Flight School: Hunter

The War

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It has a cobbled pavement that is swept free of litter and fallen leaves; the sound of footsteps clear and crisp in the biting wind, a long, long way to an end that is dark and dimly lit. Its gate opens only in the shrouding of darkness, the coming of the night; and the path it revealed is long and winding, the route beautiful but uncertain—paved with good intentions.

"What is your name?"

"Ignus."

There is an alternative to the phrase: that hell is full of good meanings but heaven, of good deeds. The slightest consideration—an idling in thought, deadly to action that sometimes required there to be none—would reveal every flaw in the alternative; weak and unlikely. It meant that good deeds did not necessarily come from good intentions. One did not need to be inherently good to conduct an act of goodness or exhibit a generic behaviour of goodwill to go to heaven for all they needed to do

"No, your real name." They came upon the gate.

"It is...Umbra." The name was unfamiliar on his tongue. As though he was speaking of an acquaintance that he'd made only a day before.

was the act itself. And should an intended goodness end up—under the disfavour of fortune or the gust of a wind—lost and dull in its meaning, its will diverging from the outcome, the end that was intended, then hell was due.

"Umbra," the man smiled, giving the teenaged boy a firm clap on the back. "Welcome."

"And you, sir?" He turned to the man with a rifle on his back, as the latter greeted their gatekeeper with a nod. "I don't know your name."

But how should one identify the intentions of another unless their minds could be read and their thoughts, laid bare? Did intentions play such an insignificant role in the distinction between those who belonged up above and down below?

"Vater." The man confirmed as they came to a fork in the road, to which he chose the path that was well-lit.

"Father?" In German.

Vater threw a hearty laugh in his direction. "Yes. Everyone calls me that."

The boy deduced that his guide had more years of experience as a Hunter than he had as a human being at all. It frightened him immensely; that a high-ranked officer would voluntarily show him around the Market.

The creature inside the cage was prone to many things among those that came in slithers of smoke and shadow. Fragile, it was susceptible to greed, envy, vengeance and hatred—things that often dwelled within and never on the surface, hidden amidst a forest of thought and intention. These do not appear in 'deed's.

"I heard you've earned yourself quite a bit during the final test," Vater pointed out the tiny satchel that hung from his pocket. It was bulging. "How many you've got in there?"

"Twelve, sir."

The father nodded, impressed. "The maximum you can get as a starter. You've got an advantage over the rest so use it wisely, eh?"

*

Two alleys down and a turn into the back, through a bar and out by a rattling, dingy-looking door, past a rubbish site and dark, darker, so much darkness later, they came upon the Market. It was black and cold, stalls hidden by plastic curtains and the only light coming from a sign that blinked 'Food for the Heart'.