Disclaimer: This is a fan written work based on the works of J.K. Rowling. It might possibly also have some elements of a number of other works. There is no money being made from this, it is merely a work meant for the entertainment of myself and the masses. This is merely for fun, and no profit. I repeat: I am not making any money out of writing this.
Warning: OCs OOCs Sues, and some crack. You have been warned.
Note: AU.
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FOUND
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chapter ten
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Instead of making his way to Earth for another business trip, adventure, or other reason, Harry decided to stay a while in his own world of Aetas. Even though his world, his own world, could run itself, and since there were a bunch of gods and the like watching over the people, he didn't really need to be present there all the time, he still believed that he needed to take an active role in the growth, running, and whatnot of his own world. Even while on Earth, he had received and heard prayers from his people, he had replied and or responded as he saw fit, he was the Almighty of Aetas after all, he could divide his being into countless parts, each one dealing with a different aspect of, what he considered to be, his everyday life.
From his home in the skies, Harry watched the day to day lives of the people of Aetas. It was a peaceful world, as he could see, but he noticed something in a distant horizon, on one of the unexplored continents an army was forming. Aetas was not a perfect world, it had its faults, each race had had their wars. But something in the forming army didn't sit right with Harry. He knew something unsavory was in the making, and he also knew that the rest of the continents were unprepared. Normally he left such matters to his children, the other gods, but this time he decided to take control of the situation. He summoned to himself a few messenger birds, which were phoenixes, and wrote down on some parchment scrolls his instructions, or more like prophecies of a war to come that would involve the world, or at least the explored continents and the unknown continent which the growing army inhabited. Harry allowed for the people and creatures of his world to have free will, which made seeing into the future, even for him, quite hard. There were so many possible futures, and so many forked paths, that to see into the future was to see countless possibilities. But what Harry was sure about was that there would be war, he saw the best outcome for his world, one that he could live with without having to perform some extreme divine intervention, and wrote down the way to achieve it in prophecy form.
The birds were sent to each of the twenty-seven main temples dedicated to the Almighty of Aetas, meaning temples dedicated to the worship of him. Harry's choice of messenger was quite significant, since in Aetas like in Earth, the particular bird that Harry used as his messenger bird was very rare, but unlike in Earth, those of Aetas did not bond with a mortal, they only served Harry. The other gods used a different animal as their messneger, sometimes having to deliver their messages themselves.
In Harry's sky palace there was obviously a throne room, and that was where he was as he waited for the messages to arrive at their destinations, he watched all the locations simultaneously, and wanted to see the reactions of the recepients. Different people, from different walks of life received the prophecy, but they all knew of its origins. It was quite unprecedented to have received a written prophecy from Aetas himself, most prophecies came in visions or were spoken out loud and magically recorded. Each man or woman rushed to the head of the temple to deliver the news, following each was the phoenix that delivered the news, which signified its importance. The prophecy had an out for all parties, but the people trying to decipher them would not know of it til the prophecies were fulfilled, there were two outcomes, only two. One was that peace would once again reign, and the other would be, surprisingly, the end of days, leaving Harry to start over, the survivors of such a genocide being those that had migrated to Earth.
It would be unfair to the rest of his world if only the twenty-seven received a copy of the prophecy, to be fair he decided to send copies to the rest of the world's inhabitants, but to the one to cause all the strife he would deliver the message personally. He would deliver the message minus all the theatrics that sending messengers in his stead brought about. He would simply go to their camp, minus his clothes of the day and night sky, instead he would go dressed in tunic, pants, shorts, and gloves worn by a child.
He slipped into the army camp, the race which could bring about the End of Days was the race of Nightmares, nightmares in the sense that they were like doppelgangers and boggarts combined, with the ability to transform completely into another being, except in most cases, especially in battle, they would transform into that which their opponent feared the most, and no matter how great the laughter, it would not cower or shy away and disappear. Aside from the form of that which is feared the most, they could transform into their opponent themselves. Their regular guise was that of a mixture of all other races, they were almost formless in the sense that their uniqueness in form was their having the ability to copy other races, they each could pass of as a member of one of the other races. Where other races had a single unified form, the Nightmare race had none, they were not like the Dragon-Kin, or the Lizard-men, or even the Merfolk, or the Elves, they were more diverse in physical appearance than humans.
Their primary gods were the God of Sleep, the God of Dreams, the God of Fear, and the God of Nightmares, and the Goddess of Calm. These five were the most worshipped of all gods in existence in Aetas. The five shared a balance, where Sleep, Dreams, Fear, and Nightmares were equal in power to Calm. Fear is one of the most effective and powerful weapons, and the Nightmare race was aware of their power. Dreams, Fear, and Nightmares had long been planning on having their worshippers wage war with the rest of the world. They found there to be too much permanence and no longer any change in the world. In short, the world had become predictable and boring, they wanted to shake things up a little, they also knew that Harry or Aetas himself would not intervene, and should worse come to worse he would simply reshape the world, and leave the gods and their ilk alive.
For each of the races, the gods and goddesses were called different names, but only Aetas was the same to all. Names for most were only symbols, it was what they represented that mattered. Just as the world had different languages, there was a common one which all referred to as Basic or Mundane.
Aetas was known as one who did not condone or participate in wars, he was the most nuetral party of them all, which was the reason why none of the Nightmares bothered to pray to him about their war. They prayed to Sleep, to help the other three in forcing Calm to temporarily retire. With the sheer number of prayers Sleep received, he conspired with the other three and sent Calm into a coma, but in doing so damned Sleep into one as well.
Harry appeared amidst the hustle and bustle of the military camp that was situated by the coast, there were a few ships being loaded with supplies, and number of soldiers miling about, doing nothing of importance. Harry walked among them in the direction of the leader's tent. As he walked among the soldiers he knew that not all of them were into the cause, a lot of them had been forced to join the war effort, it was either join or death.
As he approached the tent, he accessed some of his powers, he needed the setting, the mood to be just right. It was the night right before the army set out to see, to attack the rest of the world, and Harry wanted to leave an impression on them as well as have them see the significance of his prophecy.
The closer he got to the tent, his mind caught a few thoughts from the minds of the inhabitants, he immediately masked his presence from all higher powers' detections, it would not do for three of his misbehaving children to learn of his presence. Dreams, Fear, and Nightmares, all three were in the tent, they had three avatars to do their biddings, these three men were the leaders of the race. With the help of the three gods they had seized power from the former rulers of the continent, and banded together to begin their conquest, their war.
When he was a few feet from the sentries, Harry produced from out of thin air a dagger, it had an almost plain hilt, almost since it was made out of a mineral that absorbed light, the blade itself was made out of a metal harder and sharper than anything that anyone in the world, save for Harry, knew of. But what made the dagger special, was not what it was made of, although that was part of it, what made it truly special wa its design, its shape, when held with the tip pointing to the ground it looked like the numbers two and seven, the base of the two and the top of the seven attached to one another. The shape that the blade itself took was the symbol of Aetas.
With the dagger drawn, Harry slowly started to run to the tent's entrance, while running he made himself visible and noticeable to the sentries, by the time that he reached the entrance, he had been captured by them, and was being carried the rest of the way into the tent.
Once inside the guards told the officers that Harry had been caught attempting to assassinate one of them.
"Trying to kill one of us, were you!" Dreams' avatar said then grabbed the dagger, "We'll see how you like the feel of your own blade!"
After plunging the dagger into where Harry's heart would have been, Dreams' avatar, named Dranos, watched with satisfaction as Harry's body slumped over further driving the dagger into his heart. When the blade stuck out of Harry's back, the occupants of the tent saw some kind of vapor escape the wound, the body slowly evaporated as more of the vapor escaped the wound. When half of the body had vanished, the calm night sky erupted into chaos, the winds blew gale force winds in every direction, destroying nothing yet sending shivers of fear into the every sailor, then the rain began to pour in bucket loads, following that were the booming of thunder, and the bright and erratic flashing of lightning in the sky. The waters of the sea were no longer calm, huge waves formed, and rammed the shore as well as the ship afloat on it. Then the ground started to shake, rippling tremors rolled all over the continent, cracks forming underfoot, fissures opening and releasing flames from beneath the soil. When finally only the flesh around the dagger were the only pieces of the body left, all in the tent heard in a clear smooth as silk voice the prophecy that foretold forked path leading to salvation or destruction.
After the prophecy was heard the miniature statue of the God of Dreams shattered as if it were made of fragile glass, which it wasn't. The dagger, with nothing to cling to, clattered to the floor, the elements of nature ceased their chaotic behavior, and the vapor finally was swept away by the remaining winds.
The avatar of Nightmares, named Cimon, noticed what the dagger actually looked like, after picking it up and showing the blade to his companions, they all realized the implications of their actions, as well as the path that they had chosen. Galenus, the avatar of Fear, realized the importance of the prophecy and quickly set about deciphering it, for all knew whose symbol the dagger's blade belonged to. Aetas.
The three gods, turned gods of war, knew that they would no longer be the only big players in the game that they had begun, now that they had been noticed by Aetas, all the others could choose sides, and pick avatars as well. The dagger was also the symbol or the sign that the war was to officially begin. The fate of the world was no longer protected by Aetas, but was now in the hands of the people of Aetas.
At dawn the ships left port, and sailed for war.
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By the time that the fleet of ships made it to the nearest of the other known continents, the other gods had taken sides. Even Harry, although his side was still one of nuetrality, seeing as even the gods over, medicine, health, and the like had decided to join the war effort, he had something to do, even though he could order the respectful gods to continue to watch over their particular responsibilities, he did not, since it gave him something to do while everyone else went to war. He would not step in to save anyone from death's embrace, but he would help in the preservation of those who still had it in them to live. He was also the only one not to have chosen an avatar.
There was much finding, the prophecy was finally deciphered thirt years later in its entirety, the only for the whole of it to be understood was if all the involved races shared the version of it that they were given. To cooperate with one another was the only means of finding a way to figure out the whole thing, even the many unknown races in the world had sent representatives, shielded by their magic, their identities were hidden but they still helped.
All sides of the war had suffered heavy loses, but none of them wanted to end the war without a clear victor. So the leaders of all the races proposed a tournament, in which one hero from each of the races would participate, and it would be up to the winner to decide what would happen afterwards, the fights were to the death.
Of the fifty-five races that were a part of the world war, only thirty-three entered the tournament. Of the three leaders of the Nightmare race, only Dranos remained, the other two falling to his blade, he was notably one of the most powerful of the heroes, if not the most powerful. The others had chosen to join, and fight their best in the hope that they could beat Dranos, and put an end to the fighting.
As the fights wore on, there was one fighter who was the avatar of the Goddess of Luck, he was a young boy with long blonde hair tied into a pony tail, had elctric blue eyes, and lightly tanned skin, he was of the Sol race, they were a race that were devoted to the sun, they drew their strength from the sun, in darkness they were at their weakest, unfortunately the continent that they lived on was always covered in clouds effectively blocking out the sun. Lady Luck had chosen the youth as her avatar or champion for the sole reason of pitying the race, they had such rotten luck after all, since for some reason their primary god was the God of Misfortune. With Lady Luck on his side he was able to win each and every one of his fights, without having to actually kill any of his opponents. His name was Sol, and he was the crowned prince of his race.
He was given an entire day to prepare for the last fight in the tournament, his opponent was none other than Dranos. While preparing his armor, and weapons for the fight, one of the field medics decided to visit him, it was a child that looked to be almost eleven. He had slightly long messy black hair, and emerald green eyes, wore a simple tunic, pants, boots, and gloves, and on his hip a dagger was sheathed.
"I just wanted to wish you luck," the boy said.
"Thank you, and I know I will need it," Sol answered, "If you don't mind me asking, but what race are you?"
"Err..I really shouldn't say.."
"So, is there any other reason as to why you are still here?"
"Yes, there is, I wanted to ask you not to kill Dranos," the boy said while looking at the floor.
"W-why?"
"Just cause, please don't kill him, please."
"I'll s-see what I can do, I can't promise anything."
"Good," the boy then unstrapped his sheathed dagger from his waist and handed it to Sol, "You can have this then, I can't exactly use it, but I'm sure you'll find it useful."
"Thank you," Sol said, accepting the blade.
"I'll be going now, don't want Felicity to realize I've been here," the boy said before leaving Sol's presence.
As the boy left Sol's presence another being joined him. This time a woman, whose hair reached the floor, and whose skin was as tanned as his. She wore a simple dress, and a cloak of gold.
"M-my G-Goddess!" Sol stuttered as he quickly kneeled in her presence.
"Tell me, favored Sol, who was it that was here before I arrived," the woman said.
"A young boy, of unknown origin, he did not give his name," the youth answered.
"But he did give something," she said and gave him a pointed look.
"A-ah, yes he did," Sol admitted.
"And what did he give you?" she questioned.
"This," Sol then showed her the sheathed dagger, "I have yet to see its blade."
"T-that is..!" she was surprised once she recognized the blade, even without actually seeing it, she felt the power contained within the sheath, "Keep it on your person when you fight Dranos tomorrow, do not kill him, even when he tries to kill you. His death must be avoided at all costs, but at the same time you must win."
"I understand, my lady," Sol said, then he strapped the sheathed dagger to his boot, as he would sleep with all his armor and weapons on his person, just in case.
"See to it that you win tomorrow," she said before vanishing into a shaft of light.
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Sol had been proclaimed the winner, though he was saddened that he had failed Lady Luck, in that he had thought that he had slain Dranos. But as he turned his back to his downed foe, it was only thanks to his battle honed instincts that he was able to deflect that blade that would have pierced his heart from his unprotected back. Dranos had feigned defeat, only to jump at the chance to fell his foe.
The audience erupted into shouts of horror and surprise, but calmed down slightly when they noticed that Sol did not only deflect the blow, but did not use his sword. Rather, he used the dagger that was previously strapped to his boot to do it. What surprised them all, was not that he used the blade at all, but the fact that he had not been in a position to pull the blade free.
As he somehow forced Dranos' blade from his grip, he held the dagger to his foe's throat.
"I would love to kill you for all the suffering that you have caused, but I know that there will be those that will suffer at your passing," Sol said, "You now owe me your life. Use this life wisely, as the next time we meet on the field of battle I shall shed my innocence and take thine life."
"I..u-understand," Dranos responded, for it was the first time in his life that he had felt utterly helpless, and he knew then and there that he was afraid of death, which was part of the reason why he had murdered Cimon and Galenus in the first place, he feared that they would have done as he did, had he not acted before one of them did.
After Sol proclaimed the end of the war, he travelled home to his family, five years prior his father had died of an illness, and therefore he needed to return home to claim the crown. As he watched the waters of the sea as his ship made its voyage back to the Continent of Clouds, a familiar youth approached him.
"I watched your fight, and it looked like my dagger helped you out, huh," the boy said.
"Y-you! I didn't know you were on the ship, had I, I would have thanked you. I'm sorry for not realizing that you were," Sol said.
"That's alright, I just arrived afterall."
"Just arrived..?"
"You really should look at that blade more closely," the boy then walked off, "thanks for letting him live."
It would be months after his coronation until Sol would remember the words of the mysterious boy that had given him his special dagger. He was walking inside the smallest temple in the capital of his race, it was the temple dedicated to Aetas himself. While walking around, and trying to come up with the words to use in asking for the GOD's guidance, he unconsciously pulled out the sheathed dagger from within his robes. A passing priest noticed the action, and became possessed.
"Oh, what good fortune! Even for me, your majesty!" the possessed priest exclaimed.
"Huh, who are you?" Sol asked as he was brought out of his musing.
"Tis I, Malum!" the possesor spoke.
"M-my god!" Sol said surprised.
"Yes, I'm one of those, continue."
"I expected my Lady Luck, but not you, not to be rude, but why has my blade caught your attention?"
"I was wondering how you had pulled that blade out of your boot, Felicity didn't know how you did it either."
"Felicity?"
"Your lovely Lady Luck! You mean to tell me she never told you her name?"
"She never did, but I've heard someone else mention that name to me before.."
"The one who gave you yon blade?"
"Yes, how did you know?"
"To tell you the truth, I guessed."
"So..?"
"Follow me, and I will let the blade speak for itself," Malum said as he led Sol to the main chamber of the temple where a single symbol had been carved into the wall, "Now draw out your blade."
Drawing the blade from its sheath, Sol could not figure out the significance of the Hall of Worship in relation to his blade. That was until he actually looked at the wall, most ignored the carving on the wall, very few actually realized what the carving was, but as Sol looked at it, his eyes were drawn to his dagger. Realization immediately sparked in his eyes, as he compared the blade's design with the carving. Holding the dagger, the tip pointing down, it passed as an exact replica of the carving on the wall.
"Y-you mean to t-tell me that.." Sol started to say in disbelief.
"Yes, that is exactly what I am saying," Malum confirmed, "He gave you a push and an aid in his more favored direction, leaving the final decision up to you of course. Its amazing that none of us thought of it."
"I..I was visited not once, but twice..by none other than.."
"Twice! Amazing! He's never done that before!" Malum said happily.
"Never?"
"Yes, never. I guess he kind of grew impatient that you hadn't figured out who had helped you."
"I..I don't know what to say.."
"Well don't thank me, or the priest I'm possessing, thank him yourself, doesn't matter to me how, but the Day of Creation is coming up, it hasn't been celebrated in a few years.."
"I understand."
"Oh, and before I go," Malum said as he moved closer to the King, "I'm not supposed to tell you this, but you may want to offer him a cake, have a candle in the shape of his symbol placed on it. Offer that up to him."
"Err..I thank you for the advise," Sol said, then watched as the priest regained his sense of self.
"W-what happened to me?" the priest asked his king.
"The God of Misfortune possessed you to speak with me," Sol answered.
"NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" the priest cried, believing that since he had been possessed by Malum that he would be transferred to that particular god's temple, it would be the worst of luck if he were, as he enjoyed working in the Temple of Aetas.
"Calm down, I'm sure you'll be praised for having such an honor," Sol said causing the man to wail in anguish.
"I don't wanna go! I don't wanna go!"
"Go? Go where?"
"I don't wanna work at his temple! I'm happy here!" and the man continued wailing.
"I'm sure they would not force you to transfering if you didn't want to.."
"You may be king, your majesty, but the only one who can say for certainty, if I do or not, is Aetas himself," the priest stopped wailing to deliver that statement, then returned to his wailing.
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The festivities were about to begin, all that was remaining to be done was offering of a gift from the House of Solaris, the Royal House of the Sol race, to Aetas. People found it strange that their ruler had offered a cake with a single candle on it to Aetas, a lit candle. But immediately after it was placed upon the altar in front of the wall with the carving a soft wind blew through the hall, and the light of the candle was put out, following that the cake and candle vanished, in their place was a small rolled scroll. A few seconds later Malum popped out of the wall and skidded to a stop near the archway into the hall.
"Read the scroll," Malum said as he slowly stood up from the floor.
"It says, 'Thanks for the cake, best gift I've received in eons'," Sol read aloud, but only enough for those closest to him to hear, "'Good thing you finally caught onto the meaning of the dagger, huh.'"
"Well, on to the party! Father threw me out of his home since I'm the reason you offered him a cake! So C'mon!" Malum told Sol, and grabbed onto the king in order for the festivities to begin.