Disclaimer: I still don't own Danny Phantom. Butch Hartman does, and I somehow doubt that will be changing any time soon. Since I'm not making any money from this, there is nothing for the law-ninjas to sue out of me.
Author's Note: Not quiiiiite the one-week turnaround I was aiming for, but not a full two weeks, either! Anyhow, the second half of the history lesson before we return to our regularly scheduled storyline!
Chapter 14: The War of the Ascendancy
"The earth starts to rumble
World powers fall
A'warring for the heavens
A peaceful man stands tall"
-"Symphony of Destruction" - Nightwish
"So let's get the story straight." Sam mused. "So Maghnus had these magic gauntlets, note the plural, and the Ring and Crown. These Watcher guys originally helped him, but set him up for the fall... the narrator in particular."
"Right. By turning the Ghost King against his brother." Danny agreed. "And we know where the Ring and the Crown are. He has them. And we know where one of those gauntlets are. I guess those goons we got away from earlier thought we had the other gauntlet... the other half of this Ascendancy thing."
"But that still doesn't explain what Maghnus is up to other than trying to find it. According to this book, he was just your run of the mill tyrant. Those goons revere him like some sort of god!" The goth heaved a sigh of frustration.
"Well maybe we should finish going through the story." Lancer remarked dryly at the displays of frustration. "And maybe we'll find those answers."
"An excellent proposition." Ghostwriter quirked an eyebrow as he turned his attention back to the book.
I had prepared for this eventuality, and retreated to my own personal fortress to watch events unfold. The rest of the Watchers, save for a few traitors, had little choice now but to choose sides and throw their collective fate in with Maghnus or Pariah.
Most sided with Pariah.
The first sign that the end times had come to the old order was an explosion. In his rage, Maghnus destroyed his own Citadel with the remaining gauntlet; a failed effort to try and stop the Fright Knight from escaping with the other one. Still in a rage, he marshaled his armies to go forth and deal with the traitor.
His armies were vastly depleted in size, however. Pariah had planned well, and fully half of Maghnus' forces defected to pledge loyalty to the traitor. It was a shock Maghnus had not been expecting, a shock that shook him to his core when combined with his recent encounters with the human world.
"Brother!" His voice boomed across the land, full of rage that even had his own forces quaking with terror. "Return that which you have taken, if you value at all your existence! Surrender and I may yet show my own brother mercy despite this folly!"
Pariah was past being bullied by Maghnus and his threats, however; the countless years spent in thankless service had worn his fear down. With half of the Ascendancy his now to command, he had rightfully grown bold. Weapon gripped tightly in one hand, Pariah faced down his brother and screamed defiance to shake the heavens.
"Never! Your time is at an end, brother! Never again will I serve you!"
If Maghnus was angry before, this final betrayal by his own brother whom he had trusted completely left him unspeakably furious. The world as he had seen it had turned out far different than he ever expected, and that is probably when the thought came to him in his fury.
If the world would not bow to him as it should, then perhaps he needed to remake it so it would.
"Wow, god-complex much?" Sam shuddered. "Could he really DO that with those gauntlets?"
"It seems that way." Ghostwriter flipped the page, revealing another illustration.
This one spanned two pages; Maghnus on the left with his giant sword raised in anger, a swirl of black and silver energies around his extended left arm and the gauntlet. Standing opposite was Pariah, spiked mace raised in defiance, right arm extended with whirls of red, blue, and yellow around the golden gauntlet. The entire image had an unsettling symmetry to it, the brothers in mirrored stances with their forces arrayed around them.
"Hey, the Ghost King looks different than he did when I fought him." Danny observed, pointing at the figure's matched set of horns. "One of those was broken, and he had that eyepatch."
"You fought him?" Lancer looked incredulously at his errant former student.
"You mean..." Sam stared at the clueless teacher. "You don't know?"
"Know what?" The teacher irritably replied.
"William, you honestly never knew that he-?" Even the Ghostwriter looked shocked at his friend's ignorance.
"He what?" Lancer was rapidly tired of all the suspense.
"Mr. Lancer..." Danny facepalmed. "I... was the ghost kid back then. The one that stole the ecto-skeleton from FentonWorks and went off to fight the Ghost King."
Silence fell over the group as the statement sunk in.
"TRINITY'S CHILD!" Lancer blurted, nearly falling out of his chair in surprise. "That was... you?! Then what about that other guy with-"
"Yeah, that's a long story that we don't have time for right now, Mr. Lancer." Sam cut the teacher off before he could finish. Explaining the fiasco surrounding Danny and Dan and the test answers was not high on the goth's list of favorite things to do; especially not to Lancer who seemed to have quite the fixation on that particular incident. "Let's get back to the story that's a bit more important to the current situation, okay?"
Their armies were largely secondary at that point; though they fought one another regardless of the fact that they could do little to assist or hinder their respective leaders.
The first clash of the Ascendancy was mild compared to that which was to come, but even that was far beyond the most powerful display of power our world had known by that time. Reality and nothingness collided, shattering the field of battle and sending unnatural formations of stone and existence reaching for the sky in impossible combinations. It was combat unlike any could prepare for; and neither of the brothers was quite yet ready to fully test the limits of their power.
Before long, the battlefield alone was not enough to contain their war. Both took to the sky, powers and weapons clashing. Creation was countered by destruction was countered by creation; the land below was torn asunder by the conflicting powers, the shattered remains twisting at the whimsy of the clashing energies. The armies of each eventually had to give up trying to battle; there was nothing they could do to affect the outcome of their masters' war.
Indeed, it was challenge enough simply to avoid to wild powers raging above.
Maghnus tried at first to simply strike Pariah down with bolts of pure death, pure nothingness. Pariah of course countered, creating walls and obstacles that made such a direct approach useless. His counterattack lashed out at the armies below; twisting the shapes of his minions into hideous, powerful new forms. Insane with the transformations, these beasts raged rampant, only vaguely directed toward their true target Maghnus.
With a mighty shout of rage, Maghnus funneled his might through his gauntlet and tore the beasts apart, splitting the continent beneath them. The waters began to slip through the cracks, the stone crying out its torment as these ungodly forces tortured it.
Neither had a clear advantage, so steadily the forces lashing out increased in their intensity as the brothers jockeyed for leverage. Many of the Watchers attempted to assist, though sadly most of those who tried were cut down, unable to cope with the maelstrom.
There was one solitary, vital flaw in Pariah's plan though. The power of the complete Ascendancy was divided evenly in half; however, beneath that power was one immutable fact.
Pariah was still weaker than Maghnus.
"Okay, I thought the apocalyptic war is supposed to happen at the end of the world, not at the beginning of it." Sam groused.
"More like the middle of it." Danny corrected, perusing another two-page illustration of the ancient battle. "According to this, it'd been forever since I guess time started."
"I shudder to imagine what it must have been like." Ghostwriter remarked with the promised shudder. "Imagine! The Ghost Zone with that much landmass, entire continents... like a planet!"
"And this Ascendancy war tore it completely to bits." Lancer gave a pointed look to the nearest window and its bleak, empty vista.
The next several illustrations in the book supported the teacher's theory; the two giants clashing, the land below shattering like so much glass, the minions twisted into grotesque and downright freakish beasts. Several ghosts shrouded in hooded cloaks, leaping into the fray on one page; those same ghosts, presumably the Watchers, ripped apart in a haze of silver on the following one. It was really quite detailed, causing a long moment of queasy silence to fall over the room.
"Let's move on, shall we?" Ghostwriter found his voice and flipped the page.
In a clash of might that fractured our very world to its core, Maghnus gained the upper hand. With a mighty blow, Pariah was badly injured; robbed of sight forever in one eye, the silver gauntlet tearing foul green slashes across the renegade's face. It was by only the narrowest of margins that the blow didn't cleave Pariah's head from his shoulders.
"This is what your rebellion has come to!" Maghnus boomed, knocking Pariah to the ground, hand tight on his brother's throat. "And once you and yours are slain to the man, I shall..."
Maghnus paused then, thinking about the recent betrayal, about the humans that had spurned him so badly. The world was flawed, he realized. Flawed to its core, so he thought; those flaws something he could fix, he could change. After all, with the power of the Ascendancy, he could do anything he wished.
Including destroy and remake the entire world in his image.
"I shall fix this world, and rule eternally as its king!"
As I watched from the safety of my own retreat, the remaining Watchers did exactly as I predicted. If they knew that I had included them as mere pawns in my long-term plan, I am certain they would have been after me. After all, my plan called not only for betraying Lord Maghnus; but also for the eventual betrayal of Pariah by the handful of Watchers that would survive, and the betrayal of the Watchers themselves. But I digress.
"Wow, this guy sounds like a real jerk." Danny remarked. "I thought he was one of these Watcher guys, and he's sounding more like he was just tolerating them!"
"Or using them for this big secret plan of his." Sam agreed. "I guess that band of ancient ghosts that sealed Pariah up forever ago were the remaining Watchers."
"I think we need to be worrying about what precisely this long term plan is." Lancer counted off on one hand. "What are his motives? What goal is he trying to achieve with all of this?"
"Not to mention whether or not his plan is complete already, whether or not he still even exists." Ghostwriter added.
"Geez, you guys sound like teachers." Danny quipped.
"In case you'd forgotten, Mister Fenton-" Lancer retorted dryly. "I was a teacher."
"Okay guys, less witty banter, more finding out what happened?" Sam interrupted before the conversation could get too far off track.
The remaining Watchers gathered their combined strength and attacked Maghnus. It was not enough to actually harm him, but it afforded a vital distraction; he released his death's grip on Pariah so that he could tear into my former comrades with ruthless abandon. Pariah took the opportunity to put some distance between himself and his brother, a momentary chance to try and recover from his disfiguring injuries and figure out what to do next. He was wounded, and though the difference in power was slight, it was still a difference that had to be overcome or circumvented.
The Fright Knight, in a rare display of initiative, took the opportunity to do something else entirely; it was his actions that ultimately determined the victor and brought the world-shattering War of the Ascendancy to its uneasy conclusion.
In the chaos the Watchers caused, he rushed in astride his fearsome mount. Maghnus was too busy tearing Watchers to bits to avoid or counter the attack; even gods cannot fend off assaults from every direction at once. In a single pass, the Fright Knight reached out and made a truly lucky grab.
He snatched the Crown of Fire from atop Maghnus' head.
"You traitor!" Maghnus bellowed, trying to throw off the rest of his assailants to retrieve the crown.
In a brilliant display of horsemanship, the Fright Knight managed to evade the ruby blasts and silver bolts as his Nightmare charged fearlessly to where Pariah was getting his bearings. The Watchers, as well as the remnants of Pariah's army threw themselves at Maghnus with renewed vigor; the Fright Knight had to reach Pariah with the crown at all costs, lest the war be irreversibly lost. All the sacrifices made over the course of that terrible battle would be worth it if they could achieve that single goal; especially since Maghnus had just stated his new intentions for once he had reclaimed the Ascendancy. It was generally unknown if Maghnus could in fact destroy and then remake all of creation with the power of the Ascendancy; however it was not something that any of us wished to chance finding out.
"Lord Pariah!" Fright Knight sprung from his steed, throwing the flaming crown to the injured warlord.
"You shall never seize my throne!" Maghnus snarled, launching another continent-cracking bolt of nothingness from his left arm. "NEVER!"
He must have thought for a moment in the resulting flare of power that the killing blow had struck true, for Maghnus raised his blade to the sky.
"See what fate happens to all that dare challenge me?" The tyrant proclaimed. "Not even my own kindred can hope to bare steel against me and survive to tell of it-"
Then his cry of triumph died on his lips.
"We will see who is stronger now, brother!" Pariah came barreling out of the maelstrom with renewed might. "The tools of your own power have all turned against you!"
With all the force of a raging bull, Pariah crashed into Maghnus and sent the tyrant reeling from the shock of the blow. Now armed with fully three quarters of the complete Ascendancy, the balance of power had shifted.
"So... why is Maghnus still around, and why didn't Pariah grab that other gauntlet?" Danny muttered rhetorically over an image of the Ghost King's resurgence.
"Obviously the story isn't going in the direction you're expecting it to." Lancer lectured. "The logical choice would be to destroy his older brother."
Ghostwriter nodded his agreement. "But something clearly prevented him from doing so."
"What, are you trying to say the Ghost King got cold feet at the end?" Sam raised one eyebrow, clearly doubting that theory. "Somehow I don't see Pariah as being the kind of guy to get squeamish about killing his own family."
"That is just one possibility, Miss Manson." Lancer retorted.
"Can we get off the subject of killing family?" Danny murmured, not meeting anyone's gaze. "Please?"
"Yes, let's." Lancer apparently caught onto his former student's unease, while Sam looked chagrined once the goth realized what she had accidently reminded her friend about.
Perhaps, had Pariah gotten the destructive gauntlet and not the golden one, he would have been able to destroy Maghnus, and thus the tale would be done. Unfortunately, he could not simply destroy his brother, not with a weapon meant to make things rather than unmake them. Despite his power being boosted by the combined strength of the ring and crown, his own power was still insufficient to finish the task that way.
I would have liked for it to be over then, but unfortunately even the best laid plans can have holes in them, the minor details that even the greatest masterminds cannot control. I cannot fault the Ghost King for his actions however; the way in which Pariah handled Maghnus brought peace to our world, and would work quite well with my contingency plan.
He pinched reality. The effects rolled across our world and the world of men; what landmasses in our world that remained were cast adrift in broken fragments, while a great volcano erupted and covered the Earth in a cloak of darkness. Few would survive, but those few were far better than the total loss of everything had Maghnus not been stopped.
While Maghnus was reeling, Pariah used the gauntlet to trap his brother and the enemy army by folding our entire world. It was just a moderate fold; something larger would likely have destroyed everything rather than make the twisted mess our world became. However, by pinching reality around Maghnus, Pariah was able to create a small pocket of reality, cut off from the rest like a sheet of fabric that has been bundled up and twisted. Thus cut off from the battlefield and trapped in what I can only assume was a tiny space, Pariah turned the rest of the Ascendancy against his brother; the pocket was sealed shut and maintained by the powerful energy of the Ring of Rage and Crown of Fire.
So long as the power of those artifacts was present, the binding would remain strong, and Maghnus would remain trapped forever.
"Which clearly he hasn't." Sam groused. "Why do you thi-"
Everyone else turned to look at the goth as she stopped suddenly, slapping her face.
"What is it, Sam?" Danny raised an eyebrow.
"Okay, the crown and the ring were holding this Maghnus guy's prison shut, right?"
"That is what the text says." Ghostwriter confirmed.
"And it says that the binding would hold as long as the power of those stupid things was around. Not the items themselves." Sam continued.
"Is there anything else obvious you'd like to state, Miss Manson?" Lancer remarked dryly.
"Oh man!" Danny yelped, realizing what his friend was driving at. "You mean because he went back in time, that the seal got all weakened so Maghnus could break out?"
"Because he has all that power since he fought Pariah and destroyed both the crown and the ring!" Sam finished. "While he was in that other timeline thing, the power of the crown and ring weren't here!"
"That doesn't fit though..." Danny frowned, clearly not wanting to play Devil's Advocate. "He was back in this timeline before Maghnus broke loose. He came back, so wouldn't that have restored the seal?"
"Mister Fenton, what happens if you don't study and do your homework?" Lancer commented with a pointed glance.
Danny cringed. "You... get a bad grade on the test?"
The teacher nodded. "Now, if you tried to cram right before the test?"
Sam intervened to spare her friend further needling at the hands of the analogy. "Then it's usually too little, too late. So you think the seal was too far gone by the time he got back to this timeline for anything to save it?"
"The story isn't finished, you realize." Ghostwriter interrupted the chatter again, gesturing to the final pages.
With the war over, Pariah was crowned king of our world. He could have used the gauntlet to repair his injuries, but chose not to. He said his wounds would serve as his reminder of what a burden great power is. A shame he would become too rigid in his ideals to adapt to change in the future; it would be his own resistance to new ideas that would eventually make his downfall necessary.
Pariah built his fortress over the fold in reality that imprisoned his brother, and had the golden gauntlet dismantled and hidden away with its magical gems. Such power, he claimed, would be too close a temptation and too great a liability when he had the power to maintain order with just the crown and ring alone.
Only a handful of my fellow Watchers survived, though I did not come out of hiding to join them. Having learned the hard way the lesson of meddling too closely with events, their stance began to change. They retreated from the world, and eventually came to assume I had been destroyed in the fighting. They would ultimately fall in the much later war to stop Pariah, unaware that I had found and borrowed the gold gauntlet to create the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep which they sealed him in. Eventually their successors, the so-called Observants would take over the Watchers' task of monitoring events, though their creed of absolute non-interference made them far more useless than their predecessors had ever been.
I hid the gauntlet in the world of humans, for they knew less about the artifact and were less likely to disastrously utilize its powers. Over time, the tale of Maghnus and the complete Ascendancy was lost, leaving instead partial stories about the Ghost King, and the so-called 'Reality Gauntlet.'
Eventually...
"Eventually what?" Sam groused.
"That's all it says." Ghostwriter indicated the final two pages of the book.
One page was an artistic rendering of Pariah being locked up, the one-eyed Observants framing the image. A stark building was faintly depicted in the upper half of the image, almost lost behind the Ghost King save for the glimmer of gold ink. In the middle of the faint building was a golden gauntlet lying on a cold pedestal with a few gems displayed next to it.
On the facing page, there was just the single word "eventually," and nothing else.
"It's like the book isn't finished." Danny frowned. "Maybe something happened to this last Watcher guy."
"I don't think it's the book that is unfinished." Ghostwriter countered. "Rather, the rest of the story that it tells... hasn't happened yet."
Author's Note: No, that is not intended as a shot at the so-called Fourth Wall:) So, to look through the reviews, it seems Clockwork is the popular guess regarding the identity of this unknown Watcher guy. I wonder if that's still the case?
Lessee... another nag to go join the PhanFiction club on DeviantArt! You don't have to be a writer to be a member, just a fan of fanfiction. So go help a club out, kay? ;)
And I can't think of anything else to ramble about, which is unusual since it's not the dead of night like it usually is when I write these notes. Ah well. I guess I'll wrap up with my usual gush of thanks to my readers, especially for not using nice pointy stakes on me So virtual... toy helicopters! Yeah, there we go. Virtual toy choppers to: Luiz4200, Fulcon, Skandragon Blackheart, Phantom-Akiko, Eleirah, zara2148, Anne Camp aka Obi-quiet, Akino Ame, Selofain, BaronOBeefDip, i AM the Random Idiot, Moony's Metamorphmagus, ben ash, and Angelic Kittens!