Batwoman #13

[caivu]

Kate conducts a brief videoconference with Dr. Carrolyn, the head of the sanatorium Beth was a patient at. The woman gives her the runaround, and Kate calls her out and says she knows she's complicit in Beth's abduction. The call quickly ends.

Hovering above Brussels, Kate and Julia (still en route) conduct a short briefing. Julia accuses Kate of wanting this whole mess to be bigger than Safiyah, rather than the much simpler explanation.



Kate leaps from her airship and lands in front of her hold house, abandoned now for 15 years. She enters, musing about how the locals now consider the building cursed.





She continues wandering, the residual fear toxin in her system continuing to give her mild hallucinations.



She flicks on her cowl's infrared mode, and sees a human-shaped heat signature behind a door at the end of the hall.

She kicks the door open to find...





Kate lunges at her. "You saved their spy--"

"I rescued Fatima for reasons entirely my own," Safiyah says, as Kate grabs her. "You have the person you loved more than me..."

Kate shoves her through the window.

"...and I have the person I love more than you," Safiyah continues, as Kate dangles her above a five-story drop.

Safiyah stays cool.

"You do have a way of breaking things, my siren," she purrs. "Your own things, or other people's things, or other people. And you have a way of putting them back together wrong."

Kate relents and hauls her back inside.





"Tahani is the name of a dead woman," she says. Reverently, she holds a papaya, the same fruit she was eating when Safiyah found her all those years ago.

"I am the executioner's axe, the champion's sword. I am the blade that parts the just from the unjust. I am the Knife."

Elder and Younger, panicked, call Knife to their quarters, demanding to know why she has rerouted their airship. Why she, a mere weapon, thinks she has such authority.

With that, she attacks.





"Not yet, not yet!" From an intercom comes a familiar voice. White text on black.

Knife heads to the bridge, leaving Younger alone with her injured twin.

"I brought them to you, O Mother," Knife says. "They called for a queen to lead them."

She wipes the blood from her blade, tosses the rag aside.

"The Many Arms and their cult needed a priestess," she continues. "As I am renamed in my service to you, so you are renamed in your rule over them..."

Comments

[bj_l]

"Tahani is a dead woman." Well, yes, she's in The Good Place.

[jeyl]

Now all I want to see is Batwoman wielding the Master Sword.

[caivu]

I'm glad someone else noticed that!

[candescencearia]

I was wondering if someone would notice that as I went to the comments. Was not disappointed. Also, it was a very cool way to complete the imagery in that panel.

[kore]

I really love the art in this, it's just gorgeous.