ISSUE #5
Written by Emma Woods
January 2018
Written by Emma Woods
January 2018
"Blue Sun Falling - Conclusion"
The Mountain was waiting.
Uttered upon the lips of all those who dwelled within her, the words had become a mantra, echoing deep into the chasms, the very walls alive with it. Thane could feel its hunger, insatiable, he could feel the rage, the embittered malice of a granite heart that had been left to rot, one that thrummed with endless consistency, deep and loud and filling the air with its fury, saturating each every breath of its inhabitants.
Waiting.
The Mountain was waiting.
Thane had found himself alone, deep beneath the crust, knelt within a vein that spiralled towards the core, the walls as dark as blood. He could hear it, the whispers, the superstition that had plagued the minds of so very many finally taking purchase within his own psyche, filling his thoughts with such clarity, the whispers that demanded to be heard.
Waiting.
The Mountain was waiting.
A crack, a seismic shift, a single moment that would topple an endless tide of blood.
Thane opened his eyes, still holding his own breath, a decade of forced servitude hollowing out his core, leaving nothing left but an unfulfilled purpose. Dead, that was what he had said, no-one was left who remembered his name, he was already dead...
The Mountain was waiting.
Thane raised his hands up high, within one palm clutched a detonator and, all about him, enough munitions to rip the Mountain free from the very planet.
“Waiting...”
**********
Her palms had stopped bleeding.
Kara was alone amongst a sea of slumbering bodies, the slaves and dispossessed, the lost and forgotten, dozens of species crammed together to sleep like beasts upon an unflinching floor. They were fitful, surrounding her like a flock, the Last Daughter of Krypton a single pyre deep within the Mountain, a lingering fragment of hope.
The girl who fell from heaven.
Arisa had said that, the elfin girl who slept the soundest, an indomitable will amidst a pit of despair, and yet still Kara did not appreciate the significance.
She had not slept like the others, gripped by a sudden and manic need she had taken rock to wall and carved into the Mountain her brand, her shield, her mantra, months of trauma spilling out in one, wild, protracted spasm as she desperately clung to a sense of self. They had tried to break her, the Mountain had tried to break her, the Universe had tried to break her, and upon the anvil her spirit had been tested...
...
Her palms had finally stopped bleeding, the rock that she had used as a tool having dug deep into her calloused palms, leaving them a crimson ruin. But now, the flesh had healed, harder than before, and she could flex her fingers painfully, her hands prepared to form fists.
She hadn’t slept, Kara Zor-El unable to do so and yet, now, as months of repressed memories had been allowed to resurface, it was suddenly impossible to keep her eyes open. She blinked, her soul heavy, she blinked...
...
... and released a startled scream as rough hands grasped her, the slight, young woman ripped free from her place amongst the others and yanked up onto her feet. Strangers seized her far smaller frame, grappling her even as she flailed, pinning her arms to her side as they growled and shouted, short and sharp sounds that promised violence. The wolves had come amongst the sheep and were here to drag her away, a bag shoved down hard over her head.
The others were thrust awake immediately, alerted by the commotion and shouts of alarm spread quickly, the Wardens dragging away their beacon. Many tried to react, but the abduction occurred far too quickly, and even with Arisa being the first to find her feet, the indentured Green Lantern found her resistance to be all too fleeting.
Unarmed, the young blonde was swatted aside by the butt of a maul, the wicked pommel splitting her cheek and sending her toppling to the floor.
“KARA!” she shouted, vision still blurry from the aftershock, heart gripped by a sudden and terrible panic as Arisa could only watch as her only friend was dragged away into the dark. “KARA!”
Too quickly, she tried to find her feet again, but with her head still swimming from the brutal impact, she almost fell face first to the granite. There she cursed, desperately formulating a new course of action before her eyes fell upon the carven wall. She froze, taking in the sight before her, the symbol that had been carved into the face of the rock wall where it would remain for all eternity, one she had seen before.
The Crest of the House of El.
Hope.
**********
Kara knew where she was going long before they arrived, the young woman dragged bodily through the corridors deep within the Mountain towards a singular destination. She didn’t move, her arms bound before her, her feet scraping across the gantries, the echoes of hellish industry bouncing off the walls amidst the clamour of distant outrage, the echoes of oppressed fury filling every hall and finding every crevice.
The very air had become volatile, ready to ignite.
The Mountain was waiting...
Even blinded as she was, her vision obscured by the sack pulled down over her head, the teenager remembered where she was, memories returning from months before, the day she had awoken from a waking nightmare, thrust into the waiting arms of a dictator. The clarity was almost alarming, her heart beating fitfully, moments overlapping from before and now, the context ever changing with the narrative, perception altering the truth.
Inevitably she was dropped, Kara falling to her knees, reeling from a dizzying sense of déjà-vu. As the bag was ripped away, she knew who she would see, and it was upon Vartox that she stared unblinking.
The Lord of the Mountain sat within his ‘office’, the crude trappings he surrounded himself with aping civilisation without capturing its integrity, a savages attempt to appear civilised. His Wardens were likewise attired, ramshackle uniforms pinned with ‘badges of office’, crude and lacking merit, men who solidified their status through fear.
None, however, were as lavishly adorned as their leader, Vartox standing at the apex of his peers. All about his person he wore the apparel of his victories, trinkets beyond count; trophies and heirlooms pinned and hung from his vest like a tapestry of stolen cultures. She recognised most, the Lantern Ring he wore about his neck, and the bracelet, the yellow stone bracelet that was her birthright hanging from his belt, a badge of office that was her inheritance.
All that remained of her Mother...
Vartox grunted; the mass of muscle creasing his ridged brow, eyes already pressed too close together narrowing with distaste. With deliberate intent, he paced towards his kneeling captive, just as he had so many months before, crouching so that they could be at eye level.
“Kryptonian,” he exhaled, as if both exasperated and aggravated by the very word, “it occurs to me that you do not appreciate how precarious your position is.” He grabbed her by the jaw, viciously and without warning, squeezing her cheeks together hard enough to force a wince.
Kara narrowed her eyes back, her heart beating, thundering within her torso, shoulders shaking as she found herself so close to her tormentor, the man who had spent a lifetime butchering the oppressed.
She hated him, she realised, she had never known that such hate was possible, to have blood turn to poison within her very veins.
Hate...
It consumed her every thought; she was drowning in the sensation.
She could split the planet in two with nothing but her hate.
“Your species is extinct,” Vartox extolled, oblivious to the turmoil of her thoughts. “You are extinct. Do you understand me yet, Kryptonian?” He squeezed harder, forcing a further wince, “No-one will ever know that you were here, no-one is left to care. No-one will remember your name.”
Suddenly, Vartox released his captive, dismissively shoving the girls head sideways before returning to his full height, glaring down at the girl who had spurned his hospitality.
“You are already dead.”
Kara didn’t answer; she only glared back, the eyes of the Last Daughter of Krypton burning.
Vartox scoffed and passed on by, ignoring the implied threat.
“Bring her,” he commanded, his patience done, “the novelty has worn off.”
**********
Vartox had learned long ago, he did not need to raise his voice in order to be heard. That, he had decided, proved the measure of his power. He spoke, and the masses listened, intent on his every word, their lives dependent on it, he spoke, and their will was crushed beneath his whisper.
The labourers had been gathered, his people, his citizens, an entire population of indentured workers herded into the Heart of the Mountain, the vast chasm ringing with their frightful murmurs. Shoulder to shoulder they were penned together, hundreds of species, thousands of souls, a sea of irrelevance struggling to breathe the same air within the vast chasm. It was boiling, so many bodies forced to inhabit the same space, the granite sky pressing down against them as the walls thrummed with anticipation.
They watched, they waited and, high above them and upon his balcony, finally the Lord of the Mountain addressed them, arms raised to receive their supplication.
“Do you think I am deaf?” he questioned, his voice carrying without effort, his arms outstretched. “Perhaps I am blind?” he queried further, knowing that there would be no answer.
The people were restless, he could feel it in the air, feel it in his teeth, the tension on the verge of snapping and he knew precisely why. Kara Zor-El, the Last Daughter of Krypton, her wrists bound in chains as she was forced to kneel penitently before him, had given them something to believe in, a sense of grandeur.
Superstition.
He exhaled in aggravation.
“Have you forgotten so easily, how you came to be here, the shelter I have provided?” Vartox curled his lip in disappointment, an irritated father figure. “The Old Empires are receding, the Lanterns are fragmenting, the stars themselves are going out. You have all felt it, deep within in your souls, the Cosmos slipping through your fingers. The Universe is not dying,” he paused, stoking their despair; fear the most encompassing prison of all, “it is already dead, long before we were even born.”
No one spoke.
No one dared.
“The Mountain will protect you,” Vartox extolled, his manner growing in fervour, his hands raised higher, “The Mountain will shelter you,” he glared at the masses far below, cowing them with a glare, “the Mountain will judge you.”
Extending his right arm, an axe was placed into his right fist, monstrously huge and stained with the blood of hundreds, thrumming with the lives it had taken. With both hands he would wield it, and with one stroke he would break their will forever.
“There will be no savour from the Heavens,” Vartox rolled his shoulders, dark eyes seething as he stared at his kneeling captive, the girl with golden hair and far too frail to be a nuisance. “The Gods have stopped listening.”
Through it all Kara Zor-El said nothing, her eyes cast downwards, looking into the dirt, her heartbeat slowing to a crawl. She blinked and, for but a single moment, she was struck by a moment of insane clarity, a tear trailing down one cheek as her conscience bore the weight of what she had done.
“Thane,” she whispered, scarcely audible.
Vartox looked at her in confusion, lacking understanding, the air thick with building trepidation as he was struck by a devastating revelation that he could not pin point. He had been deaf, he had been blind, for all of his bravado, there was something he had missed, four words coming to his mind unbidden.
The Mountain was waiting...
“I asked him to die.”
Cataclysm was a word that had come to haunt the dreams of Kara, the only syllables that even came close to encapsulating the death of her entire world. She had been there, when Krypton fell, the only witness to its destruction, and so it was that history arrived to repeat itself before her, only now she was its engineer.
She was the girl who fell from Heaven, and the Mountain was done waiting.
Primordial was the roar that flooded through the chasms and the tunnels and the endless pits, ethereal and eternal and burrowing deep into every soul. The explosives detonated by Thane deep beneath the surface were merely a trigger that set off a chain reaction of apocalyptic proportions. With the very crust of the planet shifting, the world compromised to its core by endless excavation, the Mountain was set to shake itself apart, condemning all of those inside to die who had offended it.
The Earthquake was a sight that could send the sanest of men mad.
Vartox was dumbfounded, stunned into inaction, even as the walls shook and the gantries fell away, plummeting into the chasms far below. The floor rippled, tossing men from their feet as though they had been swatted aside by the hand of god, Vartox cursing as he struggled to retain his own, deafened by the catastrophe as it unfolded and, unsteady, lurched forwards to grasp a hold of the railing of his balcony.
As he looked down across his indentured masses, his face paled, disbelieving by what he was forced to witness.
The slaves were not panicking, even as the world itself collapsed and death rained down from a granite sky, they were far too busy escaping. Herded on by key figures within the crowd, the meek had become the wild, surging towards the exits. The strongest fell upon the Wardens, beating them with fist and claw, others collecting the wailing children and carrying the burden of their salvation, a sea of humanity that could not be held back now that the damn had burst.
Through it all, Vartox knew immediately that they had been waiting, that they had known what was coming.
That the Kryptonian was responsible...
Too late he turned about, the primordial roar of the Mountain joined by another grief stricken shout, one that was unleashed after months of hardship and misery, and the slight frame of Kara Zor-El shoulder charged into the unsteady mass of her captor.
As the balcony itself buckled beneath the shaking of the Mountain, both of them tipped over the edge and plummeted towards the abyss. For a few, terrifying moments they tumbled, before slamming into a manmade gantry, the already abused framework squealing beneath their added weight. It writhed beneath them, bolts struggling to remain attached to either side of the vast chasm, even as both of them found their footing.
They glared at one another, the hatred mutual, and it was the bloodied Vartox who surged forwards. With his huge axe still in hand he pounded forwards, swinging his weapon up and over in a wicked arc intent of splitting the girl in two. Kara stepped backwards, extending both of her hands forwards and, avoiding the lethal blade, it instead sliced cleanly through the chains binding the Kryptonians wrists with a splintering of iron.
Freedom, Kara scarcely had time to acknowledge the forgotten sensation before the abused gantry gave way.
Once again they fell, the two of them plummeting towards the ground, the rush of gravity filling the girl with a nauseating sense of vertigo. They struck an outcropping of granite, both grunting and crying out in pain as they tumbled, bouncing across rock before crumpling to a stop.
Zor-El shivered, unable to repress a pained whimper as every inch of her was in agony, battered and bruised and desperate to give up. She didn’t, unable to do so, Kara grimacing as she rolled over onto her front and her blue eyes fell upon her tormentor, coming to realise that he was not moving. Prone across his back, the girl finally had her opportunity, gritting her teeth hard as she stumbled up onto her bare feet and clambered atop the ‘Lord’ of the Mountain.
She scrambled through his possessions, the tokens and trophies that he wore as badges of honour, the mass of trinkets that told a thousand stories, all of which he had stolen, looking for just one in particular, the means of their ultimate salvation, her finger tips brushing a Green Lantern ring...
Vartox struck the girl atop him with a backhand strong enough to knock a tooth loose, the blow sickening in its intensity and smacking her head sideways. Blue eyes empty, Kara Zor-El slipped off her perch and fell bonelessly from the ridge. For the third time she tumbled, only this time when the ground rushed up to meet her, it was oblivion that found her first...
**********
...never before had Kara Zor-El kept pace with her Mother.
As Krypton’s sun bathed the city of Argo in the first rays of dawn, the future Patriarch of the House of El willed herself to run faster, sprinting across the skyways that haloed her home. They were alone, the two of them, as their people slowly stirred from their own slumbers to welcome a new day, Allura and her Daughter completing a circuit that circumvented the cities inner districts, passing the peeks of crystalline towers and the wonders of an ancient culture.
Kara had dreamed of this, the teenager desperate in every way to be the equal of her Parent, to measure up to her high standards, to be worthy of the mantle that she would one day inherit, and so she ran. She ran so hard that her muscles burned and her heart was fit to burst, months, years of determined training conditioning her for this one moment, however much she might want to keel over.
To just keep pace with her Mother.
A relieved grin broke out across her features upon seeing the finish line, all but stumbling across it as she staggered to a well deserved halt, staring out across her home with hands braced against her hips. She could scarcely breathe, but it didn’t matter, the young girl leaning forwards as fatigue washed over her entire body, the teenager giddy from head to toe.
It was beautiful; she decided, more than ever, her home.
Impossibly perfect.
“It hurts,” she confessed, weak at the knees and feeling woozy, her heart fit to burst, tears staining her cheeks for reasons she didn’t know. The pain...
“It hurts...”
She couldn’t breadth.
“It hurts so much, I can’t... I can’t...”
She almost fell over, her skin burning, the ground shaking...
“I know,” her Mother soothed, not without compassion.
Kara was forced to look up, Argo aglow with the light of Krypton’s dawn, the screams of those far below growing into a chorus, panic in the streets.
Allura Zor-El stroked the cheek of her only Daughter, she smiled, even as their world collapsed.
“And it always will.”
**********
When Kara opened her eyes, she knew that her Mother was dead.
She could barely move, alone, her cheek pressed down hard against the granite, a puddle of her own blood pooling from her temple, the Last Daughter of Krypton coming to accept her fate. Her Mother was dead, and nothing in the cosmos could bring her back.
She was alone.
She was the last, that was what mattered most.
She was the last.
With a grimace and a groan, a grinding of her teeth, the small blonde winced and placed her palms upon the jagged granite, the Mountain still shaking beneath her fingers, the air itself trembling in trepidation around her. She pushed, heaving out a cry of pain, her every muscle protesting, her bones grinding, and still she pushed, the young girl finding her knees slowly, breadths escaping from her body short and sharp.
Like a thunderclap, Vartox landed some feet away, leaping down from ridge to complete his execution, growling as he rolled his mammoth shoulders and spitting out a glob of blood. He dragged the tip of his weapon behind him, scraping through the rock, the fingers of his free hand idling with the Green Lantern ring he wore about his neck.
“Did you really think that it work?” he scoffed, pulling the emerald trinket free from its noose to hold it in his own meaty paw, “do you really think that this would listen to you?”
Kara didn’t answer, unable to rise higher, the strength of Krypton spent.
Vartox spat, throwing the ring aside and gripping his axe with both hands and raising it high, snarling before, with a mighty exhale, he swung the blade down wild to behead the girl before him...
...
...Vartox blinked, looking down and failing to grasp hold of comprehension, the Mountain holding its breadth as the Universe stood at the edge of apotheosis. His shoulders heaved, every ounce of his considerable power driving his weapon downwards, and yet it would not fall... Kara Zor-El of Krypton grasping the blade of the weapon with her bare hand.
She looked up, blue eyes staring through her overgrown fringe, the intensity of her glare almost forcing the man who dwarfed her to recoil.
“No,” she muttered, barely above a whisper, adjusting her grip on the weapon that was supposed to kill her until she held its wicked edge at bay with but the tip of her extended finger.
Her Mothers Bracelet, torn free from the many trinkets that adorned her tormentor’s person, the one trophy she had been desperate to reclaim above all others sat clasped about her wrist, secured before her fall. Allura Zor-El’s badge of office, her shield to defend the people of Krypton, the yellow stone as its centre blazing brightly...
...yellow sun radiation infusing every atom of Kara Zor-El with unfathomable might.
“I didn’t.”
She glared at Vartox, blood boiling with her fury, eyes burning as they turned as crimson as the sun, screaming as she unleashed a blast of heat vision that erupted like a volcano. The ‘Lord’ of the Mountain was engulfed and, as he was ripped from his feet and sent hurtling through the air, he was gripped by a sense of fear he had previously thought unimaginable, hurling through the air before smashing into the walls of his kingdom, even the granite giving way to the fury of Krypton.
Long before he came to land, Vartox found himself outside the Mountain, sailing through the sky before gravity took hold, soon crashing into the ground like a meteor. He lay broken, cast aside in so many pieces it was almost impossible to believe it had all been done so effortlessly, his already scorched skin peeling beneath the beat of this world’s unforgiving sun. He swallowed, bones broken, utterly unable to rise and soon to be at the mercy of his people.
He grimaced, knowing that it would not be swift.
It was Kara who came for him first, Vartox blinking as he saw her silhouetted against the sun, falling from the sky like a thunderbolt and crashing into the ground beside him. The granite cracked, the surface of the world splintering beneath her arrival like a spider-web, bowing to her power.
The Girl who fell from Heaven.
An Angel of Death.
“I should kill you,” she spoke, only for him, the two of them alone in the middle of the desert, the place from which she had fallen from the sky so many months before, the last survivor of a dead species. Her fingers clenched as she advanced, stamping a foot against his chest and driving him further into the dirt, the previously indomitable Vartox squealing out a cry of pain.
“I could kill you,” she exhaled between clenched teeth, every muscle in her slim shoulders snapping taunt, the bracelet she wore blazing brightly. “No-one could stop me, not a single soul on this whole world.”
She shivered, Kara Zor-El quivering from head to toe, her hate...
“I WANT to kill you,” she seethed, her eyes burning with fire.
Hate.
Her hate could drown the stars in blood.
...
She cracked, sanity leaking in, resisting with every fibre of her being the overwhelming need to wail, to release every single iota of her endless grief in just one, single shout, her face a map of misery.
“But I don’t have to kill you,” she stepped away from Vartox, leaving him battered and broken as her eyes slipped from crimson back to blue. She had stood before precipice and had not fallen, however much she had wanted to.
“Be thankful for it.”
She turned away, shuddering as she came back to her senses, Vartox banished from the Mountain, and Kara Zor-El finally emerging from the fires of her forging.
Her Mother was dead.
Long live the Patriarch of the House of El.
Uttered upon the lips of all those who dwelled within her, the words had become a mantra, echoing deep into the chasms, the very walls alive with it. Thane could feel its hunger, insatiable, he could feel the rage, the embittered malice of a granite heart that had been left to rot, one that thrummed with endless consistency, deep and loud and filling the air with its fury, saturating each every breath of its inhabitants.
Waiting.
The Mountain was waiting.
Thane had found himself alone, deep beneath the crust, knelt within a vein that spiralled towards the core, the walls as dark as blood. He could hear it, the whispers, the superstition that had plagued the minds of so very many finally taking purchase within his own psyche, filling his thoughts with such clarity, the whispers that demanded to be heard.
Waiting.
The Mountain was waiting.
A crack, a seismic shift, a single moment that would topple an endless tide of blood.
Thane opened his eyes, still holding his own breath, a decade of forced servitude hollowing out his core, leaving nothing left but an unfulfilled purpose. Dead, that was what he had said, no-one was left who remembered his name, he was already dead...
The Mountain was waiting.
Thane raised his hands up high, within one palm clutched a detonator and, all about him, enough munitions to rip the Mountain free from the very planet.
“Waiting...”
**********
Her palms had stopped bleeding.
Kara was alone amongst a sea of slumbering bodies, the slaves and dispossessed, the lost and forgotten, dozens of species crammed together to sleep like beasts upon an unflinching floor. They were fitful, surrounding her like a flock, the Last Daughter of Krypton a single pyre deep within the Mountain, a lingering fragment of hope.
The girl who fell from heaven.
Arisa had said that, the elfin girl who slept the soundest, an indomitable will amidst a pit of despair, and yet still Kara did not appreciate the significance.
She had not slept like the others, gripped by a sudden and manic need she had taken rock to wall and carved into the Mountain her brand, her shield, her mantra, months of trauma spilling out in one, wild, protracted spasm as she desperately clung to a sense of self. They had tried to break her, the Mountain had tried to break her, the Universe had tried to break her, and upon the anvil her spirit had been tested...
...
Her palms had finally stopped bleeding, the rock that she had used as a tool having dug deep into her calloused palms, leaving them a crimson ruin. But now, the flesh had healed, harder than before, and she could flex her fingers painfully, her hands prepared to form fists.
She hadn’t slept, Kara Zor-El unable to do so and yet, now, as months of repressed memories had been allowed to resurface, it was suddenly impossible to keep her eyes open. She blinked, her soul heavy, she blinked...
...
... and released a startled scream as rough hands grasped her, the slight, young woman ripped free from her place amongst the others and yanked up onto her feet. Strangers seized her far smaller frame, grappling her even as she flailed, pinning her arms to her side as they growled and shouted, short and sharp sounds that promised violence. The wolves had come amongst the sheep and were here to drag her away, a bag shoved down hard over her head.
The others were thrust awake immediately, alerted by the commotion and shouts of alarm spread quickly, the Wardens dragging away their beacon. Many tried to react, but the abduction occurred far too quickly, and even with Arisa being the first to find her feet, the indentured Green Lantern found her resistance to be all too fleeting.
Unarmed, the young blonde was swatted aside by the butt of a maul, the wicked pommel splitting her cheek and sending her toppling to the floor.
“KARA!” she shouted, vision still blurry from the aftershock, heart gripped by a sudden and terrible panic as Arisa could only watch as her only friend was dragged away into the dark. “KARA!”
Too quickly, she tried to find her feet again, but with her head still swimming from the brutal impact, she almost fell face first to the granite. There she cursed, desperately formulating a new course of action before her eyes fell upon the carven wall. She froze, taking in the sight before her, the symbol that had been carved into the face of the rock wall where it would remain for all eternity, one she had seen before.
The Crest of the House of El.
Hope.
**********
Kara knew where she was going long before they arrived, the young woman dragged bodily through the corridors deep within the Mountain towards a singular destination. She didn’t move, her arms bound before her, her feet scraping across the gantries, the echoes of hellish industry bouncing off the walls amidst the clamour of distant outrage, the echoes of oppressed fury filling every hall and finding every crevice.
The very air had become volatile, ready to ignite.
The Mountain was waiting...
Even blinded as she was, her vision obscured by the sack pulled down over her head, the teenager remembered where she was, memories returning from months before, the day she had awoken from a waking nightmare, thrust into the waiting arms of a dictator. The clarity was almost alarming, her heart beating fitfully, moments overlapping from before and now, the context ever changing with the narrative, perception altering the truth.
Inevitably she was dropped, Kara falling to her knees, reeling from a dizzying sense of déjà-vu. As the bag was ripped away, she knew who she would see, and it was upon Vartox that she stared unblinking.
The Lord of the Mountain sat within his ‘office’, the crude trappings he surrounded himself with aping civilisation without capturing its integrity, a savages attempt to appear civilised. His Wardens were likewise attired, ramshackle uniforms pinned with ‘badges of office’, crude and lacking merit, men who solidified their status through fear.
None, however, were as lavishly adorned as their leader, Vartox standing at the apex of his peers. All about his person he wore the apparel of his victories, trinkets beyond count; trophies and heirlooms pinned and hung from his vest like a tapestry of stolen cultures. She recognised most, the Lantern Ring he wore about his neck, and the bracelet, the yellow stone bracelet that was her birthright hanging from his belt, a badge of office that was her inheritance.
All that remained of her Mother...
Vartox grunted; the mass of muscle creasing his ridged brow, eyes already pressed too close together narrowing with distaste. With deliberate intent, he paced towards his kneeling captive, just as he had so many months before, crouching so that they could be at eye level.
“Kryptonian,” he exhaled, as if both exasperated and aggravated by the very word, “it occurs to me that you do not appreciate how precarious your position is.” He grabbed her by the jaw, viciously and without warning, squeezing her cheeks together hard enough to force a wince.
Kara narrowed her eyes back, her heart beating, thundering within her torso, shoulders shaking as she found herself so close to her tormentor, the man who had spent a lifetime butchering the oppressed.
She hated him, she realised, she had never known that such hate was possible, to have blood turn to poison within her very veins.
Hate...
It consumed her every thought; she was drowning in the sensation.
She could split the planet in two with nothing but her hate.
“Your species is extinct,” Vartox extolled, oblivious to the turmoil of her thoughts. “You are extinct. Do you understand me yet, Kryptonian?” He squeezed harder, forcing a further wince, “No-one will ever know that you were here, no-one is left to care. No-one will remember your name.”
Suddenly, Vartox released his captive, dismissively shoving the girls head sideways before returning to his full height, glaring down at the girl who had spurned his hospitality.
“You are already dead.”
Kara didn’t answer; she only glared back, the eyes of the Last Daughter of Krypton burning.
Vartox scoffed and passed on by, ignoring the implied threat.
“Bring her,” he commanded, his patience done, “the novelty has worn off.”
**********
Vartox had learned long ago, he did not need to raise his voice in order to be heard. That, he had decided, proved the measure of his power. He spoke, and the masses listened, intent on his every word, their lives dependent on it, he spoke, and their will was crushed beneath his whisper.
The labourers had been gathered, his people, his citizens, an entire population of indentured workers herded into the Heart of the Mountain, the vast chasm ringing with their frightful murmurs. Shoulder to shoulder they were penned together, hundreds of species, thousands of souls, a sea of irrelevance struggling to breathe the same air within the vast chasm. It was boiling, so many bodies forced to inhabit the same space, the granite sky pressing down against them as the walls thrummed with anticipation.
They watched, they waited and, high above them and upon his balcony, finally the Lord of the Mountain addressed them, arms raised to receive their supplication.
“Do you think I am deaf?” he questioned, his voice carrying without effort, his arms outstretched. “Perhaps I am blind?” he queried further, knowing that there would be no answer.
The people were restless, he could feel it in the air, feel it in his teeth, the tension on the verge of snapping and he knew precisely why. Kara Zor-El, the Last Daughter of Krypton, her wrists bound in chains as she was forced to kneel penitently before him, had given them something to believe in, a sense of grandeur.
Superstition.
He exhaled in aggravation.
“Have you forgotten so easily, how you came to be here, the shelter I have provided?” Vartox curled his lip in disappointment, an irritated father figure. “The Old Empires are receding, the Lanterns are fragmenting, the stars themselves are going out. You have all felt it, deep within in your souls, the Cosmos slipping through your fingers. The Universe is not dying,” he paused, stoking their despair; fear the most encompassing prison of all, “it is already dead, long before we were even born.”
No one spoke.
No one dared.
“The Mountain will protect you,” Vartox extolled, his manner growing in fervour, his hands raised higher, “The Mountain will shelter you,” he glared at the masses far below, cowing them with a glare, “the Mountain will judge you.”
Extending his right arm, an axe was placed into his right fist, monstrously huge and stained with the blood of hundreds, thrumming with the lives it had taken. With both hands he would wield it, and with one stroke he would break their will forever.
“There will be no savour from the Heavens,” Vartox rolled his shoulders, dark eyes seething as he stared at his kneeling captive, the girl with golden hair and far too frail to be a nuisance. “The Gods have stopped listening.”
Through it all Kara Zor-El said nothing, her eyes cast downwards, looking into the dirt, her heartbeat slowing to a crawl. She blinked and, for but a single moment, she was struck by a moment of insane clarity, a tear trailing down one cheek as her conscience bore the weight of what she had done.
“Thane,” she whispered, scarcely audible.
Vartox looked at her in confusion, lacking understanding, the air thick with building trepidation as he was struck by a devastating revelation that he could not pin point. He had been deaf, he had been blind, for all of his bravado, there was something he had missed, four words coming to his mind unbidden.
The Mountain was waiting...
“I asked him to die.”
Cataclysm was a word that had come to haunt the dreams of Kara, the only syllables that even came close to encapsulating the death of her entire world. She had been there, when Krypton fell, the only witness to its destruction, and so it was that history arrived to repeat itself before her, only now she was its engineer.
She was the girl who fell from Heaven, and the Mountain was done waiting.
Primordial was the roar that flooded through the chasms and the tunnels and the endless pits, ethereal and eternal and burrowing deep into every soul. The explosives detonated by Thane deep beneath the surface were merely a trigger that set off a chain reaction of apocalyptic proportions. With the very crust of the planet shifting, the world compromised to its core by endless excavation, the Mountain was set to shake itself apart, condemning all of those inside to die who had offended it.
The Earthquake was a sight that could send the sanest of men mad.
Vartox was dumbfounded, stunned into inaction, even as the walls shook and the gantries fell away, plummeting into the chasms far below. The floor rippled, tossing men from their feet as though they had been swatted aside by the hand of god, Vartox cursing as he struggled to retain his own, deafened by the catastrophe as it unfolded and, unsteady, lurched forwards to grasp a hold of the railing of his balcony.
As he looked down across his indentured masses, his face paled, disbelieving by what he was forced to witness.
The slaves were not panicking, even as the world itself collapsed and death rained down from a granite sky, they were far too busy escaping. Herded on by key figures within the crowd, the meek had become the wild, surging towards the exits. The strongest fell upon the Wardens, beating them with fist and claw, others collecting the wailing children and carrying the burden of their salvation, a sea of humanity that could not be held back now that the damn had burst.
Through it all, Vartox knew immediately that they had been waiting, that they had known what was coming.
That the Kryptonian was responsible...
Too late he turned about, the primordial roar of the Mountain joined by another grief stricken shout, one that was unleashed after months of hardship and misery, and the slight frame of Kara Zor-El shoulder charged into the unsteady mass of her captor.
As the balcony itself buckled beneath the shaking of the Mountain, both of them tipped over the edge and plummeted towards the abyss. For a few, terrifying moments they tumbled, before slamming into a manmade gantry, the already abused framework squealing beneath their added weight. It writhed beneath them, bolts struggling to remain attached to either side of the vast chasm, even as both of them found their footing.
They glared at one another, the hatred mutual, and it was the bloodied Vartox who surged forwards. With his huge axe still in hand he pounded forwards, swinging his weapon up and over in a wicked arc intent of splitting the girl in two. Kara stepped backwards, extending both of her hands forwards and, avoiding the lethal blade, it instead sliced cleanly through the chains binding the Kryptonians wrists with a splintering of iron.
Freedom, Kara scarcely had time to acknowledge the forgotten sensation before the abused gantry gave way.
Once again they fell, the two of them plummeting towards the ground, the rush of gravity filling the girl with a nauseating sense of vertigo. They struck an outcropping of granite, both grunting and crying out in pain as they tumbled, bouncing across rock before crumpling to a stop.
Zor-El shivered, unable to repress a pained whimper as every inch of her was in agony, battered and bruised and desperate to give up. She didn’t, unable to do so, Kara grimacing as she rolled over onto her front and her blue eyes fell upon her tormentor, coming to realise that he was not moving. Prone across his back, the girl finally had her opportunity, gritting her teeth hard as she stumbled up onto her bare feet and clambered atop the ‘Lord’ of the Mountain.
She scrambled through his possessions, the tokens and trophies that he wore as badges of honour, the mass of trinkets that told a thousand stories, all of which he had stolen, looking for just one in particular, the means of their ultimate salvation, her finger tips brushing a Green Lantern ring...
Vartox struck the girl atop him with a backhand strong enough to knock a tooth loose, the blow sickening in its intensity and smacking her head sideways. Blue eyes empty, Kara Zor-El slipped off her perch and fell bonelessly from the ridge. For the third time she tumbled, only this time when the ground rushed up to meet her, it was oblivion that found her first...
**********
...never before had Kara Zor-El kept pace with her Mother.
As Krypton’s sun bathed the city of Argo in the first rays of dawn, the future Patriarch of the House of El willed herself to run faster, sprinting across the skyways that haloed her home. They were alone, the two of them, as their people slowly stirred from their own slumbers to welcome a new day, Allura and her Daughter completing a circuit that circumvented the cities inner districts, passing the peeks of crystalline towers and the wonders of an ancient culture.
Kara had dreamed of this, the teenager desperate in every way to be the equal of her Parent, to measure up to her high standards, to be worthy of the mantle that she would one day inherit, and so she ran. She ran so hard that her muscles burned and her heart was fit to burst, months, years of determined training conditioning her for this one moment, however much she might want to keel over.
To just keep pace with her Mother.
A relieved grin broke out across her features upon seeing the finish line, all but stumbling across it as she staggered to a well deserved halt, staring out across her home with hands braced against her hips. She could scarcely breathe, but it didn’t matter, the young girl leaning forwards as fatigue washed over her entire body, the teenager giddy from head to toe.
It was beautiful; she decided, more than ever, her home.
Impossibly perfect.
“It hurts,” she confessed, weak at the knees and feeling woozy, her heart fit to burst, tears staining her cheeks for reasons she didn’t know. The pain...
“It hurts...”
She couldn’t breadth.
“It hurts so much, I can’t... I can’t...”
She almost fell over, her skin burning, the ground shaking...
“I know,” her Mother soothed, not without compassion.
Kara was forced to look up, Argo aglow with the light of Krypton’s dawn, the screams of those far below growing into a chorus, panic in the streets.
Allura Zor-El stroked the cheek of her only Daughter, she smiled, even as their world collapsed.
“And it always will.”
**********
When Kara opened her eyes, she knew that her Mother was dead.
She could barely move, alone, her cheek pressed down hard against the granite, a puddle of her own blood pooling from her temple, the Last Daughter of Krypton coming to accept her fate. Her Mother was dead, and nothing in the cosmos could bring her back.
She was alone.
She was the last, that was what mattered most.
She was the last.
With a grimace and a groan, a grinding of her teeth, the small blonde winced and placed her palms upon the jagged granite, the Mountain still shaking beneath her fingers, the air itself trembling in trepidation around her. She pushed, heaving out a cry of pain, her every muscle protesting, her bones grinding, and still she pushed, the young girl finding her knees slowly, breadths escaping from her body short and sharp.
Like a thunderclap, Vartox landed some feet away, leaping down from ridge to complete his execution, growling as he rolled his mammoth shoulders and spitting out a glob of blood. He dragged the tip of his weapon behind him, scraping through the rock, the fingers of his free hand idling with the Green Lantern ring he wore about his neck.
“Did you really think that it work?” he scoffed, pulling the emerald trinket free from its noose to hold it in his own meaty paw, “do you really think that this would listen to you?”
Kara didn’t answer, unable to rise higher, the strength of Krypton spent.
Vartox spat, throwing the ring aside and gripping his axe with both hands and raising it high, snarling before, with a mighty exhale, he swung the blade down wild to behead the girl before him...
...
...Vartox blinked, looking down and failing to grasp hold of comprehension, the Mountain holding its breadth as the Universe stood at the edge of apotheosis. His shoulders heaved, every ounce of his considerable power driving his weapon downwards, and yet it would not fall... Kara Zor-El of Krypton grasping the blade of the weapon with her bare hand.
She looked up, blue eyes staring through her overgrown fringe, the intensity of her glare almost forcing the man who dwarfed her to recoil.
“No,” she muttered, barely above a whisper, adjusting her grip on the weapon that was supposed to kill her until she held its wicked edge at bay with but the tip of her extended finger.
Her Mothers Bracelet, torn free from the many trinkets that adorned her tormentor’s person, the one trophy she had been desperate to reclaim above all others sat clasped about her wrist, secured before her fall. Allura Zor-El’s badge of office, her shield to defend the people of Krypton, the yellow stone as its centre blazing brightly...
...yellow sun radiation infusing every atom of Kara Zor-El with unfathomable might.
“I didn’t.”
She glared at Vartox, blood boiling with her fury, eyes burning as they turned as crimson as the sun, screaming as she unleashed a blast of heat vision that erupted like a volcano. The ‘Lord’ of the Mountain was engulfed and, as he was ripped from his feet and sent hurtling through the air, he was gripped by a sense of fear he had previously thought unimaginable, hurling through the air before smashing into the walls of his kingdom, even the granite giving way to the fury of Krypton.
Long before he came to land, Vartox found himself outside the Mountain, sailing through the sky before gravity took hold, soon crashing into the ground like a meteor. He lay broken, cast aside in so many pieces it was almost impossible to believe it had all been done so effortlessly, his already scorched skin peeling beneath the beat of this world’s unforgiving sun. He swallowed, bones broken, utterly unable to rise and soon to be at the mercy of his people.
He grimaced, knowing that it would not be swift.
It was Kara who came for him first, Vartox blinking as he saw her silhouetted against the sun, falling from the sky like a thunderbolt and crashing into the ground beside him. The granite cracked, the surface of the world splintering beneath her arrival like a spider-web, bowing to her power.
The Girl who fell from Heaven.
An Angel of Death.
“I should kill you,” she spoke, only for him, the two of them alone in the middle of the desert, the place from which she had fallen from the sky so many months before, the last survivor of a dead species. Her fingers clenched as she advanced, stamping a foot against his chest and driving him further into the dirt, the previously indomitable Vartox squealing out a cry of pain.
“I could kill you,” she exhaled between clenched teeth, every muscle in her slim shoulders snapping taunt, the bracelet she wore blazing brightly. “No-one could stop me, not a single soul on this whole world.”
She shivered, Kara Zor-El quivering from head to toe, her hate...
“I WANT to kill you,” she seethed, her eyes burning with fire.
Hate.
Her hate could drown the stars in blood.
...
She cracked, sanity leaking in, resisting with every fibre of her being the overwhelming need to wail, to release every single iota of her endless grief in just one, single shout, her face a map of misery.
“But I don’t have to kill you,” she stepped away from Vartox, leaving him battered and broken as her eyes slipped from crimson back to blue. She had stood before precipice and had not fallen, however much she had wanted to.
“Be thankful for it.”
She turned away, shuddering as she came back to her senses, Vartox banished from the Mountain, and Kara Zor-El finally emerging from the fires of her forging.
Her Mother was dead.
Long live the Patriarch of the House of El.