Between the Green and Red Lantern lines stood Saint Walker, who'd brought his gaunt Blue Lantern compatriots to rescue the Guardians Ganthet and Sayd.
"Atrocitus. The hatred ends here." Thea had no time to waste on them. Her gaze swept the Red Lantern ranks, her tone cold.
In the Goddess of Death's emotionless stare, even Red Lanterns—drunk on blood and fury—couldn't help but take a step back.
Without a word, Atrocitus turned and left. Thea dismissed the Green and Blue Lanterns just as efficiently.
She didn't care whether the little blue men lived or died. The only reason she'd returned to this sector first was to retrieve the Fate Clock. The borrowed projection had to go back to Destiny. She'd originally considered borrowing the Book of Destiny directly, but even magic had limits. The Book of Destiny stood above the rules themselves; no spell could replicate it.
Counter-summoning was the very first lesson when learning summoning—baseline survival skill for most mages.
But a thirteenth-circle counter-summon was another matter entirely. It wasn't like dismissing an ordinary conjuration—a soft pop, a puff of smoke, back to its home plane.
Sending something of this caliber home required exquisitely precise incantations and an enormous reservoir of magic.
She had both. After considerable effort, the great clock returned. As for the severed sliver of the First Lantern's self and the kaleidoscope of emotions bound up inside it, she handed that over to Destiny as her payment. Destiny enjoyed savoring the spectacle of different lives, and half of a hundred billion was still fifty billion. Plenty to keep the old man busy for a while.
Then she cleared the battlefield. The emotional residue was a tangled mess—endless feelings layered into this pocket of void, braided together across eons. Anyone who passed through would, at best, come out insane.
Thea wasn't good at handling emotions. What had been an energy source for the First Lantern was pure poison to her. She liked her life simple, her work simple; too many feelings clouded her core. She knew herself: her will wasn't exactly ironclad.
She slipped on the White Lantern ring. Borrowing the power of life itself, she smoothed over the emotional scars in the void until everything was quiet again.
Battlefield cleaned, she went looking for the world-restoration trio. The three of them were running themselves ragged—and she'd heard Batman was equally exhausted back on Earth. Her joining wouldn't speed things up much, but when they learned the crisis was over, they were visibly relieved.
"Emotions can give people power?" Supergirl, straightforward by nature, couldn't wrap her head around it. She stood there frowning for a long moment while Thea hung back and chatted with Diana.
Diana brought up Silver Swan. Honestly, that codename didn't ring a single bell for Thea. Never even heard it.
"Mister Terrific suspects Cayden James tampered with her spinal implants. That's why her personality changed. If we can subdue her, we should be able to restore her." Diana laid it out formally.
Irritation prickled under Thea's skin. Every alley cat and stray dog was crawling out of the woodwork lately. A nobody like this, eyeing Diana? She clearly didn't realize how close to death she was walking.
Out loud, though, she laughed it off and said she didn't mind.
As it turned out, Diana knew her far too well. Diana could predict her little schemes with uncanny precision. The Valkyrie's beautiful eyes pinned her in place for a long moment. "Don't you go pulling anything behind my back…"
Thea's guilty conscience flared. That had been exactly the plan. She'd already settled on personnel: Slade was the obvious choice. A ballet dancer couldn't make much noise—two quick cuts, done. Then Terra would open a grave, bury the body, erase the traces. Nobody the wiser. Bribe a few local cops, file a missing persons report. Full-service package. And waiting at the end of the line: the Underworld, where Thea would personally tell Silver Swan that death wasn't the end, only the beginning.
But with Diana putting it that plainly, she wasn't about to pick a fight over some bit-part villain. She pivoted fast. "Relax. Oh—by the way, Black Hand killed Hal Jordan and Sinestro. Where's he now?"
Diana was forced off-topic and nearly choked on the pivot. If Superman and Supergirl hadn't been right there, she would've pinned the Goddess of Death down on the nearest flat surface and taught her a proper lesson.
"Probably locked up by the Green Lanterns again," she said, not entirely sure.
Thea didn't need certainty. Without Nekron, Black Hand was a nobody—not worth a second thought. She'd only needed to steer the conversation off Silver Swan.
The four of them, backed by Earth's think tanks, worked through fifteen affected planets, restoring each in turn. Casualties were inevitable. But as long as the dead weren't Earthlings and weren't dying in front of them, it didn't register much.
By the time they finished and returned to Earth, two hours had passed.
Batman exchanged a few brief words with them and then headed home to rest. Mental labor was more draining than fighting monsters. He usually made do with one hour of sleep; today he was giving himself a break—two hours.
Barry Allen, Mister Terrific, and the rest were running on empty too. They made their excuses and left.
Naturally, Thea went home with Diana. Her place was a ten-thousand-square-meter (~108,000 sq ft) villa on the outskirts of London. Strange, really—Diana longed for Greece, worked in France daily, but chose to live in England.
They changed into loungewear. Thea moved fast and drew the curtains.
Diana shot her a sidelong look. The meaning was clear: You good? It's broad daylight, keep it decent.
Truthfully, Thea had been wronged. One gesture, one glance, and they read each other perfectly. She raised both hands in mock surrender and gently poked Diana's forehead. "Such a dirty mind. I've got a trophy to show you."
With a flourish, she produced the First Lantern Ring.
In the dim room, a band shimmering with iridescent light appeared in her palm. "This is another Source. Want to see if it suits you?"
Diana had three godhoods already—no longer a newcomer. She'd developed her own method of assessment: only what truly suited her was worth taking. Stacking godhoods indiscriminately would only stunt her growth.
She studied it carefully. The Valkyrie's brow knit. "Too chaotic. I can't read it."
"Huh..." Thea deflated slightly. A genuinely powerful artifact, and nobody could use it. Infuriating.
"Let's try purifying it." Not really a solution, but the only path she had.
The simplest option was the White Lantern. Its purification was unmatched in the cosmos. But the emotions locked inside this ring weren't like the scattered residue on a battlefield. They'd been braided together for tens of billions of years. Using life-force to soothe them would be monumentally difficult.
"Use divine power," Diana said. Divine power turned the impossible into the possible.
The downside was that it regenerated slowly. Thea didn't love burning it when she didn't have to.
Fortunately, Death's divine power could be replenished through killing. Restocking wasn't much of a problem.
"Me first." Between Thea's fingers, a pure black vortex coiled and struck like a serpent, diving into the ring.