*AUTHOR'S NOTE* This is my first fan fic so please review it so I can improve with time. Also, if I end up making more chapters, I probably won't have an exact update day, so I will make them when I can. Otherwise, enjoy, review, and whatever else you want to.
This Chapter has been updated since my original posting. Hey everybody! I'm da br0909, and this is chapter 1 for The Wrath of The Lich. It's been awhile since I posted chapter 19, but I've decided to rewrite these first few chapters. So yeah.
This is an Alternate Universe (AU) story. In this timeline, Finn was never forced to break the Demon Blood Sword and never got his Grass Blade. Billy, instead of being killed by The Lich, was killed at an earlier time by Hunson Abadeer in an attempt to stop his soul-sucking rampage. The Lich was still able to trick Finn and Jake to retrieve the royal gems by posing as the ghost of Joshua the dog. After being stranded in the Time Room, Prismo locked The Lich in a magical cell in the space between universes.
We are also assuming that the Ice King moved out of Finn and Jake's house at a later date, as the events of Play Date and most episodes afterwards are nonexistent in this universe. I hope that my explanation was easy to follow. If you're lost, just know that Finn still has the Demon Blood Sword, The Lich is in cosmic jail, and Billy was killed by Hunson Abadeer (Marceline's dad).
Adventure Time is owned by Cartoon Network and Pendleton Ward. Aside from the Original Characters and the plot, nothing portrayed in this fan fiction is owned by me. If you want to criticize me, compliment me, or just comment in general, leave a review. If you are feeling extra generous, why not like follow/favorite this story?
Attention! As of right now, I have not updated the rest of the chapters. If the next few chapters are of much lower quality than this updated one, my apologies. I assure you that this story gets better eventually. I'll work on updating the next chapters, but this is it for now. I digress… Enjoy, review, and do what you will. This is chapter 1.
Henry de Gannon awoke in his bed sweating and panting heavily. He scanned his familiar settings in his attempts to calm himself: his mahogany desk covered in paper work, the holographic obelisk that allowed for transcontinental communication, and the large crack on his wall. The young wizard rolled over on his twin-sized bed to gaze at his digital clock. 4:30 a.m.
Henry sighed, knowing that his reoccurring dreams would continue to cause him sleeplessness. The young wizard pushed himself off of his bed and walked to the crack on his wall. Placing his hand on the division in the wall, Henry pulsed his hand until the wall began to spark. The lights subsided to reveal a swirling portal. The young wizard stepped through the magical gateway and left the room empty.
De Gannon found himself in a new, yet familiar room. The walls were a purplish blue and were covered in ancient archaic runes. Henry had been proud to recreate the runes on the wall. The language was over two thousand years old, the wizard discovering them in an old book he found in the ruins of his old house.
My old house. His recurring dreams always brought him back to the smoldering rubble that used to be his house. His older brother, the evil book. The years of stealing to sustain himself. Henry de Gannon would've been the most wanted homeless man in Wizard City if the University hadn't picked him up off the streets.
Since then, Henry had prospered into one of the most powerful wizards at the academy. The young wizard was taking honor classes in runes, spells, and portals. Henry, however, was failing. Recently, the young wizard kept having recurring nightmares of his childhood home, burning to the ground in front of him. Henry de Gannon was losing sleep, and he was tired.
His greenish blue skin stopped sweating as he tiredly sat in his archaic swivel chair (Having the word "archaic" in front of "swivel chair" didn't make it sound any less childish, as Henry found out). He spun to face the inner sanctum of his hidden alchemical room, where he found three tall boxes suspended in mid-air.
Inside these boxes were homeless wizards Henry had found in the slums of Wizard City. With Henry having to sleep through his classes in order to function, his grades were naturally plummeting. The only way the young wizard knew how to save his studies was to perform ancient magic unknown to his professors. To do this, Henry de Gannon needed to practice on these "hobos" in order to increase his magical powers.
Although the acts committed through Henry's secret portal were highly illegal in Wizard City, de Gannon always felt the most calm when he resided in the blue-purple walls. It may've been due to the fact that the young wizard spent most of his extracurricular time in the chamber, or the fact that Henry had no friends to practice his skills with.
Henry de Gannon sighed, as he always did when he evaluated his life up to the point. Studied magic at a young age, saw house burn down in front of him, attending Wizard University, failing most of his classes, no friends to call his own. One big failure, his life was.
He had always wanted to be a crime-fighting wizard, or a wizened sage, but Henry's skills reflected more of a darker force. Mind control, destructive magic, and portal drawing were not the ideal skillset of a heroic mage.
Henry pushed himself off of his archaic swivel chair and walked towards his captive test subjects. As he approached, their muffled cries could be heard if you paid close enough attention. The left-most box opened telekinetically to Henry's approach. The poor soul inside cried out louder than the others, but his efforts were futile. There was no escape from Henry's grasp.
The young wizard raised his right hand and closed his eyes, attempting to recall the latest spell he had studied. Having finally remembered his incantation, Henry chanted slowly and forcefully. In his outstretched hand grew a light green orb surrounded by blue wisps of energy. The orb levitated above the young wizard's hand, bobbing up and down as if on an invisible trampoline.
Henry thrust his hand forward. As soon as the magical spell made contact with his victim, the captive started to glow a yellow color. Henry smiled, knowing that his spell went according to plan. Until the captive blew up in the young wizard's face.
Henry flew back into the wall. When he got back up, he saw that the wooden box where the victim had stood was now in hundreds of pieces across the chamber. The bloody remains of the homeless man covered Henry's body, leaving him a sticky mess.
"Hour!" shouted Henry. This command took several seconds to register, but the young wizard still got his result. A digitalized voice, programmed into the speaker system by Henry, spoke the time, "5:30 a.m. One and a half hours until classes begin."
Henry de Gannon sighed once again. One and a half hours wasn't enough time to kidnap a replacement subject, and he couldn't very well experiment on his other victims, as they were weary from the previous days. The only useful thing the young wizard could think to do in that time was to clean the chamber of the blood and guts.
Henry summoned a sponge and a soap to his hand. Unfortunately for the young wizard, his powerful magic wasn't powerful enough to automatically clean the chamber. De Gannon got to work scrubbing away the bloody remains and collecting the shards of wood. It was around 6:00 a.m. when he finished his manual labor.
Suddenly, a loud crash echoed through the alchemical chamber. Henry turned to face the noise, only to be blasted backwards by the force of an explosion. There, where the crack in the wall led back to Henry's dorm, were half a dozen SWAT mages. Most of them wore purple armor that was fitted in pieces to allow for slicker movement. The armor culminated into a diamond-like headpiece with a holographic screen protecting the wearer's face.
Henry slowly pushed himself off of the ground, covertly conjuring a fireball in his left hand. One of the guards, whose armor was electric green instead of purple, approached the young wizard carrying a piece of paper.
"Henry de Gannon," the armored mage spoke with a high-pitch voice, but still sounded threatening in a way, "We have a warrant for your arrest. You have been charged with illegal portal transportation, kidnapping, and murder in the first degree. How do you plead?"
Henry extinguished the flame in his hand, as acting violently in this situation would make it seem like he was guilty. The young wizard decided to play dumb.
"Kidnapping? Murder? I would never use my powers for evil purposes!" As he spoke, Henry tried to invoke his subtle mind control power into the mind of the mage before him.
"Then, you'll allow us to search this chamber?" It didn't work.
"Of course, officer," was the only response Henry could think of that wouldn't immediately result in a guilty verdict.
The squad moved throughout the chamber, spreading out and checking everything. It wouldn't be long before the guards decided to inspect the suspended crates, and Henry could not be there when they did.
De Gannon's right index finger began to glow a yellow color. He slowly walked to a wall, as to not attract any unwanted attention, and began to draw. His hand moved quickly, tracing the design straight from the young wizard's memory. A line here, a squiggle there, thought Henry. Only a little bit left to complete.
"Ahem!"
Henry nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt the hand grasp his shoulder. He turned around again, coming face to face with one of the purple-armored guards.
"Mister de Gannon," this one spoke with a Southern United States accent, not that anybody would recognize its origin in Ooo, "What in Grod's name are you doing?"
FINN THE HUMAN'S POV (Point Of View)
Finn the human expertly traversed the forest path on which he travelled, dodging all of the traps and hazards in his way. In his left hand was a torch, lighting the dim jungle around him. Marceline the vampire queen, who was following closely behind Finn, was simply hovering over the ground obstacles without a care. Neatly tucked inside Finn's shirt pocket was his best friend/brother, Jake the Dog.
Despite the fact that Marceline was Finn's best friend besides Jake, and besides the fact that they hung out a lot, Jake was still deathly afraid of the vampire queen. So, whenever Finn wanted to spend time with his bro and the undead rocker girl, he was forced to wear his trademark bright blue shirt with a, as he called it, "nerd pouch". It also didn't help that Marceline would take almost every opportunity she had to scare the living daylights out of the magically shape-shifting dog.
That left the human boy and the formerly half-human to walk/float essentially alone down the forest path. Finn was thankful for Marceline to tag along, as she was not only a lot of fun to be around, but she was a capable fighter and could see through walls with her demon eyes. Soon, the friends found themselves by a large willow tree, its vines hanging down like a wall.
The human boy stepped in front of his vampire companion and, pulling the crimson red Demon Blood Sword off his back, effortlessly sliced through the thin layer of vines in their way. The two then stepped into the pseudo-room. Now it was Marceline's turn, opening her demon eyes and scanning the tree.
"It's here," announced the vampire queen. With that, she pulled her crimson red axe bass (it seemed as if the two adventurers had a similar taste in color when it came to weapons) off of her back and sliced the tree in half. The trunk fell to the left of the friends and revealed a small passageway that led downwards into a large and vacuous room.
Finn jumped in first, only realizing too late that the fall would be devastatingly painful. Then, out of his shirt pocket erupted a large orange parachute. The human landed slowly, and safely, onto the cavern floor.
"Thanks, Jake," acknowledged Finn. Jake shrunk back down to his normal size and stepped out of the poorly stitched pouch.
"Finn, you need to be more careful!" Jake was always giving Finn lectures, but the human knew that it was for his own good, "You could've died from that fall, and I don't trust Marceline to always be there to catch you."
"Come on Jake! She's just-"
"A radical dame who likes to play games. Yeah, Finn. You say that every time! And every time, I'm there to save you from doing something stupid! Look man, I know that Marceline is a pretty cool gal, but she's not someone who you should trust with your life!"
"Jake, seriously. We've known her five years now. Five years! I think I's time you got over your fear of vampires."
"I'm not afraid of vampires, Finn!"
"OH YES YOU ARE!" screamed a tentacle monster-version of Marceline. To prove her words true, the magical shape-shifting dog jumped about five feet into the air and landed back in Finn's shirt pocket, a miniature dog once again.
This left Finn and Marceline relatively alone again. The vampire queen laughed herself onto her back, as if she was laying on an invisible couch in the air. Finn turned his attention back to the dungeon that they had just entered. They stood in a large cavern, about the length of a football field in length and in width. The walls were a sandy-red color, and were eerily smoothed.
In the center of the room was a small pressure plate, elevated enough only to be barely visible. As there was no treasure, monster, or passageway leading outwards, Finn figured that activated the plate would cause something to happen. So, doing the most logical thing he could think of, he walked over to the pressure plate and pressed his foot onto it.
The ground began to rumble as the human boy back flipped away from the plate he had just activated. Barely containing his excitement, Finn pulled his sword off of his back and stood in a defensive stance. Even Marceline, who had since stopped laughing, prepared her axe bass for an attack. Jake remained hidden inside the nerd pouch.
Out of the ground rose a twenty foot tall sand golem, brandishing two sandstone fists and one eye on its head. It roared menacingly, setting its massive hands down to lean right in front of its opponents to show off its ugly face. This was its biggest mistake.
Without hesitation, Finn stabbed the exposed eye of the creature while it leaned in front of him. The massive sand golem stumbled back, dropping its sandstone hand in order to hold its pained face. Marceline dashed through the air and slashed through the sand monster's head, splitting it down the middle. The large sand man roared in pain.
By some miracle, the monster remained alive. Finn was determined to fix that. Wielding his father's Demon Blood Sword, he ran up the sand golem's body and prepared to strike its head. The hero instead sank anticlimactically into the sand creature's body. Finding it hard to breathe inside his sandy environment, the human attempted to swim his way out of his opponent's belly. No such luck.
Marceline took it upon herself to finish off the injured beast. She cocked her axe bass back as and, as she flew, swung it mercilessly at the sand golem's face. With a final roar of pain, the sand creature erupted into a pile of yellow-orange pebbles. Finn sliced his way out of the pile. Marceline couldn't help but notice that he looked just like he did when he burst out of the dimple plant's carcass back before they had become good friends.
After a couple of seconds, a hole in the ceiling opened up and rained down shining gems and stones down on the adventurers. Finn dashed over to the pile of precious stones and started placing them into his double-shaded green pack. After he finished storing them, he took a few and offered them to his partner in crime.
"You keep it, weenie." Replied Marceline, "I'm already rich, being a queen and all."
"Are you sure?" asked the human, "Some of this stuff is probably magical."
"Finn," whispered the dog inside his shirt pocket, "Stop offering her stuff! Don't give her more reasons to stay!"
Marceline, with her advanced hearing, heard what Jake had said. Instead of tormenting him, however, she had personal business to attend to.
"No thanks, hero. I got some personal stuff to deal with." Finn gave an understanding nod. As the two (three, if you count Jake hiding in the nerd pouch) exited the cave, the human put the gems he had offered the vampire queen back in his backpack. They said their goodbyes, and before flying off, Marceline gave Finn a quick kiss on the cheek and left, as she always did.
Jake popped out of Finn's shirt pocket and grew back to normal size. The two walked in silence for a bit before the magical dog broke the quiet.
"You were right, you know."
"I was? About Marceline?"
"No! Of course not! I mean about the gems being magical. We should find somebody to appraise these and tell us what weird junk they do."
"We could check with Peebles."
"Why would we check with her?" questioned the dog, "She's into science-y stuff, not magic."
"She's real smart, Jake," countered the hero, "Besides, I think I know a way to ask her out."
"Fiiiiiiiinn!" complained Jake, "You're sixteen, turning seventeen in a couple of months! You need to realize that she's not into you!"
"She isn't tonight. But that's gonna change!"
"Fine, we'll visit P-Bubs. But don't say I didn't warn you!"
HENRY DE GANNON'S POV
He awoke in the grasslands, near the edge of a forest. He vaguely remembered how he got there: The guards opening the boxes, Henry attempting to fend them off. He was knocked out, and here he was. No portal in sight. He wouldn't be allowed back in Wizard City, that much was certain. He would have to find a new means of strengthening his magical powers. Maybe then they'll ask me to come back.
He started wandering around the area in which he awoke. Soon, he ventured further, and further, until he was in the dense forest. Being that it was dark outside, the young wizard could barely see anything in front of him. Until he saw a red light.
The red glow called to him. It beckoned his mind. I am your salvation, Henry. I will make those wizards pay for rejecting you. He walked towards the light. hjjjjfiuuiuH=KJJJIFFUUHFJK
He reached down and picked up the source of the light: a red gem. In the distance, he could see a humanoid and a dog further into the forest. They must have dropped the stone while they were walking.
The stone talked through his mind again. I am a portal stone. Use me to teleport to your destiny. He squeezed the stone, and a swirling yellow and pink portal opened before him.
PRINCESS BUBBLEGUM'S POV
Her monitor screen stopped working momentarily. This scared the princess more than most things she had encountered. Her power supply was nearly limitless and inexhaustible, so something tremendously powerful must've shifted the energy in the Candy Kingdom.
Princess Bonnibel Bubblegum though for a while, then decided to investigate the disturbance. Taking a CD of herself snoring, she hotwired a CD player to play it on loop, so anyone who entered would assume she was sleeping. She grabbed her seismic monitor and jumped out the window.
HENRY DE GANNON'S POV
The portal had brought him to a place he had never imagined before. All around him was rainbow grass. The breeze blowing by him felt simultaneously warm and cold. In the distance, impossibly tall mountains that surpassed all of the layers of golden clouds. Above the dropout wizard, in the sky, where swirling galaxies, shooting stars, and a golden box with a rectangular hole in its side.
Unbeknownst to Henry, he was in a separate plane of reality, one created by the deity Prismo as a jail. The golden box was the Time Room, where Prismo resided. Prismo was a second-dimensional being who granted wishes to all who visited him. It was with his help that Jake the dog was able to stop The Lich from destroying all life in existence.
In Henry's periphery, he saw a red flash of light. Follow it, beckoned the red gem. The young wizard obliged. On his journey, he passed several magical barricades that the red gem disabled. At this point, Henry had forgotten the reason he had come to this realm in the first place, only focusing on what his red rock told him.
In this plane of reality, time passes differently than in Ooo. As such, it took Henry several hours to reach the gem's destination, but only several minutes in real time. When he arrived, the young wizard thought he was prepared for anything. He was dead wrong.
In front of him stood a colossal steel cage, topped by a holographic screen. What surprised him the most wasn't the cage, but its occupant. In the center of the jail stood a massive skeletal being. Wrapped in a green cloak, it easily stood at about thirty feet tall. Its face was covered by a thin layer of skin, parting at the mouth where the jaw was visible. This large demon in front of Henry de Gannon was none other than The Lich himself.
The red gem in Henry's hand started to glow brighter, than released a stream of energy flying upwards. The young wizard was in shock of what he saw, and was unable to move. The gem in Henry's hand was now nothing but a rock, all of its luster released into the sky. The energy stopped when it reached the top of the jail cell. The red light fell onto the holographic screen. Immediately, the barrier dissipated.
The large, colossal being floated out of his large holding cell. Landing in front of the wizard, he spoke with a booming and charismatic voice, "Thank you, Henry de Gannon. With your help, I will be able to take over Ooo and take my revenge on the human and his dog."
Henry felt his mind slipping away. His fading vision showed the demon lord sucking the soul out of his very body. As he fell to the ground, he watched the demon fly off into the distance. The last sound Henry de Gannon ever heard was the frightening sound of The Lich's laughter.
*AN* It's been a looooooooooong time since I posted Chapter 19, and I'm sorry for the wait. I had to write the majority of this over Spring Break, as I had a lot of homework to do and tests to study for. Also, I made this the longest chapter yet just to help you guys tide over until the next update. Next, I will make Chapter 20. I will most likely switch off re-writing chapters and posting new ones, so be on the lookout.
I know, I know, I'm terrible at updating on schedule. But don't worry! I haven't abandoned you guys! I hope the wait was worth it. Did you like this chapter? If you did or didn't, tell me why with a review. Again, sorry that the next several chapters will probably be really bad, but I'm working on fixing them, too!
See you guys next time, and I hope you have a great day!
-da br0909
