On the other side of the portal Hunter watched everything fall apart. Chunks of titan bone broke, floated into the air. Burning light of an impossible sun backlit the Human and the vines braced around her arms. A small shadow lifted from her. The demon she was always with floated up and she grabbed onto it, but the apocalypse was going to take them both.
"We've gotta stick together, we've gotta stick together," the Human fumbled in desperation even as the world tore itself apart. Even though it was impossible. The floor buckled and lifted beneath her feet as her pointless hope cracked when Blight chose to struggle into the chaos to lose herself too. Hunter watched their pathetic little group shatter because they couldn't accept the fact not everyone would make it. Just like he'd seen all the Coven Heads scattered across the magic circle, too blinded by what they'd been promised to realize the truth.
Truth? Something horrible inside Hunter was twisting up, rising and flaring, thousands of injustices swelling like a silent roar in his chest until he could feel the curve of his lip snarl over pointed canines. He saw massive pillars separate in half as if it were nothing while Willow and Gus prepared to dart through the portal to help the others; in three seconds they'd be on the wrong side again.
This was stupid.
He watched utter destruction rain down on the group of friends. He'd known these people for what, two months? He was the outsider. He was the one who didn't belong.
The palisman staff manifested in his fist. No time to express feelings surging through every scrap of his wretched existence. Regret, failure, pain, strength, so many things, and he only got two words.
"Sorry Willow."
And then he clutched her shoulder and pulled with all the fury roaring inside him, using the momentum to launch off her, throwing her and Gus to the dirt of the human realm. Reality blinked out. It reappeared filled with Luz the Human. For that instant Hunter hovered weightless in front of her.
In one fell swoop he pushed the demon into her arms, bunched both legs, and kicked her straight in the stomach.
He'd remember Willow and Gus' horrified expressions for a long time, right before their friends crashed into them, and the door shut.
Portal pieces exploded. Searing cuts splintered over his arms, shards of glass and wood, gears, tubing, mechanical bits no witch alive on the isles could ever hope to replicate. The portal was gone.
They were gone.
Good, he thought, as he fell, the madness of the Collector echoing behind him.
Good.
