Empty Mantle

Chapter One - Dissonance

"A lack of agreement or harmony between people and / or things."

"We have no chance in this world, it is changing. What do you see for us other than destruction? I fear the worst for us all." A masked, male figure stood tall within the grassy field. The visage of his mask held the head of a stag, soft brown eyes peering through the sockets of the headdress. His body was athletic, toned like an Olympian with his torso exposed to the night's cool breeze.

Facing a beautiful woman whose hair was Auburn, the glinting tone of oak in her locks shone through the pale moonlight above them both. Her skin fair and eyes a deep emerald.

"I see hope. I see a future where we are no longer hunted or threatened. I see peace not in our time, but beyond this one. We can do nothing but run." She explained to the man before her.

"They will find us sooner or later. We cannot hide forever." He protested.

"But that is where you are wrong." She objected.

There was a loud humming sound surrounding the two of them as they spoke, what had sounded like wings beating were met with the appearance of armored beings that circled them.

"There is no reason to run. Resisting your apprehension only delays the inevitable." One of the armored figures stood forward and folded his wings in. Such beautiful, gargantuan wings of white plumes that stretched quite extensively from his strong, bulky form.

"The Hunter and the Mother Goddess. You have hereby been ordered to relinquish your presence and return as either prisoners of heaven or face execution of the highest order" The man spoke with a booming voice.

Without looking over his shoulder, The Hunter held his hands at his side as he uttered.

"Our time here will not end without bloodshed, so let us at least fight for our freedom without chains." He interjected with a strong resolve, though before he could lift a finger, he was quietened by the sound of the woman before him.

"No! We will not stoop so far." She argued pleaded within her gaze to have the Hunter reconsider.

"Then consider your heads cut free from your body!" The armored man announced as he drew from a flash of glistening light in his hand, a spear.

Fabricated within a thought as he drew fast. With an accompaniment of four others, garnered in the same fashion, they had drawn swords of silver from hilts in their belts. The sound of metal being dragged across the entrance of the sheath as it sung in a high pitch, both the Mother Goddess and her Hunter stood their ground with both their hands at each other's sides.

The Mother Goddess took her hand and extended it forward to take that of The Hunter's as she called to the shadows,

"I know you are watching!" She bellowed out.

A loud sounding clap struck forth from the surrounding trees that traipsed the wide-open field, the clearing was enveloped in a kinetic force which surged the area in one large wave. As it pulsed about them, the armored figures came to a startling halt in mere seconds, frozen in a forward rush motion with their blades clutched in both hands.

The clap that was heard carried though this time at a distance as the noise had been joined to a person who was shrouded within the low hanging branches.

"I will admit, Hecate. I did not see this one coming at all." The stranger spoke, he emerged from the cluster of foliage and showed his face under the paling light above.

He was an older male, elderly and clothed in a simple toga wrapped loosely about his frame as another cloth was drawn over his head and folded neatly around his shoulders, hooding him and darkening the rest of his features.