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[center][u][b]Homecoming II[/b][/u][/center]
[sub]Gotham City Outskirts, The Zatara Estate
3:35 AM[/sub]
[sub][sub][hr][/sub][/sub]
[INDENT][INDENT]
[Hider=+][I]La mia bella orchidea,

If you are reading this letter than I fear you are in grave danger and I have failed you.

Everything I have ever done is to [i]protect[/i] you. Every sacrifice I have made was always for your sake. The work that I did was always so that you did not have to experience the pain that I had growing up.

There has always been a darkness in this world. A leeching presence that hides just beyond the corner of the eye. You can feel it in mankind's oldest and most primordial fears: the dark, the monsters hiding under your bed, and the creeping feeling of being watched.

For over a millennium, since the time of Romulus and Remus, the Zatara family has stood against this terrible tide. We stand tall where others would run. We fight where others would hide. We do what must be done to keep the darkness back.

But now it seems my fight is over. The darkness has consumed me. I discovered a grave and terrible secret, a secret which angered powers not even I could withstand. And now I fear that these powers will set their sights on you. For these creatures, these things do not care for petty familial squabbles. They do not recognize your rejection of your legacy they see you as a threat.

My dearest daughter, I fear that your fight has just begun.[/i][/hider]

There was an aura of perpetual unease that clung to Zatanna. The peculiar type of feeling that arose in the head when one lays down to sleep in their childhood bed and feels like a stranger. The destructive and self-flagellant feeling of alienation distilled in the slightly-[i]off[/i] sensations of bedsheets against bare skin. A shift of positions here and the flipping of a pillow there, kicking the blanket off and then minutes later pulled it back up. Tiny rituals performed to find some level of ease and each failing one after another.

Giving up on this fitful parody of sleep Zantanna blindly grasped at the bed table for her phone. Squinting at the harsh glow she was immediately assaulted with a torrent of information: texts, emails, reminders, social media pings. The life of a celebrity no matter how minor or insignificant was one of constantly giving yourself to others. As her eyes became readjusted to the light, she opened her email app and began writing an email to her European tour manager.

Or at least she [i]attempted[/i] to write the email. Her mind kept on wandering, kept on drifting to the stack of journals and the half-read letter still in her father's study. It was exactly something he would do, even in death everything was always about his work. Every little thing, every gift, every bonding moment, every shared word, just another constructed plot woven together in an attempt to get Zatanna to take up a mantle she already rejected.

Yet there was something there. Words clinging with stubborn persistence to her subconscious - "You are in grave danger." Her father was many things paranoid, goal-driven to the point of obsession, and more stubborn than a mule. But if there was, one fault that he did not possess was over-exaggeration. Always running, always moving, always on to the next "big thing", not a word, was wasted on assumption. 

With a sigh, she placed her phone on the bedside table and began the arduous process of getting out of bed. Bare feet against cold hardwood sending a shiver up her spine. She looked about in silent contemplation around her old room like a refugee regarding the bombed out shell of her old home. Old books covered in layers and layers of dust like overgrown statues in some long forgotten garden.

Fumbling in the dark Zantanna reached towards an old Victorian candle holder that sat waiting on the bedside table. Another reminder of the strange other-worldliness of the house, influenced by her father's paranoia in the belief that magic and modern technology did not "dance well together." She sighed as she searched through a draw for a familiar misshapen metal tin of breath mints yet inside she only found broken match heads and discarded motes of phosphorus. Resigned Zantanna begin to mutter an incantation as she focused on the wick of the candle.

Peoples ideas of magic always had confused Zatanna from a young age. The media and literature she consumed presented a very peculiar type of the magic that seemed very alien to her. It found its foundation in the imag3 of bespectacled British children going to school to learn magic. To Santana these conceptions acts of profane blasphemy to make magic into a science something to be studied and tested, the act of trying to make something very much alive into something cold and dead.

Magic wasn't something found in the rigor of equations or the austerity or the boarding school education of a British socialite. Magic was a dialogue with the universe, asking and receiving, domination and submission, anticipation and release. The universe was perfectly willing to break its facade of rigid structure and foundation, all you had to do was know [i] how to ask[/i].

[i][b]"Eldanc thgit evig em thgis"[/b][/i] And just like that a thread snapped and reality flinched. And like some all-powerful God creating something from nothing there was heat and warmth and light.

Grasping the ornate silver handle in her hand she rose from her bed and entered the hall. Without thought, Zatanna took on a familiar creeping stance, her foot expertly avoiding sections of the hallway where creaking floorboards would protest to even the lightest of footsteps. The act itself reminiscent to a particular moment in time. A young girl sneaking through hallways that to her limited perspective seemed cavernous and labyrinthine in scope and scale during her midnight escapades in search of vampires, ghosts, and other fascinating secrets that seemed a 1000% more interesting than anything that her tutors could ever provide.

And just like those ghostly after-images, her path lead her back to the sturdy wooden door with the burned in G & Z. When she was younger it was something of the unattainable prize, the one door in that her magic words could never pull open the wards that her father placed too strong for even her to shatter. But that was a long time ago and that once stalwart barrier now lay slightly ajar, beckoning her forward.

The study was exactly how she had left it. Half-read letter and journals still prostrated upon the desk like offerings to some foreign idol. Zatanna tried to regard the rest of the room but a certain inescapable magnetism kept on drawing her eyes toward the journals and the note. Letting that magnetism pull her in closer Zatanna found herself soon standing over the desk. Fingertips grazing the darkened leather of one of the journals, their construction stout, simple, and utilitarian. The slightest hint of personality derived much like the door through only the simple G and Z etched into the cover. Fingers tracing the groove made by those etchings, lost in contemplation Zantanna almost didn't hear the sounds of footsteps behind her.


She raised the candle, pushing the creeping shadows of the room backward. There in the doorway half-hidden by the flickering candlelight was the unmistakable hulking frame of Tong. 

"Mister Tong?" Zatanna called out curiously, 

"The young...miss should be sleeping at this... hour," Mister Tong responded his dictation off-kilter as the very spacing between his words was distorted some smashing together too fast and others creeping together agonizingly slow. The Voice was still definitely his but it immediately put Zantanna on edge. 

"Mister Tong," Zatanna questioned nervously taking a step backward only to find the hard edge of the desk pressing against her backside "are you okay?" 

"[s]We[/s]... I am okay," Tong answered as he stepped into the study left foot dragging limply behind the right"it is late and I am worried about your safety young...miss. be-be-be-be-becau"

Cautiously, Zatanna swung out the hand holding the candle holder casting the shadows in the room backward and illuminating the creeping and stuttering figure of Mister Tong. "Mister To-... What the hell?!"

What Zantanna saw almost made her vomit. Covered in a thick coating of viscera and blood was what resembled what was once the large frame of Mister Tong. His skin was torn and split covered with lesions, scar tissue, and growing and shrinking tumors, the whole mass writhing and shifting like boiling water. And where Mister Tong's bald head and gentle smile once existed was instead a writhing mass of tentacles, sharp teeth and glowing orange eyes. 

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"BECAUSE YOU SHOULD BE CAREFUL OF MONSTERS!" The abomination yelled as it lurched one of its arms forward. Following from the movement was a crescendo of snapping bones and screaming flesh as its arm began to extend outward impossibly long. At the tip of the extension where the hand once began was no crushed together getting thinner and sharper as it morphed into a fine needlepoint. 

Zatanna barely had time to react managing to throw up one of her arms in time to prevent the needle from piercing her head. There was the sharp sting of pain as the flesh of her arm was ripped into. The long lance like appendage only stopping as it deflected off bone not possessing the momentum required to smash through. Zatanna screamed out in pain collapsing down onto one knee clutching her arm. The candle-holder falling from her hand and clattering to the ground, the flames beginning to lick at the nearby wood, smoke curling ever so slightly upward.

"WEAK, VULNERABLE FLESH" The creature laughed clearly enjoying the pain that it was causing. It retracted its arm backward flesh and bone coiling back like a great whip. Taking another step forward it snarled and released another strike.

Zatanna was still hunched over one knee, her other hand pressed as deep as she could manage into the gash on her arm, blooding pouring through the gaps between her fingers. The pain was all-consuming like a siren screeching in her head but there was also the adrenaline. Fight or flight response kicking into overdrive somehow managing to give her the clarity to notice what was happening, the long lance coming to run her through.

"Didn't they ever tell you?" Zatanna asked her voice shaky but managing to put on a smile nonetheless "Never show a girl the same trick twice!"

[sub][sub][h3][b]"Ezeerf!"[/b][/h3][/sub][/sub]

That one word dripping with anger, desperation, and fear was all that it took. The air around the arm rushing forward suddenly growing colder and colder. Long tendrils of ice began to form and take root across the distorted mimicry of flesh, despite the screaming protest of the monster. The entire arm was frozen within the blink of an eye. The needle frozen in its deadly flight only managing to have made it halfway across the room. 

Zatanna still clutching her injured arm stumbled to her feet. Her entire frame shaking with each deep breath. Eyes typically cast in the joyful tones of a clear summer sky were instead dark and crackling with energy, a tempest unleashed. 

[sub][sub][h3][b]"Rettahs"[/b][/h3][/sub][/sub]

A cacophony of noise followed as the arm cracked and splinter. The result was something close to a Pollock painting as ice and blood filled the air and the room. The abomination screamed as it stumbled backward clutching the bloody and torn stump where its arm once existed.

"INSOLENT FLESH!" The Monster screamed its voice full of rage and hatred at the young woman standing definitely across from it. 

Zatanna was not focused on the mass of teeth and tentacles shouting at her, but the fact that the arm was already beginning to grow back. The wound already having scabbed over and covered by a large undulating cancerous growth that was slowly beginning to extend outward. It wasn't angry that she had injured it significantly in some way, it was angry that she managed to harm it at all. 

"I'm the insolent one?!" Zatanna challenged her voice booming with anger. "You came into my house, took the form of one of my friends, and attacked me! You dare call me the insolent one?!"

[sub][sub][h3][b]"llup!"[/b][/h3][/sub][/sub]

There was the splitting of wood and metal as one of the large heavy bookcase bolted to the ground was ripped from its anchoring points. It stood to suspend in the air for a moment over the monster before it came down like a hammer smashing into the creature and sending it directly into the ground. Wood splintering and pages of old tomes and texts scattering in the air. It reminded Zantanna of a large beetle being crushed the crunching of bone and squish of flesh. Despite this thunderous impact, the creature was still moving its large frame attempting to push the bookcase off of it.

[sub][sub][h3][b]"llup!"[/b][/h3][/sub][/sub]

Another bookcase from the opposite came crashing atop the other. The creature screamed in pain but it still moved.

[sub][sub][h3][b]"llup!"[/b][/h3][/sub][/sub]

A third bookcase came down this one directly from above falling like an executioner's ax. Somewhere below the wood and the books, the creature still thrashed. The bookcases jostling and shifting slightly as it tried to unpin itself.

"Why won't you just die?" Zatanna muttered as she stepped forward. The exhaustion and blood loss finally starting to kick in. She wobbled on her feet but managed to keep a steady footing. Gasping for breath, she looked at the shifting heap of wood in front of her. And she furrowed her brow and whispered a single word beneath her breath.

[sub][sub][h3][b]"Nrub"[/b][/h3][/sub][/sub]

The small burning flame of the knocked over candle holder trying to burn through the thick wood of the floor was pulled upward. The flames coiled and coalesced like a large snake suspended in the air. The flames continued to grow as Zatanna felt the heat at her back increase. Seconds later it released like water from a firehose enveloping the collapsed heap of wood turning it into a funeral pyre. 

The creature still sounded like Tong as it screamed in pain. It began to thrash and push trying to get away from the hungry flames licking at its flesh. For a moment, Zantanna worried that it would be able to break free from its burning prison. Soon though the thrashing began to slow and finally ceased altogether. Even the screams began to die away being swallowed by the roar of the flames.

Zatanna didn't realize she was vomiting until it hit the floor. The shock that the adrenaline and the fear of death had managed to repress finally coming barreling over the levy. She stumbled away from the smell of burnt flesh and vomit going to the other side of the room back towards the desk. She sat down slowly unable to trust her shaking legs, she pressed her back against the desk using it as a guide to slowly ease her down.

She closed her eyes and exhaled long and slow. 

[sub][i]"Fuck."[/i][/sub][/INDENT][/INDENT]