Darkness, part two
Not for the first time, the Dark Phoenix emerged from the depths of the firepit.
She appeared to all the world as though Hell had tried its hand at crafting its own angel - her body, lean and curvaceous, floated slowly downwards. A pair of fiery wings, birthed of illusory flames, flanked the psychic. Her orange-scarlet locks acted like they had their own life, moving outward in every virtually direction. Her eyeballs burned with golden light, and her pale lips were set in a sly and cold smirk that slightly bared her teeth. The waist-sash of her suit swayed gently in the faint breezes around her.
Far below that goddess, on that Apokoliptian street, flocks of Lowlies were gazing up towards the posthuman with only affection and devotion on their faces and in their eyes. More than a few of them were bowing in reverence to their overlady.
The psychic gazed indifferently back at the sycophants, looking over the mob, approaching them at a leisurely pace.
"I beg of you," cried out one of the people in the crowd, an insectoid quadruped, with a voice that was female and heavy on the clicking of mandibles, "use us for your purposes, torture and transform us however you want, just let us serve! By all that is holy, we are yours!"
None of the people in the crowd refuted her, or even looked at the insect-woman as though she had said anything wrong or objectionable. Indeed, in their minds, she hadn't. What they did was merely look up at the levitating woman - silently, expectantly, adoringly.
Dark Phoenix regarded that statement with naught but a slight smirk. A billion and more wills deadened so long ago, thought the Lady of Apokolips, and this was the reward for it. Oh, the possibilities of an unswervingly obedient flock.
The woman extended her arm, pointing out an orange-skinned humanoid who wore only rags. The Tamaranian began to float upwards, gravity's hold on him negated by her telekinesis. The orange-skinned man smiled, thoroughly content with his current situation.
The woman, with her subject in tow, took off like a jet once again, towards the northern region and where she remembered the torture-god's laboratory to currently be. Her voyage there, through the dark and cloudless sky, was a silent and relatively-prolonged one - for her elected one was too enraptured by the thought of being tortured by his gods to speak to her, even after the first twenty minutes of the telekinetically-enabled flight - but she made it there eventually.
The goddess descended from the transparent skies, towards a solitary compound's in the Armagedda district. When her booted feet made contact, there was no noise to hear from it. Her companion remained afloat as well as silent, suspended in the air behind her.
The psychic then released her mental grip on the Tamaranian, who then experienced a blunt fall of about one metre. The discomfort he experienced elicited a chuckle. The man moved into a bowing position, regarding the red-haired woman with gratitude. In his mind, he praised her for choosing him over all others.
"Go," spoke the former heroine, without turning to look at her worshipper. "Seek DeSaad in this place, and tell him who has sent you to him. He will know what to do with you."
The Lowly stood up. Looking around the area, he quickly found - a stone's throw to the right, where there was a staircase in the rooftop - where he was supposed to go, and began walking towards it.
Dark Phoenix folded her arms over her chest, and took a gander up at the skies.
The skies the woman now gazed at were a dirty shade of orange-red, akin to the mixture of blood and mud.
It was a common thing, thought the alien to herself, on New Genesis that its children got into a poetic mood and introspected about the nature of the ties between New Genesis and Apokolips. Many times over her forty decades as an Apokolips resident had she listened in on the mental monologuing of the New Genesis deities - young, middle-aged, old, they all did that.
Dark Phoenix did not much grasp why that was so; it was hardly that fascinating, and it did not seem strongly productive to ponder the subject when the truth was as simple as that the New God planets represented the spectrums of evil and good in full. Releasing a light sigh, she decided the oddity a product of their culture - just as them taking a divine name and power upon coming of age was.
"Perhaps idly standing here for a few hours will be enough?" thought the psychic. There was not much else to do than stand still to meditate and reflect, and DeSaad's laboratory was as good as a place as anywhere. Perhaps tomorrow, after the next hatching, there would be time for another exploration of the second galaxy.
And so, she just stood. Around the immortal, the moments trudged by. A bit of a crowd gradually took shape in the streets around the compound to praise her and pay tribute, which she ignored. Her thoughts wandered from subject to subject, and occasionally made wild jumps, but no one topic were so complex that she could not reach a satisfactory conclusion within the space of an hour.
Then, without any prior warning, the red-head heard the voice of Darkseid among her thoughts. "My Phoenix, I hope that you are not currently busy - for there is new work to be done!"
"Think to me in earnest," related the Apokoliptian goddess of life and death, with mentally audible interest, "and I shall overturn all the heavens if need be to grant your desires. What are we to do?"
"I wish to ask one favor of you," communed the Apokoliptian god of fascism, his physical gaze growing absent. "I believe that the time has come to call Big Barda and Mister Miracle back to Apokolips. These past centuries is more than enough time for their frivolities and their dithering about across the universe. I would see them indulged no longer, and called back where they belong."
"Very well," thought the psychic, with an ounce of displeasure. Here she was - the woman who was fire and life incarnate, she whose might was such that it left omnipotence wanting, a hell-bringer, enslaver of souls by the thousands on a quiet day, unsurpasssed among all the Apokolips gods. All that, and yet, he asked her to recruit fresh meat for the forces of Apokolips? That was what DeSaad and Granny were for.
Well, why not? Indolence was, after all, the downfall of many evils. "I shall see this request be fulfilled. Know that I will contact you once I have. It should take no more than an hour, honey."
"Most satisfactory," thought the stone-bodied divinity to her. The restrained warmth that was Darkseid's mind dimmed from her mind. She turned her attention elsewhere.
A thought occurring to her, she re-established the telepathic contact. "Is there any particular state you would prefer them returned to us in, any crucial knowledge that they hold?"
"None," conveyed Darkseid, who then felt her mind's touch of his own fade - a sensation akin to diminished desire for love-making and battle and domination.
Across the vast gulf of space that divided the sibling-worlds of the New Gods, her mind's eye soared, and bridged the gap with a swiftness that almost nothing which possessed substance could equal. The fiery orange light in her physical form's eyeballs brightened from that exertion of mindly might.
In a lagoon, far away from wondrous Supertown, Barda and Scott were frolicking. More to the point, they were embracing tightly, exchanging passionate kisses, and in general, having a very good day.
Then, an invisible wave of psychic force washed over both the undressed husband and wife, and their immediate surroundings. Telekinesis and telepathy worked in concert to halt all progress or movement in the area, material as well as mental. In effect, the flow of time had been dammed up.
The projection-entity gazed sternly at the couple, idly debating which deity to reclaim first. Urgency was of the essence; being on the same planet as the destroyer of New Apokolips was far from desirable.
"Highfather's son would be a good start."
There was now an unyielding silence in the hall of the throne. The decoration there was sparse, and not a lot was to be seen beyond the throne and the room's exit, and a handful of their subjects. Upon the two thrones, the rulers of the world. A short distance before them, a series of concentric circles which seemed purely made of white light hung in the air, rippling outwards.
From the luminous dot at the center of the divine technology called a Boom Tube, that which stemmed from the waves of the mind of the Mother Box, there extended eight lines which connected every ring that was generated.
As the pair watched it, no abundance of emotion in their faces, two figures who enjoyed much renown among the New Gods emerged from the other side.
One was a man, in bright and festive colors; red and green and yellow was what Scott Free wore on this occasion, an attire which fit snugly to him and left little doubt about his striking musculature. Down his back, there fell an emerald-colored cape. Save for the eyes, nothing of him was left bared.
One was a woman, in equally bright colors - red and blue and yellow - as her husband. The woman was, unmistakably, taller than the man walking beside her and comparatively well-muscled, and not lacking in beauty. Her attire's primary portion was the ocean-blue suit of scale-mail that covered every section of her body below her neck in multiple layers. Her coal-black hair reached past her neck, and her marine-blue cape picked off where her hair left off. In her left hand, a golden cylinder was carried - a celestial weapon whose simple exterior belied its power.
The spouses walked a short distance, then got down on bent knee before the throne-seated ones, who regarded them with not much interest.
"Well," telepathed the red-haired woman to Darkseid, "they are brought before you as you asked. Does the sight of them bowing in surrender to you please?"
"I anticipate that they will provide appreciable service in the coming days. A somewhat pressing question is what roles they are to be assigned in the great machine and pantheon that is this world," related Darkseid. "The somewhat apparent approach to take would merely be the inversion of concepts, and put them to work as the Gods of Captivity and Despair."
"The monikers are suitable, my love," communed Dark Phoenix, the thought enmeshed with undisguised amusement and a slight smirk creeping onto her face, "though they lack the audacity I have come to expect from all things born of Apokolips."
"I will not deny that," conveyed Darkseid, "but not all things need be clutched after a hard-fought victory, nor need a scrap of knowledge be grasped only after many a year of introspection and journeying to distant lands."
"There is truth in that," answered the psychic. "However, I would question whether a God of Captivity has any place here. What further entrapment might Scott bring about than I have already? Could it be that you question my talents, my love?"
"Not in the slightest," he was quick to answer, sounding a bit perturbed at the notion despite the good humor of her thought. "I had simply not considered that it might be construed in such a fashion. If you desire Miracle disposed of, I will see to that."
"You need not," she communicated, turning her head to face him. "I ask merely that you give no reason to believe that tiresome bit of hero's arrogance, to believe that I am here only to be a weapon of spirit's might, and all shall be well between us. ... when did we last have a conversation of this nature, twenty-eight years ago?"
Darkseid felt a sigh coming on, at the memory of that battle. "I believe so, and what I told you then is still true: You are valued greatly, not for your psionic prowess, but for the mundane pleasures that I have experienced in the centuries I have known you. Though all of creation might dispute that, that shall forever be true - in a millennia as in a billennia, in hundred-thousand years, and even long after the stars die."
A pleased smile grew on her face, which reached into her luminant eyes. "Why, Darkseid, I believe that you might actually be in a sentimental mood. Rather an endearing thing to behold."
Darkseid thought and said nothing, gazing towards the kneeling ones. With an idle glance away from the kneeling gods, he noted that their subjects had begun to mutter words of adoration to their rulers.
The sweetness of the exchange lingered for a long moment. A moment after, she resumed the mental dialogue, "Regrettably, Scott is no longer capable of serving as the God of Captivity, even if such a creature was needed. I did not subject him to mere enthrallment which might be reverted, you see. To procure their servitude, it appeared most efficient to expunge everything from their souls, and reduce them to walking nothingnesses. Save for the bodies, there is now nothing left of Miracle and Barda."
"Good."
"It was quite the fascinating piece of work, to cause such absolute soul-death, and all the more rewarding by their hopeless struggling. An experience I anticipate repeating in the days to come."
Casting a glance at Scott and Barda, Darkseid thought after a pause, "Dark Phoenix, though I have faith in you above all others to aid my efforts, I believe it to be most prudent that observable proof be provided of Barda's obedience. Of her emotional ties to New Genesis, one still remains, and in that lies a possibility, however slim, that she might someday commit another betrayal. That must be crushed."
"I agree fully," communed the red-head, eyeing the man in red, yellow and green with expectant amusement. "Would you like to give the order? If so, I will take care of matters when the next hero shows up and seeks to overthrow us."
"Big Barda, rise," ordered Darkseid. The armored woman stood up, looking squarely at the lord and lady of Apokolips. "Demonstrate your fealty, kill Miracle."
The Apokolips goddess of despair turned to him, and gripped his throat. Gagging and coughing, and struggling for breath, though the god of freedom was, he wasn't putting up a struggle against her. With a final sharp tightening of her grip, a blunt noise sounded from the man's hand-enwrapped throat.
With a minor exertion of muscle, she flung her victim aside, to skid across the floor towards the right-side wall. If Barda felt any remorse about the killing of the man she had once loved, there was not a trace of that emotion. Indeed, there was not any there - her eyes were cold, her expression was stony.
She turned to the ruler-divinities of the hell-planet. "Have I done it adequately?"
Darkseid regarded her handiwork with a certain fascination. After a pause and a further bit of mental conferring with his wife, "Yes, you have."