Because Zayne felt being exceedingly handsome and skilled qualified him for the chairmanship so he started the infamous Al-Jazzar Mutiny. He died during his first 1v1 with The Chairman, thus proving that having an elite track record and the best scores doesn't guarantee success.
Rumors say Al-Jazzar's Mutiny was pre-planned by Bahamut Vice Chairman Khaldoun Jandali, with whom The Chairman had been wrestling with for power. Whether or not Jandali was truly the mastermind behind the Mutiny is as true as whether he helped the Cleaners abduct Carmen or not.
I dare you to yap about your OCs to me. I fucking dare you. Do it you won’t. /silly/nf
ooo. ooooooo. an excuse to talk about horrible women. oooooo. oo. perchance i may. who knows.
ok im Going to talk about edith and lybiss, thanks for giving me the excuse to cause now i Have to. ive been putting it off mostly cause. idk where to start. Theres a lot. but yk what. fuck it! im going to lore dump ok. prepare yourself.
its going under a cut actually holy fuck i think you lowk opened the floodgates 😭😭😭😭 these guys have been Brewing for 1~2 years dude and now theyre Free (kinda)
ok so for Edith to make any sense at all, you kinda need to know how she was like. made. as an oc. okay. so she came into being when i decided (like an idiot) "im going to join dnd club at school!" now, that was an Abysmal experience, but it did kind of lead to how she is now. so. yeah. anyway, for dnd club, i made Edith, a hexblood warlock who got her power from the Grandmother hag that turned her into a hexblood at a very young age.
now, because dnd club sucked so fucking bad (distracted players, very Loud room, etc) we had like. 4 dms that year, each running a different campaign, and i used Edith for all of them. i came up with a joke with one of my friends that those were just her past lives, so now that's like. the main part of her concept. you know how that goes.
After that, i had a campaign idea for the Spelljammer campaign setting, and i decided to use characters i'd never get to play/wanted to turn into npcs. Edith was the first i chose to add, mostly cause i wanted to add on to her "past lives" thing. that campaign has been brewing in my Documents for like a year. so. (literally all i need is to plan like a date to start it i swear to god its so close to existing and being played. oh my god)
okay. so now i can explain who the fuck she is. Edith is, from a technical standpoint, a hexblood archfey warlock. however, she's a lot more fey than that definition allows, so i usually ignore it 😭😭 her Grandmother hag/warlock patron reincarnates her in a different universe every time she dies, so shes quite literally Built for aus.
in the universe i've decided is the most "canon" (the spelljammer campaign i still havent run), she's the captain of a spelljammer ship on the Astral Plane, and it's called the Melpomene. in this universe, she's old enough and experienced enough to wield some of the powers the fey do, such as magically trapping people in debt to her or taking names (though that ones more restricted than normal fey). she also has a familiar that either takes the form of either a snake or a raven, and her Grandmother controls it and can see through it and shit. its basically how they keep in touch, even if Ediths in some fuckass hell dimension or some shit 👍👍
btw her whole motif is fool's gold. that's important cause its like. symbolic. cause she's manipulative and tries to look like a "good option" even when shes Going to condemn you to some kind of personal hell for the next 20 years before letting you die violently. more on that later, she lowk did that like twice someone stop her. anyway so the snake and raven have like. fools gold designs on them (like the tips of the feathers or between the scales). she also has like cracks of fools gold in her skin (think like kintsugi) and they branch out from places that shes been killed by (heart, neck, back of head, etc.) character design am i right
oh yeah i can put a picture of her
this is the second most recent drawing i have of edith ❤️❤️❤️❤️🥹🥹 i love her with all my heart. i actually dont know if ive decided to make the fools gold shit like more like mineral veins or liek cracks. just like lines honestly idk dude im Bullshitting. they go all over, they just originate from Death Causing locations. also the thing on her head is like. a living crown thing??? i think????? idk but its a hexblood thing. id say google it but i tried that too its weird no one talks about what the hell it is. another point of Bullshit i suppose
ok, so Edith remembers almost all of her past lives. at this point, there have been... a lot. after so many cycles of death and rebirth, she started noticing patterns, and sees each life as a story, and she can usually gauge her role in that story. she knows she usually ends up as the "villain." she knows there's a "hero" out there that will lead to her downfall, and probably death. she knows that trying to subvert that is useless, and usually leads to an even worse fate than normal.
this does all lead her to believing a lot in fate and destiny, and she uses that as a cover so she doesn't have to grow or change to be a better person. also because she thinks that being a better person at this point would probably be harder after so long of accepting and embracing her usual status as the "villain."
Now, she has very little attachment to morality (she began to deem it useless to her considering her "circumstances"), and also after living so many lives, well. shit gets boring. somewhere along the line, she developed a bit of a sadistic streak, and finds manipulating people and getting the worst to come out of them a very entertaining thing to do. she Will find your biggest insecurities, use them against you, and then watch your inevitable resulting breakdown as entertainment. wretched woman. evil. i still love her
Most of her backstory in the spelljammerverse is hinged around the former crew on the ship, and the fuckass shit she did to them. Of the original 4 that worked for her, 1 is alive, 1 is dead, 1 wishes they were dead, and 1 should be dead and is losing her fucking mind. I might go into that later in a different post, but maybe not right now cause i still have to talk about Lybiss. for the yuri. yeah Edith is gay as hell did you know.
okay. so Lybiss was my first ever dnd character. her original concept was just. stereotypical horny bard. but she's got a fuckton more personality now so !! yay!
Lybiss is an infernal tiefling college of glamour bard from a technical standpoint. i also lowk ignore her Regular Character Sheet Stats cause theres a lot more she can do. I made her for an Icewind Dale campaign my best friend offered to dm for me, and the version of her in the Spelljammerverse (im calling it this now) is a future version of that.
unfortunately i dont have any good recent art of her so. you guys are stuck with this
im so serious this is the best art i have of her. the first one is her in the Monitoring fit cause. idk i just wanted to do that. and the second one is Edith and Lybiss. yeah. im not kidding, i dont think i have any better recent art. i need to make some....
At some point after the campaign she's from, she ended up in a ship in space, utterly alone. being someone who lives on love and attention and adoration, this kinda breaks her a little bit. she gets a bit. delusional up there.
shes also very hedonistic and would genuinely sacrifice whatever for a good time. idk where to put that but thats an important part of her character too
another thing idk where to put but after the events of the campaign she's from, she sees herself as like the Savior of Icewind Dale, and every time she meets someone she like. Needs to mention that. she also Lies and says she did saved it on her own even though there were 3 entire people with her. so. shes very self-centered.
now, as to not be misinterpreted, this was all her own free will that got her here. she chose to abandon everyone she knew, even though the decision to do so was a bit spontaneous. there's more reasons she did that, but it means explaining a whole fucking Side Quest she went on in Sigil before she went to stay in the Astral Sea so. thats for another time.
as of present, she figured out how to turn the inside of the ship into a demiplane, so now its like her own little.. personal dimension. she turned it into like, a club, and there's like just an infinite party going on in there. the only problem with this is that Nobody goes to the specific spot she's drifting in the Astral Sea. the astral plane is like way too big for anyone to like. care enough. but for a party, you need people. so, she created like these... Collective Hallucination Fake People that kinda just look like older ai art of people i think. though i also imagine them as like, just shadow people. maybe thats the another cup talking idk! point is, she made a bunch of fake people, as well as copies of lovers that "abandoned her" (she abandoned them), and now she parties Delusionally all the time. someone get this girl. uh. something. idk if anything could fix her atp shes beyond repair
ok so. Edith x Lybiss. their ship name is O Captain My Captain, or O Captain for short. yes it is named after the walt whitman poem because thats the funniest possible thing i could think of to do. also to mock her status as the captain of her like space ship, Lybiss calls Edith Captain almost exclusively instead of her actual name so. thats what she says when they Go At It. btw i can no longer watch dead poets society with a completely straight face anymore because all i can think of are these two gay ass women. holy shittt man.
Their dynamic is very interesting to me and i think about it A Lot. At the point they meet, Lybiss is a lot more powerful and experienced in general compared to Edith, and she doesn't fall into any of the funky Fey Traps Edith tries because she Knows! shes not falling for that bullshit! this, naturally, makes Edith. very anxious. because she can't really do much to her or control her or anything. and she doesn't like that. Edith is kind of a control freak tbh.
in the long run, Lybiss is always more powerful, and Edith knows this. she knows this well, and she doesn't really like it very much. Edith is used to being the one in power/control, or at least attaining that eventually. Lybiss, on the other hand, is a very chaotic, unpredictable person who will always be a step ahead, and that makes Edith. Very Nervous. she Knows she doesnt have the upper hand and that Bothers her
as for how they are with each other like relationship-wise. holy fucking shitt dude. toxic as hell. Lybiss initially saw Edith as like, basically a way to cope with her loneliness and general Lack Of Attention she was facing in her life, so thats like almost the sole reason as to why she seduced the hell out of her. She never really cared very much about Edith as a person, and only really wanted her to stay for her own pleasure and not much else.
unfortunately, while Lybiss technically fell first, holy fuck did Edith fall harder. Edith actually like fully caught feelings, and genuinely did love Lybiss a lot. after she realized that she didn't really care very much about her as an individual (along with. a few other factors), she decided to leave and do her own thing (captain the ship, ofc) and tried to get over it, but never really did.
to this day, they're still not really over each other. Edith never really got over those Feelings, and Lybiss is now back to Coping Badly.
ok so because Edith is built for aus, i have like. a lot. ive inserted her into many things. my other oc stories, tma, another cup, just other misc aus i thought were funny. on the topic of Edith x Lybiss, its always consistent that somehow, for whatever reason, O Captain just. doesn't work out. Edith i think noticed that pattern, and every time she meets Lybiss in another world, its just like. a looming sense of dread. they'll always be together for a time, and then something will Happen and Doomed Toxic Yuriiii.. I think Edith tries to straight up push away her own belief in fate and destiny while undergoing this cycle, hoping desperately maybe this time it won't go up in flames. Lybiss, on the other hand, does not know about all these alternate realities, and has no idea she's perpetuating a cycle. so isnt that fun!! 😊😊
okay thats all i can think of to yap about for now. holy fuck. thanks for this ask and excuse to yap. there is more but i think thats for another time. theyve got a lot of lore and it lowk all builds on each other so. yay!
ok thats all thank you for coming to my ted talk. if it wasnt coherent then like. ask about it i think. idk! enjoy my lore dump. i love my shitty gay women with Issues ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️🥹🥹🥹🥹
Either I’ve completely forgotten to post this here or I can’t find the post but hey Mesmerizer brainrot has come back so I’m showing these guys again with me explaining their designs and story :)) (I may not finish the wip of trying to replicate the og with these guys so I’m putting this here in case I don’t!!)
This is long as fuck lmao but please stick with me I DIDNT PUT THAT AS MY DESCRIPTION OF MY BLOG FOR NOTHING 🔥🔥🔥‼️‼️‼️
While some parts of these designs are just aspects of either of the character’s design (the clothes being relatively the same as Miku and Teto’s just in Riftloss!Emery & Riftloss!Tom’s colour schemes), some parts are intentional little details I’ve decided to put in as to hint at the story behind these two and why I’ve drawn them as the Mesmerizer duo (the stories touch on somewhat similar themes like escapism methinks)
I’ll start with RL!Emery, where I’ve given her a white lily (which symbolizes rebirth) (it also represents purity which I guess you could assign to her but it’s not really relevant in this story) instead of Miku’s visor bow, a forget-me-not on her badge (which represents like remembrance of someone after they’ve passed, or at least that’s how I’ve used it here) and a black ribbon around her neck (kinda a reference to Miku’s choker but it’s moreso that it matches with RL!Tom’s ribbon and that the black ribbon represents remembrance and mourning) + the pink highlights being the same shade as Joshua’s (I’ll explain who he is a) cursed powers.
Meanwhile for Tom, I’ve given him what’s supposed to be a white chrysanthemum on his hat (which represents mourning and devoted love), what’s supposed to be a green ribbon around his collar (as to represent mental health awareness) and a little clock on his badge as to represent his job and how he’s connected to his father (time stealing casino security, I’ll explain it when I get there 😭) (and yes he’s the same guy but in another timeline as the other Tom in my pinned message, it’s that he’s related to the funny clock guy in there as well and in this timeline he intentionally takes more of his features, as he’s trying to break from his shadow)
The plot, independent from Mesmerizer (I’ve had this plot in mind for years now the OC brainrot is THAT deep 😭) starts with me establishing that infinite timelines exist and that time manipulation is possible, albeit extremely tricky and considered impossible in my lore and that powers are a thing cause man I love urban fantasies
In the base timeline, one of the stories in the plot involves Emery and an old friend of hers Josh, in which the two act as a vigilante duo, with Emery taking most of the game as she can actually cast magic and Josh being treated as the alchemist mage-wannabe sidekick, which he doesn’t appreciate as he feels like he’s being taken for granted by her, they both are kinda shitty to each other in the friendship, Josh ends up taking a cursed grimoire as to try to impress her by taking it’s powers and using it for himself, he’s manipulated by it to attack against her and decrease her popularity by starting a cult in the town and constantly beating her in battles under an alter ego, and eventually breaks out of the curse right before dying (?) due to it in front of her, telling her she’s sorry and she says it back. (I tried to speedrun it here 😭)
So, that’s where all the remembrance symbols for her come from.
Mainline!Tom, on the other hand, wants to know what happened to his father, Alexander Pascall, who disappeared years ago, leaving his research on time travel behind. He then has recurring dreams of this insane “time god” who calls himself Kairos, who won’t leave him alone until Tom accepts his offer to give him the power to time travel, which he eventually does accept despite his better judgement.
He gains what seems to be the product of his father’s research next morning - a blade that can cut through the fabric of space time - put in the form of a scythe, and fiddles about with it until he eventually finds out that he’s now been partially possessed by Kairos against his will - thanks to him traumatizing a close friend and colleague of his under Kairos’s influence
And yes, Kairos does turn out to have been Alex having lost his mind, pursuing power haven being driven to madness during his research due to seeing the infinite amount of possibilities out there in the infinite number of timelines, and he sometimes has moments of clarity which eventually let Tom put the pieces together (can you tell what one of my favorite tropes of characters is 😭)
(The two are also friends)
Now that the bare bones of the mainline story has been explained, I’m gonna try explaining the Riftloss!AU for these two and why a specific part of their storyline fits Mesmerizer and why it was stuck in my head as something I had to make for months,,
Also Emery looks mostly the same as her mainline design because up until this point of the AU, the same events occur.
Essentially, the twist here is that instead of a blade sharp enough it can cut the fabric of space-time, Alex instead invents a gauntlet that can absorb a person’s life span and give it to the user instead.
When he was first testing it, he accidentally used it upon a very close friend of his, watching her age rapidly and disintegrate right in front of him, panicking and trying to turn the thing off until it was too late - all that was left of her was ashes.
He then dedicates the rest of his life to trying to find a way to make his gauntlet be able to give others time from his life-span so he can use it upon her ashes that he has within a bottle, becoming more bitter, cruel and inhumane as time goes on and he fails over and over again.
This results in him needing to extend his own lifetime to find the solution, which he reluctantly did at first but eventually normalized, and eventually over time this developed into him starting a casino where he could claim you didn’t need money to gamble in - just your mere time, which you wasted in any other casino anyways! With the prize for winning being extra time for your lifespan, which is why the casino was rigged, yet addicting and enticing enough to get more players within - an easy place to siphon off time he needs to figure out the solution.
Tom, being his son, is a part of the casino’s security, having been conditioned and set up by his father to be obedient to his every command, a cold reaper of those who attempted to mess with how the casino worked.
He didn’t question his situation, having done it all his life until he met the same friend and co worker (Lucy/Astrid) from his mainline story, where these two slowly grow closer as friends like the main timeline and Tom realizes what his father’s done to him and decides he’ll escape his father’s shadow and try to become a better person than him, becoming more spiteful of having to follow his orders over time.
He starts research of his own, and ends up prototyping the same blade that can rip through the fabric of space time Mainline!Alex does with Astrid (thanks to Kairos intervening in his timeline and telling him the basics), testing it and losing Astrid in the process as the time rift opens (haha the name of the AU, she also does have her own separate storyline in a separate timeline) far wider than expected and starts sucking them in, with Tom only being able to close it when it’s too late - paralleling his father’s beginning of spiral into madness. (Also one reason why he also has remembrance symbols)
Having lost leading light out of his father’s control and a really close friend he deeply cared about, he falls into self-loathing and thinks he’s no better than his father, having done to the same thing as him in his eyes (hence why he looks more like him in this timeline - I’m imagining a good devastating mirror art piece outta this one 🔥🔥🔥)
This then leads into him finding out and trying to console Emery after she loses Josh as she’s fallen into grief and depression, (hence the green ribbon, with it being tied differently to how it’s usually tied also able to be interpreted as a reference to how his solution is an attempt but not healthy in the end) being clingy to her and desperate to prove that he’s a good person and have a take 2 of sorts because of the Astrid incident.
However his solution to her depression (the first red background part of the animation) is to take her on a trip through other timelines that he enjoys and show her the wonders of the possibilities there, with the two having a rather pleasant journey through them before coming back, with him doing it every now and then with her at her request.
As time goes on, she becomes more and more reliant on these trips as to keep it together, indulging too far into escapism, blocking out her grief and pretending it isn’t real as she becomes mesmerized (haha) with the endless possibilities within the endless timelines that Tom’s blade on his scythe unlocked - and she starts to lose her mind akin to how Mainline!Alex does. (Akin to Miku)
Kinda like Teto, Tom realizes this far too late, and even after realizing this she asks him to let her keep the blade, to continue going through timelines endlessly, and he still accepts, albeit guiltily. He just didn’t have the heart nor was willing to deal with the consequences, and he never sees her again after this, having been haunted by how he’s ruined another person close to him’s life (he’s NOT doing well in the way of trying to not be like his father 😔)
I’d just replace the hypnosis in the middle thing with a time rift and it works borderline perfectly for their storyline lmao I’ve had this storyline before I found mesmerizer so imagine my brainrot when I realized how these storylines could perfectly overlap and aughhhh I knew I had to try to make an attempted remake of it with them 😭
(apologies in advance for the coherence, or lack there of, in this post. stressful week, brain is now ground meat patty)
DANTE'S PURGATORIO
After ascending every level of Purgatory, Dante ends up in the Garden of Eden (which stands between Purgatory and Paradise/Heaven). A lot of crazy stuff goes down there, and there are some hot girls, but none of that is relevant.
What is relevant are the two rivers that Dante finds there.
One of them, Lethe, is taken directly from Greco-Roman myth. In the myths, the river Lethe flows through the underworld, and cleanses the dead's memory of their lives before their passage into the underworld and/or reincarnation. It is unclear whether Dante keeps to the original myths here, or if the Lethe in Purgatorio only cleanses memories of sin.
(quote from Purgatorio re: Lethe's power to erase specifically memories of unhappiness and sin)
The second river is the Eunoe (translation: new mind/good memory???), which either:
-(if the Lethe wipes ALL memories) restores the dead's memory of their life on earth, but only memories of good & godly actions
-(if the Lethe only removes memories of sin) strengthens "good" memories.
(Full-ish description of both rivers)
Once the dead person/soul/(oh I give up, idk) drinks from first the Lethe, and then the Eunoe, THEN they are ready to go to Heaven.
if The Metatron put ANYthing in the coffee, its this. Water from these rivers. Both of them.
no it did not have anything, aside from the spiritual/religious symbolism that people have already pointed out, to do with the almonds.
and lastly,
could I interest you in some
~*~*~Agonizing Thematic Parallels~*~*~
...anyway uh yeah tldr I don't like the Coffee Theory, I don't believe it, but the angst potential was so good and also I will really just lore-deep-dive ANYTHING.
also thanks to Prof Graham, my Medieval Studies prof this year, for FINALLY pointing out to me that Eunoe and Mnemosyne (the river, not the Goddess) are NOT THE SAME THING.
I may be horrible at pacing my writing but fuck it we ball I gotta drop this brainrot on the world one way or another,,
Long ago, four friends were reaching the tail end of their school years as they hit their late teens.
Their names were:
Alexander Pascall,
Lloyd Dixon,
Emily Dupain,
And….no. She isn’t relevant to this story, is she? That one dipped out of the friend group after having seen what would have become of them. Clever girl. She dodged quite the bullet there.
Well, these three friends were going through the motions of late school years, stress, studying, romance, drama, etc. However, their friendship seemed to always survive whatever befell them. The friendship consisted of:
Alex, a blue-eyed brunette boy that always seemed to be wearing goggles of some kind, who was the good natured, bright and dorky goofball who took everything he did a little too far,
Lloyd, a golden-eyed blonde boy who was the ever-curious, ambitious and hardworking nerd whose work was rarely acknowledged,
And Emily, the warm, caring mom-friend who didn’t hesitate to get her hands dirty, but also was a tad hasty when making compromises.
However, one thing that made this friend group a little different than the others roaming around the campus was the lifelong project of one of their members.
Namely, Alexander. He had been obsessed with the concept of time travel ever since he was a little kid, considering it the solution to every problem on the planet! Well, that was probably the childhood naïveté talking, but still! He saw the utter potential and knowledge time travel had, and decided to make it a life long goal of his. Cause, well, if some people could create things out of thin air then, well, time travel would also be somewhat plausible, right?
That was his logic, anyways, as he set off to study all he could on the multiverse theory, quantum mechanics, the properties of the fabric of space-time and the blending of magic and technology.
Lloyd and Emily also saw a lot of possibilities with time travel, however due to their skepticism, really helped Alex out to support him as friends than really believing that they could crack open the secrets of the space time continuum. If people couldn’t do it before them, then how could they?
However, when the group hit their late 20s, and both Alex and Lloyd had married and had a son each, Alex proved them wrong. He proved them all wrong his first proper breakthrough in the project, as he'd created a prototype for a hypothetical blade that was so sharp that it could cut through the fabric of space-time.
The moment he’d finished finally sharpening that damned point of the enchanted metal, Alex decided he couldn’t wait no longer. He had to test it. To see if his last decade of research and theories amounted to something.
So, he enthusiastically waved the piece of metal in the air, unsure if anything would actually happen, holding his breath as nothing appeared in front of him until-
He felt something give out, something tear under the pressure of the blade.
Eyes widening in disbelief, he instinctively drew a circle in the air with the blade, watching as the fabric of reality bowed down to him in front of his very eyes.
He’d created a time rift.
He’d created a time rift!
He’d done it!
Without a second thought, he hopped into the time rift, and suddenly felt like he’d fallen into a freefall, lights and colours flashing before his eyes until-
He fell right back in front of his original time rift again, ass hitting the floor hard as he fell through the ceiling of the room.
“FUCK!” Alex yelled, rubbing his sore behind as he thought about how he ended up back in his room again until he
looked
up.
“Oh.”
Another time rift was swirling around on the ceiling, showcasing an Alex looking upwards at something.
“Hey, wait, does that mean-“
He immediately grabbed a chair from his desk and stacked it on another, positioning the stack under the rift and climbing onto it as to get through it, and sure enough-
He ended up in front of the original rift again, blinking in disbelief as he got over the sickly effects of time travel.
“So, these two rifts are connected, huh?”
Cogs were already turning in Alex’s brain as he tried to connect the dots as to why this rift lead his straight back to his room, and why specifically right in front of the other time rift-
Oh.
Wait.
What?
“What the- is this some weird mind reading type shit??? Like you gotta will it into your mind and existence??? I guess that is how RC did describe magic…”
Sighing, fingers crossed, Alex decided to try again with the blade, opening yet another rift as he pictured the outside of his house. He then walked through, and sure enough, there he was, staring at the glimmering night sky with his door right behind him.
Holy shit.
Holy fucking shit.
At the very least, he now knew that he could make portals through space, an earth shattering discovery on its own, but now came the big one - whether he could turn back the clock.
Running down the street, lab coat flowing behind him in the wind, Alex dashed down to his local park as he stared up at the clock tower, noting the time - 8:36pm - and he pictured that very same clock face glowing with sunlight, reading 4:13pm. Why this specific time? Well, uh, he didn’t really know, the man thought to himself, but now wasn’t the time to distract himself-
Leaping through the rift, the first thing that Alex noticed was just how bright it was.
After recovering from the whiplash, his eyes traced the clock tower's face and sure enough, it read 4:13pm!
Well, 4:14pm now, but hey, it still counted!
He then realized that maybe walking out of a random portal in the middle of a park in the afternoon may be a horrible idea in case of any butterfly effects or paradoxes, so Alex quickly ran backwards into his rift again, hoping he wasn't seen.
After a good half hour of waving the metal shard around the rift's outline desperately, Alex finally figured out how to close time rifts - by zig zagging left to right, slowly moving downwards across the rift as if your were sewing up a hole-
"Ah. Fabric of space time. God dammit why didn't I think of that before?!"
After running back home and sealing up the rifts from earlier, Alex sat down, processing what he'd just done and the ramifications of his discovery.
Ideas of varying extremes zipped through the scientist's head, as he started to laugh to himself how... well, how free he felt.
He felt...
As if he could do anything!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When Lloyd and Emily first opened their eyes the next morning, the first thing they saw on their phones were a shit ton of missed calls and some utterly insane looking text messages from Alex.
"He'd- He'd done WHAT NOW?!?"
After a brief conversation over text between the two, Lloyd and Emily sprinted towards from their respective houses towards Alex's, meeting in the middle as they swung themselves down the stairs and into Alex's lab, where the scientist himself was standing in front of a table with some kinda weapon on it, and while it looked quite ineffective, it had a wicked sharp blade-
"Oh! Hey, guy-“
“WHAT DID YOU MEAN IT WORKED?!?”
“Ah, is that what y’all are here for?”
Alex turned around, the bladed weapon in his hands (which turned out to be a huge scythe. Yeesh, you’d think the guy would've used those braincells to good use to realize how bad of a weapon scythes are, but hey, this is Alex after all...)
Emily sighed, knowing how out there and crazy some of Alex's ideas were, but if this blade really did cut through the fabric of space time.. then maybe, just maybe he's been on the right track this entire time, and she was the silly one.
Heh. Then again, that's what she liked most about him. He was a beacon of light in her stress filled life.
"HOLY SHIT!!"
A sudden squeal snapped Emily out of her tangent as she watched Lloyd's eyes sparkle in front of the colourful, forever changing pattern of the hole in front of her, but, wait, was that-
"As you can see, this baby right here goes right back to our old primary! Man, wasn't that a good time..."
Upon hearing the word primary, Emily immediately peered through the portal, and sure enough, there it was.
Their old primary school, where their friendship started, leaving day banner flowing in the wind as the sunset painted everything in a rose gold glow.
She slowly pulled her head out, disbelief written all over her face. Her gaze wandered off to the keen tip of the curved blade, noting how stylized and...well, Alex, the scythe was. Holy shit. He- he wasn't joking, or pranking, or-
"You could do so much good with this thing."
"What, you want me to be some kind of time travelling life saving vigilante or something??"
"No, of course n-"
"Cause I'm SO FUCKING down for that!!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And so, the legend of the Time Reaper came about, and despite the somewhat ominous title, the Reaper's reign on the streets was quite peaceful overall, as at long last there was someone since that Geode who went against her family's legacy to stop those petty thieves on the streets.
The trio grew closer and closer thanks to this little secret they shared, however, people do say to keep your friends close...
...and your enemies closer.
One day, however, the Reaper disappeared without a trace, and while at first Lloyd and Emily assumed that perhaps Alex was taking a well deserved holiday from the stressful life of a vigilante, but when weeks turned to months, and months turned to years, their texts about their missing friend became more and more panicked, until, at long last, Lloyd and Emily decided to check back in at Alex's house and lab.
Missing such a close and, well, important friend was much worse than missing another lecture on how to harness the power of the stars above or your shift at the pretzel shop down the road.
They met up in the middle again, Emily noting how frazzled and scruffy Lloyd's hair was and he noticed how she still wore her uniform from her job down the road.
She must be really integrated this into her daily routine huh. Kinda depressing.
Pushing their hesitation aside, they opened the already unlocked door...oh. This is already looking pretty bad.
The sight that met them was a pretty average one of Alex's workshop, if only a tad bit darker than usual. Emily and Lloyd immediately got to work, scouring every part of the place they could find, finding dust settled on everything but a small desk Lloyd found, where there was an arrow shaped mould and lying there, alongside a lot of hastily wiped stains- some of them a striking shade of red.
The duo's eyes locked immediately. They needed to get to Alex NOW.
They flew down the stairs so fast, feet pattering so loudly that they may as well have fallen down them, hearts racing in unison as they reached the inner bowels of their closest friend's lab.
Kicking down the door, Lloyd whipped out his cane sword as Emily swung her lasso around, the duo expecting an Alex being held hostage-
Yet again, the place was empty, lifeless, eerie. The complete opposite of Alex.
After a scan of the small chamber, Emily noticed something she didn't remember being there the last time they were here.
Wow.
That was a while back.
"Perhaps we really shouldn't have delayed on this checkup, huh!" Lloyd laughed nervously, trying to make light of a dim situation.
Sighing at Lloyd's desperately pathetic attempts to clear the air, she turned her head back to the fixture she didn't remember being there.
A door.
On a completely empty wall.
No awards or pictures or even cheesy motivational posters in sight.
Suddenly, the door creaked open, and somehow, the chamber they walked into was even darker than the one they came from, with a somewhat familiar, trenchcoat-wearing silhouette on the other side of the perfectly circular room.
Lloyd immediately let out a sigh of relief upon seeing the figure, strolling casually towards it as his previously tense and stiff posture relaxed into something more casual.
"EYYYYY, ALEX! Man, you scared me real bad there my guy...You made me n Emily over 'ere think you were kidnapped, or even worse!"
As Lloyd approached him, Emily couldn't shake off the feeling that something was off, as the previously subtle ticking sound got louder and louder with every step he took, she had to stop him, she thought, immediately whipping out her lasso round Lloyd's waist-
"WOAH-"
She swung him round till he was right behind her, but it was too late.
Whatever that thing was sharply cocked it's head, which seemed to make the ticking louder, much louder, so much so it was deafening, leading to Lloyd staring forwards in utter fear and curiousity and Emily wincing hard, planting her hands over her ears.
Then, it walked out of the shadows,
And into the light.
Grin wider than the line outside the pretzel joint Emily worked at during rush hour, a clockwork mess of a man, in all his god damned ticking glory stood there, drinking in the utter fear painted across both of their faces.
Emily's eyes jumped from the strangely sharp clock hands protruding from the thing's back, to the identically pointy pair that was where the hands are supposed to be on a person, to the clock that replaced the left eye of the wreck they were looking at.
A-and his face.
"W-what?"
The husk that was their friend cocked his head back in a sharp motion, letting out a deranged, bone chilling laugh as it leapt towards Emily, who only had one thing racing through that head of hers.
The Alexander Pascall they knew and loved was no more.
Replaced by this cruel joke of a human being.
!TW for next little section, slightly graphic description of body horror (?)!
He leered ever so close to her, the crudely joined line between Alex's arm and the cruelly sharp arrow still covered in copious amounts of blood where he melted and merged the two together, a reality ripping replacement being stuck on instead.
Emily's heart rate reached an all time high as he swung down his hands as to slice her, clock eye unblinking, a strange feeling over coming her as she felt as if she was fading out of existence, pounding footsteps ringing in her ears-
"GET AWAY FROM HER!"
A furious, sword-wielding Lloyd grabbed Emily and swept her away from Alex, holding the handle of his cane out, blade glimmering from it under the faint rectangular lights above.
"Oh. That's why he carried that thing all the time with him," Emily muttered to herself, almost breathless, "I thought he just wanted to seem more sophisticated then he really was."
"WHOEVER OR WHATEVER YOU ARE, ALEX OR NOT, YOU AREN'T KILLING THE ONLY PERSON
I
HAVE
LEFT."
A rage and resolve that Emily had never seen before radiated through Lloyd, and something about the utter confidence he yelled his words told her that Lloyd had been bottling up these feelings for a while now.
"HOW FUCKING DARE YOU TAKE OUR HARD WORK, OUR BLOOD SWEAT AND TEARS, AND USE IT AGAINST US?!"
Emily audibly gasped as she got up, coughing as she tried to get herself in a fighting position.
Lloyd had never sworn before, something he almost kept as an oath to himself to seem more refined and polite.
She gripped her lasso, spinning it round as both men whipped their head round to her.
A moment of tense silence passed, until-
SWOOSH!
The loop landed round Lloyd's waist again, with Emily dragging him along with her as she dashed towards the open door, slamming it behind her, dragging them up the stairs as fast as she fucking could as the adrenaline pumped through her, boosting her until she fell over in a wheezing mess outside the house's front door.
Lloyd slammed the door shut, fists clenched as he sheathed this cane-sword, something having...changed, within him.
There was a new ice cold demeanor about him as he stared at the door he just shut, face an expression of pure disgust.
For the last time that day, Lloyd and Emily's eyes locked, a harsh gold against a dull brown.
Well, that's enough for now. There is more to this trio's tale, but well, there is only so much time we all have, right?
Lloyd, in a fit of rage, swears an oath of vengeance against Alex, as Emily sobs her nights away from her unaffected facade she puts up in front of others.
What happened was that Alex had a taste of power, perhaps one too generous, as he would abuse his powers to no end, learning more and gaining more as he neglected his wife, son and friends.
He then realized that to gain more power, he had to "optimize" his body for time travel.
He began to start making "improvements", ones that started small even back in his vigilante days.
These all added up and got a bit out of hand, especially after losing an eye in a battle.
He would then go by Kairos from then on, not associating himself with his past self anymore, setting his sights on a new goal much higher and much more delusional than his last - achieving godhood.
So, Lloyd and Emily decide to try and take down Kairos, starting by gaining power, knowledge and strength as to take the guy down.
Meanwhile, Kairos kinda purposefully fucks up everything throughout the timelines he travels through, (Kairos can not only travel forwards and back in time, but can also travel through alternate timelines. Think of them as like parallel universes) gaining some higher powers' attention who then later summons him to ask what he was doing messing everything up like that.
Little to their knowledge, this was on purpose as he wanted to join their ranks.
He explains this, showcasing his powers, getting nothing but a disdained sigh and a fool's errand, being told to "go make the people on Earth finally start believing in us again so we can become more powerful and then we'll consider it"
Kairos then gets really pissed, as he mutilated his body and dedicated years of research into this, (though some of it wasn't his) and so goes off the deep end and starts committing intertimelinial war crimes out of spite and as to threaten them into reconsidering.
What he did in the other timelines themselves are somewhat innocent at first, but due to his knowledge of the ins and outs of timelines at this point, and the utter potency of the butterfly effect, he had targetted the weakpoints, leading to utter carnage following the man wherever he went.
Or at least, carnage to the being's authority.
His message came across as clear as day once they caught on, and if there's one thing you learn from myths, it's that you don't fuck with power you don't know the extent of.
So when they finally caught him in the act, they end up sealing Kairos in a small pocket dimension out of space and time, all alone, doomed to wander the place forever, unable to escape, cursed by his own dedication to immortal youth.
While Kairos is stuck as he goes even madder inside his small pocket dimension, realizing that he can't rift his way outta this one, Emily and Lloyd are still gaining power to confront Kairos again, not knowing he'd just been sealed away.
Alex's family have no idea about his Kairos insanity, having searched for quite a while after the first appearance and later announcing him dead.
Thus, they just leave his legacy as Alexander Pascall, praising his diligence and good nature as well as his sense of morality and justice that he was remembered for before he disappeared. (they're kinda rich and famous as, well, while no one else knows how he did time travel, that wasn't the only breakthrough he'd achieved in the field of magi-tech.)
So his son and wife grow up together, missing him and relying on each other until the end of the wife's life, leaving his poor son an orphan, left to fend for himself.
Back to the duo set on vengeance, eventually, Lloyd gains his power in the form of an incredible amount of magical knowledge and experience from multiple grimoires thanks to his penchant for astrology.
On the other hand, Emily focuses on expanding her arsenal of weapons, and honing her ability to kill with no powers (as she never had any magical potential) to a concerning degree of success.
Time passes on, and Lloyd starts becoming a bit paranoid, noticing Kairos's concerning inactivity, expecting an ambush at any time.
He starts stocking up on extra, dubiously-sourced power unbeknownst to Emily, and decides to start an alter ego as to train his skills and actively bring attention and seek out Kairos.
Lloyd gets far too into enhancing his powers "as to be prepared for anything", until he, too, then goes missing in a fog cloud late one evening while on a holiday with his family, scarring his son and causing immense grief to his wife.
This son also eventually becomes an orphan down the line, but not due to natural causes this time, so take that as you will.
One late evening, Emily grieves and collapses one evening in the lab, ready to close up the place once and for all due to the horrible memories attached to it and it's now missing common visitors.
The strange sensation of deja vu from all those years ago was still acting up again and again, frustrating Emily to the brink of insanity herself, as she finally realized a few months ago what was going on.
She was pretty sure.....she was stuck in a time loop.
It'd started ever since that damn moment she got slashed by those golden hands.
And now, well, she's been stuck in a timeloop of this timeline, slowly learning to stiffen up and feeling much older than her body really was, with an immense amount of experience and wisdom, forced to be thrown back in time if she does even a single action out of script for the timeline’s list of events.
And yet, she didn’t even get to keep the damn memories of future sections, as every damn decision she made could loop her back to the moment she made said decision, over and over and over again until she got the right option.
And the only evidence of these previous decisions she made were blurry, fuzzy memories and maybe one or two words from the results if she was lucky.
As her mind wandered off to theories about how she could undo this curse out upon her, fingers fiddling with a toolbox propped on a desk that he’d never packed away. Might as well take it as to get some good use, or at least, cash, out of i-
Wait.
Someone’s here, aren’t they.
That’s what she thought she remembered happening anyways.
And sure enough…
WOOSH!
A shadow flicked out of the corner of her eye towards a pair of curtains.
Emily whipped out her spiked lasso, circling it round and round, ready to capture the invader.
She ran up to the window, eyes darting around as she tried to find the source of the shadows when a figure stepped out of them, bright nimbus behind its head aglow like the full moon outside.
He donned a dark purple suit accented with orange and yellow, wielded a cane with a crescent moon-shaped handle, and stared into Emily's eyes, the calm and collected smirk on his face unwavering.
She could immediately tell something was wrong, that something was off, that yet again, this friend of hers was not be the same person he was a year ago before his disappearance.
Tears pricked her eyes as Emily couldn't stop seeing Kairos in him, choking down sobs as she attacked the smug being that was once her friend.
That night Lloyd learned that perhaps, to change fate, you were supposed to do it out of sight and out of mind. Never directly.
And, well, they do say that pain can be a great teacher.
Moments after the encounter, Emily gave in to her heaving sobs, breaking down as her salty tears flooded the once pristine concrete floor.
And, well, that was the most recent sighting of anything that resembled Lloyd Dixon.
What happened to Emily, you ask?
Well, she would close off to others over time, still deciding to try and keep justice up in the local area and to save as many people as possible, but, she didn’t hesitate to sacrifice the lives of a few to save the lives of many, and in the end always chose herself.
