“A new war awaited us in Alpha Century, a war between the planets.

Until now, the tyrants had only faced us on the surface of the planet they had enslaved. This was no longer the case, as swarms of creatures attacked our fleet before we could even launch a planetary assault.

How these monsters survived in the vacuum of space, we did not understand at the time, but humanity was firm in its course and righteousness was on our side.

One thing was clear. We would make war on the enemy wherever we found it. The battle that ensued in the space above the planets we came to liberate lasted for days of imperial standard time.

In the end, we were once again victorious as the Devils had to consolidate their bastions planet's side as Legionaries had been granted their demand to start their planetside assault prior to orbital security was reached. At the same time, the fleet fought creatures out of myth and nightmare in the vast space above.

It must have chafed at them to watch others do battle on their behalf. The report of their exploits, when let loose upon the enemy of mankind, was as captivating as it was disturbing.

For the human command, it was the first time observing the sheer ferocity and brutality of the imperial legion brought when let off its chains.

Among the Magi, however, who at this point had taken it upon themselves to expand their mandate to the archaic history of humanity before we were enslaved, a sentence was often heard spoken in jest that made little sense outside of their closed order, The Geneva suggestions."

- Elistar Iscariot, Grand Magister during the second Kingfisher dynasty.

Giving her a thin smile, I said. “Now that I have you alone…Oh, relax. It was a joke.” I said as she was about to smack a red button on her side of the stall. “By that, I mean I need to go over a few things in the registration form. Firstly, will my given name be enough? Is there a need to put my surname? Secondly, it states that I need to go through an affinity test overseen by a guild representative. I assume that is you? How widespread are the results of this test? I would prefer it if it weren't written down at all. It seems like a great risk to let that information be out there if people who potentially could wish me harm could gain access to it. Thirdly, but by no way least important, what does it mean that a third of what I earn? That's more than the king's tax!”

She seemed to take this in stride, even my outburst at what was clearly highway robbery. She did look a bit intrigued, however. “To go by order of the queries. No, you do not need to give your family name until you reach the third rank of awakening. At that point, it becomes an issue of the security of the kingdom, and you will have to be registered at the Tabularium. How widespread the information becomes is then up to the kingdom. The rules concerning that are in the guild charter and can not be circumvented.” She gave me a look that spoke volumes about what she thought my chances were at reaching the rank of Journeyman.

“As to the affinity test, it is so that the guild can assign quests to those most likely to complete them. Certain domains are better suited for different situations, as I am sure you already know. The result of the test is not divulged outside of the guild archives. Still, it will be imprinted on your guild membership token together with your standing, guild credits, rank in the guild and any other information pertaining to the guild interest. Each time a guild representative updates the guild token, the information in the guild archives is automatically updated to reflect this new information. The token is the dominant part, so changes can only be done to the token and not in the archives. As to their security, not even the king is allowed inside the guild archives. Any attempt by the country to force an entrance would be considered an act of war against the guild.”

Seemed fair enough if I reached the third rank…No, when I reached the third rank, I was almost positive that most of my present issues would be solved, considering how few third rankers there were. My affinity would not be my greatest concern once I stepped into the rank of Journeyman.

“The tax is the twenty percent the king demands, and ten percent goes to the administration and services the guild offers. These services will depend on your rank, but at bronze rank, you will have the option for cheap sleeping quarters and as much stew and bread as you can eat at all guild buildings. Free legal representation if you should find yourself accused of breaching local law. Access to training rooms and personal or group combat lessons for both monsters and humanoids in exchange for a small tuition fee. Should you gain access to a domain, you will be advised for free once a quarter by a guild expert on domains pertaining to where you should go to grow your domain power and what abilities give you the highest chance of receiving a boon. The list of amenities, services and rules can seem a bit daunting in the beginning, but I suggest you pick up a free booklet by the exit. The list is extensive.”

Taxes! My family was exempt from the king's tax and had been since it had separated from the Runien Empire and became the Kingdom of Aeruborg. I still owed an oath of fealty to the king, but for all purposes, my land would be ruled by me in sicut regale, as my forefathers had. If I could survive until I turned sixteen and loosen whatever grasp my aunt had over my subjects.

Fine, I would pay these damn taxes for a short while. It's not like I had much choice at the moment. Powerless and helpless as I currently was.

Sometimes I wanted to go back in time and kick my ass until I started acting like the heir to a house and not some spoiled brat from the capital. It took a few moments to clear my affronted ego, but I got there eventually.

“Well, consider me sold,” I said while clapping my hands together. Maybe a bit harder than necessary by the way she jerked and proceeded to glare at me. It is nice to make friends. With bif toothsome a smile, I filled out the few boxes I was supposed to fill out.

The lady, all smiles again, accepted the form and started filling out the remaining boxes.

Then there only remained one thing, well, two things, but one thing I was equal parts dreading and wanting to know. My affinity.

“Excellent. Give me a moment to set up the apparatus.” She said before bringing up some wires, a fist-sized clear orb, a metal ring lined with what looked like silver hairs and a wooden framework I assumed everything would be slotted into. It was all very strange, and I'll admit nothing I had seen before. With some effort, she brought up the final thing. A tome.

As he began fiddling with the wires and setting up the contraption, she said, “I know it looks daunting, but there is really not much to it. You are just supposed to hold the gold wire in your right hand and the silver one in your left hand. When I turn on the Affinity Seeker, the domain you have the most affinity for appear as a glyph on top of the orb. The higher your affinity is, the more of the orb will be filled up with the primary color or colors representing your domain. I will then find the glyph in the tome, and we will know what your domain is and how far you can expect you to reach in rank.”

She seemed highly animated for the first time since the registration process started. “So, am I right in assuming the tome is a mirror of a more centralized one, and how do we see how many ranks I'm expected to reach?”

“Look,” She answered, pointing at a thin circle running around midway through the crystal sphere. I noted that the distance between the lines wasn't spaced at even intervals. If it was used as a unit of measurement made sense, but this was too archaic for me to have much of an opinion about.

When everything was set up, she finally placed a tiny glowing egg-shaped crystal into a slot in the apparatus. The glowing crystal I knew about. It was something you could find in sapient creatures, just about their belly button or where it would have been if they lacked one.

What we call monsters could have crystals of unattuned ability in them, even if it was extremely rare to find one. Sapient creatures from incursion or invitations, depending on who you asked, had a crystal of power in them. The more it glowed, the more power it contained.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I had heard of a group of scholars in the central empire who had managed to calculate what they called units of power and transfer it between the crystals. The instrument used was becoming very popular in all the lands since it allowed power merchants to price the crystals by their actual value. Some had even begun using it as a measure of currency. The group had unsurprisingly become very wealthy from the discovery.

What interested me about the egg-sized crystal, however, was that those who had Awakened could take in the power as a substitute for eating. From what I had gathered, there was no downside to doing so outside of it being tasteless. I would see about acquiring a few to cut back on future food costs and, more importantly, not have to fill an extra pack just for food.

At her nod, I placed the silver wire in my left hand and the gold one in my right hand. Before I knew it, it felt like something hot was moving through my body, and the orb started filling up with the inky blackness I was so used to feeling brush against my soul.

More, the orb was demanding more, so I let it. It was too late to turn back despite the chills running down my back. The air felt ice cold, and there was an undertone of an emptiness that could never be filled. A hunger to consume everything.

I could hear the guild lady's breaths quickening even as her heart beat as fast as a rabbit's. It was intoxicating. The smell and feel of prey within my grasp. All I had to do was to reach out and…

“Look!” My prey suddenly said, hurling my mind back to what was happening. Pushing those feelings away, I looked at it, slowly becoming more inc than clear. Hovering above the once clear crystal orb was a blot; it looked like a scribe had spilled black inc, and it got stuck in the air, but as the dense black tar infected the crystal orb, the symbol on top became round and started sprouting tentacles, as a child's drawing of our star. Two became four, and four became eighth and eighth became sixteen. On it went, each appendage squirming like worms drawn from the earth.

I like to think we both were equally surprised when the crystal fully turned black, and droplets that looked like tar slowly oozed its way down the outside of the crystal ball until it coated both the inside and the shell in light-consuming black as well as the outside of the crystal ball. What remained was just an inert globe of tar with a strange symbol hovering about it. Then it all froze, like a painting. No more tentacles were made. No more tar came from the crystal orb.

“I have..,” Was all she said before she grabbed the enormous tome and started going through pages from the wrong side. I just sat there slightly amused with the entire thing now that my mood was my own again.

“Here!” She said, sounding way too excited. Leaning the tomb towards me, I could see the black blob with a myriad of tentacles reaching out from it.

“Erebus: Our understanding of the Domain remains a mystery. Even the name Erebus is based on mythology rather than any form of knowledge about what is contained there or what exists there.

The Xares call it Ze`nadar, the Trepetos say it is Motila, and the Remdra will not even divulge what they call it, only what their name for it means: The darkness from before and after, the unquenchable void, the darkness that feeds. Father dark.

Surprisingly, the Xares and Ze`nadar give similar descriptions of the domain. None of the races can confirm that a personification of the domain exists, which is particular, considering the unfathomable power its bonded displays in recordings from innumerable battles.

There is only one known instance of a human being pairing with the domain we decided to call Erebus, legionary 161 of the Crimson Legion. The second legion of the first empire, the first legion of the planet Mars. Legionary 161 is known internally in the legion as Smiley.

We have been unable to contact Legionary 161 for clarification and testing despite the Crimson Legion and Legionary 161 being listed as on active duty even after all these millennia. Until such a meeting is arranged, we can only speculate, and we have learned that speculation and assumptions often lead to disaster when it comes to the myriad domains and their denizens.”

-Grand Magi Toralf Fjell

Clearing her throat, the lady said, “This…This is so exciting! An uncharted domain! There is so much we need to do. Where do I start.” She was blabbering now, not that I was really listening. I had stopped paying much attention after she mentioned Legionary 161, or as I remembered them calling me, Smiley. Apparently, I couldn't stop smiling when the rage took me.

[- I remember pieces of my childhood, first losing my parents and then my sister, the assault and subsequent death of another more valued slave for what he had done to my sister. We were all slaves to the Master back then.

I remember glimpses of crawling around at the bottom of the deep mines of Mars, no light, no wind. Water and food were scarce and treasured things.

It shaped me. It molded me into something else. I minded my quote. I killed my fellow slaves when need for their water and food. I would not break.

Then, the world shook. Even down in the deepest parts of the mines could the explosions be heard. It went on for a long time, days, maybe years. I didn't know how long It was since I was forced into the mines, and barely what had exited before them. Yet my anger remains at the injustice of our existence under the thumb of the Tyrant. The Master.

Like a pool of black inc, it spread through me, coloring my mind and my soul. I was the dark of the mines. I was what lurked in the unknown. I was the all-consuming devourer.

They eventually stopped sending guard slaves with the mining slaves. Why they continued sending new slaves into my dark, I never knew. No mining to place anymore. No skimmers were sent to pick up the precious rocks broken loose from the tunnels.

Then that stopped, too. I remember the air was charged with desperation and anger as no more food or water came from the other place. Yet, I smiled. What did I need these things for anymore? I was the darkness. The despair slacked my thirst and the anger my hunger.

Then something unknown happened, something that brought me a new forgotten pain. There was light. What looked like walking machines came down into our home and took anyone they found. Some tried fighting back but were put out and carried away.

I hid from the light as long as I could. I didn't know why I feared it so much back then, but I later understood it was afraid to face myself, to look at what I had become. I remember the intense pain of sunlight, of laying on the red soil of Mars curled up and shaking in hunger and pain as humanity once again made itself known in my shattered mind.

I lay there until it became dark, and light came back. Then she was there. The most beautiful person I had ever seen. Her hair was clean, the light and dark strands of hair making an ever changing tapestry in the wind. Her grey eyes boor into me like she was looking at what was hiding behind this thin veneer of humanity I had pulled over myself to hide the darkness within.

“Hi there, my friends call me Bullseye. Would you like to be my friend? I would like to be yours.” She said in a voice that I then believed could make angels weep in jealousy. I don't know if much time passed, but I was hurting and hungry, so with a small nod I reached a hand towards her.

The feeling of being held broke me again, even by someone clad in the armored cataphract she had on stained rust red from the soil of Mars.

I was fragile back then. Kindness was something I didn't fully understand. Empathy was something lost a long time ago. I don't know how long the mines had swallowed me, but when I entered, I was a child. When I left I was close to fully grown.

She placed me on a bed so soft I thought I had died already. It was one of many in a large hall. People scurried back and forth, checking on those who were lying in the beds.

I didn't want her to leave, but she promised she would be back, and she kept that promise. It was here in that hall of the Medicus that I met my new family: Blondie, Peanut, Handsome and Grace. Much later, I would meet Sarge and much much later Fancy, but for now, those four became my new siblings, and Bullseye was mother to us all. -]

I came to as I felt a hand on my shoulder gently shaking me. It was the guild woman. She was clearly worried, but I noted that the security screen still was in place. “Are you alright?” She glanced at the sheet I had filled out earlier, “Alucard.”

The struggle on her face between bombarding me with questions and being worried that something bad had happened from my little episode down memory lane was a bit funny. Still, I could see she was actually sincere about her question.

“Sorry. I was just lost in a memory for a bit. Look, I have a lot to do today, and I'm almost positive my companion is getting worried for me. Can we do the rest of this later?”

She seemed to take that in stride, but I doubt she would give up pumping me for information given half a chance. Not that I would mind the chase too much, she was a good-looking woman, and I had my own questions, especially about that damn book of domains.

“Yes, yes, of course. I would really like to talk with you at a later time about your domain. It is a phenomenal find.” She then pushed a button on the front of the apparatus and the thing made a whirling noise before the crystal once again became clear, and there was a sound of metal hitting wood. Opening a small compartment, she brought out a bronze medallion about the size of a large silver coin. On it, there were only squiggles and lines in different directions. A code I now understood the Hunters Guild used to keep things confidential with its members.

Accepting the medallion, I said. “I'll think about eh…” She actually giggled. “Lana,” She answered. “Thank you, Lana, it was a pleasure, and yes, I'll think about it.” I gave her the best smile I could manage and turned around as the privacy screen went back into the sealing.

A spitting-mad Mira stood with her arms folded against the far wall. What a lively girl, I thought, heading over.