ic Midnight Dynasty

[Avenger Assembled]

On the opposite wall, a face suddenly appeared, then seemed to lean backwards out of the frame to reveal its owner. With long black hair, brown eyes, and a muscular body, the nude man in the chair might have been handsome once - but even there, alive and breathing, he looked unhealthy as he settled back into the chair. His skin was sallow and his eyes deep in their sockets, his veins standing out black against his skin. "Hello," he smiled, and the inside of his mouth was black as well, as if he'd been chewing licorice - if licorice could writhe like maggots. "This is the final journal entry of Taddai Hendahwit, and the birth of..." He chuckled, a dry, hacking cough, and leaned back in his seat. "...someone new. After all these years of searching, after all the sacrifices I have made, I have found the gateway to der Schattenwelt. I don't care what that old fire-spirit said; I will open that gateway right here!" He pointed to his chest. "And I will become the embodiment of power! I will restore magic to this cold, dead world; I will BE magic!" He laughed. "No more sickness, no more lies, no more holding back. _I_ will be remembered as the greatest of my family, as the Hendahwit who dared reach out and break the very boundaries of the universe. Space, time, and magic itself will be finally be mine! Diary, I tell you this in the interests of history. One day my grandchildren will look on this, and they will know who it was that made them so special!"

 

He began chanting and gesturing, his body half-obscured by the table, and black, inky darkness like animate smoke began to rise out of the books on the table before him, slowly pooling up his body and pouring into his eyes, his mouth, his ears, his nose, every visible orifice on his body. His body darkened, turning darker and darker, and then finally a deeper darkness that seemed to drain all the light in the room for a long moment. He kept chanting, but his voice was cut off into a gagging, hideous wheeze as suddenly the inky darkness he had absorbed came erupting outwards again - as if his very soul was being torn out and given animate form, dropping from the mortal flesh like a butterfly erupting from a chrysalis. The all-too-familiar sight of the being that had come back in time to kill their parents slowly pooled up from the smoke like an old-fashioned picture developing. The white-eyed humanoid turned and looked at the 'camera', then turned and walked out of view. 

 

Showing, horribly, that Taddai Hendahwit was still alive! Unable to move, unable to do anything more than twitch in his seat, and silently move his lips "Nonono..." the future scion of their family, sat locked into his own paralyzed form until the playback ran out (after discovering the fast-forward button, they were able to skip ahead to the end), a full twenty-four hours later. 

 

- 

 

Meanwhile, the door to the 'chapel' opened, revealing a bizarre corridor beyond cast entirely in white enamel. Something bizarre stepped into the room with Daybreak, something that didn't seem to look at him at first - it was a humanoid figure, but blurry and translucent, all in black and white like a very old photograph. It said something in a language Daybreak couldn't speak, then raised a metal object and began scanning the room with it, first one side, and then the other. Within seconds, it was going to notice he was there! He did notice one familiar thing about the flickering phantom - there was no mistaking that black fedora...

[Electra]

Knightfall looked a little pale by the time the playback finished, swallowing convulsively a few times as they watched the living corpse sit in place and twitch. "Dubyateeff," she murmured as the screen shut down. "Guess the universe got a head start on punishing him for his crimes. What a nutbar." Shaking herself, she addressed her comm channel. "Daybreak, Hematite and I can hear you. I'm going to try and home in on your location with my comm signal. Do you need help?" She lifted her radio and took a few steps, watching the signal and hoping to find a clue.. 

[Gizmo]

"Ghhn. Can't say he didn't bring it on himself," Hematite agreed brusquely, though his gaze lingered a little longer on the corpse sitting in from of them. How had Taddai Hendahwit reached a point where reaching into der Schattenwelt had become not only an option but an obsession? He doubted there was anyone among the branching potential timelines of their family who didn't want to become stronger, more skilled but Knightfall was right. This had been madness. He was peripherally aware of Blackbird gathering and recording data but she remained silent as he took a moment with his brooding thoughts.

Hiding behind the chapel door, Daybreak caught a glimpse of the new arrival's hat and bit the tip of his tongue in momentary indecision. Letting out a silent breath, the young man quickly made up his mind, activating a beacon on his belt to allow his twin to find him sliding back one sleeve enough to reveal a wrist mounted computer. Switching on the device's translation functions, he stepped out of the shadows, shoulders squared and sledgehammer at the ready. "Alright, buddy, Mom's gonna be ticked I gave up the element of surprise but Dad'd be mad if I messed up a fine piece of haberdashery like that without asking where you got it first. How about some answers, huh?"

[Avenger Assembled]

The being turned on some central axis and Daybreak realized it was hovering in the air, the sound of its footfalls having come from some electrostatic discharge between the booted feet and the ground. When they were eye to eye with each other, Daybreak found himself confronted with something that looked very much like images he'd seen of his great-grandfather in costume. Not that this was a doppleganger of the first Midnight, rather, it was as if one of those rare black and white images had stepped off the wall, gained solid form, and begun probing the world. "Classified." It pointed a sepia-and-black glove at him. "Well out of era," it informed him in an accusing voice that he realized was a near-perfect copy of his father's. Eyes like black quartz, red leached of all color, looked at him, glancing briefly over his shoulder as his sister arrived.

 

"Both of you," it said to them both. "Mystery solved." Now there was satisfaction in the spectre's voice. "Company?" 

[Electra]

"Who are you?" Knightfall demanded of the strange new apparition, automatically raising her bo to a defensive position. She edged around the room towards her brother, keeping both eyes on the wispy intruder. "What are you doing here? What mystery have you solved?" 

 

On the other side of the portals, the remaining Hunter-Whites looked at each other as minutes passed and there was no response from the away team. "Come on, get the hell out of there," Erin muttered impatiently. "Don't make me come in there after you..." 

 

"You can't," Sojourner interrupted firmly. "It's too dangerous, you could destroy all our timelines simultaneously if something happened to one of you while the universes are in flux. Besides, it may be that the two of you are providing a magical anchor to this dimension. If you go through, the portals could pop loose on their own and strand everyone." 

 

"You know magical theory?" Erin asked with some surprise. 

 

"Enough to get by," Sojourner replied with a faint smile. "You never know what's going to come in handy." 

 

"Well if that's a magic portal, I don't think anybody who's gone through so far knows bip about magic," Tensile pointed out. "Maybe that's why they can't get out, they're waiting for a magician. Come on sis, we can help them out. Beats waiting!" Without so much as waiting for assent, he scooped up Sojourner and hopped through the nearest portal.

[Avenger Assembled]

The metal device in the other figure's hand beeped and it, he, nodded approvingly at whatever it was reading - something impossible to read for the uninitiated since it appeared to be a blank metal rod with a beeping light at one end. When Tensile and Sojourner made their appearances, stepping through the portals with a rippling effect that seemed to stretch the very stuff of air and space around them, it took a tentative step away from the assembled heroes. "Company. Worldlines coming together. Studies are finished." Carefully, it slipped the device back onto its belt. "Overstayed welcome. Do not overstay yours. Loop is closing. Close it first." 

[Gizmo]

"Well that is some mystic mumbo-jumbo," Daybreak observed with a note of annoyance, not lowering his hammer. "At least when Dad does the Voice you can still usually tell what he's talking about."

Following behind Knightfall as she led the way toward her twin, Hematite gave Sojourner and Tensile an exasperated gesture as they appeared. "Really?! Did anybody stay to watch-- oh, frell." Looking at the rows of mismatched caskets and urns, the masked time traveler took a silent moment to process what he was seeing. "Then this wasn't his first stop... Listen, everybody, it's not enough to just stop Hendahwit from getting our parents. I mean, these are..." He made an awkward motion with one hand to take in the remains. "They're family, too, yeah?"

"Yeah! ...who's Hendahwit?" Daybreak whispered to Knightfall, eyes darting between her and the terse visitor in the fedora.

[Electra]

"The assprancer who started this whole thing, the freaky poison guy," Knightfall whispered back. "He was trying to open a portal to some dark mystic power and it ate him, like always happens, and spit out the creature we saw. Way not to think ahead, right?" She dug an elbow into Daybreak's ribs. "Probably one of your descendants." She looked around, taking in the rows of caskets. "Are we sure this guy actually killed all these folks? It kind of looks like a creepy family mausoleum or something. Like look at these nameplates, some of these people lived to be real old. And some of these caskets look like they actually got dug up out of the ground. It's like maybe he went around stealing dead bodies before he realized he could make his own." 

[Avenger Assembled]

For all that Tensile was the one among their number most familiar with high technology, this place baffled him - he could tell intellectually it was a place of great advancement, perhaps equal to some of the Furion communities he'd visited. But it was also a place that had gone in a very different direction, thus making it (strangely enough) even more alien to him than it was to the people from less advanced timelines. This was a place, he could tell, where things could go wrong indeed if the wrong button was pressed or the wrong word spoken. 

 

In between one thought and the next, the mysterious Midnight of the very far future - simply disappeared. 

 

Meanwhile, while her cousins sorted through the mystery in the crypt, Sojourner found the key to the whole business - or something close to it, anyway. The late Hendawhit had been something of a student of the Cosmic Coil in his magical research, and sorting through his papers she found the usual guides to various forbidden realms that anyone who knew anything about magic were familiar with - the Hellworlds, the Dark Dimensions, the Netherworlds, the Terminus...but from the margins of the texts, she was able to put something together. Hendawhit had built a backdoor into his casting - a safety device that he hadn't put into place before his death "bekase auf da blud rekwiremants", but one that with so many Hunter-Whites together she could herself cast.

 

It would pull this section of the Cosmic Coil out and discard it, undoing most of what had happened here since just after Hendawhit had begun casting his first spells and even before his death. If she cast it right, and if her siblings joined her in this; they could not only save Hendawhit from his own hubris, but far, far more importantly - she could save her parents. And everybody else. 

[Electra]

"All of you, look at this," Sojourner ordered, her voice uncharacteristically harsh. "I think this is it, this is our key." She laid out the specifics of the spell in broad strokes, pointing to the various aspects and variables of the spell. "We'll need blood from all of us, maybe Grandfather too, and a very large casting circle. We need to go back." 

 

Knightfall studied the spell, obviously torn between hope and worry. "But... this spell will change the past, won't it? Unwrite our timelines? What if we cause a paradox and completely bork ourselves out of existence?" 

 

"If we haven't borked ourselves by now, anything we do from here on out is unlikely to change that," Tensile pointed out, his cheer slightly edged with nerves. "That's the only reason we're around at all, we inherited Mom's resistance to changes in the timestream." 

 

"There's also paradox protection built into the spell," Sojourner added. "We'll actually be lifting ourselves clear of the timestream for a little while, to give us the metaphysical leverage necessary to move the coil." 

 

"Now that sounds dangerous," Tensile commented. 

 

"It is," Sojourner admitted. "And I'm not entirely sure about the long-term effects on any of us. The consequences could be unpredictable, and we'd just have to hope for the best." She looked around at the others, seeking consensus.  

[Gizmo]

"I lack sufficient data to accurate predict the likelihood of success," Blackbird chimed in from over Hematite's shoulder, her hologram looking more curious than worried about the situation.

Her super-strong partner made a flat sound in the back of his throat. "Hey, I didn't come back in time just to frell around when things got chancy," he insisted, crossing his arms over his chest before pausing and working his jaw like something tasted sour in his mouth. "Magic, though. Blood magic. That's how Hendahwit started this whole swarbage storm."

"Then, um, it kinda makes sense that that would be the way to fix it, too, right?" Mystery suggested softly from his left, scrunching her shoulders together as if she was less sure of the logic now that she'd spoken aloud.

"Gyah, Mysty! How long have you been there?!" Daybreak exclaimed, stopping just short of jumping backward from where he was looking over his twin's shoulder at the papers Sojourner had found.

The youngest time traveler looked a little sheepish and glance down at her boots. "Um. A while? I thought maybe it would be good if the black and white Midnight didn't see me? I couldn't read his mind."

"Interesting," Blackbird repeated, considering the petite telepath.

"Dad taught me every trick he knew," Mystery explained, one corner of her mouth twitching in a hint of a smile. "Including some tricks I don't think he's come up with yet."
 

*****

 

Back on the other side of the stain-like rifts in the air, Trevor looked about the Hunter Estate's grounds eyes narrowing behind his mask as he realized he'd been left by himself. "...hn. All went in, didn't they?" he asked Erin over their private comlink channel.

[Electra]

"Yep," Erin confirmed, her sigh of resignation audible over the comm channel. "I guess we'd better go after-" Her words were cut off as she looked through the window to see all their wayward descendants popping out one at a time onto the lawn. "Never mind." 

 

She jumped out the already-broken window to land next to the returnees, looking them all over for signs of damage. "Well?" 

 

"It was... THE FUTURE," Tensile intoned in his best vid-announcer voice. Erin gave him a singularly unimpressed look. "No, really. The very far future, way far ahead of when any of us come from. I couldn't even make sense of it." 

 

"We saw a clip of the idiot who started this whole thing, playing with dark magic and screwing up the timestream. He came to a bad end, but not nearly soon enough. Sojourner says we can fix it, though!" 

 

"We're going to need sterilized knives and a large bowl to start with," Sojourner told Wander. "You probably don't have the ritual circle scribed in the third-floor ballroom yet?" 

[Gizmo]

"...what," Trevor intoned flatly, unfastening his mask and moving to stand next to Erin, giving the assembled time-travelers a hard look.

"It's fine! It's fine," Daybreak jumped in to assure his, the way the young man mimed brushing away any concerns failing to reassure anyone. "It's just, y'know, it's a blood thing, I guess? ...Sojourner explained it better earlier."

There was a faint hiss as Hematite's suit depressurized. "Look, nobody else has a better plan. Let's just get this done." He looked over to the pile of rubble that had once been a fountain. "I don't like pushing our luck."

"Um, what else do you need?" Mystery asked Sojourner with a shy bob of her head, holding up a stainless steel bowl in one hand and a sealed kit of surgical scalpels in the other, retrieved from the manor's infirmary while the others had been discussing.

Exchanging a look with Erin, Trevor turned to the stern, black haired gunslinger. "Tell us what to do." He was no expert in ritual magic himself but if someone raised by a version of him had taken up the craft he doubted she would have settled for anything less than genuine expertise.

[Electra]

"Um, well the ritual circle has to come first," Sojourner replied, looking down at the notes she'd brought along. "I'd use a trowel and inscribe it outside, but it's dark-"

 

"And snowing," Tensile chimed in.

 

"And cold as hell," Knightfall added helpfully. "Can we please go inside?" 

 

"-so the garage is probably going to be the best place, and easiest to clean up. We'll need some black paint and eight candles, one for each of us. Nine if Great-Grandfather will participate as well. That would be good, nine is a mystically significant number. And we need a representation of time, a clock, a calendar, an hourglass even, so long as it works and measures time." 

 

"We've got all of that," Erin replied, "and I'm pretty sure Travis won't mind joining in on the fun. Let's get started before these holes get any bigger." 

 

The whole gang trooped into the big, bright warm garage and began to make preparations. Under Sojourner's guidance, the ritual circle was quickly painted down onto the garage floor, about as wide around as a tetherball pitch, with the candles spaced around it at equal distances. Erin had no idea what all the symbols meant, but her older-than-her daughter seemed entirely confident in what she was doing. The big black and white schoolroom clock from the garage wall sat in the middle of the circle, ticking audibly against the floor. 

 

"All right, now everyone adds a little blood into the bowl," Sojourner explained, demonstrating with her own hand and a neat slice at the base of her thumb. "Doesn't have to be too much, just so that there's enough all together to drip it around the circle. Once you've bled, go stand behind one of the candles."

 

She passed the bowl to Erin, who took a clean knife and mimicked the cut on herself, then repeated it twice more before blood actually flowed out. Erin gave the destroyed knife a disgusted look, then passed the vessel to Tensile, who grimaced but retraced enough of his armor to make the cut on shockingly white skin, then gave it to Knightfall, who turned a little green and passed the knife to Daybreak. "You do it." 
 

[Gizmo]

Daybreak pulled a less than enthused expression of his own but took the scalpel from his sister all the same. "Maaaaan. Fine, but you owe me one." With some hesitation he pricked the end of her thumb as she held it over the bowl. Knightfall hissed sharply, her eyes quickly filling in with crimson and black as blood several shades too dark and considerably too viscous to be quite normal dribbled into the growing pool. Her twin retrieved the next knife from the package of medical supplies and added his own contribution to the vessel, unsurprisingly with the same odd characteristics as that of his sibling.

Hematite took the bowl next, the unmasked strongman holding one glove between his teeth as he pressed just as hard as Erin to pierce his own superhumanly tough skin. He grumbled as the first cut failed to bleed at all, refusing to meet anyone's eyes until he'd found a spot on his palm closer to a vein with Blackbird's help. Once he did, the blood ran easily and thinly from the cut in direct contrast to the twins', leaving him to produce a small bandage from his belt before replacing his glove. "Just... make sure to dispose of that, alright?" he grunted as he added his knife to the pile of discards.

Travis was next in line, placing the bowl on a nearby workbench as he supported himself with his cane. Redbird had brought the Night Cycle up to the garage and resumed a more mundane appearance for the vehicle, not wanting to miss the conclusion of the bizarre night. Trevor helped his grandfather with the scalpel, the younger man's lips pressed into a thin, serious line as he looked carefully between the pinprick and Travis' face, worried about his discomfort. "Old, not made of paper," Travis reminded him dryly, giving his hand a shake to get a few more drops out and into the bowl before walking slowly but steadily to stand behind one of the candles.

With a flat grunt in response, Trevor went next, cutting a precise line exactly as Sojourner had, wisps of inky black mist rising from the wound as soon as the skin was broken. The blood that dripped out was swirling with the same black colouration and continued to smoke as it fell into the bowl along with the collected offerings. Mystery stood a little straighter as she watched, setting her jaw and taking the vessel when Trevor offered it to her. The youngest time traveler cut her hand with a wince, revealing the same midnight mist-infused plasma as her father, leaving a pair of slowly dissipating clouds floating toward the garage ceiling as she brought the bowl back over to Sojourner. "Is that enough?"

[Avenger Assembled]

Sojourner walked the perimeter of the ritual circle, tracing out a circumference that included her, her maybe-siblings, her mother, father, and great-grandfather - and then herself took a position in the center of the circle, knife held high. None of the other heroes knew the language she chanted in, some dark tongue that fused English, Greek, Latin, and what was almost certainly a dialect of Lor - but the guttural words burst from her throat with a fervent, nearly throbbing intensity, as if they were being born. Suddenly the air rippled as Sojourner's eyes glowed a familiar black - and over their heads, a circle formed in the air to match the bloody one on the floor. This one throbbed and wavered with animal intensity, but Sojourner's chanting went on. 

 

As she did so, the blood at their feet began to ripple and glow, black and red mingling together with a strange, eerie light matched by the circle above - until the very stuff of reality seemed to give way as they watched! Inside the circle over their heads, all-too-familiar scenes played all over again; the rotting, the changing, the painful deaths of their beloved parents; until suddenly those scenes ran in reverse, then resumed as normal with no sign of the previous carnage! The scenes rolled backwards, faster and faster, from the most recent deaths (which turned out to be, from a quick glimpse, Mystery's parents) all the way to Tensile's, and they had a quick glimpse of Hendahwit at his ritual table; until with a sudden great infrablack flash, the circle flared, and vanished! 

 

Just as the circle disappeared, though, a body dropped right out through the closing magical passageway, landing right at their feet. Naked, semi-conscious, and looking decidedly unhealthy, it was Taddai Hendahwit himself! 

[Electra]

Everyone just stared for a moment at the naked man gasping in the middle of the ritual circle like a giant landed fish. Erin looked at Sojourner, wondering if that was supposed to be part of it, but she looked just as confused as anyone else. The circle was quiescent now, the blood burnt away to leave only black paint and candlewax on the floor, bright flourescent lights utterly mundane after the glow of magic. Even the clock in the center of the circle was silent, its face cracked down the center. 

 

Knightfall was the first one to break the general paralysis. "That's him! He's the one who did the magic!" Racing into the middle of the circle, she delivered a nasty kick straight to the ribs of the prone man. "That's for my mom and dad, you son of a bitch!" 

[Gizmo]

"Jebus, Nightie, don't kick the dead guy!" Daybreak admonished, rushing into the circle himself to grab his twin around the arms in a bear hug from behind, though they were evenly matched enough that he doubted he'd really be able to pull her back if she genuinely didn't want him to. "Or... mostly dead? Was that supposed to happen?"

"The failsafe ritual was designed by Hendahwit," Blackbird reminded the group, equally unbothered by the nude man's sudden arrival and Knightfall's angry reaction. "Evidence suggests he did so in a way that would provide opportunity for his own survival."

Hematite made a face, having a hard time not remembering the grisly video diary as he watched the barely aware Hendahwit. "So... what? The shadow thing just never existed now? We're good?"

Travis made a sound in the back of his throat, tapping his cane against the garage floor in a syncopated rhythm as he considered. "Perhaps its an old man's pessimism, but seems too easy."

Trevor, meanwhile, retrieved a tarp from atop one the half-disassembled cars resting nearby and brought it over to give their newest arrival some small measure of modesty. "Send him back, may just try again."

The youngest of the group tore her eyes away from the place where the floating images had shown all of their timelines and stepped cautiously over to stand beside Sojourner. "Um, are you okay? That seemed like a lot of work, just now, with, I mean, with the chanting and... and everything?" Mystery chewed on the corner of her lip, hoping she wasn't insulting the raven haired gunslinger's fortitude inadvertently.

[Electra]

"I'm fine." Sojourner's eyes, now brown again, were focused on the prone figure of Hendahwit in the center of the circle. She hadn't so much as flinched when Knightfall kicked him, merely scuffed a foot to break the ritual circle ahead of the younger woman's charge. "A little tired," she admitted. "I wasn't prepared for a physical teleportation. He must've planned to use it as an escape route all along if things went wrong." She glanced over at Mystery. "You all right?" 

 

In the center of the circle, Knightfall struggled against her brother's hold, but it was a halfhearted effort, complicated by the tears sliding under her mask and down her face. "You saw it, Hank! You saw what he did! He killed Mom and Dad, over and over again, and for what? For magical  powers? He deserves worse!" She aimed another kick at Hendahwit, this one more southerly, but couldn't quite connect without breaking Daybreak's grasp first. 

 

"Maybe he deserves it," Erin cut in, stepping into the circle and putting herself between the tarp-covered villain and the enraged girl. "But we're not going to give it to him. We're better than that. Heroes don't kick the bad guys when they're down," and here she quirked a rueful grin, "no matter how much we might want to." 

 

"If we can't send him back, what do we do with him?" Tensile asked the room at large as he leaned back comfortably against the wall. "I can't take him home with me, my wife laid down a strict no-pets policy after the thing with the mini-dragon."

 

"You have a wife?" Erin repeated, at the same time Sojourner asked "You have a dragon?" 

 

"Well not anymore," Tensile replied, then added hastily, "to the dragon thing, I mean. Sure I got a wife, and more." He smirked at Erin. "But I didn't think you'd appreciate me showing up and calling you Grandma." 

 

Erin opened and closed her mouth a few times before speaking. "You're probably right," she finally allowed. 

[Avenger Assembled]

Hendawhit's eyes snapped open suddenly and he gasped, his hands coming up from beneath the tarp to clutch at his throat with wide eyes. His black-stained veins bulged wide with effort as he took deep, agonized breaths that rattled in his throat. "Vapooor..." he begged in an accented voice that sounded like nothing they'd ever heard before, his words flavored by uncounted millennia between them. When he realized where he was, or perhaps when, his eyes suddenly went even wider, until it looked like his body was about to explode from the strain behind his eyes. "Familiae! Hendawhit familae!" His terror, and his weakness, was obvious, his bare feet drumming into the floor beneath his bare body. "Vapor wrang! Vapor wrang! Daulaz!"

[Gizmo]

"Suffocating," Trevor deduced between laboured breaths from Hendawhit even if he couldn't entirely parse the far future time-traveler's language. What their accidental guest did need in his atmosphere took a moment longer to reason out. It couldn't have been anything too bizarre or his various could-be children wouldn't have been able to breathe themselves when they'd stepped through the oily rifts into Hendawhit's version of the manor. Perhaps, then, it wasn't a question of what he needed in the air but of what he needed removed. Producing a collapsible breath mask from his belt and affixing it to the panicking old man's nose and mouth, the dark haired detective attached a capsule of compressed pure oxygen.

At some point Daybreak's restraining hold around Knightfall turned into more of a mutually supportive hug. "But we did it, Hope. We won and we fixed it, yeah?" It was fairly clear he was trying to convince himself as much as his twin sister. "Whatever happens, we did it."

[Avenger Assembled]

Hendawhit took deep, sucking breaths at the oxygen, nearly hyperventilating, but after a few anxious moments stabilized with Trevor's help. Still wearing only the tarp and pressing the mask to his face, he looked around at all the people above him, obviously sensing the simmering hostility still bubbling-hot among his victims and their families. Tentatively, he ventured a question. "Hier. I am hier in realis, wit Hendawhits. Baeddel. It must have been baeddel, It was...bad?" he said, as if carefully picking out half-forgotten words. "Spell faillered. Mistaka." 

[Electra]

"Of course it was bad, you nitwit!" Knightfall exclaimed, only partially calmed by her twin's embrace. "You tried to channel the Schadenfreude-" 

 

"Der Schattenwelt," Sojourner corrected quietly. 

 

"Whatever, you tried to channel big evil magic and didn't expect it to blow up in your face? Didn't you ever go to school? That's like the first lesson they teach at Claremont, don't mess with evil to try and get more powerful!" Knightfall glared. "You turned into some kind of evil monster and started killing off your ancestors in every timeline you could reach. You're lucky you didn't explode from paradox before we stopped you." 

[Avenger Assembled]

"Amnesia for all of dat. Imaginarius temporus. It was, it is, no longer. All live that died, all undone dat done. But faillesauf...failled." He rubbed his eyes and said, "In tima min," a date none of them knew, and that he didn't seem interested in sharing, "Live alone I in historia hus of Hendawhit - of familie fought for just and venger year after year, generare after generare with poeir terribilis and gross. I wanted...I wanted day. But ziek - ziek all moin years, day would woirk on someone like mich...so I tried to give myself power on my own." He looked away. "I'm...zorry. I made mistaka. Hide my cors away from Hendawhit soil. Cannot be found by later Hendawhits. Paradox."

[Gizmo]

"Not killing you. Idiot." Trevor looked like he dearly wanted to sock Hendawhit in the jaw but he simply stood and towered over the pathetic, dejected would-be sorcerer, folding his arms. The harsh lights of the garage reflected in the ruby rings of his eyes like smouldering embers. "Get up. Can't make amends if you're dead." Though he did not raise his voice the instruction carried the implicit weight of an unquestionable order. He made no move to help Hendawhit to his feet.

Travis walked over to stand beside his grandson with a nearly identical expression, cane tapping against the floor with each step. "Who in blackest blazes said you needed superpowers to do justice?" he demanded in a voice that could have snuffed an open flame with its chill. "Shortcuts? Excuses? Look at yourself. Still expecting an easy way out. There's more iron in your blood than that."