a Prologue

The Heroes of Humanity emerged onto the rooftop of the great tower, prepared to face the man who would be Demon Lord. To the horizon in every direction, quiet under the crucible of high noon, spread the Tranquility Ocean. The towertop was the length of a soccerfield, its surface black stone, rude and unworked. Where the heroes stood was like the well of an amphitheater, tiered terraces rising before them to the far end of the towertop where a black throne was carved from the stone.

Upon which the would-be Demon Lord sat.

“I’m impressed.” The Demon Lord’s voice carried across the towertop as though he stood only meters away. “How did you manage to cross to here, the exact spot furthest from any land, without my detection enchantments recognizing you?”

Zenith Niall, the Guitarist, stepped forward, bolero hat pushed back, silver and topaz hatband gleaming under the sun. “You’re not as all-powerful as you think you are, Robert.”

The man stood from his throne abruptly and the Tranquility Ocean shifted, rippled, shuddered. “My name is the Demon Lord.” His voice held a hint of plaintive frustration, but also a timber that might crack the world.

Zenith looked around at her compatriots: Rion the Athlete, Mary the Speedster, and Brook the Dancer. The four Heroes of Humanity. Or, at least, that’s what they’d been told.

“What are we waiting for?” Mary said, bouncing from foot to foot, tracers of heat sparking off her shoulders.

Rion shrugged. Brook nodded.

Zenith turned back to the man who’d terrorized the world over the past months, killing off superheroes and supervillains alike, collecting their powers for his own, building this massive tower in the middle of the ocean, and declaring any who stood up to him a target for annihilation. He’d destroyed the Hall of the Mountain King with a blast of energy he called the Eye of Judgment. Zenith moved her left hand out and slightly up, fingers curled as through gripping the neck of a guitar.

“Robert Lackey.” Zenith’s voice sprang like a power chord across the towertop. “This is your only warning. Stand down.”

With a snarl, the Demon Lord pointed and a host of goblinoid creatures boiled from the stark shadows cast by the midday sun on the rough stone. The goblins were short and squat with squashed features and long arms, needle teeth and dirty claws. They scrabbled and clawed over the rough obsidian stone, a boiling army rushing for the Heroes of Humanity.

Mary Ruben, the Speedster, was first to meet them. Her power was speed and, with careful application, it was a weapon as well. Her morphcloth uniform, adapted to her needs, did not shred with the friction of her movement against air resistance. Her body, though more resilient than most, and capable of accelerated healing, was still vulnerable to injury from high-speed impact. So, though the summoned goblinoids seemed almost frozen to her enhanced perceptions, she hurtled amongst them carefully, delicately.

She chose one who was mid-stride, put her palms against its shoulder, and pressed down. The creature’s momentum resisted at first, not diverted on a whim, but she leaned into her power and pressed consistently, patiently, implacably, and soon enough the creature’s trajectory changed. Its momentum would now carry it into the rough rock of the towertop floor.

What had felt like a few minutes to her would be a blink of nothing to everyone else. On she went like this, focusing on those near the front in hopes that their fall would impede the horde behind. She focused on those whose balance was off, footing uncertain.

Rion Stoutarm, the Athlete, knew to wait. He knew Mary was the initial salvo. His mother had often told him “Haste is slow and patience is fast.” In the face of the charging goblinoids, he kept his footing solid and waited for the moment to act. Traceries of violet heat and pink lightning zipped across the front of the goblinoid horde sending fully half of them careening into the ground and each other. The whole horde of them stumbled and slowed, though they didn’t stop. Rion grinned, appreciating just how effective a careful speedster could be.

Running, jumping, climbing, swimming, Rion had excelled at all of it when he was young. Every athletic competition, individual or team, no matter the position his coaches had assigned him, Rion had excelled. From throwing to team tactics to ball handling on field or court or ice, Rion was consistently exceptional. It wasn't until college, when he started breaking every record, that he realized he was a superpowered parahuman and removed himself from official competition. It had become unfair and unfun.

The stumbling horde recovered and rushed forward, finding he was the only obvious target. Still, Rion waited. He would be their rock, their anchor, the towering shield against an enemy who could only barely scratch him. He would tank the hits and wreak havoc, allowing his fellows to do their work at a safe distance. Like waiting for the starter's gun, Rion felt himself shiver in anticipation.

When he was young, he hadn't participated in martial competition. He hadn't wanted to hurt anyone. Once he'd joined The Union, Rion had been put through a schedule of martial arts training and he'd found himself as competent with that form of athleticism as any other.

Then the goblins were upon him.

When Mary sprang forward, Brook Julius, the Dancer leapt back.

They could feel the water within and around them, moving, drifting, undulating. It was power over water, in all its forms, that had given Brook their name, the Dancer. It allowed them to move with grace unlike any other. Brook alighted upon a raised portion of the rough-hewn towertop. They ignored the charging goblinoid horde, instead focusing on the man at the far end, sitting on his self-made throne.

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Brook was certain the man who called himself Demon Lord had raised this false island in the middle of the ocean to protect and isolate himself. For Brook, it was a boon. They could feel the fathoms of power surrounding the speck of rock, and as they swayed, it swayed. They could feel the drifting clouds suffusing the atmosphere above, and as they spun, it spun. They could feel the water pumping through themselves, their allies, the golinoids, even the Demon Lord.

The Demon Lord, if rumor was to be believed, had acquired his vast repertoire of spells by killing other super-powered beings, absorbing their powers, and adapting them for his use. He'd acquired dozens of powers over the last several months, rising from unknown goon to calamitous threat.

The Demon Lord raised a hand. A beam of concentrated heat burst from his palm in a cracking staccato. He'd recently stolen the power from Ultra One, a many-powered hero, dead only a week. Brook felt the heat evaporating the moisture in the air long before it reached them. Ultra One had been far more proficient with the power and the Dancer had sparred with him on many occasions. It was barely any effort to dodge.

In response, she raised her arms and a trio of arrow-like projectiles coalesced from the ambient moisture. With a twirl and a sweep, she launched the arrows at the Demon Lord, but was unsurprised when they were batted aside before they even reached halfway to their target.

The Demon Lord stood and raised his other hand, firing a blast of cold, another of Ultra One's powers. The ambient moisture froze as the compressed air shot toward Brook. This attack, they met head on, dissipating the ice and diffusing what remained of the chill.

Idly, Brook wondered if the Demon Lord was simply taking the opportunity to play about with his new powers and felt a flash of anger, but let the emotion play through and about them, not letting it control them. Instead, they continued their dance. The ocean shifted, the clouds gathered, and the Demon Lord noticed the storm brewing. Brook smiled. They and their allies had come here knowing the Demon Lord was more powerful than them, knowing their part to play was taking and holding the Demon Lord's attention.

She summoned and fired another trio of arrows, as though she meant to distract him from the storm. And as the Demon Lord banished her arrows and began his countermeasures against the storm, Brook danced faster.

Zenith Niall, the Guitarist, felt a rhythm to the chaos of combat. It was a thrumming bass deep in her chest, a high staccato in search of a melody. She unslung her guitar from her back to her hands, a sunflower-yellow Flying V’58 powered by the magic in her fingertips and her command of sound. Her fingers flew and matched an improvised riff to the flow of combat: Rion’s anchored presence, Mary’s precision strikes, Brook’s patient brewing.

Zenith’s role was to boost her allies and undercut their foes. Her fingers found the melody weaving this way and that. A well-timed chord strummed at just the right frequency to counter the Demon Lord’s next spell. A blistering riff on the high strings sparked at the goblinoids, opening the way for Mary. A triumphant return to the melody shook the air of the towertop, staggering the Demon Lord back a step.

The power of her music reverberating through the air lifted Zenith from her feet. It was one of her favorite tricks, meant more to please crowds than defeat enemies, but she didn’t fight it. She let the air shimmer and shine, sparking with power. The Demon Lord glanced from her to Brook and back, then split his attacks between them.

Zenith let the music guide her, countering lightning bolts, aetheric missiles, and beams of elemental power. The sound of her magic turned the barrage aside with polish and panache born of years at practice.

And then she arrived.

Minerva Aegis – Shield of Civilization, Advisor to the Ages, Purple-eyed Prophet – stepped from the where she’d been to when she was needed. She was a short woman with pale hair pulled back in a simple tail, a pair of glasses upon her nose. She stood straight though her frame was thin and her face lined. Her eyes fairly glowed with purple light. In her left hand, she gripped an ironspike, carefully worked and polished to a shine. Above her raged a storm, flashing with lighting and howling with counterwinds.

The Heroes of Humanity had done their work. All that was left now was to drive home the spike. She lunged for the Demon Lord.

He saw her. How could he not? She was the woman with purple eyes, a figure of myth, legend, and folktale. He’d been so distracted by the heroes who’d come to face him that he hadn’t considered there might be a fifth. He’d never considered she’d be the Purple Prophet herself.

Distance melted like a summer afternoon, golden and gradual, fragile and fleeting in the space between seconds. For all his planning, all his power, the Demon Lord knew he was defeated. He had less than a moment. But even in that moment, he felt a flicker of confidence.

The Demon Lord had thought ahead.

Since the Last Great War, all manner of powers had emerged across the world in approximately point-zero-one-percent of the population. Some were bombastic and world-changing. Some were subtle and quiet. Robert Lackey’s was different. Robert’s power was to learn the powers of others by absorbing their life-force, that unique balance of body, mind, and soul.

The first time he’d done it had been at his great-grandmother’s bedside. She had only just died and he stood with his parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. No one noticed. She’d been one of the greatest superheroes in the world, a founding member of The Union, and when she breathed her last, Robert breathed it in. The power of carefully, complex planning; the power of contingency.

He’d told no one of his power.

He’d told no one of his plan for domination.

He’d told no one of his contingency should he be defeated. Then he’d hidden the details even from himself, spinning threads of magic this way and that, through time and circumstance, as a precaution. And as the Purple Prophet struck, the spike in her fist glowing with magic, that careful contingency took hold.

It sliced off a piece of his soul and shaped it into a homunculus, a creature of magic, will, and just a bit of substance. It created a portal. A sixteen-point star, a compass rose to point the way, a portal that would not open until specific conditions were met years from now, perhaps decades. Being unable to predict the conclusion of the spell meant no one else could either.

The homunculus tucked into the space between this side of the portal and that. The magic anchored in the past, then sprang forward, tugging at circumstance to manufacture each point of the sixteen-point star.

Finally, the moment concluded. The magical ironspike struck home. A tornado of whirling energy replaced the form of the Man Who Would be Demon Lord, and he died. But, somewhere between here and there, then and now, the first page and the last, a sliver of the Demon Lord’s soul, a mote of power and will, waited… waited… waited for the door marked with the compass rose.

A hero would act.

They always did.

Open the door, hero. Open the door.