Deadman—Boston Brand—spent a solid minute gaping at the Death Temple's grandeur, visibly nervous. But the moment he spotted Thea standing behind him with a decidedly unamused expression, his face broke into a genuine, heartfelt grin.
"What are you grinning about?! How did you manage to die again?! Do you think this is some MMO where the first player to log in gets a launch-day bonus? Would it kill you to stay alive for more than five minutes?!" Thea tore into him without mercy.
Deadman told his story—not that there was much to tell. He'd been trailing Dove—Dawn Granger—as usual. Then the heroic-rescue-of-the-damsel bit happened, and he'd caught a hail of bullets for his trouble.
The coincidence was almost poetic. He'd flatlined on Earth less than a tenth of a second after Thea stepped into the Death Temple. Under the rules of the cosmos, the Underworld had come online at that exact instant, and Deadman had been yanked straight to the threshold—straight to her doorstep.
"Want me to resurrect you? Your boss is the Goddess of Death now. I get a monthly resurrection quota." Thea offered, testing the waters.
Deadman shook his head without hesitation. "Don't bother. I can't protect Dawn as a living man. Only a dead one can."
Destined for this, apparently. Thea sighed. "As the Underworld's very first arrival, you're granted free passage between worlds. Go play with your Dove."
This wasn't favoritism—the Underworld's own protocols genuinely included that provision.
She shooed Deadman away quickly, because the Underworld had just gone live and souls were spawning like it was an MMO server launch. There was no time for small talk.
Kanto, Lashina, and Bernadeth—Apokolips elites all—began directing traffic under her orders, herding the incoming souls into some semblance of order.
The rank-and-file soldiers she'd brought from Apokolips now had bodies again—functional within the Underworld, though they'd crumble to ash the moment they stepped outside. She distributed them among her three New Gods, and the initial chaos gradually settled into something resembling organization.
"Your Majesty, we're short-handed!" Kanto had zero difficulty switching from Darkseid's loyal hound to hers. But the workload was genuinely crushing. He stole a moment between waves to voice his complaint.
Thea had no choice but to pull out the big summoning guns.
The Siren arrived with several hundred of her kin, establishing a permanent presence in the Underworld.
From the Greek pantheon: Thanatos, god of death. Hypnos, god of sleep. Charon, the ferryman. Minos, the judge. All answered the call.
When the twin brothers learned she'd claimed the Underworld, they didn't deliberate. Both swore fealty on the spot and formally severed ties with the Greek divine hierarchy.
Additionally, the demon lord Mekanshuut—who'd been showing signs of passive defiance lately—heard about her hostile takeover of the Underworld and promptly crawled back to grovel at her feet, renewing his oath of eternal loyalty and personally making the trip to pay his respects.
Even with all of that, management was still stretched thin. If not for the Underworld's strict limitations on living beings entering, Thea would have seriously considered dragging her corporate executives down here.
Fortunately, beyond Deadman, she spotted another familiar face from Earth.
Harvey Dent—Two-Face. Killed in a gang war.
Thea assigned him to Minos's division without a second thought. Keep doing what you're good at—prosecute and judge.
Professional excellence, a deep understanding of criminal psychology, and blazing-fast case processing. Harvey Dent quickly proved that his reputation as one of Gotham's elite hadn't been for nothing.
Between the New Gods, Old Gods, demons, and one supervillain-turned-judge, Thea finally caught her breath and could actually survey her domain.
The Underworld appeared to be a region of infinite expanse. Her Death Temple sat at the dead center. Combined with the surrounding barracks, workshops, and residential structures—all under her direct control—her territory accounted for roughly one-third of the Underworld's current area.
The outer two-thirds were a dense patchwork of smaller domains.
Earth's civilizations held a disproportionate advantage here—Old Gods tied to human faiths claimed half of all external territory.
But because no Earth was unique, some domains existed in plural. Take Hades's realm: there wasn't just one. The Hades that Thea knew personally happened to be the strongest, having absorbed the underworlds of Earths One, Twelve, Nineteen, and Twenty-Seven.
Earth-Two's Hades looked like a withered old man. Earth-Three's was a colossal monstrosity.
Some Earths had never developed Greek civilization at all. Others had been nuked into oblivion.
Her Death Temple claimed one-third. Earth-origin domains claimed one-third. Alien civilizations held the remaining third.
After studying the Underworld's governance rules for the better part of a day, she let out a long, frustrated breath.
Her position as ruler was largely ceremonial. Over those external territories, she held zero authority—no personnel appointments, no fiscal control, no military command, no diplomatic standing. The entire Underworld was a loose confederation of independent fiefdoms.
She'd recruited Thanatos and Hypnos, but their original territory belonged to the Greek underworld—which Hades had since swallowed. She couldn't reclaim it.
The rules had been set at the dawn of Creation itself. Unless she could outmuscle the Almighty, she played by them.
"Right. If I were stronger than Him, I wouldn't need an Underworld." Mildly irritated, she stood at the temple entrance, hands behind her back, watching her people scramble. Regardless of the limitations, she was now officially a major power in the multiverse.
She dispatched Kanto—the fastest mover she had—to carry orders to every death domain in the Underworld. Your overlord is short-staffed. Send people. Now.
The responses were predictable. Weaker domains complied grudgingly. Mid-tier domains dragged their feet with every excuse imaginable. The strongest didn't even let Kanto through the front door.
Thea had been educated by Earth's finest politicians. She spent a full day studying the existing rules and found exactly the loophole she needed.
She whispered two sentences to Kanto and sent the assassin on his way.
Sure enough, three days later, the Egyptian pantheon—the second most powerful faction in the Underworld after Hades—was hit by a catastrophe. Anubis, the jackal-headed death god, came howling to her temple like a kicked puppy.
"Your Majesty, that Darkseid is a monster! My father has fallen!" Anubis wailed. Part performance, part genuine grief.
Thea—whose own acting could win awards—pressed him urgently for details.
Here was what she'd done: she'd planted Kanto—whose stealth was peerless—in the Egyptian death domain, leaving behind a clear divine signature. Darkseid, still seething, had followed the trail with his full army and smashed straight into the Egyptian underworld's front gates.
One look at the legions of undead inside and he didn't bother asking questions. He started killing.
Even with the Egyptian death pantheon fighting at full strength, they were swept aside by the tide of Parademons.
Darkseid had come in person this time. He squared up against Osiris directly—pinned the legendary Egyptian god of the dead to the ground and beat him senseless before finishing him off with an Omega beam. God-killing made clean.
Having finally vented his fury, and mindful that deploying his main body wasn't without risk—plus the fact that he'd brought his entire army and left Apokolips defended by wounded reserves, vulnerable to a Highfather sneak attack—he ransacked the Egyptian underworld, then marched his forces home, practically singing on the way.