Ceres Avyichen

Summary
An original character by Wheelsecond. Ceres Avyichen was chosen by the interpreters of the First Scrolls to fall into the footsteps of the Hero of Will, along with the other Heroes of this generation they chose to go put down the Worldshadow (who needs to be re-killed every 30 years or so to keep him from getting back on his plans to envelop the world in darkness). The tradition of the Heroes, however, has become more and more extreme as time has gone on. Now, in the 18th generation of heroes, attempts to whip everyone into shape have become draconian. Powerful healing magic is used to prevent the Hero of Strength's muscles from shredding under the ludicrously high training standards, for instance. The Hero of Arcana is either studying or sleeping, with little in between. And the Hero of Will, specifically, is sent through brutal tortures and extreme deprivations in order to toughen her up, not to mention her bloodstream being flooded with nootropics to keep her willpower artificially elevated—her training is the most extreme, as the Hero of Will is supposed to be the most powerful. It doesn't help that the Heroes are aggressive with keeping each other “in shape”.

It was during this 18th generation that the Worldshadow has finally defeated the tradition of the Heroes, not through his ever-growing powers of darkness, but by words. Upon seeing the Heroes enter his throne room (that he doesn't bother to repair anymore), he off-handedly remarked that the Heroes must have put the Hero of Will through absolute hell this time, and he was kind of tired, and maybe everyone could take a short break or something before he dies this time. This spoke deeply to Ceres. He noticed her expression and went on describing that her treatment really wasn't the right way to go about things, and if he was in charge of training the people to kill him, he'd allow rests, praise, positive reinforcement, and all sorts of good stuff to organically build up a Hero's mind.

After quite a bit of more speech, where Ceres listened to the Worldshadow and ignored her fellow Heroes trying to tell her not to listen, she finally broke down and defected to his side, at which point the two killed the rest of the heroes. The Worldshadow is now working on his plans, and he has a being of nearly pure determination on his side, if only because he was the only being to ever even suggest kindness to her.

This character will not be spun out into an entire verse; it's basically an exploration of a few concepts.

Powers and Stats
Name: Ceres Avyichen, “Hero of Will”, “Dark Tenacity”

Tier: 10-C | 7-B | 7-A || 6-A 

Gender: Female

Age: 22 years || 24 years Classification: Human || Shadow entity 

Destructive Capacity: Glass Level | Town Level | City Level || Continent Level 

Range: Melee | Several Hundred Meters with thrown object | Multiple Kilometers with thrown object || Continental 

Speed: Gradual | Subsonic | Transonic || Hypersonic with continental teleportation range

Durability: Fragile | City Level | Mountain Level || Wall Level or N/A, depending on attack method

Stamina: Normal | Olympian | Olympian || Physically undefined, but one continental event per day

Lifting Strength: Feeble | Class 100 | Class 100 || Zero 

Striking Strength: Feeble | Class GJ | Class TJ || Zero 

Standard Equipment: Wheelchair, magic items, medical IVs, nootropic solutions, magical daggers embedded in flesh || Ephemeral tiara, ephemeral house shoes, dyscia flower 

Intelligence: Average || Bright

Weaknesses: Human vulnerabilities, offers of kindness (apparently) || Light-based magic. Is incorporeal, so an extremely potent application of spirit binding, exorcism, wards, etc. might work unless they can be overcome with willpower.

Powers and Abilities: Destiny, Nigh-inhuman Willpower, Magic Item Affinities || Teleportation (between shadows and darknesses), Incorporeality, Darkness Manipulation, Continental Rejuventation, Inhuman Willpower, Magic Item Affinites, Destiny Violation, Telepathy, Mental Manipulation (via voice)

Key: Base Form | Altered Mental State | Altered Mental State, with Nootropics || Dark Tenacity

Natural Abilities
Destiny: Ceres is protected by the whims of chance, in accordance with a ritual by the interpreters of the First Scrolls. It's not perfect, but things just seem to go right for her.

Nigh-inhuman Willpower: Self-explanatory. This also includes a magical ability to use it to override phsyical limits, which is why her body becomes terrifyingly physically powerful once she focuses. It also includes an ability to simply reject spells or other influences that would mess with her mind. Even gods would have trouble getting a mental influence to work on her. Finally, she can dictate how her body and mind operate, allowing her to speed regeneration to some degree and control her metabolic processes--even her own heartbeat.

Magic Item Affinities: Ceres has attuned herself to a few magic items so that they work better for her and require a lot of fiddling to get them back to the point where they're easily usable by someone else.

As Dark Tenacity
Inhuman Willpower: As Dark Tenacity, this improves, letting her prevent all but the most powerful of magics from affecting her in any way.

Teleportation Between Shadows and Darknesses: Self-explanatory. Takes a second or so, but it has continental range.

Incorporeality: Ceres doesn't have a physical body anymore and exists as an entity of shadow and raw mental energy. Thus, she can't really interact physically in any meaningful way; she has no strength. This also means that raw physical destructive power isn't particularly useful—powerful bursts of light can harm her, but physical matter passes right through her. Being shadow, she can morph her form from her default humanoid shape, gaining an ill-defined, rounded ghostly visage, which is usually used while in motion. She still hasn't gotten used to the fact that she doesn't need to care about wind resistance.

Darkness Manipulation: General ability to throw darkness around at town-level without even trying, and can perform a continental-scale darkness event once a day or so. The supernatural properties of darkness tend to smother light and light-based spells, and choke the flow of magical energies. Assuming she doesn't want to evoke fear with it, the night can also be oddly comforting. She can use this to literally blot out the sun over a continent, if she wants, and does that when she doesn't have any other ideas for her daily darkness-based mindscrew.

Continental Rejuvenation: Ceres can reform out of darkness anywhere within continental range if superficially destroyed, albeit in a weakened state that lasts an hour or so. Destruction on a deeper supernatural level (i.e. erasing her soul) works normally.

Destiny Violation: Protections based on fate or density don't really work against Ceres unless they can invoke ludicrous (struck-by-lightning level) probabilities. She's rejected her own destiny, and fate doesn't know how to handle her anymore.

Telepathy: Ceres can talk into people's minds up to about a kilometer away. She just needs to be able to see them; they don't need to able to see her to respond.

Mental Manipulation via voice: Ceres usually 'speaks' telepathically. She has a true voice, but her words come out as distorted ghostly whispers that can evoke somewhat intense emotions—usually fear, but the proper application of sweet nothings can make someone very relaxed or blissful.

Equipment
Wheelchair: A chair with big wheels. It goes forward and turns, if Ceres tilts her feet correctly while sitting in it; there's some enchantment in it. Her left leg is far too damaged for her to walk, and the other is not very responsive.

Magic Item - Amulet of Warning: A simple cube-shaped pewter pendant. It rattles when danger is close, waking up the user if they're asleep. Excellent assassins know to distract their target if they're wearing one of these, so that they don't notice the rattling.

Magic Item – Headband of the Apprentice: This dark blue headband allows the user to see magical auras. Good luck identifying them if you're not a trained mage, though. It works in the dark.

Magic Item – Cometary Mace: Flanged mace made of a bright gray-white metal. Can literally smash through darkness, leaving light in its wake. Most mortal weapons don't work on the Worldshadow because they'll break before he takes any real damage, but Cometary Maces do.

Medical IVs: Very thin (and thus highly flexible) brass tubes that lead into her bloodstream if she sticks the needles in. Good for delivering nootropic solutions. Bad news: they're very breakable, and brass can be toxic with overexposure, but it's expected that Ceres will just push through the copper poisoning.

Nootropic Solutions: Saline solutions with the relevant ingredients from herbs. They focus her mind when added to her bloodstream.

Magical Daggers: Embedded in her body, for the purposes of toughening her up against pain and suffering, and to be a reminder for Ceres to never, ever give up.

As Dark Tenacity
Ephemeral Tiara and House Shoes: Made of darkness. They look pretty, are comfy, and can be taken with her when she teleports and such. No actual use, though.

Dyscia Flower: Rare and difficult-to-cultivate dandelion offshoot that can grow on raw magical energy. This one was grown with pure darkness. It's weightless and incorporeal as a result, so Ceres can carry it around. It can store a cubic kilometer of darkness in itself for Ceres to use later, so she can just carry this small flower around and have lots of shadow available for use.

Forms
Human Form: Ceres while she was the Hero of Will. Wheelchair bound and feeble, like some senior citizens. People went overboard with the tortures, to the point where healing magic just kind of stopped working.

Ceres can, with about thirty seconds of effort, psyche herself up to bring her full willpower to bear, which basically uncaps all the restrictions on her body and makes her physical power vast and terrifying. It's all raw strength, speed, and durability; no fancy techniques. This, obviously, is a massive mental drain, but she's expected to push through it. As an extension of this, her nootropic solutions and the IV poisoning are bad for her, but using the solutions can ramp up her willpower further and makes her physical power even more awe-inspiring as a direct, scalable result.

Dark Tenacity: A true change of metaphysical and physical structure, Ceres achieves this state permanently after a few months of tutelage under the Worldshadow and a ritual on his part. She becomes an incorporeal creature of shadow and thought; its properties and abilities are described previously.