Beyond the Limit (DC) Chapter 122: 122

Nova finally returned to its master—Joseph Bell—after days of following Morpheus, the Endless, in his quest to recover his three lost symbols of power.

After Dream's capture by Roderick Burgess, his artifacts were stolen and scattered across the world. The pouch of dream sand ended up in the hands of John Constantine, who bought it at a garage sale in San Francisco. He took it ho, only for it to be stolen by his then-girlfriend, Rachel. Dream tracked Constantine down. Together they visited Rachel, only to find the pouch had consud both her and her father as Rachel had been using it a replacent for drugs and inadvertently loosing dreams into the waking world. Dream took back his pouch, which was the only thing keeping Rachel alive. And at Constantine's insistence, Dream let her die peacefully with a pleasant dream of Constantine in her mind.

The Dreamstone was another matter. Ethel Cripps had stolen it from one of Dream's 'caretakers' during his capture by Burgess. Eventually, it landed in the hands of her son—Doctor Destiny—who renad it the Materioptikon. After his defeat and imprisonnt in Arkham Asylum, the Justice League retrieved the stone and stored it in a hidden warehouse in upstate New York. It was Zatara who safeguarded it there. On Nova's suggestion, Dream visited the Hall of Justice and was recognized by Martian Manhunter—not as Dream of the Endless, but as Lord L'Zoril, the Martian god of dreams. J'onn saw him as a burning skull surrounded by fla and imdiately offered deference. Through him, Dream located the stone and retrieved it with Zatara's help. He also inford the League that Joseph Bell was still alive.

With two of his three artifacts reclaid—only the Helm remaining, locked in Hell—Dream had regained enough strength to fulfil his promise to Nova. But it seed that his master was in battle. So Dream aided in the only way he could from across the galaxy—he forced Despero to enter the Dream State. Then he sent the A.I. across the cosmos through the Dreaming, to rejoin Joseph.

Nova found its master not dreaming, but unconscious—his body barely clinging to life. Joseph was broken: burned, bruised, battered. His flesh was trying to heal itself with assistance from the preprogramd nanites, but it was slow. Too slow.

Then Nova sensed sothing strange—a force perating Joseph's body. It wasn't the Speed Force, which had once accepted Joseph briefly. This was different. It felt like montum, mass, raw motion. If the Speed Force was velocity, this was Strength.

It accelerated Joseph's recovery in strange ways, swelling his muscles and encasing his injuries in fiery rock.

Nova couldn't control the Speed Force directly. It could only replicate the physical state Joseph had been in during his initial exposure to it—boosting both their speeds, but at the cost of its nanites disintegrating under the strain. Just like with the Speed Force, Nova couldn't control the Strength Force either. But here, underground, with Strength Force naturally flowing through Joseph's body, the nanites were reinforced rather than breaking down. It made Nova wonder—what would happen if the Speed State was triggered while the Strength Force was active? Maybe the added durability of the nanites could make the Speed State last longer.

While observing the Force, Nova looked deeper.

It imdiately recognized a depleted but familiar force. The well of energy that Joseph converted other energies into.

Elsewhere within Joseph's body, Nova detected three distinct magical signatures. The brief ti spent alongside Dream had refined its ability to recognize and classify arcane phenona, and these were unmistakably magical in nature—but crucially, not unified. They were separate, incompatible frequencies, layered into Joseph's biology without interacting.

One was brilliant, arcing with lightning. Another was aligned with strict order. The last pulsed with chaos, wild and unpredictable. They coexisted like independent software partitions—simultaneous, but walled off. Nova didn't know how Joseph ca to bear all three, but their presence raised questions… and possibilities.

The A.I. then beca aware of their environnt: Joseph was underground, surrounded by lava. His body was clad in damaged armor forged of so unknown tal. The helt and gauntlets were lted in several areas; the rest of him, exposed. The tal, however, still humd with potential. Nova found out that it could inhabit the tal like it could with its nanites. Useful.

Nova scanned deeper—and found sothing even stranger.

His combat avatar in the Dream State was housing a large reserve of psychic energy. He could easily identify it from the months spent roaming the Dreaming.

Given everything, the A.I. decided one thing: Joseph could not wake up like this.

Not broken. Not vulnerable. Especially in the midst of a war far from Earth.

He needed an upgrade.

A system update was in order.

**

| Thanagar - August 30

Joseph awoke from the best sleep of his life. So good, in fact, that for a mont he believed the recent horrors were nothing more than a dream.

Then he looked up and saw the crater.

The sky was blue. Despero's stiff corpse lay burnt and half-buried nearby, upside down in the dirt for so reason, as if partially spit out from the Earth. Explosions echoed in the distance—Thanagarian and Gordanian weapons still at war.

His injuries? Still present but mostly healed. His ribs, right arm, and both legs only faintly ached.

His Nova Force? Massively depleted from his fight with Despero. Only enough to shoot a Nova beam for a few minutes. Though it had increased at a higher rate than usual considering he was only passively absorbing UV energy from the star Polaris while he was unconscious.

Floating up with ease, his anti-gravity field felt smoother than ever before.

Then he looked down.

Gone was the burnt, sand-colored ARGUS suit. Gone, too, the lted Nth tal armor taken from Paran Dul. In their place was a thin, gold bodysuit—skin-tight, elegant, and undeniably Nth tal. But this wasn't just armor. He could feel it. A psychic link.

He willed it to shift. It did. The suit lted and reshaped itself into a gold shirt and pants, flowing like liquid tal.

Then he willed it to shift into his Nova suit. It seed there wasn't enough Nth tal for that so he settled for his normal Spartan helt in gold with his lower-body covered in gold Nth-tal, leaving his upper-body bare.

Thinking more about it, he shifted the helt into the one Paran Dul wore. It wouldn't do to implicate Earth because of his actions so it was best to stay hidden.

"What the hell… who did this?"

//It was , sir. I hope you like it.//

He froze.

"No way."

'Nova?' he asked, mind-to-mind.

//I'm here, sir.//

Tears welled in Joseph's eyes.

Out here, on a war-ravaged alien world, thousands of lightyears from Earth, for the first ti in a while—he felt whole again.