CHAPTER 2: AWAKENS, THE HUNTER.
The Hunter takes a gulp of Frothed Beer, laughs and cheers. His eyes dilate in response to joy. A concept he hasn't allowed since the earliest parts of his childhood. He lives in the moment, lives alongside friends and comrades of kindred spirit. Alongside people he cherishes beyond his own life. People who know him. People he knows.
Across him a Bard with tall tales to tell and long songs to prong. He loses himself to his Needle Harp, vibrating with gentle consistent rhythm, switching to a rough high pitch about a sixth of the times. The symphony of order, the melody of chaos. The Hunter can not only tell he's good, he can tell how good he is. The Bard's passion is radiating, inspiring. To lose yourself to your life's love. To the only thing you know. The only thing your good at. To forget there's a world beyond it. What a dream, the Hunter thinks in his head, and envies in his heart. Slightly. Still, he does.
To the left of the Bard sits a Mage, a Female Mage, beautiful as one can get. He feels something, perceives an experience he's never known before. Lust. He can't name it but its lust. Desire, need and longing, throbbing from him. Terrifying, yet somewhat, precious. A hope of reciprocation takes root in his heart, a hope of comfort.
The Mage, forgets herself taking massive gulps of Crackling Ale and shoving Recrusted Bread down her throat. She is completely lost in the Bards tales. In the multi approach of his Gargantuan Song, 'Of Ascended Legends and Fallen Heroes; Le History, Le Mythos, Le Epic,' into timed history. She doesn't just know he's good, she knows just how good he is. He gets the Mages skin cackling, his dedication gives her goosebumps; vivid, explosive chills.
She gets excited, takes some Graphium and a piece of teared cloth and starts scribbling theories. She scribbles a composition; a symphony of Arcana and Arcane. Pits formulae against formulae, trying to smoothen the interaction in The Two Major Subjects of all Magic. A Perfect Fusion. True Fluidity. As fluid as the Greatest Song Ever Sung would be. It's a hard task. A brutal challenge. Being pitted against your limitations in a 1v1. Horrific. It feels like your mind is cracking under a mountain. And in Magic, a feeling like that translates into assured failure. Still, she bears it and soldiers on. All to achieve her life long dream. A perfect sync to Arcana and Arcane. Making Magic make sense. Making the world make sense. Making life make sense. She struggles holding clear thought, she struggles maintaining focus, she struggles realizing ideas. It's a struggle but she perseveres, moving forwards, a step at a time. Slow, but progress nonetheless.
She feels a resonance in her skin. A low touch, invisible and vibrating. Its Magic. The source is directly Infront of her. For the first time ever, the Mage notices the Hunter.
The Hunter is still glaring at her idiotically like hes been for a while know. The Mage stares into his eyes and both eyes lock. Her eyes spontaneously shine a Luminescent Blue from the paper lanterns lighting. Her hair, lashes and brows included, start to gleam and radiate a warm ethereal light exactly like the moon does. Suddenly she's ten times prettier to the Hunter who again, idiotically, can't help but notice. He gets flustered. The Mage then contorts her face into a look of disgust and revulsion aiming to intimidate him. It works. The Hunter immediately looks away in sharp pain. The Mage gets exactly what she wanted.
"The idea of him being capable of magic let alone versed in it. How off-putting. How gross. An insult. A genuine afront to Magic" she thinks still holding her stare on him.
He looks back one more time and makes the exact same reaction he did before when he was intimidated, completely oblivious to her new facial expressions when she thought that line of thought. Unable to read them and thus unable to react to them. She reads this truth off of him and is completely assured of her evaluation of him. She looks away and forgets his existence.
The Hunter now stares at the table before him. His smile is long gone. He's embarrassed. Humiliated. Pain rushes in his cranium like a cold grasp. Not in reaction to his humiliation but in humiliation that he even reacted. Him off all people, allowed external influence. The pain feels more familiar than anyone or anything hes ever known. A Guardian hes had since his childhood. The only real one he has ever known. It tells him to focus, to analyze himself first and shut out his surroundings. He takes a breath of air. At Will, his ear drums become still; sealing off any and all vibration and allowing him definitive silence. He closes his eyes and thinks. There's something he's forgotten. He can feel it.
His body immediately heightens into a Reactive and Defensive Status. His physical body loosens; to allow faster reaction times and mislead any observer. Deceive them that he's letting his physical guard down. A Floating Cobra Tactic. He however, gives no warning. Unlike the Slitherer, he's looking for a fight. Always. He doesn't do self-defense.
He ramps up his Magic production from his Inner Core. He Immediately Seals off about 99% percent of the newly produced energy from radiating from his skin. The process is practice made perfect. The Magical productions change happens in a Micro Second. The one percent he allows out of his skin is the exact amount he was already radiating before. A Micro Meter is about the only difference in the one percents change of wave length. Its effort made absolute. He pulls off multiple Arcana Trap Spells layered against each other, one after another, from his sealed magic ready to set them off should he will it.
Focus
He thinks about himself, about who he is. And what that means to him. And what he has to remember. He starts with what he is.
He's a Hunter. An Abnormal. Distinct from humanity because he was born with a Core Distinction.
A Core Distinction; a physical, mental or emotional abnormality select few humans are naturally born with. Trainer Hunters, those who create and train new Hunters, take advantage of this abnormality to turn children with it into Hunters. The exact type of abnormality they have, determines which type of Hunter they can potentially become.
Vague.
Not good enough.
Deeper.
He adjusts the focus into himself rather than the concept he represents. He remembers training as a child to maintain absolute control over his physical, emotional and mental state. To be the one to influence and determine them and never anyone or anything else. He realizes in semi disgust; he slipped in his discipline. Allowing the Mage to dictate him. To determine him.
Its passed.
Isolate what matters.
Only what matters.
Deeper.
He was taken into a Trainer School when he was about nine. The first and most important lesson to a Hunter was to purge any external influence. It was a lesson taught through pain. They tortured children until they could shut out their minds from perceiving pain. Exert Absolute control over it. It was a fly or die lesson. Pain was one of the many things they learned to shut out. And the mind was not the only thing they had to achieve Absolute mastery over. He never once slipped in the time passed since he became an Official Hunter. The very concept was tortured out of him since the day his training started. He never falters. Ever. That's the reason there are a lot of feelings and experiences he has never known. He shuts them all out day and night. The static of his self-determined perception is all he knows. All he can remember. There is incomprehensible strength that can be achieved from being the only one and the only thing capable of influencing and affecting parts of yourself. In the Subject of Magic and much more. A skill few could ever achieve and a talent few could ever master. But for hunters, you master it or you die.
Closer.
Nearer to the real question.
To the honest truth.
There is something. Something else. Something wrong. Something forgotten. He keeps remembering. He remembers the test and the pain that came as a consequence of it. He remembers how the pain came to define him.
The test used by Trainer Hunters to observe and influence the Core Distinction of a child. The Ritmus Test. It's a pseudoscientific method, two thirds Science and one thirds Magic. It's a brutal, cruel test especially on those with a weaker physick. And by a truly evil chance only children near the optimal age of Ten years can undergo changes to their Core Distinction. The Trainers cause change in their Core Distinction which in turn changes them. This test was also a fly or die test.
What came after was somehow worse. Much worse. 'The Stress Test.'
The Hunter was different from the other children. The observation into his Core Distinction yielded an unrecognizable sight. The signs and symptoms after his Ritmus test realized details that were unlike any other child, then or before. No one could recognize what his potential was. No Trainer Hunter could, No Arch Supreme Scholar could either. Until eventually …
Someone did.
Someone recognized the observation in the Core Distinction.
Someone recognized the post Ritmus signs and symptoms.
Someone recognized the potential.
She recognized...
A Divinity Hunter…
Thus began the greatest torture and the harshest cruelty any Trainer school ever inflicted on a single child or anyone for that matter.
An idea stops him. He could stop trying to remember. Give up and rest. Forget himself. Forget his scars. Here he doesn't have to be alone. He doesn't have to strive. He doesn't have to be in pain. Breathe and let it all go. It's his choice. It isn't the first time his had a similar choice, had this familiar idea. He chooses what hes chosen again and again. Chooses the answer that compels all of his decisions. An answer, forever an enigma to him. An answer, that has long been an unknown to him.
He remembers the pain.
He remembers himself.
The Hunter awakens.
Chrono awakens…