Wonder Woman #29: "Twilight"

Wonder Woman debriefed the League as best she could on her adventure to Tunguska and back; she updated their files and added 'Doctor Psycho' to the archives. She'd memorized the prophesies that the fallen angel had muttered, transcribed them, and even though the League was not a group of men and women beholden to prophecy and legends of what could be, Diana came from another place on the matter, and knew that while your destiny was one's own to guide, events and people would intertwine with it regardless of wanting, and so change without warning.



"Wh-Why are you doing this?!" She'd been promised a hot meal. A hot meal and a place to sleep for the night. She trusted them, and then the bag was over her head and she felt the pinprick in her neck… She didn't remember much after that. Rebecca Mitchell. Nineteen. She'd wanted to be a star, but didn't they all? Los Angeles was not the shining bastion of hope and promise that she'd believed. She'd wanted to be a star, and now that the lights were on her, and everyone was watching, she knew that all she wanted was to be home. The lights made her sweat, panic and fear dribbling together over her brow. Everyone was watching in just the wrong way. She wanted her father. But he was gone now, hundreds of miles away, and a dozen apologies further.

The man, whose pale blue eyes and polite tone had led her here, playfully moved the needle above her head, not touching her skin, but the promise of the action terrifying her none the less. "You serve a greater purpose. You're worth more like this." She was lying naked atop some kind of altar in the middle of some kind of church. She'd awoken here, strapped down; the bag still on her head, and it was only a few moments ago it was removed. The light of the sun permeated down through the stain glass window up above, but all around the perimeter of the light was shadow and darkness, and though her eyes struggled to adjust, just past the man who had brought her here, were dozens of men and women, all dressed in black robes.

She shook her head fervently. "I want to go home I want to--" He put his finger to his lips and she froze.

"That's my girl." He leaned in close. "This will hurt. I mean, we're preparing you for greatness, are we not? Do you not wish to be part of something bigger? Brighter? Don't you want to be part of the promise to a better world? Isn't that what you want?"

"I want my daddy."

"Well then I'm sorry, but really," he smiled that very same smile that made her trust him, "you don't have a choice in the matter." He pulled his hood over his face, but she could still see a hint of that smile. "Really. I'm sorry." The needle met skin, and she cried out as he began to inscribe the words. "Release," he began to chant, "release." Her head was pulled back and the warm red liquid poured inside. "Blood of the world." She gagged, tears streaming down her face, "Release." The needle rose up and was placed to the side, and then he leant in close, that polite tone now whispering in her ear. "Soul of the Earth."



Diana's movements flowed like water, slow and smooth, arching through her center of gravity as she practiced tai chi chuan. She was on monitor duty, and as most Leaguers realized, this was the most boring part of the job. She took the time to practice and train as monitors flickered through every band and signal across the world in the background. She remembered every single martial art she had been taught, Amazonian and Eastern and all those in-between (her times with I-Ching, a few years ago, were fond memories for her, especially considering the adventures they had) and moved through the styles slowly, her muscles retaining everything she'd been taught. She paused for a moment, the first time in the three hours she'd been on watch, and looked at the screens, hoping to glean some threat from them that she might face to break the boredom. "One apocalypse," she smiled, "it's all I ask."

TOOM! The world shook, the entire world, signals blaring across the screens and signals they had set up in the monitor room. TOOM! The Hall of Justice creaked and the walls shook, and Diana's eyes darted around not knowing TOOM! what was going on. She flew out of the Hall as fast as she could TOOM! and floated above Metropolis, and saw the Daily Planet globe shaking, TOOM! She pressed a button on the underside of her gauntlet, a thin sheath of communication weave, and the call went out: Justice League emergency!



"For thirteen minutes, the world experienced seizures." Ray Palmer had his hands palm down on the round table in the middle of the Hall meetings room. "Fault lines and tectonic plates moved due to some as yet unknown factor. Richter scale-sized seizures."

The Justice League had gathered. They'd spent hours running damage control across the world, drafting in the reservists and any able-bodied super power who could help. Tidal waves had been kicked up and while Green Lantern and others had been able to reduce the damage during the event, there were still areas that were not doing well. Aquaman and the Justice Society of America's Green Lantern had descended into the ocean to seal up holes in the ocean floor, whilst tectonic plates were being welded back together by the Kryptonian power houses that were Superman and his cousin, Supergirl. Wonder Woman was distributing supplies to those badly affected, but as she did, scenarios ran in the back of her head, picking apart what had happened, and remembering the profiles of those who could possibly inflict such damage upon the world. The Justice League themselves had finally reconvened in the Hall of Justice, the JSA continuing the aid, the Teen Titans assisting where they could.

"That's not all," added Kid Eternity as he picked up the report, as he stood to the sideof the assorted heroes. "Ley-lines, the magical life-blood of the Earth, hardened."

"I can corroborate that statement," nodded Manitou Dawn, who rubbed her head slowly. "The headache has only just started to pass."

Kit reached for her shoulder but stopped short before he continued to speak. "Magic shorted out. I was in Oblivion Bar, and you should have seen the chaos."

Wonder Woman rested her chin on her latticed fingers, and turned in the direction of Kid Eternity when he was finished speaking. "Are you alright, Eternity? Were you affected at all by the phenomenon?"

Kit smiled slyly. "No, the ghosts in the bar were fine. We were the ones fetching buckets for the wizards and witches who couldn't handle it."

"Good to know," nodded Diana, "Lantern, any weapon grade energy signatures detected? Something that could cause something like this?"

Hal Jordan shook his head. "I sat on the moon and scanned the entire planet, and got nothing. I also had my ring scan for trajectory patterns incoming to Earth, but again, no."

"So we have nothing. No hint or clue as to what caused the Earth-seizures."

"I'll keep investigating, Wonder Woman," affirmed the Atom, "I intend to call up Niles Caulder and pick his brains about the event, but we can't do anything else other than investigate. We cannot fight what we cannot see..." He shrugged. Katar Hol, Hawkman, grunted, and Ray allowed himself a smile. "...Unfortunately."

Diana stood. "I'll follow up on some leads of my own. Keep in contact if you discover something about this mystery." She exited, leaving the rest of the Justice League in silence, looking at each other.

Kid Eternity broke the silence. "Whose turn is it for monitor duty?"



"My lady." Diana knelt in her chambers in Themyscira House, the Paradise Island embassy to the rest of the world, candles burning, wax dribbling down the sides and smoke fluttering to the ceiling. She closed her eyes, and whispered, "I seek an audience."

"Granted." She opened her eyes, and she knelt before the throne of Athena. She bowed her head, and noble Pallas motioned for her to stand. "What is it you wish to ask me, my champion?"

"The world suffered from what the scientists are calling... tectonic seizures. I have never once considered this before, but I wish to seek an audience with Mother Goddess, Gaia."

Athena shook her had. "Impossible."

"I do not mean to sound impertinent, but why?"

"Gaia does not hold residence upon Olympus."

"Then where may I find her?"

"You may not."

Diana took a step back before replying. "Why not?"

"I advise you to watch your tone, Amazon," hissed a voice from behind her, as the doors to the main chambers of Olympus were flung open. Ares wiped his mouth with his forearm and stepped inside, grinning menacingly. "You would do well to not over step your boundaries in this place."

Diana smiled courteously, and then turned back to Athena. "I apologize for my tone. But I do wish to know why it is I cannot see Mother Gaia..."

"I cannot say any more, my champion. I am sorry." Athena snapped her fingers, and Diana vanished from the throne room, leaving Ares standing before her. "May I help you, brother?"

"Yes, you may." He took a step forward. "I seek an audience."



"Hera." Diana opened her eyes and was back in her quarters. Her hands tightened to fists, and she pressed down on the hard marble floor of her chamber. She stood, and then turned, only to be met by a sight she was no expecting. "My lord." She bowed immediately before Apollo, who shone in the flickering darkness provided by the candles. "I am unworthy of your presence. How may I be of service?"

"We don't know where Gaia is. Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, doesn't know where Mother Earth is. This, obviously, worries her," Apollo stepped forward, dressed entirely in a gleaming white suit, hands deep in his pockets, his blonde hair and blue eyes glowing in the dim light of Diana's chambers. He was hunched somewhat, his neck tilted to meet Diana's eye level. "And us. Gaia is the life blood of the world. If she's gone off somewhere without our knowledge, then hey, that's not a good thing."

Diana stepped forward. "What can I do?"

"I am not your patron. You are not my champion. But if I were to...say, make a suggestion…" He winked at her, and she blushed, as she had done the past occasions that Apollo had come to her. It felt different now than it had before. He seemed, more and more, to have some vested interest in her, and it concerned her. "… Then I would hope you took my counsel under advisement."

Wonder Woman smiled in wry understanding, but continued to press the matter. "Do you know where she is?"

"Broad strokes, Diana," Apollo quickly corrected her as he shook his head and continued to slowly walk toward Wonder Woman. "We gods are abjured from stepping down from our thrones and our mountaintop temples to interfere with humankind. You have the odd exception to that unofficial rule, and we both know who I'm talking about." He paused in front of her, and looked her deep in the eyes. "I have this to say: Humanity cannot rightly kill gods. Before existence, there was a place... where gods were born. Gods more powerful than any you know now. To kill a god requires more than just an enchanted gun or a blessed spear. Gaia is on a level beyond anyone's understanding, Diana. She's a force of nature. To refer to her as a her is so narrow a definition. She's a force beyond godhood or gender or anything. She keeps the world alive. Humanity was never intended to meet her, let alone bind her away from the world. This is a pivotal moment in the history of the world, and humanity should be the ones to decide it."

"I understand," she bowed, and he stroked her cheek slowly, his fingers warming her. "I…"

He abruptly pulled back, and then turned away from her. "Los Angeles. Mother Earth is somewhere inside the City of Angels." He didn't look back to her as he simply vanished, only his voice lingering in the air. "Good luck, Diana."

"Thank you, Lord Apollo." The candles were all snuffed out as Wonder Woman stood silently in her room, and after whispering a prayer of thanks to the Sun, she headed to the basement, to the teleport booth the League had hooked up so Diana had a direct link to the Hall of Justice or the orbital satellite. She preferred to fly, to be honest, to be one with the air and the sun and the sky, but this was important. She stepped inside, her atoms buzzed as they disassembled, and she stepped out in Metropolis, on Hob's Bay, inside the Hall of Justice.

Dawn Makes Strong Move lazily typed away at an article for the Sanbourne Institute. Her days as a researcher there seemed a million miles and a thousand years away since she'd come to possess the True Axe and embrace her role as shaman. She was startled from her reverie by Wonder Woman's voice at her doorway.

“Manitou Dawn, I need your help,” Diana said in such concerned voice that the shaman was immediately alarmed. She turned to the League's leader to see a face burdened with grave concern.

"What is it?" Dawn turned off the computer screen and hurried over to Diana. "What's wrong?"

"Apollo came to me and told me that Gaia has been stolen away from her position and now walks the Earth. The world-tremors were caused by this event, and we need to find her. We need to find her before something happens."

Dawn eyed her, not with suspicion or contempt, but with surprise. "That's incredible. I mean, you read of legends of gods walking the world, but a modern-day account?" She chuckled nervously, low and soft. "Why am I even surprised? I have a film night with a ghost, a Martian and the flying Honeymooners/i]. At least, that's how it feels," she added with a smile, but with a look to Diana, and the burning intensity upon her face, she immediately fell silent. "Sorry, useless tangent. Kinda nervous. So what's the mission?"

"You need to use the True Axe. You share a bond with all aspects of the world, and I was thinking that you may be able to use that link to locate Gaia, in whatever form she may have taken. Or been forced to take."

"Forced? Damn, right, so where do we start?"

"Los Angeles."

*

"What have you done?!" Rebecca Mitchell thrashed against her restraints, but she was unable to escape. Her skin was a tapestry of black tattoos, strange sigils and glyphs that covered all parts of her naked body. "How am I here?!"

"I killed this girl and I put you inside her. I didn't think it would be possible, but he whispered to me, to all of us, and the rite of binding…” He looked at her in awe, “...it worked."

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!" The room shook, and the men and women who surrounded this naked girl groped around themselves for support.

The man pulled her hair up, and she let out a yelp. "You're the spirit of the world, all-powerful, all-knowing, but you didn't see this coming did you?" He laughed. "A god. In my hands." He released her, and looked to the others. "The day he promised us is coming. The day of reckoning. What I am about to do? This will trigger the end of this broken world. He will come! He will come to us, and he will free us from these empty shells we call our lives!" A cheer rang out, and he turned back to the bare form of Rebecca Mitchell, the complete being of Gaia now barely constrained within. "It all comes around in the end, Mother Gaia. It all comes full circle. And this is what it's all about." He opened up his robes, and the glint of metal made her eyes began to tear up once more, a reaction that Gaia, who had never taken true human form before, didn't quite understand. "Full circle, and the end."

*

"Oh…my…" The True Ax glowed. Blue lightning crackled across it's surface. "…God…" Wonder Woman placed her hand gently on Manitou Dawn's shoulder, and a rush of energy flew over her. She stood her ground, and the two heroes, atop the Wayne Enterprises building that overlooked the entire city, could feel the life-lines of the world change course. "That's… amazing…"

"I can feel it," nodded Diana. "The world warping together. Like a web."

"And in the center, Gaia?" Dawn looked to Wonder Woman. "What then? What do we do?"

Diana lifted up off the roof of the building, and picked up Dawn. "We do what we have to. And more." They shot toward where the web of energy drew them. Dawn could feel a gaping imbalance at the center of the web, and she passed the sensations on to Diana.. Diana now sensed where they had to go, and she pushed as hard as she could with her passenger in her arms.

*

"You do not understand what you are doing." Gaia felt the lump in her throat grow as the knife traced a line up from the navel on her forcibly-adopted body. What was this sound coming from her mouth? Words? Real words that were made crudely from vocal chord and tongue and throat? Words. The pain was a new feeling to her, a new sensation for this being who existed on a different level of understanding. She felt countries weeping when tsunamis hit their shores. When earthquakes wrecked havoc across the world, she felt cities cry out as their skin was torn asunder. But this intimate sensation of pain? It was new and she did not like it. "Y-you...would do this? For your self? What of the world? Of the rest of humanity? You damn yourselves."

"For the greater good," he replied, and he drove the knife down.

*

Above, Wonder Woman and Manitou Dawn smashed through the stain glass window that arched over the derelict church that the True Ax lead them to. They were ready for anything, but what they found was beyond what they expected. Dozens of men and women, dressed in black robes, littered the church, their blood pooling together on the cold stone floor like a crimson reflecting pool. Dawn covered her mouth as she saw this horror, and the two heroines landed on the steps that surrounded an altar, and atop it, the naked corpse of a young woman, a knife driven straight through her sternum and into her heart. Beside her, his blood cascaded down the steps, was another cultist.

"Hera help us..." Diana's fingers traced the fresh tattoos on the girl's flesh, and looked to Dawn. "We're too late."

Dawn looked up, as rain began to fall upon them. "What does this mean, Diana? What does it mean when the spirit of the world dies?"

"I don't know, Dawn." Wonder Woman closed the terrified eyes of the young girl, and then shook her head. "I've failed her, just as I did Hippolytus. Just as..." She grit her teeth. "Athena help me...."

Manitou Dawn struggled against nausea at the sight of the massacre. Dawn had never seen something as horrific at this. Everywhere she looked, everywhere she turned, blood pooled. So many bodies. So much blood.

“God,” she whispered as her knees trembled. She staggered toward the dead woman, and as she did, she could hear a faint cry of pain, of shock, of unmitigated torment. And as the cry rattled across her more mystic senses, images flooded her mind. The last images this dead body saw, the last images perceived by the dull senses of a dying goddess. She turned to Diana, her mind racing, and with a touch of her hand, shared the experiences with the Amazon.

The knife plunged through bone and soft tissue before reaching the heart. Gaia screamed and her murderer held the knife steady where it came to rest. "It is done." She coughed and sputtered, shock and surprise and horror giving her a tenuous hold on life as she felt this body fail. Her soul was bound to this body, and so she felt the darkness as it crept toward her.

It was a strange sensation, but then the man who murdered her leaned in close, his soft, well-spoken voice replaced by something much more sinister, a deep growl that scratched at the sides of his throat as he whispered. "I'm coming." He reeled back, his limbs jerking uncontrollably, and then he was suddenly facing the other cultists, their eyes wide and their faces pale. "You are the harbingers of my. return!" His hand rose up. "Across the void of time I speak to you." He opened up his hand, his fingers reached out, and then he suddenly clenched his fist. The cultists screamed as blood exploded from inside them, and they fell to the ground. Then, in turn, so did their attacker, the man who spoke with a voice not his own. He fell to the floor, and the words continued to dribble out in a whisper. "Across... the void... of time... I come."

Above, Wonder Woman and Manitou Dawn smashed through the stain glass window that arched over the derelict church that the True Axe led them to...

*

The Hall of Justice was closed to visitors. The rain outside continued to pummel at the streets and buildings, and across the world, the downpour continued. Another case the Justice League would have to react to in good time. Inside the Hall, down in the lower levels where no civilian went without escort or unannounced, the meeting room was filled near capacity.

Wonder Woman listened to the silence after she and Manitou Dawn had finished explaining to the rest of the League what had occurred mere hours before. Every man, woman or alien who had ever been a member of the team, any reservist called to duty or yet to be called to duty stood assembled around the table where the current League members sat.

"If Batman were here he'd say something cynical," mused the Flash as he scratched his cheek. "Personally, I'm lost for words."

Aquaman smiled glumly, and then turned back to Wonder Woman. "This rain, I'm assuming it has something to do with what happened?"

Wonder Woman nodded. "I believe so. We have mystics working on a solution to that problem, the rain should die down eventually."

"Yeah, I spoke to my contacts at the Oblivion Bar, they're working on something to sort this mess out." Kid Eternity shrugged. "Apart from that, I can't think of what to contribute. Who even saw this coming? What kind of magic can bind the spirit of the world to a human vessel? And what human in their right mind would murder her?"

"You can't kill Gaia," stated Wonder Woman rather abruptly. "Humans couldn't if they tried. This is why this whole series of events terrifies me." She looked around. "Something is coming. In a world where pantheons collide on a regular basis, I have learned that something is coming beyond what we understand." She looked over to the Martian Manhunter, who nodded. "J'onn J'onzz is going to project a memory into your minds, one I experienced a few days ago. I hope you do not mind this intrusion, but I think it best to share it with you:

[[>The bound angel weeps in their heads, and they heroes are filled with the sadness and emotions that were triggered inside Wonder Woman when she underwent this experience. "The darkness comes, will strike down the Sun God, scour the Earth of life, and he will come, the great one, the Void King, he will emerge..."<]]

Another long silence fills the room, and Wonder Woman watched them process this information. "The great darkness..." She paused, she herself thinking through the experiences of the past months. "...It's coming."