The Depths of the Atlantic:

Orm the Ocean-Master was angry, hardly an atypical situation for the elder brother of Orin, the damnable wretched half-breed who so easily outmaneuvered a pure Atlantean of the blood. Yet even then, there was a sense of family, of love. Of duty. Orm could not readily or easily kill the rightful king of Atlantis, nor would he ever be able to do so. The frustration and hobbling of his options this meant periodically led him to decisions like this, to cross the immensity of the depths of the oceans, to burn it out in great swims.

It was during this that a terrible blinding flash of light had occurred near the vast trench where slept a great monster, and Orm, the protective martial instincts that marked his own resemblance to his own sibling, could not resist the impulse to follow it. Then the dissonance of that thought with his own kind stopped him and Orm sought to maneuver upward, only for him to see the great light maneuvering forward and upward, slowly, inexorably. With a hint of malice and contempt growing.

Orm started when...something...manifested in the stgyian depths of the ocean. Sickly green light that was impossibly bright shone through the depths, causing him a brief momentary blindness and disorientation, though the effects faded relatively quickly thanks to the blessings of Atlantean biology. His eyes focused and then he saw the giant with her arms crossed in front of her chest. Twenty-five feet tall, her hair fanning out from her face and cape seeming to move with an effect more like wind, something that awed him and made him cautious, reaching for his trident.

The giant looked at him, her cheeks flared out in a dish-like fashion recalling some of the fossils the surface dwellers said were ancient ancestors or relatives of the first humans, something he was unclear on and only startled into remembering by the way the eerie light that emanated from between the lines of the armor plating lit and reflected off her face, especially the partial armor concealing the mouth.

"What exactly are you? Surface dwellers are not welcome here."

A voice boomed that was not a voice in a conventional term, a thunderclap and a whisper, a soul-flaying slice of a psychic knife that tore into him in a way he was unprepared for even with experience of the colorfully costumed allies of his brother.

I am not a surface dweller, son of Atlantis. I am the Undying Flame, a god to the gods, firstborn of all chaos. From me your Lords of Chaos derive power though they know it not.

A flash of memory of the creature Klarion made him draw his trident and move but before he could make a single further motion the entity held the trident in her right gauntlet, which was not absurdly oversized for a reason he could not quite place. Her dish-like flared face bared teeth in a monstrous shark-like smile full of serrated fangs, the jaws seeming to extend outward and then to move to a more humanoid posture so rapidly he was uncertain what precisely he'd seen.

You cannot attack me, maggot. And you do not want to try.

I have sent four entities to task those surface-dwellers you despise and I know even with the Kryptonian modifications on the cyborg he will not be able to match the task I have assigned to him for anywhere near the length of time.

Her fanged smile widened.

You, however, have command of vast armies with technology matching or even exceeding the Guardians of the Universe. You cannot, however, match your brother Orin in command of the Seven Seas, nor the Kryptonian, the Martian, and Orin together...

She released the trident and moved back, smiling as she opened both gauntlets, the light playing out producing an eerie effect that chilled even the Ocean Master, himself uncertain.

I can give you that power, for a price of my choosing, as I will it chosen. All you have to do to seal the bargain is to take my hand.

For a moment Orm remembered a brief moment in time where he'd seen a very pale woman with dark eyes and the kindliest smile he'd seen who'd asked him to take her hand and then enabled him to be reborn after...after something that he could not remember happened.

The glowing gauntlet with the lighting extending between each of the grooves on the fingers and the thumb, and the rings glowing in different shades of green extended to him. He found himself uncertain and seeking to resist, and a slight eyebrow raise and a partially impressed face were followed by the most imperceptible of pulses. Orm's hand extended outward and clasped the gauntlet, ludicrously small in the hands of the twenty-five foot thing that gazed at him.

Then the fires entered him beneath the sea and light rose up to swallow him and Orm screamed in a terrifying howl that echoed across the depths of the Pacific. Deep within the deepest part of a trench, a monstrously ancient...thing...that had slept the sleep of ages broken only by other things like itself but hostile interlopers into its territory awoke in response to the scream and the pulsing green light.

Yellow eyes flashed open and the great creature's spines briefly flashed blue, as did its eyes. After twelve million years, Gojira had awoken, and the Ocean-Master had the first King to follow him in the better part of a decade.

In another part of the Pacific an atoll that was not an atoll flashed with light and two other eyes flashed. It too had felt the call and knew that terrible times were beginning.

Earth-11

Rocked once by the arrival of the Great Azar and the awareness of the multiverse that fully dawned on it, this dimension was shattered twice more, the first time when space screamed with a terrible sound heard throughout the width and breadth of reality. Only in the realm of the great Seven, the Endless, even the one who'd abandoned his position and yet for all that was still Endless, was the sound heard and dismissed as more signs of the upheaval, the seven Endless aware that their presence would not be altered unless the monster that had planted these cuckoos succeeded. Even then there were their other forms in that other multiverse, however much they despised them.

Space screamed and bled and an angel fell to Earth, wings bright and brilliant and terrible. The sky flashed and shrieked in agony like a damned soul, though the Angel was unconscious from the effects of the terrible power that had awaited him, and humanity was frozen. Even though the arc was one that carried the angel into the Andes with a thunderous explosion producing an unlight not unlike that of a mushroom cloud, people awake or asleep saw it as though it were straight in front of them.

The impact drew immediately the presence of the Regime, this time armed to the teeth with weaponry more terrible than anything else at their disposal.

A few seconds later the planet was enveloped in another presence, something…familiar, moreso by far than the strange entity that had sought to conquer the planet and yet clearly kindred. A bright and terrible shining light drowned out the stars and visions were there of a being, somewhere between the old medieval military order-monk, the knight who took oaths before his god and went forth to deal battle and destruction and death, and the old ideals of the superhero before the destruction of a city led a living god to proclaim the doctrine of the Overman.

Clashes of a terrible war of a scale to defy imagination rippled, the lightning-infused smoke aweing people, and so too the strangely familiar and yet not so imagery of a towering giant of technorganic shape unleashing terrible blasts of destructive force from both his hands and yelling in delight.

The light consolidated into a singular being of the same height as her sibling, but bone-white in skin, with nine glowing golden eyes.

Zauriel had fallen too rapidly for the machines to register, the delay, even with the….erratic….effects produced by the grand psychic effects of the New Ones making their presence known permitted them to zero in on the descending Lightdancer, a being who had they known of her presence would have disturbed them for her mirror in form and presence to the Worldbreaker, the mirror only askew in that the Lightdancer had all the cruelty and destruction of the other but…..more complete, perhaps.

Terrible energies arced toward her and the monster simply froze in air, sighing.

I don't have time for this.

A slight snarl grasped her lips and the Black Smoke erupted from around her in a pair of columns that seared out, disintegrating the energies of Krypton and Oa as though they had never been, then the entity within a boneless dancer's skill resumed her downward arc. She could have taken her lover with her, but there was no point to that, not really. Not at present.

It would only exacerbate confusion.

A sonic boom followed over the Andes, the Regime sending its heaviest hitters. The Aquaman, the Superman, Shazam, Wonder Woman, and Raven. Each of them gathered at the sight of the awe-inspiring and beautiful being. Six were his wings, covered in eyes, and the glow was a bright gilded one as of flames and the spectre burned none of them, even Raven, who found herself startled at this and having to reappraise some of her expectations about what the transfer of power between herself and her father meant. And what her father actually was.

They heard another and then saw a towering entity, some thirty feet tall, descending clad in armor with a light blue cape. Instinct led Wonder Woman to lunge at the being with the Godkiller in full swing, only for the entity to move with a surprising degree of speed that she'd not expected in spite of the encounter with the other one, grasping her and hurling her upward into the sky, with a gritting of teeth and an:

I really don't have time for this right now.

Landing, the entity knelt beside the Angel.

Another giant, reflected the inhabitants of Earth-11.

My sister's clearly been by here. This is her work.

The tall entity resembled one of the Forbidden Seven, the servants of mortality, the concepts given flesh and form. She resembled her but swollen from a height that was that of a normal woman, anywhere from seventeen to forty and always ageless and kind to twenty-five feet. Instead of clothing that was soothing and prone to produce a dissonance in those who expected Death to be stern and cruel, this entity arguably resembled more what such people would expect.

A horribly familiar light blue cape, a loincloth of the same color. But the armor itself was unadorned with the symbolism or light, a dull grey slate color, that of a knight errant who needed no symbolism to broadcast power. And like a knight errant, saturated in menace and bloodshed.

It was not the Regime, nor the insurgency that interested the tall thing with the nine glowing sun-eyes, it was the fallen being who'd torn open a hole in space above them, and had landed in the midst of the Andes, cratering two entire mountains to leave a vast gaping pockmark on the surface of the Earth.

The Lightdancer's gaze was impassive, and when Superman lunged forward to try to take down this entity, he collided straight into a clenched fist that to his shock and horror and a degree of awe, left his nose broken and him spitting out a tooth.

Depart from me, son of Jonathan Kent, I have no interest in fighting you. The fools in the central...nexus...of all this have a part of me as an ally they should beware more than the rest, for that part is my savagery unconstrained by the rest.

The entity knelt by the fallen angel, whose wings still quivered with the impact, and whose body carried the massive fist-dents produced by a terrible gauntlet, and the indents within indents produced by the Rings of the Dread Azar.

This one will matter greatly at the end of things. How like my foolish sister to seek continually to defy fate, only to create it.

Even after witnessing Superman thrown back, this didn't deter Captain Marvel or Raven, who decided where brute force did not work, magic would.

The cry of SHAZAM! and the unleashing of the dreadful power of the demon Trigon followed, and the Lightdancer closed all nine of her eyes and sighed.

I am not the Azar, mortals. You can wound her avatars and risk your own destruction. Nothing that exists in this world or in any other may pierce my flesh, nor draw my blood.

With a swiftness and bonelessness akin to the Azar's but something that was hypnotic in a sense of awe rather than unrelenting pain and terror, the Lightdancer turned and stared calmly, crossing her hands across her chest. The energy collided into her and as it did, Raven paused suddenly to see all nine of those eyes open and a monstrous fanged smile that suddenly indicated an all too powerful family resemblance...

The light burned more brightly and more brightly still, covering the entity in the glow, and then when Shazam and Raven were finished with the spell it faded away, leaving a bored-looking Lightdancer gazing even as Wonder Woman, she knew, was hurling toward her with the pointy end of her sword aimed straight for her eyes.

I don't have the time for this, not really, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to enjoy this. You of all people, daughter of Trigon, should know that blood lineage does not dictate fate, though perhaps you're the wrong one of you to give that particular reminder to. I can see in your memories you sought to hurt my sister, and insofar as she, savoring the fight more than intending to win did not appreciate your own abilities, you perhaps did.

The Lightdancer smile.

However…

It was with a sudden blur that she grasped Diana by the wrist as Diana was within range to stab her with the sword and then moved faster than even the Kryptonians and the incarnation of the power and majesty of the demon Trigon could react, quite literally hurling Diana at Shazam, who anchored himself only to be barreled over with her by the sheer locomotive-worthy nature of the impact.

We are bone of bone and flesh of flesh descendants of a warlord who never shrunk from the willful challenges of the foolish and the ignorant, even if perhaps a more moral man would have.

She grinned.

I'm the great warlord of a single side, and I know one great truth of such things. Morality does not win wars. Power does.

More blurs and then the Aquaman was stunned by the impact of a gauntlet to his face, knocking him backward into unconsciousness, the impact of a gauntlet visible in the bone, while Diana and Shazam righted themselves even as Superman lunged for the Lightdancer, who effortlessly sidestepped the heat vision, smiling as she then grasped both of his hands in her right gauntlet, before drawing back a fist, and then smashing it into Superman's guts with sufficient force that Superman fell unconscious likewise, and then as Diana and Shazam moved further, the entity simply spoke the word:

Sleep

And they fell unconscious, unmoving.

That left Raven, empowered by the fullness of what was within her.

I am used to warring against your sister, Lightdancer. Not you.

The Lightdancer's gaze was impassive, her head deliberately cocked.

Do not lie, Angra Mainyu.

Not a lie. I wage wars against her. I have yet to avoid a massacre against you, which is why I try to avoid drawing your interest.

The Lightdancer smiled.

And yet you have.

With that Raven unleashed her eyebeams that the Lightdancer waded through, calmly. No formation of weaponry from midair even with the Lightdancer's invocation of the form of a knight, simply wading through power much like Clark himself would have done in the past before Clark Kent died in grief and the Overman was born in destruction and power and ruin.

The same terrible arcing power that had torn clean through the Azar followed in its train, grinding against the plates of her armor like the shrieks of the damned and the raw rumbling of tectonic plates. No impact, the Lightdancer's smile widening.

It's never been an idle boast, Lord of Pandaemonium. Nothing has ever pierced my flesh, nor shall it ever. The price to contain the unstoppable force is to become the immovable object.

The Lightdancer blurred again, grasping Raven in a necklift with her left hand, smiling as she then saw the demon Trigon's power blazing from her.

This is why even though this should have been avoided, I chose not to. I will never resist a chance to humble Angra Mainyu of the Tetrarchy.

The right gauntlet collided into her face with an impact that if it had been simply Raven, daughter of Trigon, would have decapitated her and seen the emergence then of the true thing behind the flesh, and from there things would have been different. As it was, with Trigon himself, the impact hurled her across the globe, landing with a cry of pain and shock straight into Nanda Parbat.

Now with that out of the way…..

She resumed kneeling by Zauriel, forming a portal and taking the unconscious angel with her in a blinding flash of light that left the ground around it seared.

The Fortress of Eternity:

Zauriel groaned. He was one of the high command of the heavenly host, one of its best individual fighters. And he felt like…

He felt his head. The impacts were gone, and healed. In spite of…

It was only then that he focused around him and gazed in shock. This place felt like the presence of the monster that had assailed him in a sense. Kindred power, certainly, in the sheer rawness and viscerality of it, the monstrous hammers that struck everything and turned everything into nails by sheer dynamism. But…..

It was then that he saw a being striding toward him in a simple silver robe, another being to her right. The one on the left was bone-white with glowing golden eyes and dark hair, the one on the right was technorganic with glowing eldritch energies, a red glowing eye, and was clearly once a man now ascended to become someone completely different.

Why am I here?

Zauriel's question was followed by him raising an eyebrow.

Last time I encountered one of you, that one hurled me from Heaven and showed me a new power that's rising in existence itself in the process. If you're here to do the same, I did survive something nothing else save perhaps the Spectre would-

Amused laughter cut him short. And it was only then that he registered a key difference. The other one, the Azar, had been a psychic flaying knife even to him, a sense of vulnerability that offended his sense of righteousness and terrible purpose. A thing neither god nor demon, something unnatural and unholy had torn him from Heaven even when the Presence had not willed it and managed to reinforce that.

This? This was a visceral rawness of righteousness and cleansing, the terrible purpose of its own, akin to that of the various inquisitors and the Tophetim of the old days.

You…you're like that thing that I encountered.

Oh come now Zauriel, the giant on the left said, crossing her arms around her chest, eyes glowing.

You already knew that. You sensed the energetic similarities. We are indeed kindred, she and I. Both born of Jewish women of Sepharad, one at its dawn in one universe, one at its death in another. And both children of Turugamvirakil the Universal Emperor, one born to devour existence, the other to be its shield and its sword.

She smiled for a moment, and he then started.

So the stories were right. Cthulhu and his companions were not the last.

The Lightdancer shook her head.

No, they are not.

And now I will tell you why you're here, and what it is that awaits you in the onslaught that seeks to drown your universe and so many others in fire and sword.