"Noble goddess Elyrian, we, your loyal servants, have braved the dangers of the overworld, and have acquired a most suitable vessel for your next avatar. With the stars in the right place, we ask that you once again bless us with your presence, that we may leave this cave where we have set up camp and return you to our people in the world beneath."
The wandering spirit had no body, which meant that it had no brain with which to piece together the fragments of feelings and shards of memories it held. They were like two jigsaw puzzles that were thrown out onto a surface and jumbled together with no piece making sense on its own, and no way of even knowing if any two pieces are part of the same picture. With no real senses the world around it was nothing but darkness and chaos, yet suddenly there was a sort of warm light beckoning toward a place to stay and a people to love. As the spirit reached for this sense of belonging, images began to become visible. The light came from a red line within a circle of dots. No, people. The line itself was on another person and oozed a warm red fluid. A concept phased into the spirit's growing sense of awareness: Home. And yet more than a home. Something to occupy that at the same time gave freedom. An identity. A body. All of this being within reach just beyond the red line. In this chamber of darkness dotted with crystals, what felt like a lifetime of oblivion seemed at an end as the spirit began to bond with its new host.
Yet suddenly a savage burst in out of nowhere. It roared and screamed and drowned the area in a harsh blue-green light, throwing down all of the goddess' beloved followers and tearing away the new vessel, leaving the goddess broken. With no sense of direction she could not give chase, and was doomed to wander the world in search of her missing piece only by feeling.
Victoria Honeywell was awakened by the sound of her ringing cell phone and she instinctively grabbed it and answered before her eyes could focus to see who was calling. "H-hello?"
"Morning, Beautiful! I hope I didn't wake you. You sound alarmed." The familiar voice of Allan Kidman came from her earpiece.
"No, I'm… it's fine." Vicky squinted at her bedside clock and realised she would have wanted to be awake nearly half an hour ago anyway. "I was just having the strangest dream. I think… I was a goddess…"
"Sorry to break it to you, Dear." Vicky could hear Allan's goofy smile over the phone. "That's called reality!"
"So, tell me about this dream," Allan asked when they had met up for breakfast.
Vicky tried to align the images she could remember with existing elements in her conscious mind, and when they didn't fit she buried it all in the pile labelled 'nonsense'. "Oh, just silly things," she shrugged. "You know how dreams can be."
It was a quiet day and the two strolled through the suburb taking in the morning air. Days like these often meant that our heroes had a chance to be heroes in everyday life. Although Allan's trident was primarily a weapon, it was equally handy in helping firefighters, and on really peaceful days Vicky's wings, which were good for gaining the high ground in a battle, could just as easily mean salvation for a cat in a tree. Sure enough, they came across a little boy in tears, sitting on a park bench. Vicky bent down and asked him what was wrong in her friendliest voice. Without a word the boy, blushing at the view of his would-be saviour's downward-turned low neckline, lifted his foot and pointed at his shoe. The head of a rusty nail was sticking through the sole.
"This is bad," Vicky said in an aside to Allan after shifting to her blonde-haired healing form. "If we don't help him the wound will get infected, but I can't work my healing through his shoe."
"But we can't take the shoe off because it's nailed to his foot." Allan continued, not realising the boy can hear him. "Let's see if someone has a knife and try to cut it off."
The boy began to sob hysterically and Vicky turned back shushing and trying to calm him, but the next moment she went silent and her expression turned blank. Vicky held up a hand and there was a flash like her stun-beam only much brighter and short lived, and the boy seemingly froze in time. Vicky yanked out the nail and took off the shoe, and the boy's frozen flesh had no time to suffer trauma or even bleed. In an instant her healing power patched him up, and when the boy caught up with time again all the pain was gone.
"That was incredible!" Allan exclaimed at his still stoic girlfriend. "I had no idea you could do that!"
Vicky blinked a few times and her expression returned to normal before she turned her head to face Allan. "I have no idea where that came from!" She said with a hint of fear. "I want… can we go home?"
Anxious to sit down and gather her thoughts, Vicky shifted back to her regular form in the hope that it would make the walk back quicker. As they left the park there was a sound of happy voices as the boy ran back to his friends. Allan and Vicky turned to look: the children were joining hands and forming a circle, and at the sight Vicky's eyes grew wide.
"They need me."
"Who?"
"My people need me."
"What people? What are you talking about? Vicky?!"
Vicky looked around and then faced Allan. "I don't… I… I need some air."
"We're already outside."
"I need thinner air." Vicky sprouted her wings in half a second and with a single flap climbed more than fifteen feet up. By comparison, she normally needed to beat them rapidly just to lift herself off the ground.
Allan flinched at the powerful gust, and when the dust had settled he stared up at his girlfriend in astonishment. Vicky looked down and noticed she was still in her normal clothes, and when she grabbed at a lock of her hair and held it in front of her she realised it was still black. Logic caught up to her and her wings vanished.
Vicky woke up in bed a little while before noon. The recollection of what happened earlier that day came before she sat up, and as she looked to her side she saw, as she expected, Allan sitting by her bedside. He handed her a cup of water immediately. "How are you feeling?" Allan looked concerned.
"I feel okay. Did you break my fall?" Her boyfriend nodded. "I just have all these weird thoughts coming into my head from I have no idea where, and something weird is going on with my powers.
"Not even Flo could figure out what's going on." Allan swallowed. "Listen, don't freak out, okay?"
"Freak out about what?" Vicky wondered as Allan handed her a mirror, but the moment she looked she knew: Vicky was in her normal form wearing her normal light blue tank top and denim shorts, but her hair was blonde as though she was in her healing form.
The next moment Edward and Zoë came through the door with urgent looks on their faces. "Whatever's going on here will have to wait. I just got a text from Charlotte that Hazard Inc. is about to get up to something in some warehouse in town."
Having a niece that receives occasional glimpses of the future was often an unparalleled tactical advantage.
"I won't make you stay if you want to come with us, but I'll understand if you don't." Allan said to Vicky.
"Like you need to ask." She smiled at him.
The team was waiting in ambush in the dark warehouse when Edward's cell phone rang silently, showing the number for Charlotte's home telephone on the screen. Wanting to remain silent Edward routed the call to Nate Beta unit who could handle the entire call electronically without a sound.
"Hello, Charlotte? What is it now?"
"Is that you, Nate? Listen, I ran out of ideas so I thought I'd call and see if you guys could help. Has anyone there seen my cell phone? It's been missing since yesterday and I've fine combed the entire house with my mind's eye but it's nowhere. I'm sure I left it on my dresser but it's just not here and it couldn't have just…"
"Oh, no."
"Nate? Hello?"
"We've been had!" Nate said aloud.
Suddenly a dim light went on behind the unmistakable silhouette of Leather Jack.
"I knew you punks would show up!" his voice sounded through the darkness
"Don't play games with us, Jack! What are you up to?!" Zoë demanded.
"Pest control!"
At that the rest of the lights of the warehouse came on, revealing a life sized cardboard cut-out of Leather Jack. It had Charlotte's cell phone, on speakerphone and in mid-call, taped to its face and was standing on a time bomb that suddenly came to life and began counting down with just forty-five seconds on the clock. The entire warehouse was crawling with biotroops. Lastly, at the same time that the lights came on, an electromagnetic pulse surged through the room knocking Nate offline. Practically instinctively the rest of the team began to lay waste as they tried to inch toward the great threat in the middle of the room. Flo analysed some patterns around them and fear gripped her makeshift heart.
"Everyone!" she called. "Look at their formation!"
"What formation?!" Allan asked as he swept through some biotroops with his trident ray. "I don't think there's even room for a formation!"
"That's right!" Flo replied. "With a number advantage like this you would have expected them to try and surround us, but all they're doing is filing in front of us to block our route to the bomb so that we're unable to disarm it!"
"Then we should make a break for the exit!" Edward concluded. "It should be wide open!"
"Improbable!" Flo deduced. "It's likely the exits are shut and reinforced, as evidenced by the biotroops only protecting the bomb! The most probable reason they knocked Nate out was because his force field function was the only thing that could have saved us! If only I had kept my senses sharp when we entered this warehouse I could have foreseen all of this!"
"Everyone's bound to slip up sooner or later!" Zoë comforted amid the chaos. "What do we do now?"
"Something they didn't expect!" Vicky grunted as she vaulted off a biotroop. While in mid-air her large wings burst from her back and she shot forward, circling the room while spiralling toward the bomb in the middle. Everyone and everything she flew over had to strain against the surge of wind she generated, and the biotroops were bombarded by something like a meteor shower of stun-beams that fired off from her whole body. When she reached the middle of the room she hovered in place and put a stun hold on the bomb.
"Zoë!" Vicky called out and everyone suddenly noticed her hair had gone snow white. "Use your powers to bring Nate back online! Everyone else, protect them from any biotroops that regain their functionality!"
When Nate Beta-Unit had rebooted, Allan beckoned Vicky and she snatched up Charlotte's cell phone, before darting away from the bomb which exploded the moment she released her grip on it. She rode the shockwave of the explosion and Nate deployed his shield as soon as she was close enough. The group huddled together as the area around them was engulfed in flame and stone.
The team emerged from the rubble just in time for the various emergency services to arrive. There were no injuries to speak of, the culprit had long since fled the scene (assuming he was ever there to begin with) and there was nothing left of the building to save. As such there was nothing really that any of the emergency service personnel could do, except take turns making the six victims recount the events of the incident three times over (once to the paramedics, once to the police and once to the fire brigade). This had been nothing but a failed assassination attempt on Hazard Inc.'s greatest threat and the sooner everyone could understand that, the sooner the exhausted heroes could go home and rest.
By the time they arrived at Charlotte's house, Allan was carrying Vicky, who had eventually passed out on the walk home, on his back.
"Here. Leather Jack stole your phone and used it to lure us into a trap." Edward said as he handed back Charlottes mobile phone.
"Diabolical!" she exclaimed as her fingers rattled over the device at blinding speed. "He used up all my minutes!"
Allan laid Vicky down on her bed for the second time that day, and just as he began to dab at her forehead with a damp cloth her eyes shot open. They were silver and cold and showed no signs of emotion.
"Vicky?" Allan said in bewilderment. "How are you…"
"The one you call Victoria is no longer before you," she said plainly. "You are in the presence of Elyrian, goddess of the World Beneath, the One Who Gives."
"What are you talking about…?"
"Some years ago, the people of the World Beneath presented me with your Victoria as my avatar. The ritual was not completed so I could not reawaken. Now I have at last found my vessel, and have been fully reborn."
"Do you mean those cave hooligans who kidnapped Vicky and bound her and cut her? And gave her her powers?"
"My powers. And those 'hooligans' as you call them, were part of an entire civilization living under the earth, who send a party to the overworld once a century to call me back to them. Now that I have regained a body of flesh, I must return to my people and take my place."
"'Take your place'? That doesn't sound very godlike." Allan mocked.
Elyrian's expression sharpened. "Why do you think I have no empathy for your longing to be with this Victoria?"
"Because you have no concept of human emotion?" Allan guessed with more sarcasm than anything else.
"Precisely." she answered to Allan's surprise. "I have forgotten what it means to be human. Do not think for one second you have any idea what it means to be a god."
"I've heard enough." Allan said sternly "If you're the 'One Who Gives', give back Vicky."
"I cannot do that."
"Give her back!" Allan said in a louder but quivering voice.
"She doesn't exist anymore!"
Allan's mouth fell open but no sound came out. A single tear rolled down his face. After swallowing several times he managed: "You call yourself the One Who Gives, yet all you've done is take away the one person most precious to me. You're… You're the One Who Takes!"
Elyrian's eyes became like ice. "Do not… call me… the One Who Takes!"
"Are you going to smite me?!" Allan said bitterly. "I'm not afraid!"
Elyrian sighed.
"I do not smite; I heal. They call me a goddess, but it would be more accurate to think of me as a living idol."
"Is there even a difference?"
"Idols are made by humans to serve humans. It's a system of mutual servitude. Many centuries ago, there was a girl from the overworld named Elyrian who developed a great love for the World Beneath. She offered herself in eternal service to the people, and since medical resources were scarce, they chose to make her into a healing goddess. They developed a ritual to this end and achieved exactly that, but since nothing in this world can be created or destroyed, something of equal and opposite power remained. It was drawn to the blood of Elyrian but the goddess repelled it, so it instead took hold of her sister Ebthynelle and she became the One Who Takes. Pandemonium and despair ensued, and although so little of my humanity remained with me, the heartache of that day has stayed with me ever since.
The body of the goddess ages and dies like any other, leaving her spirit to wander the world. Once a century the people of the World Beneath have a chance to regain their healing goddess, and must find an overworld woman to use as an avatar. But Ebthynelle, the One Who Takes, is never far behind. Once the goddess has taken over her host, the ones performing the ritual feed some of her blood to a bat to act as a decoy. The bat soon rejects the spirit of Ebthynelle, but once its biological makeup has been imprinted on the spirit, it can bond with nothing else and is left to wander harmlessly for the rest of the century.
Because the ritual was never completed with your Victoria, there was no decoy and Ebthynelle most probably found a host. Did Victoria have any sisters?"
Allan thought of fangs and bat wings and shuddered. "She does have a clone… like an artificial twin…"
"Do you now understand why I cannot leave this body? If I detach myself for just a few seconds I will become like Ebthynelle after being rejected and be lost for another century. Would you deprive an entire civilisation of their goddess for such a selfish purpose as having your loved one back? Think of the greater good."
Allan silently faced the floor for nearly five minutes, dropping an occasional tear where he held his gaze. At last he looked up at Elyrian again.
"Go to your people."
"You have my thanks."
"Take me with you."
"Allan, it is pointless…"
"You don't know that!" Allan spoke up with newfound fire. "Once you found Vicky it took you nearly the entire day to take over her mind! My girl is a fighter! If there's even the slightest chance she'd come back, even for a moment… If there's even the slightest chance I could talk to her just one more time, even if it's just to tell her goodbye, I've got to take it. I don't care how long it takes. I don't care if I have to live on moles and cave scorpions. I want to see Vicky again!"
Flo suddenly walked through the door. "I believe I have a way everyone can get what they want."
Flo sat down on the floor and drew in so much air that she nearly doubled in size. "Edward, bring a pillow and sit behind me. Make sure you're comfortable." She sifted out everything she had just taken in except the oxygen, then she spoke again. "Put your hands against my back."
When Edward did as Flo said, she shifted her cosmoplasm and engulfed Edward's hands up to his wrists. Edward felt his hands tingle as Flo sterilised them.
"Zoë," Flo continued. "You are in charge of handfeeding Edward. His hands are going to be occupied. Bring him as many donuts and as much water as he can consume. The faster he eats, the sooner this will be over, and if it takes much longer than two days the process will be a failure and we will have to start over."
Edward stayed in one place for the greater part of forty eight hours, not sleeping, and not shifting from his position save for taking between five and ten minute breaks every other hour or so, and every time he returned, Flo had to disinfect his hands again before they could continue. He ate nearly a thousand donuts and used all the sugar he took in producing matter as fast as his body would allow him. He made just around thirteen kilograms of carbon, seven kilograms of hydrogen, two and a half kilograms of nitrogen, a kilogram of calcium and just over seven hundred grams of phosphorous, along with some potassium, sodium, magnesium, chlorine and sulfur, all of which dissolved into an ever-growing Flo. During the last eight hours or so, Edward stopped taking breaks for fear of falling asleep. At the end of this process, the alien turned to Elyrian. "Give me your hand."
Flo gently scraped off a thin layer of her skin, which she unfolded and studied on a molecular level. "Next, I will need some of Vicky's clothes."
Hours later, Flo's drained body sank to the ground while the spitting image of Victoria Honeywell lay on her side, slightly curled up, on the floor. Her skin was slightly wrinkled from prolonged exposure to Flo's cosmoplasm and she showed no signs of consciousness on account of lacking a soul. The humans stared in awe, including the human whose body played host to a goddess.
"This body is biologically identical to my current host?" Elyrian asked with her eyes wide.
"To the last detail," Flo managed. "Oh, with the exception of one detail: It won't age."
"Flo…" Allan whimpered unable to contain his tears. "This is beyond my comprehension. I could never repay you for this…"
Flo lifted her head and smiled weakly. "This is me repaying you."
Elyrian placed a hand between the new body's shoulder blades and both began to shine with a blinding light. As the old avatar's hair faded to black from the tips, the new body's hair turned white starting from the scalp. Finally the newly created body inhaled deeply and opened her eyes while the old body exhaled and fell to the ground. Allan rushed to her side and lifted her upper body, cradling it in his arms. There was silence as Victoria Honeywell slowly opened her soft brown eyes, and when she saw Allan's face, she smiled.
"You would really live on cave scorpions for me?"
Allan Kidman buried his face in his love's shoulders and broke out into heavy sobs. Vicky put her arms around him and squeezed him tightly. Edward and Zoë looked at each other before walking to the reunited couple and embracing them from the sides.
"I am endebted to you," Elyrian said to Flo as she was getting ready to leave. "If there is anything you desire that is within my ability you shall have it."
"I am grateful," the alien replied. "I have everything I need as long as I am with my allies. Perhaps I might ask that Vicky could retain the flight and healing powers she had borrowed from you as your partial avatar."
"It is done," the goddess said as she placed a shining hand on Vicky's head. "You now possess all of the gifts you acquired during the ritual."
"I thank you, Elyrian."
Once outside, Elyrian waved a hand at the floor and a large patch of grass and soil appeared to turn translucent. Something like ethereal stairs appeared under the ground and Elyrian stepped through the now intangible floor, descending the stairs. She turned to give one last goodbye at the new friends she made before continuing her journey home to take her place once and for all as the goddess of the World Beneath.
"Wait!" Vicky suddenly called to her. "What about all of the powers I could only start using once you started taking over?"
Elyrian smiled. "What are you talking about?"
THE END
Epilogue
On the day that would see the last time an avatar was chosen for the goddess of the World Beneath, an angry spirit was eagerly waiting to sense its new target. It had been pushed back from one home by the goddess and driven out of another by feral will many times before, but lacking a brain it was unable to learn from this and the spirit was doomed to chase this proverbial dangling carrot for all eternity. Yet something happened differently on this day. There was no false home and instead of ingraining the biological blueprint of a bat upon itself, it silently followed the avatar of the goddess. Months passed and one day the spirit felt a section of its prey get cleaved from the protective aura of the goddess. It chased after this new quarry and at last occupied it, but instead of being rejected as always, the spirit found itself being pampered in a test tube, having found a vessel it could stay in comfortably.
It had spent so much time without a human mind and had been torn out of so many animal hosts that by now it had forgotten its will to seize control, and all it had left to instil into this new host was its power, warped by the only things the spirit had come to know: wings, fangs, and a thirst for life. The One Who Takes suddenly heard voices, but had no capacity to put any meaning to what it heard.
"Professor, this is incredible! You have truly outdone yourself! And to think you said nothing will come of this one because it was 'plain human DNA'. You have earned a sizeable bonus."
"But, I… Indeed."