HAWKMAN: FINAL FLIGHT #1 (OF 2)

Ten years later...

He dreamed of Shiera. She had been gone so long now, but the vision of her in his mind’s eye never dulled; the wind in her long, auburn hair, a ready smile quirking her lips, and the glint in her eyes were as familiar to him as his own reflection. More often than not, they just flew together, wing to wing, through a dazzlingly bright sky, over the rim of the world. Or he re-lived cherished moments: his first glimpse of her in Alexandria, their wedding night in Mexico. Sometimes, in his dreams, he tracked the path of her soul down the ages, remembering her as Chay-Ara, princess of Egypt or Kate Manser, gunslinger of the American Old West; the face was not always the same, but her hand in his held the same warmth. He had learned to live with her absence, but not without the memories: so the dreams helped. Except for tonight. Tonight he found no comfort. Tonight Shiera Hall, Hawkwoman, his wife, writhed in torment, caught in the fury of the Nth force raised by their eternal enemy Hath-Set at their final showdown in 1951.

He mumbled her name, twisting in his sheets. But the nightmare wouldn’t let him go.

The storm of Nth power raged in his mind. It had held him in stasis for almost sixty years. It had gone by in the blink of an eye for him, but Shiera endured every moment, ravaged by one of the fundamental forces of the universe. That wasn’t how it happened, he tried to remind himself, tried to drag himself up from sleep. Shiera had died from her injuries. She was at rest.

It is ever so, my champion, a familiar voice came to him now, drowning out all else. The image of a hawk-headed colossus loomed in his mind, sad but soothing. Justice demands a price, paid in blood. But what if you could have her back…?

Carter Hall awoke. He was drenched in sweat and wild-eyed, his chest heaving. “Horus…” he whispered into the darkness of his bedroom. He had not heard the voice of the long-forgotten deity since his first mortal incarnation, when as Khufu, prince of Egypt, he had taken up the mantle of a hawk-man. That had been over 3000 years ago…

The hour is upon us, came the voice again, echoing like a portent in Carter’s head. Be true, my champion. I shall have such need of you…

Carter sprang from his bed and yelled the name of the god, shattering the silence of the old house. He waited for an answer, beseeching the stillness. But Horus spoke no more.

For a wild, frenzied moment, Carter considered if he might have imagined the voice, some kind of lingering effect of his dream. He dismissed the possibility immediately. Dreaming and awake, the words of Horus were burned into his brain: “…what if you could have her back?” He had to find out what that meant.


Wadi Erdu, Egypt…

Though he hadn’t been there since 1938, he had no trouble finding the hidden tomb where first he donned the wings now carrying him over the shifting desert sands. The wadi was in a desolate region, little traveled and relatively undisturbed. The entrance to the tomb was in the side of a sheer cliff-face, a yawning black gap in the rocks set inaccessibly high.

Hawkman descended feet first into the massive, hollowed-out underground structure, and had the uncomfortable feeling of being swallowed up by darkness. He landed softly, pulled in his wings, and switched on his lamp. The beam alighted on the towering statue of Horus, standing a silent vigil down the long millennia. The eyes of the hawk-headed god were blank sandstone. “Still here, old bird?” Hawkman muttered, his voice echoing in the temple. He didn’t have to glance at the inscription at the base of the statue; he had read it in 1938, and would never forget it: Beware you who enter here with no reverence for Divine Horus in your heart, for this is his house, and his wrath is eternal. But it wasn’t reverence in the heart of Carter Hall--- it was questions. If, 3000 years after giving Hawkman his mission, Horus had something else to say to him, then this temple was as good a place as any to start.

His lamplight traveled across the rush-strewn floor and over the walls covered in hieroglyphs depicting the legend of Horus and his champions. Khufu’s story was there, too, in all its triumph and tragedy. Carter was struck by the fact that, after his first visit, he had never returned to Wadi Erdu. Of course, by then, the war was on, and afterward his work with the JSA kept him and Shiera busy… but it occurred to the archaeologist in him that the site had never really been properly excavated. Therefore, as Horus was not being particularly forthcoming at the moment, he decided to have a more thorough look around.

He followed the main passage sloping down to the antechamber storehouse. The burial goods therein were just as he had left them all those years ago, glittering in the lamplight and magnificent; somehow, remarkably, thus place had gone unmolested by grave-robbers. He wondered if it was the power of the god at work. He was not ungrateful; after all, the site was also Khufu’s last resting place. The last time he’d been here, the full measure of that thought had not fully awakened in him, but in the chamber below was a mummy that had been him, a as living man. He had seen the sarcophagus. And next to his was Chay-Ara’s…

Hawkman dropped through a section of floor that had rotted away, into another vast, unlit chamber. This was the heart of the tomb complex. Here was the ancient Thanagarian spaceship that had crashed into the desert, bearing the Nth Metal to Earth, the Nth Metal Carter now wore in a hawk-shaped amulet on his chest, and on his gauntleted hand. The winged-shaped craft loomed in the darkness, but Hawkman had no attention for it, turning instead to the pair of sarcophagi in the center of the room. Long ago, he had taken from the wall above them a pair of amulets, wings and his gauntlet. This was the spot where Hawkman had been born.

Carter’s eyes were drawn to the massive stone block that was the final resting place of a priestess and princess of a long-forgotten dynasty. It was topped by a golden effigy that was not half as beautiful as the woman he vividly remembered. “Chay-Ara…”

He approached it slowly, his lamplight wavering. The stone atop the block weighed more than a ton, but the Nth Metal gave him the strength he needed to move it aside. When he had first been here, he could not bring himself to look upon their mortal remains, but this time he had to see her. He had to know. The scrape of stone on stone was loud and grinding. He looked down, into the abysmal depth of the sarcophagus, unaware that he was holding his breath.

He had expected to find it empty “… What if you could have her back?” Horus had said. Instead, there was a small female form inside, wrapped in brown cerements three thousand years old.

Gagging on the dust and emotion, he slumped to the ground, leaning against the side of the stone.

The hour is upon us, is what Horus had told him. Be true, my champion. I shall have such need of you.

“What am I supposed to do…?” He asked the shadows of the tomb.

He sat there for a long time, in the coolness of the desert night, deep underground, only feet from the embalmed bodies of Chay-Ara and Pharaoh Khufu. He almost didn’t notice when the light of his lamp faded and went out, sinking him into gradual darkness.

Hours passed. He was at a loss. What else could he do? It was only after his eyes were somewhat used to the darkness that he noticed his amulet was starting to glow. Frowning, he lifted it off his chest, and looked at it. It had never done that before, but it was emitting a soft but intense light off its golden surface. He stood, and realized there was an answering spot of Nth light coming from someplace else in the chamber. Between his amulet and the other light, objects in the tomb came out of the shadows. In front of Carter, the ancient, Thanagarian spacecraft sat on its landing gear, the answering glow coming from deep within it.

It was then he realized that Khufu and Chay-Ara were not the only two bodies entombed here.

The light from within the craft steadily grew brighter, shining out from the cockpit glass. Forced to shield his eyes from the glow of his amulet, Carter staggered towards the spaceship. He had to get inside; he wished his son Katar was here, or someone with knowledge of Thangarian tech. But it didn’t matter. At his approach, ancient servos whined and metal groaned and echoed in the tomb as a gangplank slowly lowered before him. Carter wasted no time, and ducked into the craft.

“Shiera!” He called, not daring to hope. Inside, the Nth glow was blinding.

Khufu’s memories were his, too, awakened in this lifetime by the Nth Metal. He remembered how he and Chay-Ara had watched the ship cut a blazing trail across the night sky and crash into the desert. They had pulled from it two bodies, a man and woman, ancient interstellar travelers on an unknown mission. The man had died on impact, but the woman had lived long enough to give names to Thanagar, and to the Nth Metal that powered the ship. Khufu and Chay-Ara had entombed the Thanagarians in their sky chariot, unaware they would join them all too soon in the Temple of Horus.

The first thing he saw in the ship’s hold was the crystal cylinders where they had laid the Thanagarians to rest. The nearest one held the man, perfectly preserved though he had been dead more than three thousand years. Some property of the cylinder, perhaps? The craft had been designed for interstellar travel, after all. But that wasn’t what had caused Carter to suck in a breath in shock: the dead man’s face was his own. The same blond hair, the chin cleft in the same spot… the two men even shared an identical bump from a broken nose. The likeness would have meant nothing to Khufu back then, but Carter Hall was looking upon a twin separated by three thousand years…

Then he noticed the lid of the other cylinder was open. There was no body inside.

“Kar’taral…?”

And there she was. Translucent and aglow with the light of the Nth force answering his amulet, the female Thanagarian, revivified. But it was also Shiera, somehow. Like the dead male, the female Thanagarian could have been a twin to his dead wife.

“Shiera,” he rasped, holding up a hand to shield his eyes from the light pouring off of her in waves.

The Thanagarian woman’s face was beatific but perplexed. She seemed to be engulfed in a field of tremendous energy welling from within her.

“My name is Valyra Thal. Don’t you know me, Kar’taral? Beloved…?” She raised an arm, her hand outstretched beseechingly.

Carter wanted nothing so much as to reach out and take that hand, but his mind was awhirl. She may have looked like Shiera, but was she not a long-dead Thanagarian, resurrected somehow in response to his presence? She called him Kar’taral, the name of a legendary hero the people of Thanagar long claimed he, Carter Hall, was the embodiment of, come again to save them in their hour of greatest need…

“I… I’m not…” he stammered, looking down into the crystal chamber, his own face staring back up at him. “My name is Carter Hall. Of Earth. Is that… Is he Kar’taral?”

The shining figure of the Thanagarian woman moved closer, looking into the crystal cylinder. A stricken expression settled onto her face, but when she looked back at him, it turned to confusion. “I don’t understand: how can you be dead and yet stand before me? You say you are not my beloved, yet I would know you anywhere... Do you not know me? And what of our mission? Is Thanagar safe? Where is the Silver Scarab…?”

It was almost too much for Hawkman. All of a sudden the Nth Metal on his chest felt like a psychic weight, threatening to tear him apart.

“What mission?”He managed to gasp, forced to close his eyes against the blazing light of her. “What is the Silver Scarab---?”

“NO!”

The voice boomed in the air of the tomb, and in his head. It was the voice of Horus.

“REMEMBER YOUR PLACE, VALYRA THAL. THE TIME OF THE GREAT DISASTER IS AT HAND, THE TIME FOR THANAGAR TO TAKE ITS RIGHTFUL PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE!”

The resurrected alien woman fell to her knees and covered her head with her arms, whimpering, “No, no…”

“I WILL BROOK NO INSOLENCE. RISE, MY SHRIKE. BRING ME THE SILVER SCARAB!”

The ground shook, and the floor of the spaceship tilted, sending Hawkman stumbling into a bulkhead. Valyra Thal stood again, and turning, she faced the cockpit of the ship. With a motion of her hand, a concussion wave blasted out the glass screen, and with a last look over at Hawkman, she flew out of the ship on wings of pure Nth Force.

“Wait,” Hawkman croaked, trying to regain his balance in the steadily shaking craft. “Valyra, wait!” With a few quick steps, he leaped out of the hole she had made and spread his wings, shooting out into the burial chamber. Everything was quaking. Dust and rocks were falling from the ceiling. And it was getting progressively worse by the second.

Valyra Thal was ablaze with light and rising, like an infernal angel, up through the chambers of the temple complex. Hawkman flew after her, leaving behind the mummies of Khufu and Chay-Ara, and the ruined Thanagarian spaceship, all of it becoming buried with falling debris.

He caught up with her in the main temple chamber, before the colossal statue of Horus. “Wait a minute!” He swooped around her, holding out the glittering Claw of Horus to bar her way. Her own glow was banked, but she still fairly thrummed with the innate Nth Force that powered her. “I have to know wha---.”

“HINDER NOT MY SHRIKE.”

The blow caught him unawares. The giant stone hand of the Horus statue swatted him out of the air, slamming him against the temple wall. It lumbered as if a living thing, stamping across the floor of the subterranean chamber toward him. Hawkman hit the ground hard, dazed.

“THE TIME HAS COME FOR YOU TO CHOOSE, MY CHAMPION. LONG HAVE I LAID MY PLANS AGAINST THIS DAY AND NOW THE HOUR OF DOOM IS UPON US. IF YOU WOULD HONOR ME, SAY NOW YOU WILL DO MY BIDDING.”

The statue of Horus towered over Hawkman, almost blotting out the light of the morning coming through the tomb’s entrance, high up in the wall.

“Honor you?” Hawkman wiped blood from his mouth and got to his feet. “I’ve honored the cause of justice all my life--- in every lifetime! I’ve bled for it, and died for it. But I do no man’s bidding, Horus. Nor any god’s.”

The countenance on the great stone face twisted into something like anger. It clenched a fist and raised it.

“THEN OUR PACT FORGED LO THOSE MANY MILLENIA AGO IS AT AN END.”

“So be it,” Hawkman flung himself into the air, wings outspread.

“FAREWELL, MY HAWKMAN---.”

The giant swung its mighty fist, but Hawkman was faster, and more agile. He angled inside the statue’s blow and drove up, smashing the Claw of Horus against the side of the statue’s head. The pent up Nth Force shattered the stone into a thousand pieces, and the huge form collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.

But Hawkman was not out of danger. The walls and ground continued to tremble, jarring loose huge chunks of rock and sand. He looked around but could see no sign of Valyra Thal. The Shrike, Horus had named her. She must have escaped the tomb while he fought the statue. He had to find her. Had to find out what was going on.

A deep, sinister laughter reverberated through the temple complex, shaking the very air and rock alike.

“WHAT BEGAN SO LONG AGO IS AT LAST COMING TO AN END. MAKE READY, KAR’TARAL, FOR I WILL NOT BE DENIED MY VICTORY…”

The words were as hammer blows in his head, disorienting him. He was bombarded by falling stone and showered in razor-sharp detritus. But after so many years, Carter Hall flew instinctively, dodging the more lethal rocks. He focused on the opening above, and shot out into the open air of the Egyptian desert just as the entire face of the cliff crumbled inward and slid into the sand, burying forever the lost tomb of Khufu under tons of rock.

It wasn’t until he was many miles away, scanning a reddening sky for Valyra Thal, that he realized in startled confusion, that at the last, the voice of Horus had called him Kar’taral…


The Stonechat Museum, St. Roch…

Kendra Saunders shifted the wiggling child on her hip, and with her free hand, pointed to a space across the exhibition hall. “We’ll have to move the Mayan artifact displays to the other side of the gallery so we can use that larger space for the new dioramas,” she called to the workmen. They huffed and puffed, but carefully rearranged things to her liking. She looked around, nodding and gently bouncing her son who toyed with the hawk-shaped amulet he’d pulled out from beneath her blouse. This major renovation was her first task as the newly-appointed Curator of the Stonechat Museum, and she was determined to make it the center for the study of Meso-American antiquities.

Someone calling her name caused her to turn. Striding across the hall came a winged figure, his face covered in a beaked hood of mailed gold. He hadn’t worn that particular costume since the 1940s, so as glad as she was to see him, she knew something was up.

“Hawkman,” she greeted him, careful to keep a level of detached professionalism in her voice--- she had not only his secret identity to protect, but her own, as well.

“Ms. Saunders, I need your help…”

The workmen stopped and gawked as the visitor followed their boss down the hallway towards her office. “But I saw Hawkman bust a drug dealer down in the Passerine Quarter last week, and that doesn’t look like him…?” The younger of the two whispered to his partner.

“Naw, it’s the other one,” the older workman couldn’t disguise the awe in his voice. “The original one, from the JSA. Doncha read history books? Now pay attention to what you’re doin’!”

A few minutes later, behind the closed door of her office, Kendra set her baby down in the playpen set up for him, and embraced her guest. “Carter, it’s been too long. I’m so glad to see you.”

He pulled off his hood and she noted the haunted and exhausted look in his eyes. Nevertheless he had a smile for her, and for the baby looking up at him in sudden wobbly surprise. “Me too, Kendra; sorry I haven’t visited in a while. How is my grandson?”

“Cyril’s fine,” Kendra looked over at the year-old boy, who was leveraging himself up and tottering forward, chubby arms upraised. Both adults chuckled. “We’ve already nicknamed him ‘Speed’ because we can’t keep track of him. We set him down for a moment, and the next thing you know, he’s across the room, trying to climb a bookcase.”

Carter’s smile deepened. “He couldn’t have a finer namesake. Your grandfather would have been very proud.”

“Thank you,” she perched on the edge of her cluttered desk, looking at him critically. “But, by the look on your face, I can tell this isn’t a social call. Katar’s on patrol, should I call him in…?”

“Possibly.” Carter exhaled a shaky breath; something was really bothering him. “Actually, as I said out there, I think I most need the help of Kendra Saunders, archaeologist and historian.”

She cocked an eyebrow. Carter Hall had been an archaeologist, too, before he all but gave it up for a life of full-time adventuring with the Justice Society of America. How Kendra was managing to balance her career, a marriage, motherhood, and membership in the Justice League was astonishing to everyone who knew her, not least of all herself.

“What is it?”

“What can you tell me about something called the Silver Scarab?”

Kendra frowned and thought. “Definitely sounds Egyptian,” she mused. Something nagged at the back of her mind, but she couldn’t quite bring it to light. “What’s the context?”

As he told her of his dream and of his encounter at Wadi Erdu, Kendra could only listen in rapt attention. This was her history, too, in a way; the hawk-shaped amulet she wore came from that now-buried tomb in the desert; Carter’s wife had been Kendra’s great-aunt, role-model and hero, though Kendra only knew the woman through her diaries and sepia-toned photographs.

“Carter, this is… amazing,” was all she could say when he fell silent again. “I mean, I don’t think we should get our hopes up, but what does it mean…?” Her brow furrowed.

“It means trouble.”

The voice came from the open doors of the balcony. Standing there, on the tiled walkway, was a man in ceremonial Thanagarian armor and a hawk-helm, the sultry Gulf Coastal wind blowing the curtains around his metallic wing-gliders.

“Katar,” Carter Hall greeted his son. The two men clasped arms in a bone-shaking embrace, then Katar doffed the helm, shaking out his sweaty dark hair. He went to kiss his wife, then bent to kiss the head of Cyril.

“How much did you hear?” Kendra asked him.

“Almost all of it,” the Thanagarian grimaced. “Enough to not like the sound of it.” He turned to Carter. “As you well know, the people of Thanagar regard you as the second coming of Kar’taral, our greatest hero. It’s said he’ll return in the hour of our greatest need, to fight for Thanagar in the final battle of the universe, when the fate of all life and worlds will be decided.”

“This Great Disaster mentioned by Horus, you mean…?” Carter rubbed his chin. “Come on, Katar. That sounds like nothing so much as apocalyptic nonsense. Every culture has it, even here on Earth. This whole Kar’taral business is Arthurian myth mixed with a dash of eschatology. Pretty standard stuff, actually.”

“Yet here you are,” Katar pointed out. “The dead ringer for a man dead thirty-three hundred years. And from what you say, Shiera was as much a twin to this Valyra Thal, too.”

Carter looked to Kendra for support, but she was shaking her head. “You said Horus called you Kar’taral, too, though… What would an ancient god of Egypt know of a mythic Thanagarian hero?”

Carter shrugged. “I don’t know. And I really don’t care. I’m more interested in how and why Valyra was resurrected, and why Horus has sent her after this Silver Scarab?”

At his words, something was jarred loose in Kendra’s memory. She snapped her fingers and went to one of the bookshelves lining the walls, pulling volumes out and moving others aside, searching for one in particular. “I just remembered!” She shot over her shoulder. “I knew I’d seen that phrase before, not just heard it.” She found what she was looking for, and, clearing a spot on her desk, opened it and began flipping through the pages. Carter and Katar crowded close behind her. After a moment, she exclaimed and smiled, jabbing the page with one finger. “It’s here, in the Madrigals of Thasaro!”

“Feitheran?” Carter muttered.

Katar’s face took on a look of vague disgust, which he quickly mastered. Kendra swatted her husband at his long-held prejudice against the exiles of Thanagar, and their peculiar religious practices.

“I knew you were the right person to see,” Carter smiled. Kendra Saunders was regarded as the world’s foremost expert on that lost civilization. In fact, she had met Katar on an expedition to find Feithera. “Tell me about the Silver Scarab.”

Kendra peered at the page. “These are the translations of various Feitheran texts I did with Professor Emmett after we found the hidden city. With help from Norda, of course. As far as I remember the Silver Scarab is mentioned only once in the Madrigals… here, towards the end, in canto 987… And they did make him a house for eternity, a silver scarab amidst the darkness of time and space, cursed to burrow forever, slave to slaves whom Seven Devils could not slay…”

“Seven Devils,” Katar repeated, like an expletive.

“But what does it mean?” Carter asked, intent on his daughter-in-law.

Kendra closed the book and looked up at them both. “I’m not sure…” she had a faraway look in her eye, but her mind was racing. Pieces were connecting, but she couldn’t yet see the whole puzzle; there were gaps she needed to fill. She put it aside for the moment, and announced firmly, “You need to go to Feithera. Only the Hierophants of Thasaro might know any more.”

Kendra knew that Carter heard something in her voice, could tell she was holding something back. But she also knew he trusted her. He nodded decisively, kissed her quickly on the forehead, and turned away.

“I’m coming with you,” Katar declared, reaching for his helm. Carter seemed like he was about to object, but he noted the determined set of the younger man’s jaw and must have thought better of it.

“Give Norda a hug for me,” Kendra scooped up baby Cyril, presented him to Katar for a kiss, then took one for herself. “And Professor Emmett!”


Feithera, the northern coast of Greenland…

Father and son sat in the cockpit of the Thanagarian flyer as it skimmed the deep black surface of the North Atlantic Ocean. The two said little, Katar piloting the craft with an easy expertise. He glanced sidelong at his father, the older man lit only by the glimmering red control panel, deep in thought. All in all, Katar Hol would have preferred a companionable silence, but he could not shake a feeling of dread that was creeping over him the closer they got to Feithera.

“Father, what is it you expect to find?” They were the first words spoken in many minutes.

Carter’s steady gaze was focused on the night sky outside. “Information about the Silver Scarab…”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” Katar growled. “You think that somehow your wife is alive, or has come back to life. You know that’s impossible, right?”

Carter’s jaw clenched as the words told. They were harsh, but necessarily so, Katar thought: false hope was a terrible thing.

“I’ve lived more than a hundred lives,” sighed Carter Hall. “Who’s to say what’s possible or not?”

Katar bit back a hasty reply. Shiera Hall had been mortally wounded, he wanted to remind his father, and had died of her injuries, her body destroyed in a storm of Nth power. The curse of Hath-Set had been ended, and the cycle of reincarnation was over. There would be no rebirth, no reunion… But Katar could not bring himself to say the words, however true they might be.

“Who was Valyra Thal?” Carter asked, almost to himself.

Katar shook his head. “I don’t know. At least, I’ve never heard her name before tonight. But if the woman you met in that tomb was telling the truth, and that was indeed Kar’taral who crashed on Earth thirty-three hundred years ago in that ship with her, then I suppose she was his partner, or maybe his wife. History never recorded her name, or even that she existed, for that matter…”

Carter thought about this for a moment. “Tell me again about Kar’taral.”

Katar shrugged. “There aren’t a lot of facts, just folk tales, really. They say he was the first wingman, that he discovered Nth Metal, and was the first to use it. At the time, Thanagar was a hellish place, lawless, barbaric and ruled by Seven Devils. The legends say Kar’taral united Thanagar and drove away the Seven Devils. Supposedly, he even slew one of them in single combat. Then, when there was peace for the first time in our history, he disappeared. The stories don’t say how or why. But the hierophants always said that one day, when Thanagar needed him the most, in a time when the fate of the whole universe would be in the balance, Kar’taral would return, the immortal warrior and hero…”

“And do you believe that I’m actually somehow the second coming of this man?”

Katar’s mouth quirked. “My mother always told me so,” he glanced over at his father, but Carter was deadly serious. “The hierophants have been proclaiming the eminent return of Kar’taral for decades now, and then you show up, a dead ringer for the man in all the statues and paintings.”

“And yet, I’ve seen his dead body. Seems--- what was the word you used?--- impossible?”

Katar stared at his father for a moment, at a loss. But he nodded his head, conceding the point.

“Alright, father. I’ll keep an open mind. But one more thing in case you were still in denial: Kar’taral may be moldering in some hole in Egypt, but his arrival on Earth did precipitate your destiny as Hawkman. Whatever is going on now is all tied together, and whatever began thirty-three centuries ago is now coming to a head.”

Carter was spared from answering by the soft chime of an alarm. They were almost to Feithera. Katar devoted his attention to finding a spot to land, just as the sun was coming up. It lit the horizon of mountainous crags and glacial ice. There was an ominous redness in the sky that gave everything the hue of spilled blood.

In the distance rose the spires and aeries of the hidden city of Feithera, transplanted from the Yucatan Jungle after it had been very publically re-discovered by Kendra and Professor George Emmett. Wanting only to live in peaceful contemplation, the Thanagarian exiles had completed what they called their Third Migration, moving from Mexico to Greenland and settling as far from civilized lands as they could. Both Hawkmen had visited the hidden city before, though, as it was protected by the former JSAer known as Northwind, Norda Cantrell, Carter’s half-Feitheran godson and Katar’s one-time comrade-in-arms. Both men would be glad to see Norda again, though Katar admitted it to himself grudgingly: like most Thanagarians, Katar reviled the Feitherans not just for their reclusive superstitions, but also for their long practice of interbreeding with the feral Manhawks.

They set the craft down just outside the city and flew the rest of the way. They could tell almost immediately something was wrong. There was a flurry of activity on the ground and in the air: winged figures were aloft in droves, circling and emitting keening, screeching wails of anguish or ecstasy, while below, Feitherans scurried about, some seemingly without purpose, as if in a trance.

“I don’t like this,” Katar flew with one hand on his Nth Mace. Several wild-eyed Feitherans careened towards them, and the Hawkmen were forced to veer aside to avoid a mid-air collision.

“Neither do I,” said Carter. “Let’s find Norda.” He banked and angled down into the city, making for a plaza amidst a cluster of elegant spiral towers.

Once on the ground, the two of them were mostly ignored by the aimlessly shambling Feitherans. Disturbingly, they seemed to have undergone a further physical transformation. While they were still mostly humanoid in shape, their feet were clawed, their hands ended in talons, their heads were beaked like a hawks, their eyes darting in swift predator-fashion. They had never looked more alien.

“What happened to them?” Katar’s lip curled. “I know they breed with Manhawks, but this transformation…?”

Carter glanced around, looking as uneasy as his son. “I’m not sure…” He halted a female Feitheran as she shuffled close to him, holding her by the arm. The woman stared blankly past him, a weird trilling coming from her. “What’s going on here? What’s happening to everyone?” But the woman acted as if she hadn’t heard him, pulled her arm away and moved along.

“It has something to do with the Mithras Meteor. Look: all of them are wearing small pieces of it around their necks, or in jewelry.” Carter referred to the strange radioactive stone that had decades ago fallen to Earth, in the midst of their city in the jungle.

Katar remembered it well. The Mithras Meteor had been worshipped as a sacred sending of their fallen and disgraced god, and had caused much mischief, mutating Feitherans and Manhawks into strange hybrids. “I thought I destroyed the damned thing years ago. Who would have guessed these fools would have scraped up the pieces?”

“Easy, Katar,” Carter indicated a fierce-looking Feitheran on the ledge of a nearby tower, his narrowed eyes on them; in his taloned hand was a spear. “I think some of them are more aware than others.” As if he’d understood him, the armed Feitheran spread his wings and flew away, towards an aerie on the nearest cliff face.

“At least we got someone’s attention,” Katar muttered. “I was starting to think Thasaro himself could appear in the middle---.” He stopped midsentence. At the mention of the Fallen One, every Feitheran within earshot turned toward them, and their keening sounds ceased. Heads cocked and they paused, as if waiting. Katar glanced at his father, “Must have been something I said.”

Carter nodded, holding up a hand to keep Katar from drawing his mace. Dozens of Feitherans were advancing on them, slowly, but more and more from every direction, and with a purpose. A new sound was coming from them now, a word in a long, drawn out exhalation: “Thasaro… Thasaro…”

“Seven Devils,” Katar spat, “This just keeps getting better and better.” He had his Nth Mace in his hand now, and took a fighting stance.

But before the Feitherans could close on them, a new voice rang out, a human voice, speaking an ancient Thanagarian tongue. “Voro kaw! Thasaro vaxa skree!”

A human in Feitheran dress appeared on the steps of a nearby building, waving his arms and repeating the phrase. The words pierced the single-minded purpose of the Feitherans, and they simply turned away. The human waved them over, towards the safety of the shelter.

“Professor Emmett,” Katar recognized his wife’s old mentor and colleague. “What in the Seven Hells is going on here?”

“Let’s get inside, first!” the portly scholar hustled them through the colonnaded portico into what appeared to be a huge, open lecture hall, an amphitheatre decorated with newly scrawled images of a hawk-headed god on the walls. “This used to be my academy. Until the hierophants took it over a few days ago…” During his study of Feitheran culture, George Emmett had fallen in love with a Feitheran woman, and so when Feithera undertook their Third Migration, he had been allowed to go along. Living among them, he, in turn, taught them the art and philosophy of Earth society, hoping to bridge the gap between the two civilizations.

Katar looked around, noting the scraps of raw meat on the floor, the gouges on the wooden benches, and the droppings on the ground. “What’s happening here, professor? Are the Feitherans… devolving?”

“I’m not sure,” Emmett stuttered, looking out through the open colonnade; there were no doors on the building, and the crowds of milling Feitherans could be glimpsed outside, but for now they were left alone. “Everything has happened so suddenly. Three days ago, every Feitheran had a seizure, started gibbering and foaming at the mouth. Most of them wore a Talisman of Thasaro, you may have noticed, a piece of the Mithras Meteor--- you may remember, Katar, the one that turned Lion-Mane---.”

“I remember,” Katar interrupted, gesturing for the scholar to get on with it.

“Well, the Talismans started glowing, and in the radiation, they all transformed into what you see out there. Even my Sparrah,” his voice caught, but he swallowed and continued. “And when they woke up, they all seemed to be in a religious trance, waiting for something and repeating the same thing over and over again.”

“That weird keening noise,” Carter interjected. “What does it mean?”

“It’s a prayer to Thasaro, their god,” Emmett looked nervous. “They don’t vocalize normally any more, but as best as I can make it, they’re saying, Seven Devils awake to Thanagar’s woe. The Fallen One rises: Thasaro calls his children home…”

The words hit Katar like a blow. He did not consider himself superstitious, but the subjugation of his world by the Seven Devils was a matter of historical fact. He’d always been taught they were driven out, not destroyed, and that there would come a day when they would return. A day of final reckoning. A day when the great hero Kar’taral would return…

“It’s all true…” He turned to his father. Carter Hall only stared back at his son, opened his mouth to speak, but could find no words. “Do you believe it now, father? It really is the Great Disaster…”

A commotion outside grabbed their attention. The three of them ran to the entrance, and stared up into the sky, where a battle seemed to be going on. A being of shining light wheeled and darted above them, striking at the winged Feitherans with javelins of energy, knocking them out of the sky. Screeches and wails echoed through the hidden valley as they fell to earth.

“I can’t believe it…” moaned Professor Emmett. “This was foretold in the Madrigals, but I never dreamed...” His voice trailed off in disbelief.

“What?” Katar seized the academic by the arm, looking from him, to the battle in the sky. Meanwhile, his father moved as if in a trance himself, staring upward. “What’s going on, professor?”

George Emmett looked at Katar, and the terror in his eyes was real. “It’s the Shrike.”

The shining being lowered herself on widespread wings of pure Nth Force. In each hand she held a spike of sizzling power. Her hair was blowing back as if she existed in the midst of a constant hurricane of invisible winds, and her eyes were wide and wild and fixed on one target: Carter Hall.

“Kar’taral!” Her voice reverberated and thrummed, almost hurt Katar’s ears. His father stepped forward and the Shrike floated downwards, hovering mere feet above him. The light poured off of her in shimmering waves, and even through the lenses of his helm, Katar was forced to shield his eyes with one hand.

“Valyra…” He thought he heard his father whisper.

“It is over at last, my beloved,” intoned the Shrike in a voice that carried to every corner of the city. She crossed the javelins of Nth Force in front of her body, like a warrior saluting a foe, the energy clashing and crackling loudly, then held them on either side of her, ready to slash. “Surrender the Silver Scarab to me, or I will destroy this city and everyone in it.”

At the mention of the Silver Scarab, George Emmett gasped. But Katar had no time to follow it up.

“Don’t do this, Valyra,” Carter called up to her in a calm, even voice. “Please…”

The face that looked so much like Shiera Hall’s twisted into sudden rage. “Give me the Scarab!”

“I don’t have it,” said Carter. He had drawn no weapon. He faced her, utterly vulnerable and completely defenseless.

The Shrike reared back, her wings flaring even wider, and she raised her arms. “Then this is the end, indeed, my beloved! If I can’t bring my lord and master what he seeks, than I will bring him your head.” And with a gurgling cry, she stabbed down at his exposed breast with a fatal fury…

TO BE CONCLUDED!