Tales of the Hunt

The Guard Code Symbol

My experience chapters are going to be named after the thing I will be talking about. I hope it won't be too confusing.

In a sooner chapter I've briefly talked about how the IT collected trinkets to symbolise actions, or events. Here I'm going to talk a bit about the ones in the guard section, and the ones I've won over the years.

The first I've gotten was sadly the black thread, symbol of the death of a teammate.

During an intervention, one of the intervention agent fucked up and let a possible escape to an unknown creature, that we supposed afterward to be a goblin.

The creature tore it's way through the first agent and fatally mauled a second one, before slaughtering the guard that was waiting for them to come back. It was just bad luck, the goblin ran into him while escaping.

One of the agent escaped unharmed but psychologically scarred and the second one lost a hand while trying to avenge his comrades. They both became guards after that, although the first one suicided a few years later.

I also got the red thread, second symbol found in both hunters and guards, when I got lucky and shot a man who was sneaking in the camp for whatever reason. In my defense, we soon discovered that he was definitely not human, as his internal organs were in an advanced state of decay.

We identified him as the prey of the incubus we were carrying. He was far past the point of no return, his body only a husk for him to control. Although he was theorically already dead, I still received the red thread.

I have only rarely been confronted to situations where I had to fight myself, and even more rarely did I have to kill a sapient being. It did happen though, as much as I would have preferred not to.

Another symbol I still wear are the keys. An iron key if you delivered a prisoner successfully to a permanent prison, a car key if you drove for more than 5 hours with a prisoner in your van, a gold key if you had been the bodyguard of a magical being for the facility and, lastly, a bone carved key if you drove someone to their death sentence. The last one is definitely the one I'm the less proud of.

I've also worn for a while the tooth of a kelpie, as I have almost been tricked by one of these beasts. Although it was unintentional, it helped the IT neutralize it. It was not something in the traditions of the guards, but no one held it against me.

Last thing I've gotten is a child's bracelet.

This one neither is not in the tradition, but it was a gift, so I kept it.

It was the jewelry of a little girl named Sophie. She had ran away from her home, and our job was to find her. Her parents had been reported to have forgotten her, but childs are often good with magic, and her friends, unaffected, had told their parents and all adults they could until it came to our attention.

We thought about a ghost at first, but the little girl was in fact chased by an entity that we never found. It probably still roams, but it decided Sophie wasn't worth it when we intervened. I was the conductor that day, so I was the one to keep company to her.

She was a true angel, a very sweet child. She had taken refuge in an abandoned church because her parents were religious. We believe it's what saved her.

She had spent a week there, starving and drinking rain water. The official record says that she got lost, and was found after 6 days of wandering in the wild.

As for why we are sure there was something, we found that the creature slaughtered a few other little animals near the church. We found a lot of corpses in a windwell, all seemed to have been mauled by a big cat. We burnt the windmill and made sure the creature would not come back to this spot.

During my service, I've also seen some other trinkets.

A friend of mine had a yellow thread with an old ring attached to it, from an encounter with an immortal being. The creature was getting a bit aggressive as human cities advanced toward it's territory. It ended up with a new military zone being installed here as an excuse to keep it as it was.

The creature was probably an old nature spirit, and the ring was found in a river. Seeing how he came back alive, I assume the entity didn't mind.

I've also seen people with shells, hunters and guards alike, if they worked on a boat or in a submarine for more than a month.

An old guard I knew also kept a nazi's insign he had ripped from a dead body. He was Jewish, and fought all his youth for freedom. He's one of the kindest man I know.

He is the one who had the best tales, and his personal favorite was how he got said insignia.

At that point of the facility, they still used a lot magic. That man knew about Golems, a sort of homonculus that is of the Jewish folklore.

During a mission, he decided to go and fight against a death camp where they were building a trainroad. He himself slit the throat of six persons, and then summoned a Golem. He sacrificed his pinkie and ring finger for it, but it worked.

Due to his summoning, most prisoners had a chance to escape. Some died, but surely, some lived to see another day.

He only kept the insignia out of spite, as a war trophy. The night before he left, he had thrown it in the sea. He was dying of old age, and  he requested to live his last days where he was born.

Those are the most memorable I remember, but I can't remember all small details. Perhaps I'll someday write a longer chapter focusing on one story and going more in depth, but it'll be for another time.