The days after Queen Lara's decree passed without incident. The city kept its fire burning through every night, making sure that the white monsters were afraid to approach the city.
Finn spent most of that time in the Amazonian encampment with his notebook. He was learning their ways, well, at least wrote it down. He watched them train, he watched the ins and outs of the culture.
The Amazons were, in his opinion, the most interesting of the three kingdoms. A kingdom that prided itself on being warriors, all women, and not just in title. Every single one of them moved like someone who had been training since childhood. He watched two of them spar near the cookfires and made notes. The skill of their exchanges was something along of the Wild Hunt riders, and those weren't exactly human.
Lois Lane, Queen Diana's advisor, found him while he was writing and offered to walk him through the camp. He didn't refuse of course.
She took him to the training grounds first, rows of women drilling with shields and spears. Then the field games, soldiers racing and wrestling each other for points between watches, laughing.
All of it was fairly normal, except for the fact that every person in the camp was a woman, and most of them were very beautiful women at that.
Lois noticed him checking them out.
"It is useless," she chuckled.
"What do you mean?" Finn asked.
"Most of them are not interested in men. In fact, they hate them." She kept walking. "It is our history."
Finn raised his brow. A whole camp of women who hated men. Great. "Anyway. How does the country actually work? Like, what is your relationship with the other two kingdoms?"
"Amazonia is a neutral country," Lois said.
"...How is marching on the Kingdom of El a neutral approach?"
Lois smiled. "While we are neutral, we have aligned ourselves with our neighbours through defence treaties. We do not take sides in their conflicts by default."
"And if the neighbours attack each other? Like how the Storms and the Els did?"
"It is judged by the court. If one kingdom is the cause of conflict, we try to mediate. We offer neutral ground for both sides to resolve it. If the issue is grave enough that it concerns the prosperity of the world as a whole, we march with the wronged kingdom."
"...If that's what neutrality means to you, then who am I to tell?" He flipped to a new page. "Anyway, how do you keep the women-only culture going?"
"We do not really breed," Lois said. "A minority does, finding partners outside the kingdom. But most of the time we find orphans or unwanted girls from other kingdoms and bring them here."
"And if those who breed have a boy?"
"They leave him with the husband. It is part of the arrangement and most understand it going in."
"While bringing the girl here?"
"Exactly."
They arrived at a makeshift armoury tent near the far end of the camp. Lois walked him through racks of armour and weapons until she stopped at a row of plain silver bracelets near the back.
"The bracelets of submission," she said. "It's enchanted. Near indestructible. Almost no force can penetrate them."
"Strange name for something from an all-powerful women's culture," Finn said.
"The name symbolizes a struggle of the past," Lois said. "We were not always all women. We were just like any other kingdom, far from here, before we found Amazonia. But we were fractured. The men and women worshipped different gods. Men with their god, women with their goddess. One day the men led a rebellion to enslave the women as they deemed them heretics, and that their god says so. They almost succeeded, if not for the fact that the late Queen Hippolyta was blessed by our goddess and led us to a new land to claim."
Finn hummed. Almost the same flow as J'onn's story. "Can I have one of these then?"
Lois chuckled. "They have been enchanted to make any man who wears them weak."
Finn sighed. Of course it's like that. "Well, maybe I can take one fo—"
It was then that they heard shouting from outside the tent.
Both of them quickly went out of the tent. They saw as the fiery tar pit that ran the full length of the camp's perimeter had gone out, all of it extinguished at once. Thick grey smoke rolled in from where the fire had been, heavy enough to block everything beyond a few paces.
The general was already calling orders across the camp. Lines of Amazonian soldiers formed up in front of the extinguished pit, shields raised, spears forward, the whole thing happening in under a minute.
Lois turned to Finn. "Are you willing to defend this camp?"
"The pit surrounds the whole camp, it's not like I have a choice." Finn said. "If I ran they'd chase me down in the open."
Lois nodded. "Then prepare for a fight."
—
General Philippus stood at the edge of the extinguished pit, sword in hand, her eyes on the smoke.
The camp had gone completely silent. The only sounds were the faint scrape of boots adjusting on dirt and the low creak of shields being raised. She could faintly see shapes moved in the smoke ahead, brief glimpses of something large, and the whole line could see them shifting back and forth in there.
Finn took a position behind the front lines with the archers. Every arrow had already been dipped in oil and the one on hand had been lit, the tips burning in a long row.
"General!" someone in the line called out.
"Be ready!" Philippus answered.
A blonde woman stepped out from the Amazonian ranks and faced the smoke. She drew a long breath and screamed.
The sound was enormous. It hit the air like a banshee's wail, far beyond a normal human scream that Finn felt it in his back teeth, and the smoke didn't thin or drift, it blasted apart in a single instant.
The white monsters were already charging before it fully cleared. Armoured in a rough plate, carrying spears and swords from kryptonite, and there were about twenty of them moving fast across the dead pit. Twenty of monsters that have the strength of a very lesser kryptonian.
The Amazonian line hit them and the noise of the impact was tremendous.
Finn cut the first one that reached him on the limb. It was not as if he wanted to only disarm them, but they can expand their tentacle-like features into multiple limbs, which made attacking their torso or head hard. Finn could easily chop off their arms, but the regeneration was fast still, even though the lightsaber had burned their skin.
Getting to the chest or head meant getting close enough to be stabbed by one of the six limbs, and these things had limbs growing back faster than he could deal with them. He gave ground, burned two incoming strikes at the wrist before they connected, and stepped back again.
Around him the Amazonian lines held but took damage. Wounded were dragged back behind the archers. Two bodies near the front weren't moving anymore. The white monsters kept coming, pressing the line back step by step.
He was still in the fight. But the line was struggling and the numbers hadn't thinned enough.
—
Meanwhile, at Gotham Town, Ciri was on her bed sharpening her blade when the castle started making noise.
She could hear it building from below, boots moving fast down corridors. She set the whetstone down and went to the window.
The courtyard was chaotic. Soldiers are strapping on armour, horses are being pulled out of the stables. And above the rooftops, four figures flying away fast enough that by the time she registered them they were already small against the sky. Though she could guess who they are: Diana, Kal-El, Batman, Zala.
Seeing all this, she grabbed her sword and went downstairs.
A soldier near the gate told her the Amazonian camp was under attack. The whites had broken through.
She then remembered that Finn was there.
She stole a horse from the stables and rode out through the city, weaving past the army column that was already moving through the streets. People pressed against the walls to let the soldiers through. She pushed past them all and hit the open road at a full gallop, where she could see the smoke already visible on the horizon.
—
The battle had been going long enough that Finn's arms were starting to shake.
He was still on his feet. The lightsaber made cutting limbs off these monsters easy, but getting to anything vital without catching a hit first was the hard part. The monsters grew back too fast and had too many limbs due to their tentacle-like structure. He had taken hits across the ribs and the arm, but in return he kept cutting off the limbs as they came at him, giving ground when he had to.
Around him the Amazonian lines had broken into smaller skirmishes. Wounded were everywhere. Some weren't getting back up.
Then he saw Protex. He was moving through the fighting like it owned the field, with a green conjured mace swinging from one hand, the green lantern ring on its finger.
Which meant only one thing, that the Green Man was dead. That… Luthor-Green Lantern-Joker hybrid. And now the ring is in Protex's hand.
Protex had one hand wrapped around General Philippus's throat, lifting her off the ground.
Finn ran at it and took the hand off at the wrist in one motion. The mace vanished instantly as the hand that held the ring fell off his body. Philippus hit the ground coughing and scrambled back. Protex turned on Finn and the limbs came from multiple directions at once.
"You insect!" he angrily shouted.
Finn burned each one the attacking limbs before it reached him but two more came each time one fell, and the creature kept pushing forward, getting more ferocious with each limb it lost.
It was then that something came from above. It was Kal-El. Flying down like a meteor.
The impact shook the ground. He pulled back immediately, staying out of reach, shouting at the creature. Batman came in from the left, Diana from the right, Zala from above. All four of them moved around Protex, pulling at it from every angle, drawing it away from the camp.
"It is us that you want, isn't it?" questioned Batman slowly, drawing his sword. "Then come at us."
Then, they turned away, flying towards a specific direction.
Protex made a sound and his army responded, pulling back from the Amazonian lines and following after the kryptonians. They didn't even look back at the camp. It was like they've become flies all of a sudden, so easy to ignore.
When the white monsters disappeared into the horizon, Finn sat down on the dirt.
His legs made the decision before he did. He sat there for a while and then he lay down and after that he wasn't aware of much.
—
He came back to the sound of grumbling somewhere nearby.
He opened his eyes. Ciri was standing over him.
"You look like you've been through hell," she said.
Finn sat up. "...All in a day's work."
Ciri looked around at the camp, at the wounded being carried, and the bodies near the front line. "Is it over?"
Finn shook his head. "The monsters followed Kal-El and the others in the distance. They stopped caring about the Amazons the moment the kryptonians showed up."
As soon as he said it the ground shook. A deep boom from far in the distance. Then another. Finn could see a column of fire climbing towards the sky, turning the cloud ashen and orange. The volcano, the same one that had made the Els reveal themselves to the kingdom years ago, had erupted.
Finn whistled. "Bringing things that are sensitive to fire to a volcano. Good idea."
The city army arrived not long after. General Philippus was already in conversation with the army leader near the center of the camp.
Ciri turned from the column of smoke. "It's a pity I couldn't join in." A pause. "But at least I can help the wounded."
She did. She dragged Finn toward the medical tent, and Finn got treated along with everyone else, the cuts on his arm and ribs cleaned and wrapped.
When it was done he walked the camp and found the limb he had cut from Protex near the edge of the pit. The green lantern ring was still on the finger. He pulled it off and inspected it.
The ring should have flown the moment Protex's hand came off, gone looking for someone worthy. Protex was presumably dead now, courtesy of the volcano. So why was it still here?
But then he thought, how had Protex taken it from the Green Man in the first place?
He was sliding it toward his finger when someone spoke from behind him.
"Don't."
Finn paused, and turned to the source of the voice. It was Constantine, looking at him as he was smoking his pipe.
Finn asked: "Why?"
"The Green Man was a normal man before he wore that ring," Constantine said. "After he found it, he became a madman, like a cursed abomination that had lost his mind."
"...How did he get it in the first place?" Finn asked. "And where is he now?"
"Dead, presumably," Constantine said. "If that monster had the ring. It is probably one of their tools. They used the Green Man as another instrument to spread chaos, and took the ring when they were done with him."
This is the green lantern ring, Finn thought. Not some toy of a white martian.
And yet it hadn't flown. It was still sitting in his hand.
He was doubtful for a moment, but he slid it onto his finger either way.
The pain hit immediately and his fingers went white from the knuckle down in a slow creeping line. He pulled the ring off fast and hissed through his teeth.
The dull white colour stayed on his fingers where the ring had touched.
"I warned you," Constantine said. "You did not listen."
"Curiousity got the better of me, I suppose…" Finn pressed his other hand over the fingers. The white didn't spread anymore.
"Is it a corruption?" he asked. "Will it spread?"
Constantine walked over and took his wrist and looked at it. "Most likely just a scar. A strange scar, but still just a scar. Do not worry about it. It won't spread. I'll take a closer look at it once all this is done. Just in case." He let go. "But it won't go away either."
Finn looked at the ring.
"A pity…" he murmured.
Then he pocketed it either way.