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Justice League Dark and Wonder Woman: The Witching Hour Vol 1 1

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"The Witching Hour, Finale": In the whole world, the effects of Hecate rewriting magic are felt: Madame Xanadu draws five new tarots in London, Etrigan chokes in his demon blood in Gotham, [[Kaala (Prim

Quote1 If you think you can use her body to destroy everything she ever stood up for without us putting up a fight? You have another thing coming... For Diana! For Wonder Woman! TAKE THE WITCH DOWN! Quote2
— Zatanna

Justice League Dark and Wonder Woman: The Witching Hour #1 is a one-shot with a cover date of December, 2018. It was published on October 31, 2018.

Synopsis for "The Witching Hour, Finale"

In the whole world, the effects of Hecate rewriting magic are felt: Madame Xanadu draws five new tarots in London, Etrigan chokes in his demon blood in Gotham, Eclipso laughs from his black diamond prison and Solomon Grundy's body starts falling apart.

Swamp Thing, still trying to recover from the burning of the Parliament of Trees perpetrated by a controlled Black Orchid, now free from Hecate's mark. He tells himself the Green is dead, but the Green itself answers him: not dead, but changed. Now it follows the will of Hecate and it will take on a new form, the Parliament of Flowers. But for a new Parliament to rise, the old must be pruned away. Back in the Oblivion Bar, Manitou Dawn is also free, but he tells Detective Chimp that John and Zatanna acted too late: magic has already been rewritten, and now Diana will die but before, she will do the will of Hecate as now three fifths of her power are inside Wonder Woman.

Back in Nanda Parbat, Diana rewrites the city into Hecate's own gate into afterlife, guarded and commanded by the Ultrapsychopomp, an angel of death ready to show Zatanna and Constantine their graves. Circe then acts, as she still can use magic being a protégé of Hecate herself, transporting to her island all the enemies of Hecate in the various battlefields: Nanda Parbat, the Oblivion Bar and the forest once hosting the Parliament of Trees. She tells them Hecate is almost owner of all magic, and that she is on Mount Olympus to access the Sphere of the Gods to complete her plan.

Meanwhile, inside the Collective Unconscious, Diana cannot stay there doing nothing: she dives into the silver lake of Hecate's home dimension and swims until touching the bottom, searching for an answer that might not even exist. While a moment of panic grows in Diana when she discovers there seems to be nothing to help her and Earth, a figure reaches out to her transporting Wonder Woman, or at least her spirit, in a mirror dimension. She tells Diana she is Hecate herself.

Hecate tells Diana that she's been thrown in a great drama that started at the start of the Multiverse itself. Once, magic was a raw form of power that one day will be shaped into the Sphere of the Gods, but before any god was born, magic personified into a being, Hecate herself. But soon, Hecate found out there was another Multiverse, a dark one, and another place opposing what would be the Sphere, called the Otherplace. There, a creature created as an Upside-Down version of Hecate watched her, wanting to infiltrate her dimension. She was scared by it, and she created a barrier to make him stay away. Then, she went to the center of the Sphere of the Gods, Earth, and gave a little bit of the power to humanity. It triggered an evolution that sparked the Pantheons of the Gods.

And while the initial chaos became ordered and the Pantheons started to compete for her attention and love, she had to change to another form to accomodate what was happening: the first aspect of Hecate, the one of the maiden, faded away, replaced by the Mother. She had to accept the courting of one of the Pantheons, and she chose the Greek one. Zeus, the king of Olympus, had to admit her power was superior to his but in exchange, Hecate had to accept being adored just like they were adored, and so she became the Greek Goddess of Magic. Soon though, humanity found out she possessed a power far greater than the Gods, and the humans wanted it for themselves, to be the ones shaping the chaos around them in the way they wanted. She was imprisoned in a power circle, a metaphor of her dimension, the Moon. She asked for help to the Pantheon she chose, many times, especially to the god she decided to marry, Hades.

Hades came then, but only to tell Hecate he found another spouse in the daughter of Demeter, Persephone. And then, Hades told her that the Pantheon had no use or her anymore, and left. Hecate screamed in anger and pain, wishing to avenge herself, and for the first time since her birth she felt once again that lurking presence, the creature of the Otherplace so similar but so completely different from her. She felt its hate. So she took all of her might and reached to the Dark Dimension, taking away some of its power. He then gave it to those humans that imprisoned her, a corrupt power full of hate, demise and sickness. She became her final aspect, the Crone.

Then she went to the Gods, telling them that when they would dare cross her path again, she will unleash all that terrible power on them, destroying them and taking her place in the Cosmos. Then, to keep her power safe, Hecate split it in five parts and stored them in five women who, in some way, remembered her of her past life, of her past aspect she wanted to come back: the curious, innocent maiden. And while waiting for a god to challenge her, no one ever came and in the waiting, the other two aspects came back, sometimes pushing Hecate to give good presents to her followers, the witches. But the Crone, and her dark hate, were still controlling the three-headed deity, resulting in what's happening now.

As in Olympus, Hecate is fighting, using the body of Diana, against Zatanna and the Justice League Dark, the two aspects of Hecate are talking with Diana about why they told her that story: magic is fueled by belief and her friends right now fight an impossibile, unwinnable battle shouting her name as battle cry. She is a gatherer of belief, and the only chance of doing things right: the Crone is truly right on one thing, and that's that magic, or at least some aspects of it, must be rewritten as the corruption of the Otherplace tainted it. But it doesn't have to be a rewriting made in hate, like the Crone wants. It should be something new, something made out of wonder.

As a woman herself, now Diana must make a choice. To avoid becoming the Crone, she must be the maiden and the mother. Diana then took control of her body once again, strengthened by the two other aspects of Hecate. She pleaded the goddess to change her aspect once again, to act out of love and not out of hate, but the Crone would not listen. So, Diana did what she had: with the help of Zatanna, she opened the door to the Upside-Down Man, who consumed Hecate, or at least the part of her that worked with the power she stole from the Dark Multiverse. Then, Diana used her last drop of magic to seal the passageway from Earth to the Sphere of the Gods, with the destiny of magic now a mystery.

In the end, the Olympus is being consumed by the Otherkind while Diana and Zatanna are back to the Justice League Dark headquarters. They stopped Hecate, but they still will try to find a way to fix the magic world without succumb to the dark power of the Upside-Down Man. It seems that the Parliament of Flowers and the Necropolis, the two aspects of magic Hecate rewrote, will stay but adapt to a new order now that the master they served is no more. Still, Diana senses that Zatanna is troubled: the sorceress admits she is thinking about the fact Hecate talked of five hosts for her power and that one more host was secret and hidden from them. That woman will inherit all the remaining power of Hecate, and this means the Witching Hour might come back. And she couldn't be more right: Circe was one of the witchmarked all along, and the plan she built worked almost to perfection: now she was not a mere witch, but the new Goddess of Magic and the worst is surely yet to come.

Appearing in "The Witching Hour, Finale"

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Links and References
Superboy Vol 4 69
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