Chapter 7: Scarecrow
                          --------------------

Edgar had heard of Scarecrow.  A man who killed for money and never
failed.  A mercenary with unknown powers.  The ideal soldier.  And so he
sat down and began to write his letter.  Hiring Scarecrow to eliminate a
nuisance.

And when he was done, he raised his hand, and watched the black dove
appear.  He handed the letter into its razor beak, and watched it fly
off.  It would find Scarecrow.

He stared into the sunset that had just fallen over the desert.  A
beautiful sight.  When he was done, the sun and the moon would never
again shine.  The world would be consigned to darkness, and all people
would be his slaves.

They would lose their humanity and merely become mindless creatures,
forced into labor, working for their food like pack horse.

For what THEY did to him.  But their power was gone.  No one here could
combat him.  And he raised his hand a second time.

The "Lost Tale" of the War of the Magi, the only scripture of it
remaining, appeared in his hand.

The only time humans and Espers allied during the tumultous combat.  He
had been consigned into a vacuum in time and space.  The man sent to kill
him had not come.  And so he had 1000 years to sit, and wait.

And as he did, he grew in strength.  And those outside grew weaker.  Now
none had the magic of the Magi, and there were no Espers.  But the Hunter
was here.  And he would kill him, to erase the chance of temporal
correction.

The Hunter and the Prey, caught in a temporal loop, had lived this
sequence a million times.  Every time, the Hunter had come from his time
to destroy the Prey.  But this time, the Hunter failed.  Now the scales
had tipped out of Balance, and into the side of evil.

Already signs of it had appeared.  Livouf's ability to access the Prime
Evil.  The existence of these strange, new Evil Ones.  But no one would
imprison the Prey, this time.

This time, Livouf Takar, the Ancient Prey, would kill Livouf Manar, the
Ancient Hunter.  He had been branded.  And he would die.