Chapter 1
It was said that there existed phenomenal warriors in the Fargone Mountains, of such an extraordinary caliber they could avoid any projectile, even bullets. The most skilled among them only needed to glance at a man once before being able to judge the placement of all his shots with near perfect accuracy. An awareness of the footsteps was essential. All a footstep is, really, is the displacement of air caused by two things crashing. If the two were to collide in different ways, the air would be moved in a manner dissimilar to the first example, and a new sound would be produced. The goal there, ideally, was the careful decoding of footsteps based on their sounds. With a keen ear one could not only know where their opponent was standing but also whatever direction they may be facing as well. From there, dodging was only a matter of avoiding line of sight.
A few of my peers used a similar technique when stalking their marks. It was commonly believed that modern techniques for dodging bullets and white hot gales of aura had been derived from the abilities of those mythical warriors. I could not say for certain whether that idea was true, but there was certainly something magical about putting the skill to use.
Crouching behind an old shelf, the approach of a man with heavy, flat feet caught my ear. In spite of his efforts to move in silence, his feet hammered the ground as if made of lead. The balls of his feet struck the floor and rang bell-like, trepidation only stretching the sound to a long doldrum. By that point I was certain that he was aware of my presence. Revelations of that kind, that one's mark was aware of their status as prey, had compelled many amateurs to move hastily in the past. The knowledge of the fact that a chase was underway suddenly made it more real for both parties. Ideally, one would subdue their mark without ever letting them become conscious of the fact that they were being hunted. Once they became wise to what was going on they would start to panic. After the target figured out what was happening, standard practice was to follow one of two paths: abandon the pursuit or make haste in apprehending them. However, It was my belief that there existed a third path. A middle passage. In my view, one should continue the hunt at a similar pace. There is an unstated caveat there though. One should always stalk at a dogged pace, such that knowledge of their presence and the target's end come paired like thunder and lightning.
I heard him turn on his heels and face down the aisle of the shelf that hid me. Kneeling behind the narrow side on the opposite end, the sound of gunfire crashed against my ear. Instead of walking down the aisle, as I had anticipated, he had instead decided to shoot at the other side. The mechanical rhythm of automatic fire was accompanied by the quintessential ballistic symphony. Spent shells chimed against the floor. The punch of lead came loud and heavy like precussion. What a clown, I thought; what man had ever been routed so easily, I thought. I was confident, victory seemed near, until one round from his rifle, lonely and stray, ricocheted off of some stud in the now bare wall and found a home in the meat of my shoulder.
Ducking around the shelf, I readied my weapon. The hunk of iron in my hand unfolded like a butterfly knife and produced a great blade from between the two handles. Each handle was of considerable length, about as long as a shovel. On the right was the primary handle which would become the base of the staff, to its left was the bite. As it unfolded and reached the apex of its swing, the bite stopped and latched in place with a hard klang. Once the two became one long pole the sword would slide down the end, forming a scythe, and completing the transformation. I called this the bloom. Blooming took place with the haste of a thunderstorm; simply blinking could take up enough time so as to miss the entire process. Indeed, too many men had a fatal habit of blinking.
Bringing the scythe down hard on the back of his legs and cutting the tendons, the gunman folded with a scream. He was struck with terror when I reached out to him, expecting me to end his life. I was almost offended by his fear, truly I was. At no point was killing him part of the plan. Although not working within the law, strictly speaking, I was no criminal. My intention was always to bring him to the authorities. Of course, his resistance complicated things quite a bit.
Wrapping his wounds, I thought about what ought to be done with him. Turning him in as a blood-soggy mess would be a great misstep. Caution got the better of me and I decided on simply leaving him tied to a railing outside the building.
Though I was a woman of the night, I often found great respite in the fluff of a bed. My favorite days were the dower and grey. Days like those almost always turned into dark nights, sheeted with ice. Staying bundled under the sheets for hours was something I felt no shame about. There was something wholesome about fighting off the cold with a quilted blanket. I had grown increasingly fond of those days.
Not more than a few months ago, I was accepted into an institute of higher learning dedicated to developing the metaphysical abilities of promising young minds, Beacon they called it. The students in attendance, broadly speaking, were called hunters. I made my lodgings in one of their smaller dormitories, Ba'al Hall. It should be noted that the modest size of where I stayed didn't dissuade Beacon from emptying its coffers on all manner of fineries and dainty things: marble tiles framed with ironwood baseboards, grand foyers, and chandeliers that could only be described as epic. If my understanding of the school boards reasoning was correct, the decadence of the interior design was meant to convey a sense of power. The school board had chosen a mode of conveyance subtle, like a horse's cock, and clever, like a dog's bollocks. The marble flooring was necessary, intensely so in fact.
Upon approaching the northern face of Ba'al I made my ascent towards the third floor. My habit of lurking around at night, slinking through boroughs and back alleys, had the knock on effect of keeping me away from the dorms. So I really had no idea how many floors the hall had exactly but my guess would be at least 6. It was entirely possible that there existed cold catacombs cloistered away somewhere underneath the property, but who could say. Even if that were the case, I'm almost certain that basement levels don't count towards the total floor count of an edifice. Ah, how pleasant is it for the mind to wander. Ascending the bricked face of the thing, it occurred to me that I dangled 40 feet off the ground, suspended only by the strength of my fingers. Slipping to the ground would have been so easy. All of the entrances to the building become locked by 11 at night, no later than 11:09. The mechanism which caused the locking relied on metaphysics. Doors which gave access to the outside of the building were fitted with locks that connected to an array of sensors. Those sensors watched the night sky and would lock the doors automatically after a certain group of stars was no longer visible, the specifics of which stars correlated to which sensors was a closely guarded secret. The supernatural aspect came in how the array was wired. Each of their CPUs had been made from a mix of minerals, called dust, whose physical properties defied natural law and metals that were designed to receive psychic signals similar to how gold conducts electricity. There was no way around this hurdle, it seemed. Nothing could be done about the sensors as far as I could tell. Climb or sleep on the lawn; I chose to climb.
Climbing through the window of my room, I set my feet down gently. Everything seemed fine as I closed it. Then a prickly voice poked at me.
"You dolt! Do you have any idea what time it is?" she asked.