Tales of Creator's Fist

Chapter 1 - The Humble Beginnings Before Realm Of Creator

Oh, hello! Maybe you have heard of me. It's me again – Rick Richard Richardson – Traveler Extraordinaire! If all goes well, you'll see me on the cover, so no need to go about how I look. In fact, while I may be an interesting person to some, this story won't be about me – I'll just report it.

So, what is the story about? Well, in broader sense - Realm Of Creator. Its where we live... well, I sure live in here, maybe you don't. If you don't, I'll just mention its full of interesting dimensions, characters, races and events, too numerous to list them all here! From multi-dimensional battles involving almost everybody to small skirmishes known only by few. Stories of heroism, friendship, rivalry, betrayal, alliances, squabbles, romance and much, much more! There is just so much to tell and it might take me decades or even centuries to report it all. Maybe I will report it all in the future, but for now I decided to focus on one story. The biggest, most eventful story this realm has ever seen!

This book... is that story. It's the story of a small group known most of the time as Creator's Fist. They started as heroes personally chosen by Creator himself and while their actions were mostly heroic, especially in the beginning, they also did their fair share of villainy or at least refusal to be saviors. They even changed name on several occasion and even once officially disbanded... while still sticking together, being loyal to each other. Truly it feels like nothing stops them in the end and nothing can take them apart. Sure, if you are from Realm Of Creator like me, you heard of them many times and know some, or maybe even most of the details. Do not worry, reader, this tale is written with assumption that you never heard of them, so you won't miss a thing! Well, unless you skip some chapters, but that's on you by that point. Anyway, I hope you will love reading this story as much as I loved writing about it!

So, where it all starts? Of course, in one of many dimensions in Realm Of Creator. The MediDicean dimension, to be exact. If you read some fantasy books, this place will seem very generic to you – humans, orcs, elves and half-lings along with other similar things fight with typical medieval setting while also have access to magic given through various means, divine included. So, their beginning are also as generic as it gets – a mercenary warrior named Xue (their unofficial leader), calm druid named Rioth, woodland archer Daphne and... well... freelancer heavily-armored axe wielding lady named Iforyou. Turns out even at the start they had some oddities in the team. To be honest, aside from name of that last person they looked like your typical medieval fantasy group. Xue – a male human - had a simple leather armor with hoodie and used his trust scimitars used to quickly cut the foes. Rioth – a human male druid - was wearing magically enhanced steel-bark armor and used his staff to channel his magic of the forest, which mostly consisted of pillars of flame and spell called Death Poke which literally pokes the target to kill it and is most often used by necromancers. Guess Rioth put efficiency over style and didn't cared that dark spell of evil deeds might not fit a typical nature-loving druid. As for Daphne – an elven white lady – she looked like typical ranger – green light clothes, longbow in hand and slim figure so she can easily do her nimble tricks. Too bad she was also often dumb as a pile of bricks... As for Iforyou – human lady – we have no clue how she looked until... the incident. I will talk about incident much, much later, but for now all we know is that she loves her black full-plate armor that covers her from head to toe, so not even her face was seen. I guess she slept with armor on too, which sounds convenient but also very uncomfortable. If you ask me, her pragmatic way of life sounds like Rioth's, so those two probably got along very well.

So, this team is ready to save us all! Legends say that Creator himself talked to them in a dream to save the whole multiverse at large! They had no clue what that was about, but saving the world sounds like something that should be done, so they went along with it. Soon enough – their first problem appeared. There was the castle nearby and it had to be stormed! Not only that, but castle owner – nefarious Dark Raphael - send after them his best henchmen, a man called Adamantine Matthew! This iron-clad warrior with magical axe and a literal dragon on his side was more than ready to trounce Creator's First before their adventure even started. His big, black mount menacingly dashed towards the team while Matthew held his axe firmly to chop them in half. Situation seems dire, as nobody from Creator's Fist can fly and their archery skills are, with exception of Daphne, mediocre at best.

The team, seeing Matthew, was worried at first because Matthew looked very intimidating and he could also fly using his trusty dragon mount! Too bad for the dragon rider himself that Rioth used his Death Poke and killed him in an instant. I heard Death Poke usually doesn't work on sturdy, burly beings, but I guess it was Matthew's secret weakness or something. Anyway, dragon soon gave up as he was only hired to fight and as his employer died, he has no reason to fight anymore... so dragon simply flew away, never to be seen again. Victory for Creator's Fist!

What next? Well, despite them being on open field there was a small trading outpost nearby and Creator's Fist had some coin! A little further away there was also merchant's tent with some weaponry. So, before storming the castle, the Creator's Party split – Xue and Daphne went to trading outpost, while Rioth and Iforyou went to the mentioned tent.

Xue and Daphne didn't bought anything except a mysterious magical book. Big, leather-bound, heavy, with tons of notes how to do magic, from simplest spells to some quite difficult arcane secrets, like how to summon golems. It was cheap, so why not. Xue decided that it might help him to start learning magic, even when title and author were unknown to him. There was even a risk it was basically a fraud and Xue got scammed. What didn't even Gideon knew when selling this book is that Xue just got most powerful magic book in the universe – original copy of Book of Magical Secrets by Jack Lantern. Sure, copies are easy to get, but only original holds secrets to some truly devastating magic, as Jack Lantern used this book to basically write all the magic tricks he knows, while hiding access to some of them. Seeing how Jack Lantern is often regarded as most powerful mage in existence, we can only imagine the world-shattering power it holds. Still, in hands of Xue it is mostly harmless. You would ask how Gideon found such powerful artifact, but Gideon said he found it on the ground and thought its interesting. Did Jack Lantern lost his own book? Some suspect he did it on purpose. We may never know...

Anyway, Rioth and Iforyou didn't found any magical artifacts, just lots of well-made weaponry. Their first thought was to buy some for themselves and rest to few soldiers they had under their command – mostly peasants wanting to rebel against Dark Raphael. Well, Rioth and Iforyou decided to be evil and stingy, so they killed the merchant and others in the tent and then left with the weaponry in hand. Nobody even knew they did it until much, much later, so their cold-blooded murder went unnoticed for many, many months to come. Honestly it's not that surprising they did it knowing their character, especially Iforyou's disregard for human life which she later became much more famous for.

Anyway, everything is ready to attack the fort. Peasants storm the gate to occupy front lines while Creator's First storm the back. They entered the fort, then fought lots of soldiers inside. Creator's First even at their beginnings were seasoned veteran when it comes to fight, so they were victorious despite their lacking numbers. Except Daphne that got lost and then slashed by one of the enemy knights. At least she dealt satisfying finishing blow by activating the magic inside one of her arrows – Death Cross. It made huge fire explosion in the shape of a cross, which killed knight and Daphne too. Thus, Daphne got defeated, but rest successfully reached the throne room, where Dark Raphael was already waiting for them!

He looked... well like Iforyou, at least on the outside. Guess he also did not like to show his face around. The fight begun, when suddenly, a problem appeared. Raphael was apparently a beekeeper, cause he had swarm of bees by his side. Turns out this was Xue's secret weakness, as he got scared of them and start to ran away. Rioth of course tried his death poke, which did not phase Raphael at all. What will heroes do? Well, Iforyou pulled out her great axe to slash Raphael, Xue was shooting from the distance (after dealing with bees. Good he had bombs) and Rioth... hid himself in the stone. I never knew druids can just merge with stone to be near-invisible, but there you go. Worked greatly as it helped him to deal against Raphael's non-bee cohort, being undetected. Still, no amount of Death Pokes affected Raphael. What is going on? They did not found out during the battle, but fortunately for them, Iforyou's great axe was enough to finish off Dark Raphael once and for all.

Well, after battle, which Creator's Fist of course won, the secret of Raphael became obvious. After taking off his armor, Creator's Fist found out he was never alive to being with – he was an undead! You can't kill what is already dead, after all. What happened next? As soon as heroes were planning to tell others how well the fight went, a giant vortex appeared, sucked everybody in. In fact it sucked like half of the whole castle! The vortex, known as Whirlwind of War, transported them into Creator's Realm, where their story truly began.