Chapter Text
Rimbor was an idyllic planet of lush flora and sprawling grasslands. Its people were known to be open and kind and war had not been waged upon that planet in eighteen thousand years.
Now the tally had been turned all the way back to zero and war tortured the once peaceful planet. Dark, ominous ships trawled the smog-choked skies and hordes of hellhounds and Apokoliptian land-ravagers clawed and desecrated the rolling hills and thick pelted forests.
The spear-head of their attack crawled slowly across an open field, headed for the last unconquered city, the capital.
For as much time as they had known peace they had cultivated little in the way of war and the only thing standing between their utter decimation and freedom were the heroes who had answered their call for aid.
“Is it just me or do the parademons get uglier each time we see them?” Nightwing asked as he staggered away from a cluster of the soulless, unthinking husks Darksied employed as his army. He was one escrima stick down and held onto his side where blood oozed slowly between his fingers.
Superman flew by him, taking out several of the fiends in a single punch. “It’s not just you, Nightwing. We’ve been fighting so much I’ve started to recognize some of them when they reanimate.”
“Tell me about it,” Kyle Rayner laughed obnoxiously as he swooped down. He willed his construct into the shape of a trebuchet, flinging parademons across the battlefield. “I named that one Gary!” He pointed to a charging parademon and sent out a boxing glove, punching the reanimated parademon in the face and sending him sprawling into a knot of his cohorts. “Bye Gary!”
Despite Kyle’s forced levity, Dick and all of his fellow heroes knew the situation was grim. This was the fifth planet Darksied had declared war on for some reason or another, usually deceptive accusations. Rimbor had called for help to protect their planet from the war and this time the accusations were so frail the Guardians of the Universe had finally deigned to step in and subsequently the Justice League had decided to offer their help as well.
But they were losing and badly.
Dick tried to take a step forward, to launch himself back into the fight as he usually did but a stitch in his side nearly took him to his knees. The injury all but screamed for attention. Every moment was agony. His breath hitched painfully and he was forced to lean on a destroyed Rimbor spaceship to keep from teetering over. Double vision caused his eyes to blur to the point that he didn’t see Hal Jordan until the Lantern was almost upon him.
“Hang on, kid, let’s get you back to the Watchtower.” Hal Jordan constructed a stretcher with his ring and Dick slumped into it.
“You shouldn’t waste your time, Hal,” Dick grunted through clenched teeth. “Just a little scrape, I’ll be alright.”
“That ‘little scrape’ is gonna have you bleeding out if I don’t get you back to the Watchtower, and Spooky will kill me if the former Boy Wonder dies while he’s off helping the citizens evacuate,” Hal scoffed as he flew with as much haste as he dared up towards the Watchtower.
The bastion of Earth’s defense was far outside of its normal orbit and had seen far better days.
Fighting a losing war with Darksied as he launched his final attack against all life and free-will in the cosmos did tend to have the effect, Dick noted with maudlin humor as he stared up at the Watchtower and tried to repel his growing dismay.
Most of the Watchtower’s panels were scorched and singed and it was missing a huge chunk our of the left quadrant of its quasi-cylindrical mass. The ship bay was only half operational and the rest of it was barely being held together by Cyborg AND Lex Luthor’s efforts.
The fact that they were relying on Luthor at all said a lot. Things were desperate. Beyond desperate. Lex Luthor, Vandal Savage, and every still surviving member of the Light, the evil organization that conspired to undo everything the heroes held dear, were assisting in whatever capacity they could.
And still it wasn’t enough.
Dick turned his head weakly to the side to look over the battlefield and there he found more disheartening sights. The Green Lanterns and every hero that could answer the call from every planet they could summon for aid was down there, all of them, and they were still losing.
Darksied’s forces seemed infinite. His minions seemed stronger, more adept than ever before. The Furies, Kanto, Granny Goodness, Kalibak, Steppenwolf, and other zealots devoted to Darksied’s will marshalled their forces of parademons, hellhounds, and near indestructible machinery to rain down hellfire upon Rimbor and they were doing it flawlessly.
If Darksied conquered Rimbor he would gain access to their rare nth mines that would not only power all of his vessels but fuel his war machine to a near unlimited capacity.
And, in all reality, it had all been laughably easy to accomplish. Little by little he had taken out the other planets that had been allies of Rimbor and now was striking at Rimbor itself to take the last piece of the puzzle he needed before the real battle for the cosmos began. The plan was so deceptively simple – first Rimbor, and then the universe.
The sight of the doomed battlefield finally fell from Dick's view as Hal passed them through the rickety forcefield holding the Watchtower at bay from the assaulting Apokolips fliers. The smell of slagged metal, scorched oil, blood, and ozone filled the recycled air with a choking stench. Recovering heroes were flying back out to the battlefield, Hawkman, Big Barda, the Forever People and others, willing to fight to the very last.
Nightwing tried to sit up, tried to tell himself that his wounds weren’t that bad, but the dizziness and pain in his ribs told a different story and reluctantly he lay back down.
As if sensing the worsening of his injuries, Hal quickly navigated them to the med bay. He remained in flight for the hall leading to the med bay was filled with injured Rimborians and heroes, laid out where they could. When they came to the door of the med bay Dr. Midnight met them and shook his head. “I’m sorry but we’re filled far over capacity. He’ll have to be placed somewhere else.”
“Guess you’re coming along for the ride a while longer, kid,” Hal said, trying to be light but his voice was grim.
“I’ll send a Blue Lantern after you,” the overburdened Dr. Midnight promised and dipped back into the med bay again, barking orders.
Without waiting another moment the Green Lantern moved the construct stretcher along with him again and swiftly they came unto the main hall where the majority of gatherings took place.
At the front of the main hall stood the Guardians of the Universe. There were ten of them and they stood before the large monitors that captured the situation on the ground in vivid clarity. Nine were holding hands in deep meditation as they surrounded the tenth member who floated above their heads.
They hadn’t been there before, Dick thought weakly, worry heightening in his chest. They barely left Oa. If they were here now things were truly desperate.
“Ah so the little blue men finally decided to step down from on high and give us a hand?” Hal said, gently lowering Dick to the floor. A second later the Blue Lantern that Dr. Midnight had promised rushed to attend him and Hal stepped towards the Guardians. “Sorry I’m late to the party, had to pick up an injured pal while I could.”
The Blue Lantern, a Xudarian, helped Dick sit up, and hastily began tending to his wounds. As the Blue Lantern worked, Dick watched as one of the Guardian’s, Ganthet, turned to acknowledge Hal with a nod. “You are precisely on time, Hal Jordan. We have begun our final gambit.”
Hal frowned and stopped just a little ways behind the Guardians. He posted his fists at his hips and stared up at the monitors showing the desperate battle being fought below. “Hate that word, ‘final.’ Never a good sign.”
“In this instance it is an ill-omen indeed,” Ganthet replied grimly. The small creature tucked his hands into his voluminous sleeves and turned back towards the monitors. “As you know this is the final planet Darksied needs in order to complete his plans. He will not need the anti-life equation if he has the tools to reach the entire galaxy over. We must stop him now.”
“But how?” Hal asked.
Ganthet didn’t reply. Instead he closed his eyes and concentrated on the machinery in front of him, as if communing with it.
A beep from the Watchtower’s massive computer drew Dick’s attention as something shadowy and red shivered to life in front of the monitors. A hologram.
It was like no hologram Dick had ever seen before and he’d seen quite a few in his twenty years. It was as if the connection was archaic or the signal was being partially disrupted somehow. Absolutely nothing but frizzing shadows could be made out of the images that appeared.
“It must take mighty power for the Guardians of the Universe, the false-friends, to breach the cosmic storm,” a female voice that sounded staticky and far away said, much displeased.
“It does,” Ganthet said grimly. “We do not do this thing lightly. Who may we be speaking with? It is urgent we have words with your leader.”
“I am Luand’r, goddess of Tamaran. At my side is my husband, King Myrand’r, and around our divine person stands the court of Tamaran, Guardian of the Universe.”
“Goddess,” mumbled Hal. “That’s a level of ego I haven’t heard in a hot minute.”
The shadowed speaker didn’t hear the comment and demanded of Ganthet, “Speak your piece, Guardian, and then leave us be. Tamaran has no desire to commune with outsiders.”
“We have come to request what we did millennia ago,” replied Ganthet calmly. “Residual.”
Dick looked to Hal and, despite his newly healing injuries, stood up and limped towards the grim looking Hal Jordan. He lowered his voice below a whisper as Ganthet spoke and the other Guardians concentrated to keep the connection. “What’s going on, Hal?”
“Guardians are asking for help from an… unfriendly source,” Hal Jordan replied grimly. “Tamaraneans.”
Dick grimaced and rubbed the blue construct bandages around his torso. “Never heard of them.”
“Most species haven’t.” Hal shrugged. “Tamaran is extremely isolated. It’s the closet planet to the Source Wall and is completely cut off by a cosmic storm that’s been around for eons. Barely anything can go in there and even less comes out again. The storms too wild.”
Dick arched a brow. “Then how does anyone even know the Tamaraneans exist?”
“They’re technologically advanced with space-faring technology. If they wanted to leave their world in the center of the storm they could, but they don’t. They send out exploratory vessels to the edge of the storm and release probes to different worlds every couple of millennia to see what’s going on. They’re the only beings who can navigate the storm to even get to the edge of it. The Guardians believe they evolved the ability to do it because their planet is at the eye of the storm.
“That’s how we know they exist but no one’s ever seen a Tamaranean, not even the Guardians. But the Guardians did capture one of their probes like twenty-five hundred years ago. They conversed with the Guardians at one point and the Guardians, as they usually do, screwed up and pried uninvited into their business and learned some things that the Tamaraneans didn’t want them to know, which soured the Tamaraneans and they haven’t sent out a probe since but it’s how we learned about Residual.”
Before Dick could ask what Residual was, Ganthet finally finished speaking and the fuzzy shadow of a person in the hologram lurched to their feet. “The answer that the goddess of that age gave you oh so long ago is the answer of now, false-friend,” growled Luand’r. “You shall not have our Residual.”
“The problems of today are not the problems of before,” replied Ganthet. “Darksied marches and in his wake comes only annihilation.”
“But not to us,” replied Luand’r. “The goddess X’hal has ensured our safety, we remain safely nestled in her divine mane.”
Ganthet didn’t miss a beat. “Everyone else, then.”
“I feel greatly for those under peril but everyone else does not concern us.” The voice did not sound like it truly believed those words but for a divinity, Dick thought, it probably didn’t pay to be so cold.
“But they should!” came another staticky voice from the other side of the hologram though it was not the leader of the Tamaraneans.
The leader’s fuzzy image spun, gritting out scoldings and admonishments to the speaker just as another voice that did not belong to the Tamaraneans said, “Guardians. Conspiring again, I see.”
Ganthet unconsciously took a step back as a new hologram punched into the Watchtower’s security and the towering, ominous figure of Darksied fully and clearly stood solidly before them in holographic form.
The shadowed Tamaranean stiffened. “You are Darksied I take it?”
“I am.” The hologram of Darksied put its hands behind its back and turned to face the undecipherable Tamaranean hologram. “I have accessed their relays so that we may all converse and that I may give you warning, Queen Luand’r of Tamaran.”
“Goddess,” the woman corrected.
Darksied ignored her. “Do not interfere. Defy me or join with my enemies and you too shall be my enemy and, unlike the Gordanians, you will not crush me so easily.”
Dick didn’t know what a Gordanian was but the horrified gasp from the Tamaranean was enough to tell him it wasn’t good.
“How do you know of these things?” Luand’r demanded.
“I am Darksied,” was all the evil god replied.
The pronouncement seemed to rattle the Tamaranean. A long pause drew over the hologram.
“Oh," Darksied added, addressing those in the meeting hall, "and while I am denying you your last conceivable weapon against me, might I point out that your precious, pathetically defended Earth now also falls under attack?” the new god said without sparing the heroes and Guardians a glance.
“No!” Hal ran to the nearest bank of monitors and tapped in a code. A screen blipped on to a grim Kaldur slicing into soulless parademons with his water-bearers.
“Step aside, Hal Jordan,” demanded Darksied, “and let the Tamaraneans bear witness to my devastation.” Calmly, he gestured towards Hal bent over the monitor as he ignored the new god and desperately tried to find out how bad the sudden attack was on Earth. It made no difference if Hal obeyed or not; that he was panicking at all was message enough. “This will seem like a mercy compared to what I shall do to you, Tamaranean. Should you defy me, may it take millennia or eons, I will find a way through the cosmic storm and I will massacre your people. Have that on your soul.”
“Aquaman says it’s bad. Real bad! We’ve gotta get back to Earth!” Hal yelled. “Pronto!”
Something nearly akin to a smile twitched at the edges of Darksied’s mouth. “See how they scurry, Luand’r?”
“Don’t let him intimidate you like this!” Dick yelled. He grit his teeth and pushed his way towards the Guardians and the holograms. “We’re still fighting. We’re not backing down.”
“But you will be,” Darksied replied calmly. “Rimbor has lost faith in you heroes and has submitted to me. In a few minutes they will announce their defeat and demand the Guardians and their allies leave their planet at once, to which you must comply.”
Dick slashed a hand negatively through the air. “We won’t.”
“If he speaks the truth then we must,” Ganthet replied grimly.
Dick whirled to the little blue man, nearly staggering with the pain in his side. “We’re facing down the barrel of the end of the universe here! You’ve got to bend the rules.”
“You’re yelling at brick walls, kid,” Hal replied grimly. “They wouldn’t bend the rules if the rule was to bend rules.”
“Indeed,” Darksied agreed and slowly looked towards Nightwing. “Bear witness to my victory and realize that you are out of your element, little vigilante. Go back to scuttling in your rat-infested alleyways for purse snatchers and burglars for as long as you can. You don’t belong up here.”
Dick ignored him and pointed at the jittering Tamaranean hologram. “Are you going to let this happen? Are you going to sit on the only thing that can stop this madman because you’re afraid?”
“Watch your tone, alien,” Luand’r growled. “No, I do not enjoy the thought of this… Darksied conquering all life,” she openly confessed, “but my people would remain out of it. The goddess’s mane protects us from all outsiders so like you he cannot come uninvited to our system, but that is only for now. He speaks true of his endless days. If he were to discover a way through the goddess’s mane it would put my people in needless peril.”
Dick shook his head. “The worst thing you could ever do is agree to whatever Darksied asks of you.”
“And I am certain he would say the same of you,” Luand’r replied. “He has sworn to destroy us should we not remain out of the conflict and his days are without number. Can you say the same?”
Silence mantled the heroes. No, they couldn’t.
“Trillions will die without the Residual,” Ganthet said at last. “What you have is our last, best, good hope at making sure he stays in line.”
“But if you lose?” Luand’r asked. “If I willingly side with you, openly, my people may very well be added to those trillions.”
“And if you remain out of the conflict you have my promise that I shall never declare war on Tamaran,” Darksied said instantly.
The Tamaranean tilted something that must have been her head, Dick guessed, giving the promise all due consideration. It was a better offer than the heroes had. “And if you are as divine as the royal house of Tamaran, then your oath is forever. That settles it then, I will not grant the Residual to be given to you, Guardians of the Universe.”
“So that’s it?!” Dick snapped. “The entire cosmos except your itty-bitty pocket of it goes down because you’re a coward?!”
“Nightwing!” Hal Jordan barked. “You’re out of line.”
“That it is,” Luand’r agreed cooly. “As the goddess of Tamaran we heed our ancient traditions and they are unchanging as stone. Our decisions are law. We remain secure within the cosmic storm, X’hal’s mane, to live our lives in a way she would be most pleased. We are not accustomed to aliens or outsiders, we wish only to be left alone, to live in our traditions and customs in peace. That is our way.”
Dick took another step forward, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, but Darksied now prowls at your doorstep. He’s bullying you into inaction with fear. If you ally with him or if you remain neutral or stick to these traditions he wins.”
“If I openly support you I put a target on my people’s back for certain and he will not turn his eyes away from us ever,” countered Luand’r. “We know of the vengeance he declares upon his enemies. And though we are divine we are only descendants of X’hal and do not bear every aspect of her divine majesty.”
“You’re thinking too narrowly,” Ganthet replied firmly. “Your precious hold on your traditions and customs will spell the doom of trillions.”
Agitation growled from the Tamaranean. Obviously she was not used to her words being challenged. A fist slammed into something with a solid thunk. “Silence Guardian! You shall not beleaguer us or insult our traditions after your kind –
“There are other traditions!” one of the voices, the same from before, Dick thought, yelled out. The sound was a little garbled but a shadowed figure dashed forward, pushing their way into the fore of the hologram.
“My mother the goddess speaks of traditions, of our ways of life, but there are other beneficial traditions as well.”
The fuzzy outline of the leader clamored forward, her voice pitching high with outrage. “You cannot possibly suggest what I think you are.”
“I am –
“Get her out of here!” screamed Luand’r.
The voice got no further as the fuzzy, distorted blob that was the king stepped in, obviously trying to reconcile the two and the sudden outburst. The translation program they were using to converse fell inert so that they couldn’t understand what they were saying for several minutes.
When they finally turned it back on, the leader’s voice was worried and agitated. “This is madness,” she spat forcefully. “Never in all of Tamaranean history has this been done! I said get her out of here!”
“It is my choice!” the unknown voice screamed bravely.
Luand’r shook her head emphatically. “I will not allow it.”
“And still it is not your choice, goddess, my mother. These freedoms were passed onto us by the goddess X’hal herself. The same traditions you expound upon now.”
“And what solution are you offering exactly?” Ganthet asked the interloper.
The figure that was fighting from being dragged away shouted, “When the goddess X’hal chose a mortal Tamaranean to be her husband is said she offered him a wedding gift, anything that he could desire and his one desire was to be closer to her, to ascend unto the sun where she keeps her royal throne and so she allowed him flight and since then all Tamaraneans have enjoyed this gift. When the daughter of that union was to be married X’hal did the same, allowing the husband a gift upon their marriage day. Anything he desired and so it had been since going from goddess to goddess!”
Chaos reigned on the other side of the hologram, the divinity trying to shout for order and the king trying to keep them at bay as the interloper spoke, her voice rising high and clear over the chaos. “My name is Koriand’r, third daughter of the goddess Luand’r and king Myrand’r. I offer my hand so that whoever accepts may have the gift of their choosing, including the Residual!”
Dick’s mind spun. They were losing Rimbor, Earth was under attack, and the only thing that might give Darksied pause was in the center of a cosmic storm they couldn’t penetrate and yet this brave speaker on the other side of the hologram was daring her people, her parents wrath, everything, for the universe.
And in an instant the choice was made. “I accept!” Nightwing yelled.
“Nightwing no!” Hal Jordan yelled.
“I, as husband of the divine Luand’r bear witness to this proclamation of unity,” the king replied, yelling over the chaos in the Tamaranean court.
Darksied’s red eyes narrowed. The neutral look on his face melted into displeasure.
This was unexpected, Dick realized. If anything Darksied had simply appeared to make certain the Tamaraneans would stay out of the fight.
And now… now there was a real problem.
“Recant what your daughter has said, Luand’r,” Darksied warned.
The outline of the Tamaranean turned to Darksied. The disdain from Darksied, his disinclination to address her as goddess, and the fact that he believed he could order her about seemed to be the straws that finally broke the camel’s back, or perhaps she really did think of her traditions as highly as she had espoused. “I have said I am a Tamaranean of tradition, Darksied and that is what I am. By X’hal it is my daughter’s choice to wed any whom she deems as much as mine was to deny any aid. You are an outsider. You have no say.”
The displeasure upon Darksied’s face slowly turned into fury. “So be it….”
The hologram of Darksied shivered away and all in the main hall, whether they knew it or not, breathed a sigh of relief.
An instant later the announcement came for the heroes to depart from Rimbor.
“Looks like we’ve lost this battle,” Hal contemplated grimly then stared at the screen on Earth, “but not the war,” he said suddenly, hope swelling in his voice. “Aquaman says Darksied has retreated from Earth just as quickly as he came. Guess he wasn’t expecting that ruse.”
“It is no ruse,” Luand’r said grimly. “My daughter, foolish girl that she is, has given her hand. And one of you has accepted.”
“That would be me,” Dick admitted, raising his hand. He cringed a little inwardly. The one who had called their queen or goddess or whatever she was a coward.
Luand’r heaved a heavy sigh. “Meaning you shall have the Residual as a wedding gift if that is what you request.”
“That easy?” Hal remarked.
The fuzzy shadow of the leader stiffened. “Easy? Do you realize what these two have done?! The peril they have put my people into?! The horrors I shall be made witness to?”
“Not much of a choice when it’s trillions versus a wedding gift,” Hal Jordan said firmly.
“It is wrong,” Ganthet said flatly. “Archaic.”
Nightwing spun to face the little man. “We were just down on Rimbor getting our butts kicked and we lost on top of that! Rimbor just surrendered to Darksied so those nth mines are his!
“Darksied’s next move is going to be massive. We know that. We have to be ready. We have to be prepared and the only way we stand a chance is having the Residual.” He pointed at the fuzzy holo-screen. “And if that means playing archaic politics then so be it.”
“Perhaps the goddess, in all her glory and wisdom, can bear the death of trillions on her divine soul, but I cannot,” the voice of the interloper on the other side of the holo reiterated. “If a marriage can solve the problem and make this Darksied hesitate then a marriage it will be.”
“Fool of a girl!” growled Luand’r.
“But her choice regardless,” retorted the king who had supported his daughter. “Upon the day of your marriage the Residual will be granted to you as your wedding gift.”
“When does that happen?” Nightwing asked tensely. "The wedding, I mean."
“There are many rituals that must be observed. We cannot afford to hasten the process,” Luand’r clarified.
Trying to find a loophole out of this, more like, Dick thought.
“She’s right,” Hal replied. “And now we’ve got a little breathing room before stone-face makes his next move so we’ve got to take our time and prep accordingly. Knowing we’ve got Residual in our back pocket, he’ll be forced to think twice.”
Nightwing forced the trepidation out of his voice. “Great, so what do I need to do?”
“I would think the first step,” snarled Luand’r, “would be meeting and marrying your betrothed. We shall send coordinates to the edge of the cosmic storm where you shall meet one of our probes and that will in turn bring you to one of our ships within the storm. You will come alone, alien, and we shall see then just how far this farce shall go.”
The holo subsequently died and the nine Guardians collapsed from exhaustion from holding the link.
Hal Jordan moved towards one of the view ports of the Watchtower and watched as the heroes were forced to retreat back to the ship, limping and bruised and battered. “You know, kid, though I feel bad that we lost this fight, I feel sorrier for you. Spooky is going to blow a gasket when he finds out what you just did….”