The now scratched and dented hatchback groaned and clanged along the dirt road. Asphalt had turned to dirt hours ago, and it felt like the backwoods stretched on into infinity. The trees, sparse when they turned off of the beaten path, were now thick on each side of the car, and only seemed to be getting denser.
Zatanna was angrily prodding at google maps on her phone sitting in its holder in front of her. The damn thing had lost connection a while ago, and whenever it reconnected for a second it just seemed to place them off-grid somewhere in the Indian ocean. Finally she gave up, angrily clicking the lock button and gripping the steering wheel with both hands.
"I told you we should've stuck to analogue" Patrick said, slapping an open map with the back of his hand.
"I knew something was off when it took us off the highway! These things glitch all the time!""Yeah, yeah - well we've been going off your directions for an hour now and we're still not back on the highway!"Patrick looked down at the map again. His finger was stretching and tracing the path they were taking against the road markings.
"Take a left here, it'll be a straight shot out after that."Zatanna did as instructed, turning the wheel left and heading forward only to find themselves staring at a familiar crooked signpost reading
'Now entering Blakely Hollow! We hope you stay awhile!'. The two didn't dare to look at each other for fear of confirming their suspicions.
"Uh...Pat?""Yeah, Zee?""Is it just me or have we seen this sign before?""Oh, only about six or seven times."Zatanna stopped the car in front of the sign, both of them could clearly deny it no longer that something was definitely wrong here. The two got out of the car and surveyed the area. Heavy mist was seeping through the trees like cigarette smoke and the air felt almost electric, like tangible energy was crackling around them. Deep in her heart Zatanna could feel something paranormal, not that she felt equipped enough to tackle it.
"Something's up here, Eel. Do me a favour, stretch as far as you can in one direction.""Got it, chief." He stood, almost rooted to the ground and stretched an arm out to his left, snaking it through the trees as they grazed his finger tips but always heading directly forward. He stretched, and stretched until finally he found himself touching the other side of his head.
"Now, that's odd, I definitely don't feel any part of my arm in sunny Australia so I couldn't've stretched around the whole world!""Okay..." Zatanna muttered, wrapping her jacket tighter.
"Either you're pranking me, or we're driven straight into a Stephen King paperback."Patrick leaned against the hood, squinting into the trees.
"I dunno, Zee. I don't remember seeing this much creepy fog on the brochure for 'Cursed Forest National Park.'" He stretched an arm out, his hand elongating to brush a nearby branch. The second his fingers touched the bark, the branch shuddered and his arm snapped back like a pulled rubber band.
"Ow! That tree just bit me!"Zatanna crouched next to the branch as Pat rubbed his finger. None of this felt right, in fact had she been paying attention to begin with rather than fiddling about with
Spotify she probably would have felt like going through the backwoods at all wouldn't have felt right. She thought for a moment before speaking.
"I've got a hunch here, Eel..." She stood straight and pointed her hands towards the tree. "Laever lla snoisulli!"
In a matter of seconds a majority of the trees around them began to fade and morph into what felt like their polar opposite. Tall white towers with spikes prodding out like jagged thorns of metal, their roots twisting into blackened veins that pulsed faintly beneath the dirt. The mist burned away to reveal flashes of circuitry underneath the bark, the faint hum of machines hidden within nature itself. It wasn't a forest at all, at least not a natural one.
"Okay, so either I'm having a fever dream or Alchemax just invented evil trees.""You're not dreaming..."
The voice echoed through the mechanical forest. It was distorted, like a ghost speaking through a spirit box. The two turned over their shoulders, scanning through the trees to find its source. Suddenly the forest began to heal itself, the illusion repairing under the whir and clicking of the machines around them.
A low, hollow laugh carried through the fog, seemingly coming from all angles as if the trees themselves were laughing at them. Patrick's head turned a full 180 degrees before the rest of his body followed.
"Next time, let's take the scenic route."The shimmer of a shadow darted through the trees, what little light there was bending around a shape that wasn't quite there. Then it stepped forward, robes dragging across the dirt. The figure's skin was pale and drawn tight like parchment, his eyes glowing faintly red beneath the hood of a tattered robe. Runes pulsed along his sleeves, in rhythm with the low hum of the forest.
"Who the hell are you?" Zatanna asked, instinctively taking a step back at the sight of this freak.
The figure tilted his head, as if amused that she didn't already know. "Names are for mortals and their fleeting need to be remembered. But if it gives you comfort..." He lifted a hand, tracing a sigil in the air that burned with sickly purple light. "You may call me Faust." The corners of Faust's mouth twitched into a smile. With a wave of his hand the sigil disappeared and the forest warped around them. The trees twisted into hollow, laughing faces. The ground thumped like it had a heart beat. Their car crumpled in on itself as the trees shifted and grew around it.
"You've stepped through a veil that wasn't meant for you." he said. "This land is alive because I command it. Alchemax wished to understand the limits of the soul, and I-" He spread his arms out wide "Am the one who proved there are none."
Zatanna's eyes darted around the grove, every sense screaming that the world around them wasn't real.
"This is all an illusion..." She muttered.
"There's got to be a way to break his spell""How about hitting him?"Before she could answer, the ground split open and metallic vines lashed toward them. Patrick dove, stretching his body flat against the dirt like a sheet of paper as the vines whipped past his head. He sprang back up as quickly as he hit the ground.
"Guess that's a yes!"He launched forward, his body slingshotting through the clearing. He ricocheted off a tree, then another, moving so fast he looked like a red blur. He reached out a hand to launch himself off another tree and found it pierced with a long metallic spike, the momentum carrying his now limp body forward into another tree. Faust didn't even flinch. A flick of his wrist and suddenly there were a dozen of him, encircling the pair.
"Perfection deserves company."
"Oh great, a narcissist magician. Never seen that before."Zatanna clenched her fists, muttering quick, backwards syllables that sparked purple light at her fingertips. None of her spells were counteracting his magic.
"I don't know who you are, Faust, but whatever you're doing here-""-Is far beyond your understanding," he interrupted, his voice echoing from every direction at once. "But I am nothing if not a teacher. Let me educate you, daughter of Zatara."
Zatanna froze.
"How do you know my father?"Faust's grin deepened. "Oh, I knew him very well. Your father and I once shared a fascination for forbidden power."
He thrust his palm forward and the sigil in the air exploded into a shockwave of purple flame. Zatanna barely had time to throw up a hand.
"Dleihs em!"A shimmering barrier of mirrored light flickered into being, the blast hammering against it with enough force to send cracks spidering through the illusion. She stumbled back, her boots skidding in the dirt.
"Zee!" Patrick's body ballooned outward, stretching into a living shield. The fire washed harmlessly over him, for about a second, until the heat grew unbearable. He yelped, springing back and shaking his limbs.
"Ouch! Okay! So, turns out magic fire is worse than normal fire!"Dozens of Fausts stepped closer, forming a ring. Their robes trailed like smoke; their faces, identical and hollow-eyed, began to chant in low, droning Latin. Runes lit up in the ground, forming a vast circle around the pair.
Zatanna's heart pounded. She had to act fast, before he could finish his spell. There had to be something here that he was using to source his power. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to focus on her natural magical intuition. Finally she felt it, underneath the thumping beat of the man-made wires underneath their feet was a different kind of heartbeat. One far more natural and old. She could feel a leyline under their feet, an ancient source of magic that was bleeding power. If he was using it to sustain his illusion, then she needed to cut it off.
"Patrick!" she shouted.
"Keep him busy! Don't let any of them finish chanting!""Got it! Distract the evil choir boys. Easy work!"He hurled himself into the air like a rubber band released from tension, careening into the circle of Fausts. His arm elongated like a whip, cracking through two illusions, but they didn't pop like glass. They burst into smoke that immediately reformed into new figures.
"Oh, come on! That's cheating!"Zatanna dropped to her knees, pressing her palms to the dirt.
"Enilyel fo rewop, esrever!"The ground glowed, the purple magic sprouting from her fingers bleeding through the red. For a moment the forest flickered, the trees turning real again just before Faust slammed his staff into the ground. The world righted itself, and suddenly Zatanna was flung backwards as if struck by an invisible hand. She hit a tree and felt the breath knocked out of her lungs.
"You have your father's voice but none of his control." Faust mused. "He sought to protect the fabric of reality. You? You're just a little girl playing dress-up."
Patrick's arm snapped around Faust's throat from behind just as he began to chant another spell, stretching into a coil.
"Hey pal, news flash, she's a fast learner!"Faust's eyes flashed. The runes on his sleeves burned brighter and Patrick's limb solidified, hardening and petrifying into glass. His eyes went wide as the rest of his body began to solidify as the spell worked it's way up his body.
"Oh you gotta be kidding me-" He tried to stretch away quickly, but then suddenly his arm shattered, a million tiny glass pieces falling to the ground like snowflakes.
Zatanna forced herself up, blood running down her lip.
"Enough!" Her voice echoed louder than she'd intended, fueled by anger. She could feel the power of the leyline coursing through her, like it had powered her up. She raised both hands, her eyes glowing purple.
"Noisulli, kaerb!"The forest convulsed. The laughing faces on the trees screamed as light erupted through their bark. The air around Faust warped, peeling away layers of illusion like shedding skin. Suddenly he appeared much older, much more ragged and haggered. For the first time, he staggered. His duplicates blinked out one by one, leaving only the true figure.
"Impressive..." He hissed. "But the daughter can't undo the curse of the father."
"Would you shut up already?" Patrick shot back, his arm regrowing from where it had shattered. He launched forward again, this time wrapping his limbs around Faust like a vice. Zatanna, seizing the moment, pointed both palms at the ground beneath them.
"Nruter ot erutan!"Suddenly the power of the leylines began coursing through the forest, flooding into the vines and mechanical trees like a dam had broke. It overloaded them, bursting them through the dirt and toppling them over. Faust could only yell as his power was sapped from him piece by piece. With each source stripped he got older, year by year, decade by decade, until finally the illusion of the forest broke completely and all that was left on the forest floor was a pile of old bones.
Neither of them spoke right away. Zatanna was staring at the place where Faust had collapsed, her pulse still racing.
"The leyline must have been keeping him alive. Who knows how old he must have been really."Patrick snapped back to his normal form.
"Yeah, I really didn't expect him to go all Raiders of the Lost Ark at the end there.""He knew my father, Pat. And if he was telling the truth...we might've just stepped into something a lot bigger than either of us previously thought."Patrick tilted his head, then shrugged, dusting himself off.
"You didn't get that feeling with the cyber demons?""I didn't think my father might have been involved so heavily.""Ah well, I never even knew my father for all I know he could have been Faust himself. Patrick brushed the last of the glass dust from his shoulder.
"What now, Zee? Head back to civilization, find a bar, pretend that didn't just happen?"Zatanna stared off into the treeline where the illusion had collapsed, the hum of the leyline still faint in her ears.
"No. If Alchemax had Faust experimenting out here, then he wasn't the only one." She turned back toward the car, even more broken and battered than before, already fishing her phone from her pocket.
"There was a name I found from an old archive a few years ago. Someone from one of their bio-research divisions. A Dr. Holland."Patrick groaned, following after her.
"Please tell me this doctor doesn't live anywhere near another forest.""Unfortunately for both of us," she said, sliding into the driver's seat,
"this guy seems to prefer swamps."The hatchback creaked as it turned back onto the dirt road, headlights sweeping across the skeletal trees as it pulled off the dirt and back onto the highway.
2x Thank
