Background[]
If anything were to come close to an Inkling Boogeyman, tales would be spun about how Epheral would come and take prana away from Inklings.
According to sparse accounts from Duplex, Epheral was born by accident. During Osoth's reign over the Inkling race, the empress performed several conversions of her people, absorbing the undesirables and altering them into new, more fitting subjects for her warmongering empire. Epheral was born from Osoth differently, said to have "escaped" her. Epheral is described as a "congealed" entity of left-overs from Osoth's various converts. It was born as just a core, with no Inkling membrane to cover it.
Its powers quickly became evident, as it could warp, shift, and maniuplate the prana around it, be it prana-constructs, such as Castle Blackwolf, or prana inside other Inklings. It was a more unique grasp on the life-giving energy that Inklings relied on to function, unlike any that had been seen before. To essentially control life force itself was a power that could trump all others, and Osoth grew to fear it. No Inkling could touch the core without being at risk of harm, and so Osoth ordered that it be exiled from Canvas instead, to the furthest reaches of space where it would find no living being to receive prana from.
Only two Inklings saw any positive implications of Epheral's prana-manipulating powers: Dormence and Tranquil. The two Inkling servants, long crushed under the rule of Osoth, tried to reason with the empress. With Epheral's powers, they thought that sustainable prana "batteries" could be collected and set up to feed Inkling settlements, eliminating the need for further conquest or expansion. Osoth would hear nothing of it, and declared them treasonous, sentencing them to be exiled alongside Epheral, if they adored it so much.
Using Parthal's gates, Epheral, Dormence, and Tranquil, were banished into space. There, they drifted, having no alternative but to slowly drain of prana and pass away over time.
Epheral displayed a unique ability to draw prana from other sources than just living, sentient creatures. Stars, planets, and other sources proved to contain similar life-giving energies, and Epheral drew from them to sustain itself and the Inklings with it as they drifted. After immeasurable time, they fell to a world in which they could survive by bonding with the creatures that lived there. However this planet was revealed to be one of Osoth's numerous conquests, and the creatures there were already long ensnared to her.
Despite being little more than a core, Epheral was able to communicate with Dormence and Tranquil, and it devised a plan to take the Osoth-sworn creatures and take their prana for themselves. Having no other choice, the Inklings worked to lure the inhabitants of the planet one at a time to Epheral's lair, where the core would drain them for power. By this method, Epheral was not only able to sustain itself and Dormence and Tranquil, but stockpile excess prana with seemingly no limit. This continued for ages, and Epheral would leave nothing behind with which the Osoth-sworn Inklings and hosts could use to live. It drained them to nothing, and with more power Epheral began to develop. It saw itself as a "she," and declared itself the true heir princess to the Inkling empire.
With Dormence and Tranquil acting as guidance, Epheral began a campaign to battle Osoth and attempt to free those under the tyrant Empress' control. The end-result of Epheral's draining entire worlds of their prana always came at the end of lengthy battles that ultimately resulted in failure. Loss after loss saw Epheral's empathy for Osoth's subjects steadily wane, until one choice encounter with Laibon left it completely shattered. Declaring the initial goal of saving Osoth's subjects a complete waste of her time and abilities, she decided to instead simply cut her way through to Osoth, and hunt her down to the ends of the known universe.
Dormence and Tranquil approached Epheral when it seemed she was finally closing in on Osoth herself. They claimed that Epheral had become what she hated most and pleaded with her to end her war against the Empress. Epheral didn't even see the irony in seeing this as a betrayal. Hurt by the accusations from the only Inklings she thought of as friends, Epheral took back what she had given. She drained Dormence and Tranquil of nearly all their prana, and then cast them away. She specifically sent them in Osoth's direction, unsure and uncaring as to whether or not they would survive or simply end up an example.
Having a connection with prana, Epheral could trace beings infused with what she had given them. She was able to sense Dormence and Tranquil, and she tracked them tirelessly, fixated on their journey. After a time, it seemed the Inklings did not die. After a time, they stopped traveling. They had made it somewhere, and if Epheral was correct, it was exactly where Osoth was. She began to prepare herself to meet them, and to finally meet Osoth and enact her revenge. She followed the trail of her banished friends, unknowingly setting her on a course toward Earth.
She arrived not knowing that Echelon had long since defeated Osoth, but it mattered little. With so much amassed power over so much time, Epheral was a crushing force, able to invade planets rather than trick their denizens into giving up their prana. She came full-force, touching down with "prana batteries" with which she could create her construct army and resume her campaign.
Harbington Heroes[]
Epheral met with the host of Dormence and Tranquil, Quincey Abram, first by chance after following their trail to its end. She did not know that the two Inklings had merged to become Duplex. Quincey briefly came into contact with one of Epheral's "batteries," and due to the fact that Duplex still lived on Epheral's given prana (if just barely by then) Epheral was able to glimpse into Quincey herself. She used images of beasts and monster's in the girl's mind to form her army, causing them to take the shapes of monsters from Kingdom of Roaming. She also seemed to understand what happened to her old friends and was both shocked and confused.
Epheral first targeted Inklings, which also meant targeting their human hosts. She sent her armies to Harbington and Locksmouth and was met by the likes of Echelon and her allies in Locksmouth, while in Harbington the citizens struggled to save themselves from Epheral's might.
The resistance to her attacks mounted as Echelon's forces joined other Inklings that had merged with Quincey's pack. Epheral decided that to cut them off at the head, she would need to reach Canvas, and she had discovered that Echelon had the ability to do so. After seeking Echelon out and attempting to corrupt the Inkling with her pranic influence, Epheral soon learned of the Mirror Slide and it being her gateway to Canvas. Upon her first attempt at doing so, however, Epheral found that Canvas' unique relationship with prana made it impossible for her to survive there like the Inklings she so despised. She devised that the only way to overcome this was to find a host.
Epheral attacked Harbington's citizens as they attempted to flee their home and find refuge in Locksmouth. In the resulting battle between her and Quincey's pack, Epheral took Garrison Clarke as a makeshift host, and embedded her core within the man to forcibly subjugate him. The bonding was unusual, makeshift at best, but it served to help her overcome the threshold barring her entry from Canvas. She left her prana construct armies to put pressure on the Inkling forces as she delved once more into Canvas to face Echelon, who had prepared for her coming.
Echelon, along with Mhend and Koralo, forced Epheral out of Canvas. They fooled her into escaping through a particular mirror that ejected her into the same Inkling-Removing device in the Locksmouth Police Department that had once been turned against the locals. Epheral was forced to remove herself from Garrison, nearly killing the man in the process, and was left to face Daxton Kemberge, Carrie Oakenfield, and Laila Lavinia in a weakened state.
When it seemed as if the Inklings had taken the upper hand, Epheral, driven by sheer desperation, took in every one of her prana constructs and batteries and forcibly flipped the forces of prana she had absorbed, reversing their "frequency" to create a shell of powerful "anti-prana," or "Aprana." Becoming a creature whose energies existed in direct opposition to all other living entities, Epheral declared herself "Achroma," and dedicated her entire existence to wiping away Inklings and all life as they knew it.
Achroma[]
As a new, powerful Achroma, Epheral took out Duplex, nearly killing it outright. She was even able to land a direct attack on Arus' core, which even she couldn't simply shake off. The initial transformation had left Epheral somewhat weakened, and she knew that her newfound energy could bear much more powerful effects on the world around her. Issuing a challenge to the Inklings, she fled in order to regain her strength and reach new, more powerful heights.
After twenty-four hours, Quincey had arrived with her pack, alongside Samantha Masterson and Max Tangent, to face her. They clashed in an intense battle that saw Epheral remove the Inkling cores from nearly all of her opponents, except for Quincey and Kenny. After Quincey used Shading to combat her, Epheral was defeated. In her final moments, she delivered a deathblow to Quincey and swore that she would have her revenge on her, only to be ultimately destroyed by the girl.
Though her transformation had left pockets of corrupted Aprana scattered in both Harbington and Canvas, and Epheral claimed that through these she would one day be reborn to continue her tireless campaign to eliminate everything in existence. Over time, these Aprana pockets would grow into unique, anti-life ecosystems, birthing creatures all their own to set out in an attempt to grow and hasten Epheral's eventual return. With no apparent way to combat this, Quincey and her pack are left to battle these threats as they emerge, while Echelon was left to devise a method to combat the same forces in Canvas.