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Son of Oz [DISCONTINUED]

Chapter 9: The Puppy

Summary:

Salem gives a task to her newest creation.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

 

Breath.

It was not even sure it needed to breathe until it did. And even then, it was hard to know if it did it because it needed to in order to live, or if it did it out of pure reflex.

Mother calls it “Her Hound.”

She tells the girl next to her—a servant of some kind—that “he’ll grow bigger and stronger with time.”

For now, “he” was, in her words, a little underwhelming.

The Hound didn’t take much offence.

He didn’t really mind. Mother was the one who created him. She was the first face he ever saw, and the first voice he ever heard. So she could say whatever she liked about him, and he wouldn't mind.

The servant, however, was not allowed the same privilege.

“Alright, puppy,” says the girl as she finishes cleaning up the carpets, “that’s the last time you’re going to drip your Grimm goo all over this carpet! Understand?”

The Hound huffs. As if he would listen to a servant. Mother didn’t mind if he stained the carpets. Mother was kind to him. And he meant more to her than this “Cinder” person.

The Hound scampers off down the hallway, making sure to leave a trail of black pawprints behind for The Cinder to clean up.

He runs right into Mother, much to his glee. She picks him up, holding him to her chest.

“I have a job for you, My Hound,” she says in a pleased voice.

The Hound yips, tail wagging.

How he does like to please The Mother!

Mother holds up a piece of cloth, which he automatically sniffs out of curiosity.

“I need you to find who this scent belongs to. I have something I need you to give to him, understand?”

The Hound barks and Mother places him down. She hands him a glowing, red ball and he takes it into his mouth. Red lightning and smoke crackles inside of the orb. He crunches down on it and it makes a satisfying scream.

“Be careful with it. All I need you to do is stay out of sight and touch the man I’m looking for with it on the chest. Off you go, now.”

The Hound immediately scampers away, back down the hallway he had come from.

“UGH! WHAT DID I JUST SAY?!” The Cinder yells after him as he darts past her, leaving more goopy prints.

He swerves towards an open window to avoid the guards, per Mother’s instructions. Mother called the guards “incompetent” and “easy to control." But there would be a lot of questions from those bumbling humans if he were to suddenly pop up around the castle, so he stayed out of sight.

Even so, sometimes The Hound couldn’t help but to play with them.

He was a shadow on the walls. A ghost that haunted them at night.

He was fairly certain Mother knew of his whereabouts. She knew everything. She was The Mother, after all. But she never scolded him for it. The rumors of ghost dogs in the castle corridors appeared to amuse her as much as it did him.

And he did love amusing Mother. She gave him extra pats and scratches when she was amused.

But Mother had just given him a task, so he would torment the guards another day.

The Hound slips through the window and drops the three stories down.

His gooey body plops on the ground, the impact turning his gelatinous form flat for a moment. He easily pops back up, though, and continues to scamper out into the forest, following the scent Mother had given him.

------

 

His short legs can only carry him so fast, but, after a few days of nonstop running and tracking, The Hound arrives at a large, white house. It isn’t as large as Mother’s, but that’s to be expected. Mother is grand and perfect, and so all of her things were grand and perfect, too. Most especially her home.

The Hound races towards the house, slipping through the fence and into the yard.

He ducks behind a potted plant just before a human steps past.

“Whitley! Whitley, darling, no! Keep that bug out of your mouth!”

A woman—who had white hair the same as Mother’s, but Mother’s was better and far more impressive because Mother was better and more impressive at everything she did—goes over to another white-haired person. This person was much, much smaller in comparison.

The Cinder probably would have called it a “puppy”, too, but its name was apparently Whitley.

This “Whitley” and the bigger human were not who he was searching for, however. Although, they did smell a small fraction like who he was hunting.

He abandons The Woman and The Whitley and instead follows his nose towards the far stronger source of the smell.

This human was also very tiny. Another puppy human. Was this who Mother was searching for?

The Hound glances around. There was a bigger human man cutting back some hedges, not at all paying attention to him. Two other white haired puppies were also here, but they were busy kicking a ball back and forth. And the woman was dealing with The Whitley. So that left this little human puppy all alone.

The Hound sneaks closer to the human puppy.

It looks up at him with big, greenish eyes. It doesn’t seem startled or scared by him.

Foolish human puppy!

He was very, very scary! Or at least he would be. Mother said so.

The little puppy gets up onto two legs and walks unsteadily towards him.

The Hound drops his ball at his paws and allows it to come in close. He sniffs at the puppy’s chest.

Yes! The smell! It was here!

But it wasn’t coming from the puppy itself. Instead, the smell was coming off its clothes.

How annoying.

The Hound huffs, readying to depart, before the puppy reaches out and wraps its arms him around the neck.

The Hound growls for a second. Only Mother gets to hold him and pet him—only her!

But… he has to admit, this is kind of nice, too.

The puppy doesn’t hug him for long. It lets go and backs up with a giggle. The Hound licks its cheek, leaving a black smudge, just before the puppy is out of reach.

“Bye, bye!” it says, waving a pudgy little hand at him as it totters away.

The Hound opens its muzzle, gurgling back, “bye, bye.”

He picks up the glowing ball mother had given him and continues on his way.

----

 

The Hound runs along a gravel path, following the smell of the person was tracking down for Mother.

He comes across a farm and slips under the fence.

Nothing here. Just an old, dead boar. The Hound takes a bite out of the corpse. Not because he needs to eat, rather more because he felt like it would taste interesting.

It didn’t taste like anything, though. It was like ash in his mouth, despite the putrid smell coming off of the corpse.

Strange. He was certain he remembered having taste once…

Oh well.

The Hound zips away, heading back down the path.

By the time he finds who he’s searching for, a whole night has passed. The trickles of morning light were coming in from over the horizon.

The Hound has never been outside the castle before to see a sunrise.

Some part of him stirs with a memory that he can’t quite reach.

Hot chocolate. Child’s laughter. Mother is there. She smiles at him and his siblings—or at least he believes they are his siblings. Mother is happy. And he is warm. And he is safe.

But another memory blurs with the current.

A man at a worktable. Shiny trinkets. A shop he’s meant to guard. Toto? Something about that name…

These memories only grow stronger as he approaches the group.

The person he’s meant to find is here. The Hound can smell the human on the wind. The scent is strong and unmistakable. It is him! The man he's meant to find! He stares at the human, the memory of hot coco and giggling blaring in his head.

Another man walks past. The “Toto” man.

Was that its name?

Toto?

The Toto walks over to the other familiar man, who’s chatting with another human with wild, green hair.

The sight of the familiar man shapes a familiar word on The Hound’s tongue.

“Papa?” Perhaps these were their names.

The Toto and The Papa—these two strangely familiar people from his distant memories, of which he seemed unable to completely ignore.

But Mother had given him a task. Mother had made him, and she was always kind to him. And she had sent him out to do a job. And he didn’t want to displease her—of course not.

So the Hound shakes these strange feelings and memories.

He sneaks towards the two men through the underbrush. He quite nearly reaches The Papa when a blond human calls “Can you two quit blabbering so we can keep moving?”

“Alright, Glynda, we’re coming,” The Papa says. He and the green haired human keep their conversation going as they walk.

The Hound decides to hang back and watch them for a while.

He wasn’t in a rush. Mother didn’t tell him when to be back, so why not see where this was going?

-----

 

The smell of salt hits him long before he sees the ocean itself.

This city was crawling with humans, who smelled of sweat and fish and seawater. The pungent odor of chum and old wood and rope and tuna makes The Hound shakes his head in repulsion.

The only good part about humans was the clutter they left, a clutter he could easily maneuver through and hide behind as he follows the group into town.

The Hound lies low, waiting for his opportunity to strike. He was fairly certain he knew what the ball he was holding was. He’d watched Mother work tirelessly over it for months. It was made of bone, black Grimm tar, lightening from a furious storm, and drops of her own blood.

Mother had put her heart and soul into it. So when she gave him this task, he knew it would be important.

The Hound squashes himself between two barrels of fish, waiting for the right moment.

-----

 

Ozmund had a strange feeling of being watched. Actually, his whole body had been buzzing with anxiety since they’d gotten back on the road.

Maybe it was the smell of the sea or being in the presence of so many other people. He’d never seen so many in one place before…

Ozmund peeks up from under the hood of his cloak, glimpsing the crowd moving around them.

Ironwood leans over to whisper, “Just keep your head down. We’ll try to get this over with as quickly as possible. We just need to keep a low profile—”

“BARTY!” someone yells over the crowd. A man with a big, white mustache waves his arms at them from across the road. “I’M OVER HERE, BARTY!”

Oobleck jumps up, waving his own arms. “PORT!” he yells back. “HOW HAVE YOU BEEN, YOU OLD BADGER?!”

“IN TIP-TOP SHAPE AS ALWAYS, OF COURSE! DID YOU READ MY NOTES?!”

“ALL THIRTY PAGES, MY FRIEND! STELLAR, AS ALWAYS!”

The two fall into boisterous laughter that seems to echo throughout the whole town.

“So much for stealth,” Glynda mutters.

They cross the road and Oobleck and Port share a friendly embrace.

“By the way, Port! You should meet my traveling companions! Glynda Goodwitch, James Ironwood, and the man hissing under his breath about horses is Ozmund. He’s decided to take that mare you took in.”

“Oh, how wonderful!" Port nods. "Good man! She could use a good home!”

Ozmund replies with something fowl in a long-dead tongue under his breath. “Choked by his horse’s own reins is a poor equestrian.”

“Foolish is the man who thinks he can speak in tongues without first knowing if others can listen in,” Oobleck replies in the same dead tongue. Of course his pronunciation was flawless.

Ozmund’s face blazed with embarrassment. “S-sorry…”

“What’d I say, Oz?” Ironwood inquires.

“No, no,” Oobleck replies, “in that instance, I actually did want an apology. He thought I wouldn’t know Old Folkspeak! How insulting! It’s only what all of the most influential books in the world are written in! Why, most of the words in our language are—!”

“Alright, alright,” Ironwood cuts in. “Before you start rambling and he starts telling a seven-hour story and Ozmund starts going off about horses, and Glynda starts telling everyone to shut up, I need to know what the plan is. How are we going to convince a bunch of pirates to let us on their ship so we can cross the sea?”

“Oh, that’s easy.” Oobleck points a finger at Ozmund. “Remove your coat, please.”

“My coat?” Ozmund inquires. He skeptically removes it and hands it to Oobleck.

“And that shirt underneath as well.”

“Oh—?”

“And your boots, too.”

“Are you having me strip naked in the middle of town?!”

“Depends, what’s the stitching like on your undergarments?”

Ozmund hides behind Ironwood. “He’s a pervert, James, I should’ve known! You’re right. I’ll never trust anyone ever again—!”

“I’m not a pervert! Now do you want my assistance, or don’t you?”

“Pardon, but… what do you need all of Ozmund’s clothes for?” Glynda inquires.

“You mean you haven’t noticed?” Oobleck turns the coat in his hands around and shows the buttons. “Do you see the marks on the buttons?”

“The flowers?”

“Lotuses.”

“Is that impressive in some way?”

“It’s not about the craftsmanship of the clothes themselves. His clothes are interwoven with a substance people have started calling Dust. There’s only a handful who are capable of this kind of work. The Schnee Dust Company only just recently started weaving Dust into clothing, though not very successfully. There is a village of people who’ve been doing it long before. In a town called Kuroyuri. That is where these clothes are from, and there are those who would kill to get their hands on them.”

“That’s right!” Ozmund starts. “I remember Ozma telling me about it once. About people who weave a substance into their clothing that can keep them safe from fire and resilient to the cold. He said they didn’t typically give away clothing, especially not to outsiders. However, Salem winded up striking a deal with them. If they supplied her with clothing, then she would make sure The Grimm never attacked their village. I had completely forgotten about it until now...”

“Ah, very interesting!” Oobleck pushes up his glasses and smiles. “Now, with that out of the way, please exercise haste and strip.”

“Yes,” Glynda teases, “hurry and get naked, Ozmund. We can all watch.”

Port strokes his moustache. “Hmm. All of this talk of disrobing reminds me of a time from my youth—”

“Perverts!" Ozmund hides back behind Ironwood. "They’re all perverts!”

Ironwood laughs. “C’mon, Oz. We can go get you some new clothes for you to change into.”

"Please do!" Ozmund nods at him.

Ironwood turns to Glynda, “Gimme your coin purse, G.”

“What, no way! Get your own coin purse!”

“Do you want to get on the ship or not?”

Glynda pauses. She groans and rolls her eyes. “Fine.”

Ironwood catches the coin purse swiftly. “I’ll pay you back.”

“Oh, please. I’ve heard that before.”

Ozmund follows Ironwood back across the road, that strange feeling of being watched coming back. He glances around anxiously.

Ironwood puts a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, Oz. Nobody really wants to see you without your clothes on.”

“It’s not that, it’s…” Ozmund shakes his head. “Never mind.”

“What?”

“I feel as though… we’re being followed.”

“This is a town of pirates and you’re apparently wearing the clothing equivalent of magical diamonds. So we probably are.”

“Hm… You’re probably right.” Ozmund heads inside a shop with Ironwood.

He picks out some simple clothes. A white shirt, a pair of brown pants, and some boots. They remind him of his time as a simple farrier.

“They wouldn’t happen to have gloves, would they?”

“What for?”

“Oh. Um…” Ozmund lifts his hand. “To cover my prosthetics.”

Ironwood blinks in surprise at the prosthetic pointer and middle fingers. Half of both his thumbs appear to be missing as well. “That’s incredible.” He looks over the wizard's hand with a critical eye. “It looks like the metal is fused to your skin.”

“It is. I lost them after an energy blast backfired.”

“Really? You injured yourself with your own magic?”

“Magic can be unstable and dangerous. Spellcasters back in the day used objects to channel their magic through. Ozma used to have a staff, but that got lost when Salem attacked us. I use my cane now. Objects can improve the focus of the magic and the output. Like Glynda when she shot me over the treetops. Had she put that much magic through her hands instead of channeling it through her crop—”

“Would she have been hurt?” Ironwood frets.

“Her magic seems different than mine. More… muted. It could have, but I’m not entirely sure. Anyway, after I lost my fingers, Ozma used magic to replace them with the metal. I can move them, but I can’t actually feel them.”

“Still. That’s amazing.”

“They're enchanted so I can do this!” Ozmund runs some magic through his hand and the metal turns sharp and pointed, like claws. “Fun, right? I always have a built-in weapon.”

“Somehow, you just got a little bit scarier, Oz.”

Ozmund laughs.

“Anyway. Gloves.”

Ozmund picks out a pair of black gloves and they head to the front to pay. He gets dressed in a spare room and hands his other clothes to Ironwood, though he keeps his cloak.

They step out of the shop and that strange feeling comes back. The feeling of being watched.

It didn’t feel human… But then again, it didn’t particularly feel like a Grimm, either…

Ozmund takes a moment, sensing the air with his magic instead. It was strange. Like the aftertaste of something he couldn't quite distinguish. Familiar, yet... completely foreign. But that familiarity.

He focuses more on that part.

It was like... It almost felt like... Another magic user.

But not quite. Like Glynda or Oobleck, this was muted, and yet it was completely different in almost every way. It was a pure magic atop something dark and wicked.

Like a Grimm. But also just like-

Ozmund stops right in his tracks.

Ironwood turns back to him. “Oz? What is it—?”

He jerks his head around, toward a shadowy space among the crates of fish.

Two glowing red eyes stare back at him. His brain went on full alert.

A Grimm? No. It felt like one. But it was wrong.

So, so wrong.

Because some other part of it-that hauntingly familiar part of it was-

It's magic felt just like-

A face of bone white slips out of the shadows.

The beast opens its maws.

“Pa… pa…”

Ozmund’s hands go to his mouth to withhold a shriek of horror. No. He shakes his head, trembling. No, she didn’t—she wouldn’t have—not this! Anything, anything but this!

“Oz?” A heavy hand lands on his shoulder.

The creature slips away.

Ozmund scrambles for it.

“Iclyn!” he cries, diving toward the space between the crates. “Iclyn!”

Ironwood pulls him back, “Oz, what in the world are you doing—?!”

Ozmund wrestles out of his grip. “GET OFF OF ME! I HAVE TO FIND HER! ICLYN!” He gets free and runs after the shadow dashing away behind crates and vendors.

“OZ!”

He can feel Ironwood running after him, but he doesn’t care. He sensed her—he felt her—she was there!

He tears down the street, following the shadow. He leaps over crates, pushes past the crowd. He didn’t care what was in his way—what or who he toppled—he just knew he had to get to her!

“ICLYN!”

He leaps over a crate. Tumbles over a fallen crate of apples. He lands hard on the pavement, his jaw knocking against it. He tastes blood. 

But his eyes focus on the prize ahead of him as it disappears behind a stall.

“ICLYN-!”

“OZ!" Ironwood catches up to him, grabbing him before he can run off again.

"LET GO OF ME!"

"OZ, WAIT-!"

"LET GO-!"

"YOU HAVE TO TELL ME WHAT'S WRONG-!"

"IT'S MY DAUGHTER, JAMES!"

Ironwood freezes, eyes wide.

"Please," Ozmund begs in a softer voice, his breath catching in sobs, "It's my daughter!"

Ironwood releases him.

Immediately, Ozmund pulls away and keeps running.

He had to find her again! He wouldn't lose her-not again!

He had to find her! He just—he just had to—!

Suddenly, crates and ships and people become trees and bushes. He glances around him desperately, left and right, up and down.

Heaving, he sucks in enough air into his burning lungs and cups his hands over his mouth, screaming, “ICLYYYN!”

The silence is eerie. It makes his skin crawl. His brain is going a thousand miles a second. Filled with so many horrible thoughts and terrors.

ICLYYYN!”

Snap.

Ozmund turns and sees a shape and a glowing red light coming at him.

A force hits him in the chest, and he goes stumbling backwards.

The glowing orb sinks into his flesh and bone.

Blaring white agony courses through him as he’s consumed by red lightning.

He watches as a little, black figure darts away into the underbrush.

----

 

Mother will be so pleased! So very pleased!

The Papa falls onto the ground, convulsing in agony, trying to pull out the red orb. However, it’s sunk sharp little, needle-like appendages into his chest. It would not come out easily.

The Hound yips with joy and rushes away into the forest.

What a fun game of tag that was!

Joy! What joy Mother will feel!

Now to hide and watch the aftermath!

 

Notes:

I got kinda caught up in other projects, so a great many apricots for the long wait! But at last, here is the next chapter!!
Also, hmm... I wonder if that magical ability to fuse metal to skin will ever come in handy.....
......
Heya. Ironwood. Wanna lose a limb or two? :)))