Author's note
"Hello everyone! This is my first story here on FanFiction. I hope you like it. PS: I'm not a native speaker and only 13 years old, so don't blame me for any mistakes in the grammar."
-Me, a lot of time ago.
So I'm back-ish, still dunno if I'm ever gonna finish this.
EDIT: Nope.
EDIT EDIT: Wow I did
THE BOOK OF DOTA 2 LORES
Chapter 1 - Death Prophet
It was a beautiful morning. A red sun rose in the east and woke Mother Nature. Birds were releasing their first chirps and squirrels popped out of their holes to find food. Fall must've been right around the corner, as there had already fallen some leaves, and I heard a ticking sound on the roof. Could've been rain, could've been pine cones falling from trees. The sun was shining through the curtains and illuminated my eyelids. It looked as though it was happily staring at me with a frolic face. I didn't like it. I didn't have the mood for it. As always. I wasn't supposed to be happy. And that was exactly what I was doing. I rose from my bed and dressed in my worn veil. I looked out of the window, and stared at the scenery. I couldn't make up what I was actually looking at. I was just standing there, not being able to take the view in because I was deep in thought... about... well, nothing. Then, I heard someone knocking at the door. Several knocks. "Krobelus?" said a voice from behind the door. "Coming!" I said, closing the curtain. I wondered who was at my door at this time. It must've been urgent.
I opened the door, and saw a rather portly man with a hardwood scepter. He had a derby and a fine mustache. His ink black jacket contrasted with the sweeter, quieter brown color of his satin pants. His shoes had an abstract tip on them facing upwards, which gave a little bit of an impression of jester shoes.
He began to talk: "Good morning, Death Prophet. I have come to ask for an offer. The people say they don't have money to pay taxes, but I feel like I'm being fooled. They are withholding something. Can you give me some sort of spell to pull out every last bit of them?" I knew this man. It was the mayor. Known for his pride, feared for his greed. That is why I liked him. Plus, he wasn't someone to be feared for me, because as a Death Prophet, no one had even dared to try asking me if I wanted to pay taxes. As if.
I promised him great wealth, and gave him a bottle and a piece of paper. To be perfectly honest, to this day I still don't know what I gave him. Maybe it was a love bottle and an explosion spell. Heck, it could've been instant noodles and a groceries list.
Maybe I didn't know because I wasn't really paying attention to what I was doing or what I was saying. Instead I was thinking about my weekly suicide. This might sound mad and impossible, but I'll explain. As a Death Prophet, I've always tried to become one with the dead. To reveal its secrets. But it didn't want me to know, it felt like. Every time I died, and every time I came back, I felt a little more dead. Spirits followed me, my blood thinned, My skin wore and became more and more neglected at time went on.
The man, whose name apparently was George Jacobs - beforehand I just knew him as 'The Mayor' - greeted me and walked away with a very determined walk, as if thousand cameras were looking at him and he had to look impressive. I closed the door and walked back to the living room. My mind tried to persuade me to grab the knife in the drawer next to me, but I couldn't. I struggled and hesitated and dropped on a chair at last, covering my eyes with my hands. I knew I'd have to, but I also knew the pain. I had felt it before, multiple times. The pain hit me again as I thought about it.
About half an hour I stood up and, with a lot of struggle, grabbed the knife and positioned the sharp point of it at my abdomen. All of my instincts began to work against me and drove me mad, because a person doesn't commit suicide as easy as it sounds. I managed to convince myself and pushed the knife into my stomach as hard as I could. My green blood sprayed across the room, a stabbing pain flowed through my entire body. I yanked it in even harder, to finish it as soon as possible. I screamed out in pain. A stream, no a river of blood rained onto the ground. I sank through my knees. My face landed with a smack on the ground, which felt like a finishing blow. My spirit came out of my body and began her journey to the Dead's realm. After what felt like an hour, I entered the realm and fell on my face again, slightly burning it this time. When I stood up, I saw the Death Lord himself: Thunder Evillian. And I can tell you: my God, is he a dipshit.
"Oh hello there! Isn't that my good old friend Krobelus. I've missed you, sweetie."
"Yeah, right. Do we get to business or what?" I snarl.
"Oh, why do I even bother debating with you. You know you won't be able to go, just get back to your job!"
"But I've gotta know. Look behind the veil. Discover my fate."
"You've been doing that for far too long now. And all that time you've known that I won't give you clues. This is not a game, Krobelus."
"But what would you do? Look, I haven't enjoyed a single moment of it, but the ultimate goal will always keep me trying. Wouldn't you go find your fate if it didn't find you?"
"You're not getting in."
I heard his voice getting a little unsure and less confident. This is my chance, I thought.
"What would you do?"
"Just get back to work! I'm not warning you twice!"
"Don't dodge the question! I'm not warning you twice!" I giggled.
He got even angrier, pointing at me with his scepter. It had a demon carved in the wood, which looked just as angry at me as he did.
"This is your last chance! Leave, now, or face the consequences!"
The demon's eyes started glowing red and I took a step back.
"Let me show you what I can really do with my powers. I am the Lord of Death! Do you even know who you're facing?"
I might have hallucinated it, but it looked like he was growing. Two, no, maybe even three feet. His dark eyebrows almost entirely covered his eyes. I had never seen him like this.
Then, it happened. With a loud roar he swung his scepter forth. A red bolt of lightning blasted from the demon's mouth. With a loud rumble, it lit the dark clouds of the Dark Realm with a red flare. About two seconds later, It blasted down to the ground, with twice the speed and power. It struck me right in the head. For the second time that day, I couldn't trust my knees anymore, and I collapsed to the ground. I just saw Thunder seating himself back on his throne, as I went unconscious.
I woke up on a small pinnace. I tried to look around, but my stiff neck refused to. I managed to pull myself up and sit in the boat. An old man with and a golden tooth and straggly curls looked away from his helm and began to talk:
"Oh, look at that, looks like she's awake."
"I think so," I said drowsy.
"So, how did the talk go this week?"
"Tell me about it."
"What did he do?"
"He struck me with some sort of red lightning. I think I angered him a bit."
"A bit? After he sent you on my boat, he ordered to double the guard. I don't think this week brought you any closer. More like a major setback."
"Oh, well. He's never liked me. My hopes of getting in while he is alive were slim anyway."
"Yeah, true."
We remained silent for a long, long time. I just stared over the endless sea of lava. The old man, whose name is Stock, is the skipper of this boat. This was the boat that usually brings dead people to the other side, but I always got taken to the opposite side, the 'living shore'. I've known Stock for a long time now, and we had a lot of conversations together, but this time, we just remained quiet. After roughly three hours of floating, Stock broke the silence:
"Look, sweetheart, an island at larboard."
"An island? What is that doing here? I've never seen it before."
"That's right, but I thought I'd bring you here, to cheer you up."
"Cheer me up? What's this island then?"
"It's the old Isle of Refuge. In former times, when we had another Lord, storms tended to rise above the seas. Sometimes, there would arise a lava tornado, which was incredibly dangerous. When that would happen, I'd navigate my passengers to this isle, to hide for the storm outside. Over the years, an entire village originated here, And nowadays, it is the most joyful place out here."
"Does Thunder know about it?"
"No. Our old Lord did, but he practically ignored it."
"So, there is no influence of him here?"
"Not at all."
"Neat! Let's go."
Stock set course to the island and about fifteen minutes later, we arrived on the beach. As I was stepping out of the boat and onto the white sand, I heard a loud rumble behind me. I looked up and saw a dark cloud with a hint of red in it. It took me one second to realize. Thunder had tracked us.
"Run! Into the forest, now!"
Stock looked up into the sky, and now he saw it too: He ran after me as quick as his old legs allowed him to. We both knew that running into the forest was a very bad idea, considering the foe we were facing, but at least it would give us cover from his sight. Ofcourse, neither of us knew if he had some magically advanced tracking system, but if he had, we would find out soon enough.
"Stock!"
"Yeah?"
"Where is the village? You've got to lead us there! It might be our only chance!"
"I don't know, the island seems... changed... in a very weird way. I can't recognise this part of the forest, although I should have been here several dozens of times. Besides, it seems so deserted... No one has picked us up, Atleast for what I have seen..."
"Yeah, I would've also expected someone to welcome us."
"I really don't hope that..."
"That what?"
"That the village..."
As Stock tried to finish his sentence, he stumbled over a root and fell flat on his face. A split second after that, I heard a loud rumble and a tree about 20 feet behind us collapsed in flames.
"Stock!" I cried. He couldn't have ever heard me, either because of his age or the loud background explosion. Besides, I didn't even know if he was still conscious.
I ran back to the spot where Stock had fallen, as another thunderstrike set a portion of the forest on fire. I dove on the ground, with my arms covering my face, not to get hit by the strike. When i felt like it was over, I immediately stood up and sat back next to Stock.
"Stock? Can you hear me?"
Nothing.
"Stock? Please respond!"
I turned Stock on his back, and saw the awful condition his face was in. A disgusting mix of mud, blood and tiny branches covered his face. I couldn't really tell if he was conscious or not. His eyelids and mouth were both shaking and desperately trying to stay open. Looking at his pupils, He didn't really seem conscious. They were staring at the sky as the eyes of dead people do. I grabbed his shoulders and tried to shake him awake. Slowly, life seemed to drain back into him, until he lifted his head and spoke to me:
"Krobelus?"
"Stock! Thank God you're alive. I thought I lost you."
"What is happening?" He looked around and saw the forest ablaze. As a response, another thunderstrike hit a few trees, a little further away this time.
"Well, remember that I told you I angered Thunder?"
"Myea?"
"Well, this seems to be his wrath. We've got to get out of this, right now."
Stock slowly stood up, and, with a somewhat slower pace than before, yet still decent enough, we continued to run to the village. His face must've hurt a lot, but he did a very good job at trying to ignore it and focusing on the main objective: getting to safety. We ran and ran until at one point Stock really couln't have it anymore. His face was soaked in his crimson blood, and it was dripping on the ground. So much, that you could almost see a clear track of where we walked, even thought the forest soil was almost entirely covered with leaves and twigs. As we were sitting down and trying to regain our normal breathing pace, I noticed something. I remained silent and listened carefully.
"Stock! Shh..."
"What is it?"
"The thunder... It stopped!"
"Really?"
"Yeah, I haven't heard anything in a while now."
"You're right! Did he leave?
"Probably..." I lied. That wasn't Thunder's nature. No, if Thunder was tracking something that was against his will, he would track it and destroy it until it begged for mercy at his own feet. Yet still I was confused. Where did he go? Since we'd gone into the forest we hadn't been able to see his intimidating 'cloud of doom'.
"Is he still circling around the spot where you fell?"
"I don't think so. If he saw me fall, he must've also seen us run along." He grasped the wound on his face again, remebering the immense pain.
"You never know..." I tried to give him some hope.
"No, I'm sure he still knows where we are. Besides, that spot is right there." He pointed into the direction we came from. "If he was still striking there, we would've heard it for sure."
"Then why hasn't he struck us yet? We are easy targets right now."
"Maybe he isn't trying to kill us... Just intimidate."
"Seems likely..." That wasn't lied. Thunder was annoying enough to only make my life a pain. If he kills me here, I'd go to the eternal underworld. He wouldn't want that. Asshole.
"Let's atleast get some rest while we have the time. We can find out where Thunder is later."
We both agreed on that, and tried to make ourselves as comfortable as possible next to a big rock. That way, we were able to get a bit of rest. Half an hour passed by. An hour. Another one. The longer the wait was, the more uncomfortable it made me feel.
"Stock?"
"Hmm?" He said sleepily.
"I think Thunder stopped tracking us. Do we just go to the village or what?"
"Yeah! Right! The village! I totally forgot about it!" He jumped up from his lying position, after which he collapsed back in, because his head still hurt a lot.
"Careful now, we don't want you to get in a worse state than you already are."
He stood up again, slowly and carefully this time, not to hurt his head too much. He looked up into the sky with a worried face.
"We've got to get moving now, It's at least a two hour walk to the village and it's already getting dark."
"Really? This island is a lot bigger than it looks like!"
"This is the isle of Refuge, you know. In order for it to grant refuge, you've got to build your settlements hidden and deep into the woods, far away from the shore, and therefor, this bigger island was chosen over other smaller ones."
"Interesting story, Mr. geography teacher, but that doesn't change the fact that this will be one hell of a long walk."
"Do you really think this is a good time to argue, Ms. Whiny-face?"
I couldn't really think of a proper response. Maybe it was better that way. We were better as a team, and with us arguing all the time, we were no match for Thunder. Stock already knew that, and I had discovered it the day before.
The rest of the journey to the village we remained silent. Sometimes stopping to check the wound on Stock's head, we got there just before sunset. But what we found there shocked us. The entire village was burning in flames, some releasing big clutches of smoke into the air, some still fully flaming. We both stood there in awe, Stock clearly more stunned than I was, because I hadn't seen it before.
"The village! It's gone!"
Stock walked to what used to be the town hall. He stroke along the walls with his hand, and looked at what remaining parts there were with a sad face. He must've loved this village with all his heart. He opened the scorched door. I started to walk with him, to maybe give him some mental support. Behind the door was a big hall with some sort of throne at the end of it. The path to the throne was covered with a crimson carpet with golden edges. To the left and right of the throne were two chandeliers, one on each side. One of the chandeliers was almost entirely burned down, but the other one was still standing. However, the rest of that section of the room was entirely burned to ashes, as if someone took a bite of the house. Stock looked at all of this, and then turned his head back to me, still with a sad face.
"Who could've done this," I asked.
"Me."
I was surprised, because it wasn't Stock who responded, nor my thoughts. We both looked around us, but saw nothing. Then a short humming sound was heard. I looked back at the door, and Stock looked to the other side.
"Eh, Krobelus... You might want to see this..."
"What?" I asked as I looked back. The question answered itself.
"Hello Krobelus. Enough fooling around. It's time to end this. Right now."
"Thunder."
"If it isn't Krobelus, my most persistent customer."
"And if it isn't Thunder, my favourite dipshit."
"I could've known you were going to try something. You're supposed to go straight on to the realm of life, so why did you persuade this poor old skipper to go to an island instead?"
"W-what? You actually think that? I didn't persuade shit, Stock brought me here!"
"You're lying. Stock has always been loyal to me, while you, well, if I were to blame you for things that happened in alternate universes, I'd probably still be right. No way Stock's brought you here, I swear on my mothers grave!"
"I did." That was Stock.
"Oh. Well, good thing my mother doesn't have a grave."
I almost burst out in laughter. Right, keep it cool, and hold a straight face.
"Whaddya lookin' at?"
I burst out in laughter.
"Stop laughing! This is a very serious occasion!"
I try to respond, but find myself too preoccupied with calming down my laughter.
"Ugh, this is ridiculous, we should be settling this with a fight or something, not some wacky word exchange!"
"A fight?" He had caught my attention again.
"Yeah! Just you and me, battling it out at extensive seas or wide open plains.
"We're in a hut."
"Yeah, but... we can go outside, right?"
Stock walked over to me to whisper something in my ear. At the same time, the three of us proceeded to walk outside.
"I think you're better off fighting him off at short range, since most of your spells only work like that, and since he's in control of thunder in the skies, he'll have the upper hand at long range."
"Good point! Thanks bud!"
I turn towards Thunder again. "Hey dipshit!"
"Hey, could you call me something other than dipshit?"
"Like what?"
"How about sunrise l- wait, this isn't our script, how did this get here?" He threw the script on the ground and struck it with lightning, then picked it up before throwing it on the ground again and dropping a rock on it. He then proceeded to pick up the rock and keep slamming it on the script.
"Anyway, what were you saying?"
"I was saying that we should probably fight in a small arena, with spectators and stuff."
"Spectators? Only Stock's here."
"Well, you can go to the mainland and sell tickets..."
"And let you go on your merry way? My ass. I'm here now anyway."
"The arena thing was cool though, right?"
"Yeah, I suppose... I'll try to string something together."
While Thunder was setting up an arena, I used that time to farm some creeps. How'd they get here, you ask? You demand the writer to explain it? Well, too fucking bad, he's got other shit to do.
I should maybe mention the fact that I almost died to one of these 'creeps'. I was walking around in the forest, looking for some different creeps, when I ran into a camp with two Teletubbie-coloured bear-ish dudes. First, when I was there alone, he was totally chill and all, but then Stock came to watch me and lend me a hand, which was still fine by him. However, when a squirrel walked past, he was like: "SHLABAM" and we were like "Errmahgawd" And he was like "Yehaa" and started chasing us. Stock and I ran like hell, the squirrel was never seen again. Luckily, the shopkeeper that had also appeared out of nowhere gave me a 'Healing Potion', curing my injuries. In the end, I was fit again to fight Thunder. Thank God. I wouldn't have wanted "Died because of a tomato dickface" on my gravestone.
When I arrived at the arena, I was disappointed. Thunder had amateuristically constructed an arena with logs. The arena part on the inside had a diameter of 20, maybe 25 feet. The center circle was more hexagonal than round, and had it been round, it still would've been an imperfect circle. The grandstands weren't evenly spaced out in height, some being too low where your nose was almost inside your knees, and some being too high like you were sitting on the edge of a building. Plus, there was no part where you could easily acess the higher levels with stairs, so you had to walk up on the seats themselves, which were still uneven, making your legs very uncomfortable and cramped when you arrived at the top. He also hadn't constructed a catchfence or any other safety fence, which might prove to be lethal for specatators if we weren't careful. The entrance gate was so wobbly you were instinctively protecting your head all the way through. All the logs were bound together either by some sort of syrup, or by flimsy ropes. I tested one of them, and cut through it with wooden knife. It was a miracle the thing was staying upright altogether. I had really hoped Thunder had sufficient abilities to build a second Colloseum, but apparently we had to settle for a hexagonal Jenga game.
I decided not to comment on the arena being so poorly constructed. After all, he did make the arena small, which was all I needed.
"Welcome! How do you like my arena?"
"Meh..."
"I'll count that as an 'it's okay'. Shall we begin?"
"Whenever you're ready. Should we get Stock to be the referee?"
"If he's here..."
"I'm here," said Stock, appearing from behind a pillar.
"That was easy."
"So, combatants, let me give you a few rules you should strictly follow. No striking, no punching, no stomping, no smacking, no slapping and above all, no whacking. Failure to follow any of these rules will result in disqualification."
"Stock, this is a battle."
"Good point. Forget everything I just said and fight each other to the death."
When I was fighting creeps, I had taken the time to test out which spells I could use for the battle. I had a few useless ones, like cooking and cleaning spells. However, I found out I could summon a swarm of bats, which would sting and bite my opponent. Then I found a link between me and an enemy, which could drain their life energy. And lastly, on a very rare occasion, I found myself able to summon previous spirits of myself, from when I had made other trips to the underworld. Apparently, those spirits get lost in the atmosphere of the underworld, and if I concentrated enough, I could get about two dozen of those spirits to follow me. These, too, drained life energy and gave it back to me. Equipped with these spells, I was ready for battle.
After circling around each other for a few moments, I opened with a swarm. They were picking on Thunder and blocking his vision. He seemed surprised I was able to use magic at all, but recovered quick by electrocuting my bats. He then released his own wave, surprising me again. His wave had a tickling feel to it, but much worse. I tried to get some life back by draining his energy with my link. He tried to walk towards me but was slowed down by the link. Again he responded by mimicing my spell, and linked me up as well. It was very painful, and paralysed me. While I was paralysed, he broke my link and started moving backwards. When I had recovered and unlinked myself, he threw a ball of lightning at me. I was just in time to dodge it. On the spot, I thought up something else. What if I could stop him from casting spells from a brief moment? I tried something, and surprisingly, it seemed to work! When I saw that I had stopped him from channeling another lightning ball, I immediately concentrated as hard as I can. The spirits came from the atmosphere and started to go after Thunder. Because he was silenced, he wasn't able to respond in time, and I saw him genuinly struggling as spirit after spirit passed through him and drained his life. As this was happening, he tried to resist the pain and channel one last lightning ball. However, I saw it coming and got out of the way in time. It hit the grandstands behind me.
As Thunder fainted, a portal opened above him. A portal to the eternal underworld. I was filled with excitement. I couldn't believe I had beaten the Lord of Death. As I went into the portal, I took the time to look around me one last time, in this world I hoped I would never see again. That's when I saw it. The lightning ball had hit Stock, and burnt him to a crisp. I could just catch a glimpse of it as the portal sent me away.
I had achieved my goal.
And yet...
I was as unhappy as ever.
So, that was fun. I'm surprised I managed to finish the story at all. Also, I'm sorry if you're disappointed I didn't keep the serious mood in the last part. But, what did you expect on a fanfiction site anyway.