Elden Start

God damn I've been flying through the omniverse for a long time. So long in fact that I have bypassed the multiverses that I actually know about and have entered wild space, AKA fandom's beyond my experience. A lesser being might be afraid, after all I could end up in Worm fandom blind and from the few exchanges I've had about it in the past that sounds quite awful, but friends - and you are my friends - you ain't ever seen a man like me.

Finally my spirit drew upon a world and I gave a double finger salute to the gormless metaphysical beings that lingered beyond the physical plane around it, each vying with the others for influence. Several called out to me - entities of fire and of blood - like calling out to like. They sought for me to carry them into the realm below, but fuck them. They offered power to be sure, but they all wanted pain and suffering and destruction and ruin to spread across the world. I may be known to spread a bit of all that myself, but I do it for fun not because it is who and all I am.

Fucking shit gods for wankers.

The being emanating from the moon; however, possessed real intelligence. Perhaps a true challenger for the fate of this world.

A golden light barred my descent upon the world, and our impact scattered glowing embers across the hemisphere. Perhaps in a bygone age the light could have prevented my coming, but as I burned through its attempt I knew its true measure, its full power long ago shattered. Free of obstruction, I quietly descended on a rent castle of stone and gold of scope and grandiosity beyond the means of earthborn hands.

Long past its prime, briars grew wonton across the once magnificent construct, most often in the many tears in the building, like a giant hacked into it with a carving knife and seeded it with thorns.

Onto the body of an enormous man in full engraved plate armor with heraldic shield and gleaming sword in hand I descended and my spirit fought his own in a brief battle of wills before utterly consuming it. The possession halted my march and the smaller man beside me, who's head barely reached my waist stopped with me.

"Captain?" he rasped and I looked at the man following at my side.

He carried a long torch which illuminated him on this night patrol of the ramparts almost better than the falling embers (a scene not particularly remarkable in this world as the massive glowing tree off in the distance often let loose a rain of glowing leaves). An exile brought back to the Lands Between from the penal colonies by the Order of Banished Knights, he wrapped his head and shoulders in a thick red shawl and hood over a dilapidated set of mismatched chain, scale, split and plate armor. Despite his hodge podge appearance the man and those like him were above the rank and file of this army we'd sold our service too. This was entirely in regard to their long standing relationship with the Order of Banished Knights as squires and soldiers.

Here to briars crept across the man, a testament to how far gone the people of this world are that he neither noticed or cared about them.

I took in a breath and pursed my lips under my elaborate armet helmet.

"Fuck Godrick." I announced in a deep gravelly voice.

My announcement startled the man who backed a step.

"Sir?" he questioned, completely unsure of the situation.

"Fuck. Godrick." I stated again as I changed the route to the shortest way up to the keep where the vile Lord spent his days.

I didn't want to kill Lasky, or any of the other members of the Order hired to protect this castle. They were my boys, and I'm the last person to judge someone for their misdeeds, but this Godrick guy. He is gross looking. And while me and the boys have been rather fuddled since the Shattering - believe me I am so pissed that I missed that war - the sneaky bastard grafted a number of Banished Knights onto his monster bod.

Grafting is the process of magically gluing body parts from another person onto yourself. Not the worst body horror I've ever seen, but damn nasty. Through it Godrick the Golden, a man of the Golden Lineage with precious little divine blood in his veins hoped to rise to the level of the demigods and even above so that he could return to the home long denied him. He and other diminished scions of the line turned themselves into masses of dead flesh grafted onto weakness in a grass roots approach to power.

Good God, I'd need the heavy flamer to purge all the heresy going on in this castle. Or a dragon. Maybe both.

Lasky followed behind me and soon we encountered other pairs working the night shift who also fell in line. This was not normal operating procedures, but my disruption of the monotonous routine and clarity of purpose brought the men in like moths to the flame.

My fellow Banished Knights all stood at a great height beyond the stature of normal men, garbed in matching suits of plate armor, though some chose to forgo the dragon crest with its long white plume and the curled pauldron horn in favor of a maroon hood and over the shoulder drape like our Exiled footmen, just embroidered and tasseled with gold for a little extra flair.

We mostly all wore swords but a pair hefted the Order's standard halberds. Beautifully engraved and polished like the rest of our gear, also bearing golden tassels below the three part head. Like all branches of the Order, we took up the techniques of our locale to strengthen ourselves, in this case the storm powers descended from the original owners of Stormhill, the Stormhawks and their proud King. As such we could all perform some specific air bending moves.

Which is pretty fucking sweet if you ask me.

As we crossed the graveyard that Godrick erected in front of his inner keep the man himself shuffled his gigantic and disgusting form out from his throne room, a black and gold cloak failing to hide his wretchedness as he dragged a gilded double headed axe behind him.

"What is the meaning of this, Night Captain?" the creature called out, "What are you men here for?"

"Blood." I answered causing the multi limbed thing to ripple beneath its cloak, "Keep your eyes on me men, for I'm about to start."

My rush produced a whirlwind around me that thrust me forward at great speed, and I wrapped my gleaming blade in the storm. Godrick flinched back as I arrived before him so suddenly and tried to whirl his greater and lesser axes to blow me back with his own whirlwind, but instead he screamed as my sword struck true and the blast of storm tore his cloak from his body along with several grafted arms.

He rallied against the pain and I back stepped away from him as he completed his whirl, summoning up shredding wind around him.

"I am the Lord of all that is golden!" he shrieked as he lifted his two axes up, "And I command you to kneel!"

Godrick thrust his axes into the ground - the golden axe bearing a flat top likely for this specific purpose - and send out a ground shaking shockwave that burst the flagstones beneath him. Now, I typically don't suggest leaping attacks, but they are surprisingly familiar in the Land's Between in the memories of Night Captain Garm. In fact, they are often the perfect punish to such ground slam attacks. Especially so when you can descend like a Stormhawk on a guy. So when he went low I attacked him like a majestic fucking eagle clad in razor sharp wind.

Once more Godrick screamed in pain and whirled for distance, sending out two ranged Storm Blade attacks that curved slightly to catch my dodges as he back peddled. They failed to accomplish more than covering my flanking approach. He barely saw me from the corner of his eye as my impaling thrust rammed my sword into his side. It felt like I stabbed the blade into a hard oak, but my strength and the fine blade drove deep and I tried to blow his guts out the other side with my own use of the Storm Blade technique.

Godrick's thick hide held him together as he moaned like a dying beast and fell to his grafted knees. My attack didn't tear through him, but the pulped innards leaking out were more than fatal enough.

The man pressed against the wound with many hands as I pulled away and he collapsed fully onto his less damaged side.

"We were supposed to return…" he wept, " to our home… bathed in rays of gold."

Though he made a valiant effort to plug the leak, Godrick bled to death internally in less than a minute. I sheathed my blade at my hip and took the golden crown of his head. Though most of his attire was tattered and sullen, he kept his crown gleaming. I held it aloft and let out a wordless cheer to which the men around me joined. Merry for the first time in ages.

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I encountered writer's block for the first time in two years, and took time off in the hopes of making headway into the problem. The fact that I am posting another Ultimate Krogan spinoff should let you all know how well that worked out for me.

I definitely needed the familiar simplicity of Grunt and his offshoots, characters that will go on adventures just for the sake of adventures. Just good old fashion fun that more often than not becomes more meaningful than my attempts to craft meaningful stories in the first place.

Honestly the purposeful exploration of power, governance, and free will in Actually Invincible some how feels more hollow than the accidental themes of loss and depression Dio went through or Thrag overcoming his past mental illness and achieving self actualization without even realizing it until it already happened.

I think a big problem is that Mark and Kiba were supposed to be more than just fun. Mark was my attempt to make sense of the superhero genre, and Kiba was my attempt to create a Naruto story that deals with the dark side of that world without melodrama or bashing. So once I accomplished those things I was left without any idea what to do next. The stories weren't supposed to just be fun, which is the core of my writing.

Having Grunt flip off the outer gods then re-shatter the Greater Will before killing Godrick just because fuck Godrick did more to renew my spirit than the weeks off. Hopefully its the shot in the arm I need to finish Actually Invincible before JManM 3 is born.

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