Chapter 1.1

"You're an eldritch being of unfathomable power, a god in all but name, and the best you could do to awe poor suckers like me is create an expanse of white?"

Shin-chan – I didn't name it, don't ask, my mind was already teetering dangerously close to insanity – pouted. I was pretty sure you needed lips to pout – and a face, for that matter. Somehow, the tentacled monstrosity managed.

"We thought this was how many humans envisioned limbo. Were we wrong?"

I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. Don't annoy the Cthulhu-ripoff, don't annoy the Cthulhu-ripoff, I repeated in my head. "A sofa. That's all I'm asking for. At least I can sit down that way,"

Shin-chan nodded, all six hundred of its heads moving up and down ponderously. Before I could fully take that sight in, I found my back pressed against cool leather, my feet propped up on a coffee table.

"Better?"

"Infinitely,"

Folks, allow me to say, a bubbling, amorphous shape made up of humanity's worst nightmares should not be able to grin. As unexpected as my death had been, Shin-chan's eccentricities were a level beyond that. Its offer was perhaps slightly less surprising. I blamed boredom and a healthy appreciation for the written word for the latter part.

"So…" I dragged the word along, "Reincarnation, huh?"

"Something like that. Yours will be an interesting life, Suleiman,"

I nodded slowly. "Don't suppose I get to go back to my old life,"

"Nope!" Shin-chan said cheerily.

"But," I began, hesitating, before giving up. Arguing against the being that could squat me with one of its noses was probably a stupid idea. Probably. "Okay," I sighed, "Do I need to fill out a form, or?"

"It's been agreed on your behalf, my young friend,"

"Oh. Do I, um, get to pick my powers, or…?"

"We think choice would spoil the surprise. Nonetheless, we are sure you'll be amenable to it."

"That's kind of you," I said carefully.

Shin-chan chortled. It sounded like orphans dying in a fire. "Who said anything about kindness? You start off with two hundred, by the way."

Before I could ask what that meant, there was a tug at my navel, a brief moment of weightlessness like I was falling through the air. Colours the likes of which I don't think man was supposed to witness flashed before my eyes, a million hues and a billion sounds crashing into me like the sky itself had just decided to grind me against the earth. I think I was screaming, but if I was, it was drowned out by everything else. For a brief, infinitesimal moment, too short for me to have remembered, too horrifying for it to ever go away, a path was laid through the endless cosmos, and my soul was thrown through to the other end.

-o-o-o-​

Reincarnating was a lot more painful than I'd thought it would be. I could feel my soul nearly shredding itself against the cosmic winds, each breeze and zephyr threatening to rip apart what made me, me. When the lightshow ended, I was in a body my mind knew wasn't mine. It was too short, for one, and also too lean. I'd played a fair bit of sports in my youth, and I'd never really gotten fat, but life hadn't been kind to me over the years.

I sat up from where I'd been laying on the ground, spitting a mouthful of almost dried blood out. Grimacing, I took stock of my situation.

Wherever that asshole had thrown me, it wasn't near civilisation. For as far as I could see, and man my eyes were sharp this life around, I could only really see sand. Sand, sand, and more sand. My upper body was left exposed to the unkind sun, but at least I still had some manner of cargo pants, even if I couldn't immediately place what kind of fabric they were made of. There was a small, but thick tome lying next to me, its leather simultaneously weathered and new. I glanced at it and put it in a pocket along my thigh.

A few feet away from me were three bodies, various implements and tools sticking out of them. They were all dressed oddly. Then again, I suppose I wasn't really in the position to judge anyone for their questionable fashion choices.

"Did this motherfucker throw me in the ass end of the Sahara?"

A muffled groan answered me, one of the men I thought was long gone turning to stare at me. Brown eyes widened just as mine narrowed. Something, a rush of memories, half-remembered like they weren't truly mine, tickled my brain.

I growled. "You're the asshole who just killed me?"

The man let out a weak, burbling laugh. "You seem pretty alive to me, kid." He paused in the middle of chuckling, grimacing. "Didn't think you'd end up being a shinobi."

I steeled my expression, ignoring the panic that shot through my body at his statement. Think about the implications of that later, Suleiman, later. "I got better," I bit out, "Why kill me?"

"You keep saying that, but here you are, healthy as ever. Chakra's a hell of a thing, huh?"

"Listen buddy," I started, walking over to him until my foot rested on his chest. Some dark part of me noted with satisfaction that the lightest touch elicited a sharp hiss of pain from his lips. "I'm the one asking the questions here, yeah? Why. Kill. Me?"

The man bared his teeth, shoulders trembling with mirth. "Why kill a boy dressed like a princeling wandering alone in the desert? We're bandits, son. Why do you think?"

I nodded slowly, considering what to do next. In that brief lull in conversation, I noted I was distinctly calmer than I should have been right about now. I'd lived a full life before, well, dying, but I can't say I'd ever talked to a person who'd by all means succeeded in killing me. I came to a decision then, lifting my foot off the man's chest. I walked over to his fallen comrades, picking apart the scene with narrowed eyes. Quickly, I retrieved what seemed like a half-decent sword and its sheathe to my untrained eyes. I shook off the bits of blood and gore on it and put it in its sheathe, moving over to grab a wallet that seemed half-full of some kind of paper currency. I didn't immediately recognise it, but then again, if my suspicions were right, I had no reason to.

"What're ya doing with that sword, son," the man called out to me warily.

"Oh, don't worry you big lump of flesh," I answered back calmly, "I don't plan on killing you."

The bandit relaxed ever so slightly. Now that I looked more closely, I could see shimmering white shapes at the very boundary of my vision, like a collection of houses. Houses meant people, people meant food and water, food and water meant life.

I smiled, wrapping myself in a cloak that was definitely oversized for this new, pint-sized me. "I'm just going to let you bake to death. Consider it pay-back." I chuckled to myself, letting his curses trail off in the distance as I started walking in the direction of what I could only assume was a town of sorts.

-o-o-o-​

It turned out that walking on sand was a lot more difficult than it seemed. It wasn't like walking on stable ground – sand shifts, and if you're not careful with how you walk, you're liable to fall flat on your face, as I found out multiple times that afternoon. By the time I was halfway to the town, the sun had descended sharpy, sitting on the horizon like a crown.

I stopped, looking around me to make sure no one was there, and withdrew the book from my thigh pocket. I'd read enough self-insert fiction to have more than just an inkling of an idea of what was going on. If that poor sod's words were any indication, I'd found myself in Naruto. It could have been some other universe, but it wouldn't have made sense for my first jump to be in a place unfamiliar to me. The only piece of fiction that featured ninjas who used chakra that I was more than passingly familiar with was Naruto.

And if I was right about the book in my hand…

I opened it, shutting my eyes as light exploded from the first page, searing words and letters into my brain. I laughed, slowly at first, and then madly. This, this was the Celestial Grimoire. A book that offered me an into potentially limitless power. I knew the instant I opened my eyes again that this wasn't about to be a normal Celestial Grimoire – not that anything about the original was normal. One word formed on the page, one word that sent equal measures of fear and excitement through my system.

Win.​

The book crumbled away, dissipating into ash and dust before my eyes. I wasn't worried. The book was but a channel for power, a medium. The pages itself weren't special, they never had been. Whether it was my patron or some higher being still that decided things would be a tad different this time around, the power that made the Celestial Grimoire more than mere dead wood flowed into my soul, settling somewhere deep within me. Its functions would continue unabated, I just didn't have need for it in book form. In turn, I received only one free perk in the beginning. More would depend on my luck.

With a deep breath, I willed it to start my journey, and it did so, the information flowing into my brain.

Free Perk! ​

Barriers and Shields, Lyrical Nanoha.

But you can't just keep slinging offensive spells left and right all day without any kind of defense, right? You can create barriers and shields to reinforce your own defences, letting you block spells and attacks so long as you utilize them properly. This can be especially draining or fragile against powerful Bombardment spells or worse, though...you might want to consider dodging instead.​

Oh. Okay. That was good. If I wanted to win, I needed to survive first. I wasn't a hundred percent certain if I was in Naruto, but if I was, I could at-least survive another bandit attack this way. Shin-chan had said I had two hundred to start off, right? I wonder how many I had now. Before the question had fully formed in my mind, I knew I was sitting just out of reach of four hundred points. That… was potentially a lot of firepower. Or absolutely useless to me in this setting. It all depended on how things rolled. Hah!

I picked up my pace after that, nearly jogging towards the town. The heat had become significantly more bearable as the sun descended below the horizon, but the wind had chosen to pick up, and I was not a fan of the idea of sand getting in places sand shouldn't be. By the time I reached the town, a few men had gathered near the edges, watching me warily.

I slowed my pace till I was only slightly quicker than my normal speed of walking. Waving at me from a distance, the eldest among them approached me.

"You seem to have gotten into a bit of a scrap," the elderly man commented warily when I got close enough, "Bringing any trouble with you?"

I shook my head, smiling lightly. "Those that started it aren't around anymore, old man. I'm just looking for a place to stay the night."

There was a pause as he considered my words, before motioning towards one of the men standing behind him.

The man behind him shuffled. "Hikaru-sama, if need be, I can-"

The old man, Hikaru, shook his head silently. "No need for that Jun. Direct this young man to the inn." Having said his piece, Hikaru turned back towards the town, the silent of the pair of men following him sedately.

Something in the air shifted. The Celestial Grimoire was telling me I'd acquired four hundred points – two as a gift from my patron, two as a consequence of the passage of time. I rolled once, squeezing my eyes shut as a rush of something more than human flowed into me, cosmic energies twisting and turning until they took material form. It took a lot more effort than I cared to admit to remain standing, and by the time that first perk had finished rolling in, my feet ached from how harshly I'd been planting them into the stone road.

Jun approached slowly, warily, but extended a hand in my direction regardless. "Be welcome to Taar-Hadad, um…"

New Perk! 100 CP Deducted.

Weapon of Choice, Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets

Ganon's Trident is a fearsome weapon, but truth be told there's very little about it that stands out as special. Oh, it's finely made, and a weapon suitable for a king, a warlord, and a monster in equal measure, but that's all it is. Still, pick a weapon, it need not be a trident. In your hands, this weapon moves far easier than it ought to - you could spin it in place with no skill in doing so, or throw it faster than it should reasonably be able to move. It will even come back to you afterwards. Oh, and with the injection of some magical energy, your new weapon can put out small fireballs, or coat itself in flames.​

The perk settled somewhere that I'd subconsciously begun calling my soul, waiting to be called and moulded to my desire. I knew instinctually that the weapon would not change once I decided what form it would take.

I grasped his hand distractedly. "Suleiman, pleased to meet you."

"Sool-eh-man," Jun said slowly, testing the name, "A foreign name, I have not heard its like before. From where do you hail?"

"I don't think your maps have a name for it," I told him, falling in step with him as we travelled down the road towards the centre of the town. I thought up of a believable story while thinking through where I needed to go. Merchant caravans were a thing in this time period, right? "I was a guard for a merchant caravan, but I was separated from my charges while travelling," I laughed lightly, injecting the slightest bit of despair into my voice, "Turns out the desert doesn't agree as much with me as I hoped"

Jun hummed but didn't probe further. The people of Taar-Hadad were oddly trusting. Too trusting, some part of me noted.

"Say, Jun, could you tell me what a night's stay here would be worth?"

"Five hundred ryo, not much more than that," Jun replied absently. He stopped for a second, fishing out something from his pockets. "Oh, it's one of the green notes if you have them, or five of the red ones."

"Thank you, I'm still not too familiar with the denominations of this land. Left all the finance matters to my charges,"

Jun nodded sympathetically.

Eventually, we came to a stop in front of the inn, a two-storey building that looked about the same as any others we'd passed. Domed, stone buildings that had two layers of walls, with some kind of insulating layer in between, with shutters on the few windows that I could see.

"This is you," Jun said as he opened the door for me. I nodded to him in thanks, grasping his arm as he left.

The inn from the inside looked pretty bereft of furniture, its main 'hall' just a room with a cool stone floor and squat, stone tables. Even the counter behind which the innkeeper stood was made of stone. That made sense – wood was probably an expensive import, and I couldn't imagine random villages in the middle of the desert having enough wood to spare for furniture. Maybe the more permanent residents bought it eventually, but passing travellers didn't need that kind of 'luxury', I supposed.

I tried to strike up a conversation with the innkeeper, but he was a man of few words and fewer emotions. Exchanging the money I'd filched from the wallet I'd, uh, requisitioned earlier, I had dinner in my room. It wasn't anything to write home about, just a kind of hard bread and some vegetarian soup, but I found myself not caring too much about the drastic drop in the quality of food from my past life. I was going to consult some maps and do my best to make it out of here come morning.

For now…

I summoned Ganon's Trident from within me, cool black metal resting in my outstretched hands between one moment and the next. Rolling it over, I tested its weight and balance, finding myself unnaturally comfortable with it. I hadn't exactly been a warrior in my last life, so I held out on changing its form just then. Who knew what kind of style of combat I'd have to adopt. For now, I was content to test it out. I spun it around in the confines of my room, my hand instinctively moving in patterns I knew I couldn't replicate with any normal weapon. I jabbed into the air experimentally, feeling the metal pierce the air with a low shriek. Somehow, I knew even before I saw where my strike would land.

This… this was good. It gave me something to work with on the offensive side of things as well. All the defence in the world wouldn't get me from point A to point B if I couldn't retaliate altogether.

I willed the Celestial Grimoire to roll again, bracing myself for the lightshow.

A moment passed, and nothing happened. I frowned, prodding the Grimoire to understand why my roll had failed. I still had 300 CP left – it stood to reason that if my roll had failed altogether, I would have been informed in some way. No, it seemed like it had been delayed. What being could possibly convince the Grimoire to delay its process of granting me another perk? I shuddered. Setting my thoughts aside, I reached out to assess the Grimoire again, and found that in the space between one activation and the next, I'd gained another hundred points. Grinning, I willed it to roll.

Two things happened at once. One, the four hundred points I'd gathered were consumed in an instant. Two, something brushed against my back. Cursing, I whirled around, Ganon's Trident poised to strike whoever had snuck up on me. The honed edges of the Trident met pure light, and light won. The Trident that should not have buckled against anything short of a powerful destructive force dissipated into nothingness, forced into the recesses of my mind.

New Perk! 400 CP Deducted.​

When the next word was inscribed into my mind's eye, it wasn't written in English, or Urdu, or Gurmukhi, or any other language I had ever known. I didn't know how I knew, but I knew what it was nonetheless.

Sing into the Void

​

There was music, then. Countless voices sang into the void and night turned into day. Harps and lutes, and pipes and trumpets, and viols and organs played their endless melody, and countless choirs sang with words, and from the Music was fashioned the theme of the One, passing into the depths and the heights of Creation. The twin trees bloomed, and from them blossomed a million petals of silver and gold, each imbibed with the essence of Ainulindalë, the only Song that had ever mattered.

Before there was Creation, there was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and He made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of His thought. From their lips was issued the Song of Creation, the Music of the Ainur, which fashioned the world from the void.

You are of the Maiar, those of the primordial spirits who descended to the world at the Dawn of Creation to aid the Valar, greatest among the Ainur. You are of the Maiar who stayed with Eru when Arda was woven into being, content merely to witness the Shattering of the First Silence.

You have no mantle, no concept you were given dominion over, but all Maiar, even a fledgling one as you, are born to wield powers beyond the ken of mortals. In time, as your Song is reflected in the world ever more so, you will be adorned in the Raiments of the World, through which you may change your form as you please. Though you may not pluck at the chords of Ainulindalë just yet, though you may not choose what you will hold sway over, with time, all will be clear. Who knows, perhaps you may come to wield the Flame Imperishable itself.

May the Music serve you as you serve the Music. ​

Light burst from my eyes, my ears, my pores. That moment which I spent submerged in the Song, I saw Creation take place and was awed, humbled, overwhelmed. Time and space ceased to exist, and I saw the Silence, its hunger unending, and I heard Discord, its notes warping Creation before it was allowed to breathe. I saw the slightest vision of the Day of the Overwhelming Calamity and wept, wept for a loss I could scarcely understand. I was changing, being moulded into something more than human, something beyond my ability to comprehend just yet.

When it ended, I managed only to stumble to my bed, asleep before my head had hit the pillow.