Chapter Text
Trying to escape on horseback had backfired. Running the whole way through the woods would have been impossible, but riding until the horse hurt itself and you had to abandon it had left you sore. It made running now that much harder, that much more painful. Not to mention that the boots you stole off of the body of a dead guard were too big, stuffed with his sweaty, rolled up socks in the toes so you could move. They were a twisted ankle waiting to happen. With each step, the charm hanging from your neck pounded against your sweat-slicked chest like a second heartbeat, matching the steady crash of your desperate escape. Those things only registered in the back of your mind. Terror and panic overrode nearly everything. Every sense, every thought, every bodily function, all of it fell away with the primal instinct of prey. Run. Run. Run, don’t stop.
If you didn’t, they would catch you.
They were getting closer, you could hear them even over the blood roaring in your ears, over the violent thumping of your heart. You had to keep running, you had to somehow find safety. But the ones that pursued you were catching up. Releasing the horse hadn’t bought you as much time as you hoped. You just had to run, keep running, as long as you ran, as long as you didn’t stop-
Your foot, loose in its leather and wool casing, snagged on a root. Just like that, you were tumbling and rolling across the painfully hard ground, the world tilting and spinning until a tree brought you to a painful halt on your side.
Red like fire. Red like blood. Your pain was bright, urgent, poisonous red and you choked on it, sobbing and gasping and shaking as you laid there. Everything hurt, biting and stinging and aching and awful.
You blinked tears from your eyes, trying to clear your sideways view of the woods. How far had you come? Where were you? A haze of light above the tree line was visible, evidence of the civilization you had the vague idea of running towards, but you didn’t know how close it was. You could count on your fingers the number of times you had left your mother’s palace, let alone navigated the frightening wilds of her kingdom in the dark. There was no time to try and puzzle it out. You needed to get moving.
Run. That singular, animalistic impulse had you forcing yourself upright. Onto your knees, your shoulder scraping against the bark. One foot on the ground, the tree ripping into the skin of your arm as you pushed yourself upward. You took a single step forward only to immediately crumple, an agonized yelp tearing out of your throat as you hit the ground again. Something was wrong with your ankle. Broken? Twisted? The pain was so aggressive, so fresh and urgent, that it made you sick. For a second, it was all you could do to sit there and shake, panting as you tried to get ahold of yourself. Then, tentatively, you tried to roll the foot. Even that slight movement made you sob. You couldn’t run anymore.
Crashing through the forest, you could hear the men who were chasing you, hear them closing in, uncaring about how much noise they were making for all they believed in your ability to evade. Tears filled your eyes and spilled over in hot streaks down your cheeks, mixing with the sweat on your neck and chest. Although you searched your brain for some sort of answer, some solution that would get you back on your feet, there was nothing. All you could feel was the encroaching doom, the oppressive approach of evil. What could you do? Shaking and panting, your head aching fiercely from hitting it and your hands and knees scraped up and imbedded with sticks and rocks, you couldn’t run, you couldn’t think. You were useless.
Voices began to reach you, their booming words difficult to make out over the roaring blood in your ears.
Hide. You had to hide. Awkwardly, painfully, you lurched onto your skinned hands and knees and circled to the opposite side of the tree. It was big, wide and heavy with summer growth, surrounded by a fan of thick roots rippling in waves above the spongy grass. You curled into a ball between the roots, your bloodied back scraping the bark and knees drawn up to your chest.
Another voice said something. How many of them were there? Two? Three? One would be enough to overpower you. You curled further into yourself, biting down your whimper at the pain caused by stretching the skin of your back. The rough bark had shredded it in places, tearing right past your thin nightgown. Stealing boots had been hard enough, in the initial assault, there hadn’t been any time for you to find proper clothes. You wouldn’t have made it out of the palace at all if your maidservant, Elsie, hadn’t hurried you through the servant’s passages behind the walls. You wondered if she was still alive. Her last words to you had been desperate as she slipped a chain over your head, a necklace with a charm. “Once you’re away from the palace,” she told you with a pale, grim face, “call to him, and he will come.”
In the frenzy of your escape, you’d forgotten about her final gift, but now you pulled it out from beneath the soaked collar of your nightgown. The charm was made from engraved bits of bone and metal, slick with sweat. You held it between your skinned palms, the sharp edges digging into the open gashes.
The Imperial Hunt was getting closer.
Call to him, and he will come.
Sweat slowly crawled into your open wounds, making your back sting. It wasn’t the sickening pain of your ankle, but something far more annoying and distracting. You wanted to move, but didn’t dare. They were still talking. Unaware of where you were? That wouldn’t last.
Call to him, and he will come. Elsie had been a heretic then. In any other circumstance, that would have been distressing, but now it was the least of your concerns. Now that you were no longer within your mother’s protective domain, the charm seemed to pulse softly, emitting a warmth of its own. After a lifetime of being warned of the Unseen threat, of the evil committed by the false gods, you shouldn’t have so much as considered the suggestion. Even holding it was wrong. Profane. Calling upon the aid of things best left alone was a cardinal sin, sure to damn the soul of anyone who tried. The Unseen weren’t gods who provided miracles, but powerful and dangerous entities that disguised their use of illicit magic as holy acts.
You held the charm even tighter, pressed right above your pounding heart. No matter how many times you were told of their evil, you had never been told that the Unseen lacked power. They granted wishes. It was in the details that their malicious intent manifested itself. But why would Elsie instruct you to call for help if it were too dangerous? She wasn’t just a maidservant, she was your friend. By the mercy of the star, you hoped she was alive.
The footsteps of your pursuers were right on the other side of the tree, crunching and crashing and careless.
Death should have taken you as a martyr, as the princess who refused to give in, who accepted that she had done all she could. But you were terrified, your skin prickling with sweat and head aching and tongue dry and the awful pinching sensation making you worry you would piss yourself. It didn’t matter if the miracle you received was false, as long as it worked.
“Unseen one,” you muttered, the words torn up with your gasping breaths, barely audible and thick with the taste of blood that clung to the back of your throat. Your lips grazed the warm, flat surface of the charm. It smelled of fire smoke and volcanic rock. “Hear me, heed me—”
“There you are,” a loud voice called, breaking off your near silent prayer. A scream left your mouth before the fear even registered, your body jerking away from the surprise on instinct and the charm dropping from your hands.
The other one said something you couldn’t make out with blood roaring in your ears, coming around your tree from the opposite side. Maybe they assumed you would run. If only.
The first Imperial pulled you to your feet before you could try to struggle. Your ankle gave out immediately, and you couldn’t help letting out a sharp yelp of pain. The soldier held your weight without any problem. Mindlessly, fearfully, you fought his grip, desperately trying to escape from him again. He had the gall to laugh, sour breath hitting your face.
“Please,” you begged. Not him, not the evil man that held you upright. No, you closed your eyes and reached out into the dark, into the unknown. “Unseen one. Please help me.”
The other Imperial soldier was saying something, but you didn’t know what. He’d picked up your charm, his expression twisting in the light of his lantern when he realized what it was. They were afraid of it, you could tell that much. He tried to ask you something, but you had no idea what he was saying. It had to do with the charm, you thought. Realizing you weren’t coherent enough to answer, he threw it as far as he could into the darkness. The other man, the one keeping you upright mostly by one arm, shoved you against the tree. You yelped, unable to get your footing to get out of the leverage he had. He took advantage of that to pull a gag into your mouth, roughly securing it along with what felt like a fistful of your sweaty hair. Gauntleted hands went to gather your wrists, likely meaning to bind them as well.
After the terrifying, exhausting, painful night you had endured, you wouldn’t have thought you had any energy to spare. But, for some reason, the idea of being tied and helpless brought out a final burst of fighting spirit. You bucked against the tree with all your strength, turning to strike out with your nails to the cheek of the man holding you, thrashing hard enough when his grip went lax to topple painfully to the ground. From there, you threw yourself forward on your elbows and knees, circling the tree to the other side in a filthy scramble through the dirt.
It was brighter in the clearing, moonlight illuminating the space between the trees. Even terrified past the edge of sanity, you had enough reason to know that what you had done was pointless. Pulling the gag down so you didn’t choke on your convulsing gasps for air left you with only one arm to crawl. That gave out quickly, sending you chin-first into the ground. You made an attempt to roll onto your back and sit up, but the dizziness was too intense. There was nothing but to wait the agonizingly long few seconds for the imperials to come out from behind the tree and punish you for your attack. You could only hope death was swift and that Elsie and your mother had managed to escape.
This wasn’t a terrible place to die. In the moonlight, in the tall grass, surrounded by the fresh heads of wildflowers and beneath the whispering leaves of the forest trees. You laid in the growth of spring, your senses filled with the thick green smell of it, the heavy earthy odor of dirt.
“Oh, dear,” someone said, a lilting accent that you could barely hear over the war drum thumping of your blood. “It seems you have met a most terrible fate.”
Your eyes jumped open, focusing on the figure rounding the tree where you expected your monstrous pursuers. Just one man. In the silvery lighting, the most you could make out was his startlingly pale skin and dark robes. But there was something odd, something that had your sweaty, bloody skin prickling. The way the dark crackled around him, the way it seemed to draw inwards in the same way pale colors could glow in the sunshine.
“There’s no need to look so frightened. Those that pursued you are a threat no longer,” he told you lightly. You squinted into the darkness at his back, but the shadows remained still. Did that mean he had killed them? The stranger held no weapons, but you had a feeling he wasn’t lying, something about the tingling sense of danger he invited made you sure he was more than capable. “You’ve naught to say to me?” he prompted.
That, at least, made you realize that this was real. Real enough. You cleared your throat, licking your dry lips with an equally dry tongue. “Who are you?” you asked hoarsely.
“You ought to know,” the stranger said. “After all, it was you that summoned me.”
You blinked. Once, twice, your mind scrambling desperately to understand what was happening, to decide if you were in danger or not. “You are the—one of the Unseen?”
“I am. Although, you might better know me Emet-Selch,” he told you, speaking as if you should have known the significance of his name. “I know you, of course. You are the beloved vernal princess of this fair kingdom, driven from her palace and reduced to nothing more than cowering prey begging for the aid of her mother’s sworn enemy. It truly is a pitiful thing to witness.” In contrast to his words, Emet-Selch’s tone was warm, almost playful. “But I have not come to gawk at your misery. You have a reason for calling upon me, do you not?”
Something broke within you at the vague offer. It didn’t matter who he was, not if he could help you. “Help me, please,” you begged, trying to get up, to not seem so powerless. Your body protested violently, forcing you back down. “They-they-they attacked… Im-imperials. You can stop them, can’t you? I need-”
“Calm down,” he said, holding up a hand. “I understand your predicament perfectly well.” He took a few steps forward, his tall form blotting out the moonlight. “You are asking me to cast out the imperial threat from your Kingdom.”
“Yes,” you agreed, desperately trying to stop crying, to get yourself under control. “And my-my mother. Please save her.”
“Have you no regard for your own life? With such dire injuries, your trek to safety would likely be an agonizing one. Who knows if you’ll make it.”
“Can you help me too?” you asked.
“Oh, yes. I can easily see your wishes granted,” Emet-Selch told you. “For a price, of course. What will you offer to me in return?”
“I don’t… I don’t know…” you said, your teeth practically chattering from how hard you were shaking. “Please, I’m begging you to help me.”
“And as much as I appreciate the spectacle, it is, unfortunately, of little value to me,” Emet-Selch told you. “Plainly speaking, the terms and conditions of mutually agreed upon deals—with some exception, as you should well know by now—are the guiding principles by which genuine power is necessarily bound. If you are not interested in forging a contract that benefits us both, I’m afraid I can be of no assistance.”
You looked up at him, your mind whirling with that explanation. Trying to work out exactly what he meant was impossible, but you understood enough to feel despair. “I don’t have anything,” you said helplessly. Which, maybe you did, but you couldn’t make your brain work. It sluggishly flipped through the same few thoughts, constantly skipping back to the fear and the pain and the bottomless confusion. “If you help me, my mother will-”
He sighed heavily, cutting you off. “If there was aught I desired from that infuriating woman, it would be to her that I offered my aid.”
More tears welled up in your eyes, indistinguishable from the sweat. Frustrated and exhausted, your body nearly convulsed with hiccupping sobs and your panicked, winded breathing.
“Please,” you begged. “I’ll give you anything.”
“Anything?” Emet-Selch repeated sharply, his expression changing as if that was what he was waiting for. Cast in shadows and looming above you, there was no pretense that would make you believe the figure you were dealing with had good intentions. But the world around you was sour, prickling sweat and pain and blood and you couldn’t think, not with your fevered, exhausted brain.
“Anything,” you said.