Chapter Text
Enlightenment 6.3
Taylor examined her silver sword in the candlelight.
It was nice to feel put together, again. A hot shower and a check in with her father had helped to drive off the lingering mania from her recent battles and parahuman vial infusion.
The idea of the PRT spinning their wheels watching the front door while she wandered underneath the city in her Labyrinth was hilarious to her. She hoped Assault would get a kick out of it when they inevitably caught sight of her elsewhere in the city.
With the itch to hunt satiated for the moment, the urge to create was back in full force. She loved her Kirkhammer, and her stake driver was an excellent prosthesis and back-up weapon, but she had new designs bouncing around in her brain that demanded acknowledgement.
The good news was that she could double up, so to speak. The new blueprint that caught her eye also used a silver sword as its base form, and it was even the same length. Being able to make just the sheath would kill two beasts with one sword, or something like that. And, she could still pull out the hammerhead if she felt like crushing her enemies into a fine paste.
She could easily condense the remainder of Rune's blood into another blood stone. It would mean waiting a bit longer before her Father or Amy could partake in communion, but she could still lead them through the Labyrinth herself if necessary. It would be another excuse to hold Amy's hand, if nothing else.
Besides, she figured that Amy would approve. If her friend thought that the standard silver sword was cool, surely an even bigger sword was cooler, right?
Taylor put the sword back on the wall and started the generator, then loaded up the centrifuge.
While the sounds of machinery echoed through the Labyrinth, Taylor fired up the forge and picked over her supply of raw materials.
She would need to do another Home Depot run, soon.
Arms laden with rebar, Taylor got to work.
…
I really need to steal a power hammer.
And maybe a bigger generator.
Flattening and folding this amount of steel by hand was extremely tiring. The stone block that she used for her hammerhead had been quite a bit less trouble.
Taylor put the heavy mallet down and turned off the forge, walking over to grab another water bottle.
She had decided to wear her stake driver while forging. It was just impossible to move around the way she needed to in the chair, and the weight was tolerable.
I need to rethink the attachment point, though.
The clamp and spikes that she was currently using to hold the stake driver to her leg was crude, at best. It clearly wasn't up to the challenge of high speed impacts, and the regeneration solution was too slow to totally mitigate the damage. It definitely took the edge off, and made it comfortable to wear around, but it wasn't ideal.
She was reluctant to make the bracket any more damaging to her leg, though. She could add length and anchors to the spikes so that they would sink into her bones, but that would make it significantly more painful to take on and off, as well as increase the amount of regeneration fluid she would need to offset the damage.
A project for another time. Her forge was currently occupied by the massive blade that would also act as a sheath for her silver sword.
But she needed to take a break, and Stormtiger's blood was done condensing.
Taylor left her workshop again, heading back to the two-story waiting room that she had used for Rune's vial. From what she knew of Stormtiger's power, it didn't seem likely that the process would drive her back into her workshop again.
Well, it might. But it was still better to be safe than sorry.
Taylor shook the sweat and the tremors from her limbs and loaded the vial into her injector.
She could do this. Her powers wanted to be used, and the echoes in the back of her mind practically sung with praise as they gorged on the variety of parahuman blood she imbibed. The process itself was just a bit unpleasant. In the same way that an ice-pick lobotomy was unpleasant.
Before she could second guess herself, Taylor slammed the blood vial into her thigh and closed her eyes as her mind was enhanced once again. It was strangely familiar, by this point.
Her sense of self warped and twisted while the blood became one with her.
The hunt is a dirge of farewell.
The moon hung perfect and silver overhead, so very close to being full. It sang to her in a beautiful symphony of overlapping voices and unknowable instruments, a choir of stars and heavenly light.
Taylor got the distinct feeling that the hunt served a greater purpose. That there was a reason for everything, and for her peculiar brand of madness.
May your prey rest in peace, never again to awaken to another harrowing nightmare.
She was the first, and only Hunter. The responsibility fell heavy on her shoulders. She was the only one who could dream. The only one who could prevent the harrowing nightmare.
Power surged within her as the moon's light intensified, sinking deep into her flesh and permeating her bones.
The air stirred, in time with her ragged breaths.
Taylor reached out and took hold of the tapestry, accepting the obligation and the curse that the dream offered. The moon shone brightly in the night sky, a beacon in the sea of endless stars.
Howling wind spun around her in a deafening cyclone, pulling the cracked and ruined tile with it as she became the vortex of her own personal storm.
Taylor rose from the broken floor of her Hospital and hung suspended in the atrium, shining with stark silver light in the moon's radiance.
She was the first Hunter, and potentially the last.
The effects of the hallowed blood abruptly faded, and the moon's light along with it. Taylor screamed in surprise and plummeted ten feet to the floor when the cyclone suddenly ceased holding her aloft.
She landed hard and stumbled in an undignified manner, her usual grace failing her while her mind continued to recover from the ordeal.
Breathing heavily, Taylor slowly straightened and rolled her shoulders. She blinked the remaining stars from her eyes and looked down at her hands.
She could still feel the ebbs and eddies of the air around her.
A wide smile spread over her face.
I can fucking fly?
Not really. She could call to the air and empower her leaps even further, using the pressure to drive her into the sky and hold her there.
Taylor couldn't resist, leaping up again and summoning the cyclone to carry her as she hung fifteen feet above the ground.
Her heart stuttered erratically and her vision began to fade at the edges.
Shit.
She once again plummeted to the cold floor, and this time her legs refused to work correctly. Taylor collapsed into a heap and covered her head to avoid smashing her skull on the shattered tile.
Her breathing raced once again as she lay still for a long moment, body aching from the rough impact with the ground and the exertion of controlling the atmosphere with her will.
Okay. Flying is hard.
Another power to be used sparingly, along with her quickening. Annoying, but not the end of the world. She would practice. Maybe it was like a muscle, and got easier the more she did it.
Hopefully.
She also knew that she could wrap her weapon in her blades of wind, creating a razor-sharp scythe of air to fling at her enemies. That was a nice complement to the general aerokinesis. Another long range option was always appreciated.
Pulling herself slowly to her feet, Taylor began to trudge back to her workshop. She probably couldn't swing a hammer right now, but she could at least set up the condensing process for Purity's blood before she passed out. Maybe.
This infusion had been… less worrying, overall. She already felt the kinship with the moon, and her dreams had never stopped. The light and its song weren't all that different. The actual process hadn't been all that draining. If she hadn't gotten ahead of herself and tried to fly two seconds after putting her body and mind through the ringer for the second time in twelve hours, it would have been fine.
But no. Instead, she had burned through any and all remaining energy she had floating around and was now about three seconds away from just taking a nap here in the Labyrinth.
Brilliant plan, Taylor.
She did manage to drag herself through the doors of the Workshop, though. Her fingers felt numb as she hooked up Purity's blood jars. She barely made it to her nest before toppling onto the lab table and slipping into her dreams, the moon watching her with calm contentment as she slept.
…
Amy tossed her backpack into the corner of her room next to her desk that was its designated spot amongst the mess.
School was always a bit surreal, and had been for a long time. Even before she met Hunter. What was the point of doing bullshit tests and homework when she was the best healer in the world? It wasn't like she was ever going to do anything else.
The PRT and Carol all made excellent arguments about the importance of social interaction and building a general knowledge base to encourage critical thinking and shit, but it still felt pointless on a day to day basis.
It was nice to spend time with Vicky, but everyone they hung out with were Vicky's friends, not hers. It was inevitable.
She could go try to make her own friends, but that would decrease the amount of time she got to spend with Vicky, which would entirely defeat the point.
Exhibit A of why her obsession was definitely self-destructive. Well, actually probably Exhibit L or something. There were a lot of things that were even more fucked up about it.
Amy looked around her room and wallowed in the grips of executive dysfunction for a few minutes. She had an awkward amount of time. The Vicky Express was a lot faster than the bus, so she got home before 3:00 and didn't need to be at the hospital until 6:00.
Vicky had rocketed away after dropping her off. Something about getting ice cream with Dean. Amy didn't care.
And Taylor was probably still asleep. Fucking vampire. It wouldn't have surprised Amy if the weird Tinker slept hanging from the ceiling along with the dead bodies, except for the fact that she had seen Taylor's nest.
Which was, in itself, a bit strange and sad, even if it suited her.
Amy knew that Taylor must have somewhere she could go for the necessities. She had clean clothes and her hair was well kept, most of the time.
It still twisted something within her whenever she imagined Taylor wandering alone in the endless Hospital, though.
Amy's phone rang.
Only one person actually called her, these days. Taylor's refusal to interact with technology outside the bare minimum was silly, but kind of endearing. She called it op-sec, but Amy was pretty sure she was just stubborn.
"You're up early," Amy said in lieu of an actual greeting.
"I had an early night. Overdid it a bit with Stormtiger's vial and knocked myself out," Taylor said. Amy could hear the satisfied smile in her voice, though.
"You're really burning through those. Any cool powers this time?" Amy asked. Carol wasn't home yet and Mark was asleep, so there wasn't really a risk of being overheard.
"Yeah, actually. I can fly. For like, a second. And I can throw air scythes," Taylor said.
Holy shit.
"Your Tinkering is ridiculous. That's a strong-ass power just from shooting up with some magic blood. You're like… the Butcher, but without the pesky voices in your head," Amy couldn't decide if that was a good thing or not.
"Oh, I have those too, don't worry," Taylor said lightly.
Amy rolled her eyes.
"I honestly can't tell if you're joking or not," she said in exasperation.
"And I can feel you rolling your eyes at me. Anyway, I was mainly calling to see if you wanted to do something before your hospital shift," Taylor said.
Amy's stomach clenched and her heartbeat picked up.
Stop that.
"Um, I guess? Like what?" Amy asked.
"I don't know, I'm a villainous mad scientist, remember? I have no concept of what normal people do. Do you want to come hang out here while I work on my new sword?" Taylor asked.
Amy snickered. She couldn't help herself.
Only Taylor would unironically ask if she wanted to come 'hang out' in a cursed hospital and watch her make a fucking sword from scrap metal.
And maybe Amy was just as crazy, because that sounded fucking awesome. Infinitely more fun than any of the bullshit double dates that Vicky came up with.
"Yeah, yeah, actually, that sounds great," Amy said. "I've never seen how you actually make your weapons."
"Cool, cool. Follow-up question: do you want me to open a door to the Labyrinth in your basement?" Taylor asked.
It took Amy's brain a second to catch up.
"Wait, like, in my house?" Amy said in disbelief.
"Yeah. Just in case, you know. And it would make it easier to come visit."
Amy blinked. Something about that concept just did not compute.
"You want… to put a door, directly into your villainous blood Tinker workshop, with hanging bodies and shit, in Brandish's basement?" Amy said, her voice getting higher with every word. How was this her life?
"I mean, it sounds a bit stupid when you say it like that, but no one can perceive the Labyrinth gates without taking communion, and I doubt Brandish is going to be drinking blood from a ritual chalice anytime soon," Taylor said casually.
What.
"I'm sorry, I'm going to need you to back all the fuck up on that one. What the fuck are you talking about?" Amy said. She understood most of the individual words Taylor just lobbed into her brain like a bomb, but put together they just couldn't quite process.
"Okay, so I told you that the Labyrinth is the system of infinite hospital rooms and corridors that I initially set up to protect my Workshop, right?" Taylor said, as if she was teaching a class on being a bullshit mad scientist who apparently also dabbled in occult rituals.
"Sure, I'm with you so far," Amy played along.
"Well, I used Rune's blood to make a lantern that allows me to find and open new doors into the Labyrinth, like the one in the Brockton General morgue. In order to find a door, I just have to have a beacon to follow. As far as I can tell, those are either places I'm very familiar with, or people I'm attached to. So, since you're currently at your house, I could wander over there in the Labyrinth and open a door," Taylor lectured.
That was… comforting. And terrifying. Just a bit.
Also, Taylor was attached to her? What the fuck did that mean? It wasn't fair that she could do this to her with such casual ease.
"Wait, how do you know that I'm at my house?" Amy asked suddenly.
"I'm currently holding the lantern. I can feel which direction I would need to walk in order to find you, and it matches up with where I know your house is in the real world," Taylor said, as if that wasn't an absolutely insane thing to say.
Amy knew that it was objectively creepy, and probably problematic in a number of ways, but something about the idea of Taylor always being able to find her made her chest tighten pleasantly.
Maybe she wasn't the only one with a self-destructive obsession.
The other part of Taylor's comment caught up to her.
"And what was that about drinking blood?"
"Oh, yeah, so… the… um… procedure… that I used to create the Labyrinth may have involved drinking a… customized Tinkertech solution… out of a specialized vessel," Taylor said. Suspiciously.
"What kind of specialized vessel?" Amy narrowed her eyes, even though Taylor couldn't see her. Probably. That fucking lantern might do that too, how the fuck would she know?
"It's… definitely not Cricket's skull?" Taylor said.
"Hey, Taylor… what the fuck?" Amy pinched the bridge of her nose.
"My powers work in mysterious ways! It's not my fault I got some kind of Cthulhu grab bag!" Taylor laughed at her. Laughed. After telling her about the goddamn blood ritual she undertook to create some kind of reality-twisting hellscape.
A reality-twisting hellscape that could open a portal from Amy's basement to Taylor's workshop. She could be a couple flights of stairs away from Taylor's Hospital at any time.
It was absolutely, completely unfair how tempting that was. How was she supposed to say no to that?
Honestly, the idea of Carol's expression if she ever found out that her house had a direct line to Carpenter's workshop was… hilarious.
Amy smiled and laughed with Taylor despite herself.
"Alright, fine, you ridiculous abomination. Let's fucking do it, open a door to my basement," Amy headed down the stairs.
"Hell yeah. I'm on my way," Taylor said. Amy could hear the smile in her voice and the echo of her footsteps through the abandoned hallways of her infinite Hospital.
"See you soon, then," Amy said. Why couldn't she stop smiling?
She hung up and definitely didn't run to the basement stairs. Because that would be pathetic.
Amy's adopted family never really took advantage of the finished basement. They had a widescreen TV and some couches in the main open area, but it really only saw use if the Pelham's were over for a party or something. And that happened less and less, these days.
Aside from the open living area and an unused kitchenette, it also had an unfinished portion that housed the furnace and hot water heater.
Knowing Taylor's power and its need to do everything in the creepiest way possible, Amy assumed that it would pop up in the unfinished section, between the cobwebs.
Sure enough, she had barely made it through the door when Taylor, Hunter, the mad blood Tinker and Nazi killer extraordinaire, stepped through the wall and into Carol Dallon's basement, gruesome Tinkertech prosthesis, silly hat and all.
It was absurd. Amy couldn't believe she was here.
From the smile on Taylor's face, she liked it too. That was… encouraging.
"Hi," Amy said anticlimactically.
"Hey," Taylor replied, grinning even wider. "Ready for your first real trip through the Labyrinth? It's really not all that exciting."
"I don't have to ride on your back this time, right?" Amy raised an eyebrow.
"Only if you want to," Taylor laughed.
That was extremely tempting. But she wasn't quite that pathetic. Yet.
Shut up.
"No, I guess I can walk. How far is it?" Amy asked curiously. Distances obviously worked differently in Taylor's strange domain.
"Not exactly sure. It took me like two minutes to run here, but I do run pretty fast. I guess we'll see how it goes," Taylor shrugged.
"Okay," Amy said.
Taylor held out her hand.
Amy's heart did a weird double-thump thing that didn't sound healthy.
She took the offered hand and a door wreathed in eldritch flame appeared on her wall.
The tempest of impossible blood and biology exploded within her biosenses, and Amy was once again overwhelmed by the enormity of it.
Taylor was somehow more, again. Amy knew that she had imbibed another vial, but it still caught her off guard every time. Hunter was a thundering storm of barely contained power, a flickering galaxy of churning stars and lightning.
Amy blinked and noticed Taylor staring at her with a strangely pleased expression.
"What?" Amy snapped. Part of her was a bit embarrassed by her reaction, but that piece was getting smaller every day.
"I like that you like looking at me," Taylor said simply. "With your power, I mean."
Oh.
Amy really didn't know what to say to that.
Taylor opened the door into her Labyrinth, and pulled Amy along into the dark.
…
Amy hadn't been exactly sure what to expect, but she definitely wasn't disappointed.
"So, I'm working to get this bevel lined up so it matches the other side, since this gap running along the edge is where the current silver sword blade will slide into place…"
Listening to Taylor talk about this while sparks flew from her belt grinder was… nice. Not as intense as her work with the blood concoctions. Amy perched on the lab table that served as Taylor's nest and watched her do her thing.
It certainly didn't hurt that Taylor had taken off her signature coat and formalwear to work the forge. The corded muscles in her bare arms and shoulders stood out starkly under her black tank top as she held up the massive, five foot long great sword blade that was also somehow a sheath for her silver sword.
Amy forcibly wrenched her mind out of the gutter when her phone buzzed in her pocket.
Shit, what time is it?
She checked the most recent message and sighed before replying.
V: Hey, I'm at the house to pick you up.
V: Where are you?
V: Is everything okay?
A: Yeah, I'm with Anne. She's going to take me to work.
V: Huh? How?
A: Her car?
V: She can drive?
"Hey, Taylor, you can drive, right?" Amy asked.
"Yeah," Taylor looked over at her in confusion. "Why?"
"Just curious," Amy hummed.
A: Yeah, why wouldn't she?
V: Her foot?
A: Vicky… do you use both feet when you drive?
V: Um, yeah? Gas and brake. Two pedals, two feet.
Amy snorted out loud. Taylor looked at her strangely but she just shook her head.
A: NO! No, bad Vicky. That's awful, who taught you to drive?
V: Crystal, why?
A: Oh God. I'm never driving anywhere with either of you ever again. Fucking flyers.
V: Back up though, you're with Anne?
A: Yeah, at her place now. Bout to head to the hospital.
V: Scandalous. Don't do anything I wouldn't do.
A: I hate you. Also, too late.
V: WHAT?!
Amy put her phone back in her pocket and ignored it. She didn't know what possessed her to send the last message, but she was in a good fucking mood, dammit. Besides, she was sitting in a villain's lair next to Rune's half-harvested corpse. That was definitely something Vicky wouldn't do. It counted.
Taylor looked up at her as she sighed and hopped off the nest table.
"I need to go to the hospital. I didn't realize how late it was," Amy said.
Taylor checked her watch.
"Oh yeah, wow. Time flies, and all that," Taylor said. She put the heavy slab of half-finished metal down and rolled her shoulders.
Amy definitely didn't stare. At all.
"Ready to go for a walk?" Taylor grinned over at her and offered a hand.
"Don't get us lost, I'm already running late as it is," Amy smiled back without thinking, taking her hand and basking in the now familiar spiraling galaxy.
"I would never," Taylor said with faux seriousness. "And besides, travel by Labyrinth is quite a bit faster than the bus."
They left the Workshop and returned to the endless ruined hallways of the Labyrinth.
And Taylor did not, in fact, get lost.
…
Taylor hissed and bit down hard on the leather in between her teeth as the thick metal spikes sunk into her bones.
The pain only lasted a moment before the regeneration solution began to kick in, but damn that hurt.
She wiped the excess blood off of her stump.
It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was better than anything else she could come up with. The current junction with her prosthesis was too unstable, but she couldn't go through this level of pain every time she took off the stake driver.
So, she installed a universal joint directly into the end of her leg, instead.
Rather than ending in scarred flesh, her left leg now ended halfway down her calf with a steel cap, about an inch long and cylindrical. The new equipment was fused directly into both her tibia and fibula, and wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon.
But that was alright, because now all she needed to do was adapt the stake driver junction to match. The regeneration fluid loop on the prosthesis could easily be adapted to connect to the new attachment point, and it would help to ensure that the cap never got knocked loose.
Much more elegant than just jamming metal spikes into her leg over and over. That was… not her best idea, in hindsight.
Lisa's expression had been funny, though.
Taylor idly wondered what the Undersiders were up to. Hopefully they didn't run into too much trouble because of their association with her. Even though she told the PRT they weren't working together, she wasn't entirely sure they would believe her.
A problem for another time. For now, she had a prosthesis to upgrade, and a sword to finish.
…
The cool February wind whipped over the roof of her Hospital as the sun shone overhead.
Taylor didn't come up here often enough.
Most of the buildings in the Trainyards weren't this tall, so she could see for miles in every direction. The spires of Downtown glittered in the distance, and the sea of warehouses and old processing plants that lined the Docks looked forlorn by comparison.
The Trainyards were almost completely abandoned, but that suited her just fine.
Taylor could see the current PRT surveillance team set up several blocks away, on the roof of a half-collapsed canning factory.
She waved at them. They didn't wave back. They never did.
Taylor caught just the faintest hint of dogs barking on the cold breeze. Hopefully Rachel was able to rebuild her shelter in peace.
The comforting weight of her new blade hung from the leather harness strapped over her shoulders. The great sword was a thing of both beauty and savagery, inlaid with intricate steel patterns and runes that would add conceptual weight to its strikes. Infused with the bloodstone made from Rune's remaining essence and quenched in Stormtiger's blood, the holy blade would cleave her enemies with righteous fervor.
It combined the raw power of her Kirkhammer and the lethal elegance of her silver sword into a weapon of glorious purpose. The holy blade was designed with greater enemies in mind, the embodiment of her responsibility and the ending of their suffering once and for all.
She was the first Hunter, and Hookwolf would not be leaving their next battle alive.
She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but there was an itch in the back of her mind.
Still, something felt… heavy.
It was Friday. The full moon was tonight. She hadn't looked it up, but the knowledge was a part of her, somehow.
Taylor closed her eyes and let the late afternoon sun wash over her skin.
Purity's vial was complete, but she hadn't injected it yet. Her mind and body had been worn out from the two back to back infusions and all her forging.
Tonight would be perfect.
But…
She felt like something was coming. Some threat she wasn't seeing, yet.
And she didn't, couldn't know what it was.
Taylor opened her eyes and looked out over the city.
She would stop by the hospital and see Amy tonight, and then, if this feeling of approaching bloodshed hadn't abated, she would go hunting.
She might even give Rachel a call, and see if she wanted to tag along.
Taylor smiled.
The Empire had been entirely too precocious, pushing for territory across the city. She had been busy with her own problems and projects, but it was time for someone to push back.
She may have promised Kaiser that she would take his head if he messed with her friends, but she had left out the part where she was planning to take it anyway.
…