Chapter Text
The first time it happens, he’s six years old. He doesn’t remember being five or three, but that’s normal, that’s just how memory works.
And it’s his fault, really. Uncle just wanted to eat dinner, and Hunter should have been happy to be in his presence and just eat instead of constantly nagging the Emperor. Should have hurried up and eaten what was on his plate, Uncle’s curse wouldn’t have to punish him if he just shut up and did what he was told.
So when Hunter finally manages to stop sobbing hysterically and approaches his uncle to say he’s sorry, he really is. And Belos sees it, his face softening immediately. He looks at the gashes on Hunter’s hands and actually winces. “Oh, just look at that,” he says, his voice serious. “It must hurt.”
It does.
Uncle shakes his head slightly, tsking. “You can’t go on acting like a child, do you understand, Hunter?”
Hunter doesn’t, not really, since he is a child. But he nods fervently, trying not to sniffle and instinctively balling his hands into fists.
“You must learn," Uncle carries on in that gentle voice of his. "When you fail, it’s not just me who’s disappointed. You disappoint the Titan as well. You can do so much better than that. We don’t want you hurt, you know that, right?”
The blood is pooling in Hunter’s fists. The slashed palms ache, but he has caused it with his own insolence so just he nods again, and Uncle seems pleased. Everything’s okay.
But he's still waiting. What is he waiting for? Hunter has apologized. Should he apologize again? Uncle hates it when Hunter repeats himself. Belos has already acknowledged his apology, no, has accepted it. Apologizing again would mean Hunter has just ignored Uncle’s words. Hunter swallows nervously, his gaze travelling down, and he sees the first droplets of blood marking the carpet. He shifts slightly, trying to cover the stain with his foot. Uncle is still looking at him expectantly.
“I’m sorry,” he tries, but the Emperor’s expression shifts into one of exasperation. Oh. He shouldn’t have tried to apologize again after all. Stupid, stupid, stupid. So he just stands there, confused and unable to come up with the words Uncle is expecting of him. How stupid can one be to fail even at something like that?
Finally, Uncle sighs. “Is there something you would like to ask, Hunter?” He says, and, surprisingly, he doesn’t even sound a bit impatient.
But Hunter still has no idea what he’s supposed to do. Uncle wants him to do something, and he wants to do it badly, he’ll do it, really, anything. He just doesn’t know what it is. It's the second time in an hour he's screwing up. All he had to do was shut up and eat. Tears well in his eyes, and he tries not to blink so that they don’t spill and make things worse.
But Uncle is kind, much kinder than Hunter deserves, so he just sighs again. “Hunter," he says slowly. "If you want that healed, you must ask. People won’t help you just because they see you need it.”
Oh. Uncle wants to help him! Hunter should have known. It’s so obvious.
“Lord Belos,” he says, and his voice doesn't even tremble. “Would you please fix my hands? They’re hurting.”
In an attempt to make up for how long it has taken him to understand what was required of him, he hastily puts his hands forward, opens up his sliced palms, and the carpet is immediately ruined.
But Uncle isn’t angry. Just hums gently, makes a slightest movement, and the welts stop bleeding in a blink of an eye. Just like that. They don’t disappear, but where would be a lesson in that if there was nothing to remember it by?
Uncle smile is soft. “You need to offer something in return,” he explains.
Of course. How could Hunter not think of that, that’s how people interact. Stupid. But he has nothing to offer. The Emperor has everything. There’s nothing, nothing of any worth Hunter could give him. Unless—
If Uncle has everything, then it’s not about him wanting to gain something. It’s about teaching Hunter a lesson. It’s about Hunter sacrificing something of value, right?
“There— there’s,” he stammers. He really doesn’t want to do this, but it’s not like he has a choice. He’s brought this upon himself. Uncle waits patiently. “There’s this toy you gave me, and it’s pink and it has a funny hat. I’ve been taking good care of it.” Hunter gulps. “Do you— do you want it, my liege?”
Belos laughs. Hunter thinks it’s the first time he’s heard that sound. That can't be right, though. It nice and it's good-natured, and Hunter knows that even though he has said something wrong again, Uncle’s not angry with him.
“I don’t want your toy, Hunter. Keep it, I have no need for it." The Emperor crouches next to him, smiling. "What I need is for you to be better and more disciplined. I want you to make me proud. I want to be able to count on you. Can you do that for me?”
Hunter can do that, of course he can. He’ll be better, oh he’ll be so good. He’ll eat all the vegetables, do all the assignments, help out in the kitchen, and when the time comes, he will train like no scout has ever trained. He'll find all the palismen and never stay awake past bedtime.
“Yes, Lord Belos. I won’t fail you,” he promises with seriousness only a six-year-old can muster. “You won’t be disappointed!”
“Good. I’m glad to hear that.” The Emperor nods. And then he pats Hunter on the head for a few seconds before leaving the room.
Uncle was pleased with him! Even though he has screwed up so badly, at the end of the day Uncle was pleased. Hunter's ecstatic for hours as he tries to clean up the mess he’s made on the carpet. The stains don’t want to disappear, they get lighter but bigger, and so he just smears the blood mixed with water into entirely new spots. It takes him three hours to make the carpet look acceptable. But he has promised to be better, and this is him being better. Responsible for his own mess.
When he finally gets to his bed, he falls asleep fully clothed, too tired to change. He hugs Sprig close to the chest in elation, and it’s like he has been given the toy all over again.
.
The second, the third, and the fourth time it happens, he’s still six. By the age of seven, he finally manages to learn how to navigate around the curse.
He should have done better. He has promised. And he tries, he really does, but somehow instead of not making the mistakes, he learns new tricks to avoid penalty for them. It’s bad. Basically cheating. He should stop giving Uncle the reasons to be disappointed with him, and he tries. Just not hard enough. He keeps on messing up, and the only thing he can do is attempt to mitigate the consequences. So no, he doesn’t tell anybody when he scrapes his knees, falling from a tree he shouldn’t have climbed in the first place. That one time he gets his hands on chocolate lying on the kitchen counter and stuffs all of it into his mouth, he makes sure nobody hears him throw up violently an hour later. And the homework he presents to his tutors is impeccable, even though it takes him much longer to finish it than they think.
He learns how to sneak out to the library past his bedtime and how to get back unnoticed. This is particularly bad, and Uncle would be very angry with him, but Hunter just wants to learn to be able to help. Uncle will surely understand when Hunter finally manages to find the cure. He'll be so proud. When he falls off one of the shelves, Hunter makes sure to hide the books whose pages he has ripped on his way down. If he’s dressed in white, he must be extra careful with the blood running from his nose, for the stains are impossible to remove. He’s a world class expert at sob stifling. He quickly finds out that a swollen ankle hurts less when you put your pillow under your feet, and that nobody will notice you have been up all night reading if you wash the grogginess away with ice cold water. When he oversleeps and doesn’t get to eat breakfast, he doesn’t complain and doesn’t ask for food. The thing is.
The thing is, none of this should have happened in the first place. What he does is basically getting away with stuff that deserves to be punished, and yet he can’t bring himself to face the consequences of his own actions.
“Would you address a coven head in that manner?” Uncle asks after a yet another foolish outburst of Hunter’s. Tantrums, Uncle calls them.
It’s a tricky question, Hunter has learned that by now. Judging by Uncle’s reaction, it’s obvious that what Hunter has said was wrong, so no. He should not speak like that to any head witch. But if he says so, that would mean he has addressed the Emperor in a way he wouldn’t address his underlings. If he answers “yes,” it’s bad. If he answers “no,” even worse. Hunter's breathing gets shallow.
It’s a trap, but there’s a simple way out of this, and Hunter has discovered it recently. He prays to Titan Uncle’s curse hasn’t caught on to that maneuver. “I’m sorry, Emperor. I did not realize my behavior was inappropriate." Not yet, please, please let it work one more time. "If you tell me how I should have acted, I shall endeavor to do so in the future.”
Hunter cringes at the sound of his own words. They sound too big, unnatural. Rehearsed. They are. He has a distinct feeling children should not speak this way, but he hasn’t spoken to any, so he wouldn’t know. The youngest scouts are twice his age. That’s how grown-ups address the Emperor, and that must suffice.
And it works, Titan, it works! Uncle sighs heavily, and he proceeds to explain what Hunter has done wrong. He’s angry, yes, but not furious, and so the curse doesn’t make a guest appearance.
There are other little tricks like that one. For instance, when Uncle demands to know why Hunter cries when even slightly struck, telling him the most simple truth makes him more angry. But if Hunter says that he has snot running down his nose, his breath hitches so annoyingly and his hiccups are there because he’s so sorry he has disappointed the Emperor, it works like a charm. And it’s not lying. Technically.
.
But the other times. Most of the times.
Most of the time, Uncle is kind and patient with him. He asks Hunter about his day, and really listens. Sometimes, Uncle just comes to his room and inquires about the assignments Hunter got from his tutors. Even helps with some of them.
Uncle hums when Hunter is trying to very cautiously make fun of Terra Snapdragon’s mannerisms. He places his hands on Hunter’s shoulders in reassurance when Hunter is struggling with calligraphy, he tousles his nephew’s hair good-humoredly when Hunter is memorizing the intricacies of the lower covens and the names of their heads. Other times, Uncle just peeks through the door to tell the boy goodnight (well, yes, it makes sneaking out to the library more difficult, but that’s on Hunter, isn’t it). They go on walks in the garden, and Uncle tells him the names of the plants. The Emperor brightens up whenever Hunter demonstrates that he remembers past lessons.
When in a particularly good mood, he tells Hunter stories about how he has defeated the wild witches. Sometimes, there’s another figure in these narratives, a faithful and valiant companion who helps Belos. The Golden Guard is brave, reliable and useful, though he’s not here right now. Uncle doesn’t want to elaborate on that, but Hunter knows exactly what he wants to be when he grows up.
And when Hunter learns he can’t do magic, Uncle isn’t even angry. He just smiles, and there’s not a hint of disappointment to it. He wipes the tears off Hunter’s face, and lifts his nephew’s chin up. Gently explains that other witches would probably get rid of the child, perhaps would have done so years ago. After all, the signs of his condition had all been there for quite some time. But he won’t do that. He has taken Hunter in and raised him, and so he’ll still keep the boy at his side. Yes, Hunter may be lacking, he may be missing a piece, but it’s nothing he couldn’t compensate for if he just applied himself. Hunter is to go out there and be the best scout in the coven, in spite of his weakness. If you work hard enough, you can be enough. You’re still very special, Uncle is still expecting you to outdo the rest of them. You have it in you to be worth something, you can be if you try. So you make him proud. There have been exceptions made for you, and so you must be exceptional. Uncle trusts you, Uncle cares for you even with your ailment, so off you go to finally earn that trust and care.
.
Uncle gives him an expectant look. Hunter swallows, and tries not to choke on spit that is suddenly not there. His mouth is unnaturally dry. It’s a test, just a test. Of course there’s a point to it.
The fire has been started with magic, Hunter has seen it happen, and yet it doesn’t appear magical at all. Certainly doesn’t look like an illusion. Just a normal fire, the flames red and radiating with heat. It would be cheerful, even homely under different circumstances. Hunter’s eyes dart back to his uncle.
“Do it,” Belos just says. He doesn’t sound angry. He doesn’t sound like anything, really.
Hunter nods, and he hesitantly brings his hand closer to the flame. It feels even more real right now. The hand starts trembling slightly. He steadies himself, and once again gives the Emperor a questioning look. Uncle’s lips are just a thin line, and there’s a suggestion that the line might turn into a scowl very soon. Hunter forces himself to face the fireplace again. There must be a reason for this, and it’s not his place to question it.
“Hunter,” comes a low, threatening growl from behind him. Hunter gulps loudly and squeezes his eyes shut. Let’s get it over with. Uncle just wants to see if he’s loyal enough to actually attempt to carry out this order. Probably. Uncle wouldn’t let anything happen to him, so it’s okay. It’s okay.
He moves his hand painfully slowly, but he’s still not being stopped. The heat gets difficult to stand. Okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. He bites into his lip when the flames start licking his fingers, but it doesn’t stop him from screaming out. It hurts, it hurts like nothing has ever hurt before. It feels like the skin and the muscles are breaking, cracking, curling and peeling off his bones. Bile rises in his throat, he’s choking, and it’s his flesh that he smells burning. He tries to yank the hand back, but a dark figure is suddenly there, grabbing his wrist and keeping it in place for eternity. “Uncle, please!” Hunter wails, trashing against the claws that refuse to let go of him.
In hindsight, he must have imagined it. There’s no way this was how it happened. Uncle must have been helping him. Hunter has no idea what had possessed him to put his hand in the fire like that in the first place. Still, when Uncle carries him into the infirmary, Hunter’s entire frame shaking with violent sobs, and the healer very pointedly doesn’t ask any questions while wrapping the bandages around his fingers, all Hunter can really feel through the haze of pain is disbelief.
.
Titan knows Hunter is doing everything he can. He is. The other scouts don’t treat him seriously. He mostly yells at them, not really to assert dominance but because he’s not sure what else to do. They’re all just beginning the training, and yet he is already an outcast. Granted, he’s younger than the rest of them, and his interpersonal skills could use some improvement. Yes, they’re twice his size. It’s okay, Hunter strains his muscles, breaks some of his bones, and sometimes throws up in his mouth just a little, but he’s never the last one on the finish line. He’s never the first one either.
There are some advantages to not relying on magic. Nobody expects their opponent to go for their ankles when they watch out for a spell circle you were supposed to draw with your hand. And when Hunter gets a training wand, he’s the first one to master any spell. He’s done his reading up, he knows every little gesture and nuance. With a proper tool he can see the magic come to life, and he’s doing it, he’s doing it, he’s the one doing it.
The wand is a game-changer, and Hunter suddenly stops barely making it. He’s the first one to get back from the top of the mountain, and yes, he passes out the moment he gets there, and yes, maybe his refusal to stop going and his complete disregard for the way the joints are actually supposed to bend had something to do with it as well. But mostly, he’s just really motivated. The majority of the scars and frostbites heal quickly anyways. He wears the rest of them like badges of honor.
Uncle notices, and personally sees to Hunter getting his first artificial staff. Now he can be useful, no longer a disappointment to the Emperor or the regiment. His technique is unusual—the past years have made sure that his first instinct is to flee, not to fight back. At first, it’s a hindrance, that inherent need to curl up into a ball or just run away because lashing back would be hopeless and, well, bad. It takes him a few months to accept that this instinct is not going anywhere, and so he must take it into account and turn it into an advantage. He uses it to teleport away from the immediate threat and to gather his thoughts in the fraction of a second it buys him. By the time he materializes, he’s prepared to hit his opponent, and by the time the opponent hits back, Hunter is already jumping away so that he can get his panic under control. He gets really good at it.
He does that once in the throne room, acting purely on instinct when Uncle’s curse flings at him. After that stunt, he’s not allowed to hold his staff during the audiences. It’s only fair.
By the time he’s twelve, he goes on patrols and carries out missions for the coven, and now the other scouts have to listen to him, even though his voice may be breaking a bit. He’ll grow out of it. It’s a shame the head witches treat him like a menace, though. He really looks up to them. Lilith Clawthorne has started out really young, Hunter’s sure her perspective on things would be invaluable. Maybe she understands how difficult it can get. But all of their interactions are disastrous, and whenever he offers help or wants to just talk to her, she gets furious. It’s a good thing he has never tried to get her to sign his coven recruitment poster. Hunter gets a feeling she doesn’t really like him, whatever her reasons may be.
Well, that’s a really stupid thing to wonder about, isn’t it. She’s a powerful, talented witch, why would she even bother talking to someone who has no ounce of magic to himself?
But if he works harder, one day she’ll talk to him as an equal. As if he were a witch. He could learn so much from her. He still needs to learn to be useful, he craves knowledge like his life depends on it. But it’s not like that, you see, it’s not for selfish reasons. He has to know what happened to Uncle to undo it. He must learn everything there is about all kinds of magic.
Oh. Slip of the tongue. No, not all kinds, of course.
Uncle really wouldn’t be happy about the small part at the back of Hunter’s mind still insisting that all kinds of magic are fascinating. Hunter tries to silence it, he knows only bad things can come out of this. That kind of talk lures Uncle’s curse out, makes it angry. The curse is drawn to Hunter, this much is obvious. It manifests itself when he fails, when he reports that the mission was unsuccessful again, when he asks another stupid question, when he doesn’t bite his tongue in time. It must feel him being nervous and guilty. Sometimes, he brings it to the surface just by fidgeting next to Uncle or by gulping too loudly, and that means that it knows. The curse knows he’s been thinking about wild magic. It responds to his rotten core, and to be honest, it responds accordingly. It was wild magic that hurt Uncle, and now it reacts to Hunter’s disobedience, lashing out, and it must hurt Uncle so much because it hurts, it hurts when Hunter’s thrown off the stairs and gasping for air, when all he can feel is pure terror at the distorted form of what is supposed to be Belos, when it pins him to the floor with a spike that has fortunately missed his collarbone, when the tendrils yank at his ankles and he hears the bone snap and he’s too afraid to get sick all over the floor at the sound, when his cheek gets slashed from jaw to eye socket and he’s pretty sure his molars are peeking out through the shreds of skin, and it hurts so much, and he did that to himself, really, and it just. Won’t. Stop. Bleeding.
But. Aside from that. It’s great. Terrific, really, Uncle is pleased with the progress Hunter is making, and Hunter can finally try to start repaying for the Emperor’s kindness. He’s told he’s going to be the youngest scout to be named the Golden Guard, and that must mean something, right? He will finally be able to pull the rank on anyone who tries to ban him from the restricted parts of the library. They’ll respect him, all of them. They won’t have a choice.
Uncle enters his room on the eve of the ceremony, and stays there for almost half an hour. They don’t talk about anything crucial, Hunter has already been given all the necessary instructions. He has familiarized himself with the duties of the Golden Guard years before being appointed one.
“Nervous?” The Emperor of the Boiling Isles asks him with a smirk.
Hunter shouldn’t admit to weakness so freely, but Uncle expects him to be truthful at all times, so he just nods.
“You do realize I wouldn’t have chosen you if I didn’t believe you were up to the task, Hunter?”
Well, that should not be a novel thought, and yet he feels surprised. Uncle picks up on it, and just smiles gently before he continues: “You have come a long way. Yes, there’s still a lot you need to work on, but I see a lot of potential in you. The Titan does too.”
“Thank you, Emperor,” Hunter says tightly, not sure what level of formality is required of this interaction. Belos pats him slightly on the back, and Hunter manages not to flinch at the movement.
“Uncle will suffice. Tomorrow, you will be the Golden Guard and I will be the Emperor, we’ll have our masks and roles to play. But tonight … We’re just talking.”
“Yes, Uncle.”
Belos takes a look around the room. Hunter should have cleaned up, but he really didn’t have the time, getting back to the castle all bruised and grimy, and having to file the reports. He’s just happy the forbidden texts are stashed under a loose floorboard beneath the bed. He shouldn’t be hiding anything from Uncle, that’s bad, that’s treacherous, and the curse will notice it sooner or later. He’ll get rid of these books, just. Not tonight. Not with the Emperor himself in the room.
But Uncle fishes out Sprig from behind the pillow, and gives the pink frog a short chuckle. “You’ve kept it at this age?” he asks.
Hunter’s face burns with embarrassment for something he has never before considered a possibly bad thing. Perhaps he should shrug to demonstrate he’s not attached to the toy. He’s not a child. Should he shrug? He’s talking to the Emperor, are you supposed to shrug at the Emperor?
He decides against it.
“Well, it was a gift from you, Uncle. And— and it’s a reminder of the promise.”
“What promise?”
“Uh. It’s nothing, really.” Hunter scrambles for words. “You once told me that you needed me to be better, to stop acting like a child and be responsible. You told me I could make you proud. And I promised I would make you proud, Uncle.”
“Hmm,” the Emperor huffs. Some part of Hunter is really disappointed that Uncle doesn’t tell him he has kept the promise. He ignores it. “All of this while I gave you a plush toy?” Belos asks instead, and he sounds baffled.
Hunter looks down. He notices he’s been clenching and unclenching his gloved fists for a while now.
“Well, no. It was … some other time.”
Belos seems genuinely confused. It’s okay, it’s better this way, it’s a good thing Uncle doesn’t remember that day. Here’s the thing: Uncle’s curse messes with his memory. Sometimes Uncle will look at a scar or a bruise, and will ask where did it come from. Other times he’ll say things like “as I’ve told you before,” and tell Hunter something for the first time in his life. Hunter thinks Uncle confuses him with some other person every now and then, but by now he knows better than to say anything. It is what it is. Besides, it wasn't even a bad day. It's a happy memory.
The next day all the coven heads are there. Most of them seem indifferent, but Hunter learns there are varieties to indifference. Lilith Clawthorne’s seems almost forced, and Darius has replaced his usual aloofness with a sad one.
The head of Abomination Coven drinks too much and too quickly during the reception. “Think you will last longer than the previous one?” he asks Hunter at some point. Hunter doesn’t know how to respond, so he just scowls at the man. It has absolutely no effect, given the fact that his face is covered with a mask he has worked so hard to earn.
The uniform is too big at first. He stumbles over the cloak and stuffs his boots with paper so they don’t fall off his ridiculously tiny feet. But he hits a growth spurt in a few months (ow, his bones are aching as if he were back in the training), and it’s just uncanny how the clothes and the boots suddenly fit so perfectly, as if made specifically for him.