The Abyss set us free, but it did not release us.
Even though we walked back into the plane of Earth, shadows stayed with us like a second layer of skin. My team was quiet initially. They didn't have to be. Their silence was not fear it was metamorphosis. Every single one of them had experienced something worse than dying. And they'd lived.
Survival wasn't enough, however. No longer.
I stood at the edge of the training fields in the pocket dimension I'd crafted floating above a fractured sky and a sea of shifting stars. It wasn't real, not in the way Earth was, but it obeyed me. Bent to my will. It was time to push the League beyond their breaking points again.
"You've opened more than your strength," I told them as they gathered. "Now we learn to control the forces that bend reality itself."
"Element manipulation?" Diana asked, eyes squinting.
I nodded. "Air, earth, fire, water, lightning, and void. Each of you is attuned to something some to more than one. But it won't be easy. It will resist you."
"Like you," Batman growled, entering the circle.
I grinned. "Just like me."
I lifted my hand, and the landscape changed.
The heavens split apart and rain poured down not water, but raw elemental force. Fire churned in it, thunder boomed within each drop. The earth below our feet shattered into six arenas, each pulsing with a different color, each emitting perilous, uncontrolled power.
"Select your test," I told them. "Or it will select you."
Flash flinched and the lightning dome engulfed him before he could protest.
Aquaman strode directly into the water ring, the sea closing over him like an angry friend.
Zatanna took a moment, then stepped into the fire circle. I wasn't certain if it was courage or obstinacy. Or maybe both.
Raven, veiled in quiet, stepped forward into the nothingness. Naturally. The shadows replied to her presence like the rhythm of a heartbeat.
Diana entered the arena of the earth. The earth shook left, not in protest, but in recognition. She bore the weight of worlds. It was no wonder she dominate the foundation of them.
There was only Bruce left.
I stood over him. He did not move.
"You don't believe in magic," I said.
"I believe in strategy," he said.
I leaned my head. "Air demands flexibility. Accuracy. Fineness. It doesn't care if you trust it. It only cares if you deserve it."
His gaze shifted to the air arena. Invisible forces tumbled like scythes of wind, untamed and deadly.
He walked in without speaking.
I turned away from them then. My own domain existed separately combining all six elements, enveloped by the seventh. The original chaos from which others sprang.
I didn't require training. I required resistance.
As I plunged into the elemental turmoil, the domain reacted with brutal intent.
Fire raged across my flesh. Lightning seared through my veins. Water attempted to drown thought, earth pulverized resolve, and wind destroyed clarity. And the void it spoke my name in the voice of things I'd forgotten.
Pain unfolded, but I welcomed it.
Because this wasn't about learning.
This was about dominance.
Hours went by. Perhaps days. Time did not matter here.
When I stepped out, my cloak smoldered with sapphire fire. My eyes shone like the tempest of a thousand worlds.
The League faced me, battered but alive. Stronger. Altered.
Flash's aura flared with golden bolts. Zatanna's fingertips were bleeding fire and will. Diana moved like a living mountain. Raven no longer battled the darkness she ruled it. And Bruce. Bruce had become the wind silent, unseen, lethal.
I gazed at each of them.
"We're not defenders any longer," I declared. "We're the elemental threshold between this world and what's arriving."
Raven advanced, speaking low.
"And what is arriving?"
I gazed out towards the horizon.
"A war that will rend the multiverse in two."
The wind wailed.
The stars grew dull.
And a long way off, something primordial awakened.