The New Champions: Legacy

Some mysterious accident, no one knew what, had destroyed Terra Prime and all the Eternal Champions. It seemed that a magic battle that had been fought between a group of Eternal Champions and an evil sorceror had unleashed so much energy that it had destabilized the timestream of Terra Prime, and destroyed that earth and many others.

Or at least, that was the official explanation, given by the Rules and Agents (or those that had survived, anyway.) But Willian wasn't sure that this was the truth. How could a mere mage battle unleash so much energy that it could destroy an entire group of worlds? There were greater forces at work here, clearly, and the Rules and Agents were too afraid to admit it.

But that didn't matter as much to Willian as much as the salient fact that, save for Willian alone, the Eternal Champions were all dead. And they had not died nobly in battle, but utterly meaninglessly. Above all, Queen Astra La Post, his wife and the woman he cared about more than anyone in the multiverse, was dead. She had surely deserved a longer life and a better death than this.

Why? Why had he survived when the others had all died? Why had his world, the other Eternal Champions, and above all Astra, died like this? He wished he had died with the others, so that he would not be separate from Astra.

There had been no official memorial for the dead Champions and the people of the dead worlds. This place, for Willian, served as a sort of unofficial memorial. It was the Earth where the event that had destroyed the Champions had taken place. Now, it was dead, blackened, charred by great forces of magic that had been unleashed. Willian had come here to remember all those who had died, to pray for their souls. He'd also come here to wrestle with his grief.

Willian looked at the sky. The stars had dimmed, snuffed out by the great catastrophe. It made him think of his star, his Astra, snuffed out by death.

But not all the prayer and tears in the world could bring back Astra or any of those who had died. He had to move on. Somehow, after all this death, life would go on, even though it seemed impossible. And Willian was needed, as the last Eternal Champion in the Multiverse.

Willian saw a flash of light behind him. Someone had appeared. It was Rule 179, one of the few who had survived the catastrophe. "Hello, Willian," said 179. "We have a job for you."

"Yes?" Willian said.

"The Catastrophe did a lot of damage. Many Earths were destroyed, many evil forces were unleashed. There's a lot of chaos out there, the timestreams of the various universes were severely disrupted. The Offices are very low on strength. The Champions are needed more than ever."

"And you want me to help revive them?"

"That's about the size of it," said 179. "You're a natural leader, and as the last surviving of the old Champions, you're something of a symbol of what they were. Having you on the new team would boost morale. However, if you want to, the Offices are going to let you turn this down, if you want. That Catastrophe took a great toll on you."

"No," Willian said. "I'm staying on. It's what Astra would have wanted." He was not the last of the Champions, Willian corrected himself. He was the first of the new.

1. "Good," 179 said. "Now the first thing we need is..."

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