The Dungeon Heart was a construct created by the dark gods of this world, a corrupt mana engine providing limited power but unlimited energy, the bastard offspring of an S2 Engine and a demonic subwoofer. By seeding Hearts throughout the tunnels that lay underneath the kingdoms of light, the gods of evil ravaged the countryside through both the malicious actions of Dungeon Keepers and the despoiling thaumic exhaust of the Hearts themselves. A Heart took a person’s soul and mana reservoir, enhancing the latter exponentially even as it tossed the former into the abyss.
On the other hand, Sailor Mercury was a Planetary Sailor Senshi, a mage whose soul was also quite literally the soul of an entire planet. Granted, it was one of the smaller planets in that system, but it was still more than three hundred sextillion kilograms of dense rock, and its soul was similarly cosmic in proportions. As Ami’s Sailor Crystal fused with the Heart, the effect was similar to attempting to blacken the Arctic Ocean with a small bottle of ink.
The Heart wouldn’t be sending Ami’s soul to its builders any time soon, but it could influence the inner workings of that supernatural colossus. The vast majority of its new mistress’s power and knowledge was locked behind an enormous and incredibly intricate seal. Had the Heart a human intellect, it might have admired the mystical craftsmanship needed to create something so huge and yet so incredibly elaborate and beautiful in each and every detail. Of course, the Heart wasn’t even sentient in most senses of the word, and all it saw was an obstacle to greater power for its mistress. This was, of course, unacceptable, and the Heart tore through the seal like a tireless and very patient bull in Larry’s Discount China Warehouse.
The Horned Reaper, still frozen solid, was unaware of these transcendental goings-on. Thus, when the Heart dissolved one of the seal’s lynchpins with all the grace and delicacy of a myopic rhinoceros, all he saw was the gods-damned chit of a girl explode in a flash of blue that would have left a mortal without eyes. ‘Well,’ he thought grumpily, ‘that was anticlimactic.’
Ami floated. Her consciousness was temporarily without awareness of time, space, or much of anything. Eventually, though when exactly would difficult to say, she awoke. The first thing she noticed was that her surroundings were nothing but a dense fog that seemed to stretch for eternity, making her wonder if this is what it was like to be on the receiving end of a Shabon Spray.
The second thing she noticed was that she was naked.
The third thing she noticed, while curled into a fetal position, was that her body was featureless and softly glowing blue, as though she were wearing some sort of luminescent body sock. ‘This is very strange…’ She paused for a moment, considering the odd harmonics of her voice. It was as though someone had recorded what she’d said and then played it back several times at once, all slightly out of sync.
“The meetings of gods can be strange indeed, child.”
Ami turned to the new voice, bearing similar reverb. The speaker was dressed in what the girl thought of as archetypical wizard’s robes, complete with the star-and-moon motif. She paused for a moment, then realized that the motif was in fact actual stars and rocky bodies. Indeed, this being seemed to have used the fabric of time and space in place of, say, wool.
If she seemed unusually focused on this celestial garment, it was because the speaker was several hundred times larger than she was, and she couldn’t see much else besides it. Apparently realizing this, the figure quickly shrank to a more manageable size, stopping at roughly twice the girl’s height. Ami could now see that this was a man, and his face continued the theme of “wizard archetype,” including long white beard and pointy hat, the latter composed of more skystuff. Less common traits included his rather youthful face, contrasting strangely with the beard, and his blue skin tone. He cleared his throat. “Sorry about that. Scaling can be awkward at first during purely mental interaction.”
“What’s going on?” asked Ami, “And where are my clothes?”
The wizardly figure raised a snowy eyebrow. “Why bother? It’s not like you have anything to show at the moment.” Icy silence followed this remark, as Ami felt both embarrassed and vaguely insulted.
“Don’t mind him, dear. He means well, but he can a bit of an ass at times.”
Another figure appeared, this one walking towards the others despite the clear absence of anything remotely resembling a surface. This one was female. Rather obviously female. Clad-in-long-hair-and-a-smile female. Granted, the hair was ivy and matched the siding along with the drapes, but the point stood and, unlike Ami, she bore all the associated topography. The newcomer smirked at the obvious discomfort of both azure entities, then sighed dramatically. “Honestly. Prudes, the both of you. You’d at least think the short skirts and all would make the girl less sensitive to this sort of thing.” With a benign roll of her eyes, the verdant woman manifested a gown of more plant life. “Happy now?”
“Quite.” The blue mage cleared his throat again and turned to Ami. “In any case, you’re probably wondering why—“
“Bloody ‘ell! Dinnae tell me Ah got ‘ere after ye made ‘er get dressed!”
Even at their double-normal scale, this third being stood a head above either of the others. Between his brick red skin, bloodstained armor, and numerous nasty objects clearly designed for the exclusive purpose of causing harm to others, he reminded Ami far too much of the psychotic youma she had frozen shortly before she left the physical world. The Scottish accent that, to her ears, was rendering his Japanese next to incomprehensible was just icing on an unpleasant cake.
The wizard sighed. “Could we discuss this later? There are more important matters at hand.”
“Oh, aye, but who said Ah could nae enjoy meself a’ th’ same time?”
“There are so many ways that sentence could be misinterpreted…”
“Aren’t you two forgetting someone?”
The two male figures looked at their female counterpart for a moment, both unsure to whom she was referring. A single pointed finger brought their attention to Ami, still sitting rather awkwardly and attempting to manifest clothing. She had managed to achieve a sort of blurring about her body, as though a pack of rogue censors had passed through the area.
The russet man gave a face-splitting grin. “Aye, th’ wee one! Tis a fine thing ye came when ye did, lass. We need yer help somethin’ awful, we do.”
‘Could one of you please tell me what’s going on?’ Ami said desperately.
“Of course,” replied the wizard. “We are among the gods of this world.”
“Though ye wouldn’ know it from lookin’,” groused his armored companion.
“When you claimed that Dungeon Heart,” continued the lady in green, “something very special happened. Something unprecedented.”
‘What?’
“You did not fall,” the wizard-god said plainly. “You bear so much latent power that the Heart’s attempts to drag your soul into the Underworld actually pulled it out of the jurisdiction of its fell masters.”
“But,” noted the plant-goddess, “it still wasn’t spiritually elevated enough to fall under the sway of the gods of light.”
“An’ tha; means yer Heart is gettin’ it’s power from us,” concluded the warrior-god.
‘So…you are neither good nor evil?’
The viridian woman shrugged. “We go both ways.”
“Ye migh’ say tha’ we used tae ‘ave a three-party system,” added the crimson man. “Ye had th’ good, th’ bad, an’ those of us who thought, ‘Aye, tis all well an’ good, but which of ye’s gonna be puttin’ bread on th’ table then?’”
“Or, in a less…provincial sense, those who express neutrality towards a good-evil dichotomy.” The ocean-tinted man frowned. “Sadly, between the influences of the Dungeon Keepers and the Blessed Lords, people seem to have forgotten that there exists a middle path.”
“And as both spread that influence more and more, eventually that path won’t exist.” The dryad-like goddess sighed. "Truth be told, we're already real far down that particular road."
The warrior placed an oversized but congenial hand on Ami’s shoulder. “Tha’s where you come in, lass. With you actin’ fer us in the world a’ large, we’ll ‘ave a toehold. From there, all ye need to do is kick arse ‘til people remember tha’ ye ‘ave more choices in life than bein’ a perfect li’l angel wha’ eats moonbeams an’ shites rainbows or bein’ a horrible monster wha’ eats babies an’ shites cheesy monologues.”
As the other deities pondered the wisdom and sentence structure of this statement, Ami asked a rather important question. ‘So what are your names?’
“Names are a precious, powerful thing among gods, child,” the wizard replied sternly. “Though I suppose pseudonyms would be helpful. Though we are a trinity not of choice but of necessity, it would still be appropriate to refer to us in such a manner. I am Logos.”
“I am Farore.”
“Ah’m Curly Joe.”
After a brief, awkward pause, "Farore" gave a nervous chuckle. “We never did decide on which trinity, did we?”
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(Posted Tue, 24 Nov 2009 01:24)
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