Scarface had never encountered legendary magic before. She was decisive—four Guardians kept pressing Diana while the remaining four pivoted to destroy the miniature sun Thea had conjured.
Unfortunately, the Guardians had no grasp of magical principles. They defaulted to their old playbook: blanket the problem with enough energy and it would stop being a problem.
She had encountered the angel Zauriel before, and could sense the same divine energy here—Thea's spell drew from that same source, but ran stronger than the original. It channeled positive energy from Heaven itself through a magical conduit. Nekron could shrug off that kind of energy. His foot soldiers could not.
The energy bolts the four Guardians fired didn't destroy the miniature sun. They fed it. Rather than shrinking, the sphere grew slightly larger.
With four Guardians redirected, the pressure on Diana dropped sharply. She brought her great shield across in a horizontal sweep and drove it straight into the nearest Guardian's face. These weren't good people—Thea had told her as much long ago. She felt absolutely no remorse.
Crack. The thick shield met ancient flesh with devastating force. The so-called immortal little blue man's face caved in on impact.
Diana raised her sword for a killing stroke—then stopped. He was still technically alive. Kill him, and he'd be back on his feet as a Black Lantern within seconds. She muttered a curse under her breath, twisted her wrist, and redirected the blow from a decapitation into a slash aimed at the energy chains binding him.
The Sword of Hephaestus blazed, every inch of the blade alive with fire. It sheared through the construct chains in one clean stroke.
The freed Guardian's face snapped back into something resembling its original shape. With his emotions still stripped away, he simply looked at Diana for a moment—expression blank—then turned to face his former commander, Scarface.
Scarface read the situation clearly. The miniature sun couldn't be brought down. She'd lost a Guardian. The female Guardian who had been seduced by Nekron didn't hesitate—she gathered the remaining seven, hit Diana with a concentrated blast to force her back, and teleported out of Central City, taking her former colleague—now her new trophy—with her.
Casting the legendary spell had left Thea slightly drained. She was a half-second slow on sealing the space. She watched Scarface start to run—and chose, quite cheerfully, to let her go.
Without Scarface, Black Hand alone couldn't summon Nekron. No reason to stop her.
With the field commander gone, the remaining Black Lanterns kept flooding through the portal. The situation hadn't improved much.
Diana came face-to-face with a Black Lantern version of herself, and for a moment was caught off-guard by a wave of mixed feelings.
Eagle armor. Battle skirt. Boots. The silver bracelets. The Lasso of Truth. BL Diana wielded the sword without purpose—no creed, no objective, just motion. She had been lost even in life. Now, with her soul stripped away, only her body remained, pulled back to its feet by a black ring.
"You're this world's Diana?" The Black Lantern's withered face twisted into something like a grin. "Wonder Woman? Ha—you'll die here today too!"
"I've spoken to your soul." Diana's voice was measured. "You're a memory copy of who she was. You are not her. You're a puppet."
Diana was a New God. Her counterpart was a puppet. The gap in raw power and speed was immense. After years at Thea's side, she'd long since stopped limiting herself to classical Greek combat—in every metric, she outclassed the Earth-2 version of herself.
She swept BL Diana's shield away with a kick. Her sword came around and took off one of the Black Lantern's arms at the elbow.
The miniature sun's sustained light slowed BL Diana's regeneration to a crawl. Diana threw the Lasso of Truth—even knowing it was a puppet, she had to try. The Valkyrie shouted: "Under the Lasso—tell me who you really are!"
BL Diana fought wildly but couldn't break Diana's grip. New God divine power flowed into the Lasso, a tide of law-force that locked the puppet body in place.
BL Diana kept thrashing. Diana wasn't sure why there was still resistance—normally, being caught in the Lasso meant submission. This Black Lantern was the first she'd ever seen that could still fight back. No time to analyze it. Her competitive nature surged, and she matched the struggle with her own full force. The golden Lasso turned silver-white as divine power poured in.
Diana's hair whipped loose around her. Every muscle was engaged.
Across the field, Thea drove off a cluster of lesser BLs and teleported to Diana's side. She looked worried. Diana was pushing too hard, too fast—she had reached through the Black Lantern's connection and locked herself in a direct contest of will against Nekron himself.
Earth's finest was still nothing to the lord of death. Less than ten seconds in, the silver-white Lasso was already beginning to show faint black corruption at its edges. Only Diana's divine seat of Perseverance was keeping it from failing outright.
Golden sweat ran down Diana's neck. She gripped the Lasso with both hands, barely holding. She was demanding an answer from the BL puppet—but the real target of her question was Nekron. The stakes were enormous. Thea watched, alarmed.
There was nothing she could do. No matter how close they were, their divine attributes shared nothing in common. She couldn't reach back and pour her power into Diana the way a wuxia novel would have it—one hand on the shoulder, inner energy flowing between them. Their powers came from entirely different sources and had nothing in common in nature.
Highfather's divine power of righteousness might be able to repel Nekron at range—but that was one thing Thea absolutely could not use.
She was stuck. Then her eye caught something in the distance: a civilian sprinting through the wreckage with a saxophone strapped to his back.
And something clicked.
She pulled out a panpipe. A product of Hell—left behind by a demon lord who had been entirely too interested in the arts for someone in his line of work. Twelve dragon bones, bored and tuned. When played, it breathed with Hell's particular brand of scorching heat and creeping languor.
As the goddess of art, Thea had every performing skill at its peak. She turned the instrument over in her hands and considered.
Funeral music was out. Her soul divine seat would amplify it—but Nekron would benefit even more.
Pure, uplifting energy didn't suit the instrument either. The panpipe was born from Hell. Serenity and light would sound wrong coming out of it. And besides—even if she pushed Diana from one hundred to one-fifty, one-fifty still lost to Nekron.
Thea had spent considerable time working out how to deal with Nekron. Her core principle had always been the same: if you can't match his realm, his understanding, his absolute purity of purpose—don't try to elevate yourself to his level. Drag him down to yours.
It takes ten thousand years to cultivate that kind of purity. Five minutes to defile it. Put some grit in pristine water. Pull him down to where she lived. Then beat him on home turf, where she had decades of experience to draw from.
Her red lips curved around the mouthpiece. A slow smile followed.
The music rose—soft, weightless, drifting—from a set of hellfire-forged dragon-bone pipes.