Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Where did you find him?” Boya hears hazily as he struggles to rouse from the thick, drugged fog keeping him mostly under.

The voice sounds familiar, but also not, pricking and lingering like the shadow of a memory at the back of his mind. But the more he tries to reveal its truth, the more he tries to think, to recollect, the more his focus turns upon it… the quicker that memory fizzles out, chased away like a shadow by the light.

Lost in his thoughts, in trying to remember, Boya misses most of the reply, catching only the tail end of it.

“…injured but safe. He is in the infirmary, waiting for an audience with you.”

“And this one? Is he rendered merely unconscious or insensate?”

“My lord, you did not specify a fate for him; how would we dare presume? He only sleeps, awaiting your judgement.”

A third voice speaks up. “It was as much for his safety as our own. I know my lord wished him captured alive, wished him brought back whole and aware. But surely you understand the nature of this one. Too fierce to be cowed, too strong to be beaten, too defiant to be swayed. We would have had to kill him otherwise or be killed ourselves.”

There is a quiet sound, casual and dismissive, before the first one speaks again. “You did well,” he says. “All of you. In truth, I would have been surprised if you’d managed to bring him back in the condition I specified while also keeping him awake and aware.”

“My lord is gracious,” the other voices reply in chorus.

“How much longer will the drug last?”

“It is hard to say. He is not an average human. Even by the standards of demon hunters, he is a rare and powerful sort. A normal person, be he human or hunter, would be out easily until daybreak.”

“But this one… he could easily be waking as we speak, if not fully then at least to partial consciousness.”

“But my lord need not fear. The bindings we used will sap his strength, will prevent him from struggling over much, if at all. Even on a hunter such as him, they ought to keep him compliant enough. Should the drug wear off entirely, there is the chance the effects of the bindings will weaken, but not enough that he may attack or escape.”

“And, besides, my lord can easily reinforce the magic of the bindings if there is a need. All is created to bend to your will.”

A pleased rumble, so low and deep as to have been nearly out of Boya’s range of hearing, washes across his senses in a rolling wave of pressure. “Your loyalty and service is ever appreciated. Take your leave, feed and rest, you may complete your report afterwards.”

“Yes, my lord. Our thanks, my lord,” they both say at once. The retreating echo of their footsteps tell Boya he’s now left with just their lord.

Boya hears the barest sound of sliding hinges, the moving joints too well-oiled to creak or grind, and then the soft rustling of feet on dried grass encroaching ever closer. Instinct screams at him to wake, to move, to fight, to defend. Boya does none of them, for he cannot do any of the things he needs to do.

“Well, here you are again, lying at my feet. Can you hear me? Are you awake?”

The nearness of the voice startles Boya. His inability to rouse and for his body to respond to his desperation comes in useful, because he gives no reaction to indicate his burgeoning awareness. He knows he would have jolted, if his body was capable of listening to him.

“No matter. If you are, you are. If you aren’t, you will be eventually.”

A sharp prick stings his cheek, enough that Boya wonders if blood has been drawn. Is his fate to be carved up, alive and aware and unable to do anything about it? Is this meant to be a torture where he’s forced to lie pliant and still while pain slices away strips of his sanity?

He waits, his breath as uncontrollably steady as the rest of him. He waits for the torment to begin, for his blood to be spilled in drip or in gushes. The apprehension and uncertainty makes him tremble inside his mind as he’s unable to do physically.

It never comes.

All that happens is a scratchy slide along his cheek, a caressing stroke if not for the sharpness of the touch, and an oddly soft sigh.

“What will I do with you? What should I do with you?”

Not to you, but with you, Boya notices with no small measure of puzzlement. He wonders if it’s significant or if his mind is grasping at anything it can to stay occupied, to keep from descending into the mad spiral of fear.

“I had hoped to hear your excuses, witness your temper and allow it to rile my own up, when we met once more. I had hoped for your fury to ignite mine, so that its fire would burn away all temptation. But I suppose that was too much to hope for.”

The stinging line down his cheek burns but ultimately stops at his jaw. Then Boya feels the same sharp, pricking sensation on his scalp. Mentally, he freezes, his thoughts stilling and coalescing into dread as he wonders if he’ll be scalped.

“It would be wiser for me to kill you. As you are now, perhaps it would even be merciful. If death must come, would it not be better to come in peaceful sleep? If I slit your throat or snapped your neck at this very moment, you would not know it. No fear, no pain, just continue in a sleep from which there is no waking.”

Those quiet words make the dread growing in him feel leaden. It perfuses throughout him, the knowledge and surety that his end is nigh, that his death will come, swift and instant. And that while it is meant to be a merciful death to one unaware, Boya is awake enough to feel his death, to know he’s dying, to acknowledge that slip from living into not.

Boya doesn’t want to die.

If this were a story, of the kind that book merchants hawk in the marketplace, Boya thinks he’d feel a sudden surge of adrenaline that would break through whatever drug he’s been given, shatter the magic of whatever he’s been bound with. If this were a story, this would be his moment to reveal his consciousness. This would be his opportunity to enact a dramatic escape. Or at least be given a chance to die fierce and fighting — a death more befitting a hunter of his rank than to be slaughtered like a pig meant for the dinner table.

But this isn’t an adventure novel and Boya isn’t a storybook hero. And so the moment comes and passes and Boya remains shackled inside his mind and within a body that’s betraying him for better than any stab in the back from a friend.

“I should kill you, if not for your and your temple’s crimes against my kind, then for the crime of existing in this world. For breathing and being alive. For the crime of being before me and making me wish you were not a demon hunter. If you did not exist, I would not feel a need to keep you alive.”

It shouldn’t upset Boya so much that a demon wants him dead, want his entire temple of hunters dead. So much so as to wish him from existence. It shouldn’t make him feel so sad that someone hates him with such fathomless depth of loathing. It’s understandable, being that they’re mortal enemies, that this demon lord wishes Boya never existed to begin with. Because if Boya never existed, countless demons would still be alive. He hasn’t risen to the rank of Master Hunter because of popularity, after all.

What is strange is that the demon lord seems to want to keep him alive. But, Boya reasons, perhaps it’s just so that he can be tortured, each demon death he’s responsible for wrung out of him and paid for with his blood. In that vein, Boya can see how a quick death now at this demon’s hands might be preferable to a future of unending agony, where he’s kept alive only so that he continues to have blood for them to spill over and over again.

Boya doesn’t want to die, but he doesn’t want a life where he’ll beg for death either. Which seems to be what awaits him. A peaceful death now, or a torturous life later? It’s an impossible choice that brings nothing but despair. Again, his unreacting body is once more an ironic blessing, because it means he can’t cry in front of this demon lord. His breath remains steady even while he sobs in his mind.

A tingling sensation suddenly suffuses him, feeling especially warm around the parts of him where the bindings are tightest and dig into his flesh. Is this what the other demons had spoken off earlier? The weakening drug affecting the magic of the bindings and the demon lord having to strengthen them himself?

“Are you awake? Can you hear me? Did you hear me?”

Boya doesn’t dare reply, doesn’t want to hasten the dreadful fate awaiting him. But, he realises slowly, he still can’t even if he wanted to. His limbs remain slack and unresponsive in the position he’s trussed up, and his breathing and heartbeat remains passive and placid even while his mind is racing frantically.

A gusty sigh sounds above him. “Good,” he hears. “It’s probably better that you didn’t. Though I do wonder what it is you’re dreaming of. What has made you so sad that even as deeply drugged asleep as you are, bound by bespelled silk and magic as you are, tears escape you still?”

The rough scrape of calloused skin swipes near his eyes, as if to wipe away tears that Boya doesn’t remember shedding.

“Do not dream such sad dreams,” he hears. “Perhaps it’s better if you don’t dream at all.”

The voice seems to grow further and further away, and Boya wonders why. In moments, he doesn’t remember what he was contemplating, only that he was…afraid? But then his worries, too, grow soft and fuzzy.

“Sleep, but don’t dream. It might be better if you don’t wake either.”

Boya thinks the words, the meaning of which is getting harder and harder to parse, ought to frighten him, but fear seems such a faraway concern, if one at all.

“But you will, eventually. Maybe by the time you do, I’ll have made a decision.”

What decision?, Boya wonders vaguely and hazily. What decision is there to make? And about what? Or who?

There’s a feeling like someone is stroking his hair. Is it his mother? Boya thinks there should be something… off. About his mother stroking his hair. Did something happen? But he likes it when she strokes his hair. There’s a feeling of wrongness, something he needs to recall. About his mother. But Boya can’t think through the clouds and mist in his mind.

It’ll be okay, though, he decides. If his mother is here with him, he’ll be okay. Mother will always protect him. Mother will always keep him safe.

“Go to sleep,” Boya hears, like Mother has said so many times to him before, though this time the voice that says it isn’t hers. But the difference that ought to be so jarring and discordant doesn’t bother him as he obeys its command and sinks back into dreamlessness.