Something changed in Bellion during the fight, and none understood it at first.
H'El pressed forward, sensing the shift as clearly as anyone, his assault sharpening, speeding, fists driving in rapid succession toward openings that should have demanded a response a gap at Bellion's ribs, a clean line to his jaw, an angle along his exposed shoulder that any competent swordsman would have closed on instinct alone.
Bellion didn't take any of them.
He simply stood there, blade held loose and low, wings folded tight against his back, and let the strikes land. A fist caught him across the cheek and he barely turned with it. Another drove into his ribs and he absorbed it without so much as a grunt. He was not dodging. He was not parrying. He was, by every visible measure, simply standing there, taking punishment that should have driven a lesser warrior to the ground within seconds.
H'El's fists slowed, confusion bleeding into his usually flat, composed expression.
Above the arena, murmurs rippled through the gathered Marshals, uneasy and mounting.
"What is he doing?" Ultra said, arms uncrossing, leaning forward with genuine alarm. "He didn't fight me like this. He came at me full force, wings and blade and everything he had... why is he just standing there taking it now?"
Beru's mandibles clicked, agitated. "He's going to get himself killed, Actually killed, not shadow-killed. Foolish Bellion!"
Galatea's brow furrowed. "This isn't like him at all."
Only Igris said nothing, his arms folded, his eyes fixed on Bellion with an intensity that had nothing to do with confusion.
High above, on the platform, Didi's expression had shifted. "Isn't H'El someone capable of adapting as well?" she asked, watching another punch land unanswered. "Not on the level of your Doomsday, perhaps, but he's quite powerful in his own right. I think your angel may be in trouble, Arthur."
Arthur, however, was smiling, his eyes never once leaving a single, specific detail of the fight unfolding below.
"I wonder about that," he said quietly.
Below, H'El's confusion had turned to open frustration, his next punch pulling back at the last instant, uncertain, as if some part of him had finally registered that something about this didn't add up.
"What are you doing?" he demanded, driving another strike home almost reflexively even as he asked it, watching it connect without resistance. "Fight back!"
Bellion said nothing.
He stood amid the wreckage of blows that should have broken lesser beings, blade held at his side, his expression calm, patient, almost meditative, that was the look of a man counting something only he could see. H'El struck again, and again, each blow landing clean, each one met with the same eerie, stillness.
Then Bellion moved.
It happened too fast for most of the watching Marshals to fully process a single, fluid draw of his blade, wings snapping open in one sharp beat that carried the motion forward with impossible speed, the sword completing its full arc before H'El's astonished eyes could even begin to track the danger.
The strike took his head clean from his shoulders.
For one suspended, silent moment, H'El's body remained standing, and then it simply came apart, dissolving into a violent, roiling column of shadowy smoke that scattered outward across the arena floor and vanished into the twilight air.
Bellion straightened from the follow-through, sheathed his blade in a single motion, and turned without a word, walking calmly off the arena floor as though nothing at all remarkable had just occurred.
Silence swallowed the entire arena.
Ultra's mouth hung open, no quip forthcoming for once in his existence. Beru's mandibles had gone still mid-click. Galatea simply stared, wide-eyed, at the empty space where H'El had stood only seconds before.
Above, Didi let out a long, slow breath, something between disbelief and reluctant admiration coloring her voice.
"...There goes my bet," she said.
Arthur, the calmest presence in the entire arena, allowed himself a faint, satisfied smile. "It seems Bellion figured it out."
He raised his hand, and both H'El and the ruined arena floor knit themselves back together at once, shattered stone smoothing into unbroken black glass. H'El sat up amid the restored floor, blinking, genuinely disoriented, one hand rising instinctively to his own throat as though to confirm it was still attached.
"...What just happened?" he said, staring at the space Bellion had occupied only moments ago. "I had him... I was overwhelming him. Everyone saw it.."
No one offered an answer. Bellion had already reached the edge of the arena, calm and unhurried, and did not so much as glance back.
Igris, watching him go, finally spoke. "I see."
Beru and Galatea both turned toward him at once, twin expressions of confusion.
"What did he do?" Galatea asked.
"Let's just say," Igris said, his eyes following Bellion's retreating figure, "that Doom is in trouble now."
Galatea looked between Igris and the departing Marshal, understanding dawning slowly across her features, followed almost immediately by respect. "He really does intend to keep that title for himself, doesn't he." She shook her head, a reluctant huff of laughter escaping her. "Damn that angel."
From the platform above, Arthur's voice carried out over the arena one final time, clear and absolute.
"The match goes to Bellion."
He let the words settle for a moment, his gaze sweeping across the assembled Marshals, before continuing.
"The final match for the rank of Grand Marshal," he announced, "will be between Doom, and Bellion."
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OA -
The Central Power Battery cast its green light across the chamber, illuminating the ring of towering, silent forms seated in judgment around it. The Guardians of the Universe had not moved in some time, their attention turned inward, weighing the endless calculus of order against chaos that had occupied them since before most of the galaxies they watched over had learned to name their own stars.
A Green Lantern strode into the citadel and dropped to one knee before them, his ring still glowing faintly.
"Guardians," he said, "I bring word from the outer sectors. Multiple reports, confirmed independently across several patrol zones.. Apokoliptian forces have been sighted. Parademon incursions, at minimum eleven separate sectors within the last standard cycle alone, and the number is climbing."
A ripple of unease passed through the assembled Guardians, communicated not through words but through weathered faces.
"Apokolips has been... quiet recently," one of the Guardians said at last. "Darkseid has made no move recently, this sudden proliferation of activity, without warning, without provocation.." He paused, exchanging a brief, wordless glance with the Guardian beside him. "It does not fit any pattern we have observed from him before, he is planning something."
"Then we treat it as precisely the anomaly it is," another Guardian said, decisive despite the uncertainty threaded through the chamber. "Green Lanterns assigned to the affected sectors will contain the incursions and prevent further escalation until the purpose behind this activity becomes clear. We do not yet understand what Darkseid intends. Until we do, our priority remains the safety of the worlds under threat."
The kneeling Lantern nodded, already rising to relay the order but one of the Guardians raised a hand, halting him before he could depart.
"A moment." The Guardian's eyes narrowed slightly,"The Shadow Lanterns. They are also present in those sectors, I assume?"
The Green Lantern hesitated for only a fraction of a second before answering. "They are, Guardian. Though.." He chose his next words with visible care. "They only arrived after the Apokoliptian forces appeared. Not before. Every report we've gathered places their arrival strictly in response to the incursions, not in advance of them."
"Interesting," the first Guardian said quietly, at last. "Then whatever this is, it seems the Shadow Monarch's forces did not orchestrate it, since they provoked Apokolips on countless occasions." He exchanged another slow glance with his fellow Guardians, something unspoken passing between them. "Which raises the far more troubling question of what, precisely, has drawn Darkseid's attention so suddenly.."
"Shall I relay a formal inquiry to the Shadow Monarch, Guardians?" the Lantern asked.
The Guardians considered this for a long moment, the green light of the Central Battery flickering faintly across their faces.
"Not yet," came the final answer. "Watch. Contain what spills into our jurisdiction. And report back the moment either side's intentions become clear." A pause, heavy with old, careful wisdom. "We have learned, over many ages, not to interrupt a storm before we understand which direction it intends to break." The Lantern bowed once more, and turned to carry the order back out across the stars.
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Deep Space, in a Far Off Galaxy -
Darkseid floated in the silence between stars, motionless save for the slow drift of his massive body against the black. Before him, hanging in the void, turned the great grey sphere of Warworld, its surface scarred with the machinery, its arenas and factories and killing-fields visible even from this distance to his eyes.
He had watched it for a long while now. Long enough that lesser beings would have called it patience. Darkseid called it simply what it was: A weapon yet to be claimed by him, waiting for its moment.
'A weapon such as this should never have been left in the hands of the unworthy,' he thought, his voice a low. 'A world built for war, and yet its master squanders it.. plays at conquest, at spectacle, when it could be forged into something far greater.'
His eyes narrowed, twin points of burning crimson kindling brighter in the dark.
'First, the fool who claims dominion over it will be removed. Whatever pretensions he holds to mastery end the moment I decide they end.' A slow, terrible patience settled over him. 'Then Warworld will finally serve the purpose it was always meant to serve.. not a plaything for a lesser tyrant's ambitions, but an instrument of true order. My order.'
He began to move.
Darkseid did not hasten for anything, not for gods, not for worlds, not for the end of all things. It was simply momentum, vast and unstoppable, his body drifting forward through the void toward the grey sphere turning silently below him, closing the distance one slow degree at a time.
Warworld turned on, oblivious to the threat that was approaching.
/-\
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