"Hunter! I've been calling you for the past ten minutes and I-" Eda started, opening the door to his room and widening her eyes when she saw the red cardinal palisman chirping in Hunter's lap.

"Uh..." Hunter said intelligibly. "He came in through the window."

Eda smiled, and sat down next to him. "Well. That just proves you don't need a magic bile sac to be as good as the other witches, huh? You already got a head start on your palisman."

Hunter smiled, petting the palisman. "Yeah."

After a few moments of silence, Eda gave Hunter a pat on the back before standing up and heading for the door. "You better show off that you're my pupil." She said. Hunter chuckled, and Eda left the room.

+.*.+

Eda and King were at Eda's Human Collectibles stand. King held up a tray of mostly inedible human things.

"Partake of my free snack samples! Take it! I demand it as your ruler, the King of Demons!" King said. Several people passed but none even look at him. He threw the tray to the ground.

"Nyeh! Why isn't anyone paying attention to me? I'm their rightful overlord." King said. "Intellectually and such."

"Yeah... hey!" Eda grabbed a random passerby by the cowl. She took a sniff. "It reeks more of nerd than money today."

"Guys!"

Eda let go of the passerby, turning to see Hunter run up to them with a giddy smile, his palisman on his shoulder. That bird always stuck with him no matter what.

"You will not believe whats going on!" He said excitedly. "It's a book fair! Where books come to life!"

A book from the stand next to him jumped off. "Hello." It said. Hunter yelped and kicked it away, his palisman chirping.

"A fair without rides?" King asked. A random boy popped up.

"Who need rides when this can take you anywhere?" The boy said, holding up a book to King's face. King slapped some bacon on the boy's head, and a winged demon picked him up. The boy screamed.

"A, ew." Eda said, picking up a book and dropping it on the ground. "B, I'm bored. C, I feel like pickpocketing some dork while they browse."

Eda walked off, and Hunter slumped. "King, are you gonna come?" He asked. King shook his head. Hunter sighed. "Fine, I'll go myself."

He walked around the book fair, looking around in amazement.

"This book fair's got everything!" He muttered to himself and his palisman, gazing at everything with wonder in his eyes. "A zine-making workshop, meet and greets, and a writing competition!"

He looked down and saw that tiny nose creature prisoner from the Conformatorium a month ago. He noticed that she was in a line with a bunch of others, in front of a stand.

"Hey, uh, what are you guys lining up for?" Hunter asked.

"We're in line for Jon De Plume, most famous writer on the Boiling Isles, famed author of the Realm Warriors series! I'm gonna have him read my story... and marry me." The tiny nose creature said.

Hunter looked over and saw a man at the front of the line.

"Jon, will you sign my child?" The man asked.

"I'll sign anything!" Jon said, laughing.

"Uh... alright, have fun." Hunter said, waving and walking away.

As he continued walking through the book fair, he bought a bunch of books, most of them about magic in the Boiling Isles, some about demons, and some about history.

By the time he made it back to the Owl House, he couldn't even see where he was going because of how tall the stack of books were.

He tripped over his own foot and fell, the books flying everywhere and landing all over the living room floor. His palisman flew down to head, nudging him and chirping. He slowly got up, grunting.

"What the heck happened in here?"

Hunter got up and dusted himself off to see Eda, her staff in hand, all geared up for an adventure.

"Uh, dropped some books I got at the book fair." Hunter said, quickly trying to scoop them up. The red cardinal pick up one of the books with its feet and helped Hunter gather them all, to which he smiled at. He looked back up at Eda though. "Where are you going?"

"I'm popping out for a few days to an undisclosed place to do undisclosed things. You're in charge." Eda said, heading for the door.

"Okay?" Hunter said, having gathered all the books and placed them on the living room table.

"No questions!" Eda said.

"Alright." Hunter said.

"I said no questions!" Eda said, closing the door behind her.

"That wasn't a ques-" Hunter sighed. "Nevermind."

After two trips, he managed to get all the books in his bedroom, putting them all on an empty shelf in his bookshelf. The red cardinal perched on his shoulder, chirping. Hunter widened his eyes.

"Wait, did I just understand what you just said?" Hunter asked. The bird chirped again. "Is that your name? Flapjack?"

He chuckled as the bird chirped again. Suddenly, he got a ping from pennstagram, and summoned the scroll, curious. It was a message from Gus.

Messages between INFO_DUMPER and 1LLUSION1ST_M4ST3R

1LLUSION1ST_M4ST3R: uhhh hunter

1LLUSION1ST_M4ST3R: something weird is going on

INFO_DUMPER: what is it?

1LLUSION1ST_M4ST3: you have a bunch of wanted posters from the emperors coven???

INFO_DUMPER: WHGAT

INFO_DUMPER: WHAT**

1LLUSION1ST_M4ST3R: what did you do???

INFO_DUMPER: i didn't do anything! maybe its bc i live with eda or something

INFO_DUMPER: literally all i did was go to a book fair and buy a bunch of books

INFO_DUMPER: thats it

1LLUSION1ST_M4ST3R: hmm yeah its prob bc of eda

1LLUSION1ST_M4ST3R: bc u honestly seem like the type of person to like rules and authority

1LLUSION1ST_M4ST3R: in a good way

INFO_DUMPER: i dont know whether to be offended or not

1LLUSION1ST_M4ST3R: anyway willow and i are gonna buy some seeds so Willow can practice her magic

1LLUSION1ST_M4ST3R: wanna come?

1LLUSION1ST_M4ST3R: might wanna bring a hood or cowl or something though. maybe a mask

INFO_DUMPER: i'll just use Eda's cowl ig

INFO_DUMPER: where should we meet up?

1LLUSION1ST_M4ST3R: just outside hexside

INFO_DUMPER: alr see you there

Hunter poofed away the scroll and headed downstairs, Flapjack on his shoulder. He grabbed Eda's cowl from her closet and headed out, making sure his face was covered with the cowl.

+.*.+

Soon, he arrived, and spotted Willow and Gus in the distance.

"Hey guys." He said when he came over.

"Hey Hunter. Gus showed me the pennstagram messages between you two." Willow said. "It's weird that the Emperor's Coven would just suddenly put up wanted posters for you. And the reward for capturing you is more than Eda's!"

She pulled out a wanted poster of Hunter, which showed the reward being 1,000,000,000,000,000 snails. Hunter gaped.

"Now that you mention it, back at the covention, Lilith really wanted me to meet the emperor for some reason as soon as she saw me." Hunter said. "It's really weird..."

"Yeah, this doesn't feel like a coincidence..." Gus said. "Anyway! Let's go get those seeds."

The trio walked through the streets of Bonesborough carefully, Hunter making sure his hood covered his face in shadow, so no one would recognize him. Flapjack nuzzled against him from outside the cowl, which made him realize he'd been tensing up.

"By the way, how'd you get a palisman? We're only getting ours later this year!" Willow said, pointing towards Flapjack.

"Oh, he sort of just - came to me? He was one of the palismen in the Bat Queen's cave." Hunter said.

"Cool! Destiny bird!" Gus said with a grin. Soon, the trio approached a stand called 'Boiling Isles' Plants & Herbs'.

"Hello! Do you have any seeds for goreberries and snapdragons?" Willow asked the person behind the stand. The person bent down and checked their shelves with some rustling sounds, before getting to small packets of seeds of the plants Willow had asked for.

"That'll be five snails." They said. Willow handed over the snails required, and took the packets of seeds. They walked away, soon rounding a corner and out of sight and earshot of the stand.

"Well that was easy." Gus said. "And quick. Do you guys wanna play Hexes Hold'em?"

"Sure. Eda taught me how to play, but I haven't actually played a game before, so go easy on me." Hunter said. "We can do it at the Owl House if you... want... to?"

Willow and Gus looked at him with wide eyes, before look at something behind him. A shadow cast over him, and he turned to see a few coven scouts, who quickly yanked Hunter's cowl off him.

"It's him! Seize him!" One of the coven guards said, leaping towards him. Flapjack suddenly turned into a staff and, instinctively, Hunter grabbed it and ran away, but felt disoriented when he realized he'd suddenly dashed forward in front of Willow and Gus, when moments before he'd been behind them.

"Run! Don't stop!" Gus said, grabbing his wrist as the two caught up with him and they ran for their lives. The coven guards chased after them.

"How did you do that?" Willow asked.

"I don't know! One minute I was behind you guys, the next I wasn't!" Hunter replied. He rounded the corner and paused when they'd reached a dead end. The trio turned to see the coven guards approaching them slowly.

"Nowhere to run, kids." One of them said. Willow drew a spell circle, summoning vines to suspend one of the guards high in the air, before dropping them from a large height on top of two other guards. Gus created an illusion of multiple Guses, who each blew raspberries at one particular guard.

One of the guards charged towards Hunter, but he gripped his staff and a yellow energy blast shot out of the tip (which was Flapjack). The blast hit the guard and sent him barreling towards the guard being tricked by Gus' illusions. Gus removed his illusions, and Hunter let Willow and Gus board Flapjack as they flew away from the battle scene.

"How did they know you were there?" Gus said, once they caught their breath.

"Maybe that stand owner tattled!" Willow said. "Even with that cowl, if you look straight at you from a front view, it would be pretty easy to tell who you are."

"Well, at least you have the seeds, and we managed to escape." Hunter said. There were a few moments of silence before Gus spoke again.

"They really went all out to search for you, huh?" Gus said. "I wonder why."

Hunter remembered that dream of getting his scar from earlier, and contemplated whether he should tell them. Flapjack chirped, still in staff form, and Hunter sighed.

"I... had this dream. It was weird, like - like a memory or something. I was around five years old, and I went into a study by accident." Hunter explained. "The place I was running around in looked like a castle? I remembered seeing a lot of golden colors inside. Anyway, I was chasing a bird, and I broke a picture frame by accident, and then someone I called 'uncle' came in and got angry, and he slashed me across the cheek."

Willow and Gus glanced at each other, before looking back at Hunter.

"Did you have any other dreams?" Willow asked.

"Only one. I was five years old again, but I had a scar from where I'd been slashed." Hunter said. "There was someone telling me to go through a door and keep running, and there was a battle going on in the distance. I ran through the door, and it looked a lot like the human realm, but I looked back and saw that the person was about to get attacked... and the door closed."

"Maybe someone rescued you once they found out about what happened to you?" Gus suggested.

"Maybe. But I'm still missing so many pieces of the puzzle." Hunter said, frustrated. He sighed, and gave the two of them a sad smile. "Thanks, though."

"Hey, what are friends for?" Willow said, her and Gus giving him smiles.

+.*.+

Soon, they arrived at the Owl House, Willow and Gus waving as they walked back to their homes. Willow had given him one of the wanted posters to show Eda when she got back from whatever she was doing, and now he was staring at it in the living room, sitting on the couch. Flapjack was on his lap, and with Hunter's free hand he absentmindedly gave Flapjack some pats. King walked over, confused.

"What's that?" He asked, sitting down on the couch beside him.

"I found out that the Emperor's Coven really wants me captured. More than Eda herself." Hunter said, pointing at the reward prices on his poster and the giant Eda one behind them.

"Well, Eda will sure be proud to find out. Maybe a little jealous." King said. "But what did you even do?"

"Nothing. I just went to the book fair, bought a bunch of books, and then went I left Gus messaged me on pennstagram about the wanted posters." Hunter said with a sigh, stuffing away the wanted poster in his pocket.

+.*.+

"Hey kids." Eda said, heading inside the Owl House a day later. "That was a rough couple days - what the?!"

Hunter had a piles of wanted posters of him on the ground, a few bruises on his wrists. "Uh... hi, Eda..." He said with a nervous chuckle. "Um... The Emperor's Coven really wants to capture me I guess."

Eda picked up one of the posters. "You're more expensive than I am?!" She yelled in surprise. Hunter shrugged.

"I didn't even do anything. The posters started showing up yesterday, but as you can see, a lot of coven scouts tried to grab me by the wrist." Hunter said, gesturing towards his bruises. "But Flapjack kept me safe."

He gave the red cardinal a pat, and it chirped and nuzzled against his cheek, perching on his shoulder.

Eda grunted. "You're a more wanted criminal than I am and you didn't even do anything? Titan, you're a natural at this." She said, sitting on the couch.

Hunter got up from the floor, kicking away some of the posters so he could do so, and sat down beside her, Flapjack still perched on his shoulder.

"Well, Hexside's safe from the Emperor's Coven at least, so it should be fine." Eda said. Hunter went silent for a bit, wondering whether he should tell her about his dreams, and decided that since he'd told Willow and Gus, he should probably do the same for Eda.

"Eda, I have to tell you something."

And then he told her. He explained everything about the two dreams, about him being sent to the human realm and about how he got his scar.

Eda looked tense when he'd finished explaining, like it confirmed something to her, but Hunter said nothing about it.

"Don't worry, kid." Eda said, wrapping an arm around him with a comforting grin. "We'll figure it out eventually. For now, though, I'm getting some ice for those bruises. They look nasty."