Justice League of America - Batman: The Stone King (26 page)

An ominous plume of smoke spewed out of volcanic Mount Etna in the Mediterranean. Grimacing in its swirls and roils were the faces of a thousand demons.

After a silence that had lasted two thousand years, the cave-dwelling Oracle at Delphi in Greece began to speak again. But where once the air was perfumed with burning laurel leaves, now it was dank, and heavy toxic fumes spewed up from the cavern's depths.

The voice the Oracle spoke in was the voice of the Stone King. And the message it delivered never changed.

Your time has come. Prepare to die.

Outside the chamber, on the slopes of the pyramid, Superman struggled to hold the two duplicate Stone Kings. Their strength seemed almost as great as his, and each time he tried to use a superpower against them, they countered with powers of their own.

Inside, Batman's gaze was fixed on the real Stone King. What could be seen of his skin under the animal hides he wore was glowing with fluorescent light. Dark flashes danced from his brooding eyes. His muscles rippled continuously, as if raw physical power were coursing through his body.

Almost imperceptibly, the Stone King seemed to be growing.

These clones are merely decoys!
Batman shot suddenly at the others.
Their only purpose is to delay us!

The Flash was grappling with one of the creatures, trying to stun it with rapid-fire blows from his fists that landed with the power of a triphammer. When he received Batman's message, the Scarlet Speedster immediately switched tactics.

He began to run at speed in a small, tight circle around the floor, accelerating until he was little more than a red blur. Around him, a spiraling tornado of air formed, whirling at high speed in the confines of the chamber.

Suddenly, the Flash shifted his trajectory, and the roaring cyclone dipped to envelop the duplicate Stone King. The vacuum created at its center sucked the creature in, imprisoning it in the near-solid column of rotating air.

Still struggling with their own adversaries, J'onn J'onzz and Wonder Woman didn't need telepathy to tell them what the Flash was up to. Unexpectedly decreasing his molecular density, Manhunter grabbed his foe's arm and used superstrength to hurl the creature into the center of the vortex. The Amazon Princess followed suit, using a judo throw to toss her own opponent over her shoulder. It disappeared into the Flash's tornado.

Giving the Stone Kings no time to fight free, the Flash shot out of the chamber and down the side of the pyramid.

Below, Superman was engaged in a titanic struggle with the two duplicates he'd carried from the chamber. The Flash sent an urgent warning to Superman as the cyclone veered toward the battle. The Man of Steel dived aside as the supersonic whirlwind enveloped the startled Stone Kings before speeding away across the countryside.

Superman flew up to the chamber. He had barely reentered before the Flash was back.

I dumped them halfway across the Atlantic,
the Scarlet Speedster informed his waiting comrades. His speed was so great, he could run on water as if it were dry land.

Only one Stone King left.
Wonder Woman gestured to the pulsating figure in the center of the chamber. He seemed to have grown by a foot or more, his body expanding in proportion.
Do we launch a full scale assault?

We do,
Batman replied, taking a step closer to Green Lantern. The vigilante glanced over at J'onn
J'onzz,
who gave a slight nod.

Right after this
–Batman went on.

There was a sudden, searing pain deep inside their minds as J'onn J'onzz sent out the strongest telepathic jolt he'd ever mustered. As one, Green Lantern, the Flash, Superman, and Wonder Woman clutched their heads at the bone-jarring agony. Only Batman and Manhunter himself remained unaffected.

Batman clenched his fist and swung it with the whole power of his body behind it. The punch exploded against the point of Green Lantern's chin, and the Emerald Warrior slumped to the ground, unconscious.

Goliath himself couldn't have withstood Batman's blow. His protective force field switched off by Manhunter's mental assault, Green Lantern fell poleaxed to the floor.

Superman and the others stared aghast at the unconscious Emerald Warrior, hardly registering Batman's urgent message in their shock.
Explanations will have to wait. Trust us. It was necessary.

You can't just
–Wonder Woman began, but Batman ignored her protest and plunged on.

The key to defeating the Stone King has to be earth energies,
the vigilante explained.
He's drawing his power from the planet itself–and that's where we can hurt him. If Superman and Wonder Woman can disrupt the flow of Earth's energy currents, we may just spoil his schemes completely.

Batman flicked on his cowl's digital display.
But we need to be quick. It's thirteen minutes to midnight.

The Stone King reacted as if he'd understood every word. He whirled suddenly, emitting a roar that reverberated through the pyramid. Bolts of cobalt fire shot out from his extended fingers, aimed at the heroes. Batman ducked under a bolt and saw several others ricochet off the bodies of his two invulnerable teammates, while yet more beams were deflected by Wonder Woman's silver bracelets.

Where the bolts hit the walls and ceiling, they rebounded at a tangent, crisscrossing the chamber in a mesh of crackling energy.

Seeing the danger, Batman dived full-length, wedging himself in the cramped space between the altar stone and the wall behind it. The Flash wasn't so fortunate.

Even moving at superspeed, the Fastest Man Alive was unable to avoid all of the streaking bolts that came at him from every angle. One caught him in the small of the back, knocking him off balance. As he staggered, a tracery of other beams struck his legs and sent him tumbling to the floor. His head caught on the front of the altar, and he slumped unconscious.

Fighting his way through the network of ricocheting energy, J'onn J'onzz threw himself forward and grabbed the shaman's wrist, exerting all his Martian strength to hold it. Superman seized the Stone King's other arm, and together the duo tried to wrestle both arms behind the creature's back.

As the storm of energy faded, Batman leaped to his feet "Hold him," he urged. "I have something in my Utility Belt we can use against him."

Wonder Woman uncoiled her golden lasso and sent it looping toward the Stone King's head.

She was a microsecond too late.

The Stone King tore one arm free with a wrench that sent Manhunter sailing over his head. Wonder Woman had no space to avoid him, and they both went down in a crumpled heap.

The other arm lifted Superman off the ground, slamming him into the chamber's corbeled ceiling with brutal force.

Lunging at Batman, the Stone King tore through the vigilante's martial arts defense like paper. Clutching fingers raked his costume's Kevlar lining in a trail of blue sparks, slashing clean through it and ripping his cape in half.

As the hand clawed through the air again, Batman back-flipped to avoid it. His heel struck the low ceiling, throwing him off balance.

He recovered to land acrobatically on the chamber floor, relieved that his comrades were already preparing to renew their attack.

Deep within the Earth, tectonic plates ground together, unstoppable force meeting immoveable object. Piezoelectricity shot upward in tiny plasmoid spheres, passing through the bedrock, flowing toward the pyramid.

In the burial chamber, the Stone King felt the shock and welcomed it.

Deeper still, molten rock at a temperature of thousands of degrees swirled and eddied, creating forces as yet unknown to science. As they surged through the ground in massive low-frequency waves, the pyramid absorbed their power and channeled it to the Stone King.

And deeper yet, deeper than any man had gone or ever could, at the very center of the earth, electromagnetic forces pulsed and twisted. The gravity-compressed, near-solid iron core broadcast on a wide range of frequencies, weaving webs of unbelievable force as it spun on its orbit around the sun.

In the chamber, planetary energies caressed the Stone King's skin, pulsing through it, man and planet merging.

With a wild shriek of triumph that shook the entire pyramid and sent boulders cascading down its slopes, the Stone King began to grow.

Clinging to him, Superman, Wonder Woman, and Manhunter were dragged along as he shot up at colossal speed, smashing through the slabbed ceiling in an explosion of stone.

Half the pyramid was demolished as his body expanded and swelled, thrusting hundreds of tons of rock and soil aside as if they were marbles. The plateau on top was already half destroyed, from the last time the power manifested here. The Stone King grew past it, sending avalanches racing down its sides.

Almost deafened by the initial roar, Batman collected his thoughts and sent a desperate message to Superman and Wonder Woman.
You must go underground! Disrupt his power at its source!

Batman saw two beings peel away from the monstrous, pulsating figure. They looped once in the air, then dived groundward like twin missiles.

Rocks and debris rained around him as Batman grabbed Green Lantern's arm and tried to haul his teammate to some kind of safety. He raised an arm to ward off a falling chunk of rock, and grunted as another thudded into his shoulder.

The Flash needed help, too, but there was no way Batman could carry both heroes at once. Batman saw that the altar stone had been half torn out of its foundations; he hoped it would provide the Flash with sufficient protection until Batman could return for him.

Typically, his first thoughts weren't for himself. It was at Batman's instruction that Manhunter had negated Green Lantern's force field. If the Emerald Warrior died, crushed by one of the multiton boulders that were crashing around them, Batman would bear the responsibility.

He backed up just in time. A massive lintel beam plunged to the floor just ahead of him. The air was full of choking dust. Batman's respirator would protect him, but what about Lantern?

Desperation lent him strength. He dragged Green Lantern under a huge rectangular block that had fallen at an angle, leaving a crawlspace beneath. Batman pushed the Emerald Warrior in. Hardly satisfactory, but he had no other option.

He moved away again, intent on rescuing the Flash, and was surprised to find the Scarlet Speedster had already recovered.

Stay in cover,
the Flash warned him.
I'll handle this.

Moving so fast that the plummeting granite blocks seemed to be falling in slow motion, the Scarlet Speedster was able to shove them aside with ease. For the tiny fraction of a second that he touched them, they seemed weightless to him, easy to direct away from his teammates.

Outside, the Stone King reached a height of a hundred feet before his size stabilized. The energy that had kept the pyramid invisible was siphoned back to him, and now a bright glow lit up the sky for miles around.

Towering over the countryside, surrounded by an aura of swirling fluorescence, the Neolithic shaman raised both arms in a gesture of victory. Flashes of blue fire flickered from the bull's skull that covered his head, running down the animal hides that clothed his body in a sparkling, fiery waterfall.

Clinging to the giant's shoulder, J'onn J'onzz dodged the rivers of flame that fell past him. The Martian's only weakness was a vulnerability to fire, which could reduce one of the Justice League's mighty members to abject helplessness. This was why he hadn't accompanied Superman and Wonder Woman on their subterranean mission–the risk of encountering lava and pockets of fire was too great.

Then the Stone King began to chant The low, oscillating mantra was so far down the tonal scale that Manhunter felt it rather than heard it. Great, slow waves of painful nausea writhed through his internal organs.

Ultralow frequency sound,
Manhunter thought.
Immensely destructive to all physical material. I have to stop him before it shakes my body apart–from the inside!

Manhunter soared away from the massive figure, circling in a broad loop to increase his speed and momentum. He set his teeth grimly against the waves of pain mat continued to assail him and dived headlong toward the Stone King's chest.

Streaking in like a bullet, at the last moment Manhunter increased the density of his molecules to their maximum.

He cannoned into the Stone King's chest with the force of a nuclear explosion.

Superman's heat vision seared through the solid bedrock of the earth's crust, tunneling a path that he and Wonder Woman could follow.

They were ten miles down when they came upon the first anomaly.

A thick seam of granite was grinding against a similar but heavier seam. Piezoelectricity sparked like a billion fireflies, liny globes of plasma darted through the boundary between the granite layers, rising upward, joining together until they became a wide, fast-flowing river of energy.

Any ideas?
Superman asked, thankful that J'onn J'onzz's telepathic link was still functioning at this depth.

We can try to fuse the seams together,
Wonder Woman suggested.

Both brought their strength into maximum use, straining against the face of the thick, dense seam. Even while he pushed, Superman used heat vision to melt and soften the rock, making it more pliable.

The myriad pinpoints of light began to fade, and finally died away.

In little over a minute, the two super heroes were diving deeper.

The Stone King staggered as Martian Manhunter slammed into his chest. A bellow of frustration and rage echoed for miles around.

The chanting stopped.

That certainly attracted his attention,
Manhunter thought approvingly. Returning his molecules to normal, he streaked away at high speed, intending to repeat the maneuver.