The Literary Legacy of Ophelia

"Everywhere, when she felt she could go on no longer, when her legs felt broken and sore, and her eyes watered, blinding her, she only had to think 'do it for her'."

A story by Undefines, it can be read in its highly unfinished state over here.

Also known as "Ophelia Ibun" for shortness's sake. Named after the Ali Project song, but has little actual "story connection."

Several hundred years after a nuclear apocalypse rips apart the world and society rebuilds itself, New Versailles city is the center of the newborn world, in more ways than one, little does the human population know. Ophelia Krueger, a resident of the city, doesn't like her name. She's not insane, or a doormat...or so she likes to think. Eternally living in the shadow of her wonderful older sister Celia, she strives to be as "normal" as possible--nothing extraordinary, nothing horrible, because naturally she could never be as wonderful as Celia. Except she's forced to face the cold hard facts when, one day, she discovers her parents have been brutally murdered as a part of a demonic summoning ritual, and Celia is nowhere to be found, with her fingerprints all over the crime scene. Everything she thought "normal" about her life is abruptly thrown out the window, as she finds her own family and many she knew growing up were entwined in a world full of magic--including her childhood friend and longtime boyfriend, Kanon, who tactfully informs her that by discovering the crime scene before Celia could complete the ritual properly, she inherited the demonic contract Celia was trying to get in the first place.

Unfortunate as her situation becomes, the demon girl Belial is not as ruthless and evil as Ophelia predicted. But a single demon from a large council isn't nearly enough to stop Celia's murky "master plan" that may very well wipe New Versailles off the map.

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Tropes:

• After the End
• All Myths Are True
• Apocalypse How - Type 2, bordering on Type 3A.
• Beta Couple - Xander and Belial.
• Childhood Friend - Ophelia and Kanon.
  • Childhood Friend Romance - of the victorious kind.
• Circles of Hell
  • Fire and Brimstone Hell
  • Bloody Bowels of Hell
• Council of Angels - the seven archangels and their subordinates.
• Dysfunction Junction
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink
• Enemy Mine - Mikaela and Lucifer both want Celia's head on a pike, and they reluctantly team up to do so.
• Five-Man Band
  • The Hero - Ophelia
  • The Lancer - Belial
  • The Smart Guy - Kanon
  • The Big Guy - Xander
  • The Chick - Ira
  • The Sixth Ranger - Hecate
• The Grim Reaper - who is the head of the Greater Collective of Death, an organization that allies figures of death from all religions.
• It's Personal - Mikaela's reasoning for wanting to kill the Whore of Babylon, aside from said figure being a bringer of the apocalypse and Mikaela being an angel.
• Late to the Party - Sariel manages to find Ophelia at the harbor and seal off her magic, but only after Celia and Alice have left and the Wrath seal was broken.
• Loophole Abuse - Heaven can't exert control over those of other faiths. Alice, a distinctly Buddhist ghost, can do as she pleases when the Catholic Celia cannot.
• Non-Indicative Name - Devil's Trap circles trap angels as well as demons.
• Noodle Incident - when Mikaela blew up China.
  • and how Kanon came to be associated with Pachelbel's Canon.
  • what the Whore of Babylon did to piss of Mikaela so badly.
• Odd Couple / Opposites Attract - Ophelia and Kanon.
• Odd Friendship - Ophelia and Lucifer. The former frequently questions her sanity on this.
• Official Couple - Ophelia and Kanon again, though they got together before the series proper.
• One Steve Limit - Averted, with Ophelia's father, Alexander, and Alexander the familiar. Each are respectively called "Alex" and "Xander" in-universe to minimize confusion.
• Our Angels Are Different - divided up into classical hierarchies with the seven archangels on top; cannot harm beings of faiths other than their own Judeo-Christian; ascended souls are limited in power while natural-born angels have the Superpower Lottery; weak to jade stones, Devil's Trap circles, and salt-ignited fires.
• Our Demons Are Different - souls of those who made contracts in exchange for saving their lives; ranked 72 led by Bael/Hecate are the most powerful, the rest are generally Axe Crazy Faceless Masses; generally a step less powerful than angels, but they may harm beings of other faiths; each have standard Superpower Lottery fodder plus a specialty of their own; weak to consecrated ground/blessed objects, Devil's Trap circles, and holly branches.
• Really Seven Hundred Years Old / Time Abyss - Belial and Xander are both around 2,000 years old, an incredible age for demons (who usually get replaced every couple of centuries, according to Lucifer), but both are trumped by Mikaela and the rest of the archangels, who've been around for hundreds of thousands of years.
• Screw Destiny - Mikaela is a strong supporter of this. Comically, it's mainly because of her intense desire to kill the Whore of Babylon, despite her not being the one destined to ("the beast with seven heads and ten horns").
• Seven Deadly Sins - for the seven largest levels of hell, and the seals used to keep Hell separated from Earth.
• Theres No Kill Like Overkill - Celia sure did a lovely job with that summoning ritual.
• Vitriolic Best Buds - Kanon and Sariel.
• Weaksauce Weakness - angels with jade stones, demons with holly branches.