CXXI
Metron
Raven peered searchingly into the enormous, emotionless eyes of the God before her… Metron. In this primal world surging with arcane power, the very presence of this last New God was strangest of all. There was no sign of emotion.
Metron was so remarkably different from the first five celestial beings who radiated overwhelming magical and emotional power – so much that it could be felt within every single speck of dust blowing across this planet's wastelands. In contrast, Metron radiated nothing… he was the eye in this almighty magical storm.
She wondered if they could trust this sixth God imprisoned on Ysmault. She had no way to tell if he were lying, her ability to read emotions was useless with him. She had no idea if he would even answer their questions - but still, there was a chance of getting information about the tragedies that had taken place on Ysmault, and that was information they desperately needed.
Trigon had opened the door to reveal that it wasn't only the Earth that was in peril… it was the very Universe itself! She needed to understand the forces that were at work in this Galactic power play – including the Guardians of the Universe and the Green Lantern Corps. Could they even trust the Guardians?!
Raven was certain this New God was not a magical being, which meant the Guardians wanted him here for other reasons. He was an anomaly, but he may be able to shed some light on these events. He looked very perceptive. Metron had instantly identified her as a half-God, something it had taken Raven her entire life to figure out…
Since she had been a child, Raven had been constantly indoctrinated that the powerful thing inside her was demonic, that she housed an eternal soul of evil, the castoff spawn of Trigon, waiting to emerge. In a world whose darkness had been shorn and discarded, she had been forced to live as half-a-person to become accepted.
But Raven was not a half-Demon.
She was Raven. And born of a New God.
Raven had even come to learn that even her father had not been born inherently evil. He had been made evil. It had taken the betrayal of his power-mad brother Darkseid, the Infinity Pit, and the darkest halves of one thousand Azarathian souls to make the ambitious Drax transform into the monstrous God of Revenge, Trigon. By denying one-half of her soul, Raven had followed that same dark path, driving her own divinity to become monstrous as well - when all it had wanted was to be free.
Since the time of her mother's untimely death, Raven had been trying to make peace within her own soul. As Bruce had resisted her father's temptations in the weave of Fate, Raven had brokered another, more private deal… Human-Raven had rationally discussed her thoughts and desires with Dark-Raven… Though to be honest, it had actually started as a screaming match, with a lot of finger pointing on either side.
It was when Human-Raven beheld the bitter tears that she had caused Dark-Raven to cry that Human-Raven reached out and embraced her other half. They realized that they were two halves of a whole.
Her God-self had been so desperate for her father, longing for the freedom his arrival would bring since the time of her birth, a life-long prisoner of her own humanity. She had longed for Trigon's acceptance and the rewards he had promised her.
When Darkseid had presented another opportunity to be free, her dark side had wanted it so badly, to be a prisoner no more - that she had caused them great suffering. She had never meant for Arella to die… because Arella was her mother as well. Both sides had been devastated by her loss.
So they had made a truce… Human-Raven would embrace her divine heritage and all her natural emotions. She would live as the emotional woman she was meant to be - without the ingrained fear of expressing herself. The only Hell she could now release upon the world was her own. Her father had found his own murderous path to Earth - so there were no further reasons to restrict her feelings on his account. They would live and feel as one.
And now Trigon had plans for his daughter… plans that neither Human-Raven nor God-Raven cared for. Their father wanted to take Bruce away and make her follow in his ashen footsteps, a destroyer of worlds. Neither side would permit that to happen – they both loved Bruce deeply… for their own, different reasons. They would build their own destiny with the man they had chosen and loved.
So Raven had consented to become the scarlet Goddess when it was safe to do so. She would not jeopardize the people she loved, but she would not be ashamed of who she was or how she appeared either. After all, Bruce didn't seem to mind…
And now there were things she needed to know…
"What are the names of these Goddesses, Metron?" asked Raven of the Colossus.
"They have countless names in countless cultures. They will not harm you if you go to them and ask, child. I sense they are eager to know of you."
Raven had felt it too.
With all five Goddesses, she had felt their strong pull upon her, that these entities had sensed her divine heritage, a lost daughter who had finally found her way home to her missing family. Her mother had often told a younger Raven that she had great potential and affinity for magic, yet in her past life she feared to wield it… afraid she may lose control of her emotions and become a beacon to her father.
"Please Metron… Our time may be cut short. I will reach out to these Goddesses but we need to know what the Guardians will do. Will they help us? Can we trust them? Will they be able to stop my father, Trigon?"
"If you but free me, I could take the two of you across time and space in my Mobius chair - and show you all the secrets of what has transpired, each knot of Fate would become revealed as it unfolded, without the concerns of impetuous time… Do you have the power to do such a thing?"
Raven flew closer with Bruce in tow and placed her hand upon the forehead of the captive God, so that Metron could sense her profound sorrow and pain at his imprisonment and her inability to free him.
"… I don't think we can, Metron. I'm so sorry. I would free all of you if I could."
"In time, you shall… "Metron allowed the faintest hint of a smile to crease his mouth. "I have come to believe that the Guardians seek to eliminate all Gods in time. This is the most logical course of action…"
Metron paused and gazed upon the sudden, horrified look that appeared on Raven's face.
"They do this not as an act of evil, young one, but rather as a measure of self-preservation. Believe me when I say the Maltusians, the blue-skinned Guardians you speak of, have suffered terribly at the hands of the Gods themselves. At a great cost, they have appointed their kind, the oldest race in the Universe, as the supreme Guardians of peace and order. They simply seek to remove the most powerful, erratic variants from our shared scope of existence so that they may achieve these goals."
"By murdering the Gods?!"
"In a sense… yes. Think of it as evolution, Raven. The Fifth World shall belong to the Maltusians. After all, could they not be considered as the Gods of Order and Reason? Truly, they should have called me brother..." Metron sighed as Bruce broke in.
"Then why are you here, Metron? Are you an enemy of the Corps? You seem sympathetic to their cause - yet you are their prisoner." Bruce struggled to understand what had brought this powerful voice of reason to such an unreasonable, tragic place.
"I am an enemy of no one Bruce Wayne, save perhaps ignorance. I am only a seeker of Knowledge, a being who must understand all that is to be comprehended. But first let me ask why you were brought here, man of Earth? It seems as though you were meant to be a prisoner as much as I… although I do not believe it was the Guardians who brought you to this place."
"That's a long story, Metron…"
"For one such as myself, those are the best kind. I am eternally curious."
"This wonderful lady, currently holding my life in her hand, is my wife Raven. You were correct when you called her a half-God; she is the daughter of the God of Revenge and a mortal woman from Earth, Angela Roth. Suffice it to say, her father, Trigon the Terrible is not happy with our marriage. He brought me here to die."
"I know of no God of Revenge."
"…You would have known him as Drax," added Raven. "He took the name of Trigon after taking up the mantle of the God of Revenge - floating through space for millennia, betrayed at the hands of his brother, Uxas."
"Ah, it becomes clearer… that the foul harvest of Darkseid and his countless treacheries have borne such seeds of bitter consequence is perfectly logical. I am familiar with the tale of Uxas and Drax at the Infinity Pit. Actions often have such unforeseen consequences. But this is the way of the Universe, as I have learned once again…"
"I take it your actions had consequences, Metron? Is that how you came to be a prisoner of Ysmault?"
"Indeed, it was even I who furnished my own prison, however unintentional... But do not call this planet Ysmault. During my countless eons of existence, I have little patience remaining for crude-fashioned lies and deceits such as this.
The name Ysmault is nothing more than a play-on-words used by the Maltusians to deceive the Universe. A frightening, fictional planet they fabricated, the final resting place of the so-called 'Five Inversions' – the last indomitable remnants of Sector 666, 'demons' of tremendous power who were beyond death. Ysmault is a world they have forbidden to all other life forms, a fictional tragedy to cover its true tragedy…"
"Then what should we call this planet, Metron?"
"By its true name, of course… Maltus."
"Maltus… Wait, this planet is the home world of the Guardians?!"
"It is. Or rather it was. Ten billion years ago, shining Maltus was the first planet in the Universe to give birth to sentient life, life even older than the Gods themselves. Just think, for billions of years, blue-skinned Maltusians have walked these very shores and began an epic history that continues even to this day…"
"But why are you here, Metron?"
"Certainly I could proclaim that I am here because I knew too much… that the one who bears the secrets of the Guardians' true power must be forever silenced. But I will not...
Perhaps Metron hangs upon this cross as an eternal testament for his blind actions which have invoked the wrath of the Inversion who rests upon the third cross, the thing of the threads of Fate…
Or perhaps the Guardians wish to ensure the gifts I have bestowed upon them are never gifted to another. It is the mystery which is my true punishment… Not knowing the exact reason of my sentence makes my incarceration far worse, noble daughter of Revenge.
Let us simply say I hang here to pay for my own sins… You see, it was I who allowed the Maltusians to capture every single one of these Goddesses. It was clever Metron who built and provided the very Power-Transmitters that now hold him cruelly upon his captors' cross. And it was I who designed and constructed their first Rings of Power – allowing the Green Lantern Corps to be born."
"You… made the Power Rings?!" Bruce was incredulous.
"In the hastened pursuit of knowledge, far too often we lose sight of the winding path we tread. Or the times when we choose to stray from it - to travel alongside those whom we deem as our peers. Since the dawn of their immortal life, Metron has lived alongside - and been a friend to these Maltusians, fellow seekers of the truth and disciplines of logic.
Metron seeks knowledge for the sake of knowledge, but I now believe the immortals of Maltus sought knowledge for different objectives. But do not judge them too harshly; their reasons are bound by the straight course of logic. As I have mentioned before, the Maltusians suffered terribly at the hands of Gods…
Eons ago, while the cataclysmic battle of Ragnarök closed its sorrowful jaws upon the Sun of the Third World, the multiple armies of the sentient machines constructed over a million years here on Maltus, fought to preserve their masters' vision of life.
Before the Green Lantern Corps, the Guardians had created the relentless Manhunters, the self-aware, artificially-intelligent robots that had been tasked with keeping their Universe safe. At their peak, the Manhunters numbered in the billions, spread throughout the living cosmos.
However, it was this same protective programming which caused the deadly Manhunters to fight the Gods themselves – identifying the final cataclysmic battle as a supreme threat to the continued existence of mortal life. And battle they did…
The first two Goddesses you see hanging upon crosses were among the few survivors from the last days of the Third World. Ragnarök and the Manhunters had extracted a crippling toll upon the last world of the Gods. In their divine wrath, these two Goddesses appeared on Maltus to take revenge upon the blue Maltusians and their deadly constructs that had destroyed their pantheon.
Billions of innocent lives were lost to indiscriminate, vengeful magic as the Maltusian elders begged for Metron's assistance to save their ravaged world. The last tide of Ragnarök had come to their blue shores and their own immortality was in great peril. They had angered the Gods.
I hastily constructed the Power Transmitters to save my comrades, if only to preserve the knowledge we had gathered… but this world was undone by the time the Goddesses were finally subdued. Reduced from billions to a single battalion, the Manhunters were obliterated in the defense of their creators against the greatest primeval powers arcane. Sadly, this first world of sentient life, magnificent Maltus was lost… but the Maltusians survived, though only a few thousand had lived to see the sun break upon that day.
And so a plan was made.
The time of Ragnarök had finally passed, leaving the decimated Guardians with the proclamation that they could never let the unorthodox and calamitous powers of Magic proliferate in this Universe they had sworn to protect. And so the third Goddess was captured to allow these Maltusians to move outside of the confines of Fate – so that nothing was inevitable for them.
Gods were never meant to be enslaved as they had dared, but still they had devised a way to do it. I see now that the Guardians had much farther-reaching plans when this third deity was added to their crucifixes on dead Maltus. This Goddess is among the oldest of our kind…
With the first three deities now in place, the Power Rings were created and the Green Lantern Corps born. A force to protect life in the Universe, and to preserve the most sacred and precious of all Maltusian values… order. A value once favored by foolish Metron as well.
Do you know that the fourth and fifth Goddesses are among your brethren, Raven Wayne? You may name them cousins. They are the fourth-generation of Gods ruling Magic born to the eldest New Gods… the twin sisters; Zareah of New Genesis and Abraxas of Apokolips. Goddesses of the Seen and the Unseen… one born in light, the other in darkness, both bartered to the Maltusians as part of the Paix Arcana…"
"… The Paix Arcana?"
"That the Guardians will not interfere with affairs of the New Gods unless threatened directly. Even these New Gods were painfully aware of the role the Guardians played in Ragnarök. The New Gods do not wish to hold sway over the affairs of mortals. In exchange, these daughters of magic were relinquished to the Guardians' care."
"That's awful…"
"Sacrifices are necessary for peace. Who could say how the virulent history of New Genesis and Apokolips may have played out had the two worlds had access to the powers of both magic and technology? Perhaps the Universe has been made better by its omission?..."
"Perhaps it has been made worse," countered Bruce. "Why did you construct the Power Rings, Metron? Wouldn't it have been easier to let the surviving Maltusians just carry on with humbler beginnings?"
"Machines such as the Manhunters are easily manipulated and tend to fall into the wrong hands far too often - leading to a destructive unbalance of power. With these Manhunters, a single, mad intelligence could guide the Universe to Armageddon. After Ragnarök there was a tremendous fear within the hearts of Maltusians - after they had lost so many of their own. There was little doubt in my mind they would rebuild their mechanical armies in time…
So Metron constructed a weapon that requires the sentient willpower of one user - combined with the ability to overcome fear – so I could ensure an army of individuals, not deadly machines, each capable of independent judgment and rational thought.
As a final safeguard, I added the Central Power Battery on Oa, so that the Guardians could cease the flow of power to those they deemed unworthy or dangerous. While they had realized that magic will never be destroyed, they relented that it could be harnessed and controlled by an equal measure of will."
"And for all this, they string you up here. With friends like those…"
Bruce could not help but identify with this God. After all, Bruce had also built numerous weapons to maintain peace and order, without the safeguards Metron had put in place.
"Metron has no friends, mortal… Rest assured, it is as it should be."
"Noble Metron…" spoke Raven "You have answered all questions that we have asked. Though you claim it not to be so, this is the act of a friend. I will not forget your kindness, or your divine piety not to cast blame on those who would forsake you."
"I know you shall not, child of Magic. Go to them now… Appease their new-found curiosity regarding your appearance before they also stumble upon the wonders of reason."
"Thank you, Metron." Raven kissed the giant God on his forehead before carefully flying down to the ground, landing with Bruce in front of Metron's enormous cross.
"It's safer if you stay here, my love."
"Will you be alright, Raven? These Goddesses have incredibly powerful auras… especially that fifth one." Bruce had almost made it through the gauntlet unscathed. He hadn't been ready for the level of sensory overload the Fifth Inversion had shocked him with. How would an empath feel?
"She is Abraxas… And yes, I believe I shall be fine, lover. After all, I have you to save me."
As their gazes locked in eyes of love once more, she kissed him for luck before she flew across to the first Goddess.