AlterMyth - A Hololive Fanfiction

Let The Dice Fall

Prologue

Calliope Mori sauntered down the brimstone brick boulevard of the Sous La Lune bastion, idly tossing up the pair of dice that J-chad gave her and then catching them midair. Otherworldly flames crackling in the street lamps guided Calli's path and stole her attention for a brief moment.

Like the dancing flames of those street lamps, Calli's mind wandered restlessly in deafening silence. Priestess Ina calling this beautiful bastion a gilded cage gnawed at her on one end. The pitiful, tearful pleas of the Phoenix Kiara Takanashi gnawed on the other.

' Ain't no rest for the wicked. ' Calli mused beneath her breath.

Calli waved away her doubts and made her way to the raised heavy drawbridge and the water moat that stood between her and the keep. She raised her right hand up above her and summoned her scythe with a flash of crimson red light. Heavy chains and machinery then rumbled from the other side of the moat and the drawbridge slowly descended before her and finally allowed her to cross.

Once Calli made it into the outer walls of the keep, she found the jetty of petrified wood as white as bone jutting out to the River Styx close by. A small group of Calli's juniors, sickle-wielding Grim Reapers who were still earning their names, were rowing boats towards the jetty.

Calli fondly watched her juniors going through the motions. They tied their boats to the jetty and disembarked the grey souls of the recently deceased like it was second nature to them. It was a process that Calli, over the course of three hundred years, was so familiar with that she could do it with her eyes closed - or even drunk on the strange wines that J-chad finds in the Upperworld!

Knowing this, Calli could easily tell what had changed since the day she first became a Grim Reaper.

A pair of French reapers, natives of the Sous La Lune bastion, crossed the jetty to meet the landing crew. Those reapers were sickle-ranked too, but they carried the latest model of French Army rifles among other weapons. Calli's juniors then proceeded to summon their own sickles - to prove that they were indeed Grim Reapers - before the French reapers let them through.

Seeing that, Calli furrowed her brow, but she kept her silence regardless. Those were security measures that Death-sensei put in place ever since the supposed 'invaders' from Cover Corp came into their world, after all.

While Calli was lost in her thoughts, one of her juniors approached her from the jetty.

"What brings you to the keep, senpai ?" The junior asked, "Were you hoping to see someone among the greys?"

Calli glanced at the grey ghosts that the junior and her team were bringing into the Underworld. However, the Atlantean shark-girl, the British detective and the 'management trainee' from Cover Corp were absent.

Disappointed, Calli heaved a sigh and answered.

"The one I'm waiting for died three hundred years ago, kid."

"Huh!?" The junior gasped.

"Never mind." Calli brushed her junior's concern aside, "I'm off to see Death-sensei. We'll probably talk about your promotion. I'll give him my OK. But only on one condition.

"What's that, senpai?"

"Stop impersonating that strong girl from Cover Corporation." Calli said sternly, "Make your own story, darn it!"

The junior shuddered under Calli's intense gaze. She then nodded sheepishly to Calli and went away together with her teammates and the grey souls they led away out of the keep.