Twilight of the Dragonknight

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy"

Picture this.

Within the confines of an ever-growing, timeless omniverse, there is a world.

Now this world did not simply come to be, as was often the case with millions, billions, and countless infinity more.

No, this world was created - purposely crafted with will and intent and the very essence of creation itself made manifest, as was the very universe that it resided in.

Its creator, a being the cosmos themselves only ever remembered and referred to as the Goddess, soon left it behind. It was to be expected - its creation had been nothing more but a passing whim it had chosen to act on out of, dare it be said boredom. For all the great potential the world possessed, it could no more hope to capture its interest than bacteria could attract a star.

Soon, the Great Goddess abandoned its masterpiece to its own fate- and it was a masterpiece for all that it was so quickly left behind - but not before it sired children of a sort - the gods of this virgin universe, who in due time became its sole inheritors.

Eons passed.

The gods descended on a world, the world, chosen at random. Following the example of their creator, or perhaps instinct crafted into their divine beings, they too created, crafted, and gave rise to all manner of new and novel life.

So were born the mortal races.

Unlike their creator, however, the gods were not so quick to forget their creations - quite the opposite in fact.

They watched them, observed them.

The mortal races evolved and interacted, mostly unaware of the presence of their gods even as they found their power and grew.

In time, three races rose to the forefront of them all.

The Darklings. The Dragons. And, most surprisingly of all, the Humans.

Their growth and power drew the interest of the gods, their appreciation, and even a form of admiration from the divine.

Despite their mortality and their status as only three species among tens of thousands, only the three could one day hold the power and the spark to match even the gods themselves.

In time they could have accomplished wonders.

Alas, it was not to be.

War erupted between the three great races almost as soon as they gained sentience, and the world trembled in its aftershocks - The humans were the most plentiful of all the mortal races, but the Darklings and the Dragons alone could freely call upon the greatest - and darkest - of magics.

In time, the world entire teetered on the precipe of destruction, and the gods chose to intervene.

They pooled their power and their might, combining the greatest aspect of human, darkling, and dragon, all to give rise to an entirely new force - a unique power terrifying in its majesty, burdened with divine commandment to bring forth the rage of all the gods on any who would dare conquer the world they so favored.

And so rose the first Dragonknight, born from the womb of the Holy Mother Dragon and destined to fight for the balance of the world unto death before being succeeded by another, over and over and over again for all of eternity.

Until something changed.

...

It happened like this.

For the first time in twenty thousand years, two dragon knights existed in the world.

One had been carried from the void of stars and brought down to Earth by the Holy Mother Dragon herself, as all his predecessors had been for millennia beyond count.

The second, something entirely new - his son, Dai, born to a human mother whom his father loved so greatly he sundered a continent and fell to darkness upon the eve of her death.

Dai's life was one of strife, of hardship, but also one of triumph.

Raised by a monster, trained by a hero, befriended by all, and at very end, he died barely more than a child, saving the world from the Dark Lord Kiganou Vearn and ushering in a new era of light and justice and hope for a world that had gone a very, very long time without it.

So ended his story.

Except, not quite.

Dai won, yes, Dai passed from this world, yes, but his story did not end there.

In his final moments, as his body was incinerated in an explosion bright enough to illuminate the void of space and he slipped free from its mortal confine - The Holy Mother Dragon appeared once more.

The great dragon god had long since placed her fate in this anomaly - this Dragonknight born not of her, as all of his kin once were, but of a human woman and a former iteration who had loved her enough to do what no other had in millennia and sire an heir.

He was too... unique, too novel to allow his story to end here, not after everything that had been sacrificed to bring him forth into the world and everything he had sacrificed to save it.

The Holy Mother Dragon could not resurrect him wholesale, divine law prevented so blatant a violation of the natural order, but she could grant him a chance, bring him forth unto a world beyond the hold of her gods and the laws that prevented her interference, and in doing so grant him a chance to seize that which no Dragonknight in history had ever had.

True peace, not in the embrace of death, but in a life lived solely for his own sake.

And so the decision was made.

In that brief instance where Dai the Hero's life ended, the Holy Mother Dragon seized his soul and, with the greatest application of her divine granted power, tore a hole in the essence of reality itself and sent it off into the unknown.

And after but an infinitesimal moment of hesitation, it summoned two other aspects of its power, two other last parting gifts for the hero who had given everything to restore order, and sent them off after him, wherever he may be.

...

For an eternity and a second and no time at all, Dai's soul drifted along the tides of creation, protected from the raw Chaos of creation by the lingering power of the Holy Mother Dragon.

Eventually, that journey ended, and his essence cleaved its way into a world where it would be reborn.

But, as was often the case with the creation of any god, things weren't so simple as to end there.

Dai's soul had intruded upon a universe rifle with the divine - so much so that it couldn't exist without an anchor binding to the energies of this foreign universe without risking complete destruction. In desperation, the last semi-sentient dregs of the Holy Mother Dragon's power lashed out, carving out a chunk of power that it bound to Dai's soul and used to craft a body for him and ensure his reincarnation before it faded entirely, forever gone from this foreign universe.

As it just so happened, that stolen power had come from a goddess.

And so, the influence of the Holy Mother Dragon faded entirely, Dai, new body and all, materialized in the outstretched hands of his new divine and entirely shell-shocked parent.

Had circumstances been even slightly different, the tale could have ended very badly and quite promptly. For all that the former godling possessed the potential to reawaken his old might, in that moment he was nothing more than a mewling newborn infant crafted from a foreign legacy and power wrongfully stolen.

Had the goddess been anyone else, she would have been well within her rights to reduce it to dust.

But that didn't happen.

Instead, with unpracticed movements, the goddess cradled the babe to her chest with one hand and raised another to hesitantly, brush at his skin.

It was a gesture she'd never had much personal experience with - of all her brethren, she was one of the few who had never sired a child, demigod or otherwise. And this was her child, somehow, despite the inherent impossibility of his existence.

How very, very curious.

Hestia, the greek goddess of the Hearth and a great many other domains besides peered down at her child, half-god and half-something, with something close to fascination.

"And just where," She asked slowly, donning a pensive expression that hid the sheer turbulence of her inner thoughts. "Did you come from?"

...

Just a fun thought I had.

A crossover between the world of PJO and the Anime the Adventures of Dai, plus a few aspects from the games the anime is based off of.