310 - DC: The Infinite Villain (Patreon)

310 - Rainbow Light Becomes White

When Mad Harriet rose as a third orange construct, the battle turned decisively. Superman and Wonder Woman were still fighting the two surviving Furies, but neither fight looked likely to last much longer.

Boom!

A heavy impact sounded in the distance. Mera streaked past in a flash of red light.

Her trident carved a long furrow across the ground. She stopped, pulled it free, and flew back toward Steppenwolf. The clash resumed almost at once. Even with a red ring, Mera was finding him difficult to beat alone. Damon sent his three orange constructs after the Parademons and headed for the Mother Boxes.

He reached the center of the disturbance.

Three Mother Boxes hovered together, fused within a strange energy field.

Batman, Green Lantern, and the Flash stood around them, frowning. None seemed to know how to separate them.

"Still working on it?" Damon asked as he came up and patted Batman's shoulder. "Someone's waiting for me."

He intended to return to Talia's villa once this was done.

Batman frowned. "Our technology can't get through the field. Touching it could hurt anyone who tries. Destabilize it, and the boxes will explode. We estimate the blast would be enormous." He looked at Damon. "You, Superman, and Wonder Woman might survive close enough to pull them apart, with Green Lantern supporting you."

Damon studied the boxes. They were joined without so much as a gap. He could feel the field before his finger reached it.

"It would take all three of you working in perfect sync," Batman said. "One wrong move and they'll detonate."

"Right."

Damon drove a finger into the field.

"Don't!"

Batman shouted too late. Light flickered across the Mother Boxes as the field destabilized.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Everyone, get clear! The Mother Boxes are about to explode!" Batman warned the team, then rounded on Damon. "Do you know how many people you could--"

He broke off. Rainbow light flared around Damon's hands and formed an enormous pair of palms, enclosing all three boxes.

Damon multiplied the construct's power a hundredfold.

"What's the panic?" he asked. "I wasn't planning to let you die today."

Batman stared. The light was changing.

All seven colors blazed brighter, then began to merge. Their separate bands disappeared into a single radiance.

White.

Boom!

The Mother Boxes detonated inside the now-white construct. Batman and the others flinched as the blast shone through its fingers. The white light held, then seemed to absorb the energy. Smoke seeped through the gaps. Damon opened the construct's hand, releasing the smoke. The explosion's force was gone.

For a moment, no one spoke.

"Were our estimates wrong?" the Flash asked.

They had calculated a blast that could devastate much of Earth. Damon had contained it in one construct, apparently without effort.

"No," Batman said. He alerted the team that the Mother Boxes were no longer a threat.

Green Lantern turned to Damon. "Your light. Why did it turn white? I've never heard of a white light."

"How long have you even been a Lantern?" Damon shot back, dismissing the question.

In the comics, Kyle Rayner had learned to wield all seven colors and become a White Lantern. Without the Life Entity, his access to white light was limited. Damon's own rainbow energy had evolved when he multiplied it, even though he had no Life Entity either.

Black light represented death and destruction. White light represented life and creation.

White stood apart from the seven colors of the emotional spectrum. In the right hands, it could overwhelm other kinds of light. Damon had just seen what it could do.

The White Lanterns were associated with life, resistance to the Black Lanterns, and even resurrection. Damon remembered a theory connecting black light to the Anti-Life Equation and white light to the Life Equation, though the details were hardly settled. When his light changed, he had felt the possibility of restoring life.

Without the Life Entity, however, it fell short of the power he had imagined.

The change mattered all the same.

He now held the seven colors of the emotional spectrum, as well as black and white light.

Rage, avarice, fear, willpower, hope, compassion, love. Death and life.

In his hands, those powers reached beyond emotion to the boundary between life and death.

"Send me back! Hurry!" Steppenwolf shouted from outside.

Fear spread with his voice.