Previously in Wonder Woman…

There is an island in the Ionian Sea, named Themiscyra, that for countless centuries has remained hidden to the world at large through ancient magicks threaded into the very soil and rock and ocean of the Earth. In recent times, however, this mystic shield has begun to fracture, for reasons unknown.

Themiscyra is populated by a clan of warrior women known as Amazons. The Amazons – daughters and grand-daughters of the goddess Hera, molded from enchanted clay from the banks of the island’s sacred twin rivers – have been charged with protecting a dark secret at the heart of the island, the Gateway to Tartarus. Legend tells that should a man – anyman – ever set foot on Themiscyra then this Gateway will be irrevocably sundered, releasing the myriad fiends of Tartarus and bringing about the end of all life. To guard against this, a solitary Amazon has been dispatched to the world beyond the island to determine the cause of the failing shield, and to remedy it. This champion’s name is Diana…

…and she has departed Themiscyra in the knowledge that, regardless of whether she is successful in her mission, she can never return to the place of her birth.

After encountering other superhumans for the first time in the form of the Justice League, Diana has returned to Celestial City to discover the area inexplicably consumed by sinister forestland. An accident at the scientific research facility known as the EDEN Foundation has transformed botanist Pamela Isley into the insidious Poison Ivy, and Ivy is now seeking revenge against those who tormented her when she was human. Unaware of exactly who or what Ivy is, Diana finds herself facing a nightmarish army of trees and vines intent on rending her limb from limb…

CREEPING WHERE GRIM DEATH HAS BEEN

By Meriades Rai

The forest was dark and alive, slowly closing in around her. In that moment Diana couldn’t help but remember an incident from her childhood, when a seemingly innocuous afternoon spent cavorting in the woodlands of Themiscyra with her friends had quickly turned threatening.

It had all come about because of Asteria, unsurprisingly; her sister Amazon had been a spiteful hellcat even in youth, and delighted in bullying those around her. When they’d happened upon a shy Dryad girl hiding in the woods, spying upon their merriment with wide, green eyes, Diana and her companions had been enchanted, seeing only a potential new playmate and an exotic one at that. Asteria had instead recognised an opportunity for sport.

Asteria, the oldest of the group and never one to brook a challenge to her superiority, had enticed the Dryad into their circle and then proceeded to persecute her, subtly at first but then more overtly. The nymph girl, timid to begin with, had become terrified. In her desperation to escape Asteria’s cruel attentions she’d fled deeper into the forest – and, to the amazement of them all – had used mysterious magicks known only to her kind to conjure a protective barrier of oak and ivy and briar to materialize in her wake, shielding her until she’d vanished from their sight.

Diana, to her shame, hadn’t opposed Asteria that day. She’d always been a fierce and proud child, and would quickly grow fiercer still as she blossomed into adolescence and then womanhood, but back then Asteria – older than her companions, and as sly as foxes – had cowed them all. Diana hadn’t forgotten the nymph, however. Days later, on her own, she’d been driven by a need for atonement to return to the same spot in the forest where they’d first encountered the Dryad and then she’d waited there, patiently, through another humid summer’s afternoon, and through dusk, and then through an unnaturally dark and oppressive night. She’d held her nerve; a sense of dishonour, she learned that night, was as powerful a motivation as any other.

Just before dawn, as she sat there shivering and morose but still resolute, she’d become aware of eyes upon her. The nymph girl had returned, curiosity overcoming her fear – or perhaps it was also her genuine sweetness of spirit that encouraged to recognise an important truth, that not all strangers were cruel at heart as Asteria had been. Slowly, quietly, Diana had set about making amends, not for Asteria’s behaviour – that was her sister’s affair – but for her own crime of cowardice. Reconciliation hadn’t been immediate but Diana had persevered, and eventually she and the nymph had become friends.

The girl’s name had been Chloris. Dryads, along with most faerie folk, were significantly shorter lived than Amazons, and so Chloris had aged without Diana really understanding it, and then, one day, she simply passed away. Diana had wept freely and from the soul; Amazons were not a people accustomed to such loss; but, again, she hadn’t forgotten anything that she’d learned from her experience or anything that the bashful Chloris had taught her about the remarkable qualities of nature and Themiscyra’s flora in particular.

Here, now, in a Celestial City suddenly and inexplicably swamped in a suffocating cloak of vegetation where just hours before there had been concrete and glass, Diana couldn’t help but think of Chloris and wish that the Dryad girl was standing beside her, offering a measure of wisdom to supplement her own baser attributes.

Human bad, the forest continued to sing in its wordless voice of slithering vines and foliage in the breeze. Human weak. Human must bow to the will of the Green.

Diana steadied herself with her sword held aloft, statuesque and glorious in the dappled sunlight filtering down through the restless canopy high overhead. Her raven hair was wild and her jewel-cut violet eyes gleamed as she appraised her situation, barely a breath passing between her lips.

“A friend once told me that trees were the most graceful and tender species on the goddess’ green earth,” she said, softly. “It will break a measure of my heart to rain harm down upon you… but that doesn’t mean I won’t, if that’s what’s required. There are humans here, trapped deep in this perverted jungle. Innocent people. Children. I can hear them. You – whoever or whatever you are behind this, if you’re even privy to my presence – are terrorizing them, just as surely as my malicious Sister victimized poor Chloris way back when.

“And if you refuse to retreat and let me pass, then know this: everything that happens next is down to you!”

Poison Ivy slept, and in that sleep she was troubled.

She dreamed of a shrew of a woman: small of stature, dowdy, heavy about the hips and heart, emotionally stunted. Never loved. Rarely noticed, even though she’d achieved enough in her relatively young career to demand respect at the very least, if not outright admiration. It would be easy to dismiss her predicament with that typical, trite assessment – she’s a woman in a man’s world – but in truth it was more than that. Some people just had a touch of the beaten dog about them, an ever-impending kick in the flank just waiting for the boot to arrive, as it always would. It wasn’t because she was a scientist, or an academic of note; she could have been a politician or a test pilot or a housewife, and she would have felt the same. It was because she was Pamela Isley. And, for Pamela… well, ill-treatment had begun early.

She shivered in her sleep.

No, not that. Don’t think of that, please.

So what, then? Something more recent? The words she’d overheard exchanged between the men in the cafeteria – conversations between the egotistical Jason Woodrue and the hapless Alec Holland, and then between Holland and the flippant Bryce Callaghan – had been immensely hurtful. Pamela has still been dwelling on their evaluation of her many shortcomings when she’d joined them later in the main laboratory at EDEN, where Woodrue planned to spend the afternoon in further study of plant specimens recently arrived from the prehistoric forestland of Tylöskog in Sweden.

One of those specimens was truly remarkable, but no one had established that yet. It was Pamela, her eyes still red from the flurry of frustrated tears she’d shed earlier, who noticed certain traits in the sample’s biochemical composition – traits suggesting a complex cellular structure that simply should have been impossible for a terrestrial plant. Protocol had demanded that she call Doctor Woodrue’s attention to her discovery without delay but instead she’d investigated further, hurriedly and without due care.

In her haste, Pamela hadn’t noticed a corrosive element to the specimen she was handling. She’d been wearing gloves but that hadn’t made a difference; the plant had secreted a lurid green chemical that had burned through the latex and attacked the flesh beneath before she’d even noticed. Even as she screamed, this discharge was being absorbed into her skin and entering her bloodstream. It all happened so quickly, so… efficiently.

And it was alive. Sentient. An organism, a virus, a thing. Extraterrestrial, or something of an earth so ancient, so lost, that its origins didn’t even really matter. In her final few seconds of true life, Pamela saw it and recognised it for what it was… and then the Green was growing inside her and outside her, a slithering, leafy fungus in her blood and marrow and flesh, erupting in a mushroom bloom of blood-tinctured froth. Doctors Woodrue and Holland, and the others, they were panicked and shrieking, hurling themselves towards the laboratory exit even as EDEN’s automatic lockdown procedures – protocol in the case of contamination – were executed, trapping them in this confined space with the thing that had once been the colleague they’d bullied and belittled.

Within moments, every last one of them had been consumed. And Pamela, poor Pamela…

Poison Ivy gasped and awoke, her dark eyes fluttering open and her new heart pulsing with a strange, irregular thud high in her chest. “Just a dream,” she breathed. “I can still dream… because I’m not dead.”

But even as she whispered those words she remained rational enough to doubt them.

Dead, came the whisper all about her. Human dead. Human dead.

Ivy looked down from her vantage point, her newly slender and provocative body entwined in the intricate branches of a briar throne. Her maple-red hair fell down about bare, greenish-white shoulders and her pretty eyes burned black. Before her, writhing and contorting in the silent pain of something akin to an epileptic fit, the transformed cadaver of Jason Woodrue was spat forth from a tide of verdant leaves as if for her inspection.

It was her first attempt at remaking something broken, just as she had been remade, but whilst she was a dark beauty of ancient design, Woodrue was… not. Perhaps it was because she’d fallen asleep, or perhaps it was merely ineptitude on her part. Whatever the reason, this abomination of bent limbs and rotting organs shivering at her feet was nothing resembling plant or human. Ivy scowled. She couldn’t even be sure if the beast was suffering, as she’d intended. But no matter. If she concentrated she was sure she’d have better luck with Holland.

Ivy raised a delicate hand, preparing to summon forth this second fresh corpse for her experiments, when something distracted her. It was the sound of human voices… cries for help. Cries for mercy. Children.

Ivy stood, her expression furious.

“I said they weren’t to be harmed,” she snapped, addressing the sinister forest to all sides. “You’ll do as I command. They’re innocent. They didn’t hurt me.”

The forest rippled and sang, but nothing seemed to change. The undulating chorus of despair in the distance persisted.

“Did you hear me?” Ivy barked. “I demand you–”

Under attack, the Green whispered in her mind. Enemy is close. Enemy fights, and harms. Human. Human strong.

“What?”

Poison Ivy faltered, her dark eyes glazing over. Yes. Yes, she could feel it now; the plants were screaming too, and that was more important than the children. Wasn’t it…?

“Take me there,” she hissed.

Diana pivoted at the waist, sweeping her upper body low as she brought her sword up in a wide, carving arc, and grunting with the effort channelled into this hefty blow. Her blade sliced cleanly through the latest tendril snaking out to ensnare her, lopping through a good eight inches or more of thick plantflesh and patterning the air with a spray of green ichor. A chunk of tentacle slapped wetly against the trunk of on oncoming tree, and a cloud of spores puffed brightly, glittering like gold dust in the sunlight.

Without pausing to admire her handiwork, Diana continued to turn, wrenching one booted leg free of the wretched vines lashing at her ankles and swiping down with her blade all in the same movement. Another serpentine tendril was split in twain, and there was a hiss of recoil.

Diana grimaced, almost a smile of triumph but not quite, and made to pivot again… but then a branch stabbed forth through the spore-fogged sunlight and smacked her hard across the face, rocking her back on her heels. She blinked and raised a groggy hand to her mouth, momentarily fearful that the blow had dislocated her jaw. When she withdrew her knuckles they were flecked with blood. Now she smiled.

“Good shot,” she muttered. “For a tree. Although I’m guessing you could teach the men of this world a thing or two in how to punch properly…”

The branch snapped forward again but this time Diana was ready for it, sliding her graceful weight to the left while cleaving upwards with her blade, chopping deep into the wooden limb. For a second or two her weapon wedged tight, throwing her off-balance, but she compensated and pulled free just before the rest of the tree’s bulk came thrusting towards her, seeking to impale her with a flurry of smaller branches. Diana evaded most of them, slashing at two or three as she sidestepped, but she couldn’t help but hiss in pain as she received one almighty scratch along her right forearm and then another across the breadth of her upper chest, just above the golden ridge of her enchanted steel girdle.

She gritted her teeth and moved clear, spitting blood and flexing her shoulders. “Next time the Martian gifts me with a weapon,” she said, “I’ll make sure I ask for an axe.”

Not that she was complaining. Since leaving Themiscyra she’d made do with her bracelets and lasso, but at least a sword–

Wait.

Diana paused, as much as the onslaught of the Green would allow, and analysed her options. The indestructible Bracelets of Aphrodite had proved highly effective against bullets and other conventional weapons in the short time she’d possessed them but they’d been less successful in this particular battle; the golden Lasso of Artemis, however, was an alternative she’d thus far overlooked. This weapon will obey your commands and establish an empathic link between yourself and whomsoever it ensnares, that’s what her sister Amazon Orithyia had told her back when Diana had received the item. Could it work on trees as well as people…?

Vicious tendrils shot forth as Diana plunged forward into battle once more, swinging her sword with her right hand whilst unlatching her lasso from her belt with the other. The Amazon ducked and weaved, slashing back and forth, drawing as much attention to herself as she could; tentacles and branches whipped and stabbed at her, striking home again and again, and more often than not drawing blood from a woman who wasn’t used to taking such a savage hammering from a foe. However, in steeling herself against this physical barrage Diana was deliberately distracting her enemy from her true intention.

Suddenly shifting her balance and letting her sword arm fall, Diana whirled and lashed out with her lasso instead of her blade, attacking with a glittering cord of gold so thin and bright it appeared to be crafted from woven threads of starlight. The lasso snaked between unsuspecting tendrils with a life of its own before snagging and coiling about the trunk of the nearest tree, drawing tight with a satisfied hiss.

Diana’s eyes narrowed.

“Stop,” she commanded, fiercely. “Your attack on me ends now… as will your assault on Celestial City and its innocent citizens!”

For a moment or two there was no reaction, and Diana’s heart fell. She sighed and raised her sword once more, prepared for the battle to continue as before – but then the tree barring her way shuddered and seemed to shrink a little, settling back into its roots and withdrawing its thrusting branches. The lashing vines also recoiled, releasing the irritating stranglehold they’d been relentlessly building about her ankles. The lasso was working!

“Thank you Orithyia, and thank you blessed Artemis,” Diana breathed. “I promise I’ll never whine again about not getting the weapons I wanted. Although, actually, that thing about the axe, I genuinely do think that–”

“Who are you, and how are you doing what you’re doing?”

Diana whirled as she heard an accusing voice at her shoulder, and her expression turned grim as she set eyes upon Poison Ivy for the first time. The woman with the flaming red hair was riding a rippling wave of greenery that carried her above the Amazon’s head, her black eyes cold and imperious as she surveyed her adversary’s handiwork. She glanced from the scattered carnage of severed branches and vines to Diana’s sword, then studied the effects of her golden lasso with dismay. She raised a hand, her brow furrowed in concentration.

“Rise,” she growled. “Rise, damn you!”

The trees all about her quaked and lurched forward, just a few feet… but then faltered. Diana gasped as she felt a surge of resistance travel along the length of her lasso, causing her to stagger, but the golden cord held firm and thus so did she.

“No,” she commanded again. “No more.”

Poison Ivy spat, her shoulders hunching and her head bowed. Her hair came alive like a nest of red vipers and her features contorted, suddenly no longer beautiful. Her body began to snap and flail before, with a great effort of will, she regained a measure of control. Diana saw the startled glint in her enemy’s eyes, and then a glimpse of fear. Her manner softened.

“I had a vision of you, just briefly,” she said, touching her fingers to her tiara. “I witnessed an incident, at the EDEN Foundation. Were you a scientist there? Your name, it was–”

“Ivy.”

Poison Ivy of the Green, the forest whispered. Diana’s eyes narrowed.

“Whatever happened, Ivy, I can help you. I have… new friends. Whatever ails you, I’m sure they can find a solution.”

Poison Ivy stared at the other woman, and for a moment her resolve faltered. There was a trace of something human inside her still, there… but then gone. Those terrible eyes flashed dark once more.

“I have a solution,” Ivy purred. “What was once Celestial City now belongs to me. I reclaim it on behalf of the Green – and you, interloper, are not welcome here!”

The villain extended both hands this time, muscles cording in her arms and neck. Diana braced herself again, anticipating a second backlash along the length of her lasso, but instead Ivy gestured at the ground beneath her feet, causing it to rupture and explode upwards and outwards, propelling her enemy high into the air. Diana just managed to maintain her grip on both lasso and sword but otherwise she was helpless, lost in a backwards somersault with nothing but ravenous green on all sides.

When her momentum finally slowed and she began to fall once more she was gathered in a massive, leafy fist as the canopy beneath her swayed and moved to close about her. She immediately sought a foothold and a way to struggle free but before she could right herself she was faced with Ivy again, ascending on a corkscrew of tentacle vines with her arms held aloft and her fiery hair ever wilder than before.

Diana thrust out hopefully with her sword but Ivy swatted the blade aside with a dismissive flourish and slashed the Amazon across the throat with thorn-encrusted claws. Diana choked and swayed backwards, saved only by the preternatural durability of her skin. Ivy moved in close again, this time raking her nails along the Amazon’s midriff but succeeding only in creating fireworks where her talons sparked against the other woman’s enchanted girdle.

“Resilient sort, aren’t you?” Ivy hissed. Diana scowled, still struggling for balance as the canopy shifted violently underfoot.

“What’s wrong? Finding me a tougher proposition than innocent children?”

Ivy faltered again, and this time the emotion that creased her features was one of fleeting disgrace. Diana looked on grimly, determined to press whatever small advantage she could.

“I don’t know what manner of creature you are, what you’ve become, but I’m guessing there was a human soul in there once. A woman‘s soul. And I recognise shame when I see it. You can stop this, Ivy!”

The villain bared her teeth and lashed out with her claws once more, but this time her attack was decidedly half-hearted. Diana dodged this assault with ease, gaining a firmer footing, and drew her sword up close to her enemy’s throat. She stayed her killing blow, however, correctly believing herself at a crucial juncture.

“I… I wouldn’t harm children,” Ivy protested, her expression conflicted. “Just revenge against those who hurt me. They–”

“You hear that crying, down below? Those howls for help? There are people down there, in your forests! Do you even realise what you’re doing to them?”

The woman who had once been Pamela Isley gazed down into the writhing mass of vegetation far below. Whilst she and the Amazon who had invaded her territory were fighting in the skies, staggering back and forth across a plateau of leaves and branches, so hundreds – thousands – of barely distinguishable human forms were watching them from pits of briar and root. All those faces, dazed by sense-dulling spores and snared by vines, were moaning aloud in their half-conscious state. They were desperate, beseeching.

She had done that. She–

No. No, the Green had done that, through her. The Green wanted absolute control, through her.

“Can you stop it, Ivy?” Diana asked, quietly but earnestly as she held up her length of golden lasso. “Because although I think I’m holding back the worst of it, even my strength can’t last forever. Can you feel it? The… evil emanating from this place? I don’t know what’s inside this forest… inside you… but it’s not natural. I had a friend, long ago. A girl named Chloris. She taught me about the beauty of plants, the gentleness of nature. The kindness. This place isn’t kind. It wants to hurt, to destroy. You said you wanted revenge against people who harmed you, Ivy, and I think that’s why it’s attracted to you. That’s how it’s able to work through you. But I can see the look in your eyes when I mention the children; I know there’s something inside you willing to fight it. So I’m pleading with you, for their sake…

“Fight it now!”

Ivy swayed then, as if Diana had landed a physical blow, and she let out a wail of despair. She remembered. She remembered! In the lab, handling the specimen, feeling that sudden chemical burn as it secreted something toxic through her gloves and into her flesh, her blood. In that instant she’d felt it, the entity that was the Green. Alien, parasitic. Hateful. Destructive. And, yes, just as this woman had said… evil.

She’d recognised it for what it was – and in that moment, even as she died her human death, she could have rejected it. But instead, consumed by her own desperation and loathing, she’d invited it in, granting it accommodation in her soul as much as her body. She’d craved the power it offered her; in truth, part of her still did; and she knew, in her heart, that there was no turning back now, not for her. There was no more Pamela Isley, there was only Poison Ivy. In times to come she doubted she’d have the strength to resist the urge to kill.

But, for now, there was enough. She wouldn’t allow the Green to hurt the children. Not like… not like…

“Not like I was,” she breathed. “Not like I ever will be again!”

She turned then and swept herself away upon a tide of leaves, abandoning Diana. For a moment the Amazon trod air, aware that the canopy beneath her feet was parting – was crumbling! – but also knowing that there wasn’t anything she could do about it. And then, a half second later, she fell, crashing down through the trees with a grunt and an uncharacteristic expletive that died resignedly on her lips before she could even utter it.

Celestial City quaked and shimmered, the very ground roiling in turmoil.

The Green wanted more. It didn’t want to stop… but, bitter irony, the same vessel that had allowed it to take seed and to bloom after so many thousands of years of hibernation in the Tylöskog forests, that vessel was now using every last ounce of her strength and will to deny it and to drag it back from the brink.

Human, it whispered. Human still. But not always. One day soon, the human will truly die… and the Green shall consume all.

“But not today,” Poison Ivy said, softly. “For now, for as long as a spark of me lingers, you’ll do as I say.”

And with that she began to stride away, heading towards the outskirts of a city that was already returning to some semblance of normality as the unnatural forest that had invaded it began to recede as quickly as it had grown. Vines slithered back down into the earth, leaving behind only splintered streets and boulevards and shattered buildings; the trees withered and disintegrated to dust; the pollen spores danced and dispersed upon the wind like lifting fog. The devastation left behind was immense, and likely would take years to repair, but amidst the debris there was something far more precious: already there were people beginning to stumble forth, dazed and frightened, seeking solace in one another and seeking answers they’d likely never understand. But they were alive, and for the parents who were gathering their weeping children and holding them tight, this was more than enough.

The Green resisted. It screamed and lashed and bit, and Poison Ivy felt every cut and sting, but she didn’t stop walking. After all, she was no stranger to pain.

Eventually, there was nothing left of her brief domination save for a few withered leaves.

Diana of Themiscyra stood slowly, grimacing at the soreness dancing across her battered and bloodied body and wondering how long it would take her to heal. Quicker than Celestial City, no doubt… but, like the city, some scars would remain. She gathered her sword and lasso, taking care to stay out of public sight as she pondered her next move.

A vision from the Eye of Graeae embedded in her tiara had brought her here, warning her of imminent danger at the EDEN Foundation. That danger, hopefully, had now been dealt with. So what next? Did the future of her quest lie entirely with those super-powered men she’d recently encountered – Superman, Aquaman, the Flash and the others? Or was there more for her to concern herself with here, in Celestial City? Could she find a home here, at least temporarily…?

“Excuse me, ma’am? Are you hurt?”

Diana cursed inwardly as she heard a man’s voice behind her. She turned, hoping it wasn’t another police officer or someone else with a gun or a sinister agenda – she’d had just about enough for one day. Instead she found herself facing a haggard fellow in a tattered khaki military uniform, his face stubbled and grimy and his expression haunted. The man looked Diana up and down, taking in her height and her outlandish appearance and considering it for a moment before shaking his head with a sigh.

“My mistake,” he said, with an expression of awe. “I’m thinking someone could come at you with a damn tank and you’d still be standing.”

Diana raised an eyebrow. “Truthfully? I’m so exhausted I think I could sleep for a week.”

“You and me both, sister,” the man grinned. Then his face fell and he blushed furiously. “Not, that is, that we could sleep together for a week. Or at all. For any… length… of time…”

Diana simply stared at him. The man sagged.

“Ah, Christ. What is it with me being around women that turns me into an ass? Listen, how about I introduce myself and then just shut the hell up, that sound good to you?”

He extended his hand. “The name’s Steve. Steve Trevor…”

I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t understand what’s happening. Can someone tell me what’s happening?

Alec Holland wanted to speak the words out loud but, of course, he wasn’t able to. Not in his current state. He was deep down in the earth, buried in blood and stone and roots, the mulch of his human body rotting away even as his carcass began to sprout with new life. There was something inside him, something growing. A tiny, forgotten fragment of the Green.

In a way he was just like Pamela now, just like Poison Ivy. But there was one crucial difference. He was unfinished.

The Green had taken a hold, but there was something else there… something of his memories, his soul. Unless he was just imagining it.

Was he a man who thought he was a plant, or a plant who thought he was a man? He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know.

It would be so easy just to close his eyes – his new, inhuman eyes – and to simply stay here, below ground, in the dark and the sweet rot, and to sleep forever more.

So easy.

But, instead, the thing that had once been Alec Holland clenched its fists, and breathed… and then slowly began to dig.