A Shadow of my Former Self

My, my... Now where to begin?

Hello. My name is Nathan Umbra, and I am a former agent of The Slender Man.

My service under him began eight years ago, when my brother, adopted sister and myself sacrificed our parents in his name. He came to us, impressed with our devotion, and allowed us high ranking positions in his proxy army. Free of the constraints of technically being family, Ella and I developed a romantic relationship. Around this time, my brother John also discovered his latent healing abilities. Not a personal regeneration factor, no. He was able to heal other people's injuries simply by laying his hands on the wound. This proved to be useful in the coming years, as I was quite prone to injury (and death as well, it seems).

Then one day we came up with an idea. An idea which would forever solidify our position as heroes among the Proxies. We were going to give The Slender Man a son. An extension of himself. A Demi-Fear, if you will. This entity, code named "Larvae" would act as a replacement body if the Slender Man were ever to die. And... The plan worked. Not in our favor, mind you...

You see, in my initial attempts to gather the mass sacrifice necessary for such a ritual, my true motives were discovered by a man named Clark, who decided the best course of action would be to kill me. After my death, I awoke in Hell... Or so I thought. According to some of the Timberwolves we've interrogated, Hell is just an illusion the Archangel creates for the servants of other Fears once they die and become a part of him. I spent what felt like months in torture and solitude before my Master could negotiate terms for my release.

After my revival, I relocated to Canada and tried again. This time, I managed to gather over a hundred followers by convincing them that I would succeed where the Core Theory had failed, and kill the Slender Man. One such follower was a spy sent by a woman named Diesis to try to find my true motives. One day, I caught him reading through my journal. This was the point where I let my master corral all of my followers into the sacrificial chamber while I tortured Phobos for the location of Diesis' home base.

Why I would need to know where she was is one of the memories I've lost. All I can remember is that he revealed the location of her mansion, escaped, and warned them in time to prepare for my assault. Regardless of how well it was defended, I survived and took with me whatever it was I had needed. And then the day came where Larvae would be created. I was personally asked to act as the mental template, the Proxy who's personality he would be based off of. While normally this would be an honor reserved for a Proxy the Slender Man saw as a son, it was a fate I certainly did not want.

During my service, I had seen what the Fears could do. It frightened me. I created the "Larvae" project as a cover for what the sacrifice would really do; something that will be mentioned at the end of this post. Something that would have let me kill the Fears. Unfortunately, I had to resort to tactics similar to their own, which I regret immensely.

In my final moments, I mailed my journal to Diesis' Mansion. Inside, there were several cocktails that, if administered would cause Larvae to die, releasing the "Template Proxy". I entrusted Phobos with this task, stating that Larvae would eventually grow to be a greater threat than the Slender Man himself. Placing all of my faith in him, I let myself die for the second time.

Well... I can tell from the fact that I'm typing this that Phobos succeeded. Now the only issue is tracking him down.

See, that journal had very important information in it. Larvae was only the first part of a plan on a larger scale than you could possibly imagine. Because along with him, two anomalies were created which had the potential to give a Fear unparallelled power. Anomalies that, if harnessed by a human, could allow them to completely and utterly annihilate the Fears. But due to my fractured memories, the only way we're going to find out exactly what it was is by tracking down Phobos and taking my journal back... By force if necessary.

My name is Lieutenant Nathaniel James Umbra of the Deicide Branch of STAB.

And I will atone for all of my sins.

I will give Elijah the power to accomplish his goals.

I will create a world free of Fear.

The Beginning of the End.

Good afternoon, citizens. There is no need to be alarmed. We are here to help.

Who exactly are we, you may ask? We are the Deicide Branch of an organisation known as the Supernatural Threat Analysis Bureau. You may know them as STAB.

Our branch, named after the Ancient humans who slew Gods, was only recently formed. It began when the person who is now Agent Umbra stumbled in to our base in the Thunder Bay-Rainy River district of Ontario, a part of our efforts to expand beyond the United States. He began screaming about how we needed to evacuate the city, as something terrible was about to occur. A look of Fear spread across his face as a tremor occurred, causing major structural damage to the facility. We ran outside only to discover a massive rift in the sky, a crack in reality itself, if you will.

STAB headquarters immediately contacted us over our communications relay, and asked if the reports were true. I confirmed their suspicions. The Quiet had manifested itself over my hometown. And just when we thought the end had come... It vanished. The crack sealed itself. People who had rushed out of their houses breathed a collective sigh of either relief or terror, and returned to whatever it was they were doing prior to this nearly-catastrophic event. It was as if they had completely forgotten it had happened. Most of them, anyways. The news teams are still investigating, the homeless are proclaiming that the Rapture is coming... But most people have either forgotten, or just do not care.

I for one will not take this lying down.

Umbra, myself, and all of the other personnel at the base contacted headquarters. We all came to a consensus- that something needed to be done. In the conversation that followed, Umbra presented a brilliant idea.

Create a branch entirely dedicated to destroying the Fears. When command enquired how we would do this, Umbra explained that, while being dead has fogged his memory (He'll explain this in his personal post. It's quite interesting, really.), he does recall having written down a method of gaining enough power to do essentially anything the wielder desired in a journal he once kept. Alas, this journal is now in the possession of a teenage runner named "Phobos". Until we find him, we have no leads.

Until then, I suppose there is nothing more to do than give an introduction for myself.

My name is Elijah Shepard, Commander in Chief of the STAB branch known as The Deicide.

And I will avenge my wife and sons.

I will personally escort every last Fear to the gates of Hell.