Chapter Text
Hunter woke with a groan. His skull felt like it was full of gravel that shifted about when he raised his head, trying to survey his surroundings. All he could see was darkness but that might be because of the potential concussion.
“Where ‘m I?”
His voice echoed. Wherever he was, it was filled with wide flat surfaces that reflected sound back with a distinctive modulation. Concrete, maybe? The air was moving too much for it to be a small space. High ceiling and smooth slabs, damp against his cheek and fuzzy with moss that was not having any trouble growing. As his senses returned to him, he smelled standing water, though it was faint enough that he estimated it was not close by. No sunlight filtered in from anywhere so, as much as he tried to make his eyes readjust, they could not penetrate the gloom.
He sat up. Metal clanked. He couldn’t get his hands in front of him. His head spun and he took a moment to calm his stomach before anymore movement made him retch.
When he was reasonably sure he was not about to toss his cookies, he registered a heavy weight around each of his ankles. Experimentally, he moved his legs and was rewarded with another clank, then another when he tried again to bring his hands around. He guessed he had been manacled but without being able to feel the shape of his restraints it was difficult to confirm. He could not pull his wrists apart from each other and when he flexed his fingers, they hit metal. His hands had been completely encased, probably to stop him drawing any glyphs to free himself – though what he might draw them with was up for debate. Maybe they expected him to daub glyphs on the floor in his own blood.
Hey, now that was a thought. No-one could ever accuse Hunter of not being resourceful with whatever he had to hand.
He stilled, listening to see if he could hear anyone else breathing in the confined space.
“Hello? Is anyone else in here?”
Nada. Not even Flapjack’s chitters answered him. He was alone.
Alone where, though? And why?
He tried to stand. More clanking. Heavy chains, by the sounds and weight of them. He reached out a boot, tracing the length of one from his ankle to a broad, flat panel in the floor, topped by a ring whose metal was thicker than his thigh. No way he could bend or break that without magic. He tried to walk out the length of his restraints to see how much give they had. Hardly any, as it turned out. Plus, they were even heavier than anticipated, and his wrist restraints were also chained behind him to the ring in the floor. His shoulders ached from the prolonged unnatural angle of his arms. Reaching the furthest length of the chains only wrenched them harder. He let out a pained grunt, wriggling to no avail. Maybe if he dislocated a shoulder, he could tuck his legs and body around and get his arms in front of him for more manoeuvrability. That would mean having a dislocated shoulder to deal with though. Even if he could ram it back into the socket, as he had done before when Belos’s attacks popped some joint or another out, he would be unable to use his arms at full strength if he needed to fight his way out of … wherever he was.
Okay. Brute strength wasn’t going to work here. Teleportation then. He concentrated, reaching for his connection with Flapjack. They had lately been working on extending the distances between them through which they could still make their connection. Luz had been helping, flying Hunter over the forest on Owlbert’s staff while Flapjack stayed in the yard of the Owl House and Hunter teleported back to him. They had maxed out at just short of three hundred metres, provoking applause from those watching and extra seeds for Flapjack that evening.
Hunter concentrated and reached. And reached. And reached. He strained, feeling for the bond with his palisman that usually came so easily that it was like breathing.
He could not feel him.
For a moment, he panicked, fearing the worst. Was Flapjack hurt? Could he be broken somewhere, like the poor creatures Belos had once drained dry to mitigate his curse? Was that why Hunter could not feel him?
Don’t be stupid, he thought angrily. You’re panicking for no reason. Think logically. It’s much more likely he’s just too far away for you to feel him. You need to figure out where you are and how you got here.
He thought back. His memory was foggy and his head ached horribly but he forced himself to retrace his steps of the morning. He had gone to the Owl House for a potion lesson with Eda while Darius attended some boring meeting of the Isles Elected Council. Hunter enjoyed potion lessons, though Eda did have a habit of veering off-topic when talking him through what she was doing, then veering back onto the task when she noticed he was writing down whatever embarrassing story she had been telling as part of his notes.
This morning, he had been surprised to find Luz and his friends there. He had been informed that school was closed due to an infestation of grickles: small, lizardine creatures that liked to burrow under buildings and attack prey by leaping out en masse and dragging them into their underfloor lairs. Principal Bump had declared the school too dangerous for students until the infestation had been eradicated by the Beastkeeper Emergency Squad dispatched by the Isles Council. Thus, Hunter had found his potion lesson shelved when Eda encouraged her houseful of teenagers to ‘go outside and play or whatever, just get out of my hair’.
‘Play’ turned out to be a very loose definition of the glyph experimentations they fell to doing. Though Belos and the Collector were distant memories now, Luz had never quite gotten past her need to be prepared for things that might go wrong and threaten her loved ones. They were all willing to indulge her, up to a point, and the occasional session of trying to invent new glyph combos was a small price to pay for easing her anxieties and improving her mental health.
Hunter still woke in the night himself, wide-eyed and shaking, imagining towering figures made of cursed mud and laughing children moving the moon like it was nothing. He could only imagine how bad Luz’s nightmares might be after all she had endured. He owed her too much to ever say no to ways that might ease her burdens or stop that awful, pinching expression from taking over her face whenever she thought of those final battles with their enemies, all they lost and all they had nearly lost.
Hunter recalled being the proud inventor of a new combo himself this morning: a combination of fire and plant that rained down spores instead of ash. He had intended for it to be used to spread sleeping herbs on an enemy but Willow had been delighted, espousing how this would help to pollinate stubborn plants that ate any bees trying to do so. Hunter had blushed so hard, he thought his ears might burst from heat alone. They had all practised with the new combo, pointing out more efficient ways it could be drawn and working out glitches until he, Willow, Luz, Amity, Gus and King could all draw it perfectly and were making plans based on Willow’s extensive knowledge of which plants to help first.
Whereupon Eda had told them she was going to make lunch soon but needed some griffin eggs to boil for Luz and could Luz please zip into tow for her real quick and buy a few. Somehow, with much elbowing and not-so-subtle grinning, Luz had suggested Willow and Hunter go instead to fetch a couple from the local market and refused to accept any excuses for why it would be more time-efficient for Hunter to go alone.
“Sometimes it’s not about being efficient or taking the least amount of time, Hunter,” Luz had declared, hands on her hips, and he had gotten the feeling she was talking about something else entirely that he just wasn’t understanding.
Thus, he and Willow had flown into Bonesborough, talking idly of flyer derby on the way. The Emerald Entrails had a game against Glandus in a few weeks and Willow was eager to show off to Hexside’s rival school what her team could do. Hunter had watched her fierce little smile as she talked, drinking in her enthusiasm, and tried not to embarrassingly fly into the clocktower or one of the market stalls when they touched down in the town square.
And then …
Then things got especially fuzzy. He remembered buying the eggs, holding them for Willow to make slings out of vine leaves to hook over their staffs, and hearing … something. A keening wail of some kind, like a lost child or injured animal, coming from an alleyway behind the market. It was hard to remember through the thumping in his head. He had … gone to investigate while Willow held the staff steady, arranging the griffin eggs in their slings, and then … the ground had seemed to melt under him, turning to ooze that pulled him down, right into the cobblestones, and …
And then everything had gone dark and he had woken up here.
He stumbled to the full length of his chains, shouting, “Hey! Where is she? Hey! HEY!”
Footsteps. Evidently whoever had put him in here had been waiting not too far away for signs he was awake and coherent. He heard a sliding noise and a rectangle of flickering yellow light pierced the far wall. He realised it was not a solid wall at all; a door was set into it, with enormous hinges and enough metal locks inscribed with protective runes to sink a small boat. A pair of almond-shaped eyes appearing in the gap, glaring balefully at him.
“So, you be awake for finally.”
The voice was unfamiliar. Hunter staggered over to the light, dragging his chains behind him.
“Where is the girl who was with me? You’d better not have hurt her!”
“Girly? What for girly? We ain’t be getting no stinking girly.”
His chest momentarily unclenched. Provided this person was telling the truth, Willow had not also been captured right off the street like an idiot the way he was. Maybe she was completely ignorant he was even gone. He had not had time to do more than let out a muffled gurgle as he was dragged into the liquified ground, after all, which Willow probably had not heard over the hustle and bustle of the market. At least Flapjack had been safe with her. Hunter took solace that his palisman had not been taken too.
“Why am I here? Where is here? Who are you?” he demanded. “What’s going on?”
“So much questioning,” the voice laughed. Hunter’s vision had adjusted to the influx of light enough now to see that the owner’s eyes were the colour of melted gold flecked with broken jade, with slitted pupils blown wide by the gloom of his prison. Around these sat tufts of brown and grey fur. Some kind of felinoid demon, he reckoned, though he could not judge gender from the raspy voice.
“Am I getting any answers?”
“Fuck you, that to be your answering.” The laugh became a snarl and Hunter caught the hint of broken yellow fang below a distinctly catlike nose. The speaker was older and unkempt with a poor grasp on Common Tongue. He tried to glean as much information as he could from this interaction, the better to figure out what was going on.
“Big words while you have me chained in a basement.”
“This ain’t be no basement. And you ain’t be getting me to untying so we can be fisticuffs like some two-bit hack-mack. I be smartier than that, yes indeedy.”
“You look and sound as smart as a half-dead alley cat.” Hunter tried to needle out the responses he needed. Felinoid demons typically hated being compared with domesticated cats. Make one angry enough and their judgment became impaired. Maybe he could get this one to tell him where he was, at least. “A really grungy one who loses all its fights and has to eat old fish bones from restaurant garbage cans.”
“You little–rrrrrrrggh!”
With a feral growl, the eyes disappeared. The slat stayed open. Hunter could see where it slotted into a holder on the door. It could only be opened from the outside though. He tried to get closer but his chains would not allow it. From here, he could just make out stone walls lined with lichen and a flaming torch in a sconce, which was the source of the flickering illumination. Was he underground? That could certainly explain the dampness and lack of natural light.
Was it still daylight outside? How long had he been unconscious after he was brought here?
Then the eyes reappeared, gleaming with cruel delight. “Canny to be killing you yets, nope, nope. Don’t means can’t hurt you none, though.”
Something that writhed and flashed like a snake made of lightning dropped through the slat. Hunter watched as it wriggled across the floor towards him. He tried to back up quickly but stumbled, unused to the new weight he needed to drag along with him. The snakelike thing latched onto the chain and sank into it, melting against the metal and coursing along it.
At once, Hunter fell to the floor, convulsing as electricity coursed through him. His muscles contracted. His eyes felt like they were bulging out of their sockets. His lungs seized up. He couldn’t get enough air. The pain was immense. He thought maybe he screamed but all he could hear was his own pulse pounding in his ears.
It was over quickly but not quick enough. He slumped to the floor, panting, unable to move. His whole body twitched violently, slamming the back of his head against the floor. He tasted blood and realised he had bitten the inside of his cheek. Dimly, he heard the owner of the voice laughing outside the door.
“And there be more n’ more where that be coming from if you don’t be watching your mouthy food-flapper. You ain’t be getting out of here until we to be saying so, Golden Guard.”
The laughter continued even after the slat was closed and the room plunged back into darkness. Hunter listened to it fade as the owner walked away. Bright spots peopled his vision and his breathing came in short, painful gasps as the last of the aftershocks made him twitch sporadically. Only when they had faded did he try to sit up again. The movement made his stomach swirl and he lay back down. Vomiting and being trapped in here with it would not be fun.
Whoever it was on the other side of that door knew he had been the Golden Guard. The way his jailer had said it was too specific not to be the reason why he was here – or at least part of it. But why would that matter now? Belos was dead, the Collector was defeated and the Emperor’s Coven had been disbanded months ago with the establishment of the Council. Not to mention, Hunter and his friends were famous for being key in all of those things. They were heroes of the Isles.
You ain’t be getting out of here until we to be saying so.
We. The jailer was not working alone. Who else had brought him here and why?
Laying on the cold floor, trying to piece together his fractured thoughts, Hunter could only guess at what was going on or how he was going to escape.