The Anti-Monitor had left a small garrison to defend his domain. It didn't last a single exchange against the tide of several hundred archliches, tens of thousands of death knights, and an uncountable host of undead.
Thea deployed Kanto the assassin, Siren, and the newly recruited Deathstorm.
Deathstorm had an almost fanatical obsession with death. Thea had barely needed to do any recruiting—she'd simply announced her title as Goddess of Death, and he'd dropped to his knees on the spot. Easiest conscription she'd ever managed.
This time, unlike her personal raid on Hades's vaults, Thea stayed in the center and let her subordinates do the work. She directed with easy authority while her forces fanned out to plunder.
Her Godhood of Wealth extended to the archliches and death knights under her command, granting each of them a sharp eye for value. Whatever the purpose, whatever the origin—if it was worth something, they took it.
It didn't take long before Kanto came back with results, dragging a charred, bedraggled man before her.
"Your Majesty," he said. "We found an old acquaintance."
Thea looked down. Who was this? Filthy, hair everywhere, face blackened like the bottom of a pot—the man looked like he'd been badly burned.
She looked more carefully.
"That's Metron, isn't it? I almost didn't recognize him without the Mobius Chair."
An acquaintance, however unlikely—Metron had pulled her into Highfather's camp when she first ascended to godhood, and they'd worked together later when she was building the Magic Web. There was some history between them.
He looked charred, but the injuries weren't serious. She didn't dare use the White Lantern Ring here in the Antimatter Universe, so she cast several healing spells instead. Slowly, Metron opened his eyes.
The first thing he saw was Thea. He let out a quiet sigh—a sound impossible to interpret.
"My thanks for healing me, Your Majesty." He composed himself quickly and bowed with formal gravity.
Thea didn't stand on ceremony. "Old friend—how did you end up in the Antimatter Universe? Was it Highfather's order?"
Metron explained everything, holding nothing back. At the end, he looked at her with genuine puzzlement. "Your Majesty—why did you engineer this battle? Surely you understand the magnitude of the disruption it has caused to the fabric of the Multiverse?"
Thea was quiet for a moment. "God of Knowledge—do you truly want to know the reason?"
Metron indicated that even if she killed him for it afterward, he still had to hear the answer.
"From the perspective of the New Gods and mortals, this battle was unnecessary. But if you step outside the Multiverse entirely—if you look at it from a broader vantage—you'll find that this was an unavoidable step in the Multiverse advancing to a higher stage of existence."
She paused. "You're aware of the Dark Multiverse. If the current universe doesn't reach a higher plane before the two begin to converge, the destruction wrought by the merger will be incalculable."
The core of her argument was simple: better to set things in motion early. Never let problems fester.
She sent the dazed God of Knowledge on his way with a neat package of convoluted logic and turned her attention back to the real work.
Deathstorm arrived next with better news.
The Anti-Monitor Tower. Rising over thirty meters high, it was the Anti-Monitor's masterwork of surveillance technology—a device of supreme sophistication built to monitor the entire Multiverse.
The level of engineering it contained left Deathstorm transfixed. Thea studied it carefully herself.
The tower functioned as a supercomputer—not merely advanced by Earth standards, but advanced by orders of magnitude beyond anything she had seen. Its computational algorithms seemed to represent the absolute apex of what technology could achieve, and crucially, it was designed to be operated by anyone. No specialized knowledge required.
She gave the order immediately: bring it to the Underworld.
The Underworld needed to modernize. Two-Face was still handling casefiles on paper—a state of affairs that was frankly embarrassing. This facility would drag the Underworld's administrative infrastructure into the current century.
The Antimatter Universe held a great deal of worth beyond the tower. Much of what remained was the refined residue of cosmic explosions and ancient fires—nameless materials, but of extraordinary quality. Impossibly hard, with high tensile strength and significant resistance to magic.
Thea found several substantial pieces of particularly fine metal. She set them aside for Diana—Diana's shield had been shattered, and this was a good opportunity to replace it.
There were materials. But there were also people.
The Weaponers of Qward, for instance—craftsmen who had once served under the Sinestro Corps and then dropped off the map—were from the Antimatter Universe, members of the Thunderers of Qward. Each of them was formidable. They had spent their careers forging weapons for the Anti-Monitor's armies.
They weren't life-forms in the conventional sense, somewhat analogous to demons—the Underworld could accommodate them.
Half coercion, half incentive. She brought the lot of them.
There was a particular pleasure to raiding someone else's territory, and everyone who had come along was in excellent spirits. She didn't concern herself with whether the archliches were quietly pocketing a portion for themselves—as long as the lion's share ended up with her, the rest could keep their finder's fee. Led by their generous sovereign, the whole expedition went out singing and came back singing, the atmosphere warm and convivial.
The Anti-Monitor wasn't coming back. Everything left behind was going to waste anyway—better to share it among the Underworld's many deserving residents.
That was genuinely how she saw it.
Back in the Underworld, she set her people to work on the digitization project, then returned to Earth to rest.
Diana had also come home exhausted. She hadn't had much left in her own reserves, and Silver Swan's group had hidden themselves with unusual care—two full sweeps of Star City had turned up no trace. She'd given up and come straight back.
Neither goddess was in any condition for the kind of activities that might otherwise have filled the evening. They lay together talking—drifting between gossip about Superwoman juggling three men at once and a surprisingly earnest discussion of whether Earth's first female Green Lantern had advanced the cause of gender equality.
Thea contributed the occasional murmur of agreement and let the conversation wash over her. Before long they turned off the light and slept.
She woke sometime past midnight to a psionic warning—someone was closing in at high speed. She severed the room's connection to the physical world instantly. Who would try to ambush her? They had genuinely no idea what they were getting themselves into.
Diana reacted a half-second slower, but she was upright just as quickly, eyes alert, scanning toward the distance.
The figure was still far off. Diana sensed the figure's psionic signature and asked Thea uncertainly. "That's a speedster—looks like Barry?"
Diana didn't follow. Neither did Thea. It was clearly The Flash—Barry Allen—and he was running hard enough to have worked up a significant sweat, all the way from Central City to the UK. That was not a short distance. Whatever it was, couldn't it wait until morning?
"Let's get dressed and go see." Barry was the League's most genuinely good-hearted member. His principles weren't always ones she shared, but his decency was beyond question.
They'd barely finished changing when Barry ran into view—and didn't stop. He kept accelerating.
Thea watched him carefully. His state was odd. Running at that speed and still managing to hold a conversation—how?
"We should enter Flashtime ourselves." She turned to Diana. As Death's understudy she could step outside the timestream when needed, but Diana couldn't—New Gods found it almost impossible to enter or exit normal time.
"Barry—did you need us?"
Barry was almost within arm's reach and looked ready to pull them into Flashtime. Thea waved him off. Every additional person he brought in added to the strain—and Barry was already drenched in sweat. No point adding to his load.
"—haah—" Barry was thoroughly spent, but seeing that normal communication was possible, some of the tension went out of him.
"There's a group in Central City. They took an experimental nuclear fission device from an A.R.G.U.S. lab. The fission sequence has already started. I've tried everything—I can't stop it. There's no time left." Barry pulled off his mask. His face was raw with helplessness. He hated feeling powerless more than anything.
The explosion had already been triggered. In the real world, perhaps one second away, a nuclear detonation was about to consume Central City.
The Flash had run out of options.
He'd been using his speed to search for a way out—bringing his friends into Flashtime, trying Cisco's vibrational shockwaves, trying Caitlin's ice—all of it had failed, and bringing others into Flashtime had cost him badly.