High above the nighttime battle sat a woman upon a staff that looked to be made mainly of some gnarled and old wood, yet also seemed to be much more than that. Around her floated tens of other staves and wands of all kinds, orbiting around her at an ever-increasing speed in several independent circular orbits. In her hands was a grimoire from a person who had long since passed into legend and fable, a relic of a bygone era when a thousand superpowered men and women fought against a tide of unrelenting darkness and, despite all odds, won.

This was but one of many such tomes that she had recently come into possession of, having obtained it after a difficult process of tracking down a few stragglers from a now-dead faith that dared to go against the newer version of their old foe. It was a bit poetic, and a bit ironic. She now had a few somethings that at least a few of her old ancestors used to gain their own powers, but as time and generations had passed so too did the power contained within these old books.

Here she was, Alistaira Crowley, a descendant of at least around fifty different ‘Heroes’. And, if her family and the Church had been even the least bit open to a change in the status quo, she might very well have been the first of her line to achieve the same levels of power as her ancestors and also use it for that old faith willingly and with a clear conscience. But, in the end, that was a turn of events that had only a slim chance of ever having happened in the first place. The church of the fake goddess Lumina was horrifically outdated in its beliefs and ideologies, and despite being run by a woman it viewed that most women needed to be… how to put it… ‘kept in their subservient place’?

Yes, they were hypocrites to the last, and now their last few champions were being vilified by the very people they used to have at their backs. It was a glorious catharsis for her, to see those that treated her like such a waste of life being hunted down like vermin. And by the masses as well! Oh, she felt giddy just remembering that old bastard’s face as she laid her hands on this particular grimoire. He likely expected her to burst into flames or scream in agony; what else could be expected when a ‘filthy pagan’ touched a book from the Age of a Thousand Heroes?

Yet when this old dusty tome reacted to her touch and lit up as it activated and bound itself to one connected by blood to its old master, the damn geezer’s face twisted with horror and fury! It was so deliciously cathartic when she used that ‘holy book’ to smash that fucker’s skull in. Even more so when she bound his spirit and kept it sane, only to make it and so many others watch as the so-called ‘Holy Tomes of the Hero Mages’ were twisted into what they were now.

It took a bit of blood and a whole lot of death, but by the end of it the grimoires now answered solely to her, and their secrets slowly made themselves know to her bit by bit. She wasn’t going to take the easy way out and have those old books dump all of their contents into her mind, body, and soul all at once. She was fairly certain that she could at least survive that if it happened, but she was still (relatively) young and wanted to take her time with these texts. She would devour each and every secret hidden within, and then, when they were no more useful to her than any other book that she had explored to its fullest, she would twist them further and let their old masters howl in anguish as their secrets became known to all that wanted to read them.

She felt a mental timer go off, and she extracted her consciousness from the combination of study and reminiscing that she had been engaging in. The fight down below was underway, and her addition to the conflict was nearly ready for her to add the final, finishing pieces. She could easily fly down there and join in herself, but she was never really one to fight up close and personal. Rather, she was more of the type to sit back and let legions of undead do her fighting, or have the living lay down their lives for her cause.

And of course, when the minions fought it out, she would rain down death and despair upon her foes (and sometimes allies), but she was not of the mind to send her own army in unless it was needed, which looked to not be the case. No, she was here to provide ‘morale’ support. Well, that and abject pandemonium for those arrayed here against Darksol’s will. Her spell would not be felt, nor would it be seen. It was neither flashy nor overly tangible. It was not a firestorm, nor was it a cloud of flesh-eating microorganisms, though she could easily bring such things to this battlefield if she felt like it.

No, as she finished weaving her spell and it went into effect, she wondered if anyone down there would even notice it being active until long after the battle was over. Well, regardless of whether her name would even be in the footnotes of any texts regarding this battle in the future, she had more pressing matters to attend to. Her part in this little bit of suicidal Elvish idiocy was over, and she now had a book filled with secrets of all kinds to dig into once again.

She sincerely hoped that the grimoire she had right now was at least a bit less filled with inane nonsense than the ones she had to deal with previously. At this point she was actually starting to doubt if her ancestors even tried to advance and improve their own power, or if all they did with the magical tomes that the summoning spell had given them was to scrawl nonsense in the margins and use it as a makeshift journal.

These were Heroes! Beings of Legend that fought Kain Himself to a standstill in terms of combined magical power! What logical, power-driven reason would they have to fill their own power sources with inane ramblings about ‘shipping’, ‘boys love’, ‘yuri’, and guesses about each other’s physical measurements?!

Well, at least some of them actually took things seriously. She could only read so much childish nonsense before getting to the good stuff. She had to ask this one query of her ancestors, though.

Why did so many of the males claim to have either a hidden power in one of their hands or a potentially even more destructive force in one of their eyes? Wasn’t the whole thing that each Hero only got one power, or did Earth have people who already had magic and other supernatural powers?