August 15th, X799, Evening, One of Fiore's northern roads

A young woman's dark blue eyes pierced through the night to follow her target. It had been a long time since she'd decided to take a mission for herself, but seeing as this mission was no more than an observation, it was really just an excuse to take an exceptionally long walk and clear her mind.

She raced through the shadowy coverage cast by the trees after her target. It had been years since Grace had succeeded her predecessor and taken the reins as guild master, but being back in the field made her body move on instinct. Without any thought, the raven haired woman reflexively leapt from branch to branch. Each step registering as no more than a bump in the night, so as to not alert her prey to Grace's location.

Grace closed in on her target and just as a tinge of magenta hair came into view, its owner stopped, forcing Grace to come to a halt on a branch. A thought crossed Grace's mind, could she have gotten rusty enough that a brat could detect her. She perched herself on the branch and waited for the woman to continue walking and after a moment she did.

A sinister smile crossed the pale skinned woman's face. "I could kill you right now, brat," she hissed. "I could take your life and end this before it even begins."

Grace stood to her feet, an air of arrogance emanating from her, and continued to count the ways in which the mage walking ahead of her could die.

A fierce wind blew through the branches and ruffled her clothes forcing her to wrinkle her nose as she began fixing everything back in place. She straightened her pale, blue button up dress shirt that fell to her thighs. It had been left unbuttoned, revealing her bosom and midsection while still remaining decent, and had its sleeves rolled up. It was tied off around her waist with a black sash and she wore black tights under black and blue cargo pants and black boots.

The last thing to gain her attention was the locket she wore around her neck. A silver locket bore the mark of the guild that was her family. A mark comprised of a dark filled in circle with seven broken circles surrounding it. She adjusted the locket a half a dozen times and then decided it was fine.

The locket was the first thing she'd received from her old master and was a milestone that marked her entrance into this world. Her guild, Ragnarok's Call, had become the central underlying force of the activities that truly drove the world. If someone needed something that was forbidden, Ragnarok's Call was the one who acquired. They were the ones providing the black markets that were scattered around Northern Fiore, more commonly known as the Valley. They were the ones developing magic and weapons that found their way into the hands of criminals. They were the ones who a decade prior had struck fear in the hearts of the citizens of the Valley.

But it was this very notoriety that had forced Grace's hand. She had no choice, but to bring Ragnarok's Call from the forefront of nefarious activities to a role more similar to that of a puppeteer. They had their hands in just about everything, but there was very little means of tying it back to them and even less of a chance of tracking them down.

With her clothes adjusted, Grace's eyes found her target once more. The mage was still blissfully unaware and one of Grace's rare arrogant thoughts crossed her mind.

"I'm still the Void," she thought before continuing aloud. "But if I was to strike her down now, there'd be no fun to have."

Grace silently hustled through the trees after the woman once more. Grace simply wanted to get a glimpse of the city that would house the arrogant brat's guild. In the years since Ragnarok's Call had become as quiet as they were nefarious, people seemed to have forgotten how truly treacherous they were and to top it off, her intel said that the Summit Alliance had admitted another guild to their ranks.

When the news first reached Grace that another guild was opening up in the Valley, she thought it was a joke. Who could possibly think that action would go unnoticed? Had Ragnarok's Call really become such an afterthought that no one openly feared them any longer? This wouldn't stand. It couldn't. Grace's opinion on how things worked differed from her old master a bit, but one thing was for sure, when the people stop fearing you they come to believe they can go against you.

But even so, Grace couldn't seem to find anything truly outstanding about the woman. Intel said that she had some roots here in the Valley, but Grace didn't feel any overwhelming power from the mage. So as the woman neared a town called Poppy Village, Grace became more and more infuriated. Something which was out of character for her and as someone who had been an assassin for many years, that overbearing lust for blood was best kept under control otherwise even the simplest prey would notice it.

As Grace leapt from tree to tree, that very same thought crossed her mind and she instinctively grabbed hold of a device in her pockets. Less than a moment later, the very woman who she had been silently cursing as simple and unimpressive whipped her head in Grace's direction. Grace was certain that the woman had noticed her presence and although she was furious at herself for having gotten sloppy, a peculiar thing happened. That sinister smile crossed her face once more. She stayed perfectly still her eyes locked on the woman hoping that the device in her hand would fail and the woman would see her. That way there'd be no way to avoid a confrontation, but Grace knew better. After a few moments passed with the mage scanning in every direction for the source of the malice, she turned on her heel and continued walking until she was out of Grace's sight.

Grace let go of the device in her hand and exhaled a sigh of disappointment. The device she had in her pocket had been specifically designed by her Research Division; a device which allowed one to become nearly invisible to a normal person. It worked on the premise that each of our sensory functions was an extension of the normal magic in our bodies. Each object carried its own signal and by grasping the circular device, one's signal would change to that of the objects in the immediate vicinity, making it nearly impossible to see user. The catch was that it also made the user unable to move.

When Grace had decided that someone from her guild would have to get a glimpse of the guild and its master, many people volunteered, but Grace decided on a whim that she'd do it herself. The Research Division took it as an opportunity to have Grace test one of their devices. She didn't care to do it, but after much pleading on their part she agreed. Now the raven-haired master would be sure to applaud their advancements.

But as she watched the mage walk in to the town many thoughts crossed her mind. One, maybe the woman was a bit more impressive than Grace had been giving her credit. Two, Grace would take sweet pleasure in reminding the people who had seemingly forgotten just how dangerous Ragnarok's Call was. Three, she would have to rely on other measures to learn more about the mage and finally, Grace would make sure that this time, she made the Summit Alliance suffer.

She leapt to the ground and began the long walk back to her guild. The walk was quiet and Grace was left alone with her thoughts for most of it, save for the sound of an animal or two doing their utmost to avoid the dangerous lady walking by them. Grace always admired that. Animals were instinctively born with an idea of what to avoid at all costs. People like her, or her master or even those in the guild were people whose very presence could make the hairs on the back of one's neck stand and yet they were always blissfully unaware of how close to death they were around them.

Grace turned off the path towards the mountains just south of the Valley. Ragnarok's Call was located in a secret base built in innards of the mountains. Finding the base was near impossible and if one did find it, well, that was just poor luck. The previous master had found it hilarious that the people of Fiore named their homes after flowers and trees and sought to name his home after something which would turn all flowers to ash. The Scorch. Since then, this name had become one shrouded in mystery and darkness. She scaled over the treacherous ridges of one of the mountain's cliffs and found herself at a river that ran towards the sea and towards another woman who constantly frustrated her and led another guild.

Grace rolled her eyes in annoyance. "I'll be coming for you," she began before turning to the North. "I'll be coming for all of you. I see now that I was too complacent and I let you all forget who we were. I won't make that mistake again."

Grace walked to a portion of the mountain where the runoff slowly began to feed into the river and waited. There was a cracking noise as the rock split and opened. Before Grace even stepped in, she could feel the weight of a magical sensor scanning her to make sure she was who she was supposed to be.

"Let me in you idiots!" she half-yelled in frustration.

Her anger must have been noted and people could be heard whimpering as they hustled to remove all safety precautions and let her in.

She stepped in and the mages of her Security Division heartily greeted her. She smiled and waved them off before heading towards the building which she resided in. The inside of the hollowed out mountain base provided a dark bluish cavern-like interior that was damp and cool. It took some getting used to, but now it was normal.

"I'm home!" she called and within a moment there were cheers throughout the mountain.

Author's Note:

I'm very happy to announce the beginning of a collaboration project that I'm excited to be a part of. The Summit Project. I want to thank Raiyane, MyDearWatson and Dreadburner94 for working with me on this collaboration project. We'll each be working and producing content for stories that operate within the same universe. Understanding the plot will definitely require you to follow all of their stories as well. Here are the titles of those works.

The Summit Project: God Hand by Dreadburner94

The Summit Project: Seahorse Crest by MyDearWatson

The Summit Project: Goblin Grin by Raiyane

The Summit Project: Ragnarok's Call by myself

In advance, I'm going to say there a lot of effort was put into making this as seamless as possible. There are a lot of rules that go into submitting an OC, so be sure to follow those. The first thing to note is that presently, 1 person can only submit 2 OCs to the Universe and there is a further restriction of one to a guild barring some special circumstance. It's important to read all of the stories so that you can decide where you want to send your OCs, but you'll see characters move across the stories as they complete missions and what not.

I don't know why I still crack up when I have to mention this so my apologies if I sound rude, but, we will ONLY accept OCs through privates messages. There is a myriad of reasons for why this is and once more, my apologies if I sound rude, but please just follow this.

Another rule, and this is very important, is that you MUST use the OC Form provided on the profile of the author's story you wish to submit to. So if you want to submit a character to my story, you must use the OC Form on my profile and then submit them to me. If you want to submit a character to MyDearWatson's story, you must use the OC Form on her profile and submit the character to her. The reason for this is that all of the OC Forms are a bit different from each other and have different information in them pertaining to the specific story that they're for. Also, do be aware that we do want to try to avoid having too many characters that are really similar to each other, so we might end up asking for you to change something since all of the characters will have a chance to appear in the other stories.

Now then, for my story specifically, I will be accepting 25 OCs max. Of these 7 will be Elite mages. Now Ragnarok's Call has a lot of 'faceless' members who'll come and go and work behind the scenes. However, there's a much more important dynamic in Ragnarok's Call. I will be using divisions. More in depth information will be given regarding these divisions in the form, but suffice it to say that there are 5 divisions. Combat, Security, Research, Infiltration, and Support. Excluding the security division which will work as a set unit, the other 4 are merely comprised of people whose abilities pertain to that nature. The true hierarchy is set around the 7 elite members leading teams. For example, an elite might be from the Combat division, but lead a team comprised of 2 researchers and an infiltrator. Or an elite might be from the Infiltration division and work with only a support mage.

Now, regarding Slayers, I will only be accepting 1 slayer. If it is a Dragon Slayers, then it must be an artificial 2nd Generation Dragon Slayer. The others have a limit regarding the amount of slayers they will take as well, but more importantly we don't want 3 ice slayers… As such, it's better if the slayer is unique in either its element or its type. This way the chance of overlap is improbable.

The others have towns and as such they have the ability to offer you all the ability to create establishments. I've been racking my brain thinking about how to make something similar possible for the dark guild and the only thing that comes to mind is offering facilities within the mountain. But it's important to note, that we're within a mountain and secrecy is important. Later on, I'll be introducing more black market related things and establishments then will be possible.

The 4 of us are reviewing these characters and we'd prefer to see brand new material. So please refrain from submitting previously created characters.

Each of the creators have their own specific rules, so be sure to adhere to their rules.

On a separate note, many of you knew about this project and wondered what it meant for my other stories. I haven't given up on them and I'll be returning soon. That's all for now.

I'm really glad to be writing again and I very grateful to each of you and to the people on this project.