The matter of learning from the notes could wait. Being forced back by a talking statue wasn't exactly glorious. Some mercenaries suggested taking a detour and climbing over the wall, but Deathstroke shook his head and rejected the idea. He didn't care much about honor one way or another, but Thea wasn't about to let a statue push her around. She gave Deathstroke instructions through the ring.
The group pulled back. Deathstroke had the mercenaries test the statue's power one by one.
Bullets? Useless—directly rejected. Running fast or walking slow? Also useless. Everyone got forced back, no exceptions.
They wanted to exhaust the statue's magic, but Thea discovered the statue's creator had anticipated that long ago. A magic array at its base continuously drew power from the earth itself. To drain it completely, they'd have to level half the valley.
"Interesting." In a spot the soldiers couldn't see, Thea stepped forward.
Reverse-speech magic was powerful, sure, but it only had one trick—"refuse"—and that made it rigid as hell.
When it came to pure magical knowledge, Thea was no match for Zatanna's father. But her methods weren't limited to magic alone.
Material energy could be refused. Magic could be refused. But how could emotions be refused?
Fear. Massive waves of emotional energy shot from Thea's eyes. She didn't just want to destroy the statue—she wanted to study its inner workings and use this opportunity to peek into the mysteries of reverse-speech magic.
The Guardians of Oa couldn't refuse fear. The gods couldn't refuse it. And mortals? Even less so.
The ground beneath the statue trembled. Fine cracks spread across its surface. Three fingers on its outstretched right hand shattered outright, but it barely managed to withstand Thea's first wave of emotional energy.
Was it because the statue itself wasn't alive? Thea understood now—but so what? Fear as an emotion permeates all matter. Stone might not feel fear, but that trace of spirit left behind by a grand mage certainly could.
No one can refuse fear.
The second wave of impact—mixed with Thea's magic and fear—crushed the statue's feeble resistance. Its jade hand exploded into fragments. That lingering trace of spiritual power was obliterated by the overwhelming emotional shock. The invisible field around the statue vanished instantly. The jade seemed stained with pale ink, the cracks widening until the whole thing crumbled into rubble.
It shattered fast. Thea had barely glimpsed thirty percent of its inner workings before the statue self-destructed. No doubt the old mage had left behind some failsafe. When the dust settled, Thea covered her nose and walked inward with mild irritation.
The mercenaries couldn't see the invisible clash. To them, the statue just exploded for no reason. At Deathstroke's barked orders, they regrouped and charged into the inner courtyard.
The inner courtyard was much larger than the outer one. The ground was paved smoothly—clearly the castle's original owner had used it as a training ground. Several archery targets and straw practice dummies still stood nearby.
But all that had been shoved aside. Now, the courtyard was filled with several hundred cultists—bare-armed, wearing red robes, faces and bodies covered in markings—hacking each other to pieces.
At first, Thea thought these people were just incredibly dedicated, practicing late at night instead of sleeping. But after three seconds, she realized she'd misjudged.
More than a dozen bodies already littered the ground, and more joined them by the second, becoming silent corpses.
Four figures stood out. A brown-skinned woman with a nose ring was attacking an old man with a long beard. Another person—rail-thin, barely a hundred pounds, shirt open, gripping a crimson sword—was slashing viciously at Mister E, who'd blinded himself through extreme training.
Easy to see: the woman and the skinny guy were on one side, the old man and Mister E on the other.
Thea had already seen photos of three of them. Aside from Zatanna's father, who was already dead, these were the three surviving founders.
But where had this nose-ringed woman come from?
"Did you release charm pheromones?" Seeing their group of three hundred-plus enter the courtyard while the cultists kept fighting, completely ignoring them, Thea asked Poison Ivy with confusion.
"I don't even know these people. Why would I?" Poison Ivy rolled her eyes.
Strange. Thea couldn't figure out what they were doing.
With a "less trouble is better" mentality, she figured they might as well wait for the cultists to finish killing each other before asking questions.
Three hundred people prepared to watch the show. Good plan—unfortunately, while the cultists were mentally unhinged, they weren't blind. The eyes of those swinging machetes inevitably drifted toward the new arrivals.
With so many people, how could they not be noticed? They'd walked in openly. To ensure maximum firepower, there were even five mercenaries who'd undergone genetic clinical trials, deliberately equipped with new exoskeleton armor developed by the committee.
Excluding freaks like Thea, Batman, and Luthor, this was the latest equipment independently developed by human scientists using alien tech. The exoskeletons didn't enhance much—they just mounted a Vulcan cannon on each arm. The ammo they carried was enough for ten solid minutes of sustained fire.
The committee had produced ten sets total. Now, under a cleverly fabricated pretext—calling it "performance testing"—Thea had brought five sets straight to the cult's doorstep.
The five exoskeletons were heavy, making deep thunk-thunk sounds as they moved. There were plenty of torches in the courtyard. Firelight gleamed off the pitch-black metal, making them even more conspicuous.
The cultists gradually quieted, clearly separating into two sides. The truly brainwashed stood at the front, teeth clenched. Those with slightly more sense hid behind the human wall.
The four at the center of the conflict were relatively clearheaded. They looked at each other in pairs, their eyes all asking the same question: Are these your reinforcements?
But seeing the confusion in everyone else's eyes, all four were baffled.
The old man with a full beard, wrapped in a white turban and dressed like an Indian, was seriously injured. His eyes glowed with faint purple light as he searched for an escape route.
Mister E, though blind, actually understood the situation best. His clairvoyance let him see the three people in greater invisibility.
Papa Midnite's body, filled with pitch-black magical energy, made him wary, but he felt he could win with effort. Under clairvoyance, Poison Ivy appeared as a mass of green energy—no internal circulation, no blood flow. Was this even human? Some kind of summoned creature? Such a strange life form left him uncertain.
As for Thea at the center, she was a walking wellspring of magical power in his vision—a bottomless pit. Calm on the surface, but once angered, unstoppable. Such overwhelming power left Mister E at a complete loss.
Though he could sense her breathing and heartbeat, it still didn't feel human. Could she be an angel descended from the upper realms?
The blind old man, Mister E, automatically retreated to the rear. He'd let his former companions test this group's strength first.