CHAPTER 2

-

I

-

Through the cloth she used to strangle him, Lucienne could feel the strength swiftly ebbing from D’s form. Five millennia earlier, she’d fought a number of dhampirs. She’d slain all of them. This young man was a tougher opponent than they had been; she’d have to choke him twice as hard.

All signs of life had already left D. Lucienne laughed maliciously as she knifed through the water toward the Hunter. Just to be sure, she would use her special claws to tear the flesh from his bones. The sword D gripped didn’t concern her. Who would’ve expected it to hack through her from the top of her head all the way down to her cleavage?

Writhing in intense pain, Lucienne found her field of vision tinged with red.

Seeing that the water witch had dissolved into the black fluid streaming past him, D kicked up through the water. His face broke the surface, and his lungs took a savage breath of air. Though he was several times as powerful as the average dhampir, it was still difficult for him to go nearly ten minutes without oxygen.

The Hunter had no intention of getting out of the water—Sue and Matthew had gone downstream. In the incessantly gurgling subterranean waterway, D caught his breath as he was swept along.

-

Upon a strike to his cheek, Matthew opened his eyes. A man he didn’t recognize was peering down at him. Without noticing the bluish darkness behind the stranger, the boy started coughing violently.

“You have to spit out the water,” the man said. What he said next made Matthew’s coughing stop. “I’m Courbet the Missionary. One of Valcua’s seven.”

As Matthew turned to look in horror, his face was like that of a waterlogged corpse.

“I was supposed to haul your little sister out as well, but my singing compatriot is handling that. The current was a bit too strong. At least I snagged you,” he said, grinning at the boy’s ghastly, pale face.

“What are you gonna do to me?” Matthew inquired in a hoarse tone.

“Not a thing. I’ll bring you back to our country.”

“Your country?”

“To Grand Duke Valcua’s country, that is. Your sister will be going there as well, and that fellow who calls himself D, or something like that. Not that I approve.”

Matthew was speechless.

Courbet continued. Apparently the subject was a sore one for him. “No matter how you look at it, the Hunter is our foe. There’s nothing to do but fight him and see who lives and who dies in the end. He should definitely be killed before he gets inside the castle. What can Lord Valcua be thinking?”

Just then, Matthew felt a shadow fall across the sun, and he looked up. What he saw was a night sky tinged with a pale blue that suggested dawn was near. He could make out stars twinkling through the trees.

He felt an enormous presence in that starry sky.

Courbet gasped, “Lord Valcua!”

“I’m not thinking about anything at all. At least, not about anything that concerns the lot of you.”

Matthew instinctively looked around but was unable to pinpoint the source of the voice. It seemed to come from both the highest heavens and the depths of the earth.

“Because of that, I shall give you an order in terms worms like yourselves might comprehend: Kill that human.”

Courbet’s eyes gleamed with surprise as he replied, “Leave it to me, Lord Valcua. I would risk body and soul to do your will.”

Matthew felt the presence vanish. Knowing what fate lay in store for him, he was relieved at first, then horrified.

Courbet stood up. “I suppose the least I can do is let you choose how you’ll die,” the missionary said in a tone that was all murderous intent and mocking sneers. “Would you like to have another go at drowning? You could strangle yourself, slit your own throat, or maybe—”

Matthew leaped up with a shout, charging at Courbet head first. But he was too slow. Dodging to the left, the missionary brought the side of his hand down on Matthew’s neck in a chop.

“You’re too stupid to see when someone’s trying to do you a favor,” Courbet laughed, extending his right arm. Beside him, branches jutted from a tree. Snapping off a relatively straight one with a single twist of his wrist, he held it like a spear as he walked over to where Matthew lay groaning on the ground. “In the service of the grand duke, I’ve done battle with Nobles, but I never used the legendary method against them. Isn’t it ironic that I should first get to try it on a human being?”

Raising the branch with both hands so the jagged break was like a stake, the missionary began to swing it home. But he froze in place. Something had latched onto the end of the branch and stopped it.

D? he wondered. Not concerning himself with the branch, Courbet released it and leaped back. There was no one where he’d just been. Icy breath crept across the nape of his neck.

“Wooden stakes really should be saved for the Nobility. Or for their abhorrent servants.”

Behind me again? the man thought, and he was about to spit a curse when a stake pierced him through the back with feverish speed, running through his heart. Letting out a final breath, Courbet staggered. He tried to take in more air, but his lungs disgorged something else. Fresh blood splattered against the grass at his feet. He took a few more steps, and then turned.

The woman in the white dress possessed the poise and beauty that made it clear at a glance she was a Noble.

“You—you bitch! You’re . . . Miranda . . .”

“That’s duchess to you.”

Approaching him without a sound, Miranda grabbed the tip of the branch that protruded from Courbet’s chest and twisted it this way and that. Screams split the darkness, and the blood that sprayed from him stained the duchess’s pale face and breasts a deep red. She possessed a countenance so lovely it would’ve rivaled that of Sotoori-hime, a legendary princess so fair her beauty glowed through her attire. Seeing the duchess lick the blood from her mouth, Matthew felt his mind drifting a million miles away.

“Forgive me . . . milord . . .” Courbet coughed through bloodied lips before he collapsed in the grass and moved no more.

Matthew stared at his savior, dumbfounded. He realized the battle wasn’t over. Back at Lamoa Fortress, D had told him about the powers of Valcua’s assassins. Acting on reflex, he put his right hand in his pants pocket. It closed tightly around the hard objects his fingertips brushed, but he thought to himself, These probably won’t do much good.

The plastic earplugs were something D had given him back at the fortress to use against Courbet.

“Aren’t you a fine fool,” the duchess said, making no attempt to hide the scorn in her eyes. “Even with that Hunter and the count to protect you, I find you out here in this remote place, all alone, at this hour—you’ve brought this all upon yourself.”

“No . . . it’s not like that . . .”

“At any rate, you’ve been saved. I’m a woman, so I’m more calculating than those other two. But sooner or later you’ll have to repay me for this.”

As she spoke, the duchess walked up to Matthew. Her right hand seized the collar of his shirt. Without bending her knees or even bracing her feet, she hoisted Matthew into the air with a single slender limb. Using her left hand to point, she said, “If you go that way, you’ll soon be out of the forest. I must be going now. The dawn is like a death knell.”

And then the pale Noblewoman dissolved into the feeble light, and Matthew collapsed on the spot. There was a dazed look on his face. Though he understood what had transpired, he remained numb. It took a good minute before a human emotion could force its way onto his expressionless face.

The Noble or his assassins would probably be coming for him again. Matthew got up and started walking with leaden steps in the direction the duchess had indicated. Gradually his pace quickened, and before he’d gone ten strides he was running full speed.

-

Sue remembered everything. Though the things that had happened while she was under the hypnotic gaze of her android guard had seemed like a dream, the memories themselves were clear. The spell had been broken when she was immersed in the subterranean river. She’d been immediately pulled out and lifted high in the air—such was the strength of Seurat’s powerful arms. She had no idea how far the dark water had carried her. Perhaps she’d been swept along for two hours or more. Suffering a terrible blow, Sue had lost consciousness.

Apparently it was the sunlight that awakened her—the light that now hung around her was the glow of dawn. Sue was in a rocky area. Her joints ached, but she was able to move. She looked all around. Seurat’s enormous form had fallen at her feet. He rested there like a stone, not moving a muscle. As he lay flat on his back, Sue pressed her ear to the left side of his chest. A beating came through like a rumbling deep in the earth. On realizing that she was relieved, Sue was terribly surprised. This giant had held her up out of the water the whole time they’d been swept downstream. Although it was his duty, it couldn’t have been an easy thing to do.

By the girl’s feet yawned a crevasse that looked to be a good thirty feet long. The strange stones and towering boulders that surrounded it appeared to point toward the chasm. A splash resounded. Seurat must have pulled Sue from the subterranean waterway and crawled this far before his strength failed him. He was probably injured.

Running her eyes over Seurat, Sue gasped. A red stain was spreading in the area just beneath the right side of his chest. Something pale jutted from the center of the stain.

“One of D’s?”

It was a needle. He’d probably been pierced by it as they were falling into the subterranean waterway.

A strange feeling took hold of Sue, and the girl was surprised that she was ready to act on it. Though it was a perfectly natural instinct under the circumstances, Sue knew she would be inviting her own destruction.

You have to help those who are suffering, she thought. The giant was an assassin sent to drag her into Valcua’s deadly trap. They were fighting for their lives, and D’s needle had been intended to stop him. If she were to act on her impulses, it would completely defeat the purpose of D’s battle.

Make a run for it, someone whispered in her head. It was someone Sue knew very well.

Turning around, Sue took a few steps. Then she halted and took a breath. Looking back, the young girl had a certain resolve on her face. Without any further hesitation, Sue ran back to the giant. Squatting down, she grabbed D’s needle with both hands.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She planted her feet on the giant’s chest and took a deep breath.

“Come on!” she exclaimed, simultaneously letting out a gasp. The needle came out with astonishing ease, and, thrown off balance, Sue fell over and whacked the back of her head against the ground.

“Ow!” she groaned, hand to her head as she sat up, her eyes glittering while she stared at the giant. She got up on her knees. Raising the needle high over her head, Sue swung it back down with all her might.

-

II

-

D needed to find a horse. His body was failing—water was the bane of dhampirs. And now the light of dawn sprayed like a shower through the interlaced branches and seared D’s flesh.

After he’d slain the water witch Lucienne, he’d floated nearly an hour before the water carried him to a subterranean shore. Resting for a while and finding a crevasse to get back out to the surface had taken an additional two hours. Still, he knew where he was. Needing to return to their coffins before the light of day reached them, the Nobility branded the ability to judge times and distances into their DNA. He’d come out about sixty miles north by northwest of where he’d fallen into the subterranean waterway. The stream was moving at more than forty miles an hour. If he kept going straight, he’d soon be out of the forest, and—

There was the sound of footsteps approaching. D advanced without hesitation. Before another minute had passed, a girl in a white blouse and ankle-length skirt appeared. Her blond hair glistened in the light spilling through the trees, and her vermilion skirt seemed ablaze. With her left hand she carried a wooden basket. It was filled with flowers of every imaginable color. The instant she saw D, her willowy form became a sculpture of ice. The fear and tension that ordinarily would’ve gripped her were blown away by a rapture that colored every inch of her body.

“Are you from around here?” D inquired, halting.

The girl’s mouth fell open in a gasp a few seconds later. “Yes. I’m from the village of Toja, and I . . .”

“Have you seen anyone? A boy of sixteen and a girl of fourteen?”

After some thought, the girl shook her head.

Thanking her, D began to walk away.

“Please, wait,” the girl called out when he was about thirty feet away. “Are you—are you a Hunter?”

“That’s right.” The reason D bothered to reply was probably because she’d answered a question for him.

“In that case, please come with me. I beg of you. My village is in trouble!”

As the girl rushed toward him, the figure in black suddenly began to move away.

“Oh!” the girl exclaimed, but she followed him regardless. The young man in black seemed to be walking at a good clip. But the girl quickly noticed something unusual. Even though she ran for all she was worth, she couldn’t catch up to him. The young man never quickened his pace—he just kept walking at the same speed. He was close enough she probably could’ve reached out and touched him. Nevertheless, she couldn’t close the distance between the two of them.

The girl halted. She’d realized if she ran any further, she’d never be able to speak. Her lungs felt like they were on fire as she squeezed a mix of words and air from them.

“Not too long ago—near our village—something unbelievably huge—went by. And after it did—a big pit formed—like thirty feet across—and out of it came some monsters—like bugs and snakes or something. Somehow or other—we managed to kill some of them—but villagers got killed, too—and others were injured. There are still monsters—outside the village. I managed to slip out without them seeing me—so I could collect medicinal herbs. But now—I’m scared to go back.”

D remained at a distance from her. The girl’s desperate cries meant no more to him now than distant baying borne on the wind. But he halted.

“Please wait—D.”

He turned around. The girl was hunched over, her hands resting on her knees as she struggled to catch her breath, when the Hunter asked her, “Where’d you hear my name?”

“When whatever it was passed by—”

The girl’s voice failed there, and she struggled to fill her lungs with oxygen. When she finally managed to speak again, her voice was hoarse, as if coming up through her throat had wrung all the moisture from it. “I heard it—then. That a Hunter named D—would be coming soon. And that we—should ask for your help.”

“You were the only one who heard this?”

“No—a bunch of the villagers did. But all were people—with an affinity for spirits.”

“Did this voice identify itself?”

The girl shook her head. After resting a little more, her voice was finally back to normal when she spoke again, saying, “No. But it was really huge and scary. Whatever it was, it was not from this world. I’m sure of that.”

A shudder passed through the girl. Overwhelmed by the fear of the unknown being, she forgot all about her village and the injured people there. D alone knew what it really was.

“If I were to go to your village, could I buy a horse there?”

Waves of hope swiftly broke against the girl’s face. “If you help us, I’ll give you all the modified horses I own!”

As she stared, enraptured, at the young man approaching her, she suddenly felt a sharp tug at her waist. Without asking for the location of her village, the young man in black took the girl under one arm and sprinted off like an exquisite wind, as if he’d known where he was going all along.

Less than ten minutes later, the village’s palisade came into view outside the forest. Screams and inhuman howls were carried on the wind. Undoubtedly the creatures had attacked again.

D quickened his pace.

Just before the rear gate, a caterpillar with a red shell was engaged in deadly battle with a number of villagers. Looking like a dozen bumps fused in a row, its body was a good twenty to twenty-five feet long. The caterpillar’s weapons were the half-dozen semicircular bladed mandibles jutting from its round head. Two vermilion-stained villagers lay on the ground, and another five were also covered with blood. Proof that they weren’t completely ineffectual came from the yellow and red ichor that dripped where a number of spears had stabbed into the bellows-like membranes linking one segment of the caterpillar to the next.

The villagers cautiously surrounded the creature and took aim at its head, but suddenly its body twisted with incomprehensible speed and assailed the men to its rear, who had let their guard down. Taking one last swipe with his longsword, a middle-aged man felt a bladelike mandible drive right through him. The shell where his longsword struck gave a hard ring. The mandibles parted, and the mouth opened, devouring the man. The crunching sounds made the other villagers cringe.

Without warning, the caterpillar changed direction, looking down. D was by its feet. Still carrying the girl, he didn’t even reach for the hilt of his longsword with his right hand.

A command sprang into the brain of the caterpillar, filling it with cruelty and hunger and a lust for battle. It bit through the prey in its mouth and flung down half of it, swallowing the other half, and then it launched an attack on the vision of beauty below it without hesitation. A silvery streak of lightning struck its head—splitting its armor with a vicious crack. Its great lump of a head split in two by a single blow, the caterpillar crashed face first into the ground. With none of the quivering death throes that might be expected from a lower organism, it was reduced to a lifeless piece of meat.

The villagers, dumbfounded, stared at its corpse. The very same monster that had given them such a ferocious battle had been rendered a harmless insect with a single blow—literally with one stroke from a sword. So great had been the change in the situation, their minds couldn’t keep pace. Their brains didn’t have the means to comprehend it.

The sudden silence was broken by the girl as she said, “D . . . You’re . . . you’re just incredible . . .”

Letting go of the girl, D walked over to the caterpillar without a word. He kept only his thumb around the hilt of his sword, cupping the other fingers to catch the ichor that spilled from the cut he’d made in the creature. When the girl saw him bring it up to his lips, her eyes went wide. His handsome head arched back. She saw a thin stream of blood fly from his lips and up into the sky.

Dhampirs must be able to spit with great force, because the geyser of blood reached some thirty feet into the air, where it scattered in a red mist. Once D had finished disgorging it, he wiped the back of his right hand across his lips and then simply stood there. And all the while the villagers remained frozen in place. Not because the young man who’d suddenly appeared to slay the hellish beast with a single blow had entranced them with his swordplay, and not because they were shocked or terrified, but because their very souls had been taken by his beauty—or so it appeared to the girl.

Finally, one of the villagers went over to the young woman and said, “Hey, Maquia!”

Just then, a weird howl shook the air. As the villagers turned to look at the defensive palisade, a shadow fell across them. It belonged to the enormous creatures that had sailed through the air and over the fence: a colossal arthropod that looked just like a scorpion gifted with a nauseatingly gaudy coloration and a mollusk that seemed to be no more than a knot of innumerable sucker-covered tentacles. Each of the creatures was the size of a small hut. The claws of the giant scorpion were wet with fresh blood.

“How many of them are left?” D inquired, but at that very instant tentacles streamed toward him like weeds underwater.

“Just these,” a villager replied.

The Hunter seemed to become a silvery flash that raced between the tentacles, severing each and every one of the hideous appendages and leaving them lying on the ground. The villagers took in the action. The deadly battle was over in seconds—but it was something they would pass down to their children and their children’s children.

The young man in black seemed to glide in a gentle arc while the giant scorpion closed on him from one side, its scythelike claws extended. The young man swept his right hand down without any particular effort. No one had actually seen him raise it to strike. Sparks flew, and the giant scorpion’s claws thudded to the ground. Only later did they learn that the claws were covered by nearly an inch of shell that was every bit as tough as iron.

Taking a step toward the monstrous bug as it tumbled backward, the Hunter lashed out with his naked blade, driving it deep between the creature’s beady red eyes and then flinging the massive fifteen-foot-long, two-ton form at the mass of tentacles to its rear with a single movement of his right arm.

The mass of tentacles backed away. As it barely dodged the giant scorpion, the figure in black, following the scorpion’s trajectory, landed by its side. Split in two, the mass fell into two halves and ceased moving; almost simultaneously, it became countless individual tentacles that scattered. There was no sign of a body connecting them. It was unclear whether the creature had been a swarm of sentient tentacles or if a single intelligence had united them. The stench of their compatriots’ blood told them this was a formidable opponent, and they were massing together again when their foe’s blade carved out a deadly world for them.

The rear gate was still open wide, and when the frozen villagers saw the new figure that dashed through it, they finally moved again. Staring at D, one of them muttered, “What in the world are—”

Just then, someone called out, “D!”

Shrieking, the girl pulled both hands up over her heart.

The voice had come from the giant scorpion.

All the villagers were paralyzed.

“There should be no need for me to introduce myself. The girl you were protecting is now in my custody. I believed her brother had been captured as well, but it would seem there’s been some interference. At any rate, I can read the stars. I learned to do so after being exiled to the depths of space. We shall meet sooner or later, D . . . just as the stars say. It would seem that your journey and mine were for that very purpose. Won’t that be pleasant? And then we might finally learn what thread of fate binds the Ultimate Noble Valcua and a lowly Hunter. But in order to find out, you’ll have to keep from being slain by my lackeys. The things you face from here on out will all be monsters whose flesh and spirits I’ve strengthened with my own two hands. I would not think it odd if any one of them were to slay you. If that happens, then it will be fate. I shall have to curse the stars. But just wait, D! And go north as fast as you can—into my world!”

This wasn’t an invitation. It was an order.

The giant scorpion moved no more, but a number of villagers were left reeling, and a few people fainted. Such was the power the source of that voice carried.

Had Valcua created these monstrosities and attacked the village merely to tell the Hunter this? Did the stars of which he spoke portend D’s coming even before his encounter with Maquia?

Sheathing his sword, D asked the villagers, “Do you have any horses?”

-

In about ten minutes’ time he was all set with a cyborg horse. The villagers didn’t once mention what the giant scorpion had said to D. All they could do was stare in amazement at the far-too-handsome young man. While they gave the Hunter no complaint, they expressed no gratitude either. They just wanted to be rid of him as quickly as possible.

After giving the cost of the steed and a saddle to Maquia, D put one foot into the stirrups. When he got up into the saddle without using his left hand, a stir went through the villagers—they’d finally noticed that it was missing. The opponents that lay ahead were daunting, and now D lacked his left hand.

The young man had appeared without warning and was leaving just as abruptly, and the villagers said nothing as they watched him go.

As the forms of horse and rider became one and they started off toward the road, Maquia rushed over, saying, “Thank you, D. Thank you—and I know we’ll meet again.”

But even she didn’t believe the last remark.

“I don’t know what to say at a time like this, but where are you going?” Maquia asked, walking alongside him.

Unexpectedly, the horse broke into a run. D had given it a kick to its sides.

Pulling away, the reeling Maquia somehow managed to stay on her feet. There he goes, she thought. They’d met in the woods, and he’d carried her under one arm back to the village. That was it. He hadn’t said a single word to her since reaching the village. And yet, her heart burned.

“Um—next month, I’m getting married,” the girl whispered, with at least some of her reason returning. Her sweetheart was among the villagers behind her. After going a few paces more, Maquia halted. Tears suddenly spilled from her eyes.

The rider in black had turned left on the highway and was already out of sight.

-

III

-

As D galloped north on the road, he seemed no more than a speck of dust to a certain woman. She wasn’t underestimating him. Rather, it was a matter of perspective.

Callas the Diva was astride a giant eagle soaring fifteen hundred feet above the earth. A song of unearthly beauty flowed through the air—even birds in the distance seemed to be listening. This eagle had wings that were over thirty feet long, and with the width of its body, its total wingspan reached sixty-five or seventy feet.

Callas and Courbet had received their orders to dispatch D from Grand Duke Valcua in the forest near the fortress. Both she and Courbet had been brought back to life by their lord’s power. Valcua had commanded them both to do away with D. He put it this way: “You mustn’t let your guard down, but it’s not imperative that the two of you work together. Slay him together, and you shall have my praise. Accomplish it alone, and you shall also be rewarded. Ah, yes—perhaps I shall give you control of the moon!”

Valcua had led the starry-eyed pair to the spot where D and the Dyalhis children had fallen into the subterranean waterway.

“I leave the rest to you,” Valcua said to them before he faded away.

Of course, the two assassins had no way of knowing where the water had carried their targets. Believing they would seek out civilization where they washed up, Callas headed for the village of Toja. Courbet elected to follow the course of the waterway. Its route had been input into his memory at the time of his resurrection—that must’ve been Valcua’s doing. But Valcua’s statement that they need not fight side by side was impeding any cooperation.

When Callas reached the village, the weird insects that had sprung from Valcua’s footsteps were in the midst of their attack on the community. Callas had merely watched as people were horribly devoured or chopped up by oversized claws, for no human soul remained in the diva after Valcua revived her. And now she flew across the sky on a giant eagle, following D as he raced along the ground. As she watched his tiny form, now smaller than a grain of pollen, her eyes not only displayed the same rapture that had always been there, but they also held a hint of terrible obsession capable of shaking any who saw it. Most people would’ve called it hatred. Those with a keener understanding of the mind’s workings might’ve called it something else: love.

“The sun is high, but I am higher still,” Callas murmured. Her words were a song.

Her hair fluttering in the breeze, she filled her lungs with the crisp air before looking at the birds that surrounded her.

“Would you care for a bit of exercise?” the diva sang, her voice still gentle.

-

D wasn’t riding aimlessly. Since he’d left the village, he’d been listening to the sound of the water flowing beneath the earth’s crust. Before long, the water would be rushing back out to the surface. Where the waterway ended, he should find Sue—who’d been abducted by one of Valcua’s assassins—as well as Matthew.

Was the assassin in question Callas or Courbet? D had witnessed Callas stabbing Courbet, and then the two of them being engulfed by napalm flames immediately thereafter. However, that hardly meant that Valcua’s subordinates were dead. Or was it another one? The last of the seven . . . the foe known as Seurat.

Whoever it was, having Sue as a hostage would undoubtedly make him or her a fearsome opponent—or so ordinary reasoning suggested. D raced like the wind. Not a glimmer of fear or uncertainty showed in his horribly handsome features. From the very start, this young man had been utterly devoid of feeling regarding those he must slay.

A shadow unexpectedly passed across the sun, as if a cloud that wasn’t there had suddenly appeared. D lifted his head a bit to look up at the heavens. The blackness that spread overhead was no cloud—it was expanding in all directions. Or rather, it was drawing closer.

A second later, thousands—or even tens of thousands—of birds assailed D and his cyborg horse. There were little four-winged birds, birds of prey, winged dragons, and great ravens—and while they surged with a beating of wings to shake both heaven and earth, a naked blade danced out.

Holding his longsword in his teeth, D pulled a scarf from one of his coat pockets and wrapped it around his steed’s eyes. He would guide it by use of the reins. A blinded horse would have to be junked, after all.

D’s swordplay was neither wasted nor ineffective. Every time he swung his blade, dozens of birds fell to the ground. However, that did nothing to decrease the ranks of his foes.

His horse staggered. The snout of a small, winged dragon had struck it in the nose.

A rocky slope came into view up ahead. The road forked. D chose to go left. Though he would stray from the path of the waterway, there was no helping that at this point. A rusty chain was stretched across the entrance to that road, and a signpost stood beside it. As the horse and rider bounded over the former, the latter listed to one side.

Although Callas couldn’t read the words warning of danger from so high up in the sky, the clear and resounding song that she used to control the birds suddenly stopped.

“Why would he go that way?” she mused, furrowing her brow.

Shielded on either side by stone walls, the road ran down a rather steep slope into the bottom of a ravine. As D and his steed made their way down, they were obscured by what looked like a multicolored sea of clouds, or a bizarre gaseous creature. On reaching the bottom, D pulled on the reins. Avian monstrosities and demon birds fell to his blade, but twice as many came to replace them.

“I’ve summoned all the flying creatures in the area. This is a new power bestowed on me by my liege Valcua. No matter how good a Hunter he may be, it would take him three days to kill them all. Oh, are they down again?”

Spying winged creatures to the north, Callas began to sing her bewitching tune. Perhaps it was out of satisfaction with her victory that she forgot all about the road D had chosen. It wasn’t until the moment the flock of birds began to move again that a flash of inspiration sparked in her brain.

“What is it now? Wait—why did he pause at the entrance to the valley?”

D had already advanced about halfway through the ravine. White mists rose here and there like strips of cloth across the barren wasteland, devoid of a single blade of grass. Suddenly the mists grew thicker. That was when Callas noticed what was happening.

“No—get out of there!” she screamed in something other than her singing voice.

Suddenly, the white mist blanketed the bottom of the ravine. A minute fissure that hadn’t been evident on casual inspection ran across the floor of the ravine. The white mist that issued from it—or rather, the colorless and odorless gas—killed the thousands of avian creatures instantly.

Just look. Only D and his cyborg steed emerged from the far side of the white haze. D had memorized a map of the surrounding area back in the fortress of Lamoa, so it was only natural that he’d remember this deadly valley. Of course, the bottom of the ravine wasn’t always full of lethal gas. It erupted periodically, like a geyser. D had also committed its schedule to memory, and he’d halted just before entering the ravine because it was too early and he needed to kill some time. He’d held his breath while they galloped through the gas. And his horse, which usually breathed the surrounding atmosphere, had been instructed to rely on its internal oxygen supply. That was the signal he’d given the beast when he pulled back on the reins.

Coming up out of the ravine by another road, D got on the highway. Without decreasing speed, he and his mount bounded into the forest to their left. Not a single chirp was heard. All the birds in the vicinity now slept the sleep of death at the bottom of the ravine.

Letting his horse’s breathing return to normal, D swiftly got out of the saddle, went over to the base of a tree about ten feet away, and closed his eyes. Three seconds passed. Five. And then his dark eyes opened and looked up coolly.

-

“Took refuge in the forest, did he? Ah, such is to be expected from the man who’s stolen my very soul. But I won’t let him get away. I’ll show him it’s not the birds of the air alone who fall under the spell of Callas’s song.”

After muttering this, the unholy singer gave a little cough and then began to fill the air with a clear and resonant soprano. Like an invisible shower, it rained down to fill the ears of every living creature.

-

When D was nearly finished with what he was doing, he noticed footsteps closing on him from the distance. This time it was the creatures of the land. Those who were closest would probably come barreling through the forest in a veritable avalanche in less than thirty seconds. Sensing their presence, the Hunter’s cyborg horse whinnied fiercely.

D got up, put what he’d made under his left arm, and wheeled his steed around toward the right side. Its whinnying stopped dead.

Only one irksome task remained. Drawing his blade, the Hunter stuck his left wrist out in front of himself and made an artless chop at it. From behind him, a single black shape sailed forward—with the speed of a shooting star.

-

“Take him!” Callas cried from the back of the giant eagle, making a ferocious sweep with her right hand.

No matter how good a Hunter he might be, there was no way D would be able to hold off hundreds of monstrous beasts. Imagining the handsome features of the young man in anguish as innumerable claws and fangs ripped him apart, Callas became intoxicated by her blood-soaked vision. And her besotted eyes did indeed detect a pale object flying from the forest. Mentally and physically Callas was too swept away to dodge it, and it was moving too quickly for her to bat it aside.

Some might call its speed ungodly. Made from the pointed end of a branch, the missile penetrated the body of the giant eagle with ease, piercing Callas in the throat and poking out the nape of her neck. Her anguished cries mixed with those of the bird, sending ripples of sound through the air.

-

Watching the gigantic bird wheel in circles as it fell, the Hunter cut down the last of a dozen tigons just as it was about to pounce, and after slaying three more creatures he turned his gaze in the bird’s direction again, but the avian form had already vanished into the distant forest. At the same time, the herd of beasts that had closed to about a dozen yards from him lost their singularity of purpose, the confusion plainly eddying in them, and then in the blink of an eye they scattered. Though a number of them went for D, they achieved nothing, becoming sacrifices to his sword.

Once stillness had returned, D got back on his unharmed steed and put the forest behind him. After he’d gone, all that was left behind was a thick branch with a vine strung from one end to the other, making it into a bow. It went without saying what had become of its sole arrow.

Branches and vines—what kind of skill did it take to fashion a bow from these materials alone, use it to fire an arrow that was just a thin branch honed to a point, and score a direct hit on a siren fifteen hundred feet away? And there was more to it than just that. D’s left hand was missing from the wrist down, but fresh blood dripped from where a vertical cut had been made in the stump, because the Hunter couldn’t use the bow with just one hand. He’d actually split open the end of his left arm and wedged the bow’s riser in it while his right hand drew the bowstring. And as he pounded from the deadly ravine into the forest, the reason he’d listened hard was so his superhuman hearing might deduce Callas’s position in the sky.

That, in a nutshell, was what it meant to be “D.”

SEURAT