"Wake... up..."
A low grumble stirred in the darkness.
"... Wake up."
The sole resident of the darkness grumbles ineffectually.
"... Five more minutes-"
The tranquil silence was disturbed by an arid spray of sand cascading down onto the sleeper's face, rudely awakening him from his cot screaming and dryly sputtering.
After spitting out all of the sand that went into his nostrils and mouth, a lightly-tan skinned woman in her early-to-mid-twenties dressed in light combat armor and a hijab around her head was sitting next to where he laid with an unamused look on her face.
"SWEET SOTHIS! NANI THE FUCK, WOMAN?!" he cried out.
The woman scoffs as she gets up from her seat. "... It's suppertime, Karna Yuga," she informed the pale-skinned man dressed in nothing more than a black-leather vest, pants, belts (with silver buckles) and boots in Almyran. "Come. Food is better eaten warm than cold, especially out in the sands of Almyra."
"Right, right..." Karna then lets out a loud yawn before picking himself out of his bedsheets, following the woman outside of the tent they were in. "Comin'..."
Upon following the woman out to the exit, Karna found himself walking towards a bonfire with a thick plume of dark-gray smoke rising from within a ring of people densely packing themselves around the illuminance.
"Ah!" an echoing, bassy voice spoke from within the crowd, revealing themselves as a humanoid construct made of thick plates of dark-slate, almost-black metal with lines of turquoise lights serving as the body's accents that outlined their bipedal silhouette. "I was afraid it'd be a while before you'd wake up, Professor."
"Oh spare me your worries, Byron Amadeus Noa," Karna snidely remarked as he took his seat next to where the construct sat at, taking the offered bowl of reddish-looking soup with bits of spiced lamb or venison and onions floating in the broth. "... It'll take more than some upstart sellsword who bumblefucked her way into becoming an educator at Fódlan's most prestigious and trusted institution to best the likes of me."
"Still..." a throaty, yet youthful-sounding voice remarked, coming from a dark-skinned, white-haired, and blood-red-irised boy dressed in bits of armor and bear pelt, a massive golden axe crackling with sparks of scant electricity from its warhead being planted behind him like a backrest. "... You were out... like a sleeping baby."
"Well excuse me for enjoying my beauty sleep, Mister Víðarr," deadpanned Karna as he began eating his share like everyone else, taking note of the various men and women dressed in light armor and headwraps like their leader, who soon joined them in their mealtime with her own share. "... Turns out fighting for your very life takes a lot out of a person!"
"Yeh, yeh, we're sorry 'bout worrin' ova nuthin'," a crude-sounding voice remarked, coming from a young woman with her dirty, almost rusty-red hair being tied into braid that hung from the left side of her head and a tribal tattoo vaguely resembling a under her right eye, wearing a brass-golden armor with green highlights and cape, the latter of which sporting a golden tribal iconography resembling a lynx's visage, and holding her own bowl of soup were a pair of chrome-golden arms that led down to her prosthetic legs, with "ATA ver.3.0 Midas" printed in jet black text across the side of her left golden thigh. "... I mean, kinda rich comin' from us, given dat we tend te flirt with death every bloody week."
"Kinda going off topic there, Miss Sorcha McCarthy," Karna replied, caused the young woman to scoff dismissively before chugging the rest of her stew straight from her bowl. "... Then again, it's not like we're exactly fitting into the mold known as 'conventions' to begin with."
"Hear, hear!" Clamoring was another girl that was similar to appearance with the aforementioned Sorcha McCarthy, almost a twin-like resemblance, with the sole differences being the orientation of her braided hair and tattoo being their exact opposite positions, the latter being a tribal outline of a single feathered wing, her limbs were mismatched in length, construction, appearance, symmetry, and matte-silver, with the text "ATA ver.3.0 Airgetlám" printed across her elongated right arm's length in white text, and her eyes being monochromatic and its irises shifting around on their own within their sockets. "... We are proud of who we are now. It is dat difference that made us seek greater thins' beyond Fódlan."
"Stating the obvious, but appreciated nevertheless, Miss Selene McCarthy!" Karna snapped his finger as he pointed his finger at her dramatically, pose and all, much to the rest of diners' shared befuddlement. "... Oh how much I pity our enemies, if they weren't so pathetic!"
"It doesn't change the fact that not all of our enemies have drawn their final, terminal breath," a serious-sounding, yet optimistic voice remarked, coming from a large, muscular young man with dark-tan skin, chiseled jawline, and a short mane of fiery-red hair akin to a young lion, his face covered in small scars and faded scratches, wearing modified armor with fur cape and asymmetrical shoulder armor, with his left being a more armored vambrace with a fenced-off pauldron over the rounded-off shoulder armor, and hanging around his waist was a length of rope hung around his waist like a girdle, with a massive horse skull hanging by its eye hollows. "... If my time spent in Fódlan taught me anything, is that just because our future quarry is currently weak doesn't make them easy marks in the future."
"Glad you're keeping vigilance, Mister Cyrus Iskandar." Karna nods with approval as he draws more of the shared stew from the cauldron with his bowl acting in place of the ladle (that was already there). "... Almost lost myself to my own hype back there."
"All the more reason to grow stronger," a hiss-like voice remarked, coming from a miniscule young woman with purple hair with a metal half-mask covering her face from her jawline to nose remarked as her branched-edge tail slithered around her acting as her third appendage, the rest of her body being obscured in a hooded cloak. "... How we'll further evolve past our limits... the mere thought and anticipation alone is more than enough to get my heart racing...!"
"Keep that desire burning, Miss Topaz," the Professor pointed out with a small smile. "Power is what gives light to life, after all."
"Sore, sore, sore!" cheered a pale-skinned, redheaded girl with a scrunchy and a horned ogre mask tied around her head remarked as she energetically raised her spoon into the night sky, standing up from her seat and revealing her lightly-armored ensemble of loose clothing, her loose and wide sleeves drooping down to expose her blued steel limb with red highlights hidden underneath, and an array of wide-spaced holsters containing various tomes of various magic wrapped around her legs and underneath her sectioned armored waist-skirt that also contained a pair of black and white scabbards sheathing a pair of katanas brimming with otherworldly power. "Three cheers to the Dustbin and friends! A thousand curses and deaths to all those who dare to oppose us!"
"Kanpai!" Karna then banged his bowl of stew against the girl's before both of them chugged their shares while crossing each other's arms around their elbows. "Attagirl, Tsukiko! Making your pride as the last of the Kirigakure Clan one victory at a time!"
After finishing their bizarre rituals over dinner, the rest of the uniformed men and women clean up the camp's cauldron as the woman with the hijab approaches the quixotic-looking pack of eight herself.
"So," she addressed the group in Almyran, "had your fun over supper?"
"Apologizes for our unintentional rudeness, Amira Khawlah al-Mansur I Muhammad," Karna replied in fluent Almyran as he bowed his head. "... As you can see, we're not exactly civilized folk like you and your [Mubashir] Griffin Knights."
"I don't care for your standing in the slightest, only that you and your band bring me the results I desire," the militant Amira ("Princess" in contemporary Almyran) curtly remarked. "... Although I cannot help but be curious about you lot."
"Pardon?" Topaz said, to which Cyrus translates, causing the rest of the group to be more attentive.
Khawlah then gestures the eight of them into her personal tent. "Follow me."
The group then all situate themselves inside upon entering the Almyran Amira's personal tent, to which it was sparsely decorated save for a large wide table that was low to the ground. Perched atop of its low surface was an ornate contraption that resembled a fusion between a coal lamp, a flask, and a pair of ivory pipes each connected to the basin of water through a loose cloth hose.
"... De 'ell is dat thin'?!" Sorcha asked.
"A hookah," Topaz explained as she looked towards the Amira. "... You brought smoking herbs?"
"Even better." She then brings out a small sack of dried-out poppy seeds along with a striking flint. "... Opium, imported straight from Rajapushpa."
"Ooh, some high-end stuff, neat!" Karna cackled as the Amira set up the contraption, putting the seeds into the container before lighting a small fire on the uppermost lantern that heated the seeds to produce flavored smoke that flowed down towards the flask full of water below, generating a cooled steam and stored within the bottle. "... No smoking hard drugs until you're all past 21, okay?"
"Tou-san, I'm way past that chronological age," Tsukiko pouted as her father (adopted) took a seat before Khawlah.
"Counterpoint, your brain is still readjusting from the lobotomy to remove your brainwashing." Karna then picks up one of the pipes before sucking in a huge drag before exhaling the milky vapors through his nostrils. "... Yep, that's some strong-ass shit."
Khawlah then takes a pipe for herself before taking her own drag through it as well. "... All of you, sit down," she ordered before exhaling. "My subordinates are preparing tea."
The Dustbin takes their seats around the table as both the Professor and the Amira sit across from the same hookah table.
"... So, our deal still stands," Khawlah pointed out.
"Given that you scratched our back, I suspect that we do indeed owe you a scratch in return," Karna cordially replied in Almyran. "... That was a metaphor, by the way. It means that yes, I do agree with the notion that our deal with you months prior still stands."
"Now before we make our covert alliance official, I'd like you to humor me on one more thing..." The Amira then takes a small sip through her pipe before exhaling her own plume of scented steam. "... Can you tell me more about you and the rest of your merry band? I mean, I heard only pieces of your story during your time where I have found you in the slave markets. Now that I got you right in front of me along with your charges, I think I have earned the right to know everything about you."
Karna chuckles to himself. "... You've gotten bold after these past 20 years, have you?"
He then sets down the pipe as the Amira's subordinates come into the tent bringing with them their tea set; a hot kettle full of sage tea and cups atop the wooden tray.
"Very well, Amira," Karna remarked as he picked up his pipe. "Allow me to recount the epic tales of Karna Yuga and his merry band of bloodletters and psychopaths..."
Dragon Dust: The Dustbin Chronicles
Lesson 0: Refresher
My story begins with me stumbling upon a small village in the mountains, nothing more than a nameless stranger owning nothing but what he carried in his bag full of knickknacks and the very clothes that he wore.
The sole reason for his undertaking of this tumultuous journey was to find a better life as an instructor for Fódlan's most prestigious institution: Garreg Mach Monastery's Officers Academy. As soon as I landed a job there, a cushy bedroom all for myself, three square meals a day, and having the protection of the continent's greatest superpower on my side awaited me after a lifetime of hardship!
It was getting dark upon his arrival, so he sought for a drink before settling in for the night.
But just as he was finished, a bandit raid had occurred, right as he was relieving himself in the alleyway next to the stray mongrel he'd befriended. Together, with their combined wit and cunning, they managed to make their way out of the village, just in time to witness all the fighting that was happening just outside.
Right as he and the dog were about to make a break for it, he gets cornered by a swordsman of exceptional skill, and the pair fall into the running stream below, swept away by the tides into an unknown destination...
... To which he wakes up washed ashore, still alive, and a few days late for his application.
However, in a twist of fate, a deal was offered by those who were more than willing to kick him to the curb: he will get the job, provided he teaches the academy's worst-performing students for a whole year, and gets them to graduate.
And so, his new lease on life began with the following students:
Fódlan's smartest person who the other Professors didn't know what to do with.
A bandaged and nigh-feral boy who looks as if he's always on the verge of killing someone.
Twins from Brigid, disgraced bodyguards of their liege, now trapped in this purgatory.
A tall Almyran boy and his monstrous horse whom their way of life was stripped from them ever so cruelly.
And a veiled young woman barely reaching up to my kneecaps whose lethality was that of a viper's.
With that, our days spent together had begun, collectively known as "The Dustbin." We cleaned out the old classroom I found them in, had it set ablaze by someone not wanting us to succeed, somehow stumble into a small conspiracy, and after fighting for our lives, including having to fight the very same dog I have befriended who was turned into a monster right before my very eyes by someone else, we earned the right to use one of the other, cleaner, and better-stocked classrooms, albeit only at night.
Better than eking out termites during class time, that's for sure.
Anyway, our first exam period began, and admittedly, it was harder than actually having to fight for our lives. Due to the fact that nearly everyone in my class was illiterate in Fódlan's lexicon.
I had to work really, really fast, just to make sure that they could actually keep up with the other students beyond learning how to kill other people.
I even had to host remedial classes of my own for other students just to have my own charges can ride some coattails and learn something. In the end, most of them passed, and a few that didn't had to take remedials afterwards for the future make-up attempt.
Did you know that we each had to pay an admission fee for those exams? And that the Professors had to take them too?
After that exam and getting to see the other students go out into the field, I had to bend over backwards to my superiors just to allow my students to do the same.
We somehow managed to uncover a fucking conspiracy against the Church of Seiros by complete happenstance.
"Wait a minute, this is the first time I've heard of such thing," Khawlah pointed out. "I thought Fódlan was united under the damned Church and the three nations were merely vassals!"
"No nation is a monolith, let alone a continent, Amira," Karna pointed out. "... Remember Almyra's own history?"
"I do, and it's just that we are the ones who are stamping out insurgents every full moon!" she pointed out. "The [Mubashir] were formed as an expeditionary group for said purpose under my design!"
"Well, silver lining, you've done a much better job than the Church, that's for sure," Karna remarked with a chuckle. "... Now I wonder how our next set of players would've lasted against you."
First we learned that the bandits who attacked the village I ended up were hired by some asshole calling himself the "Flame Emperor," and then we were sent to investigate a small-time nobleman trying to start an insurrection, the latter of which we got caught, jailed, and few of us got tortured by some fucker named Lord Lonato.
His little compound that he kept us in went up in flames as we made our escape. After which, we were ordered to rest as the rest of the Officers Academy's students were sent in to clean up what was left of the insurgency, with Lord Lonato's head decorating a pike soon after.
After sweeping the incident under the rug by blaming the Western Church for the whole mess, we were assigned security duty for the Church of Seiros' day of Goddess' Rite of Rebirth.
Said place was broken in by the same conspirators, but nothing of value was stolen and no one important were hurt too gravely.
And thus, our class project was officialized by our current higher-ups: find the conspirators against the Church of Seiros and stamp them out.
We tackled a tower packed to the brim of bandits, led by a disgraced noble who was in charge of a continent-wide cartel of bandits. We were forced to investigate a kidnapping that led into an organ-trafficking operation taking place where all of the peoples' refuse go to swim and piss. We had to bust a fraud medicine ring during a fucking epidemic. We had to stop a village from burning to the ground during my time off.
We practically moved heaven and earth behind the scenes for very, very little in return. At least our clients paid us in full under the contract we were under.
And then came the last month of Fódlan's Calendar Year 1179... where we managed to unmask the conspirators and officially declared war against them.
They called themselves "Agartha," or "Those Who Slither in the Dark." Led by Sage Thales and the rest of his Seven Sages, this secret cabal of assassins and occultists try to subvert Fódlan's status quo in their favor from the shadows.
... And they were the ones sponsoring that schmuck Flame Emperor and his little rebellion. Whoopie.
We fend them off during our debut, but it was clear that the month after would be the beginning of our intimate relationship.
First, we had to retrieve the [Chalice of Beginnings], an artifact that can create life from nothing. After that, our client who told us to get that damned thing gets kidnapped and we were forced to play a whole game of chicken to prevent our side from suffering losses. And then, said kidnapped client was revealed to be using both of us to get his hands on the [Chalice of Beginnings] in order to resurrect some dead woman who he loved, and planned to use us as sacrifices in order to get the damned thing working.
And then, the Agarthans hijack said plan, and then proceed to create a monster out of one of their own named "Vritra," an honest-to-the-gods Dragon all but in name.
... We lived. We slew the monster created before us. And I managed to save the sacrifice from her fleshy prison.
The others demanded that she be put to death, with that she has the blood of Agarthans flowing through her. I told them to spare her, suggesting that we can use her to extract information about our enemies from her.
And so, they complied. Her name was Kronya, and I began sticking needles into her head to get her to talk.
A good few months pass by, a little Almyran invasion there and there, and lo and behold, everyone who has designs for this bloody continent began to move to their final parts of their plan-
"Wait, wait, wait... hold up," Khawlah interrupted, the tent now occupied to the brim with the [Mubashir] Griffin Knights listening in on their story with the Dustbin. "... How is everything that you're saying making any sense?"
"I'm only one person, not some omniscient narrator who can tell literally every player's perspectives," Karna pointed out. "I'm only telling you my story, not the whole story."
The Amira silently curses herself for her careless application of words. "... Clever bastard."
"And besides," Karna remarked as he took another drag from the hookah, "it's not like we're scarce on time and opportunity to fill you in on the missing gaps. Forgive me for the upcoming omissions, for even I do not have solid proof of what were they actually thinking. Not that it matters, since well... they're all dead."
"Fine, fine..." grumbled Khawlah as she huffed out another plume of scented team. "... Proceed."
So you know that little invasion of yours, Amira? You know, the one with the [Zaratan]-class ship with the [Dantalion Cannon], the Janissaries, and Amir Shahid al-Mansur I Muhammad had half of his face ground to a skull?
Turns out that kind of a shake-up stirred up some shit for every covert superpower within Fódlan, forcing them to accelerate their respective plans. That became the impetus for me to come up with my own plans.
That "sacrifice" that I took with me and begged the Church to spare her from a headsman's axe? Yeah, she's my estranged adoptive daughter that I used as my double-infiltrator and saboteur for all factions converging towards Garreg Mach. More on that later.
So while the Church thought that my students graduating from Garreg Mach's Officers Academy can be covered up as a "roadside accident"? Psh, they survived worse.
In fact, it was the Church's overconfidence in their own prowess that I exploited to get my own plans rolling.
While my students and daughter were busying themselves slaughtering Agartha's population, I occupied myself trapping the Archbishop. her closest confidants, and of course, every student who found themselves in this mess.
... And one of them was none other than the Flame Emperor himself, or herself.
The Flame Emperor was none other than the Adrestian Empire's Imperial Crown Princess, Edelgard von Hrevelg, to whom I exposed to everyone present, right after I sealed every last exit with bombs.
I took my time, slowly breaking down their minds and bodies with nothing more than my khukuri knife that I had stowed away in my bag of cultural knickknacks this whole time, some fork-tongued psychological breaking, and an application of Dark Magic that I used to even the playing field via a ravenous rat swarm to consume whoever didn't get back up to their feet fast enough.
There were about five hundred or more underground. I reduced them to about a couple dozen before moving onto the Archbishop.
We punched and kicked each other like savages, spitting teeth, blood, and spit alike with each blow we inflicted upon each other. We stopped using weapons entirely, settling for making our executions painful as possible.
I prevailed via a spinning piledriver into the stone floor of the underground mausoleum. Then I made my escape via a stolen [Warp Powder] that I nicked from the Flame Emperor's main toady, and left everyone inside to drown into the spatial void that I summoned with my own Dark Magic.
As soon as I got out, I took a Pegasus Knight hostage and forced her to take me to where my students went.
Lo and behold, four of them got themselves killed, but Agartha's technology and my knowledge allowed me to bring them back from the brink.
I have Sorcha and Selene new arms and legs, I gave Byron and Víðarr entirely new bodies, and I made Cyrus and Topaz's bodies stronger.
And while the rest of the continent were running around headless with the disappearance of Garreg Mach itself, I got to work executing my own plans for the continent.
I began saturating every last one of the continent's drinking water supplies with magical runoffs extracted from the Dragon Veins nearby Agartha's cities, tailored a set of clothes based of clerical robes of the Church of Seiros, and set ups magical beacons around Fódlan, and I couldn't have done it all without the help of my students.
And the fateful day hath arrived... via me dropping the disappeared Garreg Mach on top of the gathered three-nation army, crushing them all into paste as I made my true debut.
The projectors showed me off, I shot the Gatekeeper in the head with a flintlock, and gathered the remaining continental authorities to the table, and then made my proclamation as the new Pope of Church of Seiros.
"I'm sorry, WHAT?!" The Amira then coughs out from accidently sucking in too much opium vapor while some of the [Mubashir] Griffin Knights spat out their sage tea in surprise.
"Technically, that title I made for myself is defunct given that Garreg Mach itself is nothing more than a gaping crater..." Karna grumbled as the other listeners try to comprehend what they had just learned.
"... Amira, I am having a hard time keeping up with this madman's narrative," one of the Griffin Knights pointed out.
"I concur," another added. "If it weren't for the fact that we saw that monster be shot down by our [Dantalion Cannon] with our own eyes, then I would assume that he's legitimately insane!"
Karna laughs at their befuddlement the Dustbin were also having a hard time keeping up due to the language barrier (that Cyrus and Topaz had to translate real-time).
"... Come to think of it, the development for the last two months we spent at Fódlan went by too fast, didn't it?" Tsukiko pointed out.
"Hey, move fast, break stuff," Cyrus chuckled.
So upon declaring myself the new Pope, I began enacting some... reforms, per se.
First, I now dissolved the Church of Seiros as an institution, and all of its affiliates to be liquidated effective immediately.
Then, I pardoned whatever perceived crimes that my students were accused of.
And finally, I then revealed all of the dirty laundry of every superpower in Fódlan to the general public.
"Well what are those dirty little secrets?!" one of the Griffin Knights clamored.
"Yeah! Yeah!" another added, causing the whole crowd of [Mubashir] to go into an anticipatory frenzy.
Khawlah then raises her hand, ordering her subordinates to cease their excitement.
"... Impress me," the Amira requested. "... I have seen the worst of Almyra and its darkest corners. Show me what the lands blessed by their 'Goddess' have to offer."
Karna nods as he sips his tea. "Alright..." He then readjusts his seat before looking back at his students and adopted daughter, to which they nod in consent. "... The truth."
Fódlan is nothing more than a lie fabricated by those who were the "winners" of history.
It's Goddess? Nothing more than a corpse worshiped cravenly as an idol. It's faith? Nothing more than pure propaganda to keep control of its masses. It's government? Nothing more than a pawn that no longer has its master telling it what to do.
I know the truth. I know what Fódlan was and is.
Because I was there since the beginning.
I was there where it all began.
The whole tent goes silent, with the [Mubashir] Griffin Knights and Khawlah going into complete shock whereas the Dustbin and Tsukiko nod in solemn understanding.
"... I would say that I don't believe you," the Amira pointed out. "... But the fact that we witnessed you eight fight that monster who could talk and breathe light so hot that it turns earth into glass has made us doubt our own disbelief."
Karna then exhales another plume from his nostrils. "... Thank you for your understanding."
Before Fódlan, there was me. Before Karna Yuga, there was Drakōn. Before Drakōn, there was just an orphaned boy raised in a world that is not of this world.
In a little place called "Archanea."
I was raised in the halls of Khadein's Mage Academy for as long as I can remember. I remembered there being a war going on, with me and the rest of the student body cheering for a certain hero who was leading an army of warriors, mages, and others willing to fight alongside himself against an evil empire led by a malevolent Dragon.
I studied day and night diligently, all in the hopes of being able to join my hero in his quest to liberate us from this fear.
It all came crashing down as the Dragons declared their victory, leaving me alone in a world where we were merely prospect slaves to our new conquerors.
And thus, this boy was left to fend for himself in the wilderness for a few years before making a harebrained attempt to save his fellow man.
He failed, and was enslaved like the rest. During his tenure, he was put to backbreaking work like the rest, building monuments of our oppressors.
During one of his labors, he chanced upon his fallen hero's corpse, left to rot with his comrades at the bottom of a ravine in disgrace.
My fear turned into despair... until I saw his broken sword.
Taking the blade whose edge hasn't dulled, I slew two Dragons with it, and turned my despair into rage.
With this blade in hand, I sought to liberate my kind from the Dragons, and thus our revolution had begun.
Continent by continent, we slew all Dragons that stood in our way. We kept killing every last one of them until we arrived at our tyrant's front door.
It was either them or us. In the end, I alone prevailed. The Dragons slain down to their last brood. But in return, humanity was now rendered extinct save for me.
I had nothing left in this dead world except for the rage boiling in my heart. So I found a way out.
The Outrealms, the crossroads that connect a myriad of parallel worlds through the Dragon's Gate!
I could only muster enough power for a one-way trip, but honestly, I had nothing left to leave behind save for whatever scraps of clothes I had on my back and the hero's blade that I had fashioned and reinforced from melted Dragon's bones.
And thus, I jumped into whatever world awaited me. A lowly boy who lost everything now sought to gain everything.
"... Another world?" Khawlah remarked in disbelief.
"How is it even possible?!" a [Mubashir] Griffin Knight pointed out. "There are no records or myths of beings coming from a world different from our own!"
"... Except for Fódlan." Everyone then turns towards Cyrus, who sits cross-legged and cross-armed. "... During my... involuntary stay there, I've become rather familiar with its myths. There was one passage stating that the Goddess, Sothis, came to this world from 'the stars'."
The unfamiliar Griffin Knights were taken aback by this usage of exact wording, realizing that the truth was literally staring at their faces this whole time.
"... It was a lie, no doubt," Topaz added. "But even lies are rooted in some truth, no matter how absurd."
Khawlah blinked stupidly before taking a drag of opium to calm her nerves. "... Methinks that we've underestimated Fódlan," she commented. "But alas, where's your proof that you come from another world?"
Karna, without a word, flexes his right arm to transform it into a more demonic-looking form, now radiating with a sinister aura that causes the [Mubashir] to take a step back.
Tsukiko then follows it up by showing off her [Fūjin Yumi] extending its limbs out from its bird-crowned grip and catch like a telescope before a line of verdant energy connected itself like a bowstring. Not content showing off one Regalia, she then partially unsheathes her [Raijinto] from its ivory and gold scabbard, letting the exposed blade crackle with azure-colored sparks of electricity.
"Okay, you've proven your point," Khawlah remarked. "... Even by Fódlan's standards, you lot stand out like a sore thumb."
Tsukiko then whispers something into Topaz's ear, to which the latter translates. "... She said that if you think this is beyond the pale, then you haven't seen or heard the worst of it."
"And that's our segue..." Karna then takes a deep drag from his hookah pipe before blowing out a large plume.
Throughout my journeys across the Outrealms, I stumbled upon many, many kinds of worlds, each one more messed up than the last:
A world literally broken apart by the God of Fate, its lands now mere islands floating in an infinite sea of aether. There I found Tsukiko, last of the Kirigakure Clan, and sole heir of its lost royal birthright.
A world divided between humanity and beastmen, watched over by a Goddess who didn't give two shits and despised them both. There I found Solon, a beastman who was cast out by his kin for being a cripple and abused by those who took him in.
A world where the dead walk the earth in place of humanity, the skies eclipsed by a titanic wyrm whose wings blocked the sun's rays. There I found Thales, raving mad from years of being isolated after the death of his company.
A world where a religion worships a Dark Dragon as its god, where children are routinely gathered as sacrifices as their reach crushed any hope it could gather. There I found Bias, a child of a powerful bloodline who had yet to awaken to her true power.
A world where monsters and their Demon King reigned supreme over all creation. There I found Chilon, last of the Grado Empire's generals and current leader of the last bastion of humanity that have still yet to perish.
A world... that surprisingly normal, save for a conspiracy that hired us as their couriers, where we found a whole slew of human replication, and a plot to open their own version of the Dragon's Gate and absorb the coming Dragons' quintessence to gain their powers.
"... I'm sorry, but can you repeat that?" the Amira deadpanned.
"Exactly what it sounds like." Karna then sips on his hookah pipe before blowing out a thick milky plume from his nostrils. "... We tend to attract trouble whenever we're not walking into one."
"The fact that you survived speaks volumes of your tenacity..." Khawlah then sips on her pipe. "... Or your fecklessness. Continue."
Anyway, in that seemingly normal-looking world, we found Cleobulus, a backup body for our client who gained her own mind and soul and the very reason why we broke our contract in the first place.
... And yes, we did go through the Dragon's Gate. And we accidently left it open, causing that peaceful world to be overrun with Fire Dragons during our absence.
Every single [Mubashir] Griffin Knight facepalms in exasperation.
"... In my defense, I never learned how to close the Dragon's Gate manually due to all of my traversals to the Outrealms being one-way," Karna defended.
After... cleaning up our mess, we found Epimenides, a young Dark Magic prodigy who went through the same thing as I did, albeit in a shorter amount of time.
Moving on from that disaster, we arrived at a world... which was a loose combination of all of the previous worlds we visited.
Monsters, walking dead, warring gods, and whatever humans we found being utterly insane. Oh, and to make matters even worse, the land we were standing on was slowly sinking into the ocean.
We found Myson and Pittacus, former adherents to the Duma Faithful, the latter having lost a majority of her soul that was botched and the former has been trying to find a way to reverse that.
After slaying the two dueling gods, we left, and we kept traveling through the Outrealms, slaying whatever Dragon, god, or anyone getting in our way, gathering our own followers until we nearly reached one billion.
We've gathered various weapons, armor, and skills during our nomadic trail. We gathered blades that pierce through a Dragon's hide like a hot knife through butter. We've forged armor that could withstand a Dragon's breath and claws with nary a scratch. We've developed skills that allow us to harness the raw power of the Outrealms itself, even going as far as to open a way into the void between the realms, [Zahras].
We continued in our endless crusade... until we arrived upon a land unspoiled by man.
Forests as far as the eyes can see. The air so clean that it purified our muddled souls that has been marred by an eternity of conflict against our divine oppressors. And mankind who lived here before our arrival were wearing animal hides and hunting fauna with spears and bows made of sticks and stones.
A realm... where mankind had yet to develop a "civilization."
Khawlah drops her pipe in sheer shock while one of her [Mubashir] subordinates drop the refilled tea set onto the floor (thankfully, the ground being mostly sand dampened the impact, preventing breakage) upon reentering the tent in time to hear everything.
"... How old are you?" the Griffin Knight with the dropped tea set asked.
"Who knows?" Karna shrugged. "Perhaps I'm over one million years old. Perhaps I'm even older than that. But despite everything, I'm still the same kid from Khadein at heart!"
"How did you stay young?" another asked. "Your face still looks youthful after millions of years!"
"Dragon meat," Karna answered. "Turns out the flesh of beings that are closer to divinity makes one hell of a superfood. I don't recommend it for the faint of heart, due to it being extremely addictive, and keeping down other food is going to be a trial."
Khawlah mirthlessly chuckles at the reveal of Karna's chronological age, which was (generously) ambiguous at best, but it's made clear when she looked right into his eyes.
"Karna Yuga" was the farthest thing from a mere "man." They were faded yet resolute. Mad but purposeful. A god in every sense, who has stared eternity in the face and didn't blink first.
"... And to think you were trying to pass yourself off as a mere school teacher," the Amira remarked with a wry smirk. "... Tell me, was it all part of your plan? To pull the greatest fraud in the universe as reprisal for Fódlan's own fraud?"
Karna then looked down at his own reflection cast from his cup of sage tea. "... At first, it wasn't."
Honestly, we were seriously considering settling down here. Put down our weapons and live in peace in this pristine, unspoiled world.
... But we immediately forgot that the universe doesn't let us have nice things. Because by pure luck, another group of wayfarers consisting of Dragons came to the same world and conclusion.
There wasn't enough room for the both of us, so we went to war.
It could be best described as "apocalyptic." Humans and Dragons killing each other with such reckless abandon that we accidently destroyed both of our Dragon's Gates during all the fighting.
Without a way out of the mess we found ourselves in, everyone doubled down.
All traces of nature were destroyed by us and the Dragons warring against each other. The original human populace caught in the middle, who, I remind you, didn't even learn how to forge iron, were either driven out of the continent or eradicated. And for said warring humans and Dragons from another world, the war started with 999,999,999 humans, each of them well-experienced in the art of Dragon-slaying, against 666,666 Dragons, each of them who have the power to raze an entire nation alone.
The war ended with only 108 humans and 22 Dragons surviving the quagmire. As for how long it lasted... we lost count, but I kinda remember our last battlefield being a blasted wasteland that was ash-black as far as the eyes can see.
Saner minds prevailed on that day, and me and the other side's leader agreed on a ceasefire, with the alternative being that we drive each other to complete extinction.
"... That reminds me of something," Khawlah remarked in a hushed tone, to which her subordinates began to agree.
"Of what?" asked Topaz.
The Amira sighs as she then shares her revelation. "... You see, one of Almyra's many folk legends surmises that the creation of man began... with the 'destruction' of what was called the 'old world,' drowned into a 'sea of fire' called 'Jaḥīm,' with the lands beyond Almyra were the realm of savage demons and monsters. A land called 'Jahannam'."
The gathered [Mubashir] along with Topaz and Cyrus begin clamoring among themselves upon making this connection.
"So if the Professor has been there since the beginning...!" Cyrus remarked as his eyes widened upon realizing the full truth in both contexts of Fódlan and Almyra.
"Suddenly, him calling himself 'Devil of Fódlan' makes way too much sense," Topaz agreed as she saw her Professor look pensive at his past actions.
Khawlah then looks at Karna in complete shock. "... What the hell were you thinking back then?!"
"Not much, apparently." He then sucks in another drag of opium from his pipe.
The truth is... I got sick of my own purpose.
Killing Dragons, monsters, and gods without end... I got tired of it. I got tired of seeing death everywhere I went.
So, for the first time in a long time, I explored the continent after several centuries of rest and peacetime, seeing that Fódlan's nature was slowly recovering. It's animals were slowly returning, its native people coming back and resettling into their prior lives, and its skies now clear of smog.
It was as if our war prior had never happened, but I knew the truth. We destroyed the very land we were trying to call home simply because we couldn't stand each other.
Ironic, isn't it? Me, a harbinger of death upon all Dragons that had once razed these lands without remorse, getting sentimental over nature's resurrection.
I guess the boy inside of me never went away. He wanted peace, like any other sane human being.
So, against all common sense that I've lived by for who knows how long, I reached out to the very same Dragon who I was leading my people against.
We got drunk and eloped in secret. And of course, when my people found out, they poisoned my wine and dumped me into a river that led into the ocean, all the while, my adopted daughter was forced to watch this display of treachery as she was punished in my place for this act of perceived "betrayal."
I don't know how long I was set adrift into the sea. It might've been so long that my own perception of time was... distorted.
You know when you sleep, it feels like only an hour or two had passed when in reality, about several hours to a whole third of a whole day had passed in that time?
... Accuse me of being absurd, but my time drifting across a whole ocean and towards another continent felt like a mere day, when in reality, civilization was slowly rising up by the time I washed ashore upon Rajapushpa!
"... How are you not dead from starvation?" asked Khawlah before Karna took off his leather vest and pointed his thumb towards his chest.
"My Chromes and the internal mana engine inside," he explained. "Former reinforced my bones and muscles to the level surpassing that of a Dragon's, whereas the latter allows me to keep going as long as there's ambient mana present."
"So you're basically unkillable," the Amira pointed out. "A true immortal, in every sense."
"Oh no, no, no, no," Karna rebuked as he shook his head from side to side. "I can still be killed like any regular person. It's just that it's way harder to put me down. Admittedly, I came this close to dying when I was engaging in fisticuffs with the Archbishop. She made me bleed like crazy."
The [Mubashir] Griffin Knights exchanged concerned looks amongst themselves, wondering how much of a monster was Fódlan's Archbishop was to make him bleed.
"... Curious?" Karna teased. "... Then brace yourselves."
After I got dragged into another conflict that resulted in those who took care of me in Rajapushpa getting butchered down to a man, I began exploring the other lands beyond where I washed up from.
I've seen the formation of the first Khanate of Battu taming their first organized herd of their famed horses.
I've walked across Shangri-La as they built their first of their famed walls around their flourishing city.
I wandered through Hanafuku as they were planting their very first rice fields.
I've braved through the blizzards and wildlife of Albinea.
I've traversed the dense jungles of Dagda and Brigid.
And then I returned to Fódlan, completely unrecognizable from the time where I had left it.
... I saw the corpse of the Dragon who I eloped with rotting on before my feet as if she were just rubbish.
Then I sought to find what had happened during my absence. So I went to the Crimson Canyon for some answers.
... They killed Sothis after she'd bore my children. Then they erected her name to divinity and some fake was forced to carry it. And all of the remaining native human populace were wiped out and replaced with failed War Dragons, now living as "humanity" of Fódlan.
I tried to seek vengeance, but I was denied. Those cowards took their own lives before I could even try, so made their people, the Dragons, suffer in their stead.
I left the fake called "Sothis" by the masses to her fate, the "Ten Elites" taking her apart shortly after as I returned to my people.
They had now scrubbed my existence from their shared memory, damned as a traitor, including my own adopted daughter, now named "Kronya," as they were about to march towards another war against the Dragons.
I had nothing left. So I consigned myself to my fate of rotting away in a world that I cannot escape from.
I was content living the rest of my life as a nobody, letting my own Chromes and mana engine to rust away naturally until they stopped working. I even took up a position to teach at Garreg Mach to let my last moments here be somewhat comfortable.
"... And then they woke you up," Khawlah pointed out. "... Just like a Devil sleeping below the earth."
Karna scoffs before smirking. "... Can't blame them," he pointed out. "Can they know of someone who's been erased from history?"
"More like repeating it!" a Griffin Knight pointed out.
"Eh, I'm not the good guy or the bad guy here," Karna remarked apathetically. "I just exist. I'm here now."
The Amira sighs as she tries not to cry at the story, refusing to show weakness as her reputation as the "Ruthless" demanded it. "... So what changed your mind?"
Karna then turned towards the Dustbin. "Them," he answered. "It's because of my teaching job that I got to meet them. They reminded me why I started my journey in the first place; to ensure that people like them have a future. People... like how I was, who lost everything from the powers beyond their measure. A chance to fight back. A chance... to live their own lives."
He then looks towards Tsukiko with a small smile.
"... It was them that they reignited my hope," Karna continued. "... It was small, but it was enough to give my life another chance. It's because of that that I took my shot in saving Tsukiko from being 'Kronya'."
"... Then that monster Vritra was!"
Karna nods at the Griffin Knight's statement. "... And the reason why I didn't take the first chance was that I needed time to come up with a plan to rescue her from their clutches," he pointed out. "A half-baked plan will make all of my efforts naught. I had to move fast and quietly. I came close a couple times losing her, especially during the times when the damned Archbishop was visiting her cell."
Meanwhile, Topaz translated what Karna was saying towards Tsukiko, the latter smiling in relief. "... Arigato, tou-san."
The Amira sighs. "... And here we are," she pointed out. "You and your band escaped Jahannam, and now used my deal to come up with a way to finish Fódlan off."
"That's part of the reason, yes," Karna remarked. "However, it's not merely your military might alone that I seek, Amira."
Khawlah then raises an eyebrow. "... Pray tell," she replied. "What else do you seek from our partnership?"
"Experience," Karna answered. "We are strong, yes. But we are not strong enough to eradicate all of Fódlan without drawing things out. It'll take five years at least to clean up the entire continent's worth of people, but rather than opting for a series of purges, I'd rather deal with them with a single, decisive blow."
"So produce more [Dantalion Cannons]?" the Amira pointed out. "I can arrange that."
"I need more than that, Amira," Karna begged. "I need all of Almyra together. Wholly united against Fódlan and for what lies it stands for. See how our interests align?"
Khawlah snickers with the utmost satisfaction at what he was implying. "... You dirty sneak of a man. No wonder why you're called the 'Devil of Fódlan'."
"Question is, are you willing to make the deal?" Karna asked.
The Amira then sets her pipe down before getting up.
"... It's getting late," she pointed out. "We shall undertake our negotiations as soon as we arrive in Almyra's capital city. I can arrange a room and board for you and your group."
"No need." Cyrus then pulls out the owl medallion that he got from an Almyran Griffin Knight a few months prior during their invasion of Derdriu. "... As royalty yourself, you must know the benefits of having friends in high places, no?"
Khawlah snickers in amusement. "That makes my job of delegating work to my [Mubashir] much easier," she remarked. "... Thank you. I'll make the arrangements."
"Alright everyone." Karna then puts down his pipe onto the table before the hookah is taken away. "... Time to turn in for the night."
"I'll join the night watch," Byron offered. "My body requires no sleep to function properly."
"Just keep close to the camp, alright?" Tsukiko remarked as she and the rest of the Dustbin made their way to their own tents. "... Min'na, oyasumi."
"Good night to you all..." Karna remarked with a yawn as he made his way back to his own tent, ready for the true first day of their liberation.
To Be Continued...
Author's Notes: Hello, everyone! It's been a while!
Thank you so much for your patience for my sequel to "The Dustbin", "Dragon Dust: The Dustbin Chronicles"!
I have to admit, I was initially planning to go straight into "Chapter 1," but after returning from my family vacation to Seattle and working on other fics, I decided to implement a "Chapter 0" as both a recap and my way of easing back into this fic's narrative after like whole good 3/4th of year of absence.
But if this recap is not up to your speed, feel free to ignore that and read my previous work at your own pace.
As for the content of this chapter itself, it's more or less reintroduction of our main cast, and the [Mubashir] and Amira Khawlah al-Mansur I Muhammad acting as "audience surrogate" for "The Dustbin"-fic as a whole. It's messy, it's chaotic, and it's the work that I could genuinely be proud of. There are also a few lore-drops here and there, but it'll be expanded in the next few chapters.
And aside from Karna paraphrasing Porky Minch/King P from Mother 3 regarding his age, there are no other (notable) references in this chapter. For now, just take this fic chapter as a sign that I'm back...
... And I need to learn how to take a break for my writing, because God forbid, I swore to myself that I'd take a break from writing during my Seattle vacation, and what do I do when I'm bored?!
Although in my defense, traveling and I don't agree much, so maybe the psychological dissonance may have impacted this chapter's development more than I think.
Anyhoo, speaking of my writing, I'm implementing a new upload schedule in the following order:
- Dragon Dust: The Dustbin Chronicles
- High School DxD - Re:Incarnation of Malevolence.
- Apocrypha: Book 2 - War
Tune in next time, where the real story of the Dustbin's misadventures outside of Fódlan begins for real!
Until then, happy 2025, and hope that we do better this time!