<u>Heaven to Hell: A Journey of Lost Souls Pilot</u> <i>He’d been running for what felt like hours as he periodically turned back to see who was chasing him only managing to catch glimpses of the assailant who would flit in and out of his field of vision. Thoughts that questioned his existence plagued his mind, slowing him until he tripped and fell down an unseen embankment hitting a rock in his ribs, instantly making the pain of them breaking scream in his mind until at last he abruptly stopped when he smashed into a large tree at the bottom of the hill. With fading coherence, he picked his head up and reached to his chest, breathing shallow both because of the pain and not wanting to puncture a lung when his pursuer stepped into his sight. “What the hell you want from me?” he asked. The assailant gave no answer as he stepped closer, gripping his jaw hard and forcefully turning him to meet the cold blue eyes staring through him. “Soon…” the man whispered,</i> when a sound made Alex jerk awake, looking over to see it was a doe foraging around his campsite then running away when she heard him stir. The warm summer air quickly dried the cold sweat that had been dripping down his face. Over the past three years, Alex had been having progressively more terrifying nightmares, some of which depicting the attack on his home village. Sleepily he dragged his battered body from under the heavy blanket he used for a bed, rubbing his forearm from his last job where a large bruise glared back at him. “<i>There has got to be a better way of making money.</i>” He thought. Three years ago, the dragons descended on Axorik with a vengeance, wiping out every last member in his village of Supernatural Hunters, or as most people knew them, The König Jäger. They were the ones that made sure the supernatural creatures within Axorik stayed away from the villages of humans, including the dragons that were at the top of the supernatural hierarchy. Just below them were the Lycanthropes; the foot soldiers and personal guards of the Dragons. Alex was now the last of this once great village, when the Dragons came in force, overwhelming the village within seconds and eliminating them all. Now that the Konig Jager were gone, there was nothing to stop them from taking over all of Axorik, making life a living hell for the humans who became slaves and the occasional snack to both the Dragons and the Lycans. After Alex had washed his face in a nearby creek, he happened to glance over at his few belongings and catch sight of a picture depicting his adoptive mother and father, two of the Konig Jager’s hunters. Through tales from them, he eventually learned that he was the son of the greatest hunter of them all, Samuel Hunter. “<i>I wonder what Master Marik would say if he could see me now, using my skills as a hunter to make the tiny living that I can. He’d probably slap me in the back of the head too; I haven’t trained since the day of the attack, and what skills I do have, I haven’t done diddly for the human race against the Supernatural creatures. I’m just one kid and all alone, so what can I do?</i>” He thought, rummaging through his supplies for the last bit of stale bread until he heard a twig snap behind him, making him freeze and slowly reach for the dagger hidden in his boot. With a blur of movement he turned around and threw the dagger at the first thing he saw, pinning a small white rabbit to the ground through its tiny skull, not even giving it time to make its horrible squealing scream. Alex slumped his shoulders when he saw that it was nothing more than a rabbit, until his stomach rumbled in protest of no food, remembering that he hadn’t had a decent meal in three days. With a sigh, he walked over to the rabbit and pulled the dagger from its head, and quickly pulled its skin away, and hung it up to dry while cutting up the meet and putting it on a stick to cook over the stirred up embers of last night’s fire.
^ I'm going to expand on that comment as that doesn't always help... But anyway, I struggled reading some bits out loud. Not from the pronunciation of words, but from running out of breath. That's because sometimes you tried to cram detail into one sentence, but it's smoother to read over two or three sentences. Otherwise it's a good start, I would love to see how it progresses
“I’m sorry little guy, but your life was given so that I may live another day.” He mumbled, something that was drilled into his mind to say to himself whenever he killed an animal to eat. But the words sounded hollow to him now: the animals didn’t understand him, so why say them at all? “Maybe it was a way of making one not feel so bad after making a kill.” He thought, turning the meat over and watching the flames dance within the rock ring, still able to hear the faint screams of women and men alike running for their lives during the dragon’s attack. Once he had devoured the meat, he packed up his belongings, put out the fire and began walking on to where his next job was going to take place: a small mountain village had been having problems with a creature coming during the night and stealing not only cattle, but also some children and women. When he first received the massage, he thought it sounded like a Dragon Spawn, creatures born of a human woman but fathered by the dragons who abducted women and forcefully impregnated them. The dragons then took the children and raised them to be dragon infiltrators of villages since only a trained eye could tell the difference between a Dragon Spawn and a human. These too were some of the creatures the Konig Jager would hunt since no ordinary human could fight them: they were stronger, faster, and smarter, not to mention that a few of them were gifted with elemental abilities. After about an hour of hiking, he made it to the outskirts of the village. The first thing he noticed was the noise, or rather the lack thereof: there were no children in the streets nor vendors trying to make a quick sale. Not even the birds dared to break the deafening silence that enveloped the village. As he walked, he strained to hear any noise whatsoever, trying to sense even the faintest evidence of life. After circling the village and find nothing, he walked to the center of the street and called out. “My name is Alexander Hunter; I am the one you contacted for help. I mean no harm.” He wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard a faint quiver come from the doorway behind him. He turned and slowly walked to it, trying to peek inside the narrow opening of the door, holding his hands out to show they were empty. “I promise I am here to protect you. Here, I’ll prove I’m not dangerous.” He said softly, unlatching his belt which held his sword and various weapons, dropping them to the ground, then stepped back and spoke once more. “There, now I am defenseless, so would you please come out and show yourself?” Alex stood there for a few moments in silence, feeling like an idiot for talking to the air. He was just about to collect his effects when the door he had been talking to slowly swung open. There stood a young elfin girl dressed in tattered clothes, covered in soot. At least, she appeared to be young; Alex could never tell with supernatural creatures.