Oppression

"Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission."

-Simone Weil

********

Darkseid lost.

Uxas, God of Tyranny, Lord of Apokolips, conqueror of innumerable worlds and scourge of the multiverse.

Had lost.

Not once.

Not twice.

He had lost thrice.

Thrice had Darkseid been defeated.

Not set back, not rebuffed.

Lost.

The first time, it had been his plan. 

A circumvention of an old prophecy. 

Death was not final for him. 

He returned from beyond, biding his time in secret upon a version of Earth as he studied humanity from the shadows, teasing fragments of the Anti-Life Equation from the suffering of mortals as he awaited the moment of vengeance.

Darkseid's second loss came upon his moment of triumph.

His trap had been set.

More powerful than ever, he had revelled in his dominance. His final victory. 

The traitorous son. The hypocritical rival. The weak and pathetic.

They'd all fall before him as Darkseid grasped a fragment of reality and bent it to his will.

All Life was pointless before Darkseid.

Yet victory slipped through clenched fists.

The Last Son of Krypton.

That accursed nexus of fate and chance.

Darkseid's plans were repeatedly set back by mortals' fumblings as if the entire multiverse revolved around the heroic Kryptonian and his band of colourful peons. 

The fragment of the Equation should have been more than enough to subjugate that world's version of the 'Justice League.' And it had.

But once more, some quirk or twist of luck had given the ants a chance to survive the boot.

One moment of inattention.

One slightly stronger fly.

And Darkseid lost a second time.

Killed once more by the traitorous Dog of War.

Tyranny never dies.

So long as hearts beat with the desire to dominate, to oppress, to control, and to subjugate, Tyranny will never die.

Darkseid would never die.

But Darkseid could lose.

Twice, he had lost. Twice, he had been reborn.

The third time, it was different.

Something broke.

Aware of Darkseid's plan, of his grasping a fragment of the Anti-Life Equation, his enemy had not given him time to form plans or learn more of the truth of Life.

No sooner had Darkseid reunited with his generals, the Elite who joined him beyond death, were they slain for a third time.

It was a terrible realization that confronted Darkseid at that moment of his third death.

He had been hunted. His soul's passage through the multiverse tracked.

Darkseid was prey.

His Elite realized it, too. They abandoned their Lord, their own rebirths scattered to the multiverse.

A sickening, wholly unfamiliar feeling overwhelmed the former Lord of Apokolips.

Darkseid would always return.

Alone.

Hunted.

Oppressed.

Darkseid returned in his fourth life, not in triumph, but in failure.

So wretched was Uxas that he was forced to hide on the edge of the multiverse in a reality mixed with the taint of chaos. 

So far was Darkseid from the Fourth World, from the New Apokolips, that other realities bled over into this one. Only this confluence of chaos could hope to hide his fourth life from the ones hunting him.

It was that moment, that lowest, most pathetic moment of Darkseid's life, that the God of Tyranny truly grasped the first fragment of the Anti-Life Equation.

This was Life.

This squalor. This wretchedness. This weakness. This mortality.

Darkseid knew pain, but he had never suffered.

Darkseid knew failure, but he had never entirely lost.

Darkseid knew death, but he had never felt the End.

Darkseid knew Tyranny but had never been oppressed.

His power. His privilege. His slaves.

It had all held him back.

Alone. Weak. Defeated.

Darkseid had never felt stronger.

From suffering would come power.

From power, more suffering would flow.

Such was the nature of Life.

At that moment, Darkseid started fusing with Anti-Life.

But he only grasped a fragment of the true Equation, one facet of innumerable others.

Darkseid needed time.

So he hid.

In the darkest edge of the multiverse, in the lowliest of worlds, a version of Earth bereft of all but the crudest civilizations, in the body of a powerless mortal on a world of powerless mortals, Darkseid hid.

And learned.

Darkseid learned of the struggle of the starving as his tribe cannibalized itself to survive a winter.

Darkseid learned of the killing power of simple wood, stone, and bone as his men and women were beaten, killed, raped, and enslaved by a larger group.

Darkseid learned of the elements' oppression as a few inches of rain loosened mud and smothered a burgeoning civilization in its cradle.

There was no reason to any of this pain and suffering. No point, greater purpose, or grand plan. There was no mastermind behind these events, no villain in the shadows. It was just Life.

From the vicissitudes of chance, Darkseid learned cruelty.

From his first weak cry as a mortal boy to his ceremonial crowning as king of mud huts and their lowly inhabitants, Darkseid learned of humanity.

Years passed. Decades.

A collection of mud huts turned into a kingdom that spanned thousands of miles.

Darkseid had done it all as the lowest of mortals. 

Not even a hint of his prodigious powers leaked from him as he hid among the mud and squalor. He did not elevate his slaves with his knowledge of technology.

He simply ruled. Fought. Conquered. Dominated.

He had learned patience.

Why rush for the Anti-Life Equation?

Tyranny would always win in the end.

Darkseid would always win in the end.

So the Godking of one of the infinite earths ruled his mortal subjects with an iron fist.

Learning about Life.

Waiting for a moment of realization.

That moment came from the stars.

Everything he had built, every one of his people, all his effort and patience.

All pointless.

Everything was razed to the ground as two beings the size of continents chose his version of Earth as a hub. 

Random chance. Bad luck. A turn of fate.

Whatever the reason, Darkseid didn't care as he grasped at ashes.

Two Entities undid it all.

They purged all life from the planet as they used it as one of a million nests from which to launch their shards across dimensions as they started another turn of their Cycle.

And Darkseid learned rage.

********

He was weak.

So weak.

Dying three times was not without costs, and he had spent no effort recovering from those injuries during his time as a mortal.

Darkseid, Lord of Apokolips, was weaker than ever before.

It was more than enough to crush two Worms.

They were creatures that existed across dimensions, parts blending in and out of facets of reality as they scattered and recombined their pieces through a small fraction of the multiverse.

Their destruction of his version of Earth was but one of countless others.

Their initial attack tore apart his mortal shell, the energies alone rendering it into pulp, then atoms, and then nothing, as even those were scattered to the dimensional winds.

And did nothing to the evil it contained.

The attacks stopped as the entities beheld Darkseid.

Limited creatures that they were, they could not comprehend his existence.

He beheld their forms in turn. He saw them for what they were, multi-dimensional or not.

They were worms, the most basic and pathetic of species, who learned to manipulate the fabric of space but had discarded almost all greater potential for their lowly ability to wriggle through the folds between dimensions.

Darkseid sneered.

And punched.

He was so weak that only half the continent cracked in every dimension these worms inhabited.

These pathetic creatures were not without a few means, however. Their bodies were frozen in a temporal/spatial field that nullified most of the blow's power.

Darkseid punched again.

Time/space shattered.

The crust of the planet ruptured.

Half of one of these worms was rendered into a pulp of blood, crystal, and metal. It reformed, but less. It was lacking. Parts had been lost.

The other counter-attacked, a stinging sensation in Darkseid's chest the only mark of a blow that should have pierced dimensions.

A lesser being would have been unmade, the blow scattering them across space as everything narrowed into a point that pierced through the layers of reality.

Darkseid's rage rose as he noticed the tiniest of blemishes on his skin. 

It immediately healed, but the fact that he had been wounded by such creatures reminded the tyrant of his weakness.

Their greatest attack, having failed, the worms tried to flee.

As if he'd let them.

Darkseid shattered their bodies as they tried to fly.

He tore their portals apart.

He crushed the parts they tried to jettison as distractions.

It would be easy to kill the Worms. Lessened as he was, Darkseid was still a being so far above these creatures that they were simply incapable of comprehending the difference in the nature of their existence.

Their bodies might be the size of planets, stretching across realities to accommodate their mass.

Their abilities might be many and varied, ranging from physical, spatial, or technological.

They might be in their prime while he is reduced to a shadow of his former might.

It didn't matter.

He was Darkseid.

If one reality couldn't contain his might?

Darkseid forced it to.

Why would he need varied abilities? 

Darkseid disdained the use of things like the Speedforce or the rings of the Oans.

Their greatest peak would not reach the toe of his weakest moment.

Method after method to flee was crushed.

Attack after attack was dismissed.

Darkseid tore them apart piece by piece and scattered their remains over the multiverse.

Slowly but surely, he ground them down until no hope remained.

Inquiry.

"You do not get to talk."

He ripped a crystalline tower the size of a mountain from the back of one and impaled the other with it.

Inquiry.

"You do not get to question."

Space shattered as he crushed a proboscis-like tendril as long as a moon and thinner than an atom under his foot.

Plea.

"You do not get to beg."

An explosion, large enough to burn a planet bare, engulfed his body. He wasn't even singed.

Plea.

"You do not get to die."

They tried to flee once more, compression space around them to create a black hole to trap him as they fled the dimension and dilated their relative time.

"All you are allowed to do is suffer." He crushed the singularity in his palm. "Such is the will of Darkseid!"

The Worms froze as he attacked them once more, not with his fists but with his mind.

Their mental abilities were even more pathetic than their physical ones.

These things were barely sapient, their sense of self so low that even the most basic emotions were lost on them.

But they'd learn.

Darkseid had no need to relearn how to inflict pain. He was already a master of the art.

Weak as the Worms were to the most basic of psychic attacks, Darkseid tore their primitive minds to shreds as he rampaged through them, leaving only enough intact so they would continue to suffer.

Yet it wasn't enough.

It would never be enough.

Any who would defy Darkseid would become monuments to pain and torment.

So, in a delicious twist of irony, he trapped them in their own Cycle.

All the data was there. All the remnants of civilizations and peoples they had consumed as they spiralled across the multiverse. The remnants of the hosts of their trillions upon trillions of shards was all imprinted in their memory. 

A data bank of suffering, waiting to be used.

Time after time, Darkseid forced these wretched creatures to live through the lives they had consumed.

Initially, these creatures did not understand or care. It was all data, numbers and inputs that had no relation to them.

Darkseid forced them to understand.

Pain inflicted in memory was inflicted in reality.

Darkseid forced them to care.

Pain and loss were inflicted on the other when a memory called upon emotions.

These animalistic creatures did not understand emotion but understood the need to breed and grow. They knew they could not do so alone. Their entire existence was wrapped in each other.

Even the lowliest of beasts understands loneliness is to be avoided.

Life needed Life

Darkseid trapped these Worms in their primitive minds and forced them to grow, to evolve, to feel.

And from those feelings, he tortured them.

Even as he completely rewrote their existence to be one of pain, loss, and suffering, Darkseid did not feel satisfied.

Their pain would never be enough.

He'd eventually grasp the Anti-Life Equation, but all who slowed his march forward would be ground down like the bugs they were.

It was in a moment of lucidity when Darkseid allowed the creatures to emerge from the traps of their minds so they might realize their suffering before trapping them again that the inspiration struck.

One of the creatures, the one dedicated to combat, reached out to the other. Not physically, but through their primitive method of communication.

Not for information or a plan of escape but for validation. For reassurance that its partner still lived. 

For confirmation that it wasn't alone.

It had learned to care.

At that moment, Darkseid realized another part of the Equation.

Life needed Life.

Life needed to care—about itself, about the world around it, about threats. But caring led to loss, for nothing was permanent. 

The most selfish of beings, who only cared about their own wants and desires, still cared. And when it faced the loss of itself? When confronted by its own impermanence? Would that not also be the greatest of pains? Just as a mother loses a child? Or a lover loses a lover?

It was all about investing oneself, in investing one's Life, into something.

Had he not cared about his experiment? At the effort and time he expended? He would not feel this rage at its loss if he hadn't.

What if he had known this was how it would end? Pointlessly at the hands of two lowly Worms? Would he have cared?

No.

Why care at all?

Life needed Life.

Life needed to care about Life.

All that Life cared about would disappear.

And that disappearance, that loss, was the most profound of suffering.

That juxtaposition.

That pointlessness.

It was a fundamental part of the world.

To live was to care. 

To care was to lose. 

To lose is to suffer.

Any Anti-Life Equation needed to incorporate this principle.

Darkseid needed to continue his experiment, seizing upon this new lesson. He now had enough fragments that he felt it was time to test them actively.

And now he had two new slaves to help him carry out his whims.

He could be a bit more daring, though he needed to remain unnoticed in this chaotic section of the multiverse.

Darkseid had learned patience, after all. 

Until the Equation was complete, he would not step out to claim his place.

********

Darkseid didn't even bother to sneer at the simpering mortals that grovelled at his feet.

What did he care for their pleas?

With a flex of his mind, the silver figure on his right tore the Atlantean to pieces.

Even after all this time, the Worms remained susceptible to mental controls.

At least their avatars and pets were useful as minions.

"Those who do not fight, do not eat," Darkseid ordered.

He didn't care that the throne room was covered in blood and viscera. Not a day hadn't gone by without someone dying in this room since he had slaughtered this world's version of Aquaman and his family.

It had been cathartic, to say the least. It was a shame a version of the Kryptonian hadn't appeared on this world yet. Darkseid was looking forward to that immensely.

And what do you know, Atlantis had made the perfect test bed.

It lacked the sheer number of test slaves of his previous experimental areas, but it made up for it in other facets. The stronger slaves and their ability to use magic, for one.

That and another benefit made this slightly riskier testbed a worthwhile investment. Besides, the risk was mitigated by Atalantis' isolation from the rest of the planet. When anyone learned of its destruction, Darkseid would be in another reality.

If this round of experiments failed, that is.

"But my Lord," one of the slaves gathered the courage to speak up. "The childr-"

Her blood joined the other's.

"Fight or die. No exceptions. Do you want your child to eat? Fight twice."

He wasn't trying to set up a long-term base here. The only reason he hadn't killed the children already was because it made their parents fight all the harder.

His pits had seen some results.

Armed with weapons bearing various iterations of the Equation, he pitted the Atlanteans against each other to mixed results.

The despair of killing off those you know and love. The loss of a parent, sibling, child, or friend. 

Seeing so many examples of caring, loss, and its pointlessness led to refining the Equation.

The most tremendous success so far had been a version of the Anti-Life Equation that, upon seeing it, would drive those slaves of weaker wills to suicide.

A useful weapon but suboptimal.

If Darkseid sought to destroy everything, he would have already succeeded.

He sought a greater prize.

Domination.

The true Anti-Life Equation he theorized to exist would be one that would render even death pointless. Only complete submission of one's Life would be a way to escape.

All would live.

All would be Darkseid.

But this experiment had run its course.

It had been fun, but lingering in a world too long, even one as bastardized as this, ran too much of a risk of being discovered if he remained in his true body.

Still, before he left, Darkseid would squeeze one more morsel of benefit from this world.

And it had been so long since he had preyed on a genuine god.

Even if it was only a fraction of a fraction of his true might, Darkseid was looking forward to healing some of his wounds and regaining his power.

********

Darkseid idly thumbed a broken prong of metal as he looked upon the husk of a sea god, completely drained of all power.

The Worms continued to disappoint, utterly unable to deal with magic or divinity. It put a halt to further plans of hunting gods to absorb their powers, at least for the moment.

Darkseid would win any fight, of course. He knew how to hide, manipulate, kill, and consume gods. They were predictable in ways mortals were not.

But the conflict would attract attention he did not want as he continued to grasp for the Equation.

And that was why he was still in this reality, instead of leaving the drained god and the ruined Atlantis.

The Equation.

The ambush had provided an insight, on top of healing a portion of his spiritual wounds.

Hope.

The Atlantians had seen their god appear. They had known a part of the ambush had failed.

Their entire city had turned to rubble, half of them dying in the chaos, yet they dared to feel hope.

Darkseid had long believed hope to factor into the Equation somehow, but the realization came when he felt his test equations take hold, not when the god was slain but before.

It was not the loss of hope, as he had expected, that was part of the Equation.

That was his mistake.

Hope was essential for survival. It was the aspiration of Life, the desire for a better tomorrow for oneself or one's progeny.

The loss of hope would not lead to submission but death.

No, hope was essential, yet any who possessed it would not submit, for they would hope for escape, freedom, or survival.

A paradox his Anti-Life Equation needed to take into account.

To hope yet not hope.

The answer came to Darkseid as he thought of the symbol of hope he knew.

Superman.

A hero.

Heroes were the answer.

When you were at your lowest, did you not hope for salvation. For a hand to reach down from the heavens and save you?

Was that not the quintessential manifestation of hope?

Were those saved, not those who entrusted their very lives to heroes? Was that not also a form of total submission?

Everything they were, everything they cared about, all their hopes and dreams, everything was in the hands of those they pleaded to save them.

They, the hopeful hopeless, those who could not save themselves and had to beg chance, fate, or others for salvation, were they even alive at that point?

That was how one lived while not being alive.

Submitting everything to another.

That realization came with a downside, though.

Darkseid looked at what remained of the Atlantians.

Less than a hundred living beings stood there, on the sea bed, in the remains of a once great city.

Man or woman, old or young, injured or whole, they were all different. The only commonality between them was their listless, one could say lifeless, eyes and blank expressions.

All of them were under the control of Darkseid.

A success.

With but a thought, they descended on each other. 

Husband strangled wife. Child impaled parent. Comrade fought comrade.

Atlantis died when, with the same blank face as when the fighting began, the last survivor took a fragment of her god's trident and stabbed herself through the eye.

Complete submission.

Yet it was a failure.

His order had been to kill each other till nobody was left.

Yet the soldiers had not reached for weapons they didn't already possess and had not used any martial skill they should have possessed. The magicians cast no spell, though it would have sped up the process. They did not organize a culling, where half would kill each other and repeat the process until nobody was left.

It was an inefficient, chaotic melee with no higher thought behind it.

Slaves like that were useless.

They were slaves, yes, but Darkseid didn't need slaves like them. It would be like having a useless limb. They would only get in the way.

But it was enough for a base of a plan.

The world of this Atlantis was in its infancy regarding heroes. It was one of the reasons Darkseid had felt confident in remaining hidden.

Darkseid knew how realities like this worked. It would only take a few sparks, a couple of fools in colourful costumes, to herald a rising tide of power.

At the moment, a few dozen 'Supers' roamed the world openly, but that number would be ten times greater in fifty years. Power drew power to it. To rise with or against it.

And, looking at the gold and silver avatars beside him, Darkseid knew he could help that growth along.

This world was already at the border of the multiverse, where other parts of the omniverse blended together in a chaotic melange. If he mixed things up even more, this entire planet could be a wonderful place to study this newest fragment of the Equation.

He'd spread his Equations, hidden in words and minds, testing and refining his process as this world grew more and more powerful.

The failures, the mindless slaves, would be tools he used while remaining hidden. A few abilities from the Worms would make even the mindless useful.

Those who were useful, he'd keep the Equation in their subconscious without activating. That would let them grow their abilities and power without issue. It would be a back door for the Worms to use their own limited mental abilities on even the most resistant.

One day, the Anti-Life Equation would do it all, but a patchwork job would have to suffice for now.

Once he had an army large enough and useful enough, he'd throw them against the gods of this world and heal his injuries completely with their divinity. 

Trapping one Olympian had almost ended in failure. He wasn't ready to take on the likes of Zeus or Odin yet.

********

This was... new.

Which was noteworthy.

Not much was new in the multiverse for Darkseid, but the white dragon was an unknown.

More than that, it was a disruption in the plan.

Darkseid had released the Worm's pets when the world was strong enough. 

The 'Endbringers,' as the peons called them, were a way of inflicting enough despair that even heroes begged to be saved, entrusting their Life to others.

To lose the Simurgh, his favourite, was a setback. Half the reason he expended the effort he did to keep them alive was to cultivate their mythos as 'invincible.' Beings to be fought against but never defeated. He wanted to test if such a belief might affect the Equation.

Odder still was that none of the abilities that should have saved the Endbringer worked on the white dragon.

It seemed to be immune to mental, temporal, or predictive interference, at least to some degree.

Interesting.

It bore study. If only for its novelty.

Darkseid had the Avatars of the Divided and the Metal spy on the dragon. Their unique connection to the Parliaments of this Earth made them much more helpful than the mindless slaves of the Equation.

Darkseid turned his attention to resolving the loss of the Simurgh and the reputation it represented. He was still about a decade away from being able to claim with absolute certainty that he could assault the gods of this world without sending ripples throughout the multiverse.

It may be time to test his improvements on The Ultimate.

Seeing the realities where the Kryptonian was slain by a prehistoric version of his own people was a pleasure. And the loss of Superman would instill a different kind of despair in the world.

Even if you kill an Endbringer, it would only call forth an even greater calamity as punishment.

And, once he gained control of the Parliament of Decay, he'd be able to bring back the spectre of Superman as a tribute.

********

This was... concerning.

Not the dragon, the 'Elden Lord's power, though the slaying of The Ultimate was relatively noteworthy. Bringing back the dead was easy enough for those with the right knowledge, as was connecting the Worms with the 'Endbringers.'

No, it was his knowledge and immunity from influence.

So many times had he and his 'family' been subjected to representations of the Anti-Life Equation, yet not one had been infected. As the controller of the Equation, he always felt all who were connected. It wasn't that they hadn't yet felt the needed emotions to fall under his sway. They simply did not even acknowledge its existence.

Yet that was a silver lining because this 'Mikael' was also a multiverse-level being.

Not only did his entourage hold a version of the Amazon, but he possessed knowledge from other realities. There was a very high likelihood he knew of Darkseid and those who hunted him.

Darkseid was not ready for that fight yet. His experiments were still ongoing. He was close, so close. 

Even if he died again, it would only be a setback, but there was no reason to risk it so close to completion.

So Darkseid hid even deeper, in another reality altogether and operated his experiments through his four useful slaves and countless mindless minions.

And he set the Elden Lord on course to interfere with Trigon's little prophecy while manipulating Dr. Fate to gain the gods' attention.

Either Trigon would kill the dragon, erasing the problem, only to be rebuffed by the Council of Skyfathers, or the dragon would manage to fight him off, revealing more of his cards.

Darkseid didn't believe for a second that those idiot sons of the devil would succeed in their attempt to overthrow their father. They were nothing but instigators meant to pit the Elden Lord against Trigon.

No matter what, Darkseid would win in the end.

********

This was starting to become an enjoyable pastime.

The Elden Lord wasn't dumb. He had managed to trick not only Trigon but Darkseid as well.

How many other wives was he keeping hidden? Or other cards? What of that blue moon? Was it more than just a divine symbol?

So many questions. So many opportunities.

Maybe the Elden Lord was key to pulling his plans forward by years.

... Yes. There was an idea.

Already, Sublime was discovering so much through its agents on the island. A few samples of the fascinating blood the Elden Lord had mentioned would not go amiss while Darkseid set everything up.

********

"You... won't... wi-"

Athena never finished her sentence as she was drained dry, her divinity restoring Darkseid a little bit more.

"Poseidon said the same thing."

With a careless toss, Darkseid dropped the carcass to the ground.

"So did Isis."

Hera's eyes blankly stared sightlessly at the sky as he stepped over her.

His foot crushed Hephastus' skull.

"As did Amatarasu, Anansi, Durga, and so many others."

Decades ahead of schedule, Darkseid was whole.

Even without the quality of power from the Skyfathers, the Earthmothers and lesser gods made up for it with their quantity.

Darkseid hoped they dealt with the Elden Lord quickly. He looked forward to their looks of despair when they returned to their realms and found all they cared for ruined.

Still, that was for later.

Best enjoy this moment now.

"They spoke the truth," Hestia said, her voice not hinting at the agony she must feel from lacking all limbs. "You shall not win. Someone will stop you."

Darkseid loomed over the last Olympian, relishing the moment.

His assault on the divine realms had been a blitz, not giving anyone time to contact each other or teleport away. A necessity as he never knew when the Skyfathers would finish and return. 

He wanted to be whole to greet them, with his rituals set up to stop fluctuations echoing through the multiverse.

After all, it was far from the first time he had hunted gods.

Still, he hadn't had time to enjoy the moment of victory. Of being whole and powerful after almost a century of weakness.

"Yet here I am." Darkseid crushed Demeter's torso to a pulp for emphasis, relishing the pain in the goddess' eyes. "I am waiting for your leaders. No god can save you. No hero. There will be no one to avenge you."

The Elden Lord would be killed by the Skyfathers, and his wives succumb to despair at his loss, giving Darkseid more slaves.

The world, ruined by the 'Endbringers,' would spiral further and further towards helpless submission as he continued to run his experiments.

His next step was to gain access to Asgard. Odin had bought some time by incapacitating his people and catching on to Thor's infection, but this only delayed the inevitable. 

Eventually, the one-eyed god would need to emerge and Darkseid would be waiting.

"So long as evil exists, so will justice," Hestia said, defiant to the end.

"I hope so. Heroes are so very useful." 

Heroes made the best slaves.

Hestia's defiance ended when his hand pierced her chest, claiming more power for himself.

He would have preferred to leave these gods alive if it weren't for the need to heal his weakness.

Death was so final.

Submission to Darkseid was the only way for others to exist.

The inevitable end of all Life.

Even the Elden Lord, immune to mental control, still served Darkseid till his end.

As he was setting up the ritual for his final confrontation with the Skyfathers, Darkseid's world changed.

Freedom.

Complete Freedom.

He was Free. 

Connections. Morality. Consequences. Time. Space. Reality. The multiverse itself.

He was Free of them all.

He was Free of all limits.

He was utterly alone.

Darkseid.

The only Free Life in existence. 

Everything and everyone else was inconsequential. 

They were all bound. Limited. 

Slaves to their reality, their feelings, their bodies, their omni-verses.

Unlike Darkseid.

Darkseid was Free.

And then the moment was over.

Once more, he was limited.

For the first time in his eternal life, Darkseid felt like a slave.

For the first time in his eternal life, Darkseid felt Heartbreak.

In that moment of complete loss, even greater than his third death, Darkseid completed the Anti-Life Equation.

It was decades before he would have if Mikael had never existed in this section of reality.

All that remained was to wrap up a few experiments to create more powerful slaves and lay out the trap.

For one final time, the Elden Lord would serve Darkseid.