(A/N: You may be wondering throughout this chapter, "Wait, wasn't Cherit in this fic?" Yes, he was. And no, he's not with them now. As I slung myself into bed at 12:15 AM last night, I remembered that I didn't mention him at all in this chapter, swore for a bit, then rolled over and fell asleep. So how about we say that when Ket told him he could go say Hi to the local Titans he ended up hanging out with them till the storm ended. Because I'm terrible at writing Cherit, despite having a lawn gargoyle named after him.

Prepare for lots of dialogue. Cheers!)

Ch.3

The Balunu Hitihuta

Rain lashed against the filmy windows, filling the low ceilinged cabin with a dull roar. Ket set down the last glass of water in front of Den, having collected drinks for everyone from the tank by the door before sitting down herself. Arrayed around an old oak table worn smooth from countless years of hands and meals, the team was waiting for their guide's explanation of the recent happenings.

"So…." Ket folded her legs under her as she sat and leaned her elbows on the table. "I'm going to be really blunt sometimes and really wordy at others. Feel free to push me for more or tell me to wrap it up, I'm quite known to ramble."

Dante gestured slightly. "We'll try our best not to interrupt. Please, take your time." He assured.

"Thanks." Ket bobbed her head in his direction, hair still dripping rainwater down her back. "Well, anyway. To jump right to the point, the area outside the safe house zone isn't technically of this world. This whole forest is an unstable seam where Huntik and our world overlap."

Her casual statement was met by a bit of commotion. Lok nearly choked on his water, and had put his head on the table as he cleared his lungs. Ket watched him with a slightly amused expression, deigning it enough of an interruption to halt any further speech.

When the teen was done he leaned forward eagerly, eyes bright and determined. "Ket, can people enter or exit Huntik from here? See, my dad is–"

"Oh." The amused grin fell. "Oh. I'm sorry, Lok. I'm afraid it's not that kind of seam.

"See, outside the safe zone, the world of Huntik is all meshed and woven into the earth around us. The Titans you see aren't just essences like the ones in our amulets. It's farfetched to most, but Titans around here have the unique ability to actually breed, grow and eventually return to Huntik proper as energy to start the cycle again. It's similar to what gives my team and me our abilities. But no person who has any ounce of human blood in them has ever been able to push past the entwined ropes of our world and this pseudo-Huntik to reach Huntik proper." Ket cast her eyes down to examine the grains embedded in the table and added softly, "Not without dying anyway."

Lok slumped in his chair as Sophie put a hand on his drooping shoulder. For a brief moment there he thought he had the answer to all his problems, a way to bring his father home. But like all leads it was just another dead end, literally if Ket's last statement was anything to go by.

"We'll figure it out, Lok." Sophie murmured to her partner, gently rubbing his shoulder. "Maybe we can study this seam while we're here. It's a start, right?"

"Yeah…." The boy drew himself up again, gripping the table. He would always have some hope. Maybe the seam would hold some answers for him. "Sorry, Ket. Keep going."

"It's fine, really. I should have remembered your father before I went blurting that out." Ket swiped stray brown hair away from her face again, gathering her thoughts after the slip up.

"So are you not human or something?" Den suddenly asked.

"Speaking of blurting things out…." Zhalia shook her head. Manners wasn't either of their strong suits, but at least Zhalia knew when to keep her mouth shut. "Den, we've got to work on that."

Ket just laughed. "It's all good. I'm human. But I'm sorta not. It's got a bunch of history behind it, but everyone on the team here are what's known as a balunu hitihuta.

"See, way back when Florida was populated by native peoples, the tribe that covered this area was known as the Timucua. They're the first ones that we know of who protected the seam from people who would cause it and the Titans and animals within harm. They were Seekers, at least most of them were, and due to the convergence of worlds here the priests and shamans who were dedicated to protecting this forest began to experience weird abilities. It became apparent that those who had the abilities couldn't leave for long periods of time without risking their lives, so they formed a protected village here by making a pact with what they believed were the natural spirits that resided in the forest.

"After a while the descendants that didn't have the same gifts left and western colonizers started taking over Florida. People got shifted around and bloodlines were mixed but the location of this forest and the zone was never leaked to those outside the original branches that left the woods. When a balunu hitihua dies, their ability is transferred to a newborn that in the bloodline of one of the shaman's descendants, and the power is continued on."

"Wait, I'm sorry, back up." Sophie held up a hand. Although more spiritually linked and wired to the natural world in a different way, the very basics of this sounded very familiar. "You're saying that this balunu hitihua ability is a bloodline power, like the Casterwill family powers?"

Ket leaned back a little and planted her feet on the ground, bobbing her head side-to-side with a low hum as she contemplated her response. "Yes…and no again, I'm afraid. If you could roughly translate balunu hitihua from Timucuan, you'd get something along the lines of 'one possessed by the spirits for life.' Somewhere along the line of protectors, Titans somehow fused to the spirits of four of the shamans here. They passed on innate abilities that we have from birth. When we die, it's moved on to someone else in the descendant line, but it won't always be someone that's directly related to us." She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder, in the direction of the cabin where the two creatures had disappeared. "Mama Cat was born in North Carolina, Marko was born in Spain and Cor was born in Norway of all places. I'm the only one in the cycle right now to have been born and raised here, but I was adopted from parents who lived who knows where."

The room went silent for a moment.

"So you're possessed?" Den asked cautiously, having flashed back to a few choice movies when the term had been brought up. It was an honest question. Even after less than a year in the Seeker world he was beginning to realize that the fantasy world of Hollywood and the world he got to experience were sometimes balanced on a very blurred line.

"I can't spin my head around and climb walls without Spidertouch if that's what you're asking."

"Oh. Okay." Mollified, Den sat back. "Good."

Dante put down his water, seeing the near predatory gleam in Zhalia's eye. She would probably be asking the poor guide rapid fire questions about the possible genetic links to Titans and Seeker magic later, but for now she was holding her tongue.

The detective had his own questions though. "I read in the files that you each have specific abilities particular only to yourselves. Is that true?"

Ket nodded. "All true. They didn't list them, did they?" Her voice had a slight edge to it.

"No. Not even in the classified files. Something about extreme risk if subverted to the wrong causes."

"Oh good. They took us seriously this time." The guide relaxed somewhat with an easy grin. "I'm sure you all are aware of how some Seekers, our present company of the Casterwill Heiress included, can sense magic and powers. If I'm not mistaken, your elders can even occasionally pinpoint and name the auras they feel after decades of practice, correct?" Sophie nodded, suspicion worming its way into her mind again. Casterwill related information was few and far between. "Well, not to brag or anything, but when I said I see things, I meant I can see powers, auras, anything magic related. And name them. Like…first try, no mistake, this is that, no ifs ands or buts."

The Team stared.

Ket stared back, comically attempting to bug her eyes out when the silence stretched too long for her current tastes.

Dante raised his eyebrows after the moment of quiet contemplation, impressed but skeptical. "That's rare. Titans and amulets as well?" He phrased his question carefully, wanting some proof of the young woman's claim but not wanting to sound offensive in asking for it.

Ket gave a somewhat sly smile, picking up on what he was truly asking. "Lok didn't bring his Baselaird on this mission. He's got Springer, Kipperin, Arawn the Hunter, and Stone Sage." She tilted her head in the direction of the Irish Seeker, stray wisps of still-damp hair falling in front of her forehead again. "Nice choices. Be careful about using Stone Sage around here. The only rock we have a lot of is limestone, and you don't want him tapping into that and making a sinkhole. Use Springer to pick up a trail back to HQ or Kipperin to get above the trees to find it again if you get lost."

"I'll keep that in mind." Lok returned Ket's grin. "That's a pretty cool ability! Can you see amulets through walls or traps? I thought only Castwerill Seekers could do that sort of thing!" He toned down his enthusiasm when he felt Sophie's fingers digging into his arm under the table. "I mean, your team is really lucky to have you along on retrieval missions if you can."

Ket shrugged at this, oblivious to the glower Sophie was shooting Lok from the corner of her eye. "It gets fuzzier with more layers of material. I can pick up the aura of amulets embedded in quarries when we look for fossils, but it takes some digging to know what it is." She pointed to her eyes. "There are four different abilities. I'm what the Timucua called their Mucu shaman. It's clichéd and called the Sight. I've always had it and been aware of it as long as I remember, and since my parents were well connected to the Seeker group at the state history museum they figured out what it was early and helped me keep it under wraps.

"When I turned eighteen the Sight fully awoke and I started feeling the effects of being away from the seam. It was hell going back and forth from school and here every day until I graduated and moved in permanently."

"Everyone else in this place is like you?" Zhalia asked, finally breaking her silence. "The four of you?"

"Yeah. I know what you're probably thinking, that we'd invaluable if we took international missions locating lost amulets of powerful Titans and the like.

"Trouble is, with our abilities and our physical limits on how far and long we can go without returning to the seam, any chance of some group getting a hold of us and trying to force us to hunt Titans could be really messed up. And not just because we'd be leaving the seam and the inhabitants here unprotected, it'd be physically dangerous for us after a few days." Ket spread her hands out, remembering with a sour taste the first few symptoms the Awakening had put her body through about four days after her eighteenth birthday. "I'm talkin' fevers, spitting up blood, literally blinding migraines, even multi organ failure if we're out long enough. It starts out like having Dengue fever, then getting your wisdom teeth pulled without fun drugs and getting four dry sockets, following it up with necrosis and cysts of the liver with a side of lung flukes."

She glanced around the faces eyeing her with odd expressions after such a description. "I was going to major in infectious disease before I started showing signs of Awakening. I don't get to talk about it much."

Sophie scooted her chair forward, still rather interested in the effects of the so-called 'seam' on their powers. If it was possible to find a way around it, the first step would be to find out what caused the forest to react violently. "Is the meshing with Huntik what caused the reaction when Den started saying power names?"

Ket shrugged, but a glimmer in her eye showed her own interest in the topic. "That's a subject for debate around here. For one, when we do use powers outside the safe zone, after much preparation and plenty of padding, they're way more amped up. Our Titans can be summoned safely without consequence in the forest, and they're more powerful too. But any sort of aggressive power triggers a response like the one you all saw today, and just to be clear, that was a very mild response."

The guide put her finger up, delaying Sophie's input. "Hold on, we've spent a lot of time around here talking about this and I never get to tell it to anyone new, so bear with me.

"If it was just interaction with Huntik that causes this, then why would it be an adverse reaction? The mingling obviously supercharges our natural Seeker powers, indicating a positive association with Huntik instead of a negative one. Our closest guess is that it's latent Titan essences, ancient ones like the ones fused to our spirits, that were placed to protect the forest that covers the physical mesh of the seam. That or it's actual native spirits, completely different from our Seeker magic, who are coexisting with the Titans and want to protect the sanctuary that the seam provides."

Sophie was about to ask another question on the seam's stability when Den suddenly let out a massive yawn.

"Ah, jeez. Sorry, man." The teen shook his head vigorously. The rain and humidity had nearly flatted his usually spiked hair, giving him a bedraggled look. "Jet lag just bit me."

Ket laughed and pushed back her chair. "Hey, you all walked probably five to ten miles today. We never really measured the hike. Afternoons around here are usually time for a little siesta because of the heat and the rain, so I'm not offended at all." She stood and waved the team up. "Come on. Enough chatter for now. I'll show you all the sleeping area in here, and if any of you wake up before ten tonight I might have some fried cottonmouth for you to try as a true Florida initiation. No pressure though!"

No one complained about the beds being hammocks, the plastic snap boxes for their bags, or the steady drum of rain sounding like grass brushes on snares through the thick thatched roof. By the time Ket darted across the muddy courtyard to her own cabin, most of the team was already asleep.