Novels2Search

Prologues

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Sephiroth

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Cloud Strife's lifeless eyes filled his vision.

That impossibly painful sight, his best friend in the world, unmoving, bloodstained and lifeless in his lap, broke him.

Seph Yroth screamed, and for the first time in his life, gave in to his darker urges. Always, he had been the perfect soldier, a Sword Mage unmatched, trained by the nation of Shinra to be the best. A magical warrior without peer.

A super soldier.

With his rage unbound, the poor souls that shared that nameless frozen battlefield with him got to experience his rage first hand. The last sight they saw amidst the chaos of war, was a figure rising into the air upon a single black wing, a burning sword with green flames in his hand.

An unseen and malevolent force urged Seph to embrace his fury and his loss, and he did so. The surrounding snowfield was covered with fire and magical chaos, and Seph did not stop slashing and burning until he was the only one still standing. At that point, he fell on his back, and passed out.

The world was white.

Seph Yroth didn't know how long it had been so. He'd been staring at the sky so long, time stopped mattering. Much, seemed not to matter in the wake of Cloud's death. The unnaturally beautiful man, a Shadar Kai with long white hair, aesthetically perfect and objectively beautiful features, and an all too Human pale tan skin tone, sat up from lying on his back, the stench of the battlefield finally overpowering his nose as he looked upon the carnage of his latest battle, and found that he was weeping. Or had been, at some point. The tears were frozen on his face, but they started anew as he realized an awful truth. He didn't even know where Cloud’s body even was, anymore. Trying to find him now, would be impossible.

Bodies, in various kinds of armor, littered the entire field. Friend, foe, it hadn't mattered to Seph. They had all died for taking Cloud from him. He returned from the conflict alone, to their camp just north of Winterknell's wall, and upon rendezvousing with a surviving unit of soldiers from his home nation of Shinra to the west of the wintry hellscape he now inhabited, the men treated him like a hero. They sang his praises, of his ferocity with a blade. They might have gone all night, if he hadn't spoken a single word.

"Why?"

The men stopped, and stared at their unnaturally beautiful Hero as silence settled over the campfire. "Why what, Lord Seph?" One of the peasant conscripts lucky enough to survive, answered.

"Why did all of our forces die...what killed the enemy, in the end? Why are we victorious?"

Silence reigned, and then one of the older soldiers said, "It was a...spell, or something. From the Mages. Had to be. But it went awry. Whatever they tried to do...that fire...it burned us, too. Many wounded have severe burns. Many others…just burnt up completely"

Seph went quiet then, for about a solid half minute, before he rose suddenly with unnatural grace. "I need a drink." He muttered, and then headed into the city itself. There were no officers left to stop him. Shinra's command structure had also been murdered. By him. Despite what the soldiers thought, he knew it was a matter of time before his dark deed was revealed, but he no longer found any fucks to give, and thus, he turned to drowning his blood soaked memories in alcohol.

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Avatar Yaang

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"Your Duel in the Heavens is a twenty two? You hit!"

"That'll be...forty six damage, total." The platinum scaled Eastern Dragonborn said, as he rolled several small black and white dice, before the, arguably, most powerful being in existence.

Master Saitama, the One Punch Monk, founder of the Way of the Weaboo, and renowned for his immortal and unmatched power which could and had rivaled even Gods, sat before him, with an array of paper, dice, and a long foldable screen that hid whatever he was rolling from Yaang's vision. Saitama was completely bald, and had rather generic features, for a Human.

As much as Saitama loved a good fight, in his ‘old age’ as he called it, he preferred running one-shot D&D campaigns for his students, every single one of whom had been taught to respect the chaotic power of dice. Master Saitama lived his life by the dice, as they even decided on where he traveled. The trick was having enough patience to get him to roll them for one’s own journey. A trick only achieved by playing D&D. Yaang assumed those letters had some meaning or importance, but every single time he or one of his fellow disciples had asked about it, Saitama avoided answering the question. To Yaang, he had once promised, that the young Dragonborn would indeed one day learn what they stood for. That would be the day that he ceased.

Not dead, mind you, his exact words had been that all Yaang was would cease to be, and yet Saitama did not foresee death for him. Many close calls with it, but whatever fate he foresaw, was not death. Arguably, it was worse, but Yaang didn’t let it bother him. In the privacy of his mind, he thought Saitama’s god tier power had cracked his mind a little bit, and he took the master’s predictions with a grain of salt.

“Forty six damage!?” Saitama said, looking slowly at the enemy’s health.

Yaang nodded. “And thanks to my feat, I can split that among multiple enemies.”

Saitama threw his hands up. “You massacre them! The entire bandit camp can’t possibly stand before your power.”

Yaang frowned. “I don’t want to kill all of them…”

Saitama raised a hairless eyebrow at him. “Okaaay, then who are you killing, Yaang?”

Yaang shrugged. “Y’know…the bad…bandits. Surely they’re not all evil?”

Saitama chuckled, and sighed. “Alright. You turn most of the smelly, blood-stained murderers to paste, but the two weaklings who beg you for their lives, you decide to spare, in your infinite mercy. Not very Bahamut’s Fist of you, but it’s your choice.”

Yaang sighed. “Surely even Bahamut can find pity for the pitiful, no? Anyway. I loot the bodies. Search the tents. The usual.”

“Give me an…investigation roll.”

“Investigationnnn……” Yaang said, staring at his sheet with his abilities, and their modifiers.

Saitama glanced at his sheet, and then nodded. “Right, you’re still on the fourth edition. Uhh. Just roll the D twenty, and add your Int.”

“Alright…that’s...twenty five.”

Saitama stared at him, and then just nodded, muttering, “Yep. …high level character….mod the damn DCs…right. You find…three hundred and fifty gold, from across the bodies, and some…” He rolled several dice at once. “Winged Boots.”

“Aww yes!” Yaang cheered. “I put on the boots! Can I fly!?”

“You strap on the, slightly, blood covered boots, and encourage them to fly. It seems like they need a new activation word, for a new wearer.”

Yaang pondered for a moment, then shouted, “Yip-yip!”

Saitama nodded. “And with a Yip-yip, you soar into the air, not quite how you eventually wanted, with actual wings, but it’s a solid start. And on that note, we’ll call it, cause it’s been…yea, about four hours.”

Yaang nodded, having been aware of every second. He liked parts of D&D, but he was practically bouncing where he sat, after four hours. “So uhh, where do I go next, Master?”

“Oh, right.” Saitama paused in putting his shit away, and rolled a golden twenty sided dice, whose triangles were outlined in red. He rolled a few more, of varying shapes, but the same color scheme, and then looked at Yaang with a bored expression, now that D&D was over. “Winterknell.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

From where they were in the mountainous Northern Wastes, which were just teeming with undead, Winterknell was south, technically on the other side of the planet from where Yaang had come from. But, Master Saitama’s rolls were always accurate. If he wanted to grow stronger and walk his own path, free of the myriad forces trying to control or ‘acquire’ a platinum-scaled Dragonborn like him, he needed to go to Winterknell.

“I’ll uhh, take your sheet. Like the others, you’re being upgraded to a kind of ‘version four point five’ as I call it. It kinda takes the best of both worlds from four and five and smashes them together. And it works! Most of the time…”

“Alright. Until next time, Master.” Yaang said, handing over everything that was related to playing the game. Saitama kept all of his pupil’s things, just so they didn’t get lost or damaged on the road. Using his latent Psionic power, Saitama punched a small hole into a pocket plane dimension, and stored everything related to D&D in there, where it floated in a nerdy heap. It was an entirely blank void of a plane, but his stuff was always where he left it, and it wasn’t too hard to open a small, temporary gap to this plane. For the One Punch Monk, anyway. Psionic power surrounded his hands as he yanked reality closed again, checked its integrity, and then continued on his own path. He smirked, as he rolled his dice.

It seemed he would be meeting with Jotaro next.

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Xerex

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The soft strumming of a lute filled the mountain cavern, sitting in the southern part of the Stormsummit mountains. Next, came the sound of a lute. Then some test drumming. Instrument by instrument, the brass scaled Dragonborn bard known as Xerex tested his traveling band’s worth of instruments, and then, after a solid hour of tuning and lubricating, made his way to the center chamber of the draconic lair.

His master, the Ancient Brass Dragon, Anachronos, was nowhere to be found. There was only Grimbul, the irritating Kobold that the merciful dragon had decided to spare instead of splatter. He looked up at Xerex, as he came closer. Grimbul was more sagging skin than anything else. Wiry gray hair grew from his vaguely draconian ears, and atop his head was a burning candle, as well as years worth of other, long burnt candles that formed a kind of waxy helmet. He was old for a Kobold, but nobody actually knew how long the tiny creatures lived for. Most died long before they reached old age.

He pointed a gnarled finger at Xerex as the metallic Dragonborn came closer. “You no take-”

“I don’t want your gross candle.” Xerex interrupted. “Where is Anachronos?”

The Kobold seemed far too gleeful as he said, “Gone. Gone, gone! Gone for some time. Not coming back…heheh. Said you should leave. Journey. Grow.” Grimbul scowled at him. “More likely, become crow food. Heheh. Good riddance!”

The Kobold scampered off then, and after some searching, Xerex found a note for him that essentially said exactly what Grimbul had. Anachronos was busy, gone, and he should resume traveling again. Irritated, Xerex made his way to the dragon’s hoard, a part of the cavern open only to those with brass scales, and started looking through his master’s spells. If he was going on the road, he was going armed.

He found a bunch of scrolls, and started to sort through them. “Prestidigitation…keep. Mage Hand…already have it… have it, have it, have it, the bard muttered before finding something of worth, and low level enough to use. “Scanlan’s Hand…nothing else, just Scanlan’s Hand…all right then. Everything else will beyond his current level anyway. Though he was a bard at his core, Xerex had sorcerous blood, and aspired to one day become a proper dragon, through sorcerer magic and apprenticeship to a good, or more accurately lawfully neutral, metallic dragon.

Xerex left the lair, and pointed at an open area, as he spoke the incantation for Scanlan’s Hand, which was just him, essentially singing the words ‘Scanlan’s Hand’ in a high key. It took a minute to hit the note high enough, but eventually, a giant sparkling purple hand manifested. Xerex thought it felt like Mage Hand, but bigger, which was good, because his dexterity with Mage Hand was akin to a thief’s. “I wonder if I can ride on this…”

The giant sparkling hand gave him a thumbs up, seemingly on its own. Xerex practically leapt in the air when it did so. “Are…are you partially sentient?” The thumbs up didn’t change, and Xerex nodded, keeping that in mind as he jumped into the hand’s palm, and let out a whoop as they flew into the air. He decided to do a proper world tour from the west to the far east, and on his map, the westernmost town was Winterknell.

Xerex knew almost nothing about it, other than it was cold, and had undead problems, but that was true of every northern city on the planet. With almost no preparation, Xerex flew on a spell he didn’t know the duration of across an ocean. Luckily for him, it was tied to his own energy and would exist as long as he concentrated on it. He also had enough rations to survive, thus, as he always did, he managed to survive a potentially perilous journey on little more than luck.

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Monkey D. Luffy

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“Uuughhh! It’s so cold!” Monkey D. Luffy, aspiring pirate king, shouted loudly, drawing looks from the locals. The older teen was clad in an unwanted but necessary leather duster, and for some reason, he’d put his red torn sleeve shirt over the duster. It did not work, at all, but it kept the monk warm enough to not become brittle and break, which was a real danger for him. Being literally made of rubber, after pranking the wrong old woman as a snot nosed youngster and being cursed with a rubber body, Luffy had made it work to his advantage.

Unfortunately, his loud mouth had mentioned that he was going to be King of the Pirates, so the Hag had cursed him again, to be unable to swim, as well. Despite more than six feet of water being deadly to him, Luffy’s dream remained unchanged. “What are we even doing here guys? This is no place for a Pirate!”

His ‘crew’ had met up with him after he’d taken a ferry from Straw Hat Isle to Piravia, and after exactly one voyage with Luffy on the incredibly deadly Oceanus Tenebrae, they’d parked their ship on the continent's western coast, and had brought him inland, to Winterknell. His Captain for this voyage, a grizzled living stereotype of a pirate who went by ‘Greg’ smacked the teen’s straw hatted head.

“Stop advertising that we’re Pirates ye bloody fool. Nobody expects tae see Pirates this far inland unless ye an’ yer giant fecking mouth give us away!”

Another of the crew, a far less hygienic stereotype that called himself Jack, put a grimy arm around Luffy. “Tell ye wot, lad. Go an’ warm up a table fer us at tha pub, ya? We’ll handle the cold an’ such. It aint no climate fer a rubber man.”

Slightly less enthusiastic, but eager to get out of the cold, Luffy made his way to the Frosted Flagon, and grabbed a table. As the hours ticked by, the bar became more and more crowded, and Luffy’s ability to reserve a seat shrank, until the bearded barkeep just told him to move. Deciding to check on his crew, he learned from the gate guards that they’d already left the city, in a hurry.

As fast as his freezing rubber legs could carry him, Luffy made his way to the stormy seaside of the Oceanus Tenebrae, known to those who sailed it (and couldn’t pronounce the Elvish name) as the Dark Ocean, so named because sailing it was almost always a death sentence. Luffy wanted to one day punch it clean of the massive monsters that lived there, and had trained with Master Saitama to make that dream a reality, but as he reached the edge of the cliffs they’d anchored near, he saw the ship sailing away in the distance. Seeing his straw hat and red shirt, his former crew laughed raucously and waved at him, but made no move to head back to him.

Luffy tried stretching his arms, but they were too cold and threatened to snap. He stood there, the wind howling, stranded and holding his straw hat tight to his head. Just as he was about to turn away, massive tentacles rose up from the Oceanus Tenebrae, as it lived up to its name. Luffy watched in horror as they utterly demolished the ship, and everything on it. When the brutal display was done, and the tentacles seemed to shift towards him, Luffy turned, muttering, “Good riddance…” to the crew that had left him in the shithole that was Winterknell. He completely ignored the single childish tear that fell from his cheek as he remembered the good times he’d had with the crew.

They had been rough, but they were with him. Or had been, anyway. They’d agreed to sail together, and to Luffy that made them as good as family, though, it seemed that they hadn’t felt the same. He headed back to the Frosted Flagon to get a fresh drink, which was about all he could afford.

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‘Stumbledore’

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The office of Albus P. Stumbledore was a magical marvel.

Ripe with magic items from across Gaia’s many ages, it was a trove of knowledge, as well. Even the picture frames were magical, having somehow been granted sentience. Great moments from across history lined each wall. The Splitting of Io. The opening of the Eternity Gate, a physically and magically manifested doorway to the divine realms of the Gods. Son Goku, and his epic but foolishly defiant battle in the seven Heavens.

Currently, after their epic falling out at the dawn of time, there were seven Heavens, and nine Hells, each ruled by a single God.

Bahamut, Pelor, Mystra, Corellon, The Raven Queen, Tymora, and Moradin ruled as the ‘good’ deities, and were generally uniformly worshiped across the world.

Asmodeus, Tiamat, Bane, Lolth, Gruumsh, Cyric, Torog, and Orcus ruled in the hells, but the final dark god was a total mystery, even all the knowledgeable Professor knew about him was that his followers gathered in black pyramids, and were utterly, incurably, insane. And not ‘hearing the voices of Gods’ insane, proper ‘we’re going to snuff out all existence, and we’re okay with that’ insanity. Even Asmodeus would take a contract over total obliteration. The good pantheon was arrayed in their classic, stylistic images on the top of Stumbledore’s office, namely across the arched ceiling, with a portion given to each.

The bottom of his study was where the hated rulers of the Hells were depicted, slavering, burning, in chains, or just generally looking unpleasant. There was however, something new marring their masterful and unnerving depictions.

The lifeblood of Albus Stumbledore himself, pooling across the smirking visage of the Lord of the Nine Hells burned into the memory of his murderer, a former student of his who once was known as Tom.

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Some Time Later...

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The office of Albus P. Stumbledore was a crime scene.

The only evidence of the crime, the unnervingly spread out pool of blood, too much to have come from a still living person, and eventually identified as belonging to Stumbledore himself. It had eventually pooled to cover all eight of the leering, evil, demonic visages that covered the office floor. The ninth, represented by a shadowy pyramid, had oddly enough remained blood free, as if whoever had purposefully spread it to cover the dark Gods avoided that one on purpose.

Of the Headmaster, there was no sign, only rumors that he’d been seen fleeing Fogwarts, and departing into the wilds of the Shadowfell. The Headmaster's store of magical scrolls and ink and paper enough to copy them had also been noted missing, along with quite a few magical artifacts: an artifact chess set, all of the Headmaster’s robes, and anything that could’ve been used as a wand or magical focus had been cleaned out. Even the Reins of Summoning, a gift given to the Professor after he defeated the dark sorcerer Grindelwald, had been stolen. Thankfully, it wouldn’t be too difficult to find the pegasus they summoned within the Shadowfel.

Unfortunately for the school authorities, the thief in question was not planning on staying in the Shadowfell. It turned out that crime was actually quite easy to commit, across multiple planes and realities. The man who murdered the Headmaster now assumed his identity, and thus, miles from the grounds of Fogwarts and well into their Death Forest, which was naturally just a short jaunt from school grounds, he used the Scroll of Plane Shift, and returned to the Prime Material Plane.

Immediately, he felt cold, and looking around, he realized he’d manifested in front of a tavern of some kind. The Frosted Flagon. Figuring that was better than nothing, the seemingly aged wizard entered the establishment, his lawful pursuers easily shaken by the power of jumping across Planes.

The interior of the tavern was nothing special. A downright beautiful man with long white hair and a long sharp sword was taking up the bar with his aura. A brass scaled Dragonborn bard was readying for a set presumably, and chatting with yet another Dragonborn, this one clearly from the far east, judging by his lanky, serpentine form. His scales were silver, at least to the wizard’s eyes, which finally landed on the only table with open seating, one occupied by a depressed, straw hatted teen who saw him sit, glanced the wizard's way, and then left for the bar. Fine with that, ‘Stumbledore’ began properly Identifying and examining his ill gotten goods, amidst the revelry of the tavern.

More than the artifacts and magic items though, he valued the large black tome the most. With a whispered Knock spell, it opened, and at last, the murderous magician found the information he’d been seeking. Namely, details and potential information on the location of three legendary magical artifacts: The Wand of Instant Death, The Raven Queen’s Shroud, and the Stone of Resurrection.

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