"Almost there, I think."
Batman had barely paused moving since the ascent began—navigating, checking instruments, scanning the rock face. His multitasking was effortless in a way the rest of the team found quietly annoying.
The moment "almost there" registered, the collective exhale from six suffering heroes was nearly audible.
Superman took the initiative. He lifted off the face and swept the interior of the summit with his X-ray vision, looking through hundreds of meters (~a thousand feet) of ice and granite.
"Found it. And I think I've been spotted." He didn't wait for a vote. "I'll go ahead."
"I'm right behind you." Thea launched herself up the moment the words were out of her mouth. She was done walking.
Diana shook her head, smiling, and followed—a streak of gold cutting the gray sky.
Hal Jordan moved to follow by air, but found Aquaman and Barry gripping his arms.
"You are not leaving us on this mountain," Arthur said.
Hal summoned a construct to carry the non-fliers, and the whole group swept upward—just slightly slower than the three who'd gone ahead.
Thea arrived almost simultaneously with Superman. Diana was less than two seconds behind.
Before them stood an enormous stone gate, perhaps five meters (~16 ft) tall, carved from gray rock that looked as old as the mountain itself. In the center of the gate, rendered in extraordinary detail, was a relief sculpture of the Asura—the multi-armed, three-headed figure from Hindu and Buddhist cosmology, six arms extended, every line charged with a barely-contained ferocity. Even Thea, who had spent quality time with actual deities, thought it was exceptional work.
The three of them exchanged a look. The task of kicking this door in fell naturally to Superman. As he raised a hand to do exactly that, the gate's owner demonstrated better judgment by slowly, mechanically, opening it himself. Stone grinding on stone, the gate split and pushed aside to reveal a narrow passage.
"Finally caught up!" Hal arrived with the late arrivals just as the way opened. With all seven assembled, they stepped inside.
The corridor was barely wide enough for one person. Superman went first. Thea fell into the middle of the line. Diana took the rear. The interior temperature was still cold, but noticeably less brutal than the exposed peak. Aquaman's complexion, which had taken on an unfortunate blue-gray cast, began migrating back toward its normal shade.
"Clank. Clank."
Two machines blocked the passage. They were built in the Demostar mold—hunched bipedal posture, clawed hands, heavy tail, the lizard silhouette—but their bodies were entirely encased in metal. Four electronic eyes, each glowing faintly red, swept the group. Their focus settled on Superman.
"Confirmed." A voice like metal scraped across glass. "Cellular enhancement is consistent with G2V (Earth) yellow dwarf stellar radiation exposure."
"Biological scan complete. Probability target is standard human: 0.00%."
"External garments confirmed to contain fourteen distinct elements. No match to Earth's known elemental catalog."
"Conclusion: probability target is native Kryptonian: 97.86%. Consistent with anticipated parameters."
The two machines scanned him as though the other six people weren't there at all. Then, without comment, one rotated in place and walked away at the same unhurried pace it had arrived.
The heroes watched them go.
The group continued.
The corridor stretched for some time before the floor leveled and the walls spread outward. Seeing no threat in the rear, Diana fell into step beside Thea. They spoke in low voices about the relief carvings along the walls. Diana shared memories from her post at the Louvre.
The passage opened into a vast underground plaza.
Eighteen massive stone columns supported a space roughly a thousand square meters (~10,760 sq ft) across and fifty meters (~164 ft) overhead. Four corridors—the one they'd come through and three others—opened at the cardinal points. The excavation was immense; the rock looked as though it had been carved out at least two thousand years ago. The entire aesthetic was unmistakably ancient Buddhist architecture: white elephants, lotus blossoms, meditating monks rendered in stone at every surface. This had been a sacred site—a place of pilgrimage—before something had claimed it for its own use.
At the far end of the chamber, a figure stood watching them arrive.
Blue-flame skull where a head should have been. Golden armor. Black cape. His attention was entirely on Superman—the gaze of a man appraising an artifact.
Thea tilted her head. This wasn't quite right. The ordinary Demostar soldiers were all the same: hunched, shambling, the posture of creatures that had never been designed for dignity. This one stood straight as a sovereign. The blue flames were there, and she could sense the Demostar resonance underneath—but whatever this individual was, centuries of something had transformed him into something entirely his own.
"I knew it." The alien's voice carried without effort through the chamber. "When that ship came down, I knew there was a Kryptonian aboard. And now here you are, all grown up."
The implication landed across the group like a stone into still water. He had been here when Superman arrived as an infant. Which put him in the mountains of Earth at minimum forty years ago—but most likely far, far longer.
His scan of the group moved from Superman to the others, slowing on Thea and Diana. Something uncertain crossed his expression—he had no frame of reference for them. What species? What alignment?
Thea met his gaze without expression and fired a single targeted pulse of raw fear directly into his mind.
The composure shattered.
"How dare you!" The alien's carefully assembled gravitas evaporated in an instant, replaced by something frantic, reactive. Whatever that fear impulse had touched, it had disturbed something old and buried. "You will kneel before the great Lord Hesperant! Not stand there playing cheap tricks!"
He wheeled back to Superman, visibly working to reassemble his authority. "Kryptonian. I'm offering you an opportunity. Kill these Earthlings. In return, I will give you knowledge beyond anything your adopted world has produced. This planet is yours to rule. You have my word."
He seemed to expect this to land somewhere between reverence and desperate gratitude.
All seven of them looked at him with the specific expression reserved for someone who has said something genuinely bewildering in public.
Diana's eyes slid sideways to Thea. Is he serious?
Thea burst out laughing. She'd stared down Darkseid. She'd traded provocations with entities that predated human civilization. This one had just offered Superman the Earth in exchange for murdering his friends.
"You will die for that!" Hesperant's patience ran out. One arm extended and a beam of blue energy—roughly half a meter (~1.6 ft) in diameter—lanced directly at Thea.
She hadn't dropped her guard since that first exchange. The moment the attack released, her hand went to her sword. The holy blade came free in a single draw, sweeping up to meet the beam.
Contact. For just a fraction of a second, the sword hesitated—a sensation of resistance she hadn't felt in a long time. Then she leaned into it, poured force through the blade, and split the beam cleanly in two.
She held the sword up afterward, reading it.
"Curious." The energy had felt vast, layered—reminiscent of her sword's own nature in ways she couldn't immediately categorize. "That power isn't native to your species. Demostar combat technique doesn't feel like this at all." She studied the blue flames, the structure of the skull visible within. Human proportions—orbital, nasal, mandible, all recognizable. "And that's not your original body either, is it?"
A second look at the golden armor. The engravings. The specific aesthetic grammar of the craft.
"That's Acala's armor." She spoke slowly, as though confirming something she barely believed. Acala—Fudō Myōō, the Immovable Wisdom King, the wrathful deity of Buddhist tradition, depicted in a corona of flames with a sword in one hand and a rope in the other. The armor's markings were unmistakable to anyone who knew the iconography.
She looked at the skull. She looked at the armor. She looked at the cave carved full of lotus flowers and meditating monks.
"You converted, didn't you." It came out less like a question than a quiet revelation. "You're an alien Buddhist."