Fate: Hammer Time

Chapter 4: The Two Brothers

A/N:

Alright, a fair warning to everyone. Many people have let me know that they dislike this chapter. That's fine and everything, I can even understand it to a degree, but it still provides information that I would have put into an author's note otherwise.

It contains a lot of information that is handed to you right away, in the form of shameless fourth wall-breaking. But like I said, these were matters I was getting a lot of questions about, and I wanted to answer them, but not in a boring note at the end. So this chapter was born as a result.

You are of course not required to read it. If you dislike Fourth-Wall-breaking and a lot of telling instead of showing, feel free to skip this chapter. I can't guarantee though that you'll understand everything from this chapter on in the story.

This note was added to the chapter because people complained about it, mainly its style, but I don't want to remove it. Maybe I can rewrite it sometime, when my writing-skills have improved, or when someone has a better idea of presenting all this information, but no guarantees.

So hereby the warning: INFODUMP AHEAD!

Thank you for your attention. Please enjoy your reading of this chapter, or the next.

The two brothers

The Omniverse was a crazy, mindboggling place. It held an infinite number of worlds, verses, dimensions, realms and more. Some of the dimensions were very much alike, with only mere details being different. Other verses were so completely unlike each other that one would think they belonged in different realities altogether. Yet for all of its immeasurable vastness, the Omniverse had a distinct shape. It was roughly shaped like a sphere.

In the middle of said sphere, in the heart of creation, laid a castle. Not a castle as you would see on Earth though. No, this castle was far greater than anything on Earth.

The very center of reality, this 'building' was splendour and grandness incarnate. Far beyond anything a mortal could ever understand or even perceive. Even Gods that reigned supreme in their own universes would find themselves tiny and insignificant compared to the Heart.

It was here, at the birthplace of the current reality, that a three-faced golden man sat. He was seated on a throne, feet on the ground and arms on the armrests. Roughly shaped like a human, his size was that of a mountain, but in the gigantic castle, he seemed like a normal man in proportion.

This was the Living Tribunal. One of the two first beings created by the One-Above-All. He was subsequently also one of the two most powerful beings of the Omniverse. He was so close to omnipotent that no being below multiversal level could ever understand or perceive the difference between his power and true Omnipotence. Another trait he shared with his insufferable brother.

His three faces represented three concepts. The front face, the one that spoke to others the most, was Equity. The fully hooded face on the right was Necessity and the partially hooded face on the left was Just Revenge. The three faces had to agree on all matters before the Living Tribunal would act. Fortunately, the discussions seldom lasted long.

He was the Guardian of reality, the spill that kept it all going. He had been charged with maintaining the Balance of All.

The Balance of All was, as its name said, the delicate balance of the Omniverse. It was what made it possible for creation to keep existing. It was a scale for many things; Power, Life, Death, Space, Time and more. Everything had to be measured and controlled, lest the consequences be disastrous.