5. Shirone

'Oh man, this is gonna suck!'

Subconsciously walking quickly into the forest to get out of eye and earshot of the party, Shirone's thoughts started to wander.

'This is supposed to be my little project that Sandstorm gave me power to do this once and now I'm gonna ask her for help, this is super embarassing!"

Taking advantage of this moment of distraction a shadow jumped from behind a tree at her with a guttural screech.

Shirone immediately stopped on a dime and let the creature face plant in front of her, in the dying light of sunset she could make out its features. It was not a beast, but a human, a cultist at that. With an elaborate iron headdress, sizeable muscles, and rusty iron claws on each hand.

'What an atrocious disrespect for such faithful weapons.'

The cultist gave another vocalism of rage and scrambled in her general direction.

Raising her hand calmly Shirone summoned a spear above him and drove it down, through the cultist's spine and into the ground, pinning it in place in a jumble of limbs.

Shirone sighed and knelt down, reached for its hands and tugged off the claws. After all, these poor weapons could use some TLC back in her world.

Suddenly she felt a presence behind her where there was not one before.

"Hmm, interesting."

Shirone whipped around and beheld the source of the voice.

There stood a man, not just any man, but a man who was incredibly anachronistically well dressed for Darkest Dungeon. He had a silky black jacket that looked like it was almost a tuxedo, but not quite. His jet-black hair was slicked back and he stood straight with his hands folded in front of him.

"Why thank you, I do pride myself on any matter of the forge, who are you?"

The man chuckled quietly,

"You're right, how rude of me, my name is Marius, Grym of the shadows, nice to meet you."

He held out his hand for a handshake.

Now highly suspicious, Shirone walked up to him but at the same time readied an incredibly powerful sword to be summoned if need be. Shirone reaches out and shakes his hand...but nothing bad happened, he appeared to have just wanted a handshake.

Chuckling once again Marius continues,

"Did my title frighten you of all people much?"

Shirone gave a shrug,

"Not gonna lie it did a little, but how on earth do you know me?"

"Well that's easy, you made quite the name for yourself by coming into MY reality and messing with MY fabric of time and space."

Shirone pauses for a moment,

"Well those are quite bold claims of ownership, I assure you my sister has more power over fate and reality than you do."

"Yeah sure, either way, my contention is with you and we must discuss it immediately."

This ran a chill up Shirone's spine.

"What if I just teleport home because I don't feel like discussing my matters with you?"

She asked in a huff.

"That's easy, I would highly recommend against doing so, right now we are in a pocket dimension of my creation."

Shirone waited a second to see if he'd explain further, then realized he wasn't going to.

"So?"

Marius gave yet another smug chuckle,

"So, you have no idea where in time and space you are located right now, you can't make a travel vector between point a and point b without knowing where a is, any attempt at teleporting will more than likely result in you un-realizing yourself from all realities like Alucard's demise in Hellsing, except more permanent. I believe programmers call that conundrum a null-pointer error."

Shirone is back on edge now,

'System, is what he says true?'

'Yes, it is indeed, traveling right now would be rather hazardous.'

"And what might you want to discuss?"

Marius grinned and pulled out a clip-board from his coat,

"Let me see here, firstly, you introduced a new individual to this world did you not?"

"Yes indeed I did"

Shirone answered matter-of-factly,

"Interesting, secondly, what reality do you belong to?"

"That is none of your business."

Marius frowned at that,

"You're not going to like the consequences if I have to find it myself."

"And you're not going to like the consequences if my sister gets set on your destruction."

Marius laughed at this,

"And my brothers and sisters would not take an attempt on one of our lives lightly from another immortal, we can do this threatening all day if you're childish and foolish enough to continue doing so."

"Fine then, let me leave already!"

Marius clicks his tongue in disdain,

"Just two more things on my list here, my brothers and sisters aren't all fans of this world ending as is prescribed by fate, do you believe this Thomas guy has the ability to change that?"

Shirone pauses for a moment, still annoyed at the disrespect Marius has shown.

"Yes, I did endow him with powers didn't I?"

"That is true, but you yourself said you don't know what they are exactly."

Shirone shook her head,

"That is true, I don't, but the sheer amount of energy the thread of fate that is tied to him is capable of many wonders, including altering the course of history itself."

"Hmmmm..."

Marius jots down some notes,

"One final thing, if Thomas were to develop a certain distaste for us Grym, would he threaten the security of our godhood?"

Marius looked intently up from his clipboard at Shirone.

"No, he respects gods like us, I highly doubt he would attack you unless you were overtly rude to him, like any mortal would."

"Do you swear this upon your life?"

Shirone responds quite annoyed,

"You have no capacity to hold that ransom, I shall make no such promise."

Suddenly Marius turned into a 3d silhouette of darkness and expanded until he encapsulated everything Shirone could see. Then he opened the hundreds of eyes that were in the black on all sides and Shirone could hear the reverberations of his voice in the fabric of reality itself,

"I highly suggest you do, for your own health."

Shirone sighed heavily,

"Fiiiine, I promise, but you owe me."

The eyes responded once more,

"I owe you nothing more than the freedom I assured you earlier."

The blackness retreated back into the former humanoid form Marius had taken,

"I have notified your system of where in space you are, begone."

Shirone immediately teleported.