Apokolips…

A world that has for eons been a byword of despair and pain. No one, EVER, goes to the system for any reason unless they are mad or the latest victims of its insatiable need to inflict harm. Course, dark and lifeless from high orbit, it would not be a mistake to assume the world was on its **** knell. Its surface was heavily industrialized and bleak, with hardly any light to suggest anyone or anything lived there. And rightly so as molten matter spewed from six points on the planet with such intensity these columns of plasma hot fires always pierced its own polluted atmosphere, like permanently active volcanoes. The planet was inhospitable to life, no one lived on Apokolips. No one ‘lived’ on Apokolips. Every square foot of the planet was devoted to the industrial war complex. Smithing, smelting, fabricating, all in the pursuit of weaponry for further conquest and destruction. But the cruelty in their fabrication, the suffering caused in their creation was viewed almost as more important than their application.

Millions of slaves, prisoners and the unfortunates caught in the wake of the world’s armies worked day and night without food, water or even reprieve from pain to create more for Apokolips. Millions died daily, only to be replaced with shipments of more captured and broken by the furies of Apokolips, the living beaten into submission, beaten into production, and their dead fed to the carrion or to their own loved ones… For amusement.

No. No one went to Apokolips, unless you were mad, or already taken.

Overlooking the landscape of fire and pain in front of him stood a towering man, dressed in black armor, his skin a course, almost stone-like grey, and his eyes burned with energies as he took in the screams of pain and misery that echoed out for miles all around him. He was the master, the creator of this hell he ruled over for so long, only he recalled a time when the planet was anything else but Apokolips.

“My liege, we have come with our daily reports of your magnificent plans.” Hissed a bowing robed figure, one of dozens who did the same in front of four columns of hundreds of robed scribes, warriors, and vassals who either bowed their heads to the floor or stood at attention with weapons at their sides. The palace throne room was large enough to house a cruise ship. Its interior was as hideous as the world outside, with ebony metal columns, harsh stone walls and fire licking its way up to the ceiling. The brutalist aesthetic was shared with the ghoulish looking parademons that roosted overhead, screeching, and hissing down at the armies of vassals like living gargoyles.

Turning around to address his minions, the ruler of this world made his way down the stones of his throne, his arms behind his back as he stepped down to stand before his bowing subjects. He towered over all of them, the tallest of them barely coming to his waist when he stopped in front of the scribes bowing at his feet.

“Tell me.”

His voice was deep and gravel. Felt by everyone in the massive throne room, even those at the back who winced at his presence. Eventually the vassals got back to their feet and offered their documentation to the towering man who quickly took the pad from the nearest one and skimmed through it. Giving the pad back, he moved on to the next vassal, reading his report as he shook like a leaf with his hands together. A split second later, he was given his report back and moved to the next. After the seventh, the towering ruler paused, the glow in his eyes intensified as he loomed over the trembling scribe.

“Thirty-seven… Thirsty seven instead of thirty-eight.” The ruler stated, waving the pate in his hand accusingly. “Your facility was charged in making thirty-eight **** bloom bombs to be used in our next conquest, and you could only muster thirty-seven.”

“I… My deepest apologies my liege, it will never happen again, we will…”

The cowering man didn’t have the chance to continue speaking when the towering despot reached out with his free hand and grabbed the man by his skull, easily lifting him up as he legs kicked and flailed in fear when he was lifted to see his master eye to eye.

“I tolerate no failure. I tolerate no excuses. Your failings are an affront to me, your failings are by extent an action AGAINST me. I am everything here, I am the one who decides the drive and fate of the galaxy. And you will not oppose me, not for but a single split second.”

Whimpering in the grasp of this giant, the man could only whimper as he cried out for everyone to hear, just as his skull was crushed like an egg. “DARKSIED IS…” The sound of broken skull and spilt blood could only be heard by the rows of men and women who shivered in terror at the sight as the ruler ground his head to a paste so severely, the headless corpse detached from the remains and slumped to the ground. Flicking his hand of the pasted brains and cranium he destroyed, the man turned and went back to his throne, his hands behind his back as the hundreds of servants in his throne room roared out a chant, echoing the **** cries of the man he executed.

“DARKSIED IS! DARKSIED IS! DARKSIED IS!”

Returning to his throne, the ruler of Apokolips, the god of Apokolips looked out to his throne room to his armies of vassals within, his legions without and the burning, screaming hellfire of a world under his heel.

“I AM THE RULER OF THIS GALAXY! IN TIME ALL WILL BE DARKSIED! ALL WILL KNOW MY WILL IMPOSED ON AN UNRULY AND CHAOTIC COSMOS! DARKSIED IS ORDER! DARKSEID IS CONTROL! DARKSIED… IS!”

“DARKSIED IS! DARKSIED IS! DARKSIED IS!”

“Darksied… REALLY likes to hear his name being called out.”

His eyes narrowing and looking out to the massive double doors to his throne room, everyone there looked to the lone man casually making his way down the columns of people at either side of him, confused, baffled but silent, watching this lunatic who dared to enter their lord’s throne room with the same nonchalance as walking into an old friend’s home. He dressed in black, his clothes almost silky in texture with a red undershirt and black tie, his hands checking the cuffs of his sleeves as he spun around on his heel to take in the vast throne room with a smirk and a chuckle that riled the legions of scribes amid vassals trying to retain their indignation of this stranger’s disrespect in their lord’s presence.

“I mean, I get it. I’m not one against being surrounded by sycophants all day, it’s certainly refreshing to hear someone say nothing but good things your way when you’re doing whatever you want. But… I’m the paranoid type. Trust is a dirty word in my house.”

He was handsome, with his hair slicked back and his teeth a perfect white. But there was a wrongness to it somehow. Like it was all a façade. Unreal. To everyone who saw his smirking face, it just seemed unnatural, unreal, like it was a lie. Even when he stepped over the corpse on the floor, his feet never stained the floor with blood, it was as if he wasn’t even there.

“I see you still surround yourself with broken toys… I’ve ALSO heard you’ve got some new ones recently, been trying a new tune to have them see your way?"

Gripping the armrests of his throne, Darksied glared down to the man as he continued to make his way through his throne room and up the stairs to meet him. Darksied’s personal bodyguards and servants eyeing the stranger with bafflement and fury. Dasaad and Granny Goodness eyed the newcomer as he danced his way up the last steps to click his heels together and fold his hands behind his back.

“Lucifer.”

Smiling with his hands up, and shrugging his shoulders, the man did another click of his heels and circled the throne where Darksied continued to sit. “Speak of the Devil…” Looking out to the windows that overlooked the fiery landscape for miles, the man continued to chuckle, his hands in his pockets as he admired the view. “Great place by the way, you don’t know it but I snowbird here every now and then when things get too… Chipper back home.”

“What do you want?”

“What I WANT is always the same, to see all he’s built crumble back into the dust it came from… Daddy issues, same old, same old. You understand. But there’s been a wrinkle in my little pet project.” Tilting his head, he wiped a hand down the sleeve of his dress jacket. “I’m here to offer you a job my good chum, one that’ll benefit the both of us.”

“YOU DO NOT SPEAK TO OUR LORD AND MASTER AS IF HE WERE AN EQUAL!” Barked a guard at the edge of the throne, pointing an accusing finger at the stranger. DARKSIED IS ALL, DARKSIED HAS EXISTED BEFORE THE BEGINNING OF ALL AND WILL REMAIN UNTIL THE END OF ALL! YOU ARE BUT A SPECK UNDER THE BOOT HEEL OF HIS…”

Before the man could process a single thought, this dark dressed stranger was already in his personal space glaring into his eyes with his own. The façade was gone, his visage was a mask of pain, and blood and ruin scarred over his scorched and blistered flesh. The embodiment of punishment for wrongs done and doing. Staring into his eyes they pulled the guard in to look into an abyss of time and space spanning back billions of years, seeing the flow of what was back to its beginning. His voice lost any of its smarm or charisma. It was cold now, direct, like the edge of a knife.

“Before there was time… Before there was anything… There was nothing. And before there was nothing… There were monsters.”

At that brief and terrible moment, the guard saw everything at the start of it all. A churning, roiling chaos of thought and emotions without limit or shape was revealed to the guard, sights so profound and horrific, he dropped his weapons, shivering on the spot until the stranger stepped away and checked his tie. Looking back at his lord and master, there was no fear or furvor there anymore. His mind was utterly broken by what he was shown. Slowly turning his attention from his master to the rest of the court and down to the throngs of terrified vassals, the guard took a shaking step towards the throne’s stairs and threw himself down them. His armor and bones broke the entire way down until he collapsed at the final step, broken, dead. Looking down at the remains of the guard, Lucifer made a face of apathy and turned his attention back to Darksied.

“Nice help you’ve got here, hope he was replaceable.” Turning to face him fully, the man snapped his fingers. “Right, as I was saying, there’s been a bit of a hitch in my plans for Earth. I had an agent there who would have drowned that world in blood and darkness thousands of years ago! Then he had to go and fall in love and get all honorable and kill with principle. THEN I approached one of his whores. Lovely lady, you would have loved her. Ooooh, the carnage she would have caused… In time she would have snuffed out stars and laid the universe in total darkness...”

His mood instantly soured, his smile of delight twisting into a grimace of rage as he continued. Then opened a window to the sight of a dead world somewhere on some corner of the galaxy, where a single flitting white light approached it. Landing on the surface, the light went still, calmed, until a foot stepped out of the light, along with a staff in one hand, and a top hat in the other, taking the form of a human woman. She was beautiful. Wearing a Vegas style showgirl magician’s get up so white it practically glowed along with the rest of her. Her eyes were a rainbow of colours as she stared out onto the desolation around her and to the deadened sun overhead.

With a smile, she tapped her staff on the grit of the stone she stood over and pointed a finger at the sun above. At that moment an explosion of light and colour flashed overhead, an orb of intense blue shining over the dead world as plant life spread like a fire from her feet across the entire landscape. Letting her staff hover in front of her, projecting symphony music that made the woman sway and smile. Zatanna waved her hands in front of her like she was conducting an orchestra, matching the pitch of the music being projected, every hand gesture causing the life she was creating to turn and move to her own will. Forests and fields developed in front of her, rivers and streams and lakes, and entire oceans came out of nowhere, refilling the empty spaces as the skies filled and changed colour, obscuring the pitch-black sky with a soft blue to match the sun overhead.

When she was done, laughing as it began to rain with songbirds flying overhead, Zatanna hugged herself as she smiled and cried with joy to see a dead world come back to life. A second chance.

Screaming into the image in blind rage, Lucifer swiped his hand through the window he created in frantic, clawing gestures. Destroying the image into nothing as he fumed and raged maniacally before slowly regaining his composure and wiped his fingers through his hair to calm himself.

“I killed that world 1500 years ago. It was beautiful, it was magnificent, like watching dominos fall or a house of cards collapse. It took me just a century. And she just shows up one day and undoes all my work in the span of just a few minutes to some fucking fantasia soundtrack. Ever since she went and found herself on that little ring scavenger hunt, she’s been reviving dead worlds I’ve made a hobby of killing. It’s like walking down the street of your childhood to find all the graffiti you did as a kid painted over… It’s fucking depressing!”

“I have yet to hear a proposition from you.” Growled Darksied, leaning back in his throne and bringing his hands together to lace his fingers together.

“Straight to the point. I like that. The thing is… I want you to snuff the Earth off the face of the Galaxy.”

Raising an eyebrow, even the rest of Darksied’s closest advisors were peaked in their curiosity.

“I’m serious! I want you to go to that pretty little blue spinning ball and put a match to it, I want you to cause so much blind suffering I can hear the screams from Pluto. Tear it down, make it your own, piss on the ashes, go to town my good friend, GO TO TOWN!”

“I have been waylaid in the conquering of Earth in the past. A delay, not a stop gap. That world is well guarded and protected, and much to what you have shown, has the most powerful lantern protecting it. Not to mention the kryptonians who roost there. What has changed NOW?”

Spinning on his heel with a grin that reached ear to ear, Lucifer giggled. “Oh? You didn’t hear? Superman and his little troupe of boy and girl scouts aren’t on Earth anymore. They’ve been banished!”

Dasaad and Granny Goodness traded looks behind their master, wheels already spinning at that prospect as the visitor continued.

“No Superman, no Lantern, no Justice League, just a poor defenseless little world ripe to be taken, and I’m serving it up to you on a silver fucking platter.”

“What OF the Kryptonians and the Lantern woman.” Asked Darksied, his face unchanged with the new information. “What prevents them from intervening if I were to act as you suggest?”

“Oh, I have a friend dipping her fingers in the kryptonians as we speak, they’ll be out of the way for the foreseeable future… and as for HER? Well… That’s also why I’m here.”

Approaching the throne, the guards and advisors hissed in Lucifer’s audacity as he came in close enough to whisper into Darkseid’s armored ear.

“I know your dirty little secret! That little art piece you’ve been working on all locked away in the darkest deepest pit on this fireball you call home. The one you’ve been saving for a special occasion like say… Oh… If you ever got kicked off your pretty, little throne one day by the big ol’ red and blue.”

Turning his head to face the man, Darksied did not show the surprise he felt that the fallen angel knew his plan. His scorched Earth weapon for if he were to ever fail in the control of the universe. If…

“What are you proposing?”

“Give me your favorite toy, and I give you Earth. Simple trade.”

Standing to his feet and folding his hands behind his back, Darksied thought on the matter and raised his hand to his court to look up to him.

“TO WAR! WE SHALL DESPOIL THE EARTH IN THE NAME OF DARKSIED!”

The thousands before him raised their blades and fists into the air, chanting his name so loudly it could be heard even over the screams and fires outside.

“FOR DARKSIED! FOR DARKSIED! FOR DARKSIED!”

Walking down the stairs with a dance in his step, Lucifer chuckled as he was ignored by the masses of scribes and armies still chanting their master’s name when he disappeared as soon as he left the threshold of the throne room entrance.