#whumpee is a palette! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tildeathiwillwrite · 2 months

Text

What Happens in the Fells

The Hunter, the Myth and the Cure, Chapter 2

Tales from Valaria Masterpost

Fandom: Original Work

WIP: The Hunter, the Myth and the Cure (Tales from Valaria)

<- Previous Chapter | Next Chapter ->

Words: 3000

Tag List: @fourwingedsnake @whumperofworlds @pigeonwhumps @mr-orion @scaewolf

@the-ellia-west

CW: blood, crying, referenced disease, lycanthropy, werewolves, death, gunshot wounds, captivity, mentioned experimentation, mentioned abduction, child whumpee, hunger, referenced force-feeding, manhandling, screaming, restrained, medical whump, experimentation whump, lab whump, blood drawings, panic attack, fainting, blood loss

A/N: None of this stuff that happens qualifies for the BTHB (bad things happen bingo), so I'm just going to put up the whole chapter at once.

----------

“These tracks are suspiciously human-shaped.”

Draven hissed through his teeth, folding his arms. “I told you they only shift on the full moon.”

Octavian sighed and rose to his feet from where he’d knelt, studying the footprints left in the snow. “As you say. They continue west.” He wrinkled his nose. “The tracks stink of blood.”

“How can you tell?”

Octavian raised an eyebrow. “Shifting isn’t the only thing I’m capable of.” With those ominous words, he turned and stalked off, following the trail in the direction he indicated.

“What, do you have enhanced senses or something?”

“Something like that….”

Draven followed the elf at a relaxed pace, hands on his pistols. He didn’t know how much further the lycanthrope had gotten during the night, but his gut told him they were getting close. “How enhanced are we talking? All the senses? How do you know it’s better than normal?”

Octavian glanced over his shoulder, eyes narrowed.

Draven raised his eyebrows.

Octavian muttered something under his breath as he turned away. “I have better night vision, smell, and hearing. Taste and touch are much the same, but my palette has changed. And I wasn’t always devar.”

Draven smirked. “By ‘palette changing’, do you mean ‘I prefer raw meat’?”

If the elf heard him, he didn’t respond. Not out loud, anyway. Draven thought he caught a snatch of murmured elven curse words, but it could’ve been the wind. He considered the other half of Octavian’s response for a few minutes. “What do you mean that you weren’t always devar?”

“I’ve never met a human who asks as many questions as you do.”

“Clearly you’ve never been around the Hunter’s Guild. It’s—”

“Hush.” Octavian put a hand up, his other hand on the borrowed knife. Draven glared at the back of his head, but he immediately fell silent, listening. The elf cocked his head to one side, frozen in place for a long moment. When he looked back to Draven, a look of mild confusion was on his face. “She’s crying,” he murmured, puzzled.

Draven hissed through his teeth. “…how can you tell?”

“The pitch.”

“How much further?”

Octavian shrugged. “Not much.” He hesitated as Draven moved past him, taking the lead. “Why do you react like that?”

Draven almost didn’t respond. When he finally answered, his tone was harsh even to his own ears. “If she’s crying, she knows what she is and what she’s done. She won’t fight us. It makes my job easier.”

If Octavian had a reply, he didn’t voice it, save for a very quiet word that almost sounded like the word “callous”. So what? In this world, now, you have to be, to stay alive.

A bite was all it would take to get infected. A scratch might not, but Draven had seen a few cases where the lycanthrope had been turned by the smallest nick from their claws. Granted, the hunter in question got doused in his mark’s blood shortly after acquiring the injury, so perhaps the issue was less the claws and more the infected blood or saliva.

Draven resisted the urge to slow his pace as the faint sounds of muffled sobbing reached his own ears. He’d been a part of the Hunter’s Guild for almost a decade, trained on the job with countless others. He’d seen hundreds of people infected with the disease, put all of them out of their misery. Some had tried to fight him, begging for their lives. Sometimes others had fought him, not wanting their infected loved one to die. Irrational, blind with terror and desperation and hope for recovery.

It got easier, over time. But some cases were worse than others.

The woman's sobs quieted as they drew close, no doubt she heard their approach as Draven abandoned stealth in favor of a peaceful encounter. Peaceful being a subjective term, but anyone could lash out when startled, and he would rather avoid such a scene.

She faced away from them, her back against a gnarled oak whose trunk and limbs twisted in an almost unnatural way, splaying out as if pulled by unseen strands. Her torn dress had once been a light green, now spattered and stained with dried blood, not all her own. A wild, matted mess of long hair cascaded down her back, mostly obscuring her tear-streaked face. Her knees were pulled up to her chest, her hands, the strong hands of a weaver, resting lightly upon them.

Her eyes were closed. She knew what they were.

Draven drew his pistol. He had a prime angle for a shot straight through the skull. Quick and painless.

“What are you doing?” Octavian hissed, “She's defenseless!”

“You see the blood, the wounds?” Draven murmured, half-turning towards him, his eyes still on the woman. “Remember what I said. You are as similar as water and blood.” He raised the pistol and clicked off the safety.

Octavian’s hand shot out and grabbed his wrist, throwing it off target. “Is there not a treatment, an antidote, anything?”

“Your apprentice is naive, hunter,” the woman said softly. Her voice shook with emotion, but she remained unmoving. “I know what I am, what I've done, as do you. I hate it, that thing. But… but I can't… do what you came here to do.”

Poetic. Draven had heard variations from those who'd accepted their fate, but could not bring themselves to do what they knew was the only way to prevent further harm.

He hesitated. He didn’t always do this, but Octavian’s presence, his flat, disapproving expression, demanded he show some compassion for the victims of the disease. “What is your name?”

The woman started, she had expected a gunshot, not a question. “I… it's… Maera.”

“Your name be laid at the feet of the celestials.” Draven gave Octavian an equally disapproving stare and jerked his hand away from the elf’s grip. Shooting arm freed, Draven raised the pistol and took aim.

Bang.

---------

“How are our guests?”

“Uncooperative as ever. Takari won’t admit anything unless we prove his daughter’s safe. It doesn’t matter what we try, the only words out of his mouth are asking after the brat.”

“Stubborn. Alas, it is to be expected. And the daughter?”

“She’s refusing to eat or speak. We’ve had to force-feed her for days to keep her alive.”

“I see….”

“Sir, if I may?”

“Go ahead.”

“I have a theory. It’s not obvious, but the girl looks Draigo. At least half, she’s obviously his, but going off what we know of the Draigo, it’s not impossible. If I could have your permission, I’d like to run a few tests, to be sure. If I’m right, and she is Draigo, we could have a resource on our hands for further experimentation.”

“What sort of tests?”

“Nothing too drastic, I assure you. Our magician on staff could draw some runes, we could conduct blood tests, analyze her hair and skin. If she’s Draigo, she’ll have the protein.”

“And if she’s not?”

“Well, we continue as normal. I only require your permission.”

“…granted.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Mmm. You are dismissed.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Wait.”

“Yes?”

“What experiments will you run if she is Draigo?”

“Nothing on her directly, I do not want to risk danger to her. We… well, we’ll likely be running blood tests and attempting to isolate the protein. From there, we’ll attempt to synthesize a tentative medicine and begin trials.”

“I presume you will require subjects for the trials.”

“Naturally. But we don’t need to worry about that immediately.”

“Hmm… it’ll be very difficult to procure a live lycanthrope through the Hunter’s Guild. Even with the promise of an antidote, they’re all trained to kill. Some of them might not even want to have a cure, the hunt is their source of income, after all…. I’ll have to find someone working outside the Guild, willing to bring one in.”

“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, sir, I would prefer to have at least a dozen total subjects before I can confidently say the cure is ready for distribution.”

“I’ll see what I can do. You are dismissed.”

“Of course, sir.”

----------

Reese lay flat on her back on the bed, staring at the ceiling of the room she had been shoved into almost six days ago. Fifty boards comprised the wooden ceiling, four nails each securing them in place, making two hundred nails, added to the one hundred ten in the floor making three hundred and ten.

Three hundred and ten pieces of useless information. But with nothing else to do, locked alone in the rook with no company but the masked guard in the green mottled jacket who brought her the meals she didn't eat, counting boards and nails was a riveting pastime.

She exhaled slowly, allowing her head to drop to the side and stare out the windows. The manor house that served as her prison was deep in the Fells, a thicket of trees protecting it as much as its outer walls. Every day she dreamed of breaking the windows and disappearing into the forest.

And every day she remained. She didn't know where her father was, but she knew he was somewhere within the confines of the manor, trapped same as she. Reese wasn't certain why they'd taken him, but the purpose of her presence was clear: leverage.

She cooperated by not escaping. Who knew what their captors would do to her father if she got away? But she didn't cooperate otherwise. Every time the guard who brought her meals—she was sure he was the same one every time—tried to make conversation, she ignored him, ignored the food, barely even acknowledged his presence.

After the second day of this, another guard came, and they forced the food down her throat. She gagged and choked and pleaded, but they did not relent. Her captors needed her alive, then. Insurance, against her father. Against Zade Takari, esteemed diplomat who was trying his damn best between the effects of the outbreak and the disappearance of the Draigo and the elves refusing to reopen their borders.

He'd been trying his damn best for the past decade of this. But perhaps to some people, his best simply wasn't good enough. So maybe that was the reason behind the abduction of him and his daughter. Or maybe there was something else.

Reese didn't know. And that uncertainty caused an anxious rolling in her stomach, a hammering pulse, a throbbing heartbeat in her ears when she thought about it too much. Or perhaps it was the hunger. The guard brought her three meals daily, but he and the other would force her to consume only one.

She absently wondered when the next meal would come. It would be the pair, this time. Her captors operated on a surprisingly strict schedule.

As if in answer to her thoughts, the sound of footsteps, muffled through the door, reached her ears. Multiple sets, so it appeared. They stopped outside the door, key rattling in the lock.

Reese closed her eyes. She'd stopped begging days ago.

The door opened, and the guards filed in, their boots thudding into the stone floor. Strong hands seized her arms, and she tensed, anticipating the grab at her jaw, the fluids poured into her mouth as it was forced open—

The guard dragged her across the floor an improbable distance. Was he—?

Her eyes flew open in shock as he yanked her out of the small room and into the hallway. Two other people besides the guard holding her accompanied them: the guard in the mottled jacket, and a man in the black coat of a scientist or doctor.

Unlike the guards, he wore no mask of dark metal. His eyes were a bright, piercing blue, and he studied her like she was a particularly interesting exhibit at the Zariyan museum.

Reese's face became hot from embarrassment and anger. “Where are you taking me?!” She demanded furiously, struggling against the guard as he pulled her down the hallway.

She might have not spoken at all for all the response they gave her. Staircase, now, and the guard lifted her like she weighed nothing and carried her down the steep wooden steps. When had this place been built? Surely not after the outbreak.

“What's going on?!” She shouted, voice echoing off the walls, to no avail. Somewhere far away, muffled shouts answered her cries, but she had no way to tell who they belonged to.

The guard in the mottled coat glanced at the doctor, but with his face obscured by the mask, she couldn't read anything from his expression. He said something in a low voice, words Reese couldn't make out, split as her attention was between listening and fighting and tracking their path throughout the manor. The doctor's reaction, however, was not hidden as he scowled at the guard and snapped something in an equally quiet tone.

Before Reese could guess what was said, the guard holding her shoved open a door and dragged her inside. Quicker than she could react, he forced her into what could only be described as an angled chair, tilted like a rocking chair tipped back too far.

Her heartbeat hammered in her ears as he held her there, unbothered by her attempts to punch him or, when that didn't work, her words pleading for mercy. He could have been carved from stone as the doctor began to strap her to the chair with strong leather cuffs.

First her arms.