Ciri had been walking the corridors for a while when she caught the smell of incense coming from a room at the far end. She approached the doorway and peeked in.
A body lay in the middle of the room, covered in silk. Amazonian banners hung along the walls. Incense burned at the corners. A woman sat beside the body with her face in her hands, crying.
Ciri started to back away.
"W-Who's there?" The woman's voice came out unsteady.
"I-I'm sorry to disturb you— Forgive me, Your Majesty." Ciri stepped into the doorway properly. "I was exploring the place. I sincerely apologize for disturbing you. I will pay my respect to the old queen and leave you at once."
Diana said nothing for a moment. "You're with the strange entourage of Bruce Wayne..."
Ciri entered the room. She went to the body and bowed, not quite sure of the proper form, just doing what felt appropriate. She looked at Diana, and now could see her features up close. She looked young, her eyes red, her hair a mess. Grief overwhelms her. A feeling Ciri knew all too well.
Ciri turned her attention back to the body.
The crown sat on top of the silk. She could see herself reflected in the metal of it. Her reflection staring at her. She clenched her fist. A familiar feeling flushes over her.
She remembered the night that Cintra fell. The chaos of it, the shouting. Her grandmother's face as she commanded the knights to get Ciri out. Watching from a distance as her grandmother threw herself from the window ledge.
She was forgetting Calanthe's face now. Slowly. She didn't like the feeling of it.
"I think you've stayed too long if you want to pay your respects," Diana said.
Ciri turned. "My condolences, Your Majesty. …I am sure that your late mother was a great queen."
Diana kept her eyes on the body. "I heard that you are a traveller that has been to kingdoms far away from here. Tell me, am I the youngest monarch that you've ever seen?"
Ciri thought about it for a moment. "No, Your Majesty. I once heard of a monarch that assumed the position when she was but a child. A girl. She was to be queen when her grandmother died on the sack of her own kingdom." She paused. "She never truly reigned her own kingdom, of course. It was a title she was supposed to hold. She spent her life running. From people who wanted to use that title for their own interest, or from people who wanted to use her blood for their own machinations."
"Sounds like a miserable life, this young queen has," Diana said.
"She managed. Or so they say…" Ciri said. "I'm sure you'd be a good queen, Your Majesty. Just like your late mother was."
"Thank you for your words."
"Your Majesty. Once again, sorry that I disturbed you." Ciri nodded once and walked back toward the exit.
Princess Zala was just outside the doorway, about to enter. Ciri bowed slightly in acknowledgment and left them to it.
—
Finn was about to join in the interrogation that is happening right now when he found a trail of vines and leaves running along the floor of the corridor leading to the throne room, thick enough to have pushed through the stone in places. Finn followed it inside.
Inside, he found four queens now sat on the thrones. Lara, Annisa, Diana, and a woman he hadn't seen before, green-skinned, the overgrowth spreading from around her feet.
Poison Ivy, Finn thought. Must be the queen of the forest or something.
He settled in the corner, away from the attention. Ciri was already near the front with the other observers, which he hadn't expected.
Alfred, or whatever he was now, knelt in the centre of the room. The lasso wrapped around him, glowing faintly.
"Speak your name," Diana said. "Your real name."
"My name… is J'onn J'onzz."
Lara leaned forward. "Tell us everything that we need to know. Where you're from, what you are, what we may face."
J'onn lowered his chin. "My homeworld was beautiful. A beautiful place to grow up. A beautiful place to raise a family. But we were a people divided. Green and white. Despite our differences, we respected each other. We existed in relative harmony. But there was one white. His name is Protex. He did not believe in harmony. He truly believed the greens were inferior beings. And… in a telepathic society, a thought can travel faster than sense. He united the whites in fear and hatred. They tried to enslave the greens. To force us to serve them." J'onn's eyes went sharp toward Lara. "We would not serve."
"A war, then," Annisa said.
J'onn nodded. "A civil war began. The greens were not as warlike or as ferocious as the whites. In single combat, we could not compete. But we were great thinkers. While the whites took us out one by one, we devised terrible weapons. Weapons of fire that grew in destructive power. At the end of it, our planet was scarred. Our war left nothing worth anything. So many were lost on both sides. Still, Protex fought. Still, he killed. He decided if we couldn't be tamed, we should be exterminated. We took to hiding beneath the surface. For months our children were forced to exist in darkness. But even then, they hunted us. The last of our people were wiped out."
J'onn's voice dropped. "I could still hear it in my dreams… the thought of my son as he died… how he begged me to save him… I wanted to assure him, to lie, but I couldn't hide my thoughts from him…"
He continued. "I buried my son in the dust of our former paradise, and abandoned it. Then, I came here. The Waynes knew what I was. But the King and Queen asked me to keep the secret."
"Why?" Diana asked.
"The prophecy," Annisa said. "You are an alien, and you are a green man. The prophecy mentioned both."
Ivy pulled the thread forward. "And what exactly are we dealing with? How many of the whites are left?"
"The war was devastating to the point that I would guess there are less than twenty of them left. But Protex was one of them. He will be the one behind all this. He will want your world. And to enslave your people, as he tried with mine."
Annisa's expression hardened. "He tried to engineer a plot to remove any with the power to stop him. He tried to wipe out the kryptonians, the amazonians, and my family. He almost succeeded."
"He wanted to divide us through deceit," Lara said. She was quiet for a moment. "My queens. If we can forgive the series of events that he tried to inflict on us. The misunderstandings and grief that he used as a tool to make us point our weapons at each other… if we can forgive that… then Protex's plans would backfire on him, and instead we would be three kingdoms united like never before."
Diana spoke out, her voice now filled with ragr. "I know now who is responsible for our pain. I know now who has earned my fury. I will find Protex, wherever he hides."
—
Finn and Ciri walked the corridor after, their footsteps the only sound for a moment.
"I rather liked her," Ciri said.
"Who?" asked Finn.
"The Amazonian Queen."
"Diana?" Finn said. "She's a very beautiful woman, I'll give her that. But I don't really know what kind of person she is beyond that."
Ciri rolled her eyes but said nothing about the comment. "She lost her mother. And now she has to carry the full weight of a queen at her age."
"Two of the three queens are quite young," Finn said.
"They are…" Ciri muttered.
Then she stopped walking.
Finn opened his mouth, about to ask if she's okay, and then he heard it. A voice, not his own, inside his head. Protex is in the dungeons with J'onn J'onzz.
"Did you hear that?" Ciri asked.
Finn already had his hand on the lightsaber and was moving down the corridor toward the dungeon.
When they arrived there was a hole in the wall, the stone still loose around the edges. Bruce Wayne was inside, shooting laser beams from his eyes at a shape in the corner that hissed each time the fire touched it.
Protex tried to move for the exit. Finn stepped into the gap and brought the lightsaber across the monster's legs. The cut was clean but the stumps stretched and bubbled and reformed into something tentacle-like almost immediately. Protex pushed through and hit the far wall and passed through it entirely.
They went into the dungeon. J'onn was on the floor, wounded. Bruce crouched beside him.
"Are you alright?" Bruce asked.
"Do not worry about me," J'onn said. "But Protex will come back. You need to set up defenses that will make him afraid to approach. Kal-El and you must act now."
"I'll stay with him until a medic comes," Ciri said.
Bruce nodded once and left. Kal-El followed.
Finn waited until they were gone. "You spoke in my mind."
J'onn nodded. "You heeded the call. I am grateful."
"Don't do that again," Finn said.
"Your secrets are of no business of mine," J'onn said. "And unless you are a direct threat to this kingdom, I will not expose them."
Finn frowned. "I hate telepaths."
J'onn let out a short sound that was almost a laugh.
—
By the time evening came, the city of El had fire at every corner.
Tar pits had been dug around the soldier encampments and set alight, running in lines across the open ground outside the walls. Every section of wall had torches mounted along it, placed close enough that no gap sat in shadow. Queen Lara's decree went out before the sun was down: no man or woman could walk the streets, day or night, without a torch in hand.
The city held its fire through the night. A deterrent towards the white monsters. And for a few days… they didn't attack.