Two more rounds of White Lantern purification, and the black taint embedded in the Source's core refused to budge any further.
Here goes. She steeled herself. A perfectly clean Source waiting for her to absorb? When had the universe ever been that generous? These days, even putting on a Lantern ring could warp your personality. She had confidence in herself.
The Source seemed to sense her intent. Already more than half-purified, it drifted toward her of its own accord.
The residual black taint resisted—but it was an arm trying to wrestle a thigh. It had no choice but to submit.
The Source dissolved into a fine mist and enveloped Thea from head to toe.
Strong. Unbelievably strong. She'd fused barely a third of it when a visceral shock lanced through her chest. The sheer potency contained within a top-tier divine seat dwarfed anything she'd experienced with Soul or Wealth. It pointed straight back to the genesis of creation, and the power it held was, for all practical purposes, infinite.
She had the momentary illusion that a casual wave of her hand could shatter a universe.
Her earlier estimate held up. A single Death divine seat was worth roughly three second-tier seats—Soul, Justice, Evil, and their equivalents.
What had been theory was now certainty. She could fight Highfather to a standstill. Against Darkseid, she'd probably still fall short—the Omega Effect wasn't purely New God power; it was something else entirely.
As the fusion continued, that stubborn thread of black taint kept trying to seep into her.
Thea frowned. Clearly impurities. Shoving them into Nekron's Source had been immensely satisfying. Having them shoved into her was a different story entirely. The purer, the better—for herself. Everyone else could stay as contaminated as they liked.
Thinking of her old friend Nekron gave her a sudden flash of inspiration. If these impurities were so enamored with death, she'd simply give them a substitute host.
To her, they were impurities. But in objective terms, these residual resentments—left behind by the countless dead, surviving dozens of purification cycles—constituted an extraordinarily pure form of energy in their own right.
She produced Nekron's scythe. The weapon had been broken in two, and both halves were now in her possession. Diana had repaired it. Thea had tried reaching out to the weapon multiple times, but the scythe refused to acknowledge her. Its loyalty to its former master was absolute.
She had two options. The first: surpass Nekron and force-wield it through sheer superiority. The second: melt it down and reforge it from scratch.
She'd originally intended to keep it for study. Today, the resentment lurking in the Source left her no choice but to take the second path. One final attempt at communication before she committed.
The scythe ignored her call. When it sensed she was about to reforge it, though, the weapon practically radiated just get it over with—cooperative to the point of eagerness.
"Fine. I respect that." Thea didn't particularly see herself swinging a scythe around anyway. Both parties were in agreement.
The scythe disassembled itself into the purest essence of death. The thread of resentment inside the Source hesitated, torn between staying with the Source and drifting toward the scythe's remains—which felt far more to its taste.
Thea pushed from behind. The scythe's essence beckoned from the front. Together, they lured the resentment out of the Source and into the reforged weapon.
This was a conceptual weapon—a tier above divine artifacts. No hammering required, no tempering. All it needed was a thought, and it would take shape on its own.
Thea was proficient with plenty of weapons. In the end, she chose the sword. A bit conventional, perhaps, but undeniably striking.
The blade was sixty centimeters (~24 inches) long, extremely narrow, double-edged. A wide channel had been hollowed down the center, and the resentment nested inside it. Faint wails drifted from the groove—as though countless tormented souls were screaming without end.
Black mist clung to the steel. Even Thea flinched at the savage killing intent radiating from the blade. She didn't dwell on it, because with the resentment extracted, the fusion had entered its final stage.
Death. Every kind of death. An avalanche of dying scenes flooded her vision—impaled by swords, bludgeoned by clubs, poisoned, vaporized by energy weapons. Every death the multiverse's countless beings had ever suffered, she experienced in a single torrent.
"AAAAAH—!" The final surge of pain ripped a scream from her throat. They said childbirth ranked at level twelve on the pain scale. This felt more like level eighty.
The cry rippled across the multiverse—as though the cosmos itself were voicing its accumulated anguish. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. She'd been mentally prepared for that much. She simply hadn't expected pain on this scale.
This was the advantage of her existing foundation. She was already the third-strongest among the New Gods. She barely—barely—weathered the agony.
Swap in an ordinary being trying to claim Death as a shortcut to godhood, and what awaited them was obliteration.
Sweat plastered her forehead. Cold sweat ran in rivulets down her body.
Only then did she realize she'd drifted down to the surface of a planet without noticing. What had felt like a single instant of pain had, by the time she regained awareness, lasted half an hour in the outside world.
She exhaled slowly and reached inward to feel her new power. It felt as though she could flatten mountains with a wave of her hand. Wherever her gaze focused, even a river would be forced to reverse its course. If she willed it, destroying a planet—annihilating a star system—was a matter of a single thought.
Goddess of Death! Thea threw her head back and laughed, exhilaration flooding every fiber of her being. All she wanted was to go on a rampage, to kill without restraint.
Hm? A jolt of self-awareness cut through the euphoria. Why would I think that? Death was life's companion—she didn't believe she'd strayed from her path. Which meant something external was influencing her emotions.
"I need to calm down." She drew the ankh talisman. Her ranking had reached forty-ninth. The rush of invincibility crashed back to earth in an instant. Still a long way to go. The Goddess of Death was a stepping stone, not the summit.
She purged the stray impulses, centered herself, and spent an entire day before she identified the problem.
Death was not tender. By fusing with the Godhood of Death, she had accepted an obligation: to settle accounts on behalf of the dead.
No justice required. No righteousness. Only death. The death of the living.
Only through mass slaughter would Death fully acknowledge and accept her.
Thea rose to her feet. A robe of radiant black materialized around her—dark green patterns tracing from the neckline all the way down to the hem. The robe cinched at her waist, accentuating her slender waist, while the skirt swept to cover her feet. Only the elegant lines of her collarbones showed above the neckline. A long cape fastened at her shoulders.
"Not even shoes?" She glanced down at her bare feet and suppressed an eye-roll. The higher you climbed, the more your wardrobe dictated itself. The Endless's second sibling—Death—was stuck in her goth getup permanently, and the Goddess of Death apparently came with a mandatory uniform, too.
At least the outfit was beautiful. Compared to the bloated, ungainly costumes that Darkseid and Highfather wore, she was stunning by any measure.
A breeze stirred her hair, and she noticed her golden locks had turned black.
She reached for the Nightsword. A twist of both hands, and it separated into twin blades—thin as razors, thrumming with lethal promise. She was fully confident: even a planet, these blades could cleave in two.
Nightsword. She'd borrowed the name outright from the blade wielded by Marvel's Goddess of Death. What it was called didn't matter. What mattered was the killing.
She already had her target picked out. Apokolips. A world teeming with life, and one where she had plenty of scores to settle. As for Darkseid—she wasn't afraid. If she couldn't win, she could always run.