Richen

Part one

Chapter one: The beginning

 In a parallel universe on a planet similar to Earth, two scientists shouted out in success, they had finally created what they had spent so many years of research and experiments on; a substance which had the attributes of almost indestructibility yet formable and something that would change the world as they knew it: the attribute to store and enhance large amount of energy and unlocking dormant powers of the material that it was imbedded in.

 In this parallel universe the planet earth was a thousand years ahead of most of the other universes, and therefore the humans on this planet were more evolved and had unlocked more of their dormant powers. Humans could now control more of the powers originated from the soul, the ability to sense other people and their moods and auras, sensing when something is wrong or imminent danger, sending and receiving energy and signals to and from other humans and a lot more.

 The planet was called “Shadowria”, because of the dark sky and the many shadows casted from the clouds. The scientist decided to name their new substance after the planet, so “Shadowrium” became the name that would be remembered as the start of something powerful and good, but also something that went very wrong and turned dark, and eventually evil.

 Some months went and the scientist continued their experiments with the Shadowrium and they thought that it was time to show the rest of the world their discovery, but unfortunately their success was discovered before that, by an agent from a security agency, with the mission of tracking and collecting new weapons and explosives within the country.

 The night after, the agent along with his team, stormed the lab and captured the scientists and their research. Unable to resist, the scientists were brought to the headquarters of the agency along with the Shadowrium. The scientists were given an ultimatum; work with the agency and the Shadowrium on their terms, or be thrown in prison. They accepted with remorse in their hearts, because they knew that the agency would use it with the thoughts of power behind.

 The agency recreated an old program called “Super soldier-program” with the intent of creating better soldiers, rather than creating better weapons. The old program had failed because the result was unstable and lacking significant power upgrade, but now the program could be reinstated because of the new substance. The name “Super soldier-program” was replaced with the name; “The Shadow Hunter-program”.

 Research began, and after one year, the creation of their first soldiers began. There were ten people in charge of the program, five men and five women, they were known as the “Council”.  The ten councilmember’s where given one general each of the same sex as themselves and each general would have two captains under them, one male and one female and there were lots of Shadow hunters created with lower rank than the captains.

 Shadowrium was not easy to create; it required a lot of rare and expensive materials, so the Council understood that giving the Shadow hunters different amount of Shadowrium would be a necessity. The higher the rank, the more Shadowrium the Shadow hunter would be created with. 

 The hunters were given swords and knives as weapons, and the reason for having such medieval weapons was that it would make tracking the hunters back to the agency harder; bullets and explosives leave far more traces than a stab wound or a sword cut would, and you don’t need ammunition.

 To create all these soldiers, they needed human embryos, and through some highly classified and unethical operations they acquired what they needed for the experiments. While the embryos grew, they were injected with Shadowrium straight into their system. Many hundreds of embryos died before they succeeded of breeding a human embryo to self-supporting life. The Council wanted healthy and able soldiers as soon as possible, and by using highly advanced bioengineering and manipulating the Shadowrium, the embryos evolved into eighteen year olds within weeks. After that age they were manipulated to age normally again.

 The generals were created first, and with enormous amount of Shadowrium in them, they had unbelievable powers and large amounts of their dormant human powers were released. Because the soldiers had no normal human background their minds were easy to form after the will of the Council, and for security reasons the generals were programmed with codes, like a computer, with which they could be totally controlled. Each general’s codes were kept in their councilmember’s possession and only the councilmember could give orders to their own general.

 The Shadowrium had the color of silvery-grey and the hunter’s eye color was therefore the same. The hunters had, after the injections of Shadowrium, silvery-grey lines covering their bodies.

 At each fingertip there were short needle-like connection points that could be extended from beneath the skin to transfer energy and aiding in the use of other abilities. Their feet were covered in similar lines but the toes had no connection points like the hands.


 The hair on the head was more dark-grey almost black and with some red shades, but became more bright and silvery the stronger the hunter was. The females had more red in their hair than the males, which in turn had more black instead. The length of the hair differed depending on the rank of the hunter. The lowest rank, the soldiers, had very short hair and then the length grew the higher up in the ranks you came.