Kailor: 'Tis the season!
Naruto: It's summer.
Rikku: A freaking hot summer.
Nuriko: A really freaking hot summer.
Kailor: I know. I was dreaming. Thanks for ruining my fantasy, you jerks. P.S! This story has NO inspiration from the Hunger Games! It was inspired by a single scene in Robin Hood, one of the older ones. I do not own Negima. Reviews are loved. The usual... Please, enjoy. By the way, pun definitely intended in the title :D
Konoka
They called it Hounding.
Her father always called it "murder". But with the king sitting beside him, she guessed they'd be calling it Hounding again for a while.
"Konoka?"
She looked up as the king called to her. Despite his white beard and completely bald head, the man sure commanded attention. "Sire?"
"Will you travel with your father?"
To the game, he meant. Hounding. At Sir Dynamis's castle. Would she travel with her father to watch a murder. Well, of course, since it was he who asked. "Yes, Your Majesty."
"Good, good." King Mynan's large hands smacked together, like a child when he got what he wanted. "It will be good to have a duke there this time around. Maybe your father will be named Hound, eh? Quite an honor!"
Honor this, she thought, mentally throwing him a very rude hand gesture. To his face though, she said, "An honor indeed, Sire. But I'm afraid Duke Eishun sits a horse little better than a two-year old. He wouldn't make for a very interesting Hound."
Across the table, Eishun pretended to choke on his wine. "Can't sit a horse, you say?" he spluttered in mock anger. "Why, I could outride the wind if it weren't always coming out of my old steed's backside!"
The king nearly fell out of his chair, laughing with all of his roiling belly. Her father gave her a small smile of apology for his crude joke. "Oh, Eishun. You should most definitely be Hound with that old thing! The Underdog would probably jog away from you, waving goodbye! Why do you keep the thing? It must be older than you, and you're no young baron anymore."
Her father's smile seemed real enough, but she could see how hard it was to keep it up. "He belonged to my late wife's father. When he left for the north, I kept the steed and gave him my own. The old horse reminds me of the old man."
She gave him a sharp glance over their plates. No vulnerability.
"And it makes riding him around and hitting him with the crop much more amusing," Eishun quickly amended, bringing on another raging fit of laughter from the king.
She turned back to her food, pretending to chuckle behind her napkin. As a lady should. As THE Lady should. As the daughter of the most respected duke in all of Mahora should.
She wondered how much of a "Lady" they'd find her if she walked up the table and smashed her plate of steaming potatoes over King Mynan's head...
The dinner ended mercifully quick. King Mynan departed, assuring them he'd return soon. Eishun bid him a safe trip and practically begged him to hurry back with all haste.
She made her way upstairs. After that tiring feast with the king, she just needed sleep. Or a really thorough bath...
That could wait til morning.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
With morning came that bath, but also hours of prepping and packing and pampering and stupidity. If it were up to her, she'd have had one bag over her shoulder and one bag around her waist. But noooooo, according to her maids, she absolutely NEEDED all seventy dresses and forty-two brooches and eighty-six pairs of shoes. She NEEDED all her perfumes she never used. She NEEDED this. She NEEDED that.
She NEEDED to get the hell out of that castle.
And finally, she did. Climbing into the carriage before Eishun, she settled into the front seat. As soon as the door was shut she ripped the pins from her hair, the shoes from her feet, and the twenty pound necklaces from her throat.
"Nekane won't like that," Eishun chuckled as she mused her hair back to the way she liked it best. He was right, of course. Her handmaiden was definitely not going to like Konoka ruining all the hard work she'd done that morning.
"Nekane can fix her own hair. Mine looks just fine like this. And it feels even better."
"Come here, child." Her father motioned her over, smoothing away the bumps she'd missed and the flyaways she couldn't reach.
Outside the carriage, woods passed them by, the coblestones rattled, and Castle Dynamis drew closer, not yet visible, but not nearly far enough away.
"What happened to this being murder?" She asked, leaning back against Eishun.
He sighed, a heavy sigh that carried down his body and through her own until it sank into the floor of the carriage. "It's the King's favorite sport. To stay one of his favorite people, we must take interest in his favorite things."
"So we'll just do what we don't believe in because he enjoys watching a helpless Underdog run from half-drunk Hounds for three days?"
"Helpless? I don't think you've heard tell of this Underdog. Sir Dynamis's Underdog."
Konoka had heard, alright. The girl was called many things in different parts of the country: The undefeatable Underdog. Sir Dynamis's pet ghost. And a litany of other things.
Undefeatble, huh? Well, good for her. "Some life. Underdog forever. Constantly under fire. I'd have stepped in front of an arrow years ago."
Eishun laughed. "You are too quick to judge, Konoka. Did you ever think that maybe she survives for a reason?"
"What reason?"
"Well, she must still have family around. She's only been Underdog for eleven years." He said that like it was a small amount of time or something.
"Maybe." She'd never considered what lay outside Dynamis's arena for the Underdog. She was more legend, really. Konoka had never seen her. The one time she'd been to Dynamis's castle was for two hours to fix their broken wagon wheel nine years ago.
Did the Underdog stand out in the arena sometimes when there were no games, staring up at the top of the huge fence? Did she dream of what lay beyond it? Did she try to scale it? To escape?
Could this creature of tales told by a dim fire in the middle of sleepovers to scare friends have a family out there waiting for her? This story figure with animal-like survival skills?
People said the Underdog was more animal than human now...ever since the Plague...
"Father, does she really have Plague eyes?" Plague eyes were what people called the mismatched eyes of the Plague-touched. When the Plague had swept through Mahora it had killed many, but there were survivors and these survivors were called the Plague-touched. Most people avoided the Plague-touched as much as possible, shunning them from society. Each survivor, after their bout with the disease, had one normal colored eye and one eye that was a strikingly abnormal color. She didn't understand it herself. They had a maid who was a Plague-touched and, though her one brown eye and one bright green eye were a bit startling at first, none that lived in their castle treated her any differently.
Eishun shrugged. "I've never seen her, myself. Time will tell, I guess."
Not nearly enough time.
By nightfall they were rolling through the gates of Castle Dynamis and her world seemed to lose color in an instant.
The cold, grey stones rose into an equally grey sky, like jagged teeth protruding from the hilltop. She knew the woods swept down the other side of the rise, miles and miles out from the castle. However, her view of them was blocked by the thick, wooden fence Dynamis had built years ago. Its wood was so dark it was nearly black and it connected to the east and west walls of the castle, rising higher than the tallest turrets, then raced off in both directions, shrinking into the distance. The courtyard was all stone, no plants or small garden beds like in Castle Eishun. The main doors were thrown open to the chilly night air. Beyond the threshold small torches tried in vain to light the hallway. The shadowy corridor gave her chills.
She already wanted to go home.
The footmen scattered about the doorway rushed forward to open the carriage door and remove their bags before leading the wagon around to the sheds.
Konoka slipped her shoes back on, but the necklaces and hairpins went under the seat cushion. She had no time nor wish to replace them.
A footman in a grey tunic, perfectly matched to the castle stones, helped her down from the carriage. At her own castle, in the company of her own people, she would have ignored his proffered hand. It was two tiny steps to the ground, after all. But here, in Castle Dynamis, with every move she made being scrutinized, she took the man's thin white fingers and nodded thanks.
Above them the clouds rolled over each other, their grey showly becoming black as night draped itself over the land. It was said the skies over Castle Dynamis were always dark and cloudy. Today was no exception. Some attributed it to Sir Dynamis housing a Plague-touched. They said her presence brought darkness, even evil to the building and its inhabitants. Konoka knew this was nonsense, because the skies over her own castle were rarely dark at all and they housed a Plague-touched as well.
Others said it was Dynamis himself that brought the dark, with his dabblings in alchemy and sorcery, though, and this theory she could not dismiss so easily...
Either way, she didn't want to be there. Why had King Mynan forced her and Eishun's presence at this game? Two more weeks and they would have been gone to the north where her grandfather waited.
Instead, she was swept off to Castle Dynamis to watch a bunch of haughty bluebloods vie for the role of murderer. Oh, what a cruel mistress Fate could be.
Nekane and Konoka's other maids leapt from their own wagon and immediately started fussing over her hair and where were her jewels and why was her dress wrinkled and OH BY THE STARS, her hair!
She waved them off. She was there. She was being good. She could look however she damn well wanted to look.
The footmen led Eishun into the castle and she followed, Nekane close to her side.
Tapestries depicting dark scenes from ancient legends hung all down one side of the hall and stuffed animal heads lined the other side, mounted on thick black plaques.
"Seems Sir Dynamis is quite the hunter," she muttered to Nekane.
The maid swung her long blonde hair back over her shoulder. "I've heard he was a master Hound until he acquired this Underdog and started Hosting."
"We'd better keep very close to Father then. He hates sport hunters and rarely thinks before speaking."
"Yes, My Lady."
At the end of the hall was a much better lit room. Inside dinner was laid out on an insanely large and perfectly round table. Four men and two women were sitting together on the far side. In the largest chair, the one framed with fur and silk, sat the lord of the castle himself.
Dynamis's smile widened when his footman announced Eishun and Konoka's arrival. He rose, his ice blue robes-the only hint of color she'd seen so far- rustling as he spread his arms wide. "Duke Eishun! You grace us all with your presence, sir."
Konoka tried to keep her face under control. She hadn't expected him to look so young. She knew Dynamis was older than her father, but his long, black hair had no grey and his skin was smooth and unwrinkled. Two feet taller than Eishun, and much more muscular, he seemed to tower over the table. Despite his cordial smile, she found herself pausing in the doorway. The left side of his face, from his hairline to his upper lip, was covered by a white bone mask. Where his eye should be was painted a light brown tiger eye that quite nearly matched his real one.
She'd heard he had his face burned when he was a young boy, before his knighting. They said he'd had the mask made and never removed it. No one had ever mentioned how incredibly creepy it looked.
"Sir Dynamis," Eishun circled the table, clasping the lord's forearm. "Well met."
"Indeed," Dynamis replied. "Please sit! Enjoy the food and company. Your journey here is a long one."
Her father sat and Konoka took the seat beside him, scanning the group. She was slightly surprised to recognize her closest noble neighbor and old friend, Ayaka.
The young blonde waved across the table and Konoka flashed her a smile.
"I believe you know Lady Ayaka, daughter of Marquess Yuki." Dynamis said. Eishun nodded to her. "This is Viscount Takahata and his lovely Lady Shizuna." The tall blonde man rose and bowed politely. The blonde woman to his left gave them a friendly smile. "And Marquess Akashi." The black haired Marquess raised a hand. "And lastly, Sir Rakan." The last man was huge with wild white hair and muscles so thick she figured he could probably crush her in the crook of his elbow.
"This is Duke Eishun and his daughter, Lady Konoka." Dynamis finished, taking a sip from his goblet. "When King Mynan sent word that he had convinced you to join us this time around I thought it was surely a jest. I've never heard of you participating in any Hounding."
"Well, I haven't," Eishun admitted, shrugging it off. "But only because I'm a horrible rider and rarely good with the bow. Give me a sword and steady ground any day, I say!"
The nobles laughed, falling to other topics.
Ayaka left her seat and circled the table, taking the seat at Konoka's other side. Konoka flashed a glance back at Nekane before she turned to talk to her friend. Nekane immediately took a few steps closer to the table, ready to step in if Eishun said anything wrong. Appearances, appearances, she thought, sighing inwardly.
"So have you heard?" Ayaka said, leaning in.
Konoka was surprised. Ayaka wasn't usually the type for idle gossip. She preferred topics like fashion and politics. "Heard what?" she asked, playing along.
"Young ladies have been disappearing not far from here." Ayaka's voice was suddenly barely above a whisper. Her eyes flickered across the table for a moment. "One of them was Marquess Akashi's daughter, Yuna."
Konoka glanced at the man. Only then did she notice the dark circles under his eyes and the lines around his mouth. "She just disappeared?"
Ayaka shrugged one shoulder. "He told my father that Yuna wasn't happy about having to attend the Houndings. One day she went out riding and just never returned. Normally they'd just say she ran away, but she's the seventeenth girl to go missing around these parts in the past year."
Konoka hissed lightly between her teeth. "Seventeen? Do you think it's the Moonlighters?"
Moonlighters were the tribes that lived to the south of Mahora. They were known to sneak into Mahora at night and take things, and even sometimes people, spiriting them away under the cover of darkness. They had odd beliefs and even odder traditions, like embedding rocks into their skin and dancing the night before a battle until they could barely move anymore.
"I don't know," Ayaka said. "Could be. But the Moonlighters have never taken so many people. There's only been three people in history who have been proven to have been taken by them, and two of them were willing runaways. And they never take more than people can afford. Like a farmer that has thirty sheep would only have ten taken. People would have food missing from their stores, but not enough that they couldn't easily replace it in a week." Ayaka shook her head, her blonde hair tossing. "No, this is something different."
Konoka frowned. How strange...
Ayaka suddenly froze, her eyes focused on the farthest corner of the room. Konoka turned to see what had captured her friend's attention.
At first she saw nothing, then the torch light caught on something small and bright blue. An eye. An eye so startlingly blue that it seemed to pierce through the air and darkness between them, arresting her gaze. As she continued to stare she could make out the faintest hint of a person's body.
Dynamis had noticed her and Ayaka's distraction. He turned in his seat, smiling. "Ah. You've decided to join us tonight. Come closer." Now everyone turned, conversation halting completely. Even the footmen by the door grew still.
The eye moved slowly closer until a shadow detached itself from the wall and glided towards them, all dressed in black. The shadow steadily gained form as it neared, becoming a girl with pale white skin, one black eye, and one shockingly blue. She stopped just before she was fully visible, leaving most of herself in the cloaking darkness.
"Everyone," Dynamis said, his voice a soft hiss of sound in the silence. "This is my Underdog, Setsuna."