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The warp stream emitted a brilliantly gleaming glow that refracted off the polished stone until the whole room glittered like the night sky. But when its light faded back into the warp pad like wax dripping down a candle, Jason stepped off the platform to a cavern of obsidian darkness. The pitch black lasted only a moment before orb-like crystals embedded into the cave’s walls pulsed a pale glow with Jason’s every stride. They lit his searching path through the winding chasms carved deep into the planet.
He stalked through the tunnels with purpose. His palms pressed to every slated stone and jagged bump in the wall, poking and prodding as if a new chamber door would unlock with a mechanical whir. But the cold stone beneath his touch didn’t budge—as solid and unwavering as the Black Diamond who chiseled and sculpted every nook and cranny of this cave.
Fucking Bruce.
Jason’s fist slammed against the stone. The crystal light rattled against the wall; its glow shuddered upon the floor like the wings of a moth.
Bruce had one of the Jokers hidden here somewhere, bubbled away for safe keeping while he tracked down the other two Joker gems that made up the fluorite monster that haunted Jason’s every waking moment. He still saw it—that thin spindle of a gem towered over him, each of the fusion’s six arms bent at terrifying angles, their shadows like knives when they finally pierced the red beryl gem at Jason’s sternum. He thought himself shattered; but the Joker preferred toying with his victims. Carving up their gems just to hear them scream.
Jason pushed off the wall to continue his search. His boots thumped upon the stone with the heaviness of his anger, and idly, he touched a hand to his chest. He pressed at the edges of his gem, tracing its contour of rough dimples and crags. It had been smooth and polished before the Joker fusion sank his teeth into Jason and gnawed like a beast for the marrow of bone.
Retreating into the gem to regenerate hadn’t healed it, and despite the long months Jason spent reforming and shaping himself anew, the Joker’s marks remained. Both in the chips and scuffs of his gem, and the carved brand upon his cheek. Cracked like glass, tiny fissures spider-webbed from the main chasm of the jagged J to the lobe of his ear, across the bridge of his nose, and to the corner of his lip.
And maybe worse than the scar was being told it remained due to his own mental blockage. An ineptitude of his own making. That if Jason had taken the proper time and care in repairing himself, it would be healed. As if he hadn’t tried recklessly poofing his form again and again, retreating into his gem to mend the pieces of himself that remained, only to materialize with the Joker’s mark a hideous reminder on his face.
A warning to the rest of the Black Diamond’s little soldiers, Jason was reduced to a pitiful gem deemed too fragile for Bruce’s front lines. Too unstable in both body and mind to be allowed to hunt down the gems who broke him.
But he never thought Bruce would bring one of the Jokers into their own home. Bubbled and hidden away as if the gem deserved redemption instead of being shattered and ground down to dust, burned until nothing but ash and bitter memories remained.
Jason had already checked the depths of the cavern where molten rock flowed in rivers and its heat steamed up through the channels and airways. It beaded upon his brow and dripped in rivulets down the arch of his nose as he sorted through the corrupted gems floating in their protective bubbles. But the fluorite prism—the greens and purples molded together like a wicked, venomous storm—didn’t hover among the gems.
No, Bruce went to greater lengths to conceal the Joker, knowing Jason would hunt him down.
He had thought Bruce would’ve done the same. That in this singular instance, the Black Diamond would put aside his beliefs in redemption in order to protect one of his own. Jason wasn’t asking him to shatter every corrupted gem. Just the Jokers, the three who fused together into a monster without morals, who terrorized their planet who no remorse.
Jason would’ve done that for him. He would’ve stopped at nothing—traversed the entire galaxy turning over every stone and pebble the Joker so much as touched—if it meant avenging the gem who called him son.
With a harsh kick of his stride, his boot scuffed a shrill screech across the stone. His footsteps echoed in the corridor; the sound drifted ahead of him past the crystal glow into the darkness. But instead of dissipating into the far heights among the stalactites, the thumping pounds bounced back at him.
He came to a stop before the towering, pointed arch of a door. At its peak, a shield-cut diamond marked it as Bruce’s quarters.
Jason stared at the diamond’s glinting shine for a long moment before his eyes cut lower down the thick panel. He pressed his palms to the chill metal and ran his touch across its width, feeling for even the slightest hint of a secret panel. When he came up empty, he angled his ear to the door and softly rapped his knuckles against it, listening for a hollow note and finding none. He wedged his fingers against the frame where the metal sank into the cavern’s stone. Gentle at first, he caressed the lip, skimming the pads of his fingers for the dimple of a button. But his patience grew thin, and soon, he clawed at the frame as if he could rip the door out of the stone.
His chest quaked with his panting exhales. With his rising frustration, the scratch of metal grated his ears in its lingering echoes. It bounced back at him in jest, mocking and jeering until, with a final yank of his fingers, his grip slipped, and he stumbled backwards with the momentum.
Jason caught his balance with a stomp of his boot, and he surged forward with the swing of his fist. His knuckles hit the door with a metallic pang that vibrated through the panel. Its note rippled through the cavern, softening with each echo. When it faded to but a whisper behind him, Jason slumped forward. His forehead pressed to the door; his fist tightened, knuckles paling to a dull pink—murky compared to the deep red luster of his skin—before his grasp loosened.
Eyes squeezing shut, Jason fought back the moisture that stubbornly stung them. His anger simmered low, its heat draining away in favor of the cold despondency that shivered down his spine. It settled in his gut like a boulder as he tried not to think of all the times this door opened, unbidden, for him. He didn’t have to raise his hand to knock or speak his presence aloud for the door to slide open with a whoosh of air upon his cheeks. Warm and welcoming.
A low chuffing noise startled Jason. His head shot up as he pushed off the door with his knuckles.
There, seated on its haunches, a massive beast stared at him with its amber-colored eyes. As dark as obsidian, the lion’s thick mane flowed like moving shadows. Its tail flicked an idle thump as the black lion chuffed another exhale at Jason, its head tilting with its stare.
“I don’t suppose you’d fancy teleporting me to the other side of this door, would you?” Jason asked conversationally. But the lion stared at him without so much as a blink. Dropping his head, Jason sighed. “Didn’t think so.” His shoulders hitched with his soft, snorted chuckle as Jason looked to the massive, regal feline. “Too loyal for your own good, ain’t ya, boy?” Weren’t they all? Jason couldn’t fault the cat for that.
With the sag of his weight, Jason pressed his shoulder to the door and slid down its panel. He pulled his knees to his chest and lolled his head back to stare at the glistening stalactite drips of the ceiling. They shimmered like black ice so far above him.
The soft pad of the lion’s paws drew closer; and when Jason tipped his gaze to the cat, it bowed its head to bunt its cheek on Jason’s shoulder. The massive beast stepped over Jason’s bent leg and pushed its face into Jason’s chest, rubbing with an affectionate vigor that engulfed Jason in the coarse, wiry tangles of its mane.
Chest quaking with laughter—so light and airy in his throat—Jason framed the lion’s jowls with his palms and pushed its massive head back so he could see beyond the black sea of its mane. “C’mon, Ace. Down boy. I ain’t mad at you,” Jason struggled, his words strained with exertion, with the effort of holding the cat at bay.
Then, finally, with an exhaled huff that washed hot against Jason’s face, the lion sagged to the floor. Its weight pinned Jason as it rested in his lap and continued to nuzzle its head against his stomach.
Jason patted the lion’s paw where it curled—kneading—at his hip until the prick of its claws retracted. Then, as he sank his hand into Ace’s mane and scratched through the velvety soft fur behind its ear, Jason’s shoulders sank back against the door panel. With a heavy breath, his entire body deflated with the exhale.
“I thought I meant more to Bruce,” Jason spoke quietly. He felt the lion’s ear flick toward his voice. “More than the Joker, at the very least.”
Ace huffed a low, grunting breath. Jason combed his hand through the lion’s dense mane. When his fingers stroked along Ace’s cheek, the cat lifted and angled its head until Jason’s touch scratched at the underside of its chin.
With both hands, Jason scratched the length of Ace’s neck; the feline, with its amber eyes veiled in bliss, lifted its head and stretched to rest its chin on Jason’s shoulder. Jason turned his cheek into the coarse bush of the lion’s mane. “You’re always stalking after Bruce,” he said. “Did you happen to see where he hid the Joker?”
At this point, Jason grasped at even the shortest of straws. He hadn’t expected a reaction at all, was simply voicing a silly little thought aloud, but Ace’s paw ceased in its kneading at his hip. It slipped to the floor where it planted to heave Ace to its feet. The lion towered over him, head held high like a diamond before its subjects, and those amber-colored eyes stared down at Jason with an intensity that made him suddenly feel like prey.
“Ahh,” Jason nervously laughed as his hand hovered in the space between them, torn between patting the lion’s chest or pulling back to protect the gem at his sternum. “Forget I asked. I’ll just…” slowly, he lowered his palm to the ground and shifted sideways to gradually extricate himself from beneath the lion. “...search some more on my own.”
Ace rumbled a low sound and crowded further over Jason. Its massive paw fell upon Jason’s fingers, and Jason held the beast at bay with a palm splayed upon the muscled strength of its chest. “This isn’t funny anymore, Ace. Cut it out.” Jason shoved the lion, but Ace didn’t budge.
“Seriously, knock it of—” Jason pushed at the lion’s neck with a mighty heave, and his hand slipped into the tangle of its mane. It found no purchase, no wall of thick muscle or the cat’s thumping pulse. His body followed the momentum of his arm as if swimming, the stroke gliding through waves of unending fur.
He surfaced with a gasp of breath, but he was no longer in the depths of the Black Diamond’s cavern. Long reeds of grass—or was it the lion’s mane, thick and coarse and dark like obsidian—rolled with a breeze Jason couldn’t feel. He watched, both baffled and fascinated, as the grass billowed in waves, undulating like ripples through the sea. Not a single sound carried its notes. Silent save for Jason’s own breathing as he pushed himself to stand.
Above him, a full moon hung in the dark gradient of the sky. Pitch black faded to pale gray on the horizon. Eerie with the overcast of clouds, yet strangely peaceful in the soft twinkle of the stars that dotted the darkest depths of the sky.
“What in the…” Jason trailed off, his whisper of dismay odd and vacant in this pocket dimension.
He ran his palms along the reeds. Their bristle-like ends tickled as he wandered in a small circle, taking in the expanse of the dark, wheat-like sea. Vast and seemingly unending. In the far distance, he spotted a single island.
Jason waded through the mane-grass toward the island’s volcanic sand. As he neared its beach, he saw a rustle among the reeds that broke its rolling wave. He walked toward it and parted the reeds with his hands. The rustling ceased, and before Jason could reach his hand out toward it, a beak poked through the grass.
With a jolt of his shoulders, Jason tensed as the beak dipped back into the reeds. The creature waddled toward the island, and Jason cautiously followed at a distance until the little thing hopped up out of the grass and tottered along the beach.
Jason would’ve huffed a sharp bark of laughter if it weren’t for his utter confusion at seeing a small banded penguin toddle on the beach. It shuffled along the sand with its head bent toward the ground, swiveling and searching; and curious, Jason trailed behind it. The penguin waddled along until, with a thrilled little shudder, it flapped its flippers at its sides and hurried toward shiny pebbles spilled on the beach.
As the penguin jubilantly picked through the pebbles—scooping them up one by one in its beak only to drop it for an even shinier one—Jason noticed they weren’t pebbles at all but gold coins. Spilled upon the sand, they trailed further inland. Stooping down to inspect one, he turned the coin over and found a head on both sides.
A shrill, braying squawk startled Jason, and he dropped the coin as the penguin waddled toward him with its spiny tongue bared in a hiss. With a few hopping steps, Jason avoided its snapping beak and back-pedaled up the beach. When he cleared the little trail of coins, the penguin flapped its flippers at him but gave up pursuit in favor of its treasure.
Jason watched the penguin a few minutes longer before turning to trek up the slope of the beach. His boots sunk into the black sand, and each step felt heavier than the last. When he finally reached its crest—bent over and braced upon his knees—Jason exhaled a huffed pant. With the depth of his next breath, he lifted his head and stared—wide-eyed, his breath forgotten in his chest—at a field of stone ruins.
Toppled pillars and crumbling archways. Briar roses vined along the stone, and overgrown bramble eclipsed the blades of mighty axes and swords that were wedged deep in the earth. The moonlight cast long shadows across the rusted weapons and stretched through the mounds of stone and brick. Battered walls remained half-standing, ruptured and decaying, forming a labyrinth across the field.
Jason wandered through the debris-ridden bramble with a quiet awe. Reverent, remorseful even, in every brush of his fingertips over the hafts of axes and mallets, the hilts of swords, the curved edges of fallen shields. The battleground carried a solemness that Jason felt in his core, but there was a beauty in the twining vines and delicate flowers that bloomed among their thorns.
As he rounded the remnants of a pillar—the stone mounded high in its collapse—Jason spotted a tree growing at the edge of the battlefield. It grew from two trunks that snared together and branched out in weeping arms. Its petals—so pale in their pink color they looked white—drooped down in sparse clumps toward the earth.
It called to him. Drew him in without conscious thought with each step he took until Jason stood beneath its ensnaring branches. Delicate petals brushed the curled ends of his fringe when Jason tipped his head back to admire the grotesque way its trunk twisted and entwined. There, encapsulated in a small bubble among the petals, Jason spotted a gem shard.
A tiny thing, but a jagged sliver of stone. It wasn’t the noxious green and bruised purple of the fluorite gem. No, it shined a brilliant, deep red even through the glassy sheen of the bubble.
Jason climbed for it. He hauled himself up the tree’s limbs. Each stretch of his arm strained taut to his chest, aching to a pulse that hammered just beneath his own gem. When he reached for it with trembling fingers, Jason knew what it was. He cupped its bubble in the safety of his palm and tucked it against his sternum before making a slow descent to the ground.
His knees braced his hop down; and when he stood, he lifted the bubble from his chest. It floated just above the touch of his palm. In this pale, monochromatic realm, the shard gleamed. Its bubble glittered, and when Jason peered closer, he saw the tiny flakes of beryl floating around the main shard.
Touching his other hand to the gem at his sternum, Jason’s shoulders hunched with his exhale. The breath wafted over the bubble; its glimmering dust swirled like a flurry of snow. His finger traced the rough contour of his gemstone, dipping into the crags and catching on the knots.
A piece of himself, Jason was sure—felt it in the very core of his gem—but he no longer knew where it fit. His rough edges—battered and molded anew after so many attempts at reforming himself—no longer matched this piece. No matter how many times he traced his finger over his gem, he couldn’t find a place to slot the shard.
Emotion welled in his chest like a stormy wave, swelling to unforeseen heights before cresting in a moment of suspense. It hitched the breath in his lungs until, with a lurch, it crashed into him with the force of a diamond’s fist.
He clutched the bubble to his chest, cradled it beside the protrusion of his gem, as he turned heel for the battlefield. Anger—righteous and vengeful—weighed down the stomp of his boots as its hurt mirrored in the moist sheen of his eyes, the soft pink of his irises blazing like flames. Blurred at the edges, he blinked through the hot sting of his stare, tucked the tiny bubble into his jacket, and renewed his hunt for the Joker’s gem with fervor.
Bramble twigs and leaves crunched beneath his steps. Their thorns snagged on his pants and scratched a myriad of pale lines along the exposed skin of his forearms. But he plowed through the overgrowth and overturned every chunk of marble. He wrestled swords free of the tangle and kicked askew the broad shields in his search. With the swing of one of the blades, he cut through the thicket of rose bushes until only sliced petals and stems remained.
When he rounded a decrepit stone wall, Jason’s boot landed heavy in its rubble. It anchored his weight as he spotted a bubble gem floating low in the shadow it cast. With a seething hiss, Jason drew back the sword and lunged with a wide, slicing arch toward the bubble. But just before its blade kissed the glossy sphere, Jason’s arm jerked to a rigid halt.
The gem within wasn’t the Joker.
Jason plunged the sword into the ground and dropped into a crouch to get a closer look at the gem. Even in the darkened shade, he could tell the gem was lighter in color than the deep greens and purples of the Joker. Its shape, too, resembled a rough oval with asymmetrical pointed ends, whereas the Joker gem took the shape of a sharp prism.
Cupping the bubble in his hand, Jason stood and lifted it into the light of the moon. Mottled together, blue apatite crystallized within the orange calcite. Cloudy fissures fractured its surface despite its polished gleam, and the cracks ran deep through its layers like splintered sheets of ice.
The gem didn’t seem corrupted. Despite the oddity of its multi-mineral composition, both the calcite and apatite looked normal in appearance. The gem itself didn’t take on any monstrous form, and as Jason carefully rotated the bubble, he didn’t spot any impurities or degradation beyond the rough fissures and surface scratches.
Looking at his own worn gemstone, Jason wouldn’t count those against this gem.
A mutant maybe? It didn’t look like any cluster gem he’d seen before. This wasn’t a gem composed of shards forcefully fused together, one without clear shape or identity. It was whole, seamless in its marbled pattern.
But Jason supposed, the biggest question on his mind, was what was this gem doing hidden away in a pocket dimension? Sequestered away in the Black Diamond’s secret world instead of tossed deep into the cavern’s core with the rest of the corrupted gems, what crime could this bubbled calcite and apatite mutant have committed? One greater than that of the Joker?
With a scoff, Jason doubted that. The heated anger in his belly reignited with that thought, and he pitched the bubble over his shoulder. It wasn’t the gem he needed to shatter. It wasn’t the Joker.
The bubble tumbled carelessly back into the shadow of the ruins. It spun a slow rotation as it bounced off the stone and floated into the blade of one of the two identical swords jammed into the rubble. With an inaudible pop, the glossy bubble sphere burst in a flare of light.
Its brilliant, streaking glow slashed across Jason’s shoulder in a long slice of light that illuminated the rubbled earth. Like a lightning strike, it flashed a harsh glare that lasted only a heartbeat. Blinding in its intensity, Jason blinked against the budding moisture as he turned in time to see a massive warrior gem lunging at his back with the swing of dual swords.
Jason dropped his upper body weight—his palm smashing into the rubble—and ducked beneath the slash of the swords. A high-pitched clang vibrated along the blades as they crossed just above his face. They sliced through the stillness of the air and sent a rippled wind down his cheeks, his jaw, coursing as a shiver down his throat.
With wide eyes, Jason stared at the mass of the gem above him. Suspended in the hitch of Jason’s breath, the gem arched in his leap. Lithe and graceful despite the sheer wall of stone, the weight of his shadow eclipsed Jason completely. He stared up at him, captivated by the pale blue of the gem’s eye—the color of a winter sky, so vibrant against the monochrome gray past those broad shoulders—in contrast to the dark stormy hue of the apatite and fiery orange calcite that slotted itself in the gem’s right eye socket.
When the gem cleared Jason and landed in a prowling skid upon the rubble, Jason scrambled to find the traction of his own feet. He twisted toward the gem in time for the launch of the next attack.
He dove out of the path of the sword, and with a roll of the momentum, dug his boot into the rubble to balance in a kneeled crouch. He reached for the empty holster at his thigh, and with the curl of his grasp, his blaster’s form materialized in a glow of light.
Jason drew the gun in a quick swing of his arm. It centered on the gem’s chest—plated like armor, the dark blue apatite layered over the calcite—as the gem lunged for him. That brilliantly blue eye zeroed in on Jason’s blaster, and through the mask-like veil of his face—a near even split, the right side so dark the blue looked obsidian, the left a refracting sheen of orange that moved and breathed with the barest hint of the moon’s light—the gem’s mouth arched into a harsh, simpering smirk.
Jason squeezed the trigger just as the gem swung down one of the swords. The energy blast skimmed along the blade in a trailing stream of crimson red—its tail paled to blushing pink—just as the blade connected with the muzzle of the blaster in a feral kiss.
A flash of light blinded Jason. It wasn’t the searing impact of the energy blast exploding nor the quick, ruthless slice of the sword through his flesh. Jason squeezed his eyes shut against the white glare and felt a warmth like no other envelope him. Deeper than his body, it wormed its way to his gemstone. Cradled it in all its rough edges and jagged crags. He felt as if he was floating, drifting through ocean currents without an anchor. But he wasn’t lost. That dreaded sense of being incomplete—of always searching for his missing pieces—fell away like weighted stones.
He blinked his eyes open to the glittering gleam of red beryl. At his chest, flakes of beryl twinkled like stars, orbiting the larger shard that had been bubbled. It sank into his gemstone, melting to a liquid that flowed through the cracks and crevices to solidify. And when Jason lifted his gaze past the starlight shimmer, he saw the warrior gem floating opposite him.
Together, they were cocooned in a stream of white light. No longer harsh in its glare, Jason met the wintry-blue eye of the warrior.
And suddenly—as that widened stare softened to an almost pleasant glance, humored beyond their mutual astonishment—Jason knew the warrior’s name. Without a word passed between them, it echoed in his head like a whisper on the breeze. Caressing in its warmth yet calloused in its strength. Imbued into the very core of Jason’s gem.
Jason didn’t fight it. Not like he had with the Joker when the fluorite monster ensnared him in the constriction of those barbed limbs. Crushing, suffocating. Imprisoning Jason inside the cold, dreaded rattle of his ribcage.
No, there was strength in the name he spoke aloud. Empowering in the flow of it. Instead of taking—draining Jason’s life force—it coursed between them in a joint stream. Ebbing and flowing in their connection.
“Slade.” The name an echo between them. Jason’s own rumbled out, a deep harmony as the two fused.
When the light stream faded back to the monochromatic shades of the battlefield and its ruins, Jason blinked through eyes he shared. Not him. Them. Together. Their consciousness combined and intertwined into a new form.
They stretched out their arms and rocked forward onto the balls of their feet. So compatible in their fusion, their body took a completely humanoid form. No extra limbs or deformities. They formed a massive knight plated in dark armor colored like the foaming, vengeful sea, its anger churning in the stormy depths of its water and reflected in bursts of fiery explosions upon its surface. Its depths lightened to a sapphire blue at the chest where—slotted at their sternum—a pietersite gemstone—its reds and blues swirling together like smoke—took the shape of a diamond.
‘I know where he’s hidden.’ The deep, vibrating rumble of Slade’s words—their words, their voice reverberating in their shared consciousness—ignited a fiery passion in Jason. He didn’t have to ask who or where. The thoughts came unbidden, reeling in flashes of Slade’s memory now his own.
They revealed the Black Diamond skulking past Slade’s bubble. Towering and massive, Bruce’s shadow trailed behind him like a billowing cape, marking every turn through the labyrinth of bramble and marble.
As one, Slade and Jason stalked after the memories. Through the thicket of the battlefield, they crossed the breadth of the island to a far corner of the ruins where a massive pillar lay precariously balanced on the remaining structure of a barricade. Nestled in the shadow of its canopy—broken by the thin streams of moonlight passing through the cracked stone—a noxious green prism floated idly in its bubble.
The flash of those spindly arms above him—caging Jason in, each strike a lashing blow that chipped away at his gem—strobed through their mind, and with an animalistic roar, Jason’s anger—his hurt—raged through the Knight. In a starburst of light, dual blasters materialized in holsters at the Knight’s ribs, and the Knight drew them with the speed of a serpent’s strike.
The first shot shattered the bubble, and before its glossy sheen dissipated on the air—the blinding light of materialization barely a budding speck—the Knight fired blast after blast into the fluorite prism. The gem burst in a spray of shrapnel, and the Knight’s aim zeroed in on each shard until nothing but glittering dust hung in the air.
The muzzles of the blasters smoked with the searing red heat of the metal. The Knight held them steady as they watched the Joker’s ashes drift to the debris-ridden earth. Then, with a heavy exhale, they dropped their arms. Their grasp flexed on the pistols’ grips as they stared at the shimmering dust in the moonlight.
‘There’s more of him.’ The deep rumble of Slade’s voice echoed in their head. More statement than question, his tone lilted with his curiosity.
Jason didn’t need to answer. His memories crept to the forefront of their mind, clawing their way up from the depths in which he buried them.
‘We’ll hunt them down.’
‘We?’
Slade’s thundering purr reverberated in their chest. His satisfaction seeped from their fusion gem in rippling waves, the warmth encompassing the Knight as they holstered their pistols. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t feel it, too.’ The Knight lifted their hand, and with the curl of their fist, portrayed the strength that flexed up their arm. ‘Tell me I’m wrong, and we’ll part ways.’
Jason’s decision was an easy one. It passed between them without effort. It solidified in the pulse of their fusion gem, and when they emerged from the black lion’s mane with a mission of vengeance, it was as one. Together as the Knight.