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The Kryptonian warship screamed across the sky like a falling star, ripping apart clouds as metal shrieked under stress. Buildings trembled. Car alarms wailed. People ran some screaming, some frozen in horrified awe as the vessel carved deep into the city and finally collapsed among shattered concrete and burning steel.
Inside, smoke curled through corridors broken and sparking. Armor and bodies lay where they fell.
Footsteps echoed, slow and steady.
Arthur Blackwynd emerged from the fading flames, one hand closed around a throat clad in Kryptonian plating. Faora-Ul dangled from his grasp, her boots barely scraping the floor.
Her face was bloodied. A smile tugged at her lips anyway, wild and completely fearless.
"You fight… like a demon…" she whispered, each word a rasping laugh. "Quite the warrior…"
Arthur's expression did not change. No gloating. No pity. Only cold resolve as violet light pulsed beneath his irises.
Twinblade materialized in his free hand sleek, deadly, glowing with an eerie shadowed edge.
Faora's smile widened.
"A glorious death is not a bad thing at all…" she breathed.
Arthur drove the blade through her heart.
Her breath hitched once then stilled. He let her body fall, lifeless metal clanging against the floor.
Without turning, without looking at the blood pooling at his feet, he spoke voice low, resonant with ancient command.
"Arise."
His surroundings darkened. Shadows peeled themselves from the corpses, violet fire ignited hollow eyes opening, devoid of life yet brimming with power.
Shadow Faora rose first, armor cracked, posture perfect, kneeling before her new king.
"Await my order," Arthur said, the ground vibrating beneath his voice.
The warship had crashed down into Jump City with a quake that nearly split roads apart debris rolling like waves, dust engulfing everything. Civilians stumbled, crying out, some filming in disbelief even through tears of fear.
"Somebody call the Titans!"
"What is that thing?!"
"God… help us…"
Their terror washed against the presence emerging from the smoke.
Arthur stepped away from the wreckage, cloak whipping in the heat and wind, shadows coiling around him like living serpents.
His gaze swept the scene.
Wrecked streets. Fires burning. Civilians fleeing. The cost of war.
Then a streak of blurred motion burst upward, blasting into the sky the escape of one of the survivng Kryptonians, General Zod.
Arthur's eyes narrowed, burning a fierce violet.
From the darkness at his heel, a knight of living shadow rose, Igris his armor dripping wisps of violet fire, Demon King Longsword in hand.
"I am here," he said, kneeling. "Your command, my liege?"
Another shadow surged up beside him colossal wings unfurling, scales gleaming violet-black with infernal majesty.
Kamish, the Dragon Marshal his roar shaking shattered windows.
Arthur pointed to the fleeing Kryptonian.
"Go with Kamish," he ordered. "Bring me that one's head."
Igris bowed once, sharp and proud.
"At once."
He leapt, landing upon Kamish's back and the two launched into the heavens, leaving a roaring sonic boom through the air.
Arthur watched them go.
For a heartbeat… the world felt still around him.
He exhaled, rubbing his jaw lightly.
"…Hopefully I'm not gonna get slapped by her now," he muttered, remembering that he has to free Kara himself.
Then he clicked his tongue.
"Exchange."
The shadows swallowed him whole and he vanished from the crater, leaving only violet embers drifting in the air.
****
They came fast too fast to pretend it was an accident. Sirens still screamed through the choking smoke as the Titans and Raven pushed toward the crater where the Kryptonian wreckage had punched the city into chaos. The street was a ruin of twisted metal, scorched concrete. Little fires licked at broken signs. Pieces of alien armor jutted from the ground.
Robin moved with the speed of someone who had learned to take in a scene in a breath. Cyborg's scanners spat data as he swept the area, his optics painting everything in cold, useful numbers. Beast Boy stuck close to the edge, bouncing on the heels of his boots like he wanted to laugh and cry in the same minute. Starfire's hands hovered at her sides, palms glowing faintly as she took in the wounded civilians; her mouth kept shaping words she didn't quite say. Raven drifted a yard above the chaos, hood down but eyes shadowed in concentration.
They found bodies first fallen Kryptonians, armor torn and human-red blood mingling under the alien plates. One of them moved, barely: a single gasping breath, a hand twitching through the dust. Robin was already there, slipping under a half-collapsed hull, prying a crushed visor open. The soldier's face gaunt, ash-flecked with frozen blood turned toward him.
Beast Boy's voice was sharp and small. "Why should we help this guy?" he said.
Robin didn't answer. He could read the decision on the line of his jaw: you save who you can. He rolled the Kryptonian onto his shoulder, cradled like something both precious and dangerous, and half-carried, half-dragged him to where Cyborg was waiting.
"Vitals," Cyborg said, voice flat with focus. His arm whirred; scanners ran over the alien physiology in a flurry of data that would have made most minds reel. "He's hemorrhaging internally. Shock. If we don't stabilize.." He stopped, the words trailing. "He doesn't have much time."
Robin's hands moved with calm, practiced motions, compression, an improvised tourniquet but he could feel how thin the thread was. Starfire hovered closer, eyes wide, fingers trembling. "We must help him," she said, voice fragile in a way that made Robin's shoulders square. She moved to offer warmth, offer healing, but there was only so much a princess from another star could do in a torn body and alien physiology.
The Kryptonian's voice rasped, a word cut into air like a coin on stone. "I'm… Jax… Jax-Ur," he managed. The name came out like a confession and an apology wrapped together.
Cyborg's tone turned clinical again. "He's not going to make it if the hemorrhage continues."
Robin looked down at the man whose life was slipping away and, with a decision that had nothing to do with diplomacy or politics, eased his hold. He let Jax-Ur go.
"What did you guys just launch?" Robin demanded, voice rough with the shock of too much. "What is that big black machine charging up over Metropolis?"
Jax-Ur's lips moved. He tried, and tried again. Then he managed, slowly "It... it doesn't matter. Our General..." His eyes turned away as if trying to find another world in the rubble "our General got blinded by duty and revenge. This is... this is not how we should be operating.."
The breath left his body with a small, watery sound. He died, the last of the light in his eyes giving way to nothing. The medi-scan line that Cyborg watched flatlined.
Robin snapped, "Hey! you didn't answer my question!" His hand struck at nothing but air, a useless, angry motion.
Raven didn't look at him. She floated a little higher, tone flat and final. "He is dead," she said. "So don't bother."
Starfire put a trembling hand over her mouth. Her whole body shuddered. Beast Boy finally swallowed and went quiet; the joke died on his lips because the rawness of the moment had none of the edges he usually played with.
Cyborg's eyes flicked across the wreckage, reading the remains of the others not just bodies but the way they look, the direction of their wounds. "Someone fought these people, they didn't die from the impact." he said, the line of his voice like a verdict. "Someone hunted them."
Robin's jaw set. He watched Cyborg's feed and then the sky. He knew. The name arrived without being spoken; it was certain. "Arthur," he said, low and steady.
Beast Boy's face contorted with the bemused disbelief of a kid who'd watched his favorite chaos-maker show up and then leave yet another chaos. "Of course it's Arthur."
Raven turned, eyes darker than the smoke. "We need to regroup with Flash and the others in Metropolis," she said. Her voice carried command, not request. "That machine is charging. We don't know what it will do if it activates..." Her eyes narrowed. "We have to take it down."
"And fast," Cyborg added, fingers already rerouting. "I'm pinging Flash and the League. Robin, put out a perimeter and keep civilians clear."
Robin nodded, Beast Boy smiled, tired and rueful. "Okay," he said. "We go smash the big scary machine."
/-\
If you Like this story! Check out my other stories! Solo leveling in Westeros.
&
If you wish to read more or simply support me than check out my patreon at
"https://www.patreon.com/FrenzyAren"
You can Get Access to 3 More Chapters OR 7 More Chapters if you want