Chapter 1: Legacy

Netherworld Tower: Throne Room

The Fourth Overlord, Acheron to his Mistress, formerly mistresses, let out a silent sigh as he half-listened to the last of a long line of petitions he was hearing for the day, this one from another bloated, self-absorbed Empire bureaucrat that thought themselves entitled to his time. What those businessmen learned soon after coming here was that they were tolerated, if only just, by the powers to be, that is to say, him. Still, that lesson didn't fully sink in until he dropped them through the hole in the middle of his throne room, the gateway that opened at his whim, sending those blubbery buffoons off to some random destination around the world. He couldn't begin to count how many of his petitioners he had killed like this, but he also couldn't be brought to care. Juno had been more than capable of dealing with them in his stead, but that was no longer possible as she was quite dead.

He glanced up at the source of the deed that was wafting her way through the black stalactites that lined the ceiling, Ghost Fay, formerly the corrupt version of the fairy Queen Fay, lady of light. He had been quite leery when the woman, that had at the time called herself Dark Fay, had jumped the gun and followed him home. He had however, been quick to change his tune after a rather scintillating session of lovemaking. His earlier fears turned out to be quite justified when he returned home after consolidating his hold over the Golden Hills after the sacking of Empire City. The then Dark Fay had been waiting for him in the Private Quarters, that in and of itself not bothersome. What was bothersome however, was that clearly displayed behind the fairy were the corpses of his two other mistresses, Juno and Kelda, whom had been stabbed a multitude of times with a large knife still held in Dark Fay's hand. When it came to Juno, he really thought he could have gotten over it. After all, the Empire woman had been little more than a walking pair of breasts for him to bed despite her usefulness in other settings. But Kelda though, he had known her since he was a little boy in the town of Nordburg, spent half of his life around her, really come to love her. He had struck Dark Fay down on the spot, but her ghost had stuck around anyway, still very much in love with him. The only good thing about that was that the Ghost version was much closer to the Fay he had known before inadvertently corrupting her, someone he had liked a lot more.

Not in the mood for listening to an Empire floozy any more he waved his hand and opened the Pit, drawing a modicum of relief from the scream. He then snapped his fingers, summoning the Minion Master, Gnarl, who seemed to simply materialize next to the fur-covered throne.

The old minion spoke, as fawningly as ever. "Yes, most depraved of Evil masters? I await your command."

He slid around on the throne, twisting himself until he was both sitting up straight and facing the wrinkled old minion. "You've been going on for a few days about how this same thing happened to my father. He took over everything and got bored?"

Gnarl's claws clicked together, seemingly in anticipation. "Yes young master, not in those words but yes. His Supreme Evilness was indeed quite dissatisfied when the last of these lands bowed before him. Couple that with the loss of Mistress Velvet and he was quite depressed."

He shot a glance towards the group of bureaucrats that were being roughly herded back out the portal to the surface, silently wishing that he had a dwarven cannon strong enough to blow all of them away with a single round. "I think you also mentioned something about how he dealt with that depression, something about going from this world to another one. How did he do that?"

Gnarl's eyes glittered with excitement. "Am I sensing that the Sanctuary Smasher is interested in following in his father's footsteps?"

Even though his solid gold, glowing eyes didn't have pupils he gave a mighty effort at rolling his eyes. "Yeah Gnarl, would I have asked if I wasn't interested? So can you skip your little happy dance and just tell me how the old man managed it? Because a new world to enslave would be really nice about now." He added to himself, "And to the Abyss with these egotistic Empire assholes."

Gnarl obliged; "Well Young Master, to be perfectly honest I think your great father simply got lucky with the Tower Heart, and I'm sure you remember that-"

He finished the sentence, exasperation flowing through him as quickly as the lava all around the Netherworld. "I used the Tower Heart as slingshot ammo to bust down the gates of Empire City." He leaned down on the stone arm of his throne to get closer to the old minion. "What I want to know is if he had anything else that he used to go back and forth, or elsewhere."

Gnarl cowered under his gaze. "Well, His Evilness did have a very large collection of war trophies and other such devices. There does exist the possibility that some of them survived the detonation of the Tower Heart."

He shot a glance along the walls, out the windows at the brimstone falling around the Tower. "Anything particularly powerful that the Old Man left behind before Florian tampered with the Tower Heart?"

Gnarl rattled off the first possibility. "His Godliness had acquired a large jar of a plague, powerful enough to turn an entire city into a necropolis."

A shudder of disgust rushed through him. "Ugh, hell no. You've spoken of that thing before and I want no part of it. I refuse to run around cleaning up zombie body parts, and I seriously doubt a plague is going to do anything to help me get from here, to somewhere else. Next item."

As the Minion Master went on he, as he often was, set upon by the sense that nothing he did would ever live up to the example set by his father. That was part of the reason that he always referred to the former, though technically still alive, Overlord derogatorily as "The Old Man." The other part, and he would never admit this to anyone, was that he was angry his father and mother had abandoned him, even if he knew it wasn't their fault. He didn't even know what they looked like, as Gnarl was only ever able to give him grossly exaggerated descriptions of his father's epic deeds with no attention at all to what he looked like. Of course, of his mother all he could get was rather lewd descriptions of her pale,heaving bosom. It went without saying that he really didn't want to think of his mother in that capacity. Still, he knew Gnarl had been spying on him whenever he retired with one of his mistresses up until now, so it stood to reason the old minion would have done the same thing before he was born.

He held up his hand, snapping his fingers multiple times to grab attention. "Whoa, stop right there. You said something about a sword, something that almost killed the Old Man? Why couldn't you have mentioned this before, like when I was tackling the Glorious Empire?"

Gnarl backed up a step, just to be on the safe side. "As you said, Young Master, I m only telling you what was there. I don't know if any of these goods survived the Cataclysm. I'm not any more omniscient than you sire!"

He glanced up at his sole mistress, dreading the notion of trying to talk to her but finding it necessary. "Fay, while you were holed up in the Wastelands did you ever visit the remains of the Dark Tower?"

The dead fairy's glowing aura dimmed, whether from the topic of conversation or something else was not apparent. "When I was alive I had no reason to set foot in that cursed ruin. I spent all of my time shepherding the last vestiges of the elves and every other being of magic."

He responded, "Great." Then added under his breath; "Thanks for nothing."

A moment passed while he fumed silently, before Gnarl broke the silence. "Young Master, my memory is not as sharp as it used to be. If you really are interested in the relics your father left behind, I would suggest that you explore the ruins yourself. After all, even if you find nothing you might still learn valuable secrets to employ for your reign."

He leaned forward on his throne, resting his cupped hands on the handle of his flaming mace, the Apokolyptor. "Rooting around in the burned out husk of the Old Man's home…" Something about it felt wrong to him, but he couldn't quite pin it down. "Oh to hell with it, I'm going on a raid. The dead don't need their things."

He swung his seven foot frame forward to stand, shouldering his mace in the same motion. A few steps across the fractured floor stones and he leaped through the Netherworld Portal, bound for the Wastelands.

Netherworld Tower: Throne Room

Gnarl slowly plodded his way up the stairs to the Private Quarters so he could watch the antics of the young Overlord, cackling aloud the moment the boy left the Tower. After all, no matter what happened in the ruins it was an enjoyable way to pass the time, at least until the Real Overlord could figure out how to circumvent the void that stood between the worlds. The Young Overlord was good, no question, but simply couldn't hold a candle to a God.

He muttered aloud, " Don't worry Sire, I'll make sure the boy doesn't get himself killed before you return."

He shuddered to think of what would happen if he should fail at that task. At best, he would be ripped asunder and Mistress Ivy would use his hide for a new pair of boots.

Wastelands: Netherworld Gate

Acheron stood atop a high bluff that overlooked the majority of the wastelands, staring at the bleak, dismal crags of rock that turned the area into a maze of gullies and warrens, all of it illuminated with the sickly blue glow of the deadly slime and the cracks of lightning that lanced across the tortured sky. He couldn't help but try and imagine the place as it had been before the Cataclysm. It had been described to him as a verdant plain overcast by a blood-red sky, a symbol of the power of the God of Evil. But no matter how much he wracked his brain the picture just refused to form, he could only see it as it was, a ruin.

He sighed as he turned away from the vista, summoning a hoard of the minions with a wave of his hand. It wasn't as though his moping was going to get him anywhere, but he still felt like doing it just for the heck of it. Besides, practice and observation told him that ladies liked the tall, dark, brooding stranger. And standing at seven point two with completely black skin, he definitely fit that description. The thought brought a crooked smile to his face, even hidden as it was inside his infernal helm. He'd consistently won points with the minions, Gnarl especially, for essentially parading his female conquests in front of them. It took a particular kind of woman to be comfortable with that notion, or an exceptionally gilded tongue. The latter of which he was quite proud to claim he possessed, and a certain lack of shame.

He waved his minions forward, twenty Blues and thirty Reds, to start clearing the toxic slime out of his way so he could walk without really paying attention to where he put his feet. Occasionally, like now, he found himself wondering what might have been different if Florian Greenheart had never broken the Tower Heart and his father had never been trapped on the far side of a dimensional void. He wondered if he would have matured into the same man he was, an admittedly pathological womanizer, because if the actions of the minions were any indication, he'd picked that up from them. On the flip side, he had heard that his father had been the very model of the gentleman Overlord while still being every bit as Evil as the God he had killed.

He shook his head and voiced his thoughts. "Heh, killing a god, not much call for that anymore. I wouldn't even know where to find one if I wanted to catch up to the Old Man. Even then, the only one I can think of is the Mother Goddess, and that is most definitely not a role I want to take over."

Despite his desire to the contrary, an unbidden image of one of the elven priestesses literally rolled through his mind and caused him to shudder. Privately, he marveled at the stupidity of the elves. The act of taking a perfectly alluring elven maiden and force-feeding her until she emulated the statue of a massively obese "goddess." The train of though compounded itself, bringing him back mentally to his first encounter with one of the "women" in the jungles of Evernight. A woman that could barely walk essentially was catapulting herself through the air and landing on him, that would have smothered him to death had he not been strong enough to push her swollen mass off of him. Even then, he had only been able to clear his face enough so that he could breathe, and it had taken an hour of his minions beating on the priestess's back and sides before she even passed out. Only then had he been able to escape. Following that, he had rolled the blob into a very secluded grotto and tied her to the cavern wall, also gagging the elf so she couldn't call for help. At the time, and he was still of the same opinion, he reasoned that she would be able to escape after she shrank by a very wide margin.

His eyes were drawn upwards to the boiling sky, thoughts again being voiced. "That elf should at least be able to walk once those restraints are loose enough. Hell, she'd probably thank me if she weren't brainwashed by the rest of those flower-loving nitwits."

Something hit his foot and pulled both his eyes and his thoughts back to the present. He was mildly surprised to find that he had already arrived at the ruins of the Dark Tower. And he almost found himself thanking his memories for passing the time so effectively, with emphasis on the he was standing he was looking up the fallen spire of the Dark tower, canted as it was at about a forty five degree angle to the ground, and could clearly see the sky through the collapsed interior. It would be a very bad pun to call it a "holy" structure, so he refrained from doing so out loud.

He glanced towards the crowd of minions, and used his left hand to point to a spot a few paces in front of what he might call the entrance of the ruins. "Stay right there until I'm finished. I don't want one of you idiots to break something and cause another huge explosion."

Technically he didn't need to speak to get his minions to do what he wanted, he just did it anyway because he felt like it. Besides, his subjects responded better when they knew what his voice sounded like, or so he liked to think. Last time he had paid a visit to Empire City he had been able to disperse the crowd of his "admirers" with two words. He used that word loosely, because the crowd of prepubescent girls that flocked to his arrival were, without exception, hideous. He found that astounding, because that made Juno the single attractive Empire woman he had ever met.

Tearing his mind away from women, if only briefly, he started poking around the piles of debris that crowded the little space there was. Something shiny caught his attention briefly, before he realized that it was simply a necklace crafted with some metal wires and hung with what looked to be animal teeth. He picked it up anyway, manipulating it in the dim light so he could see all of it. His first impression had only been partly right, along with the teeth there were claws the size of gold coins. He wondered momentarily what animal they would come from, before the thought occurred to him that he was probably just holding one of his father's war trophies, the remains of some great beast the Old Man had slain. His arm started to move to toss the object aside, but he stopped, something made him hold on to the trinket.

He held the centerpiece, one of the teeth, in the palm of his hand and just stared for a long while. "Dammit, Old Man, you had to choose that particular time to abscond with the whole family?"

With more than a few reservations he set his mace down and started to fumble with the clasp on the necklace for a few moments before looping the piece of man-jewelry around his neck. He felt the points of the teeth settle against the top of his chest, and though he didn't have a mirror on hand he knew that the token would be all but invisible to most people. An onlooker would need to be as tall as, or taller than him to see it, and that just wasn't very likely.

Almost the instant his hands fell to his sides something disturbed the air, a light, icy whisper that sent a shiver down his spine. "Does someone disturb my rest after so long?"

Both hands went to his mace as his eyes slowly scanned the darkened ruin. "Depends on who's talking, I wasn't aware the Old Man had any live prisoners, particularly after the Tower Heart exploded."

The voice grew slightly louder as he backed towards the one intact wall, and he couldn't shake the feeling that his ears weren't actually hearing whoever was speaking. "Old Man? Why, then you must be that Acheron boy I kept hearing about before I was entombed. I haven't heard that name in almost twenty years."

He turned to the wall, tapping it with the base of his mace to see if he could make any progress by just breaking the wall down. "Then you were here during the Cataclysm, must have been a rough ride."

The voice seemed to ignore his probing, instead responding to his words. "Cataclysm you say? Well, it didn't feel all that catastrophic to me, it was more like being reborn, so to speak." He stood parallel to the wall and took aim, swatting the wall once and drawing a comment from the voice. "Ooh hoo hoo, you're absolutely blazing hot."

Not exactly listening, his response was almost automatic. "Well, yes, I know I am."

A noise that resembled laughter, but sounded closer to a wind chime, preceded another string of words. "Well, I'm quite sure you are, but I was intending to convey how close you were to finding me."

He froze before he could start swinging in earnest. "Ah, of course, I knew that. What did you think I was talking about?"

Before the voice could answer he swung at the wall with all of the considerable strength he could muster, cracking the old stone open like his mace would to an egg, complete overkill. And over the sound of crumbling stone he heard the sound of stone hitting something like glass. He stepped through the new opening, recoiling only slightly when he heard the crunch of something beneath his boot. Once he confirmed that it was only a small black gem he turned his eyes ahead again, what he saw left him speechless. The chamber, or perhaps grotto was more apt, was coated completely with a thick layer of black crystal that gleamed in the dim light, a light that was coming from the object in the center of the space, what at first seemed to simply be an extension of the crystal formation. As he approached however, he could see that there was a miniature island of raised stone that held the object away from the surrounding crystal.

He checked his surroundings one last time before lowering his guard. "You know, when I decided to raid the ruins of the Old Man's home I really hoped to find more than a disembodied voice in a shiny room. It's a little anticlimactic."

Said disembodied voice immediately chimed in, again preceded by that bizarre tinkling sound. "And you were hoping to find, what, a giant super weapon of doom and destruction that you could use to scare the world into bowing before you? So far as I know the Overlord did not believe in that kind of thing."

He swung his gaze left and right, trying to pinpoint the source of the voice. "Fun idea, but I think I already have the whole 'ruling the world'thing down pat. I was actually hoping to find some kind of portal device or some such so I could have, you know, more worlds to take over. You wouldn't happen to have any idea if something like that is still hanging around now, would you?"

The response seemed to come from the entire room. "I might, but what's in it for me if I tell you?"

He slung his mace over his shoulder, deciding to wait for a sign of movement so he could stop looking like an idiot. "Well that depends, particularly if I knew who or what is speaking."

There was a pause, during which he heard only the howling of the wind outside, before the voice answered. "You haven't figured it out yet? The speaker is right in front of you, right in the center of my glittering little tomb."

His eyes fell upon the glittering spire of crystal in the center and caught a somewhat familiar shape, a handle. "Wait, you are kidding me, right?" He slowly began to pick out the vague shape of a blade, fractured though it was. "You're some lady talking through this thing from a different place, some kind of otherworldly prison?"

What he had now identified as a sword laughed at him again. "Pick me up and maybe you'll find out. I can't do anything while I'm stuck in this tiny room, beautiful though it may be."

He couldn't quite believe what his ears were hearing, which was enough evidence to him that he wasn't completely crazy. But even if this wasn't the offer it appeared to be, could he really afford to pass it up? Sure he could leave this talking sword here, but then he would be no closer to finding a way to escape the clutches of this world and finding another. Objectively, he could even say that this was far more than he had been expecting. Sure, finding a handful of mighty relics was all well and good, but knowing how to use them was even better.

Tentatively, he reached out his free hand and took hold of what he thought was the handle. "Ok, now that I'm taking you out of here it might be a gesture of good faith for you to spill some of what you know."

There was no response for a good cut of time, then the blade pulsed and black arcs of lightning began twining up his arm. He was dumbstruck for a few moments, and that was long enough for the lightning to reach his head. He uttered one expletive referring to fecal matter before he lost full consciousness.

Astral Plain: Heart of Soul Calibur

Acheron felt sensation return to him all at once, the sudden overload leaving him a little bit dazzled. He turned his golden eyes left and right, taking stock of this new area. From what he could tell, he was standing on some kind of platform floating in nothingness, but in that nothing towers of black crystal seemingly floated by, all of them farther away from his island than was possible to jump. The island itself was made up of still more crystal, but this was a deep blue instead of black, and veins of a brighter blue twined through it like the hairline fissures in real rock.

His gawking was interrupted by the same voice, but this time there was a definite source to it. "Surprised? You should be I suppose, it isn't everyday that a talking sword with a will of her own tries to possess you."

He whirled around, Apokalyptor still burning brightly even here. "Whoa, possess me? Sweet cheeks, you clearly have no idea who you are talking to."

The speaker, now a tall statuesque thing that looked to be carved out of ice, kept laughing at him. "Of course I do. You are Acheron Killgore, son of the God of Evil, and little more than that." There was a pause during which the laughter grew more intense for a brief period. "But 'sweet cheeks'? Flattery will get you nowhere in here, no matter how much I like it."

He started to advance, slowly. "And why not? Flattery has gotten me into so many places already."

A blade appeared in the hand of the figure, a perfect copy of the sword he had picked up save for the color, shining blue. "And I'm quite sure that it has, but I want out of here, and if you aren't worthy then I'll simply have to use your body to find someone who is."

The figure stepped forward, both "hands" holding the blade for a vertical strike. He mirrored this action, mace held up to block the blow, a smirk playing across his face as he anticipated the shock of the little extra effect he had added to this weapon over the time he had wielded it. The weapons met, and a fountain of molten metal erupted around the point of impact, spraying towards his opponent in a deadly burst. They staggered back; catching some of the burning fluid with the broadside of the blade but the majority washed over and clung to what could be considered the chest and arms of the crystal figure. Instead of collapsing in pain though, the molten metal eventually slid all the way to the ground and hardened immediately. The places on the figure the metal had touched glowed angry red for a while, but slowly calmed back to a cool blue.

The voice had stopped laughing, and was instead a little hesitant. "That was, interesting, to say the least."

He started smiling from ear to ear. "Isn't it now? Gnarl has always said I had a better knack for magic than The Old Man. Apparently the codger only used magic when he had no other option, or was just being showy. Me, I like to flaunt the fact that I am beyond the ability of any mortal to handle." Now it was his turn to laugh, and he did so. "What's the matter, you scared now? Come over here and try again."

The figure did not take the bait. "I think it is obvious that a head-on attack has already proven itself futile. Therefor, I must insist that you come at me."

He tossed his mace up, flipping it once before catching it again. "Same result either way. Any hostile touch is going to shower you with molten metal."

Though his opponent had no visible eyes, he felt that he was on the receiving end of an acidic glare. "I think you're bluffing."

He dove forward, sweeping his left leg around and taking out his opponent's ankles. They didn't even get to bring the large crystal blade to bear as he sprung back up and pounced, seating himself where the stomach would be on a person and pinning both arms with his feet. If he had been gloating before, this was rubbing salt in the wound, but he liked that. In his mind, it was just another way he could differentiate himself from his father, whom he had heard had been possessed by the notion of fair play.

He chuckled, holding his mace up near his shoulder. "Do you still think I'm bluffing, because I am fully capable of crushing your face if the situation demands it."

The voice sounded a little bit pained. "Well, ugh, if you did that, how would you learn what you came here to learn?"

Inside his helmet he smirked, knowing that that argument was a bit of a sucker punch considering that it was perfectly valid. "Oh I'm sure there is some old hag out there, with her crystal ball and incense, which could tell me everything you have to offer without trying to kill me. Cause I have to say, I've got enough people gunning for me without adding my own weapon to the pile."

The "head" of his beaten opponent gestured to the "hand" that still held the strange sword. "You mean that giant glob of metal you hit me with? I feel obligated to inform you that I am, much better than that poorly constructed, object."

His smirk morphed into a sneer, mildly irritated that she, and he couldn't help refer to whatever this was as a she, had touched on that rather sore topic. He had never caught on to the intricacies of forging weapons and armor, instead being reduced to using, by Overlording standards, poor molds for new gear. He suspected that he simply lacked the patience for the process.

He wasn't about to concede a point so easily though. "Really? Well, why don't you convince me of that? This weapon has won me control of practically the entire world and I'm quite fond of it."

The voice started to regain that amused quality from before. "Two things: first, cutting power. That club of yours hits something and stops, whereas I would go straight through the majority of metals, including arcanium plate. I wounded the God of Evil in that exact fashion. Two, can you carry on a lovely conversation with that dead piece of metal?"

Her second "point" almost made him laugh, but he was too busy processing the first one. If she could cut right through the arcanium than she really was superior to whatever he could get his hands on. He'd be an idiot to not take her up on the offer.

He tried to not sound too eager. "Let's say I accept, can I expect you to try and take over again?"

The "face" of the figure beneath him seemed to lose a little bit of its distinction. "Not at all, you've proven yourself to be at least tolerably worthy. I won't try again, and even if I did I couldn't threaten you anywhere but here, in my twenty year tomb."

He found himself focusing where her eyes should be. "Good to know. But you know what else would be good, getting me out of this place."

As soon as he spoke he found that the area around him was fading away, and for some reason he found himself disappointed.

Wastelands: Dark Tower Ruins

Acheron suddenly found himself right back where he had been upon losing consciousness, or at least so he thought. Logically speaking, shouldn't he have fallen down if he blacked out?

The voice returned, "Perhaps, I can allay some of that confusion?"

His eyes shot down and saw that he was still holding the crystal sword, the black version. "Yeah, that might be helpful."

He turned around and started walking, listening to his new weapon as he went. "That little confrontation we had all took place inside me, and occupied little more than a flicker of thought. So, as I mentioned, you should be perfectly safe even if I try to surprise you in the middle of a duel."

He waved the minions away from their guard point and set the blues to clearing his way back to the Netherworld. "I don't duel, I dominate. That fair play crap is something I'll never understand."

On that note, his talking sword shut up and let him walk in silence. Good thing too, because his head was already spinning with all the possibilities that were arrayed before him if this deal panned out.

Netherworld Tower: Private Quarters

Gnarl felt his eye sockets grow wider as the young Master started to return from the ruins. He momentarily thought he was seeing things as the black blade clutched in the boy's hand was almost too good to be true. If the Cataclysm had finished the job that the Overlord had started, then Soul Calibur really would be a great asset. He might even be forced to stop leading the boy away from the worst of the fighting for fear that it would become too easy. Why was that a problem? Because the son of the Overlord had proven that when things were too easy he got sloppy, and getting sloppy in another world would most likely end up with the both of them dead. Acheron immediately, and his minion hide shredded upon the return of the real Overlord. Still, he had to give the boy credit. No mean willpower was required to control a weapon of that grade, perhaps the boy could live up to the family name after all, only time would tell.