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“New hunting buddies, Skulker?” asked Danny, eyeing the ghostly hounds and not-quite-horses all around him, and the horses’, frankly, quite unsettling riders. One and all, they radiated power. It made him want to shrink down and curl up, make himself as small and unnoticeable as possible, so, of course, he did the opposite. His eyes landed on the only familiar one. “Didn’t take you for a team up guy, Fright Knight.”
Skulker scoffed. “See?” he said, turning his head towards the riders. “The whelp doesn’t understand. He doesn’t even know who you are. He isn’t stupid, just ignorant.”
If he wasn’t surrounded, Danny would have rolled his eyes. He’d have to add that one to the long list of backhanded compliments Skulker had paid him over the years. Things like ‘unique,’ ‘a good challenge,’ ‘handsome enough to hang on my wall,’ and ‘cunning.’
“I would contest your opinion of his stupidity,” said Fright Knight. “To steal my sword is either that, or cupidity.” Fright Knight’s terrifying winged unicorn mount snorted, as if in agreement.
Danny didn’t know what cupidity was. It didn’t sound complementary. Well, Danny liked Skulker better, anyway.
“Explain it to him, then,” said one of the other riders in a dry, whispery voice, tipping their head towards Danny. It was hard to tell, with the horses, but Danny thought they might be taller than Fright Knight. They were draped in a colorless, concealing cloak with a deep hood that hung over their face. Huge antlers stuck out from either side of their head, through slits cut into the hood, dozens of points stabbing into the sky. Their horse was enormous and slate gray, and in their hands they held a bow longer than Danny was tall, a full quiver hanging from the saddle.
Looking at them made Danny’s brain feel pins and needles all over. There was something fundamentally… threatening about them. Like a knife held to the throat.
Skulker nodded. “This is the Wild Hunt.”
“Sounds like there’re some capital letters in there.”
“Once a season,” continued Skulker, as if he hadn’t heard Danny, “the Wild Hunt chooses a quarry.”
“For… rocks?” Why the heck would a bunch of ghostly hunters need rocks? Were they making a low budget sci-fi movie or something?
Actually, come to think of it, that might not be a bad idea. Ghost powers would save a lot on special effects. Plus, a lot of Fentonworks tech looked pretty sci-fi to begin with…
“Prey,” said Skulker, snapping Danny back to the present moment. “Don't you go to school or something?”
“When I'm not interrupted by people trying to hunt me, yeah.”
Skulker rolled his eyes. Lucky him, that he felt comfortable enough to do that. “You have two options. One, join the Wild Hunt forever and hunt down those who have committed great crimes, or, two, be hunted and destroyed this very night.”
“Hey, I haven’t committed any great crimes. All my crimes are mediocre!”
Skulker gave him a flat look. “You are alive and dead at the same time.”
“Oh, you mean crimes against nature.”
“I told these people you were intelligent, whelp. Don’t make a liar out of me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry I’m embarrassing you, while you’re getting ready to hunt me for sport. Is there, like, another option here? Because both of those sound bad.”
“There is,” breathed the gray rider. “Our hunt lasts from dusk to dawn. If one were to evade us for the whole night, we could never hunt them again.”
“Oh, so this is some kind of trial by combat crap. I understand.” He paused. “Did Walker send you? Doesn’t really seem like his style…” He knew Walker had nothing to do with this, but if he didn’t make some kind of a joke, that voice might make him lose his mind.
Fright Knight growled, making Danny jump. “You ought not to jest, this hunt is no mere test.”
“Uh huh, okay,” said Danny, floating slightly away. “So, do I get a head start or something? Seems kind of cheap, if it starts now while you guys already have me surrounded.”
“You have until dusk,” said the gray rider. He pointed at the sun with his bow. “When the sun is gone from the sky, that is when we will ride in earnest. Make your peace before then, for you will not get another chance.”
“Right,” said Danny, resisting the urge to claw at his ears. “So, uh. Bye.”
He dropped down, out of the rough sphere the horsemen - horseghosts? Some of them might have been women, it was hard to tell - had made around him, and plummeted. In this situation, gravity was often the best way to get away. By the time he was falling through the thin cloud cover, he had his phone in his hand and was dialling his only friend who was likely to know what the ‘Wild Hunt’ was.
“Are you calling me while flying again?”
“Yep,” said Danny, zipping into horizontal motion. He wanted to be out of town before those guys caught up to him, in… He checked the sun. A quarter hour or so? Fighting Skulker was hard enough. Fighting a dozen Skulker slash Fright Knight combos, their horses, and their freaky and incredibly un-cuddly dogs? He didn’t want to wipe out a city block. “So, I wanted to ask, have you ever heard of the Wild Hunt before?”
There was a moment where Danny thought his phone might have dropped the call. “Danny, what did you get yourself into?”
“Hey, I didn’t do anything. They just showed up and found me. Told me I have to stay away from them from dusk to dawn.”
“They’re incredibly dangerous,” said Sam, “they rarely lose their quarry–”
“Does that really have nothing to do with rocks?”
“Focus, Danny. They rarely lose their quarry, no matter what happens. It’s supposed to help if you have a horseshoe in your pocket, or if you turn your shirt inside out… Or was that fairies?”
“That sounds incredibly sketchy.”
“I’m working with what I’ve got. It’s been a while. Just assume that they can track you anywhere and that they’re faster than you are. You’ll need to be smart. Go places they can’t get to in a hurry, cross barriers and take shortcuts they can’t.”
“And what would those be?”
“Not sure. If they’re like fairies, then it could be holy ground or running water or even roads.”
“I don’t think it’s roads or water. They managed the city fine.” Just in case, Danny dropped down close to the ground and looped invisibly through a church he’d spotted. “Anything else?”
“Not really. There are other legends about helping them, getting cursed by them, things like that… Not as much about escaping them.”
“Figures,” said Danny.
“Maybe we could set a trap for them or something?” said Sam. “Like, if you lead them around somewhere, maybe Tucker and I could shoot them, or use one of your parents’ gadgets. Get Jazz to help. Not with the shooting. Setup stuff.”
“Yeah, putting holes in me wouldn’t help,” said Danny. “Uhhh take it under advisement. Some of these guys were… really freaky. I don’t want to bring them back to town unless I don’t have a choice.” Danny licked his lips. “Backup like that would be good, though.”
“I’ll call Tucker and Jazz. You focus on escaping.”
Ugh, Jazz would give him a hard time about not calling her first, probably. She was such a sister, sometimes. “Got it,” he said out loud. “See you at dawn.” He snapped the phone shut as Sam also said goodbye, and tucked it back into his pocket.
The sun had started to slip behind the horizon, shadows jagging across the landscape below Danny. This far up, in the open, he was too exposed, too easy to spot. He had invisibility, of course, but he’d feel better if he had some obstacles in between him and any pursuers. Even if those pursuers were ghosts who could pass through said obstacles intangibly.
… Maybe he should’ve stopped at home for a shield generator or something. That’d be something the Wild Hunt couldn’t cross. On the other hand, if they could break through, he’d be a sitting duck, so maybe that was for the best, anyway.
Something unnaturally green flashed from the ground and Danny stopped. Looked again. Considered his options.
Well. If that natural portal led to another time or something like that, he could always ask for help from Frostbite or Clockwork. Frostbite could send him back with the Infi-Map, and Clockwork didn’t like things winding up when they weren’t supposed to be. He dove for it, passing through just in time for it to snap shut on his heels.
He pulled up, coming to what felt like a stop (motion was relative and the Ghost Zone was weird) so he could get his bearings. All around him thick green clouds billowed behind and across slowly floating purple doors, no other features visible. Danny turned in a slow circle. It was the same in every direction. Danny was probably lucky he hadn’t run into one of them.
This was a good place for getting lost in.
Which was the point, but still a little unsettling.
He swiped his hand over the surface of the nearest door, trying to get a sense for whether it was a lair, a passage, or just a pocket-space. It was a skill he was trying to develop and it’d be useful if–
The sound of a hunting horn rippled through the ectoplasmic clouds, echoing in a way that nothing should. All of Danny’s hair stood on end, and he knew: the hunt had started.
Were they… Here? Had there been another natural portal nearby? Was the Wild Hunt able to just make portals? Or was this the result of some weird, specialized ghost power, one that let the target of the hunt always know that they were being hunted?
Did it matter?
Danny wrenched open the door and zoomed through into an eerie, ghostly forest, full of silvery, transparent tree trunks. The sky above was green and crackling with thunder. Dark shapes moved in the shadows between lightning strikes, things like the reflections of deer, imprinted on Danny’s retinas by the flash.
A passage, then, although not to a place Danny would have chosen to go.
The hunting horn sounded again, and Danny flew.
.
It had been hours, and every time Danny stopped to rest, he heard horns, hoofbeats, and the howling and barking of dogs. He still wasn’t sure if the Wild Hunt was actually there, chasing him, or if this was some kind of psychological warfare ghost power kind of thing.
Maybe other people chased by the Wild Hunt died because their hearts gave out. It wouldn’t surprise Danny.
But, it had to be getting close to dawn. Unless, of course, that deadline didn’t matter in the Ghost Zone, since it didn’t have a sun, technically speaking.
He stopped for a moment on the slopes of a floating mountain, next to a burbling stream. He knelt, splashing his face with water. He was… exhausted, to be honest. He’d gone through so many different doors, portals, strange buildings, and he had no idea where he was. Getting home would be a pain and a half.
A puff of mist flowed out of his mouth and he dodged to the side before a missile struck the place he’d been kneeling.
“Good dodge, whelp!” shouted Skulker. “But the Hunt approaches!”
Crap. They actually were hunting him. Crap, crap, crap. He threw an ectoblast at Skulker and took off, the hunting horn vibrating in his bones again. He looked over his shoulder and saw, at the very edge of his vision, the Wild Hunt.
There were no doors to dive through here. Not that he could see. No swirling green portals, either.
And then he spotted the River of Revulsion. Now, there was a landmark he could recognize!
Which meant that the Fenton portal was–
He changed course. It’d let the Wild Hunt catch up with him faster, but if he could get to the portal, he could slam the door shut behind him, and maybe even take Sam up on her earlier offer to set up a trap.
He saw the pinprick of the portal in the distance, a slightly different green than the rest of the Zone. He piled on speed, until he was moving as fast as he ever had. Stopping before hitting the lab wall would be difficult, he’d have to go intangible, change direction as fast as possible, and then slam down the close door button.
Was the door even open right now?
Something snapped at the tip of his ghostly tail and he threw back a wave of cold. A wolfhound tumbled away from him, apparently faster than the rest of them. He threw out another wave of ice, just in case, and powered forward. Come on, come on, come on.
He was in the lab, rotating, slipping through the wall and shooting in the opposite direction, back to the big red CLOSE DOOR button. He hit it, but not before the wolfhound - or maybe another one of its equally demonic brethren - barrelled through. Danny was ready for that, though, and caught it in the thermos. The ‘FULL’ light immediately flicked on, the wolf’s ectoenergy almost too much for the thermos to handle. Danny wouldn’t be able to do that again.
Phone out, up through the house, into the gray sky, a blush of lavender blue at the horizon. Jazz, this time, as the most likely to still be awake.
“Hey!” he said, as soon as the line picked up. “You guys still have that trap set up? Where?”
“Ye- Yeah!” said Jazz, in a tone that told Danny she’d been dozing and was trying not to let him know. “We didn’t know which way you’d come in from, so we’re in the park. It was a pain to break in after hours, but–”
Whatever else she said was drowned out by the sound of the hunting horn. “I’m coming your way, get ready!”
The horn sounded again, and Danny could hear hoofbeats. How were they doing that, when they were riding through the air?
The park was in front of him. Just a little furthe–
An arrow embedded itself in his shoulder, and he almost tumbled out of the air. Just a little further–
A barrage of neon green erupted from the park’s quiet trees, passing Danny by inches. Tucker was in charge of aiming, then. Good. He was the best shot out of all of them, as long as he had his glasses on.
Another arrow skimmed past Danny’s cheek, and the gray rider emerged from the curling ectoplasmic backwash from the massed blaster fire, along with a pack of dogs.
Danny dove for the trees even as his friends fired again. The rider was fast, moving to cut off Danny’s escape. Danny clipped a tree branch, veering off course and into the ground at the rider’s feet, and they raised their bow–
Rays of sunlight broke through the tree leaves, bathing both Danny and the rider in light. The rider paused, tilting their antlered head, as if surprised. Then, they lowered their bow.
“Well played, well fought,” they said. “It seems Skulker was correct, and you are both clever and… lucky. Worthy prey indeed.”
“Does this mean Skulker will stop trying to hunt me?”
The gray rider laughed. “Skulker is no rider of the Hunt. But us, you will not see again. Fare well, young Phantom, and good hunting.” The ghost faded away.
Danny, careful of the arrow still in his shoulder, laid down on the ground.
“Oh my gosh!” That was Jazz, pushing through the park’s sparse underbrush. “Danny! Don’t try to pull it out. Sam, you’ve got the first aid kit?”
“Hey, dude,” said Tucker, resolutely not looking as Sam hauled out the first aid kit. “Those guys were creeptastic.”
“Yep,” said Danny.
“Are you injured anywhere else?” asked Jazz.
“Nope,” said Danny.
“D’you think I can keep the arrow, once it’s out? I’ve been making a collection of stuff you’ve been shot with.”
Danny laughed.
“Tucker!” Sam scolded. “You’re supposed to distract him to keep him from moving around.”
Danny laughed harder. “Sure, Tucker, whatever you want.”