Character Monday: Leal & Hunter (PART TWO)

HUNTER: How are you not? I only know your name, and other than that I know nothing about you! I beg you not to go seeking out that noise. What you will find is not going to be something you will want to see.

LEAL: Let me put this simply, Hunter. Either you tell me or I go find out for myself. Which way do you want it to be?

(Hunter turns around and walks over to the pile of wood. He picks up his axe and starts chopping the wood again.)

LEAL (aside): Be that way.

(Léal begins to walk away, but then Hunter speaks. Léal stops and returns to where Hunter is.)

HUNTER: At one time I had the chance to change things. I could have made everything different, and all it would have taken me was saying a few elfish sentences.

LEAL: But you did not do it?

HUNTER: I was about half way through, but then my cat, Stripes, came and got me out of it. He saved me from making a terrible mistake and from possibly destroying everything as we know it.

LEAL: Your cat saved you?

HUNTER (laughs): My cat is as special as I am, I suppose you could say. I call him a Transporter because he can go anywhere he wants in the blink of an eye.

LEAL: Hunter, you never said how you would have changed everything. You also never mentioned anything about the noise…

HUNTER (sighs): A figure that kept a dark cloak on and never showed its face used to visit me. Whenever it came there would be this noise that would come through the forest because it would freeze everything so if someone walked where it was they would not see me and it talking. The figure wanted me to release the Dark spirits that the elves had vanished from the lands.

LEAL (amused): Dark spirits were your problem? Ha, you have a lot to see before you understand the true meaning of changing everything around you.

HUNTER: You mock my story, sir?

LEAL: No, no, not at all. It’s just… Well, you act like a cat that’s fallen into a river when you are overreacting. Those Dark spirits cannot harm you while the elves have them locked in a place for them to rot.

HUNTER: The figure I spoke to was a Dark spirit. It had somehow escaped, so how might you explain that?

LEAL: All right, so that one did escape. What I am telling you is that the possibilities of any more finding their way out are very low. Low enough for you to have to ponder on this anymore.

HUNTER: What of the noise?

LEAL: I do not know. On my way out I shall see what it is.

HUNTER: Who are you? Really, you speak about Dark spirits as if they are harmless.

LEAL: I suppose I can tell you who I am, seeing as you aren’t much better. I am a Dark magician. However, Hunter, I never said Dark spirits are harmless. The elves would not have spent centuries fighting them if they had been harmless.

HUNTER (shocked): You’re a magician?

LEAL: That is what I said.

HUNTER: Why are you a Dark magician? Why would you want to be one with all the darkness that is already in the world today?