Best to put on an expression that said the stakes are too high to discuss in detail and leave it at that.
Lady Styx didn't particularly care whether there was some grand secret behind it all. The moment she learned that this was the Underworld—that every living being would pass through here eventually, and that the woman she'd been half-coerced into pledging loyalty to was its sovereign—her joy instantly overwhelmed her fear.
In other words, as long as she didn't do anything catastrophically stupid, her future was secured.
She wasn't some mortal with only a few decades or centuries to live—even if the Underworld pulled strings at the gate, it wouldn't matter once they were dead and gone. Lady Styx was an immortal. In theory, she could live for billions of years more.
For the sake of living as long as possible, she knelt and bowed of her own free will this time—swearing to the heavens, vowing eternal loyalty.
Thea listened to the oaths with polite detachment, then directed Lady Styx to continue working on the Two-Dimensional World. The goal remained the same: conjure life from nothing.
"Your Majesty! I think there's a response!" Desperate to prove her worth, Lady Styx threw herself into the task with everything she had. Her four eyes pushed her psychic power across the boundaries of time and space. Drawing on her formidable earth-element abilities, she forced a hairline crack in that rigid, stone-like world.
"Channel my psychic energy through."
Before, the Two-Dimensional World had been stagnant water. Thea's psychic power could have been a hundred times stronger and it wouldn't have mattered. Now, thanks to Lady Styx's abilities, a crack had finally appeared.
Acting as both vanguard and guide, Lady Styx expended enormous effort to draw Thea's psychic power into proximity with the Two-Dimensional World.
Cramped. Suffocating. Even the merest sliver of Thea's psychic energy felt like a living person entombed in concrete. She couldn't turn, couldn't raise her head, couldn't lower it—every motion was impossible. The world itself was actively rejecting her as a foreign body.
The sensation was like being laced into a whalebone corset—even the simple act of breathing became an agonizing ordeal.
But Thea was elated. The hardest part was always getting in. Now that she was here, she had options.
"Excellent work, Lady Styx. I'm truly grateful for your help. This isn't a teleportation talisman—it's a resurrection marker, unregistered. Whoever holds it gets one revival." Thea summoned Kanto—Lady Styx's old acquaintance—and handed the talisman over personally before sending Lady Styx on her way.
The reunion between Lady Styx and Kanto was awkward for both of them. A little over a month ago they'd been fighting to the death; now they were crossing paths again in the Underworld. Fate had a twisted sense of humor.
Elevating the Two-Dimensional World was critical to Thea's grand design. In cultivation novel terms, this was her Dao foundation—comparable to the Lamp-Lighting Daoist's twenty-four Sea-Calming Pearls. From core to surface, the world had to bear her personal imprint and no one else's.
Even if it made her look like someone who discarded allies the moment they'd served their purpose, she didn't care. She watched Kanto escort Lady Styx away, then turned her full attention back to the Two-Dimensional World.
If the world-will of the main reality was a towering titan, Earth-2's world-will was an infant at best—and the Two-Dimensional World's didn't even qualify as a single-celled organism.
Even with her divine power diluted by a factor of ten million, it took her less than ten minutes to subjugate the Two-Dimensional World's will.
The only reason it had resisted this long had something to do with Rao dying inside it.
But Rao was ultimately dead. A scrap of lingering, chaotic will-residue was no match for her.
Working quickly, she shaped a small humanoid figure, then activated the White Lantern to attempt to grant it life. The result was unsurprising—the figure couldn't withstand the white light and shattered to pieces.
First experiment: failure.
Undeterred, she reasoned that human physiology was too complex. Better to start with single-celled organisms.
As a titan of modern medicine who had also conducted her share of appalling experiments, very few people in existence could match her expertise in cellular genetics.
Layering in Kryptonian genetic knowledge, Thea weighed everything from long-term potential to personal compatibility. After considerable effort, she produced a single cell that met requirements on every front.
Unfortunately, the cell was even more fragile. It dissolved into a tiny puddle of goo before she could even apply the white light.
Second experiment: failure.
Then came the third, the fourth, the one hundred and sixty-first...
Complex structures didn't work. Simple ones didn't either. Robust organisms failed. Fragile ones failed worse. Humans, beasts, birds—even fish were no good.
In the end, Thea collapsed gracelessly across her throne, gasping for breath.
Out of ideas, she decided to head back to Earth and study someone else's approach.
Legend had it Diana's body had been sculpted from clay and then imbued with life. Thea intended to go home and conduct a very thorough "examination" of that body...
She recalled Diana, who had been having the time of her life on New Genesis—playing general, barking orders left and right. The Magic Corps was fighting in close combat more than ever under her command.
"What is it? Did they find Batman's son?" Diana strode through the door, unclasped her cape with a soldierly efficiency, picked up a water glass, and drained the whole thing in three long gulps.
"Batman was incredible, let me tell you—" The two goddesses were, at heart, incurable gossips. Thea recounted the entire saga with dramatic flair, complete with rising and falling cadences.
"Darkseid must be furious... Will he come after Earth?" Diana was entertained at first, but as the implications sank in, worry crept across her face. Batman announcing his identity hadn't been definitively right or wrong—even without the name, Apokolips could have traced the Mother Box signal back to Earth.
"Absolutely he will. Which is why we need to prepare." Thea hadn't brought this up without an agenda. Diana had been spending all her time on New Genesis lately, and that was bad. Very bad.
Her divine portfolio overlapped with Highfather's in too many ways. Highfather had also been single for billions of years—his wife had been dead that long. His personal charisma was more than sufficient, and he perpetually wore that weathered, seen-it-all expression of a seasoned man in his prime. All of which was deeply attractive to Diana.
And when it came to righteousness and radiance, Thea couldn't hold a candle to Highfather. For the sake of multiversal stability—to prevent a war that would hurt their own side and delight their enemies, giving Darkseid and Trigon something to laugh about—Diana needed to stay away from New Genesis.
But Thea couldn't exactly say any of that out loud. Fortunately, Batman's stunt had provided the perfect excuse to pull Diana's focus back to Earth.
Diana was as decisive as Thea had expected. Much as she loved commanding armies in the field, she hadn't forgotten her mission: protect Earth, defend Earth.
"You're right. We should prepare in advance. At least the New Continent gives us a buffer zone. The Justice League needs to be combat-ready."
Seeing Diana about to rush off and convene a League meeting, Thea caught her arm. "Darkseid was knocked unconscious by Batman. He'll need time to recover. And Batman needs time to heal as well."
It was almost comical when you thought about it. Darkseid had genuinely been knocked senseless by Batman. Kanto had revisited Apokolips on a scouting run, and his intelligence confirmed it.
The Hellbat armor's near-suicidal energy blast had shattered the Dark Lord's surface defenses. After forcing out a single question, the Egyptian dagger had plunged Darkseid into a fog of mental confusion.