It's warmer outside than it is in the castle. Hunter weaves through creaking wood, boots crunching already-tattered leaves, and the world is closing in the thick of branches. Trees huddle together around him. They tower like eggshell white hallways, but stand with a distinct steadiness, one that grounds the tremble in his step.
And auburn leaves shroud him in shadows, scattering with the evening breeze in a delicate flutter. He breathes in when they bunch around the sky, close in as the wind settles, a blanket of comfort that shuts him out from it all. There is no need to think, no need to feed the cogs in his brain itching to spin and grind a headache into his skull. They plead for something to latch onto, a reason to methodically engineer escapes and excuses, but there's no fuel. Just one foot in front of the other. So they keep whirring, and he keeps walking.
The wind comes and goes. It picks up again, lifting away lonesome branches. Golden light pours down, washes away the shadows Hunter slinks through, and he double-takes his surroundings warily. Despite his lonesome trudge through the forest, every rustle of a bush makes him more jumpy. A squirrel runs past, and he nearly trips on his own feet. What he presumes are owls coo drearily, and he can never pinpoint where exactly it comes from.
Hunter is reminded of nights spent weaving past patrols for leftover snacks, missions wasted sifting through crowded towns that bore eyes into his unfamiliar presence, waiting until he trips on his cape. He can't help the brisk urgency in his step. These are grounds he's only seen as a distant dot out his window, a speck of colour among the Titan's remains.
He wishes it could've stayed that way.
The nauseating buzz of crickets, the endlessly loud croaks of frogs, low hanging branches that smack and scratch him in the face — every single tree root that he trips over and is followed by chirping laughter. It's inescapably infuriating, and he can hardly focus on the task at hand. He wants to go back. Most noise at the castle was muffled with gaping rooms of distance, and spiralling staircases you can't see the bottom of. Hunter would give anything to go back. Because this? This is just a clusterfuck of teeth-grating white noise, all at the same time, clashing and arguing right in his face.
Hunter resigns into an exasperated sigh. His stomach churns, and a pang of resignation shifts his gaze downward. The smothering, unreachable ceilings are gone. They are sickening, but they are familiar— patterned designs traceable, always too tall for him to reach. Only yellows and blues float above him, meandering, and the clouds are far away. The simplicity is laughable, breathable. He's never felt so small. Maybe the sky will collapse in on him, too.
And with the narrow walls replaced by endless trees, he still finds himself shaking. Knee sore against tattered carpet, molded mask tight against scarred skin. The lingering wind is cold against his face.
His palisman delights at their impromptu nature walk, on the contrary. It's chirping in high-pitched sing-song and hopping around on Hunter's head, talons snagging at his hair — distracting. He winces at every clump of tangled blond that gets caught. It would be easy to just pluck it off and drop it into the air, letting the palisman's wings carry its own weight. But the gears twist until his head buzzes, and his hand trembles with the light weight of his artificial staff.
This is the first time he's seen the cardinal bouncing around so much, he realizes. At least compared to its time spent hidden under his cape, or tucked away in his bedroom. The night it first settled in, Hunter returned to his corridor and saw it sitting atop the barred window, staring out upon the isles, and he wondered why it wouldn't just fly. He made many attempts to explain that it could just go, that it doesn't need to stay, it isn't needed, he doesn't want it around. But it would only fly over to his shoulder and chirp pointless nothings.
It's only a bird, out here. Head darting back and forth, wings stretching in the vast space, and there's more movement than a rigid, wooden staff. He doesn't know if he's okay with it. But it's enough to hold on to. The silence is let be, save for the palisman's babbling and noises of the woods, because if he has nowhere to return right now, nobody to be, at least he has this stupid cardinal.
A twig snaps beneath his foot.
I smell food!
Hunter slaps a hand over his mouth and the voice crack that erupts.
I smell many things, I smell lots of food, I need grub!
The cardinal returns to squawked gibberish, chirping high and low nonsensically. He steadies himself, nearly toppling over in sputtering shock. For a moment, Hunter considers that maybe the lack of sleep and fatigue of stress is finally worming into his head. But then again, this is a creature of wild magic he's talking about. There's probably more that the stupid thing just doesn't feel like revealing until it wants to.
He lifts the palisman onto his hand, its feathers ruffling in his shaky grasp, holding it out in front of him with an exasperated look. It tilts its head. Hunter narrows his eyes.
"You can speak?"
It chitters indiscernibly in response. Hunter pinches the bridge of his nose in an attempt to can the furious words tipping at his mouth. He has a vice grip on the magic staff, and the palisman is lucky it's not his other hand.
"And — and you just spent this whole time messing with me?"
The useless thing stares back at him. There's a pause given, a chance for it to contradict.
A beat of silence.
It leans down to nibble its feather idly, and he rolls his head back with a groan, "Great. Yeah, just only tell me important stuff when you feel like it, I guess."
GRUB!
Before Hunter can spit through clenched teeth, the shade of leaves fades off into a soft field of grass. It yellows in a beeline, passing by a few lonesome trees and large, jutting rocks, until his eyes meet a disastrously cluttered cabin. Hunter narrows his eyes, because is it a cabin? He stares longer, and it starts to look more like a shoddy blacksmith's cottage with a pathetically constructed tower crumbling in the back. Not a favourable place to vacation at, and definitely not a cabin.
The lights are on.
He curses, sliding behind the nearest rock. His heart is pounding again. The gears are whirring. He shuffles through pockets, but the mask is gone. He's jittery, holding the palisman closely as it stays surprisingly quiet, and smiling a little in his trembling unease. Why is he smiling? This is horrible. He doesn't have a plan, only a searing headache. The bags under his eyes sting under the dimming sky. Damn it, the place is right there. They're in there. She's in there. He's already made it, so why does he not feel ready?
"Well, what do you say to a quick snack?" He mutters. Maybe this mission is easier than he thought. Gone for a night, back the next day without a hitch. All the ruminating about being on his own was redundant — he'd been taught better than to complain before even starting. There was no point in dawdling and meticulous planning.
The cardinal bites his finger, and something snaps in him.
It's so, so tempting to squeeze the little shit right there and then. I could do it, I'm the Emperor's right hand, I could do it, I am the nephew of the Emperor, he would do it. Its beak stays clenched on, tugging and squirming in his grip, and his hand doesn't move. Blood flushes to his face, reddening skin as his other hand digs into grass and catches soil in his nails, but his grip never tightens as he trembles. Let go, he wants to scream. Let go, he's too wary of the house and the lights. Before he registers what he's doing, the cardinal flutters away in a frenzy from his loosened hand, flapping itself into the air until it's out of arms reach. Hunter's eyes burn as he stares at where it once was, only meeting beaten ground.
There's more bile in his throat. More blood in his mouth when he releases the cheek clenched in his jaw.
It's back on his head, pecking at greasy hair. He feels sick.
"I don't know what birds eat," Hunter blurts, and it's honest, and it's not an apology.
The cardinal doesn't feel a need to respond. There's nothing to say. He doesn't understand his own actions. Doesn't register them as his own. All of the thoughts he shoved away, all of the words he refused to feel washed over him, and then they were gone. He doesn't understand, doesn't want to. He pulls in his knees, wraps his arms around them, tucks his chin in as he shivers. It's not cold. The palisman hasn't left, and it is kind when it ruins his hair.
This isn't food, nobody is home, it chirps, but he can't really make out the words when his eyelids tumble down, and the voice that follows is too high pitched to be a little cardinal.
Luz is reluctant, as careful as she can be, edging around the Golden Guard's curled up body when she raises a stick at it like a morbidly curious kid with a dead mouse. She isn't quick to discard the thought that, yeah, maybe he is dead — head lolling to the side, jaw slack — but his chest still rises and falls in a stutter. At least they won't have to figure out a way to explain that one. Though, she sees the same tatters and rips in his clothes as the night before, some new ones added, and doesn't know what to think of it.
Baffled would be a way to put her state of mind, kind of annoyed would be another. Her clothes still stick awkwardly to her with sweat from the race hardly a hour ago. She has to catch her breath up to her chugging heart every few seconds. Her legs are sore and heavy, hands red and blistered. And with King yelling his head off about an intruder on his grounds, Eda lecturing him and rambling about another random teenager on her lawn at the same time — "Out of anyone, it had to be this pretentious little—"
Luz really can't find it in herself to confront any of the questions she has.
But she does want to know why a familiar face is squawking at her like there's some invisible barrier her pokey-stick better not take a damn step over. Its feathers are puffed out with its chest, and its talons are caught on mangled blond hair. They've been staring at each other rather awkwardly the past few minutes as Luz waits for any sort of words to come out of her mouth, but she's just positively, utterly speechless. It would be kind of pointless to try asking a bird for answers.
Hunter. That's his name. A few feet away from their doorstep, dozed off like it's just any other Tuesday, his apparently new palisman defending him like he's a saint descended from the skies. Considering how she still hadn't put together what in the worldhappened the last time they met, this is a completely separate, even more perplexing puzzle. And she's missing quite a lot of pieces.
"I wish Owlbert cared that much about me," Eda snorts from behind. Luz tilts her head for a moment, offering a chuckle, but there isn't much humour behind it. She doesn't get it. How a palisman bonded so closely to the guy that actively tried to kidnap it, now sacrificing itself in a vulnerable form while he sleeps in plain sight. Thinking of her still-uncarved paliswood pulls her a step back.
"So this is the sad, bad boy you were talking about?"
Luz blinks down at King, who is peeking out from Eda's legs, glaring at the unconscious boy. The cardinal immediately switches its intense staring over to Eda's disinterested gaze, completely ignoring King's attempts at intimidation.
"I don't get why he's here," she finally says, exasperated, exhausted, suspicious, a little concerned. Hardly any time had passed between their last feud, and she'd been so preoccupied with other things that any idea of what to feel about him was shoved in the back of her mind. Now, whether or not she has the energy for it, the question sits right in front of her, and she doesn't get much choice on what to do about it.
Eda is probably thinking of throwing him in a bush, though. The impatient tapping of her heel and crossed arms are itching to discard another problem she doesn't want to deal with. Honestly, the exhaustion seeping in Luz's bones wants to agree with her, get rid of him so she can curl into a blanket ball in her room — but something feels off. Maybe it's the unnatural cry that seeps into the palisman's insistent chirping, or the fresh scratches that litter Hunter's skin, because their truce ended on a confusing note and now he's back without the consciousness to speak.
And with an unenthusiastic realization, Luz is the only one willing to listen to him.
"Oh, no," Eda grimaces, turning to now cross her arms at Luz, "I know that look. Don't you dare tell me to take that mess in my house. He looks like a drowned rat, kid."
She throws her arms in the air, "exactly my point! Plus, you're not the one who's met him. Do you not want to know why he just showed up here? And has a palisman?"
"Not particularly."
"What if he has information about what the Emperor is planning?"
King bounces out eagerly, "CAPTURE THE INTRUDER!"
And the look on Eda's face is unforgettable as she stretches out a long, tired groan.