Danny awoke slowly, his head feeling like he'd gone on a bender the likes of which he hadn't gone on for years, not since graduating college at least.
He opened his eyes to a grey sky and a black sun. He blinked, and stood up, finding that he was laying on his back in a grass field, except the grass was just as grey as the sky, and as his hands brushed against it, it broke apart, every blade shattering into pieces that promptly dissipated into nothingness. The same happened wherever his slippers-clad feet touched the grass, leaving footprint that vanished the moment he stopped looking at them : if he so much as blinked, the strange grass reappeared.
He felt cold, and very, very alone. For a moment, it was all he could do to simply stand here and breathe the odourless air as his headache slowly faded and his mind pieced together what had happened to him, scattered memories slowy coming back together.
Taylor, the thought surged to the forefront of his mind, unbidden, and the name of his daughter was enough to snap him out of his stupor, and he whirled around, looking feverishly in every direction for any sign of her.
The plain of grey grass stretched out in all directions to a horizon that was a straight line instead of the curve it should have been. The only thing of note he could see was a medieval castle, directly behind him from the way he'd first stood up.
Wait. He touched his face, and indeed, he wasn't wearing his glasses, which were still on the bedside table in his room. Yet he could see the castle in the distance clearly, in a way he hadn't been able to since he was a teenager. He looked back at the castle, and now it was blurry, like it should be. There was something weird going on here, or rather something else weird going on.
"Focus," he told himself, but even his own voice sounded strange, almost as if he were underwater.
"Alright," he muttered. "I get it. I'm not in Kansas anymore."
Now that he remembered what had happened – Taylor's scream, his rush to her room, the black tentacles everywhere, the arms which had opened a path for him – he was able to start piecing together a vague idea of what had happened. The most logical explanation he could think of was that his daughter was Lasombra, the famous cape who'd been making so many waves in the Bay lately.
Taylor was Lasombra. Taylor was Lasombra. Taylor was Lasombra. The cape who had taken down Lung and the Empire, who had … shit, Lasombra was supposed to be involved in Coil's death when his underground base had collapsed, wasn't he ? His daughter had been involved in the death of someone, even if it had been a supervillain, and he hadn't been there for her.
Just like he hadn't been here for her when she'd Triggered. He'd heard enough stories about the ways parahumans suddenly developed their abilities to know it was never easy, no matter what the PRT-sponsored comic books might claim, so she'd probably gained these powers when those absolute bitches at Winslow had tried to stuck her in her locker.
Part of him was sad that she hadn't told him about it, while another part couldn't help but be proud of how she'd helped clean up the city, but he firmly ignored both and thought back to what had happened when he'd barged into her room. From what he'd heard, Lasombra had the power to summon tentacles like the ones he'd seen : it was how he'd dealt with Oni Lee back when he'd first appeared on the scene. So, it looked like Taylor had lost control of her powers somehow, which had led to him (and presumably her) being dragged … here. The reason why didn't matter right now : all that mattered was finding her and getting her safely home. There were stories about some capes being able to access other dimensions; Professor Haywire was the most infamous, but he'd heard about others whose powers involved accessing smaller dimensional pockets … or something like it, he wasn't sure where the line between reality and comic book writing was. He'd never been too interested in capes beyond what an everyday citizen needed to know, though he'd a suspicion that would change that today.
For lack of a better direction, he started walking toward the castle. After a few steps, a road suddenly appeared under his feet; a few moments later, he arrived at the edge of a forest that hadn't been here before. The trees were as unnatural as the grass : up close, he could see that they were made of black stone, from the roots to the leaves. Hesitantly, he plucked one leaf off a low branch; just like the grass, it immediately fell into dust.
There was a path of black dirt leading into the woods, so Danny followed it. The forest felt even more unnatural than the plains : more than once, he swore he could see motion in the corner of his eye, but whenever he turned his head, there was nothing but more black trees, even though every instinct he possessed told him he was being watched. The complete absence of sound other than his own footsteps made the situation even more surreal; it had been some time since he had gone walking through the woods, but he still knew they were never that quiet.
Still, he had no other choice, so he kept walking, until he eventually emerged out of the forest. The castle was much closer now, but of more immediate concern was the immense wolf that was resting on the road, and which, despite being just as black as everything else in this strange reality, was perfectly visible.
The beast raised her head (somehow, Danny knew she was a female, though he couldn't have explained how he knew it) toward Danny, staring at him with pure black eyes. He stamped down the instinctive panic that came from being so close to so large a predator, and remembered seeing something about this on the news, about a great black wolf which had helped take down the Empire.
Nothing for it. He swallowed, and began to speak, as calmly as he could manage under the circumstances :
"You're … Marchosias, right ? Lasombra's, no, Taylor's wolf ?"
The beast lowered her head as if in approval, and made a sound between a whine and a growl. Danny took it to mean agreement, mostly because he didn't want to think about the alternative.
"Do you know where she is ?" he asked.
The wolf turned toward the castle and inclined her head.
"Of course," Danny sighed. "Well, Marchosias, I'm Taylor's father, and it looks to me that she needs help. I'm going into that castle to find her. Are you coming with me ?"
The wolf didn't reply, but slowly rose to her full, terrifying height, and fell in next to him.
"Good enough," he muttered, and resumed walking.
Soon, he and his canine companion stood before the castle's door. They were unbarred and unmanned, which only made Danny more cautious. There was something about the fortress that radiated malice, even compared to the rest of this dark world. Looking at the doors, he saw that there wasn't any locking mechanism : it was as if whoever had built this place didn't believe anyone would ever attack it with an army.
He passed through the gates and found himself in a long corridor, lined with torches that burned with the same black fire as the sun. The floor was covered in thick, expertly woven carpets of black and white fabric.
After the fifth right-turn, Danny eventually realized that the layout of this place didn't make any damn sense. The corridor he was walking down should have looped back on itself, but that hadn't happened. He still hadn't seen a single door or passageway branching off the corridor : the longer he was here, wherever 'here' was, the more dream-like it seemed. But whose dream ? That was the question.
Marchosias was still advancing, so Danny assumed this was normal and pressed on. Eight turns later (each and every one of them to the right), they finally approached an actual room. Danny stopped at the threshold and took a good look.
The room was large and circular, with a domed ceiling that displayed a painting of what Danny could only identify as the mythical Flood, except instead of showing Noah's Ark, it showed humanoid figures that only bore a passing resemblance to men and women drowning in the water, while a black sun shone overhead. The painting was beautiful in a terrifying, haunting way, and it took an effort of will for Danny to look away and at the rest of the room.
The walls were covered in weapons : axes, spears, maces and swords. None of them looked decorative, and just looking at them, Danny had a feeling each and every one of them had been used for killing. But it was the figures which occupied the room which concerned him most. There were dozens of them, all of them made of shadows – but unlike the descriptions of Lasombra he'd read, they were insubstantial things, with two blazing red lights where their eyes should be.
None of them appeared to have noticed him, and he realized that the figures were speaking, a babble of hushed, fearful whispers. He strained his ear to listen :
"Must be careful, must not show weakness …"
"Thirsty, so thirsty …"
"Keep smiling, keep smiling, keep smiling, keep smiling …"
"They are all jealous, all plotting to kill me, I know it …"
"Does he know ? Has he found out ? Did they betray me, or did he read my mind without I noticing ?"
"Have to stand straight; can't take another beating from sire …"
"Mine; mine; mine; it will all be mine …"
"I am the Dark Angel of God's vengeance, I am the Black Shepherd, I am the Stalking Doom let loose upon the unworthy …"
"So dark, so dark, can't see anything, they are all around me, I know they are …"
"He killed them all, I'll make him pay, I swear on the blood of Caine …"
On and on it went. It was hard to be sure, but Danny felt that each figure was repeating itself endlessly. Watching one of them closely, he found that the same was true for their route through the room : each of them was following into its own footsteps, over and over again.
Though he had no desire to step into that room, Danny knew he had to. Between the moving shadows, he could see another archway on the other side. His choices were to go back the way he had come, or risk entering the room full of whispering shades.
That was no choice at all. Danny took a cautious step forward, and couldn't stop himself from yelping as immediately, the shadows all stopped in their tracks, and turned their faceless heads toward the pair.
"BLOOD !" they screamed, now united in an inhuman chorus. "BLOOD ! BLOOD !"
They charged toward him, hands held out in front of them. Before Danny could do anything, Marchosias growled and leapt into the horde, her fangs and teeth ripping them to pieces – but there were a lot of them, and none of them seemed scared of the demon-wolf in their midst. They fell upon the wolf, punching and tearing at her fur but doing little damage. A few, however, moved around the melee and kept going for Danny.
The first shadow reached out for Danny with its claws. Over his years at the Docks, Danny had been in his share of scrapes, but none of them had involved any of this supernatural business.
Thankfully, before the creature could touch him, Danny did … something, and shadow arms erupted from the floor, just like the ones which had appeared in Taylor's room and struggled with the tentacles that had blocked his path. They grasped at the creature's limbs and held it in place, and when the other shadows tried to move around it, more appeared and immobilized them.
Danny realized that he was the one who was doing this. He just hadn't realized it before, but it felt … incredibly natural, like moving his own arms. He'd heard that most parahuman powers were like this, which was apparently one of the main arguments on the 'intelligent design' side of the eternal debate on their origin.
Somehow, he had gained parahuman powers while trying to rescue his daughter from whatever it was that had been happening in her room. And that still hadn't been enough to get to her on time.
The thought made him lose concentration for a fraction of a second, and that was enough for one of the shadows to reach him. Its claws raked his chest, and he cried out. There was pain, and cold, and the sensation of some vital part of him diminishing, but no blood, no torn skin and muscle.
He fell back, and hit the ground, hard. As he scrambled to his feet, ignoring the new pain in his back (which was nothing compared to the one in his front), his right hand closed around something, and he brought it up between him and the advancing monster on instinct.
That turned out to be an excellent idea, as the thing he'd grasped was the hilt of a sword that had fallen from the display on the wall when Marchosias had thrown another shadow-thing against it. The monster impaled itself on the blade, pushing all the way through until it almost touched Danny. Then it realized it was dead, and fell apart just like the ones the wolf was ripping to pieces.
Danny rose to his feet, leaning on the sword for support, and looked at the half-dozen shadows held in place by the dark arms. He took a deep breath, twisted, and they all fell apart too. Turning his attention to where Marchosias was still fighting the bulk of the horde, he focused, and started picking off the shadows at the edge of the pack, crushing them within the embrace of the black arms.
Soon, the last shadow disappeared, its head crushed between Marchosias' jaws. For several long seconds, the wolf stood there; by all rights, her chest should have been heaving with effort, but it wasn't. In fact, now that Danny thought about it, he realized that he hadn't seen Marchosias breathe at any point.
He grimaced as the pain in his chest suddenly flared up, but forced himself to stay on his feet and take deep, steady breaths. The pain diminished with each one, until it had faded enough that he could ignore it. When he opened his eyes again, he saw that Marchosias was staring at him, her head cocked to the side as if in puzzlement.
"I'm fine," he told the wolf, only half-lying. "Let's continue."
The archway on the other side of the room led into another physics-defying corridor, except this one turned left instead of right. Once again, there were thirteen turns before the man and the wolf reached another archway.
This room was a lot simpler than the previous one. It was just another straight corridor, large enough for Danny and Marchosias to walk side by side. One wall was covered in portraits of men in what Danny guessed was wealthy clothing throughout the Middle Ages all the way to the Renaissance. Almost every portrait depicted a man, and almost all of the subjects had dark hair, and were staring at the painter as if deciding whether to murder him.
The other side of the corridor appeared to be the same at first glance, but once Danny gingerly stepped through the archway, his stolen sword held in both hands, he realized that it was in fact a giant mirror that occupied the entire wall from one end of the corridor to the other. And the moment he realized that, he froze.
The mirror showed him, still in his pyjamas and with his pilfered sword at hand. It didn't show Marchosias, but Danny didn't have time to think about what that meant, because of the other thing that the mirror did reflect : a creature that resembled a spider in the same way Leviathan resembled a fish, hovering above his head, several of its spindly legs wrapped around his neck and torso.
Danny stepped to the side. His reflection followed, as did the eldritch horror squatting on its head. Slowly, he raised a trembling hand over his head to where the mirror showed the creature … and felt nothing. In the reflection, his hand simply passed through the not-spider – and then, suddenly it didn't, and he could feel something vaguely chitinous-like under his hand.
He was about to do something – he didn't know what; scream, probably – when a voice boomed into his skull.
[PEACE], it said. It didn't speak in words, but in bursts of information that felt like they would make Danny's head explode. [ALLY]
"Who … who are you ?" he sputtered.
[QUEEN], the voice replied. [ADMINISTRATOR]
Again, the words carried a wealth of information within them, too much for him to really process. What little of it he understood gave him an impression of … leadership ? Domination ? No, coordination, that was the best way to describe it.
"Are you …" he swallowed. The idea sounded crazy even inside his head, but he just had to ask : "Are you the source of my powers ?"
[AFFIRMATION], the voice replied, and the word carried enough raw data that Danny was certain it wasn't lying. It wasn't sure lying was possible in that … that weird, alien, hyper-language it was using to communicate.
Okay. Okay. Danny tried very hard not to freak out, and was only partially successful. This … this was probably a discovery that would shake the whole of parahuman studies, if he could manage to convince anyone without sounding like a madman.
But right now, that didn't matter, he reminded himself. All that mattered was getting to Taylor. And if this entity was related to powers, then maybe it knew more about the situation than he did.
"Do you know what this place is ?" he asked.
[NEGATION] It seemed to hesitate, then added : [DAUGHTER]
"Yes," Danny nodded, swallowing his disappointment. "I think it's linked to Taylor as well. Do you know where she is ?"
[NEGATION] There was a current of frustration in the flow of information this time, as if the entity wasn't used to ignorance and didn't like it, while at the same time being elated by it – which didn't make sense, but even humans could feel apparently contradictory things at the same time, so who knew how the mind of this … spider-thing functioned.
"You can see it, right ?" he asked Marchosias, who had been standing next to him this whole time.
The wolf inclined her head, black gaze fixated on the reflection of the Queen Administrator. She looked tense; not hostile, but definitely not friendly either. She growled, a low, threatening noise, and to Danny's surprise, the spider-thing on his shoulder actually edged away from the wolf.
[ALLIANCE] It sent to Danny, with something which could be translated to panic.
"It's fine, Marchosias," he told the wolf. "We need to get to Taylor, and these powers I have were useful both to get in here and against the shadows we fought earlier. I'm not too happy about having a weird spider-thing attached to me either, but if it helps me get to Taylor, I can deal with it."
The wolf stared at him for a few seconds, then, with another growl, started walking down the corridor. After one last look at the reflection of the Queen Administrator, Danny took a deep breath and followed her.
This time, the corridor beyond the archway didn't twist randomly : it merely spiralled up, and up, and up, through a claustrophobically small, windowless spire. Danny lost count of the number of steps after the first couple hundreds, yet he didn't feel exhausted, which he was old enough to know should definitely have happened.
After an unclear period (it was hard to gauge time when he didn't feel tired), Danny and Marchosias finally reached the top of the spiralling staircase, which led into a small hall with an immense arched, double-sided wooden door on the other side.
On each side of the door was a tall marble statue standing on a plinth, easily four or five meters high. The one on the left depicted a weeping woman in a toga, her tears painted red on her white face, while the one on the right was of a warrior-king of Antiquity, clad in the panoply of war from some ancient civilization Danny didn't recognize.
The gates themselves were decorated with bands of silver engraved with strange symbols, and standing in front of the gates was –
Danny stumbled, feeling as if Hookwolf had punched him in the chest.
Annette.
It was Annette, his wife, looking just like she had when he'd seen her alive for the last time, wearing the clothes she'd worn before leaving home for her job as a teacher. It was her, without the hideous wounds that had killed her, and which he'd seen before the mortician had done his best to make her presentable before she was buried …
It was Annette, and she was smiling at him, that same smile which had made him fall in love with her so many years ago, and which had kept making him fall in love with her every time she'd shown it to him once they'd gotten married.
The sword, which he'd been carrying all the way up the staircase, dropped from Danny's nerveless fingers and clattered on the ground. Without realizing, his feet began to move, bringing him closer, while behind him Marchosias growled in warning.
He stood right in front of her, not daring to touch her, afraid that doing so would break the spell. She looked up at him, still smiling, still silent.
It was Annette … but it couldn't be.
"You are dead," Danny said, every word a knife into his own heart. "You are dead … but Taylor isn't. I won't give up on her, not even for you."
The apparition smiled, then vanished. Behind, the massive doors slowly swung open.
Danny took a deep, shuddering breath, as Marchosias stalked to his side and nuzzled her head against his hand. Her fur felt like smoke, only barely more real than their surroundings, but he drew comfort from it all the same.
Bending down, he picked up the sword again, just in case the next obstacle required it. It felt heavy in his hand, heavier than before.
"Let's go," he said, voice thick with grief.
Together, wolf and man passed between the open doors and into a room that looked like it had come straight out of a demented artist's nightmare, and Danny heard the doors slam shut behind them. The room looked like a collage of several others, smashed together at random, causing the ceiling, roof and walls to mix together into some demented kaleidoscope. He saw racks of medieval armor hanging upside down next to large wooden barrels, as well as more paintings cut in half to give way to carved stone. Merely looking at it all made his head hurt : if there was any logic to it all, he couldn't see it.
The only constant was the path of flat floor extending from the door through which Marchosias and him had just entered. And at the end of that path …
"Taylor !" Danny shouted.
His daughter was here, sitting on a throne far too large for her, hugging her knees, her long black hair flowing around her. At his shout, she raised her head.
"Dad ?" she said, her voice tiny and full of doubt, as if she couldn't believe he was real. Given what he'd just seen, Danny couldn't blame her : who knew what she had seen while he and Marchosias made their way to her.
"I'm here," he told her, running to her side, Marchosias trotting along – and then he was hugging her.
"You … you're real ?" she asked, and the fear in her voice made him hug her all the harder.
"Yeah," he choked out. "Yeah, kiddo, I'm real, I promise."
For one long moment, they simply stayed like this, with Marchosias whining softly as she nuzzled Taylor. Then Taylor flinched, and drew back from Danny, looking alarmed.
"You can't stay here, Dad," she whispered, eyes darting around. "It's too dangerous."
"Well, I can't say I've had a nice time," Danny agreed, "but I'm not leaving without you. Not that I know how to leave, mind you. What's this place, anyway ? I already figured out you're Lasombra, but is this," he gestured at their surroundings, "linked to your powers somehow ?"
"It is, but I don't control it, not really." She took a deep breath, which only calmed her down a little. "We are outside of Plato's Cave, but the old wrestler was wrong. There is no light in here, and the shadows on the wall that we call reality are cast by the light of our own burning souls, interacting with the concepts and principles that dwell here."
Right. Danny remembered enough of his high school philosophy classes to get the reference.
"And how do we get out ?" he asked gently.
"I don't know. I … I've never been here in the flesh before. When I went out as Lasombra, it was just my mind passing through and creating a projection elsewhere while my body stayed immobile."
Well, that was a bit of good news at least, since it meant Danny hadn't somehow missed his daughter leaving home every night for the past few weeks to go fight crime in the streets of Brockton Bay. It helped him feel a bit less like a failure of a father.
"Alright. What have you already tried ?" he asked.
"Nothing,' she replied. "I … I can't go back out. Not yet. It's too dangerous."
She was trembling, afraid, and he didn't know why and couldn't help her – no. Danny crushed his rising guilt. Right now, she needed him to be strong, not the wreck he'd been for the past two years.
"Why ?"
"Because … because I'm not myself right now. Dad, I know what this all looks like, but I'm not a parahuman. I thought I was, but I'm not. I'm something else. It happened in the Locker; I thought it was a Trigger event, but it wasn't, only maybe it was, but it didn't complete or …"
She was rambling, rapidly working herself up to a panic attack. He hugged her again, and she slowly relaxed within his embrace.
"Taylor," he asked as softly as he could. "What happened in the locker ?"
Her trembling intensified. Danny hated himself for making it relive that horrible experience, but he needed to know in order to help her.
"I think I died, Dad," she said very quietly. "And if I didn't, I came very, very close. Close enough that something was able to come out of this place, the Abyss that exists between universes, and tried to possess my body. It failed, and I got all of its power instead, and used it to burst out of the Locker. The shock made me forget, and I have been figuring out what I can do ever since, but now, I remember everything. Dad, I've thousands of years' worth of memories floating around in my head, and I … I don't know which ones are mine and which are his," she hissed the last word.
"His ?" Danny repeated, feeling more and more lost. "Who are you talking about, Taylor ?"
"Lasombra," she replied, as if that made perfect sense. "The true Lasombra, the one whose name I took because … because my subconscious already knew where my powers came from, I guess. On his world, he was a very old and powerful vampire, who sought to escape the limitations of his flesh by entering the Abyss as a purely spiritual entity. It worked, but the Abyss is full of bigger, stronger entities, and eventually he was forced to flee, which is how … oh. Oh no."
Taylor's already pale face went even whiter.
"I shouldn't have told you that," she whispered. "I shouldn't have."
"Why ?" Danny was getting really sick of asking that question by now. "Taylor, what's wrong ? What's happening ?"
"This place, it's not real," she mumbled. "It's built out of my memories and his, and because he's got so much more than me, even with everything that was lost to the Abyss, the Castel d'Ombro, where he ruled for centuries and shed off his mortal coil, was recreated here, in this place of dreams and symbols, where Creation and the Abyss meet. And now, because I've told you about him, because I've spoken his name, because I've made him real in your mind and brought him to the forefront of mine … he's coming to take back what's his."
The ground shook, and Danny caught himself on the arms of Taylor's throne to stay on his feet. Next to him, Marchosias had turned toward the entrance, snarling.
"He's here," Taylor whispered.
The doors through which Danny and Marchosias had entered exploded, blown to pieces by a vast and shapeless darkness that poured into the patchwork room like a flow of purest malice, before rising up into something vaguely resembling a sea serpent, with a pair of black spots that were impossibly darker than the rest of it as its eyes.
Despite the terror he felt at the sight, Danny didn't hesitate. He lashed out at the shadow with his power, conjuring dozens of arms that grasped at it, only for it to turn, and crush them all. Danny winced as a headache suddenly bloomed behind his eyes. Backlash, he thought, from the manifestations of his power being destroyed. Capes pushing their powers too far could cripple or even kill themselves, he knew.
But the monster was still there, still coming for his daughter, so he ignored the pain and called more arms into existence. Lasombra broke them too, and slithered toward him, only to be intercepted by a leaping Marchosias, whose teeth bit deep into the 'neck'. Before Danny realized what he was doing, he was charging the monster, slashing with the sword he was still holding.
The blade passed right through the shadowy body of Lasombra, causing a faint ripple. Before he could try again, the dark leviathan contracted its body and threw Marchosias off, knocking Danny off his feet at the same time. Laying on his back, Danny saw the shadow of the monster that had tried to possess his daughter looming over him, blackest eyes gazing straight through him and into his soul –
"GET AWAY FROM MY DAD !"
And then Taylor was there. Shadows coursing across her body in a strange kind of medieval armor, she leapt from her throne, and wrapped her arms around the creature, before pulling it away from Danny and throwing it across the room. The sheer difference in size should have made that impossible, yet she managed it all the same, and Lasombra smashed into the wall above the door. Cracks spread across the stone as if it were glass, and Danny saw only darkness through them – darkness, and the impression of hungry things dwelling on the other side, waiting for the facsimile of this 'Castle of Shadows' (Danny's mastery of Spanish left a lot to be desired, but he'd picked up enough over the years to translate the name Taylor had given to this place) to fall apart.
Lasombra rose back up, shimmering with rage and indignation. A face appeared in the darkness, ageless, cold and merciless. If you were to take the faces of every tyrant, every dictator, every man who believed ruthlessness was a virtue and empathy was a weakness, and distilled them all into a single visage, then it would have resembled what Danny saw in the depths of Lasombra's body.
When it spoke, it was with a hundred voices, all united in their wrathful arrogance :
"I AM LASOMBRA. I AM THE UR-SHADOW. I AM THE HUNGER IN THE DARKNESS, THE ELDEST AND THE PRIMOGENITOR."
"No," said Taylor, sounding more determined and pissed off than Danny had ever heard her. Gone was the terror that had consumed her moments before: it was as if seeing him in danger had unlocked some hidden reserve of strength she hadn't even known she possessed, which made Danny feel both proud and ashamed at the same time.
"You are not," she continued, her voice harder than steel. "You are none of these things. I see it clearly now. You are nothing but a petty tyrant, a failure of a human being who was so self-centered and obsessed with your self-aggrandizing that you turned your entire Clan into a world-spanning, millennia-long circle of abuse, just so that you would never lack for sycophants. And you know what ? Out of all of them, not a single one loved you, and even Montano, whose loyalty you definitely didn't deserve, hated you for what you did to him."
Taylor took a single step forward, and Danny swore Lasombra flinched away from her.
"You masquerade as a god," she continued, her gauntleted hands closing into fists at her sides, "but you are just an insecure bully who lucked out into being given immense power by someone who should have known better, and who really should have seen your betrayal coming."
"And you are already dead," Taylor delivered these four words like a pronouncement from Heaven. "This ? This is just my mind struggling to process the memories I tore from your essence when I fought off your attempt to possess me after you fled from the Abyss you thought you had mastered. And because I have all this power, what would be a mental breakdown in anyone else is causing all of this instead. This castle is only here because that's where you ruled and where you died; the symbol of your power, and of your many, many failures."
A flicker of something like doubt, and fear, passed on the face in the shadows.
"NO. I AM LASOMBRA. I AM ETERNAL. I AM –"
"You are already dead," Taylor repeated, cutting off the monster. "And this castle, this power, and these memories … they are all mine."
"YOU ARE NOTHING," the apparition roared. "YOU ARE A THIEF AND A USURPER."
"I am the one who beat you," said Taylor. "That's right : without all your mental domination powers to help you, you lost a contest of will to a lonely, bullied teenage girl. So, by your own principles, doesn't that mean I have the right to take everything you had ? Right of conquest and all that jazz ?" She smiled without mirth, and the sight of that expression on his little girl's face made Danny shiver. "Not so funny when it happens to you, huh ? You pathetic hypocrite."
"NO ! I AM THAT I AM ! I WILL CONQUER THE ABYSS AND ALL REALITIES ! I –"
"Enough," snarled Taylor. "I am done bandying words with ghosts. You are just a bad dream, and it's time to WAKE UP."
The last two words echoed with the same unearthly quality as the apparition's voice. It howled, twisted, and then turned in on itself, becoming smaller and smaller until it was gone.
Danny opened his mouth, but before he could say anything (not that he was sure what he was going to say), the entire room around them started to dissolve into black void that was at once completely empty and full of nameless, shapeless horrors. He rushed forward, hugged Taylor, and –
He gasped, and stumbled, as his senses adjusted to the jarring transition back to reality – though he still held onto Taylor. Looking around, he saw that they were in Taylor's room. It was exactly as they'd left it, with several objects laying on the ground where they'd been knocked down by the writhing tentacles.
"We … we're back," said Danny.
"Yeah," said Taylor, sounding both tired and exhilarated. Gently, and with more than a little reluctance, Danny let her go, helping her lie down on her bed.
"Can I open the window ?" he asked after a few seconds of awkward silence. Judging by the light that was seeping in already, they'd been gone for several hours. "I feel like we both could use some sunlight at the moment."
"I … yes. Please."
When he threw open the shutters, he found the sun was up in the sky, and for some reason, Danny could hear what sounded like … cheering ? Yes, cheering. A lot of it, like the entire city was celebrating, even though there wasn't anything special about today that Danny knew about.
He discarded that mystery for now. Taylor was more important, though he couldn't stop himself from enjoying the sunlight on his skin for a moment. After the Abyss, even the pale winter sun felt like a warm summer day.
Pulling up the chair at Taylor's desk, he sat down next to her bed. Taylor looked … well, she was still paler than he would like, and there were black circles under her eyes that hadn't been there at dinner, but she didn't look so scared, and that would have to do for now.
"So … I feel like I'd have noticed if you had turned into a vampire, Taylor," Danny said lamely.
She chuckled weakly. "That's because I'm not, Dad. Lasombra abandoned his body when he plunged into the Abyss, including the Curse of Caine."
"Right. I'm going to need a more detailed explanation than that, Taylor. First question, though: from what I understand, you've been using these powers for weeks, creating some kind of shadow puppet across town to beat up the likes of Lung and Hookwolf – and we're going to have words about that, young lady – and you didn't have any issue. What happened tonight that was different ?"
Taylor squirmed, refusing to meet his gaze for several seconds, then mumbled :
"I killed the Simurgh."
Danny blinked, once, twice, as his brain tried and failed to make sense of what Taylor had just said.
"You what ?!"
"I killed the Simurgh," she said again. "It was descending on the capital of Australia, and I sensed the terror of the population – that's another of my powers, the one I've been using to find crimes to stop. So I projected my avatar all the way there and … well, we won. We threw the Simurgh into the Abyss, and it didn't survive, because it didn't have a soul – which raises a whole bunch of questions about where it came from and what the Endbringers are exactly, because if they are parahumans whose powers went crazy, they should still have their original human soul …"
Danny felt his legs go weak, and was grateful he was already sitting down. Unlike his daughter, he remembered what the world had been like before the Endbringers, and how different it had become under the constant threat of their rampages. Like everyone else, he'd given up all hope of them being stopped, and now …
"The cheering," he realized aloud, turning to look at the window. "That's what this is about. God, the entire world has to be celebrating right now."
"Really ?" Taylor blinked, clearly not having thought about what her accomplishment meant (then again, she'd been rather distracted. "Uh. Well, I guess I won't have to go to school today then. That's good; I don't think I could manage a math test right now."
There was something about the way she said that which made Danny suddenly worried again. Not that he'd planned to let her go to school today, obviously.
"Why ?" asked Danny. "What happened ? Are you hurt ? Do I need to take you to the hospital ?"
"No, it's nothing like that. It's just …" She paused, trying to find her words, then continued : "When I fought the Simurgh, I had to draw a lot more power from the Abyss than I ever did before. Until then, the memories of Lasombra were mostly suppressed, with fragments related to how to use his powers popping up when I needed them. But when I clashed with the Endbringer, I dug deeper and deeper and ended up unlocking them all. It was … not enjoyable, but I managed to ignore it while I was fighting. Once the fight was over, though, there was nothing to hold them back, and I freaked out as soon as my consciousness returned to my body." She took a deep breath, visibly forcing herself to relax. "It's going to take time for me to process all of the original Lasombra's memories, even now that I've gotten over the initial shock and kept the … the revenant we fought in the Abyss from taking over."
"Yes, I would imagine suddenly getting thousands of years' worth of memories from someone who, based on what you said to his … ghost ? Wasn't a very good person, has to be difficult."
"I don't have all of his memories, I don't think. He got really beaten up in the Abyss to start with, and I've no idea how the metaphysics of the inheritance-slash-usurpation process worked exactly. But there's still a lot of memories floating around in my head, separated from any context, and until I finish … digesting them, for lack of a better word, I have a feeling using my powers would be … unwise. With how powerful I am, I need to be careful about avoiding mistakes, especially now that I'm going to have a lot of people looking for answers. Besides, Lasombra just fought the Simurgh, and I told Alexandria I'd been hurt, so nobody will be surprised if he doesn't show up for a few days."
"Wait, you spoke with Alexandria ? The Alexandria ?"
"Hmm ? Oh, yes. You see …"
Danny sat down and listened to Taylor tell him the full story. Later, he would need to call the DWA, check that everything was fine, and explain that he wasn't coming in today (not that he expected a lot of work would get done today, what with the worldwide celebration of the Simurgh's death). And he'd need to tell Taylor about his own powers, about the Queen Administrator, and what they should do about that strange revelation, which had somehow come despite being apparently unrelated to Taylor's own powers.
But later. Right now, he was going to be here for his daughter as she told him the tale of how she had fought an Endbringer side by side with the Triumvirate.
AN : Something of an experimental chapter, I know. It took entirely too long to write, and I'm still not 100% satisfied with the end result, but it needed to be done for things to make sense. Don't worry, we're going back to Earth-Bet and parahuman shenanigans next chapter, and hopefully that will be easier to write.
As mentioned earlier on Spacebattles, the next chapter will be something of a bonus : a PHO Interlude, made up of comments by readers on the SB thread as well as some written by myself. It was originally supposed to be just a part of the next chapter, but there were so many of them I decided to split them up, lest they make up over half of the chapter. As a result, you can expect that Interlude to be published very soon (so if you have PHO comment suggestions, you have a limited window in which to add them in your review or comment).
As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter, and look forward to your thoughts and comments.
Zahariel out.Last edited: 9/9/2025 Award Quote Reply939