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Disclaimer
This work will be little more than a fanfic. It is created under fair use and is not for profit. That goes for any media used here, some of which is owned by multiple license holders. It’s just used to enhance the effect of the fanfic story written here.
That said should Cover Corp ever wish to develop this work further with other media, as far as anything I will author, they have my full blessing to do so. Heck, if I’m given some forewarning, I would even help, pro bono.
That said, all I would ask is anything developed from this use the voice talents of those who have played these characters in past or present. Those who made the magic for tens of millions of fans should be those that get the first chance to tell their own stories should they wish.
Like the story of Myth’s Bad Ending used as this work’s cannon, this will be a darker take than many might be used too. That was originally the masterpiece work of Mazumaro, SFXs of DaphdafDave and the scores of StarlightDaryl.
In keeping with the spirit of not only the characters, but the very talented people who played them, I just wanted to give their characters an engaging story with a little more punch and focus. What follows is that work.
For those that might be upset that this will not match their head cannon, I would repeat a classic answer.
As Puck said in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Might’s Dream, Act V, Scene 1,
“If we shadows have offended,
Think but this,
and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here,
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding, but a dream.”
That’s it, my friends. Let’s get on with the show and take full advantage of the infinite possibilities. Buckle up, we’re likely about to take a ride you don’t expect…
This work is currently 11,803 words, compared to the 40,000 word mark for light novels. It's just in rough draft status, pass 1. It has 11 of the required 12 to 20 scenes so far.
Episode 1
Crisis reluctantly creates a Myth
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy" -William Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5
“So many of our dreams seem impossible, then improbable, then inevitable.” -Christopher Reeve
The figure of a lady, in the slightly unusual brown clothing, from a different age, walked towards the little blonde girl in the library. Quietly, she sat near the girl and waited to be noticed.
The little girl in as local school uniform looked up moments later. The figure’s warm presence almost materializing near her.
The lady spoke in friendly, hushed and secret tones that held unnatural levels of charisma. She said, “I heard you might be a bright little girl named Amelia Watson.”
The girl looked in shock. She clearly had no idea who the brown-haired lady was.
She noticed the lady had an unusual appearance with a few white and black highlights in her hair. She also noticed the lady wearing two owl feathers in her hair.
Amelia stated, “I’m not supposed to speak to strangers.” The little girl's blue eyes began observing and deducing, she did so often enough that her mother called Amelia "the detective" as a nickname.
The smiling figure stated, “That’s a wise policy. The world can be a dangerous place, even for adults.”
The brown eyed lady seemed sad with that statement. The words were weary and held the emotion of a secret introvert, forcing herself to be social and speak.
The blue eyed girl looked at her with wonder and amazement. She didn’t speak though.
The figure continued, “I was instructed to give a prize from the library to the best reader. I am a stranger though.” There was no joy in the lady’s eyes as she said this, even behind her sad smile.
Amelia asked, “What’s your name?”
The lady answered, “Nanashi Mumei”
Amelia stated, “That’s effectively nameless or anonymous in Japanese. That’s not a name.”
The figure smiled. “It does seem you are preciously intelligent for your age. Like I said, there is an award for such a reader. Do you speak Japanese?”
The little girl looked but didn’t speak. She scanned the brown-eyed lady for irritation but found none.
Amelia admitted, “I honestly have trouble with languages. I don’t retain them easily. I’m good with computers and the internet though.”
Amelia swallowed and explained, “I read that your first name was used as a common username on Japan’s forum 2 channel. It was something an anime fan mentioned in a forum.”
The sad lady looked at Amelia and smiled. Nanashi Mumei admitted, “I have trouble remembering languages too.”
The sad lady pulled a gold pocket watch with a golden chain from her pocket. She said, “The prize is this watch.”
It was pretty and a valuable item from the Victorian era. Amelia wanted the watch, but in innate caution, she decided it was a bad idea.
Amelia responded, “I don’t need a watch.” The little girl pointed to the pink one on her wrist.
She smiled hoping not to upset the sad lady. Even if the lady was running some kind of con, Amelia honestly liked her and felt like she was being forced into this by circumstance.
The lady asked, “Is that watch magic?”
Amelia confidently answered, “There is no such thing as magic”.
The lady responded with a strange confidence, “This is.” The golden watch moved ever so slightly back and forth gaining Amelia’s attention more.
Amelia retorted, “I don’t believe you.” The little girl said with conviction, though her eyes stared curiously with quiet wonder.
The brown eyed lady said, with the practiced ability of an online troll, who could play someone’s emotions like a fiddle, “That is ok, if you don’t want it, there is a stinky boy that was the second-place winner. He can have it instead of you.”
Amelia was intelligent and wise beyond her years. That said, ever so secretly, she was also fiercely competitive.
The little girl compressed her eyes. Somewhere from deep within her throat an unnatural growl resonated.
Pretending not to notice, the brown-haired lady stated, “Ok, well, have a nice day.” The lady waved and got up.
Amelia grabbed the ladies’ cloak. It was only when she did so that she noticed the Norse ruins inscribed in them meaning friendship. Amelia had seen them in a fantasy comic book not that long ago.
Amelia stuck out her hand pleading, “May I please have the prize, mam. I am truly sorry, if I was rude.”
The brown-haired lady placed the watch in the little girl’s palm. The watch clicked and bonded with its new true master.
Within the watch, the image of an owl, a branch, an hourglass, a six-sided dice, the planet Saturn, and a symbol of hope glowed. The deed was irreversibly done.
The little girl and the watch were forever bonded in that moment. Young Amelia Watson noticed the brown eyed lady had very sad eyes in that moment.
The sad lady said, “Congratulations, I hope you enjoy your prize.” Her smile and tone were in great contrast to the tear running down her left cheek.
Amelia watched the nameless lady walk away and began to put the watch in her pocket. Her senses could hear the lady far away saying something under her breath.
The pretty lady practically spat out in a whisper, “Sometimes I really dislike you, Kronii.”
A voice that wasn’t even there replied, “You and the rest of council have the advantage of not remembering every timeline. I don’t have that luxury, Mumei.”
“A little girl should have time to be a little girl.” The brown-haired lady was fully crying now. It was bitter and regretful.
The voice that Amelia couldn’t see reasoned, “There is no choice in this.” The voice was logical, calm, and direct.
Amelia could begin to feel a slight hum from the watch, whenever either being spoke. Her other five senses continued sharpening as well.
The far away brown lady argued in frustration, “What do you mean there is no choice?”
The disembodied voice stated, “There is no timeline that exists that Amelia Watson that does not receive that watch at this time.”
The brown-haired lady was defiant arguing, “Kronii, I still don’t think that warrants this. We could have done this when she was grown.”
The calm voice reasoned, “Mumei if something exists in most timelines that makes it something of Legend. Big event or small, it means the timeline itself will likely fail in its absence.”
The tearful voice defiantly retorted, “So?” Amelia could feel that the brown-haired lady was so pissed, that she was getting irrational.
The other voice buzzed through the watch, not audibly, but telepathically in Amelia’s mind, “So that means, if something is in every timeline, it is completely unavoidable.”
The other being continued, “We don’t have room to make deals or alter it. That means the event isn’t just legendary. It means the event is the very stuff of Myth.”
Amelia Watson watched the brown-haired lady some thousand feet away. Under cover of almost complete darkness, the lady instantly transformed into an owl and flew off.
The voices stopped. The young lady looked at the watch and felt her entire world expand.
She held the gold watch and understood something with absolute certainty. Magic was real….
A Phoenix answers the call
“I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.” -William Faulkner
"The true contempt of an invader is shown by deeds of valor in the field." -Hermocrates of Syracuse
Kerry Paulazzo
Fall Out Boy - THE PHOENIX (Animated Lyric Video)
“Aeveris” was a huge world that was richly seeped in the most primal magics. Even with its Earth like atmosphere, gravity, and weather, the planet was larger than the planet Jupiter.
It was a world so huge that it could contain over 1,400 Earths. In a world of such scale, magic such as teleportation gates and interdimensional gates were commonplace. This was in the same way highways were for earth.
“Aeveris” was a harmonious place, home to trillions of humans and demi humans. The kingdoms of which were the pinnacle of high sorcery and divine spells. The true price of Aeveris’s infinite possibilities had been the ever-present risk of sliding into the infinite darkness.
In time, the greatest possible living evil had taken shape. A villain seeking immortality, at the small price of killing an entire world.
The dark pact was easy to make for one mighty enough. The abyss was hungry for another magical apocalypse. It could create a fresh new interdimensional plane of horror. Thus, a villain’s wish for immortality was small consideration for payment.
There as an irony to such heinous plots of mass death. The dimensions of magic were not helpless against this.
This kind of diabolical malice actually called fate’s finely tuned antibodies. They were the very supernatural beings that had been created to protect life, since the first primal fires of creation.
The fiery lady responded. Kiara was once famously known as one of the bravest hearts of her people. That heart answered the sacred and frightened cry of life itself.
Kiara took her human form in this new world. She limited her fire and form to the confines of what the “Aeveris” needed within this life.
This was where the mission began. That said this wasn’t something any being, even supernatural, could do alone. Stopping the minions of the abyss would be war.
She moved throughout the world. She inspired the people’s inner fire. She gathered the bravest souls.
In the first years, Kiara inspired and collected heroes from across the lands and races. She led from the front to light the flame of light’s rebellion against the onslaught of darkness’s evil.
Time increased response. Like an ever growing and expanding storm, many others answered the call.
The guild had formed. The war had been waged. Kiara had led them in what some raised in only peace would call the cliché story of over a million worlds.
In the eyes of an immortal, twenty years had passed in a flash. Kiara led hundreds of exceptional adventurers, potential legends all.
Humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, and halflings answered the call against the demon queen’s forces. They fought supernatural horrors called from the darkness of entire worlds that had been long ago swallowed into the abyss.
The demon queen’s motives made Kiara’s skin crawl. It was ignorance and madness dressed as ambition.
She honestly could not understand how some mortals would wish for immortality. It was just the dreams of starry-eyed fools, who didn’t know its actual heavy, gut-wrenching burdens.
Even Phoenixes are often emotionally crushed of immortality’s horrible price. Kiara’s people had once been as numerous as the stars. They had protected hundreds of thousands of worlds simultaneously.
One by one, the fiery stars gave into the silent gravity of loneliness and depression. They tired of lost loves and friendships.
Phoenixes became mired in the overwhelming weight of the seemingly endless loses over millennia. Most had slowly lost their fire to live.
Will was the very flame of a Phoenix’s immortality. When a Phoenix lost the will to live, they snuffed out the primordial magic of their own immortal flame. Thus, a mentally broken Phoenix would already be on their last life.
Kiara’s will had never wavered. Her purpose was clear. The Phoenix felt connected to these mortal creatures in a way she could not explain.
The war was successful. The guild inspired armies to push the abyss’s darkness back.
The final battle had come. Many of the world’s armies answered that call.
Millions fought the abyss’s minions. The ground shook from the fighting, the magic, and the siege weapons.
The fight had been unimaginably brutal. Demons from the abyss slaughtered millions, before they themselves were permanently snuffed out.
Once the battlefield was secured, the next phase began. Outside the demon queen’s castle, thousands of priests and mages wrapped the castle in actively cast wards. No teleport spell or interdimensional gate would allow evil to flee.
Kiara’s group fought in the vanguard to push into the castle. They battled through the guards and the death traps. One by one, her valiant companions fell.
Only the strongest of her allies had survived as they kept pushing forward. No, Kiara thought, that was wrong. It was poor to judge anyone who had followed her and lost their lives as weaker.
Their hearts had all been mighty enough to face the unimaginable horrors inflicted on their world, even if it cost them their lives. Unlike Kiara, those brave souls would never rise again.
That was something which had always galled her to her core. She was helpless in this regard. A Phoenix could not share their ability to rise with humans and demi humans.
The Phoenix’s ability to share the reignition fire of life was limited to only a few species of birds. None of the millennia Kiara spent studying magic had ever given her a work around to this limitation. It was apparently a fixed law of the universe.
As it had more than ten thousand times before, the battle drew to a close. They advanced on the demon queen’s throne room.
Thousands of faces, from this life alone, flashed before her eyes, as she advanced. Her consciousness momentarily wandering, as she looked upon the demon queen herself behind her minions.
The crazed elf could have literally been a supermodel on thousands of worlds Kiara had known. Despite her striking looks, Kiara noted that the demon queen’s evil monologue was only about 20% different from those the Phoenix had heard more than ten thousand times before.
One thought interrupted Kiara’s normal focus, as she looked upon the latest incarnation of evil itself. She thought of the waste of it all, there was a troubling consistent factor among so many demon kings and queens.
Why did so many of these crazy jerks have to be so darn attractive? In far different circumstances, Kiara would have happily dated her, if she had been a better person. In another life, they might have even been life mates, but now to save a world Kiara was going to have to eliminate this beautiful demon queen.
Kiara stopped musing and focused. It was business time.
The throne room erupted in battle. Void formed dark tentacles and demons jumped Kiara’s allies. Her allies unleashed holy and elemental spells as the entire room erupted in explosions.
Kiara once again called forth a sword that was as much as part of her being as her wings were in her gigantic true form. She bathed the throne in flames and engaged the demon queen herself.
Seconds later, they crossed blades. The demon queen’s once lovely form was already irreversibly scarred and fried by Kiara’s fury.
The demon queen hissed, “I’ll make you pay for burning me.” Her sword thrusts were supernaturally quick. They took advantage of Kiara’s long neglect of the master levels of defensive swordsmanship.
Kiara had disarmed the elf and stabbed her seconds later. Her reply was her blade through the queen’s heart.
It was only when her purpose was complete that she noticed her own fatal wounds. Kiara half-smirked in her agony. She had gotten distracted by her fury.
One day, she would have to have the patience to learn sword defense well enough to parry off the pinnacle of enemy warriors. One day, she would.
She turned to look for her companions, but she already knew the answer. As a Phoenix, she could no longer sense any other life within the room.
The spells and the bladework of both sides had been too deadly. It was mutually assured destruction from the very beginning.
No one was going to survive this. They had all known this from the beginning.
Kiara would be the last to die here. Mournfully, she walked towards the body of her last love and lover. A mage named Angelica, whose smile and humor Kiara had fallen for.
The world-weary traveler sat next to the skeleton of the last person to make her feel happy to be alive. Demonic spellcasting had removed everything but Angelica's bleached bone.
She sat next to the remains of the last person to make her smile. Preparing to die, she laid back and held Angelica’s skeletal hand.
Kiara silently let her departed lover know she wasn’t forgotten. She let Angelica's smiling face, now lost to her memory, know that her world was safe.
Kiara lay dying. She was in tears looking at the dead friends forever beyond her reach around her.
Her own will to live flickered inside her. The loneliness and the futility of the endless fight was wearing her down more than any enemy ever could.
She clinched her jaw. She thought of the innocent lives that she could still protect.
Kiara thought of the sacrifices of those she had known as friends and lovers. She made the choice to not let their memory die. Kiara clenched the remains of Angelica’s hand in her grasp.
Kiara steeled herself internally. She would not quit. She raised the fire inside her to try at least one more time.
She would be ash soon. Life would call and Kiara would awaken in the next world that needed her.
It was moments before her impending death, something that was like life entered the room. Kiara could feel the spirit’s presence before she could see it.
The Phoenix saw a celestial creature that appeared to be a cross between most worlds would see as an angel and a devil. The Phoenix was honestly confused.
The celestial being spoke, “Kiara, I’ll have to ask you to forgive me, but I’m going to need to redirect your next life.”
Kiara replied to the unprecedented moment saying, “What do you mean?” Fate’s order of appearance was a sacred thing to her people. It literally was the cry for help of Life itself.
“There is a world that will need you far more, than the one fate had originally assigned for you next.”
Kiara knew her duty and the immense gravity of it. The proud Phoenix starred the celestial down stating, “Then you are asking me to let a world die. I refuse.” She squeezed her lover Angelica’s dead hand in defiance to the spirit.
The odd-looking celestial being touched her calmly and empathically stating, “No, Kiara there is more going on than you understand. You should know my name is Irys. I am a celestial charged with a very specific duty.”
The celestial being continued, “What I need you to understand is that I am charged with being the living embodiment of Hope. I am not redirecting you, because I am condemning a world.”
The spirit continued with grave importance marked in her words, “I am changing where you are meant to go, because if the world I send you to falls, then all the other worlds will be unmade as well. That includes the world you are worrying about.”
Kiara blinked. That wasn’t exactly an answer she was expecting.
Irys continued, “The name of the planet is Earth. The country you will be fated to be reborn in will be called Austria. From there, your quest will lead you to a country named to Japan. It is there that you will gather your fated companions.”
“So, I can lead even more people to slaughter?” In her pain, Kiara almost spat that statement out in a mixture of humor and bitterness. In that moment, the endless rerun of these lives was taxing.
The celestial being clarified, “You won’t lead these people, Kiara. Nor, will you be the only immortal being called by fate.”
Kiara sked, “If I’m not leading, why do you even need me?”
The celestial being empathically stated, “Hope doesn’t need you to be a leader this time, Kiara. For the universe itself to have any chance to survive and move into the future, your group must survive. For them to have any chance do that, they will need your heart.”
The moment of Kiara’s death was almost upon her. Her eyes began to dim. Her body cooled.
Kiara felt her eyes water. Not from the agony of impending death, but the weight of so many lives lost.
The celestial being kissed Kiara’s forehead. In a moment, the teary-eyed Phoenix turned to ash and disappeared.
Dust vanished in the sparkle of the ancient magic of primordial creation. Kiara had already reappeared in another dimension, on a tiny, magic starved world known as Earth…
The Last True Daughter of Atlantis
“…in a single day and night of misfortune, the island of Atlantis disappeared into the depths of the sea.” -Plato, 360 B.C
"Mothers hold their children's hands for a while, but their hearts forever." -Anonymous
Nightcore Venyx
「Nightcore」 Atlantis - Seafret ♡ (Lyrics)
The spirit known to many as mother nature, sadly moved through the deep ocean. The time had come for her once more to give up a sentient child from the garden’s protection.
This one would not be a consequence of a bad choice. This one was needed for the world to have a chance to survive.
The being known to some as Ceres Fauna found her favored child in the ocean. A little shark that had spent thousands of years, in the deep, slowly avenging herself on the remaining minions of her hated enemy.
Fauna manifested in the depths. She pulled the last daughter of Atlantis into her old form. Well, as much of her old form, as the last daughter of Atlantis’s feral side would allow.
Fauna hated what had to happen next. The only respite was that the young woman had many millennia to process and distance herself from the trauma.
Fauna returned the full memory. The split personalities known as Gawr Gura refused.
The cost was immediate. The young lady remembered holding her mother’s hand in the city market thousands of years ago.
Gura had loved her family. Her mother was the person she loved most in the world.
It was a simple day out in the ancient city. A place that buzzed with magic and excitement.
She lived in the most enlightened place in the world. Further, she had been blessed to be born to a mother that was a once in a generation talent among her peers.
Gura’s mother laughed and joked with her daughter. For Gura, her mother was a person as bright as the sun itself.
Gura was happy. She was safe. She was loved and adored.
Things changed in an eyeblink. The end of a subcontinent came faster than reason could explain. The sky went dark before the earthquakes, and the volcanic eruptions even began.
The roar appeared before they saw the Titanic figure of the Great Old One. It’s unknowable horror for a flicker in the lightning in the darkness.
Gura remembered the screams. She remembered the rumbling as the Great Old One instantly turned miles of deep bedrock into magma.
The ground sank giving way to a sensation of falling while standing on solid earth. Gura remembered the impossibly large Tsunami, rushing in from the darkness, just beyond the city lights, that rapidly engulfed the coastal city she had lived in.
The water rushed in. The force of it was beyond her imagination.
In a moment, she had lost the grasp of her beloved mother’s hand. It would be an eyeblink and everyone she loved was gone.
The sorcerous walls and shields that the elders bragged about, in the greatest magical kingdom Earth had ever known, were nowhere near enough to stop the cataclysm. The Earth’s very ley lines had been decimated.
Gura survived the lethal overwhelming shock. She survived the tons of crushing water and undertow that pulled her leagues from her home in mere moments.
Gura would never really know how she survived. Using her mother’s magical teachings in sheer instinct, to avoid drowning, she took the form of a shark to attempt to survive.
Everything had gone dark. Everything had gone red.
Thousands of years ago, Fauna had embraced this child back into nature’s fold. Though she did so to protect another close to her.
Over thousands of years, Fauna grown close to one of the few humans that had ever returned to her fold. She loved this child like an adoptive mother.
Gura was the only survivor of a subcontinent that sank beneath the waves. A victim created by a Great Old One’s eldritch magic.
The whole event was over nine thousand years ago. Humanity would not even regain the skill of a single written language for thousands of years after Atlantis's fall.
The green mother cried returning the memories and mental pain to this poor lady. Ceres Fauna did so and she rewired the young lady’s mind for modern communication.
Fauna gave Gura the place to go, like the migration instinct of a bird. Finally, Fauna gave her little adopted daughter her parting gift.
Manifesting her own power, Ceres Fauna pulled Gura’s heritage from its resting place in the garden. The little shark was fused with her birth mother’s trident. With it, Gura was fused with her birth mother’s power.
Teary-eyed, the green mother watched the little shark swim away at high speed. Gura would soon forget much of her time back in nature.
Fauna felt her dominion over the little lady slipping. As her parting thought Fauna handed the little shark back to her little sister’s domain.
The Green mother asked by whispering, “Sister, please watch after this one.”
On a Pale Horse
“THAT’S MORTALS FOR YOU, Death continued. THEY’VE ONLY GOT A FEW YEARS IN THIS WORLD AND THEY SPEND THEM ALL IN MAKING THINGS COMPLICATED FOR THEMSELVES. FASCINATING.” -Terry Pratchett, Mort
“Death’s pale horse looked up from its oats and gave a little whinny of greeting. The horse’s name was Binky. He was a real horse. Death had tried fiery steeds and skeletal horses in the past, and found them impractical, especially the fiery ones, which tended to set light to their own bedding and stand in the middle of it looking embarrassed.” -Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man
AmazingGraceLyrics
Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around Lyric Video
Riding the personal steed of the Grim Reaper himself, Calliope Mori went where the boss had directed her. Thousands of miles flashed by in seconds.
The Grim Reaper’s personal apprentice knew the boss wouldn’t send her without good reason. The living white steed secretly known as “Binky” came to stop.
Death’s apprentice could feel and smell the atrocity in the ground before she could see it. Her boss’s voice entered her mind, “This is the place. Crap, it’s worse than I was told.”
Calli mentally inquired, “Who tells Death these things?”
Death answered, “You means the odds of atrocity and death? It’s a rat.”
Calli replied in shock, “What like a snitch?”
Death cackled. He replied, “Yeah, something like that.”
Calli sighed stating, “At some point, you need to be clearer about these things.”
Death empathically replied, “There are some headaches, I will spare you until you take the office. Trust me, you are happier not knowing, until the time comes and you take the seventh seat of the underworld.”
Calli rolled her eyes. She hated secrets.
Death offered, “All children should have a childhood. All apprentices should have time to ease into the job.” Life wasn’t always like that, but it was an ideal Death tried to strive for as often as possible.
Few knew the Grim Reaper was such a softy and an idealist, all they saw was the terrifying bones and spectral robes of the office. Calli had long ago learned that the real being was something quite different, a boss who was purposely different than the wicked monster he had replaced in the office.
Death complained, “She downplayed this. She’s got that kind of angry mouth and she downplayed this.”
Calli asked, “Is the snitch a demon?”
Death cackled again. The boss answered, “Demons can only be so foul mouthed Calli. The rat is something far more vulgar in anger.”
Calli inquired, “What could be fouler mouthed than a demon?”
Death dad joked, “An Australian.” She could feel his silly grin through telepathy.
The scene before them opened. Several dozen human-looking undead in black cultist robes had finished several sacrifices.
Calli’s mere presence had removed the tortured innocent into the merciful embrace of death. The undead sensed the presence long, before they could see it.
Death saw and understood. He ordered, “Vampires, you need to take the gloves off Calli. End this quickly.”
Calliope Mori took the full form of office. She became a fifty-foot-tall Spectral reaper.
In almost slow motion, she swung her scythe repeatedly inflicting absolute death. Dozens of screaming supposed immortals permanently burst into dust with each scythe swing. In this, they were forever consumed by the darkness they were fated for. Not one vampire escaped.
It took seconds to finish. Calli shrank back to her normal form.
The boss requested, “Apprentice, I need a look at what they were doing.” The Grim Reaper was irritated.
Calli looked over the scrolls and maps they were using. There was a method and purpose to the cruelty they had inflicted.
Calli could feel her boss rubbing his empty eye sockets in frustration. The old man was confused and pissed. Innocent lives had been taken before their time, the boss neither understood why evil had been committed, nor its aim.
Death requested, “Apprentice, I might need you to investigate this personally. I’ve got about hundred years left in my thousand-year office. I can give you that much time if it’s required.”
Calli protested, “It’s not like I’m a detective, boss.”
Death returned empathically, “It’s not like I am either.” The boss offered, “This has something to do with magic and the old ley lines though.”
Death accessed something unknown. He looked at the probable path of the ley lines. He spoke aloud, “Tokyo.”
Calli simply stated a fact. “I can only manifest for a short period time. I don’t know what you mean by a hundred years.”
The boss explained, “That’s only if you don’t bond with a human body. It’s rarely done, but a reaper can take a body that has just died. The downside is you pick up the memories and the emotions of the person you replace.”
Death was already looking through the records of the book of death, to find someone he thought would bond well with Calli. He found a match, but wondered aloud, “What the heck is a Texas rapper doing performing in Tokyo? Kids these days.”
Calli confidently stated, “Sounds easy enough.”
Death warned in a serious, fatherly tone, “Don’t underestimate the power of human emotions on the mind, apprentice. They can be humbling even for a reaper. Even if it turns out that you do it easily, I’ll admit it was hard for me.”
Death requested, “I’ll need you to volunteer to reap this soul and take her place. Binky can get you there before she dies in three minutes, from a traffic accident.”
Calli was already on her way. Letting down her boss was like letting down a beloved father, it wasn’t in her to do it. Hundreds of miles began to fly by, while she was on Binky’s back.
Death simply said, “Thank you.”
Calli asked, “Where will you go when you retire boss?” There was a part of her that would like to know where to find her mentor when he was officially gone.
Death sensed his apprentice’s sad thought. He responded with levity. Death dad joked, “Where else? Miami.”
The girl who survived
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown". – H.P. Lovecraft
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents". – H.P. Lovecraft
Aviators
Aviators - Can You Hear It? (Lovecraft Song | Alternative Rock)
The vile, gurgling sounds grew louder in the darkness outside the room. Something unknowable slithered, with wet and slimy purpose nearby, larger than the shrine and just beyond the veil of the actual world.
Primal fear tried to grip at the young lady’s heart. Madness tried to dig inside her mind, with the force of forks being driven into her skull.
That wasn’t just a metaphor, she could often feel the ghostly pains of things being thrust into her flesh without leaving wounds. She could feel insect-like sensations crawl against her skin. She felt slimy cold things sliver across her.
She could feel these things, even when she tried to pass into the mercy of sleep, which just opened the infinite horrors of her nightmares. Dreams did not have the limits of the waking world in their horrible madness.
She was the last child. The only one to have survived all the tests and the tortures.
That was what saved her. That was what had doomed her.
She could hear the gasps and screams of the other children. She could hear their sobs and cries. This was still happening long after the last had died.
Had they become ghosts? Had she simply gone mad?
It was hard to tell listening to their screams in the now empty rooms near hers. Was it memory or supernatural?
She had been made an anchor. She was the only one to fully grasp these things unknowable to any sane mind.
Nightmares clawed at her even in her wakened state. The madness beyond the stars called singing to her in an ancient choir that predated mankind.
The darkness did not want her to bend. It wanted her to break.
When her mind was gone, the full possession could occur. She just had to surrender to a pull no human could possibly resist forever.
The darkness and the madness pushed. At least physically, the other little girls had already escaped from the terror and the madness.
They hadn’t been judged worthy of being vessels though. They hadn’t been chosen.
Ina momentarily thought of the possible peace. The sound of an old playmates sobs in the room next to hers exposed that thought as a possible lie.
Ina was the vessel. Ina was the sacrifice. Ina would be the end of this pitiful world.
The darkness that predated the stars in the sky was hungry. The darkness wanted a return to the abyss. The darkness wanted an end to all that glittered and glowed in the universe.
She could feel the old one’s presence. She could feel it long before she had begun reading the book. The Great Old One was there.
It was so oppressive it was hard to breathe. It was so overwhelming it was hard to think.
It overwhelmed her senses. It robbed her of calm and peace. It slowly sought to break her mind.
Ina forced herself to be calm. With sweaty, shaking palms, she drew. A little girl raised by her cult parents to be a slaughtered lamb, refused to give in.
She created. She expressed. She invoked.
A picture formed from paints. With it, a different soothing voice also appeared, though only in her mind.
A warm, friendly, compassionate voice complimented, “That’s a good one, Ina. You might not be that far away from making your first masterpiece.”
Ina could feel the one wrapped in light appear in her mind. Sunlight appeared in her prison of darkness. A kind Titaness easing her loneliness and isolation.
Ina smiled at the presence of her friend. The grasp of the madness and the dark receded.
The kind friend was nowhere near as large or powerful as the darkness. That said, even just a match’s light was a ward against a universe’s worth of pitch black.
The shrine priestess of the darkness almost cried in relief, “It’s good to hear from you, Sana.”
The Titan sized speaker of space replied, “I know what it is like to be alone. I will never willingly abandon a friend, Ina. You can count on that.”
The two happily chatted as Ina drew and colored. Both were big fans of beautiful art, something the darkness neither cared about, nor understood.
This ritual of creation held the slithering darkness at bay. In time, it completely disappeared.
Ina’s palms dried. Her heartbeat slowed. Slowly, the shakes left her body.
Her fear was gone. She was master of the house. She was master of her mind again.
Not long after that, her friend’s had to leave. That said, the warmth wasn’t going to fade in her absence.
A figure appeared that wasn’t even vaguely human. Ina’s servants had come searching for an important answer.
The Takodachi were the sentient forms of the shrine. They were her void minions. They awaited the priestess’s orders on what kind of evil they should best represent.
After all, it was likely the original lady had already been possessed by that which was beyond the veil. These could be the orders of the Great Old One itself.
Ina spoke to her legion saying, “We shall take over the world, slowly.” Her message was simple and the legion was overjoyed.
Her instruction also defined the evil they were to personify, “The evil I want you all to manifest is Sloth.”
The Tentacult was slightly confused. They had expected something like wrath and immediate war.
Ina clarified, “My followers, you can all agree the time of man will eventually come to an end, correct?” The priestess let the weight of her words hit her minions.
The Tentacult could not disagree with such wisdom. It was the core of what they had always believed.
Ina instructed, “then there is no point wasting resources or a single Takodachi soldier’s life on what will come to pass anyway. Be patient. Be wise. We will win, slowly.”
Her spirit followers could see no flaw in the mistress’s plan. They immediately began to strive to become a spirit legion of NEETS, lazing about the shrine, nearly useless.
They would become the NEETS of NEETS. They would strive to attain a level of laziness no mere mortal human could attain. Only then could they truly show their absolute devotion to their mistress.
Ina smiled. The priestess went back to her shrine maiden’s inner chamber.
The Great Old One was already quieter. A great trait of the darkness was already taking hold and slowly down their efforts to thousands of times less than before.
Ina sat and began a new picture. Centering her mind, she made sure the little girl inside her survived.
Her fear was gone. She was master of the house. She was master of her mind again.
As the picture formed, it did so with new levels of ability in art. Soon, she would proudly show this one to her Titan friend…
Fate’s Chosen One
“Heroes are ordinary people who make themselves extraordinary.” -Gerard Way
“Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” -Alfred Tennyson
Lita Cena
The Pretender - Foo Fighters Lyrics!!
The case was a set up. Amelia Watson knew it, as soon as she took the bait money.
She was loaded out for what was to come. The light Kevlar she wore as a detective uniform disguised her intent. It also hid the form fitting vest she wore for one extra layer of protection.
The detective was ready to fight. The investigator was in hunter mode.
Amelia Watson entered the place she had found in her investigation. It was just as the hired actor, that in turn had hired her, had predicted.
The perps had congregated in an old mining cave in Nevada. Amelia wasn’t supposed to be aware that the perps were vampires.
The cave was far enough away from society that there was little chance for witnesses. Further, if witnesses disappeared here, they’d likely never be found.
The front guard was pleased to smell the target human walking up to the entrance of the cave. The blood sucker mused that might as well have been food delivery.
The guard saw a serious looking figure that was dressed in yellow, like an old novel detective. What startled the guard for a second was the detective drawing a gun.
Vampires had nothing to fear from bullets. Neither steel nor lead hurt them permanently.
The vampire’s confused hesitation was fatal. A phosphorus round fired off from Amelia’s large caliber pistol blast. The vampire screamed, flared, and burned to dust.
The cave erupted in frenzy and screaming. Pistol rounds went off one right after another.
One vampire exploded into bright ashes, one right after another. The ancient hunters had become nothing more than prey.
Far below the majority, the lead vampire waited at the end of the cave complex. He was deeply confused and stayed put in an emergency.
He told himself he wasn’t being a coward. Someone needed to guard the cult’s paperwork.
No human or group of humans would make it through the twenty vampires that made up the cave network anyway. It was unthinkable.
“Yeah”, the vampire thought, “no human could make it down here.”
The lead vampire calmed itself knowing victory was imminent. He might even get to drain some of the intruders, once they were captured.
The rationalized confidence dropped when they heard the first phosphorus grenade go off. The screams and panic of the other vampires echoed through the cave walls.
Was this a military attack? Was the government itself hunting them? Was there a whole platoon of soldiers out there?
Minutes went by like hours. Had he still been alive, the lead vampire would have pissed himself in panic.
The vampire was reduced to pulling a pistol for its own defense. That and he was relying on the last guard outside.
There was a last shot and firing right outside the door. The guard screamed and disintegrated.
It was then that the lead vampire heard the moment of victory. Outside, there was the sound of the gun jamming.
Being an older vampire, he knew what that meant. The heat of the rounds had ruined the firearm.
From the sound it was nothing more than a single remaining survivor. The survivor was forced to toss the gun to the side due to the heat.
The lead vampire sadistically giggled. Once again, luck was on its side.
He set down his firearm with care. He was going to enjoy this.
The lead vampire threw open the door. It screamed in victory, “What are you going to do now human?”
The vampire prepared to drain its target. It would take its time killing the hunter.
For a single second, it saw the woman in yellow clothing. The woman in yellow drew a pistol in a flash and aimed.
The shot went off. The lead vampire crumbled to ash.
Amelia answered, “I’ll use another pistol I brought.”
The detective moved inside looking for the paperwork she knew she would find there. There had been sacrifices and dark ritual magic performed here.
It took minutes to find them. There were maps, scrolls, and multiple loose-leaf pages.
The core issue was it was once again written in ancient Greek. This investigation was going to be a pain.
Amelia gathered the paperwork. She’d need an expert in ancient Greek and someone who could look at the text.
There were only two things she made out herself. This was due to seeing these specific clues often enough to remember reading them even in ancient Greek.
Amelia was clever enough to grasp phrasing. Retaining it a few years down the road would be a different story.
The first clue was a phrase that translated to, “The Five must not be allowed to assemble”. Amelia had no idea what the five meant.
The second clue was a date. It was from an ancient calendar. If translated into a modern calendar, it read as September 13th, 2022.
She thought through her contacts and knew exactly who she could refer to. She only needed to make a small stop first. After all, Amelia needed to buy some liquor for the bribe.
She flashed into an alley by a convenience store and made her purchase. Once outside and under the cover of darkness, she was ready to go.
The watch dialed the directions to ancient Athens. As she appeared in the ancient time, the watch rewired her English speech, reading, and writing to the local dialect.
She wouldn’t be able to take notes for this talk or record it. After all, it would be in a language she barely understood, once she returned home.
Thanks to the magic of the watch, she walked unnoticed through the ancient city. She stopped briefly before the statue of Athena; the Olympian who the city of Athens was named after.
Amelia looked upon the face of the goddess of Wisdom, Art, and War. On the statue, Athena posed with her sacred animal, the Owl.
Athena was a figure that had consistently aided mankind. She was the one from several stories that had interacted and assisted the Greek Heroes Perseus, Heracles, and Odysseus.
According to Myth, her owl was said to have been a princess on the island of Lesbos named Nyctimene. Athena had sheltered her after she had been abused in unmentionable ways by her own father.
In thanks, the owl became the guardian and companion of the Olympian. That was of course one of the most common stories of the Myth.
There were of course conflicting stories of Nyctimene. Some even cast her as a villain who wronged her father. As with many of the old stories, many tellers may have distorted the basis of the story beyond comprehension long ago.
Amelia got back to the task at hand. She was about to hand slow poison to someone who would be fated to die of something much stronger.
She couldn’t allow herself to be melancholy or lost in thought. She needed a translation.
No, she needed more than just translation. She also needed the perspective of an ancient nonlinear thinker to see if there were any gaps in her assumptions.
Magic always had unseen nuances. Modern thinking didn’t reason in its metaphysics anymore.
That said, it would also be good for Amelia to visit a friend. She needed someone to talk to after all the crap she’d been through.
It would be good to see the old man. It was time to talk to Socrates again…
The Crossroad of Dreams
Tokyo, Japan
November 2, 2019
"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream." -C.S. Lewis
"Often when you think you're at the end of something, you're at the beginning of something else." -Fred Rogers
There were no adventurer guilds. There was no obvious danger to the world.
There were no dragons nor demons to slay. There was no treasure to find nor bounties to hunt. Cutting even evil people down with swords was very illegal in both Austria and Japan, thus the Phoenix had to adapt.
For the first time in thousands of years Takanashi Kiara had to work normal jobs just to get by. She had quested from Austria to the capital of Japan just as she was instructed by the celestial in her last life.
Once there, the Phoenix Gajin had become a non-Japanese, idol in Japan. She sang and danced.
Kiara had learned public relations and worked with fans. She had already become fluent in Japanese, German, and English.
She lived under glittering lights and worked with the other members of her idol group for years. The girls she worked with pushed themselves for long hours.
They worked on their professional images. They each lived extremely regulated lives as they chased the dream of reaching for the highest stars of the entertainment life in Japan.
Kiara's group had singles on the radio and many fans. There were dazzling shows that became memories that she would never forget.
With her idol group, she forged friendships that had seemed like they would never end. Unfortunately, these bonds began to fray under pressure and the weight of dreams never completely achieved.
The girls she had loved like sisters were human. Age became the unstoppable anchor that had limited the time they had together.
Far too soon, the time came when they were no longer a new group on the rise. The time came when they were no longer a group in their stride.
There came a point where they were in decline. They felt the pressure from newer, younger groups who were reaching even higher levels of popularity.
Part of the fate of an idol group was luck. Kiara’s group had been luckier than many.
That said, in the moment, it’s hard not to be jealous of those whose luck passed you by. All the girls had given their all to try and make it to the most dazzling heights of fame.
Years had flown by. Before she knew it, it was a beautiful dream that came to a bittersweet end.
The idol group had dissolved. Within a month, the company's idol dorms that had been her home for years would expect her to move out.
She had a nest egg of money. Knowing how fickle jobs can be, as a former guild leader, she had always prepared for the worst.
Not everyone in her group had been as disciplined. Now, the contract with her agency had expired for all of them.
Kiara soon found herself as the last member of her group in Tokyo. The loneliness in that was something the Phoenix wasn't used too.
The other girls had gone to family in other parts of Japan. It was harder watching them leave one by one, than Kiara had anticipated.
Unlike in war, it was nice to see those she cared about retire from a career. That said, she felt surrounded by the little things that used to be.
There were favorite idol posters. There were favorite parts of idol merchandise she had collected. There were memories of friends she would likely never see again.
In her melancholy, she had gone somewhere her manager wouldn’t let her go, under her strictly controlled time and diet. She went to a local fast-food restaurant.
It was an American place for fried chicken. The Phoenix was eating something known as original recipe.
This place known as Kentucky Fried Chicken had a magical seasonal meaning in Japan. A genius advertiser had convinced the people of Japan that KFC was something people in America ate for Christmas.
No, that was not completely true, “Kentucky is Christmas” was not just a thing to eat. For the Japanese, it was a celebration of a foreign non-religious holiday that many people enjoyed.
Three million six hundred thousand Japanese families sat down to eat this every year. Kentucky Christmas was a huge part of how Japan was KFC’s third largest global market. It was also a third of the chain’s yearly sales.
It even had romantic connotations. A famous actress had recently dumped a fellow movie star, because the nonromantic man had not thought enough of her to reserve this holiday meal, that with two KFC stores in Tokyo had even included with wine.
It’s not that the meal was expensive. It’s that the meal was hard to get. The meal required the forethought for reservations around a month in advance for the premium menu.
Kiara sat enjoying her meal and fantasied about what it would be like to own a restaurant like this. As she did so, she remembered an Elven fried chicken recipe she had enjoyed in her last life.
She remembered it. The ingredients were here on earth, both the oils and the spices.
It was a matter of how you prepared it. She sat dreamily remembering the recipe and the lady who used to make it for her.
The memory of that world and Angelica’s face could still bring a smile to her face. She thought of naming a restaurant after her lost love, but decided that would be something that Angelica would hate as an idea.
The last real love of her life was an introvert. Her name being used seemed disrespectful to her memory, as Angelica truly loved her anonymity.
A second name popped in her head, Kiara Fried Phoenix. She even liked the initials, KFP.
There was a humor to it. With the word Phoenix, there was a little bit of magical spark to it as well.
Kiara finished her meal and went back out into the increasingly chilly streets of Tokyo. It was a fleeting thought.
How could she ever do it? There would be investors, employees, building location costs, advertising, and ten thousand other small details.
She was a former idol with a small nest egg of money. That little dream seemed impossible to make real…
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