[AoshiShinomori]

...A sudden black out and an assault of more memories stunned him...

A vision of a crimson sky with the vermillion sun fading away in the horizon… the same cool feeling of breeze, the same thrill of swiftness… this was a hunt… Far away he sighted a herd of huge creatures, towering over the land yet grazing as docilely as the deer he had marked for lunch. A whisper of thought blended into the vision… Margoth…

Who was Margoth? A slain kinsman? A treasured friend? A hated enemy?... The whisper of thought urged louder… not who.. but what… The vision focused more clearly on the enormous creature ahead… the voice spoke stronger now… MARGOTH… He slowly began to learn… this vision was from a margoth hunt. The creatures ahead were margoths and their short lifespans were now running out fast as doom from the dragoman approached.

The vision unfolded faster in fast forward, yet he still grasped all it had to offer. The dragoman beat his wings hard and gained surprising altitude. The margoths were now little black dots on a tiny bushel of land far ahead. The dragoman inclined downward, hunger and killing etched deep in his eyes and began his dive toward his prey. At first he glided on the wind, but with each passing movement he gained tremendous speed. He seemed to dance upon the wind drafts like a happy fish at sea. Faster and faster he plummeted toward the herd. The black dots grew bigger and the land raced forward faster like a mother embracing her long lost child.

With the same fluid movement as his glide, the wings now stretched and quickly curved back winding tightly round the dragoman’s body. With the precision of hunting shark the dragoman twisted his neck at the same time that his wings wound in and made a corkscrew movement in the air piercing through the clouds. He gathered speed swifter than he ever had before. He was now a twisting bolt of air grinding toward his prey. If he had danced on the wind currents then, he was literally cutting through them now. Nothing stood in his way.

The herd of margoths below heard nothing and felt nothing, they grazed placidly on their morning meals… With the speed of a striking snake, the dragoman launched toward the middle of the herd. Beside himself with excitement, Tenshojin watched the memory. The margoth at the center of the herd seemed like the definite target, completely unaware of the approaching death hammer from above.

The vision turned to slow motion now as though specifically stalling to make a point… The same whisper of thought again… “Watch closely for nothing is as it seems. The only obvious deduction is the unexpected”… Tenshoujin focused on the vision. What did this riddle mean? The obvious deduction was that the juicy margoth in the center was about to outlive it's purpose...

The vision continued... Like a bolt of lightning on a clear day the dragoman paced toward the herd center. Everything stood still as though chiselled from stone, the wind lay passive as he cut through its currents, the grass lay frozen like a lake during winter, the margoths stood eerily unmoving, the head of the pack right up front stood halfway through an eye-blink. At the very last moment when crashing seemed imminent, the dragoman fluidly made another neck twist out of his corkscrew dive and stretched his wings out on the air currents. The vertical descent of his dive now transformed into a burst of horizontal speed… he whistled right past the herd center heading instead toward the head of the pack. Just as he was almost about to miss the herd altogether, he stuck out his claws to slow himself a glimmer and with perfect timing, grasped the margoth, still three quarters through the blink. The dragoman arched his tail and tilted his wings upwards just a little. The whooshing air currents now picked him up and he rose into the air, this time with the margoth clutched victoriously between claws.

The vision resumed its normal pace. The herd resumed its pacing only slowly awakening to its tragedy. Panic rippled through the herd as it realized the pack head was missing but by now the dragoman was cleanly on the mountaintop feasting upon his kill...

The dark shadow had fallen and vanished within the blink of an eye… the entire move was impeccably graceful and poetic to watch and as it unfolded its deadly rythm all that was left to sing its testimony was a dead carcass on a mountaintop. One less margoth now stood to graze on the greenery below…

The vision vanished, and reality returned. Yet again, Tenshoujin took a moment to adjust. He was still in the air gliding toward the deer. The deer was in the same stance as if stunned, and the wind still flew past him rejuvenating the cold burst of discomfort. The vision had come and gone in an heartbeat but it had left Tenshoujin wiser. His lack of strength did not bother him now, his inability for powerful strokes seemed a redundant fear. Tenshoujin knew what to do. There were no strokes and no power required… just precision aerobatics and focused reflexes. Tenshoujin had learned from his memories…

With a swift change in angle he melded perfectly with the wind currents gliding on them as he had learned from his memories. The lake and meadow loomed up in front of him. With a twist of his neck and tail, Tenshoujin paced into the dizzying corkscrew dive dipping his angle further. He knew now that he shouldn’t dive straight for his prey but rather incline his dive behind the prey to give him space to steady out for the kill.

As the nearby trees watched, a black bolt of lightning struck the ground behind the deer. Not a single speck of dust was scattered. A heartbeat later the ground stood clear. The grass swayed free from its herbivorous enemy...A hundred feet up in the air, a dead deer hung in Tenshoujin's talons. Giving into his carnal craving, he dug into his first meal. The strength returned to his newly formed body. His grip on sanity tightened. His fear of his visions slowly abated.

As he landed on the mountaintop, he thought back to the days events. In all that had happened, the glowing blue crystal still stood out in his mind… A search was at hand… his destiny was linked to it. He still feared his nightmarish memories… but the day had taught him that he could learn from them as well. He knew he had much that lay ahead of him and he would need every bit of tutoring he could muster.

Sunset had fallen and the blue sky now turned crimson, its heavy shades of red and orange adding a soft glow to the dragon emblem on his chest. With strength in his limbs and purpose in his eyes, he looked toward the village in the west…