Entry 6-358, 1st of Capricorn, Cole Nite
I sat outside next to the fountain today; it's completely frozen (finally). With the year nearing its end, I flash-backed to my accomplishments and as usual spotted from the scenery of my memory countless little details describing my performance that all are in need of improvement immediately. I've been an official Hunter for over two years and I still can't find myself at par with the determination that quiet man whose trecked even further into the late hours of the morning in his training than I have, merely to be a part of Hyrolamb's Royal Guard, retains! He and I are the only two awake as the night becomes its darkest and slips into the pitch black morning; he often arrives at the pit after running his rounds with the torch that acts as the single light across the entire city, just in time to break my meditation. He lights the pit and says not a word and fails to even acknowledge my faint breathing while he stances himself for bow practice at the hay bail target not five yards away from myself. Another night, another hundred arrows and another hundred silent sighs of frustrating interruption. I ascend to my dorm and let an hour of wooden sword swipes against the scarecrow sing me to sleep.
But my concern is not with the perhaps future lowly knight but with the maintenance of my precious memories. Against the usual, my memories are not precious in the way the maternal figures' are at the sight of their child or in the way that the groom cherishes his bride, my memories are precious in the way that I will be the only one in what's left of this world to retain the images projected from the Fractions that unintelligibly utter in the back of my power struggling mind. No, the royal soldier can continue his physical endeavors and probably fail one day while on that day I'll continue my never ending mental endeavors versus the unimaginable. I will overcome them as I do each month by this, the recollection of what was when I had a life and what is to them a reminder at whose mind they tangle with. My memories are precious in the way that without them, my body wouldn't be mine, but theirs. I write what is to remind them of what will never be.
I am a resident in a world my peers and I always refer as "what's left of itself." On this world is few continents all connected by masses of land not visible to the dimwitted, though the only continent I concern myself with is the one on which I take up residence. This continent is the Din-for-saken hack of land where the City of Hyrolamb sits. Hyrolamb is the largest known city in my conformity. I say this because though all the world's geographical features are mapped out perfectly, as evident by the parcel that is the only fully exposed wall in this room, very little is known of its political features beyond this continent; the mapmakers are curious as to if there are any other cities at all (the mapmakers being the grandchildren of the mapmakers who gave to us the same map we've used for decades but never bother to politically update, proof that there is no need). Hyrolamb's castle is home to our peace ambassador (who's never really found need for negotiation) and his daughter, a young blond woman about my age who other guys here at the academy idolize as their primary concrete symbol of lustful attraction; pigs, one and all. I refer to myself and the mysterious Guard-trainee I encounter at night as the only two teenage individuals deserving of the title of "man" because we each have on our minds solely the fulfillment of our goals and ignorance to the majority's petty extrinsic motives.
Aside from said castle dominating the southern region of the city, the wide and bustling official market with the many subordinate features taking dominion over the east chunk of the city, the many-colored markets of the always eventful west part of the city, I lair in the largest structure in all of Hyrolamb: the Southern Nimrod Academy. Many would laugh when first hearing the name but none who have heard it before would fail to recognize it as one of only four training halls across the world engaging its typically orphaned students in a curriculum focusing on the peak human mental and physical condition of an elite group of militiamen with the purpose of attaining objectives taking shape of the most unimaginable and unspeakable of inhumanities/inhyrolambities. (Yes, that's each of you nuisances taking residences inside my shell, you hell spawn prats). Its the largest structure aside from the castle because of its endowment, an endowment which should be equal of the three other academies stationed at the three other compass continents of the world, an endowment included on the taxes of every working citizen because each citizen understands the horrific consequences of not being able to train those like myself. All children who are without parents before the age of fifteen come here, and since the boom in children without such that occurred sixteen years ago, there was no problem in finding students to satisfy the boarding budget of all academies. We are the only citizens with skill sets equal or above our city's respective Royal Guard, and at a young age.
I am one of the oldest here at the academy; an upperclassmen by fate, one might say. There is only a class above myself yet none of them match the painstaking obstacles I encountered after two years of continuous diligence for the sole purpose of completing a task none my age see fulfilled even in their strangest nightmares. The purpose of the Hunters being trained in these academies: To exterminate the growing threat of fatal species to the less harmful population, offending kingdom animalia or otherwise...
My only question remains as it did as this week began: Is there no one human being in all the world remaining that can rival my prodigal abilities? The difference in this morning apart from every other morning is that my schema of the answer turns to the image of the man with the green hat training so lately in the garden just a season before the trials for Royal Guard begin. Tomorrow is my last free morning before we depart to investigate the disappearances of children in our neighboring village. Perhaps I'll ask that man the same question at that time.