Hunters

[Mithat]

The mage stood in the middle of the road. His face was masked and his cape fluttered in the wind. The street was dark except the bright red moon in the sky. That bright red moon was the reason the mage stood in the middle of a dark street while forming a really big fireball in his hand. When I say big, I mean freaking huge. Seriously.
Anyways, the Mage’s targets were at that moment seated behind a car. They were arguing about something but they were too far away to hear. So I concentrated on them instead of the magical pyromaniac on the street. The vision on my scrying orb moved slowly to the car and the voices started to become clearer.
“No way!” yelled a female voice. “I was the bait last time and that ghoul almost bit my hand off!” While she showed her hand, the orbs focus was complete. She was a young girl. Her blonde hair was considerably shorter than the last time I’ve seen it. The ends of her hair were still smoking, just like some parts of her clothes. So she used a protection charm against the fire but still got burned a little.
“That’s my point!” the man next to him argued. “You got way more experience in being the bait than I do. So run now and I’ll shoot the bastard.” He shook the thin glowing wooden stick in his hand. His wand was loaded with power. Just like the girl his clothes have been singed here and there.
Right when the girl was answering, they heard the sound of the fire collecting in the Mage’s hand. I moved the orb vision a little higher and saw the mage in the street was doing his last arrangements on the fireball. He was holding it in both of his hands now and looked almost ready to throw it. From my experiences on the field, that ball would blow up the car and kill the two young hunters behind it.
They realized that too. “Did you heard the Fwoosh? Master always says to wait for a fwoosh before escaping from fire.” Said the girl while panicking. She was looking through the car windows.
The mage yelled a power word that I did not hear properly through the orb and let the ball of fire go.
“Run left, I go right. The one that’s still alive shoots the bastard.” Shouted the man while moving to the edge of the car. “Now!” he screamed when he saw the giant fireball coming at them and they started running to different sides.
The ball hit the car. It exploded. Then the car exploded and the force of the blast threw the hunters to the ground. They both turned their wands to the mage and screamed some random stuff like “Killicus!” and “Shooticus” to help them release the power in their wands. Two bright lights flew from the ends of the wands and hit the mage. The whole street lightened up for a moment with the explosions and the wand shots. Then everything went dark again.
Mage still stood his ground like nothing happened. “Two bolts should’ve gone right through him.” I muttered to myself. I was alone in my study, watching and recording the events as they unfolded in my scrying orb.
The hunters were lying in the ground, trying to gather themselves together. Both the blast and the wand shots dazed them. While they tried to shook off the effect, the dark mage looked up to the moon started laughing.
“While the moon is red, my powers have no end. No magic can hurt me!” he screamed while laughing. He sounded just like how all those other second class egoistical villains with high hopes sounded like. He was dressed all in black, had a cape and mask that covered half his face and gave his voice a Darth Vader effect. Red moon or not I realized that moment that this idiot was going down. No villain with even a little talent and wit, or self-respect, would have been that cliché.
He walked towards them while making his hands glow with red lights. He was conjuring two more fireballs for the hunters. As he approached the fires from explosion drained towards his hands and the two balls of fire formed.
The hunters saw him and got up. “Where the fuck is the master?” the yellow haired girl said. “It would be an insult to all hunters if this guy kills us. I mean look at him!”.
“Well our wands are empty. So we do this old school!” male hunter shouted and two icicles appeared in his hands. He threw them towards the dark mage. They evaporated in mid air without even touching the mage.
“Yes, throw ice to a fire mage. Your stupidity knows no bounds.” The girl said and took a little flask that was hanging from her belt. I recognized the bottle as I was the one gave it to her couple years ago. She opened the lid, whispered the words I thought to her and emptied the container on to the asphalt. Water splashed to the ground and just stayed there.
“So just a bottle of water is better than?” mocked the other hunter who’s name I cannot recall right now. Even I thought that she messed up the incantation for a moment but then the water on the ground started moving on its own. It formed a pool and a water elemental exploded out of it.
The orb vision was still focused on the hunters so I didn’t see it but I wish I could’ve seen the dark mages face as a towering water elemental charged at him. The elemental took a human like appearance and jumped towards the mage. He released the two fire balls and hit the elemental in mid air. Still it didn’t slow down, some parts of it just turned to vapor but before the mage could do anything else, it splashed on him. The human form turned into a globe of water, trapping and drowning the mage inside.
We watched as he swirled inside the globe of water but than a sudden red light appeared inside and a wave of fire evaporated the elemental completely. The fire moved as a wave towards the hunters and once again they flung themselves to the ground. The fire flew over them, melting and destroying the sides of the buildings and the cars it touched. It came right through me and I lost my focus. The image in the orb vanished.
Even though there was no possible way of hurting me still I was so amazed by the power that I have lost control for a second. I started to chant the words of the spell that would reactivate the orb. I put the images of the two hunters in my mind and focused. Silver smokes in the orb started to flutter and move, slowly revealing an image. Before the image or the sound became clear I heard a question from one of the hunters. “Seriously, where the fuck is the Master?”
Yes. Indeed, where the fuck was he? It was just like him to be late but generally he was heroic enough show up just in time to save people and take all the credit while his students stood in the back healing their wounds. I mean the guy did in fact have extreme power but zero sense of responsibility, sadly.
So I cleared the images of the students who were extremely close to dying and focused on their master. His image appeared in my mind, with his black hat and black trench coat and the big wizard staff that started its service as a broomstick handle and the small wand he fashioned out of a drum stick and his big smile as he took the credit.
The mists of the orb once again cleared and I saw him. He was wearing the stuff I just described except for the staff and the wand. He was standing on a roof and looking down to the street where a lot of fireworks were going off. The dark street was getting bright as a day for a second and then turned back to black and then lighted up again. The fire mage was on the two hunters and they were fighting back with everything they had. Still he just stood there watching the action with a little smirk on his face.
Still, it was my duty to record the events so I turned the orb vision down to street and zoomed in. At that instance, the fire mage pushed them with magic and the apprentice hunters flew back, hitting a building wall. They slid off to the ground and activated their protections charms at the last second as the fire closed on them. It seemed that the mage was bored of toying with them and wanted to finish the fight. In the end the moon was going to be red for so long before returning to normal and he still had people to kill and places to rob.
The apprentices had a blue hue on them. Their charms were the only thing keeping them alive but they were running out. They were screaming in pain while the flames circled them and the mage watched. “No magic can stand in my way! I will finish you and the order tonight. Before the moon comes down all of you will burn!” he screamed and started laughing again. Which was a definite overstatement considering the time he wasted on two student hunters. The Order didn’t even know about him until last evening when we found about the prophecy about the moon turning red and giving power to pyromancers across the world for a whole night.
The girl screamed a power word and a chunk of concrete tore itself from the asphalt and flew towards the pyromancer’s back. He heard it and turned around just in time to put up a shield, losing his concentration for the fire on the hunters for a second. The rock hit the shield and fell to the ground without harming him. He turned around furiously and extended his arms towards to the hunters in learning and fire came out of his hands towards to hunters once more. “You will die!” he yelled at them as the apprentices started screaming in pain once more and their charms’ lights dimming.
I couldn’t believe it. They were actually losing. I couldn’t handle their screams any longer so I adjusted the scryer towards their master once more. Just at that moment he jumped down from the roof. He disappeared in to the shadows. I quickly turned back to street level and saw him emerging from the shadows of the opposite building behind the pyromancer.
He slowly walked towards him and asked “So no magic can hurt you, eh? What about this?” He pulled out something out of his coat but the pyromancers body blocked my view.
I quickly moved the orbs view point as the mage turned towards him, delaying the apprentice cooking, and he was so shocked about what the elder hunter was holding that he only said “But, but… you can’t bring that to a wizard duel..”.
The elder hunter was holding a Desert Eagle .50 in his hand.
“Expeliarmus, Bitch!” he said and pulled the trigger.
The pyromancers head exploded towards the apprentices.
As the mage’s now nearly headless body collapsed to the ground, the apprentices and I just watched silently. Their master walked towards them and used his other hand to get two healing potions from one of his other coat pockets and tossed them to his apprentices. They quickly stood up and caught them in mid-air, opened the flasks and drank them.
Her yellow hair slowly grew back to its normal length and the burns on his face slowly disappeared. “Sorry about that.” He said calmly while holstering his weapon. “It took time to find the right weapon to give the dramatic effect. You know, not too big not too small. Anyways, you did fine so good job!”
They just looked at him without any expression and turned and started walking away without saying anything.
“Oh come on! It’s just a little burn!” he shouted behind them smiling.
Up in the sky, the moon was slowly losing its red color and turning back to normal. Than all of a sudden the hunter turned towards me, literally looked at me which was completely impossible.
“Oh but it’s not impossible and we have names you know!”
I was shocked. The scrying crystal orb was supposed to be a one way window to the Order’s watchers to record missions and it was a known fact among hunters but still…
He moved even closer to my screen, still looking at me, he said “Yeah, I don’t care about how shocked you are and shit. Just when writing the report, don’t forget to write my punchline! Expeliarmus, heh, I worked on that since I was looking for a gun.”
He then turned his back and walked towards a buildings shadow, “And my name is not the master, it’s Rabec” he said and disappeared into the shadow.

[Mithat]

-HUNTERS PREQUEL-


Wendell walked through the dark alley as a short cut. He was in a hurry to reach his flat as it was already late and he didn’t want another fight with his wife. So he hurriedly walked through and around the dumpsters in the alley instead of taking the walk around the block to reach his home like he did for the last five or six years.
He tried his best to not the touch anything or not the disturb anything that lived there. The light at the end of the alley got brighter as he reached the end but before he got out safely to his usual path, he heard a sudden whisper behind him. He didn’t made out the words but didn’t stop either. He started walking with a faster pace to reach the relative safety of the crowded street. All the while thinking “Please don’t let them stab me! Please God, don’t let them stab me!”
“Hey! Wendell! Stop!” came the shout behind him.
He froze for a second; trying to decide should he turn around or just run away. He wasn’t exactly the bravest of the bunch. He was a small fat man with lots of health conditions who worked at a job that had certain dangers to it and one of those dangers were to get his throat slit in a dark alley. In the end he decided that he couldn’t ran away much before that caught up so turned around, gathered al his courage and said “Yes?”
He was waiting for a couple of big guys who were there to rough him up but instead, a young blonde girl that looked like she was in her twenties stood behind him. She slowly walked towards him, putting her hands up to show him she didn’t mean harm. “Sorry for startling you, sir.” She said in a friendly tone. “But I’m looking for someone named Wendell ...”
“What do you want?” he cut her off. Seeing just a girl instead of bunch of hitmen helped his ego and courage immensely. “Yeah, I’m Wendell. Who the fuck’s looking for me?” he said trying to act tough as possible.
“We just want to ask you one simple question.” The girl answered kindly, without responding to his other question.
“Call my secretary and take a fucking appointment! Also these dark alleys are not a place for a young girl like you.” He said. He realized that he really enjoyed bossing around someone instead of how the things usually went. He then turned around to walk back to his house in a relieved state but he bumped in to something and almost fell on his ass.
“Are you a wizard, Wendell?” asked a deep voice while he regained his balance. The man he bumped when he turned around was bigger than he was. He was wearing a dark coat and a black hat. “Or a mage? Have you ever shown any talent or affinity to magic?” he continued asking without caring about Wendell’s scared state.
“Whaaa?” was all he could say. “How could he sneak behind me like that?” he though. He started to sweat. “Magic? Are you fucking crazy or something?” was all he could say.
“Master Rabec, let me handle…” she tried to intervene but with no avail.
“This magic!” Rabec said without listening to her and put out his hand. Suddenly a ball of fire appeared on his palm then it turned in to a little phoenix and flew away a little before vanishing to thin air.
Wendell’s mouth opened and closed a couple times then this time he really fell back on his ass. “I.. I.. What the fuck you want?” he managed.
“We just want to know, Wendell. You see, me and my lovely apprentice here are recruiting for the Order of Hunters. I’m sure you never heard of it before, it is a mostly underground movement but we are always looking for talent and yesterday we heard from our, let’s say talent scouts, that there was one Wendell Gibbs who supposed to have tremendous skill in magic. Is your name not Wendell Gibbs?” said Rabec standing over him.
“Wait! My name’s Wendell…”
“Yes! I just said that!” shouted Rabec. “This is taking too long.” He muttered to himself .
“Master! Just let me talk to him for a second.” Tried to reason the blonde girl.
“Fuck reason!” growled Rabec and pulled out his gun from his inner coat pocket and put it on Wendell’s forehead.
Wendell started whimpering but he couldn’t even find the strength in him to try to move away.
Blondie tried to move towards them but stopped when her eyes met her masters.
“I want you to concentrate really hard for me right now. Can you do that Wendell?” said Rabec when he turned his attention back to him.
Wendell nodded.
“Now if you have even the slightest magic in you, in a situation like this it will come out. Excitement and all kind of stuff like that triggers it. So really concentrate on that bullet. Put every ounce of will you have in you to stopping it.” He waited for a moment. “Ready?” he asked and pushed the gun even harder.
Wendell started to cry. He couldn’t helped himself. He though he was sure to die there on a dark alley because some lunatic thought magic was real. His thoughts started to wander to his wife. “That bitch will love this.” He thought. “Me dead in an alley and she gets everything.”
“Wendell, just believe and you can do it. It’s not hard, believe me! Just try!” pleaded the blond girl.
Her calm voice helped and he realized if he was about the die, he might as well try. So he tried to clear his mind of everything but the bullet that was coming for him. He put everything he has to that one single thought. “That bullet will stop before touching my skin!”
Then he felt it. He suddenly felt powerful. He felt that he could actually do it and smiled. “Do it!” he screamed to Rabec.
“Ok.” He answered calmly.
“Wait! No!” screamed the apprentice.
Rabec pulled the trigger.
Wendell was smiling as the bullet travelled through the barrel of the gun. His smile never faded as it reached his forehead and kept going until got out from the back of his head and stuck to the alley wall behind.
“Oh, come on!” apprentice shouted as Wendell’s lifeless corpse collapsed to the ground. “Cant you go for five fuckin minutes without killing people!”
“Well he should’ve stopped it!” said Rabec then turned to the left and said “What wallet? Oh right good thinking.”
“Who are you talking to?” asked the Blonde.
“No one!” said Rabec and crouched to search the corpse for a wallet. He found one in Wendell’s back pocket. Pulled it out and started going through it.
“And this time you killed an actual recruit! You know they’ll get me for this too right?” said his apprentice furiously. Her eye caught Wendell’s blood pooling on the ground and she turned her back feeling sick.
Rabec went through the wallet and all he could say was “Oh, fuck me.” And started laughing. “Jess look at this.” He said and tossed the wallet to his apprentice. She caught it in mid air and looked through it curiously.
“Wendell Gips? Gips? Seriously?” she started laughing too.
“Yes, not Gibbs!” said Rabec coming near her. “This wasn’t the guy. Idiots in the intelligence gave us the wrong place and look at him!” he said pointing at the body.
“That fat fuck was, well, too fat and old to be a recruit. We should’ve guessed it but nothing we can do now.” He said and they started walking towards the end of the alley. “Keep the wallet for a while so they’ll think it’s a robbery.”
“How can magic show us the wrong persons place then?” asked Jess.
“Maybe the scryer though of Gips instead of, you know, Gibbs.” He answered and once more turned to left and said “Of course you can make a mistake!” and continued walking.
“Who are you talking to?” pressed the apperentice.
“No one.” Rabec answered. “Anyways, we still have to recruit Wendell Gibbs”
They continued chatting and walking side by side but stopped at entrance to the alley when they heard a sound behind them. When they turned around they saw a young men getting out of a dumpster and running at the opposite direction as fast as he can.
“Oh shit! There.” Pointed Jess and started running behind him. “Wendell!”
Rabec just moved backward couple steps in to a shadow and disappeared.
Wendell was running for his life. “They want me dead!” was all went through his mind. That crazy blonde chick was after him. He turned his back to look behind and suddenly crashed in to something. While flying back to the ground he saw the man that was near the girl on the far side of the alley was standing over him.
“Hello, Wendell.” He said smiling. “We just wanted to know your thoughts about magic” he said and pulled out his gun.