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Way Past the Edge of Death and Into Oblivion

Summary:

The universe was destroyed. Some try to save it by embarking on a wild romp through space and time. And Aviel tries to bring Chaos to take over everything. A war with the scope of the multiverse ensues. Now, why can't these supposed saviors of the universe take anything seriously?

Notes:

Parts of this story were derived from roleplay logs. It was co-written by Mauler (who played the Chaos characters), Rhuan (who played Rhuan, Duvon, Jason, and the Dragon Ball characters), and Dreamshifter (who played Asura and Gelidus).

Chapter 1: Prologue

Chapter Text

And so, that was the end. The world was over. The universe had been completely destroyed and consumed by the merciless gods of death. There was nothing left. Nobody left to tell the tale. Well, except me. And those the rest of us who had managed to survive by escaping to another timeline. But still. It's the principle of the thing.

Oh, perhaps you wanted to know how it came about? Or maybe you were actually wondering who the hell I am? Well, let me tell you, then. My name is Kalli May. I was a Dancer on the Edge of Death. I never considered that I might be helping to bring about the end of the universe unwittingly simply by bearing a symbol that I didn't even know the meaning of. They always told me that it meant something very different from what it actually turned out to mean. It meant death. I always figured this meant I was a Dancer on the Edge of Death. The Dancers of Death were to bring themselves close to death and thereby attain enlightenment, from within the face of nearly dying one would find the answers to all things in the universe. But that was not what it meant. Not what the Urian Death Priests so often concealed from us, and so often from one another as well.

But when the Nameless Ones came, spilling out from the Ethereal Plane, what we used to call hyperspace, like ravaging terrors of doom and destruction, there was nothing we could do. Even the most powerful and mightiest of the Elkandu could do nothing to stop them. They had believed them to be slain, but they were not slain. You cannot slay a god of death. To kill them is to empower them. They only come back stronger than ever before, and with a vengeance to wreck against those who had so attempted to affront them.

The Nameless Ones aren't really nameless. But the Urians concealed their names so completely that they managed to let on to most of the population that they had no names at all, and only priests knew they even had names at all. Only the High Priest of the Nameless Ones was to know what their names were. Because just speaking their name could invoke great and terrible powers down upon the speaker, whether or not they realize or intend it. Perhaps this was what finally befell us, when the names of all six of the gods of death were spoken aloud by unbelievers.

They had travelled into their dark realm, on a dead planet in the fringes of the Karzan Galaxy. There were seven of them who went. Rhuan, the mighty Chronomancer. Suzcecoz Ilawi, the greatest technomancer who ever lived. Jenna Jordan, my granddaughter and a good person, if a bit cynical and sarcastic at times. Theodore Nott, whose cutting wit surely would have wounded the gods had he managed to get in far enough to meet them. Kanraku, the bizarre hybrid born from the Geneforge. Goku, a strange alien they called a Saiyan. And Tarna Tanson, a dreamwalker ninja.

Following Jenna's descriptions of ancient myth and legend, they went to this planet out in the middle of nowhere and from there fought their way past the Warriors of Death which were undead guardians of the gateway into the other world. Once there, they battled the Nameless Ones on their own turf and nearly died, but believed they had slain some of the death gods in the process.

However, they brought Dirania with them out of the world. Yes, Dirania, he is the god of "natural death", or so he claims, and he claimed to them to be a god of peace and that he had been betrayed by Ledonu, the god of betrayal, and was locked in the dungeon. But when he came with them, Kanraku and Goku had touched him and he had spread a strain of the Purple Death to them. They took it back with them to their own world where it continued to spread and might have had numerous deaths, perhaps even in the billions, had Suzcecoz not invented some nanobots to fight the plague.

Dirania they locked in a room in Castle Shieltas where they were to keep monitoring him. But he quietly passed away in his sleep and his body dissolved, and there was nothing they could do to stop him or save him. Perhaps they had foolishly believed him dead, but he was not dead, insofar as any god can really die. Unless, perhaps, they will themselves to like Shazmar had done in order to force himself to be reborn as Kanraku, but that was never confirmed until it was far too late. Did Shazmar realize this would happen or that any of this would come about, destroying his precious creation and everyone within it? I don't know. Maybe if he had he would have done something more to stop it. Maybe he just didn't care anymore.

Kanraku did escape the destruction and all, being in a different universe at the time when it went down. But the Nameless Ones were quick to spread there was well, and even the most powerful of the fighters there could not stop them. They would not accept the futility of their fight, however, and "killed" the gods of death repeatedly, forcing them to grow ever stronger. Finally it was their doom and there was nothing more they could do. Kanraku realized this, as he's not all that stupid, even if he is a bit naive sometimes, and he escaped into another timeline with me in hopes of finding some way to stop them from here. But this much is clear, that violence and brute force is definitely not the solution.

We fear that they will manage to shift timelines as well and therefore destroy all creation. Suzcecoz insists that this is not actually possible due to entropy and paradox. I'm not so certain about that, as I have seen plenty of things recently which these Elkandu claim is not possible by any means. She was wrong about plenty of other things, why could she not be wrong about this too? So therefore we must run and think and hope and pray to nobody because our gods have turned against us.