"Shouldn't be much of a problem, I suppose," Odhran mused to himself. He had no idea how competent these six people were, nor if they would even be able to help. All Odhran knew is that he was told to rescue them. A smirk rose to his face, wondering what fun things he could do this time. Simply summoning Spirits had been a bit on the boring side in recent days, so the Ace of Creation gave a challenge to himself: he was going to take this on with only his Ark of Embodiment and the Hallow's Phantom. No Scorpios, no Unknowns, no Spirits at all. This was just something for the most important man in the entire world to take care of by himself.
He leaped off the cliff, letting himself fall for a few moments before willing his mind to sprout wings upon his back, their black feathers reflecting the sunlight and shimmering with a certain sheen, a luminous hue brushing across each individual ridge. Sometimes, Odhran even surprised himself with his sheer attention to detail. He was a master of this, after all. The mind of an artistic savant, the creativity of a master artisan, the sheer brilliance of the brightest minds in the world... it truly was tough being him. Having to live with all this skill buzzing through the mind and not constantly bragging to people about it . Nonetheless, the Ace of Elysium fluttered his wings further and further, approaching the caravan at a breakneck pace. He aimed straight for a caravan itself, before deciding he had a better idea. Yet another stroke of genius! Another way to prove that he was the greatest in the world! As such, he darted his way ahead of the traveling group, skidding to a halt some three hundred meters ahead of them. He raised a hand, a throne of mud rising from the ground. Someone such as him deserved better than mud! So, to fix it, he used his ark of embodiment to recolor the throne to a nice golden paint and sat upon it. The caravan had stopped, but it soon picked back up, coming upon him within a matter of minutes.
"Excuse me, sir?" a stout looking man with a strangely unkempt beard huffed. "Official business, please move or we will have to use force."
Odhran flippantly waved a hand. "You really think you'll be able to use force upon me? Me? Do you know who I am?"
The man sighed. "I'm afraid not, sir."
Odhran was simply enraged by this. "Wha- you don't know who I am? But how! I'm nefarious! I'm evil! Ugh! You folks know the Coming Storms, right?"
"Yes, we are aware of them."
"Well I'm one of them! I'm the best one of them, at that! Ace of Elysium?! God of the Celestial Spirit Realm? Voted Most Likely to Forget to Study for a Test in fourth grade in fourth grade at my elementary school? You know, Odhran Aegisbane?"
The man thoughts for a moment. "Oh! That name sounds a bit familiar. Yeah, I think that's a coming storm, isn't he?"
Odhran burst out of his makeshift throne. "Yes! Finally! Some recognition! Well, your recognition is a bit late, okay? Anyways, point is, unless you want to deal with me killing you to death in extremely bloody and slightly amusing fashion, you're going to release those six people you have in that carriage, posthaste!"
"No."
"N-No?!?! W-What do you mean, no?"
"Our orders are to bring these guys to the capital to be executed, and I'm not going to deny my orders."
Odhran stamped his foot on the ground. "So be it. Then I suppose I'll need to show you the power of an Ace of Elysium!"
The bearded man seemed to disregard Odhran entirely, which only irritated the already ornery Odhran to yet another level. He rose his hand skyward as his clothing morphed from his tan suit to a grey and black striped jumpsuit, a shattered mask resting around his neck. "You'll learn to regret underestimating me, idiot."
Odhran dashed ahead, his left arm flaring outwards as it morphed into a chainsaw like appendage, cutting through the gut of the bearded man with ease. Odhran reveled in the look upon his face, his upper torso flying through the air with an expression of shock and disgust on his face. Yes, Odhran could certainly get used to this. Fear was such a powerful weapon, such a great thing to use. He needed to harness it more. He looked up to see panicked looks upon the rest of the guard's faces and he smiled, the devil within piercing through the light of the eccentric Aegisbane. His left arm morphed back to normal, beckoning his opponents on further.
They were fools to listen. They all rushed ahead, their spears and swords and clubs drawn, while archers and mages sat in the back taking potshots at the most powerful being there. Odhran transformed his right arm into a tower shield, standing as high as his forehead and as low as his knee, its weightlessness allowing him ease of movement. Despite the size, Odhran felt no difference in movement as if it were his normal arm, yet his mind buzzed with the realization that he need not think about the positioning of it, knowing he would subconsciously mold the shape of the shield or move it out of the way when he would strike. His left arm morphed into a rifle. He fired a shot, it easily being dodged by the encroaching squadron. He smirked, knowing that they would not entirely be pushovers. The rifle was not enough, so the next logical step was the minigun, his left transforming into the rapid chambers of fire. Within moments of charging, he began raining a hail of pellets of magic upon the melee forces coming towards him, trying his best to gun them all down. A few of them fell, but it was not long until they gained shields of magical protection. Oh well, seems the fun with guns was over.
Odhran's arm shifted and morphed once more, this time becoming a thorned spike, not too dissimilar to a rose's stem. He rushed forwards to meet his foes, their surprise evident with their staggering at seeing the impressive speed. He thrust the spike forwards, piercing a man with a club in the chest, before extending the reach of the spike around to loop through the throats of two more soldiers, a woman with a spear and a man with a cardboard box. Odhran wondered what the box could have been for, but he knew of the potential murderous properties that a cardboard box could hold. Some of the denizens within Elysium's halls knew all too well. He thrust the shield outwards once more, bludgeoning a few more soldiers in the face. His left arm spike retracted, coming forth to his torso in a show of brilliant light before it morphed into a crossbow, firing a bolt into the face of a blue haired woman with a pair of brass knuckles. What sort of equipment were they giving to these knights, Odhran wondered. Unorthodox weapons, for sure, yet ones that he had already discovered could have some intriguing promise in the realm of death and murder. He flipped backwards, each leg morphing into a shotgun as he continued his flip, firing rounds of buckshot into the faces of whoever was unfortunate enough to be nearby. His landing marked the end of the shotgun legs, his feet firmly planted upon the ground. He rushed forwards, enjoying the looks of horror upon the faces of his foes, rending them in two with his left arm, now transformed into a hacksaw. The melee soldiers were all dead, pooled into piled at his feet. He lazily held his arm outwards, the shield protecting him from more possibly damage as he began monologuing.
'Tell me, Knights. Do you know fear? What it is to find yourselves at the mercy of a stronger being, the mercy of something so far beyond your comprehension that you can't help but break down in fear? Well, if you didn't, I hope you do now. I am the force that can destroy all who oppose me, I am the one that the worlds shall fear! You lot are irrelevant. Each one of you individuals is naught but a collective of flesh within the mass ball of misery that is the Rune Knights, each one of you a worthless cog in the machine of the cycle of life. You are nothing, none of you. Some of you have magics to prove yourselves as better beings than others, some of you are unfortunate enough to not even be born with magics. You are pathetic, and you deserve to bow before those who are stronger, those who are better than you! You know my name! You know who I am! I am Odhran Aegisbane! I am a Coming Storm! I will be Warlord of Fiore, I will be the creator of a new world, and I shall shape everything within my image! It is my right as a God! And you? You all are pathetic! You are mortals standing in the presence of a god of death and creation, of destruction of rebirth, of every single fabric of existence that this world is made of! You are nothing to me, you are nothing compared to me, you are nothing! You cling to this false ideal of justice, when the only ideals that matter are those that I ordain! I am the God of the Celestial Spirit Realm, and I shall become God of Reality itself!"
Upon his proud boast, Odhran raised his arm, causing the very earth to quake beneath him. Mud and dirt, stone and grass, existence itself began to merge into a form, the sound of bones and flesh becoming formed. Odhran simply could have snapped it into existence, but the captain of their group wanted to enrage him, and thus his wards must suffer. The earth shifted and morphed into the form of a beast, with naught but a skull for a facial facade, torn upon its jaw into a chair of spiked teeth, empty sockets of nothingness drilled upon its front, four horns resting around. He smiled, sending his beast out towards the rest of the soldiers. Odhran let his body morph to normalcy, returning to his tan suit and neatly combed hair as he casually marched down towards the group of other soldiers, enjoying their screams of fear, terror, and pain as his warped, morphed creation tore them apart. The Spirits were much more competent than these abstract imaginations of the mind, of course. His Celestial Spirits held immense, otherworldly power, while the creatures spawned by the Ark of Embodiment held a limiting factor in being formed from Odhran's own power, rather than that of the Celestial Spirit King's power or the power of their very stars themselves. Of course, Odhran did not just want to leave all the fun for his summoned beast, so he casually raised a hand up, letting a revolver form within his dominant right hand as he marched, firing the occasional marksman shot into the heads of people trying to engage the beast. A particularly confident mage rushed Odhran, a requiped sword in his hand. Odhran scoffed, stepping on the ground. An iron maiden formed around the other mage, quickly clamping. A quick screech of pain was heard before Odhran let the force dissipate, seeing the skewered man before him. He lazily fired a shot of his revolver into the head of the mage, ensuring that such a foolish man would surely die.
The Ace came to the side of the caravan's carriage, sending his imaginary revolver back into the depths of nonexistence. He lazily shoved his hands into his pockets, letting the Hallow's Phantom tear the door, as well as the roof, off of the carriage. The six inhabitants of the carriage warily looked out to see the Ace himself.
"Hi, guys! So, uh... right, suppose there's a bit of explaining to do." A Rune Knight's corpse flew over Odhran's head. "Don't mind him, that's just Fluffy. Well, one of the many forms of Fluffy. She or he or whatever kinda is just the name for whatever thing I decide to summon. Ain't they a cutie? So adorable, I know. Right! Getting to the point! I'm Odhran Aegisbane, hopefully you've heard of me, right?" He looked around the carriage for an answer, no confirmation coming from any of them, which honestly made Odhran rather sad. "I-I see how it is, o-okay... right! So, basically point is I'm the Ace of a guild out in Sin. Sin's not exactly the best place to hold a guild, I know, but I'm pretty sure it has some really nice tax breaks. Like, there are no taxes there at all. True, there's no government, but that also means no taxes, so my tax evasion schemes go on without a hitch. Oh, and I suppose we actually get taxes from the people there, don't we? Well, that's neither here nor there. What matters is that our wonderful guild master, the Warlord Janet Cinderfeild, saw fit to save you! Congrats! You've been saved!" Odhran flared his hands skyward, puffs of confetti flying out. "There's a condition or two, got to admit. As much as I'd like you to just be fine with putting in a good word with your other evil buddies, such a thing isn't what Janet wants. She wants you guys to join us! Hooray! You get to join Elysium! You get to be a member of the New World! You're not going to be nearly as cool as people like me or Janet, but you can certainly be there. Maybe we'll let you become a mayor or something, I dunno, that's mostly up for Janet to decide. So, as a condition for you guys not being dead, you get to join Elysium! I know, it's great. I mean, you're not going to really be anything special, sure, but you're there, and sometimes participation trophies are all you can ask for. That's what my mom always used to say, and now it's a wise word of wisdom to pass along to you! So, how's about it, boys? You mind joining? Oh, and if you don't join us, I'm going to kill you. Fluffy's hungry every so often, even though she doesn't exist. Well, she sometimes exists. Sometimes he exists, sometimes she doesn't, using imagination magic gets confusing sometimes, but it's a burden than only someone as wonderful and talented as my self can handle. So, what do you say?" The six all nervously looked at each other, before nodding, one of them looking particularly hesitant. "Wonderful! See you guys there!" With that, Odhran snapped his fingers, causing a rather rickety looking flying craft to appear as Odhran sprouted his wings. "If you want to, you can follow me. I know my way around, so you can trust me to be a good tour guide. Hell, I'll even show you where some of my biggest statues will be! A few statues here and there, a few towns and cities named after me, I'm even thinking a castle or two. What do you guys think sounds better, Aegisburg or Odhranstein? Probably Aegisburg. Aegisbaneburg? Odhranville? Whatever, I can figure things out as I go. What about you guys? What's your names?" He laughed. "I'm just kidding I already know, I looked at the dossiers. So, Betty, Mathilda, Erik, Tom, Smith, and Hurgleblurge, let's go! With that, Odhran left, tossing the dossiers of Billy Marqu, Mary Postier, Eddie Eddison, Tom Tomsomtom, Aiden Smit, and Hurgleblurge McCurglebargle away, content with a job well done.
