Hunting Death- Prologue
#1 of Hunting Death
This is an interesting enough story concept in that this is almost more of the character writing the story than me writing it for them and then plot-wise expanded into a very long saga.
Prologue
They say that unicorns are one of the most magical species in all of creation. Their horns are said to have the ability to let unicorns see the very ebb and flow of the magical world as well as see into the souls of any in front of them. It is also said that their blood gives them incredible healing abilities to the extent that their blood can cure any malady, including even death. But I am not a unicorn. Though my blood does not have any curative properties - in fact my blood would be far more likely to kill someone than cure even a common cold - magic still flows freely through it. Where a unicorn's blood restores, ours adds.
It is a sort of rite of passage among my people to make our soul weapon once we are old enough to do so. It is a simple enough process. Take a large chunk of the purest iron, the purer the better, and heat it up until it has completely melted and liquefied and then we tend to it and add our blood into the metal bit by bit. Five fresh drops of our blood every hour for five days. Five days of no sleep, no food and little water and doing nothing but tending the fires and adding in our own blood. After those five days we rest and feed and leave the forge alone. There is no measure taken to cool the iron afterwards. It is merely allowed to do what it wants as it cools itself at its own pace. If it starts to get too big for the forge it is removed but otherwise left alone. Once the metal has cooled it will have taken the form of a weapon of a shape and magical abilities that are aligned with the heart of the one who bled into the forge. That is the power of our blood. Without any rituals beyond bleeding into the liquid metal, without chants or circles and without even really touching the product until it's done we are able to make a magical weapon that would never break while the owner still lives.
The only other aspect that makes us at all any similar to that of unicorns is that our blood burns like they do. Well to be honest the blood doesn't actually burn. It is more of a sensation of extreme nausea and discomfort; it only feels like our very blood is trying to burn us alive from the inside out and is typically accompanied by headaches to top it all off. A unicorn's blood will burn when they get too close to immorality and corruption. Like any prey species they handle this by running away, by staying away from anything that causes them discomfort. But we are not a prey species and our blood doesn't burn for the same reason. Instead we have an almost strange connection with death. We can feel it inside of us whenever something is going to die. The larger, or more numerous or more important the death the stronger we feel it and the further away we can feel it. But our blood is selfish; it only burns for our own death.
Every single member of my kind know, even at a young age, how we will die. It is nothing so convenient or useful as knowing exactly where and when you die. No, for us all we get are the sensations going through our minds and bodies at the time of death. We know how we die and what we are feeling when we die, but have no sense of why we are dying, or where, or when. Well I guess that last one isn't entirely true. When we have less than a year left before we are going to die our blood will burn to let us know. It'll even be useful enough to burn whenever we first meet someone who will either be able to help us prevent our own death or be one of the ones who would cause it. And as luck has it there is no distinction between the two. Ideally if we can avoid all of the bad ones and collect as many of the good ones as possible we may be able to fight back our own deaths. Of course if we hide as the unicorns do, death would still find us. So instead we act the predator, hunting that which is going to kill us in order to try and seize that chance of living. And last night, my blood burned.