Trinity

Seconds after both her comrades had fallen lost in the terrible stupor of Deimos’ nightmarish realm; the Amazon Princess found herself the focus of the demi-god’s singular attention. Both Bruce and Kal were crumpled up on the ground, their face a rictus of fear and horror. She saw Bruce curled up in a ball and fought the urge to run to his side, feeling immediately guilty that she thought of him first, not because he was most vulnerable, but because of what she felt for him.

It was an advantage she should not have given the God of Dread.

“What is this?” She heard his voice snap her focus back to him sharply. “Your thoughts are transparent Princess…” Deimos sneered. “Has the chosen one of Olympus been soiled already by the Patriarch’s World? I would have thought it would have taken some time at least for your supple thighs to be unclenched? I suppose that is the way with all you Amazon whores…”

“You will not bait me…Servant.” She retaliated sharply, far too sensible to be provoked by his vulgar innuendo. The demi-god had not struck her down as he had Bruce and Kal and she wondered why this was. “If that is the best you can do, then I suggest you inflict me with the same horror that you have cursed upon my friends and cease your obscene prattling.”

“You bitch,” the god hissed, “No unpleasant little nightmares for you. I will tear you apart piece by piece. You, I have left for myself.”

With that, the snakes that made up his unholy mane lashed out like cobras springing and crossed the distance between them to wrap their coils around Diana’s body. She could feel them circling her legs, arms and torso. Her ears filled up with the sound of their vile hissing, her lungs recoiling at their fetid breath. Through the serpentine coils crisscrossing over her face, she saw Deimos approach, Harmonia’s talisman hanging at the belt around his waist.

Sharp teeth tore into her skin and she realized that the snakes were not merely intending to suffocate her – their fangs were also filled with poisonous venom, venom that a child of the Gods may not be able to withstand. Clenching her fist around the largest of the creatures circling her neck, Diana tore it away in one powerful movement. She felt the reptile go slack in her grip before tossing it aside. However, the snakes were like the hydra, where one was removed another was there to take its place.

“Fight little princess but you are nothing but an Amazon, clay given life. I am a god,” Deimos taunted vaingloriously as if the whole of Tartarus was audience to their battle. “I am the son of the greatest of gods, who for too long has abided by the rules of Zeus to remain out of the affairs of men! When he rules in Olympus, I will be at his side and I will toast your destruction by taking my pleasure in your whore sisters in Themiscyra!”

Diana ignored his obscene words, knowing that he was only trying to distract her from escaping his serpentine clutches. She jerked at the stinging pain of another unholy snake clamping its jaws around her cheek, drawing blood. Diana winced in pain as she ripped it away, literally decapitated it when its head came away from the elongated body. Hot blood sprayed against her cheek and she had to blink to keep its poisonous fluids from blinding her.

However, something else was beginning to sap at her strength and Diana knew that the venom was beginning to taint her blood with its poison. If Deimos did not succeed in killing her with his serpentine mane, the vile substance in her body would.

No! She cried defiantly in her mind, refusing to entertain any possibility of defeat. She was an Amazon and the survival of both the Patriarch’s World and Themiscyra depended on her prevailing.

Suddenly, something else penetrated through the haze of pain and her efforts to fight off the poisonous serpents around her. A heart wrenching scream cut through her ears, stilling her breath when she recognized from whom it came. A world of sorrow and grief rode on the crest of that anguished cry.

Without even seeking out the source, she knew it had come from Bruce.

The pain and anguish in his voice tore at her heart and more than anything, she wanted to go to him. Accustomed to his proud spirit and sheer force of will, the extraction of such cry from the Batman filled Diana a surge of fury. Mustering all the power at her disposal, she launched herself off the rocky ground, climbing into the darkened air above. Like ropes pulled taut under the strain of a dead weight, the snakes tightened their grip as she dragged their master into the air with her.

Deimos let out an indignant cry of outrage as he was lifted of the precipice where he and Diana had stood. Digging his nails into the rock wall as he was dragged upwards, his fingers raked grooves across the hardened surface. “This pitiful effort will avail you nothing Amazon. The importance placed upon your existence by your patrons only does disservice to your entire race. In the end, what you are matters little!”

“We shall see about that,” Diana spat back, grabbing the snakes attached to her form in mid length, compressing them under her palms like a thick rope. She held on fast and then swung hard. Deimos, attached into the end, smashed into a wall, his bulk shattering a length of walkway, causing debris and black rock to rain down into the darkness. Swinging him across again, she gave him no quarter, even when more monstrous coils sprung forth from the god to encircle her.

They descended upon her like a writhing wall, capturing her in mid air. She felt them surround her ankles and her wrists, their sharp teeth like knives biting into her until her whole body screamed in protest. She could not endure much more of this. Despite her defiance, Diana could feel the poison sap more and more of her strength. She had to stop this and soon. However, she would give Deimos one chance at surrender.

If he refused her, Diana would bear no guilt for what happened next.

“Release me or suffer the consequences,” she said suddenly. Her voice calm and deliberate despite the fact they were continuing their relentless tug of war.

Deimos actually laughed at this as he clung harder to the rock face. “You? You are warning me Princess?”

Princess. Hearing Deimos refer to her as such when the only other male who had done so was Bruce made Diana bristle with annoyance. Glaring at him through narrowed eyes, she reached for her brow, removing the tiara through the tangle of jet coloured hair. Ignoring the bites and the stinging pain throughout her body, Diana straightened the golden band around forehead until it was flat and straight.

“Will you yield, son of Ares?” Diana demanded one last time.

“Your arrogance knows no bounds whore!” Deimos bit back, causing more serpents to squirm out of his skull towards her. “You forget yourself whore! I am the son of a god....”

Diana shook her head, feeling near pity for his lack of understanding. By the time, he realized the truth. It would be too late. “You are indeed a god,” she cut him off. “But it is you who forget yourself, particularly in regards to where you are. This place was built to imprison the Titans; it was made to withstand the likes of Cronus. Here, all beings are made equal. In Tartarus I am not yours god of Dread, rather you are mine.”

With that, Diana hurled the tiara in her hand. It tumbled through the black like a Catherine wheel in the night sky moving so quickly that Deimos neither had time to see it or for that matter register what it could do. Not until it struck. The tiara sliced through several strands of reptilian flesh before meeting its mark with deadly accuracy.

The cut was swift and clean giving the demi-god no time to react. He might have comprehended an instant before the tiara struck but if he did, he had no time voice it.

His head came away from his neck and the snakes attached to it, all screeched in startled surprise agony as Deimos’ decapitated skull fell off his shoulders. They withdrew abruptly as they rushed back to their master’s lifeless form. Diana watched them shrink back around Deimos’ body as his slackened fingers released the handhold keeping him in place against the rock face.

His corpse landed on the walkway where Bruce and Kal were still gripped in the god’s malicious illusion. Diana wasted no time in reaching the body to remove the second half of Harmonia’s talisman from his belt. Once the second half of the amulet was in her possession, she shoved his remains over the side.

With certainly less fanfare than he had arrived, Diana watched the God of Dread vanish into the abyss, taking his serpentine clients with him.

**********

Diana went to Bruce first, telling herself that her choice had to do with his being closer, even if her heart knew that was a lie. Whatever anger she may have felt at his earlier deception, Diana knew that it was forgotten in the face of her concern for him. She did not know if her affection for Bruce could be likened to the deep burning fire of Kal’s love for Miss Lane but Diana knew she did care greatly for him.

Dropping to her knees beside him, Diana reached for her lasso and immediately bound the Batman in its golden strands. At the time of her battle, she had wondered why Deimos had not tried to ensnare her as he had done to Kal and Bruce. However, now that there was more time to consider the question, she realized that the lasso of truth in her possession would allow no such illusion to cloud her mind. It had been forged by Hephaestus, a god who rivaled Ares in power. Deimos had no more power over it than he had over her.

“Bruce,” she brushed his cheek gently with her fingertips as she held the lasso against him with her other hand. “Let the veil of deception fall from your eyes. What you see is a trick of Morpheus, a nightmare drawn from that which frightens you. You are the strongest man I have ever encountered. I know you use fear as a weapon because you are all too aware of its power. Do not allow it to break your spirit. Fight, Bruce fight!”

Diana could feel him struggling and though she did not know what terrible things he saw in that nightmarish realm, Diana could hear its toll upon him by the sounds of his near silent sobs.

It broke her heart all over again and she lowered her lips to his, her eyes moist with emotion. “Please Bruce,” she whispered softly. “You are not alone. I am here with you. Come back to me.”

And somewhere in the dark recesses of an alley that still stood in the real world, the little boy covered in blood, weeping over his parents’ death, saw a glimmer of light leading him away from that terrible place. Like the sun peeking through the clouds, he forced himself to leave the grisly scene and follow the beam until he began felt the sunlight fall upon his skin again.

Bruce Wayne opened his eyes to see Diana leaning over him, her blue eyes staring at him with a mixture of hope and worry. Raising his hand shakily, a gauntleted finger touched her lips and was surprised when she tilted her head just enough to kiss the tip gently.

For a second, neither cowl nor bracelet existed. There was no great destiny to fulfill, no dark quest for either of them to overcome. All that remained was the two of them, hope and despair finding solace in each other. He wanted to bask in that moment forever, to brand the memory of her in his mind forever. However, he was still the Batman and the moment was to fragile for him to forget everything else that was happening around them.

As his powerfully honed senses returned to him, Bruce noticed her usually perfect skin marred by a multitude of tiny bites. Snake bites, he identified immediately. “You’re hurt.”

“I will recover,” she said with a wan smile.

Bruce nodded. “Deimos?”

“Dealt with.” Diana answered firmly, having no desire to go into detail about how she had slain a god. While it was a necessary action, taking a life, even one like Deimos’ was not something she took triumph in. Loosening the lasso around him, Diana broke away and stood up, her eyes turning towards Kal who was still struggling in his own nightmare.

Brushing aside what had transpired between them because she needed her thoughts to be clear and focused, Diana hurried towards Kal. “Kal is still in Deimos’ thrall,” she explained, looking at him a little shyly and reminding Bruce about how inexperienced she was for all her confidence and strength.

“You weren’t affected?” he asked as he got to his feet, shaking off the last vestiges of that terrible reality from his brain.

“Gaea be thanked no,” Diana replied, kneeling down next to Kal who was shaking and shuddering, uttering muffled words of distress. “The lasso is an instrument of truth, forged by the fires of Hephaestus; it would not allow me to be taken in by Deimos’ power. The only way he could harm me was through direct combat. Fortunately, he did not succeed.”

Binding Kal with the lasso, she turned to Bruce. “I need your assistance. You are his friend. He will hear you better than I. Call to him Bruce, he requires an anchor to be drawn out of his nightmare.”

Bruce was not about to refute the statement since it had worked so effectively on him when Diana had done the same thing.

As Diana bound Clark, Bruce knelt next to him and spoke firmly, “Clark, snap out of it. Whatever you are seeing, it’s an illusion. It’s a mind game Clark, a mind game to distract us from what we need to do.”

Clark reacted to his voice, like a man caught in a fog, searching for a way out. Clark shook his head as if fighting to dispel the images being forced upon him. Bruce could see Diana’s efforts to hold Clark still. Not an easy thing to do when he was Superman and possibly the strongest being on the planet.

“Keep talking to him!” she urged as she struggled to keep him from harming himself. “I can barely keep him subdued!”

Bruce could well believe it as he saw her using all her strength to ensure that Clark didn’t attempt to break out of the lasso’s hold. Turning to Clark, he considered a different tact and took a deep breath once he realized what was the best way to snap Clark Kent out of the dreamscape.

“Clark,” Bruce spoke firmly but with a good deal more emotion than he was accustomed to. “You need to snap out of this right now. Lois needs you Clark. Do you hear me? Lois needs your help. If we don’t stop this, Lois is going to die.”

If anything could snap Clark Kent out of his delirium, it was that.

It sliced through the parched landscape that Clark found himself trapped, it ripped away at the canvas of the amber sky with the crimson sun sneering at him and his weakness. Confronted by the gravestone that bore her name, Clark had clung to his sanity by telling himself that it was a trick. Hearing her name spoken with the chance to save her life was all Clark needed to pull himself out the hallucination.

“Lois,” he whispered as his struggles ceased to be less violent. He repeated her name like the mantra needed to find his way back to the world.

Clark blinked and saw Diana and Bruce looking at him with concern.

“Bruce…” he muttered as he tried to sit upright and this time Diana helped him instead of restraining him. He felt Bruce’s hand on his shoulder, pulling him forward until all of the disorientation he felt faded away. “I feel terrible.”

“No kidding,” Bruce retorted, hiding his relief at his friend’s state beneath his practiced mercurial demeanor. “Deimos decided to take us through the looking glass for a trip through our worst nightmares.”

“Well he was pretty damn accurate,” Clark declared, his jaw tightening. Disorientation was giving away to anger. The memory of what he had seen on that dead Earth was something Clark would not forget any time soon. It was not much more pleasant that what Bruce was subjected to, he was sure.

“Where is the son of a bitch?” He cursed with more venom that was usual as he stood up.

“Gone,” Diana answered, getting to her feet as well as she gathered up her lasso and began coiling it. “He will trouble us no more.”

The finality in which said that made Clark uneasy and he had to remember that Diana for all her naiveté and innocence was also from a culture of warriors. However, both he and Bruce were in uncharted waters where her gods were concerned and he wasn’t prepared to pass judgment when the fate of the world was at stake.

Like Bruce, he noticed the tiny bite marks and remembered the snake-like mane that Deimos had sported. It didn’t take a genius to determine how Diana acquired those wounds. “Are you alright?” He asked with concern. He knew she was strong, almost as strong as him but Diana was by no means invulnerable.

“I will be,” she reassured her. “My lasso protected me from his thrall. He had to deal with me in a more direct manner.”

Clark had no doubt about that and decided to ask no more on just what Diana had done to dispatch Deimos. By the looks of her, she had suffered just as much as he and Bruce under the God of Dread’s ministrations.

“Good,” Clark nodded, turning away to sweep his gaze across their prison and immediately noted the indentations in the rock face, the blood splattered across the rough hewn walkways. It must have been a hell of a fight, he thought silently. “Okay, barring anything else coming after us in this cavern of doom, can we please get out of here?”

”No argument from me,” Bruce agreed, his eyes shifting to Diana. “You have the second half of the talisman?”

“Yes,” Diana nodded, holding up the talisman for Clark to see. “I took it from Deimos.” She explained as she walked over to Bruce. “He made no effort to hide it. He did not perceive me as threat enough to feel the need.”

“Obviously someone whose never seen a James Bond film,” Clark remarked.

“Don’t knock it,” Bruce retorted with a little smile. “If megalomaniacs didn’t let their egos run away with them, we’d never stumble onto their master plans. Here,” he handed Diana the half of the talisman in his possession.

”Why…?” she started to ask.

“This is your mission Princess,” the Batman said to her. “You should do this.”

Diana nodded slowly, feeling a sense of wonder at this gift of kinship these two men had extended to her. Their friendship was already strong and lasting while she was a newcomer to their circle. Yet, they recognized in her the same desire to help that they shared so deeply, even if their expression of it differed greatly. Diana felt privileged at the invitation and knew that for the rest of her days, Bruce and Kal would be the standard for all men she would ever meet in the Patriarch’s World. One was like the brother she never had while the other, the lover she sometimes dreamed.

Together, they were night, day and hope.

They were trinity.

*********

She watched through narrowed eyes, burning with hatred as the Amazon whore joined both parts of Harmonia’s talisman. The convergence of both pieces ignited a burst of light so brilliant that for an instant, all of Tartarus came alive as if Apollo himself was riding through its depths in his golden chariot. She turned away, unable to look, blinded by the brilliance of it until the shadows began to reappear in the cavern.

She was only able to look upon the place where the Amazon was standing when the glow had diminished and the dark had returned to reclaim Tartarus once again. As expected, the Amazon and her new allies were no longer in the prison. Harmonia’s talisman had given them the escape they needed. The talisman would bring them both to the heart of Ares’ plan where they would undoubtedly try to interfere.

“We cannot let that happen, can we?” She asked as she looked down into the abyss.

If one had vision enough to see all the way to the bottom, they would spy the amber raditation of a fiery wheel, spinning into eternity, never slowing, never allowing the prisoner bound to it a moment’s respite. The wheel was spoken of in ancient myths to journey across the sky in and endless cycle. Such fanciful tales were borne out of its sheer size for no beast in Tartarus was as relentless or gargantuan as the creature held in place against it.

“We cannot let that murdering whore go forth unpunished for taking the head of a god.” She hissed. “He was an arrogant fool but he was still my brother.”

A disembodied voice from the wheel spoke out in answer.

Unleash me. Unleash me and I will do your father’s bidding. I will grind their bones to dust and lay waste to their lands without mercy. I will rain upon them such bloody destruction that they will have no choice but to give up the quest to hinder your father’s designs. When they come to me, I will make them pay for your brother’s death.

She who was called Eris, Goddess of Discord and sister to Deimos smiled, “I was hoping you would say that.”