’re taking that as a yes.” The tone is odd: it’s like a teacher scolding a kid.
Dream sinks further into a crouch.
“Lucky for you, buddy, we take alive bounties,” the one with the headband says. “So put down that sword and we’ll take you back.”
The archer readies a crossbow at Dream’s chest. “You have five seconds,” he says flatly.
Dream doesn’t wait for it. He moves.
Jumping to the side, he runs up a wall and uses the momentum to swing at Headband. His jump puts the hunter between Dream and the archer, who can’t shoot without hitting his friend. Dream’s sword hits another’s with a clash, and he darts back, missing Hood’s swing, to race down the tunnel.
“He juked us!”
An arrow shoots after him, barely missing his thigh.
I’m fast, I can make it. Dream sees daylight ahead. He can get out, run further into the ravine to where it opened into heavy forest—
There’s a sound of glass breaking, and suddenly Dream’s legs collapse beneath him. Pain like fire races up through his legs, then every nerve is dead, his body limp. The wood of his mask slams into his lip, and he tastes blood.
“Got him,” Dream hears. It’s Hood.
“Holy crap, Bad, what was that?” Headband asks incredulously. “Was that a potion?”
“Splash potion. It’s rare.”
“Well, it worked,” the archer says with grim satisfaction. The voices are closer.
Footsteps thud closer until the vibrations are right next to Dream’s head, while he struggles to get his numb body to respond. He can feel little bursts of sensation at the ends of his fingertips, but that’s it. It’s too late—his hands are being shoved behind his back and tied.
“We’re taking you in for the prince’s death,” Hood says with authority, standing over him. “I think the kingdom needs some answers.”
Before
“As I thought,” the Evoker says, his fingers leaving Dream’s chest. “He’s one of the rarest Touched. This is quite a find.”
‘This’ doesn’t have enough strength to speak. His chest rises and falls with painful effort.
“Your contributions will be valuable for the kingdom. You can rest easy knowing that you will help far more people than you’ve killed.”
The man’s voice is oily and so, so fake, spouting righteous propaganda like Dream should drink it up gratefully. He sees the look Dream’s giving him and his lips twitch with mild amusement.
“No, no, you’re not going to rest anytime soon, not to worry. You’re worth far more alive than dead. You’re fascinating.”
When they began to touch his eyes and paint on runes that will later be cut into his skin, that soon becomes precisely what Dream is afraid of.
He knows, he knows, he knows what they do to traitors, but he’s not a traitor and he didn’t do it and why is he being blamed for this—
It takes only a second, and the damage is permanent. Just one touch to skin. Metal to his face.
He’s branded forever.