Speaking of dreadful revelations, this Part 3: Julien spiel seems to be full of them. Picking up after last chapter’s discovery of a Ji’Lopan bent upon the destruction of Gem, we get a Mana chapter… with uh, dreadful revelations. And no, of course nobody’s life is in danger!

This chapter goes a bit more in-depth with the Thief’s hatred of magic and gives more hints at the political things going on behind The Purge. It also gives some hints at other things, but I won’t spoil.

Here’s the link to .rtf downloads for you monitor haters: Hunter Chronicles downloads

Enjoy, and, as always, please comment.

My Notes (major spoilers for THIS CHAPTER, click to view)

By the way, 28 chapters, 242 pages, 97,342 words. We’ll break 100k with the next chapter. Way to rock hard :)

And finally, to reiterate a point I made eight months ago: an interlude (prologue for Part 3) will come in the future. I haven’t yet decided what to put… but, yeah, there will be one. Later.

Today’s chapter is a Joker chapter. Brief, non-spoiler summary: Gem and Joker get on their airship and head toward their destination, Oberon’s home, Atlantis. We meet a new character, an old acquaintance of Gem’s, and the Joker discovers something … well, dreadful is an appropriate word.

Here’s the link to .rtf downloads for you monitor haters: Hunter Chronicles downloads

Enjoy, and, as always, please comment.

My Notes (mild spoilers, click to view)

By the way, 27 chapters, 232 pages, 93,671 words. Yay!

An interlude (prologue for Part 3) will come in the future. I haven’t yet decided what to put… but, yeah, there will be one. Later.

Well, I have a new prologue finally. Many thanks go to Inq, who provided the main impetus for me to write this, and gave me lots of good feedback.

http://dotq.org/hcb1com-00/2

One thing I do when I’m too busy to get to writing is I think about writing. That’s pretty much what For the Pen was—I was too busy with other things to work on ‘real’ writing, so I invested minimal amounts of time and effort to write about writing. But if For the Pen was an extreme case of my meta-writing, then miniature cases are springing up constantly. In the midst of work or play, whenever I get a free moment I concentrate on those things that Kaze ranted about: the reason and goal for the writing.

Most of the time I dwell on HC.

Sunday in the car, coming back from Port Hueneme, we were listening to U2’s Achtung Baby. I was pondering the purpose of U2’s music and I realized that it’s really all about communication. Love exists in communication. Peace relies on communication. “But don’t other groups sing about the same things?” An important factor is lyrics. Lyrics are just words, and that ‘just’ is what stresses the importance of words. Something so simple as diction is hugely important in something like… say, text. I’m not a huge fan of music in general, but I think I can appreciate that U2’s lyrics are on a wavelength I approve of when it comes to words.

But why do I mention U2? Funny little story…

Back in the day, when D had not yet graduated from high school (we’re talking … a little more than eight years, here), I was working on this story called the Crystals of Mana, writing it all down in cursive, in pen, in a notebook. This was before I became a computer kind of guy, this was before I became a print kind of guy, this was before I’d stopped watching American TV. This was when I was still in elementary school. Nine years old, probably. Almost half a lifetime ago.

The Crystals of Mana was Final Fantasy fan fiction in disguise. Rather, I was too young to understand the concept of fan fiction. When kids like Innerfire34 were running around pretending to be older than they were on internet forums, I at that age was sitting in a swivel chair with my notebook and pen in hand, copying names and ideas wholesale. I think it was that year that I got Final Fantasy IX; but no matter. I had previously written stories involving characters from Final Fantasy VI.

I’m rambling, but the main detail of the image I’m trying to conjure up is that there was a boombox on the little white table next to my chair. It had U2’s latest album, All That You Can’t Leave Behind playing. Now, this is the key thing to note—not their greatest. Their latest.

The Crystals of Mana, which eventually evolved into being the first book of today’s Hunter Chronicles, was born amidst the words and sounds of such songs as “Beautiful Day” and “Walk On.”

The particular songs matter little—I wouldn’t even bring them up, normally. I would have thought that the main point was “U2’s music” were it not for a this idea I had: that particular album set my work ethic with regard to writing. In particular, the quality of that particular album. It has one song that is incredibly great, and which I sometimes struggle to emulate in quality. But most of the album is enjoyable without being good, perhaps reflecting my tendency to drop into lower-quality writing styles. I find myself relying on the plot of HC fairly often, much as I see the album as often relying on its lyrics. Every once in a while I’ll write my own “Wild Honey,” a terrible chapter that I go back and delete the next day in a fit of self-hatred.

Now, it’s funny that I mentioned U2’s lyrics, and communication, because in terms of content, well… if All That You Can’t Leave Behind relies on its lyrics, and HC on its plot, those are entirely different, right? Anyone who’s read any HC and has half a mind knows that communication isn’t one of HC’s myriad themes (betrayal, trust, escalation, mistakes, self-improvement, ostracism, etc. are. Communication is not). The connection between communication and HC is entirely that of me. Communication fascinates me (hence my experiments on AnimeOST.NET as ‘Broken_hito’) and HC… well, is me, after a fashion. There’s a clear connection between the two: me.

But what does that mean for U2, and, more importantly (nyehehe), HC?

I often forget those things that are so important in writing—SOAPS, as Mr. Carton taught me this past year. Speaker is self-evident, so I never give it thought. Occasion is something I’ve never once considered, and probably never will, in relation to HC. Audience is unimportant to me in writing; I write primarily for myself and let those who wish enjoy the results. Purpose… well, that’s the big one.

I mentioned earlier in this post that I ponder purpose often, yes? Well, I ponder it often because I forget it often. Why am I writing? Where am I trying to go with it? What do I want to have happen, what do I want to convey, and so on. In the past, I always used to write with U2 going in the background. Not always that one album; U2 itself is associated with HC in my mind. As such, listening to it gets me thinking about HC. One thing I’ve admired in U2 is their ability to push emotion and meaning through their words; this is something I’ve aspired to do with my writing. Listening to them is inspirational, if you will.

But I don’t do it a whole lot anymore.

My inner ear is usually clogged with such music as my ’sleep’ playlist (various gentle tracks, both instrumental and not, from various anime series), an assortment of loud emo garbage, and whatever else I feel like listening to on a day-to-day basis (normally, KOTOKO’s Agony, savage genius, basically, good, pumping anime music). Also, recently those amazing OPs from Aria. But the point is: not a lot of U2.

And it’s destroying my inspiration.

Or at least, I felt like choosing a scapegoat?

So… back to the first paragraph. I was listening to Achtung Baby in the car on Sunday. I think I’ll listen to it more this week. It’s so good! And, quality aside, it reminds me of my purposes in writing HC. I think I can be more productive now.

I’m not going to say much about this chapter. I’ve already spent way too much time readying it for upload while doing other things (about three hours now, I think…). So yeah. Have fun.

Here’s the link to .rtf downloads for you monitor haters: Hunter Chronicles downloads

Enjoy, and, as always, please comment.

My Notes (mild spoilers, click to view)

By the way, 26 chapters, 224 pages, 90,612 words. Yay!

I hope to get the next ‘interlude’ up by next Sunday. That is, the intro to Part 3 (entitled “Julien”). It’s not done yet, so I have no ability to make guarantees, but … I like the idea of being on a roll.

This chapter is a Mana chapter in that there is no Gem; it’s also a Joker chapter in that his thoughts and actions are pretty prominent. He makes a deal with Oberon and continues to be a bit mysterious—even though he seems open and almost obsessed with telling people everything he knows, there’s still a lot he’s not saying…

We learn a bit more about Oberon in that what we’ve already learned is cemented. He is Oberon al’Nai, son of Nai al’Kai (one of Chaos’s children), prince of Atlantis (Nai’s realm). And yeah, that’s about all I’m saying. It’s something you should have been able to figure out from last chapter. Anyway, onto other things.

Here’s the link to .rtf downloads for you monitor haters: Hunter Chronicles downloads

Enjoy, and, as always, please comment.

My Notes (mild spoilers, click to view)

By the way, 25 chapters, 215 pages, 87,339 words. Yay!

Chapter 26 (the last chapter of Part 2) will be released next Sunday. It’s already written.

If you have any questions about this, ask them in comments I guess? Otherwise, enjoy!

Oh, and if you’re asking yourself “I read the previous GBA, how different is this one?” then my answer would have to be that this is to the previous GBA what the current Crystals of Mana is to the old COM. This means that it’s immeasurably better written and also that the lore references/world details/etc. all fit into the single cohesive “-verse” that is modern HC.

Gauntlet and the Broken Angel

Though common in the Inferno, basalt as construction material is fairly rare in Libra. It’s not as practical as wood for most large-scale building projects and, when rock is needed, it’s not the most appealing, its coloration being dark and bleak.

In western Verga, at the foot of a small hill, a shadow is cast by the ruins of Ebony Fields. The city was destroyed some eighty years ago or so, and even now, it is magnificent in its ruin. Nature refuses to touch it. The ruins are rock and stone and nothing else. Four giant pinnacles, mockingly large, stand at the corners of what was once a megalopolis—grand tombstones to an untold number of people and monument to many things, not limited to the freakish nature of Ebony Fields’ fall. Regardless of the time of day or year, the ruins are constantly enveloped in a dreary shadow, a dreary shadow that extends itself to the base of a small hill a stone’s throw from Ebony Fields. Upon this hill lie the ruins of the Ebony Fields Hill Shrine, and at its base rests one of the few basalt constructs in all of Libra: the mausoleum of Fred Duncan.

Some eighty years ago—Ebony Fields was destroyed some eighty years ago.

Though the nature of this destruction was freakish, it was not a natural disaster that took the lives of thousands of people. It was not a natural disaster that consumed the proud buildings of the Vergan elite. It was not a natural disaster that led to the growth of what came to be dubbed the Dark Pinnacles and it was not a natural disaster that stopped life from existing within the bounds of Ebony Fields.

Just beyond the area marked off by the rock pillars, grass grows green; some wildflowers and weeds dot the landscape. Why they can’t encroach upon the dead city puzzled me, so I asked the man who destroyed the city, thinking that he might have the answer.

    ~Gem Hunter

1. the promise

It was my last day, so I did what I normally did—got up early, went and sat in the fields north of the village, gazed off into the glittering expanse of the ocean. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to move. I was happy with the village, with the place where I’d lived for seventeen years. It was a small seaside town, Ream, and, to the best of my knowledge, it still stands, still free from the clutch of Libran governments. Free from the curse of information. It had no Hall of Lore. It was a peaceful little village, and I loved it.

Yet I was leaving.

My parents said that we needed to go, that I had some problem, and that there was someone over at Ebony Fields who could help me. I argued, “it’s only a day away by horse,” hoping that we could go, and come back, and that could be that. They said that the wise man from the city that they’d consulted regarding my condition would need to work with me over several months, so we needed to move. It was either that or send me off alone.

I chose to have the family move. Looking back now, I should have gone alone.

Either way, I was going, and bidding farewell to my birthplace. The fields were abundant with corn. The harvest was coming up. Pleasant smells filled the air and a mild sea breeze ruffled the plants nearest me. The tide coming in half a mile away lulled me into a state of semi-consciousness, and so I remained until he reached me and put his hand on my shoulder.

“Fred!”

“Matt,” I replied without looking over at the kid. There was only one person in the village who called me Fred, and I was the only one who called him Matt. Matthias Kinjaku, two years younger than me and unfortunately short for his age, had been my friend as far back as I could remember.

“I knew I’d find you here,” he chuckled. His voice belied something other than humor. “I came to say goodbye.”

“I’ll be back in a few months,” I assured him, though I was far from sure of it myself. “It’s not a permanent thing.”

“I sure hope you do. Ream will always welcome you back, Fred. And I’ll always be here.”

“And I’ll always be here,” I replied, indicating the cornfield with a gesture. I turned from the ocean to face him. There was more to his state than his voice. His face was the picture of worry, everything from the odd creases in his forehead to his wide eyes to his trembling lips. “Come on, Matt. I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Fred, I had another dream last night.”

I froze. Nine years ago, when the old man Ronn lost his fishing boat—and thus his means to live—Matt had seen the accident take place in a dream prior to its occurrence. There were other such instances; it was general knowledge that Matt’s clear dreams were prophetic. His anxiety was suddenly palpable as I looked into his eyes. What kind of dream had he had to incite such fear?

“What about?” I asked, though I probably would have been happier not knowing.

“Death. Ebony Fields, Fred. You can’t go.”

“I have to.”

“If you go, the city will die.” I didn’t understand what he meant. I didn’t think he did, either.

“You mean, the people?” I asked, trying hard to keep the words flowing steadily from my mouth. Then wasn’t the time to have a panic attack of my own. I had readied myself to move and I was leaving my village and that was that. I would miss Matt, but—

“The city will die,” Matt repeated, his voice trembling.

—but what does he mean by those words? I reached over and patted him on the shoulder as he burst into tears. I spoke as soothingly as I could.

“I’m sure it was just a dream,” I lied. “Must have been one terrible dream.” I had to comfort him before I left. Sure, I likely wouldn’t see him again—I knew that much just from the fear in his eyes and the fact that he’d seen one of his dreams—so on what terms we parted really didn’t matter. Didn’t matter, that is, aside from the slight detail that we had been together for twelve years, and I couldn’t bear to leave him behind in that state.

“You don’t understand,” he muttered. Neither did he.

“I understand,” I assured him, “and I’ll be back. I promise.”

That was the first promise I ever made in my life, and it was the last I would ever make. I didn’t keep it—how could I? Within the week I was settled into my life at Ebony Fields, and within two months Ebony Fields no longer existed. It wasn’t just Ebony Fields that ceased to exist. I, as Fredariko Duncan, ceased to exist on that day all those decades ago.

2. to the dead city

When Fredariko Duncan was small, he had nightmares. As he grew up, this part of his life faded away and, by the time he turned ten, his memory of it had faded as well. At the age of seventeen, when leaving for Ebony Fields, he had no recollection of the horrible images he’d seen in his sleep as a child. His parents, on the other hand, remembered quite clearly the disturbingly vivid pictures Duncan had drawn when asked why he’d woken in a sweat and crying. Pictures of unspeakable things.

Not remembering his dreams, he prepared to leave for Ebony Fields blindly, trusting in his parents to make the right decisions. However, on the morning of his departure, his childhood friend had come to him, practically crying, trying to ascribe words to a horrendous dream he’d just had. Matthias Kinjaku, fifteen, had long been recognized as having prophetic dreams.

Duncan, aware that it had meaning, was frightened upon hearing of the dream. In Kinjaku’s words, words that haunted Duncan forever, should he go to Ebony Fields, “the city would die.” He went anyway. He couldn’t argue with his parents—that was what he felt every time he opened his mouth in their presence along the road to Ebony Fields. Little did he know that this small migration was the only alternative to his exile, an exile long delayed from when he was three. The elders decided they wanted to be rid of him.

Upon arriving in Ebony Fields, the Duncan family discovered that the wise man they’d arranged to meet had actually been a dabbler, one who experimented with magic illegally, and also that he had been executed.

    ~Gem Hunter

3. fred duncan dies

I hated it in Ebony Fields. Rumors spread quickly there; within a week everyone I saw tried their hardest to ignore me. I would make eye contact with someone on the street, they’d look away. I would address a butcher or baker only to find him feigning sleep behind the counter. The other students at the university my parents enrolled me in rarely spoke of anything when I was around. When they talked, it was always about trivial things.

“Hey, hey, did you hear about the new airship they launched yesterday? I hear Antyliken’s at ten stories now!”

“What was that… uh, what’s his name again? Anyway, that upstart in Terra? Who did he think he was?”

“Apparently, the Marauders have been riding awfully close to here lately. You scared?”

Even these conversations were protected from my participation. Never was a question asked of me, never was information shared with me. The only thing my classmates bestowed upon me were disdainful glances. Once, I overheard the words “that creep from Ream.” And they thought those glances were furtive? They described their voices as murmuring? I could tell from a mile away that they were staring at me, pointing at me, laughing at me.

It was in Ebony Fields that I discovered the reason for my coming. It was late one night in our second month in the city that I woke to my parents arguing over whether or not to go back to Ream. My father was screaming about how the old man was dead, and couldn’t do anything for me dead, and how we needed to go back, because Ream was the place I loved. My mother was crying, arguing amidst tears that if we went back we’d be killed. And that it was my fault. My fault for dreaming bad dreams.

I slipped out the back door without confronting my parents and lay in the alley behind our house, trying to sort out in my head what I’d just heard.

I didn’t remember any dreams. But if I was weird, if there was something weird about me, that I didn’t understand but that my classmates somehow knew, that everyone in the damn city somehow knew, the treatment I’d received in Ebony Fields would make sense. It was as if I were a plague. Everyone avoided me, trying their best not to catch me. The next day, walking around town, I coughed a little, on purpose, just to see if I’d get a new reaction out of passersby, and I did. Covering their mouths and noses, they hurried on faster than before, often dropping things in their wake.

“I’m not sick!” I yelled in the middle of the main street one day later that week. People finally looked my way, made eye contact with me. “And last night I dreamt of the cornfields back in Ream!” Instead of running by me, the gathered crowd dashed away, outward, each person in whatever direction pointed directly away from me. I stood in the road for almost an hour, motionless, before going home.

That night, I noticed I was coughing, and that I couldn’t stop.

I snuck outside quietly and coughed, and coughed, and coughed. My whole frame shook as I coughed, great painful coughs that I could feel from my stomach to my throat. I was in pain and could barely see for it. I lay in the alley behind my parents’ new home, them not aware that I wasn’t in my room and myself not aware of that fact either. I was aware of very little save the man—no, it could have been a woman, I suppose, my vision was too blurry and my hearing too broken to tell—who stood over me in that alley.

“Care for a pair of silver bracelets?”

I find it odd that I remember those words. I could have fabricated them, or perhaps they were placed in my head via other means. But I remember them. That was the question to which I said yes.

“For free?” I asked skeptically, instinctively. I was too tired and sick to think, but I had grown so uncomfortable in Ebony Fields that I automatically treated everything like a bad joke.

“No, there’s a cost. You—” I didn’t hear the person finish their sentence. I had another coughing fit, my chest feeling it would burst open, my throat burning, my face streaming with tears. I clutched at my throat, I cried, I rolled around in the filthy alleyway. When I regained even the slightest bit of control, the person was still there, and, for some incomprehensible reason, I imagined a smile upon their face. “Want them?”

I nodded as best I could from where I lay, not having heard the price.

4. gauntlet

The night he attained the bracelets, he fell asleep in the alley. He says he never woke up. According to him, the next morning, the corpse of Fredariko Duncan rose from its resting place, splayed on the floor of a small bedroom, and walked into the Duncan family’s living room. Duncan’s parents were there, along with his younger sister, who had come with them to Ebony Fields. The body of Fredariko Duncan strode across the room quickly and, with three strong backhands, destroyed three faces. The corpse left its family lying in spreading pools of blood, gathered Fredariko Duncan’s school supplies, and exited the house.

That’s what he says.

That morning, Ebony Fields woke up to its last sun. Never after would sunlight be able to stream through the stained glass windows of the Shrine and dot the plain stone buildings with color. Never after would the entire city bask in warmth. Even as the sun rose, the ground around the city rumbled, and fissures opened here and there. No one thought much of it around the time Duncan was slaughtering his family and he didn’t give them much of a chance to start before he was through with the whole city.

After goading him into revealing more than just that he lost control of his body, I discovered that his interpretation of the world had changed that morning. Apparently, all visual perception he’d had vanished, replaced with brilliant white flames and black void. He explained that the white was anything alive, and the black was everything else. He walked into his living room, saw the three white lights that were his family members, and quickly put them out.

That morning, he says, he went to school and proceeded to kill everyone in the building and then smear their blood on the walls. Eventually, the local guard force came to stop him, and he killed them, too, reducing them to piles of ash. I’m not sure how whatever power he had gained worked, but apparently destruction just shot out from his being and took everything around him, extinguishing light after light, darkening his world, and feeding the bracelets. He says they were one thing he couldn’t extinguish—the bracelets shone bright in his eyes, bright and invincible, undying, immortal, eternal. And as he killed, they grew, spreading along his wrists, fitting to his arms, becoming thicker and heavier.

He exited his university, the building collapsing behind him. Cobblestones exploded as he tread upon them, the street turning into a river of fire in his wake. Red and white flames engulfed the blocks around him and then spread outward. He reached the center of Ebony Fields and, as the Dark Pinnacles burst forth from the widening fissures, so too did the city twitch. That’s how he describes it. Every light he could see—and he could see them through walls, and across barriers, and out the back of his head—gave one uniform shudder. And then they were gone.

Tall tales are told by alleged passersby that they saw Ebony Fields disappear into a pillar of white fire. Tall tales are all they are, for anyone who could see the city could be seen by Fred Duncan, and anyone seen by Fred Duncan that day died.

According to the stories, though, and that’s pretty much all this is, the moment that Duncan stepped into the town square was an explosion of irreversible destruction. It was at that moment that Ebony Fields became the Dead City. It was at that moment that the Dark Pinnacles erected themselves around the city, blocking out sunlight and marking the graves of an untold number of people. It was at that moment that the silver bracelets stopped growing, frozen in the form of a pair of large gauntlets. It was at that moment that Fredariko Duncan transformed into the emissary of death.

Before he knew it, Duncan was Duncan no longer.

He was Gauntlet.

That was some eighty years ago. Ebony Fields is still devoid of life and the Dark Pinnacles still stand, but he’s no longer Gauntlet. Fred Duncan rests in the only crypt in a mausoleum built for two. The basalt construction lies in the shadow of the Dark Pinnacles half the time, but when the sun strikes it it filters through a stained glass window and the inside of the black building glows all the colors that the Dead City lacks.

    ~Gem Hunter

5. fred. fred. fred. fred.

It’s Fred Duncan’s mausoleum, but I’m in there too. At least, in spirit. It’s hard to describe, but I lost my physical body a long time ago. I became like this… I don’t know, five, six years ago. And even before that I was hardly human.

Even when I was human, I wasn’t normal. I had dreams from time to time, horrendously clear dreams that told me what was going to happen in the future. I never doubted them, but after a while I stopped telling other people about them, deciding to keep them to myself. I didn’t need to burden my village with a freak. Ream was a quiet place, and it could do without me spouting prophecy. So, after about eight years of living, I simply stopped telling anyone whenever I had such a dream.

Until that day some eighty years ago, when Fred left.

Fred was my only friend in Ream and we were close. He was two years my elder, but that difference meant nothing to us. We had graduated from the same class in Ream’s only grade school and we had played in the same cornfields and we had stared at the same ocean. Though I enjoyed messing around, and causing disturbances on a small scale, when he was around I rarely felt the need to exert myself. He would stare at the ocean and I would stare at the ocean. He would gaze at the clouds overhead and I would gaze at the clouds overhead. Fred taught me some kind of serenity, some kind of peaceful and calm way of life. I took it and adopted it, wanting to be like him, wanting to be him, the one person I looked up to.

Had he not passed that lifestyle of thoughtfulness and reflection on to me, I don’t know what would have happened.

The days dragged on. Fred wasn’t there. He was gone, off to Ebony Fields. I, Matthias Kinjaku, sat on the shore day after day watching the ocean, devoid of thoughts. Even though it was the same ocean as always, it wasn’t the same ocean anymore because he wasn’t watching it with me. The beach was deserted and, as the first month of his absence dragged on, the weather took an unpleasant turn. Even in the rain, I sat out there, watching the ocean, hoping that his words of “I’ll be back. I promise” were in fact an unbreakable promise and that some day I would look to my left and see him there by my side, his hazel eyes fixed on the rolling waves…

He told me he’d be back in a few months. Two and a half months came and went, and I got anxious. I had only a fuzzy idea of why he’d gone—there’d been some talk of a wise man curing some sickness, or other issue, or something. I only found out later from my fellow villagers that he’d been exiled. I waited for him to come back. I waited by the ocean, watching the waves but seeing his face. I waited in the cornfields, listening to the wind but hearing his voice. I couldn’t sleep at night. I couldn’t eat at mealtimes. I couldn’t focus on my work, and after a while the old fisherman told me to go home, that he didn’t need me anymore.

Having nothing to do but wait, I decided that I’d waited long enough. Three months had passed and he was not back yet. I was going to go find him. I got my parents to allow it and then set out on horseback for Ebony Fields.

As I set out, my mind was full of thoughts of seeing my friend again.

The morning of his departure, the dream I’d woken from, and the exchange we’d had were not what I was concerned with and I near forgot them as I set out riding. I knew that before reaching Ebony Fields I’d have to ride around—or over—Ebony Fields Hill, a small dot of hill topped with a shrine. Approaching the city, I expected the hill and its shrine to be the first landmark in sight. I was wrong. Even before the hill was visible, I could make out giant black stick-like things prodding the sky. Menacing from a distance, like a diabolic hand reaching out of the ground to pluck the wind’s heart out, the four rock pillars of what I later learned were the Dark Pinnacles scared me.

And I approached what had been the city and the morning of Fred’s departure rushed back into my mind and I spurred my horse on and when we reached the outskirts of what had been the city I fell from my saddle and dropped to my knees and my hands scrabbled across the ground in search of plant life but they found nothing because all there was was dirt and rock and sand and dust and there was nothing alive at all and, as I’d seen in my dream, as I’d warned Fred, as I’d feared—the city had died.

I knelt just inside the shadow cast by the Dark Pinnacles.

Again and again, I called out, shouting Fred’s name, crying for him to come out from wherever he was hiding. Before me, stretching out for miles, were the stone ruins of Ebony Fields. An earthquake hadn’t struck the place; the destruction was too thorough for that. The buildings weren’t leveled, they were obliterated. Chunks of deformed rock replaced homes and inns. Roofs and walls had become fragments littering the streets. The streets themselves had been mashed up as if in a mortar. The four giant rock pillars rose up on each corner of the city, huge and frightening. Behind me, the small hill. Atop it, the shrine. Nowhere, Fred.

I yelled his name until the shadows cast by the Dark Pinnacles blended in with the shadows cast by the earth at night. I yelled his name until the ruins right before my eyes disappeared from sight. I looked up as I yelled his name and saw no stars, no moon. Just blackness. The sky was shrouded in thick clouds, but all I knew was that I was trapped in a nightmare. I had to wake up. I had to wake up.

I turned around and staggered up the hill, feeling out my way with a hand to the ground. My horse had long since bolted, but I didn’t care. I made my way into the shrine and crawled along the floor, pulling myself forward by gripping the pews. In the darkness I couldn’t even see the stained glass window behind the pedestal at the front of the shrine, but I knew it was there. I had seen it in my dream. I pressed myself up against it, as I had in my dream, and I remembered that in my dream I remembered a dream in which I remembered a dream within which I remembered a dream of remembering a dream that I dreamt of dreaming of dreaming a dreamt dream and then this was all pre-ordained.

I laughed softly at the memory of my trying to dissuade Fred from leaving, and I laughed softly at the misery I’d felt for Ebony Fields as I’d lain there crying for it. First terror, and now this, and this was all pre-ordained.

I stood, took a step or two back from the window, and then dashed forward, jumping into it.

I felt no pain as the glass shards cut my body. I felt no pain as I fell through the window and hit the ground outside. I rolled down to the bottom of the hill in a spiral of multi-color glass and I could see even as the glass cut my eyes. The clouds parted and the moon shone down and everything around me was rainbows. Blood dotted the hillside and glass lingered in the air, refracting the rays from the moon and turning the air around me into a seven-colored bath of light. I extended my arms as I stood at the bottom of the hill. Eddies, flurries of stained glass flew around me like the snowflakes that tease the ground in midwinter on the seashore by my hometown.

And then I found myself flying, high over the ground, beating wings made of glass, trails of color disappearing behind me.

Back home in Ream, my dreams had scared some people. Thankfully, the elders decided that I wasn’t cursed. Otherwise I may have met the same fate as the people of Ebony Fields. I was marked as different because of my gift, or curse, if you will, and so when I reached Ebony Fields Hill Shrine and threw myself through the stained glass window that was it for Ream. I had finally become a demon, something Ream did not want. Fred had left and embraced some demonic transformation of his own, and now, I was following him.

And I would continue to follow him for decades and decades.

I was cursed to be a destructive power, but these ugly wings would only know one purpose—I would use them to fly to Fred. And when I meet him, I won’t talk about Ebony Fields or look him in the eye or chide him or say ‘I told you so’ or anything like that. I won’t talk about our broken promise, or the cornfields back home in Ream, or even the ocean. I’ll alight next to him and sit by his side, facing the same direction as he, gazing at the same distance as he, admiring the same mundane beauties as he. And my wings will be behind my back and our eyes won’t meet and silence will reign, unless, of course, the waves roar a little.

6. the broken angel

Gauntlet told me, before he died, that the one thing he regretted more than anything else was how he’d never see “Matt” again. After some research, I discovered that he was referring to the Broken Angel, a man possessed by the spirit of a runeblade. I had met the Broken Angel four or so years prior to meeting Gauntlet, in the abandoned Ebony Fields Hill Shrine. I went there with a demon to collect one of the Crystals of Mana and I left there after relieving the Broken Angel of the Crystal’s burden. For all I knew, he had passed away in the process of giving me the Crystal, and I didn’t expect to hear more from him.

But then Gauntlet mentioned this “Matt,” Matthias Kinjaku, a boy who had grown up in the same village in western Verga.

Before the mausoleum was complete, I took it upon myself to seek out the spirit of the Broken Angel. It was out there, somewhere, waiting to be found and taken to Gauntlet’s side. Being the only one alive to have made contact with the Broken Angel, and being the only one to have entered the Dead City in the last dozen years, and being the one who sought out Gauntlet and got his story, it seemed fitting for me to not only find out more about this Broken Angel, but to also find him again.

So I studied: Matthias Kinjaku, after becoming the Broken Angel, lost himself. He became a mindless demon and razed Ream, along with a handful of other small Vergan towns. This all in the year in which Fredariko Duncan became Gauntlet—he wasted no time in becoming his own destructive demon. It was a sad year for Verga.

To think that, over time, both Duncan and Kinjaku would regain some degree of control over themselves.

That they would stop themselves from spreading the destruction beyond Verga’s boundaries.

That each of his own accord would send himself to the Inferno.

    ~Gem Hunter

7. two dead men

We met in the Inferno.

Our cornfields were fields of fireflowers and our surf was a tide of shadows.

When I saw him, and he saw me, we knew without saying anything that we had done the same thing, that I had sent myself to the Inferno and that he had sent himself to the Inferno, that we were both tired of killing, that there was enough death in Verga. But what he didn’t know was that while he had leveled a megalopolis full of strangers, I had destroyed something much more meaningful: Ream. We no longer had a home to go back to. That was one reason I was comfortable in the Inferno. I could tell he wanted to go back.

Eventually, I was sent back, back to the Shrine.

Whether Gauntlet would ever escape Hell and find Ream’s ruins was not something I expected to find out.

8. and then I was gone—and back, but still gone

I lingered in the Inferno for decades. I became involved in a lot—the shade revolt, for one. History. History I shouldn’t have been a part of. Eventually, I got my answers. The one I had encountered in the alley behind my parents’ home was an agent of Maha’s. The bracelets a creation of Maha’s. Me, an experiment of Maha’s. I only discovered this once a replacement was found, a new subject who had even less control over his will than I.

Once that replacement was found, no place in the Inferno was safe for me.

I don’t remember all that happened between meeting the Broken Angel, and then finding that I was a failed experiment, and then being killed, again, in the Inferno, but when I woke next, it was in Verga, on the steepled roof of the Ebony Fields Hill Shrine. Down the hill and over a few yards lay the barren expanse of the Dead City. That alone was enough to make me feel sick, but…

Before me on the roof stood Maha.

I was confused—he was supposed to be imprisoned in the Infernal Shrine, in the Monolith, yet he was standing before me. He had brought me back to life—no; I was, of course, still Gauntlet. He had brought me back to death. I was even more confused—how did I know he was Maha? Previously, Maha had only been that basalt monolith to me. And yet, I knew it.

And he knew that I knew it, and made as if to ask for my forgiveness.

Forgiveness?

After what he had put me—and, indirectly, Matt—through? This, I remember in great detail: lashing out at him with all the power he had so insidiously granted me, seeking nothing more than his utter demise. I wanted him dead. Maha, dead. Call me a fool, but the one who interfered and stopped our fight was a much greater fool.

That was you, Gem.

And I thank you for the service you did me.

9. killing the resurrected undead; completing the work of the devil

When I encountered Gauntlet, it was in western Verga. He and the one I knew could only be Maha were fighting, he firing lengths of silver chain at Maha and Maha returning each with a spear of darkness. The old Shrine in which I had encountered the Broken Angel lay in ruins, similar in appearance to the rest of the buildings in the Dead City. I remember thinking to myself: aha, this is the one who destroyed Ebony Fields.

And I got between them.

Gauntlet and I got away safely and, after I managed to prove that I was not looking for any bounty that might be on his head, he agreed to travel with me. He remained tight-lipped and wouldn’t tell me anything for the longest time. He wouldn’t even confirm that yes, he was the one who had leveled Ebony Fields. But I had my hunch, and he bore the power of death, and it was death that had turned Ebony Fields into what it was then.

For almost a year it went on like this, him tagging along and not saying anything. Going where I went. I felt oddly safe with him nearby. He seemed in total control of his powers, and they were strong—he was a good ally.

After one clash with Maha in the middle of February, 3121, Gauntlet lay mortally wounded, unable to die thanks to his powers and unable to recover thanks to those of Maha. He requested that I do everything in my power to give him rest, so I did. I set about making a weapon that would be able to end his misery, a runeblade capable of returning unto him everything that he had lost—his time, his humanity, his peace. During the time that I was forging it, he lay on the floor of the smithy, talking, almost nonstop.

I didn’t have to ask questions.

He rambled on and on, spewing forth name after name after name. I put the pieces together. While I constructed the weapon that would ultimately kill Fredariko Duncan, that would ultimately end Gauntlet’s suffering, I was told the story of Fredariko Duncan’s previous “deaths” and the suffering Gauntlet had wrought himself. And when I killed Gauntlet, his last words included regret, Matt, and cornfields. So I set out in search of the Broken Angel’s spirit, and eventually came to bury both demons, both friends, in the basalt mausoleum at the foot of Ebony Fields Hill.

Gauntlet died without knowing that Ream no longer existed.

    ~Gem Hunter

Part Gem chapter, part Mana chapter, this is mainly about the Underworld. They’re on our protagonists’ tails, and, wanting to avoid conflict, said protagonists decide to… well, avoid conflict. Said avoidance becomes difficult when the Underworld proves that it’s just as efficient as it always claimed to be. There be ambushes in this chapter. And. Uh. Oberon. We learn who he is, in a vague sense of the word. That is to say, we learn his title and origin, but these don’t quite mean anything to us yet. Oh, and revolutionaries are American. Or something dumb like that.

Here’s the link to .rtf downloads for you monitor haters: Hunter Chronicles downloads

Enjoy, and, as always, please comment.

My Notes (mild spoilers, click to view)

By the way, 24 chapters, 206 pages, 83,821 words. Yay!

In other news, I revamped the “random story” generator to be more awesome. And I put a modified version at the top of the forums. It’s really cool now—go read. :)

This is mainly a Gem chapter. It deals with internal stuff right after the fight with the Ly’ban; the Joker has brought Gem, Julien, and Oberon back to life (though not through conventional resurrection or animation), and now they are all dealing in some way with why and how they died. This chapter marks the end of Gem’s hesitancy regarding… well, everything, and the last sentence cues the beginning of a lot of trouble.

Here’s the link to .rtf downloads for you monitor haters: Hunter Chronicles downloads

Enjoy, and, as always, please comment.

My Notes (mild spoilers, click to view)

By the way, 23 chapters, 191 pages, 79,239 words. Yay!

(For the impatient, the link is at the top of the post. See it?)
HC: Book One, Crystals of Mana - Chapter Ponies
OMG PONIES!!!
I decided to stop being an emo pansy and have resumed schedule. This chapter brings an end to the Crystals of Mana book; work on the next book in the Hunter Chronicles series (Maha’s Legacy) will commence in a matter of days. A prologue/preview type piece should be out on Easter Sunday :)
OMG PONIES!!!
So we find out what happens after Mana goes to sleep in UnderMist.
OMG PONIES!!!
Here’s the link to .rtf downloads for you monitor haters: Hunter Chronicles downloads
OMG PONIES!!!
Enjoy, and, as always, please comment.
OMG PONIES!!!
My Notes (mild spoilers, click to view)

OMG PONIES!!!
In the end, 23 chapters, 185 pages, 77,541 words. Yay!
That’s quite significant :)