Dark Gifts-Chapter 1

Chapter One: The Hunt Begins
Fate opened to his eyes to rising sun, making him close them again immeadiatly. He always forgot to close the curtains after he got back from a hunt. There was no use trying to go back to sleep again, (even if it was the weekend) so Fate jumped out of bed, put on some comfortable clothes and looked out of his window. It was a decent looking morning in Runeden to say the least. Before Fate could remember to close the curtains again a young boy burst in his room holding a folded newspaper and Fate's morning cup of steaming joe.

" Hey Fate! He yelled concernedly, you've gotta look at this weeks issue!"

Fate made a low groan, You do realize I was there Clive, I killed those bandits and let one of them get away right?"

" I know that! Clive said quickly, but I know you dont know about the last part of the article!"

" The last part? Fate said uninterested, you mean the part where witnesses exaggerate their cases, and the village guard tell everyone to board their houses at night until the beast leaves again, right?"

Clive shook his head " Not this time. This time they've got something that may interest you."

"Let me see. Fate sighed taking the paper and the coffee. He took a swig of the drink first and was automatically in a better mood. Ah, I needed the brew, thanks Clive"

"Glad you still like the homemade stuff, Clive laughed, its fun to grind those beans up.........its on the bottom of the front page by the way"

Fate let the coffee do its full job before taking a stab at the towering article about last night's blunder. He skimmed the obvious stuff and the stuff he lived through finding himself reading through the section detailing the protesting at the village hall's front door.

" I feel sorry for the mayor, Fate said sympathetically, he's a good guy, pig or whatever but he's covered from head to toe in bad politics."

"Keep reading you're almost to the important part"

"Right, right, hold on ok?" Fate said going back to the paper.

He passed a few paragraphs about protesters and finally came across something that made his eyes open even wider than the coffee had done. Fate had to make a quick movement not to spit hot coffee all over the paper.

"Oops." Clive said looking at the coffee puddle on the floor.

Fate paid no attention to this mess, he set the coffee down quickly and read what he read aloud to confirm its existence

" -But during the protesting a strange man arrived outside the crowd with two large tiger bodyguards with big silver armor. The man identified himself as a Mr. James Savira, who addressed the people of Runeden, promising them he would help with hunting down the beast. The crowd seemed to be very pleased with this announcement, as most of them just wanted something to be done. Mr. Savira then went into the village hall and spoke to the mayor alone. It is still unknown what was said in their meeting."

When Fate was done reading he walked as fast as he could out of his room with Clive following him.

" It's been 5 years since I last met that monsterous son of a bitch! Five damn years! And yet he appears now!?"

Fate marched down the stairs at all speed with Clive bolting after him.

" You said it yourself, Clive said matter of factly, Savira is almost impossible to predict. We have no idea what he has been doing these past years!"

" Well now it's high time we start finding out!"

Fate and Clive ran past their house's living room and down another flight of stairs.

" Five years!" Fate said again yanking open the door to his basement

Fate's basement was almost completely bordered with huge kegs, but Fate and Clive both knew they werent filled with brewery ingredients, Fate and Clive used alchemy in alot of Fate's escapades using the whole chemistry lab sitting in the center of the room to make all sorts of adhesives, ichors, potions and the like for use against the crime in Runeden, in fact his lab was one of the main reasons he could get away with being a werewolf. It allowed him to make potions that could control all the factors of his lycanthropy and he could get a job as a chemistry teacher. But this was not what Fate was here for.

Fate and Clive went over to the western edge of the room and moved the kegs of ingredients aside, Fate flipped a switch on the floor next to them and the middle of the wall they were at gave way to a whole other room, Fate's "war room".

In the room there were papers that filled all over the walls of the room, papers filled with information about Savira, none of the papers were actually big enough pieces of evidence against Savira and most of the papers dated back to five years past or more. Fate took the front page of the newspaper article and nailed it to the wall.

" This is it Clive, he said, now with pure determination in his eyes, this is when we defeat Savira once and for all. All the things he's done, all those horrible experiments, begin their end right now.