Heroes Past IV
Demonmauler
Demons walked the days, and no one could see them but Gabriel Trask. His years preaching the word blended together, but he carried on as his mind continued to decay. He was cast out for his beliefs, shunned by those he sought to protect, and still he walked on.
Infernal forces were massing. The City thrummed with their blood, and the air reeked of ash and sulfur. In the desperate days before mankind drowned in hellfire, Gabriel Trask’s prayers were answered.
God offered the artifact to him, shining with the purity of the heavens. Gabriel reached for the weapon but hesitated, questioning his faith to the calling. The hand of God waited patiently, and a voice echoed with infinite serenity.
“Demonmauler must once more rise against the coming darkness,” God uttered with perfect conviction, offering the weapon to him, “You have been chosen.”
Gabriel had always known his fate was preordained, and he nodded once as he closed his hand around the shaft of the shining axe. The artifact pulsed with electrifying energy and the alley exploded, burying Gabriel beneath a shower of brick and mortar.
As the radiance faded, Fateweaver looked down at the crumpled form of Gabriel, remorse mirrored in the dark corridors of her mind. The harbingers of the battles to come foretold of the ancient weapon returning to the hands of man, but that didn’t make forging this fate any easier.
Demonmauler, scourge of the infernal, carried a steep price. Imbued with an ancient sentience, the axe eventually consumed the mind of its wielder. Fateweaver took small solace in knowing that Gabriel’s mind had already been lost. The warrior that arose from these ruins would prove critical in the trials ahead, but the strands between right and wrong were becoming blurrier each day.
Flashback
Jacob Cross considered himself a self made hero by investigating and disconnecting illegal cable service hookups across Paragon City. As if paying to rot your brain wasn’t bad enough, stealing the apathetic narcotic was just outrageous!
An enraged cable thief accosted Jacob upon a rooftop where he was busy dismantling a series of piggybacked hookups. The crossing of wires and rage resulted in a surge of energy which killed the thief and transformed Jacob.
Wanted for questioning in the death of the off duty police officer that accosted him, Jacob patrols the streets of Paragon City as he tries to reassemble the shattered remnants of his memory and clear his name. Only the painful flashbacks which crackle and burn around him hint at who he once was.
Quantum Eva
Eva Longtree’s unique quantum signature grants her the ability to seal rifts in the fabric of space time. Her services were contracted worldwide for numerous, high risk breaches until very recently.
An attempt to manufacture an artificial worm hole quickly spun out of control and only Eva’s immediate intervention prevented catastrophe. Unfortunately, she exceeded the scale of her abilities, and must focus all her efforts on leashing the gravitational beast which now exists within her.
Perhaps one day she will free herself from her quantum prison, but until then, she carefully governs the release of energies to maintain an ideal state of balance with the ever hungry singularity.