෴The legion෴

෴෴෴ ෴෴෴ ෴෴෴

Moral Support

෴෴෴ ෴෴෴ ෴෴෴

෴Adele෴

෴Ancient One෴

Maternal Bond

෴෴෴ ෴෴෴ ෴෴෴

Nearly instantly, after agreeing to support their champion, people around the world suddenly felt a sickening, desperate feeling in the pit of their stomach. Without knowing why, or how, or even how they knew, they all felt the wrenching despair, a nauseating certainty that their champion was losing.

In the R1996 Refugee camp, Dr. Patel was glad the workday was over. When the prompt requesting his support appeared in his vision, he instinctively tried to bat it away like the flies that infested the area. When his casual swipe put his hand right through it, he realized it was some kind of illusion or hologram. He didn’t truly believe that his ‘champion’, whoever that was, was fighting for him, his world, or the lives of everyone on it, but he was a big believer in the concept behind Pascal’s Wager, and chose yes. The instant he chose to lend his support, he felt something shift within him. It didn’t hurt, but the feeling that something was happening was undeniable. Seconds later, he was experiencing the sudden surge of frantic knowledge that not only was he somehow supporting his champion, but that the fight was going very badly. He barely had time to get used to that feeling before being mobbed by nearby staffers and camp residents alike. Everyone wanted to know more and assumed that he had information. He was sorry to say he knew no more than they did.

As one, the residents of refugee camp R1996 that had chosen to support their champion, felt nausea, phantom aches, and a surge of dread and despair.

Among the residents and staff alike, hot tears of tension and fear fell, and they found comfort and solace in one another.

Suddenly, a cleansing feeling of relief, power, and righteous anger directed at something beyond their knowledge rushed through them, followed by a sharp, poignant sense of a costly victory. A spontaneous cheer burst from many thousands of throats as one. The tears of worry shifted to joy in an instant of release so strong and abrupt it was almost too much. This surge of emotion preceded the message informing them all that their champion had won, accompanied by a powerful suffusion of wellbeing filling them.

They spent the rest of the evening in exultant celebration, and only a few noticed, and fewer still wondered about the new flow of strength and vitality inside them.

*** *** ***

In New York City Ingrid Lochee was on her way out of a high end hotel with her sleeping mark’s billfold in hand when she saw the prompt appear. She didn’t know for sure, but had her suspicions about who the prompt might refer to. Ingrid had never heard of Pascal, or his wager, but the prompt seemed serious enough that she chose yes. She was just deciding which hotel to visit next in her hunt for cash, when the feeling of loss and fear enveloped her. Swearing softly, she headed for the elevator. She hadn’t even made it to the ground floor when the rush of victory and power filled her with triumphant glee and set her belly aflutter with anticipation and unwelcome feelings of remorse.

So involved in this sudden surge of foreign sensations and feelings, she didn’t even think to look back. If she had, she might have noticed the similarly affected aspect of Hex who was shadowing her.

*** *** ***

In Ivaldison Forge, Hex, Brock, and Nicolette said yes to the prompt. Although they had enough context to know that this unnamed champion had to be Raz, they were no more prepared than anyone else for the rapid fire influx of hyper-intense feelings that whipsawed from terror to exultant victory so quickly. In the aftermath, they discussed and dissected what they’d felt, and what it might mean. Hex noted that she’d only received a single prompt.

They cut the discussion of this and subsequent events short when Nicolette noticed the bright flash of an overwhelmed camera on Wraith’s single surviving feed, the spider drone.

They pulled the feed onto the big screen just in time to see Raz slam the blazing weapon into the stone, and the blur of motion followed by another overwhelming flash of light that left a giant blue arm and horned head on the ground next to Raz and Fidel.

*** *** ***

Deep in the emptiness of space, Midnight thrust toward the distant Earth with everything he had. He’d seen the same prompt, but didn’t dare say yes without knowing what it would cost him. Out in the deep black, he needed everything he could muster just to get home. Instead, he focused on getting back as fast as possible. His catastrophic error that resulted in what had come to be known as the Tunguska Event in the past haunted him, so he spent his time thinking about a better way to enter the atmosphere once he caught up with Earth. He didn’t let himself dwell on how much farther he was than ever before, and whether the small oxygen canister, and his ability to absorb carbon dioxide into iron would be enough to make it home. He continued accelerating toward the fantastically distant tiny blue dot and didn’t let himself think about his chances.

෴෴෴ ෴෴෴ ෴෴෴

The small group huddled together in the lee of Mercator’s door. Adele had tried to persuade the other three to flee with her, but they wouldn't leave the scant shelter offered by the door and hill. A frigid gust of evening wind told her why they’d chosen to stay there for the night rather than brave the exposed and windy valley around them. The Mongolians with her spoke quietly among themselves, but only rarely did she catch a word she recognized. Her efforts to learn their language had been thwarted over and over again when they ate, and then slept, while she pretended to eat, dreading the day she was taken to the same larder she’d rescued Javier and Hugo from. Her hope that they were alright warred with the self-flagellating certainty that if she’d just been a little stronger, or a little faster, or at least less scared, she could have gotten away herself.

Huddled among the others, Adele wept. Not from happiness, although she was happy to be free. Not from sadness, although she was filled with sorrow every time she thought of her boys, and worse, when she let herself think about her missing son. They weren’t even tears of fear, although she was very scared. She wept because it was all too much, and she couldn’t hold it in any longer. The sheer whiplash of emotions within her had resulted in an undeniable need to release her emotions, so there on the desolate Gobi desert steppe, surrounded by near strangers she couldn’t speak with, and cold darkness, she wept.

Amidst the tears, she remained a practical woman. Adele didn’t take her stroke of good fortune for granted, or assume they were truly safe by any measure. She looked around them in the dim evening light, wondering how they’d get away in the morning. Her portal ability still felt so thoroughly suppressed she couldn't even start to form one. She hoped that in the morning, they could walk far enough away to escape Mercator’s influence, and get them all to safety, wherever that was.

A soft sound of shifting rocks caught her attention and brought her to a terrified state of high alert. The others noticed it as well. They all instinctively remained very still, hoping whatever was out there would pass them by. From behind the broken stone door, a giant spider skittered around and stopped, looking right at them.

Adele felt her breath catch in her throat. She couldn't imagine what fresh hell had been visited upon them. She ran her hand along the ground where she sat, looking for a rock.

Two of the Mongolian men whispered back and forth, an urgent exchange. The giant spider advanced on them, the shimmering black surface of its carapace catching the moonlight and making it appear even more sinister. Its movement silenced the men, who also began to feel around for nearby rocks.

A soft whirring sound caught her ear. Adele looked closer at the advancing spider and suddenly laughed. It was a machine! One of the men raised his rock in preparation of throwing it. She placed her hand on his, and whispered the Mongolian word she thought meant ‘no’.

“Khüleekh.” She whispered.

He looked at her as though she was a madwoman and uttered a rapid-fire stream of Mongolian she didn’t have a hope of understanding.

Instead of arguing, she struggled to her feet, intensely aware of the chilly wind as she stepped out of the sheltered spot. Over their urgent protests, she approached the machine with a rock held in her tightly clenched fist. Up close, it was clearly a drone of some kind.

“Please tell me you’re being driven by a person right now!” She spoke to it, desperately hoping wherever, or whoever, the pilot was, that her words would be heard.

The front legs of the spider drone bent, then straightened up, almost as if the machine was nodding with its body.

She clutched her thin blouse tighter around her body, wishing she’d been wearing her coat when Mercator’s portal swept them up. “Oh, thank God. Can you send help?”

The machine paused, then turned its body left and right, as though shaking its head, then nodded.

She glanced back at the others. They were looking at her with hope and wonder. She looked back at the machine. “That looked like a no, then a yes. Am I reading your signals correctly?”

It nodded.

“So you can’t send help? But you also can?”

It gave a yes, then a no.

“That doesn’t really help. I don’t suppose you’ve got a speaker on that drone.”

It shook its body no, then scurried around on the sandy gravel. She watched it move around, occasionally dragging one rear leg or the other. Finally, it had spelled out a terse message.

‘We are help’

She blinked back fresh tears and rubbed at her temples. “I don’t mean to be rude, but please tell me the help is more than a single small drone. There’s something horribly dangerous inside that door! We need help to get out of here!”

It nodded and crawled around the sandy dirt, spelling out more words.

A blinding flash from the door lit the night. The brilliant blade of light threw stark shadows for miles in that direction. Another flash, slightly less bright, came immediately after. When the light faded, two men lay on the ground near the door. They both had beards and long hair, and were nearly covered in blood. One was tall, the other shorter and quite muscular. In the moonlight, she couldn't make out much else about them. One of them was dragging the other, kicking one foot against the loose earth, scooting them along the ground away from the door, one laborious inch at a time.

The man kicking the ground stopped, and held up a shiny metal device that caught the moonlight before it suddenly ignited into a blazing shaft of brilliant white flame. Crackling, snapping sounds and dancing light were as though the man was literally holding a shaft of lightning frozen in space, but not time. Sudden glaring light let her see them much more clearly. The tall one was wearing a dark gray skin-tight armored suit, with some kind of segmented plate armor covering his hands, arms and back. Adele could see the shorter man was gravely injured, and the blood sloshing out of one of the taller man’s boots with every movement didn’t look good either.

Adele was now sure that their abrupt release from Mercator’s abattoir and larder was no coincidence. Whoever this was, she needed to go with them. She started toward them, only to stumble in terror when the all-too-familiar huge, imposing, blue figure appeared by the door.

Mercator was taken aback at the sight of the blinding weapon, and shielded his eyes as he shouted something Adele couldn’t quite make out over the wind and noise of the electrical arc. The giant didn’t get to finish speaking. The man hurled the blade of light. It shot from his armored hand in a streak of blinding radiance.

Adele couldn’t track it at all, but in an instant, Mercator’s arm exploded and fell to the ground, and somehow the taller man with the gloves was holding the device in his hand again. Both clawed ends were glowing an angry bright red. The device quickly built up to another raging bolt of captive lightning.

The giant turned away and vanished. Adele ran for the men, hoping she could help. The tall one shouted at her to stay back. His guttural voice was so distorted by emotion it was barely comprehensible. She could hear rage, agony, fear and more, but underneath it all, there was something familiar to the sound. Like a song heard at the wrong tempo, she felt sure she knew this man, but couldn’t immediately recognize him. She looked him over again, taking in his long strawberry-blonde hair with light brown tips, matching beard. Paired with his unusual outfit and all of it lit by the stark and jittery blinding arc-light in his hand, the man looked furious. Beaten down, but far from defeated. She didn’t know what to do, she just stared at the otherworldly, dangerous looking man.

In the moment of her hesitation, she sensed Mercator’s power gathering with her own portal ability. Before she could call out a warning, an oblong opening appeared beside the two men. Mercator seized the tall man around the waist with his huge hand and dragged him toward the portal.

Suddenly, the bolt of captive lightning blasted into the ground, and the man held tight to it. Before she could react, many things happened, much too fast for her to understand it all. A column of lightning struck the portal itself and thunder split the air in front of her. The deafening explosion and shock wave of super-heated air threw her to the ground. A less violent, lingering dance of lightning struck the door into Mercator’s home, striking again and again until the tunnel simply vanished, leaving behind a door that led to nowhere. Her eyes slid closed.

She felt some time had passed, because when she opened her eyes, she was much colder than she’d been. Still slightly dazed, she rolled over and started to get up, only to see Mercator’s head laying on the ground, the giant’s sightless eyes staring at her.

The giant’s blue blood made a trail from the dismembered body parts to the taller man’s injured foot, leaving the tall bearded man’s boot and leg all but covered in a sheen of cyan blood. The lightning wielder lay there, uncaring or ignorant of the blue ichor, his hand on the muscular man’s ravaged chest. He was speaking in a low, ragged tone of entreaty, begging that the other man come back to him, demanding that he live.

Long minutes passed as the man tried to force the other to live. His initial entreaties had shifted to commands, then bitter insults and angry tears. Now his voice was very familiar. Like a toy winding down, his desperate efforts slowed, and without warning, the man collapsed, sagging limply onto the ground next to the dead man.

In sleep, his tight, intense expression relaxed. Despite the strange outfit, beard, and long hair, Adele suddenly realized she was somehow looking at her son. She couldn’t make sense of it, but wanted it to be true.

“Raz?” She whispered.

Moments later, she felt a familiar presence. She glanced up just in time to see an armored figure catch the moonlight as it descended next to her, as Adele was unlacing Raz’s ruined boot. She glanced up just long enough to confirm it was her son’s older timeline, as Doktor Midnight.

He pointed at the boot she was working on removing. “Don’t. You’ll just hurt him and make it worse. Let him take care of it when he wakes up.” The man spoke in a low, resonant voice.

The voice instantly told Adele that it wasn’t Midnight at all. She studied the new arrival cautiously, reaching for her portal ability. That she still couldn’t form a portal worried her, but she pushed that concern down in favor of dealing with the newcomer.

The armor that reminded her so much of Midnight was gone, flowing along the ground like shimmering black liquid. Clad in a shimmering metallic-blue cloak, the tall man hid his face in the deep hood. All she could see was his hand. It was the hand of a very old man. He wore a golden ring on a bony finger and tightly gripped a long spear. Before saying another word, he glanced around them, and the liquid metal flowed into position and formed into portable light sources. In another moment, he’d built a shelter around them from the remaining material of his armor. The shelter was roughly in the form of a large yurt, enclosing the four of them, Mercator’s remains, and more than enough room for the Mongolians outside. The air inside quickly warmed until it was comfortably toasty inside.

The man shifted the metallic fabric curtain at the door and called out in what sounded like the same language the Mongolian prisoners had been speaking.

He turned back to her. She hadn’t seen it vanish, but the spear was gone from his hand. He threw the hood back, revealing the face of an old man. For a moment, she couldn’t see past the wrinkles and matte black metal eyepatch that blended seamlessly with his flesh. Then she realized it was Midnight, but ancient now, so very much older. Then she gasped and looked down at Raz, then back at the old man.

The old man chuckled. “Yeah, I know. It’s a lot to take in. Hi mom, ‘long time no see’ doesn’t even come close to covering it. I’ve really missed you.”

She sputtered. “But—How? Why didn’t you—”

He shook his head. “It’s been a long, long time. Now that this has happened, we have so much to talk about, and that,” he pointed at Mercator’s remains, “Tells me that for all my waiting and planning, I’ve already missed my cue,” he shrugged,”but somehow things still worked out.” He glanced at the sky with a wry expression. “A plan in place for thousands of years, ruined because an old man needed a nap, and apparently, I wasn’t as critical as I thought after all.”

“What are you even tal—” Adele blinked and recovered her composure. “We need to get Raz,” she placed her hand on Raz’s armored gauntlet, “my Raz, to a hospital. I don’t know wha—”

She stopped talking when his robes abruptly shrunk away until they vanished, leaving the old man wearing a cobalt-blue snug jumpsuit resembling the dark gray armor worn by Raz.

“No. We need to stay right here. That I remember,” he said with finality.

“What—what do I call you?” She finally asked.

His shoulders slumped as though simply being asked the question had aged him, or added weight to his already overburdened frame. He let out a long sigh. “Names. Always more names. Did you know that names have weight?” He looked at her with an eye full of existential exhaustion. “They do. You don’t notice it at first, but each name, each shard of yourself, splintered into another face, another identity. It all gets very heavy. One culture knows you by one name, and expects you to be a certain way, another group knows another name, and so on. So many names...” he trailed off and stared off into the distance, his eyes losing focus. As she watched, his body seemed to wither away, until it was old and frail under the skin tight blue suit. He began to totter back and forth, as though struggling to maintain his position and balance.

Adele waited impatiently until she eventually realized he was done speaking. “Lots of names is hard. Ok, but what do you want me to call you?!” her voice turning shrill.

He shook his head as though clearing the cobwebs. “Right, right. You know, just call me Hildolfer. It’s what I go by these days.” He stood up in a fluid movement, his body filled back out until he looked like a fit fifty-year-old man, rather than the decrepit man nearing the century mark she’d glimpsed.

She nodded. “Now that we’ve settled that,” her voice rising in urgency, “I need you to explain why we can’t take him to the hospital, before I lose it entirely!” she was nearly shouting by the end, clutching at her chest, and panting as though she couldn’t get enough air.

He nodded, and crouched down where Raz and Fidel lay. “First, he’s not in any danger. If I recall, by now he’s good enough at healing that a hospital will just get in his way. Worse, going to one, will just get his picture where it shouldn't be, and put attention on him he can’t afford. I know you’re out of the loop, but after the Arcstorm event, there are people looking for him specifically, and even more people looking for someone to blame. He needs to keep a low profile, at least until he can’t anymore.”

She clutched at Raz’s limp hand in the gauntlet. “What on earth are you even talking about?” she hyperventilated, her tingling hands feeling slick and sweaty in the warm air.

He gave her a tired smile. “Adele—mom, you need to calm down. I think you’re going into shock. I’ll be happy to tell you everything, but you’d be much better off hearing it from him, and he’d benefit from telling you. The other reason we need to stay here is that I don’t know how long he needs to spend with that blood.” He pointed at the blue blood intermingled with red clustering around Raz’s boot.

She looked at Raz’s ruined boot, the blue fluids mingling with his drying blood, and frantically moved to wipe it off.

His hand caught her wrist. “You’re going to pass out if you keep breathing like that. Try to slow down and take a deep breath. Don’t worry about your Raz. He’s fine. Well, not totally fine, but he will be. This is an important moment for him. I always wondered where he got that exposure.” Hildolfer said.

She shook her head in confusion. “I don’t understand any of this. I think I feel—” she blinked rapidly, swaying in place.

His other hand shot out and gently caught her head as her eyes rolled back and she flopped forward.