The Last Guardian (Ch. 1)

( Every character in this story is a legal adult over the age of 18 )

AN - The story starts in Smallville but will branch out into the larger DC universe in time

The Last Guardian

Chapter 1

It hurt to breathe. Even the endless cold of deep space felt like a caress compared to the agony that wracked the Guardian’s body. Deep slashes furrowed through his carapace, leaking copious amounts of green blood. He hovered in the void, adrift and flickering like a dying lamp. His cloak was torn, and the wound in his side was pulsing a sickly green. Somewhere below, the once-bright world of Oa drifted slowly in its orbit, half of it now little more than blackened glass.

He had known fear in the time before the Founding, but the ring had purged it from him … or so he had believed. He now felt fear once again. The ring whispered at the edge of his mind … not in words, but in images. A thousand years of memories, each as clear as the day they were made. He could see his brothers and sisters huddled around the Central Power Battery, arguing in those last, desperate hours. He could see the shattering of the emerald column. The sound of an entire planet’s soul being torn out and devoured was … unsettling to remember. And then the Enemy, the abomination they had sworn could never exist, rose from the core with a stolen ring on its finger and crowned with the ruins of Ganthet’s skull.

They had run, and now, he was the last. His brothers and sisters had bravely sacrificed themselves to create one final ring … a ring whose power eclipsed all others. It was their last-ditch effort to destroy the abomination and bring peace to the universe once again. The weight of his failure was crippling. 

The ring burned against the scorched flesh of his hand. He could feel it now. Its weight was like a star compressed to the size of a small band of metal. Its mind was searching, sifting the noise of the multiverse for any sign of hope. No Green Lantern remained … he knew that much. The rings were gone, either shattered, perverted, or they simply ceased to exist, just as their owners had. But this ring, the Final Power Ring, was different.

The Enemy was coming. He could feel it. His damaged skin tingled unpleasantly, and he felt fear once again. He didn’t fear his inevitable downfall. That was a fate he had long since been ready to meet. No, he feared the ultimate failure and what it would mean for the universe … and all others. As such, he did not look back. There was no time. His wounds were slowing him, causing his flight to sputter and lurch. He drifted like a castoff, falling into the shadow of a dead moon.

‘Ring ...,’ he thought, but his thoughts were muddy, already dissipating into the void. ‘... scan for hosts.’

The ring obeyed. In the landscape of his mind, universes bloomed and collapsed, each flaring bright before sputtering out. A trillion sentients … then a trillion more were each evaluated instantaneously for courage, for willpower, for the essential quality that his people had once called worthiness. He saw the endless wars of humankind. He saw the glimmering tenacity of those on Korugar, the stubborn melancholy of the Xudarians, and the people of Maltus striving for technological superiority. All were insufficient.

‘Ring,’ he managed. ‘Look for… anomalies … variants … the impossible.’

The sweep widened. Through the noise, something flickered … a deviation. The ring focused, and there he was … a boy, scrawny and perpetually on the verge of disaster, falling through a collapsing tower as it burned. The boy was screaming, not in terror, but in defiance. His hair was black and wild, and his arms battered and bruised. Clutched in his hand was a stick of crude, primitive technology. However, that crude stick held power, as did the boy. It was perfect.

Harry Potter … He let the name settle in his mind. In all the worlds he had searched, he had never found a less likely candidate who was more worthy than any other. He could feel the Enemy now, radiating from the dark side of the moon. It was angry, and it was here.

He tore at the remains of his cloak and tossed them away. He could not risk a direct transfer. The Enemy would sense it, trace it, and consume the recipient in a breath. He must go himself, through a path the Enemy could not yet comprehend.

He felt the pressure build, the universe itself constricting as the Enemy neared. The Guardian felt space and time warp around him. He did not allow himself to think of Ganthet, of his lost companions. His only thought was of the boy, and of the spark he might someday ignite. With the last of his will, he opened a fracture in space. The portal expanded, flickering with too many colors to comprehend, and on the far side, he caught a glimpse of a stone castle. He pressed the ring to his lips, whispered a word from a language that no longer existed, and flung himself through. Behind him, the Enemy howled in rage, but the fracture quickly closed. There was only the boy and the hope of a better future.

The Last Guardian

It was midnight at Hogwarts’ Hospital Wing. Moonlight poured in through the open windows, seemingly making the white bedsheets glow. The inhabitants slept quietly. Their injuries were severe enough to require a sleeping drought in order to get a decent night’s sleep. However, there was one patient who looked worse than the others. Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, was in rough shape. 

His eyes, though shut, seemed taut with the memory of his final battle. There were bruises on top of bruises. The entire side of his face was purple and blue, and his scalp was covered in a thick, white bandage. He hadn’t moved in days. There were fears he would never wake up. 

Somewhere above the castle, a ripple passed through the sky. Directly above the hospital wing, the ripple condensed into a vertical line of shimmering green, seemingly cutting right through the fabric of reality. It shivered, grew, and then opened with a guttural groan. The Guardian stumbled through.

He was small, by most standards, but he possessed a presence that made the air buckle around him. His blue skin was cracked and weeping lines of green. Each step left a dot of phosphorescent blood on the stone floor. Each breath was a shuddery, whistling plea for the end. His battle suit was scorched and torn to shreds. The ring on his right hand glowed with such violence that the bones of his finger were visible through his flesh. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t have the time.

Gathering his waning strength, he lifted himself to the foot of Harry’s bed. For a moment, he simply regarded the boy. He was short and overly skinny, with a shock of messy black hair sticking out from between the edges of the wrapped bandage. He stumbled to the boy’s side. The ring’s glow intensified, casting bizarre shadows against everything in the spacious room. The green light made the room hum. Down the ward, one or two of the slumbering students turned over, mumbling as if caught in a bad dream. The Guardian slipped the ring from his finger and reached for Harry’s chest. He pressed the ring to the boy’s sternum.

The band of green energy hovered just above his skin, suspended by a force more ancient than the magic of this world. The Guardian curled his fingers and squeezed, his own blood now spilling onto Harry’s blankets. It hissed as it burned holes straight through.

A whisper impossible for anyone to hear slipped from the Guardian’s mouth. The language was older than the atoms of this universe. Every syllable warped the walls and made the glass in the windows flex as if alive. The ring pulsed like a thundering heartbeat. For an instant, nothing happened. Then Harry’s body seized, every muscle corded as if about to snap.

His body arched off the bed, and the fractures in his arm snapped themselves straight. The bruises reversed, the color leaching away. The gash across his eyebrow stitched closed, leaving perfectly unblemished skin. His scrawny chest inflated, and his ribs shifted beneath the skin with grotesque pops and snaps. His arms and legs lengthened, and his muscles knotted into definition. Fingers, once broken and crooked, unfurled into strong, graceful hands. The neck thickened, and the shoulders widened. All of it happened at a pace so furious the hospital bed’s joints groaned in protest. Finally, his body fell back to the bed, whole and new and entirely too large for the hospital-issued pajamas it wore.

The Guardian collapsed beside him, his blue face ashen and slick with sweat. The ring pulsed one last time before fading from existence. The full power of the ring had been transferred straight into the boy’s body. Harry’s heart stuttered, then resumed beating. Its beats were strong, relentless, and louder than the ticking of the clock that rested against the wall of the hospital ward. Harry did not wake, not yet at least

.

The Guardian, near death, looked at the boy’s face. No trace of the broken child remained. Even in his sleep, Harry looked … almost god-like. His features had shifted into something much more noble. The eyes, when they finally opened, would be sharp and full of wonder. The Guardian touched the boy, leaving a smear of his own blood across the back of Harry’s hand. One last thing remained. 

He couldn’t leave him here. Though the chances were minuscule, if the abomination was able to track him here, it would put everyone on this planet in danger. No, the best thing would be to hide all traces of what had happened here today. He would send the boy somewhere else, to a universe full of superpowered beings. He would fit in perfectly. With the last bit of power left in his failing body, the Guardian lifted a hand and snapped his fingers. The air around the bed shimmered, reality cracking open one more time. Harry vanished, leaving the Guardian behind. With his goal complete, the Guardian gasped out one final breath before his body turned to dust. 

The Last Guardian

The sky above Smallville, Kansas, was dark and stormy. Thunder cracked and lightning forked across the night sky, lighting up the surrounding cornfields. At the edge of one of those cornfields, the tall stalks bent beneath the wind’s increasing howl. The ground trembled with another deafening crack of thunder, and then the air tore open.

There was a shudder in the fabric of the universe. Three separate forks of lightning struck as one, converging on a single, unremarkable spot in the field of corn. From the tear in space, two young men tumbled out. One landed directly on the circle of scorched earth, and the other tumbled further away, hidden amidst the stalks. 

Harry Potter hit the muddy earth and slid a good several meters before the corn stopped his momentum, the stalks bending but not breaking. The storm delivered one last thunderclap and then seemed to pull away, leaving Harry face-down in a frigid, unfamiliar field. He remained there, unconscious, until morning. 

The Last Guardian

The bright, midday sun woke Harry from his slumber. Light brushed his eyelids and pounded against his skull. It was the worst headache he’d ever felt. He groaned and pushed himself up, but it was like all the muscles in his neck were fighting against him. His head throbbed with every movement.

He pressed his hands to his temples, but it was no use. The pain didn’t stop. It felt… crowded inside his head. It was like someone had crammed a hundred radios in there, all tuned to different stations, and all shouting at once. He could hear voices and see images. None of it made sense. He caught flashes of faces he didn’t know, places he’d never been, and words in languages he didn’t speak. For a second, he thought he might be going crazy.

The noise grew louder as he tried to focus, and it became impossible to think. His body wanted to curl up and shut down, but Harry forced himself to breathe. It helped a little. He noticed the smell of grass, earth, and something sweet and damp. One thing became instantly clear … his sense of smell was far better than he remembered. He not only could smell the prevailing scents, but also the slight undertones he had never noticed before. It was insane.

He slowly opened his eyes. The world was too bright, but he forced himself to look anyway. The sky was blue, bright, and cloudless, and the air had a chill to it. The strange thing was that the cold didn’t bother him. Harry felt perfectly comfortable. He did a quick mental sweep of his body. Other than his throbbing headache, he felt perfectly fine … better than fine, actually. Physically, he hadn’t ever felt this good. He pressed the butts of his palms into his eyes and groaned. Amazingly, as he calmed his mind, the voices seemed to hush. Harry could only make out bits and pieces. 

‘Oa …’

‘... strength and power …’

‘... in time, you will understand …’

Harry rubbed his eye sockets, and the pain in his head slowly faded. After a few minutes, it was completely gone. Harry sighed in relief and removed his hands from his eyes. “What the bloody hell happened?” Harry asked himself, his voice sounding silky smooth. He thought back to the last thing he remembered. 

The battle at Hogwarts … getting hit by spells over and over … then he remembered killing Voldemort as the Dark Lord’s final spell brought the entire Astronomy Tower down with both of them in it. That was the last thing he remembered. After that, it was like a dream that never ended. He heard familiar voices cutting in and out through the darkness. 

Harry looked around but saw nothing but corn. He knew there were no cornfields anywhere near Hogwarts. ‘Where am I?’ Harry thought to himself. The answer immediately flashed in his mind. Harry gasped as he saw what had happened to him. It was almost like watching a movie in his head. He saw the Guardian hovering over him and placing the ring on his chest. Harry saw his physical transformation, and then he saw himself disappear before everything went dark. Harry’s heart pounded in his chest. He understood. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did. He was far, far away from home, and he wouldn’t be returning any time soon … if ever. Harry closed his eyes and suffered in silence. The faces of his friends flashed through his mind, clearer than they had ever been. The thought of never seeing them again nearly brought on a panic attack, but he was somehow able to remain calm. He took solace in the fact that he had done his job. He had defeated Voldemort, and he would never be able to hurt his friends again. They could grow up and have the lives they were meant to have.

He stayed there, lying on the muddy ground for over an hour as he came to terms with the fact that he was now a castaway. He had no friends, no money, no possessions. He was all alone in a strange new world. After a bit of necessary sulking, he took a deep breath and decided to do as he always did … survive. 

Harry sat up, and it was then that he realized that he was completely naked. After yelping like a frightened girl and jumping to his feet, Harry realized something else. He was way bigger than before. He was significantly taller, and looking down at his body, he saw muscles he definitely didn’t have before. He lifted his arm and flexed. His bicep bulged upward, and when he poked it with his finger, he found it to be as hard as a rock. Putting these changes aside for the time being, he looked around, hoping to find his clothes, wand, or anything useful. He found nothing. 

“Just great!” Harry groaned. “How the hell am I going to get some …” Harry began to rant. No sooner than he said it, he felt a tingle in his fingertips. When he raised his hand to check it, the tingling disappeared, and a fresh set of clothes appeared out of thin air. Needless to say, Harry was gobsmacked. Snatching the clothes out of the air, Harry quickly pulled them on. Unfortunately, as he pulled up his jeans, he somehow pulled with enough force to rip the waistband right off. The waistband slid up his torso while the rest of the jeans slid down his thighs. 

“What?” was all he could say as he looked down with confusion. He then tried to put on his t-shirt, which ended with it torn into pieces. Harry sighed in frustration and ripped the torn clothes from his body. As soon as he wanted another set of clothes, he felt the same tingle in his fingers. An identical set appeared, and when he tried to put them on again, the same thing happened. “I’m either really strong, or these clothes are super cheap,” Harry concluded. Once again, he tried. This time, he was extremely careful with his movements. 

Once he was fully dressed, Harry decided to try to find some semblance of civilization. Being surrounded by seven-foot-tall corn stalks, he couldn’t exactly see over them. When Harry wished he had a broom so he could fly to a nearby town, his entire body flared green, and he began floating. “Whoa!” Harry’s voice warbled as he waved his arms to keep his balance. Harry leaned forward, trying to get himself back on the ground. This caused him to shoot forward with blinding speed. 

The strange thing was that even though he was moving faster than he ever had, he could still see with crystal clear clarity. Harry cried out, wishing he were back on the ground. Unfortunately, his powers took that as a command to lower himself. The top of his head dug into the soft earth, and Harry’s world was suddenly filled with mouthfuls of dirt as he plowed straight into the ground. Eventually, his body tumbled, sending him crashing across a field. When his body stopped tumbling, he took stock of the situation. Harry checked himself for injuries and found none. He felt great … perfect even. He wasn’t even bruised. He sat up and looked over his shoulder. His green eyes widened with shock when he spotted a several thousand-foot-long furrow cut deep into the ground. “Okay …” Harry said slowly, barely believing what he was seeing. “I really need to figure this out.”

The Last Guardian

“Incendio,” Harry said, pointing his finger at a stalk of corn. It didn’t feel right. He tried to will it, instead, just like he used to do with accidental magic as a kid. The corn combusted. It wasn’t just a little spark either. The entire stalk erupted into a pillar of green fire. Harry yelped and jumped back, nearly tripping over his own feet. He waited for the fire to burn out, but it didn’t burn out. It simply winked out of existence like someone had turned off a lamp.

He stood, feeling a bit more sure of himself, and tried again. “Lumos,” he said, mostly out of habit, and his hand lit up like a thousand-watt bulb. The light was green, and it didn’t stop at the palm. It ran up his arm and into his chest, and Harry could see his veins glowing beneath his skin. Harry willed the light to go away, and it did. He then tried it again without saying anything. The light instantly returned. He then focused on changing the color of the light from green to red. The light immediately changed colors. He repeatedly changed the color until he could do it with barely a thought. 

He tried to think bigger. He pointed at the furrow he’d made with his body and tried to imagine it filling back in, dirt rising and smoothing out the track. He focused on the idea, the picture in his mind. The dirt moved, slowly at first, and then in a wave. The loose earth tumbled and rolled itself back into place. Within a minute, there was no evidence Harry had ever been there, except for the fact that a long row of corn was suddenly scattered across the ground. 

He paced the rows, testing out different little tricks. He willed a handful of pebbles to levitate, and they did, but instead of hovering, they arranged themselves into a spinning ring around his hand. When he stopped focusing, they crashed to the ground. He tried to summon something. He didn’t care what. He wanted money, food, or even a book. Instead, a brick appeared in midair and nearly broke his nose. He caught it just in time, the weight of it solid and warm in his palm. The brick glowed with green light, then faded to a normal brick red color. “Okay,” Harry said. “Maybe think about what I actually want before summoning it.”

As he held the brick in his hand, he noticed that it didn’t feel heavy like a normal brick should. It felt lighter than air, actually. He dropped it to the ground, and it made a heavy thud when it hit the damp dirt. It obviously had weight to it. He summoned it back into his hand, and he gave it a squeeze. The brick was instantly pulverized in his palm. Big chunks flew away, leaving only powder in his palm when he opened his hand. He turned his hand over, letting the dust fall. “Huh,” was pretty much all he could say about that. 

“What else can I do?” Harry asked himself. He focused on his senses. He could already see better than he ever could before. He already discovered that his sense of smell was insanely heightened. Harry then tried to focus on his hearing. Sure, he could hear better than before, but it was nothing out of this world. Then … his head began tingling.

He concentrated, listening. The voices were quiet. Some were in English, and some weren’t. Some just felt like shapes or colors. He focused on the nearest one. It was … a kid, somewhere not too far away, thinking about his mother’s pancakes. Harry smiled. He looked up and tried to reach out with his mind. “Pancakes are the best,” he thought, as hard as he could. The kid’s voice stopped, then returned, a little panicked. Harry could tell he’d startled him. “Sorry,” Harry said out loud. He felt the apology travel along the green channel in his mind, and the kid settled down. This was dangerous, but also kind of brilliant.

He spent an hour testing the mental connection, pushing and pulling at it. He could listen in on every mind for miles around, but it wasn’t overwhelming, not like it had been when he first woke up. He could tune them in or out, just by wanting to. It was like a wizarding wireless, but so much more. At one point, he heard a mind much farther away, moving at an impossible speed. The mind was angry, but also determined. Harry didn’t like the feel of it, so he put up a mental wall, the way Occlumency had taught him. The presence faded. As cool as it was, Harry felt guilt at listening in on people’s private thoughts. He vowed never to abuse the power. 

The sun started to dip, painting the sky with streaks of orange and violet. Harry sat at the edge of the cornfield and watched it. He did feel homesick, and he wanted to see his friends. However, he couldn’t deny the excitement he felt for these strange new powers. He pulled his knees to his chest, hugged them, and let his mind wander. The energy in his body thrummed in time with his heartbeat. It felt natural now, not foreign. It was like it was always meant to be there.

He practiced some more, building shapes out of green light. Green glowing little animals and birds danced around the field before dissolving. He made a small shield, just to see if he could, and tried to bounce a rock off it. The rock ricocheted away. He made the shield bigger, shaping it into a wall, then a dome, and finally a bubble. The shapes were only limited by his imagination.

When he tried to fly again, it worked. He just … lifted off, thinking about where he wanted to go, and he went there. He could control his speed and direction perfectly, and stopping was easy now that he understood the importance of using his willpower. He hovered above the cornfield for a while, spinning in lazy circles and letting the wind whip his hair.

He tried invisibility, and it worked … sort of. He didn’t disappear, but he refracted the light around himself so that anything looking in his direction just saw empty space. He watched a flock of birds fly right past him, unaware.

Harry flew further away and landed in a crop of trees. He then decided to test how strong he really was. He walked up to a big oak that had recently fallen and wrapped his arms around it. Harry lifted it and squeezed. The tree groaned, the bark splintered, and then the trunk snapped clean in half. The upper part crashed to the ground, taking nearly a minute to fully settle. Harry let go and brushed his sappy hands together. He felt his heart thumping … not with fear, but with a wild sort of joy. Every power he tried worked better than he’d hoped. The possibilities were endless.

He sat back down, took a breath, and listened to the world. There were people in the distance, moving about in their homes, thinking ordinary thoughts. There were animals in the forest, unaware of the changes happening just outside their vision. He leaned back, stared at the sun that was no more than a sliver on the horizon, and let himself relax for the first time in ages. It had been a long time since he’d felt this good. And if this was his new life, then so be it.

Harry grinned at the sky. “All right,” he said. “Let’s see what else I can do.”