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#4
JUL 11 |
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In the shadow of an aged lighthouse, as the sun set across the ocean’s expanse, Mera, the former Queen of Atlantis, worked tirelessly excavating the near entirety of the beach in a desperate search. She used her water manipulation powers to sift through the sands, her fingers already bloodied from the extensive digging. She had collected several of the bones but many more were still missing. She was not entirely clear on the reasons for the necessity of her dead husband’s long severed hand but her recent experiences involving New God technologies had left the certainties in her mind.
The bones that she had found had strange etchings carved into them. She was hoping that assembling the hand would clarify the purpose of the markings and give her some form of information regarding her Aquaman’s whereabouts. She was positive that he was not truly dead; she could still feel his presence in her soul.
As she passed a sieve formed of solid water through several cubic tons of damp sand, she discovered four more hand bones. The landscape looked like a construction zone, piles of discarded sand mounding across the beach. She was exhausting herself with the effort as she wept to herself in desperation. After hours of exertion, she rested and cursed her body for its lack of endurance.
She dropped to her knees, water pooling around her as it crept up her thighs and onto her torso. She tensed her body as she tried to move but discovered that she could not. The water separated and forked across her body, forming an exterior system of water veins that covered her entire person below the chin. The water glowed as it replenished her exhaustion as she soon felt as if she had been fully rested and vitality restored.
She smiled as the gift that the New Gods had given her, although she had thought it would amount to nothing but a curse. She raised her arms to the twilight sky and the sands around her blasted into the sky, dispersing into their individual particles. The sand floated in suspension in the air as her mind sifted through it until she had assembled the full skeletal hand of her husband.
Tendrils of living water gathered the bones and put the hand together, assembling the runes carved within into the proper configuration. The hand hovered before her in a dull blue glow, its bioluminescence pronouncing the foreign message it had written upon it. Mera did not recognize the language but she instinctively knew the significance.
“Ki-Si-Kil-Lil-La-Ke,” Mera whispered to herself as unseen forces watched her from the lighthouse.
Nicholas Onokentauros turned away from the window, satisfied with the direction events were heading. “Mera knows the name,” he announced to Whaler, his ancient enemy and long-time body sharer. “Where King Orin had failed, she will do what must be done.”
“I still don’t understand why you engraved the Demon Mother’s true name into Aquaman’s severed hand bones,” Whaler complained. Three thousand years ago he had a hand in releasing Lilith. Over the last thirty centuries, he had seen the error of his ways during his time bonded into the same body as Nicholas Onokentauros.
“We were aware that the events that led to Lilith’s release were in motion at the time Aquaman was travelling into the Empty Space,” Nicholas explained. “Unable to assist overtly, I did what I could to help, as cryptically as the help might have been.”
“Now that we’re separated, Gamemnae’s hold over our souls has been disrupted,” Whaler asserted. “Do you intend to help existence now?”
“That brings me to something I’ve wanted to tell you,” Onokentauros said as he turned to Whaler, pointing a rune covered ancient crossbow to his diminutive former enemy’s face. “I don’t intend to let you go back to your old ways,” Onokentauros said as his finger tensed on the trigger. “I always knew that I would kill you someday, Whaler.”
“No,” Whaler pleaded as his Maori markings that etched his face glowed with defiance. With nothing physical to channel his Borealis powers, Whaler was unusually defenseless. After all of the centuries trapped in another body, he had grown complacent and lazy.
As Onokentauros split Whaler’s brain with an enchanted crossbow bolt, he knew that it was the right thing to do. He knew Whaler better than he knew himself, and there was no question that Whaler would turn on him at some point soon. As the dead man collapsed to the floor, Nicholas suddenly felt the pang of guilt associated with murdering the only friend he’d had for the last three thousand years.
He hung the crossbow on a hook near the window and decided to go down stairs to check on Zacharael, his other ancient associate. Walking carefully down the spiral staircase, he reflected on what was happening in the universe beyond him. He had questions about why Dr. Fate had released them after making them watch the destruction of the Spectre. He was not sure about what Zacharael had in mind for the Justice League; he had no problem murdering someone such as Whaler but killing the Justice League seemed wrong. After all of his years, he was not quite sure what was right or wrong anymore, truthfully.
He reached the basement level of the lighthouse and was overcome with guilt as he saw what remained of the Justice League chained around the circular wall. The Atom, Black Canary, Plastic Man, the Flash and Zatanna were in artificially induced comas as they hung in mystic chains. Zacharael had connected them together with an abundance of wires and tubes, surgically connecting them to an anachronistic machine constructed for a specific and ominous purpose.
A fence of crumbling boulders encircled a pool that rested in the center of the stonewalled room. The machine was powered by the dark waters of the pool, pumping its fluids through the tubes and mechanisms that traveled the course through the captives, returning to the pool to dispose of the mystic waste.
“All goes well, Nicholas,” Zacharael announced as he worked, using a combination of his bulking physique and his inborn otherworldliness in conjunction while he fine tuned the device.
“The Atlantis Queen knows the true name,” Nicholas replied, bringing the Angel up to speed. “I still believe that using these heroes is not the proper avenue of action.”
Zacharael paused in his work, frustrated to have to justify his actions yet again. “I do not intend to be strapped to a wall for another eternity,” he said. “Although it will take these five to procure the integrity of the shunt, they will be able to hold her. They will live out the remainder of infinity as ultimate definitions of the heroes that they intend to be.”
“They protect this world from the evil things,” Onokentauros argued. “Who will save the world the next time?”
“There are hundreds of humans of the same ilk. There will be another Justice League to rise from their ranks,” he explained as he pulled a large level on the side of his machine. Onokentauros was unconvinced. Zacharael shook his large white head. “I am not killing anyone,” he assured. “The Lazarus Fluid will perpetuate their life cycles.”
“I’ve killed Whaler,” Onokentauros informed the Angel of Surrender.
“I know, I knew you would,” he replied. “We all will do what we must.”
“Please do not make me kill you as well.”
“I am not making you do anything but accept the truth of what we must do,” Zacharael said as he watched the tubes fill with fluid form the Lazarus Pool. “Might I add that you could not kill me if you tried? It is the one true impossibility of this life.”
“Give me the opportunity to replace these heroes will others more deserving of this terrible fate,” Onokentauros pleaded.
“No,” Zacharael replied definitively. “It is too late to stop the machine now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” a voice growled from the arched doorway. Batman embedded three batarangs into the Angel of Surrender before they knew he was there. He leapt into the room, followed quickly by the New God, Bekka and the first daughter of Ra’s Al Ghul, Nyssa.
“We came looking for a Lazarus Pit but I think our priorities have changed,” Batman explained as he saw his fellow Justice Leaguers in horrible captivity.
The ancient tattoos that covered Zacharael’s hulking white frame burst into life as he knew he must defend his machine. “You don’t understand…” he began before Batman’s boot met his whale-like chin.
“I understand all I need,” Batman growled.
Mera stood a mere quarter mile from where Batman had slipped in Nicholas Onokentauros’s archaic lighthouse, speaking the secret message etched into the bones over and over. Distracted, absorbed into the intricacies of the information, she was unable to detect the oncoming assault upon her by a legion of Lilith’s hellish spawn.
The diabolical brothers known as Sonneillon and Philatanus ordered their lesser brothers into a tsunami of flesh and teeth, overcoming Mera easily. Sonneillon, the obesity of red flesh, vomited living abortions of himself from his massive mouth, covering Mera and several of his Lilin brothers. Philatanus, the skeletal solid ghost, used the bones of his fallen brethren to carve a path to the fallen sea queen.
“You won’t live with this secret,” Sonneillon spewed, his words as rancid as his breath. “You will never live to use this knowledge against her.”
“Drink her blood,” Philatanus suggested with glee. “Harvest her eggs for a snack.”
Philatanus snatched Mera by her red hair as she was pinned to the ground. He yanked to pull her away in order to kill her but she resisted. As he tugged, the beach beneath Mera and the Lilin atop her exploded in a devastating blast of solid water. Philatanus was reduced to a cloud of red steam as Sonneillon was showered in a mist of his annihilated brothers. More Lilin were crawling from the ocean to join those that remained as Sonneillon wailed in rage.
Mera stood in a crater of sand that quickly filled with the rain of Lilin blood. Her eyes were filled with rage as the skeleton hand of her dead husband hovered before her. She pointed at the obese Sonneillon and belted a scream of utter wrath, the hand streaked through the darkening sky at her command. It plunged into Sonneillon’s disgusting belly, exiting with little resistance out of his back. The red fat thing collapsed to the sand, quickly eaten by the swarm of his own legion.
Waves of water from the ocean shot from the tide, solidifying and destroying countless Lilin. Mera was summoning the waters of her ocean to kill those that threatened her. The Lilin seemed to be limitless, like the heads of a hydra. As many as Mera destroyed, there were still more.
As frightening as the infinite monsters seemed, Mera felt that whatever was happening within her own body was more frightening. She did not even have to think for the indescribable abilities of the god technologies that had been introduced into her systems took the reins of her subconscious mind, both defending her while amplifying her awareness of its influence.
As she fought both internally and externally, the beach was blanketed by an ominous brown fog rolling in from the shore, engulfing the lighthouse and the crags around it, the sands and the shore as well. The fog meandered around her, encircling the Lilin as they fought and died until it centralized amidst the horde. The fog twisted and roiled into the shape of three humans.
Black Alice and Vince Kennedy coalesced from the Secret’s immaterial form, instantly surrounded by the endless monstrosities. Vince’s eyes glazed over as the words of Anti-Life made their way from his lips, crippling the Lilin that had the ears to hear them. Black Alice, with no words spoken, gained the golden helmet and vestments of Dr. Fate, tossing explosive ankh-shaped spells at the beasts. Secret expanded the periphery of her gaseous form, swallowing a hundred Lilin in one gulp, banishing them into an existence between true life and death. Black Alice and Mera instinctively worked together to form a solid barrier between the heroes and the monsters, establishing a temporary safe zone.
“We need to get to Apokolips,” Black Alice said as she came to Mera’s side, hoping that the sea queen had moved away from her rage and confusion back to a stable state of mind. “You’re our ride and we have a ticket.”
Mera was unsure. “I can’t get you there,” she replied, although she was not able to be positive of the new capabilities growing within her.
“You’re the only one left who can,” Secret whispered, her voice as soft as down. “We’ve scoured the planet and all Boom tech has been disabled. We know that DeSaad has implanted things in you. I can feel it through the ether.”
“You’re one of what we’re going to call ‘The First of the Fifth World’,” Alice added. “A combination of your other-dimensional origins and the alien technology of the New Gods has metastasized throughout your being. You’re among the first one a new breed.”
Mera still had reservations. She did not know these people, they were just children. “How do you know these things?” she asked as she watched the Lilin beyond the barrier attempt to gain entry and shred their bodies.
“Because Vince here is the usher,” Alice explained, gesturing to Kennedy who seemed lost in the thoughts in his own head. “His mind contains the formula that makes up Anti-Life and we need you to get us to Apokolips before the Demon Mother gets there.”
Vince muttered segments of the Equation as they watched him nervously. He had been a normal teenager when they met him a short time ago; now the knowledge trapped in his mind seemed to be eating his personality away.
“The clock is ticking, Mera,” Secret urged. “We need to depart A.S.A.P.”
Before Mera could help them further, the sky lit up as the nearby lighthouse exploded in a ball of black fire. Burning wood and stone rained upon them as they watched, fearing the prospects of what the black explosion signified. Black Alice blasted the barrier that kept the Lilin at bay outward with devastating force, pushing them all into the sky or sea, bending the energies into a path to the lighthouse. They were terribly surprised as the disconnected head of Plastic Man splashed into the sand in front of them, accompanied by chunks of his abnormal body.
“The Justice League has exploded,” Vince muttered, his eyes lost in the reflection of the black blaze. “N equals Y where Y equals Hope.”
Merryman had constructed a large bonfire out of unwritten screenplays for the Army of Yet to Be to warm themselves. Limbo was full of objects to burn; unsent love letters, unrealized blueprints, partial ideas, forgotten inventions and unused plots. He could set fire to a corner of any of them and Limbo could burn into infinity. He tossed a copy of the script for Green Lantern: Anthony Drake #12 into the flames and rejoined his men to go over the plan.
Aquaman, Hal Jordan, Barry Allen and Ollie Queen warmed their hands over the fire, relaxing after a satisfactory meal of concoctions yet to be discovered. They had been recruited into the Army of Limbo, the so-called Army of the Yet to Be, to aid them in their raid of Hell. The purpose of such an attack had yet to be explained to them thoroughly.
Merryman roasted a hot dog on a pointed stick as he elaborated. “Fear of the Demon Mother has kept the Lords of the Inferno in place for countless millennia,” he explained. “Her return to the physical realms has set the entire infrastructure into open rebellion. Ament battles Internecia while the Labyrinth holds off attacks from the Odium. Pandemonia collects all of the struggle into ultra-nuclear energy, constructing Hellbombs that the winner of the ultimate civil war will release unto Earth.”
“Ultra-nuclear?” Barry Allen asked in disbelief. “This is all nonsensical garbage.”
Merryman shook his head seriously, the bells on his jester’s cap jingling accordingly. “No sir, this is all too real. We take down the leaders of the factions, we save Earth.”
“Why risk yourselves?” Aquaman asked. “You’re perfectly safe here in Limbo.”
“Nothing ever threatens this joint,” Ollie Queen added. “Who wants to go after some endless trash heap full of no name forgotten schmoes?”
“The schmoes of the Army Yet to Be have everything to fight for, Ollie,” Merryman said, upset at the use of such demeaning language. “These men and women are not like the others here in Limbo, lost or erased from the continuities of life. They have not yet been into existence. They fight for the chance to be people outside of the ideas of them within this realm.”
“They do not exist?” Hal Jordan asked, intrigued by the concept. He was glad that those that had appeared here before him had questions as well. He never liked being the odd man out in the room, always one step behind everything.
“Not really, no,” Merryman said, indicating the nearby Owen Mercer. The young adult played with a boomerang, practicing his throws at a stuffed dummy. “Take Owen, for example. He’s supposed to be the long lost son of Captain Boomerang. He is supposed to take up his father’s mantle and become a hero in the Outsiders. He’s supposed to have a crush on Supergirl.”
“Then there’s Anna Fortune,” Merryman continued, pointing out the young woman as she fiddled with a glass canister full of sparkling matter. “She’s a member of the Justice Society and apprentice of Dr. Fate. She’s from a hundred and fifty some odd years ago.”
“Lorena Marquez is Aquagirl,” Merryman began. The teenage girl was avoiding the bonfire; the heat of the flame dehydrated her amphibious biology.
“No, she’s not,” Aquaman interjected. “I’ve never met her before.”
“San Diego sank into the ocean,” Merryman said, referring to events that had never happened. “She was one of the only survivors because she had a metagene that activated. You helped the city recover as an underwater civilization as its erstwhile sheriff.”
“So she’s from an alternate reality,” Aquaman answered.
Merryman shook his head, the heroes still not getting it. “Nope. She’s from a fictional reality.”
“So taking it upon themselves to invade and liberate Hell will give them the opportunity to become actual people,” Barry had deduced. He did not like any of this.
“Exactly,” Merryman smiled as he took a bite of his mostly burnt hot dog.
As he chewed, awaiting further questions, a large man fell from the sky and smashed into the bonfire. Cinders and burning pages erupted in a plume, covering them in sooty ash. The man seemed unharmed and coherent as he climbed to his feet. Brushing off the smolders from his god-woven yellow suit, Magnar addressed them. “I am Magnar of New Genesis,” he proclaimed. “I seek Aquaman.”
Barry, Hal and Ollie looked at Aquaman, awaiting a reply. Aquaman shared their curiosity but gave them a shrug.
“I am Aquaman,” he said finally as the large New God gave him an uncomfortably executed hug.
“Batman sent me,” Magnar said, happy to have succeeded at the task he had been given. He knew better than to ever doubt the Dark Knight. “He has a plan.”
“Of course he does,” Aquaman, Barry, Hal and Ollie responded in an amusing unison.
Lobo was strapped to the most ridiculous apparatus he had ever seen, binding his arms, legs and head in such ways that he had never experienced before. After an ill conceived raid upon the New Genesis capital of Supertown, and after it had taken twenty officers of the Warrior Elite to subdue him, he was held for an instant trial before the monarch of the New Gods.
Izaya, the Highfather of New Genesis, looked at Lobo with a hint of sympathy. He felt compassion for all living things, whether it be a newborn kitten suckling its mother or a homicidal alien bounty hunter with a taste for genocide. Lobo had killed many harmless citizens of New Genesis and would face the stiffest of penalties.
“Lobo of Czarnia,” Izaya ‘s voice boomed in the massive chamber as he paced around the captive murderer. “I am Highfather, your judge and jury.”
“No executioner?” Lobo struggled to say, his mouth strapped as tightly as the rest of him.
“There are no executions on New Genesis,” Izaya replied, eyeing the maniac. “Although there is such debate amongst the members of my advisory that would like make you an exception.”
“Do it already, old man,” Lobo challenged, fighting to move although it was definitely hopeless. “I got better things to do than sit here and listen to your beard flap around.”
Highfather scowled at the contempt shown to him, unaccustomed to being spoken to in such ways. “You have killed millions…” he started before being interrupted.
“Billions, maybe,” Lobo mumbled through his restraints. “Give a guy some credit here.”
“You do not deserve to breathe another breath of the air of the Gods,” Highfather stood in judgment, holding his curved staff to the air to announce the sentence.
“I am shattering generations of peace and life by ordering you to death, Lobo of Czarnia,” he demanded. “May we have mercy on your soul.”
The Highfather’s staff, the sole totality of his power, wisdom and rank, gathered energies from the Source as it generated its death force, curling and crackling. Seconds before the fatal blow would have been administered to the murderous alien, a Boom Tube erupted mere meters away from them.
“What is the meaning of this?” Highfather demanded answers, his anger growing into uncommon rage until he saw the occupant of the Boom Tube enter into the room.
The Demon Mother, with her long flowing pink gown and her raven black hair, smiled as she saw Highfather recognize her. “The end of the New Gods is the meaning of this, Izaya,” she spat as she unhinged her jaw and let loose as swarm of locusts into the cavernous room. Highfather’s advisory council fled the room, knowing the appearance of the Demon Mother had been long prophesied and meant the end to all that they had known.
Highfather let loose with the Source energies that he had intended for Lobo at Lilith, screaming in sacred defiance. She lifted her palm and caught the blast effortlessly, holding it in her hand and observing it curiously. She crushed it between her fingers and swallowed it whole.
“This cannot be!” Izaya yelled as Lilith slowly sauntered to him.
She came within centimeters of his face as he quivered in fear. “Goodbye, Grandson,” she whispered as she kissed his chin. Highfather exploded into a ball of Source energy upon contact with her lips. Lilith inhaled his essence with a deep breath, savoring the scent of his fallen godhood.
“Great Feetal’s Gizz!” Lobo exclaimed, still bound tightly. He was experiencing something he had never felt before as he wet his pants.
Fear.
Lilith stared at him for several moments, pondering what to do with such a thing. She disrupted the technologies that kept him docile and inspected him further.
“I have a few ideas for you,” she muttered, perceiving Lobo’s terrible abilities that could be used to further her goals. “Let’s go to bed.”
Lobo would have usually done something macho and hedonistic at the suggestion, but this woman was different. He knew she was bad news. He was at a loss for words as Lilith grabbed him by the hair and dragged him into Izaya’s lavish bedchamber. He cried as she took him, not knowing that by day’s end, New Genesis would be overrun by Czarnian Lilins, each drop of their blood producing an exact duplicate.
An unending horde of indestructible atrocities.
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To Be Continued...
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