Fury

This second profile starts where the “classic Fury” one stopped and covers the events in Sandman. Meaning that it has S P O I L E R S about a real classic.

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It doesn’t explore why and whom manipulated Lyta into destroying Dream of the Endless. Not only doesn’t Lyta have any knowledge of it, but the readers do not quite know. I don’t think there exists a commonly accepted explanation about who was the patron (if any) of Loki and Puck when they were sent to burn away Daniel’s humanity.

A broken, insane, manipulated character who does not actually do anything. However her role in Sandman is pivotal to the DCU cosmology. And The Furies one-shot was surprisingly successful at wrapping together the character, as will be explained in the third profile.

Background

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Powers and Abilities

Hall is superhumanly strong. She also has a degree of superhuman durability, especially against blunt impacts. At her lowest ebb, she was entirely out of shape. Though she paid attention to her weight, she wasn’t exercising or training anymore. That made her but a shadow of her Infinity, Inc. power level.

Still, she was strong enough to easily break bones if she did not pay attention to her enormous strength.

Dreams

In Sandman, Lyta is plainly seen eating the golden apples at the garden of the Hesperides. She is led to do so by the Furies themselves. That would, traditionally, make her immortal. She will later confirm that she is immortal, and became indestructible in certain circumstances.

Dream of the Endless (in his Daniel “point of view”/incarnation) later put his mark on her to protect her from harm from those who would kill her for having killed Morpheus. This was apparently some sort of invisible mystical sigil.

What it did is unknown. The simplest approach might be that this mark was visible to mystical entities, non-counterfeitable, and warned them that Hippolyta was under the protection of the Lord of Dreams. This protection apparently faded after a while, since some years after this writeup ends Nabu could plunge Lyta into a magical coma without retribution.

History

(This section starts where the previous writeup’s History ended. Readers interested in getting every aspect of the story are encouraged to read the writeups for Sandman (Sanford) and Sandman (Hall) for more about the “dream dimension” and related elements.)

The “dream dimension” was but a lie built into the mind of an abused child by the manipulative Brute and Glob. As to Brute and Glob, they were actually escaped subjects of the Dreaming, the real dimension of dreams.

While they used to be kept under tight control in the Dreaming, their master Dream of the Endless had gone missing. Brute and Glob eventually broke free and set up their own little empire of dreams, aping Dream in his absence.

When Dream of the Endless returned and found his wayward servants, he shattered the “dream dimension”. This explosively returned everyone to the DC Earth, where Lyta’s pregnancy resumed normally. He dispersed Hector/the Sandman, considering that the dead should not walk the Earth, which triggered an hysterical attack by the Fury.

Ignoring the affront given her state of shock, grief and confusion, Dream informed Lyta that her child, having been gestated in dreams, was rightfully his. He said that the baby’s name was Daniel. Shattered once again, the distraught Fury swore bloody vengeance against Dream, and that he would never have her child.

Back to life, back to reality

After giving birth, Hippolyta drifted aimlessly and ended up in a small apartment in L.A.. Dream apparently visited in a dream at least once, to see her son. Obsessively protective of Daniel, Lyta was a full-time mother with just one friend, a young woman named Carla.

When Daniel was about two, Carla convinced her friend to leave her son for a few hours. She wanted Lyta to meet with a cousin of hers, Eric, about a job offer. But what Eric actually wanted was to seduce Lyta.

Carla and Lyta hired the girl downstairs to babysit for the evening. Unbeknowst to Lyta and through a weird coincidence the girl was the older sister of Jed Walker. Jed was the one-time abused boy in whose mind the “dream dimension” of Brute and Glob was hosted. Jed would later recognise Lyta as one of the persons who used to live in his dreams and tell his sister Rose.

During the odd conversation with Eric, Lyta acquired the sudden certainty that something bad was happening to Daniel. She rushed home, and found her baby gone.

Once again, her life was shattered. And once again it turned out that it was the result of events far greater than herself.

The Kindly Ones, part 1

In shock, Lyta mumbled vague explanations to the police. It was mostly Carla who took care of things. On the very next night, Lyta met, possibly in a dream, with the Furies of Myth. They called her “grand-daughter”.

Having no knowledge about the rituals, the myths or the pledges, Lyta bungled anything that could have resembled a proper supplication. She thought that she was just dreaming of some sort of evil witches telling her of incomprehensible things.

The Furies, however, did not treat her as a normal supplicant but as kin. As a result special, obscure rules applied. The Kindly Ones actually wanted to help her rather than just apply ancient rituals to the letter. They told her that Daniel was in a fire. And that was true, for unbeknowst to Lyta his captors were burning Daniel’s mortality away from him.

Over the next few days, in a deep haze, Hippolyta became insane and consumed by her grief. She absent-mindedly broke Eric’s arm when he tried to touch her. In anger, Carla decided to leave as she could not handle watching her friend’s frightening descent into depression and insanity.

The Kindly Ones, part 2

The “police”(actually Daniel’s captors in disguise) claimed that they found the burned corpse of Daniel in the Mojave desert. Lyta insisted to take the photo of the tiny burned corpse from them. Further breaking down, she wandered away in a haze.

As she was drifting as a bare-footed, shellshocked, homeless woman in the streets of downtown L.A., Lyta was also experiencing a complex vision quest. That stemmed in part from sleep deprivation and fasting induced by her grief. Her vision quest was a complex mélange of actual events and people around her, fatigue-induced hallucinations, and mystical events likely taking place in the Dreaming.

Her vision quest was for Revenge, as she was irrationally convinced that Dream of the Endless had killed her husband and had now taken her son.

Deranged visions of revenge, part 1

Meeting with many odd creatures, Lyta gradually learned that her Revenge would be found in the cave of the Furies. She also was taught that their name should not be spoken aloud. Though she knew very little about Ancient Greek myths, she encountered numerous mythicals in her crazed visions.

Lyta thus turned down an offer of being adopted as the new third Gorgon, as a replacement for the mortal Medusa . Still, her hallucinatory dream-self acquired snakes amidst her hair for a while. At that point she collapsed from the lack of sleep, food and shelter.

She was picked up by one of the most dangerous sorceresses in the world, Thessaly – then using her Larissa identity. Thessaly held the unconscious Hall in a hotel room, serving as her mystical bodyguard during the remainder of her vision quest.

Meanwhile, the unconscious Lyta was invited in her dream/hallucination/vision to eat a few apples in a nearby garden. The multi-headed serpentine guardian of the tree, Geryon , letting her help herself to a few apples since it did not really care about guarding the fruits anymore.

Deranged visions of revenge, part 2

Not knowing much Classical mythology, Lyta could only think of Biblical references when it came to snakes and apples. But she had actually eaten the Golden Apples in the Garden of the Hesperides , well-known for their ability to grant godlike immortality. Like most of what occurred in her vision quest, this seems to have had real enough consequences.

Still dreaming her vision quest as Thessaly watched over her, Lyta finally reached the Kindly Ladies. They told her they would not help since Dream had taken the life of her blood and not of his own kin. But yet again, they bent the rules for Lyta.

Dream had not killed Daniel, nor was Daniel his son. But he *had* killed his own son, Orpheus, many centuries before. This made it possible for them to kill the Lord Shaper as Lyta wished.

The Good Ladies, part 1

Thus was the ancient wrath of the Furies directed at Dream of the Endless by an insane, mistaken Lyta Hall, for a cause that was not her own and had little to do with the seeming death of Daniel — who was not dead in the first place.

A pawn for forces she knew nothing about, her actions would ensure she would never see her son again until her own death.

Meanwhile Carla, regretting her previous fight with Lyta, was trying to find her insane friend. She ran into some odd events as well as everyday indifference, and was killed by one of the kidnappers.

Shortly after that murder, two agents of Dream (the new Corinthian, and Matthew the Raven) came to find and protect Daniel. Investigating Lyta’s deserted apartment, the Corinthian found Carla’s corpse. He also discovered who had been the kidnappers of Daniel and murderers of Carla – the Norse god Loki, and the Fairy character Robin Goodfellow, aka Puck.

The Good Ladies, part 2

The deadly Corinthian tracked down Loki, manhandled him and stole his eyes until he talked. The Corinthian recovered Daniel — the photos of the corpse had been fakes all along — and took him back to the Dreaming.

Meanwhile Lyta partially merged with the Furies. She became a part of the three who are one and were now four. They came to Dream to announce that they were going to destroy the Dreaming, ruin everything and everyone he knew, then kill him.

They started slowly, killing Dream’s most beloved subjects one by one as they made their way toward the heart of the Dreaming.

Even the Furies could not kill the Lord Shaper in his own kingdom. But they hoped that their campaign of terror would lead him to leave the Dreaming to spare what was left of his realm.

The death of Dream

Dream came for Lyta Hall in Los Angeles. His reluctant plan apparently was to kill Lyta to sever the link with the Kindly Ones. He was stopped by Thessaly, and left empty-handed. The Lord Shaper returned to his castle, which was now occupied by but a few survivors and the Kind Ladies.

Soon enough the Corinthian also returned to the Dreaming, bringing Daniel with him.

From the gestalt forms of the Furies, Lyta spotted her son in the Corinthian’s arms. This thoroughly confused her. She asked the other three that they save her son, but they refused her, for the Erinyes do not rescue but avenge. They then killed Dream when he left the Dreaming to honour a prior pact.

At that point Hippolyta woke up in a dreadful state, still under Thessaly’s watch. Thessaly told her that Lyta had been “a pawn… who briefly became a knight… or a queen. And you’ve just been taken off the board.”

On the run

The deadly witch then gave the derelict Hall a cup of tea, and time for a shower. She told Lyta to run far away as many people, including Thessaly (a former lover of Dream), wanted to kill her for what she had done.

Lyta emptied her bank account and fled under assumed names. She did not really know where and from whom, but was keenly aware that Thessaly had spoken the truth.

Her sanity had been mostly restored by her visions, but her morale was very poor. Hippolyta knew that Thessaly was also speaking the truth when she told her she had been used, and that Hall’s own actions ensured that she would never see her son again.

Lyta was one of the numerous dreamers who attended the wake of the Dream Lord, appearing extremely bitter and depressed. This presumably was her state in real life as well.

Mother to the new Dream

However, as the wake ended, the new incarnation of Dream summoned Lyta to him. She instantly recognised him as Daniel. But the new Dream told her that he was no longer her blood, his humanity having been burned away by Puck and Loki. He was but Dream of the Endless.

It was an exaggeration, though. Not all humanity had been burned away and the new Dream was still, to a small extent, Daniel Hall. Knowing his mother was on the run from implacable vengeance, he forgave her for what she had done whilst insane. Dream kissed her on her brow. He then told her his mark of protection was now on her, and that none would harm her.

Feeling much, much better, Lyta woke up smiling for the first time in years.

Though she seemed to be but a discarded — but no longer broken — pawn, Lyta would later confirm that she was actually a much more important chess piece.

Description

After the birth of Daniel, Lyta’s features look less WASP-blonde-cheerleader-like. She has large shadows under her eyes, a certain edge to her body language, and her features look sharper and more Mediterranean as she looses the last of her baby fat.

During this era Lyta’s hair go white, presumably from stress. But she dyes them back to blonde once her depression is alleviated.

Personality

After she came back from the “dream dimension”, Hippolyta was broken. She no longer was flamboyant, assertive and determined. Or a talented fighter, sportswoman, pilot and adventuress.

She was just a damaged woman in her late 20s, socially awkward and utterly obsessed by the safety of her child. She radiated an insane and depressive vibe. She still had the Fury temper, and would flare into physical aggressiveness with little provocation if the safety of her son was in question.

When Daniel is kidnapped, Lyta goes insane. Within minutes she becomes a derelict – babbling and hallucinating as she drifts barefoot in the streets of Los Angeles on a vision quest.

She regained much of her sanity as she woke in the room rented by Thessaly. But at that point she knew that she was hunted by forces she couldn’t understand, that she was until minutes ago insane and manipulated by something, and that she would never see her son again. All because of what she did whilst she was not in control of her actions.

Quotes

“YOU. GET. AWAY. FROM MY SON. OR YOU’LL — YOU’LL — YOU DON’T TOUCH MY SON — UNDERSTAND ME ?”

(Later) “I — I overreacted, didn’t I ?”

(With a vaguely psychotic expression) “I wouldn’t die, Carla. If anyone hurt Daniel, I’d kill them.”

“I don’t get out much.”

“They burned my son to death. They left him charred and burnt in the desert. I’m seeking Revenge.”

“I don’t know. I really don’t. I was such a together person. And I didn’t make decisions. I mean, I never did anything in my whole life that wasn’t someone else’s idea. […] It’s like, how many times can life hit you ? When do the blows start to hurt ? When do you just… stop ?”

Rose: “You know, I’m pregnant. Not hardly very pregnant at all, but I am.” […]
Lyta: “Kill it, Rose Walker. Kill it now. Kill it before it breaks your heart.”

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Sandman (DC Universe).