The Justice league were stunned, most of them were still trying to process what just happened.
"That was..." Flash stopped then started again. "I’ve seen Arthur fight before.. But this was just so humiliating for them I guess.."
"How? It didn’t seem that way to .." Hal asked.
"Because he didn’t use any of that," Flash said. "None of his shadows, just... a spear and his hands. And he took apart three of the so-called strongest hunters in the world like they were training dummies."
Wonder Woman’s hands had finally released the railing. Her knuckles were white from the effort of not joining the fight below.
"He was teaching them," she said slowly. "The entire ti, he was teaching them how to be better."
"Is that what you saw?" J’onn J’onzz asked.
Diana nodded. "I saw a man holding back just enough to let them show him what they could do. And when they showed him everything, he acknowledged it. He resigned rather than destroy them, clearly he wanted that kid to show him everything he can do."
Batman said nothing, his cowl was angled downward, toward the arena, but his eyes weren’t on Arthur anymore. They were on Ethan on the teenager standing on shaking legs, supported by the man who had just defeated him.
"Bruce," Hal said carefully. "You’re doing the quiet thing. The scary quiet thing."
"The kid," Batman said.
"What about him?"
"Arthur figured sothing out during the fight, sothing about Ethan." Batman’s fingers tapped against his utility belt.
"He said Ethan was a tahuman before awakening as a Ruler’s vessel. That his powers were amplified, that’s what I heard." Superman said.
Jean-Piere stepped forward looking down. "That is... unusual. Most of us were ordinary before awakening. Ethan was different?"
"He was found in Gotham," Batman said. "An orphan, ordinary background, nothing really unusual." He paused. "I assud that he was very strong because of he was a vessel of a ruler nothing more, this ans he hid his powers very well, responsibly even.."
"Which ans," J’onn said slowly, "The Ruler’s power amplified what was already there making him an anomaly even among hunters."
Below, Arthur was helping Elias to his feet, the German Hunter protesting weakly, too exhausted to actually resist. Renshiro had been carried to the edge of the arena by tendrils of shadow that erged from Arthur’s silhouette, laid gently against the wall.
Ethan stood on his own now barely, his legs shook. His breathing was shallow. But he was standing.
"You’re going to be a problem," Arthur said.
Ethan blinked. "Is that... a complint?"
"Take it however you want." Arthur’s shadow armor dissolved completely, leaving him in simple black clothes. He stretched his arms above his head, cracked his neck, and sighed contentedly. "I haven’t had a workout like that in months..."
"You were playing with us."
"I was assessing you, there’s a difference. besides I did not really go easy on you." Arthur glanced at the observation deck, at the silhouettes of the Justice League watching from above. "I’m sure the others understood that as well."
Ethan waited.
"Do not think of yourself as a weapon." Arthur said. "You’re a force. Forces can only be directed, once you learn that you might just beco sothing the Rulers never imagined."
Ethan opened his mouth to respond.
Then below them distant echoing through the mountain, alarms began to ring.
The observation deck erupted in movent, Batman’s voice cut through the chaos, hard and imdiate: "Watchtower reports a breach. Sothing just entered Earth’s atmosphere. Sothing big."
Arthur’s smile faded.
His violet eyes turned toward the ceiling, toward the surface, toward the sky beyond.
"Well," he said quietly. "That’s inconvenient timing."
Ethan swayed beside him. "What’s happening?"
Arthur’s hand clapped down on the teenager’s shoulder steadying, almost paternal.
"Rest," he said. "You’ve earned it."
Then he was gone, a flicker of shadow, a whisper of violet light, and the arena was empty except for three exhausted Hunters.
Batman was already moving toward the zeta-tubes, his cape billowing behind him.
"Superman, Wonder Woman, Lantern with . Flash, you head to Gotham, aparently whatever entered the atmosphere is heading there."
"Gotham again?!" Flash said with a tired look on his face.
"J’onn, coordinate with Watchtower." Batman continued.
"Bruce," Superman said. "What about Arthur? He’s..."
Batman paused at the zeta-tube entrance.
"He’s already there."
The tube activated. The League vanished into light.
And in the arena below, Elias Kruger slumped against the cracked wall, looked at Ethan Jones, and laughed, a weak, exhausted, genuine sound.
"That man," the German said, "is absolutely insufferable."
Ethan, still swaying, still bleeding, still trying to process everything that had just happened, managed a small smile.
.
.
.
GOTHAM CITY - NIGHT SKY
Arthur flew in the void above the city, his shadow armor coalescing around him in silent plates, his violet eyes fixed on the breach in the atmosphere, floating three thousand feet above the Gotham skyline, watching sothing approach.
The Apokoliptean ship descended through the clouds, it was ugly, it was ant to be ugly. Jagged angles of living tal that pulsed with orange light, furnaces that had consud worlds. Spires that served no purpose except intimidation.
Arthur’s head tilted, his vision pierced the ship’s outer hull. He counted the life signs. Catalogued the energy signatures.
"Can’t see any of the New Gods inside this one," he murmured to himself. "Only parademons."
His jaw tightened. "No matter."
Below him, Gotham continued its nightly chaos, sirens wailed in the distant streets. Sowhere in the Bowery, a mugging was in progress. This city always never knew what was going on until it was too late.
Arthur raised his right hand.
And called.
The shadow beneath him, his own shadow, cast by the burning ship above exploded.
Darkness poured out of it, spreading across the sky in a tidal wave of absolute black. The clouds drank it. The air shivered. Every light in Gotham flickered, streetlamps, car headlights, the bat-signal itself.
From that darkness, wings unfolded.
Kamish.
The Shadow Dragon erged from the void with a scream that shattered windows for six blocks. His body was monstrous, eyes that burned with the sa violet fire as his master.
Arthur landed on the dragon’s skull between the horns, his feet finding purchase on shadow scales that could deflect artillery.
"Kamish," he said.
The dragon rumbled a sound that vibrated through the air.
"I see it."
"Then destroy it."
Kamish’s wings folded.
And the dragon attacked, the ship’s sensors must have scread. Sowhere inside that twisted tal, a parademon commander was shrieking orders, trying to redirect power to weapons, to shields, to anything that might stop what was coming.
Kamish hit the Apokoliptean vessel like a cot made of rage.
The impact cracked the sky. A shockwave rippled outward, visible, physical pushing clouds back for a mile in every direction. The ship lurched, its port side crumpling inward, hull plating shearing off in sheets of burning tal.
The dragon didn’t stop.
His claws sank into the ship’s hull, tearing through armor designed to resist great assault. His jaws closed around one of the vessel’s spires, and he pulled.
The spire ca free with a shriek of tortured tal.
Kamish swallowed it.
"Tastes like fear," the dragon growled, and there was sothing almost like joy in his voice.
Fire blood in the back of his throat, he exhaled, and a column of shadow-fla engulfed the ship’s forward section, lting armor, cooking parademons where they stood, turning the vessel’s bridge into a slag heap.
From the shadows around Kamish, new shapes erged.
Giants.
They pulled themselves out of the darkness like n climbing from a pit, fifteen feet tall, wrapped in armor and wielding swords that could carve a mountain. One of the elite of Arthur’s army. They sward the crippled ship, climbing its angled hull with impossible grace, their weapons flashing in the firelight.
One giant drove his blade through a gun emplacent. Another carved open a hatch and threw himself inside, screams followed, brief and wet. A third stood atop the highest remaining spire, planted his sword in the tal, and pushed, splitting the ship’s spine.
Arthur watched from Kamish’s skull, arms crossed with a calm expression.
The ship began to fall.
Suspended between the dragon’s grip and gravity’s claim. Then Kamish released it, pushing off with his hind legs, and the vessel dropped.
It tumbled through the sky end over end, trailing fire and shadow and the bodies of parademons thrown free by the rotation. The harbor below opened its arms.
The impact with the ocean was apocalyptic.
Water erupted upward in a wall fifty feet, a hundred feet, two hundred feet a tidal wave that crashed against the docks, flooded warehouses, sent ships moored in the harbor rocking violently against their restraints. The sound traveled across the city, a thunderclap that made people look up from their dinners, their cris, their quiet desperations.
Then silence, the ship lay in the shallows, broken open like an egg, its interior exposed to the night air. Fires still burned in its wreckage, hissing where the water touched them. Parademons, the few that had survived crawled from the ruins only to be t by shadow giants, who dispatched them with efficient, silent violence.
Arthur descended from Kamish’s skull.
The dragon shrank as he fell, disappearing, folding himself back into Arthur’s shadow until only a whisper of darkness remained. The giants followed, one by one, lting into the black until the harbor was empty except for the burning ship and the man standing on the dock.
Arthur landed softly on the wet concrete of a warehouse loading bay. The building behind him was abandoned tagged with gang symbols, windows boarded, its interior dark. But its roof gave him a perfect view of the wreckage.
He walked to the edge of the dock, stopped, and looked out at the dying vessel.
The fires reflected in his violet eyes. The screams of dying parademons faded into the night.
"What is Apokolips even trying to do," Arthur said to himself, "sending a ship here... knowing full well what awaits them?"
/-\
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