Her name was almost unknown, spoken only by a few--close comrades-in-arms. Her beauty, however, shone to the heavens and above, the brightest star in the night sky. She hunted those beings others could not, created at the beginning of the Earth, those creatures that are the antithesis of all that is holy and good.

She began as a poor child. Her family had nothing; her parents were beggars, her birth a mistake they regretted. She starved in the streets, her parents beside her. Then, one sweltering summer evening, the monks traversed down the mountain, their purpose always the same: buy children to thrust to the front of their war against evil. They will pay 4 Gold pieces for any child, no matter how sickly or malformed. The weak do not survive and are buried solemnly. The ones that do survive become Kouhei, the Hunters. The Kouhei are the guardians against the night, the great wall before the darkness that envelopes souls.

Quick, furtive glances mark the approach of a Kouhei; mothers ushering their children inside, lest they be contaminated by the evil Kouhei follow, or worse, stolen away up the mountain.

The mountain trek is the first perilous test. They climb without safety or instruction, left to fend for themselves. Only the strongest—or the most cunning and ruthless—survive. The valley stretching off into the distance from the mountain peak is called The Valley of Children for this reason. Its base is littered with thousands of bones, picked clean by buzzards and time itself.

The children that survive are then treated to their first taste of their prey. A demon—unarguably so, even in it's human guise—lays strapped to a slab of stone, knives and needles pricking it's skin across the laboring chest and neck. It's skin crawls, like thousands of tiny tendrils of flesh rippling underneath, constantly changing the creature's shape and image. It's face tries to mimic the children it can see. The needles pressed deeply into pressure points prevent a complete shifting; an eye shines back like a mirror, an ear twitches into being, then seems to melt away.

This, however, does not frighten the children as much as it's twisted look of pleasure. It enjoys being tortured and in pain. It craves it, as a drowning man to water. It loves torment. And the children must continue the pleasurable torture. They must learn the weaknesses of their foe. They flay skin, peeling back flesh to reveal the snake-like ropes and bundles beneath. They learn of the pressure points; the demon's ability to change shape at will and how they can be subdued. Months are spent studying the demon. After it's death, it's dissection continues. They see it's multi-chambered heart, gushing blood so dark as to be black; it's enormous lungs, squeezed inside a rib cage of flexible cartilage. Inside the chest, they find the engorged stomach, filled with it's final meal before it's capture. A half digested child, no more than 9 years old. A few children faint, others vomit themselves into insensibility. Others stare in trepidation.

This is the children's first lesson: Know Thy Enemy.

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A Kouhei spends their life in service, from the moment they are purchased. In truth, they are slaves, just as their masters and mistresses are slaves. In the way of all religions, once the Words are set, they become rote, repeated endlessly by generation upon generation. Their mandate and their ways are laid out in the Orthae. It is a book that is remade once a generation, to prevent any of the Words inside being lost to age. The children accomplish this. They are taught to read on this enormous tome, just as their masters were. It's scrolls and pages span several bookcases in a dry, dusty room beneath the keep. The children sit at small tables, scribing the ancient texts down on fresh parchment, any mistake punished by a thorough beating.

Inside this monumental tome is all the knowledge the Kouhei possess; their runes, how to track a demon, how to immobilize and destroy. They also contain the knowledge of how to create; poisons and traps, styles and tactics of their War.

The children study the wisdom kept here for years on end, every day filtering through the room on their way to their other duties as members of the Kouhei—manning the walls, tending the livestock, standing guard. The practical side of their War is taught to them at night. They handle weapons, learn to guard and to kill with them, toiling for hours on end each night under the stars, just as the Orthae decrees. They learn to see with their ears, blindfolded in the dimness, to map out the sounds in their minds. Demons rarely fight in the sun.

The Fortress of the Kouhei—for that is what it is; a solitary fortress set against the entirety of hell—is fully self-sufficient. They grow their own foods, nest their own hens and tend to their herds. If a siege befell their temple, only a few minutes would be spent ushering the grazing livestock through the thick gates; these gates would slam shut on well oiled hinges the moment the last heifer was rushed through, to be barred with stout oak beams bound in iron, runes etched into the wood to guard against the demon's magic. Runes also span the doors, both within the walls and without; wards against the power of demons, blessings for the strength of the wood and iron, potent curses upon any who raise a weapon against the Kouhei.

These men and women of the Kouhei War against their demons thanklessly. It is their Task.