Through tear-filled eyes which were slowly adapting to the presence of light after so long in the darkness, Dorian squinted around at his blurry surroundings whilst practising his refound skill of not freaking out and reaching for his powers the instant things got rough. Tied up to what appeared to be a gurney and half blind was as rough as it could get.

Peeking through hooded eyes seemed to assuage the light needling his eyes so Dorian resorted to that for a while, and as his sight returned he looked down at his bound wrists and was hit with a medley of confusion and relief. Confusion because the straps holding him down were pieces of clothes, ties and the like— which was beyond strange. Either the GDF had gone royally broke and unable to afford proper restraints or something else was going on, Dorian didn't exactly feel relief at that thought devil you knew and all that.

His relief though came from his improving eyesight which allowed him to make out his surroundings a little more clearly which added more confusion to the already strange situation. Dorian was in what appeared to be a very nice upscale apartment, better than anything he'd ever been in, which made no sense unless he was hallucinating or his captors were playing some kinda messed-up mind games with him.

A further scan of his surroundings had Dorian building a vastly different picture than what he'd woken up with. This wasn't some holding cell he was waiting to be cut up in and studied. He was for reasons unknown tied down in a bed in one of his fellow Hunter's rooms, a very well-off Hunter it seemed.

With that realisation, Dorian flexed his arm and tore through the bindings like they weren't even there. He slowly sat up and frowned at how surprisingly good his body felt, though that might have been the very comfortable bed— though after years of fighting otherworldly creatures and being stitched back together when said otherworldly creatures fought back, Dorian had become very familiar with his meat suit and something definitely felt different about it.

Visually, after a hurried inspection of himself, Dorian didn't find anything amiss, just the same muscularly fit body that shed weight like a duck shed water off its back. It was weird and slightly alarming— feeling something and being unable to put it into words, and of one of the only things he could reliably trust too.

With a casual shake of his head, Dorian put it out of his mind and onto the 'deal with later pile' Sitting high up on the pile was his core and what changes that had happened that was so significant he could feel it in his bones. Wanting to not acknowledge that thought till he was somewhere safer, Dorian walked around the apartment and made several notations of things to buy to spruce up his place. First up on his list was to buy a bigger place.

With an explosive sigh of relief, Dorian finally spotted his satchel and the filled cores with them. Not able to put it off any longer and something he really should have done the moment he woke up, Dorian pulled up his terminal and was bombarded with messages from his friends.

» Where the HELL ARE YOU«

»Hope you're okay bruv«

»be okay«

»I will murder you if something happened to you«

Dorian laughed at the extra message from Dan and sent messages to each of his friends assuring them he was okay and through one of the many shiny things in the apartment, Dorian couldn't see the reflection of a big goofy grin on his face. With messages sent and promises made when his terminal was blown up with more questions and demands, Dorian finally relaxed and nearly shot straight up into the ceiling.

He hadn't been walking on the ground… no he was, he just had been floating above it without realising and his relaxing had his feet finally touching the ground which led to the realisation that had him currently floating in mid-air, his head inches from the ceiling of the room.

A sound reached Dorian's ears that had him turning and to see the apartment door sliding open and allowing a heavily laden Robert in. Both men simply froze and stared at each other, one hanging in mid-air and the other standing with his mouth open in his doorway. Dorian cleared his throat and the spell was broken.

Robert quickly hustled in, sliding the door shut and turning to find his guest with his feet planted firmly on the ground. At a loss of words he simply asked, “Hungry? I got food.”

Dorian's stomach picked that exact time to growl loudly and that was answer enough. Robert simply nodded and laid out a spread of rice and potatoes and an assortment of meat prepared in many different ways. The mouth-watering dishes had Dorian's mouth giving testament and he dug in with a gesture from Robert. The first bite and the explosion of flavour nearly knocked the younger Hunter down flat but he simply persevered and shovelled more food into his mouth.

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After minutes of the only sound in the apartment being eating and an occasional burp from Dorian, the formerly impressive spread before the younger Hunter was reduced to empty takeout containers with pieces of picked bones. Robert wordlessly shook his head and pushed his portion over to Dorian and watched in respect as that was also devoured.

“Do you have a black hole for a stomach or something? That was impressive. ”

Dorian choked on his rice and spent minutes hacking up his lungs and then guzzling down water and when the possibility of death from choking was avoided, Dorian looked up at a startled Robert.

“What did I say?” the older Hunter asked, perplexed.

Dorian sighed and started talking and as he did an imperceptible weight on his shoulders began to lessen and the more he got into it the more animated his voice became. After what felt like hours but was actually a couple of minutes, Dorian took a sip of orange soda to quench his parched throat which turned into emptying the can when he realised how sweet it was.

While Dorian was focused on his can and its contents, Robert had a thoughtful look on his face and thoughts running so fast his head should have been smoking. He cleared his throat to get Dorian's attention and tried to phrase his request in a way that didn't look strange. After everything Robert had seen Dorian do it didn't make sense he would want to see 'proof'.

And maybe that was it, he didn't want to see proof because he doubted what Dorian could do, no he'd carried his literally weightless unconscious body under the cover of darkness to sneak into his apartment, which he had then had to tie down to stop from floating away. No, he firmly believed in Dorian's abilities, what he wanted to see was the proof of change, a deliberate use of the power, proof that the endless mire of pain and misery the Hunters were under was nearing its end.

Dorian didn't need to be a mind reader to see the beseeching hope within the older Hunter's eyes to read the tense shoulders, the twitching fingers— a barely controlled act to not clench his fist.

One of the things that Dorian had found out upon awakening was the absence of the pain in his core, he hadn't looked at it though everything within him urged him to. For doing so would cement the irrefutable fact that his core had changed, he'd convinced himself it wasn't safe but with the eyes of a trailblazer shining with hope and his previous floating antics— he had to know.

Dorian closed his eyes and sighed at the view that jumped out to him, his core still spinning and holding its impossible darkness had shrunk a lot. It was half the size of what it was previously and the crack marring it thankfully was barely there. It wasn't all bad though, the pathways that carried Echo to and from the core appeared massive in Dorian's mind's eye and appeared to loop around in a confusing medley of highways and back roads that saw Dorian always having echo filling his pathways.

Dorian opened his eyes and stretched out a hand towards a soda can left forgotten before Robert, he willed its gravity to reverse and for it to fall upwards only for nothing to happen. He had been afraid of losing some aspect of the power his core provided but it still hurt to find out his control over an object's gravity was no longer something he could do.

With supreme effort, Dorian forced a smile, “Seems I can only make myself float now.”

And to show he could do it, he tried to before common sense kicked in and showed him floating around and puking all over Roberts's expensive shit.

Noted. No floating on a bloated belly.

Deciding to go for broke, Dorian imagined the soda can he still held floating and it leapt off his hand to hang a few inches above it, with an ecstatic thought he sent it higher only for it to slip his grasp when it floated a metre above his head and then fall back down to hang in mid air when it neared his body again. Dorian studied the can intensely, putting two and two together about the limitations on his ability, it sucked it royally did and yet he was going to take anything he got.

He was pulled out of his musing by Robert clapping loudly and there was a wetness to the older Hunter's eyes that were most definitely not tears. Dorian looked away and waited for the older man to compose himself before turning to continue their conversation.

“So there you have it, that's all I can do at least for now. It's still early so you never know but what I do know is my friends are about to unlock their own abilities and so is every other Hunter if they follow the steps laid out.”

Robert nodded furiously and Dorian smiled at the thought of the man bustling out to find cores to gain his ability with, he could just imagine it and on the subject of hunters gaining abilities— Dorian knew it was beyond time his friends gained theirs.

After multiple promises to stay in touch and a group call with the hunters from the plant to assure them he was okay and a promise from him to explain everything, since they'd seen him fly, though Dorian planned on pawning off that responsibility to Robert— he was finally ready to head home.

Home.

What a strange word, home was not something Dorian thought he would ever call a Lodge and now here he was. Where was that old saying again?

‘Home is where the heart is’.

Must have been a very old saying because when the monsters came, home was where pieces of you were usually found at least before the damned birds.

Dorian didn't know what home was, or he used to know what home was. It had been wherever his family was but no more. He had made new friends and had the beginning of a family, maybe it was time to make a new home, with that thought, Dorian got on his bike and gunned it out of there, he was heading home.