Embrace

What does a professional bounty hunter do in her free time? The assumption is probably that they are always working in some capacity, either sharpening their evil knives or poisoning bullets somehow or casting some nasty magic that would make them even more evil than before. They were likely killing people for fun or hanging around some evil lair laughing maniacally about their next crimes. They would steal candy from babies for fun or trip little old ladies who had done nothing wrong.

Except most of them didn’t do that, of course. To a great amount of them, killing was a profession and not a hobby. An accountant doesn’t go home and revise their computer files or cast spells on dividends. Nor did most hunters take their jobs home with them. Certainly there was likely more preparation involved in the job, but that was still when they were on the job. The contracts came and the contracts went and in between there was time, just like with any profession, to practice ones own hobbies and interests.

Akemi, for example, was in the library. Granted, it was not the public library in Crocus or some commonplace nonsense like that. Of course not. She was in her family’s private library, a massive collection of ancient tomes and books including some rare scripts that hadn’t been seen in decades; this was a library in which a three bedroom house would fit comfortably, and the vast amount of knowledge to be obtained in there would make any historian go into fits.

She had been searching for something in her free time and even in her own library, where she had been studying since she had accidentally created the problem that now forced her to search for the solution. Which, had she known that killing her own master would lock away the knowledge of how to use the second magic that she possessed, she probably wouldn’t have done it. It was important to note here that what she was searching for was a key to unlock the secrets of her own magic, the Kageyama Secret Arts. Something that she deserved, and that she was the heir to the knowledge of. And she had learned each and every summoning that was contained within the art. Rather, she had learned how to perform each and every summon. In fact, the problem with what she needed to know was that she knew all of it. She had the knowledge locked completely within her, but the key was what she sought to unlock it.

The key happened to be in the form of a key. A physical key, she thought, at first. The Master she had trained under had taught her all the spells she needed to know for the second magic that the Kageyama clan’s primary branch possessed, and once she had thought that she knew everything, she killed him. She was unfortunately unaware that the key to unlocking the magic and being able to use it was stored within a key that was once possessed by her master’s master, who used it on him to allow him to be able to use the magic. Then, predictably as with anything that was “too dangerous to be in the hands of most people”, it was hidden away. Of course it was only supposed to remained hidden until, as she had learned afterwards, she was deemed worthy of unlocking it by passing some tests of restraint, morality and conscience. This magic was dangerous and deadly, after all. Ugh. So she needed to find the key, but those that did not possess it were afraid of it. This magic, it seemed, had quite the history.

She hadn’t ever learned anything about the magic rather than learning that the magic itself was useful and deadly. Which were two things that she really wanted magic to be. She knew that this summoning magic had once been used at the crux of an important battle, when it was necessary that the forces of good of some far-off land defend itself against the everlasting encroaching darkness of some fearless evil. When the light shone brightest, those who fought for good were at their greatest strength. That was when the summoning magic was released. That was when the tides turned. Texts with more information on the battle had been burned, buried away, and hidden. Fear does frustrating things to peasants. In fact it was only within texts that had been quite literally hidden within other texts that she had found out that the key itself was not a physical object that could be hunted down. The key to [and then the name was scratched out and replaced with many different holy symbols to purge the darkness of the words themselves] lies ever in the sun’s embrace. Which answered literally nothing. She had spent years searching mythology and history about the sun’s embrace, and found that it could mean a number of places, all of which she had visited. Nothing. The way to the key was placed in… somewhere so that no one of comparable evil would ever get their hands on it. But that was precisely why she wanted to get her hands on it. Aside from the fact that she was the rightful heir to the magic, Akemi did not consider herself to be evil. She was pragmatic and opportunistic, sure. But she would never commit crimes due to boredom or lack of self control. She was methodical. Consistent. Mature.

She pounded her fist on the table, knocking over the small cup of tea next to her. “I want my goddamn key!” Her hair was momentarily misplaced by the sudden gesture, changing a regal woman to a miscreant in an instant. The various servants that had been shuffling books around all stopped and froze in place immediately. She took a breath, dusted herself off and cleared her throat. After fixing her hair, she pushed the ancient oak chair out from its matching table, releasing a horrible screeching sound as the chair met the floor with some resistance, and stood up. She knew well and good that this was not how a lady should stand from a table, but she also knew that she did not give a rats ass.

“I’m going to bed,” She announced, leaving the room and therefore the mess to those inferior to her. She left in what one would consider a huff, but would not call it to her face. She settled into another book after a long bath and another cup of tea. This one held nothing new about the key, she thought, but it was an annotated transcription of a retelling from a warrior who had fought at the final battle itself.

She did not know when she fell asleep, but she knew that at one point she awoke within her library once more, wearing her nightie and moving through the books as a blessed one moves through water. She could see the knowledge within each book. She flipped through them with the wave of a hand and found nothing. A sea of knowledge and nothing she wanted. Nothing in the town. Nothing in the city or country. No. That wasn’t true. There was nothing in an individual tome.




And that was when it hit her. She was not looking for an inanimate key that would magically show up in a book. The key was living and it was something she needed to complete her. Something she had yet to acknowledge.




She stopped in place, turning towards the sound. Whatever had made it moved from her vision. “A specter or a spirit? A nightmare?” She called, “Out yourself. I do not fear you, ghoul.” She kept her eyes trained on the area she had last seen it, but her mental focus was on sensing the magic around her.




It called again. It was once again behind her. She turned again and she was no longer in the library. She was standing above Fiore, as though stopping mid-flight and stepping out to take a stroll. Below her there was a city. She stepped down to it, each step as calm as running down the stairs. In this city there was a curio shop. It did not hold a name like “sun’s embrace”, she was not that lucky. But she was not here for no reason. She could feel consciousness here. Something was pulling her there. She placed her hand on the doorknob and opened it. There, she was flooded by something that she had never seen before. Them. They sheer quantity of them caused her blood to run like ice. Akemi had never known herself to fear anything or anyone. But as she saw the vast depth of what lie within that room, her eyes turning red as the shock paralyzed her, the knowledge of the key filled her. And she possessed what she needed now. She had seen what she would be using against every opponent she had ever faced, and in that instant she had been filled with the fear that she would fill others with soon.

They pulled her into the room, and she found herself surrounded by them in every way. They were innumerable as the fears that mortals and immortals faced, they rattled the consciousness and caused even the most tempered souls to quake as loose dirt under the footsteps of mammoths. She reached her hands out under them and felt the pain that they were, the agony that they longed to produce. The output of envy they exuded. The rage from which they were born and the sorrow which kept them aloft and alight. They were bastardizations of love and hope, they were the hopeful look in the warrior’s eye turned to despair at the sight of fallen brethren. Of camaraderie that would never become. She spoke to one, her mouth unmoving. “It is said that you appeared at the crux of a battle against good and evil. That you were summoned to face the light. Who won?”

That to whom she spoke was a giant creature made of bone, but denser than any she had ever seen. As she watched, it scooped an errant bird from the sky and shoveled it into its mouth. The bone seemed to shine as it was reinforced while the still living deboned bird fell to the ground in a squawking agony. She stared at it a moment in a horrified trance, before looking up at the creature again. Making eye contact with her, she was forced to stare into a hollow void of an orbital tissue that somehow seemed to be reading her every expression. Massive jaw still closed, crooked and terrifying teeth protruding from the jaw, the creature said, “Fear won.”

Reaching down to her with a single finger from each hand, it placed the tip of its fingers at her midsection, one under the ribcage and one just above it. It pulled her open, like someone opening a tube constructed of thick rubber, but her body stayed in tact. What it had revealed within was a portal into her soul. Something that the various creatures delightfully poured themselves into. Was this how it should go? They were far too vast for her soul to encapsulate all of them, yet she did. Finally, the largest of them, the unbelievably large skeleton thrashed its way in and her soul slammed shut. This left her within that room, completely empty, save for one more creature. She looked at it. It wasn’t facing her. It was shaped like a man wearing a perfectly fitting suit, who seemed to be adjusting his cufflinks. She opened her mouth to call to it, but it spoke first, “And you, Pandora, having proved yourself worthy of the Fear must now call it home. Thus is the fate of all who learn the Second Hidden Kageyama Art. To produce the Fear, you must become it. Except one. There will always exist one that you cannot control.”

And he turned to face her.

She woke up in a cold sweat, breathing heavily. It was morning now, if only just. She could feel the magic filling her now. The window was wide open and she stared emptily at the wall across from her for what may have been hours. The world did not stop, time moved on. It was only when the sun reached her window did she snap out of her stupor, cradled gently in the sun’s embrace.