The Arrival [closed]

[thekohakuriver]

WHO: Haku and Bartimaeus, aka the spirit squad
WHAT: Haku enters the world
WHEN: Now
WHERE: a somewhat remote and lonely rift
NOTES: TBD

Things had been going so well, for once.

It had been a long time since Haku had defied his mistress, really defied her, gone against what she had ordered rather than simply doing a little more, or a little less. Sometimes he had even stubbornly done as he'd been told, that much and not an ounce more, which was often much better than outright insolence, in it's own way. But this time, this time he'd really done it. He'd even claimed responsibility for Zeniba's hostage, though that had been Chihiro's cleverness, and no real fault of his. He'd flown away, without reporting in, which he excused to his sense of honor because she'd treated him as dead when he'd only been dying. She'd thrown him in the trash, the actual trash.

And she hadn't been able to stop him, this time. It had seemed, just for a few hours, with the clean sea below him and the clean sky above, that he was, if not free, then the very next thing to it. And, more importantly, he was for once in the service of someone he actually wanted to help. There are worse things than death; not being able to choose your own master, for example.

Then... And then...

And now, this.

One moment he'd been flying, dreaming of freedom, daydreaming really. And then he'd been crashing chaotically through trees that hadn't been there a moment before, snarled up and scratched. The light had gone acid-green, and the air as close and oppressive as the depths of the bathhouse steamworks, as if the very veil of reality were somehow too heavy, too solid and real. That was when the screaming started, the outraged, hateful shrieks of black, broken things. And when Haku turned and saw the rift, he knew that he was among their number; Spirits, twisted and broken, somehow wrested by force and flung down here, outside of the Spirit World.

He didn't know where he was. But he knew where he wasn't, and he knew what pain was. Everything else was an unknown. And so it was when Bartimaeus found him; a long white snake of a spirit dragon, snapping and snarling, keeping the demons at bay with only reluctant violence, and a shining green shard in the palm of one talon.