Enemy at the gates...

Somewhere in New Gotham… In the bowers of a cave…

A flock of bats screeched as they flew by overhead in the deep dark caves underneath the former Wayne manor, only visible thanks to overhead lights installed to make the almost pitch-dark space visible for those who couldn’t see in the dark. The Batcave, once abandoned, was now fully restored after the rightful owner took it back once he was ready. Nearby, the batmobile sat at the ready, the sleek and polished black vehicle aimed towards the exit to charge towards the city to provide aid if needed. The batwing flyer sat folded and fueled, hanging from the ceiling like the real bats that congregated at the stalactites that loomed overhead. Islands in the dark bore sophisticated equipment, equipment displays and trophies from past victories and current investigations by the Dark Knight.

At the center of the cave sitting in front of a computer desk where dozens of screens showed different feeds and reports was the Dark Knight himself. Damien Wayne. Leaning back in his seat in full costume with his hands folded in front of him, the man looked over the increased activities of crime throughout New Gotham and the world outside of it. One feed showed a man being hauled away, screaming, and raving while his hands were cuffed and being put into the back of a police cruiser. Ranting about the end of the world. Another screen showed Barbara Gordan; one of the leaders of the werespiders perched over a streetlight after she had bound a doomsday cult in webbing and had them hanging from said light post, her hand holding up a bundle of explosives they had planned to set off at the local hospital. Hearing footsteps behind him as he changed to a different police report, Damian’s face was a mask of cold concentration when he heard the young man speak.

“You know, Halloween is usually celebrated in October, in this city it’s as important as Christmas. So why are we getting so many nutjobs in costumes trying to blow up schools, hospitals, and office buildings here?”

“Reminds me of the good old days.” Husked Damien, bringing a folder close to him and handing it to the young man standing behind him, who accepted it and opened the folder to see its contents. “In the last year alone, we’ve had 14 instances of individuals or groups trying to cause as much mass destruction and misery as possible. Police interrogations showed that none of those groups are affiliated to each other in any way. No religious associations, hate groups or negative political viewpoints in any way except for one striking detail…”

“They all are responding to a mass call for the end of the world.”

Stepping into the light that illuminated the computer station, Terry McGuiness raised an eyebrow to the testimonies of those arrested. Terry had been with Damien as his protégé for almost 3 years now, ever since he had saved him from a gang in New Gotham that fetishized the Joker as a role model. Their presence was a nuisance, but they never held a torch compared to the clown prince of anarchy. Many thought that it would have been either Batman or the Wolf King to deal with them. Turned out, out of anyone they chose to piss off the worst, it was Harley Quinn when the ‘Jokerz’ were found parading around a blow-up doll in her old costume… It took all four leaders of the tribes to contain her and keep the white wolfess from eating them all whole! Since then, Terry had become Damien’s first Robin.

“Bunch of fruitcakes if you ask me.” Stated the young man, taking a step back, wearing a green and red costume with yellow highlights. “You wanted to show me how crazy New Gotham can get? Because I know firsthand already.”

“I wasn’t no, I wanted you to see something. In those reports, it shows that while the perpetrators were being questioned, they were searched for any paraphernalia they had with them or upon request offered a writing utensil and paper to scribble on while detectives had them detained during questioning.”

Getting up from his chair, Damien stood almost a foot taller than the young man as he pointed at a bundle of photos with his gloved finger in Terry’s hands. There, on almost a dozen photos were the symbol of the roman symbol Omega. Either scratched out in pencil, pen, or human blood, each group brought in for questioning all had that with them. “It’s him. Darksied.”

“Who?”

“My father in his more… ‘Civilized’ days dealt with an alien being who bore that symbol. He was a god where he came from, probably still is.”

“Must be a very convincing guy to follow if he caused a bartender, dentist, lawyer, ballerina dancer and street cleaner to go **** suicide in his name.” Frowned Terry, moving on to the next files in the folder and how everyone detained had committed suicide after questioning.

“He had the ability to strip your willpower away from you, turn you into anything he needed you to be to fit his designs. Called it the Anti-Life equation.” Heading to another station at the Batcave, Batman checked the security feeds throughout the city, looking for something as he continued to talk over his shoulder. “You’re too young to remember… You weren’t even born yet, but the Justice League had to deal with that, he turned half the world against itself.”

“Schway…” Snorted Terry, placing the folder back on the computer desk and followed the Batman to where he was just now going over settings on a nearby device. “So, how’d you guys stop him?”

“Life without will is anti-life. To oppose it, you needed a big jolt of willpower to break it. It’s a long and convoluted story, but they made it where no one on Earth could ever be affected by it ever again.”

“So how do you explain these guys?” Terry gestured, pointing his thumb back to the folder and the news feeds behind him.

“That wasn’t the Anti-Life, What the police never checked was that these people did have something in common after all. Their medical reports showed they ALL had heightened extra sensory perception.”

“…. They were psychic?”

“I wouldn’t rely on them to tell you your fortune if that’s what you were wondering, but yes. They could sense things, premonitions, dreams of things to come. Maybe spending half their lives under a massive, magical tree will do that to a population. But the point is they were made aware of something that’s coming and it was so potent it broke them…. There they are.”

“There WHO are?” Asked Terry, following the Dark Knight as he made his way over to the batmobile, the older man pressing a button at his belt and the vehicle automatically powered on with the growl of its engine and interior lights come on as its canopy opened for its two passengers.

“We need to have a chat with the tribe leaders, and they don’t carry cell phones on them.”

With a thrum of the batmobile’s engines, the black vehicle blasted forward at the speed of a fighter jet, leaving red streaks of heat and light in its wake as it bounded out of the batcave and towards the city of New Gotham.

*

A gleaming white portal opened like an eye over a blast warzone, the landscape a testament to devastation as a single emaculate white shoe stepped out and gentled rested a staff on the ashen ground, the portal closing behind her as she looked around in absolute horror.

She was too late.

All around her, the capital city of the world of Almerac, a world known for its technological marvel and martial prowess, was left dead and cold save for the fires and toxic smoke the flames belched out to the skies. She still could not believe it. She was only aware of the calamity only minutes ago when she was travelling through space. She had planned to visit the Blue Lanterns for their annual celebration. But halfway through her travels, someone caught her attention, something so horrible it stopped her in her tracks. She heard whispers in the void, like a chorus of screams, millions upon millions of voices crying out in horror. It was so overwhelming she clutched at her head just to try and make it stop. It was only when she looked at her hand that she found it came from her ring. Her white ring screamed in anguish at the sensation of a world dying just out of reach, she could not ignore this. Feeling out, she teleported herself to the world that cried out for safety, for relief from a terror that gripped it, and when she arrived, she gasped at the horror before her.

Almerac. A civilization she had frequented in the past, once a sprawling advanced world, had been laid to waste. The destruction was total! Everywhere she looked the great city that would have reached up high to the heavens and pierced the clouds was gone.

Slowly walking through the crumbling, fiery ruins of superstructures torn down to the ground and ruined, Zatanna looked around, clutching at her staff as she remembered what this city used to be. She remembered sipping drinks at a café she passed to her left, now a smoldering crater where smoke still trailed from the wreckage. Further down she spotted the park where she joyfully danced with the children there, performing magic tricks for them, now the landscape was a flash-scorched husk of dead trees and soot. All around her the great city was a dead ruin, leaving the white lantern dhampir to shake her head and shed a single tear at the tragedy all around her. A question on her lips when she stopped in front of the royal palace to find it demolished.

“How?”

They were all dead, closing her eyes she reached out with her powers and her ring for anything that remained alive in this city, and this world. There was nothing. Nothing left alive that called out to her. The silence of it all was deafening. All around her were the charred and strewn bones of millions of people, so far burned they crumbled like charcoal in the stiff wind that blew over. There was nothing left, nothing left… But there WAS something here.

Her.

Opening her eyes, a steeled focus filled her multi-coloured eyes as she raised her staff over her head and stamped it down between her feet. A sound escaped the strike, like the calming sound of plucked harp string as the cracks and chips of the street disappeared, moss and grass began to grow where before there was nothing. Like time moving backwards, the debris and buildings around her began to rebuild, rubble rolling back and colliding with other chunks of debris to rebuild that which was destroyed.

Skeletons began to stand up under their own power, the crumbling remains of their flesh being renewed as people came back to life one by one. The wake of the of Zatanna’s spell expanded outward, restoring Almerac to its former glory one meter at a time as the ring of renewal spread out. Already she could see bystanders stumble and look around confused, watching as their world was brought back from the brink. A man stumbled back in surprise and spotted the white clad magician smile back at him with tear-streaked eyes, clutching her staff as she approached him.

“What happened he…?”

“GET OUT! YOU HAVE TO GET OFF THIS WORLD!” The man panicked, clutching at Zatanna’s shoulders with fear in his eyes. The Almeracians were proud warriors, more than willing to face whatever they would face. But the look in this man’s eyes told her even that had been tested.

“What? What did this?”

“There’s NO time! It’s here, it senses us, it senses LIFE! You have to escape here, warn them, warn everyone that its…”

Another sound called out from afar. Something horrible. Like hearing the shift of tectonic plates and the **** cries of a million lost souls all at once. Looking up, Zatanna could… FEEL something coming. She didn’t feel it before because it was still, motionless like the **** of this world. Looking up she found a single black point appear over the clouds. Descending at the speed of a falling bomb, the sight of which made the man panic and try to shove Zatanna away, trying to save her from what was coming.

But it was all too late.

The impact might as well have been a bomb, a bomb that held enough destructive power to rival any of the atomics back on Earth. The fiery blast was enough to send Zatanna back, protecting herself with a forcefield at the last second as the remains of the city was reduced to a smoldering crater from the chaotic energies unleashed. Falling like a rock through what used to be a highway and into the empty barren home with enough **** to blow out its roof and walls, Zatanna picked herself up, using her staff to prop herself up. Looking up, she found the same pitch-black point leap from the blast radius and land heavily right in front of her.

Its eyes were soulless, mindless, pure destructive rage unbound and unchecked. It’s body was a hulking slab of grey slate muscle and chitinous slabs of overgrowth that jutted out of its shoulders arms and face like butcher’s knives on a carving block. It’s toxic breath was hot and fuming like the hot furnace of war as it breathed in and roared with such intensity it would have burst the ear drums of anyone that could have heard it a continent away. Staring up at the monster, and wiping white blood from her nose, Zatanna narrowed her eyes at the atrocity that challenged her.

“Doomsay…”

*

The heavy double doors to Dracula’s sanctum opened with a loud groan, the two Amazonian guards standing at either side of the entrance opened the doors and bowed before their queen and her guest as they joined the rest of the occupants in the grand observatory and closed the door behind them. There chatting in the center of what could be best described as the inner sanctum to a scholar, the room’s walls were in fact vast libraries of tomes and books. At the far end there was a fireplace left could where two finely furred chairs sat with a small table between them.

Seeing her parents speaking with the tall, cloaked man who owned the castle, Mia separated from the regal queen and joined the Black Canary and Green Arrow, while Hippolyta joined the side of the count and his wife as they paused in their conversation and nodded back to the fair queen.

“Did you get lost in the castle?” Asked Dinah with a knowing grin. Eyeing the Queen whose expressing was stern but showed a hint of nostalgia with how the blonde woman cared for her daughter.

“No.” Mia lied, rolling her eyes to look away as Dina h smirked back at her.

“She wandered into a history lesson Dinah.” The queen explained. “But we are not here for the past, we are here for the present. What ills you Cain Adamson? You have been troubled of late, you have rarely left this sanctuary to do naught but feed and even those bouts were few and far in between.”

“Yes, my love. Please tell us.” asked Selina, clutching at the man’s arm attentively.

“For years I have consulted with the oracle Bastet over an omen that appeared to her some many years ago. She had even warned the wolf king, he and I have both discussed this together and approached her as one, and the omen remains the same every time she seeks answers from the aether. A great and terrible darkness as old as time itself has set its sights on this world, and the world knows it. The Wolf King warned me that the Umbra is now a maelstrom, its landscapes a roiling nightmare that grows worse as time passes. Maliciousness has staked its claim on the Earth.”

“The Umbra’s not the only place gone coocoo.” Snorted Oliver, crossing his arms as he nodded to his wife. “Terrorist activity has only increased, and what’s worse is their reasoning… If they ever needed one was flighty at best. Many of them keep spouting the same horse shit. That some terrible darkness is coming, and they need to be ‘worthy’ if they want to be spared. We’ve needed to hire new members into the league to deal with the influx of activity happening across the world.”

“Speaking of which, your son and daughter are doing well in the Justice League, your daughter Victoria tossed a marine on his ass when he couldn’t beat her in an arm wrestle.”

Hearing that made Selina raise her chin with a grin, as did Dracula before he continued.

“Bastet’s visions remain the same. In her words she claims ‘A poisoned dagger that was once a loyal blade shall descend upon the innocent and guilty alike. Venom will be whispered in the ear of the masses and will turn reason to madness. A pantheon will fall, heroes will end, and angels will rise from the ashes of the dead world of Earth.’ Every time she looked into the future; it never changes.”

Hearing that alarmed everyone in the room, even Mia who gripped at her father’s hand out of a need for comfort and looked up when he squeezed her hand in return.

“When is this ‘poisoned dagger supposed to…” A beep from a device at his hip diverted Olliver’s attention to his personal communicator, something that confused the amazons in the room and gained the attention of Selina and Dracula who watched the man pluck the device off his belt and answer his phone. “Yes? This is Green Arrow. What is… What?” Everyone present watched the man listen to his phone as a look of confusion marred his bearded face. “Give me the feed to my phone.”

Placing his phone on the ground and setting its display to a holographic interface, a projection popped up several feet from the floor to show news feeds happening back at Metropolis and the Halls of Justice.

‘This is Lana Lang of the Daily Planet coming to you from the Metropolis observatory where we can view the unidentified object that just appeared over low orbit from Earth. The object in the sky appeared just an hour ago.’ The camera then panned to the sky where the camera zoomed as far as it could to focus on a thin, dark object above the clouds. ‘Communication attempts have been made but so far the massive object remains silent save for its efforts to maintain its orbit….’

“No… It CAN’T be…”

“Is that…?”

The object floating over the planet looked like a shard of scorched black metal. Twisted, crooked and sharp. Its surface glinted against the sunlight beating down on it, which was the only way the massive orbiting object could be seen. It was hideous to look at, like a looming **** apparatus hanging over the head of the world like a knife. But to Dinah and Olliver, despite its appearance, there were parts of the massive space station they recognized. The long structure at its core, the horseshoe shape of the center decks that in the past looked like arms offering an embrace.

“Good Lord… It’s the watch Tower!”

*

The interior of the former space station was… A nightmare. Walls once pristine and metallic looked dark, weathered and masoned over with black stonework as pitch as coal. The only illumination provided by torches littered those halls and corridors like some ancient dungeon. The floors were just as black as the walls and ceiling, caked and slick with years and years’ worth of spilt blood and gore that had filled the air with a coppery stink. Overhead leaden pipes would hiss and groan as something churned through them, leading towards the auditorium at the heart of the former space station. The auditorium, once the command deck of the Watch Tower, was a horror show. The masoned over walls carved with effigies to Darksied and his many conquests, Gargoyles loomed overhead with fanged maws wide open vomiting boiling hot gore into a moat that surrounded the panopticon control center, where eight figured knelt before a black stone likeness of their lord and master.

“We have arrived my lord.” Hissed the leader of Darksied’s furies. Her full-bodied armor, black and etched with tarnished bronze, showed crude artistic renders over each plate over her chainmail wrapped body. Depicting scenes of butchery and horror on full display over her entire body, her cloak behind her was a woven tapestry of misery depicting the warrior woman’s many horrific exploits. From the burning of worlds to the rending of their peoples, even their children. Even more horrifying was that the cloak was woven with the torn hair and scalps of her victims to obtain such obscene colors. Standing at her full height, she stamped her prized weapon by its pommel and slammed its blade tips to the floor, a double headed battleaxe that had seen decades of carnage, yet the chipped edges were as razor sharp as ever. Her armor now on full display, skulls were notched into the puldrons and shoulder guards, champions who had tried and failed to best her, now trophies to show off her martial prowess and cruelty. Looking up from her enclosed helm, obscuring her face and skull save a thin ‘T’ shaped slit that exposed her eyes, glowing a heated red, looking up to the onyx statue before her. “We have arrived in lower orbit over Earth, we await your command oh mighty Darksied, my master.”

“Rise.” A voice called out from the statue.”

“DARKSIED IS! DARKSIED IS! DARKSIED IS!” Chanted the others behind her, standing to their feet as well, as they looked up at the statue.

The statue rippled, slowly coming to life as the likeness of Darksied became animated and looked down at the lead fury, its eyes glowing as it folded its hands behind its back.

“My furies, I have tasked you with the subjugation of this world. Like so many thousands before it, you shall spread the word of MY will to its masses.”

“DARKSIED IS! DARKSIED IS!”

Looking to his minions, the statue glared at two furies to his right. A man and woman clad standing hunched and wrapped in black leather straps laced with curved hooks and spikes. Their hands and feet were oversized talons like some predatory birds, chrome and rusted. Making a harsh contrast with their oily black feathered wings folded behind their backs.

“My Carrion, you will poison the skies, blot out their sun and once finished you can rip and tear into the screaming, mewling masses until they cry out my name.”

“Yessssss…. My Darksied.” Hissed the male of the two, folding a clawed arm to his chest to bow, his face obscured with a helmet in the shape of a buzzard’s skull. The female responding in kind as she too bowed. “By your command.”

Looking to his left, Darksied nodded to the pair armed with tridents. Their bodies wrapped in netting and bones laced together to look like armor. “My leeches, you will feed off the seas of this world, pollute their wells and leave the Earth in blight and famine, until they have **** but to feed from my hand to stay alive.”

Raising a trident over her head, the woman, who’s face was obscured with a **** mask in the likeness of a kraken boasted and stamped her trident to the stone floor. “The HUMANS will drown in the blood and gore we spill in your name of mighty Darksied.”

Turning his attention to the four in front of him, Darkseid raised his chin high. “You… My heralds, my executioners, You will spread my word across this world, you will crush any resistance who dares speak against me. Rob them of their hopes, steal from them their aspirations and leave nothing but ash. All will be mine.”

Stepping forward behind their leader, three others joined the axe wielding warrior in front of them. To her left stood a cloaked man in a coal black suit. The jagged depiction of a thunderbolt over his chest. His face was obscured by his hood, but his chin and lower lip could still be visible. His skin was chalk white, his teeth filed to points and a forked tongue licked at his blacked lips as a static charge coursed up his arms. To the right another black clad man stood, nearly skeletal in his frailty as he stood hunched, and brittle. Yet there was an aura about him, a blurriness to him that made it difficult to focus, and the ground at his chipped, pale and bare feet looked as if the stone grated until it was becoming dust and sand. The last was a man… If he could be described as one. It was hard to tell what was its armor and what was his own flesh as it all seemed to meld both concepts together. Pitch black and hobbled together, the cybernetic abomination bowed, its many eyes focusing as it raised its head again, where wires and cables that used to be its mouth twitched and convulsed like arteries while a strange code could be heard all around.

“For Darksied!”

Turning to look out the pulpit of the chamber, the statue of Darkseid looked to the beautiful blue orb of the Earth, his eyes burning brighter as he turned his attention back to his minions.

“Go! Do as I command and spare no one.”

With a flash of light, the furies were teleported off the station and sent down to earth, the statue, having served its purpose, returned to being still and inert.