AlterMyth - A Hololive Fanfiction

The Infinite Library

Prologue

What the hell was this place!?

That was the thought on Calliope Mori's mind when she and her new companions found themselves stranded in a strange new world. Though her legs were still weak, she forced herself to stand up from her ruined seat in the motor-boat. Behind the plumes of smoke and dust rising around her, the rogue reaper saw a surreal domain of bookshelves, checkerboard marble tiles and spiral staircases under an endless cosmic ceiling.

Was this a library of some sort?

Or was this one of the traps that Death-sensei and his 'allies' had prepared for them?

Impossible, Calli thought. Just moments ago, before the ambushers with Maxim guns could even set up shop, she steered the boat into an entirely new course. The Portuguese Azores Islands were incredibly far from their original course of Lisbon on continental Europe. A whole swathe of the Atlantic Ocean separated them! Moreover, it was a place that Calli knew didn't have a Grim Reaper bastion in the past millennium.

The Azores Islands were a perfect hideaway, Calli quietly rationalized. It would have taken them a longer journey to charter a ship to sail to England, but they would have been safe there from their enemies - at least as far as Calli knew. All they had to do was actually get there safely. Unfortunately, while she looked around her strange new surroundings, that seemed less and less likely.

Guh!

Calli shook her head. Whatever this strange realm turned out to be, she knew she had to protect her new companions. She turned to them and saw that they were still shaken up from the impact, but Jenma and Kiara were already getting back up on their feet. Jenma and Kiara were in sync as always, Calli recalled. From the moment that she first tailed them in London, the management trainee and the Phoenix were an inseparable team that Calli had to watch from afar or clash blades with up close.

Standing alongside them now seemed more surreal to her than their trippy surroundings. The fact that she was now a rogue reaper had yet to sink in too. She then brought out the cracked obsidian orb that was supposed to tear open a portal into the Upperworld. However, a strange force sealed the power trapped within the orb - a force that Calli couldn't quite see.

Then, Kiara sauntered over to her with concern and offered her hand.

"Are you okay, Calli?" Kiara tilted her head with concern, "You're looking far away."

"Kusotori..."

Calli snorted. She pocketed the orb and then took Kiara's hand. She let her once bitter rival help her out of the wrecked motor-boat. The two of them then stood together and surveyed their surroundings.

"Do you know about this place, Calli?" Kiara asked with curiosity.

"I wish I did, Kusotori. I wish I did." Calli's eyes wandered up to the cosmos and her thoughts escaped her lips, "Things have been happening so fast. I've been learning about the things that Death-sensei has really been doing too. I haven't really had the chance to catch my breath, you know?"

A pang of pain gripped the rogue reaper's heart, but she suddenly felt Kiara's hand in hers once again. It was warm, Calli thought, and soothed her heart. The words that escaped Kiara's lips, however, were just as lost as hers.

"That's how I felt when I found out that I was the last Phoenix in the world." Kiara spoke with a rare somber tone, "Folks I've known for so long who were so full of life just... suddenly deciding to give up and expire? They didn't even tell me why they went and did it. Month after month. Year after year. Decade after decade. My list of friends kept getting shorter and shorter till' I was the only one left."