AN:
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Disclaimer: I own no source material
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Chapter 1: How It Begins
Magus slowly began to wake to find himself in complete darkness. Not one to panic, he simply lay there unmoving as his brain fully came back to wakefulness. As the fog cleared from his mind, the darkness seemed to sense his change and recede to reveal that he was sitting in a plush leather chair with a velvet red carpet beneath his bare feet.
Looking further, Magus realized he was in a small cozy study in the style of a stone room with heat coming from a green fired hearth. An enchanting scent drew his attention to a side table with two mugs of some kind of steaming liquid, the scent oddly nostalgic with traces of cinnamon and apple.
The action also revealed that he wasn't alone. For across the table was another man, a man of six feet in height with broad shoulders, a hawk-like face, and a certain aura of handsome and dangerous in one. 'Pierce Bronsan?'
The James Bond look-a-like wasn't even looking at him, just staring into the flames as Magus took him in. Yet, while Magus could have opened his mouth to ask a question, he rather turned to the mug that was tempting him and took a sip. 'It was cinnamon apple.'
"Careful son, drinking nectar too fast could hurt you as much as heal you." Pierce's voice, if that was who he was, had a smooth baritone with a trace of humor as he warned him.
Magus promptly slowed his drinking and stared at the cup like it betrayed him. "Thank you, sir."
"No need for 'sir'." The man chuckled softly. "I know who you are Magus E. Mors, I named you."
"James Bond says what now?"
"Hm, quite the easy-going personality you have there."
"I've taken a strange outlook on life since I found a timer counting down how many seconds I had left to live."
"A strong mind." The man commented to himself with a good-natured chuckle and turned away from the flames to regard him with warm grey eyes. "Well, let's clear up some of that confusion first. To start, and I apologize if this sounds cliché, but my name is Thanatos, and I am your father, Magus."
Magus face turned to stone as he heard those words. Words he had never thought he would get the chance to hear. He looked the man dead in the eyes. "Can I use the forc…."
"No, you can't use the force."
Magus clicked his tongue. "Damn, killing a hot-blooded dream right there."
Thanatos laughed in amusement. "If you really wanted it that much I could always send you to that world."
"You mean an Isekai?" Magus's eyes lit up. "You can do that? Anime worlds exist and stuff?"
"Of course that's your first reaction." Thanatos sighed and waved his hand. "Yes, yes, it's real. Now, don't interrupt me while I speak."
With his wave, the small table between their chairs got covered in different snacks while Thanatos took his own mug of nectar. Magus shrugged and took the bribe for what it was, snacks were snacks.
He also figured it might be best to listen to the strange guy calling himself his father, who couldn't appreciate a good meme, and whose name resembled the Greek primordial deity of death.
Thanatos took a sip and cleared his throat. "There are many complicated factors involved, so for the sake of clarity, I'll give you the bullet points.
One, the multiverse is real. I am a multiversal entity, each realities Thanatos is technically my clone, and while they have their own lives, they are all aspects of me. I literally could not die unless every Thanatos in every reality were simultaneously killed.
With me so far?"
Magus nodded with chipmunk cheeks while munching on a pretzel. "Mn, big boss of death is my daddy."
Thanatos flicked a pretzel at his forehead with a chuckle. "Don't be cheeky, brat. Anyway, there are countless realities, and each reality has parallel dimensions.
Some of these dimensions even end up with individuals who grow powerful enough to usurp the cycle of reincarnation in their dimension and I get shut out. Many of such individuals happen to be reincarnators due to a variety of factors, mainly because other multiversal beings are messing around. Still following?"
Magus found an old school favorite among the snacks in sour gummy bears and sent his father a thumbs up. "Mn, all powerful multiversal gods acting like cats."
Thanatos raised a finger to flick another snack at his son while Magus used a small plate as a shield but paused and put down the finger as he actually considered the phrasing. "A fair point." He shook his head with a chuckle and went on. "This leads to my second point. Dimensions where individuals become powerful end up being fundamentally changed by these people. For example, turning the world of Harry Potter into a scientific empire built on magic and science. They alter things to their own liking and create unique worlds of their own. We call these types of people 'Pillar Gods' for they are the pillar of their worlds and yet are still quite weak compared to the big leagues anywhere outside their worlds dimensional walls."
Thanatos gave his son a look as he played around with old school Warhead candy and Magus responded to the silent question. "Mn. Otaku's got good. Representing the dream."
"Accurate." Thanatos sighed. "Although they all pay a price as whoever sent them on their way uses their actions to harvest energy from the changed dimensions. But that's a different discussion to have." He waved a hand to brush off that topic. "My point is, these worlds become unique, and us multiversal gods like uniqueness. It gives us new things to enjoy. So to make a long story short, I had a clone enter one of those dimensions, made a bargain with the Pillar God to roam as I pleased as long as I sealed my power for a time, got incredibly drunk with said Pillar God as host, and woke up the next day in a bed with a woman I ended up getting pregnant."
"…" Magus didn't bother with words as he judgmentally stared while chewing on a twizzler as the man scratched his cheek awkwardly.
"Look, you have to understand how insanely rare this situation really is. I've been alive for a long, long time. I'm a multiversal entity, and most of my individual bodies would kill any human through just a simple touch. Me sending a clone of my actual body, to a world where I didn't rule death, and while limiting myself to human levels, and then having a kid had a less than .000001% chance of happening. I had no idea I would get that woman pregnant that night, you're the first child of my own blood I ever had. In a world I had no authority in." He seemed to sink in on himself slightly. "Can you imagine how lost I was?"
Magus gave it some consideration and slowly nodded at the man's point.
"I'm sure you could tell by my absence in your life that there were some issues. I didn't just go for milk and not come back. As my child, you would have been a powerful demi-god. Unfortunately, your universes humans were utterly mundane without the potential to handle a supernatural force. Your genetics were not strong enough to handle my divine essence, and as you grew, your divine half would continue to eat away at your health in agonizing pain until you died."
"Couldn't you have just pulled me out of that world?" Magus asked without accusation.
Yet his father could only shake his head with a resigned sigh. "The Pillar God of your world was unreasonable about releasing any soul under his authority. I could have forced things, but there are consequences for destroying a universe. Rather, I pressured him and made a deal that your soul would come to me when you died, but until then, I was unable to intervene. Not that I didn't try." He grumbled the last part but Magus heard it.
"Is that why things always seemed to go my way?"
"Partially." He admitted. "The Pillar God didn't want you disturbing the order of his world, so he sealed all your divine essence so you could live a relatively normal life for twenty years before your human body failed. The offset to that was improving your luck factor until you died."
Magus hummed and raised a hand.
"You don't have to raise your hand son, just ask."
"Is luck why all those strange things kept happening to me?"
"What things?"
"Well, no one could ever find me if I didn't want to be found. It was also very easy to learn physical activities or study topics that interested me. Did you give me a boon or something?"
Thanatos gave a dry chuckle. "You're learning capabilities are a carry on from your divine side, you were quite talented." He shook his head. "Too talented for that world. You have no idea how many people you still ended up attracting the attention of. If you weren't hidden, you would have been hounded by people endlessly. You were just sleeping on the grass or staring at clouds while the people looking for you ran by like headless chickens."
Magus dropped his fist into his palm. "Oh, that puts things into perspective."
Thanatos sighed and decided to move on. "Forget it. Anyway, I am very proud of you son. Even without any parental guidance, you never became arrogant with your talents and let anything go to your head, you helped others when you came across them, and you stood up for yourself when you had to."
Magus rubbed his head, never having had parental praise before. "Thanks." Magus never held any resentment toward his parents for being abandoned, he was just curious on the why. If things were as simple as Thanatos was saying, he couldn't really fault him at all.
Thanatos smiled and patted his shoulder. "I managed to sneak in that timer for you, so you could know how much time you had left and go out on your own terms. Congrats on your choice of death, it was a nice way to go. Default humans on peaceful worlds are so cookie cutter, it's always the same things over and over, war, suicide, overdosing, bah, where's the flavor you know? Throw some magical beasts in the world, let them go out with a bang, that will really spice things up…."
Magus just silently listened to his old man ranted about methods of death while he went back to munching on snacks. It was kind of nice, being able to experience a father-son bonding experience. Even if the man was casually discussing dying like an everyday thing.
Which is was for the multiversal god of death.
For the next few hours, the two talked, traded stories, laughed, ate snacks, and all around had a great time. Magus never knew what was waiting for him at the end of his timer, but he was glad it was this.