Woo boi. It has been a while since I posted anything on this website. If anyone is here from my first story, I must apologize. That story is officially dead. I didn't write it very well and more than anything it was the crack fic of someone who wanted to do too much with too little. Though if anyone wants to know how that story would have played out, I wouldn't mind posting a very small timeline for it. With that out of the way, HELLO EVERYONE. Thank you for taking time out of your day to read this. Any feedback, flames or otherwise, is appreciated. That being said, I present you with the first chapter of Fractured Fate.

CHAPTER 1

Legends. Stories scattered through time. Fairytales told to children as bedtime stories. One story depicts a knight storming a castle to save a princess from a terrible monster. Another is the story of a lone warrior standing against the forces of evil with naught but a simple sword and a heart of gold. These stories are just that. Tales that have no meaning except to entertain. What you are about to read is nothing like those. This story has importance. This is the story of one man who lost everything and through his pain, he gained power above all others. But we aren't to that part of the story yet. After all, every journey has a beginning. And this tale shall begin with an end.

Rain poured heavily in the midnight hours. It soaked the earth and turned it into a slippery, muddy mess. Lightning flashed across the sky illuminating a figure in the darkness. The figure was crumpled on the ground with a black hooded cloak covering its body. The figure shook and shivered, its head hung low. If one were to get close to it, they would hear sobbing. The sobbing of a small boy. Curious, what would a young boy be doing outside in the rain, and at this time of night? The boy continued to weep for some time. Mumbled words spoken in an incoherent gibberish could be occasionally heard from the boy as tears fell from his eyes, mixing in with the rain that soaked him. Lightning flashed again, this time it caused the boy to jump, and in doing so his hood was removed, revealing his reddened face to the world. He was light skinned and scrawny. He had black hair that clung to his forehead and threatened to cover his eyes. And his eyes, what a wonder they were. Pure sliver like you had never seen before. They looked like precious gems glinting in the night.

After the shock of the thunder had subsided, he looked back down, and his eyes filled with tears once more. As he began to weep again, he heard a voice. "Now Jasper, you have to stop running off like this. It isn't good for your health," a feminine voice spoke. The boy, Jasper, looked behind him to see a small, elderly woman walking towards him. She had gray hair and pale skin. She was tiny, barely taller than the young boy. She used a blue walking stick that had a skull carved into it as she moved to him. Like him, she too had silver eyes, though hers seemed, tarnished in a way. Almost like a fogged mirror. Jasper looked down before mumbling. "I'm sorry Maria. It won't happen again." The elderly woman looked at him for a moment before her eyes crinkled and she laughed. "Haha, you've said that the last three times now lad, so don't expect me to believe you this time. Now it's too wet outside for my tastes, so why don't we get back to the cabin, hmm? We can visit her tomorrow," Maria said, extending her hand to Jasper. Jasper nodded his head in agreement and took her hand. She helped him up, and they headed for shelter from the rain. Lightning flashed again, and for a moment, what the young boy was weeping over was illuminated. It was a small marble slab, rounded off at the top and it was engraved with a few words.

Jade Tenebris

Mother

Wife

Huntress

3017-3052

Flying. It is quite easy nowadays with the advancements made in bullhead technology allowing for them to be more easily manufactured, along with the upgrade in size they received a few years ago. Yes, flying is quite easy, however, getting the proper identification is another story. In order to fly, one must have a valid Department of Bullhead Travel ID, or DBT ID for short, and getting said identification is quite troublesome. As bullhead travel has become more accessible, those who preferred not to use them have started to use them more and more, leading to many DBT centers being full quite often. That is why I find myself, waiting in a ten-person line just to sign a few papers.

"Jeez, could this take any longer?" I complain, looking at my companion. She is an elderly woman barely half my height, hunched over an old walking stick waiting in the same line as me. Her hair is long and a grey, going on white, color that is done in a single braid. Her clothing consisted of a navy-blue jacket over a black shirt. Her pants were a lighter blue that were tucked into black boots. She looks up at me with silver eyes that reflect the color of my own and sighs before speaking. "I suppose it could Jasper. Would you like it to? I'm sure something could happen to make the wait longer. Do you want me to see if I can?" she asked with an even tone and a straight face, though I could see the left corner of her mouth twitching.

I sneered slightly in response, but by the expectant look in her eyes, she wanted a more vocal response. "Tch, no Maria, I'm fine waiting at this speed. I really don't need to know how much longer this could actually take," I responded. She seemed satisfied with the reply and turned away from me to look ahead to the front of the line again.

"Next!" a woman's voice sounded off in front of me. It seems the line was moving forward. It was about time. I took a few steps ahead with Maria and began waiting again. With the time I now had nothing to do with, I simply stared off into space, occasionally moving forward when the desk woman sounded off. In the silence of the moment, I thought back onto why I needed an ID in the first place.

I panted as sweat poured down my frame. I was out of breath and my arms felt heavy, almost unable to support the wooden sword I was holding. I looked in front of me towards my opponent, Maria, who, despite sparring with me for almost an hour, had yet to break a sweat. Taking a few much-needed gulps of air, I shakily readied myself into a stance, intent on continuing our spar.

"That's enough, Jasper. The spar is over. Let's take a break and talk about how to continue your training, hmm," Maria said. I nodded my head and moved from our training field over to our cabin's small porch and grabbed one of the water bottles she had prepared before we sparred. After taking a couple of big swigs, I poured the rest over my head. The coolness of the water felt amazing after the long sparring session. We sat there for a few minutes in silence as I caught my breath and cooled down. I looked to Maria and nodded that I was ready to listen to her speak.

"Well," she started, "I think we need to up your training a little more. So far, all we've focused on is swordsmanship and a little bit of hand-to-hand fighting. Now while none of that is bad, there is still much more you need to learn if you really want to become a huntsman." Here she paused, looking at me intently. I shook my head in agreement. Ever since mother died, this has been my goal. To follow in her footsteps and protect people. My eyes grew more focused as she began again.

"In order for you to learn more, I don't think we can stay here. As nice as sanctum academy is, you will need a more grounded, more direct approach to learning. For that, I think we need to travel somewhere with, would you say, less restrictions on training someone your age." She was right. In all the four kingdoms, huntsman training, even when not done at a recognized academy or prep school, is heavily regulated. From laws outlining what can be taught at what age to how much time a day a person can say they've trained on their way to reaching the number of hours they needed to step up a level in their tutoring. For example, a Beginner I license can only be given to someone who has trained at least one thousand five hundred hours of overseen training. A Beginner II license is given to one with two thousand five hundred hours and so on. Here is Mistral, someone of my age, twelve, can only register six hours of training a day.

I shook those thoughts from my mind and instead focused on more pressing matters. I looked Maria dead in the eyes and asked her where we would be going. "Are we going to a frontier village? Or maybe Vacuo? They've always had much more lax laws," I ask Maria. She gives me a small smirk as she answers. "No, I think getting away from the kingdoms completely is what we need for your training. So, Jasper, tell me, do you like beaches?"

I felt something smack my leg, taking me out of memory lane. I looked down to see Maria's walking stick pressing against my leg. Raising an eyebrow, I looked to her for an answer. She rolled her eyes and pointed in front of us. Looking forward, I realized that there was no one ahead of us anymore, meaning that it was our turn. I blushed slightly and chuckled a little before moving up to the desk. The woman at the desk had a patient smile as she looked at us. She was a middle-aged woman with blond hair and light brown eyes. The desk had a small terminal and a keyboard, meaning that this was an older model. The newer terminals all had touchscreen keypads for easier use. Next to the desk was a small filling cabinet that is three drawers tall.

Maria reached into her jacket's pocket to retrieve a few folded papers. She unfolded them before giving them to the woman and speaking. "We're here today to finalize this paperwork in order to get our DBT ID's." The desk woman took the papers and looked to her terminal. She spent a good five minutes referring to our papers and typing, before turning back to us. She reached for the second drawer of her filing cabinet, and after sifting through a few folders, pulled out two papers. She handed them to us along with a pen. "Here is the final paper I need you to fill out. All I need is your name, age, date of birth, and your signature, here, here, printed name here, and lastly your initials here," she said, pointing out each place that needed a signature. I grabbed the pen first and began filling it out.

Name: Jasper Tenebris

Age: 12

Date of Birth: October 30th, 3045

Initials: J.E.T.

After putting in my initials, I passed the pen to Maria, and watched her fill out the paperwork.

Name: Maria Calavera

Age: 75

Date of Birth: 2982

Initials: M.A.C.

We passed our papers back to the desk woman and she took a stamp from inside the first drawer of her filing cabinet and stamped a small red seal onto the top right of each of the papers. The stamp read, Official Document of the Department of Bullhead Travel. She then took our papers into a folder that she had grabbed from the third drawer of the filing cabinet and then put the folder back. After that, she stood up and motioned for us to move to the side of her desk. We did and she explained what she needed from us. "Alright. Now that the paperwork is done, we can get to the only fast part of the process," she said with a small laugh. Maria and I let out a quick laugh alongside her before the woman began talking again. "Ok, so I need each of you to look at the back of my terminal so I can take a quick picture and print out your ID's. Which one of you wants to go first?"

I decided to go first and stepped up to the back of the terminal. I gave a small smile and I heard a clicking noise. She smiled, saying the picture was perfect, and then placed her hand underneath her desk, reaching for something. I heard a whirring sound for a moment, and then she removed her hand from below and in it was a small plastic card with my face and some information on it. I took it from her, and she spoke to me one last time before moving on to Maria. "Since you are training to be a huntsman, every time you upgrade to the next certification, you'll need to update your ID. Right now, it shows that you are a Beginner III. When you move on to Beginner IV and every time from then on when you upgrade, remember to come back and update you ID, alright?" she spoke cheerfully. I nodded my head in affirmation and she went to help Maria. After a minute, Maria had hers as well, so we bid the desk woman, who didn't have a nametag or name plate, funnily enough. Oh well, we had our ID's and, finally, we could get my training into high gear.

With our business done in the building, we left and began to walk towards our home. Our little cabin was a small way out from the main city of Argus, which in and of itself was quite the distance from its home kingdom of Mistral. That is because while Argus is a Mistralian town, it is protected by the Atlas military due to it being an important trade city between the two kingdoms. On the edge of the mainland there is a small Atlas base built into the existing mountain landscape. It has a large tower connecter to the mountain itself and a smaller, more compact building at the base of the mountain that houses the Atlas military's soldiers and weaponry. Most of the soldiers there, from what I've heard around Argus and from Maria, were new recruits that got shipped to the base for basic weapons and ordinance training. With a vast ocean only a few hundred feet from the base, it gave the soldiers a perfect place to aim their shots, and I had seen small ships with targets strung up, sitting a little off shore once or twice before.

As we walked across Argus, I looked around the city. Argus is split into two different districts. The civilian district and the much smaller hunter district. The civilian district had a brick aesthetic, with the roads and most of the houses being made of it. Argus is a very packed city with the houses being built side to side, and the streets were filled with people at the busy times of the day; eight in the morning, noon, and five to six at night. During those times, the streets were packed with people moving shoulder to shoulder. Right now, it is halfway past two, and only a few stragglers remained in the streets.

In contrast, the hunter district had a very loose layout with spaces in-between every building, and the buildings themselves were made of a white metal. The streets in this district weren't ever filled due to the lack of consistent movement through them. The only time the streets would get busy was after Sanctum Academy got out for the day and all the students left for home.

After a few minutes of walking, we reached the edge of Argus. From here, it was only a little more walking till we reached home. Maria and I walked down the small road towards the outskirts of Argus' territory. Out here, there were just a few buildings, mostly farms, that housed the livestock of the town. While I would never want to live near these farms, I had to admit, the grassy plains and wide-open space was a nice change of scenery from the jumbled feeling of the city.

We got home a little over a half hour after leaving the city. Once we got home, Maria reminded me to pack since we would be leaving in three days. So, I went to my room with a duffel bag and was packing clothes and necessities. My room wasn't anything to talk about. It was a small square room that held only my bed, dresser, and nightstand. I had already finished packing my clothes and toiletries, so I did a quick scan to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything. My eyes fell to my dresser and to the three pictures on it. The leftmost picture was of my mother and me. This picture was taken by Maria when I was six. I remember how much my mom had to talk me into getting my picture taken. In the end, the only reason I smiled was because Maria made a silly face. I looked at my mom. Her black hair matched mine, and I had a similar face to hers, but it was my eyes that made me different. While hers were a beautiful deep blue, mine were a bright silver. Every so often I would Imagine what I would look like with her eyes, though I quite like the exotic look of my own.

The second picture was of me and Maria. We both had big smiles and I was holding a piece of paper. That was the day that Sanctum Academy accepted me into their hunter program. While small academies will accept anyone, the biggest four academies across remnant have an acceptance trial where you need to show your ability to be a hunter. I smile, thinking about how happy I had been that day. I don't think that giant smile left my face for a week. After I had gotten my acceptance letter, Maria took me out to eat in Argus, and we ate at a small noodle restaurant there.

The last picture wiped the smile off my face. The last picture was of two people holding a baby. On the left was my mother, a humongous smile on her face. Just from the picture you could feel her infectious happiness. The baby they were holding was me. It was taken a week after mom had gotten out pf the hospital after giving birth to me. On the right, was my dad. He had gray hair and black eyes. He was quite tall, over a head taller than my mom. My fist clenched as I thought about him. I never got to know him, because he left us when I was one. Maria told me that one night, he seemed distant from my mom. He spoke to her very little before going to bed, and when they woke up, he was gone without a trace. No note, no reason, nothing. He left my mom to raise me alone, and even though she never complained, I know that it couldn't have been easy. I hated him for leaving. If I ever find him…

My thoughts were interrupted by a hand touching my arm. I looked down to Maria. "Jasper are you finished packing?" she asked, a worried look on her face. I relaxed my fist, uncurling it into an open palm. There were four crescent moon shaped marks in each palm. I sighed before shaking my head. "Not really, but I'll be fine. I still don't see why I need a picture of him in my room," I spat, looking heatedly at Maria who was focused on the floor. We stayed standing in my room for a while before she spoke again. "Well, I think that it is good to have a reminder of what you are striving not to be. You are a forgetful child. You don't remember what you've learned, and you have a nasty temper. So, it's good for you to have a goal you never want to achieve. You want to be a better man than him, and a reminder of that is good." Once she had finished speaking, she clasped my hand into hers. She looked at me with a small smile while patting my hand before she left the room.

I let out a huge breath before flopping onto my bed. I certainly didn't want to be thinking about any of this tomorrow. I had my last spar at Sanctum tomorrow before we left for Menagerie. It was the match I had been looking forward to all year. Tomorrow I would be getting my match against the second best of the academy, and I surely wasn't losing. "You won't beat me," I spoke to myself quietly, "not in a million years, Pyrrha."

Again, I would like to thank anyone who took time to read this. It took me way longer that I like to admit writing this, and right now I don't want to give myself a schedule because I know I wont stick to one. But one chapter about every two weeks isn't out of the realm of possibility.