Chapter Text
Angus McDonald bolted through the Stateran Forest, sobbing for breath as a giant chimera chased him. The beast ran in near-silence, the only sound it made the underbrush around it crashing back from its bulk. Fire erupted over Angus’ head and he yelped, ducking away from the heat and stumbling. His legs and his lungs burned and he scrambled into a stand of closely-grown trees and prayed it would slow the chimera down long enough for him to lose it, or climb a tree, or something.
To his surprise, the chimera’s sounds began to grow fainter, until he couldn’t hear it anymore, and when Angus risked a glance over his shoulder through cracked glasses, he didn’t see anything. With no idea how far he had to go to escape its territory, though, Angus kept running until his legs finally gave out, and he stumbled and fell, scraping his hands and knees on the forest floor. A distant roar made him scramble to the dubious shelter of a cluster of tree roots, and with some effort he managed to squeeze his small frame underneath them and huddled there, panting and trembling in the dim light that reached the forest floor.
As his breath came back he began to count seconds. He’d almost reached 250 when a deep shadow fell over him, accompanied by a low growl. He looked up into three sets of eyes, all fixed on him. Then a massive paw tore at the roots shielding him, and Angus flattened himself against the ground and screamed.
“Help, someone, anyone-”A claw snagged his already-torn vest and ripped another slash in it. “Help me!”
Angus’ life didn’t flash before his eyes as the dragon head’s jaws seized a root and tore it back, but for half a second he wondered if anyone would ever know what happened to him.
Then came a thundering rumble and crashing trees, and something blotted out even the faint light that reached the Stateran’s floor. The chimera looked up and snarled in two voices. It snapped with all three heads as something huge and hairy shoved it, and a deep voice grunted. The thing – a giant foot, Angus realized – shook sharply and knocked the chimera away. Its owner shifted and a beam of light illuminated its face, one eye cloudy and sightless.
Angus whimpered faintly, and the monster’s good eye found him. It looked like a giant humanoid bear covered in scars, an old red bandana tied around its neck and an enormous ax carried in one paw. He’d never even heard of anything like this before – a magical mutation, maybe? But the ax was metal – where would it have even learned to make that? There were no giants anywhere near the Stateran that could have made a weapon so huge.
It bent down and Angus didn’t have time to run before it pried back his cover and picked him up, cupping him in one massive hand – paw? – as it stood again. Angus grabbed instinctively at the claw nearest him to steady himself, and then pulled back as he realized it was bigger than he was.
The chimera pushed itself back to its feet and screeched fury at the bear-monster for stealing its prize, wings spreading as it crouched to lunge.
“Hey! No. Bad chimera.” The bear-monster pointed the ax warningly, holding Angus in the air away from it. The chimera leapt for it – or for Angus – and the bear swatted it back to the ground. “Down! Down. Not yours.”
It was, Angus thought dazedly, a surprisingly human way to talk.
The angry chimera snarled louder and backed up a few steps, then opened its dragon jaws and let loose a burst of flame. The bear-monster twisted, putting its back to the chimera and shielding Angus, then grunted as the chimera’s full weight landed on its back, clawing and snapping. The bear-monster pulled Angus close to its chest and twisted to slam back against a tree, knocking the chimera off it, and whirled to bring down the flat of its ax onto the beast. It took a step back and watched the chimera, which didn’t move even when prodded with the ax. Angus would’ve thought the bear had killed it if he couldn’t see its chest moving.
Then the giant bear turned its attention back to him and Angus flinched, covering his eyes – he didn’t want to see the teeth, didn’t want to know what was coming-
“No manners, am I right?”
After a moment, Angus looked up.
The bear was watching him, grinning cheerfully – that was too many teeth – but it made no move to eat him. Putting its ax on its back, it made an encouraging gesture at him. “See, the way talking works is, I say something, and then you answer.”
Angus, for once dumbstruck, just nodded. The bear sighed, then shifted to hold him against its chest and steadied him with the other hand as it started to walk, leaving the unconscious chimera behind.
That startled Angus back to speech. “Wait! Where are you taking me?” For a second he thought to run for it, but one look at the distance to the ground changed his mind.
“Well, I’m not gonna just leave a little kid out here, there’s monsters all over the place.” The bear looked down at him and grinned another grin that bared too many teeth, too close for comfort. “Relax, you’re too small to eat!” He laughed. Angus smiled weakly. He was pretty sure that was a goof, but coming from a giant bear it was hard to tell if it was a good thing. Who knew anything about bear humor?
Well, bears did, probably.
“Name’s Magnus, by the way. Magnus ‘The Hammer’ Burnsides.” The bear – Magnus – puffed out his chest.
Angus, manners shaky on the situation of giant bears but pretty solid on introductions, nodded. “It’s, uh, nice to meet you Mr. Burnsides sir, I’m Angus McDonald but really just Angus.” He paused, then added, “Thank you for saving me, I wasn’t expecting a bear man to help me but I do appreciate not being eaten. By anyone. Sir.” He dared to watch to see how Magnus took that.
“Anytime.” Magnus waved his free hand dismissively. “Seriously though, no one’s going to eat you, we don’t eat people.”
Angus snorted quietly. “The chimera sure had me fooled.”
“No, no, not that. That was definitely going to eat you. I meant me and my friends. You’ll meet them once we get there.”
“Once we get where?”
“Home, duh, where else?”
Angus cast another nervous look at the distant ground and hoped none of Magnus’ “friends” had a taste for people either.
An area the size of a small village had been cleared among the trees, and seven enormous structures filled up most of that space, made out of what appeared to be nearly-whole trees and looking simple but solidly built. As Magnus got closer, Angus could see that the shelters had been scaled to around Magnus-size, and his first thought was a village of bear-monsters!
Then Magnus called out “Hey guys, I’m back!” and two heads poked out a window.
“Hey Maggie! You gonna tell us why you’ve been weird all morning yet or what?” the blue one called. The pink one pulled back and came out the front door, while the blue one just climbed nimbly through the window, using his tail to steady himself as he landed.
Angus stared. He’d never even heard of monsters like these, not in any textbook or adventure story he’d ever read. They looked almost like giant tieflings, but the blue one’s horns were lined up vertically and his ears were more elflike, poking up through a hat that Angus could have stood up underneath with room to spare. The pink one looked nearly identical to him, but rather than horns she had a pair of wings with feathers the color of fire. Both had an ethereal sort of glow to them.
“Okay, so, you’re never going to guess what I just did.” Angus looked back up at Magnus to see another broad grin.
“Did you wrestle the lake monster again? Your pants are way too ripped for comfort, my dude, if I have to see your bear ass again I’m gonna-”
“Whatcha got there, Maggie?” The blue monster had taken notice of Magnus’ cupped hands, and blinked out of sight, appearing just as suddenly behind him and levitating to lean over his shoulder. “Oh holy fuck. Hey Lup, Magnus stole a baby!”
“You what?” The pink monster – Lup, apparently – darted across the intervening space and leaned over to see. “Magnus, you like, know that we’re not supposed to be the baby-stealing kind of monster, right? Like, that’s not a thing.”
“I didn’t steal him!” Magnus protested, at the same time as Angus’ indignant, automatic “I’m not a baby! I’m ten years old!”
“Guys, what’s going on out there?” Out of another door leaned another monster, one who looked like just a winged skeleton in robes, eyes pitch-black hollows. Angus thought of the death omens that people saw lurking around the Stateran and swallowed nervously, pressing a little closer into Magnus’ chest.
“Babe, Magnus stole a kid,” Lup called.
The skeleton emerged from the door to join the group. “I don’t know why I’m surprised, but Magnus, why?”
“Okay, first, I didn’t steal him, I fought a chimera for him-”
“-so you stole him from a chimera-”
“-second, I wasn’t about to just leave a kid out there for something else to eat, what do you take me for?” Magnus paused. “Also other reasons.” Before Angus could speak up another voice joined the chorus.
“Magnus, did you have to bring a human here? Was that really necessary?” This monster looked almost human, if Angus ignored her size, but her dark skin was speckled with moon-white dots in places and her face was an impassive mask he could see her eyes through.
“It kind of was, actually. Listen, do you know where Davenport and Merle are? I figure we should introduce him to everyone at once, I-”
“Hold on, introduce him?” The blue monster’s tail swished, catlike. “It’s not like he’ll remember any of this, let’s just go get Fisher and wrap this up.” Angus didn’t like the sound of that.
“They’re on their way, I heard the commotion and I thought you’d probably want them, so I gave them a call.” The masked monster shifted the book in her hand to the crook of her arm.
“You are literally the best person ever,” Magnus told her, and though the mask didn’t move she chuckled and gave him a mock salute.
“Finally, a little appreciation.” She looked down at Angus again, pinpricks of white against the dark eyes focusing on him. “Does this have anything to do with how you locked yourself inside all morning?”
“Maybe.” Magnus drew the word out.
“Magnus! The hell did you do now?” Angus’ shoulders sagged with relief as everyone’s attention was drawn away from him. Around a corner came two more monsters. One looked like a giant dwarf made of wood and vines, leaves and shoots and flowers sprouting and budding all over, especially where hair should have been. The other looked like – well, nothing. For a second Angus thought it was a cloud of smoke, but it was surrounded by a red jacket and as it approached, it formed into a roughly humanoid shape, although it kept billowing and changing – claws, tendrils, wings, they kept forming and collapsing back into the basic form.
Magnus held Angus out towards them. “Okay, so, this is Angus. I found him being attacked by a chimera and rescued him, like you do.”
“Like you do, maybe,” muttered the blue monster, and Lup elbowed him. Magnus nodded thanks to her before continuing.
“And, I mean, I couldn’t just leave him after that, you know? So I brought him back here. We can at least look after him-”
“Magnus,” interrupted the smoke monster. “You know what I’m going to tell you already, I don’t – I don’t know why this had to get this far.” A face formed to frown at him.
“I know, I know, but listen – I’m not kidding, this is important, I’ll explain later. But we can’t just leave the kid to fend for himself, look at him.” Angus folded his arms tight against his chest, shoulders hunching under seven stares. He knew he wasn’t really what his parents would call presentable, but it seemed rude to call attention to it.
Magnus continued. “Listen, we can talk about this later, but right now can’t we at least help him out? He’s a mess – no offense,” he added to Angus, who frowned.
The smoke monster looked at Angus for a few seconds, then sighed. “We are going to discuss this tonight. But – I guess a day won’t hurt. Fisher can handle that much if it comes to it.”
“Yes!” Magnus pumped a fist and Angus instinctively ducked away as it came down. Finally, his frayed patience snapped.
“Then can you all stop talking about me like I’m not here now, sirs, ma’ams?” A sudden knot of regret settled in his stomach as all seven monsters looked back down at him, and he couldn’t quite read any of their expressions. Lup looked over at the skeleton monster and raised an eyebrow, ears twitching. Angus cast a longing look at the ground, where he wasn’t literally in the hands of the biggest being he’d ever seen.
“I guess if he’s gonna be sleeping over we’ll have to talk to him eventually,” Lup remarked, and then she was in front of him again, grinning and leaning down to bring her to eye level as a startled Angus leaned backwards. “So, I’m Lup. That’s Taako-”she jerked a thumb towards the blue monster, “and Barry,” towards the skeleton monster, who gave him a little wave.
“Oh, thanks, Lup, what if I wanted to introduce myself to the kid?” Taako was still leaning on Magnus' shoulder.
Lup made a cheerfully rude gesture at Taako before continuing. “You already met Magnus. This is Lucretia,” she motioned to the masked monster, who nodded politely to him. “Professor Oak over there is Merle, and that’s Davenport.”
Angus blinked a few times, though he committed the names to memory and nodded. “Thank you, ma’am. I’m Angus McDonald.”
“Angus, what were you doing out here in the Stateran anyway? It’s a dangerous place for adventurers, never mind children.” Lucretia watched him intently, though at least she didn’t seem to feel the need to come as close as Lup did.
Angus hesitated. “I got lost,” he said after a moment. “And I wanted to find out more about the forest, so I decided to explore in it.”
Lucretia eyed him for a moment, then nodded. “Okay.”
Magnus lifted Angus up to his eye level, and Angus squeaked at the sudden motion. “Alright, we better get you cleaned up and everything – uh, do you have spare clothes or something?”
Angus glanced down at his outfit, torn and stained and muddy all over, and shook his head. “No, they were in my bag.”
“…so where’s your bag?”
Angus looked down. “I don’t know. I was sleeping and someone stole it.” He’d woken up with a dawning horror and nothing left but the clothes he wore.
“Okay, well, Taako, can you-”
“Fuck, fine, if you’re gonna bug me about it. Gimme that.” Taako reached up and plucked Angus out of Magnus’ hand, and Angus found himself spun around dizzyingly, Taako lifting one of his arms out and peering at it before finally stopping, and Angus, held loosely in one hand, reached up to feel that his glasses were still on his face. “Hm.” Taako lifted his free hand and tapped the glasses, knocking them askew, then plopped him back into Magnus’ outstretched hand and sauntered off. “I’m not cooking tonight, Lup, that’s on you,” he called. Lup flipped him off. Taako flipped her off without even looking back.
“Bath time!” Magnus announced cheerfully, striding away as the rest of the monsters dispersed. Angus, fixing his glasses, realized that the crack in the lens was gone.
The bath was kind of an adventure, given that the tub had obviously been sized for the monsters, and not a human boy. Magnus had also presented him with the tub full of bubble bath that reached several feet high, and had to clear a space in the bubbles for Angus.
The water was warm, though, and Angus scrubbed his hair three times before he was satisfied. It was very nice to be clean again. Once he’d had enough – and had pruned so much he thought he might be able to climb walls – Magnus returned to bundle him into a massive, fluffy towel.
“It’s Lucretia’s,” he explained as Angus peeked out from the soft folds. He’d also brought fresh clothes that looked pretty much like Angus’ old ones, but as he pulled them on he found a little star charm attached to one pocket. The star was a perfect match for the one on his training wand. The wand was also with the pile of clothes, and Angus slipped the lanyard over his head with a pang of relief. He didn’t really know any combat cantrips, but it was comforting to have anyway.
Once he emerged, feeling a little braver, Magnus brought him to one of the shelters. It wasn’t much inside, but it was warm, and on the floor in one corner was a gigantic pillow, a large square of cloth spread across it, and a neatly arranged sandwich, protected from the floor by the torn corner of a giant piece of paper. The sandwich wouldn’t have made even a bite for Magnus, but Angus needed both hands and a good bit of his boy strength to pick it up.
On the other hand, being on the floor reminded him just how big Magnus was, and he retreated with his dinner onto the pillow, where he wasn’t as easily lost from sight against the ground.
Magnus gave him another toothy grin. “Just stay put here and get some sleep.”
“What about in the morning? Who’s Fisher, and why do people keep talking about them in relation to me?” It hadn’t sounded like anyone was going to eat him, but Angus was still pretty sure it was a possibility.
The grin faded. “Fisher’s another friend of mine, you’ll meet them later. Don’t worry about it, alright? Eat and go to bed. It’s all good.” With that Magnus left Angus to his own devices. Angus watched and considered following, but his stomach growled loudly and he decided food came first. You couldn’t do sneaky detective work with a noisy stomach.
Once he’d eaten as much as he could, though, Angus’ attention returned to the door. He slid off the pillow and crept towards it, pressed against the rough wall in case anyone came back. The door wasn’t nearly flush with the ground, and at its relative size Angus could crawl underneath easily. It had gotten dark, but he could see light from another one of the shelters. He dashed across the space between and crept under this door before he could lose his nerve in the darkness.
Inside, scale saved him once again. The seven monsters were all gathered around a table. Davenport was standing on it at the head of the table, and at the other end Merle was sitting on a platform of wood and vines growing from the ground that lifted him up to the same level as everyone else. The rest were all seated around it in more normal chairs, and nobody thought to look down and see Angus as he crouched just inside the door, against the wall.
“We’re not babysitters, just have Fisher wipe his mind and send him home,” Merle snapped, glaring across the table at Barry. “Why are we even arguing about this? We don’t need some kid wandering around getting underfoot.”
“Literally underfoot,” Davenport added. “Humans are fragile, any one of us could kill him without even meaning to. We have our own duties, and we’re protecting people by attending to them – not by keeping stray humans in dangerous places. Angus would be better off back with his own family.”
Angus shrank at that.
Lup shook her head. “Listen, yeah of course we have to keep doing what we do, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have room for a little normal compassion! Who lets their kid go wandering into fuckin’ Monster Woods? Shitty people, that’s who.”
“Lulu, come on, do you wanna be dealing with a little kid all the time? I mean, I don’t! They’re messy and annoying and gross, I don’t want some kid crying all over my stuff or whatever.” Taako leaned back in the chair, propping his feet on the table. Lup gave him a look and flicked a finger, creating a small illusory star charm above it as she stared at Taako, who glared back.
“I mean, Lup has a point.” Barry drummed his fingers on the table. “Have we ever seen anyone other than adventurers come so deep into the forest? People don’t get that lost in a few hours, not so lost that they meet chimeras.”
Lucretia looked at Magnus. “You’ve been quiet since we got here. Is there something you want to share with the group, Magnus?”
Magnus leaned forward and rested his forearms on the table. “Listen. I woke up at ass o’clock in the morning today to a fucking vision-blizzard. It’s one of those days.” Angus heard Taako mutter a surprised “shit” before Magnus continued. “And guess who they were all about? Angus. A lot of things could come out of what we do tonight, but you need to know before we decide: Barry’s right, nobody gets that lost, and so is Lup. Angus didn’t just get lost, he ran away. For good reason. And I can’t see everything that might happen, but I’m not liking what I see if we send him back.”
There was a long moment of silence. Angus frowned. From his angle, he couldn’t see Magnus, but he sounded a whole lot more serious than he had all day. The others were all looking at one another.
“What about what you see if we don’t?” Davenport finally said.
“That goes a lot of ways, and that could go real bad too, I’m not saying it won’t. But I like the odds a lot more on that side.”
“You seriously think things are going to go better with us in charge of a kid?” Merle snorted. “Who have you been living with all these years?”
“That’s enough – even though I don’t really disagree with you, Merle.” Davenport sighed. “We’ll put it to a vote. Everyone for sending Angus back?” Merle’s hand went up. Davenport’s smoke billowed upward. Nobody else moved. “Everyone for letting him stay?” Lup’s hand shot up, and Barry’s followed suit. Taako groaned dramatically, letting his head fall back, and lazily raised his own hand. Lucretia lifted hers and, from how she glanced over to the side, Angus guessed Magnus did too.
Davenport frowned. “The ayes have it, I guess. I hope you’re right about this, Magnus.”
“I’ve never been wrong in my life.”
“You’ve been wrong three times since you woke up this morning,” Lucretia observed, to a ripple of chuckles from the others and what sounded like a raspberry from Magnus.
“Anyway, I’m glad,” Magnus remarked as Angus began to creep back to the door to sneak away. “It’d probably be rude to vote to kick him out when he’s right by the door.”
