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.