The End of The Hunt

Prologue
     "Corvo, why are you all alone? Were there other Knights like you?" Asked Malgreant who crouched on the catacomb floor, facing towards the darkness that surrounded her torchlight.
     The figure in the dark replied with the rasp of man near death. "Sometimes, a creature may become so invested in the letting of blood, it is all their eyes can see."
     "Even the elves?"
     "We had attained an unending life with which to enjoy every pleasure possible. But few things are meant to be endless, and intelligent creatures are prone to boredom. The final, and most thrilling experience to be had is inexhaustible- bloody- combat."
     "I see."
     "I should hope that you do not."
     "So your people got bored one day, and fought until they died??"
     "No. They formed hunting parties, seeking out challenging prey. Dragons, demons, and eventually, even the Gods were no longer safe. But their game could never hope to kill them. The Knights were immortal."
     "Then where did they all go?"
     There was a scraping noise from the darkness, and Corvo stepped nearer. The tip of his birdlike helm shining in the torchlight. "Once hunting gods became a banal chore for the Knights, some sought challenge in one another. Their endless combats churned entire continents. The ethereal plane bears scars that have not healed fully, even now."
     She listened to the dripping sound that always accompanied Corvo during his sporadic visits. He stepped closer, and she could see dark fluids leaking out of every gap in his armor. She looked up at his helm and asked, "That's when those Knights lost themselves? And their eyes could only see blood?"
     "Yes."
     "What happened to them after that?"
     "I came to take their eyes."
----Chapter 1 of 4: The Hunting Party
    In the city of Aeclanum, before the Great Collapse, stood the greatest Cathedral in its age or any other. Within its labyrinthian chambers were old armories where the most zealous Knights practiced their rituals.
    With a firm hand and practiced motion, one such Knight polished a helm made of cracked stained glass. Her armor. Her oldest memory.
     For a Knight, upon her christening, relinquished her old ego. Her old self.
     She must abandon the fleeting purposes and whimsies of the common elf and sharpen her will to an edge of Lappsteel.
     She cannot remember her birth name. For the day of her Knighting was a second birth, and with it came a new name. A name that befit her armor.
     Silicia. The Shattered Stained Glass Knight.
     Silicia finished her meditative routine. It was a formality that few Hunter Knights maintained after their first thousand years. Meticulous polishing of the armor followed by an hour of mental stillness and shield drills.
     Though she always found herself staring in the mirror. Through the cracked and colored panes of her helm, at her own sorrowful eyes, wondering what horrible visage laid beneath her armor. This second skin which fused itself to the wearer.
     Surely someone somewhere has managed to remove theirs and peer underneath.
     The thoughts were pushed from her head, and the sound from beyond her door replaced them. The choir of the hall outside sang in a sharp soprano, accompanied by the shrilling of the violins. The smell of iron struck through the air. A blood banquet had begun.
     Out in the banquet hall, the floor was alive with motion. Cupmasters emptied their porrons of blood into the open mouths of guests. House representatives looked on sternly as the young lovers danced in delicate circles. A few human servants wove around with platters, dwarfed by all but the youngest elves. The music swelled as the statues cried pure tears that ran down their golden faces. And on the more dimly lit balconies above, the Hunter Knights sat and spoke of their exploits.
     Silicia sat at her assigned seat, late to the festivities. Lucatiel had arrived on time and filled her porron with wine rather than blood, remembering her preferences. He is a fantastic squire, she thought. If not a little cowardly. He will make a fine Knight once he's proved himself. Earned his armor.
     "Hmh." The hunter opposite the table from them released a dissatisfied grunt. The Ice Knight. Thin bodied and graceful, he sat himself with the fluidity of a dancer.
     He leaned forward and spoke with a voice as jagged as the crystalline armor he wore. "All this dance and drink, for an especially unarousing hunt, hm?"
     "You seemed pretty aroused." Silicia said as she poured a bit of wine into the opening of her helm. She tried to savor the taste, but she's drank this wine well over ten thousand times before. She swallowed it out of habit more than enjoyment.
     The Snake Knight with her cobra shaped mask slid her hands across the table. "Aye. You seemed to take extra care that those Pit Fiends felt the full extent of their deaths, Glacius."
     The Ice Knight shrugged. "All part of the show."
     "He's right though." The Snake Knight always spoke at nearly a whisper. "It's been a millennia since our last truly engaging hunt."
     The Ice Knight perked up. "That human Lich? What was its name again? That was a good one! Those primitives really make the most fantastic gods you know. Riveting hunts, every time."
     "Would you have me retrieve its hand from the trophy vault?" The young Lucatiel asked.
     Silicia shook her stained glass helm. Uncharacteristic of him to speak up like this. He wants an excuse to leave and see that mistress of his again. Perhaps the rumors were true that she's with child. A squire sworn to a Knight, bearing children out of wedlock. How scandalous. Blasphemous even.
     "Lucatiel, would you check with the Hunting Representative, please, and see if there are any hunts available to pass the time? It is obvious this ball will not suffice."
     "Yes ma'am." He nodded, and rushed off.
     The Knights sat in silence for a short while. Ruminating on thoughts and imaginations they'd had a thousand times before. Yearning for the newness of life they had in their youth. Before long, the squire returned in a full sprint. Sliding to a halt.
     "The primitives have worshipped us a new God." He inhaled, winded not from exhaustion- but excitement. "We've been granted rights to the hunt."
     The Ice Knight stood swiftly to his feet, shattering several crystals off his armor which regrew and froze in new shapes. "What kind of god?"
     "A dragon god."
----Chapter 2: Cutting Teeth
     In the distant east, the hunting party's tower floated a thousand feet above the primitive village. There Silicia faced Lucatiel across the weapons room. In her hands, a long polished rod of a very dense metal, which mimicked the heft of her jagged glass battleaxe. Lucatiel instead wielded a greatsword in one hand, and a parrying dagger in the left. Combat training between Elves was rare. As such, the tower's resident Keymind had made it a point to observe in person. His transparent purple image wavered with artificial light.
     Silicia started the engagement with a shifting of her weight, and Lucatiel  rotated around her. As usual, they used this as an opportunity to speak as equals.
     Lucatiel spoke first. "Why must we wait until morning? Certainly fighting in darkness would create a more interesting challenge." He pointed the tip of the greatsword at her, his palm up, like a fencer en garde.
     "The primitives need sleep. We will land in the morning, and force them to summon their god." She lunged forward with speed, swinging vertically. The bar crashed against his readied weapon and cast his arm to the side. She followed it up with a swift punch to the torso.
     "Excellent move, Commandant." The Keymind said, as he gave a small curtsey to Silicia. "How did you anticipate his feint? I've never seen either of you attempt one like that."
     "Thank you, Vilhelm." Silicia continued her advance. "Call it a gut feeling I had." She was a walking fortress, and few would succeed in stopping her with sheer might.
     Lucatiel was quickly backed against the wall- and channeled a martial spell; Misty Step- flying through her strikes as a black cloud of smoke. As he moved, he made an opportunistic swing which deflected off Silicia's steel bar with a loud pop.
     He righted himself and continued speaking. "We allow the primitives sleep, but engineer their religions to create gods to kill. Seems contradictory?"
     "It is not out of empathy that we let them sleep." She wound up for another powerful swing. "An exhausted savage prays little."
     Lucatiel kept his distance as they paced around the room. "Even so. It is perplexing that the savages do not fiercely hate us."
     "Oh, many do. But those who hate, often take that hate with them to the grave.... Their lifespans are simply too short to maintain a true hatred for us."
     The squire dashed inwards, thrust his dagger into the floor and used it as a fulcrum to spin across the room. As a swirling dervish, his greatsword swung outwards.
     Silicia leapt up and backwards. He almost got me that time. She thought. I'm distracted.... Certainly my apprentice would not go and sire children while so close to attaining Knighthood.
     She decided to change the subject, purging the discomfort out with it.
     "Tell me, future Knight. What is the duty of a hunter?" She thrust forward with the bar like a spear.
     "To seek-". He prepared to parry a thrust, but it was a feint, and instead she spun, sweeping the bar horizontally between them.
     He dodged, and continued speaking. "-To seek challenging prey and slay it. To test oneself. To embody the-"
     The second swipe caught him across the chest, sending him flying against the bulkhead on the opposite side of the room. A blow that would sever a primitive in half, was merely an embarrassment for an elf.
     He rose to his feet again, taking the en garde stance. "-To embody the Hunt."
     The two closed the distance again. As they marched towards each other, Lucatiel took a non-combative stance.
     "Lady Silicia.... If our duty is to hunt that which is the strongest... then, why don't we hunt each other? There are old fables of Knights doing it before."
     He regretted his passive stance as Silicia punished him for it with a flurry of staff jabs.
     As her strikes flew, she spoke calmly. "Hunting is something a man does to a beast. And should a knight become blood thirsty enough to prey upon other men, they should be hunted like the beasts they've become."
     Lucatiel responded, as he attempted to deflect the thrusts with his dagger, but the recoil from each parry sent him sliding further against the wall. "That's a Hunter of Hunters job, right? Like the fables say?"
     "If there were any left." Silicia is old, and remembered a time when those fables were more recent, frightening rumors. Rumors based more in fact than fiction.
     "How would it even be possible to hunt an elf anyways? We're immortal." Lucatiel remarked as they swirled in a lightning fast flurry of blows.
     "Once an honorable elf debases himself to that of a feral beast, he casts aside the gift of longevity. Our ancestors were wise to make it so. Otherwise we could all end up as maddened monstrosities, battling for eternity until the sun burns out."
     Their combat took the form of a fluid dance. Silicia increased the pressure on him. His repeated parries and dodges felt more like a fear of being struck rather than a strategic choice, which irritated her.
     Lucatiel lunged finally, "Our sparring sessions are not unlike a hunt, though. You risk us falling prey to this 'blood drunkenness' you speak of."
     "An acceptable risk, for that very purpose. A day may come when you must hunt another Knight out of necessity."
     Their words could barely be heard over the clanging of their weapons. The combat rising to a boil. Strikes faster than the eye could perceive. Silicia continued to lecture her squire all the while.
     "The armor of a knight is as alive as you or I are. It feeds on the blood of a hunter's prey as they fight. A Knight that has given in to his animalistic urges would be unstoppable, growing stronger as their armor fed on the bloodshed."
     To demonstrate, she engaged a bit of her armor's capabilities. The stained glass cracking and reshaping itself on her arm to form an enormous greatshield. "The only thing that can stop a knight, is another knight." She said.
     As they fought wildly in the dojo, Lucatiel was forced to be more aggressive than he'd prefer. His leather hair tie broke, leaving his shoulder length white hair to dance in the wind behind him.
     Frustration could be heard in his voice. "You'd see me hunting other Knights? This training would only improve my ability to kill you, not other hunters."
     Calmly, as always, Silicia responded. "That is exactly the point. You will be able to kill me, if the need arose. Let me worry about the others for now."
     "You've stopped speaking in hypotheticals." Lucatiel lowered his weapon. Forfeiting the match. "Do you anticipate something to go wrong on this hunt?"
     She walked silently to the weapons rack, placed the metal bar back upon it and made for the elevator upwards.
     Without turning, she stated, "Call it a gut feeling."
----Chapter 3: A Beast's Crime
     Silicia stood in the open field, listening to the sounds of the wind blowing and the hissing of her armor as it soaked in the last of the echoes from the puddle of blood she stood in.
     This field an hour before had been an eden for the savages. But now it stood mutilated. Deep gouges of their conflict ran across the field, leaving dark scars upon the earth. In the distance, the forest where the primitives lived had been flattened and razed. Most survived, and gathered at the edge of their decimated home to peer at the elves which had slain their god.
     In the center of the field where a creek had once run, now flowed a river of dark blood coursing from the mangled corpse of the dragon god they hunted. Surrounding it was the Ice Knight and the Snake Knight, deciding on which of the 5 multicolored heads they would take as a trophy. Attending as well was the Rhino Knight. He did not participate in the battle, but instead served as a representative of the Department of Hunting to log the historical record of this hunt.
     Glacius crushed a fist of ice above his head which grew and froze in the shape of an enormous cleaver. It fell and severed the blue dragon head from its neck.
     As it rolled, the primitives could be heard sobbing and yelling in their guttural language. Silicia looked over to them and found it to be a diverse group. Humans, hobbits, and even a few Yenno, though they preferred to call themselves 'half-elves'. Silicia averts her eyes.
     The insolence of these lesser beings. To suggest they share common ancestry with Elves because they have pointed ears? They have more in common with their domesticated wolves than us.
     Among the savages there were indeed these domesticated wolves. The idea of befriending an apex predator rather than fighting it for glory, always unnerved the Elves.
     Lucatiel continued to stare as the lesser beings marched closer. The primitives aren't too dissimilar to us. He thought. They create gods from nothing with the power of collective faith. They seek power and meaning. Their lives are simply too short to achieve greatness.
     As they grew nearer, he could begin to see their faces. Elves rarely stared at a savage for long, for if you paid close attention, one could see the subtle signs of aging before your very eyes. So out of instinct you looked away. To ignore the reminders of their quickly approaching death.
     The Ice Knight ignored their advance, facing towards his hunting party instead. "This was.... disappointing." His voice dropped to a whisper. "5 thousand years of cultivating religion to birth a dragon god... And it falls in a mere hour of battle..."
     A primitive human clambered over the top of the dead god, and leapt at the Ice Knight with a stone-tipped spear.
     Glacius simply ignored it. The wooden haft of the weapon snapped against his impenetrable armor. The Knights watched on as the savage rose to his feet and unsheathed its dagger.
     The human lunged at the Ice Knight's legs, stabbing and slashing for several moments before attempting to climb up the armor to his head.
     Glacius sighed and grabbed the savage by its face, holding it aloft. With a flick of his wrist, it's neck was broken and the Ice Knight dropped the limp body onto the grass. The angered yells of the primitives were pierced by the frantic cries of its mate, or perhaps its mother.
     Lucatiel, the only elf present whose face was visible, shot a glare at Glacius. "That was unnecessary and cruel. He posed no threat nor challenge to you. That dishonored the Knight's Code."
     The Ice Knight shrugged and said casually, "I did it a great honor. In fact, I envy the savage." He stepped closer to Lucatiel, who instantly remembered his lack of rank and became flushed in the cheeks. "Because for even a moment, it faced an opponent whose power dwarfed its own." He gestured lazily at the corpse. "This savage had the opportunity to battle one of the strongest creatures in the universe, and took it. It would be a breach of the Code to rob it of its rightful hunt."
     Glacius then paused for a moment in deep thought. He mumbled quietly for a half second and turned towards The Snake Knight. "Serpentes, would you spar with me? Now, in this place? Certainly you would pose a greater challenge than this pathetic dragon."
     Before the Snake Knight could respond, Silicia protested, raising her shield between them. Before she could speak, Serpentes brushed past and scoffed in her whisper, "Silicia, we all know you spar with your squire regularly. There is no need to be so strict with the Code today. A short duel would be harmless." She raised her shotels. Two sickle-like curved blades.
     Silicia turned on her heel back towards their flying tower. "Come Lucatiel. We are going back to the Grand Cathedral. And will not witness this dishonor."
     Lucatiel followed. By calling him by his name, she confirmed his deepest fear. He had not earned his armor, or his new name yet.
     As they re-embarked, she whispered over her shoulder at him. "We will return here once their 'duel' has reached its climax. They will be wholly immortal until that moment. If we stay, the temptation to join may be too great."
     The Rhino Knight saluted at the departing tower. He would stay to watch the fight. It'd been some time since he'd seen a spectacle.
     Indeed, this spar would be a true spectacle.
----Chapter 4: Hunter of Hunters
     The sound of conflict echoed on the air above that field they had left not long ago. The flying tower arrived soon after.
     Inside Silicia armed herself, ritually polishing her multicolored battleaxe of jagged stained glass. Lucatiel rushed around the weapons room, searching for a sword fit to kill a Knight with, but found none.
     "Take a dagger, and something long." Silicia's voice wavered uncharacteristically.
     Lucatiel grasped a short thick dagger bearing a horizontal hilt and a diamond shaped blade. For his main hand he gravitated to the greatsword, but settled on a Patar, a sword fused with a gauntlet. He would not be disarmed like before.
     As they leapt from the tower a hundred meters above ground, Lucatiel's mind lingered on the recent memory of the savage. The primitive who'd struck at an invincible foe with a weapon that could never hope to wound its target. Lucatiel landed on the ground, and gazed at his Lappsteel dagger. We are not wholly different, in this respect, brave human.
     Silicia surveyed the landscape from atop a large hill. The land had been ravaged. The ground scarred so thoroughly that little of the grass remained. The mountain range to the west was littered with enormous craters, and a chasm in the earth had opened up in the middle of the clearing. From deep below, hot water churned itself out, forming a lake of boiling mud. The village of primitives had been replaced with a blighted hellscape.
     Around the battlefield were shimmering translucent fissures, floating in mid air. Cracks in the ethereal plane that were torn open when two invincible suits of Elven armor collided.
     The sound of another being ripped open roared through the air from the direction of the mountains. Racing there, they passed by the remains of a primitive Dwarven settlement. What was once a simple castle carved into the mountainside had been reduced to a rocky crater, revealing the complex inner workings of their tunnels.
     As they ran by, Silicia looked at the corpses of the Dwarven defenders, who even in death, clung to their stone shields and hammers. For the first time she felt a sliver of pity for the savages.
     Moving headstrong the two shortly arrived at the source of the sound. They saw the Rhino Knight charging with his oversized pauldrons- right into the Snake Knight- casting her backwards into and through a cliff face.
     Elephant sized boulders were launched into the air which rolled down the mountainside on a sheet of loose gravel. In the grey clouds above, a sound echoed like the distant peal of thunder.
     The sonic boom parted the clouds as the Ice Knight descended from the sky, rocketing forwards on a curtain of frozen wind. As he dove above them, a volley of razor-sharp icicles followed. The only thing that could be heard over the chaos of battle was Glacius' maddened cackles.
     The Snake Knight dove from underneath the avalanche of stone and ice, flipping and extending the arms of her armor into long shotel-tipped whips.
     Silicia leapt between them and planted her greatshield into the ground, blocking the Snake Knight's flailing weapons. "This duty bears no honor, but it will be done." She turned to face the Rhino Knight, while Lucatiel split off towards the Snake Knight.
     With a single sentence, she's revoked her status. Lucatiel thought, looking for an opening to get close. Silicia, Hunter of Hunters.
     Silicia and The Rhino Knight, Ocero, traded strikes, sliding further down the mountain with each earth shattering blow. Ocero had a simple method of fighting; overwhelm with incredible strength. His thick knuckled gauntlets were his only weapon, which left disarming out of the question. Each of his punches created shockwaves as they pounded against her shield.
     She tried to focus her thoughts elsewhere with every fibre of her being. But as much as she wished otherwise, she was having the most fun she'd had in over a hundred millenia.
     Lucatiel, a half-mile in the other direction, lunged forward at the Snake Knight with laser focus. Serpentes' arms gave her range, but the squire was suited for fighting as close as possible. A lightning fast swing of her weapons came his way- and passed through him.
     Lucatiel, channeling Misty Step, moved as a black cloud through her attacks and climbed onto her torso. He scoured the armor for a gap, and found himself looking through one on her helm- dead into her eyes.
     For a moment, he was transfixed. He stared not into the eyes of a noble and honorable elf. Instead, the pupils were collapsed and turned to mush- the whites were dark red with blood. The eyes of a beast.
     He jammed his dagger into the gap, scooping out her eyes in a single swipe. The two landed in a heap upon crushed stones, motionless.
     Lucatiel rose to his feet and witnessed a sight only spoke of in legend. The armor of a dead Knight dissolving back into the blood it was made of. All that was left was the slender corpse of Serpentes, and her eyes; which Lucatiel kept. His first hunting trophy.
     He rushed towards the ongoing combat down the mountain.
     Ocero dragged his fists across the lake of mud at Silicia, sending waves crashing behind him. Glacius soared overhead lashing at The Rhino Knight with tendrils of ice. Silicia threw her shield at him, formed a new one on her arm and repeated the attack.
     Lucatiel ran up behind her, presenting the eyes in his bloodied hand.
     "The eyes! The eyes are the answer!"
     Lucatiel looks at his mentor, seeking her guidance. But through a cracked pane of her stained glass helm, he could see one sorrowful eye.
     Bloodshot and bearing a torn pupil.
----Epilogue
     Lucatiel stood in his new chambers, methodically polishing his armor as his mentor had done before.
     A sound rose from beyond the door behind him. The choir of the hall outside sang in a sharp soprano, accompanied by shrilling of violins. The smell of iron struck through the air. A Blood Banquet had begun in 'honor' of his shameful Knighthood, but he would not attend.
     He could not bear to witness the blasphemy outside, though he could hear it over the orchestra and through the door. The clashing of weapons.
     Tale of his hunting party traveled fast, and it seemed everyone wanted a taste of this new and arousing entertainment. Young un-knighted elves of every caste dueled each other in the hall. Weaving between the dancers and the statues as they attempted to avoid spilling other guest's drinks.
     It is only a matter of time before they lose themselves, He thought.
     He meditatively donned his new armor, designed in honor of Silicia's death. To prevent him from falling to the same fate, he'd had it lined with blood-letting needles. It would be fueled by his own blood, rather than that of prey. So that, should he lose himself to violent urges, he would bleed himself to death.
     His responsibility was one that bore no honor, but it did not mean he could not honor the deaths of the Knights would hunt.
     With this in mind, he'd had his armor crafted with the visage of a scavenger bird; to suggest their sky burial. He'd had a cape of feathers made to hide the shame of his duty.
     Lastly, all Knights, even one disgraced as he, must forsake their old name and take on one that befits their title.
     He stared at himself in Silicia's mirror as he donned his helm. Sealing his Knighthood. It was last time he would see his own face for a long, long time.
     And thus, Lucatiel of Aeclanum became Corvo, The Crow Knight. Hunter of Hunters.