"The cycle will be complete."
The Stone King's words hung in the air, at once a promise and a threat.
He stood behind them, fully recovered now from his mental war with Peter Glaston. The unexpected
attack had taken him off balance, fouled up his carefully constructed ritual, and blemished the purity
of bis thought processes.
It had taken a lot out of him, but he had eventually managed to repel Glaston's manic assault. And now
he could concentrate again on the task at hand.
The pupils of his eyes began to enlarge, and he stared hard at the duo who had dared to invade the
sanctity of his lair.
Batman and Manhunter were in no position to resist the shaman's mental bombardment. Pictures
leaped into their minds, vivid visions of horror and death that would linger for a long time.
They saw the sacred sites of the world ablaze with energy.
Machu Picchu, the Incas' mysterious mountaintop sanctuary, belched sulphur and lava from a yawning
crater that opened in its summit.
A violent electrical storm raged around the giant rocks of Stonehenge, lightning bolts of unstoppable
power streaking destructively into the surrounding countryside.
Sections of Black Mesa, in the Hopi heartlands of the Four Corners, burned uncontrollably as the coal
buried in the mountainside spontaneously combusted.
Vision followed awful vision with startling speed. Gotham City crumbling and collapsing as
conflagration raged. New York shuddering with seismic shock as the bedrock beneath Manhattan
turned to a jelloid mass. Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain, disintegrating in an explosion that
could be heard all around the world. The Orkney Islands, scene of Europe's first Neolithic settlers,
sinking beneath the Atlantic waves.
Still dazed, unable to shut the visions out, Batman's heart filled with growing despair. To have come
so dose, only to see victory snatched away! The whole world was burning. Billions of innocent
people had perished. The Apocalypse prophesied by almost every religion was upon them.
And there was nothing Batman could do about it. Fear of failure raged within him, until his very soul
felt crushed.
Manhunter felt physically ill under the mental onslaught. The death of his family and friends—his
whole planet!—had left him scarred inside forever. To see the same thing happen on Earth was more
than he could bear.
Yet he was helpless, as his adopted world faced its own wholesale destruction at the hands of this
maniacal monster.
Still the visions persisted.
Tokyo in ruins, the world's most modern city reduced to a barren wasteland by earthquake and
volcanic eruption. Russia brought to its knees by plague and pestilence, corpses piled as high as the
Kremlin itself. An America they didn't recognize, the land ripped and torn, the people fleeing in panic
from a foe no army could fight.
lime and again, history had presided over the rise and fall of mighty civilizations. The Persians, the
Assyrians, the Greeks, and the Romans; the Etruscans, Minoans, Aztecs, Maya, Toltecs, and Olmecs;
the crazed hordes of the Mongols and Huns, charging through the cities of the world, baying for blood.
Every one of these civilizations had reached its apex, then plunged to its doom. But there had always
been other cultures, ready to expand and take the place of those that failed.
This time, the collapse would be total, and planetwide.
Batman and Martian Manhunter saw the few survivors come crawling out of the holes and caves
where they'd hidden. The cycle would start again.
The Stone King would lead them into a new life, cleansed and pure. The electromagnetic fields he
controlled would be their lodestone, their guiding star. All would be well—as long as everyone did
what the Stone King commanded.
Paralyzed by the Stone King's will, wracked with hopelessness, it was all the Dark Knight could do
to remain conscious as the horrific visions never faltered for a moment. For once, the message that his
fear carried could not be acted upon.