Batman placated the two ancient Egyptians with a thoroughly unconvincing reassurance—he would search for the hammer, and return it the moment he found it. Amid their grateful thanks, he climbed into the Batwing and departed Egypt.
The two guileless souls from antiquity thought Batman was a genuinely good man. A stranger going out of his way to help like that—they'd gladly told him everything about the hammer, quirk by quirk.
Recognizing the hammer's extraordinary nature, the world's greatest detective set to work analyzing every fragment of intelligence. He followed the violet crystal thread straight to Carol Ferris of the Star Sapphires—and from there, it took very little deduction to conclude that the hammer was in Miss Thea's hands.
Thea was in the middle of cleaning up the junkyard Larfleeze had left behind when Batman's call came through.
As the saying goes, the wise fear causes while mortals fear consequences—and she was beginning to understand exactly what that meant. Her old self would have waved a hand at a mess like this and opened a portal to dump it all off-world. But she couldn't afford that anymore. What if it triggered an ecological disaster? What if certain compounds reacted violently with some planet's chemistry? A world's destruction was not without consequence, even for her. The White Lantern ring was extraordinarily particular about such things, and so—against every instinct—she'd called in one of her companies to handle the disposal.
When Batman opened with a request for the hammer, she didn't deny having it.
In the language of fate and karma: Hawkman and Hawkgirl were people whose destinies were deeply intertwined with this world.
"Is this for them, or for you?" Thea considered for a moment before speaking. Batman had a track record. Returning the hammer to Hawkman and Hawkgirl—that was fine. Handing it to Batman? That warranted more thought.
"Is this thing magical equipment?"
"No. Pure metal."
"It won't explode? Won't affect the timeline?"
"No. It's pure metalwork—the ships that came down to Earth were full of the stuff."
Silence fell after she said it. Batman was one step short of saying hurry up and toss it over so I can study it.
"Bruce. You can study it—but remember to return it to them. They're not bad people. For all we know, they'll be counted among the heroes someday."
She reached out with her senses, located Batman, and opened a portal. Through it she tossed Hawkgirl's hammer—the one that had struck the Black Lantern entity and burned through every ounce of its spiritual power—along with Horus's gauntlet. The gauntlet was useless to her, but it would mean a great deal to Hawkman. As for Hawkman's own hammer... well, it had drifted off somewhere. She thought about it and tossed Horus's gauntlet through as well—useless to her, but it would mean a great deal to Hawkman.
Under her repeated reminders, Batman promised: so long as they caused no harm, he would return the items at the earliest opportunity.
Thea held her reservations. Batman and she both had a habit of squeezing every last bit out of things.
He'll probably give back a hollowed-out hammer, she thought, with complete confidence in Batman's cutting-edge tech. N-Metal would be no obstacle to him.
Deep within the core of the Ruiqi insectoid homeworld, buried past layer after layer of living rock, was a vast holding cell that Kerrigan had repurposed specifically to host her uninvited "guest" — an unnamed Guardian.
Massive chains suspended him in midair. Several Zerg were injecting biological hallucinogens through their tendrils.
The Guardian's ancient face was unreadable as stone, utterly unchanged—even as his consciousness drowned in cascading visions.
"Any progress?" Thea had been occupied for two days before she remembered there was still a prisoner here. She teleported over, intending to study the Guardian's eternal lifespan.
"The old bastard is stubborn as a rock. Not a single useful word." Kerrigan looked uneasy. The Guardian had been a brutal capture—she'd lost a significant number of her forces taking him down. And after all the torture and repeated torment, he'd remained completely unmoved.
Thea regarded the little blue man with a cold smile. Setting aside Ganthet and Sayd, the rest of this lot were the single greatest scourge the universe had ever produced—and she had absolutely no qualms about dealing with them.
She thought for a moment. "Here's what you do. Focus on one thing only: get him to say his name. The reason he's staying silent is emotional severance—but identity is never fully severed. Once he recalls his name, everything else follows naturally."
Kerrigan was skeptical but went to try. In less than ten minutes, she came sprinting back, claiming results.
"He's called Herupa. He's a student of some great figure, and he comes from the planet Maltus—apparently their homeworld." Kerrigan delivered her intelligence with the pride of someone expecting a reward.
Thea turned to the now fully unconscious Guardian and sent a thin thread of psychic power into him.
Every psychological barrier had already collapsed. The little blue man's memories lay completely exposed—she could browse them at will.
Ten billion years of life. He had lived through more than could be fathomed. With the focused mastery of a deity, Thea spent a full thirty minutes picking through his memories before she had everything she needed.
Some things she already knew—such as how the Guardians had severed their own emotions to create the First Lantern. Other things were new. This Herupa's teacher, for instance, was none other than the legendary Krona.
Ten billion years ago, the Maltusians had been the first sentient life to emerge in the universe. Their technological civilization had surpassed anything that came after—beyond Batman, beyond Lex Luthor, beyond Brainiac. Krona, the foremost scientist of his people, had possessed an insatiable hunger for knowledge. He had attempted to unravel the mystery of the universe's own origin, pushing his science to heights no one before or since had matched. He built a cosmic probe—and glimpsed, at the dawn of creation, a giant hand cradling the newborn universe.
Just as Batman had inadvertently birthed the Dark Multiverse, Krona's reckless act created both the Multiverse and the Antimatter Universe. To monitor the infinite parallel worlds spawned in that moment, the Monitor and Anti-Monitor were born as conceptual entities—and had persisted to this day.
Krona and his people—including Ganthet and Sayd—had shrunk from their natural height to their current three-inch stature.
Whatever the higher powers were thinking, they had apparently decided that the best things came in small packages. In shrinking their bodies, they had also granted them eternal life.
The Guardians predated even the Old Gods and New Gods combined. The Entity had been born on Earth—but the Maltusians had been the universe's first life. The current Guardians were at least a thousand times weaker than they had been at their height. Only Krona and Ganthet had witnessed the giant hand cradling the newborn universe—Herupa had merely heard about it secondhand. Even so, in their diminished state, they retained power enough to imprison the First Lantern—which was no small feat.
From the memories, Thea estimated that she and the First Lantern were roughly matched—if anything, she might be slightly behind. The Black Lantern entity could destroy the First Lantern in an instant; she was nowhere near that level yet.
"Keep him. Don't let him escape." She wasn't going to kill this living encyclopedia of the cosmos, but she wasn't releasing him either. These Guardians had caused enough chaos across the universe—killing one would be wasteful.
She left the Ruiqi homeworld and wandered around Earth for a while before making her way to the origin point of time—the dwelling place of the Endless.
Her ranking had nudged up once more. The path of perceiving death through the lens of life was working. The improvement was modest, however—she had spent too little time truly understanding life to draw deep insight from it.
Rank 75. And the Black Lantern entity had fallen to 230—there was no catching her in the short term. Miss Thea exhaled with relief.