Whumptober 2023 - Day 2
Prompts: "I'll call out your name, but you won't call back." / Delirium. / "They don't care about you."
Character: Hunter (The Owl House)
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Hunter couldn’t move and he was thankful for that, but he felt himself slipping away. He was laying on his back and it was cold, the ground beneath him harder than stones, more jagged than bones. Every time his lungs gave up air, he could see it materializing in the darkness, and Hunter half feared it would be the last evidence of his life. Something only he could witness before giving into the darkness that was starting to suffocate him.
Above him, the Titan’s skull groaned and splintered. Voices ricocheted, agonizingly familiar. His friends were still up there trying to stop the Day of Unity. Gus had been so vocal at first, so defying against the monster that Belos became, but whatever memories the illusionist had ambushed him with had rendered Gus speechless. Even after Hunter pushed him aside, even after Belos altered his attacks to Hunter, crushing his palisman and smacking the grimwalker off the side of the bridge. Hunter had heard every one of his friends cry out except for Gus.
Gus knew what Hunter was. That was the only thought inside Hunter’s mind as he fell into darkness, unconsciously clutching at air, seeking Flapjack. But none of his friends came to his rescue. Not Flapjack’s wings, Willow’s vines, or Luz’s light.
When he hit the ground, Hunter ached for reprieve from the pain that was surely worse than death. He’d never come close to drowning, but he imagined that this was what it felt like. Searing lungs and a cracking chest, fracturing more every time he tried to take in air, unable to even whimper or wheeze. The sound of his ribs cracking was enough to make Hunter swallow back bile, putting even more pressure on his throat, provoking pallidity to blanket his sight.
He didn’t know how much time had passed since then. The Titan was not sympathetic enough to allow Hunter to slip into unconsciousness after enduring so much pain. After years of abuse, the Titan had never been sympathetic enough to grant Hunter such a thing. Perhaps it was just his heritage. Perhaps grimwalkers just weren’t meant to faint. They were meant to keep fighting and enduring and obeying.
“Help,” he whined.
How pathetic he sounded, using a voice octaves higher than Hunter knew possible, fringing on the edge of a whisper. Every time he spoke, his vision went white.
“Help…!”
Something clattered beside him. It made Hunter shiver, knowing that he hadn’t heard anything fall from the height he’d been pushed from.
Despite the darkness that enveloped him, Hunter knew what lay around his body. The clattering only confirmed it. Masks and bones and torn attire from previous Golden Guards were perched in every corner of this cave. Reminders of what he was and always would be. Dying down here had always been his fate.
“Emperor?” Hunter whispered. “Belos? Please…”
Only Belos could save him now, though Hunter knew deep down that it wouldn’t happen. He was already damaged inside and out. A tainted mind and broken body. But how badly Hunter wanted to live. How terribly he wanted to try.
The clattering sounded again.
“F-Flap?”
No. Flapjack wouldn’t be all the way down here. Unless in pieces and scraps, strewn along the ground like the grimwalkers who had died decades and centuries ago.
This realization made Hunter’s chest seem to buckle, caving in with the realization that Flapjack would never fly or whistle again. He had seen the little bird burst in Belos’ barbarous grasp. He had heard the sound of wood splinter and break, his first friend’s final cry. Now all he could do was dwell on the life he had failed to give his palisman. The life Hunter himself would also never be able to have. So maybe this was fair. Maybe it was karma.
“Please…” Hunter mumbled.
The clattering grew louder, morphing into footsteps that circled around Hunter, crushing bones and stomping over the uneven ground. Hunter began to shake.
“W-Who’s there?”
Every fiber of his being feared it was Belos, so why did Hunter hold out hope that at the same time, it might be? Belos was a powerful witch, with the will of the Titan engulfing his vitality, perhaps enough of it to build Flapjack back to life or rid the pain in Hunter’s body. Put him out of his misery for good.
Groaning with effort, Hunter attempted to tilt his head in the direction of the noise, waiting for his vision to bounce back from the whiteness. Gold glinted in the dark. Pale bones peaked out from beneath capes and armor. Every single skull faced him.
“They don’t care about you.”
Belos’ voice made Hunter’s vision go black. Everything disappeared from sight. It seemed that his entire sense of sight was eradicated, like his eyes had rolled back into his head, opening on absolute nothingness.
“Won’t you make another?” Hunter whimpered.
“When you join them, they will not grieve for you. They will not welcome you.” The words fluttered against both of Hunter’s ears. “You are one of them, but what are the entirety of you all? Pieces of a person who deserves to be extinct.”
Extinct?
The voice vibrated in the depths of his skull. It was tranquilizing and terrifying.
“Congratulations, Hunter. I suppose you are different after all. Special in the sense that you are the last grimwalker.”
Hunter said nothing else. Unsatisfied, Belos seemed to storm away, rattling his brain with every stomp of his foot. Dwelling on the words left Hunter feeling utterly sorrowful and spiritless.
The interaction had been like Belos’ voice, stuck only inside Hunter’s head. It had not been real.
Hunter was dying. Hunter was daydreaming.
But he hoped that his subconscious was right. Being the last grimwalker would save so much heartache for those who might come after him. In a harrowing, twisted way, it was an opportunity for him to be special, too, which was all he had ever wanted to be for his Emperor.
Even in the pits of hell, feeling the heart in his chest stuttering and slowing, the bones in his body tensing and muscles tempering, Hunter hoped that he would be the last of his kind, if only to save the creatures that had died in order to bring him to life. If only to be selfless to them, like Flapjack had tried to be selfless for Hunter.
