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Book one...
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Chapter 1: Memories
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At first, there was a crimson sky. Then came cries, the cries of his master. His master was elderly looking, but seemed to be filled with such energy that you could have mistaken him easily for someone much younger. The master fell, and blood surrounded him. There were howls in the distance and shadowy figures emerging from the undergrowth on all sides. If he could just hold out until dawn, he though, his masters life may be saved - saved from the white light that even now engulfed them both. The white light swallowed them and everything faded away. He woke up.
Dusk was a Hucast, of old and now faulted design. He had been created to serve one of the factions of Coral, before photon technology had been conceived or even thought of. He carried his master?s sword still, a katana with 1975 engraved on one side. This, his master had told him, was the true Agito, wrought by a great master of steel long ago. He looked at the blade, it still seemed as sharp as the day he had first been assigned his master, and the day he has first carried his master?s sword when he was too old to fight himself. The metal was folded, and as he had learned through his own endeavours it could only be used in a kind of diagonal - vertical slash or a stab effectively.
When the remaining factions banded together to form the twin pioneer project to escape their doomed planet, destroyed by war and pollution, his master had joined the government and he had stayed in his service. Not so long ago he had been convicted of his masters' murder and had been exiled from pioneer 2 to his own fate. He had explained to the head of office himself that monsters had slain his master, and he had brought him back to pioneer 2 via a teleport gate he had found near by built by the citizens of pioneer 1 before the explosion supposedly in a futile effort to escape the monsters that even now roamed the ruined city of a ship in the hope that he could be revived.
Unfortunately for Dusk, recently a group called Works had been stirring up resentment against the android faction of pioneer 2, saying they had become faulty, corrupt and capable of in-human treatment of others. The old 'A.I. scandal'.
Dusk wondered why he had blacked out; he lay in the forest, rain thundering down all around him. The electrical energy in the air must have interfered with his communications systems and power source, he thought. Maybe the few androids of pioneer 1 developed a cure for this, he should look around. Or else, go deeper, down, down into the abandoned mines where no interference could reach him. He shuddered at this notion, for he had heard of the horrors down in the deep, where the research team went. Where that girl went, that famed red ring Rico. They were lost, also to the deep. The first of the hunters.
He heard growls the other side of the gate, he drew his katana from his side. The gates opened, and he was prepared now for anything that would strike, from the forest or from the deep.
It began with white, he thought, and will end with black. Both can engulf, on both hang a certain sense of mystery.
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Chapter 2: Into the fray, or else the darkness within
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As he ran through the gate, bright red eyes began to glow from all sides. He gauged the situation, there appeared to be many minions backed up by heavier mammals that he had found out in his research were called hildebears... only, they were supposed to be docile despite their size. The bizarre creatures flowed round to his left as if they had one mind, and suddenly without warning swarmed in. Claws and teeth, everywhere.
He cut through one of the minions only to find it replaced by another. Swathes upon swathes emerging as if from nowhere. Then, to his far right he glanced an opening in the ground. This was where many of the creatures were emerging from. When he saw an opening in the screen of enemies he pelted over to the caves gaping entrance, like two huge jaws. He opened his right and left arm compartments, from one compartment he threw a high explosive charge down the entrance to the cave, and from the other he took out a chemical charge and hurled it into the enemies.
Rapidly the demented animals became angered further, an in-experienced observer may have thought he had just sealed his own fate but the beasts had become so distraught with rage they had begun to slay each other. Soon all that was left was a bloody mess on the floor.
There was a dull thudding from behind. Dusk looked around and saw something that would have made his insides churn had he been a mere human. He gazed up into the eyes of a hildebear, but it didn't look like the others he had seen. It towered above him; it was a monster of a monster! It was covered in almost steely grey armour and its shoulder horns were gigantic. Its very mouth seemed to breathe the scent of death corruption and decay.
It lunged at him and his sword arm was ripped clean off. He dived for cover, behind some kind of pillar (he had learned from officials on Pioneer 2 these were built by the citizens of Pioneer 1 as a commemoration of their landing, but this he could not believe) and he quickly produced a small pistol from his left leg hatch with his remaining un-afflicted arm. Hot photon energy buzzed through the cool air creating waves of moisture as it flew to strike its' target right between the eyes. It did not seem to affect the lumbering beast in the slightest.
It suddenly looked as if it were about to vomit, Dusk moved out of cover to try and take advantage of the situation but then came something vulgar. A huge ball of pure decay flew from the beast?s jaws, it smelled of death and somehow Dusk knew this would be what it would bring. It struck his left leg, and instantly it rusted away as if it were as ancient as the rest of the planets relics, Dusk fell backwards into an unseen well, covered by undergrowth and he remembered no more. Darkness engulfed him, his screaming sensors faded-through one by one. Darkness he thought would be his reckoning for a crime he had not committed.