When Osiris went down, Anubis—the current God of Death, locked in a pitched battle with Steppenwolf—didn't waste a single second on sentiment. Horus's elder brother broke off the fight without a backward glance and bolted straight to Thea for help.
Thea laid out the facts. "You see how powerful Darkseid is, right? Not exactly someone you pick a fight with. I just got here—problems stacked to the ceiling—and frankly, I couldn't beat him anyway."
When Anubis asked what she proposed, Thea talked in circles for a solid five minutes before finally revealing her hand. "Unity. Only by standing together can we resist Darkseid and his army."
Over the next ten-plus days, Anubis worked the public angle while Kanto operated in the shadows, both spreading the gospel of the Darkseid threat.
Some believed it. They pledged to rally around the Goddess of Death and resist Darkseid's tyranny.
Others didn't—until they saw the state Anubis was in. Then even the skeptics had to concede: this so-called Lord of Evil didn't just terrorize the living. The bastard went after the dead too. Unforgivable.
The former Apokolips rank-and-file and the two False Furies fanned out like a public awareness campaign, going door-to-door recounting Darkseid's atrocities in harrowing detail. Panic spread fast.
At the critical moment, Thea—Goddess of Death—bravely stood up and said a very quiet "No" to Darkseid.
On the twentieth day since she'd taken control of the underworld, the Grand Anti-Darkseid Coalition was officially established.
To thank their leader for stepping forward, members poured in resources—money, muscle, materials. The Goddess of Death's temple finally got a facelift.
Kanto continued running intelligence. The two False Furies, Lashina and Bernadeth, became Thea's personal guard captains.
The God of Death, the God of Sleep, and the Siren handled the temple's daily operations.
Minos received a major promotion—she put him in charge of all soul adjudication, with Two-Face as his deputy. The workload was staggering; even Thea's head spun just looking at the case files.
Not every soul qualified for reincarnation. Under her system, the virtuous got priority. Those who'd contributed to their people got priority. Even though they'd only carry one percent of their former power into their next life, that starting point was still leagues above the blank-slate souls manufactured when the World Will recycled and reconstituted raw essence.
That was the underworld's purpose—building a virtuous cycle that made the entire multiverse better, one reincarnation at a time.
As for Charon, the grizzled old ferryman, he kept doing what he'd always done: collecting under-the-table payments. No rowing required here—his only job was selling resurrection slots.
Just as Thea had told Boston Brand, the ruler of the underworld held resurrection slots.
These weren't the same as White Lantern resurrections. Anyone brought back this way would forget their entire afterlife experience. Giving the slots to some and not others was a political headache, so she'd handed the whole operation to Charon. Sell them. Eighty-twenty split afterward—she was still the Goddess of Commerce and Wealth, after all. Couldn't play favorites between her own domains.
She'd even planned ahead: if Charon's profiteering generated too much public backlash, she'd decide on the spot whether to confiscate his assets or just take his head.
Black-market dealings aside, legitimate commerce needed to get moving too. As ruler of the underworld, the fact that she wasn't the wealthiest entity in her own domain was completely unacceptable.
The underworld was lifeless in more ways than one—death gods sitting at home all day, zero cohesion. She raised her banner and started doing business on a grand scale.
Hell's specialty goods and material-plane imports flowed into the underworld; underworld specialties flowed right back out to Hell and the mortal world.
A handful of recently deceased human merchants and economists, led by the demon lord Mecanthut, launched an initiative to stimulate trade—a commerce program with distinctly underworld characteristics.
To lure the vast population of necromancers to her side, she also established an underworld Magic Network. Within ten days, over a thousand necromancers, fifty-some archliches, and more than a dozen dracoliches had pledged allegiance. Growth was rapid; the underworld's military force was finally taking shape.
Once the avalanche of administrative work was sorted into something resembling order, Thea sat down and realized she'd been away from home for over three months.
She delegated her various responsibilities to her subordinates and headed home.
Highfather hadn't revoked her Mother Box access privileges, which told her both sides were still reassessing their relationship. A direct sovereign-to-sovereign meeting was premature—some preliminary probing was still needed.
Thea set those matters aside. Back on Earth, the first thing she did was look for Diana.
Apartment—empty.
Office—also empty.
Where had she gone? Thea muttered under her breath. In her experience, Diana was the definition of a model worker: work, rest, work—the same work-and-home routine, day after day. What was going on today?
At her current level of divinity, many threads of fate had cracked open just enough for her to catch glimpses. She could sense the locations of people closely connected to her—not magic, but a kind of intuitive awareness of the world's operating trajectory.
She reached out for Diana's presence, and a flicker of surprise crossed her face, followed by quiet understanding. Without alerting anyone, she flew east.
Belgium. A nameless village. Poison gas had contaminated the groundwater here. Even in an age of population booms, the place remained uninhabited—but it was where their love had begun.
Walking past the village entrance, traces of that day were still visible everywhere. Her eyes drifted to a low hill nearby, where Diana sat hugging her knees, staring blankly into the distance.
Thea's power had surpassed Diana's, and Diana was distracted enough that she hadn't noticed the approach.
Thea let a wisp of her divine aura slip out and cleared her throat.
"Ah—!" Diana jolted awake, then whipped around. The moment she saw Thea's smile, every trace of wariness melted into pure, radiant joy.
"You're back!" The warrior goddess launched herself forward, tackling Thea to the ground—literally tackling her. With their constitutions, it was fine. An ordinary person pulling that move would've been looking at permanent paralysis.
They were close enough to breathe each other's air. Diana studied Thea's eyes, searching for any sign of how she'd changed.
Thea quickly put on her best pitiful expression. That broke Diana's composure entirely—she laughed.
"Seriously—mmph—"
Real, fake, who cared? Thea seized the moment mid-sentence and kissed her.
The familiar motion. The familiar warmth. Her love was exactly the same—unchanged. Diana's heart flooded with joy, and she kissed back just as fiercely.
...
After only a few dozen rounds, they called it quits. This wasn't exactly home, after all.
They sat down and began catching each other up on everything that had happened.
Thea didn't have much to say about her side. Whether it was the arena slaughter or the Apokolips bloodbath, neither story aligned with Diana's values. She wisely glossed over the details and focused on listening instead.
"Superman's in serious trouble—let me tell you..."
"Batman's in serious trouble—let me tell you..."
"Green Arrow's in serious trouble—let me tell you..."
Diana had been holding all of this in. Once she opened the floodgates, it all came pouring out. By the end, Thea could only stare in exasperation.