Death's divine power was relentless—nothing it couldn't kill, nothing it couldn't unmake. It was the emblem of every ending. But fast as it went in, it went out. Within three seconds Thea felt her connection to it snap. The outcome wasn't subtle: the sheer volume of emotions had swarmed and overwhelmed her input. Ants could chew through an elephant. Raw power meant nothing when the enemy had numbers.
She poured in more. The ocean of emotion drowned it again.
"Let me try." Seeing her partner get tripped up, Diana sobered up too. One finger flashed green—courage. Another shimmered with flecks of gold—perseverance.
Perseverance lent her greater toughness. With perseverance, courage could push ever forward. Diana's raw strength might have fallen behind Thea's, but she'd earned her place as the world's protagonist. She'd broken past her own limits and was advancing steadily. Her godhoods harmonized beautifully with one another.
Unfortunately, even she lasted less than five seconds before the link was severed.
What now? The question hung between the two goddesses.
Thea's approach was to take problems apart one at a time.
It was emotional residue, wasn't it? She went to the Underworld first and pulled the four Guardians out of the reincarnation queue. She told them to reclaim their emotions from the ring.
"Your Majesty, we have no bodies. We can't retrieve emotions." The big-headed Guardian wore a flicker of cunning. The subtext was clear: With bodies, it'd be different. Perhaps you could resurrect us?
"If you had bodies, are you certain you could retrieve them?" Thea studied them coldly.
"That…?" The four Guardians exchanged glances. They weren't sure. Making promises you couldn't keep was a bad way to die twice.
Their hesitation stirred something in Thea. Standing face-to-face with death, even the Guardians—once so lofty and untouchable—were starting to talk nonsense.
She summoned her Secretary, Two-Face, with a wave. She pointed at the little blue men. "Penny, Burton, Bradley, Horuba—these fellows have done the cosmos some service. In light of past contributions, we'll suspend their reincarnation process. Wait for further notice from me."
Two-Face, cheerful as ever, acknowledged the order. Earlier, you were up in arms, acting like nothing short of reincarnating as a pig would satisfy public fury. Now they're useful, and suddenly they can be salvaged. Saintly or wicked, all depending on your mood. You're more two-faced than I am!
Thea then walked Two-Face through the identities one by one, matching faces to names. The initial registration had been sloppy—"Passerby One, Two, Three, Four" clearly didn't meet standards.
A few of the little blue men had acquired some value in the young miss's eyes. At the very least, they'd gotten their names back—no longer extras.
With the dead four granted a reprieve, Thea flew off to Odym. The deceased could wait. There were still two living Guardians here. She cut straight to the point and asked Ganthet and Sayd to retract the emotions in the ring.
The process wasn't pleasant. She'd already torn through Ganthet's soul searching for the ring—crude methods had battered the old man badly, shredding his defenses. Then the Fate Clock's backlash had finished the job. When Thea walked in, Ganthet was lying in bed, breath so faint he seemed already gone.
Sayd bristled at her on sight. But she'd long outgrown youthful temper. Faced with Thea's request, she made a long speech about her hardships—alone now, caring for her ailing partner, and on and on.
Thea conceded she may have been a touch rough. She gave Ganthet a thorough once-over. His injuries were severe, but he was among the strongest Guardians. A few passes of soul divine power, and he slowly came around.
Afterward, the two of them honored the agreement and drew out their share of the ring's emotions.
Thea reviewed the results with mixed feelings. The good news: extraction was possible. The bad news: nearly fifty individual emotional signatures were bound inside the ring.
Which meant fifty Guardians had participated in forging the original ring.
After eons, some had fled to Zamaron and founded the Star Sapphire Corps. Most had died—the three killed by Raven during Blackest Night; Scar, who committed suicide afterward; the one they killed after he fused with Parallax in Coast City; and all the others lost to the long grind of the ages.
Fifty originally. Now one she'd secretly imprisoned, two in front of her, eight guarding the First Lantern—eleven total. The rest, essentially all gone.
If Thea wanted to fully resolve the ring's emotional problem this way, her best bet was to do what the First Lantern had done: travel back ten billion years and "sweetly persuade" the full roster to retract their emotions.
She weighed it and decided the risk was too high. The little blue men's power curve was an interesting one. Early on, they were monstrous—Krona one-shot the Grandmaster, one-shot Galactus. That was the baseline. After that, it was all downhill. By now they were barely operating at Superman-tier. (Superman, off to the side: ...)
A ring-wearing, full-power First Lantern was a nightmare. And even that First Lantern had still been sealed by them. If she went back and had to fight fifty of them at once, she'd fare no better than he had.
For a ring that was, frankly, optional, it wasn't worth the gamble.
And there were other options. Just more tedious ones.
Everything died. Emotions were no exception.
Drop by drop, stone wore through. She couldn't spare the divine power—so she'd grind it down with death-aura. The Underworld was full of "people" she could draft.
Back in the Underworld, she built a new purification chamber beside her towering statue in the Death Temple.
The official line couldn't be "I'm conscripting everyone's death-aura to purify my ring." Her explanation was that sentient beings were invited to pay their respects—gazing at the many-hued ring, commemorating their own emotions long since lost.
The dazed and unaware couldn't provide much death-aura. Those still conscious in the Underworld weren't numerous, but the pool was vast—fifty-two parallel universes plus countless smaller worlds, every planet and realm with its own luminaries. Cumulatively, the numbers were staggering.
Countless notables received the order and came to pay respects. Most had no idea what the point was, but seeing that it cost them nothing, they performed the ritual sincerely or otherwise.
Thea offered a few perks at the right moments. Those who approached with genuine reverence were offered a choice of roles in the Underworld. Some elites wanted to start fresh. Others wanted to keep their memories and carry on contributing.
For many, "eternal life" in this form wasn't such a bad deal.
Case in point: the four advisors now at Thea's side.