Return of The Corps

[Thaal Sinestro]

The wash of heat and blinding light enveloped Sinestro as he strode forward, his foot sinking into the sand as he crossed the threshold from one verse to the next. He instinctively pulled his hat down, hiding his eyes from the scorching sun and took a deep breath, reveling in the arid atmosphere.

He took a few steps into the drift before a faint yellow aura slipped over him. His feet gently lifted off of the ground and he began to fall into the cloudless sky. Upward, further and further, until he was barely a speck against the vast firmament of blue. The wind yanked at his poncho and it fluttered wildly as the air grew thinner. The rolling Dunes spanned out before him, yellow tides churning, an unforgiving wasteland with nothing of value as far as the eye could see. Somehow, it felt like home.

Noise and chaos had filled his life for what had seemed like months, the voices of others all but drowning out his own. Wars of emotion raged through him, different hands that scrambled over his work, tugging his attention back and forth until he scarcely understood which way he was going. As the thundering commotion grew to a crescendo, the Harbinger was formed. The ambitions and desires of the gestalt still echoed in his mind, as if they had been his own. It was a struggle just to reclaim his identity from the flames of the creature’s passion.

Peering up at the sky, he yearned to push beyond it. He wanted the stillness of the void, the utter silence that stretched infinitely in every direction. He wanted the knowledge that every star that seemed to be just on the horizon was actually billions of miles away. He wanted stillness and to be truly alone, if only for a moment. He wanted a place from another life. But even in the stillness of the desert, there was no more time to waste on regrets. Time only marched forward, never back.

Closing his eyes, the lantern took a moment to center himself. Why was he here? What did he want? He brought the battle in the Nexus to mind. There had so much blood. So much power. So much fear. And when the smoke cleared, the battlefield was littered with the corpses of those that had stood against him. He had won. Wasn’t that what he had set out to do?

With Sasuke gone, the last true threat to his dream was dead. Nippur had fallen, and he had chased the last of its children to the ends of the Omniverse and snuffed them out. There was nobody left to stop him from taking the Dunes. In all of the worlds, in all of the verses, nothing could stand in his way. Not this time.

There was no more New Babylon, there was no more Ganondorf, no more pretenders or opponents. There was only Sinestro.

He allowed his hands to rise from his sides, fingers splaying out as he bathed in the glory of the moment. A feeling of warmth swelled in his chest, bigger and bigger until he felt he could no longer contain it, and his lips parted in a soft guffaw. As soon as he allowed the first to escape, another followed, even louder than the first. Soon his throat roared with laughter, full and rich with true and undiluted, madness-inducing, joy. Tears tumbled from the corners of his eyes and down his cheeks before they were devoured by the sun, and creases formed where they hadn’t for years.

There, in the beating sun, whipping wind and endless sand, he laid claim to his uncontested empire. He was the Lord of the Arid Waste.

Slowly the swelling in his chest faded. The laughter stopped, and once again he gazed over the sweeping landscape that sprawled out below him. Everything he had fought to win still wasn’t enough. Certainly he was master of this wasteland, but that’s all it was: a waste. He was king of a vast sandbox, without even a bucket to make a castle. For all the work he had done to claim the foundation of an empire, he would have to do even more to build an empire worth having. Ambition was like hunger; just as the memory of one victory began to fade, he ached for another.

He lifted his fist into the air and stared hard into the ring on his finger. The sun danced over the surface, reflecting off of the harsh angles of the symbol. The Yellow Light of Fear. It was a brand that he had seared into the minds of so many. And yet, for all the power that it offered, for all the destruction it had wrought, what had he ever built? A gathering of sociopaths that carved a golden swathe across the stars. More the work of a madman than the architect of a better tomorrow.

But, as always, a plan had been in place for them. The insane were given skill, direction, purpose. How many in his new empire would benefit from the guiding hand of the Greatest Lantern?

LAW was dead, but the Sinestro Corps would rise again.

[Thaal Sinestro]

Thick wheels rolled over the packed-dirt path, hopping and bumping as the lazy-eyed driver gradually maneuvered his cargo through the desert. The sun had sunk long before they began the venture into the wasteland, those who coordinated the movement hoping to take advantage of the poor visibility and respite for the burning heat.

Four horses drug behind them a steel wagon, massive rivets indicating the material’s thickness. A mountain of goods was piled atop the wagon with a thick burlap cloth concealing what lie beneath. A few scrawny, ill-equipped merchant’s children trod after the vehicle, they were weary, seemingly unaware of what surrounded them. Unoiled wheels screeched into the night, a siren’s call to any who might be prowling the darkness, searching for an opportunity to strike.

“Hold it!” one of the young men in the back shouted, his age told with the simpering tone of his voice. “Can we jus’ wait a minute?” he pleaded, a faint cockney accent bleeding through.

Rolling his eyes, the driver pulled the reigns limply and the horses came to a halt. “If you don’t stop bitching about the walk, boy, you’re not gonna get paid.” The portly older gentleman removed his bowler cap and fanned his face with it, “How do you expect us to meet quota if we only cover a quarter of the damn road every night?”

Beneath the burlap, something rustled, nudging the driver forcefully. “Yeah, alright,” he complained and whipped the horses into motion once more. “If you can’t keep up kid, we’re gonna leave you behind.”

A lean girl, no more than sixteen smirked at the boy and nodded. “You hear that li’l’ William? If you can’t keep up, we’re gonna leave you in the dust.” She laughed loudly and tipped her long-rifle over her shoulder, following after the steel vehicle.

“Fine!” the boy shouted, tossing his weapon a few feet off the path. “It’s not like this damn gun has any bulletin it anyw-“

The child’s screeching was cut off by rolling, trilling shriek that accompanied an eruption of sand, three dark figures leaping from the ground below. The masked figures brandished their katanas as they fanned out, surrounding the wagon and its paltry defense.

“Sand furies!” the boy screamed, rushing towards his abandoned gun.

The girl reeled back as one of the apparently female assailants sliced her weapon in two. “What the hell is a sand fury?!” she howled in confusion and pain.

The horses whinnied, unable to kick or jump within their harnesses. As the wagon jerked about, the driver grinned and tore out the pintle, allowing the animals to flee. As they galloped past one of the warriors, the towing harness still strapped to their backs, he yelled out, “We got some, boys!”

The cloth that covered the wagon fluttered before being flung away, the once hidden gunmen emerging and instantly opening fire. The symphony of their various weapons erupted, neither in unison nor completely out of it. The force was comprised of men and women from several universes, cyborgs, aliens and old-west bandits alike. The one thing that they all held in common was a bright golden star worn upon their chests.

“Get ‘em off that kid!” a gruff woman ordered with a static-corrupted voice from beneath her massive Steel Brotherhood helm. She sprayed a few bursts from her massive plasma minigun, her hulking power-suit making the weapon seem easy to handle.

The young girl staggered back, clutching the deep cut on her forearm against her chest as the Fury pressed the attack. As the katana swept upwards to claim the girl’s life, a pair of massive scimitar blades intercepted the blow with a ringing clash. A lanky gerudo sneered and tossed the weapon aside, her olive eyes locked with the creature behind the mask. She twirled her blades and sank into a practiced stance as the sand-creature slunk into the darkness and contemplated an attack. “These are stronger than the others we’ve found so far,” the gerudo woman noted.

“I don’t know,” a figured wrapped in a tattered yellow cloak idly interjected as they fired off a series of tight, three-round bursts from an automatic rifle, idly watching the fury dodge out of their path, “that desperado we found last week was pretty tough.”

“They only lasted a day!” a thick-armed man laughed with a thick dornish accent in his throat, his bulging muscles tensed as he aimed his bow. “At least these would make it through the combat phase,” he chuckled and let loose the arrow, which caught his unsuspecting target in the neck. The sand warrior crumpled to the ground with a wheezing yelp, clutching at the sky dramatically. “Then again, maybe not.”

The two remaining furies barely seemed to notice their fallen sister, circling their prey and frantically spinning their swords under the light of the half-eaten moon. Their tattered clothing covered every inch of their bodies, thick layers wrapped around their head and neck, piling into a slap-shod mantle over their shoulders. They wore round, black-lensed goggles over their eyes, and two small “horns” of wound fabric pointed horizontally off either side of their heads. Small, round baubles hung from these horns, bouncing with every movement.

The woman in power-armor grabbed the young boy by his collar and lifted him off the ground easily, gingerly placing him in the wagon behind her. “You said you know what these things are?” she asked, her voice offering nothing that could be considered softness.

“Th- they’re sand furies,” he stammered, “from Aurora!”

A beam of green roared from the end of her weapon, dissuading what would have been another assault. “They don’t seem like a very technologically advanced people,” she said with a hint of irritation, “Tell me what you know, kid.”

“From I’ve heard from the guards that toured Aurora, they are a terror to behold! They’ve even been said to give the Hero King a bit a’ trouble now and then,” the youth rambled, the confines of the wagon offering the pretense of safety.

“Sentient?” the yellow-cloaked figure demanded, turning his robotic face to the child.

Stammering, the child shouted, “I don’t know what that means!”

Growling, the exo abandoned his firing point and grabbed the boy by his neck. He lifted him over his head and allowed the smooth lenses of his eyes to bore into the child’s mind. He gave the boy a forceful shake, shouting, “Do they think!?”

Tears rolled down his cheeks as he sobbed out, “Yes! Yes, I think so!”

“You either think, or you know,” the gerudo said coldly, engaging in a swirling dance of blades with her opponent.

The young boy began to weep in earnest, heaving and wailing as he struggled for breath against the android’s strangling grip. His little legs kicked and flailed as fear overwhelmed his fragile mind, tiny fingers tugging at the exo’s hands. “I’ll ask you one more time,” the robot stated.

When the boy only answered in more tears, the exo took a step to turn, dangling the squirming child over the side of the wagon. The heavily armored woman laughed and lowered her weapon, the thunderous rhythm of her blasts suddenly and overwhelmingly absent. The flailing boy glanced over his shoulder to see the lithe form of the fury darting in the darkness, the glint of her blade the only thing revealing her presence.

“I’d say you’ve only got a few seconds before that ‘fury’ cuts off your legs for a nice snack, kiddo,” the massive woman intoned grimly. “Better tell that bucket of bolts what he wants to hear.”

The exo grinned, as much as he could grin, and turn his wrist outward, allowing the boy a full view of the creature that was coming to kill him. The boy’s eyes widened and he suddenly went still, terror wresting control of his body. The gang of secondaries each looked to the young, sniveling child, and in their eyes some horrible reflection of his fear glinted within them. It seemed as though they took in the child’s whole being, in all his anguish, and the relished in it. Their gaze was that of a pack of hyenas prowling in the wake of an injured gazelle, waiting for it to succumb to its wounds.

Tentatively, the terrible creature in the darkness took a step forward, keeping its blade between itself and the cart. It tilted its head, curious as it tested the other combatant’s reactions. When it became clear that the gunfire had truly stopped, it belted out another trilling shriek and charged. His whole body clenched at once and he was unable to prevent himself from wetting his trousers as he witnessed the fury sprinter closer and closer. It lifted its katana high into the air and crouched down to leap.

“THEY CAN THINK!” the child finally screamed, taking momentary control over his faculties.

“Perfect,” the android purred and spiked the screeching boy hard into the hard steel floor of the wagon.

The dornishman let loose and arrow, penetrating her left calf and halting her dramatic leap. She hit the sand in a heap, writhing and tugging at the projective that protruded from her leg, wrenching it free with the sound of rending muscle. The gerudo stepped around the corner of the wagon, covered in the blood of her opponent, and the fury reached for her weapons. They were jsut out of reach. She wordlessly turned her eyes up to the dervish that now stood triumphantly over her. “Looks like you’re our lucky winner,” she said with a wide grin under her beak-like nose.

The flat of the scimitar slapped the creature’s head, and darkness consumed her vision.

[Thaal Sinestro]

Ruddy fingers swept over the man’s dirty blonde beard, his beady blue eyes darting as each man passed him by. His hand returned to the side and rested on the handle of his Schofield Model 3, which might have looked like it was backwards if you didn’t know any better. Some folks would even take time out of their day to stop and tell the man that he had his holsters on the wrong way. But sure as he knew that bullets could kill a man who didn’t mind their own business, he knew that those pistols were pointed the right direction.

He idly pushed the edge of his black hat, peering out from below the wide brim as a coach rode by him down the street. The brougham didn’t even have paint on it but boasted thick locks, iron bars, and more than a few rough looking guards on top of it. It didn’t take much thinking for the man to know that there must have been something inside worth keeping.

The man took a few steps forward as he watched the carriage pass, moving from the shade of the awning he had been under and into the light. The sun caught on the copper buttons that rode down the doubt breasts of his bone-white leather jacket, even if they were more than a little tarnished. His long, slim, clay-colored trousers also sported buttons down each leg, but didn’t have the same shine as the Royal Army Pay Corps ones on his top.

After looking back and forth for a moment, he stalked down the street, following the wagon around a turn at a lazy intersection. It slowed to a stop in front of a large structure with metallic walls and a heavy looking door, and the men offloaded from the top. Even in the daylight, the bright sign that hung on the building’s top read “BANK” in flickering, neon wire.

Nobody had to know everything about the world they lived in as long as they knew where the money came from and where it went. He figured that it couldn’t be that much different in this place. Looking down, he wiped a speck of blood off his jacket. After all, he did know that a bullet still killed a man.

Squinting his eyes, the pale man looked at the burly guards open the locks and open the doors to the wagon, allowing some workers to begin unloading it. Some kind of big green fella, a metal man with a yellow cloak, and then three dumb looking rough-necks. At least three of them were something he was used to shooting. He figured the other two wouldn’t much like the taste of forty four caliber better than a normal person would.

He stalked back the way he had come, around the edge of a wooden building. Even in the middle of the day, summer heat at its peak, the town was bustling. With all manner of freaks and monstrosities all around, the man looked perfectly harmless, if not downright normal. It was almost too easy for him to blend into a passing group and duck into an alley. With all the sound of the electrical generators humming and the sparks from poor connections, not a soul noticed as he held his hands in front of him and summoned a shimmering ball of omnilium.

When he was done with his task, the man strode quickly from the alley and back into the roadway, shouldering his way through the crowd of people and toward the group of guards and their cargo. The green one spotted him and stepped forward, aggressively cocking the lever of his carbine. “I’mma need you ta step away from tha wagon while we unload, stranga,” the creature boomed with inhuman baritone.

The man in the white jacket looked past the giant creature to the robot in yellow. His eyes narrowed as the other three men stepped up to surround him. “Ya’ll some kind of lawmen?” His eyes snapped back to the strange creature that stood before him. The four creatures and their overseer glared into him, their fingers already on their triggers. “I hate lawmen.”

Two pistols left their holsters and fired before the wagon guards could do more than look surprised. Two of the thick-necked humans immediately fell, and the third only managed half a shout before a hole opened up in his neck. The green man cracked off a panicked shot that went over the shooter’s shoulder, only to catch two shots to the chest. When the brightly colored bruiser didn’t immediately fall, the outlaw crossed his left hand over the right pistol and fanned the hammer four more times.

Black powder filled the air, the man’s nostrils stinging with sulfur. He stepped through the smoke and over the green man’s body and its pool of purple blood. Both of his revolvers were leveled at the machine, which hadn’t moved an inch. The man in the white jacket gestured his weapons towards the carriage. “There anything special I gotta know about them boxes?” he asked, a cold edge to his voice.

A static-ridden chuckle came from somewhere inside the robot, its amber eyes glowing with a sinister aura. “Only that they aren’t yours, traveler,” he, if you would call it a he, replied.

The highwayman had to resist the urge to pull the trigger. “I ain’t got much patience for banter, mister.”

Ignoring the man’s statement, the robot tilted its head to the side and parted the tattered yellow cloth that hung around him. A massive revolver hung at the machination’s side, rounds bigger than the man in white had ever seen outside of a cannonball. “Now, how many bullets you got left in that pea-shooter? I know the right one’s empty,” his crackling voice rattled. “You got three, right?”

The crack of the robber’s pistol rang out, and sparks flew from the robot’s face as he was tossed, his back slamming into the side of the carriage he had been sent to defend. The man stared hard for a moment, not sure if he’d killed the damn thing.

“Well, that’s two left,” it growled, and pushed itself up off of the heavily armored vehicle. Another dead-eye shot ricocheted off its brow. The machine’s face was a mangle of bent steel and sparking wires, but its jaw still opened. “Only got one left, traveler.”

The outlaw tore open the top two buttons of his jacket, revealing a bundle of thick red rods. “That’ll do,” he said calmly, pulled the dynamite free, and tossed it in the final guard’s direction.

The aperture of the robot’s optical lenses widened and he dove for cover, but the bark of the man’s pistol heralded a wave of concussive force, smoke and fire that erupted in every direction. The wide street filled with dust, raining debris and screams of the terrified secondaries that hadn’t had the time to run away yet.

Shreds of burning paper and wood fluttered down from the sky, embers danced along the ground. A grotesque silence held over the entryway of the Town’s bank, as if time itself was afraid to see what had happened. The smoke choked the sun’s rays, but if you strained your ears, you could hear a faint sound, almost too quiet to hear. As the dust began to settle, light pierced the darkness, but it wasn’t the sun’s.

Yellow, fierce and bold, hummed with power. A wall of hard-light surrounded the robot, and its glow cast beams through the air, shadows dancing through the fog. A single figure stood silhouetted against it in the distance, a strand of gold linking the man’s terrible aura to the construct. Anyone who had been in the town for longer than a day knew who it was.

“Sinestro,” the robot muttered, his voice filled with reverence and perhaps a tinge of fear.

The hard-light wall flickered and warped as the energy of the ring rescinded back to its source, and the deputy of the Town With No Name stepped into sight. “Phantom,” he coldly intoned, looking to the machine, “I thought you had this in hand.”

The automaton shook his head and drew his weapon, already scanning for the man who had just thrown a bomb at him. “I think he’s Prime.”

Sinestro’s sharply exhaled and lifted his fist, an amber beam of light instantly cutting through the smog, revealing the textures and terrain beneath it. “Or perhaps he was just made by a powerful Prime.”

Shaking his head, the metal man gargled, “I don’t know Guardian, he was rather fast.” His weapon swept over the smog-choked area. “He might have even been faster than me.”

“A bold claim for a Gunslinger,” the deputy complimented as his keen eyes searched the detritus that now littered his roads, “if what you’ve told me about The City is to be believed.”

The machine snerked, “Every word is true, or I’m not an exo.”

The penetrating ray caught the edge of the tip of a boot as Sinestro swept it by, hiding behind a barrel about twenty meters from the front of the bank. At the speed of thought, a noose whipped out and snared it, dragging the outlaw into the street. The man’s eyes were wild but his hands were still working, desperately slamming rounds into the chambers of his revolvers.

“Is this the man that gave you so much trouble?” the red-skinned deputy asked flatly.

Phantom grunted and nodded, “That’s the one.”

The man snapped his six shooter closed, leveled the barrel, and unloaded. Bullets zinged off of Sinestro’s shield, the thin yellow aura that surrounded every inch of his body. “He’s got a lot of fight in him,” he said aloud to nobody in particular. His amber eyes gleamed and he allowed a sinister smirk to cross his lips. “For a human at least.”

Phantom twirled the oversized pistol in his hand and as he drew down on the outlaw, it burst into a gleam more radiant than the sun. With his Golden Gun in hand, the Gunslinger’s mangled face laughed shortly and grumbled out, “He won’t for long.”

The outlaw glanced between his two targets and his aim suddenly shifted, a trio of rounds clanged off of the exo, tossing his aim to the side as he pulled the trigger. The Golden Gun shot slammed into Sinestro’s shoulder, instantly shattering his shield and carving through his flesh. The lantern snarled as he stumbled to the side and clapped his hand over the wound, purple blood flowing between his fingers. His eyes flared wide at the foolishness of his cohort, but his attention returned to the unnamed bandit before he allowed himself to be distracted by anger.

The pale man dove behind the cover of a parked speeder, warily glancing out while he reloaded. Sinestro scowled, all of the playfulness gone from his countenance. “Not in my town,” he spat, and lifted off of the ground. His clothing was washed away in a wave of yellow, revealing a skin-tight suit beneath.

The lantern glared down at the wounded exo and barked, “Are you ready?”

Phantom nodded in return, and held his opened palm into the air. In perfect unison, both men began to chant.

“In blackest day,” Sinestro’s ring gleamed, pulsing with every word, “in brightest night,”
“Beware your fears made into light!” The weapon began to shudder almost imperceptibly, almost like it was struggling to leave his hand.
“Let those who try to stop what’s right,” the shuddering continued more dramatically, shaking violently.
“Burn like my power,” the ring moved so quickly now that it almost appeared that there were two of them.
“Sinestro’s might!”

A flash devoured the city, blinding anyone unlucky enough to look directly at it. The golden light eventually receded and at its epicenter, a second ring rested on the machine’s extended finger. A tight Sinestro Corps uniform covered his body, a shimmering hard-light cloak replacing the cloth one, an almost digital grid filled in the gaps as it shifted and flickered. Phantom closed his fist around the ring and looked down at it excitedly.

“I am going to corral the civilians out of the area,” Sinestro said, snapping the exo from his revere. “I’ll give you another chance to clean up your mistake.”

“I won’t let you down twice,” Phantom replied confidently, a hard-light revolver materializing in his hand.

Sinestro’s mustache curled into a snarl. “I know.”

[Thaal Sinestro]

The people of the Town knew what it meant when they saw his symbol in the sky. Stay inside. Lock your doors. Comply with the instructions of any Corps member. Be afraid of what might happen next.

The Sinestro Corps’ symbol appeared in the sky like a second sun, its light condescending into the town below, casting everything in its fearful golden glow. The streets cleared rapidly, citizens shuffling in nervous trots into whatever establishment was closest, slamming the doors and closing the shutters. Those who had nowhere else to go rushed from the immediate area, darting into alleys or ducking into their wagons. There was a sudden stillness in the air, a nervous quiet. The wind blew, and a single pane banged back and forth.

Suddenly, gunfire.

The shots ricocheted off of the shield that Phantom held in front of him, sparks flying off the transparent yellow as he slowly stalked forward. From the strength of the bullets, the man in white was probably a Prime. It took all the focus the exo had just to maintain the defense, but his nervousness bolstered its strength. Every time it wavered, he remembered that Sinestro was watching, burning through him with his amber eyes, judging his every move. The shield didn’t break.

“Come on now, traveler,” the robot spat, oil leaking down his face, “don’t make this harder for yourself than you’ve already made it. Just give up, and I’ll have some mercy on you.”

The deputy, Sinestro, flew high above the scene, his arms crossed, his eyes narrowed. He was ready at a moment’s notice to cut off the criminal’s exit or, if needed, snuff out their life. Instead though, he simply observed. He had been reluctant to put the exo on this mission, as simple as it was. When he had found the gunslinger in the desert, he was little more than a killing machine. Sinestro had seen a spark of something more in him than a simple dualist however, and attempted to foster some sense of purpose into his cybernetic soul. Thus far, the results had been mixed.

“I can tell you’re smart,” Phantom said, creeping around the edge of the hoverbike, his constructed cloak waving with each step. “Just come on out. Make this easier for both of us. I don’t wanna have to kill you.”

Sinestro’s ring flared to life, a beam of energy tearing down from the sky, but it was already too late. The stranger rolled out from beneath the craft and buried a knife in Phantom’s electronic throat. Oil and sparks sprayed out in a horrible display before his ring duplicate could manage to contain the bleeding in a protective seal. A millisecond later, a beam of yellow blasted the outlaw away from the Corpsman and into the dirt.

Phantom scrambled for a moment before his hand found the handle of the blade, jerking it out wildly. The ring’s automatic systems plugged the wounds, constructs forming replacements for each of the machine’s vital systems as he stumbled down to his knees. The exo choked for words, only to have black oil leak from his lips. His optics flickered, and he could sense his systems starting to fail.

There were no Ghosts here to bring him back. There were no doctors that could repair him. There was no hope for him. And in the absence of Hope, there was only Fear.

Phantom turned towards the robber, his body enflamed with a yellow aura. Every aspect of his body prickled and twanged with the ring’s power, absolute terror having taken hold of him, filling him with the full power of the Sinestro Corps’ ring. Weapons formed around him with barely a thought, a wall of pistols of every manufacture surrounding the machine. All of the hammers drew back in unison, and in similar unison, they began to fire.

Dirt and stone flew into the air as the streets were torn apart, the gunslinger’s constructs firing faster than a hundred men. The pale man shouted in shock and attempted to turn and bolt, but the hail of hard-light bullets fell upon him, perforating his legs and back with more holes than anyone would bother counting. He fell instantly and without a word, red flowing down his white jacket.

A hand pressed into the lawman’s shoulder, and all of the pistols jerked to face its owner. When Phantom saw who the hand belonged to, they vanished. The machine quavered, his robotic legs buckling beneath him. The korugaran caught him as the uniform faded off of Phantom’s body, his convulsing body shivering in his superior’s arms. “Di-” he gurgled, “did I d-do…” Black flowed from his open mouth, strangling the machine’s last words.

Sinestro offered a rare smile, and nodded. “You served well. Your reputation stands.”

“Never been beat,” the Corpsman chucked weakly. His hand grasped the deputy’s uniform, leaving a dark streak over the symbol on his chest. Phantom’s eyes flickered once again, then faded into emptiness.

Sinestro slowly shook his head slowly. “And your service is not yet finished.” He pressed his hand into the gore of the exo’s neck, and a prismatic light shined from within. Slowly, the exo’s internal systems were replaced, omnilium filling the gaps and fusing the severed wires. Eventually, he was repaired, and the deputy lowered his yet unconscious body to the ground.

Sinestro’s uniform slowly flickered away, as he looked down at his Corpsman, his attire returning the poncho and wide-brimmed hat as he processed the encounter. He had never been able to save the men and women he lost in battle. The grisly deaths of hundreds of his soldiers flashed through his mind. Green Lanterns, as well as Sinestro Corps. So many loyal to him had died. But here, in the Omniverse, he could save them.

It was then that his attention drifted to the man who Phantom had gunned down. Squinting, he lifted his ring and scanned the man. “Life signs?” he asked.

“LIFE SIGNS MINIMAL, BUT PRESENT,” the ring barked back.

“A lot of fight, indeed,” the lantern purred. “Additional information?”

“CHARLIE PRINCE, HUMAN. PLANET OF ORIGIN: EARTH.” The crackling voice paused for a moment. ”LIFE SIGNS FADING.”

The deputy stalked over to the robber’s body and kicked away his gun. Kneeling down, he flipped Charlie onto his back, and placed his palm on his hole-riddled chest.

“Charlie Prince of Earth...” A white light began to gleam, and Sinestro smirked to himself. “Welcome to the Sinestro Corps.”

[Thaal Sinestro]

Ben Wade’s eyes were aflame with anger. He didn’t know why, God damn he didn’t know why. After everything he’d done, dragging these sorry ass criminals through the trails, chasing after him and gunning down any dumb bastard who got in his way. He fought a whole God damned town, he’d given away more than a few hundred dollars, and he’d gone through more than his fair share of hell just to make sure that they didn’t put Wade on that train. And he’d done it! Against all the damn odds, he’d done it. He’d killed over twenty men on his way, but he killed the dumb bastard that was trying to put him on that railway to Yuma. Shot him dead.

After all that, Wade’s eyes were full of anger, and he knew he was gonna have to draw.

Charlie bolted up and grabbed for his holster, but he found it empty. He blinked the sleep from his eyes, trying to see through dimness that surrounded him. He tried to get off of the bed, but the rattle of chains and the jerk of his leg told him that he was bolted to the wall.

“Ya know,” he said with the same cold quietness he was known for, “I kin just summon up a hacksaw to get myself up outta that.”

A shadow stepped forward from the corner of the small room, revealing themselves to be the metal man he had recently thought he killed. “You’d need more than a few minutes to make one,” he replied. His cybernetic voice was even more distorted than it had been before, likely thanks to the blade that Prince had jammed into his neck. “And it only takes me about a half of a second to pull this trigger.” The thin ray of light from the window glinted from the barrel of the exo’s gun, which just so happened to be pointed in Charlie’s direction.

The outlaw leaned forward, narrowing his eyes. “I think I might take the bullet then, mister. I hear that that funny little bald kid will bring me back if you end up killin’ me.”

“True enough,” Phantom growled, “but don’t think I’d be killing you. I think I’d just make you hurt real bad for a while. Make you wish you were dead.”

Charlie idly tugged at the shackle around his ankle, reluctantly glancing between it and his captor. “Well, what do you want from me then?”

The machine slowly stalked forward, and if the robber wasn’t mistaken he had a smile on his his face. “I want to give you something.”

The criminals mean eyes focused on the exo as he spoke, catching every little detail about him. “What’re you handing out that I can’t get for myself?”

Phantom exuded a crumpled, static-laden chuckle and shifted his weight. The barrel of the gun was still pointed at his prisoner’s head. “Well, your freedom for starters.”

“I reckon I could get that if I tried hard enough.” Charlie slowly reclined, taking on a more relaxed pose as the robot tried to sell him on compliance.

“We’ll banish you if you don’t comply. If you don’t know what that means, just imagine hell.”

Charlie smirked and glanced up. “If I was afraid of hell, you think I’d be a highwayman?”

A cool stillness hung between the two men, both monsters. The lingering motes of dust illuminated in the glaring sunlight that rained from the cell’s tiny window. “We’ll train you,” he finally replied, “You’re pretty fresh here in the Omniverse. There’s a lot you don’t know yet, about what you can do, what you can’t. We’ll even teach you how to fight, how to win.”

Prince smiled subtly. “From the way that rob’ry went, I figured you’d be the one wantin’ some lessons on that.”

Phantom turned his head to the side. “You remember the ring, traveler?” Charlie’s attention was caught, and he laid a little more quietly than he had before. “That’s not power you can learn to use on your own. It’s something more than just a weapon. It’s something deeper than that.” A distant madness could be seen reflected in the lenses of the exo’s eyes, his sight somewhere far away as he spoke. “It’s like nothing you’ve ever felt before; all the power in all the universe around your finger, and all the terror that comes along with it.”

Prince remained silent for a moment, glaring at the robot and considering his words. “Ye know, I don’t like all this talkin’.” He adjusted himself and then leaned forward, his face just barely caught by the sun. “So you’d best let me go, real peaceful like.”

“Afraid not, traveler.” Phantom pulled back the hammer of the revolver in his hand, ockcing it with a menacing click. “It’s a bit of a ‘do or die’ situation, you see.”

Shadows were cast over the highwayman’s face, and he didn’t speak above a whisper. “I guess you’d better get ready to send me to hell then, ‘cause you better know I’m comin’ for ya after I wake back up.”

“Purpose.” A dark form interjected from the doorway across the way from Charlie’s bed. “That’s what we offer.” Sinestro’s massive frame dominated the space, leaving little room for the light to filter in from behind him. “Structure. Meaning. The loyalty of the men on either side of you. Something to live for.” He brought his hand up before him, and the ring glowed a baleful gold, casting traces of yellow over his sharp features. “Someone to live for.”

Charlie looked into the man that stood before him. His eyes were aflame.

[Thaal Sinestro]

The pistons of the power armor hissed along with the thump and clang of the massive metal boots as they hit the ground. The spiteful sun glared down, glinting from the ragged edges and catching the pits beneath the chipped red paint as it swayed and lurched on its path through the compound. “Hm,” the wearer’s voice quipped through the speaker in the helmet and a heavy metal finger flipped a page in the massive tome that the other hand held, “interesting.” The armor slowly crawled to a stop, a warm golden glow slowly illuminating it more with each dwindling step. “But disappointing,” the heavily armored figure tossed the book to the side flippantly, allowing it to land in the sand in a heap.

Gauntleted hands reached up and depressed the releases on the helmet with a puff of steam. The woman shook her dark red hair loose, and Yellow Light reflected from her emerald eyes. A shiver spot up Jaclyn’s spine that only deepened the longer her attention lingered on it, nerves buzzing all the way down to the tips of her toes. Her hands trembled gently, even as she lifted it, holding it before her. She took the most timid step forward, reluctant fingers flitting with trepidation. Closer, and closer, and closer, until finally they met the sleek, perfect surface of the Sinestro Corps’ Power Battery.

Terror sprinted through her body like a pack of irradiated mongrels. Her teeth chattered, her body quaked. Amber light flowed into and through her, burning from her eyes with thick, rolling smoke joining it. The lantern stared down at her as its power diffused into every cell of her body and every servo of her armor. It towered there, only a thousand feet from the nameless oasis of the Dunes, imposing the Yellow Light of Fear upon any that would dare glance upon it. And it knew her. It knew who she was, deep down beyond anything that anyone else ever knew. Could ever know.

It was fear, pure and undiluted, the deepest most primal sensation any sapient species knew. And yet, it was more than that. It took her into its arms, cradled her, swaddled her in a dense and inescapable dread that she had only known in the embrace of a lover. What if tomorrow never comes? What if that boring book with its disposable information was the last thing she ever read?

What if she never knew the touch of the lantern ever again?

Her hand jerked away, and she took several ragged, rapid breaths. She held her hand to the chest of her armor and closed her eyes, giving herself a a moment to allow the fear to exit her body. With a heavy sigh, she lifted her helm and placed it back onto her head, concealing the unnoticed tears that had been streaming down her face. The armored hissed to life once again, plodding as it turned her to face the ramshackle wooden structure where she would be spending her morning.

A viscous grin spread unseen on her chapped lips. “Training day,” she purred through the crackling amplifier.

---

Pitch blackness was all that met the group of recruits that had been dumped onto the floor when the black bags were removed from their heads. Only the sound of hard breathing and the swish of nylon being yanked off faces revealed to the recruits that there was anyone else in the room but them. That and the firm, steely hands that bullied them around, shoving their bound and shackled bodies to the ground once the sacks had been removed. One man began to speak, only to be silenced by the sound of a heavy boot impacting his rib. “Quiet,” a distorted voice commanded.

It seemed like forever that they sat in the darkness, sniffing, breathing, silently agonizing over whatever wounds had allowed them to be brought here. Then a voice shattered the quiet, thundering out and filling the space all at once. “What are you afraid of?” it boomed, static clinging to every syllable. There was a scrambling against the dirt floor, somebody being wrestled to their knees, and a long, corpulent pause.

“Nothing,” a man’s voice barked, trembling but proud. He had a thick accent, twangy and shrill, like an old drunk from the local tavern. “I ain’t afraid of nothing!”

“Well,” the commanding voice answered, “you’re either lying to me…” There was the sound of a switch flipping, and two dull red lights appeared in the pitch. A high pitched electric whine filled the relative silence, then an electrical whir. “… or telling the truth.” A blue LED screen illuminated, casting a dim light over the silhouette of the large, boxy, mechanical weapon.

“Either way you’re useless to us.”

Darkness was replaced with light, everything in the room suddenly visible in strobes of furious red. It was blinding, but what it revealed was impossible to look away from. Each shot was a snapshot of violences, a time lapse of directed energy beams ripping into the wasteland vagrant’s body. The hulking power armor was cast in splashes of crimson, deep shadows only deepening the contours of its horrifying frame. The man, bound on the ground, barely had a chance to yelp as his torso was perforated with more beams than the witnesses could count, his flesh splitting from the super-heated beams of light with hissing steam and sprays of blood. The others felt his body raining down upon him, some only a few feet away. Soon there wasn’t enough torso to hold his body together, and his arm slumped gruesomely onto the floor before the weapon powered down.

Again they were subsumed by shadow and silence. All sat still, frozen by the scene they had witnessed. Somewhere in the room there was gentle sobbing and murmuring. “Shut up,” the voice snapped, and the pitiful noises quieted.

Two more heavy footsteps thumped and the power armor hissed menacingly. The metallic reticulation of the gauntlet rang out as she grabbed the next recruit by the collar. “What are you afraid of?”

Another man, his voice thick with a fremen tones, stammered, “You! I am afraid of you!”

“Hm,” the voice huffed, “and why are you afraid of me?”

“You just killed that man!” he yelped, the frantic tightness of his voice turning everything into a high pitched yowl.

The switch clicked, and the red lights appeared. “You’re getting warmer,” the person behind the mask purred.

“Please!” the recruit squealed, “Please don’t kill me! I’ll tell you whatever you want to know!” The sound of his manacled feet scraping across the floor drowned out he whir of the electronics.

The gatling laser’s head began to spin. “I’m still waiting for an answer,” the voice crackled coyly, clearly taking no small amount of pleasure from the man’s panic.

“I don’t want to die!” he pleaded, thrashing helpless against his restraints and the steel grip of his captor.

“I didn’t ask what you wanted!” the power armor roared, “Tell me why you’re afraid!”

The fremen’s answer didn’t come soon enough. Lances of pure light blasted through his chest, a momentary scream gurgling out before his head was split into several pieces and his corpse dropped into the dirt. All those that had sat near him felt the warmth of his bodily fluids oozing onto their feet and legs as they knelt.

The sobbing voice shifted into screams for help, and the metal wall rattled as his frantic flailing brought him in contact with it. “I said shut up,” the voice growled and a few rapid blasts from their weapon made her demands come to fruition. There was less waiting, less quiet, less stillness now. A manic energy had shifted into the room, the unsurety of long they would survive taking root. The recruits shuffled, and the executioner took less time taking hold of her next victim. “What are you afraid of!?” she boomed.

“Death, mon! I be afraid of death!” a woman yelled back instantly through her thick tusks.

She was hurled across the room with the sweep of the exo suit’s arm and stiffly landed near the doorway with a cloud of dirt. “Was that so hard?!” the beast of steel yelled in apparent frustration, the distortion of the suit twisting her words into a crumpled screech. The next recruit was in her powerful fingers in a moment. “What are you afraid of?”

“Death!” the boy hastily barked back.

Everyone heard his head being spiked into the gravel below. “Give me a different answer!”

His voice muffled by the sand and stone, the recruit spat out some of the blood that had seeped into his mouth and shouted back, “I don’t know!”

“You’d better figure it out fast,” the voice rumbled, the click of the switch following shortly after.

“The dark?” he asked, clearly unsure of his answer. The gatling laser was flipped back off and he was tossed into the woman by the doorway.

The power armor lurched towards the final recruit, and she paused in front of it. The creature’s head turned to the side, her goggles glinting in the darkness as she stared up at her captor. “Can you even talk?” the voice in the armor asked. Only silence answered. “You did those war cries before, so I know you can at least make noise. The Power Battery is translating for me, so I know you can understand. But,” the switch clicked, “can you talk?”

Silence.

The gatling laser spun up, blue light showing just enough to see a gauntleted finger hovering just over the trigger. In the dim light, the sand fury’s gaze drifted from the towering butcher that loomed over her and to the corner of the room where the other two had been unceremoniously thrown into a pile. Soundlessly, she held her bound hands up to the power armor and dipped her head in a motion of supplication, exposing the back of her cloth-wrapped head in something close to submission. The two stayed there, neither moving, the hum of the weapon that had just dispatched three others still filling the blood-scented air. The power armor’s finger twitched, touching the trigger. It flexed, the trigger halfway engaged. The fury did not move.

The lights died as the weapon lowered, and Jaclyn snatched the creature by the scruff of the neck. “Good enough.”

[Thaal Sinestro]

The sun gasped up from beyond the distant horizon, spilling its hot breath over the sand and stone that sprawled before the pair of shadows. They stood on a red stone mesa, deep in the untamed badlands which surrounded every speck of civilization in the verse. The chill of the night had not quite left them as the sun struck their faces, its warmth welcomed for the moment. Brusk, stiff winds flew as the temperature changed, grit whisking against their faces, the deputy’s poncho billowing gently. They stood there in quiet as they gazed over the vast and unforgiving desert that swelled below, eyes following the barely visible trails of dust that spoke of faraway drivers, no doubt on errands of destruction and mayhem.

Sinestro was the first to speak. “What are you afraid of?” he asked, his voice almost soft.

“Nothing,” Prince replied proudly, smoothing his hand over his beard. “I ain’t got no use for fear.”

The lantern smirked, remembering that exact response from so many recruits before. “You’re wrong,” he replied, keeping the growl in the back of his throat small. “Fear is a universal constant throughout all sapient races in every corner of the universe.” He turned to face the outlaw, the brim of his hat tilting up to reveal a single golden iris. “Even this universe.”

Prince snuffed belligerently, pushing his thumbs into the pockets on the front of his jacket. “Well I did away with it.”

“It would be a shame if that was true,” Sinestro replied, with a nearly mournful breath. “Fear is what makes you strong. It’s what makes your hands pull those guns so quickly. It’s what made you attack that bank. It’s what drives every excellent part of you.” He took a step towards the ledge, peering down over it casually.

Prince’s hand flashed, and his Schofield was pointed at the lawman. “I think you confused skill fer something else there, stranger.”

“And what was it that made you wake up and practice every morning?” Sinestro asked, the brass of conviction returning to his tone. “What is it that you felt when you pulled the trigger for the first time? What drove you to be such a paragon of slaughter, Mr. Prince?”

“Nothin’,” the bearded man spat back, his weapon now catching the light of the morning sun. “I didn’t feel a damn thing when I pulled that trigger.”

Dust on the plateau they stood on was swept by a passing wind, and for a moment they just stood there. The morning sun bit into them, the nearly cloudless sky watching their exchange dispassionately. Red stones scraped beneath Prince’s boot as it settled into place, his gun hand unwavering, not a flinch or tug of a muscle to disrupt his aim. In the distance, there was the sound of battle, but neither man bothered addressing it. Their attention was, here, now, in this moment.

A genuine smile crept onto the korugaran’s lips. “And now that you’re in this place, now that you can make anything and do anything your heart lusts for, are you back in the desert robbing banks?”

“It’s what I do best, mister. And I intend on keepin’ at what I do best.”

Sinestro lifted his ring, perched atop his clenched fist. Something stirred within him, some glint of emotion, and the weapon emitted a faint yellow glow. “Or perhaps it is all you know what to do with a skill that you’ve cultivated over a lifetime of struggle and killing? Maybe something within you has given you to the life you led, but you don’t need to lead that life anymore. You can be something more. Something stronger. Something better.” His mustache curled as a sinister sneer grew. “Charlie Prince of Earth,” he growled, “You have the ability to instill great fear.”

[Thaal Sinestro]

“Ey mon,” the troll whispered, her eyes cautiously scanning the field she had been dragged to before even the sun had bothered waking up, “what you think we doin’?”

There were a handful of other recruits at various points surrounding the perimeter of the field, as varied in shape and stature as they were in origin. All nervously shuffled and fought through their own trepidation to hold distant, awkward conversations. By a visual count, there seemed to be about twelve people there in total. One pair had already began to throttle each other, seemingly in a dispute about a weapon. There was the crack of gunfire. Eleven people in total.

The sand fury looked up to her from behind her opaque goggles, her jester-like cap twitching as she tilted her head curiously. After a few moments, it became clear she wasn't going to reply to the troll’s questions.

“You a touched t’ing, ain't cha?” the troll said, clucking her tongue. She shook her tall, ironwood staff, the bones and dark red feathers rattling atop it. “I gotta figure we’s doin’ some kinda fightin’, if dey’s give us back our weapons 'n t’ings.”

She looked around the perimeter of the area they had found themselves in as the sun poked its nose above the horizon. “Name’s Ur’Gezza, by da way.” She tugged down on the weathered leather armor, a massive pauldron shifting, then tightened one of the many brass buckles. She tilted her chin towards the fury’s katana and offered a long-tusked smirk. “You ain't gon’ get me wit’ dem swords, is ya?” She chuckled to herself when her companion didn’t, deep wrinkles in her ruddy grey skin accentuating her anxious grin. “Either way…” She shook her head of rust-colored hair with her three-fingered hand, lack of grooming causing her once tall and neat mohawk to deflate into a frazzled mess. “I ain't goin’ down wit’out a fight, mon.”

“That's the spirit!” a voice boomed from the distance, accompanied by the thumping of hooves in the sand. A large, thick cut man rode into view, his horse black with a fiery mane, his body wrapped in deep yellow robes. A pike was in his hand, a bow on his back. “Let's hope you have the heart to back up such a claim!”

Dezial and his sand-steed made a long, lazy loop around the obstacles of the testing ground, a collection of barrels, shallow ditches and other small bits of cover littered across an acre of rapidly warming sand. Aside the stony mesas in the far distance, there wasn't another landmark in sight.

The two women stared at the warrior as his mount trotted him closer. “What we doin’ here, mon?” the Ferraki shouted, tightening her grip on her staff.

“Well you see, I will be seeing if you're worthy of a ring!” He turned a few meters from them, zig zagging between burnt out warrigs and stacks of smoldering tires. “And you? You'll be surviving.” He allowed his polearm to slide down in his grip, the head dragging in the sand, leaving a wake of dust trailing behind him. “Or not!”

He took a sharp turn and disappeared behind the cloud, the only evidence he was still there was the thunder of his steed’s horseshoes.

The recruits stiffened, and the fury drew her twin blades. Their eyes were locked on the swirling cloud, attempting to peer past the miasma as it settled. Instead they saw an arrow snap through, a tiny path clearing in its trail, wisps of grit flitting after it. The same fury trilled and bound backwards, spiraling through the air and rolling her her feet smoothly. The arrow sunk into the dirt a few feel in front of her, and she immediately began to circle, warily eyeing the sun-harried battlefield. Ur’Gezza lifted her staff and a shear of wind buffeted away another shot that was intended for her throat.

Dezial’s laughter boomed over the training ground. “The killing will only stop when there’s two left!”

The two warrior women glanced between each other in a moment of silent acknowledgment. A moment between two beleaguered souls, set to an impossible task at the risk of their lives. In that moment, they knew each other perfectly, and could see the heart that beat within the chest of the other.

Then they ran in opposite directions.

The caterwaul of a dying man filled the air, and Ur’Gezza chanced a look in his direction to see him impaled to a wooden barrel, the dark steel of the pike protruding from his gut. Dezial twisted the weapon inside of him, then jerked it free in a spray of gore. The shaman looked away, afraid to know if the Corpsman had picked her out in the unfolding chaos.

“That makes ten!” the cavalryman cheerfully announced, followed by the familiar sound of a firearm. The man that had killed his partner had apparently intended to use the weapon he had won. The snap of his bow, and a gurgling yelp followed. “That was fast. Nine!”

The shaman ducked behind one of the twisted chunks of indistinguishable metal that littered the killing ground, and began to wave her hands over each other in an esoteric movement. Electricity sparked between her fingers, and she closed her eyes, thanking whatever gods this land had for her continued connection to the elements.

“WITNESS ME!” a bold voice called, disrupting her concentration.

An almost naked man, bald with black paint around his eyes, held a can of spray to his mouth and emptied the contents over his teeth, painting them and his lips a vibrant metallic silver. He then ripped across the battlefield, his long, thin legs carrying him as fast as they were capable. In his hands was what seemed to be a pole with some sort of device tethered to the end. “I shall ride forever,” he screamed as he approached his mounted foe, “SHINY AND CHROME!”

The tip of an arrow impacted the explosive at the tip of the lance, and the young man was consumed in an inferno of flame and pressure. A bloom of flame shot into the sky, and the blast wave shook the metal Ur’Gezza hid behind enough to make it buzz. After the last petals of fire had turned to smoke, a wary quiet sunk into the area.

Dezial sat, more than a few meters away from the blast area, and allowed his bow hand to drop with an oddly charismatic smirk. The rugged scruff on his perfectly shaped chin made his lazy contentedness all the more unnerving. “The Sinestro Corps has no need for martyrs or heroes!” he shouted, seemingly restraining a laugh. “Dead men cannot uphold order!” He casually stowed his bow and then twirled his pike into his hand. “Eight, if any of you dogs had lost count!”

Her eyes went wide, and Ur’Gezza redoubled her efforts in her communal with the elemental spirits. Her pounding heart was reassured by the crackle of lightning cupped in her palms, the voice of the sky visiting to sooth her troubled mind. Even here, in this place, living this nightmare, the elements had not abandoned her.

The stillness that the explosion brought loomed, each of the other recruits staying just as quiet as the troll intended to. The plodding of hooves allowed the cowering menagerie to trace their hunter’s movements as he leisurely stalked between their hiding places. “Now, it seems we have done away with the foolish!” She heard a bowstring, a sound she had already learned to dread. “Now to do away with the cowards.”

The rusted steel twanged over Ur’Gezza’s head, the head of an arrow punching through only inches from her face. The shaman choked down a gasp, a bolt of terror all but punching her in the chest. She rolled around her the ragged lip of her cover, and a bolt flashed from her hands as soon as she laid eyes on her captor.

Lightning crashed into the dornishman’s shoulder with a shower of sparks, and he tumbled backwards off of his saddle. His boots were planted and his posture righted almost as soon as his back hit the ground, and the tip of his spear was already haft-deep in some cat-person who thought they saw the perfect opportunity to pounce. He whipped the steel from the carcass and twirled it behind his back. “Seven,” he heaved, smoke drifting from his scorched robes.

The troll didn’t hold her position long, compromised as it was. She sprinted over the sand, happy that other targets were keeping her executioner’s pike busy, and tumbled behind a barrel. Compelled by the steady thumping in her chest, she was no longer content to simply hide. She uttered a negotiation with the primal forces that surrounded her, and summoned from them a stout wooden totem that she slammed into the ground. Gentle winds blew from the idol, droplets of cool, curative water dappling her face. Though she was not yet injured, the restorative effects of the Healing Stream quieted her panic all the same. It was better to have healing at the ready than hope she wouldn’t need it later on.

Her wrinkled features furrowed and she stood up from behind the ramshackle concealment. She asked of the winds yet another favor, and a murmuring zephyr wandered away with her words. The spirits of flame compiled, and Dezial’s robe spontaneously caught alight. Not done, Ur'Gezza wound her hands through the air, tugging at the fundamental structures of reality as she knew it. Waves of heat and smoke wafted up as molten magma burbled up from beneath the dornishman’s feet, and he only barely managed to leap to the side before a lava burst splattered up where he had once stood.

“I do hate warlocks,” Dezial grumbled as he furiously slapped out the lingering flames in the dense linen that covered his shoulders.

Before his ire could be put to use, a trill called out from behind him. He snapped his weapon to attention, only to see the sand explode about fifteen feet away. The sand fury emerged with her signature warcry, shortly followed by a gout of blood pouring from the decapitated body of some rough and tumble space marine that had enjoyed better luck during the Brood War. The sand fury spun and leapt back over the retaliatory gunfire of his partner, then lifted and fired her own pistol to fire with significantly better aim.

Dezial sneered with joy as the ruthless killer fell upon another team, then another. The flash of her blade and the pop of her pistol danced between the obstacles like a bloody blossom drifting over the desert dunes, the shrieks of her victims calling out in a chorus of woe. Before the Corpsman could even count, the battlefield was littered with the carcasses of the other hopefuls, and the silent fury stood amid them, not even short for breath.

Ur’Gezza looked on in shock and horror at the efficiency of the slaughter, her brutality even outpacing Dezial’s. “By da sand and sky, mon,” she whispered, but even they were too afraid to answer her.

[Thaal Sinestro]

Smoke billowed over a nearby crag, desert shrubs sprinkled wherever they could find purchase over steep, jagged red rock. There were pillars rising up every couple hundred feet, stabbing at the sky like a thousand needles of wind-carved stone. The badlands were filled with hidden nooks and crannies, affording the raiders and wild men plenty of opportunity to conceal themselves after striking out at caravans and travelers. Patrolling these areas had become a priority for Sinestro while his other members trained the newest recruits, and he didn’t mind bringing his company along with him. It reminded him of the days he had spent becoming Roland’s deputy, though it had become significantly easier to clear out pockets of resistance since he had regained his ring.

“So,” the lantern said flatly, “tell me everything you know about the men on the other side of this ridge.”

After a dismissive sigh, Charlie pushed the brim of his cap up and peered up, his glinting, sea-green eyes scanning quickly. “Fire’s not too big, but prob’ly a few of em. I’d say no more’n ten ‘r so. They ain’t been there for too long; ain’t no trails cut. If they got any horses, they’re thirsty and ain’t had much to eat. Slow.”

Sinestro smirked, and nodded. “I’ll forgive you for not knowing about other means of transportation, but they likely have cars or speeders. In either case, you’re right about them being thirsty. They’ve been stranded out in the wastes for too long to likely have a reliable source of fuel.” He paused and turned to the criminal, “But did you consider a prime?”

Prince huffed and shifted his weight, “I s’pose you’re right, mister. If they got somebody like us, they could whip up anything they need. Food, water, weapons.” His piercing gaze shot to his captor, “Now what you got me out here doing? We gonna go in there, guns blazing?”

Sinestro nodded. “We’ll see who they are, what they have. If it’s likely that they’ve been attacking the citizens under my watch, we’ll solve the problem.”

Charlie shook his head and rolled his jaw. “Now I ain’t a lawman, ya hear? I got no interest in whatever yer job is, cause I got no want of it.”

The lantern laughed, and removed his hat, allowing the scorching daylight to shine over his face. “You don’t need to do anything, Prince. Only watch.”

“What,” he scoffed, “you fixin’ to show me what’ll happen to me if I don’t join yer little posse?”

Sinestro lifted his fist, and his ring shined brighter than the sun could drown out. His clothing burned and fizzled away in blotches of yellow-edged oblivion, revealing the skintight Sinestro Corps uniform beneath. “I will show you the power of Fear.”

A beam of golden light surrounded the rough-worn bandit and the two lifted into the air with alarming speed. Charlie pressed his hat down on his head and staggered in the air for a moment, only to realize that he felt no wind. The vibrant glow of the ring’s energy supported every aspect of his body and left him with an alien weightless sensation that he had only experienced floating atop a perfectly still lake. He watched in horrid wonder as the plants that dotted the hill rushed below him, and suppressed a yelp when they reached a dizzying height, hundreds of feet above the encampment.

His attention snapped to Sinestro as he let out a ponderous, “Hmm.” The korugaran pointed to the small campfire, surrounded by a few mismatched individuals that milled around beneath them, completely unaware of their presence. “It seems you were right. A small camp, a few vehicles. They even have a horse. They don’t seem to have very much in way of supplies, but what they do is marked with our bank’s logo. That either means a prime is making them on demand, or they’re all secondaries.” Stark, gleaming yellow pupils cut into Prince’s and for a moment they shared eye contact. “Would you like to take a gamble on which?” Prince stammered a few times, still overwhelmed by the majesty and terror of flight. “I’ll assume they’re alone. What kind of prime would waste their time robbing banks and caravans when they could simply create whatever their hearts desired?”

Before Charlie could respond to the jab, they careened towards the ground. He found himself flailing his arms around in total disequilibrium, without a sense of balance gravity to steady himself. He shouted, wide eyed, as they approached the ground at breathtaking speed, only to come to a gentle halt ten feet above the group.

“Good afternoon, citizens of the Dunes,” Sinestro said, his tone sharp as a razor and carrying throughout the canyons that surrounded. “What brings you to this remote locale?”

The group all snapped to attention, looking up at the Corpsman with shock. After a few seconds of gawking, a super mutant snatched his minigun off of a nearby boulder, grunted, and unleashed a hail of bullets. Sparks flew from Sinestro’s aura as he slowly shook his head in disappointment. “That’s what I thought.”

A golden tether flickered out from Sinestro’s ring, fastening around one of the assailant’s feet before whipping the nine foot monstrosity into a nearby speeder bike, which exploded on impact. A Redguard woman was flung across the camp and slammed into the face of the stone alcove with a splurt of crimson. Her companions scrambled to arm themselves. “You may either submit to arrest and reeducation, or die here like your friends,” the lantern’s voice boomed, his arms folded behind his back as he patiently waited for them to retaliate. “If you wish to survive this encounter, lay down your weapons, step out of the combat zone, put your hands on your head and await detainment.”

A beat-up cowboy fired a handful of bullets, each zinging from the all-encompassing shield around Sinestro’s body. He held his hand to his chest as a beam of amber light snapped through it, then crumpled to the ground in a heap. “Noncompliance will not be tolerated,” the Corpsman reminded them, his voice calm and even.

Some sort of dashing rogue tore a rapier from his belt and thrust it in the air. “Come down and face us like a man!” she proclaimed in an elegant accent of indeterminate origin.

Slowly the korugaran drifted to the ground, and perked his eyebrow. “Gender discrimination is looked down upon in my territories.”

The man screamed a battle cry and sprinted into a thrust, only to find a brilliant yellow saber delicately deflecting it. Sinestro pursed his lips softly at the man’s expression of amazement, then pushed his blade into his throat. Gurgling, the duelist slumped and slid off the tip of the weapon as it dematerialized. “I’ll give the rest of you one last chance to surrender,” the lawman said, looking between the rest of the marauders.

“I’m not going to one of your damn camps!” a surly, cloth-wrapped warrior snapped. “I’d rather die then become one of your little puppets you pink bastard!”

Holding his arm out, Sinestro took a few steps in the fighter’s direction. “You’ll be fed, clothed, bathed and housed. There is more than enough for you within the comfort of our city. We only ask that you learn to contribute to the health, safety and wellbeing of our people rather than detract from it, as you are now.” He closed his open hand into a fist, and slowly pointed his ring in their direction. “But if you insist.”

The warrior roared and bounded towards the lantern empty handed, but his charge was cut short when his head was removed at the shoulders by a charged beam of hard-light.

A moogle carrying a rifle three times its size glanced up to a lizard person, mouth agape. The two nodded, threw down their weapons, and placed their paws on the back of their heads. Sinestro’s glower faded into a smile, and he turned to face them. “Your compliance is appreciated.”

[Thaal Sinestro]

Thick metal manacles rattled around the boy’s wrists, his short legs shuffling furiously to keep up with the gang of recruits he had been so contemptuously strapped to the back of. The Uruk Hai in front of him jerked the chain and grunted angrily. “Move it, human!” it roared. “Why is this child here? Did it survive so far by hiding in a a hole?!” The young boy sniveled and scrunched his tiny eyebrows together, casting an angry look up at the creature. “I have fought by my blood and valor, and I am tied to likeness of a pathe-”

The crackle of bones halted the line, and everyone turned in time to see the orc collapse onto his chest. His dead eyes stared up into the cloudless sky, neck twisted completely around.

A few gasps and murmurs ran through the line of recruits, glancing between the deceased creature and the boy, who’s hands were still completely bound. He sniffed hard, sucking back up a trail of snot, tears streaming down his face.

“Quiet your blithering mouths!” Taeket commanded as she strode past the ranks and to the rear of the formation. She glanced down her long, hooked nose and squinted at the child. “At least you’re trimming the fat,” she spat, kicking the convulsing corpse. She pointed the tip of one of her scimitars at the youngling and tilted her chin up with a disdainful frown. “But you will drag him the rest of the way.” He began to simper, but she sucked her teeth and edged forward. “I will not hear any excuses! Your trickery does not work on those that know your game. Try something like that again and I’ll put you back in the vase!”

The facade of emotion was wiped from the child’s face and he grumbled as he knelt down and grabbed the creature by the ankle. “Very well,” he said in clear irritation.

Taeket smiled and nodded, allowing her blade to fall to her side. “Excellent choice.” She turned back to the lead and barked, “Now move! We will arrive before nightfall, or I’ll let you all die of thirst!”

The chain gang slowly limped forward, and the child strained as he hauled the massive body behind, leaving a deep trench in the sand below. The gerudo squinted and swung her finger in his direction. “I will be keeping an eye on you.”

---

The shattered skull of the ruined Gerudo Valley castle glared down at them just as the sun kissed the lower edge of the sky. The abandoned huts lay barren, burnt out by trials come and gone, wooden supports splintered from dry rot and neglect. It was another graveyard of broken dreams, one of the hundreds of forgotten ruins that lay scattered like pages torn from the journals of once-great Lords amid the vast and unforgiving arid waste. The four recruits that remained hauled the bodies of the fallen behind them, chains still tangled around their red, sun-swollen limbs. The heat had just barely began to relent, and the motley crew of hopefuls were drenched in their own sweat and filth, barely having stopped to rest when their comrades had succumb to the desert’s caress.

Taeket strolled in front of the squad, her twin swords resting comfortably on her shoulders. “Welcome to my home,” she said, a solemn smile on her lips. “This is Gerudo Valley. It was once the stronghold of Ganondorf, our leader’s greatest ally in his early days here in the Omniverse. Now, it is nothing more than what you see before you: a smoldering ruin. This is the consequence of disorder. This is the penance we all pay for the sins of the few. This, my children, is why we must cull from you the weak. The foolish. The unworthy.” She turned, and mournfully gazed at the old castle, its lava floes black, hard and still. “The consequences for failure are far to high.”

She took a breath and turned back to the hodge podge of broken, half-mad recruits. “But you do not need to worry about this for now. For now, you may fall back upon the same worry you have had for the past two days.” Her deep yellow eyes glinted with sadistic sharpness. “Survival.”

The gathering visibly stiffened at the news, though they had learned better than to argue against the woman by now. “You will enter the labyrinth our savior has constructed under my humble advisement. It moves through this cursed place, below the sands, and ends in the court of the once-great  Guardian of the Desert.” She shrugged the massive gourd from her back and set it upon the ground. “Then, and only then, may you drink.” She beamed and slapped the side of the container, a hastily painted Corps symbol on its face. “A gift to those successful from the mighty Sinestro.”

The sun-parched recruits greedily eyed the container, licking their chapped lips with dry tongues. “It is the only water for miles,” she added, “so even if you choose to take this test as an opportunity to escape and somehow,” she glared at the boy, “manage to evade my notice, then you will still die in the sands alone.”

With nothing more to say, the gerudo pulled a drawstring on a pouch attached to her hip and withdrew an oversized silver key, seemingly with only two teeth. She crept up to a tall stone outcropping near the exterior wall of the Valley and pulled free a small chunk of it, revealing a narrow hole. She pushed the key in and slowly turned it, a loud clink ringing out when it met its terminal position.

The ground began to shake violently, and slowly a a shape began to displace the sand underneath their feet. The recruits scrambled as an organically shaped stone structure pressed up from the earth, its surface covered in a series of lines with glowing red circles winding about it in a complex pattern not unlike constellations. When it finally set itself into place, it was apparent that it was a doorway. It was perched atop a broad, circular platform, a glowing panel on the right side. A series of long, thin, engraved, stone  panels swung open horizontally, revealing a glowing pad within the mouth of the portal.

Taeket sneered and waved her scimitar at them, ushering them towards the opening. “Now get inside.”

“You’re not even going to take off our bindings?” a lean, powerful cat woman protested. “You are just leading us like gazelle into the maw of the lion!”

Taeket’s eyes narrowed and she stalked over to the creature, who had already begun backing away in terror. She held her hands up in defense, but her chains went taught and she could retreat no further. “Then I shall free you,” she hissed, and with a swipe of her blade, both of the creature’s hands fell into the sand. The furry woman yowled in agony and fell to her knees, the Corpsman looming over her with unrelenting contempt.

The rest of the group gawked for only a moment before she barked, “Go! Now!”

They did not require any more demonstrations. The group ran towards the shrine, piling into the cramped space, what remained of the dead still dragging along after them. The gerudo liberated the corpses, too, of their wrists, in the first act of mercy she had offered them since their introduction. Kicking aside the arms of the bodies, she allowed the recruits to gather up to loose links of chain so that they were clear of the pad they now stood upon, and waited with hushed breaths for whatever came next.

Taeket stood in front of the panel, and held her hand over it. “Use your wits, children. Or you will not escape.”

With that, her finger fell, the and the elevator jolted to life, carrying them into the abyss below.

---

As the lift slowly sunk into depths below the broken village, the scale of the structure became apparent. The edges of the perfectly cubed cavern were nearly seventy feet high. The ornate stone walls of the maze easily fifty. The recruits were offered a momentary glance at the grand complexity of it all, peering down from high in the air at the harsh turns, twists and maddening corridors that they would soon wander. Only dim torch light illuminated the vast, horrible space, glowing up in wavering orange and red, the stillness of the subterranean air the only thing keeping them from snuffing out before the recruits had a chance to even attempt navigation. In the center, a massive cylinder of yellow lights shot upwards and through the ceiling, signifying the terminus of their trial.

The dais they were all precariously perched upon locked into place, and they all stood there for a moment, simply staring at the task that spanned before them. It was the Kel Dor that stepped forward first, his rebreather huffing as he took his first deep breath below the surface.

“While we’re stuck together like this, it’s everyone or no one,” he said gruffly. “So we’ve gotta work together on this. By this time tomorrow I expect most of us won’t have a drop of liquid left in our bodies, so we need to get through this thing, and fast.” He gestured to the massive superstructure behind him. “This trial was clearly designed to not test our smarts. Labyrinths are more random chance than clever work, so it’s about teamwork.”

“And you want to be lead us?” a yuan-ti abomination hissed dismissively. “I can survive for another week before I dry up, unlike the rest of you insignificant humanoids.”

“But can you get out of here with the dead weight of three bodies?” he countered. He looked to the child, “Well, two and a half.”

The snake person’s tail whipped around in frustration, but remained silent.

“That’s what I thought.” He turned to the hulking, blue-skinned Kree. “Do you understand?”

He grumbled, the massive scar that covered the left half of his face wrinkling into a sneer. “Fine.”

“Good,” the Kel Dor affirmed and set out towards the first long corridor, the retinue in tow. The child jerked along after them, skipping a few steps as he came down from the elevator.

The near-incomprehensible size of the tomb was all the more apparent when they were inside of it. The walls seemed to huge, too close, and the peak of each wall seemed to stretch into eternity. The carved faces were hung with shadow, the light of each torch having to spread a few hundred feet before the next.

About fifty feet into the first leg they came to a crossroads, marked by the half-rotten corpses of some previous group, all still linked together by a length of chain similar to their own. Gruesome injuries marked most, while one lay leaning against the wall, one of its teammate's gnawed legs in its hand.

“The fools must have turned on each other,” the yuan-ti hissed, wringing its hands together.

The Kree knelt down, submerging himself in a wave of stench and flies. Grabbing the manacles from the group, he lifted them and shared a meaningful look with the others. “Looks like at least one managed to get free.” Upon closer inspection, the alien was right. The cuffs in the middle of the group had been opened, and seemingly not by force. “There must be some way to open them, hidden in this place.”

Nodding, the Kel Dor snatched a torch from the wall. “Then let us set about finding them.” He looked between the paths on every side of him. “Three new directions. Which way do we go?”

“The stink of death lies to the right,” the yuan-ti spat. “Left! We must go left!”

The Kree snarled and pointed his thick finger forward. “The exit is in that direction.”

The small boy sniffled softly and all three suddenly remembered he existed, glaring poisonous barbs in his direction. He murmured pathetically and pointed to the right.

“Ignore this hatchling!” the snakelike abomination roared. “It is the most deadly path!”

The Kel Dor hummed and glanced in that direction. “It would make sense that they would put an obstacle along the correct path to deter us at the onset. If I was wanting somebody to go the opposite way, I’d lay down a danger.”

“The most well defended direction is likely the path to victory,” the Kree agreed.

Without another word, the “leader” of their little group began stalking through the chosen pathway, flames blazing atop The torch in hand. Reluctantly, the each followed suit. The darkened passage immediately banked to the left, and it was beyond this vile turn, this twist into the unknown blackness, that they were confronted with their first true challenge.

A collection of failures were scattered around the horrific device, underneath it, caught in bits on the edges, even splattered against the walls surrounding it. It seemed simple enough: a single, massive guillotine, swinging back and forth like a gargantuan pendulum, its mount jutting out perpendicular to the hall, about twenty feet up. There was some clearance near the bottom, but the walls on either side of it wore ground-in groves where it had once brushed up against them at the furthest edges of its lazy swaying.

“It appears a simple task,” the Kree grunted, beginning to walk towards it. “It is slow. We can easily pass through it.”

The abomination hissed and slithered in front of the man, halting him with a firm shove. “You fool! If you pass through before the rest of us do, our chains will be caught by it and we will be pulled into its path!”

“Then we all stand in a line and step across the threshold at once,” the Kel Dor said with all the confidence in the world.

The yuan-ti snapped, its massive fangs flaring out in discontent. “The hallway is too narrow! I will slide past it it on the ground, and our chains will be too low for it to catch. You shall lay down, and I will drag you across.”

Huffing, the Kel Dor found no appropriate contradictions to the plan that tore leadership from his capable hands. He consigned himself to a momentary defeat, balled his shackled fists, and nodded. “Let it be done.”

The group huddled up, daring to be dangerously close to the sweeping movement of the contraption, close enough to feel the gentle breeze it created in its wake. The monstrous creature gestured, and each clambered to their hands and knees, gathering at the far edge of the hallway where the arc of the blade was the highest.

Following its word, the abomination slid swiftly to the other side and halted, grabbing hold of the links that were closest to the next member’s manacles. Its slit pupils locked with those of the Kree’s, and as the guillotine swept up to the opposite peak, it yanked as hard as its bulging, corded muscles could muster. The blue-skinned man slid across the floor, clearing the gap just as the blade sliced in the opposite direction, his ankles saved by millimeters.

Next, the Kel Dor pressed against the corridor and made himself as tiny as possible, and the other two grasped his steel tether. They watched the damnable machine tick-tock through a few cycles until they were sure of their timing, and then looked to the man on the ground. “Ready?” the Kree urged, unable to read the masked creature’s expression.

“Ye-” he stammered. His shielded eyes watched it sway, back and forth, its edge dirtied with the gore of those unable to complete their task. He saw each knick along its use-worn blade, perhaps a bone or a shard of metal forming each. “Yes.”

It swung forward, towards him, and he caught a glimpse of hair as it slowed to a stop, hanging in the air as a silent warning. His fellow potentials tensed, ready to make their move. Sweat poured over his face as it began to droop back down. “Wait!” he shouted, but they had already begun to pull. He threw his legs out in an effort to stop himself, which worked. A moment too late.

The blade sunk into his torso, a gurgling scream echoing out as purple blood shot out from beneath his rebreather. He convulsed for a moment, staring down at the bisected lower half of his body, hands jerking for a moment before they went still. The yuan-ti and Kree reeled in the rest of his still wriggling torso, a look of shock on their faces.

“The idiot,” the abomination hissed in a hushed tone. “He allowed his fear to confuse him.”

Using the pendulum to slice away the man’s hands, freeing them of the burden of another body to carry, they turned to gather the child. However, when they looked, he was nowhere to be seen. He and the chain that had bound the boy to them were simply gone. It was not until they heard his tiny whimpering behind them that they whipped about to find him standing there, meekly kicking his foot in the dirt. Rather than further questioning the apparent miracle, they made their way to their feet, took up the torch, and forged onward.

At the opposite end of the corridor, once concealed by the guillotine that had taken the life of their fearful leader, was a large chest. It was rather sizeable, about three feet at its widest face, and seemingly constructed of the same stone that made up everything in the doom-cloaked cavern. A large metal ring was set into its face, serving as the handle. Curiosity overtook the crew, and they could not help but find their hands ever so cautiously lifting the lid.

Despite its size, the container held only one, small item: a key.

Withdrawing it, the yuan-ti held it to the torchlight, making note of its simple construction. It did not take long for it to come to a conclusion about its use. “It must be to unlock the restraints,” it hissed with a pleased shiver of its neck frills.

“Which one of us will use it?” the Kree stated aggressively, more as a reminder that there was an option at all.

A serpentine smile grew over the abomination’s lips, and he looked down to the child that stood between them. “You know, there is a way that we might both be freed.”

The Kree’s eyes bore down into the child for a moment before the cogs shifted into place in his mind. “Ah, yes,” he growled, “I see. If we were absent only one more member, neither of us would be burdened if one was unlocked."

With  long, exasperated sigh, the boy slipped the cuffs from his wrists and they clattered to the ground. The two reeled back in surprise, but before another word was spoken or gesture made, the child’s arms dissolved into an undulating, amber goo and snapped out. The tendrils wrapped around each of their throats, and the recruits sputtered and gagged as they were slowly lifted from the ground. Gradually what was left of the boy’s body faded into a similar substance, and the oozing, indistinct form stretched up to carefully inspect them. A roughly head-shaped mound swiveled back and forth, its featureless contours still somehow displaying a look of cold disinterest and exhaustion.

Their necks snapped in unison, and they fell to the ground as gruesome warnings to whichever group was to come next.

The nearly liquid shape shrank back down before folding itself into a Tarkalean hawk, complete with ruddy red feathers and white underbelly. The bird took off, easily scaling the heights of the labyrinth walls, soaring over its myriad obstacles and death traps, and swooping into the golden light that struck upwards through the center.

Taeket started when the bird fluttered through the exit of the labyrinth without the sound or fanfare of the elevator to announce its arrival. When the creature metamorphosed back into something vaguely humanoid, she smirked. “So, did you leave them behind?”

When the formless mass finally decided on a human, she shook her head. “No. They planned on killing me, so I struck first. They are dead now.”

The warrior laughed heartily and grabbed the oversized jug of water. “Well, you have earned your drink nonetheless.”

The changeling accepted the jug, but did not open or drink from it. “I do not require food or water,”

Taeket’s eyebrows furrowed. “Then why come back here?”

“For the same reason I have tolerated captivity: it was the purpose of the test. You hold me chains to instill a sense of powerlessness. You tethered me to those solids to test our thinking and teamwork. As soon as it became clear that they were incapable of cooperation, I took it upon myself to survive your challenge alone. This water was the end point of my test, regardless of my actual need for it.” The creature uncorked the jug, emptying its contents onto the floor. “Though it will serve as a wonderful place for my daily regeneration.”