"Kathryn, come down and join us..."
"Mommy, it's so dark here, come play with me."
"You damned woman, I won't let you go even as a ghost!"
In a lavish bedroom, a middle-aged woman with a face full of terror jolted awake from her sleep. "No! Don't come near me!"
The steady ticking of a clock echoed through the quiet room, grounding her as she realized where she was. Glancing at the mirror, she saw her own reflection: a weary face, pale and shadowed, with a flicker of fear constantly surfacing between her brows.
Rubbing her forehead, she muttered, "Three days of nightmares now. Damn it! I can't stay in this wretched place anymore." Frustrated, she pressed the call button by her bedside, expecting her trusted subordinate to escort her to a safer location.
Three minutes passed with no response. The silence beyond her door was unnerving, broken only by her increasingly labored breathing.
Realizing something was wrong, she grabbed a handgun from the nightstand and scanned the room warily.
"Good evening, ma'am," a voice called out abruptly. Without a second thought, she fired at the window where the sound came from.
The figure collapsed, and she exhaled in relief. But before she could process what happened, another person appeared at the window, dressed identically and speaking in the same tone. "Good evening, ma'am."
By the time she shot down a third intruder, her nerves were stretched to their limit. She wasn't a professional marksman, but her aim was reliable—each shot had struck true. Yet the figures seemed unaffected. Were they human? Or something else?
Forcing herself to stay calm, she gripped the gun tightly, seeking comfort in its weight. When a fourth figure appeared at the window, she held her fire, curiosity overriding instinct. She needed to know what they wanted.
The figure, shrouded in a swirling black mist, paused at the window. Noticing her hesitation, it realized its plan was working.
It casually climbed into the bedroom.
"Stay back!" Kathryn's hands trembled as she aimed at the misty figure. She tried to bolster her courage, but the sight was too bizarre—ordinary people didn't move through clouds of black fog. Was this even a person?
But soon, an even greater fear enveloped her, leaving no room to ponder the black mist.
The mist figure extended a smoke-wreathed arm and snapped its fingers. "Give me the gun."
Kathryn almost scoffed. Why on earth would she hand over her weapon? Yet, despite her clear intent to resist, her body betrayed her. Stiffly, she walked toward the figure and handed over the gun.
The surreal moment shattered her composure. Her heart pounded as panic erased all traces of rational thought. This was it—her past misdeeds had finally caught up with her.
Trembling uncontrollably, she stood before the misty figure, a mix of terror, disbelief, and resignation coursing through her.
The black mist figure appearing here was, naturally, Thea.
Having resolved the Grundy affair, Thea knew her time in Gotham was drawing to a close. Whether it was helping Moira with her campaign or learning more knowledge, she needed to return to Star City. She spent the remaining few days contemplating how to deal with the Court of Owls.
The Court wasn't a rigid organization but a loose coalition of Gotham's elite, bound by local roots and social prominence. For two centuries, they'd pulled the city's strings from the shadows. Bruce had disrupted their operations in his early years, yet they'd evaded total destruction. Now, amid Gotham's chaos, they were stepping back into the light.
Their strategy was simple: blend into the populace. Bruce, deeply tied to Gotham's fabric, struggled to root out these elite adversaries. Thea, an outsider, faced no such constraint. She needed only one weak link, not the whole chain. Three days ago, she activated the nanite tracker within a Talon's body.
That tracker led her to Kathryn, the Court's liaison for external affairs. For the next three days, Thea continuously used magic to invade Kathryn's dreams, bombarding her with horrific visions to erode her mental defenses. Tonight, she'd achieved rudimentary control.
Of course, she wouldn't admit she was developing mind control techniques specifically to deal with a certain red-caped superhero. That would surely be a misunderstanding.
Sighing, she reflected on the spell's clumsy execution. If Merlin knew his descendant took three whole nights to successfully cast such a simple dream invasion spell, he'd probably charge out from the depths of the multiverse and blast her face with fireballs...
Such were the frustrations of being self-taught. Thea knew she was terrible at this, but it was truly the limit of her current abilities. Piecing together scraps from ancient texts, dagger inscriptions, and dubious online theories, she'd barely pulled it off. To amplify the spell, she'd conjured three illusory doubles to die dramatically, crushing Kathryn's hope at its peak—a psychological tactic, not magic.
To subdue this woman, Thea had used practically every tool at her disposal. The phantom technique only consumed stamina, which was manageable. But the black mist spell drained her meager magical energy. Using it four times to reinforce the impression had pushed her close to her limit.
Thea extended a hand and placed it on Kathryn's forehead. As Kathryn stared blankly, Thea began reading her memories.
Using the term "reading" for human memories isn't entirely accurate. Memory isn't a flat sheet of paper but a multi-layered scroll. Despite some mental preparation, Thea had to stop after skimming three superficial layers. The flood of chaotic thoughts overwhelmed her. She needed to constantly digest it, discarding the jumbled thoughts and memories, retaining only what concerned her about the Court.
With a smile—meant to be warm but warped by her voice modulator into something eerie— Thea sat, notebook in hand, refining her memory-reading technique.
Kathryn Monroe, the Court's liaison, stood motionless. Not out of fear, but because her body no longer obeyed her. Thea's rough probing had left her mind dazed, blurring dream and reality.
Reviewing her approach, Thea switched from broad sweeps to precise targeting. Junk memories were ignored entirely to speed things up and avoid raising suspicion by being away from her base too long.
"Hmm?" An unexpected issue arose right as she began this new reading. Kathryn's surface thoughts were flooded with variations of "Am I dreaming?" and "When will I wake up?"
Interesting. Her mind wasn't completely controlled by the spell; instead, she believed she was still trapped in a dream. The earlier gunshots and conversations were buried deep within her psyche.
Classic denial, Thea mused. Her original plan was just to summon the Court members, strike, and then leave. Now, a bolder idea took shape.
Thea continued her deeper probe, no longer lingering on miscellaneous memories but pushing straight toward the deepest recesses.
Digging deeper, Thea bypassed fleeting memories, plunging into Kathryn's core. There, she found buried fears, dulled by time or therapy. Among them, her own crafted nightmare stood out—a dark, magic-tinged mass consuming surrounding fear memories.
If unchecked, it would consume surrounding memories enough to kill Kathryn, triggering a fatal shock—erratic breathing, heart failure, or similar symptoms.
But Thea certainly couldn't let her die. A high-ranking yet pliable pawn could deliver the Court into her hands.
Yes, her plan had initially been a simple hit-and-run, but now she saw another possibility. She immediately revised her strategy. She would control the Court of Owls. Whether for their family fortunes or for establishing a foothold in Gotham, these so-called upper-crust individuals were incredibly useful. Furthermore, their channels might even lead her to ways of further cultivating her magic.
Thea began consciously modifying the nightmare she had created. Since it was already tinged with her magic, the memory didn't reject her influence.
With a steady output of her magic, old, grey fear memories were replaced by the magically infused one. She altered this new core memory into a cliché obedience contract. Kathryn Monroe would, from the deepest level of her psyche, accept Thea's commands as her own will.
Her normal conversations and actions wouldn't be affected. Additionally, since the magical memory completely occupied her fear-memory center, she would no longer experience fear. Whether this counted as a blessing in disguise was debatable.
As a final step, Thea left a small cluster of her own mental energy deep within Kathryn's mind. If Kathryn were subjected to forced brainwashing, this mental energy would detonate her consciousness, turning her into a blank slate. In a world with so many superpowered individuals, precautions were necessary.
Breathing heavily, Thea withdrew from Kathryn's consciousness, dispersing the black mist. Her mental energy was significantly depleted. If not for her spirit being far beyond normal after the fusion, she couldn't have sustained such large-scale expenditure. She snapped her fingers to test the outcome.
Kathryn blinked, regaining control of her body. Seeing Thea's true face, the surprise on her features slowly morphed into excitement, then finally into eager devotion.
"Thea! When did you get here? Want something to eat?"
"Is there something you need? Just tell me!"