She is the last light of a fading sky,
Longing, longing—for someone who truly sees...
Come on, live fully—time stretches on without end,
Come on, fall in love—there's plenty of room for fools,
Come on, go wandering—every direction is waiting,
Come on, play pretend—there's plenty of splendor to go around...
Circling and circling, lost in a reckless dream,
The more you worry, the more you want; the more you want, the more it itches; the more it itches, the more you scratch; the more you scratch...
Decadence from the first note to the last—channeled through her soul power and divine seat of art, amplified by a panpipe carved from Hell itself. The melody wound through the air and refused to leave. Every note trailed implications that pulled at the imagination and left them deliberately, agonizingly unresolved.
At full divine resonance, mortals below the threshold of divine perception couldn't consciously hear the music—they could only feel it. A warmth under the skin. A vague, rootless restlessness with no object. Superman, for instance, attributed his sudden inexplicable heat to too much solar radiation.
Diana was completely immune. She was too experienced for a little music to catch her off-guard. After years together, what was one provocative melody? She'd seen it all. She felt the tune and let it wash past her without a tremor.
Nekron's experience was the exact opposite.
He had never heard anything like this in his entire existence—which predated life itself. For the first time, something struck against the absolute calm of his being. A tremor, tiny and barely perceptible. But there. The ancient well, still for an eternity, stirred.
He had existed before life was born, had watched endless cycles of lives emerging and fading away. Now, hearing Thea's music striking straight to the soul, he felt—for the first time—a faint flicker of envy toward ordinary mortals. Those creatures with souls could experience so much more than this.
Thea's gaze pierced through countless layers of space and met Nekron's wooden, uncomprehending stare.
Watch carefully. This is how the goddess of art beats you.
Nekron's expression didn't change. But the simple, absolute directive that defined him—the return of all things to death—acquired a very thin veil. A gauze. Almost nothing. But enough. And the thread of control he held over BL Diana frayed, instantly, to almost nothing.
Diana felt the release. The silver-white power surged back.
"Tell me who you are!" Her body was failing—divine power nearly spent—but her voice came from somewhere that didn't run dry.
BL Diana's struggles slowed. "I... I'm not... I am..."
On the far end of the connection, Nekron read the situation and withdrew.
"I am Diana Prince." The Black Lantern's shout split the air. "Wonder Woman!"
From the inside out, the puppet's body detonated into dust. Earth-2's Wonder Woman, bound by the Lasso of Truth, had reached something buried deep in the body's memory—her own name—and reclaimed it. The black ring's hold shattered.
Thea stared, mouth slightly open.
In that instant, she felt a new Source crystallize inside Diana. Diana looked at her, and told her its name.
Courage.
Questioning a being far above you. Fearing nothing. Charging into the dark even when everyone else turns back. Standing when the numbers are beyond any rational calculation. Standing anyway.
Thea had always assumed this divine seat belonged to Highfather. It did not. Apparently Highfather didn't have Courage at all. That explained quite a lot about centuries of losing ground to Darkseid.
She filed the observation and began mentally reorganizing her taxonomy of New God divine seats.
Four tiers, roughly:
The first tier: foundational forces. Time, space, life, death—the objective substance of the physical universe. Pre-existing. Currently beyond any New God's reach.
The second tier: divine seats of enormous and arguably necessary influence. Justice, evil, soul. Soul edged slightly above the other two—though technically, life could exist without souls (the Reach were proof enough).
The third tier: divine seats that arise from the activities of living things. Trade, wealth—her original seats. Protection, courage—Diana's. Hate, pain—Steppenwolf's crowd.
The fourth tier: the optional ones. Nothing would collapse without them. Art. Lady Starhaven's tracking. Nice to have. Not essential.
Across the field, Diana was soaked, divine power in the red, and absolutely glowing. She caught Thea's eye, licked her lips, and the expression said everything: See that? Caught up again. You're in trouble tonight.
Thea ran the math. Her own portfolio—one second-tier seat (soul), two third-tier (trade, wealth), one fourth-tier (art) — versus Diana's three third-tier seats (protection, courage, and whatever came next). In theory, Thea still had the edge in raw divine weight.
Her personality just didn't come with the same natural aggression. She instinctively pulled her shoulders in.
She gripped the ankh talisman and checked the latest data projected from the Death's Domain. She almost laughed out loud.
Nekron's position in the cosmic registry had dropped by three. He now sat at 108.
The defilement strategy worked.
She sent Diana to rest—Diana had nothing left anyway—and stood alone for a moment, cataloguing the new divine seat's properties.
The decadent melody had done its work on Eobard Thawne as well, as an indirect bonus.
Barry and Wally were both young men. They couldn't consciously hear the music—but the soul-level harmonics still reached them. Neither understood why they were suddenly having such a disorienting physiological response to the sight of Eobard Thawne. Both stood there, thoroughly confused. Should they see someone about this?
BL Reverse Flash had no such complications. He took advantage of Bart Allen's inexperience in the resulting chaos and slipped out of Central City before anyone could close the gap.
BL Superman tried the same exit. Thea blocked him. Several heroes combined fire—one green construct, one yellow—and BL Superman went offline, collapsing to the ground as a scatter of bones.
Diana studied the portal—wide enough to drive a truck through—and frowned. Black Lanterns kept streaming from the other side. Steve Trevor. Laurel Lance. People she'd known, back on their feet with black rings.
"Can you seal it?"
"I can't seal this quickly," Thea admitted, hands already building with power. "I'll just blow it up." But she held back, not quite committing to the act. The balance of the universe was fragile—if she blasted Earth-2 off the connection entirely, there was no telling what chain effects would follow.
This was why being a villain was easier than being a hero. Villains just broke things. Heroes had to think about what came after.
She'd find another way.
Then the answer walked through the portal itself.
"Child—it's me!" An old man stumbled through the gate and immediately threw his hands up before she could complete her spell. "It's me!"
"Old Robert?" Thea blinked. "Why are you here?"
Behind him came the rest—a battered procession. Earth-2's Superman, Val-Zod. Then Doctor Fate—Khalid. Green Lantern Alan Scott. And Jay Garrick, Flash of Earth-2—pouring through in ragged order, all of them out of breath.