---

With three perfect white smiles, the Corinthian had cleared the area. Countless legions of Chak Lah’I had appeared from the endless horizons, threatening to rend the flesh from the bone and the soul from the body, yet the Corinthian seemed to have them under his influence. Dr. Fate, Aquaman and Nicholas Onokentauros were speechless as they were saved.

“Hector, my friend,” the Corinthian said with three mouths. “It is good to see you, despite the circumstances.”

“Impossible,” Dr. Fate stated. “You can’t be here outside of the Dreaming.”

“I’m an embodiment of the ultimate nightmare,” said the Corinthian. He scanned the barren land surrounding them. “This looks like a nightmare if I’ve ever seen one.”

“Aren’t there rules?” Fate asked.

The Corinthian broadened his grin, relishing the opportunity to engage in such melodramatic dialogue. “I’m the Corinthian. Intentional or not, I was created from nothing specifically to break the rules. Now, are you going to let me help you people or are you going to waste what little time I’ve bought you by questioning my conveniently timed appearance?”

“If you’re here to assist us, then you should get on with it,” Aquaman said as he got out of the hole that the three others were standing in. “I don’t intend to be here a minute longer than we need to be.”

“Agreed,” Onokentauros added, hoping that the panic he had exuded a few minutes prior went unnoticed.

“Of course,” the Corinthian began. “I’m here for instructional purposes only from this point forward. Somebody, somewhere far away, is looking out for you, it seems, and I get to help you not screw things up.”

He slowly paced around the three as he spoke, meticulously and carefully.

“Nicholas Onokentauros,” the Corinthian announced suddenly, pointing at the two faced man accusatorily. “You have misguided these men. You are not here to help them.”

Onokentauros looked surprised and was quick to defend himself. “What?” he exclaimed. “Who are you to accuse me of such things? I’m giving them an opportunity to get what they want here in the Empty Space. Without me, they wouldn’t have gotten here at all.”

“I’m not talking to you,” the Corinthian stated as he pointed to the face on the side Of Nicholas’s head. “I’m talking to your second you…the one that was called Whaler.”

The second face was silent, perhaps so as not to implicate himself.

“Three thousand years ago when you were two people, one of you fought valiantly to prevent her from coming back while the other of you attempted to free her,” the Corinthian explained. Aquaman and Dr. Fate watched the exchange with great interest. Had they been played?

“We’ve both spent the last thirty centuries living the error of our ways,” Onokentauros said. He turned to Fate and Aquaman with a desperate look in his eyes. “You have to believe me; I mean only the best with my intentions.”

“I’ll leave it up to them to trust you,” the Corinthian said. He turned to Aquaman and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m truly sorry, or at least as sorry as a thing like me can be, for what these three men will do to you.”

“What does that mean?” Aquaman demanded to be enlightened. His impatience was evident in his body language.

“You should have brought your hand with you,” the Corinthian said as he reached into the pocket in the front of his jeans. “Too late now.”

He handed three small white objects to Dr. Fate, careful not to drop any of them. Dr. Fate accepted them and studied them intently. Aquaman stared intensely at the second face of Nicholas Onokentauros with growing distrust.

“In order to cross the Empty Space,” the Corinthian explained, “you need to emulate the dead. All that is here is the dead in one form or another. Only by becoming as they are may you survive. Constantly seek water, even if you don’t need it. The things around you will know if you are searching for anything else and therefore they will know that you are not of the dead.”

“What are these beans for?” Dr. Fate asked as he continued to study the objects that the Corinthian had given him.

“Those are Chak Lah’I pupas encased in candle wax. Ingesting one will summon one of the terrible things. The second one will allow you to communicate with it. The third one…” the Corinthian stopped in surprise. The objects were gone.

“Where did they go?” he asked, all three mouths using different voices this time.

“I’ve ingested them,” Dr. Fate answered matter-of-factly.

The Corinthian let out a gasp as he back peddled away from Fate. “You’ve screwed everyone now,” he said as his body disappeared into nothing. The skies started to rumble and the darkness took to a blacker shade of black.

“I don’t think you were supposed to eat all three at once,” Onokentauros stated as he watched the world fill with dread around them.

“I realized that as soon as I did it,” Fate replied as his hands lit up with golden energy in anticipation of battle.

“I suggest a retreat,” Onokentauros said.

“They come from all directions,” stated Aquaman, his cybernetic hand transforming strangely into a double edged blade. “There is no running.”

The din escalated as the Chak Lah’I began to take form, their bat-like torso and girl arms swaying and interlocking with each other, each individual beast at some points sharing the same physical space as others around them. Thousands poured into existence as Dr. Fate sent the first bolt of solidified mysticism into their growing ranks. The darkened swarm cascaded effortlessly around the attack, leaving them unharmed until the energy dissipated.

The oncoming stampede roared with the overwhelming sounds of bone grinding and tap dancing, completely surrounding the three as they stood in a triangle formation prepared for defense. As the herd closed in, they abruptly halted mere inches from contact. Aquaman felt the air being stifled around him…the beasts were suffocating the oxygen. His skin was parching and drying, a bad sign of what was to come.

The three stood silently and motionlessly as the Chak Lah’I gathered before them. The things grunted and wheezed, gurgled and drooled. Their cacophony of noise was indecipherable and nonsensical, slowly escalating in volume until it seemed the entire world around them was filled with more innumerable beasts all screaming the same terrible song. Until suddenly it stopped.

A lone creature moved amongst the herd, standing erect on its impossible legs. It let out a twitter of mucous from its face, clearing its throat as it began to speak.

“I suggest a retreat,” it said. Its voice was almost identical to that of Nicholas Onokentauros. “I suggest a retreat,” it repeated.

“You’ve screwed everyone now,” it continued. “I’ve ingested them. There is no running.”

“It’s just repeating things we’ve said,” Dr. Fate observed. “They’re not attacking us.”

“Fate,” Aquaman said from behind Fate. “Look at this.”

Fate turned to see the unending flock disperse, creating a path into the endless horizon. The beasts were pushed aside by an unseen force, presumably against their will as the sounds they produced were indicative. Turning to Onokentauros, Fate and Aquaman saw him praying, eyes tightly shut, words muttered under his breath. This was the same trick he had done with the ocean earlier.

The Chak Lah’I did not approve of being forcibly moved and began to express their displeasure as a legion, a slow howl beginning to form within them. Taking their wits closely into themselves, Aquaman and Dr. Fate ran down the pathway that Onokentauros had made before it closed in on itself. Onokentauros quickly followed, the path closing behind him as soon as he gained forward momentum. Onokentauros ran behind Aquaman, who was much fleeter of foot than he was as Dr. Fate streaked away through the air but low to the ground. The Chak Lah’I were engulfing them from above now as well as from all sides.

After an amount of time that exceeded normal human stamina, Onokentauros reached a clearing that seemed to appear from the ephemeral. Dr. Fate and Aquaman were standing safely in the middle of a wondrous place, the exact opposite of the darkness of what they were leaving behind them. Onokentauros began to weep at the beauty of what he saw as the second face of his head began a slight private chuckle. This is where they needed to be, this is where the Chak Lah’I had shepherded them purposefully.

At the four corners of the clearing stood four brilliant spires; gateways of whirling columns of iridescent dust that reached into the infinite sky for as far as the eye could perceive. Undiscovered marine life swam in the substance of the spires, some resembling early forms of human life, others seemed highly mutated or evolved imaginings of the future of life. The air filled with an almost solid breath of hope.

In the center of the clearing, perfectly central within the geometry of the spires, was a small structure. It appeared to be made of a study kind of wood, aged well through centuries of its existence. A tiny chimney emitted a gentle fog of exhaust.

Abruptly, Dr. Fate grabbed Onokentauros by the throat and lifted him off the ground. “Answers. Now,” he demanded, his voice stronger than it had been in months, the vitality in his eyes was fiery with rage.

“We’re here,” Onokentauros stuttered. “The stampede brought us right to it.”

“What is this place?” Fate asked, loosening his grip to avoid any unnecessary strangling.

“This is where they’ve kept her for all of these years,” Onokentauros explained. “An eternal, inescapable prison designed by the Old Gods to keep her from ever preventing their rise to power. A place where she could not stop the rise of the Second World, nor the two that followed.”

“Who is she?” Aquaman demanded to be informed.

“She’s the only hope we all have,” Onokentauros explained. “She is where you will find your wife, Hector. She is where you will cure your people, Orin. She is where I will end my miserable existence.”

“She is where she will be free,” the second face said.

“Then free her,” Fate said as he dropped his grip on Onokentauros’s throat.

“Are you sure you’ve thought this through, Dr. Fate?” Aquaman asked as Onokentauros coughed to regain his breath. “Who will you be releasing? How exactly will this woman rid Atlantis of its plague? We know nothing of what is going on here.”

“She will give me my wife back, Aquaman; that is all I have wanted for a very long time,” Dr. Fate said. He turned from them and walked to the aged house, determined to regain his heart’s desire after so many years. Aquaman and Onokentauros followed him reluctantly.

“Keep explaining,” Aquaman demanded as they walked.

“A long time ago,” Onokentauros sighed, “I tried to keep her here but Whaler had other ideas. We were of different clans then, not one and the same as we are now. I operated under the influence of a woman named Gamemnae. Perhaps you have heard of her?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Then the Lost Chronicles are going to open your eyes quite a bit.” Onokentauros gave a reluctant smile. “She had the most beautiful blond hair and such enchanting blue eyes…pretty strange for a Queen of Atlantis. But still, she was my Queen and I served only her whim.”

“You’re from Atlantis?” Aquaman asked with great surprise.

“Oh yes,” Onokentauros replied. “During the Lost Age. It’s lost for a reason, you know. In that structure you see before you is the reason it was lost.”

“It appears the Lost Atlantis Chronicles will do more than hold a cure to my people’s condition.”

Nicholas Onokentauros avoided eye contact with Aquaman. “It most certainly will,” he said as he hoped to avoid further elaboration.

Dr. Fate reached the door and touched the rusted knob with his golden glove. He had not paid attention to anything that had been said since he had decided that his wife was inside this house. Without hesitation, he entered. Inside the single room was not what he expected.

A huge pale skinned man, almost human but quite different, was chained to the far wall. His face was almost like that of a whale with human characteristics, with solid black eyes that reflected everything he saw within them. His arms and legs were disproportionate, the upper arms and thighs slender while the forearms and calves were huge and muscular. The man wore patterned red robes almost disintegrated with age and the exposed pale white skin was carved with ancient rune tattoos of an unknown language. He did not struggle and almost seemed happy to be there.

Dr. Fate was silent as he observed the man while Aquaman and Onokentauros entered the room behind him. His fists were glowing, his eyes were filling with tears.

“Good evening, Nicholas,” the chained man said calmly. “Nice to see you after oh so many years.”

“Hello, Zacharael,” Onokentauros responded, not replying with his host’s apparent cheer.

“I suppose you’re here to deal with the problem with a bit more finality than last time,” Zacharael said as if he were sipping a cup of tea on a nice spring morning. “And you brought some friends. How nice of you.”

“They seek important things, Archangel Zacharael,” Onokentauros stated as he bowed humbly to the imprisoned man. “They have suffered because of what we have done and I wish to rectify our transgression.”

“Our transgression?” Zacharael bellowed, a hint of anger hidden deep within his calm voice. “I have been here, chained to this infinite prison, for thousands of years because of you and your like. I have done nothing but guard its contents at the expense of my existence, unable to spread my message to the people of the world. All because of you.”

“I plead and beg of you, Zacharael,” Onokentauros dropped to his knees. “I want my existence ended. I want the parasite of my second half removed and I want no more misery.”

“I no longer wish to experience misery either,” Zacharael said cryptically. “I will not grant you access to your petty wants and desires.”

Nicholas wept into his hands as Whaler, the man that lived with him in his body, laughed. “If you will not help me,” Nicholas begged, “then please help them. Tell her out for them.”

Zacharael considered for a moment before speaking directly into Dr. Fate’s soul. “What is your plea, golden sorcerer?” he asked. “How can a mere human convince me of anything?”

“I know of you, Archangel Zacharael,” Dr. Fate said. “You are the Angel of Surrender, your name symbolizes the remembrance of God. You assist in receiving the will of God. You help us to recognize that our attachments in our physical lives are temporary. Your mission is help us learn not to be owned by material things, but to use them for our highest good.”

Zacharael chuckled a healthy bellow. “You know of my namesake,” he said. “I was named well when I was discovered by the people who were to raise me as their own, to be their own prophet. What is it that you seek?”

“I am Dr. Fate. I hold within me the powers of a Lord of Order, earthbound to assist in the balance within the universe. I was not chosen unwisely,” Dr. Fate boasted, almost bragged. “We are similar, the two of us, in our original purpose. Like you, I have mission that I cannot continue due to occurrences and circumstances beyond even my control. Am I correct in assuming that freeing she whom you are imprisoning will free you as well?”

“You are theoretically correct,” Zacharael said. “It is yet to be tested.”

“I came here to restore the existence of my wife,” Dr. Fate said. “Without her, I do not wish to continue along my path. Allow me the opportunity to get her back by my side and you will be free to spread your word.”

Zacharael was deadly silent for a moment that seemed to last for eons. As his silence seemingly grew louder, the markings that covered his skin began to shine a radiant white light. A dull hum buffered through his whale-like lips as he grew brighter.

“The portal that I protect that is also my prison can only be opened through phrases of an inhuman tongue,” Zacharael announced, breaking the unusual silence with the depth of his voice. “The words consist of geometric forms in space that possess length and breadth and height.”

“Say the words,” Dr. Fate desperately suggested.

“These are not words that I can say lightly,” Zacharael stated. “Yet with a gift of the flesh, I may be induced to repeat them.”

Dr. Fate considered his words for a brief moment and hardly hesitated to put a solidified bolt of mystical energy through Aquaman’s chest, tearing through the sea king’s torso and leaving his heart on the ground behind him. Aquaman’s face filled with rage as he realized he was being killed but fell to his knees and died before he could express himself properly. Nicholas Onokentauros screamed with a mad panic as Fate picked up the extracted heart.

“With the blood that pumps from the King of the Seas,” Dr. Fate chanted, “I grant you, Zacharael, your freedom. That is my promise.”

As Fate squeezed the blood from the heart onto Zacharael’s chest, the markings of the skin began to glow from white to a deep red, deeper even than the blood from the heart. With a pulsing throb, the earth began to move as shapes formed words not of sound or noise but of reality. Zacharael produced the language from his symbols as the chains that bound him slowly began to unravel and decay. Soon, they were gone, Zacharael stood free for the first time in three thousand years, and the air behind him became something that was impossible to perceive.

Dr. Fate waited, dropping the destroyed heart to the ground as whatever was held within the gateway formed back into existence. He watched as atoms collided together in clumps, as matter spontaneously thickened and conjoined. Amorphous globs grew rudimentary appendages as they connected with one another. Soon, the unreal mess of nothing and everything took the form of a woman. She stood naked before Dr. Fate, her pale skin still slimy from her formation. Thin long antlers grew from her head and formed as her face turned into a wretched yet beautiful smile.

“מי אני חייבת את החופש שלי” she growled, her tongue used for the first time in millions of years.

“Give me my wife,” Dr. Fate insisted, unphased by her grotesque creation.

She laughed and the vibrations shook the Empty Space that had held her. It held her no longer. “אתה תמות עכשיו” she screeched as she raised her thin fingers to Dr. Fate’s face.

Dr. Fate was as surprised at his own death as Aquaman had been as the woman turned his face to dust, reducing even the skull to a fine powder. The body of Hector Hall collapsed to the ground next to the fallen Aquaman, forever to feed the hungry inhabitants of the Empty Space.

She said nothing else as she obliterated the structure around her and rode into infinity on an ethereal tsunami of ghost tentacles.

Zacharael pulled the broken yet still living body of Nicholas Onokentauros from the wreckage of his former prison and checked him for grave injuries. Onokentauros coughed as he regained consciousness.

“It’s happened,” Zacharael informed Nicholas. “You know what needs to be done.”

“We both do,” the second face said, but the voice did not come from the side of Onokentauros’s face. The Whaler had been separated from him. He stood a full three feet shorter than the towering archangel as they helped Onokentauros to his feet. Whaler had a similar marking across his forehead that symbolized something similar to Zacharael’s markings. It glowed green as he smiled at his newfound freedom.

“Now that we’ve freed her,” Whaler said gravely, “how do we destroy her?”

“That is a good question, friend Whaler,” Zacharael answered. “How do we destroy the Demon Mother? How do we stop Lilith?”

---

---

To Be Continued in CRISIS ad INFINITUM!

---

Previous Issue | Next Issue