Grandmaster glowed as bright as a star.

  Torrents of fiery heat poured into the air currents around her, an uncountable number of threads that composed the fabric of reality, the fabric of the entire universe, thrumming in the air. She reached out with a talon of fire to pluck a thread, and it echoed, rippled, through the fabric of space and time.

  She was a power from the stars, she knew. Ancient and alien, too vast for the human mind to comprehend. But somehow, she knew that this was simply a husk, a mortal shell, a coil from who she truly was. What she did to the Perpetual she could do as easily to Phoenix if she wanted to. But she held back because she believed that Phoenix could be reasoned with.

  You simply lack the will to stop me, he had told her. Was he right? What could she do, if she really wanted to? Would she be like Phoenix? Or worse?

  The sensors of the ceiling of this testing chamber in the Star Legion’s subterranean headquarters beneath the Academy for the Empowered hummed and cycled, gathering data on the constant influxes of her power. And when her eyes opened, Grandmaster could see.

  She could see the whole entire world. She could see the frozen terrains at the poles of the planet and roiling clouds over the Gulf of Mexico; see every jungle that steamed with hot rain and the breathtaking mountains of the Alps coated with frost. She could see the Pacific Ocean swelling and spilling into a beach on the Hawaiian coast, while dormant volcanoes at the bottom of the ocean rumbled with centuries of unrest. She could see everything…and it was all being changed, affected by Aftab Ferrara. By the Phoenix.

  Because what he was doing was…it was incredible and terrifying.

  This is a new day for man and deviant, Aftab had announced to the world. I am the Phoenix, and I am making the world better for all living things.

  In the Horn of Africa, where fields were once barrened and withered with rot and blight, a meadow bloomed.

  On the Balkans, where people were dying of starvation, there was now a feast.

  In the poorest places on Earth, self-replicating technology ten thousand years ahead of the time unfolds and ingrates itself.

  Buildings made up of brand-new elements spring up overnight, consuming and converting the already existing architecture as raw materials.

  In the depths of Central America, near the Panama Canal, there was no more thirst, as any man could drink from its spring without getting sick.

  In the Gobi Desert, there was energy, boundless and limitless. And free.

  You will not fear my kind any longer, he said. You will thank us.

  The list of accomplishments grew, as did Phoenix’s fame.

  When a tsunami threatened the Philippine Islands, Phoenix struck the ocean until it stopped moving. When an earthquake struck southern Alaska, he was already moving, already everywhere. At just under the speed of light, he evacuated all fifty-six thousand residents, one by one, before the buildings began to topple like dominoes.

  At first, governments objected to the violation of their sovereign territory. In California, after Phoenix absorbed the heat of a sixty-two mile wildfire, there was a close call with the LAPD. But he got things done, and with that, his message spread.

  Phoenix was too big of a problem for the world leaders to solve. And they had faced the terrifying truths behind this heroic veneer: Phoenix had given each nation on Earth an ultimatum. Comply, or he would burn them to ash.

  The Taymyr Peninsula, people whispered. The people of Taymyr had resisted Phoenix’s control and aimed their nuclear weapons at him. They ordered him to stop. He refused. They fired…and he simply melted them down to nothing and burned the entire country to ashes.

  So much power. Raw, unfettered power. And people were frightened. It unnerved the entire world.

  People had seen death before, but the Decimation of Taymyr…the whole world was terrified. Governments had planned to move against them, but he was too big of a problem to take down. So, not for the first time, they decide to do nothing to stop him.

  The lone protectors of cities planned to strike at each Eternity Corporation facility in their hometowns. There are 743 facilities on their list, from a space station to strip malls.

  The teen team of superheroes, the Outliers, were battling another threat from the cosmos. And the Transcendents, the Earth’s Greatest Heroes, had no plans to move against phoenix. Because how could one take down a god? How could you take down someone who had the power to mold reality to their whims, whatever the cost? So they decided to sit this one out.

  That was why it was up to the Grandmaster. Up to the Star Legion.

  …

  The arcane, ancient power within her. The terrible, beautiful power that could bring wicked Monarchs to their knees and make cities crumble to dust. She had the same powers as Phoenix, she knew. The two of them were not so different. She knew that, and it terrified Grandmaster. Would she go mad with power, too? Would she destroy this world in her attempt to save it?

  “Maggie?”

  Tempest and Sparks walked over to join her, Sparks swiping down on a handheld tablet. Grandmaster forced a smile. “I hope I’m not a disappointment,” she joked awkwardly.

  “More like an enigma. A conundrum.” Tempest peered over Sparks’ shoulder, frowning at the screen. “We have been analyzing Phoenix’s powers using a strand of hair recovered at the scene, and we noticed that he is not a deviant. He is just a human who came into contact with incredible power, and is masquerading as our people. Why would he do that?”

  “Jealousy,” Grandmaster answered. “When deviants first emerged, people were awed at our abilities. But it quickly turned from ‘oh my God, they’re so amazing!’ to ‘why can’t I do that?’ People grew jealous of our abilities as they began to realize our true potential. And that jealousy is why they hate us and fear us.”

  At any rate, we also noticed that both of your cells are in a constant state of fluctuation, as opposed to other living beings, Sparks said. But yours have been greatly accelerated.

  “Into what?” Grandmaster wondered. “What are they changing into?”

  “We don’t know.” Tempest looked up, concerned. “But it looks like it has been going on for quite some time.”

  Grandmaster hissed in a breath. “Since my deviation manifested.”

  “Possibly. But the deviation in your cells, compared to Phoenix’s, is so similar, it could indicate that…” Tempest hesitated for a moment. “He could be another cosmic entity. A human transformed into a cosmic being.”

  Grandmaster froze, untethered from the weight of reality. That was what Phoenix was doing in that cave, she realized with horror. He was transforming himself from a human into a cosmic being, the father of the stars, just like her heritage. How was she supposed to beat him if he was just like her? She could not do it last time, and that was before this transformation. What chance did they possibly have this time?

  The emptiness that lived within her was replaced by a burning fire. Grandmaster wanted to cry and scream, claw at the clouds, run and hide from the world. A sharp, thick pain prickled at her fingertips, and she looked down to see she was bleeding. Her nail beds and cuticles were raw, revealing white and pink flesh on her hands.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Tempest stepped forward, concerned at the blood at her friend’s hands. “It’s okay,” she said gently. “Don’t let that scare you. It will not stop us from working against him.”

  This was how it was–how it always was. One moment, she was moving forward, and the next, nothing. No matter how important it was or what she needed to do, this feeling came and stuck to her throat, refusing to leave.

  Grandmaster forced air into her lungs as her emotions reverberated inside of the hollow space inside her chest, the world tearing down and rebuilding itself up.

  Tempest unfolded a cloth from her pocket and pressed it to her lips before gently wiping Grandmaster’s bloody hands. “It’s okay,” she said softly. All the Legionnaires, in some part, however big or small, knew about the demons Grandmaster faced every day, and did whatever they could to help her. “You’re here with us. It’s okay.”

  Grandmaster sucked in a shaky breath, and when she spoke, she hated the way her voice came out: all high-pitched and petulant, like a small child’s. “Yes.” She cleared her throat and tried again. “I mean…okay. It’s not like I am…it…he…” her voice trailed off at the grim expression in Sparks’ face, and almost recoiled when she saw the hate in his eyes. Hate. Directed at her.

  Grandmaster, Sparks transmitted. If Phoenix is really another cosmic being, then the ramifications could be disastrous. Just how exactly do you practice warping reality without risking messing up the world you live in? At the darkest and most horrifying aspects, it may even get to the point where you can’t tell what is real from what you yourself alters. After all, if you’re the one who defines what reality is, what is the difference between reality and fantasy?

  Grandmaster threw her hands up in the air. “What do you want me to do, Thomas? Pretend like my power doesn’t exist? It’s not like I go around and change things. I know the line. I don’t cross it. I’m the most careful person I know.”

  Yet you were in outer space, restoring suns and editing black holes. Sparks’ eyes gleamed with something she couldn’t place. And if the Fire Source has the same power as you, then that power is what destroyed an entire planetary system…

  At those words, an inferno of something that felt like pure rage ignited to life within Grandmaster, threatening to smolder her from the inside. She pictured a doused campfire, broken twigs dangling in the wind. “Is that what you think?” she demanded. “Do you think that I am going to do that? Is that what you think of me, Thomas?”

  Tempest sighed. It was known to all the Legionnaires, even Astra–Sparks’ beloved–that Thomas Crestire was dangerous. Dangerously ignorant, and dangerously resentful of Grandmaster’s power. He had been the first Legionnaire, and the field leader until Grandmaster replaced him. Whatever lay ahead between them…Tempest had a feeling it would not end well.

  “Thomas is not saying that, Grandamster,” Tempest said, trying to be patient, and she turned to Sparks, giving him a meaningful look as though he were a small child. “I think what Thomas means to say is that reality warping, cosmic power, is so dangerous, it is difficult to stay in control. This Phoenix may have a desire to use his powers to debilitate the world and hurt innocents. And he has already committed a small genocide. We must stop him before it gets worse.”

  “Yes. Of course I understand that. Do you think I am not scared?” Grandmaster’s wings flared from her spine, her phoenix dragon glowing with its own power. “And I know why you are scared. You think this power will either kill me or drive me crazy. Or maybe both. Just like it did to Blackstar, just like it’s doing to Phoenix. But I’m not them, Sparks. I’m not him. That’s not my story. This is my power, my life, my deviation. I know that. And I want this power. I’m ready.”

  …

  The Tempest of the Star Legion raged and focused and summoned her power.

  The world was beset with terrible weather, perhaps from the influx of ta’lien caused by the Phoenix. Huge, towering black clouds rolled in from the north quite suddenly, blotting out all traces of sun and sky as they released torrents of breaking rain which swept through the tiny hamlets of upstate New York with unbelievable ferocity. The downpour was a tremendous spectacle of blinding streaks of lightning lacing the darkly clouded sky and deeply rolling thunder breaking over the valley with earthshaking blasts that followed one after the other and then died into slower, more ominous distant rumblings from somewhere beyond the blackness of the north, of the mountains that surrounded Rochester, known as Dragon’s Fangs.

  In Tempest’s omniscient solitude, she was aware of the thickness of the atmosphere, the clouds jostling each other, eager to unload their weight. This was the perfect time for the Alpha-level deviant to practice her powers.

  Tempest parted her lips and breathed in heavily, tasting the water droplets on her tongue. For three entire days it had rained, and the Fangs people had begun to grow fearful that flash floods from the hills all about them would wash down with a devastating effect on their small homes and unprotected fields. The men gathered daily in inns and pubs, chattering worriedly over their mugs of ale, casting apprehensive glances at the sheets of rain falling steadily beyond their dripping windows.

  Everything was so heavy in the middle of winter, and no one could remember a storm of such ferocity at this particular time of year in the north. There should have been a winter windstorm, the kind that swept unsuspecting travelers from the passes and the cliff trails, never to be seen again. Its sudden appearance had caused everyone in the small hamlets to pause and reflect on the continuing rumors of strange happenings of the Phoenix.

  Bright mediums of entire worlds had transcended reality and gathered around her as Tempest spun gracefully with her power, the constructs of weather–the fierce grip of ice and frost, the crackle of heat from the earth, the sky splitting open with lightning–beckoned to her as she took them, all of them, every single one of them, under her control.

  In the vast distances of time and space around the planet, the lightning cracked the sky like a whip and the thunder bellowed loudly. This storm was more than a storm–it was the midst of half-forgotten pain and love lost. Tempest began to fall with the whipping winds and she allowed herself too, and smiled. Ever since she was a small child, she possessed the songs of the storm. The distant rumblings of an arduous yet pleasant past were flashing reminders of her tasks of destiny–but of course, what you call destiny is just an equation. A product of variables. The right person born at the right time.

  Tempest soared through her own universe, her heart quickening as it was draped within a white cloud of forever. Who am I and am I free, or is this just some memory? she wondered as she wandered through the Japanese gardens of her home, the headquarters of the Star Legion, an elite academy for those with deviant gifts–the Academy for the Empowered, as it was known to the outside world. She was keenly aware of the natural world.

  As she calmed the storm from a baby hurricane into the blue sky and golden sun, she noticed everything about the world–how could she not? She was descended from the mystical Azar, so magic ran through her blood as well as lightning. The

  The snowflakes drifted through the ashen gray sky, spinning and twisting through the air gracefully, almost lazily, before alighting the trees or the ground below with a sheet of white. Because of Tempest’s power, there were almost no clouds to be seen in the furry-gray sky, overlapping and reminding her of a snuggled-up pile of chinchillas. Over the last few months, she had watched the landscape of the small yet large town change, first slowly, then faster and faster, from orange to maroon to the brilliant pale greens and whites of winter.

  Nadia Omari was Tempest, the weather rider of the Star Legion. She was from the continent of Theandra, known to mainlanders as the “Lost Continent”–west of the Marshall Islands, alive and off-grid from the main world for thousands of years, while the humans that lived there flourished in their agrarian societies. But for some reason, Theandra became revealed to the world during the Emergence, when the deviant population was enacted again, leading some to believe that Theandra had deviant origins. Tempest was one of those people, worshiped as a goddess in her land because of her abilities to control the sweltering sun and bring rain for their crops. She believed that all mainlanders were wretched and evil, known as the Fell–because they were from the mainland and did awful, awful things to their home, to deviants–whom the Theandrans worshiped–and to each other.

  Case in point–when she was recruited to the Star Legion: she had used her powers to manage her tribe’s crops in Theandra, spreading rain and withering away the blights that threatened them. She did not know how, but when news of this miracle farmer reached the mainland, a mob from the human supremacist group known as the Guild of Sapiens had come to take her life.

  Tempest was unfamiliar to most Fell lore, but she read about the origins of the Guild of Sapiens: they were an offshoot of the white supremacist group known as the Ku Klux Klan, which believed Africans and African Americans were inferior to them, less than human–so they would take it upon themselves to ransack communities, destroy homes, and brutally execute people by lynching them.

  If anything, the Guild of Sapiens was worse: they dressed themselves in black robes and masks like hooded suns to conceal their identities, and believed deviants were the spawn of Hell, so they took it upon themselves to execute deviants by burning them alive.

  She had defended herself by using her powers. The Teacher, at that moment, came to help her, and he had brought her here, to the Academy for the Empowered, as one of the four founding members of the Star Legion, along with Cryo, Astra, and Sparks. That was almost four years ago, when she learned how to defend herself with her powers and use her powers in a world that threatened her life each day.

  Tempest thought back to what Grandmaster had said. I may be the chair, but we are an assemblage of equals. Not a strike team with a combat leader.

  Nadia was not sure if she could go back to taking orders from another, but Grandmaster was different. She loved the Teacher, she did, but Grandmaster was right: he was not what they needed anymore.

  Tempest had been happy and loved on Theandra. And then Will Morgrant came and took her away from the only home she had ever known, all for the sake of his dream. And if she had a choice, she would have been happy to pay that cost…but she did not have a choice. He told her she was not a goddess, and that he must come with her for a better world.

  Tempest was a warrior. A hero. She took the road untraveled. Not because it was easy, but because some must do it. And she was glad to pay that cost…but she fought to make sure others did not.

  Nadia took in a deep inhale and levitated herself back into the air with a strong wind and stared at Rochester’s changed colors, at the white and green of winter. She watched the world for a few moments, then smiled.

  It really was beautiful.

  Then she heard the battle cry, and prepared for her next mission, her face settling in the hard mask of duty.

  Legionnaires, together.