Screams filled the city of white, gleaming metal.
Some came from the thousands of citizens fleeing through streets split by collapsing roads and falling glass. Others came from the towers themselves, as metal supports bent and entire levels folded under their own weight.
Above it all rose the roar of the monster destroying the city.
It stood five hundred feet tall, its body shaped like an upright reptile covered in dark armored plates. Thick tentacles hung from its face like a beard, twisting and snapping at anything that moved. When it turned its head, the tentacles wrapped around one of the city’s tallest buildings and began to pull.
The tower broke.
Inside, a blue-skinned child with four arms stumbled across the shaking floor. His face, narrow and scaled, resembled a frog. He cried out as the wall split beside him and the room tilted.
His mother rushed to him.
She gathered him into her arms, all four of hers closing around him as the building lurched again. There was nowhere to run. The child buried his face against her chest, waiting for the end to come with the falling tower.
It did not come.
The building stopped moving.
Both of them froze in place.
Then the child looked up.
A vast green hand had wrapped around the outside of the tower, holding it in place before the monster could tear it free. Emerald supports appeared across the damaged floors, sliding through the structure. The broken walls locked together. The ceiling stopped buckling. The whole building groaned, but it did not fall.
A figure hovered in the sky.
A man in emerald light.
His green cape billowed in the wind as he descended toward them, his eyes moving from the child to his mother, and then to the damaged room around them.
A glowing green box appeared beside them, open on one side.
“Get in,” the man said. “It will take you away from the city.”
The mother did not waste time asking questions. She carried her child into the construct, and the box sealed around them before lifting away from the building.
The boy pressed his hands against the transparent green wall and looked down.
There were thousands of boxes like his, flying through the city and carrying thousands away from the battle.
The emerald man watched them go.
Then he turned toward the monster.
Max’s expression hardened.
Usually, he did not leave Oa for long. The Battery demanded too much attention, and every session inside the Source left him feeling as though his soul had been ripped apart and then badly reassembled. After the latest attempt, he had needed time away from it all.
So he had gone traveling.
Done some mapping.
Done some old-fashioned hero work.
Like he was doing now.
Below, the military continued attacking the creature. Aircraft circled through the smoke and fired concentrated beams into its hide. Armored soldiers held ruined intersections, covering civilians as they retreated into shelters. Their weapons did almost nothing. The monster barely reacted, but the soldiers kept firing.
Brave, Max thought.
He flew.
The air split around him as he crossed the city and struck the monster in the chest. Shockwaves erupted from the impact, breaking every pane of glass in the nearby buildings.
The blow lifted the creature off its feet. Its roar cut short as Max drove it upward. Emerald chains wrapped around its limbs, followed by a cage forming around its body. The bars locked together, thickening with each passing second until the creature hung suspended over the city inside a prison of green light.
Max kept pushing it higher.
The monster thrashed inside the construct, tentacles slamming against the bars, claws scraping along the surface.
The cage held.
For several seconds.
The monster dug both clawed hands into the construct and pulled. The cage cracked. Emerald fragments burst outward as the creature tore the prison open through sheer force.
Max blinked.
“Oh. That’s annoying.”
The monster fell.
It struck the ocean beyond the city with enough force to send a wall of water rushing toward the coast.
Max dropped toward the shoreline.
A seawall rose before the tsunami. It began as a single emerald barrier stretching across the bay, then expanded into layered walls. The wave struck and climbed, roaring against the construct, but the wall held. Water split along its sides and surged harmlessly away from the city.
The monster had vanished beneath the waves.
His trip away from Oa had not been meant to become a hunt for a five-hundred-foot lizard-squid thing, but that was how these things tended to go. He had spent much of the journey mapping the five thousand sectors he intended to divide the universe into. Ten thousand Lanterns, two per sector, partners watching each other’s backs.
It still sounded absurd when he thought of it like that.
Ten thousand people guarding a universe.
And yet one Green Lantern in the right place could save a city like this from a disaster even bigger than this.
He had even found the region where Earth would one day form. There had been no Sun there yet, only a dying star near the end of its life. From its corpse, the Sun would be born.
Less than four billion years still remained.
Too long for a man.
Not so long for what he had become. Well, maybe a bit too long, but time in the Source was a way to pass it quicker. An hour in there, and hundreds of years could pass in the physical world.
During this journey away from Oa, Max had helped where he could. Pirate fleets, tyrants, planetary disasters. It did not matter. If he saw injustice or danger, he acted. He was the Guardian, after all. He had become an Elder to strengthen himself, but the Power Primordial did not give without shaping itself around obsession.
The Collector collected.
The Grandmaster played.
The Gardener cultivated.
The Champion fought.
The Obliterator destroyed.
And Max guarded. Protected.
Yes, that was an apt description.
Protecting life was already what he wanted. If the Power Primordial strengthened that purpose, then fine. Let it.
Then he saw what obsession had done to some of the others.
Not long ago, he had discovered that Maht Pacle had been hunting the remnants of his own species. The Obliterator had called it unfinished business. A necessary end to a weak and treacherous people. He had continued doing the same to other civilizations as well, so Max intervened personally.
That had led to the first true conflict among the Elders.
Eight hundred million years since their founding, and the brotherhood they had sworn to uphold was already beginning to crack beneath the weight of what each of them was becoming. The meeting that followed had been tense. Rules were argued over. Boundaries were redrawn. Threats were made politely, then less politely.
They had solved it in a way.
Maht lived.
His intended victims lived.
The Elders remained together.
But Max no longer pretended their alliance would hold forever simply because they had once called each other brothers.
Still, many of them were useful allies.
Some were still friends.
That would have to be enough.
The ocean exploded, and Max sensed the monster beginning to burst out before it did.
He twisted aside as the monster’s arm burst through the seawall’s edge. The creature rose from the water with a roar, waves pouring from its armored body as its tentacles lashed toward the city again.
“Nope.”
Max created the first rocket construct around the monster’s right arm.
Then another around its left.
More formed around its torso, legs, neck, and tail, each one locking into place before igniting with emerald fire. The creature tried to rip them free, but Max reinforced them faster than it could break them.
The rockets fired together.
The monster shot upward.
It roared as the constructs dragged it out of the ocean, past the clouds, and beyond the atmosphere. Max watched the monster rise into space.
And that takes care of that, Max thought.
He flew back down toward the city.
The defenders saw him descend.
At first, only a few cheered. Then the sound spread across the city. Soldiers raised weapons into the air. Rescue workers stopped long enough to look up. Some of the citizens fell to their knees. Others pressed their heads to the ground, hands raised toward him as if afraid to look directly at whatever they believed had saved them.
Max grimaced.
And another religion has been formed.
He created more constructs. Humanoid figures of emerald light moved through the rubble, lifting fallen beams, cutting through twisted metal, and searching collapsed buildings for survivors.
Max remained above the main avenue, watching the city and directing the constructs.
More people arrived from other cities, then from all over the world.
Seven out of ten for disaster relief speed, Max thought, ranking them against the many planets he had visited.
He did not move from the spot until he noticed a familiar figure standing atop a broken skyscraper.
Death watched the rescue efforts in silence.
She wore a dark robe that covered nearly all of her body. Only her pale face remained visible beneath the hood, her expression calm while the city suffered below.
Max flew toward her and landed on the ruined tower.
“Shouldn’t you be down there?” he asked.
Death glanced at him.
“Doing what?”
“I don’t know. Guiding the dead to wherever they go.”
Amusement touched her face.
“Why would I do that?”
Max looked at her.
She raised one hand and pointed toward the street below.
A hooded figure stood beside a line of bodies near a collapsed shelter. It was not visible to the living. Its face was hidden behind a mask of carved bone, and a chain of small bells hung from one skeletal hand.
“That,” Death said, “is the god of death these people believe exists.”
Max watched the hooded figure kneel beside one of the dead.
She smiled.
“Why would I spend my time collecting every mortal soul by hand?”
Max looked down again.
A rescue worker had uncovered a family beneath the remains of a collapsed shelter. Two children were alive, coughing dust into the air as medics lifted them free. Their mother was not. The father knelt beside her, one hand pressed over his mouth.
Death watched him without expression.
Max had known her for a long time now, though knowing Death was not the same as understanding her. In the early years of their friendship, if that was even the right word, she had been detached, sardonic, and cold in a way that made even Galactus seem warm by comparison. She viewed the universe with a dispassionate eye, less a villain than a reluctant judge of the balance all living things eventually reached.
She was not malicious.
Not exactly.
But she had another side, one Max had only begun to understand after centuries of meetings, conversations, and arguments.
Death liked being noticed.
She liked drama. She liked obsession, and she liked being obsessed over, especially when it came from beings powerful enough to believe their devotion mattered.
She had vanity.
A great deal of it.
And yet, over time, their friendship had changed him and also her.
At first, she had visited because he amused her. Max did not worship her. He did not fear her in the way most beings and entities did. He did not slaughter worlds for a glance or offer the names of his enemies like gifts.
When she appeared, their time always ended in argument. Always something philosophical. Always some debate about life, death, purpose, or meaning.
She kept returning anyway.
Max was an equal, or close enough to keep her attention.
Eventually, Max understood something else.
Death was alone.
Not in the way he was. Max’s loneliness came from distance, time, and the knowledge that everyone he loved waited billions of years beyond his reach. Death’s loneliness was stranger. Everyone came to her wanting something. Escape. Mercy. Power. Meaning. Reunion. Immortality. Oblivion.
Even gods approached her as a function rather than a person.
Death looked at him for a long moment.
Then she waved her hand.
Max could now see the souls of the dead.
They were scattered throughout the city, faint and luminous beside the places where their bodies had fallen. Some wandered in confusion. Others remained beside loved ones who could no longer hear them. A few already followed the hooded god, their shapes fading as he led them away.
Below, the father at the shelter lifted his dead wife into his arms.
Her soul stood beside her own body, staring down at herself with wide, frightened eyes. She looked at her husband. Then at her children. Her mouth moved, but no sound reached the living.
Death vanished from the tower.
She appeared beside the woman, unseen by every living person in the street.
The woman’s soul turned toward her and recoiled at first. Death said nothing. She only waited, one hand extended.
Then she looked back at Max.
He held her gaze from the broken tower.
After a moment, Death turned to the woman again and offered her hand.
The soul hesitated.
Then she took it.
Max watched as Death spoke to her. He could not hear the words from above, but he saw the woman’s fear ease. Her shoulders lowered. She looked at her family one final time, touching her fingers to the faces of children who could no longer feel her.
Then Death guided her away.
A few seconds later, she returned to Max’s side.
He looked at her.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
Death only shrugged.
“It was different. But still, I can never understand them.”
“Well,” Max said, still looking at the street below, “what you did was kind.”
Death’s expression did not change.
“Kindness is not my purpose.”
“No,” Max said. “But you still did it.”
She looked at him then, and for a moment the distant indifference in her eyes thinned into something more curious.
“I wonder,” she said, “if perhaps this is because of your nature, Ion. Your mortal nature. You love them so fiercely, even though their lives are little more than a breath to beings like us.”
Max turned toward her. “I’m not mortal. Well, not anymore.”
“Ah. I see. You have lived as one,” Death said. “I can see it in you.”
Max said nothing.
“That is why you are different from us.”
There was silence between them for a while.
“Maybe you should try it.”
Death stared at him.
Then she laughed.
It was such a rare sound that Max actually turned fully toward her. He had heard her laugh only once before.
“You may be the only entity in the multiverse that has mastered humor.”
“I was serious.”
That made her stop.
Max leaned one shoulder against a broken support beam jutting from the tower’s roof.
“I mean it. Spend a day as a mortal. Or two. Actually live like one. Feel time the way they do. Eat, sleep, and maybe even love.”
Death’s amusement faded into a softer, colder thing.
“You believe that would teach me about them?”
“I think it would teach you about yourself.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
“I understand myself perfectly well.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
A silence followed.
For a moment, Max thought he had pushed too far. With Death, the line was always difficult to see. She could tolerate irreverence better than most cosmic beings, but there were doors even she preferred left closed.
Then her mouth curved faintly.
“You should return to Oa.”
“That was a very clean subject change.”
“You have been gone too long.”
“Veridion can manage without me for a while.”
“Can he?”
Max’s posture shifted.
Death turned away from the ruined city and looked toward the sky.
“Your Celestial has been scheming.”
Max pushed off the support beam. “Veridion?”
“A Celestial who loves life,” Death said. “Perhaps too much.”
“What does that mean?”
She faced him again.
For a moment, her pale face changed. Skin faded into bone until a skull looked out from beneath the dark hood. Then the flesh returned, black lips shaping into a smile.
“You have a blind spot for him, Lantern. He is growing impatient.”
His eyes narrowed.
Death stepped closer.
“His intentions are noble, but secrets are still secrets, and I have a feeling you will not like this one.”
“What secrets?”
She smiled.
Then she vanished.
Max rose into the air and shot upward into space, wondering what secrets Veridion was hiding from him.
.
.
.
Next chapter.