The creature was utterly deranged—but undeniably powerful. It was enormous. Thea had almost missed it at first. Love really does make people blind. That saying couldn't be truer.
This made it the third Lantern entity she'd encountered in person. The Blue Lantern entity was still nowhere to be found—Thea suspected that hope simply ran too scarce in the universe at large, and the hope she'd channeled into Saint Walker had originated from Earth-2. The Blue Lantern entity was probably crammed into some forgotten corner of deep space.
She bound the captured Violet Lantern entity in layer after layer of compressed earth and stone, then reinforced it with seven or eight containment seals before she was satisfied it wasn't going anywhere. Chasing it across the galaxy would have been deeply inconvenient.
She reached out with a Sorcerer's Hand spell and pulled the two Nth metal hammers over to her, bounced them experimentally in her palms, and struck a pose. Absolutely ridiculous. They were enormous power multipliers for ordinary people, but for her they barely mattered, and hammers were hardly elegant weapons. She'd go barehanded before she'd take the field swinging those. She tucked them away for later study.
Khufu's gauntlets were a different story entirely—divine artifacts with a faint but unmistakable signature. An old acquaintance: Horus. Or rather, what remained of a god's will after the main consciousness had vacated the divine seat: a fragment, technically severed from Horus himself, clinging to existence in the metal.
A light brush of her hand could erase that last thread permanently. She didn't do it. Horus had helped her considerably. There was no reason to be ruthless toward something barely surviving. As a prospective member of the Endless—a Death-in-waiting—she could afford a little grace.
She crouched to examine the two sets of remains. The Zamaron Queen swept in through the entrance a moment later.
"Our central power battery—!" The Queen swept her gaze across the shattered amethysts carpeting the floor and broke into theatrical wails.
Thea strongly suspected she was performing, but played along regardless. "The central battery can be rebuilt. What matters are the people—as long as they endure, the flame will be relit."
She wasn't just saying it to be kind. In the original timeline, the Green Lantern central battery had been demolished and rebuilt, then demolished and rebuilt again, more than once, and nobody had ever seen a Green Lantern headbutt a wall in despair about it. By her estimate, with these crystals and forty or fifty Star Sapphires channeling energy into them followed by one purification cycle, reconstruction was entirely achievable.
The Zamaron Queen's acting wasn't her strongest work. She stopped crying almost immediately. She directed her people to collect the amethyst shards; they had established methods for retrieving the entity as well, so Thea handed it over without argument.
The two sets of remains on the floor were more complicated.
They were her people's icons. Technically they should be taken home—but knowing that Black Lanterns could resurrect them at any moment made them living time bombs. A political leader couldn't publicly announce she was abandoning her people's cultural symbols, even when every survival instinct was screaming at her to do exactly that.
Thea wasn't particularly worried about it herself. The Nth metal hammers were already secured; even resurrected, neither of them would be much of a threat. Out of 3.9 billion Black Lanterns across the universe, two more or less changed nothing.
"Let them remain here," Thea offered. "On the land they loved so dearly." A leader couldn't be the one to say it—that line had to come from an outsider.
Not that dearly loved was accurate. The Zamarons had been on Zamaron for less than three thousand years, meaning that three thousand years ago this place was empty. Khufu and Chay-Ara had been dumped here by ancient aliens with nowhere else to put them, and died in each other's arms with nothing around them but barren rock. Whatever their last words were, they probably weren't about the homeland.
No one challenged the framing. The bones couldn't argue. The Queen's guards nodded as if this were the only proper outcome. Both Thea and the Queen made no attempt to hide their disgust, tossed the remains aside, and walked out of the palace together, each carrying an armful of crystal fragments.
Thea pocketed two of the finest-quality shards for future research into the emotion of love. The Queen demonstrated the considerable diplomatic skill of not noticing at all.
Outside, the battle was still grinding. The Zamaron population was small—just over a million—which made sense given that love at this extreme was never the majority position. Actual Star Sapphire members numbered only in the dozens, but they still practiced traditional burial rites; when the Black Lanterns descended, they immediately exhumed hundreds of former Star Sapphires and brought them back as enemy combatants.
All of them could form constructs. Sheer numbers had routed the Star Sapphires in the opening exchange. When familiar faces began appearing—family members, mentors, elders—walking toward them and reciting shared memories, the emotionally oriented Star Sapphires had their guard completely down. By the time the Black Lanterns showed their true intentions, the Star Sapphires hadn't even registered that the end was arriving.
In a single wave of attacks, over twenty Star Sapphires were killed. Those twenty were immediately resurrected as Black Lanterns and returned to the field. Simultaneously, the central power battery was shattered from the inside by the freshly reborn Khufu and Chay-Ara, cutting off all ring energy replenishment. The situation had deteriorated to critical.
Fortunately, the three-corps alliance had arrived in time, relieved the Star Sapphires and barely stabilized the line.
As Thea flew out of the palace, she found Sinestro cutting through the field like a scythe—the only person present with the willpower and technical mastery to wield two rings simultaneously. Others met the basic requirements, but lacked the technique. Another fighter on the line had sufficient natural talent, but had never bothered to study ring technique; he preferred his own massive blade over ring constructs, and right now he was acting as a one-man rapid response unit, relying on raw physical dominance to sprint between critical points wherever the line was collapsing.
Snap. A Black Lantern ring shot past Thea's eye line. She reflexively wrapped it in a sheath of magical force.
"Flesh, flesh. Connecting to Tennat of Zamaron—connection failed. Flesh, flesh. Connecting to Natt of Zamaron—connection failed."
The ring droned through its litany, mechanical and patient. Thea listened. On its third cycle it finally produced something useful: "Power level: 1.15%."
She let out a slow breath. Less than half an hour had passed since the Reach's sniper rings fired, and the rings had already begun feeding Nekron. When that number reached one hundred percent, the lord of the dead would enter the universe. And the rate would accelerate exponentially as the body count rose. She was running short on time. Only when all seven corps were united could the field be held.
"Sister Blue—begin staggered evacuations. We're not taking pointless losses here!"
"Sinestro—this isn't your personal showcase. Can't you read which sectors are critical? Stop wasting green light on meaningless targets!"
"Saint Walker—get to the front line and help Sinestro recharge his rings. Those women and children have their own people. Stop adding to the chaos!"
Sister Blue's situational awareness was genuinely poor—she had no instinct for coordination at all. Sinestro looked like he was toying with the enemy, dismantling Black Lanterns with contemptuous ease, but Thea could see what it was costing him: maintaining two mismatched rings was burning through his mental reserves at a serious rate. He was running on willpower alone. And Saint Walker had actually paused mid-battle to help a child who had tripped over rubble—in the middle of a war, no less.