Chapter twenty-seven
"I'll find you in the afterlife. I'll find you in our next life. What connects our hearts cannot be severed by time or space."
Nabu and Arley stood, shoulder to shoulder in the corner of Nabu's realm— Arley's mind, pocket dimension, who knew —watching a moment, though lost to the sands of time, was pivotal in shaping mankind and its history.
"As homo sapiens had begun to rise on the evolutionary chain, homo Neanderthals had begun to fall," Nabu told Arley. "Here we're only a hundred or so years from homo Neanderthals nearly complete demise."
I don't want to go. Not like this. Arley heard; the Lantern held back a flinch as Savage's prayer floated through the memory.
Vandal Savage— or rather, the man he had once been; the one he had started out as, Vandar Adg of the Blood Tribe —laid in the savannah dirt, looking up at the sky. His chest was heavy; every breath he took was visibly labored. The skin of his face had been torn open by the bear Arleys and Nabu had watched him try to hunt.
"Food was scarce back then. Between the climate shifting and stabilizing to what we know it to be now and over hunting from the newly emerging homo sapiens," Nabu had explained when Savage had snuck off on his own after seeing the prehistoric bear, "All anything, anyone in the Neanderthal tribes were finding when their people would go out on hunts were bones and sometimes not even that."
Arleys had just pursued her lips as her eyes flickered to the spot in the sky Savage was looking up at.
Not now.
The sky was brighter than it had ever been after the industrial revolution; it looked nothing like the sky Arleys herself had grown up looking at and yet it wasn't a question of what the Neanderthal was looking at.
While all the stars in the sky were all twinkling brightly, none shined more brightly than the strange colored— the green —star in the sky.
A knot settled in Arley's stomach. Nabu had said this memory would explain everything and with dread creeping through Arley's body she was sure it would.
Arleys was already sure of what would happen next. This was a story Arley already knew the ending of and yet she watched on hoping she would be wrong.
She hoped that the green colored light in the sky wasn't what her bones screamed at her.
As Savage's breathing became more and more labored and his thoughts— This is it. Please, Give me more time. Let me help my people —floated through the memory once more Arley wasn't surprised in what she saw plummeting down to the Earth.
A power battery. A broken power battery more exactly.
Arley leaned into the memory to look at the battery as it laid in the dirt next to Savage.Savage with a shaky hand reached out to the battery. The battery was leaking green the way a broken faucet leaked water.
The glow coming from the battery intensified. Though it was only a memory, Arley could practically feel the heat from the battery on her skin.
Give me more time. Let me save them.
The Lantern shaped power battery leaked glowing green energy the way a broken faucet leaked water.
Arley watched as the energy escaping the battery seemed to solidify into a construct. The light wound its way up Savage's finger and arm, slowly encasing him in a green glow.
Arley watched as Savage's wounds mended right before her eyes, scaring over in seconds. She watched as his eyes fell shut and his breathing evened out.
Just as quickly as it had started the light had faded and the power battery that had only just been leaking the very literal green light of will stopped flowing and Savage had sucked the battery dry.
The veins in his skin glowed a faint green on the Savannah floor.
Arley, rather quickly after that, was pulled from the memory. She looked at Nabu.
"You understand now?" Nabu asked, "How you must defeat him?"
Arley thought back to the drills Kilowog had made her run in training; the combat training that happened every time she had gone back to Oa.
Your constructs are only as strong as your will is White Circles, that means you make it unshakeable. Arley thought of how some White Circles constructs broke under others. You do that, you become the most powerful weapon in the universe.
"Yeah," Arley whispered. Her nails bit into her palm. "I do."
"Good, now sleep, I'll wake you when it's time."
"I'll see you on the other side of all this Nabu."
Nabus head dipped down. "And I will see you, Arley Gluck."
…
The Guardians of the Universe had been there when it was created; when Entity and Nekron had crafted a hole that had allowed the race of hyper intelligent blue humanoids to cross into this dimension from their original, they had watched the universe be crafted from nothing into a beautiful something.
That was why they had stepped up to protect it; they had seen it in its infancy and heard it cry out. They had known they couldn't just stand by and watch it suffer, their purpose was to protect and lead.
That was why, on Oa, locked away in one of the deepest levels of their citadel, the Guardians watched on a battle they had spent several trillion millennia waiting for.
…
Nabu, surrounded by Arley Gluck's allies, stood in the tall grass that surrounded his fathers fortress. There were twenty-five of them if you counted Nabu, Arley Gluck and her ring all as one.
None of them knew it, Arley wouldn't— even if she were awake —be able to recognize it— Nabu doubted his father even realized Fate was funny that way —back where it had all started.
That fateful place in the savannah.
The girls palms— Nabu's palms —were sweaty. His— her —gut heavy.
How long had he waited for this moment?
"There are seventy-two minds in the building," M'gann, the Martian on Arley Glucks rag tag team said. Her brows pinched together.
"Megs?" The blonde archer, Artemis, reached and placed her hand on the alien's shoulder.
"One of their minds it's—" Whatever the Martian girl had been about to say was caught in her throat when the speedster that had been on Nabu's left disappeared into a blur.
"—Where the hell did Flash go?"
"After the Light's," M'gann said. "That's what I was going to say, they have a speedster."
"What about Prime!" The alien that loved the girl Nabu was wearing sounded panicked; and from what Nabu could collected from Arley Gluck's memory's the clone was rightfully panicked.
Prime was an abomination.
"I don't know, I don't sense him but if he's all instinct I won't!" Superman's clone swore; his head snapped when a cackle cut through the air.
"Green Arrow to home base," Oliver Queen said into his com, "Someone get Bats on the line and let him know the Joker is here."
Nabu felt it before he saw it; the magic in the air.
"Wonton!" Nabu could feel the sorcerer close by.
"Fate!" Wonder Woman snapped, sword in hand. "Find Savage! We'll take care of the calvary!"
Arley's Atlantean comrade took his water barers from his back and brandished them in the sorcerer's direction.
"Very well!" And like that they were all off.
Arrows of various colors— red, purple and green —flew through the air. Some landed in targets such as hench men who dropped in pain while others were almost expertly deflected by the likes of villains that Nabu recognized through Arley Glucks memories.
Her Atlantean friend's father Black Manta. Poison Ivy who the Martian engaged. A gorilla and a woman covered in cheetah fur. Black Atom— Fate hadn't needed Arleys memories for him; Nabu could remember when he and Kent Nelson had met the ruler —and the Joker.
He had taken Arleys mother from her.
The clown cackled as he fired randomly from an obnoxiously long gun. Some bullets hit his own men, all of whom fell with cries that made the clown laugh louder.
Nabu set himself down. His gleaming green sword drawn.
Arley had been made for her role. She had been crafted to suffer; every scar deliberate and carefully placed. She had been punished for existing.
The scar on Arley's— Nabu's —face burned.
Wonder Woman's lasso caught Waton before he could strike at Nabu; not that the Agent of Order was worried, he would strike down every enemy on the battlefield— drown himself and the girl he wore —in blood if it got himself one step closer to his father.
To revenge.
Peace.
The clown brandished his yellow teeth at Fate. The bullets the Joker fired bounced off Nabu's armor.
"Come on Helmet head tell me! Where's Bats?" The Joker only paused when Nabu said the man's name. His eyes grew wide and his smile faltered.
"How the hell do you know that name!" The Joker emptied his gun uselessly against Nabu's armor. He then snatched a tiny switchblade from the lapel of his violet colored jacket.
"How could I not?" Some people's fates were not up for debate. Arley Glucks was not. Nabu's had not been; he had been fated to be an Agent of Order.
The Jokers was though.
"I have seen you die so many times it's laughable."
That was why Nabu so easily sliced the glowing green sword of will power through the man's torso. The Joker died one hundred and six different ways just in this universe; the was just one of the ways he could have gone.
The Joker didn't laugh as he died as he did in so many of the versions Nabu had watched but Nabu supposed that it was because he had died at their— his and Arley Glucks —hands and not his own or inadvertently Batman's.
When the clowns thin, wiry chest chest hit the ground Nabu turned, bloody construct in hand. Nabu swung once more when a man with a gun had run at him; the man's shrill screams had hit the air before his forearms had hit the dirt.
Nabu only paused when he saw Wonder Woman standing across the battlefield looking at him, her own bloody sword sheathed and lasso in hand.
The weight in his— in Arleys —gut tightened. They were one step closer to ending this.
To the end.
…
"We're ready," Raven said as she had lit the last candle. Constantine stood in the middle of the pentagram, his blood hand tightly bandaged.
Both Zatara and Zatanna stood at one of the other pentagrams points.
"Right then," the man nodded, he patted his cigarette out on his pants. "Let's do this and demon girl?"
"What?" Raven replied dryly.
"Make sure your mate watches out for her okay? Girls fucked in the head enough I doubt this will help."
"Then why are you doing this?" Constantine looked at Zatanna and smiled at the ground. The young woman had a crush on him, she didn't hide it very well, nor did she hide the distance in her voice. "If she's not going to fix herself why do this?"
"Who said she won't fix herself?" Constantine had on good authority that if anyone could come back from what she had been through it was the greenest of all those dry beans. "Besides," John added with a sly smirk. "This is what heroes do, don't they?"
"Since when do you want to be known as a hero?" John felt his smirk turn into a grin.
You're a good guy Johnny, you know that?
Slowly, not replying verbally, the man sat, legs crossed, only to— once his eyes shut closed —start floating. The others in the House of Mystery followed suit, however begrudging they were.
I will be, John Constantine thought, I'll be good. He thought it like a prayer meant to be heard by the heavens. I'll be fucking great.
If it's the last thing I do.
…
Two beings sat in a room. One bright and blinding. The other dark enough for the average human eye not to even register the space it were taking up. They both sat on one side of a long table.
I'm the middle two figurines.
One was a girl bound in chains; the figure was small but in her hands, despite the chains was a sword. The other was a hulk of a man draped in a bear skin cape, holding a spear.
"Is it almost over?"
"You just want your piece to win." There was no twitch, no movement but the sound of a deep belly laugh filled the room.
"End of the day they're both mine aren't they?"
"She's no Morningstar here. She's mine!" Like they were two young children the pair squabbled over the white and black chess pieces that sat on the table between them.
"Godkiller not yet."
"Not ever, not really, the boy— " the word was spat, "—Has seen to that."
"We will see!" The haunting laughter echoed in the room once more.
…
Nabu could remember his life in pieces.
He could remember his father catching him as he fell from a step, telling him to be careful. He was his father heir, Babylonia wouldn't know what to do without him.
He couldn't remember his father ever saying what he would do without him.
He could remember beaming under his father's praise, warm the same way he would be under the sun because back then everything had been about making his father— his King, his God —proud.
His father had never said he was proud though. Not aloud.
He could remember the burn of his loves kisses. The feel of her hand on his chest. The love he had felt for his own children; the way his father had laughed in joy when he had his first son, that had been the closest his father had ever been to saying he was proud.
He could remember dying. How betrayed he felt, the rage that boiled in his veins. How cold he had felt.
Arley thrummed in the back of head.
Nabu could look into her memories and the pain she felt, the betrayal and anger and heartache she had gone through he could take it on as his own.
As he stood in front of his father though, for the first time in a over several centuries he wasn't sure, whose emotion he was feeling surge through him.
Was the anger his own? Was it Arleys? Was the fear that gripped at the heart beating in their shared ears hers? Or was it his; was it because even after all the time that had passed them by his father hadn't changed?
His hair hadn't grayed. The lines in his face hadn't deepened. Not a single new scar marred his face and his eyes were exactly the same.
Cold, calculating. The façade had slipped before Nabu had died and he had seen the man his father had been, that was the man who sat in a large desk chair still too tiny for him. The windows behind him that looked into the factory floor were alight with the fire one of Arley Glucks allies had started.
"Father." His and Arleys voices were hard, neither wavered nor were either loud.
"Nabu. You're wearing that Lantern." The man— God, monster, Agent of Chaos —didn't move from his seat. The weapons he had in front of him, gilded sickles Nabu knew well— they had been his once —gleamed in the office lighting.
His father thought he would strike him down with the very same weapons he had once taught Nabu to wield.
"Of course, it's her Fate to stop you." It was deeper than that. Arley Gluck had been made to fight Vandal Savage. She had been crafted from nothing but iron and carbon and immovable willpower for one thing only.
"Fate can be rewritten. I'm going to slaughter her Nabu."
"She's yours."
"What?" Savage leaned toward. He didn't grip the weapons yet though, he wasn't ready to end the game of catch-up yet. Nabu knew the look on his fathers face well enough; he was curious.
"You remember Amun?" His father shook his head and rage spiked in the back of Nabus' shared skull as a knife, dull due to the sands of time pricked at his shared heart. "My youngest." His father shrugged and though the man wouldn't know it, Nabu snarled at him from behind his helmet.
"My son survived what you and the Witch Boy did to Babylonia. He had a family of his own and so on until they had her mother-Arley Gluck is yours father."
The willpower that bound his father to the mortal plane bound Arleys atoms to one another. They were enhanced of course by her own ring and time spent bathed in the green light of will; they had to be as anyone else would never have survived what she had.
No one else would have been able to claw their way out of the rubble that was Cadmus Labs the way she had if they weren't like her.
"I've killed my own before. I killed you Nabu. Ending this roach—"
"—Watch your mouth." Nabu didn't hate Arley Gluck. He wasn't sure he liked her but he respected her. How could he not when he had survived everything the universe threw at her.
"Or what?" The cold glint in his fathers had turned flinty. Dangerous.
Nabu fingered the weaponized construct at his side.
"I'll make you father."
"Then let's do it Nabu." His father grabbed at the sickles and leaped over the desk; his foot had pushed it in Nabu and Arleys direction only for the green sword to effortlessly cut through the wood as if it were nothing.
A second construct appeared as the pieces of wood splintered, blocking Vandal Savages blow from above. The shield, unlike the sword was not green despite the fact it had emerged from Arley Glucks ring. The shield sparkled in a hundred and one different colors.
"Fight and I will make her suffer Nabu. I will make you suffer as well for your impudence!"
Nabu slashed at his father with the sword. The sword nicked his fathers putter forearm; blood flew.
Nabu saw an emotion he had never seen before flit over his fathers face.
Panic.
Fear.
As blood quelled to the top layer of skin on his fathers forearm Nabu took his chance and injured the man once more; the sword flew down and though didn't cleave his fathers hand off hacked at it.
Nabu, as his father had screamed, tugged the blade back.
"You are not my King anymore Father. This is not impudence, this is vengeance."
"I'll show you vengeance you whelp! You and the cunt! I'll carve you both up!" Vandal Savage slashed at Nabu.
I got this. It was whispered in the back of his mind but Nabu felt the pressure that was Arley Gluck's conscious build.
No! It was dangerous. Arley Gluck was not magically inclined like those meant to wield him. And yet, Nabu watched, for the first time in years, as a third party through his borrowed set of eyes.
Arley, burning herself from the inside out as she— impressively —held up the shield attacked Savage with a vigor Nabu he could have never mustered against his own father.
And his father, a man who had been immortal far longer than anything on the planet Earth had any right to be, tried to fight the Lantern off but he had spent all of known— and unknown —history never needing to practice parries or blocks because up until Arley Glucks clandestine birth, nothing had ever been able to hurt him.
Savage swung his blades wildly at Arley; "Bitch!" He huffed. He was scared; it was evident in his tone of voice. "I'll kill you!"
"Will you?" Arleys voice overlaid Nabu's, not the other way around. Pain splintered down the pair's shared skull; not that Arley gave any attention to it.
She was solely focused on the man in front of her. She had dreamed of this— killing Savage —was something that had kept Arley alive during her years of captivity.
"Because you've failed on every front so far."
Savage bled from several wounds as Arley Gluck's consciousness built and built in the back of Nabus mind until it was two of them in the body.
Everything was hot.
The windows of the factory office splintered from the heat of the fire that raged. The windows were going to burst.
Savage had only hit them twice; once in the side and once in the leg and yet Nabu had never felt pain like what he was going through. Neither had Arley; not in all her years of captivity did Sportsmaster manage to make her hurt like the fire inside of her was making her feel.
But she didn't stop as the burning intensified and a third airy voice echoed, We need to do this now.
Nabu felt tears gather in his eyes from the pressure— pain —that built in the back of his head. So many— too many —consciousness awakened in such a small space was not natural.
The magic that flowed through him burned.
Constructs burst not from the ring but from Arley. Acting as the living conduit of will, blood tricked down hers and Nabus back as the pointed constructs impaled his father.
Savage screamed as the windows hurt and the fire that had started to overtake the warehouse climbed into Savages office.
There was a pain in the back of Nabus mind; a scratching. Someone was trying to enter it. He pushed back as Arley stepped closer to his father.
Nabu wondered if this was what being flayed alive was like.
Green burned behind his fathers eyes.
His father swung wildly. The sickle— Nabus —found its way into Arleys side. Between her fifth and fourth ribs. She wheezed but did not faulted as she drew Vandal Savage closer.
Green tendrils of will crept up Savages neck. Savage opened his mouth to speak— to scream —but a light burnt in the back of his throat.
"Give me my brother back bastard," Arleys ring Aniell hissed. "You have misused him far too long."
Savage pushed the weapon deeper into Arley. Nabu's own mind shook with the pain. Something had been punctured.
No. I will not lose. Arley thought forcefully. I won't die before him. Her hand caught the hilt of the sickle; one more tendril of will burst through Arleys side and wrapped itself around Savage's wrist, stopping him from pushing it forward and yanking it out.
Arley grabbed her weapon and ran it through Savage's chest. His own weapon, despite the light wrapped around his wrist, dug more into the girl's innards.
Not that she cared. She had a mission.
Green Lanterns always completed their missions.
Dying men often made this awful wheezing sound. A prayer and plea all in one; whispered to their god in hope of one more chance.
Nabu's father, a God amongst men, did the same. Despite his centuries upon ventures of time on the planet his still begged at the end of Arley Glucks blade for more time.
"You're dead," Arley hissed as she yanked the blade out.
Savages own was ripped from her. Nabu could barely feel the pain over the burning sensation rippling through him.
Arley— Aniell, Nabu —dropped to the floor with Savavge. Blood flowed heavily from the wound. Both wounds.
The blood on the floor mixed below before Savage and Arleys knees.
He fell forward first. His face landed in the blood with a disgusting splash.
Arley— Aniell, Nabu —swayed on their knees.
It's over.
It was. Black danced across Nabus vision while the burning inside of him and vessel raged.
The heat of the fires rippled over him. The building shook.
A slab of the ceiling fell.
Someone was destroying the fortress.
They had to leave. None of them— not Nabu, Aniell, or Arley —moved though.
Nabu's consciousness felt small. Nabu felt cold.
He hadn't felt cold in so long.
Something hit the back of his shared head.
The last thing the Agent of Fate could remember was the taste of blood on Arley Gluck's mouth; she was smiling as they fell forward.
She was smiling as she died.