Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The castle was on fire.

Hunter choked on smoke even from behind his mask, shouldering through another door. The flames loomed and lurched behind him, catching on anything fabric and melting gold into sticky, gooey puddles that stung when he ran through them. The sound was indescribable.

Someone screamed down a hallway to his left, but with the smoke, he couldn’t see anything. He probably wouldn’t have stopped even if he could. No, he couldn’t help. His artificial staff had been broken when— no, no, he couldn’t think about it. He didn’t even have enough magic to clear the haze from his eyes.

Another turn. He was getting closer, now, and the fire grew in intensity, roaring in outrage. The edge of his cloak caught and almost immediately started burning. The metal parts of his uniform burned in a way that told Hunter, if he was anyone else, they’d be hurting about a million times worse, and even for him it was unbearably painful.

Finally, finally he reached the throne room door. In desperation he beat at it, slamming fists that sizzled with blisters against the gold. He howled, voice hoarse and scratchy, until that just turned to undignified screaming. The doors themselves just about disappeared under the thick fog of smoke that rose from the cracks like the effects in a stage play.

No one answered.

There was no one inside.

It was real. That’s what solidified it, made it reality, not just a bad dream or joke. Hunter had really just— he’d actually—

He stopped screaming. What was the point? Even the steadily increasing pain of the melting metal burning the fabric onto his skin faded to the background. After all he’d— 

After everything Hunter had—

The fire faded away. Slowly, slowly, Hunter sank to his knees, ignoring the burn of the floor. He couldn’t see anything at all through his mask and for the first time he was grateful. He didn’t want to watch this. He didn’t want to see it. 

After all that, Hunter was always going to burn.

There was no possibility of redemption for him. No second chance. There was no one out there who would love him or take him in, no, there might not be people out there period. For a moment it was too much, and then the fire came back and it was little again.

Funny, wasn’t it, how things seem so much smaller in context?

Sure, Hunter was burning to death (willingly), but what did that matter in the face of his whole life turning to ashes and lies in his hands. What was the point?

His mask finally reached its breaking point and started to melt, slowly. Golden tears dripped like wax down the front and inside, inching its way towards Hunter and the floor, obeying gravity’s commands and looking to join the molten gold already on the ground.

For a moment, some part of his brain far divorced from reality remarked on how it couldn’t be gold, actually, because the melting point of real gold was incredibly high, too high to melt in what was essentially a house fire. Hunter would have been ash before his mask liquified if it were real. It must have been gold-dyed aluminum, then, that and everything else around him melting. Just another veneer. Just another lie. 

He supposed it didn’t make a difference. It hurt either way. 

What was the point?

A single drip fell off and landed on Hunter’s face, above his left eye. The heat and pain made his vision white out and his whole body spasm; still, he didn’t move. Metal seeped into a sizzling brand on his skin and Titan it hurt but he didn’t get up. It was a punishment he deserved. Die then or die later. At least if he burned it’d be going out with a bang. Going out just like—

Suddenly, there was another scream, this one much closer and more angry than scared. Even as the flames lapped hungrily at the blackening skin of his legs Hunter stumbled to his feet in sheer confusion. It had come from inside the throne room.

Running on sheer instinct, even with the burns traveling their way up his calves, he stood and slammed against the doors again, and, in some distant miracle, the metal of the lock bent enough to open. Behind the throne there was a hidden door, some barred thing he couldn’t remember ever seeing. The screaming was coming from there. 

Another few liberal applications of body weight got it open, and then he was running full-tilt through the smoke, holding his breath. His legs hurt as badly as the rest of him, and some small part of his brain noted calmly that if he made it out of here, the scar on his face was going to be the least of them. The only reason he was moving at all was a mixture of adrenaline, the heat resistance he’d never gotten an answer for, and a lifetime of raising his pain tolerance. 

The walls were lined with cages, some small and others larger than his bedroom, most filled with claw marks and lumps too dark to make out through the haze. None of them were moving. 

He finally breathed in and almost doubled over coughing, the smoke so thick it felt like moving through water. There was still golden metal burning into the skin of his face and now hands, leaving black marks; or maybe those were just his vision giving in at last. 

The screaming had reduced to wheezing, almost out of his hearing. He pushed himself a few more steps before his left knee buckled and he bit down on his tongue with the impact. Blood filled his mouth. With a torn and bloodied glove he ripped the lump of aluminum off his face, sending molten gold drops across his arms and burning clean through his sleeves, and threw it, spitting out as much blood as he could. His chest was on fire. 

From wheezing to choking. 

Why was he risking himself for this? He’d been ready to die earlier, hadn’t he? What was keeping him moving, pushing him through this pain, when he hadn’t even had the strength to keep his body intact? With that thought, another one surfaced, muddy and slow. He didn’t care about himself, Titan, he deserved to burn. But that didn’t mean anyone else did. If he could get just one person out, he could atone for what he’d done. Just the one. 

He stood back up. Agonizingly slowly, painfully, he pushed himself up and limped to the wall, visibility damn near zero. Carefully he inched along, one damaged foot in front of the other, towards the rapidly-fading sounds. 

There was a cage directly ahead, the metal bars audibly sizzling, and the lump inside was still moving. Hunter must have blacked out for a moment, because he blinked and then he was pulling the lock off, brittle in the heat, and the door swung open on its own. 

Hunter’s legs burned and his hands were black with soot, but he still found it in himself to take a deep breath of smoke, heave the crying creature up on his shoulders, and turn around—

The smell hit him first.

The smell was usually the thing that hit him first. Not like Vee, who could smell magic and provided about ninety percent of their early warning system, whose nose was actually useful. No, Hunter’s sense of smell was a dumb double-edged sword; it gave him pretty useful information about the empty that was hunting (Ha.) them, but it also made his eyes water and made him gag. 

The scent itself hit him like a truck, the faintest whiff and then, before he could brace himself, the full force of the horrific, nauseating smell of rotting flesh and toxic vapor. It stung the inside of his nose even through the wood of his mask. He doubled over as if punched, stomach trying to rebel and climb out of his throat for a few dangerous seconds until he could steady himself enough to breathe through his mouth. He coughed once, twice. Titan. 

“Potions,” he managed, which was pretty unnecessary. They were the only ones that stank quite that badly. From his reaction alone Vee already knew who it was, no words required. 

She hummed lightly, hand still wrapped tight around his upper arm to keep him from slipping until he had recovered enough to balance himself. Her tail was coiled around the tree trunk like a snake’s. She never had to worry about falling out. Hunter had fallen out a lot before he’d really gotten the hang of it. It had almost gotten them killed more than once. 

After a few seconds of mouth breathing, his stomach calmed and he could blink the tears out of his eyes. He steadied himself on his branch, both hands on the bark, and shrugged to let Vee know he was good. She slowly, quietly, shifted her weight back to give them both enough room.

Below them the red leaves formed a natural window into the clearing they’d evacuated. Hunter had caught a large two-headed goose in one of his bird traps, and it still lay down there, necks wrapped in wire and wings splayed awkwardly. Looking at it now, it really wasn’t as big as its feathers would suggest. Its ribs were awkwardly visible in a way that made him feel self-conscious about his own. 

All he’d had time for was breaking the single living neck and to start untangling it before Vee had caught the scent and they’d had to hide. If they’d been lucky, which they never were, the empty would’ve passed by none-the-wiser and Hunter and Vee would’ve been free to gather their catch and leave. But no. Why did Hunter even bother hoping anymore? Titan knew that between the two of them they had enough bad luck to consider it a medical condition. 

Even though Hunter wasn’t breathing through his nose, the smell managed to intensify, and he grimaced, trying to be quiet. When he looked over to Vee, she held up a single finger. Slipping a hand to his hip under his loose, over-large cloak, he pulled out his retractable staff and hovered his thumb over the button.

Years ago, he’d thought that Potions empties were the least dangerous, if only because they were more inclined to eat their ingredients than make potions out of them. And if they did make potions, they’d eat those instead. Maybe that’d been true back when everyone was just a little hungry and tired instead of… yeah. Maybe then. 

Now? Three years later? What few Potions empties were still around were dangerous for more than their toxicity. They had to be, to survive like they did. 

Vee tapped on the tree, only barely loud enough to be heard. She wrinkled her nose at him when he looked over. 

“Only one,” she breathed, almost lost over the wind in the trees. “Might pass.”

“It won’t.” He raised his eyebrows at her, and she rolled her eyes, sensing it despite his mask. They both knew it wouldn’t pass.

As if on cue, Vee froze. Hunter immediately did the same. The red firebushes at the edge of the clearing shivered and then recoiled, as if sentient. The leaves curled up and steamed while others melted or turned black-brown, dead. A figure pushed itself through, leaving a steaming, hissing path behind them of dead plants and corroded dirt. Acid dripped off waxy, sallow skin and burned holes through the ground. The toxic cloud of vapor was damn near visible. Hunter’s eyes burned and he fought the urge to cough again.

The Potions empty paused and knelt by the dead bird, picking at the trap with fingers that turned the wire to slag. Its visible ribs and hollowed cheeks told Hunter everything about what was going to happen next. It bit into the bird, raw and still feathered, ravenously, digging rotted teeth into one of the necks. The disgusting sucking and crunching noises might’ve made the Hunter of three years ago violently ill, but by then he’d had plenty of practice ignoring similar things. He couldn’t afford to look away or cover his ears, not when it could mean life or death. 

It took the empty a full five minutes to turn the bird into chunks of bone and splatters of blood, leaving the heads next to the trap. It stood for a moment, clearly satiated at least a little, before looking up to scan the clearing. That’s when Hunter got his first good look at it. 

It was clearly a witch, pale skinned, with what might have been black hair at one point hanging in greasy clumps from its skull, partially covering sunken, wild eyes and a rotting grin. Both wrists were heavily wounded, the source of the dripping acid, and yet it didn’t seem to notice the gouges at all. Its face, hands, and upper body were all covered in blood of various shades and ages. The torn, ratty dress it wore didn’t hide protruding ribs and a skeletal figure, and it wasn't wearing shoes, with obviously rotted feet. There was visible bone starting at its shins. Despite that, its gait was deceptively smooth, leading to a constant clicking from the horde of empty and half-full bottles hanging on both sides of its belt. The entire time, except when eating, it had been humming nonsensically, random noises without a tune. 

A pretty typical empty, then. Ugly, starved, desperate. Hunter had seen hundreds, though the terror never went away. This will eat you, something in the back of his brain said. You’re about to die. Hunter swallowed nervously and gripped his staff with sweaty fingers under his gloves. A glance at Vee showed that she was worse, and his resolve tightened. He couldn’t afford to hesitate or take risks, not when he had someone relying on him. He couldn’t be paralyzed with fear over monsters anymore. He had to deal with it. So he stayed still, stayed ready, trying to tune out the awful humming.

And then, all at once, it fell silent. 

The lack of sound was suddenly oppressive. There wasn’t any birdsong, and hardly any wind in the trees. Hunter held his breath, and he could tell that Vee was doing the same, both frozen completely, utterly solid. 

When the empty cocked its head, its massive antlers dripped a steady flow of red-green acid onto the ground, and Hunter couldn’t help but follow it with his eyes. Every point was jagged and wickedly sharp, coated in enough chemicals to eat right through the dirt and leaves below, and he couldn’t imagine what it could do to flesh. The scars on his stomach twinged with phantom pain.

Mental note: don’t get gored again. It won’t go better the second time.

“I know you’re here,” it said. Its voice was shockingly intact, almost melodic, but even the casual tone couldn’t hide the undercurrent of desperation every empty shared. “I heard you. I just want to talk.”

When Hunter glanced at Vee, she was making a strange face, half fear, half dark humor. He could almost hear the did it really think that would work?

It took a step forward, now standing directly below the little leaf window Hunter had been watching the clearing through. If it looked up, both Hunter and Vee would be seen immediately. There was no way to close the hole well enough to hide them without making sound, or without taking too long. Hunter nervously thumbed the button on his staff. Less than fifteen feet directly below, a lone leaf drifted off its branch and settled on the antlers, where it melted and then turned into gas almost immediately. 

When he’d been in the Emperor’s coven, Hunter had done survival training just like any other scout. While he’d been by far the best swimmer, the high temperatures of the water not bothering him the way it bothered the others, his smaller lungs had made his breath capacity significantly weaker. The damage from the fire had only worsened that. On a good day, when calm and seated, he could hold his breath for maybe a full minute before he had a coughing fit and had to stop. Now? Heart rate high, perched delicately in a tree, having been breathing shallowly for minutes to make his inhales as quiet as possible? His chest was aching less than half a minute in.

Vee seemed to sense it. Or maybe she just knew him that well. When he risked a glance at her, her eyes were wide, ears back. She shook her head frantically but with almost no actual movement, like she was vibrating. 

They both knew their luck wasn’t that good.

The empty stayed directly beneath them, unmoving and ears pricked. Hunter’s vision started to gray out at the edges, restricted to the eyeholes of his mask, and his chest felt like he’d swallowed fire. His throat spasmed. After another agonizing five seconds, he gave in, and exhaled. Inhaled. He blinked and tried to refocus his eyes, looking down.

A pair of watery blue eyes met his. 

The empty smiled, both rows of rotted, cracked teeth on full display. “Found you.”

“Run run run run!”

Vee wasn’t really the one with the plans between them. She rolled with the punches, came up with things on the fly, while Hunter was the one with a full alphabet of contingency plans and a dictionary of codewords. She’d never bothered to learn every single one of his plans, not when things always seemed to end up at the worst possible scenario anyway, but there were a handful she knew like the back of her hand. Every one had saved their lives in the past a dozen times over. 

For example, their main action plan when faced with a starving empty actively hunting them. Step one: determine whether it would be best to run or fight. The answer was usually run.

So, without having to communicate it further, the second the empty launched itself through the canopy to reach them, Hunter extended his staff and cracked it down across their head. Vee squeaked and used the shaking of the tree to jump across to the next one and then down to the ground, shifting mid-fall to her usual witch form. Two legs was always better than a tail for running away. Behind her, the empty howled in pain and Hunter yelped. 

She didn’t look back, taking off in a stumbling dead sprint. Within seconds Hunter had fallen in step next to her. Only a handful of yards and already both of them were breathing heavily. Vee was uncomfortably aware that they weren’t winning any contests of endurance. Or speed. Or strength, really. Definitely not magic. The crashing and hissing behind them coaxed a little extra speed out of her. 

So what did they have? A dozen plans, a useless basilisk, a magic-less grimwalker, and a lot of desperation. She frantically recalled her mental map of the area, though after a terrifying second where her foot caught on a branch and a few drops of acid stung her calves, she realized they’d already gone further from their current hideout than she knew. Still, adrenaline heightened her senses. A few deep sniffs carried a faint scent of boiling water on the wind.

“Lake!” She called, breathless with terror.

Hunter wasn’t doing much better. “Where ?”

She didn’t bother answering, simply turned to the left and prayed as hard as she could. Dear Titan, please let us live just a few more days. I’m too young to die. Please let this work for once. 

Thankfully, thankfully, the lake was close. Strangely so, in a way Vee couldn’t help but see as a gift from the island itself. The empty’s deranged, horrific howling chased them directly onto the shore. The only warning she was given was Hunter’s little gasp, and the second she hit gravel she threw herself to the right in an ungainly roll. The potion missed her by inches. The claws missed her by millimeters. She froze, letting out an involuntary whimper. 

She wouldn’t be able to get up in time. She screwed her eyes shut, throwing her arms above her head and wondering if making it three years in this hell was really all for nothing—

“Hey ugly!” Hunter screamed, slamming his staff into the ground. And then, like always, like every time previous, the empty immediately abandoned Vee to go after him instead. 

It used to scare both of them. Vee could, arguably, defend herself against them better than he could, even with all of his fancy staff tricks. Standing on that lake shore, well used to it, Vee simply thanked her lucky stars that the rule held true, and scrambled to her feet. It never got less scary, being hunted, being chased down, but at least it was consistent. While the heart-stopping, delirious fear of death never went away, it at least had a fun companion in annoyance. Still, Vee kept praying. 

The empty lunged for Hunter and he dodged, sweeping his staff under their feet and taking a few steps back until his heels brushed the water. Too focused on their next meal to notice, the empty followed. They had to be careful, though, empties were desperate, not stupid. Vee’s leg still ached from the Abominations empty early on that had tricked them right back. That was a mistake you only make once.

“You’re… protecting her,” they said suddenly, as if just realizing. “That’s okay. I’ll let her go. Just stop fighting. She can go, I won’t follow.”

It was a trick empties used all the time. Even if Vee and Hunter weren’t well aware that they never meant it, neither of them would ever take the bait and lay down to die. 

Hunter gritted his teeth, but stayed silent. Another step back.

Vee dug witch fingernails into her palms, trying to stay quiet enough that they would forget she was there. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, she inched her way around back, completely out of view of them both. Oh my Titan. Holy shit. Ohhh they were so both going to die.

“I really won’t, I promise. You want her safe? I’ll leave her alone,” the empty tried again. “I just want you. I’m sorry. I really am. Won’t you help me?”

Another step back. The tiny waves hissed as they splashed up Hunter’s shins. Vee circled a bit further. She slipped one of her knives out from the sheath on her belt and palmed it in one shaking hand, just in case. She needed to not mess up, though she always seemed to freeze up when it was important, and it always went poorly. 

“I’m so hungry. You get it, right? I’m just surviving. I’m so, so hungry. Won’t you help me? Please. I’m sorry. Ple—”

Vee struck midway through the word. She focused on her free hand, shifting it to match one of the massive tentacles she’d seen a couple times on mountain krakens (and praying for her life that she was remembering it correctly). The sound was enough to alert the empty, who started to turn, but by then it was too late. Hunter fell backwards and flattened himself against the lake bed. Vee slammed her arm into the empty and sent it tumbling over itself, over Hunter— right into the hot lake. 

They screamed in pain. All the acid leaking from their body seemed to evaporate at once as they writhed, spraying water wildly in their thrashing. Still, Vee didn’t dare to relax. Her legs still shook with fear and adrenaline. Even with the screaming, even with the pain, their sheer stubbornness to remain alive was one of the singular traits all empties shared. 

It took less than five whole seconds for the empty to drag themselves out of the lake. The screaming had to turned to crying, with whole body, wracking sobs that made them seem miles more pathetic than the monster chasing them through the forest had been. That was an act too, though. 

Vee still felt sorry for them. She’d used to hate how she always hesitated, how she couldn’t help but be too empathetic. Three years in, though? It was a badge of honor. She still cared. Maybe too much, but she still cared. They still cared. 

She startled when Hunter appeared beside her, dripping wet, staff in hand, face grim. He didn’t seem to share her sympathy for the empty, though she had a few good guesses as to why. He saw the same things she did, was chased and tore into and hurt the same as she was, he was just… less forgiving. Less willing to absolve them of blame. It used to be an argument between them, but arguments, not trusting each other entirely and implicitly, led straight to an unhappy end for them both. It wasn’t worth the fight.

Besides, they still had an empty to deal with. She wasn’t allowed to get lost in her own head yet. A hard shake refocused her. 

As always, Hunter took the first steps, Vee immediately behind his shoulder. She liked it there. It was a comfortable formation; his staff in both hands, Vee, directly behind with a knife, just in case. And again, as always, when they got to the empty curled up on the ground, smoking, Vee hesitated. 

They did look upsettingly pathetic, sniveling and wailing in pain. The acid flowing from their wounds was watered down and it pooled around them like poisoned blood, which she supposed it was. The scene wasn’t pretty. Something in Vee recalled dark nights chained to stone, hungry to the point of eating herself, and she couldn’t bring herself to move closer. Hunter brought his staff up to slam into their head.

Lightning fast, the empty threw their head back, attempting to slam their sharp antlers through his legs, and at the same moment threw another potions bottle at Vee, who’d hesitated. Hunter had not.

He’d been expecting something, so he was ready, and immediately stepped back to avoid the antlers. With the butt of his staff he knocked the bottle away in the same smooth motion. When it broke the liquid inside began eating straight through the gravel below, and Vee felt her face drain of color. They both recovered quickly, though, and Hunter brought his staff around to slam the pommeled end of it into the center of the empty’s forehead. They dropped like a discarded doll. 

Vee didn’t say anything. Partially because she was still breathing heavily, fighting not to wheeze, and partially because there wasn’t anything to say. Vee was always going to hesitate. Hunter was always going to be the one who wouldn’t. Who couldn’t. Because of her.

“Rope,” he said after a beat. “I don’t…”

Vee took pity on him. “I do,” she said, and slung her satchel off her back. Coming down from the adrenaline made her hands shaky as she rooted through it, and she had to fight down a giggle. “You really need to fix that strap better.”

He flushed a deep pink, which was never not hilarious. “I— it just— it’s not my fault it keeps breaking!”

It totally was, but she let him have it. She moved to tie the Potions empty to a nearby tree, then hesitated. They would totally melt right through the rope. “Hey, Hunter?”

He didn’t answer. She turned to look at him, but his gaze was locked on the lake, the ripples splashing up onto the shore. What was he looking at? 

“Hunter?” she tried again, but he just shook his head slightly, like he wasn’t listening. Both ears were pricked forwards. 

Ripples.

Why were there ripples?

This lake wasn’t very large, more of a pond than anything. The empty had pulled themselves out of it less than a minute prior, sure, but the ripples weren’t getting smaller, they were getting bigger. And Vee started to hear the sound too, something faint, almost like… a voice?

Some strange instinct started blaring in the back of Vee’s brain, a ringing alarm that she’d only just calmed enough to notice. Fearing for your life had a funny way of drowning everything else out. It was like as the adrenaline faded, she finally started to notice the world around her, and every little cell of her body was saying that something was wrong. 

It was too quiet. 

There were no insects, no faint sound of fairies or birds, no sprites or even wind. The world around the water was eerily, entirely still, like every living thing was holding their breath. It wasn’t the same as earlier with the empty, not like prey startled into silence, instead as if sound simply didn’t exist, nothing to make it, nothing to hear it. The trees all bent towards the pond. Fog wisped and curled at the edges of the clearing (a perfectly uniform four body-lengths from the water’s edge), as if scared to come any closer. For that matter, there wasn’t a single blade of grass within range, and the gravel untouched by their scuffle was just that— untouched. Completely. Not just by footprints, but by any kind of animal tracks or dry leaves. 

Hunter took a step forward, as if trying to see better, as if in a daze. Little waves lapped at his toes as if inviting him back in. Vee was fully, completely back in alarm mode by then, twisting her head oddly to try and keep both her brother and the tied-up empty in view. 

Another step. His beat-up boots hissed slightly upon contact with the water, like they were protesting their second splashing in the past few minutes. The water still dripping off his cloak and hair into the pond was infinitely loud against the stillness. Every strand of hair on Vee’s body was standing straight up. 

The sound got louder as the ripples continued to intensify. It was definitely a voice, though what it was saying, she had absolutely no idea. It seemed agitated. Hunter clearly noticed that as well, as he pulled his ears back and readjusted his grip on his staff, sinking halfway into the stance he’d been trying and failing to teach Vee for years. Still, though, he walked forward. 

“Hunter, what—?”

He was up to his knees now, and slowing. “Vee, stay there. Be ready. I don’t…” His shoulders crept towards his ears, still back. 

Vee swallowed nervously. With one eye on the empty crumpled on the gravel and one on the water, she crept forward until she was close enough to reach him if she transformed. She’d risk the burns if it turned out to be something he couldn’t handle and she had to pull him out. Hunter slogged closer to the center, up to his hips. 

“... and she just! I can’t even… it’s so… try so hard and it never…”

Small snippets of the voice cut in and out, muffled by the sound of the water and the distance. Every so often it slipped into a language she’d never heard before, or became entirely inaudible. Even then, with only a few words, the tone was clearly close to tears. It also sounded… young?

Hunter looked down, less than an arm-span from where the ripples came from, and almost absentmindedly collapsed his staff to attach it to his hip. Vee stretched onto her toes to try and see what he was with a ravenous curiosity and a deep certainty that this was important. The air tasted like magic when she flicked her tongue out to wet her lips. 

Hunter gasped. 

“... what’s the po… am I? What is… oh my god, what is—”

The voice shrieked, shattering the tension in one awful moment. Almost simultaneously, in a sudden blur of movement, Hunter yelped and lurched forward. He fell up to his shoulders in the center as if pulling something (or some one) off the bottom.

“VEE!”

Oh, Titan. That was a person . The inland water wasn’t nearly as hot as the sea but it could still cause burns, and almost no one had the resistance to it Hunter did. Without a second’s hesitation Vee called on her magic and launched her arms, transformed into the strongest tentacles she could manage, to her brother as he threw himself backwards. Ignoring the spots where the water stung as his movements threw up waves, she wrapped both around the figure he’d pulled out and lifted up, trying to keep them clear of the splashing. Whoever it was yelled and swore, writhing desperately in her grasp, which was a good sign. 

Her brother stood up, drenched for the second time, and locked eyes with her through his mask. The look he had scared her. Who was this? Or, well, what was this? She tried to smile at him but was pretty sure it came across as more of a grimace. 

Enough standing around. Vee began retracting her tentacles, pulling the struggling person closer to shore (she hoped they were struggling because she’d accidentally completely covered their face and was holding them upside-down and not because they were injured). Hunter wasted no time wading back over, eyes flitting between her and the water below, as if puzzled by it. When he was close enough to hear without her yelling, she opened her mouth to ask him what he’d seen. 

He beat her to it. “DUCK!” 

For the second time at the lake, the only warning Vee had was the sound of hissing, melting gravel and her brother’s yell. She hit the ground before he’d even finished speaking, feeling more than seeing the now-awake empty launch itself over her towards Hunter. 

She couldn’t entirely focus on that, though. When she went down, her arms had gone with her. Thankfully she’d just pulled them just short of the water, but that’s where her luck stopped, because she’d dropped the figure, head first, onto the shore, and they’d gone completely silent after an ominous thud. 

Vee scrambled to her feet, torn for a heartbeat between trying to help her brother fight and going to check on the person they’d saved (and she might’ve just given brain damage), but was immediately frozen by the sight in the lake. 

The veneer of humanity the empty had been wearing like a coat earlier had melted right off, and they threw themselves bodily at Hunter, trying with some kind of animal desperation to sink their teeth into his skin. The sound and smell were both utterly nauseating. Hunter hardly had to do anything other than dodge, as the empty’s hunger forced them to boil themselves in the water for just the chance of a reprieve. The acid that leaked from their skin mixed with the lake and steamed, almost drowning out their snarling and shrieking. Either they didn’t feel the pain as their skin blistered and liquified, or they just didn’t care. 

Hunter didn’t have time to get his staff back out, and seemed unwilling to try while there was the chance it could be significantly damaged by acid. In his panic he simply stumbled backwards, forcing the empty deeper in after him, though when they tripped forwards something seemed to click and he surged towards them. 

Planting one foot on something Vee couldn’t see for certain, he reached steaming hands into the water and pulled up hard. His eyes were wild behind his mask and his chest heaved. Hysterical strength seemed to kick in and with a mighty heave, the empty’s antler cracked clean off in his hands. He must have been standing on the other one. 

Vee hardly had time to make out the discolored skull fragment and chunks of flesh that stubbornly stuck to the base before Hunter reversed his grip and, despite how the acid must have been burning right through his gloves, stabbed down into the body pinned below him. Abruptly the shrieking, having reached a crescendo the second their head had met the water, cut off into a wet gurgle. 

Neither of them had time to pause, though, as Vee heard the telltale hissing whine of even more acid reacting with the hot water and pulled Hunter straight up before the spread of blood from the now floating body could reach him. The boiling waters didn’t hurt him really, but there was no guarantee the acid would behave the same. He lay limp but heaving in her arms, and it took her a moment to realize the trembling was coming from both of them. 

Titan. 

The return of the quiet was almost as jarring as when it broke earlier. The moment both of Hunter’s feet were on the ground, she transformed her arms back into witch ones and was frantically patting him down despite the water steaming off of him, checking for hidden injuries. He was too out of it to even push her off. 

“Oh, Titan , Hunter , that could’ve… I was so worried… you’re not bleeding, did the acid get on you anywhere besides your hands, tell me right—”

He cut her off with laughter. Abruptly, he’d doubled over, burned hands behind tattered gloves pressing into his knees while his whole body shook with giggles. 

Vee stared at him wide-eyed and stunned silent. Had the empty hit his head without her noticing? Were the fumes getting to him? She hesitantly reached forward to pull off his mask, but he batted her hands away before grabbing them and pulling her in close. He was still uncomfortably hot to the touch, so he didn’t hug her, instead resting his forehead on her shoulder and continuing to laugh. His weight slowly pushed them both down to their knees on the gravel. 

“Hunter? Hey, I need you to tell me what’s wrong, okay? I need you to answer me, I don’t know why you’re…”

He gasped through his laughter for a second, trying and failing to string together a sentence, while Vee watched on in concern. He’d pushed his mask up to his forehead so she could see just a sliver of his face, next to her head as he was, and he didn’t look hurt, but she had to be prepared for anything. 

Finally he got himself a little more under control. “All we wanted… all we wanted was… was the damn goose!” His giggles started up again and he held onto her tightly.

And it barely made sense, and definitely wasn’t funny, but for some reason Vee found herself snorting alone. Their second adrenaline crash in ten minutes probably had something to do with it. As her body relaxed the whole concept seemed more and more comedic. They really had only gone out to check the traps, only a little farther than normal, and Hunter’d been so excited to see the goose. It would have fed them both for at least two days. Now they were both steaming and laughing next to a magic lake where they’d pulled a—

Her laughter cut off mid-breath and she pushed Hunter off. The person she’d dropped!

Without bothering to get onto her feet, she half-crawled, half-waddled over to the limp lump lying exactly where she’d left them. Hunter’s laughs stuttered to a halt as well and with the shifting sound of his feet on the gravel, in a second he was standing on the other side of them, leaning down to check their head. Vee grabbed at what seemed like an unblemished wrist and tried to find a pulse. She’d never been very good at it, so it was a testament to how strong it was that she found it immediately. 

They both sighed in relief, Hunter lifting his (still blistered and missing a few layers of skin) hands to show a lack of blood from any head wound. With their survival assured, Vee shifted to analyzing their appearance. 

First off, the clothes. They weren’t that different from what Hunter had told her of typical fashion in the Isles, which was weird in and of itself. No one dressed like that any more, there was no new clothing, everything instead hand-mended and washed carefully. The oddly perfect seams and colors of their long-sleeved shirt were unsettling. Second, the body itself looked oddly out of place among Vee and Hunter. It was brown-skinned, with what was probably a female figure and a healthy weight that contrasted with Hunter’s form swamped by his cloak and Vee’s entire height of five foot flat. 

Hunter made a little noise, and with his mask still up Vee could see his confused eyes and open mouth. One of his hands was on her forehead looking for bumps and the other was behind her ear, which he was staring at. “Uh, come here a second and make sure I’m not hallucinating.”

Unfortunately, he wasn’t. 

They both stared in complete disbelief and shock at the rounded human ears of the person sprawled out beneath them. “What the fuck,” Vee breathed, and Hunter just blinked in agreement. 

He sat back, thighs on his heels. “Okay. Okay.” A deep, whistling breath didn’t seem to help. “Okay,” he repeated again, as if that was going to change anything the first two didn’t. “Alright. So. That’s.”

“... A human,” Vee finished, when it was clear he wasn’t going to. “How did she… how did you—” 

Because, yeah, Hunter had absolutely pulled a whole human out of the water. He winced as he threw his hands up. “I don’t know! I have absolutely no idea, Vee, because this hasn’t exactly ever happened before, and it. Just!” He pinched his nose, avoiding the shiny burn scars across the bridge of it. “I looked in, and I could hear and see her, and then— I don’t know, maybe she saw me, or something, because she leaned too far and fell through the water. I don’t know. I was kind of panicking by that point.”

Vee filled in the gaps. “She was looking into water from… what, from the human realm maybe? Did your… did the emperor have any books on natural portals?” She could've sworn Hunter had infodumped to her for hours about something like that once. 

“Maybe. It’s not… impossible.” He still looked pensive, eyes locked on her unconscious face. “Really lucky, though. Or unlucky.”

“Definitely unlucky.”

They sat in silence for a moment, both staring at the human on the gravel. The urge to start laughing again bubbled up in Vee’s throat and she swallowed it down with difficulty. 

Hunter huffed out a sigh through his nose and unsteadily got to his feet, swaying a little. He seemed conflicted. Vee beat him to it. 

“Hunter.”

“We can’t—”

“Hunter.” 

“We can’t, Vee, we just can’t. It’s not about duty or anything, it’s about survival. We can barely get enough food to keep ourselves afloat, we can’t help her. Besides, what would we even do? The only portal I remember is… well, it’s gone.” Not entirely true. Both Vee and Hunter knew exactly where it was, but it certainly didn’t work anymore and they wouldn’t go within a hundred miles of that place anyways, so it didn’t matter. “I don’t remember much about the human realm but look at her, she probably doesn’t know how to fight or hunt or anything. It’s not something we can afford, you know that. It’d be best to leave now.”

“It might be our fault she’s here at all! And don’t act like I don’t know exactly how thin we’re stretched, okay, I’m not blind. But we can’t just leave her here to be eaten by the next empty that comes along. We’re still…”

We’re still people, she thought she was going to say, or something like that, but she trailed off. Hunter had his eyes squeezed shut, not looking at her, which is how she knew he agreed with her, even though he couldn’t afford to admit it. And, yeah, it was almost definitely the better option to leave her here and continue on with their lives; still, even the thought of it filled Vee’s stomach with roiling guilt. They couldn’t.

“We’ve found a way for years, haven’t we?” She continued. “She’s human, she doesn’t have a sigil or magic at all, that means the empties won’t target her, right? She won’t have to deal with magic drain or anything either, so all she’d need would be regular food, and we can probably deal with that.”

Hunter had completely turned around, so she brought out her trump card. 

“Look, I know it’s not the most sound decision, but if saving and helping someone was always a bad idea, then you should’ve left me in the castle.”

He flinched, full-body, and she felt bad for a moment before her resolve strengthened. When he faced her again she tried to meet his eyes, though as usual his skittered away within a few seconds. The air was tense, but Vee knew she’d already won. When his shoulders slumped and he pulled his mask back over his face, it was only confirmation. 

“Fine.” He didn’t sound entirely happy, and Vee prayed she hadn’t made a mistake with this. “We’ll try to get her home.”

Luz woke up with the worst headache of her life and the deep-seated feeling that something was wrong. 

Fortunately, she didn’t have time to panic about the latter, much less open her eyes, before the former made itself her primary concern. God, it hurt, like the time she’d cracked her head against the sidewalk trying to learn to skateboard (it hadn’t worked, her balance was famously bad, but she’d kept at it for a week and destroyed the warranty on her helmet). It was as if her brain was a squeaky toy being squeezed by a massive dog. 

At the same time, it radiated from one spot on the top of her head, like… had she been dropped onto something? Fallen? She couldn’t quite remember, not in an amnesia way (she hoped), but in an ouch-my-head-hurts-too-much-to-think way, which was strange because all she did was think. 

She groaned and shifted, cracking her eyes open the tiniest bit against the light. It sure felt like a concussion, though she’d only gotten one once, and the voices above her immediately quieted as if sensing her headache. Something moved to block out the light, which she was grateful for. Without staring directly into the sun she was able to open her eyes more. 

There was a face over her that took a second to sharpen in her vision, silhouetted as it was against the… afternoon? Sky. It looked off, though not in a way Luz could immediately identify. 

The girl had an average face, rounded despite slightly sunken cheeks. Her eyes were bright, a reddish-brown that stood out against her pale skin and unkempt mane of straw-blonde hair dyed blue at the ends. Freckles dotted her face and nose. A bandana sat around her neck. Luz couldn’t quite see her clothes from the angle, but got the impression of muted browns and teals. 

Those brown eyes widened when she saw Luz’s tracking her, and she leaned back, abruptly exposing Luz to the direct sun again. She slammed her eyelids shut with a hiss, hand coming up on instinct to cover them. 

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry…” Two hands helped her to sit up, bracing her shoulders as she swayed slightly, dizzy despite sitting down. “Go slow, you were out for at least a minute.”

Another person moved on the other side of the girl, murmuring something too low for Luz to hear. Tentatively, very slowly, she dared to open her eyes again. One of the girl’s hands immediately moved against her brow bone to block as much light as possible, so she opened them wider. 

Then, and only then, did her memories catch up to her. But that… couldn’t be right, right? There was absolutely no way she’d fallen into a pond and came out the other side. Even as she thought that, though, she could feel the overly-warm wetness of her clothes and the sting of her skin, like a medium sunburn, as well as the gravel beneath her legs. What was going on?

She chanced another look at the people who’d… what, saved her? That was very fantasy, every protagonist had the helpful friends/mentors/locals to help them get started. Her heart rate picked up without her permission. Bad heart!

“What happened?” she asked instead, because if she was wrong she was going to look completely crazy. 

Keeping her hand above Luz’s eyes, the girl leaned back, kneeling. With her moved Luz could see the boy she’d seen in the pond’s reflection, wooden mask and everything. She must have been his sister, at least judging from the almost identical hair and similar eyes, though with the mask and oversized cloak she couldn’t compare their body types or faces. He stared at her, tense and quiet, like a startled rabbit. Or a threatened dog. Still, all of that was processed subconsciously, because Luz’s attention immediately darted to his ears, barely visible through his much shorter but no less unbrushed hair. 

His pointed ears. 

As if following her gaze his eyes narrowed and those ears twitched back, like a cat’s. Luz fought not to make a stupid sound. Oh my god. Ohhh my god. 

The girl opened her mouth, probably to answer Luz, a second too late. “Are you guys elves?” Luz asked, voice an octave higher than normal. 

Two sets of eyes blinked at her, visibly bemused. “Um. No? What’s an elf?” the boy said, and his voice was oddly raspy and muffled (that was probably just the mask). 

Also too late. Luz had already moved on. “I wasn’t hallucinating or daydreaming or whatever! I knew it! I mean, that’d be a pretty vivid daydream, and the counselor says that’s a really bad sign, and I guess this could still be one big dream or whatever and I’m knocked out on a rock somewhere behind my house but this doesn’t feel like a dream because my head still hurts, like, crazy bad. Let’s make sure. Hey, can you pinch me— sorry, what’s your name? I keep calling you ‘the girl’ in my head but that’s really rude and I’d hate if someone did that to me, so. I’m Luz! Luz Noceda. Don’t ask me why I said that like James Bond— oh my god you guys definitely don’t know who James Bond is. That’s so wild. Also, where am I? Or. Where are we? I mean, you have to know, that’s how this goes, right?”

She had been going to say more, but as she leaned forward the girl (Luz was so sick of thinking that!) had steadily leaned away and was looking at her with a lot more fear than concern. The boy had frozen completely, but his hands were hidden as if reaching for something on his hip. He took a step backwards. At the same moment, as if predicting it, the girl spun around and latched onto his cloak, pulling hard and making him stumble forwards. 

“No! No, you are not— if you even think of leaving me to—”

He threw his hands up, and Luz just caught the edges of blistered, burned skin and ruined gloves. “Oh, don’t be mean, Hunter, it’ll totally work out just fine, Hunter, don’t say I told you so!” He (Hunter? Or was that her name? Luz was a bit confused) mocked in a falsetto. Neither of them were yelling, or even speaking very loud, and he wasn’t looking at her, but this was clearly some kind of spat Luz didn’t have context for. “It’s not like your very smart brother told you this was a bad idea, but Titan, don’t listen to me, clearly he’s always wrong! You wanted to help her! I don’t see what you need me for!”

“If you run away right now I will hunt you down from toes to fingers, I swear. You can go back to being awkward and antisocial after we fix the mess you—” 

“Me?! Sorry for saving someone I thought was drowning! Maybe if you hadn’t dropped her on her head and knocked her out—”

Before the last word had left his mouth they’d both turned back to Luz, who was completely undaunted in her enthusiasm. She’d never had siblings but that seemed like a classic sibling fight, at least according to Azura. Lucy’s younger brother fought with her like that in the fourth novel, in a more evil way, of course, because he was a villain, but it was pretty close!

Still, the tone switch made her blink. Hunter (?) moved closer and the girl, one hand still on Luz’s forehead, used her other to prod at her scalp, face serious and frowning. He worried at his cloak with both hands. 

“Nice to meet you, Luz, my name’s Vee, and that’s my brother Hunter. We need to get you home as soon as possible, and we will, okay? It’s going to be alright. Can you tell me where it hurts?”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Luz said, pushing away from the hands on her. “That’s not how these stories start, I can’t go back yet. I’m here for some reason, right?” 

Hunter leaned in, not even very tall, but towering over both of the sitting girls. “I don’t. Think so? You’re here because… you fell in, I think?”

Luz nodded, carefully, to avoid aggravating her headache. “Yeah, I was just making little leaf boats and setting them free because… actually, that part doesn’t, um, matter.” She felt her face color a little at the reminder. That was an issue for later. “But I heard this, like, awful noise, so I looked into the water, ‘cause it was rippling really strangely, and then I saw, well. You. And that was really weird! Usually you only see your reflection when you look into water— or is that different here? Do you guys normally see other people?”

Her bemused audience had clearly given up on stopping Luz when she was on a roll, so Vee just shook her head and motioned for her to continue. 

“Right, so, I saw Hunter, and I thought ‘huh, that’s odd,’ so I leaned over to get a closer look, and I must have leaned a little too far, because I fell in and then through, which felt super duper weird, because the water was cold and then really really hot, and… something grabbed me, I guess? And then… here. That’s it.”

Vee looked expectantly at Hunter. His shoulders tensed. “Titan’s blood, I think. Natural portal. I read about it once. But that seems… unlikely.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Vee breathed, then gestured half-heartedly towards the lake behind them. “I don’t think we’ll be so lucky, but could you…”

He nodded sharply and turned towards the water. Luz followed him with her eyes for a heartbeat before the light glinting off the little ripples forced her to hiss and look away. The hand returned to her hairline, and when it pressed down she winced. 

Vee muttered a quiet apology, but she sounded sincere. “I don’t know as much about first-aid as Hunter does, though he’s taught me a few things, so I’m sorry if this hurts. I’m just trying to make sure you aren’t bleeding, or melting brain out of your ears, or anything.”

Luz didn’t feel like she was bleeding. Maybe that was because she was still pretty dizzy, though, and vaguely nauseous. “I think I have a mild concussion,” she said, “so I should be okay. Or, maybe I should see a doctor— do you guys have doctors here?”

“Oh, yeah, we didn’t…” Vee trailed off, as if gathering her thoughts. The splashing sounds following Hunter stopped, followed by a low curse and them resuming in the opposite direction. “Not really? We have, er, had healers, if I remember right. And if I’m right about what a doctor is.”

“Healer, like with magic? Do you guys have magic? Oh my god, this is absolutely a fantasy world, you’re totally elves, please tell me you have magic.”

Vee looked deeply startled, though not for the reason Luz expected. “You… do humans not have any magic over there? At all?” 

Humans! Luz pumped her fist (only a little, she wasn’t trying to cause a scene here) in victory. 

Hunter trudged out of the water next to them. Something about that seemed strange, like Luz was forgetting something. Vee turned to him with an expression Luz couldn’t place. “No magic?”

He blinked at her. “No? I swear I’ve mentioned that before, unc… Belos used to tell me stories of the human realm, and while I don’t believe all of it I’m pretty sure they don’t have magic. No Titans either. Oh, and that’s a no on the lake, by the way.”

Vee’s knee bounced rapidly against the gravel, shaking her whole body. Not for the first time, Luz felt like she was missing something. Unfortunately, she was too busy rejoicing over human realm and titans and… well, Belos wasn’t actually that weird of a name, but it was stranger than Hunter and she’d take what she could get. 

“Something’s not adding up here, Hunter. The timing, it’s…”

“Vee,” Hunter said, and they had an intense sibling discussion through their eyes for a while. Vee’s hand was still on Luz’s forehead. 

Really, she just couldn’t take it anymore. “So are you guys elves?”

“No, ” Hunter spit at her at the same time Vee said “We’re— witches.”

Just like Azura. 

Luz knew she was always destined to be a fantasy isekai protagonist. 

“This is so awesome,” she breathed. 

“This is awful,” Hunter sighed, muffled behind his mask and the hands he’d put his head in— his now gloveless, bandaged hands. When had he done that?

“Okay, Luz, don’t worry. Looks like the way you came in was pretty one-use, but we’ll get you home. I promise. It just… might be a little while…” Luz’s face must have done something funny, because Vee lurched forward to grab her hand as if to reassure her. “Hey, hey, it’s alright, I know that’s really scary—”

“What? No, I don’t want to leave right now! I just got here. Clearly I’m supposed to help you with some prophecy or grand villain or something, like there must be a quest of some sort.”

“I don’t…”

“I mean, there might not be a villain yet, that happens sometimes. The main antagonist of the third Azura book didn’t show up until the back third!”

Both of them had pulled back from her, and Luz had to replace Vee’s hand with her own. “... Villain?” Hunter asked unsteadily.

“Yeah, you know, like some evil tyrant or cult leader or something. Someone responsible for everything bad in the world? Maybe threatening to start the apocalypse, or trying to kill the heroes, or just being kind of shitty. Villains have fantastic range.”

Hunter had frozen again, eyes wide through his eyeholes, entire body tense. Luz abruptly felt kind of stupid. This was a fantasy world she knew nothing about, maybe they didn’t have fantasy as a genre. Maybe they didn’t even have books! 

Once again, Vee saved her. “We know what villains are,” she said after a heartbeat. “I just… think you have the wrong idea about… well, everything. You need to leave as soon as possible, we’re serious.”

Okay, that kind of hurt. “Hey, that’s fine, sometimes they start out wayyy more slice-of-life. Do you guys go to magic school? Is it no-humans-allowed, is that why I can’t be here? ‘Cause you don’t really know me yet, but rules definitely aren’t going to stop me—”

Hunter growled and pushed past his sister to get right in Luz’s face. He seemed… angry. Frustrated maybe. Hard to tell with the mask. 

“You could’ve died! If we hadn’t been here you could have drowned, or boiled to death, or been fucking eaten! This isn’t some— some novel! There’s a dead empty floating in the lake right there, for Titan’s sake!”

Almost against her will, Luz’s head turned towards the water, and her eyes immediately locked onto a limp shape bobbing gently towards the middle. Her world tunneled. She could faintly hear Vee hissing at Hunter and him spitting something back, but she couldn’t make out individual words when her attention was so stuck on the… the body. That was a body. That was absolutely a body. It didn’t look human, really, more zombie-like than a person. Still. It was face down, surrounded by discolored, roiling water. There was something lopsided about its head. 

It looked like a nightmare. 

All at once, her brain started to categorize the world around her, and she was stuck wishing it really wouldn’t. Vee’s cheeks were sunken in hunger, Hunter’s frame wasn’t lean like she’d thought, just unhealthily skinny. Their clothes were covered in old stains, carefully patched rips, and dirt. There was a knife on Vee’s belt. Hunter’s hands were bloody and torn to bits and somehow he didn’t seem to care, like the pain didn’t register, or he was too used to it to bother. Sections of the shore around her were melted or bloodied, like there’d been a fight. There was a body in the lake. 

Her hands were shaking, Luz noted distantly. 

Vee grabbed them both (when had Luz stopped covering her eyes?) and used them to turn her around, breaking her line of sight with the— what, he’d called it an empty? Her eyes were hard, but kind. “Hey, breathe. Breathe. It’s okay, we’re going to get you home. Nothing will happen to you.”

It didn’t feel so much like a fun fantasy adventure anymore. 

Hunter shuffled awkwardly. “Welcome to the Boiling Isles?” he offered. “We, uh, used to have magic schools. If that helps.”

It was okay. It was going to be okay. Luz actually felt more calm about this than she probably should’ve. For Christ’s sake, she was in another realm. So what if it was more dark fantasy than she’d been expecting. It’d be alright. 

“Used to?” she asked when the silence stretched a little too long. 

She heard more than saw the dumb little jazz hands he did. “Yeah. The world kind of ended a few years ago, so you’ll have to forgive our poor hospitality.” 

Maybe she was a little too late for her saving-the-world coming-of-age story. 

Deep within the burned, abandoned husk of what once was a castle laid a door. 

That was not unusual. There were hundreds of doors, only half of them reduced to slag or ash. Molten metal, long since solidified, had dripped down the walls and pooled in tarnished puddles on the ground, still stained black with soot. That was also not unique; only the real gold and platinum in the throne room had escaped unscathed. 

This door, however, had not been opened in three years. 

Behind it was a room left completely untouched by the years of frantic looters. It was far from empty, though, tables covered in dust that might have once been paper, planters full of magic-rich dirt like a greenhouse, wall sconces long empty of their torches that left the room beyond pitch black. 

At least, it was pitch black. 

Because, in this room, among the rubble of the back half, laid a briefcase. After years of silence, of darkness, of stillness, a dim glow illuminated the eye on the front as it— 

It blinked open.