Hearts of the Multiverse

Chapter Five: Alastor's Game

"Kaolinite," Professor Tomoe began. "You've wasted many of my daimons, and you haven't managed to capture a pure heart of any significance. How many more times do you plan to fail me?"

"Professor, I'm afraid you'll have to be patient. But I have many plans for the people of this world."

"I do hope so."

Kaolinite walked away, but she was silently fuming. She had so many targets she wanted to check, but there was always someone else in the way. There had to be a way to get her targets alone so she could steal their hearts. She needed more power. More monsters. More something!

And then, her phone rang.

Expecting it to be another tirade from the professor, she hesitantly picked up the phone. "Hello?"

"Hello," a chilly, crisp, American accent spoke on the other end. "Might I be speaking to the lady Kaolinite?"

"Who is this?" Kaolinite demanded.

"Relax, I'm on your side," the man assured her. "Actually, I'm quite interested in your, shall we say, method of energy conversion? Souls are pretty powerful."

"I'm listening," Kaolinite said, somewhat impatiently.

"What if I told you I had a league of my own? A league formed from the unrightfully jilted members of their societies interested in getting revenge? I bet we could provide you some information that would make hunting and cornering targets easier."

It was almost too coincidental having someone who knew the wannabe heroes' strengths and weaknesses, someone who could tell her how to finally achieve what she wanted.

"What's in it for you?" she asked.

"Other than revenge? We'd like a piece of your new world. We know a little of your plans. We want in."

"Oh?" she said, somewhat surprised. "Of course, I'll need to check in with—,"

"Yes, check in with your professor. We encourage you to do so. But as an olive branch, we've developed a monster to aid your daimon today using some DNA of creatures in my region. One of my loyalists will deliver the sapling to your front door. It operates just as one of your monsters—it provides more of a psychic attack and keeps others out of the way."

"Th-thank you. This is incredibly generous if all you're saying is true."

The voice on the other end chuckled. "Consider it a start to a beautiful friendship."

...

An ominous wind ripped and tore at his face. His mask had been split open—the left half hung uselessly down off his chin. All around the shattered pavements and building were bodies—some being people he knew. For instance, he could see some of the shrine members: broken, beaten, possibly worse on the broken pieces of building and what used to be roads. His body felt weak—weaker than ever before.

He tried to pull himself up, but he couldn't. Dust swirled in the echoing breeze that whooshed and nipped at his body.

"C'mon, get up," he urged himself.

But it wasn't any use. He couldn't even move his right arm—probably broken. The ground trembled and groaned as something pushed its way through the ground. Miles tried to block the dirt from his face, to peer up long enough to see a giant shadow in the sky. The wormholes it created looked all too familiar...just like...