THEMYSCIRA
The night had nearly breathed its last. The velvet veil of darkness clung stubbornly to the edges of the horizon, but already the heavens trembled with new light. Helios, the great charioteer, had not yet stirred his steeds, yet the brilliance of Apollo's watchful eye pierced through the cloud-strewn firmament. His radiance—golden, fierce, and unyielding—cast pale fire upon the waiting earth, heralding the day to come.
The sky was serene, as if draped in divine silence. Yet below, the earth seethed with motion. The island quivered with the gathering of her children. From every path, from every stronghold and valley, they came: Amazons, proud and terrible, marching in their thousands. They converged like rivers of bronze and silver, streams of steel and war-paint flowing toward a single point of destiny.
That point was a temple, its white stone scarred by the recent quake, yet still standing like a defiant sentinel. The earth's fury had not toppled its sacred columns, nor marred the perfection of its symmetry. To the Amazons, it was not due to proper work of masonry—it was an omen. For above its altar, suspended in air, hung a relic of the gods:
A staff of gold, its shaft gleaming as if hammered from sunlight, crowned with two serpents coiled in perfect symmetry. Their jeweled eyes glowed with living fire, and their tongues flickered as though tasting the mortal air. The staff pulsed—not like inert metal, but like a heart beating in rhythm with Olympus itself. It hovered high, unclaimed yet undeniably present, a divine sentinel awaiting its chosen bearer.
The armies encircled the temple in perfect ranks, bronze shields raised, spears angled, war-steeds stamping impatiently. Before them stood Queen Hippolyta, regal and unwavering, her armor polished to a brilliance that mirrored the rising sun. Before her, an arc of oracles knelt, their robes flowing, their hair crowned with laurel and myrrh. With arms raised to the heavens, their lips moved swiftly, chanting in unison a litany of invocation. Their voices, soft at first, merged into a cadence both haunting and exultant—a hymn older than mortal kingdoms, a language woven into the very bones of the world.
The air grew thick with the perfume of burning torches placed before them. Sacred oils, distilled from divine groves, burned low, sending forth smoke of a sweetness so profound it dulled the senses. Every inhalation filled the chest with a rapturous intoxication, a fleeting taste of Elysium. Eyes glazed. Limbs quivered. The line between flesh and spirit blurred as worship ascended toward heaven.
Slowly, the oracles ceased their frantic chant. Their heads rose, eyes clouded with a white, unearthly brilliance, gazing not at the world but through it, into realms unseen.
And in answer, the staff above blazed with sudden, violent radiance.
A murmur swept through the ranks of Amazons—fear, awe, devotion, each indistinguishable from the other. The light cascaded downward, gilding the stone, the warriors, the very air. It was no longer mere sunlight, but Olympian fire. Their petition had been accepted.
Hippolyta, at last, lifted her head. Her face, solemn yet aflame with purpose, turned toward her sisters. With slow, ceremonial grace, she reached to her side, and drew her helm. Polished gold and crimson plumes crowned her brow. She turned fully to her warriors, the helm settling upon her like a mantle of inevitability.
The Amazons roared.
A single sound, raw and primal, erupted from thousands of throats. Spears lifted. Shields clashed. The very mountains trembled with their war-cry, hollowed in their fury. It was not mere shouting—it was the voice of a people declaring themselves to gods and men alike.
From the far ridges, still more Amazons poured forth—columns of horse and rider gleaming like flowing rivers of bronze, streaming toward the temple's heart. Seen from above, they were tributaries converging into the sea of their united host.
Hippolyta raised her hand, silencing their thunder. Her voice cut across the air, deep, solemn, and terrible:
"Open your hearts to him, sisters! Let the Messenger feel your fervor for battle! Let his hymns guide you to the slaughter! Let the incursors bear witness to our justice!"
She raised the staff's silhouette with her hand, though it had not yet fallen into her grasp, and added:
"Let the gods who walk unseen remember why we were born! Let Ares' enemies tremble before our wrath, and let Athena's wisdom crown our spears! Let the blood we spill be sacrifice to Olympus, that they may know their daughters are not silent, not passive, but the thunder of war given flesh!"
As her words resounded, the heavens themselves stirred.
The sky yawned open, tearing with golden brilliance. A rift, vast and yawning, unveiled itself—a celestial gate into the domain of the Sky-Father's herald. The god of travelers, the swift-winged messenger, he whose sandals had crossed the worlds unseen—Hermes, patron of motion, commerce, and war's cunning grace. His presence was unseen, yet undeniable. The staff, brilliant beyond endurance, fell from the heavens like a comet, landing into Hippolyta's hands without resistance.
The Amazons gasped, then thundered anew. This was no symbol. This was a covenant. Hermes himself had stretched forth his hand to guide them.
Hippolyta raised the staff high. Divine energy coursed outward in waves, flooding her people. The steeds beneath the Amazons stamped, snorting fire, their eyes kindled with unnatural vigor. Hooves sparked against stone as they pawed the earth, touched now with Hermes' blessing. Speed, endurance, swiftness of spirit—they bore the god's truth in their veins.
"RAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!"
The Amazons howled, and the gate above opened wider, until it filled the heavens. Its golden brilliance poured downward like molten fire, consuming the army in light. The portal's vast hunger devoured the legions of Themyscira, drawing them upward into Olympus' chosen path. They did not hesitate. They did not falter. They rode into it with conviction, swallowed whole by divine radiance.
And among them, another figure moved.
Atrius lingered at the periphery, crimson eyes narrowing as he measured the unfolding spectacle with cold precision. Yet beneath that stillness, a storm churned within. In all the brilliance before him, he discerned no touch of the Warp—no psychic current, no whisper of corruption, not even the faintest residue of its taint.
The staff's radiance was no sorcery. The portal's vast, golden maw was not the conjuration of witches or psykers. This was something other—raw, unmediated, and terrible in its purity.
It flowed from beings who named themselves gods and demanded obeisance. The thought made his chest tighten, his breath shallow.
For the first time since his arrival on this strange world, the scales of judgment within him began to shift.
His indoctrination urged distrust. His discipline whispered that such powers were parasites—stolen, fleeting, terrible yet never absolute. And yet… Atrius could not banish the weight in his marrow, the undeniable sense that what unfolded here was unlike any deception he had ever known.
The Amazons roared and rode, and Atrius, without hesitation, surged forward. His stride devoured the earth, his body moving with unnatural speed. He passed warriors, surpassed even Lysippe at his side, and threw himself into the portal's golden maw.
There was no resistance. No wall, no pressure, no tearing at flesh or spirit. Only passage. The light swallowed him whole.
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Far from Themyscira, across a wide swath of earth scorched by some nameless calamity, the land lay raw and open—a wound that ran for thousands of miles.
Above, great bastions of blackened steel descended with ponderous deliberation, their hulls sweating slag. Smoke and ash coiled into the sky in choking curtains, turning the sun into a bruised coin. Where rivers once ran, braided tributaries of lava crawled like living veins, hissing steam into the acrid air. This scarred plain was the place where it had all begun: the quake that split the world and opened its wounds.
From the heavens three perfect cubic constructs eased downward, their facets devouring light. Cloaked figures draped in black veils of alien weave formed a ring around the objects and knelt as if before holy altars, voices low with prayer. The air about them thrummed with ritual intent.
Beneath the circle a colossus stood patient and immense—its skin cracked like basalt, each breath a tectonic groan that matched the ruin around it. It belonged to the apocalypse.
Darkseid watched the tableau with the implacable calm of inevitability, regarding the prize of his machination as a judge regards sentence.
A figure stepped forward from the ring of veiled figures. Thorned and ashen beneath his alien cloak, he bowed deeply before his him and spoke with measured, obsequious grandeur.
"My master," he intoned, "your legions stand ready. The Mother Boxes approach unity, yet the Old Ones remain unseen. Perchance they cower at the shadow of your coming."
He raised his head; impatience glittered beneath his practiced reverence.
Darkseid looked down at him, his very gaze made the air thicken.
"They will come, Desaad," Darkseid said, each word a slow, falling stone. "If they do not, rend this world until they are compelled to answer when their domains stand exposed."
"Release them," he added. "Raid this world to the last of its souls. Let every survivor learn the cost of the inaction of their gods."
"Yes, my master," Desaad replied, voice swelling with eager grandeur. Without hesitation he lifted a hand to the heavens. At his command, reality obeyed.
Where his palm pointed the sky thinned and tore. Vast, smoking rents opened—gaping mouths in the vault of existence, each rim stretching for kilometers. A keening issued from those wounds, a sound that bent the teeth of the land.
KRREEIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEIEE!!!
Then, as if some dam had burst, they poured:
millions of daemonic forms cascading from the rifts like waterfalls of shadow and fang. Horn and talon, maw and spined carapace—an unending tide of living malice. They slammed into the scorched plain with the sound of empires collapsing; where they struck the earth burst and seared, and the air filled with the acrid stench of burning terror.
They flowed across the land in waves, a living conflagration that swallowed light and sanity alike. Desaad's lips curled in brittle pleasure as Darkseid watched, the serene center of the storm he had summoned, as annihilation took the stage in absolute, remorseless choreography.