Hello, its Thegoh. I know, I know I've been dead for awhile. University life is not very kind.

But in the meantime, this is a more experimental fic of mine, one that I was very excited about but never quite got the courage to actually try to write.

I mean, these two ideas just managed to click in my head! I felt so eager to share it...

In any case, I'll just put this out here/there. Tell me what you think! Would love to know how you guys see this ^^

The blaring trill of the alarm clock sent its piercing rings blasting around the walls of a large bedroom. The walls were a dark coffee brown, with even darker maroon highlights at the edges where the walls met. A blood red carpet covered the floors, and deep maroon curtains flanked the ornate steel window frames. In the corner, a round mirror sat atop an antique vanity table; the curved legs bearing intricate carvings of lilies and thorns on its entire length before ending in a swirl at the very base. A short distance away, a row of bookshelves stood eternally at the ready, flanking a single black leather chair.

A slim figure stirred within the white bed sheets of a king sized bed; its elaborate dark brown frame and fixtures making it the obvious centre piece of the room. The bedposts were over 2 meters high, covered with the same carvings of lilies and thorns; soft, almost transparent satin cloth draping from the lofts. A pale hand stuck itself out from within the warm darkness of the covers, struggling in blindness to seek out the source of the god-awful shrills. Five sleepy fingers fumbled lazily as they grasped at the air, unable to find the origin of the disturbance.

A groan; and the covers slid downwards, revealing a mop of unkempt, blue hair.

"Bloody hell…" the boy swore as he opened his eyes, the fragile orbs stinging as they were flooded with sunlight. He muttered a string of curses as he forced himself upright, away from the comforting realm of sleep, at the same time extending his arm and shutting off the clock on the nightstand next to the bed.

The room fell into silence as the boy sat in bed, legs tucked under the sheets in a pocket of comfortably warm air. His eyelids still felt heavy laden, and longed to close and shut his still stinging eyeballs from the accursed glare of the sunlight from the window.

But he shoved himself off the bed regardless, for today; he was a man with a mission.

He turned his gaze towards the nightstand again. To the naked eye, the book that lay next to the digital clock was almost ordinary. Its brown leather cover was plain and just a bit worn, like an old tome left to collect dust in some collectors' basement. The dimensions were nothing special; the thing was no larger than an ordinary notebook not unlike those that he used in school. However, it was thick, thick enough to be passed off as a novel or even a dictionary. And it would be easily passed off as such, if one only looked at its outer appearance.

The pages of the book itself were filled with a mess of paragraphs and pictures; numerous circles and jagged symbols occupying the spaces that weren't filled with words. In fact, the words themselves were merely unintelligible scribbles to him, and the paragraphs were simply line after line of weird scrawls, seemingly explaining something in an alien language.

But the dead giveaway that the book was not normal was simply how it felt. Not how it felt when placed in your hands, but just the air it seemed to give off. It was a heavy air, like a thick, swirling fog that would never lift. It was an aura that dripped of tightly wound power and pressurized force, likened to a furious beast that had been caged against its will, but was now silently biding its time.

The young man stared at the book for awhile, and for the briefest of moments, he saw a storm of red streaks flash across the cover. He felt his blood vessels pulse at the sight, and his blood flow halted for the shortest of moments. A blade of pain burst through his temple, searing his head and frying his senses. Redness, blood, a blinding rage and a piercing shriek. He clutched his hair; wanting to pull them out by the roots to end the agony.

And a beat later, the pain disappeared completely, leaving a haze of dulled shock to hang over his mind. He uttered another string of curses as he fought to bring his breathing back to normal; his entire body was still trembling from shock.

"Damn it. I haven't adjusted huh." His breaths were still ragged. He shook his head and rubbed his cheeks as he staggered towards the bathroom connected to his room. Throwing the door open, he reached for the shower stall and flipped the tap, dousing himself in a jet of ice cold water. The sudden contact with the freezing liquid jolted his mind, and his muscles jerked; the discomfort of a drop in temperature was enough to force his racing mind to regain its composure.

While his breathing slowed down to a more regulated pace, he took the chance to take a quick shower. For now, he decided that he probably needed some distance from that object; it seemed that just sleeping next to it overnight had not helped him adjust to its power and presence properly. The nightmares certainly made the experience worse.

You fool. You'd never be able to do it.

The boy narrowed his eyes. The voice rang and echoed in his ears; it was an evil whisper dripping with sneering contempt. A pair of hollow eyes framed by bony sockets flashed in his head.

You're not the heir. You'd never be. I am surprised that you still bother trying.

His fingers curled into tight fists; knuckles turning white from the intensity of the grip. His shoulders tensed once again, despite the jets of water drumming on them. He felt a boiling pressure rising from the pits of his stomach to his throat.

You're useless boy, a disgrace. Just like your fath-

"You know nothing you shitty old man." He gritted out, fists now trembling slightly. The cold rush from the showerhead was all that kept him from blowing his top and punching the tiled walls that surrounded him. A calmer side of his mind reminded him that the attempt would most probably break his knuckles. He sagged against the tiles and sighed, letting the water cool his head. He would not lose his cool today, not when everything was already going according to plan. He closed his eyes and massaged his temples.

He would do it today. He would do it and succeed, and serve one right back to that rotting bastard who dared call himself a leader of his family. The boy let out a mirthless laugh; to think that a walking pile of shit-bugs was the patriarch of his clan. Regardless, today was the day that he would prove that old man wrong.

Then, he'd have to take back those words of his.

Finishing his shower, he quickly threw on his uniform. Having worn the plain thing often enough, his fingers found themselves automatically moving and positioning themselves without thought; working through the metal buttons and collar effortlessly. He was more or less perfectly dressed in less than 2 minutes. As he straightened out his hair in the mirror, he briefly recalled just how much longer it took for him to get into the thick cloth that made his school uniform back then. The amount of fumbling he went through trying to fix the stiff, heavy buttons in place was almost pathetic in retrospect.

Satisfied with his appearance, the boy stretched his arms and grabbed his bag; stopping briefly to glance at the artifact once more before he left the house.

Perhaps shooting an arrow or two during practice would help to cool his head off.

His footsteps echoed eerily around the walls of the place. It was dim, moist and musty; the walls themselves reeked of rotting matter and the stone was slick with some kind of thick fluid, dripping off the edges and pooling in the corners. The flickering shadows against the chilling green flames only made the environment feel worse.

The chamber he was in was unusually silent; most of the time, the walls would resonate with the sound of a legion of clicks and hisses. The floor would be completely blanketed by a writhing mass of grey, and the air would be putrid with the stench of exposed fluids and decay as a lone girl lay on the ground unmoving; her eyes blank and unfocused as she stared hopelessly into the darkened ceiling.

He hated this chamber; he hated it with a disgusted passion. It was the one place in his grand home that he wished never existed, that he wished that he never stumbled across.

But if he was to get his chance to prove himself as the rightful one, then he must bear the soul-ripping aura of decay that permeated the air and stung his lungs.

As he carefully descended the stone steps, taking care to plant one foot securely before allowing the other to proceed, his gaze fell to survey the things on the bottom floor. A large circle of green lamps had been lit and placed in the center of the floor, the ring of green light illuminating the place with an ominous glow. In the middle of the circle was an ornamental pedestal with a small book atop of it, and flanking the wooden furniture was a young girl with shoulder-length hair and an old man with his walking stick.

He knew those hollow eyes were tracking his every movement as he walked toward the set-up; that the darkened orbs that rested in the bony skull of that bastard's head would be watching him like a hawk, greedily awaiting to catch on to his nervousness and unease. The boy drew in a silent breath, steeling his resolve as he marched into the center. A pair of soft amethyst eyes gazed at him, sad and full of worry, and a pair of lips were drawn into a bitter line; unable to voice the fear and uncertainty in a certain girl's head.

He bit back the boiling pressure that rose to his throat. This was no time to lose his cool over her.

"Ah, so you actually were serious? I must say your resolve is certainly surprising." The old man let out a small chuckle as he eyed his grandson, the smirk on his face never fading for even a moment. The boy narrowed his eyes slightly.

"Now now, there's no need to be testy. You asked for a chance and I am giving you one, so be grateful. Though, I doubt that you actually have the capacity for something like this." The old man chuckled again as he shifted his sights to the book. An image of a tired, broken man struggling to stand on his two feet, with hair as white as a sheet flashed clear in his head; bringing a wave of amused laughter to the old man as his lips tugged themselves into a smirking sneer.

The resemblance was so uncanny, so pathetic. His body practically shivered in anticipation at how this round would turn out. What would happen now that he would play his cards differently? Will this grandson of his surprise him? The old man snorted silently.

Regardless of the situation, this was bound to be entertaining.

The pedestal was placed in the center of an intricate circle, carved deeply into the stone flooring. The reflections of the flickering flames danced and rippled across the dark liquid that filled the grooves, and Shinji suppressed the urge to ask just what the liquid was; deciding that this time, the lack of knowledge would do him some good.

Ever since he had stumbled across his grandfather's artifacts and books all those years ago, Shinji had been determined to restore within himself the ability to use magic and to wield prana as well as his own od. The old, abandoned room at the far end of the hall that he – soon after – began regularly sneaking into became his private den, one that was cluttered with books and strange objects of every kind. Despite the fact that he was still painfully young back then, he found it within himself a burning need to know, to grasp the potential that his bloodline – the Matou or formerly known as Makiri family – innately possessed. Through countless hours of study as well as numerous close calls, he slowly built and molded his understanding of magic and all the laws that governed it…

Only to find out not long later that the magic potential in his family line had completely dried up by the time he was born. That, thanks to so-called 'improper breeding' of his failure of a father, the Matou family no longer possessed the thing known as Magic Circuits; the thing that separated a magus and a mere human being.

Yet, Shinji paid that fact no heed. He was the firstborn, and the only one who was truly born into this family. If there was anyone that deserved to know and learn; to receive the richness within his bloodline, it would be himself. His father and uncle abandoned their inheritance, and Shinji vowed to not follow in their foolishness; after all, they were blind to the greatness of such a history.

He broke himself out of his thoughts as the old man neared the pedestal. The dark liquid in the grooves rippled slightly as he stepped past them and sauntered towards the tattered tome.

"While I would normally provide artificial circuits for such a task, seeing your absolute lack of them…" Shinji's shoulders tensed immediately; and an intense scowl ghosted across his features for the briefest of moments before he wrestled himself back. The old man let out yet another light chuckle as he gave him a crooked grin.

"…Sakura here cleverly decided to offer a… milder alternative for you." The girl in question suppressed a squeak as her shoulders hunched down and her head shifted away. Shinji felt a rapid fire roiling up his chest as his fists clamped shut. Instinctively, he shot her a heated glare.

That arrogant bitch was sticking her nose in again! Again and again! Was this her plan? To humiliate him before he took the chance to claim what was his? To challenge him for the right to the knowledge of magecraft? To show him some fake compassion and get his guard down? To take away the one thing he had hoped for?! This was his chance to get some Circuits, this was his chance to become a magus! THAT BITCH!

The anger flared and pulsed, and Shinji's gut twisted within him. His fists tightened even more, and he quickly shoved them into the pockets of his pants; well aware that he had already allowed his composure to crack.

"Such a kind soul is she not, boy? Well then…" The old man tapped the centre of the circle and the liquid began to hum.

Shinji swore in his head as he felt… something tug and snag at his being; it was going to be a very long and tedious night.

The rain was pouring down on to the scorched earth. The droplets sped through the air, striking the land and all on it with the force of a speeding needle in massive torrents from the tips of the sky. They poured out of the legions of darkened clouds with an empowered wrath; the armies of heavenly mists now devoid of a godhead to rule over them. Thunder roared, and the blackened skies lit with furious flashes as the cracked tendrils of blinding light manifested themselves for the briefest of seconds. In the moments of silence, the shrill cries of harpies rang as they flew.

A man lay on the rocks. He lay on the jagged stones unmoving, his head facing the raging seas before him and his tired eyes gazing into the depths of the darkened sky. He simply stared; tired and uncaring of what his hands had wrought.

It no longer mattered that the world was slowly becoming undone around him. It no longer mattered that the ones who had held the chains of the world and kept it in order were now gone; headless, dismembered and very certainly dead. It no longer mattered that his own torso had been split open by the rocks he lay on.

He let out a mirthless laugh. Or he would have, if his throat had not been crushed. His lungs screamed for air, they burned in his chest despite the cooling torrent of rain washing over his feverish skin. Instinctively, he tried to draw in air, but to no avail. The life giving substance just would not enter into his body properly. Through the bloody haze in his eyes, he shifted his gaze to the chaos around him.

It was all for nothing.

He had hoped, against all sensible reason that removing them would have saved him. He had hoped that by doing so he would be free of the chains that bound him.

But it was all for nothing.

The high and mighty bastards whose corpses now lay in ruins, through their deception and stupid fears had turned his entire life upside down. In their arrogance and cowardice, they had betrayed him time and time again, making his life a living hell and turned him into a pariah. Their obsession with their agendas had given him bloody nightmares that would never cease. Their petty pride had caused him to bloody his own hands, but gave him no recompense. Instead, clouded by their power, they had disregarded him and continuously used him as a mule, foolishly believing in his absolute subservience.

For that, he had sworn to drown the ground in their blood. To use their blood as atonement for the ones he himself had spilled by their treachery.

Yet, there was no relief in him, no unwinding sense of freedom when the last of the Olympians fell to his bare hands. There was no comforting feeling of justice as he drove the holy sword through his own abdomen, to give to what remained of mankind the power that had kept him going and preventing it from falling into the hands of yet another scheming god. There wasn't even a sense of empowerment upon realizing that he had single handedly snuffed out the lives of numerous powerful and once believed to be immortal beings.

He only felt the searing pain setting every nerve in his body on fire and tearing his sanity apart. He only felt the utter anguish of the wound; the agony from the sword of legend ripping his flesh, tendons and organs apart as it plunged into his abdomen, causing his knees to buckle and sending his body tumbling onto the plateau he stood on.

There was only a pressurizing panic crushing his mind, as he lay on the surface writhing in pain and slowly realizing that his hardened body was refusing to die. There was only bitter desperation as he forced his beyond exhausted and nearly strength-less arms to pull his body forward; the jagged surface opening his wound even further and the foul stench of his own blood flooding his nostrils and clouding his senses as they flowed out of his body and pooled in the puddles around him.

And when his agonizing crawl had finally allowed him to tumble over the edge; he felt only contempt as his body hurtled downwards like a ragdoll towards the rocky bed below. The resulting burst of agony did little comfort him.

For it was all for nothing.

As he continued to lay there, the last ebbs of life slowly flowing out of him, he silently cursed in every possible language he knew.

He wondered quietly; just what had possessed him during his entire journey? Making him move forward, slaying Titan and Olympian alike, to shake off every life threatening battle with abominations of every kind. What had allowed him to have tumbled and rolled around in every hellhole imaginable, to have spilled his blood countless times for the sake of completing some mongrel's mundane task?

Athena had called it… hope.

By her word, it was what enabled him to endure through all the pain. It was something so powerful that it had to be sealed into a box and hidden far away in fear; it was the magic or power said to give a mortal the power to kill a god. It was the power that gave him the strength to break free of the grips of Hades and death… thrice now.

But now, all that hope he had to be free had crumbled to dust. For even the death of the world's most powerful beings was not able to undo his past, and was not able to bring him peace. It was over, and now he would die and have no hell to go to.

That is what you think, Spartan.

The haze in his mind retreated slightly as the voice echoed in his head. The voice was toneless and devoid of emotion, neither male nor female, and seemed to ring from the air around him. Yet, it also sounded strangely distant.

I have watched you, and your name has reached the heights of legends.

Reached… legends? Mankind was dead… right? He wasn't very sure. Yet, even in his near death state, he knew that whatever was speaking to him was neither human nor god.

There is much you do not know. But regardless, I can offer you what you seek. You seek redemption; you seek a miracle, you seek freedom…

Behold, one kindred spirit calls for you from across the void. Answer, and you shall be granted…

The voice trailed off. The man hesitated as he drew in ragged, panicked breaths. His consciousness was fading rapidly, and he could feel that he was just moments from slipping away. And yet, here he was, at the brink of death, and still having to contemplate over a choice.

Throwing the last of his desperate caution to the wind, he tried to reach for the voice; and immediately he felt his body burn hotly as his vision faded to black.

It's not like he has anything to lose anymore.

For the briefest of moments, all Shinji could feel was the gaping hole in his chest as the light faded from around him.

Nothing had happened.

He had recited the spell as he had practiced. He had practiced it for weeks.

And yet nothing happened. His face began to heat up; had he failed even before everything began? In the shadows, he heard a faint snicker. Shinji knew the old fossil was hiding somewhere in the corner, even if he did retreat while he was chanting the spell he knew that bastard wouldn't leave this room.

Before he could continue his thoughts, a flash of bright light erupted from the circle's center. The resultant shockwave shot through the air, knocking Shinji off balance onto the stone floors. But his brain barely registered the impact as he watched a figure materialize before him.

White. Pale white. White paler than burnt ashes shone off the man's skin. A terrifying blood-red streak stretched across his body to his head; a stark contrast to the ghostly whiteness of his complexion. Not a strand of hair crowned the helm of his head, in fact, there was barely any traces of hair on his head save for the closely cropped goatee that covered his chin. He wore nothing on his being but a long, tattered maroon cloth around his waist embroidered with golden lines, a pair of worn sandals on his feet, cloth bindings on his forearms and a triplet of shining gold pauldrons and spaulders on his right arm. A pair of deep set golden eyes briefly considered the boy before him, whom by now was flat on his ass and very obviously trembling at his presence.

Shinji had stumbled backwards the moment the figure before him had taken full form; and for good reason. The man was large, very large; standing at least one and a half heads taller than Shinji himself. His large fists seemed powerful enough to crush bones with a bare grip, and with the sheer density of the muscles that covered every inch of his body; the man could very well rip any living being apart on a whim. The air that hung around his shoulders was tense and bloody, and his very presence reeked of horrid death, raging carnage and just… killing. Shinji could see a dim but dangerous flickering in those hardened gold orbs.

They bore a tired yet bone-chilling stare, like the smouldering remnants of an intense inferno; settled enough to give off an ominous glow yet volatile enough to readily ignite once again. The numerous scars that crossed his flesh – most notably the huge gash across his abdomen that look crudely stitched – merely made the unsettling feeling in his gut intensify; he found himself having to draw in increasingly quick breaths to steady his racing heart.

But what had scared him the most was what the man held in his palms, which Shinji could only describe as two pairs of massive, serrated hook-blades. A pair held in each hand, the hooks lay parallel to one another and were longer and thicker than Shinji's own forearms; and were attached by their bases to a circular joint. One flex of the man's hands confirmed Shinji's immediate suspicion; the joint opened itself smoothly and the hooks themselves grew apart while rotating to an angle, turning the pair of hooks into a clawed V shape.

He shuddered at the sight of its razor points; this was not like a sword which chopped and slashed along a sharpened edge to directly kill, this was a weapon designed to maim. It served to scratch, to puncture and claw apart. It was a weapon of torture; meant to draw blood and rip out flesh in chunks, giving injuries painful enough to cripple yet leaving the victim intact and very much alive to feel it.

The heavy, alien weapon was attached to a long, dense chain, a short length of which hung loosely in an upturned parabola before winding themselves around the man's wrists and forearms and ending near the crook of his elbow. Daring himself to scrutinize the chains a bit more, Shinji twitched; the ends of the chains were burned and seared into the flesh itself.

Not only that, but the weapon seemed to have a crude level of awareness. It had pulsed, glinted and very much glowed brighter with that terrible purple aura when he had looked closer upon it. It was as if the blades themselves could sense the presence of another life force near it. The purple haze that cloaked the weapon was thick, it was a bloody fog; a cloud of air that existed as a result of the souls and blood that it has claimed for its wielder. And Shinji had a hunch that the blood it has spilled and the souls it has torn were anything but human.

The gold eyes were now framed with an impatient scowl, and Shinji let out a whimper. The air was now thick with a bloody scent. In the shadows, the snickering had stopped. The gold eyes hardened even more as they scanned the place.

"Hmph. Another contract."

So this is it, my idea hahaha.

This was originally all typed out on my phone. Sat there for quite awhile before I transferred it into my computer.

So do tell me what you think of this story! Much appreciated.

Thegoh