FanFiction:The Art of the Hunt/Season 1/Chapter 7 - The Shadow of Death

D eafening roars ensued. When they passed, the silence in the arena was not just unnerving, it was terrifying. The hunters looked up. Some prayed. This was the first time they--or anyone else, for that matter--had ever been exposed to such a phenomenon. Even as they looked skyward, the shining clouds looked normal...

Except for one in particular, which seemed to be shockingly symmetrical, flying strong against the wind and cracking lightning constantly. Every other nearby cloud suggested wind, calmness, and light temperature, but this suggested storms and heavy rain. What weather of the world could this be?

Nothing could be farther from a description of this phenomena. The air shook and rain began to fall. Suddenly, lightning tore apart a nearby tree as the sky grew dark. Seemingly out of nowhere began to fall stones and sharp splinters of... something. More lightning cracked; real thunder boomed. Another musical, yet deathly frightening, scream that filled the Field with terror and aroused reactions from every viewer present. Suddenly, the audience lost their wits and any semblance of formality and began to run in every direction.

Only Taka knew why. Even this far away, the voice of the "cloud" could be heard on the fringes: "Ae gwimn nie darmah... Ae driwn in diheranda..." Taka did not know what the unnerving words translated to, but roughly he could decipher the thought of the voice: "I come not in peace.... I leave only in anguish..." Taka drew his blade. Gamor, who had always had a sixth-sense for danger, blew a short but loud call on a whistle and drew his hammer to his side. From the air to the south, a Harpy flew to Gamor's side. Reia, who, due to supernatural events, attracted wyverns and could detect their auras, was suddenly ill at ease. She vomited across the grass and grew pale. Noami held her and looked up with fearful eyes, blasting a strong and fast arrow into the misty air. Calli and Katrina looked at each other briefly in real concern for the problem, trying to discern with their surprisingly clever eyes what the problem was. They still saw but a cloud.

It was Jeren, who, level-headed and intelligent, decided to drink a Psychoserum to be sure. He was instantly alerted of a presence in the air, a fell, evil presence, something that wanted to be known and quickly. He, without further thought, drew his gunlance and loaded several high-explosive anti-wyvern (or HEAW, for short) shells into the weapon and aimed it skyward, waiting.

Waiting... For what he did not know, but by now, they had all figured out that not all was right. Despite the confusion, however, the Field seemed silent to the hunters. They had trained and devoted their senses to wyverns; their ways, their signs, and their presence was all that they detected in fell moments like these. Though all around them people jumped up from their seating and ran, they remained perfectly still, silent, waiting and watching. The sky remained dark and foreboding.

Each of the hunters drew their weapons and made a formation to spearhead the attack, breaking away from their trance long enough to do so. Jeren was in the middle. Yuki, with her gunblade, lay to his right, and behind her, Reia readied her longsword. Several feet behind Reia waited Noami, bow ready to support the group. Opposite Yuki was Brutus, great sword prepped to defend Jeren. Ali and Gamor sat on either side of Jeren, adjacent to Yuki and Brutus, ready to defend at any given moment. Calli, with her lance, stood ready near Jeren, waiting and watching for an opportunity.

Their formation solidified and they fell back into a trance, a mighty trap set and ready to spring. Hunting beasts, wild and cunning, waiting for prey. Still nothing stirred. Over the eerie atmosphere and strangely chilly air came the muffled voice of the tower: "All hunters report to Tower Base One. I repeat, all hunters report to Tower Base One. All hands at ready. Battle positions. Ready formations and check weaponry. Final order: Hunt and Conquer. Over and out." Something was wrong. Definitely wrong. Even the Guildies were frightened.

From the heavens came another roar, but this one was not musical and soft, as the others had been. This one was guttural, evil, and vicious. To all present, it seemed as though the sky had been rent with a great strike. It began to snow and hail. "This is beyond sense and logic... How is this even possible? It's the hot season!" Thought Taka and Katrina at the same time. Then came the wind.

It was wind unlike any other; it came down and swirled, it blew over trees, and it very nearly took the tower completely down. The hunters grew more frightened. This could not be any weather of the world, it was impossible.

There was no other power in the world that could cause such potential damage, yet this weather, even, was impossible. They did not know what was upon them, only that it clearly possessed godlike powers of destruction.

With a loud bang and another massive, heartrending roar, the beast, for beast it was, descended. It was beautiful, yet horrifyingly powerful. Its shining chrome-like wings glittered in the air; its mighty, bladed head shone on the wind. The Phenor. All thought it had went extinct one thousand years ago; this was the first sighting in an age. No one present knew what it was, or where it came from.

Its tail stretched out long behind it, adorned with rows of fang-like adornments. Its legs, of which there were only two in the back, were scaly but glossy, light running across them like the banners of the sun. A dull gleam seemed to emanate from the entire body of the wyvern. As it flew, wind blew behind it, blowing down trees; ahead of it, following its breath, was snow and ice; around it was thunderous beams, seemingly electric, like lightning formed into a beast. As the beast flew in its great circuit, the hunters felt the power of its wind, the will of its mind. That is when the true destruction began.

The hunters aimed their formation at the Phenor, ready to attack and conquer as it came near. As the dragon swung its body nearly 90 degrees and bore down on them, like a striking missile, it began to freeze the very air in front of it. The hunters, who had never heard of--much less fought--a monster of this size and power, braced themselves and charged. If it weren't for their inexperience, they may have done more damage. But with their current state, all that they did was cause a tiny scale to flake off from the most frontal spike within the crest. This only angered the creature, as they soon learned. It flew to the other side of the arena and, turning another ninety degrees, began another loop. This time, it dealt destruction.

What people there were left on that side in the seating were soon frozen or crushed under tons of rubble. The deathlike tail of the Phenor dragged its hooked end through the bleachers, tearing apart metal and stone into one morbid stew, drowned in blood and reeking of death. Bodies flew. Metal flew. Rocks flew. The Phenor flew, too.

It turned towards them again. This time, they scattered. The creature, suddenly confused, reeled and landed. The ground shook with the weight and force of the Phenor. It searched the area; it had never known any such beast with such sharp talons and large horns to simply disappear, as this one had done. Its sharp eyes examined every tree and every leaf. It saw nothing. No sound came to its ears, and even staying still and feeling vibrations gave it no direction.

It finally decided that it would have to smell them out. Cleverly detecting the locations based on the old familiar smell of humans, which it had finally realized were the "beast" it was after, it routed out each of the hunters and regrouped them. As they took their formation again, the Phenor launched an ice spire into the middle of the group, causing them to lunge away and scatter again. They regrouped. The Phenor, meanwhile, had flipped overhead and was now pointed at them again, though from the opposite side.

By now, the arena was very well broken up, and the weather, which had turned cold and soggy, darkened their hearts and chilled their very bones. They momentarily shivered as the Phenor froze itself, looking at them with cold yet very alive eyes. The hunters and the Phenor kept up their staring contest for nearly a minute. Finally, the noise was broken by a nearby twig--snapped by the cold and falling to the ground, it broke them from their trance. The lance wielders charged, Noami blasted arrow rain upon the monster's back, and from every angle, blades rushed at it. The Phenor reeled. As the cold, sharp metal bit into its scales, it roared in pain and body-slammed the ground in front of it.

Luckily, every hunter managed to dodge, and soon they were right back at it. The Phenor was grounded now, trying to regain its strength after a chain of such rigorous fighting, but it was not done yet. As soon as it felt the first drop of coming blood fall to the ground below, it lunged up and forward, taking the air back into its wings. It soared around the arena, circling in increasingly more narrow circles until there was only about a twenty-foot diameter of the circle its glide created.

This is what it had prepared for. The Phenor breathed, loud and clear and with strength. Ice fell, electricity arced. But that was just the beginning, the dizzy hunters realized. It had summoned up all of its energy now, and a small tornado had been created. They were trapped, in the eye of the storm. The back of the Phenor began to glow with an otherworldly light. With a massive crack and a streak, a ridiculously powerful bolt of lighting shot down from the heavens and smote the ground in the precise middle of the windy circle.

The hunters were scattered, and could not see for a good few minutes; but soon, that did not matter. The Phenor flew in a much wider circle this time, using its tail and back plates to rip apart the outer ring of the Field. Wyverns, corpses, and twisted metal trailed behind it. Some of the wyverns flew. Others laid there and bled out, wounded beyond repair. Now, the Phenor was ready. It honed in on its prey, and stopped in the circle its lightning had hit. It summoned it again.

This time, it used it to build up its own power; and as the hair on its back and wings stood up and glared like needles, the air in the Field began to move in the same circle it had traveled. The air closed in on the hunters and though it did not take them inside it, the fast-moving air drew them closer to the Phenor. They remained blind to that which happened next.

The Phenor used the last of its gathered power to make the winds go faster than it ever had. With one final burst, it blew not only some of the ground but also every single hunter far, far away, into the distant wilderness and an uncertain future. Electricity soared, winds screamed, and ice chunks flew everywhere as the hunters were propelled willy-nilly into the mountains. The crack of thunder, howling of the wind, and splitting of ice was almost too much for even the Phenor's old ears to bear. It calmed the weather, finally, and looked upwards. The sun did not shine, but no unnerving planes scaled the wind. No inexplicable blimps flew any longer. It saw peace in the skies, that which it had wished for.

So taking up the air in its wings, it flew high into the sky, and without another roar, flew northwest. The air remained chill and bitter, though now it was completely silent. Not even a bird chirped. The tower was destroyed, a nearby rock formation toppled, and a death toll of three hundred and forty seven, not counting the unaccounted-for Tanj Ten.

They were alive... But in unknown lands, wandering the wilderness and waking up slowly in the midst of near-blindness and clear sickness. Each of them would awake to look around and see, no matter how far, the Field, destroyed, in shambles. They would return.

To be continued in FanFiction:The Art of the Hunt/Season 1/Season Finale - Regroup