The Codex of Gods, Act 3 REDUX: Ragnarok Returns.

[Yun Lao]

Unlike the others, Travis Royce found himself not in an organic universe, but rather one that felt...artificial to put it in an understandable word. Although the human eye could not see it, he definitely felt it: the flow of information surging around him as imaginary numbers extending pass multiple eternities in each direction. Unaware to it, but the fledgling entity had been intercept shortly after entering the portal made by the Fates. Uncertain of how to proceed, Travis began to contemplate until the scent of coffee reached him.


"Not bad, huh? It's my own little slice of heaven, so to say."

Although the man's appearance was different, he was quite familiar. "Lost, I presume?" The man raised a brow. "Lost? No, it's you who's...oh, wait, I get it. Uhh...yeah, I think that might have been a code name I once used, but then again I've gone through a lot of those. For the sake of keeping track, just call me Vargas." "Regardless of whatever name you wish me to call you, I can only assume that you brought me here for a reason?" It was usually around this time that Travis would have begun planning an escape route, but in this situation, he didn't have much of a choice but hear out this strange man's request.

"Bingo. I'm extending to you an invitation to join a little club of mine." With a slow swing of his arm, Vargas extended his hand back to reveal three other figures who had seemingly spawned into existence from nowhere. The first was what appeared to be a normal woman in every way, yet there was something about her that suggested that she was much like this universe. Her behavior, treating such an occasion like this, like a mundane annoyance only added to it as she gave a small nod in his direction. "I apologize for this. He tends to be a bit impulsive at times." The second one was a man of strong Asian origin, clad in a blue changshan and bearing a pair of glasses on his nose. Unlike the woman, it was quite apparent to Travis that this man was also a deity of sorts like him and Vargas and that this appearance was nothing more than a physical form he used. A smile took the other man's face, yet he remained quiet for now. The third of this trio was a man Travis recognized with shocking speed, for it was the very same homeless man he had encountered back in L.A. right before he was attacked by the Xiroc and his powers awoke.

"Could you spare some change, please?"

It wasn't so much the question itself that surprised him, but the fact that a homeless man managed to sneak into an airport like this. Sure, enough, however, he found himself glancing down to see an African American man, crippled through the lost of his right arm and leg, with a small sign unreadable through its weathered condition.

Pushing up his hat, Detective Travis Royce stuck a hand into his pocket and pulled out a small amount of change. "I'm not doin' so well myself, sir...but I figure I still have an advantage by the grace of havin' four limbs." With that, he tossed it down into the man's cup, only for his wrist to be grabbed by the homeless man. "I know who you truly are." He whispered, breath reeking of alcohol. "Your trickery will be needed soon." Despite seemingly being malnourished, the man's grip was almost inhuman.

"I see you collected enough change to turn your life around." Travis chose to say, hiding his surprise, to which the 'homeless' man chuckled. "You know what they say, "God works in mysterious ways." I am a bit disappointed you remembered me so quickly; I wanted it to be a surprise."

"We are the Ascendants. Now, with that all said and done, we really need to get going."

"What makes you think I would even agree to this?"

"I can think of a few reasons. The biggest is that there's a good chance we'll probably bump into Yahweh on the way."

"I suppose I don't have any choice. So, what is our goal?"

"Right now? We're going to make a little girl's dream come true. We need to hurry, though, because she's almost at the wishing well." As one, the five vanished from the artificial realm.
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The Internet Deity: He who became a god on a whim.
The Ascending Dragon: The man whose fighting style opened the gates of heaven.
The Descendant of Man: The spirit of technology made mortal.
The Saint Revived: Broken and abandoned, the one who never lost his faith.
The Web of Misfortune: The god made thrice.

The Ascendants are now complete.

To Be Continued...

[Nik Hasta]

((Okay, time to send of Oliver in style. Here is music to accompany the story.))

Oliver Vortigern sat on his throne, looking over the wreckage of London. Great plumes of smoke and flame billowed up from the streets, even reaching tops of the skyscrapers.

Things had, in retrospect, gotten a little out of hand.

Well... not really. Not out of hand enough. He knew he could stop this at any point. He could end the killing and the rape and the violence and the horror with just a word.

Just a word. A damn word. That was all it took from him. All it took was another insipid, blighted word from his gaping, flapping, cavernous mouth. He had thought himself so witty and clever, so bright and better than anyone else who would stand against him.

And the worst part was...

He was right.

His fingers, gnarled with premature ageing, curled into a fist and he thumped the arm of his throne, his voice rising in a roar of anger and frustration. He forced himself upwards, out of the chair, ignoring the creaking and protests of his bones and stumbled toward the window. He beheld his city, his London, a place he had made perfect and them imperfect and then hell itself. Just with mere words. He stood on the very edge of the smashed window, drinking in the smell of smoke and chaos. He closed his eyes and contemplated taking that step forwards that would end it all.

"Oliver,"

A voice intruded into his thoughts and he turned to see the assembled Alaphim standing at the entrance to his chamber. They had grown stronger, like he had, and they looked short of patience, like he was. It had been Fianna who had spoken, standing at the forefront of the group, her tiny form filled with the most terrifying of energies. Truly the wolf was coming out in her more and more with each day. There was something about her eyes that her prepubescent form could not disguise. They were dead, like the eyes of a predator, thinking only of the next meal.

"My friends," Oliver said, his voice quiet. It was an effort to suppress his powers. Almost an impossibility given how engrained into the very form of his body they were, but he tried. He wanted no hypercharisma, no charming voice, no favours of any sort. He wanted to talk to them as himself.

"Oliver stop this," Fianna said, her young voice slightly tremulous with emotion. There was that strong sense of justice that characterised her youth so well. Doubtless they had seen what he had done on the way up here. Oliver laughed and spread his arms.

"Stop this? Why? So you can reinstate the old systems? Build another turgid world for the uninspired to atrophy and rot in? No. I will not stop this. What I have done is horrific but it is the only way to create anything of interest. So... no, I will not stop this," he replied, his voice hard and cold like a blade. None of his usual soft charm or rogueish wit. This was him naked, without pretence or defences. This was Oliver Vortigern.

"You sick son of a bitch, people are dying down there!" Lance yelled, his voice like thunder. He began to move forward but was stayed by Jim's hand. The tall boxer eyed his former ally with eyes that burnt like the sun before speaking a voice taut with emotion. It was clear he was barely restraining himself from attacking.

"Oliver, man... you were one of us. We don't want to haveta-" he began but Oliver cut him off.

"Have to kill me?" he snapped, "I know why you're here. There can be no other reason for it. I won't play by your rules so Fate dictates that I must be removed from this world. This is what the reborn gods of our world have become - little more than glorified hit squad for a cosmic chessmaster. How disgusting,"

"We aren't here because Fate told us to be," Kaj replied, lightning crackling from the blade he held in his hand, "We are here to stop you because it's the right thing to do. Look at what you've done here! Are you insane?! Why else would we come here?"

Oliver leant on his cane and lit a cigarette.

"Jealousy?" he said, throwing the question out there, "Because I and I alone have dared to indulge my power and be the truest form of a man made god? I have conquered a nation, I have brought it to the peak of utopia in a matter of weeks and now, because I grow bored of a plaything, you seek to chastise me? The people down there do not matter, they are but mere toys to us. We are gods, we are better and we deserve... we deserve something interesting!"

The last few words burst from his lips like bile, he spat them like they were vomit as he once again beheld the source of his restlessness.

"It's all so boring," he muttered, his face consumed with a profound sadness.

<"And what of my family Oliver?"> a voice in Mandarin piped up, shaky but so much stronger than she had been when Oliver first encountered her. Kris has truly grown as a person and for a moment Oliver forgot his rage and sadness and felt only pride in her, <"Are they just toys for you?">

<"I said I would protect them and I have,"> he replied in her mother tongue, <"Despite all this, my word is still my bond,">

Fianna stepped forward, her fist clenched, power seeping from her in waves. The building seemed to shake as her strength grew.

"Oliver, don't make me hurt you,"

Oliver laughed once again. It was the long and loud and screeching laugh of a man who had been taken to the very brink of his reason. It was so ironic, his power had liberated him from the prison of his mundane life and thrown him knew challenges the likes of which he had never thought possible. He had become a gatekeeper to the world of the dead, he had spoken to the dead, he had forged an empire and waged bloody war, he had battled alien gods and sent them cowering from his lands. He had enjoyed himself. He had been powerful and he could change the world on a whim.

But that was just it, the more he exerted his power to change the world, the more entrenched he became in the subsequent status quo he was creating. The second anything settled it became old and he became bored. Oliver finally admitted to himself what he had always suspected.

He was not a man who wanted anything that he could have.

He only wanted the unattainable.

He had become a god and now he was bored with it and was actively trying to bring the world to ruin in a bid to make something more interesting happen.

It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.

In all seriousness, it really couldn't continue.

"Please," he said simply.

Power swirled in his throat for one final time. The molten gold tingling throughout his body.

He would miss this feeling.

"Kill me," he said to Fianna.

The punch came instantly, faster than he could have imagined. His lanky body was hurled through the broken window - ribs shattered, shards of bone lancing through his organs, she had gotten so strong - and he tumbled down into the very hell that he had created.

Finally, he was free from the whims of Fate. Finally, he was free of the boring world. Finally, he had lost.

He hit the ground with a wet cracking sound and did not rise.

--------------------------------------------------------------

He opened his eyes to view the monochrome world he knew that lay between life and death.

A hand reached out, withered by age and bronzed by the sun.

A highly familiar old face smiled at him.

Ogmios and Oliver stood together, laughing at their games, before finally crossing through the threshold of the gate and on into oblivion.

Finally at peace.

[Froggy]

I guess I'll try my hand at this

Jim had decided to return to Earth after conversing with the fates on how it could be done. They told him it was possible but not in the way he expected. As he started to speed away to the planet of his birth, he felt.....layers of himself peel away, consciousness start to strip down, energies start to burn away. His wings started to turn brittle and break apart as he hit orbit and heated up. By all means he should have died before impact but instead he grew brighter, and brighter, and brighter, before crash landing just a few miles outside of Cairo Egypt. The flash was seen all over the globe, but Jim's grin wasn't.


10 years later, a young boy is seen in a boxing gym, a towel wrapped around his head. He's got the typical thin frame of a little boy, ten years old with messy blond hair, but there's something about him...he has a unreal fire in his eyes, a thirst for more as he shadowboxes in the corner. The way he move is as if he's done this before, incredibly professional for a child, causing some of the older patrons in the gym to stare as he continues to throw punches at his imaginary foe. He continues this for half an hour before jumping rope, hitting the bags and wiping his face with the towel as he leaves. The people in the gym watch the kid run out the door but no one knows where he goes, or where he stays. The boy runs down the streets, passing an older gentleman in biker gear with his biker lady friend, causing them to turn their heads and wonder. He sees a bouncer outside a strip club do a hammer fist on some drunk guy and tries to fight the man himself, causing the bartender inside to laugh before doing a double take. He tries to get his friend Dexter to come out and play with him but he says it's too late and he's busy looking at bugs, talking about evolution and stuff he doesn't care about. Disappointed that there's nobody left to play with and having still no place to go, he sits on the stoop next to the alley he's made his home for as long as he can remember. He stays there for about an hour until he sees an older lady with groceries walking up the street. She's being harassed by some guys a little older than him, but that doesn't stop the boy from doing what comes next. He shouts out to these guys to leave her alone, and when they respond with less than kind words to the boy, he forces them. Hitting the men with surprisingly strong fists for a ten year old, he sends the punks running and helps the lady pick up her knocked down groceries.

"Thank you young man, but may I ask what you're doing out so late? Don't you have a home to go to? Your parents must be worried sick!" she said, the first part of her sentence causing him to grin, the second part turning that grin into a frown.

"I...I don't know. I don't really have anyone, really haven't had anyone ma'am" he told the older woman as he gave her the grocery bag he picked up. She had a kind face, real motherly, or at least what he'd consider motherly having no real reference for it. The boy then turned quickly after exchanging smiles with her and put his hands in his pockets, walking off to god knows where

"Where are you going?" she asked, causing him to stop and think, which took about two seconds

"I don't know, somewhere?" he told her, truly not knowing where to go.

"Why don't you stay with me young man?" she said, putting her hand out for him to hold. "A child shouldn't wander the streets alone, and I think you'd like a nice meal wouldn't you?"

before he could answer his stomach did, rumbling like an earthquake which made the woman laugh. "Okay, you convinced me ma'am...I'm Jon...Jon Blue, I think?"

"Jon, very simple name, I like it. My name is Georgina Newman, Jon Blue" she said as they walked up to her apartment. "You had some real nice moves back there Jon, are you a bit of a tough guy?"

"Ehh I guess? I don't know, I really like boxing, I want to be one of the greats you know? Ali, Tyson, Leonard, but even though I got a long way to go I got my own sunday punch it's called the phoenix buster wanna hear about it?"

"Why don't you tell me all about it Jon" she said, walking up the stairs


Jim made it back to Earth, but like the phoenix it was through a rebirth

[Nik Hasta]

Aww, that's nice.

[Froggy]

Aww, that's nice.

thank you
I figure it'd be a nice way to cap off things

she gets to hang out with Jim and he starts fresh. threw in some other codex people as well for kicks, and I can only imagine how these two will grow up haha