The surface of the planet Zynzir burned, the atmosphere set aflame. The screams of the millions below were silenced in space, but Haral floated in space as if he could hear every single one. Glowing green, he turned his head, the two eyestalks moving first so that he could see the ship slowly floating away, heading for the far corner of his Sector. Invisible to anyone but the telepaths and empaths of his home planet, he could feel the darkness oozing from the cruiser, leaving behind a wake of misery.
Glowing green once more, his ring powering his body and suit, he shot through space after the cruiser, punching a hole in the side of it without hesitation. The people on board the ship were not the innocents of Zynzir. They were monsters, creatures of unnatural life, and would thank him for the end to their wretched lives. Haral frowned beneath a face with no nose, his heavy clawed tentacle feet clutching the ship and shoving him inside the hole he had made.
The alarm was already going off, screeching that something had broken into the ship, a villain to the villains. He moved out of the room that was already shutting its self off from the decompression, his orange blue skin throbbing a little from the sudden temperature change. His people loved the cold of space, and this ship was not just warm. It was tropical. He grit his teeth and ignored the irritation, leaving destruction in his wake, but keeping himself in check. It was her he was after, not her slaves.
It was simple to get from his entry spot to the bridge. Mostly because the undead slaves of Lady Styx had obviously been ordered to let him through, but put up a fight if they so chose to. Most were dropped to the ground with one or two hits, the ones truly worth anything on the bridge. Her personal guardians. The Darkstars.
The Darkstars stood quietly on the bridge in front of a massive platform, home to only one thing, a throne. All of them wore uniforms, red and black, with the black multi-pointed stars on their chests. Within the star, there was a piece of metal, a circle that had visible workings on the outside that moved on its own, the purpose of which was lost to him. There were, thankfully, no familiar faces there as he looked them all over. But it was the figure on the dais that was his true concern.
She sat casually on the throne, four slender arms with blue skin pulled tight over them, five clawed fingers per arm all tapping the arms of the throne. Her yellow eyes, pupil free and glowing, looked down at him as a smirk touched her lips, letting him see the pointed teeth inside. Slender, her tail curled around the base of the throne, her long legs settled comfortably with the left crossed over the right. The only clothing she wore to conceal her genitalia-free body was an amulet around her neck that matched the metal pieces of the Darkstars uniforms.
Her head cocked to the side as she looked him over, the crest of cartilage coming from the top of her head moving with her easily. She was Lady Styx, the Dark Mistress of the cosmos, and she was watching him with some interest, that smirk getting just a little wider, just a bit more entertained.
“A Fjerian?” She said, amusement mild in her tone. “I thought your kind were mostly Blue Lanterns. How rare to see one in green.”
Haral frowned, “For crimes against the planet Zynzir and twenty four other worlds and Sectors, you are here by under arrest, Lady Styx.”
She laughed this time, a sound that reminded him of an animal being tortured to death. “I am under arrest? How many more fools will the Guardians send to me? But you're interesting, I think, perhaps, you should join us.”
That apparently was the only thing the Darkstars needed to hear. Within a fraction of a second they had moved, surrounding Haral with their fists clenched, their dead eyes, gray and free of any iris or pupil, turned on him. He frowned, the green glow around him growing as suddenly as they moved to encircle him, lashing outward in a tidal wave of energy, knocking them back. One was already up again, sending yellow energy towards him.
Raising a shield of green, he used his other hand to swing a chain and mace, wrapping it around the attacker's throat and jerk him past into a Darkstar that had risen up behind Haral. A female with angry looking fangs darted forward and was shield rushed, two of those fangs dropping onto the floor as she spat out a gob of dark blood, unable to stand for the vertigo that he had caused. More came, and more were shoved away from him, torn apart by the scythes he had brought to life behind himself, others just thrown back by the inertia of those flying through the air.
It felt as if it were taking hours to fight through the legion of bodyguards, but he knew that only a few minutes had passed. Minutes enough that Lady Styx herself had risen from her dais and came down on steps that floated without support. Her tail was lifted just slightly out of the air behind her as she walked along, smiling ever so slightly as Haral threw another of her Darkstars through a wall, the bodyguard not returning.
Ready for her, he built a prison around her, an octahedron of green energy, the walls closing in and sealing her there. She looked up at him slowly with those yellow eyes, smirking as she touched the walls he had built around her.
“Is this the strength of will? Little walls so thin I can see through them?” She asked.
Haral stood quietly, the Darkstars moving slowly now that they had been cut off from their mistress. “You will come to Oa with me for judgment.”
“And punishment, I'm sure.” She cooed softly. “But my dear Fjerian, haven't you noticed that it's getting just a little warm in here?”
His body temperature had indeed been rising, but he noticed that even the Darkstars were beginning to sweat. Lady Styx stood calmly within her prison, waiting for him to realize what was going on. After a moment, he felt it, the strain of his two hearts to keep his cold blood moving even as his body heated beyond the cooling point. The trap had been set so elegantly with the burning of a planet at the very edge of his Sector, with the ship so lazily drifting away. The pain in his chest was sudden and abrupt as he began having a heart attack.
“That little planet was nothing.” She said quietly, watching calmly as he grabbed his chest, dropping to the ground.
The green prison around the silver blue alien dropped as well, and she walked over to the Fjerian male, watching as he struggled to breathe through the crushing pain. Her tail swung once, and the end, razor sharp, pierced his side, injecting her neurotoxin into his system. Haral immediately went into a seizure as she stood over him, the poison coursing through his body as his heart struggled to keep from just stopping all together.
“I was just curious to see what kind of Darkstar a Lantern would make.” Lady Styx continued, watching him convulse.
The ring on his middle finger pulsed suddenly, and the alarm went off that there was decompression somewhere else in the ship. Lady Styx smiled, looking down at him.
“And who just arrived?”
Haral could not answer, his muscles refusing to cooperate with the poison in his body. He did not have to wait long to see the green glow though, the relief in his mind nothing compared to the agony his body was in. The ring would not fall into the wrong hands. The door to the bridge began to slide open and was then thrown inward, bending irreparably around the walls, revealing another glowing figure. He had hoped it would be someone of his own color of the spectrum.
The figure was too slender, petite in stature to be any of the hulking members that had been with the Corps for a while that he had hoped for. She was also the wrong color. Violet light shone around her instead of green, but it was still relief. He recognized her. A Lantern who had thus far resisted the darkness of the tenuously balanced Violet Lantern power, Ceraphel from the planet Els, stood in the doorway, throbbing with violet light. He found the strength to slowly reach over, trying to take aim at Styx. The others were too busy throwing themselves at the Elsian female to notice him.
She was more impressive than he had expected from a species so like his own in ability. She had several wrapped in chains while still fighting with two more, guarding against energy blasts from her back. Haral groaned and her attention turned to him, her eyes melon orange behind her violet domino mask. Approaching him, she was slowly looking around for Lady Styx who had disappeared somewhere.
Kneeling down, she put a hand on the side of his face. “Haral...”
“Ceraphel. Go, warn them. You must.” He managed, though his mouth did not want to work.
She shook her head, trying to lift him up. “Not without you. We'll get you back to Oa...”
Something burned painfully across her back, and Cera turned, her own emotions flaring as she saw the Darkstar with the barbed whip in his hand that had come down on her back, from one shoulder to her hip, while she was trying to get Haral out of there. The pain was an angry reminder of not paying attention while she covered her own arms in her constructs, letting the whip slice through them if only because the dust they would drop would help them escape.
Haral wanted to say something, at least to thank her for her kindness in thinking she could save his life. But he knew that it was over. He knew that he was going to die there on the ship, or become a zombie protector of the bane of the galaxy. He was going to try and tell her goodbye, but saw something move overhead, something familiar, and for one more moment, his hand was able to rise, to point at his comrade this time. Gathering all the power the ring had, he blew her towards the glass of the bridge, just as Lady Styx dropped down to where Ceraphel had been.
There was something in her hand, a circle of metal with a long stiletto on the end. For a moment he watched as the stiletto broke into several needle-thin barbs, and then cried out as Lady Styx stabbed it into his chest. The needles pierced his hearts, holding onto both and the cartilage cage that they sat in on his chest, as the green of his uniform faded and turned dark, red and black washing over him.
The last thing he saw before sweeping darkness cloaked his mind was Ceraphel flying through the thick glass, his green energy protecting her as she shot out into space, a comet of flesh and energy. His body convulsed again, and in a moment he got up, straightening as he floated over the ground, bowing deeply to Lady Styx.
She smiled, patting his cheek. “Where did you send her?”
“A far away planet, oh goddess,” he replied quietly.
“And that would be?”
“One inhabited by very few.”
She nodded and slowly walked back to the dais, climbing the steps and sitting down. The Elsians were a species less likely of producing powerful Lantern material. The Elsian was also aware of where Lady Styx was. It would only be a matter of time before the Elsian female reported back to the Guardians where she was. Then the hunt would begin anew.
“Then by all means, let’s go make sure the poor thing is okay,” Lady Styx ordered.
The ship began to turn around, making a lazy pass towards the green and violet streak that had already disappeared into space. It would only be a matter of time until they reached the planet, and found one more to add to the ship's crew.
*********************
It felt as if she had been floating through space forever.
Haral's power boost had only pushed her so far. Just a few light years and she had slowed, coming to a floating stop in space. Her Sector was next to Haral's, it's how she knew to come check out what had happened to the planet Zynzir, feeling the pain of the people who had died there, the crippling loss of love. She saw the ship, and the hole in it, and angrily thrust her way inside, only to discover something she had only learned about in stories.
Lady Styx. Darkstars. They were real, and so close to her home and her Sector. They had also killed Haral, and then turned him into one of those slaves just as he sent her out through the glass. She suspected it was as much to save her from having been killed as to get her to send word to the others. Ceraphel did not have time to waste being angry at herself for not watching her back, or grieving for Haral. There would be time for that later.
Her energy was ebbing, and she was in pain. The wound on her back ached terribly, the whip somehow having cut right through her uniform, right down to the flesh. She would have to do something about it once she got to a planet and could recharge her ring. Then it was a question of discovering where she was, and trying to get back to somewhere, someone who could be warned.
Eventually, she saw a planet, a far off place she was unfamiliar with. But any planet was better than floating in space, waiting for her energy to completely drain. Ceraphel used a surge of energy from her ring and dropped down through the planet's atmosphere and the clouds, drifting down through the sky. She knew she would look like a violet bird, feathered and surrounding a figure, as she dropped from the atmosphere, but that was just a risk she would have to take.
When she landed, she stumbled forward, being on her feet too much after the fight and the wound. Cera dropped to her knees and tried to get herself to some shelter, a copse of trees not too far off, but she had a hard time getting back onto her feet. Her uniform faded, leaving her in the sleeveless, high necked dress she had been wearing before she knew she had to find out what was going on.
Within the trees, she collapsed on her side, hopefully safe for now, dark aquamarine hair hanging down her back and shoulders, her skin not having the healthy glow of champagne gold that her people should have had. Cera knew she should have been trying to find help, but all she wanted to do was rest. Rest her body, her eyes, and the world went dark.
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