The Second Archon War: Superbia Hominum 18

Superbia Hominum 18: Ad Astra Abyssosque

When Wyatt had been a boy, he’d dreamed of exploring new worlds and finding new and wonderful discoveries. He’d read plenty of comic books, and imagined he’d be like Reed Richards or Tony Stark, inventing incredible things and using his creations to save the world. He’d worked hard in school, constantly studying and reading ahead, getting the best grades possible from an early age, and winning the science fair with his experiments every single year in junior high and freshman year of high school.

Of course, the main reason he studied so hard was that while his mind was strong, his body was weak. He’d been legally blind by the time he graduated from high school, and had been forced to learn braille, his diabetes robbing him of his sight. 

So when someone had offered Wyatt a miracle cure, he’d taken it. He’d gone from being the weak shrimp who everyone pitied to a tall and handsome Adonis. Heck, a girl like Becky wouldn’t have looked at Wyatt twice before he’d taken that cure. He should know: he’d asked three girls out to prom, none of whom had been as attractive as his wife, and they’d all turned him down. Plus, Becky was eternally 20. Oh sure, Wyatt was 40 now, but his wife still looked as good as she had the day he’d met her. 

Some people would have let a history like Wyatt’s make them bitter. Some would have let it give them a complex. Wyatt refused. He’d been given a gift. Now, his goal was to give as many others the same gift he’d gotten. It was frustrating to him that he couldn’t use his tinker tech inventions to cure type 1 diabetes or give blind children new eyes, or anything like that. Sure, he was working to save the world, but he wanted to save all the little people along the way too. 

Well, now he had that chance. He had a chance to find a new source of energy that would transform the world, and finally be that silver bullet against Scion. Part of him wanted to rush in full steam ahead. 

He’d done that with the Archons. Turns out, he’d been wrong to trust them. Becky had been right: They were trouble, and they had to go. Just like Scion. 

So, Wyatt was slow. Wyatt was careful. And Wyatt would try not to kill Dr. Meliton, but some days the damn harpy tried his patience. 

That wasn’t even him being rude: She did look a lot like a green harpy these days. 

“Look, Honey, I know this data is promising, but we have to be careful with the samples of this stuff! It’s got an insane amount of energy, which means it’s also insanely dangerous! Then there’s what it does to living tissue in its raw form,” Wyatt said, resisting the temptation to rub his forehead in irritation. 

“Then we should start experiments on living specimens! What about some Case 53s? We have plenty of those,” Honey argued. 

They were sitting at a remote lab on the Island of Kaho‘olawe in the Hawaiian Islands. Currently, both of them were outside, enjoying the ocean breeze. The island itself was completely uninhabited, due to lacking a permanent supply of fresh water, and you had to be careful where you walked beyond the markers that surrounded the lab, because there was still a great deal of unexploded ordnance. Most of the lab itself was in an underground bunker that dated back to the Second World War, though it had been completely refitted and restored aside from the entrance, which was pitted and weathered.

“How about some lab rats instead of people?! We can’t just rush forward into this blindly!” Wyatt said, now beginning to lose his temper. He was of two minds on the Case 53 program. On the one, it was wildly successful. On the other, using incarcerated criminals, kidnapped near-victims of natural disasters, and the homeless was disgusting. On the gripping hand…they would all be dead or deranged. The Case 53 program gave them the same second chance he’d had. 

Of course, now they were mostly using volunteers, which had turned out to work even better. They hadn’t needed to fly by night. They had plenty of good stock doing their work in the light of day, and that made Wyatt feel much better about the whole thing. 

Even if he did have to work with people like Honey Meliton who thought morals were an especially disgusting flavor of jelly beans. 

“We’re losing the war against the Tsaritsa! We can’t churn out capes like she can delusions because we’re running out of vials! We need a replacement!” Honey shot right back. 

“That’s a fair point. But we’re sticking to animal trials for now. If we just start injecting people with this exotic energy, we don’t know what it will do,” Wyatt pointed out. 

“The cell cultures either die or become super charged with the energy, growing rapidly! It should be the same in humans. We’re figuring out how to reliably use it without destroying the cell cultures!” 

“Rats, Honey. We use rats,” Wyatt said firmly. “That goes well, we move up to pigs and dogs. Once we’ve got stable use on that, then, and only then, do we use human test subjects.”

“Oh, fine. You’re just standing in the way of science, you know,” Honey grumbled, and sipped at her ice tea. 

Wyatt just looked out at dry scrubland beyond the warning flags and sighed. He hated animal and human experimentation, but it was necessary. They just had to at least try to be ethical about all this. 

He put in the order for rats and mice to use as test subjects, along with all the necessary equipment and personnel to do so. It would take a few days to get everything set up and situated, even with the unlimited budget they had. After that, he went home. 

Well, not home, home, to LA, but to the White House. 

“Good evening, sir,” the Secret Service agent on duty said, nodding to him as he stepped out of the Door and into the Lincoln Bedroom. How the heck did they always know which door he was going to use? Or maybe they just stationed an agent at all of them. That was entirely possible. 

“It’s afternoon for me, teleportation is killer on your sense of time,” Wyatt said with a laugh. “How’s it going, Leeroy?” 

“All quiet here, sir. The President is in the Oval Office, but she left instructions that you’re to be shown to her when you arrive,” Agent Leeroy said.

Wyatt nodded and strode through the White House, greeting the various staffers and functionaries. He found his way to the President’s office, where there sat his wife, wearing not a suit and tie, but her new Cape costume, which consisted of a white suit with red cuffs and shoulder boards, and a blue cape with white stars, her Vision on a pendant around her neck. She really was going all in on the “President Cape” persona, but the good news was it was skin tight and really showed off her curves. 

He paused, grinning as he leaned in the doorway, waiting for her to notice. She, of course, had known as soon as he stepped into the hallway outside, but she kept working and pretending to ignore him. 

“If you’re going to just stand there looking, you could do something useful like giving me a backrub,” Becky said, not looking up from the paperwork she was pouring over. 

He stepped across the carpet emblazoned with the Great Seal of the United States, and complied with the back rub. She paused after a moment, and sighed. 

“I’m supposed to be working on this bill for funding the war effort. I have a lot of notes before I give it back to the Senate. We cannot leave our allies high and dry. The Nordics are all in a panic now that Finland has nearly completely fallen.”

What Becky meant was that the extreme north of the country still had a few places the Fatui hadn’t bothered to steamroll yet, as they were focused on subduing the major population centers in the south. Most of the north of Finland was empty wilderness and a few isolated towns and villages. The Finnish government in exile had set up shop in Iceland, but everyone knew that if the Tsaritsa decided her troops were going to walk to Iceland, she probably just could freeze the North Atlantic solid. Sweden and Norway were certain they were next in the list of invasions, and everyone was nervous. For now, the Russians were consolidating their hold over Finland, but at this point, there seemed little hope of pushing the Fatui out. 

“We did all we could,” Wyatt said consolingly. “A lot of American blood was spilled fighting them.”

He hadn’t looked at the latest casualty reports, but between Poland and now Finland, the casualties were over 6,000. That didn’t sound like a lot, and compared the abject slaughter that World War II had brought, World War III’s deaths were relatively light. But so many of those had been capes, and they were incredibly hard to replace. America had lost about 1/10 of her capes in the war, Vision Holders and Parahumans alike. 

So they needed replacements. And fast. 

“And yet what do we have to show for it? The Tsaritsa spreads her tyranny, and gains more territory and subjects to increase her power. Already, there are those in Finland converting to the Church of the Frozen Heart and embracing the worship of their new god,” Becky said bitterly. “Hell, we had to crack down on a preacher here in DC that was proclaiming the divinity of the Tsaritsa. I’m getting Senator Hill from Indiana to introduce the Alien Religions act.”

“We’re getting rid of freedom of religion now?” Wyatt asked, stunned. That was…that was one of the cornerstones of the United States’ belief system. 

“When they allow an enemy god to gain followers and powers on our soil? Yes. It’s going to ban Cyclists as well, because that’s the last thing we need.”

“Cyclists?” Wyatt said, confused for a moment. “Why would we- wait. Are you talking about those crazies in Britain who worship Scion?”

“Yes. It’s spreading like wildfire here now as well. It’s a dangerous cult, proclaiming that humanity must evolve, and deliberately trying to cause trigger events among other things. Archonism isn’t as insidious from outward appearances, but I’m increasingly convinced they gain power from worshipers. They’re gods. Why wouldn’t they?” 

Wyatt digested that as he continued to rub his wife’s shoulders. “So, you think that’s worth getting rid of the First Amendment?” 

“The Framers never imagined a world where a hostile god who can brainwash entire countries would have a religion that could allow her to infiltrate our country and destabilize it. Or where an alien overlord would found his own religion in an attempt to…I don’t even know. Albedo claims it’s an experiment to see if Scion can gain energy and power from human faith. I would have called it nonsense six years ago.”

“And then Amaterasu came back and cut the Leviathan in half, followed by an Angel of the Old Testament variety kicking the Nazis out of Europe. Then Gaia herself returned to Babylon, the White Witch of Narnia showed up in Moscow, and now…whatever the Hydro Archon is. A theater kid who watched too much Ally McBeal?”

Becky groaned and put her head in her hands, finally giving up on working on the bill. “I don’t know, Wyatt. I don’t want to be a tyrant. I don’t want to trample over the establishment clause or the Free Exercise Clause. But the Tsaritsa is starting to look like she can conquer whatever part of the world doesn’t have an Archon that has claimed it as their own. So, somehow, I have to figure out how to keep humanity free of her, and the rest of them.”

“With five down, two to go,” Wyatt said with a sigh. 

“That’s what our best information says. Though we know fuck all about the Geo or Pyro Archons, aside from the fact that they exist, and the Geo Archon is apparently dead in every timeline where an Archon’s felt like talking about it,” Becky said in disgust. 

“Maybe we’ll catch a break then,” Wyatt said hopefully. “I did order lab rats today. New tests look promising. This new form of energy has potential, Becky. Real potential.”

“How close are we to a viable product to create capes?” she asked, turning her head to peer at his face. 

He hesitated, then sighed. “I don’t know. We’ve only been at this a few months. You know how long it took Doctor Mother to create the Vials. It’s probably years away.”

“We might not have years. Do the animal trials, but do them quickly. I’ll authorize all the Case 53 subjects you need,” Alexandria said. That was her talking, not Rebecca, not the kind, funny woman that Wyatt loved. But Alexandria, the hero who was leading this country, and the world, in the fight against gods and aliens. 

“I’ll do it,” Hero promised. “But we’ll need time.”

“Time is something we might not have,” Becky said, standing up. “How long do I have you for?”

“Eight or so hours.”

“Then let’s spend it in the bedroom. We’re both busy, but I need to feel alive and loved right now. Hopefully, there isn’t an Endbringer attack in that time.”

They made love passionately, but not as long as Wyatt would have liked. He was getting old, and while his skill was increasing, his stamina most certainly was not. A 20-year-old bride sounded good, until you remembered that you were becoming an old man who struggled to keep up with her. 

As they cuddled on the bed, Rebecca asked an astonishing question. “Do you ever regret that I can't have children?”

“Becky, honey, I knew that when I signed up for this,” Wyatt said, pulling her close and squeezing. “Heck, you having the fountain of youth is something most men dream about! Now if only I could tap into it!” 

“Yes, but…” Rebecca touched her womb, and Wyatt could feel tears on her cheeks against his own. “I don’t know. Something about this Vision…it makes me long for the love of a family. A family I can’t have.”

“We could always adopt, you know.”

“No, no. There’s no time for it anyway. Even if I could get pregnant…I’m 35 now. The youngest President in history. But still a bit old to be having children.”

Wyatt kissed her; he didn’t know what else to do. “I love you. Always and forever.”

“I…I love you too, Wyatt.”

“Wyatt Costa-Brown. Never forget: I took your name, because you mean everything to me.”

After that, he made love to her again. Slowly, and tenderly, at least in part because he was worn out, but also to show how much he loved her, truely. She seemed to understand, and both of them got a better night’s sleep than usual, even with the weight of the world on their shoulders. 

A few days later, they started the experiments on the rats. They were standard brown norway rats, with a little more genetic diversity than the white lab rats. They had a control group, of course, that would not be exposed to any of this new exotic energy. Another group would be exposed to an ambient source of the energy, in this case, glowing purple crystals that would hang in their cages. Another group would be given water irradiated with the energy, and a final group would be injected with a solution of the energy to see what would happen. 

Results were almost immediate in the last group. A number of rats writhed and died from the energy, their bodies horribly mutating before they burst in purple pustules of oozing energy. Some, however, were changed. They grew larger, stronger, and, shockingly and completely unexpectedly, intelligent. 

“Yesyes, need moremore. Hmm, hmm, givegive moremore!” one of the rats hissed. It had grown to over two feet long, four if you included the tail, and was walking about on  hand legs with claw-like hands that rubbed together constantly. Its eyes glowed an eerie purple color, and strange runes had been burned into its hide, leaving white markings on the grey hair. It’s teeth were longer and more wicked, and it paced about it’s cage, rubbing its hands together and muttering to itself. 

“What the hell is this stuff?” Wyatt muttered to himself, peering through the safety glass at the, well, he was calling it Skaven. Though if he knew anything about Skaven…this might not be the best omen. 

“It’s similar to elemental energy in some ways,” Honey remarked, taking notes on her tablet. “It can uplift animals, and this has done the same.”

“I guess elemental energy does also kill things that get over exposed to it,” Wyatt muttered, shaking his head. “But this is so rapid. And this isn’t the same sort of uplifting that happens with elemental energy. Look at it! It looks like a monster out of a TTRPG!” 

“We’ll tweak the formula, but I want to experiment with other animal stock,” Honey said, turning to Wyatt. 

He sighed, and nodded. “We’ve already got them on order. We’ll go ahead, but we keep modifying the formula. Perhaps adding an infusion of Elemental Energy…”

That didn’t work out at all. They even captured a few slimes and tried injecting them with this new energy source, but they just all went berserk, died, or exploded violently. 

Interestingly, the rats with crystals hung in their cages slowly began to twist and warp after a week or two of exposure. Some died painful deaths, but when the other rats fed on their bloated corpses, they became more of the Skaven-like creatures. Complete with mad ramblings, and violent tendencies. They would attack their keepers at any opportunity, and several were culled and autopsied. The results were fascinating. The creatures’s brains had rapidly developed, as had their muscles. 

The most frightening day came when a Skaven, when a worker came to clean its cage, shrieked at the man, then cast a spell on him. There was no other word for it: the rat-thing drew a rune of burning purple energy in the air, and a bolt of dark energy flew out and struck the man in the arm. The arm twisted and withered even as the man screamed and the Skaven danced about its cage, cackling with glee. 

“Yesyes, man-thing will pay, pay! Give more, more! Yesyes, need MORE power!” 

The rat was, of course, shot dead, and first aid provided. It was partly terrifying and partly very exciting. 

“This is remarkable. They’ve developed blaster powers using this energy, and are creating more of it!” Honey said. “This is exactly what we need.”

“We have to be cautious. These things are dangerous,” Wyatt said. “What about the pigs?”

A few days later, the pigs were turning into orc like creatures, if one used the piggy definition of the term. They were even more intelligent and more aware. 

“You have chained us, feed on us, but we shall feed on you!” one snorted as it rattled its cage bars with all too human hands. The others attempted to craft crude tools, and even tried to effect a breakout, but the precautions taken prevented it. 

“The casualty rate is still too high to begin human trials,” Wyatt said, shaking his head. “But we’re getting there. We have a 60% survival rate with the latest batch. Keep working at it. 

But they’d already had word that the Tsaritsa had awoken, and that she was preparing to launch an invasion of Kazakhstan, to reclaim lands that the Soviet Union had held sway over. They were running out of time. He started sleeping in the bunker, working around the clock to try new integrations of this power source, new formulas. 

He awoke one morning and went down to the pens, but he felt an oppressive air. At first, he thought the lights were burning out, but something was wrong. They were bright as ever, but the light was being…absorbed. He hastened his steps, and found the scientists clustered around a viewing window. 

“What’s happening?” he demanded, hurrying forward. 

One of the observers turned to him, a look of horror on their face. “Director, they’ve sacrificed one of them!” 

“What?!” He ran up to the window, to find the pig-orcs and rat-skaven had spread-eagled one of their own, and using a crude shank they’d fashioned, cut open its belly and spilled out the entrails. Even as he watched, they were drawing a series of runes in blood. 

“Honey! Dr. Meliton, we have to stop this, NOW!” Wyatt said, every alarm bell going off in his head. 

Meliton looked up, an annoyed expression on her face at being interrupted. “But this is such good data! They’ve done this spontaneously, we-”

The creatures had formed a ring, and begun to chant. 

Venite ad nos, ingluvies esurientes. 

Sanguine depasce, nigredine sine fine. 

Ima da nos potentiae abyssi!

Wyatt stopped barking orders. Ominous Latin chanting was the line you did not cross. He slammed open the emergency door, drawing one of his rayguns and summoning his nano armor. Even as alarms blared and the creatures snarled and turned on him, Wyatt blasted two in half. 

But he was too late. A black hole in reality opened up, and out of it, monsters swarmed. 

“LOCK THE DOOR!” Wyatt bellowed, and shot one of the things out of the air as it bayed and came for him. It looked almost like a wolf, but like a floating, twisted mobile. Dark energy filled most of the body, and the eyes glowed purple. One sank its fangs into Wyatt’s arm, and he gave up the ray gun for a beam saber, slicing it in half. Two more came at him, and he struck them down, even as the rift grew. 

Behind him, he heard screams and a blast of wind, and he saw more of the wolf-like demons were slaughtering the scientists. Meliton was fighting back, and he watched as she ripped one in half with her talons, then used a blade of anemo to slice another. But he had no time to pay attention. Wyatt’s entire body was now covered in armor, and nanites sealed off the wound. He turned back to the rift, desperate to find a way to close it, when he heard a voice. 

Ah. Human. Seek…power? Come. Come. Listen. Power. Feed…power. Feed.

Dark tentacles sprang from the rift, and wrapped themselves around Wyatt’s arm. He hacked some with his beam saber, but the room was tilting, drawing him in. He tried to fight the pull, to blast it away with his rocket boots, but a wolf monster slammed into him from the back, and he was propelled into the rift. 

Purple darkness washed over Wyatt, and he screamed in terror as he was consumed by the rift. He fell for what felt like hours, a swirling storm of chaos biting and gnawing at his armor. At last, ground appeared before him, and he used the last of the energy in his suit to slow his descent and tumble down to the ground. 

Gasping for breath, alarms warbling on his HUD, he looked around at where he found himself. Crystalline spires in weird shapes jutted all around him. He’d barely managed to steer himself into a mostly open space. He put a hand to the ground, and lifted up a handful of lilac sand. He let it run through his fingers, then slowly stood. 

This was not a barren, lifeless place. Glowing plants clung to the rocks, and dark things skittered around him, looking like bugs or twisted reptiles. He slowly turned, his heart thundering in his chest. He looked up from where he had come, and saw beyond the swirling mist, stars burning with a terrible light. 

“Where…where am I? Hello? Can anyone hear me?” he called, but he tried his radio before. “Oh God. Rebecca! Oh God, what have I done?!”

Oh God, Rebecca! Hello? Where am I?

Wyatt spun, and found a floating…thing…staring back at him. It had six wings, four smaller ones on top and bottom in pairs, and then two oddly shaped ones jutting out of a circular body. A light blue halo floated about the thing, which had what looked like purple petals surrounding a glowing blue eye at the center. 

“What the hell are you?” Wyatt whispered, slowly trying to circle around the thing.

What the hell are you? It echoed back. 

He shook his head, trying to get his bearings, and muttered. “Are you…intelligent? Or just a mimic?”

Intelligent? Just a mimic.

The thing spun about itself, then in a burst of purple smoke, it transformed. Wyatt jerked back, swearing in surprise. To his shock and horror, a purple shadow of himself now stood where the thing had been. It aped his movements, stumbling back from him and nearly falling. As Wyatt righted himself, it stood as well. When he stepped right, it did the same. 

“Can you understand me?” Wyatt asked. 

Are you… me?

He cocked his head, and his mirror did the same. In a fit of madness, Wyatt sang, “Do doo be-do-do.”

Mahna Mahna.

“Ha! Do doo be-do-do!”

Mahna Mahna.

Wyatt continued the song for a couple of lines, doing a silly dance, which the thing at first mimicked, then began to improvise its own moves. 

“Hey, you’re pretty good,” Wyatt said, grinning. “For a fake copy, anyway.”

You are… false. I am real. The Mimic said, stepping towards Wyatt, shaking his head in anger. 

“Oh no,” Wyatt groaned. He’d seen this one before. So, when the thing formed a beam saber and tried to strike him down, he parried. 

You…your memories…your being…give them to me. I will be…real.

“I don’t think so!” Wyatt snarled. “There’s only ONE Wyatt Costa-Brown! And he ain’t dying here!” 

They exchanged a couple of blows, then Wyatt pulled an Indy, and drew his ray gun and shot the thing in the chest. It looked at the hole for a moment, as if shocked that this was possible. Then Wyatt decapitated it, and pumped two more rounds into it. 

He stood over the thing as it dissolved into purple ooze, breathing hard. “That’s right. I’m the original.”

I’m the original.

The original.

Original. 

Slowly, Wyatt turned, finding three more of the mimic things floating towards him through the mists. He groaned. “Aw, hell naw.”

He ran, darting between crystal structures and firing as he was pursued by three sets of doppelgangers. 

“Hey, which of you is real?” he shouted back behind him. To his shock and delight, each shouted back a response about being real. Then, they fell on one another, each claiming to be the original. Wyatt waited until only one was left, wounded and bleeding purple. Then he shot it five times, just to make sure. 

He slumped down against a crystal rock, and watched the last of his oxygen run out. He’d used up too much power, and his nanomachines were unable to keep recycling his air.

“Well. Guess there’s only one thing left to do,” he groaned. He disabled his helmet, eyes squeezed shut, holding his breath. Then, he sucked in.

To his surprise, it only burned a little. He was able to take a few more breaths. Then, slowly, he stood, breathing regularly. The air tasted a bit acrid, but he could breath. He wandered for a bit, looking for water, or anything he could eat. He found trees with oddly shaped fruit, and took some, but didn’t eat. 

“How to get back,” he muttered, and took a look at his gear. Nothing that could create a portal. Well, he was one of the greatest Tinkers on Earth Bet. Time to get to work.

A day passed. Wyatt was ready to die of thirst. He’d found no water, and made little progress. He still had his powers, but he couldn’t figure out how to make a portal home with what he had. Teleportation was one of the things his Shard struggled with. At last, nearly mad with thirst, he ate a fruit. 

The sweet juice inside was shockingly, not that bad to eat. He ate some of that, then killed a bug thing and ate that too when the fruit ran out. But after a week or so, he stopped getting hungry and thirsty. Not that he noticed. 

He killed more mimics, and found more strange plants and crystals. He began to have…ideas. His mind ran wild, and he began to construct strange things, carving runes of power into the rock and even the air itself. More wolves and other monsters attacked, and Wyatt killed them, then ate their flesh, or used their body parts to build more of his devices. 

He began to change as well. His flesh hardened, and his form twisted. Two hands weren’t enough, so he grew a second set. Walking was too slow, so he began to fly. 

He experimented and worked for years, creating weapons, armor, odd devices. 

Then, one day, he found a hole in the world. A bright light that hurt his eyes shone through, and for the first time in what felt like years, Wyatt remembered something. Home. Love. Becky.

He charged through the hole, and into madness. Prey things were battling with…Men. Men in armor, wielding weapons. He struck down the prey things, and then Men attempted to fight him. He shrugged off their weapons, then commanded. 

Cease. Do you not recognize your betters? I am your Director. Lay down your arms, and bow to me!

“What the fuck is that thing!?” one of the Men shouted. He was…Marcus. Yes. Marcus. 

“We have to close the portal!” another, a female…what was her name? Ah, yes. Honey. 

Wyatt turned, and regarded the portal. He made a gesture and used a bit of his power, and the portal slammed shut. 

There. It is shut. Now. I have been absent too long. Tell me: How goes the war? 

No, no. That wasn’t what mattered. He clutched at his head, and screamed. 

Focus, focus! Becky, love, together, the wedding, holding one another, the warmth of her body against his, making love, his love for her. His! Love!

With a great force of will, Wyatt forced his form back to what it had once been, the power within burning and biting, clawing to be free. Gasping, he lay on hands and knees, naked and shuddering.

“Holy shit, Director Wyatt?!”

“Hey…guys…’m back,” Wyatt rasped. Then, he passed out.

He came too some time later, still in his fleshy form. Good. He needed to keep his power under control. He was in a hospital bed, and a woman was clutching his hand. 

“Wyatt? Wyatt! He’s awake!” 

“B-Becky?” he gasped. 

She flung her arms about him, sobbing. “Oh, God, Wyatt! When they called me, I was so scared! But, they said you’re alright?”

He flexed his hand, then, slowly, put his arms about her. Yes. This was what he should do. He…he loved her. Didn’t he?

“How long…how long was I gone?” Wyatt asked, fearing to hear the answer.

His wife…yes, wife, that’s who she was. Rebecca. His wife. She pushed herself away, a look of confusion on her face. “Gone?”

“He was sucked into the portal for about two minutes,” Honey Meliton said, ruffling her feathers by the door. “When he returned…at first, we thought he was another monster.”

“It’s me, I promise,” Wyatt said, smiling.

Rebecca’s eyes narrowed. “Oh yeah? Who’s the Warchief of the Horde?”

Knowledge flooded his mind. “Well, first, it was Blackhand the Destroyer. After he was slain by Ogrin Doomhammer, he-”

“It’s him!” Rebecca laughed, and hugged Wyatt again. 

He hugged her back. 

Yes…he was Wyatt…wasn’t he? Wyatt Costa-Brown…

Images of a slain human at his feet. Red blood. Taking the memories…

No, no, that was just a nightmare. He was Wyatt. He was real.

Wasn’t he? 

Author’s Note: 

The Abyss will always grant power. 

But those who receive it will not be those who requested it.