Green, violet, yellow, indigo—four blazing auras lit the sky as all four women surged with power.
Diana's transformation was the most striking. She wore a suit of soft armor unlike any Green Lantern's standard-issue—a green domino mask, dark emerald bracers and boots, luminous white mesh stockings, shoulder guards, and a flowing cape. Absolute conviction radiated from every inch of her. A single glance at her and you felt your own courage multiplied a thousandfold.
"Good heavens—is that the Ion form? You can achieve Ion without a ring?" Salaak, Oa's chief administrator and keeper of many secrets, turned uncertainly to Ganthet.
"Yes. Ion without a Green Lantern ring." Ganthet kept his voice level. What he left unsaid: the Guardians themselves could merge with entities without rings. Higher-order beings like New Gods had even less difficulty. What surprised him was Ion Shark's urgency in choosing Diana—near-instant, without a moment's hesitation. For an entity that had existed for hundreds of millions of years, that kind of impulsiveness was almost unthinkable.
Faora's transformation was more conventional—fear-light radiating in all directions, her very gaze carrying immense pressure. Her costume was her Yellow Lantern kit enhanced with shoulder guards, a cape, and reinforced boots.
Kara had changed the most dramatically. A bone-white mask covered her entire face. Silver-white chest armor beneath a violet overcoat. Uncontrolled violet fire danced around her body.
Thea, the strongest of the four, was barely affected by Proselyte. Only a faint indigo tint appeared at the corners of her eyes.
She reached out toward Kara and deployed a psychic shield. "Stay lucid. Remember your mission." Diana and Faora were warriors—she had no concerns about them. But the violet entity had a temperamental streak, so she reinforced Kara directly with magic.
Entity-bonded and radiating power, the four women's combined presence was staggering. They could transmute others' courage into strength, turn fear into fuel. The amplification had virtually no ceiling.
Violet, green, yellow, indigo—light blazed across the black-clouded sky over Coast City, illuminating half the heavens. The spectacle lasted about three seconds before the rhythm shifted back to phase two of the tug-of-war.
"Are you kidding me? It still won't budge!" Thea swore. Proselyte was being a good sport—the little entity had lent her every ounce of its power and poked its head out from her shoulder to cheer her on.
The other three were gritting their teeth and straining just as hard. They'd started the contest airborne; now all four had dropped to the ground, their feet carving deep furrows in the earth. Nekron had shrunk to a gaunt figure roughly two meters tall (about six and a half feet), looking almost pitiful as he held his end against the assembled women. To thwart the enemy's scheme, the women dug their feet in so hard they carved furrows in the earth. Several non-flying heroines joined the chain as well.
Nekron was starting to buckle. His feet hadn't left the ground, but wisps of dark energy were seeping up through the cracks beneath him. Thea was now certain: there was something under his feet.
"Lantern Corps—form up and protect us! Everyone else—distract him, attack him!" Thea bellowed.
The Seven Corps teleported to the inner perimeter and erected a massive construct wall, holding back the Black Lanterns.
Superheroes opened fire with everything they had. Superman's heat vision. Martian Manhunter's psychic blast. The Bat-plane strafing Nekron with fear-toxin rounds.
A faint sound—barely perceptible—reached Thea's ears. She surged with excitement. Nekron had almost lost his grip on the scythe. He'd caught it again instantly, but it proved the weapon could be taken.
"Keep going! Hit him again! One elite from each Corps—concentrate fire on him!"
The Black Lanterns went berserk seeing their lord in trouble. Scar directed her seven Guardians into a frenzied assault, but Green Arrow, the Flash, Aquaman, and others held them at bay.
With agonizing difficulty, each Corps pulled one elite member from the defense line and organized a strike team.
"Hit his right hand!" Thea was still calling shots while pulling. She'd staked her goddess reputation on this—she was getting that scythe today.
Indigo-1 led the remaining six Lantern elites. All seven opened fire on Nekron's scythe hand in unison.
"Off target—adjust! Hal, your beam's too intense, dial it back!"
"Larfleeze! Hit harder or I swear I'll kill you myself!"
Thea pulled and directed simultaneously, piling pressure on Nekron from every direction. Hemmed in inside and out, his defeat was only a matter of time.
"It moved! It moved!" Supergirl was on the verge of passing out from exhaustion, but her sharp eyes caught the scythe shifting toward them by a single centimeter. She nearly jumped for joy.
Nekron was torn. He couldn't abandon his source-weapon. He wanted to temporarily release the Entity beneath his feet, but the fundamental rules binding him wouldn't allow it—he could neither descend to claim it nor retreat from it.
Both sides had hit a tipping point. The question was who would break first.
In the end, it was strength in numbers—and variety of power—that tipped the scale.
Doctor Light—a scientist who had inadvertently absorbed a sliver of radiance from Thea's holy sword during an experiment—became the straw that broke the camel's back. With a shrug of might as well, he extended both hands and fired twin beams of light squarely into Nekron's face.
Among the barrage of energy attacks and emotional strikes, his contribution was utterly unremarkable. But the effect was extraordinary.
Nekron roared. His focus shifted. His hands, which had been gripping the scythe at the one-third mark, slipped free.
His reflexes were godlike—the weapon was part of his very source. Both hands snapped into a reverse grip and caught the scythe handle again.
He didn't get to savor the recovery. White light erupted from beneath his feet—a cataclysmic surge of life force, the absolute antithesis of death energy, slammed into his body.
Caught off guard, Nekron tried to hold both his source-weapon and the Entity at once. He failed at both.
BOOM—BOOM—Two detonations in rapid succession. The scythe snapped clean in half. As a piece of Nekron's own source, the weapon had absolutely no desire to join Thea's side—but the women were too insistent. In the end, the Death Scythe chose to sever itself, splitting apart from the middle.
If Thea had checked her Ankh amulet's rankings at that moment, she would have found Nekron had dropped another thirty places.
On the other side, the Entity—which Nekron had been using the laws governing the dead to drag toward the surface—broke free and, working with Thea, delivered a savage counterstrike.
Nekron's left leg exploded. Rotting flesh and blood corroded the ground into deep pits. His brittle, white hair—withered as straw—suddenly gained a hint of luster.
For the living, that would have been a blessing. Renewal. Rejuvenation. For Nekron, it was devastation. Following the decadent music that had defiled him before, he had been violated a second time—and far more brutally. The first encounter had been a remote exchange; its effect on his purity had been limited. This time, the Entity had struck his true body with the full force of life itself.
The vitality that every living being craved was pure poison to him.
The serene finality of death was suddenly invaded by the clamor and passion of life. He faltered, unsure of his own purpose. Should existence be joyful survival, or tranquil death?
The Entity had posed him an impossible question.
Teeth began regrowing. Skin tried to regain elasticity.
Nekron felt a shudder originating from the very wellspring of his being. With a howl, he abandoned all caution—damage to his essence be damned—and wrapped the life energy in death force, burning through massive reserves of his own essence. He retched violently, expelling a torrent of black blood. A blast of black-and-white light erupted from his body, and with it came the two explorers who had been wandering his insides—Deadman and the Atom, swept out in the flood.