The war for Earth had entered its most grueling phase. The battlefield had become an unrecognizable tapestry of gore, flame, and ruin. The skies above still wept ash from the decaying cities, and the ground cracked under the constant battering of footfalls, blood, and weaponry. The armies of Apokolips were unyielding, but now, a new terror had begun to shift the balance in their favor—evolution through infestation.
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At first, it had gone unnoticed. Amidst the chaos, screams were commonplace. But soon, warriors who had only been wounded—dragged off by berserkers or lost in the fog of battle—were found again... no longer themselves.
A human soldier stumbled from the edge of the jungle lines behind the centaur cavalry, coughing violently. His eyes had gone black, his mouth frothing with bile. Moments later, his chest erupted, birthing a slick, barbed exoskeletal creature with spindly limbs and a slavering mouth. It hissed, then lunged toward the nearest centaur, who barely had time to scream.
One by one, the armies of Earth realized the horror unfolding behind their lines.
The Paraxeno Drones, originally bred for shock and slaughter, had begun replicating—implanting embryos into the wounded, mutating rapidly, and producing adaptive bio-horrors based on the infected host. Satyrs gave rise to nimble, horned variants. Atlanteans produced aquatic, eel-like xenoforms with bio-electric pulses. Amazons yielded powerful, agile drones that fought with frightening precision and coordination.
Above them all, the psychic presence of the Brood Queen, bloated and grotesque with a glowing sac of embryos, loomed in the heart of the Apokoliptian hive structures now dotting the warfront like tumors. The Queen's mind was linked directly to Mastema himself.
On the flagship, seated in his floating throne, Mastema's eyes glowed faintly as his thoughts connected with her.
"You will adapt them. Breed from the strong. Learn their traits. Break their spirits. Their gods will bleed next."
The Queen screamed—a psychic shriek that rattled sensitive minds in a thousand-mile radius—as dozens more drone pod ships dropped from orbit. They slammed into the earth like divine punishment, each pod unfolding to release fresh waves of newborns ready to swarm, infect, and consume.
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Meanwhile, the Parapredator Berserkers had gone from war beasts to executioners. Their movements were increasingly precise now—less frenzy, more ritualistic violence. They began selecting their kills, dragging worthy warriors into trees or ruins, only to return with their skulls and spinal cords held aloft, trophies to display to their queen or Mastema's generals. Their cloaking and hunting tactics were now interwoven with battlefield strategy, mimicking Predator elite hunting packs, coordinating with ruthless synergy.
Vandal Savage—Genghis Khan—was under siege by a squad of these predators. His elite guards had dwindled to less than a dozen. His cloak was soaked in blood, his sword dulled but still clenched. Around him, torn bodies of warriors and Parapredators littered the ravaged earth.
One of the predators—an Alpha adorned in bone-etched armor with three severed Atlantean heads strapped to its belt—emerged from the smoke.
Savage growled, wiping blood from his chin. "You think death will unmake me, beast?" He slammed the butt of his sword into the ground. "I've been death for ten thousand years."
The Alpha responded with a bone-clicking snarl and extended twin plasma blades. The hunt was far from over.
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Elsewhere, the sky cracked with every blow traded between Kalibak and Ares. Their duel had moved across the entire battlefield—toppling mountains, shattering forests, even splitting a canyon open with one of Kalibak's downward strikes.
Ares had grown stronger as war bloomed. His armor now pulsed with divine resonance, his blade heavier, darker, as it fed on conflict. But Kalibak's raw Apokoliptian endurance kept him even. Blood streaked down his chin, one eye partially closed, but he grinned.
"You are no god to me!" Kalibak roared, smashing his Beta Club into the ground, creating a shockwave that sent dozens of divine creatures flying. "You're just another battlefield for me to trample!"
Ares planted his blade, steadied himself, and countered with a mighty spear throw that pierced through Kalibak's shoulder and erupted out his back. The Apokoliptian didn't even flinch.
"You bleed," Ares said coldly. "That means you can die."
Kalibak chuckled. "So can gods."
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Big Barda vs. Hippolyta raged like a myth brought to life. The Amazon queen's shield was cracked, her arm bloodied, but she matched Barda's strength strike for strike. The Mega Rod flared with apocalyptic energy, clashing against Hippolyta's divine blade as sparks and blood painted the earth.
"You're strong," Barda admitted, gritting her teeth. "Almost enough to make me forget you're mortal."
"You're a slave," Hippolyta spat. "No matter how mighty. A beast on a leash."
That struck home. For a moment, Barda faltered—but only for a moment. Then she snarled and surged forward, hammering blow after blow, pushing the Amazon queen to her limits.
King Atlan II, armored in abyssal coral and wielding Poseidon's Trident, was barely holding ground against the other Furies—Lashina, Bloody Mary, and Stompa. Their coordination was immaculate: Lashina's whip binding limbs, Mary draining energy with vampiric leeching, and Stompa delivering shockwave stomps that shattered the earth around him. Atlan was powerful, but even with Atlantean elite around him, he was being systematically torn apart.
"We can end this quickly," Bloody Mary whispered in his ear after stunning him with a blast of necrotic energy. "Or… painfully. Your trident will be a fine gift for Mastema."
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Above it all, Athena stood at the heart of the war camp, flanked by injured generals and mages too weak to cast. Her armor was scratched and smeared with ichor, her hands bloodied from command and combat alike. She was orchestrating what was left of Earth's resistance like a chess master—creating kill zones, rotating retreating fronts, using clouds and terrain for ambush. But it was only delaying the inevitable.
She turned to her seers and scribes. "He hasn't even moved," she whispered, her brow furrowed.
"Who, my lady?"
"The mastermind behind this. The son of Darkseid. Mastema. He has not intervened. This—" she gestured to the battlefield below, "—is merely his hand, not his will."
And then, as if to confirm her fears, dozens more drone-pods streaked across the sky, slamming into the earth behind allied lines. Hive-spires unfolded, releasing more queens, more predators, more horrors—each more adapted than the last.
Then came the hunter deployment ships, shaped like obsidian arrowheads, their undersides opening to release new waves of Berserker-class elites.
Athena's fists clenched.
"We need more than warriors," she said. "We need divinity."
She stepped away from the command post, walked into the clearing, and raised her spear to the sky. "Father," she called out. "Your daughter calls for Olympus. Send me light. Send me fire. Send me the twins."
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The clouds split open.
A chariot of golden flame descended from the heavens, pulled by four divine steeds made of sunfire. Upon it stood Apollo, radiant and burning, his bow already drawn, golden arrows shimmering with holy heat.
Beside him, Artemis, clad in silver and moonlight, nocked her twin arrows. Her eyes scanned the battlefield, already marking targets. Behind them, legions of celestial archers and beast-warriors of the wild descended like a second dawn.
Athena smiled grimly. "Let's see how Apokolips fares against the wrath of Olympus."
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Within the flagship of Apokolips, the heart of shadow and machinery pulsed with eerie quiet amid the distant cacophony of war. The Throne of Dominion, a floating construct of shimmering obsidian and pulsing red circuitry, hovered above a massive projection table where Earth was rendered in real-time—its scarred surface, the slow retreat of Earth's defenders, the bloody stalemate of Kalibak and Ares, the brutal hunting grounds of the Parapredators.
And now, to Mastema's glowing red eyes, an infection had begun to spread across his perfect war chart—divine radiance.
The god twins had arrived.
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From the upper skies of Earth, Apollo and Artemis danced across the battlefield like avatars of destruction. Apollo's golden arrows fell like solar flares, each shot igniting dozens of parademons or splitting Juggernauts with radiant force. Where his arrows struck, the ground was left molten, blackened, and glass-smooth.
By contrast, Artemis was silent death—her arrows were silver, her bow carved from moon-wood and starlight. Her strikes were colder, targeted: queens, alphas, aerial units, support lines. She coordinated with Earth's faltering command, striking not with fury, but with cruel, elegant precision.
The hybrid legions—drones, predators, juggernauts—began to burn. Cyclopes rallied. Centaurs roared back to life. Amazons cheered. Even Vandal Savage took a breath longer than he had in days.
Mastema leaned forward in his throne, unreadable. He watched as a flare of solar fire detonated an entire drone pod cluster.
"How fascinating," he murmured, more amused than irritated. "Divine escalation… good. Let them burn brighter. It will make the extinguishing more poetic."
With a slow, calculated movement, his long fingers hovered over a recessed portion of the throne's left armrest. The glyphs etched there were not standard Apokoliptian—they were his own, custom-coded, crafted by his mind and fused into the ship's control systems. He pressed the central glyph.
The ship responded.
Two Boom Tubes formed in swirling silence.
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From the left portal, she stepped first.
Proxima Calith, born on Tamaran—but long since reforged. Her orange skin gleamed like burnished copper beneath battle-worn armor of violet and black plating, which left most of her midriff and thighs exposed—a choice of vanity and flexibility. Her emerald, pupil-less eyes sparkled not with innocence, but violence. Her long violet hair was braided into a whip-like cord that swung behind her, humming with embedded energy nodes. In her hand was a spear tipped with a pulsing shard of collapsed neutronium, thrumming with spatial distortion.
She descended to one knee, pressing her fist to her chest.
"My lord," she purred. "Do you require someone's head?"
From the right portal emerged a towering wall of pale flesh and disciplined death.
Corvus-Thane, last Warzoon of a dead gladiatorial moon. Born beneath brutal stars, raised in bloodpits, reforged by Mastema in silent black vats beneath Apokolips. His skin was an unnatural alabaster white, washed of his species' orange hue by chemical sanctification. His body was carved like a god's: slabs of muscle bound by barely-contained Omega plating, cybernetic implants augmenting his musculature without visible seams. His eyes were blood red, soulless. His voice was monotone and calm.
He knelt beside Proxima.
"Mastema. You summoned. What must be destroyed?"
Mastema rose slightly from his throne, hands behind his back as the war map below them twisted to highlight Apollo and Artemis, waging radiant slaughter on Apokoliptian forces below.
"The twin gods of Olympus. Their light is... disruptive. That light must be extinguished."
He turned his burning eyes on them.
"You were nothing once. A slave in chains." He nodded toward Proxima. "And you…"
"You were food," he said to Corvus. "Unwanted by your kin. Barely seen as worth the labor to kill."
They both bowed their heads deeper.
"But I saw the iron in your bones. I made you strong. I made you Dreadlords. My chosen seven. Now prove to the gods of this world that they like those who worship them can be slain."
Proxima stood first. A smirk curved her lips.
"I will make the Sun God beg for an eclipse." She spun her spear and flared her wings—small, retractable tech-blades built into her shoulder guards, opening like jagged petals.
Corvus rose without sound. His only reply was a nod. A nod that meant obliteration.
"Do not fail me," Mastema said, almost gently. "I give you leave to command my surplus."
He tapped a new command into the throne—lowest-security conquered planets, previously used for mineral harvesting and fodder-parademon breeding, were opened. Stored legions of standardized Parademons were released from stasis, thousands at a time. A chain of seven Boom Tubes opened in orbit above Earth.
Below, the battlefield howled.
Parademons began to fall from the sky like a meteor shower of nightmares. Fire trails marked the horizon as their deployment ships blackened the sun again.
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Proxima and Corvus walked together into the portal that would lead them to the surface of Earth. Their every step was echoed by the rhythmic chanting of parademons. Their armies had arrived.
As they emerged from the Boom Tube over the scorched plains north of the center of the battlefield, a hundred thousand parademons howled into the sky.
Proxima raised her spear. A blinding violet flare erupted from its tip and pulsed outward in a wave. All parademons snapped to attention, silent and still for a fraction of a second, connected. Her will was theirs.
"Tear their armies apart," she shrieked. "Let this world know what true conquest feels like!"
They surged.
The Earth quaked.
The skies were once again black.
But not with divine wrath.
With death.
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