Absolute Fantasy: The Advanced Series.
Book 1: 'The Brilliant Age'.
Chapter 1: Enter, The World.
Episode 1: Exit, The Shadow Hold.
Febuarch 2, Tuesdawn 3510 A.S. The Brilliant Age.
Escaflore holds in the right hand, heavy, stringed carrion-beads, rubbing them in nervous rhythm. Each bead, black as void, brandishes a white condor at full wingspread, engraved by the finest craftsmen in the continent of 'Centralis'. In the other he holds a single 'bleeding-coin', rubbing the macabre engravings in both head and tail. Hes reading it like an embossiary, rhyming the eucharistic lines in his head. It's a habit, fermented from childhood. It gives him focus. Provides anchorage. It allows measured breath. Allows courage to face the throbbing anxiety. He sets himself against his white, hunter trained horse, Felis. He checks up on the girth and secures the saddle. Todays the big day. The moment he graduates from the 'Whetstone' centered, 'capital church of Hunters', one of the few shadow holds in the shadow capital of the nation. His eyes are dilated and appreciative of detail. The morning is much brighter and more radiant than it's been for years. His touch sensitivity is heightened. He can feel the moisture in the air down to individual drops, hitting and shattering on his skin. He could give an entire count of how many are breaking on his skin and how many are entrenched in his follicles. He can smell the air significantly better than he usually can. It smells of cold dew and soggy flowers. Of wet clay and ripening harvests. Todays a good day. Hes excited.
He gets his 'hunting alms' from the church's head cleric, 'the greatly exalted martyrial eucharist, Hesbin WyrmTrodden', the greatest in his field of cleric craft in the whole continent. So, he's heard. He's glad he'll never see a face so repulsive ever again.
His hunting alm is a single ring in an open case. He isn't lost on the meaning. Hes been prepped for this moment for as long as he can remember. He takes the ring from a raised slab of rock. He is one of the only few beings alive who could even move it let alone carry and wear it.
It's a 'pocket ring'. A 'conditioned high-ring'. It allows the storage in a pocket dimension of anything at all regardless of size, number and weight but in turn, translates the weight inflicted into the pocket dimension onto the ring itself. So, the weight of the ring is directly equal to the weight of the inner contents. High level 'Arkane forging' at its finest.
After lifting the ring, he imposes an 'Arkana' on it. The Arkana technique halves the weight of the subject but at the cost of the imposer having to maintain a constant concentration on the subject. Hunters can pull that feet off significantly easier and better than actual Mages can. The perks of the brutal torture and fly or die tactics imposed on the children of destiny during their training to become destined martyrs.
The weight of the ring is still very significant even when halved. Not a problem for him but a worry when mounting his horse. He uses the same Arkana Technique on himself and boards Felis, holding onto her leather back saddle.
His heart is thumping. The weight of this day dawns on him just when hes on the edge. On the verge of freedom. Eight years. For eight years he held on and survived. He took it as it came and day by day he kept living on. Today it all ends. Today he doesn't have to just survive. He can live. He can be alive. It's a chance of change. A chance to be the difference in his life. To be the difference in their lives. To start again and find meaning in life. Just him and Felis. All they have now is each other. All they will ever need is each other. Hes thought of this day for so long. Planned for this day for so long. He promised to face it with bravery, to face it with optimism. He does his best to do just that and takes a leap. A leap of faith.
Still holding onto his religious carrion beads and rubbing his bleeding coin, he wills Felis to move and she does just that. Holding tightly to the reins they see the outer world for the first time. Vast, endless nature as far as an eye can see, canvased in widespread highlands. A memory for the ages. An image of a lifetime.
They move forwards.
Into the sprawling nature of 'The Wayward Highlands'.
Episode 2: The Breadth Of Nature.
Leaving the rusted gates of the hold behind them, they're greeted by Boundless Vistas of Mountains. Heavy clouds swirl and swallow the orange and blue colossal giants. He can hear the roaring updrafts of hot wind adjacent to the Mountains many miles away. It's the sound of a great waterfall. He can feel the uphill wind moving against his body. So many new scents are present. Scents sourced from wooden barks and rustling leaves, basking in the natural scape of the forests. Scents sourced from flowing and gleaming rivers moving through the nape of the valley. Scents sourced from the 'Mer Ruids' in their scattered numbers living in and along nature. Scents sourced from creatures alien to this reality. Those he trained to calm or kill for the last eight years of his life. His dream. His chosen purpose. His 'religious operandi'. Felis also smells them, though not as distinct or scaled as Escaflore. The blaze from the blue rising sun is enlivening. Warming, enriching and soothing. He is overwhelmed by a cluster of estranged emotion. The world is beautiful. Life's worth living, after all.
Escaflore holds the reins. He can feel his mare's eagerness easily matching his own. He won't hold her back anymore. Never again. He wills her to be wild. To be free. She rears in celebration. Balancing on her hind legs and burst in roars. He can read her body language better than he can most languages. She initiates a vow. A vow to never look back. A vow to never be bound. A vow to never be broken. Never again. He agrees, and affirms her vow.
She makes a trot downhill, moving slightly faster than a walk. She ups it to a canter, going smoother and faster. She gallops and bursts into full sprint, matching her top speeds.
The wind's rushes violently, thrashing and stabbing. She's doubling the speeds of a regular horse. Doubling the enthusiasm too. The world feels lighter, light feels distant, sound feels muttered. For miles, there is nothing but the two of them. Boundless solitude, endless nature. There is freedom to be found in the nature. Hope to be remembered in the wild. Here identity can be lost. Drowned out by the chirps of birds and rustle of trees. Here second chances can be born. Reincarnations made manifest in real-time. Escapism and fantasy, made into locality and reality. It's a living dream and Escaflore is a living dreamer.
They cross tilted highlands and flattened plateaus, cross the necks of rivers and sleaves of valleys. They move through animal populated forests and grove perimeters. The world, unbounded and unbent, is silent. Erath, boundless and alive, is brought to complete calm. Only the howl of the wind can be heard. It's at around sunset that they draw near the first sign of human settlement. At sunset they draw near 'the Fisherside village.'
Episode 3: The Fisherside Village.
The sun was dusking and the sky was turning into a pungent blue. There was a rush from the villagers to go back indoors before the moon became the prominence in the sky. The men were coming back from the lake rushing to dock their boats and hang their nets. The women were closing up shops. From grocery shops to sewing huts to bakery kiosks. It was a fermented practice. Bettered by the observation of children, know the adults, and the practice of the adults, as learned from their own parents. This has been happening for quite a while as Escaflore can see.
It's usually very hard for people to notice his presence even if he isn't trying to hide it, but he came to expect that they eventually do. He noted that the first to notice him were the children and the cats. The cats especially. He really loved cats. Like clockwork, the adults notice him too, eventually. They recognized what he was too. The horse he was on, the finest breed of the finest breed, was not a common sight in peasant villages. Nor was his attire, queer even to the massively diverse, free nation of 'Artorica'. Henceforth, it was a common give away. He got mixed expressions from his presence. From the cats to the children, from the women to the men. Each one had a unique set of ideas and opinions on him.
He moved his horse around searching for lesser hostility and attention. He wanted to try finding a place to sleep for the night. Normally, in the church capital, he was not allowed to sleep on consecutive days. He can now go several days without any sleep and maintain peak condition. He would like to rest up though. Out of curiosity, for the remembrance. For a feeling and experience long forgotten. And an effort to acquire the pieces back.
He deducts the most likely location for an inn and gets his guess right. It's in a building as far away from the fish smell, as possible, and as erected in view of passersby as able. He gets off Felis and confronts an old man lying on a hemic outside the door. To call him old is possibly half an exaggeration. There's a queer presence to his physique. He's probably the owner since no owner would allow just some guy that luxury since it's not a proper look for the business. He tends to make efforts to observe and deduct information as such, to avoid talking or interacting with as many people as he can. He isn't the most comfortable when it comes to interacting with humans.
"Ah ye want. If it be accommodations then give the doe and be off with yah. Mm. Interesting fellow you be. That hair, that attire, that horse, those necklaced beads. A bleeding coin in a pocket, I expect too. You're a 'Mor'. I've seen yer kind before. Not a rare sight considering, you know, the church uphill, hidden somewhere near here. A secret supposed to be but a dog turd secret if yah ask me. Haha." The old man bursts into uninterrupted laughter for a while. Escaflore is indifferent to it. Mostly.
"You know they say, rhyming makes chicken gurgles sound smarter," Escaflore retorts, hoping to sound smarter.
"Settle down, calm your tits will yah. I just be jesting young boy. You'll find no prejudice from me. All gods are a business and all religions are seeded-companies. If faith be thee currency, then it's no business for a greedy crook like me. Gold be me god and lust my life bound religion. Capital and Investment, ye ever seen a greater beauty?" the old man lays his faith and philosophies bare. Bare for the stranger hunter to see.
"Yes. A lot. Probably." Not really. Everything Escaflore has ever seen boils down to, a drawing in a book, a painting from a continent famous artist or a superpositioned, limage subject, in a 'magik-orb', focused and translated by a starforger telescope.
"Yer still young. Yer still blind. Yer still a dumbass. Even cleavage, I bet, ye hasn't seen. Anyways mister Hunter, I go by the name, Lonspear OxHand. And how do I be of service."
"Accommodations Sur OxHand. For my mare and myself. I have a little bit of godhood for you if you catch what I'm throwing. Its gold. I have gold." He thinks his wit is improving. It isn't.
"No need to sully me intellect sunny. If it be about gold then call me Arch Scholarof the gold, Sur OxHand, and shove a fist up my arse. If yah catches what I'm throwing. And it be common decency to introduce your name once a names been introduced to you. You'll need common decency to survive in the real world even for super humans like ye." He makes a good point. A point Escaflore knows all too well. To survive in the world he read about in books all his life, he'll need to really on the reality of things rather than the fictional depictions of them.
"Sorry. The names Escaflore. Only Escaflore. I'm a Surless. My friends call me Escaf. I hope your widespread indifference to discrimination extends to that fact too. It would be a pain in the rear otherwise. The outside world cares for the dumbest values possible." He talks in a quasi-awkward manner, half alien, half estranged, because he wasn't allowed much human interaction by his Handlers and Hunter Trainers. He is well aware of it, thanks to an old friend long gone, and tries to adapt to the world to be a better hunter, but change takes time and habits only die hard.
"Nice to meet yah Escaf, ye son of a bitch. Worry not dear boy, my indifference does indeed reach that far and extend that high. And don't assume the outside world is all bad. If yah here that means ye chose to live on in spite of the horrors those beasts of men inflict on you children. If you chose to be alive, seeing the world with optimism, blinder to the bad and more open to the good, will make your healing a lot smoother and yer new life a lot easier, if not better. And pardon me from sounding like a jackass but you be one of the few graduates I see reference friends. Who are your friends who, like I, refuse to call you by your maiden name?"
"Cats. I had a lot of cat friends growing up at the church."