Fantasy In Another World With a Bunch of Assholes [IC]

[Birdsie]

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[Birdsie]

June Verles Epiphany Reinhardt Noble Scion Swire Alteras

Let's begin! Alteras can join in once he's done with his CS.

For a moment lesser than an eyeblink, everything was awash in light. After the light drowned out, there was darkness and space; an endless void stretching as far as imagination cared to perceive.

Within that void, a voice spoke, "Ah, ––––––, you've done it again."

The ominous statement was followed by a shift in the void.

It expanded forwards, like a tube of spatial distortion; inviting movement. Some kind of acceleration happened, followed by the sound of dimensional barriers being broken, and suddenly the black void became a small, poorly-lit chamber in the bowels of a castle.

The group of ritualists, wreathed in arcane blue robes, raised themselves from where they had been kneeling on the floor, with looks of surprise. They came together into a circle and broke into a swarm of gushed whispers and confused exclamations.

"This early?" one of them asked. "The heroes weren't to be summoned for another five months! This interferes with protocol!"

"H-hey, are you sure we've summoned the right heroes?! One of those is a... cervitaur, I want to say?..." another summoner said. He proceeded to stare at said cervitaur's breasts unrepentantly, his thoughts drawn to nicer places.

"The emperor will like, totally, like, behead us, o-or something, man! I don't want to be beheaded until I'm given head, bro!"

One of them determinedly stated, "Calm down! We can't be held accountable... i-if anything, this is a sucess." He stepped forward, even though drops of sweat went down his forehead like bullets.

"Let's greet the heroes for now, and, uhm, discuss our probable execution later, okay?"

A chorus of half-hearted agreements answered the last mage's plea. All at once, the summoners turned to face the heroes in a row, with varying degrees of terror. One of them stepped forward, cleared his dry throat, then began to explain:

"W-we welcome you, to the Empire of Artesia, O great heroes of another world! I am Head Summoner Philabert Tilghman! We'd like to beg your patience, while one of us contacts the Emperor, as t-this wasn't supposed to happen for several months!" He glared at his team, and one of them slinked away to another room, presumably to make a call. He turned back to the team, all smiles and singsong voice. "If there's anything we can do to make this better for you, we'd love to be of assistance."

A blonde boy among the heroes let out an excited shriek. "Can we have cookies?"

"Of course! Bring them the finest cookies we have!" the Head Summoner barked out, causing two of his men to flee the room with haste only seen in a hotrod whose engine was replaced by a jet turbine.

***
Interlude ~ Primus​

Author's Note: It's a bit long, Epiphany, but I advise giving it a read if you have the time and want a laugh. Or at least, probably a laugh? Not sure if that's funny or I'm just deluding myself.

Spoiler

In another world, a god was panicking.

All he had tried to do was repair some of the damage done by an unknown wizard deciding to blast his way through several dimensional barriers, and yet somehow things had turned so horribly wrong. Sure, he had taken the opportunity to sneak in a couple other changes, like finally syncing up the flow of time between some of the planes, but surely that couldn’t have caused this, right?

What was he supposed to tell the other gods?

'Okay, so good news and bad news. Good news is that I found a book with the true names of a bunch of demons. Bad news is that I broke it and lost all the pages on the material plane.'

Yeah, that would go over well.

He needed to fix this, and hopefully without the other gods noticing. They’d likely notice if he started plucking up their champions, so that was out, and they’d definitely notice if he materialized and started looking around himself, so that was right out too. He could send his own servants, but they weren’t exactly subtle (even he knew that).

Maybe he could…?

Looking outwards, beyond the Outer Realms and into the Far Realms, the god began to search.

Summoning a Great Old One would certainly distract the other gods from his little accident, but that seemed counterproductive to the whole “maintain the order of the universe” thing. He found a number of humans sitting around a table, seemingly strategizing before a battle with a beholder using small figurines and books of information, and he idly took note of their location in case he didn’t find anything better.

And then he found something interesting.

“A group of heroes... ritual... cheat powers... perfect! Ooh! They get summoned every three decades?! All orderly, just how I like! Now then, next up is to appear before them in the form of an angel or something and clearly and concisely explain the situation so that they are prepared for what is to come…”

“...pfft.”

Laughing, the god reached out and grabbed the heroes' souls.

This wasn't really his specialty, but he could fine-tune their fates if he stared and focused hard enough: fate was an orderly thing, after all. He saw lines of destiny, like threads on a loom, interwoven into events of various likelihoods. A venerable spiderweb of possibilities, stretched on branches of a timeline, braiding in certain places and diverging in others.

All of them were interwoven with each other tightly, probably because fate dictated they were meant to be a circus troupe or something. The god just shrugged and got to work.

He grabbed a pair of scissors and cut out some of which he didn't like, and then he made a few knots in places of importance. By the time he was done, the lines of destiny were torn up and hastily reassembled.

They were looking kind of jury-rigged, as if put together by an amateur.

But they would work... probably. He really hoped he didn't outright unchain them from fate; that would give a bunch of prophets headaches for centuries to come.

He might have made some other, minor adjustments, while he was at it. He was certain replacing one of the heroes with a legitimate artificial mind meant for military aircraft and plopping it into the body of an elf would be appreciated, as would giving the one person with the thieving ability a cervitaur body.

Because that - being much taller and less dextrous than potential theft victims - would make pickpocketing easier.

He may have also overcharged the ritual a bit, speeding up the summoning, which would cause other consequences for various groups of interest in the local material plane. Whoops!

He decided to try and fix that, so he adjusted fate again: cutting a thread in a broad stroke of meta-scissors.

Now he sped up the ritual and put the black market economy in danger. Actually, wait, wasn't that disorderly? Crap, crap, crap - he cut several more lines, hoping it'd fix the problem, but he ended up making it bigger. Two groups of goblins were now fated to explode, for one reason or another; a blue dragon in the eastern deserts would be transmuted into glass at some point within the next twenty years; a teenage girl would come into contact with a spirit entity that gave her the ability to summon and control fairy insects.

"Shit!" he exclaimed, realizing he made things worse. "Okay, okay. Calm down. I can make things better, if I just tie this... and this... put a little glue... aaand, done."

Bam! Now, they'd find the pages, hand them over to certain authorities, and before long, he'd have them back in his hands. All safe and where they belong.

H-hopefully, the problems he created would be worth it.

No, what was he thinking? Of course they would! He was the God of Law! He always kept things straight!

“Ah, Primus, you’ve done it again.” The god smiled to himself, patting himself on the back. “Truly no god maintains the balance of the universe like you. Now it is time to take a nap.”