Hexaflexagon

What Are You Listening To?

Hex's Repository For Things Lost and Now Found.

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A L

W A R B I R D

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^{_{C A R O L D A N V E R S ♦ S U P E R H E R O ♦ W A S H I N G T O N D. C ♦ T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S
O F A M E R I C A}}

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:

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^{My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right. - Carl Schurz}

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The world of today is different from what it once was, new threats and dangers challenge the old order of things. The dawning of the new millennium has shown that the United States of America once defined by its stalwart impregnability can bleed. A bleeding that has only been worsened by the continued arrival of metahumans and other 'powered individuals'. This new existential threat to the country having been clearly shown in the recent tragedies in Star City and New York. The damage to both innocent lives and property endured in this devastating attack on the American people has confirmed earlier suspicions by the Department of Defense that America must have a readied response to these new types of potentially catastrophic threats. These fears would lead to the formation of the Department of Extranormal Affairs headed by King Faraday. It was then quickly decided that the Department would need a face for the common people to rally behind. With Wonder Woman's loyalty being questioned more and more each day, and Captain America swallowed into Nick Fury's shadow games, it was felt that America needed someone new to hold up the virtues of Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

Luckily for the USA they already had an ace up their sleeve.

Carol Susan Jane Danvers was born in Boston, Massachusetts to working-class parents, Joe and Marie, and had two brothers, Joe Jr. and Steve. Succeeding both academically and athletically in her younger years, Carol gained admittance to the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado, Springs, Colorado. As her time in the Academy ended, she was tapped to undergo further training to prepare her for operations underneath the banner of the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC). Predictably Carol would excel in her time in the special forces, she would earn high praise from her commanding officers, as well as numerous commendations including the Air Force Cross. It would be her continued gallant actions and her time and time again commitment to the cause that would lead her to being tapped for EXCELSIOR.

Project EXCELSIOR began soon after the end of the Second World War as an attempt to create an improved Super Soldier Serum. Due to budget restraints and bureaucratic red tape, EXCELSIOR would be canned, and the project would all but be forgotten until a decade ago. Everything changed when a Kree scout ship would crash in the New Mexico Desert; ironically enough it was the Corpse recovered in the crash that would breathe new life into EXCELSIOR. Gone now was the old plan of simply making a stronger Super Soldier Serum, instead using cutting edge genetic engineering technology they would splice together Kree and Human DNA to create the perfect mixture of both species’ strengths.

Carol was the 23rd EXCELSIOR test subject and thus given the designation of Subject - W. But where the others had failed, Carol's DNA took to the gene splicing exceptionally well. The two divergent helixes would merge together to create something entirely new. The DoD immediately saw the potentiality of Carol's powers and soon Carol would be shifted back under the oversee of United States Special Operations Command under a new codename - Warbird. Not wanting too much information to be leaked about their new weapon, SOCOM would use Carol sparingly and only in the direst of situations usually rescuing other operators that otherwise couldn't be saved.

But now Carol's time in the shadows was over. Transferred out from underneath SOCOM and under the jurisdiction of her new boss King Faraday. It was something that Carol welcomed with eager arms ready to take a more proactive role with the powers that she had been granted. And with the Department of Extranormal Affairs first press conference scheduled, it would only be a matter of time until the whole world knew Carol's name.

C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:

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^{“By stressing that the identity of a democratic political community hinges on the possibility of drawing a frontier between 'us' and 'them', Schmitt highlights the fact that democracy always entails relations of Inclusion & Exclusion.” - Chantal Mouffe - The Democratic Paradox}

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Without mincing words too much the story I currently have outlined is very politically charged, as at its heart it is fundamentally the story of the failure of the Western democratic model. A model built on the promise of ensuring the rights of all its citizens but having never really been able to do so. A model that has propped up and supported increasingly authoritarian systems of governance supported by its most fundamental framework of inclusion and exclusion. The plot, I currently have outlined attempts at least in part to explore not only these broader ideas but the underlying themes of fear, hate, displacement, and the "other". For a point of reference thematically it is much closer to a House of Cards style show than a West Wing style show.

Carol then, serves as the perfect character to use to explore these narratives. In many ways, she represents the strange juxtaposition of ideals and values that can form in distinctly non-homogeneous place such as the USA. On one hand, she matches even the Cap himself in her belief in the American experiment. On the other hand, she is everything that same exact experiment seems to despise: a woman, LGBTI+, and in the Absolute Verse she falls under the category of Extranormal. And so, there is an unmistakable tension there in her character, which will serve primarily as the central tension of the story going forward. A tension that will only increase as Carol rather than rejecting the establishment outright as some might do, instead chooses to take up the herculean task of trying to make real change from the inside.

Beyond flexing my creative muscles with a tale about the moral gray on gray of the modern nation state, Carol also provides with me an opportunity that Zatanna's story did not - collaboration. Carol's position as the "face " of the Department of Extranormal Affairs will hopefully allow me to be much more open and active with collaboration and just helping expand the wider world further.

All in all, this is a story I’ve been thinking about for some time now, and I’m excited to have the potential opportunity to share it with you all.

C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:

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^{"Order, is a kind of compulsion to repeat which, when a regulation has been laid down once and for all, decides when, where, and how a thing shall be done, so that in every similar circumstance one is spared hesitation and indecision." Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents}

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• Carol will be wearing her more modern Captain Marvel style suit, because aesthetically I feel it fits better with where she is coming from and what she is doing in this story.
• Putting my money where my mouth is, I will be listing a supporting cast below, but there inclusion here no way, shape or form means that I'm claiming complete ownership over them the only thing I ask is please consult me before you do anything life changing with characters marked with a Δ.

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▼ Department of Extranormal Affairs ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Δ King Faraday - - - ◼ General Samuel Lane - - - - ◼ Δ Jessica Drew - - - - - ◼ Jimmy Woo - - - - - ◼ Avril Kincaid	- - - - - - -

▼ Enemies of the State ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Δ Karla Sofen / Moonstone - - - ◼ Δ Robert Hunter / Nitro - - - ◼ Albrecht Krieger	--

S A M P L E P O S T:

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^{"By this I mean a number of phenomena that seem to me to be quite significant, namely, the set of mechanisms through which the basic biological features of the human species became the object of a political strategy, of a general strategy of power, or, in other words, how, starting from the 18th century, modern Western societies took on board the fundamental biological fact that human beings are a species. This is what I have called biopower." - Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population}

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Prologue

1401-1409 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Willard Hotel, Washington D.C | Four Hours Ago

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^{Blast Radius|Prologue}

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A buzz of activity hung in the air around 1401–1409 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, as a pack of journalists made their way into the Willard Hotel. All the big names were there: Times, Post, WHiH, Planet anyone that was anyone was sending somebody to the press conference held by the Department of Extranormal Affairs. The government's newest department was creating a significant amount of noise on the political circuit. The cynics amongst them were eagerly anticipating new blood to grease the gears, expecting similar controversies to that of Homeland Security, the last department created in response to an attack on American soil. Others were just curious to see what Extranormal Affairs purpose was going to be. The Extranormal Affairs Bill which give the department life followed very typical political mannerisms in that it said a lot while saying very little at all.

This air of anticipation was only intensified by the lack of information following the bill's passing. Little was made public about the hiring and staffing of this new department with only a few key roles being disclosed. The names that were released predominantly included former members of the military and intelligence communities. Among those drawing several raised brows being the inclusion of one General Samuel Lane, an old warhawk that made his name during the War in Iraq and being one of the main playmakers in the United States more proactive counterterrorism policy. With members such as Lane, it didn't take long for the conspiracies to begin to form about a militant wing of the government seizing power. This chatter only increased in volume when it was announced King Faraday, a relative nobody when it came to public politics, but someone with many ties with Langley and the broader Intelligence community, was tapped to serve as the department's inaugural secretary.

The shakers and movers in the Department of Extranormal Affairs seemed to be playing into this aura of mystique. Where the traditional way of communicating to the journalistic community may have been a courtesy phone call or email, the details surrounding the press conference came much more traditionally. The selected editors in chief finding a spotless white envelope on their desks closed with a wax seal carrying the department's crest. Only two dozen of these letters were sent out in total, the rest having to watch the live television broadcast like everyone else.

The lucky two dozen were ushered from the Willard's lobby to a second-floor conference room. The room was spartan in its layout, at the back a table with miniature bottled water, cups filled with precision cut spears of carrots and celery, and a small selection of patriotic themed baked goods. Beyond the table was the camera equipment being used for the press conference. A small film crew worked to get rigs set up, microphones ready, and gaff tape on the ground. They were following the directions of an arthouse documentary filmmaker who had made a minor wave at Cannes the year before for her documentary on Seoul's grassroots punk rock scene. Her presence another oddity replacing a veteran C-SPAN crew that would traditionally be taking on a conference like this. The journalists filtered pass the film crew and towards the front of the room where a few rows of chairs and a lectern was set up.

As the press moved to take their seats, Agent Woo counted heads with an analogue clicker as his partner checked passes. Dressed in a finely tailored black suit with matching tie and sunglasses, Woo played the role of government spook like he was born into it. Having served with the South LA County Violent Crimes Task Force for the better part of a decade, before spending time teaching at the Macau Security Forces Training College to get back in touch with his roots. He dropped the grade book and picked up the badge again when Faraday had finally cashed in an old favor. Woo would never tell his wife, but it felt good to be back in the field.

As the number on his clicker moved closer to the magic number he leaned into his arm to cough. As he leaned in closer, he whispered into a receiver that was clipped to the lapel of his suit jacket.

"This is Fisher to Kasparov, only a few stragglers left."

"Understood, be with you shortly Fisher." King Faraday replied.

He sat in an adjoining room as he tapped the ashes of his cigarette into the soil of a windowsill planter. Faraday wore the same navy-blue suit that he had been wearing for the past thirty years. The old intelligence operator was shameless to admit he did not own a suit in any other color. It came from some old kernel of wisdom he had picked up from his grandfather years ago - "King, my boy" he would say, "suits are like women. When you find one that fits stick with it." The hand spun Italian linen wasn't necessarily the kindest to his wallet, but it breathed easily and didn't restrict his movement.

King lounging there in his chair as he took another drag from his cigarette was the complete antithesis of Carol.

Carol Danvers stood in front of a mirror straightening out her medals for the fifteenth time as she practiced smiling. It was ridiculous really, she could storm an entrenched enemy position no problem, fly a million-dollar tin can with rockets strapped to it breaking the sound barrier, but she couldn't smile. Each attempt only managing to push her further and further into demented serial killer territory. And it wasn't like this was a new struggle that she was dealing with, her parents had an entire school yearbook that said otherwise. When she was little, her mother always told her to just think of something funny in her head, but how could you laugh at your own jokes?

As the blonde-haired woman gave out a defeated sigh, Faraday piped up from his chair.

"Loosen up Danvers, you look like somebody just shot your dog."

"Easy for you to say, you aren't the main event."

King stood up grinding the butt of his cigarette into the planter. He had the rigid locked-in perfect posture of a career military man; his 6'1" stature giving him roughly three solid inches over Carol. Despite being on the far side of fifty, King managed to fill out his suit quite nicely, he adhered to a strict physical fitness regimen to combat any ill effects that his advanced age and lifetime pack-a-day habit may have brought. As he walked over to the mirror were Carol stood, he licked two fingers and flattened out an unruly strand of white hair.

"Danvers, I spent years using media to influence foreign elections to suit our great country's many interests. And in that time, if I learned anything it's that the media loves a good story."

"So what? I love cake but I still know when I'm eating a shitty one."

"Well good thing we aren't feeding them cake then. And even if we were, any cake will taste good after being starved for weeks. We've been denying them any information for weeks and now they are just begging for any little morsel we may dish out. Trust me Danvers everyone in this country is going to know who you are by the end of the day."

Yeah as that girl who can't even smile right Carol thought to herself as she followed Faraday out of the room and into the hallway.

King straightened his tie before entering the conference room. He gave a small wave as the clicking of cameras filled the air like rain rolling off a roof. He walked towards the lectern at a controlled pace, giving the cameras all the time, they needed to track his movements. Despite being a spook for most of his life, Faraday navigated the crowd like he was a movie star. From his first step he made it clear that he was in command here and everyone else was just along for the ride.

As he got to the lectern, he made a show of pulling a piece of paper from his suit pocket. It was a piece of loose leaf, the edges off kilter in a way that suggested he had just torn it out of a notebook moment prior. It echoed another man called King, who finished his "I Have A Dream" speech in the Willard's lobby several decades prior. Of course, in King's case, the paper was blank, an artist hired to rip, wrinkle, and fold it in such a way that created the most aesthetically pleasing mimicry of frantic energy that money could buy. Another prop in the carefully planned show that was unfolding in front of a nation's eyes.

Clearing his throat Faraday began to address a waiting populace.

"Thank you, members of the press, for joining me here today, as well as all of you at home watching this live. Today is a monumental day in the history of our great nation, because today I get to introduce to you the future of American security & safety. Before we begin, I believe introductions are in order, my name is King Faraday and I will be serving as your newly appointed Secretary of Extranormal Affairs.

What is Extranormal Affairs you may be asking? All of you, I assume are painfully familiar with the attacks the befell New York and Star City. I will be frank with all of you, we were unprepared, and we paid the price. The Department of Extranormal Affairs was created to ensure that we are never unprepared again. By committing to developing our state of readiness and enabling proactive measures against potential threats we, will ensure that no Extranormal threat is able to devastate our people in such a way again.

But our mission isn’t just preventative, it is also about building bridges. The only way our new department's mission will ever come to pass is through the aid of those among us that possess abilities and understanding far beyond our own. As many of you undoubtedly know it was many of these exact kinds of individuals that at the end of the day were essential in stopping the attack on two of our greatest cities. And so, it is our intent to foster dialogue and communication between the everyday citizen and these remarkable individuals. For it is the belief of myself and the entire department that we will work better together.

To that end, I would like to introduce you to a very special individual. Many of the bravest members of our armed forces community know her personally and those that don’t, know someone that was saved by her. She is one of our own having graduated near the top of her class at Colorado Springs and afterwards serving with Air Force Special Operations Command with distinction for several years. And yet she is also unlike us with abilities that most of us could only ever dream of. In this way she has a foot firmly planted on each side of the divide, and if our mission goes according to plan, will help erase that divide from our vernacular completely. When she is on mission, we call her Warbird, but today I will introduce her to you under a different name. Without further delay, it is my pleasure to introduce you all to Ms. Carol Danvers.”

The woman of the hour closed her eyes and exhaled as she tried to expel the tingling sensation which was causing her lungs to seize up. Standing in the hallway by the same door that King had entered moments earlier, she half-listened to Faraday. She had heard the newly christened secretary give the speech at least seven times during their car trip to the hotel. The words were already solidified, but each variation he would change his dictation and inflection in subtle ways. The meticulous way in which he hung on each word reminding Carol of an old fling who worked at the Smithsonian telling her why the old renaissance masters marble sculptors were so impressive, it was because they were about subtraction. Painting she told her was about addition and so wayward mistakes were easier to fix, but sculptor was about subtracting and that was permanent. That’s how the white-haired man went over his speech, the subtle cutting away at particular pauses and moments of emphasis to give a new angle that would reshape the work.

The words all too familiar at this point, she waited absentmindedly for her cue. Most of her attention was drawn towards wrestling with the other thoughts that were racing through her head. The primary one was that she didn’t give her parents a courtesy call before the conference went down. None of her family knew about the whole “super powered government” agent deal, they just knew that she did work for the Government that she wasn’t able to talk about. The first that they would be hearing about any of it was going to be with the rest of the country. Carol could only imagine the angry string of text messages and voicemails that her mother was going to send her way. Her father would try to do damage control of course, but being an undercover superhero was a lot bigger than hiding a rescued stray cat in your bedroom for a month, and when Marie found out about Apollo, Frank had only managed to reduce her sentence to one long month of nothing but chores, homework and sleep. And now the Danvers’ matriarch babied old Apollo like he was her long-lost child or something.

Was it okay to feel nervous about your entire way of life changing? Since her last day at the Academy life had become at least partially defined by the bureaucratic masquerade. A system of security clearances, long established cover stories, and the type of lies that after a while just ended up becoming fact. A structure of organized hoops and dotted lines to at least create the facade that somewhere in the chain of command that someone knew what they were doing. After all, if the public even understood half of the uncertainty that went with protecting and securing the interests of the world’s biggest superpower, Danvers was sure they would wonder where all that money for drones and the NSA was going. But now in a way, Carol was being liberated from that structure, though if she was being honest, it felt less like being freed of something and more like being pushed out of the nest.

Though if that was the case, she only had herself to blame. She was given ample opportunity to turn the offer down and the DoD would have been more than happy to keep her for themselves. She couldn’t though, Danvers wouldn’t have necessarily described herself as religious despite growing up in a family of self-identifying Ulster Protestants, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that doing this was what she was put on the Earth to do. She believed tremendously in the Department of Extranormal Affairs intended message of collaboration and acceptance. A fundamental idea that at the end of the day you were always better trying to build a bridge than burn one. It was a simple choose to her really, it didn’t take more than a casual observation of any playground brawl at the local school, violence always ended up breeding more violence. Healing only was able to happen once you put the swords down. It was time for Carol to put those beliefs to test, to make them more than just moral philosophizing done in the dead of night to bring her own demons to rest. And that all started now.

“…it is my pleasure to introduce you all to Ms. Carol Danvers.”

There was a moment before Danvers had entered the room, while Faraday pivoted his torso and extended his arm to greet her that their gazes met. In that brief fraction of a moment as the perfect blue of the sky collided with the deep earthen gray all that needed to be said was. A playwright from England once said that all the world was a stage and now for just a few minutes that stage was going to belong to Carol. She nodded her head in affirmation, smacking a palm across her right shoulder to get the blood pumping again and then she stepped in from the hallway.

The blonde-haired woman had to fight the urge to block the flashes from the cameras. The rapid fire clicking that preceded each shot sending an involuntary shiver down Carol’s back as they sounded eerily like the punctuated staccato firing of a machine gun emplacement. There was no moment of reprieve as each barrage of flashes followed closely on the heels of the last volley. Somehow though, despite the efforts to seemingly blind her, Danvers was able to make it to the podium.

Standing there she felt like a specimen on display. Bright lights from either corner of the room brought in by the film crew were centered on the podium radiating heat like two miniaturized suns. As sweat began to build on her brow, Carol looked out onto the crowd but only found shadows looking back at her as the lights swallowed any significant detail from their facial features. The conditions were at least vaguely familiar to her, having been cast as the corn stalk in her preschool thanksgiving play, but they were still unwelcome. The world watched on in a stretched out and agonized silence, as Carol took a few seconds too long to get adjusted. The ease and command that her boss exerted moments earlier replaced with an awkward anticipation. Gripping the edges of the podium, she forced out a slow and shaky breath as she looked down at the podium, King’s artisanally disheveled paper still sitting where he placed it. As she exhaled, she looked back up at the journalists and too nervous to think about it, Carol produced the easiest smile in her entire life.

“Sorry,” She started out “it’s a little bright up here.”

Her words hung in the air for a moment as the blonde fought the urge to sprint out of the room. Thankfully, one of the journalist’s chuckled and a few others followed. Carol wasn’t sure if the journalist was laughing at her or with her, but in the moment, she didn’t care either way. The laugh dissipated the tension in the room, as Carol could feel the heavy knot in her chest start to loosen. Flickering her eyes quickly to her left, she caught Faraday stone-faced and standing to one side, but ever so slightly he nodded his head in approval and confirmation to continue. Having caught her own momentum and unwilling to let it go again, Carol practically jumped to the next comment.

“My name is Carol Danvers, but I guess you all know that already don’t you? I am a superhero and I will be working with the Department of Extranormal Affairs to bring back a sense of normality, to allow our great country to heal the wounds that have been unjustly placed upon it. And it is my hope, that along the way, I can inspire some of you to do the same…”

The script that a gaggle of speechwriters had worked hours on painstakingly crafting for her had gone straight out the windows. The words became muddle and key points lost in the haze of the moment unable to find purchase upon her tongue as she spoke. Despite going off the range the journalists seemed to respond well to her comments as she reinforced many of the same talking points that Faraday had hit on previously. Her primary focus being on a message of unity and community building rather than the disciplinary side of Extranormal Affair. Hopeful in tone and assertive in her convictions, through the course of her speech citizens of not only the nation, but the world watched as Carol slowly came into her own. And at the end she gave an even bigger smile than before as she looked out into the crowd.

“Any questions?”

A forest of hands sprouted from the seats as the eager journalists all began to try and get Carol’s attention. Peering into the crowd, she picked a hand jutting outward from somewhere in the middle. The lights still made it hard for Carol to get a look, the journalist’s face still covered in shadow. Though as she peered forward Danvers was able to pick up on two details: The first was the man’s long white hair pulled up into a tight ponytail; the other was the slightest glimpse of the man’s eyes. It was the eyes that made Carol freeze, she’d seen those eyes on only two kinds of people before: those that were about to kill themselves and those that were about to kill somebody else. The blonde could hear the smile on his voice as he spoke, his voice distinctly light and velvet smooth, like a cold glass of water on a hot summer’s day.

“Have you ever seen a man explode Ms. Danvers?”

Time slowed down to a crawl around Carol as her human/kree adrenaline gland kicked into overdrive as her “sixth sense” kicked in. She watched as the white-haired man’s skin began to crack and flake away as pulsating red energy poured through rapidly forming cracks and fissures. Her options were limited, if she broke the sound barrier she was at risk of permeant deafening the people with less than superhuman eardrums, the bomber had intentionally positioned himself in a location where she also couldn’t safely let off an energy blast without hurting the other journalist. The only real option she had was trying to absorb whatever energy that the man was about to release. And so, she moved.

In the blink of an eye, Danvers vaulted over the lectern and bolted forward like a bullet through the air. She outstretched her right hand and gritted her teeth as she flew directly at the “journalist”. The last she saw of his face was a haunting wild grin before it vanished consumed by the red energy. As the man combusted and the energy rocketed outwards Carol attempted to absorb it. Like smoke being pulled into a funnel the energy pulled towards her. She could feel it begin to course through her veins, but the energy was too much for her to handle, it felt like liquid metal coursing through her body and she couldn’t hold on. The explosion spilled back outwards filling the space as it went, and the last thing Carol saw before the darkness took her was an angry wall of red as she felt the heat and heard the screams.

The world, through the lenses of one of the still functioning television cameras, watched in horror as there was a bright flash followed by heavy smoke. And in the middle of that smoke there was a newly reformed figure who emerged from his cloud of death. The white-haired man’s hair was no longer in a ponytail and he was now wearing something closer to a skintight jumpsuit, but the manic grin still clung to his face as his eyes were bright with bloodlust. He stalked up to the camera slowly and with inhuman strength yanked it up and into his hands so that the whole world could see his face.

“The meek shall inherit the Earth no longer.”

And with that he threw the camera to the ground; as the picture faded into static, he to faded into the smoke.

_{Prologue End}

P O S T C A T A L O G:

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^{"The fact that man is capable of action means that the unexpected can be expected from him, that he is able to perform what is infinitely improbable. And this again is possible only because each man is unique, so that with each birth something uniquely new comes into the world" - Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition}

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N/A

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

Jailbreak In Fairyland IV

_{The Royal Palace, Guest Quarters, Faerie}

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Much to Zatanna's dismay Voodoo's definition of waiting involved the older man locked away in his bedroom with several books he borrowed from the castle library on Faerie legal procedure. The magician cramming harder than a student during finals week left Zatanna trying to find some way to occupy herself until dinner. Partially spurred on by her companion's sudden bibliophile streak and partially because she finally had a moment to rest, Zatanna conjured up her Father's journals from the small fold in reality that she had tucked them away into since leaving the estate and spread them out across her bed.

They numbered nearly two dozen collectively, picking the one closest to her up Zatanna weighed it experimentally in her hands. Immediately she was struck by two things: first was the weight which seemed uncharacteristically heavy for the journal's slender profile and the smoothness of its black leather covering on her fingertips and palms. The journals were something that he took very seriously as something that his father before him did as well. In that way Giovanni used to refer to the journals in conversation Zatanna with a kind of reverence that one usually reserved for the divine. The elder Zatara going as far as getting the leather from the same farmers near Naples that his ancestors did. Yet where those journals of old served primarily as monetary ledgers, Giovanni's journals held much more esoteric knowledge.

Cracking open the journal held in her hands and experimentally flipped to the last page. The only thing deceriable to a normal observer was the date which places the entry about a month before Giovanni's death. Beyond that though, the page was filled with a strange array of markings and shapes that took up the majority of the page. A look of bemusement slowly transformed to a small smile of recognition as she quickly ran into the studying gathering up a pen and some paper.

Dealing with magical powers that had the capacity to unravel reality's fragile threads on a daily basis Giovanni never recorded anything using traditional methods. The effects of some malicious party getting a hold of his spell book would of been too catastrophic. Instead, the magician wrote everything through a complicated series of ciphers of his own design, the man spending a year teaching himself the ins and outs of traditional cryptography techniques just to ensure that it was up to snuff. And just to be sure, the cipher's key was not written down it had to be painstakingly memorized, a process which father forced upon daughter. At the time, Zatanna hated the lessons and the pneumatic devices she had to remember to get a grasp on the sequence, but now all that hard work was coming to fruition. With the speed of someone drafting a message in their native tongue, Zatanna quickly began to decode the entry

As the entry neared its completion it became apparent that it wasn't an entry at all, it was an incantation weaved into the very ink that lined the page. A last layer of defense entrusting that only Giovanni or his progeny were able to activate the enchantment with their magic-infused words. Upon its completion, Zatanna began to recite the command phrase backwards and as she did the scribbles in the journal began to glow with a purplish hue. Zatanna reached out to touch the now glowing page and as she did purple filled her vision and the smell of roasted beans hit her nose.

"More espresso sir?"

Mister Tong stood next to her hoisting a silver platter upward with a medium sized clear decanter filled with black liquid. They were back in her father's study and she was sitting at his desk the journal from previously placed atop of it. Reflexively, Zatanna attempted to move away from the large butler and cast a spell in defense before he could transform and attack. But Zatanna found that she was unable to move and when she did speak it was a voice that while deeply familiar was not her own. It's gruff texture of years of cigar smoking smoothed over by whiskey, deep and rich.

"No grazie Tong, I should really be getting to sleep soon."

"Yes sir, of course sir"

"Oh and Tong?" Giovanni asked as the butler slowly inched backwards out of the room.

"Yes sir?"

"Did Zatanna ever respond about dinner tomorrow?"

"Unfortunately, I have not heard from her sir."

Zatanna felt a sad and heavy sigh escape from her chest.

"That's alright! We will just have to try for next Sunday."

"Of course sir."

As Tong exited the room and the door clicked behind him, Giovanni rested his hands upon the desk as he looked over the journal. They seemed older and more frail than Zatanna remembered. The skin was pulled tight around the bones permanently displaying his veins as they ran up into his arms. He had let his fingernails go slightly overgrown as what looked like dirt was slowly began to build up along the edge. He pulled them together bunching them up closely as he began to speak to himself. As the words left his mouth the coded seal began to take shape on the page.

"I had the same dream again. Gotham, a city of corpses and that infernal abomination at its center. This can't be a coincidence, someone or something must be trying to communicate with me. To what end I do not know but it is becoming painstakingly clear that I must find out before this horrid prophecy comes to pass, for all our sakes.

I must consult others in this matter. My knowledge has been stretched thin and no books in my library speak of any such creature. Tomorrow, I will travel to New York and speak with Strange hopefully the Sorcerer Supreme will be able to put me on the right track...."

And with another burst of purple Zatanna was once again sitting cross legged on the bed, the purple glow now faded from the text in front of her. She picked up her discarded pen and placed the butt in her mouth and chewed on it softly, a distraught maths tutor and one long session with a tongue depressor later having taught her not to apply too much pressure. Chewing away on the pen, Zatanna tried her best to process the new information she gained, let alone the fact that her father had constructed mini-windows into his past that she could just peer into like a tank in an aquarium.

After a few restless minutes of chewing it became clear to Zatanna that she wasn't getting anywhere with the new information. Frustrated, she tossed her pen across the room letting it clatter against the far. Soom the young magician got it into her head that it was the environment that was the problem. The dark gray stone of the walls, the significant lack of a singular window, and the old wooden bed frame made Zatanna feel like she was some rebellious nobles daughter shuttered away in a nunnery to avoid any scandals, and it was making her restless. The increasing tension only furthered an urge in Zatanna to find a shower.

It was a silly thing really, the showering. The shower was one of the only places where she was able to have any privacy as a child, her only impregnable bastion from house staff and tutors. And so a routine slowly began to establish itself, needed to cry? It was time for a shower. Needed to yell? Time for a shower. Needed to think? Time for a shower. The rushing water served as the walls of her constructed hideaway where all her other problems could melt away. Of course such mechanisms had their drawback, particularly after one rough month including a rough breakup, a friend then immediately afterwards sleeping with her ex and a chemistry exam that left her scrambling to explain to her father why the water bill was so high.

The memory of her father's bemused expression managed to crack a small smile across her face, a smile that quickly faded as she looked at the journals spread out around her. All he'd ever cared about was making sure that she was ready to take up the fight when he was gone. The talk he had with her after the shower incident was exclusively about how a Zatara couldn't run away or hide in a shower, they had to stand and fight or the world could fall into darkness. And now, there she was scouring through his journals and chasing after his ghosts, he had gotten exactly he'd wanted. And yet since he died, all she could think about were the good times. Those rare moments when she actually felt like she had a father and not a strict magic tutor that only checked in on her every other week.

Feeling worse off than she started, Zatanna stowed the journals back into their fold in reality and exited the bedroom. She didn't know how long she had been in there minutes maybe, hours? The confusion only further worsened by the lack of any sort of timekeeping device and looking outside wasn't any help either revealing only a sea of perpetual twilight above as below crawling forward endlessly. Whatever time it was, she had to assume that she had enough time to find some sort of bathroom before dinner. Before she ventured outside though she walked over to the still closed door of Voodoo's chamber, experimentally she pulled at the hand which gave way as the door swung upon.

Voodoo sat cross legged on the floor a series of books each as thick as Zatanna's skull sprawled out around him in a semicircle. In his own lap was his own big black book where he was taking down notes with a pen. As he was writing, Zatanna couldn't help but notice the fact that he was having a conversation with himself. Commenting here or there about a particular line to back up a claim or refute an unspoken argument.

"Well obviously I've already thought of that! Who do you take me for exactly? You know I was always the smarter one."

Zatanna knocked on the door.

"Huh?" Voodoo looked up startled but the tension released from his shoulders when he saw it was only Zatanna

"I'm I interrupting something?" Zatanna asked cocking a brow as she did.

"No, no, of course not!" Voodoo explained with a smile.

"You sure? Because you sure were having an illuminating conversation with your self" Zatanna stated as she peered around the room double checking behind the door to make sure nobody was there.

"You should try it sometime," Voodoo admitted with a shrug "you'll be surprised how insightful it can be."

"Maybe I will," Zatanna coincided with a shrug "anyway I just wanted to tell you that I was going to go find a bathroom of some kind. I need to get clean and presentation before dinner."

There was something strange going on and Zatanna knew it, but was wise enough not to prod into it at the moment. It was on the same grounds of perhaps being a better conversation for later did she justify not telling Vodoo about what she learned from her father's journals. The older man was obviously busy with his research and she could delve deeper into the dreams on her own. Instead tactfully shifted the conversation towards her intended topic of discussion.

"Alright," Voodoo replied, there was a reluctance in his voice but he agreed anyway perhaps reminded of their spat from earlier "just try and not get into any trouble"

"No promises!"

"And close the door! The draft is dreadful!" He added exasperated as she turned to leave.

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

Jailbreak In Fairyland III

_{The Royal Palace, Faerie}

---

“Anton... you died,” Voodoo responded his voice giving away no emotion. Yet standing next to him, Zatanna couldn't help but notice the just too-tight way in which he was gripping his staff, his hand slightly trembling from the effort.

Arcane laughed

“Oh Jericho, you should know better than anyone else that death is nothing more than a mere inconvenience with the right preparation.” Disregarding Voodoo, Arcane turned his attention towards Zatanna“I give you my sincerest condolences, while Giovanni and I did not see eye to eye on every matter, he was still one of the greatest minds of our generation and a respected colleague.”

Zatanna unable to take her gaze off of Anton’s ember eyes took a step forward.

“You... You knew my dad?”

“We were both pariahs in our own way. We both saw the guidelines, rules, and restrictions championed by the likes of Voodoo as inhibitive to progress. Though I am sure that Jericho has forgotten to mention that.”

Voodoo took a step forward and extended his arm effectively putting himself between Zatanna and Anton, "The girl is none of your concern Arcane."

"This girl can make her own choices thank you very much." Zatannaresponded as she pushed Voodoo's arm away.

"Tsk, Tsk dissension in the ranks already Jericho?" Anton prodded with a smile, "If Zatanna wants to abandon an old wash-up like yourself in search of greener that's her right."

"That's not what I meant!" Zatanna protested.

Before either party could continue all the sound was sucked out of the room. Words were ripped straight from tongues, gravitating towards a singular point. And then all that sound exploded outwards as Queen Titania spoke a singular command.

"Enough!"

Zatanna had to fight an inexplicable urge to bow as the command washed over her. Despite Titania barely whispering her voice rang out like a bullet shooting from a barrel. Rising slightly from her throne Titania towered above them her judgmental gaze washing over them. Her wave-like dress shifted and churned like the sea in the middle of a storm as her red hair began to rise upward on its own volition. Both Voodoo and Anton somehow managed to drag their attention away from their bickering and towards the Queen. A murmur of unease ran through the assembled nobles as their gaudy finery seemed to shrink and grow dim at the outburst.

“This is a royal court,” Titania stressed, “not a public house to air petty squabbles.”

“Your Highness,” Anton started “it was clearly the fault of these new interlopers.”

“Silence Anton. I’m more than capable of making my own observations.”

Zatanna couldn't help but chuckle softly as Anton visibly flinched at the comment. Laughter which soon got caught in her throat as Titania’s gaze fell upon them. She felt a blush beginning to build feeling like a child that was just caught by their teacher. Yet Zatanna could've sworn that there was a knowing and mischievous look to the Queen’s eyes. This moment of distinct humanity threw Zatanna off guard as it was the last thing that the young magician expected from such a divine presence. The confusion visible on Zatanna’s face seemed to only further spark Titania as a small smile worked its way onto her face as her hair and dress began to fall back to more neutral states.

“Jericho Drumm,” Titania began “You are always a welcome guest here, I would not be sitting on this throne if not for your assistance. Though I must admit that I’m most curious about what brings you here?”

As Titania addressed him Voodoo bowed respectfully. Zatanna noting the ease at which Voodoo was able to change emotional states. Whatever shock from Anton’s surprise appearance was quickly replaced with a strict level of observed decorum.

“I seek the release of the Kingkiller into my custody”

The explosion of noise that followed made Zatanna jump. The nobles gathered behind them expressing their discontent in an unorganized rabble. Voodoo seemed unaffected by the shouts as his gaze was instead focused on Titania. The Queen for her part seemed just as adept as Voodoo on maintaining an iron-faced visage. She let the anger wash over the court the noise only increasing in volume as the anger began to feed off of itself in a feedback loop. Eventually, after the nobles had worn themselves out Titania rose a hand guiding the chamber back into silence.

“You ask for much Jericho,” Titania commented, “the release of one of Faerie’s most hated criminals is no small favor.”

“You know I would not ask for such a boon if it was not under the direst of circumstances.”

Titania rested a hand against the underhand of her chin as she considered her options. Her gaze swept across the room before settling on Zantanna.
“And what of you Young Zatara? Do you vouch for your allies claim?”

“I don’t think my opinion really matters here your highness...” Zatanna insisted

“Nonsense!” Titania protested “As Jericho’s traveling companion you more than anyone else are most suited to speak of his character.”

“I haven’t really known him for that long though.“

“Darling, when a queen asks a question it’s best that you answer .” Titania reminded the young magician her gentle voice laced with steel.

“He.... no, we have just caused. We are dealing with a flesh elemental and require the Kingkiller’s expertise” Zatanna asserted

“A flesh elemental?” Titania responded leaning forward in her throne “You speak of dark and ancient magic. I thought the last of them were killed in the War.”

“My father told me never to assume anything.”

Titania chuckled at Zatanna's comment. For a figure as imposing as Titania, her laughter was light. It had a transportive quality to it, taking Zatanna back to late summer evenings and playful sea breezes whose dancing created choirs of tumbling windchimes.

“Giovanni was a wise man,” Titania commented with a small smile

“So you’ll help us?”

“It’s a shame that he didn’t also teach you the value of patience.” Titania teased and Zatanna shrunk as soft laughter ran through the court. Zatanna let out a sigh of relief as the queen raised her hand out of mercy not linking the ostracization linger on the air as she did for Voodoo.

“This request that you ask of me... it is something I must first consider. In the meantime, the two of you may stay here as my guests.”

As the court was dismissed, Zatanna and Voodoo were escorted out of the throne room by a cadre of winged royal guards. And as they left Zatanna couldn't help but notice the ember-eyed stare of Anton Strange. Standing in the middle of the room, the exiting crowd parted around him like a river bending around a large stone. Despite there being no detectable malicious intent in the older magic user's gaze, Zatanna could not manage to shake her unease. The gaze reminding her of her earlier nightmare of a Gotham consumed by corpses and rot. Fighting every instinct that was telling her not to look away from the danger Zatanna turned back around letting out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding only once they were around the corner and out of Anton’s gaze.

Their royal escort lead them through the palace towards the guest wing. As they walked, Zatanna was struck by how empty it seemed. Long hallways lined with miraculous stained glass windows and tremendous portraits of what Zatanna could only assume were former rulers, wide enough to carry five-man shoulder to shoulder across its width lay dormant. On a rare occasion, they would see a servant who would quickly disappear into one of the adjoining doors without a word. The empty halls reminding her of her old estate, but where those hallways give off a distinctive sense of presence as if the occupants had just left only moments previously, the halls of the castle felt barren as if nothing had ever been there in the first place.

Eventually, they were lead to a guest suite in the eastern wing. It was a small space made up of two bedrooms connected by a central study/dining area. Voodoo slumped down in a chair at the table, nestling his face in his hands as he made small circles around his temples. Deciding it to be wise to give him space, Zatanna circled the perimeter of the room her attention focused on the bookshelves that lined the room’s walls that were covered with a vast array of strange trinkets and other baubles.

The young magician picked up a metallic skull from one of the shelves. It was a small thing that fit comfortably in the palm of her hands. A series of strange letters in a language that Zatanna didn’t understand were etched into the surface. Examining it in the light revealed that it was actually one solid piece of metal that had been painstakingly shaped and molded into its current form. Through the reflected metal Zatanna could see the slumped over figure of Voodoo. Tentatively she began to speak in an effort to cheer him up.

“You never mentioned that you knew a Queen.”

Voodoo looked up from his hands smiling slightly

“I knew her before she was a ruler.”

“She said that you helped her get the throne?” Zatanna offered curiously, “That seems against your earlier policy of preserving the balance .”

Voodoo shook his head, “Preservation does not always equate to inaction. Titania and her former lover Mab, the matriarch of the Court of Dawn fell into conflict over which court would assume control of Faerie. It was in the best interest of the Mundane if Titania one that battle and so we acted.”

“So she owes you one,” Zatanna replied confidently, “that means she has to help us out!”

Voodoo sighed, “It is not the Queen that worries me.”
“It’s Arcane isn’t it?”

“...Yes”

“Who the heck is he anyway? Gives me like total creeper vibes.”

To Zatanna's relief Voodoo actually managed chuckled at her comment as he conjured up his big black tome. Without even looking he flipped the book open to a page and gestured for Zatanna to take a look. Placing the skull back on the shelf, Zatanna walked over to the table. An old photographer was nestled into the pages of the book, the corner of the picture crinkled and bent with age. The picture was of three men standing somewhere in the mountains, they were worn and beaten but standing proud and tall with smiles on their faces, behind them the corpse of a tremendously large dragon. Zatanna instantly recognized the man in the middle as her father dressed as fanciful as ever in his vest, dress shirt, and black pants even in the mountains. To the left of him was another familiar face, there were fewer wrinkles upon his face and his long and unruly dreadlocks peppered with white were replaced a short afro of thick curls, captured in that moment of celebration Voodoo looked the happiest Zatanna had ever seen him. In the far right of the frame Anton Arcane even in his youth possessed the same sulking figure that he had in the throne room. He was tilted slightly away from the camera, a smile on his face, but he was looking at something in the distance.

“There was a time when the trio of Drumm, Arcane, and Zatara rocked the magical world. Our antics and our success propelled us into minor celebrity status. We were young and foolish thinking ourselves to be invincible. But it was never meant to last.”

“What happened?” Zatanna asked running a finger against the bent edges of the picture trying to flatten them out.

“Richard Redditch happened.”

“I’ve never heard of him.”

“The press called him the Artist. He was a serial killer known for collecting an ear from his victims. One day while we were out on a mission, Redditch broke into Anton’s house and murdered his wife.”

“That’s... terrible.”

“Indeed, soon enough Anton was able to track Redditch down back to his apartment. Nobody knows what events transpired but in the end, Redditch’s wife was dead and so was the Artist himself having choked to death on his removed ears. Neither I nor your father heard anything from him after that for a while. He disappeared completely from both the regular and magical communities.”
“But he came back?”

“Yes, he resurfaced in Louisiana several years later. As it turned out in the interim, Anton had become obsessed with asserting his control over death. Such a search required plenty of human subjects so soon homeless, criminals, runaways, and other unfortunate souls in the bayou were getting abducted to be used as test subjects in his devilish experiments. Your father and I teamed up with a powerful swamp creature that called the bayou home and we were able to put a stop to his madness. Last we saw of Arcane was him being consumed by the fire that was running rampant through his laboratory as he tried to preserve his research.”

“And now he’s back.” Finished Zatanna

“And now he’s back.” Voodoo agreed

“What do you think he wants?”

“Nothing good.”

“So what do we do?”

“For now we do the only thing we can do. We wait.”

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

Jailbreak In Fairyland II

_{Somewhere In Faerie}

---

In Zatanna’s dreams, Gotham isn’t dying, it’s already dead. The city had become a Venice of corpses, as seas of bodies fill the spaces where asphalt and street corners once stood. Above these pathways sprouting amongst the skyscrapers were blooming cancerous growths creating a canopy of blood as veins of raw flesh raced across the open sky connecting them together. Crawling atop these veins and picking through the corpses that swallowed up the ground were strange abominations of decay similar to the flesh elemental that had attacked her in her home. They squabble amongst themselves snarling and slashing outward at one another fighting over treasures like a particular well intact femur bone. But beyond these strange mockeries of flesh, there were no other signs of life as even the scavengers and carrion eaters, the corvids and the cockroaches couldn’t escape their fate.

What was once Robinson Park served as the tabernacle to this temple of decay. In mockery to the green and beauty that once stood there was a great mass of flesh and tentacles. The mass ever so often pulsated like a beating heart as blood dripped from its folds. It was similar to the much smaller car-sized growths that were emerging from the skyscrapers as if they were merely extensions of this much larger abomination. The blood-stained veins emerging from their flesh all leading back and sinking themselves amongst the flesh. A sea of eyes swam across its body each individual pupil, bright orange in color almost like the embers of a flame, each larger than a house.

Forced to reckon with this creature Zatanna immediately felt very insignificant. This feeling reminded her of reading a book about tsunami survivors in Indonesia. In each of their stories, there was a common linking thread, a feeling that could only be described as a powerful mixture of awe and fear as the ocean pulled away only to come back as a singular towering wall of water. The great mysterium tremendum to be forced to reckon with something so beyond yourself, so immensely more than you could ever be that it might as well be divine in nature. But where those tsunami survivors had to contemplate their insignificance in the face power of mother nature, staring into one of those ember eyes Zatanna could only witness life’s meaningless struggle against the inevitable that was rot and decay. And as she stared into the eye, a voice louder than creation itself filled her mind with a singular word.

C̸̭͈̎ͅo̶͍͗̓n̵̠͑͊̕s̶̨̩̍͌ͅȗ̴͖m̴̝̊́ẻ̵̬

Zatanna shouted as she opened her eyes shot open. Her breath came in quick short bursts, heart thundering in her chest as she looked around the train cabin. Thankfully most of the other occupants had moved on or otherwise were preoccupied with their own business to notice her outburst. Atop the mahogany table of her booth was simple white teacup etched with blue flowers atop of a matching saucer, the sharp smell of citrus drifting upwards from the mostly filled cup. Across the way from the cup sitting in the booth’s opposite bench was Doctor Voodoo, peering over at her quizzically from beyond the edge of his book. Zatanna felt her embarrassment override her fear as her face flushed, trying to act cool she reached for her tea. Yet her shaking hands betrayed her as the hot liquid spilled across the table.

“Dammit!” She cursed before pointing at the spilled liquid and commanding softly “yrd”

As the liquid was magically pulled away from the table, Voodoo put his book down on his lap and cleared his throat before speaking.

“Are you okay timoun?”

Zatanna exhaled for a long time as she placed the now empty teacup back on the table. She looked down at the table running her finger along the grain of the now dried wood. “Yeah, I just had a bad dream that’s all.”

Voodoo cocked a brow “There is significance in dreams. If you ever want to talk about it...”

“It was nothing, it’s just been a crazy couple of days” Zatanna replied shaking her head. “Are we there yet?”

Thankfully Voodoo had enough social graces to take her prompt to change the subject and gestured towards the window.

“Take a look for yourself.”

Zatanna couldn’t help but gasp as she leaned closer into the window.

The train rolled across a landscape that defied explanation. Primeval forests stretched across the horizon their towering trunks stretching into the sky as their leaves were caught in brilliant shades of red and orange so much that from a distance it looked like the entire canopy was consumed in an almighty wildfire. On the horizon beyond the forest's rose jagged mountain peaks that looked like they were constructed from half-gnarled bone. Great churning rivers that sparkled like a diamond catching the sun ran down from their ashen peaks, cutting great paths through the forest as they ran towards an ink-black sea. Bunched together like islands upon the sea of black were the towering masts of ships from nearly every age in history, lost in great storms and having been swept away to foreign shores.

And as the train rolled across this landscape suspended on an adequate like track above the ground, the primeval forest gave way to signs of civilization. Writhing trunks gave way to strictly organized developments of farmland. The crops that grew upon these organized sections of land were unlike anything Zatanna had ever seen before. They rejected any formal understanding of color, shape, or size, one batch that caught Zatanna’s eyes being an orchid of trees that opposed to growing fruits upon their branches instead grew severed arms. These groupings of strange and disturbing vegetation were planted around sprawling Edwardian era estates that Zatanna could estimate were each roughly the size of a Gotham city block in length. Some looked freshly painted and new as if they had been built yesterday, while others looked long abandoned and overrun as foliage and veins broke through shattered glass and crumbling walls.

And finally, even the farmland was replaced with a different concrete kind of jungle. The country environment giving way to an urban sprawl thick with artificially bent metal. The cityscapes were in some ways even more breathtaking than nature’s vistas. As huge sprawling towers made of shimmering glass rose skyward. Compared to the order and structure present in the farm plots, the planning for the cities seemed like a haphazard afterthought, but still somehow managed to find its order in the chaos. Buildings twisted and embraced one another, weaving in and out like one knotted mas. Streets varied from straight lines to at some points rising directly upward at perfect ninety-degree angles with no means of getting up them. All the while amongst these wandering streets, these dense and chaotic urban spaces never seemed to lose their connection to nature as next to the rising towers of glass were equal tall trees that seemed to serve the same purpose and large overrun parks and gardens dominated any open space.

Zatanna didn’t know what to expect from Faerie. The children’s tales and old legends described a world of idealized wonder. In a way they were right, the world outside her window could indeed be described as wondrous for the sheer strangeness of it all. The bizarre mismatched cohesion of colors, shapes, and architecture, unlike anything you would ever see in the Mundane. There was no unity of style or presentation as towering castles stood next to simple huts. And to make matters worse even as Zatanna watched entire sections of the city began to reconfigured themselves. Some of the buildings crumbled to the ground to be replaced with entirely different structures within the blink of an eye, while others just grew or shrank in size or even just a simple change in the style of the front door. The whole effect preventing Zatanna from ever really getting comfortable with the cityscape in front of her.

Eventually, the train pulled to a stop. Other passengers began to rise from their seats and prepare to depart. Pulling away from the window, Zatanna looked over at Voodoo who had at this point deconjured his book and began to rise from his seat. The bizarre landscape only made Zatanna more eager to go out and explore. It was one of the reasons she didn’t mind going on tour as much as other performers - the overwhelming desire to get lost in a place that was unfamiliar to her.

“Word of warning,” Started Voodoo as Zatanna rose to her feet “the Fae do not follow our conventional sense of morality. They are like children with a magnifying glass and we are the anthill, they act on impulse alone.”

“That’s lovely, I always hated children.”

They exited the train onto a wide platform. The surrounding building was a large dome-like structure, brilliant mosaics cast across the inside like the interior of some old Byzantine church. Everything was cast in a pallet that to Zatanna’s eyes seemed to be exclusively cast in shades of bronze and gold. Statues of colossal winged knights lined the dome’s perimeter their arms raised upward as if they were holding the weight of the dome above them. Passengers moved up and down the platform, some towards one of the many exits that lead out of the dome, others aiming to catch the train on its return trip. The platform was one of at least a dozen all performing the same ritual of embarkment and disembarkment.

Approaching them on the platform was a strange figure. He was dressed in what Zatanna could only imagine a knightly squire may have looked like. A loose white long-sleeved shirt tucked into a pair of brown sackcloth pants that half-covered a pair of bare feet dusted with hair. As the stranger approached a half-grin hanged easily on his face. He appeared young barely more than a boy with his auburn hair burst up from his head like wildfire. And yet even as his gray eyes sparkled, the carried a weight to them that rivaled Voodoo.

“Mister Drumm and Miss Zatara, I presume?” The stranger asked stopping in front of them.

“What you know who we are?” questioned Zatanna

The Stranger chuckled, “Of course we do! You are our honored guests after all.”

“Honored... guests?”

“Why yes! It isn’t often that two powerful magic users from the Mundane come to visit us.”

“Well then guide,” Voodoo his voice tired and laced with impatience “do you mind leading us to the Palace? We have important business to discuss with your Queen.”

“Right away sir!” The guide replied with a small bow before turning around and heading in the opposite direction.

The guide led them out of the dome and into the city proper. If the city was breathtaking from the window of the train, it was even more so being inside of it. Life seemed to almost overflow in the nooks and crannies between the towers of sculpted metal. Tantalizing smells attempted to drift Zatanna of course as numerous street vendors cooked up meals in cobbled-together hutches thrown together on the sidewalk. The sound of them and other vendors peddling their wares filled the air, a rising chorus of strange voices competing over one another to be heard. Unlike in a city in the Mundane, these voices did not have to compete with the roar of cars. The streets instead were filled with mostly pedestrian traffic and the rarer horse-drawn carriage.

One such vehicle parting the road as the group navigated the streets. It was a large black carriage the curtains on its windows tightly drawn blocking the curious gaze of any onlooker. Zatanna nearly was sent tumbling to the ground as the panicked crowd pushed towards the side of the street to avoid the thundering hooves of the horses that pulled it along, the driver seemingly unwilling to slow down to give pedestrians in front of the carriage time to get out of the way. Yet Zatanna wasn’t struck by this blatant disregard to safety as the four skeletal steeds that pulled the carriage. Boney hooves slammed against the dirt of the road leaving a chill in the air and frost covered impressions in their wake. A shiver running down Zatanna’s spine as they passed like a gust of wind on a cold winter’s morning had just blown by.

Their guide who had been less fortunate in avoiding being knocked over was a few feet ahead of Zatanna catching his breath as he rested on his knees. Dirt was now caked into the white cotton of his shirt and on smudged streaks across his arms and face. As Zatanna reached him she bent over and extended a hand to help him up. The surprise on his face was palpable but he nodded his head in thanks and accepted her help. Standing he scratched at his bramble of red hair with a thankful smile on his face.

“Thank you kindly miss” He added as he began to try and wipe away the dirt stains on his shirt.

“Here, I can help you with that” Zatanna offered gesturing towards the stain. “Naelc”

The guide looked down in amazement as the stains upon his body and clothing began to fade away as they seeped into flesh and fabric before vanishing altogether.

“That’s two favors you’ve done me now...We should get moving because soon I’m going to owe you a blood debt!”

“A blood debt?!” Zatanna asked startled as she chased after him. She turned towards Voodoo for assistance but the older magician’s face gave nothing away. “There is honestly no need! I just saw that I could help!”

“Help for the sake of helping? You sure are a strange one!”

The guide called back incredulously as he guided them down a, particularly narrow street. The buildings on either side of the road growing closer and closer to one another as if the entire street came together at a fine point. Their passage became dark and almost tunnel-like as the roofs on either side began to overlap with one another, blocking out the sun above. As space grew smaller and smaller, Zatanna was forced to pivot herself sideways to navigate through the crack, the much broader and muscular Voodoo having to push himself flat against the wall and inch forward like he was navigating a ledge. The end came with its own sense of panic, by that point Zatanna was submerged entirely in darkness, the only sounds being her companions breathing and the shifting of clothes against the bricks of the building. Zatanna was certain that she was stuck, but finally, with enough struggling, she came free and came out into the brightness on the other side

The funnel had emptied them out into a new area within the city. The cramped dirt streets replaced with paved, broad promenades lined with trees and statuary in sharp contrast to the squabbling vendors. What struck Zatanna most though was the quiet. The crowds that had existed only moments earlier had vanished. Instead, the citizens here moved in small and quiet groups of three to four. They were just as strange as their more rambunctious cousins, dressed in a strange amalgamation of aristocratic dress from throughout history. They walked at perfectly controlled paces, not slow enough to be considered dawdling and not fast enough to be described as brisk, taking a painfully calculated amount of time to regard the flora and statuary as if following a choreographic routine. Zatanna for her part then felt a drunken fan storming the stage disrupting this perfectly sculpted flow. Zatanna put her head down to block the gazes of intrigue and contempt that had been immediately thrown their way.

Thankfully the guide also seemed bothered by the attention and began to pick up the pace. He lead them through a winding path through the district. They quickly pulled off the main promenade, guiding them through abandoned side streets and alleyways that made untrodden paths between the walled off-estates towering in their austerity. Beyond the occasional groundskeeper tending to the strange multi-colored flora on their grounds, Zatanna saw little in the way of movement. Curiously as she peered at that passing buildings more and more, she began to notice a strange thing, those occasional lonesome groundskeepers were the only moving things, it was as if time itself had been frozen, ensnared in some kind of protective enchantment around the walls.

As she tried to wrap her head around the sheer amount of magical energy needed to perform, emerging from another alleyway they reached what Zatanna could only assume was their destination. A grand castle-like structure sat floating at the center of a sea of twilight. It looked like something out of a dream, created from a perfect blending of artistic vision and engineering talent, the artistic skill and talent of something like Michelangelo’s David combined with the sheer engineering might of the Burj Khalifa. A single tremendously long bridge stretching across an open void of purples, pinks, blues, and reds sat at the center of the city as if an artist had punched a hole in reality’s very fabric.

As they approached the bridge their guide stopped.

“Well, this is as far as I take you.”

“Thank you again,” Voodoo responded and Zatanna nodded her head in approval.

“Think nothing of it’s my task after all!”

And with a small wave, the guide left the duo alone disappearing back amongst the shadows of the buildings.

The pair looked at one another before taking their first steps on the bridge. The long crossing lent itself kindly to contemplation and roughly halfway across the bridge, something dawned upon Zatanna.

“He never gave us his name?”

“Who?”

“The guide!”

“He didn’t have one.”

“What?”

Voodoo sighed

“Names are very important here. In a world such as this, a world driven by fanciful whims and desires, in constant flux, because the mold has never had a chance to set there is a kind of holiness to those things that are granted permanence. Names are one such thing. They may change yes and titles may be added or removed, but at their heart, they serve as identifiers of the self. The name that you choose to carry comes to leave its mark on you, it becomes a part of you that cannot be removed. By taking on a name, you gain power over the flux, over the change, you become a rock upon which the river most divert itself. And so such powerful liberties are only awarded to the highborne.”

“That’s terrible...” Zatanna whispered

“To us,” Voodoo offered “we see it as a dehumanizing act, a purposeful erasure of identity. For them, this has always been this way. It is not like those with power are taking away something that they already had. We ourselves would think it's ridiculous if there was outrage over a dog’s inability to use the postal service.”

“I guess,” Zatanna relented “it’s just still no excuse y’know? If we see injustice don’t we have an obligation to try and use our magic to try and fight it?”

“You are not Wonder Woman timoune,” Voodoo warned his voice still soft but gaining a stern edge as he continued to speak. “You are an inheritor of a great magical legacy, and part of caring for that legacy is being mindful of the balance, of the things which you cannot change. Every day we flirt with forces of immense power and capability, we hold the power to destroy entire worlds in our hands, this is a power which when abused can distort and change a person. The moment you start trying to save everyone is your apotheosis, your divine awakening, but at the same time it is also not just your end but potentially the end of everything.”

“How do we know though?” Questioned Zatanna “Has anyone tried?”

“many..”

Zatanna dropped the topic.

Soon after they made it across. They were quickly ushered inside by a waiting servant allowing them to bypass the armed guards that stood at the other side of the bridge. The servant, a sharply dressed woman with a large pair of butterfly wings emerging from her back did her best to get them up to speed as they walked. They had arrived late in the day and the Queen was just finishing up with her audiences for the day, so they would have to hurry if they were going to be able to talk to her. They were also drilled with basic etiquette principles such as the importance of bowing and of not looking the Queen directly in her eyes. Though if Zatanna was being honest the servant was talking at such a frantic pace, that all the instructions began to blend into one incomprehensible mess.

As the servant finished her rapid-fire instructions, they arrived at a pair of large double doors flanked on either side by two more royal guards. The doors were already open and from beyond Zatanna could hear the soft murmur of conversation. The servant ushered them forward urgently following closely behind.

The doors lead into a large throne room. The floor below was made from glass or some other transparent material giving a direct view of the sea of twilight below them. On either side, leading up the throne were a large mass of nobles, dressed in a similar manner to those that they saw on the street. Many of whom chatted amongst themselves, whispering intently as Zatanna and Voodoo entered the room, pointing and gesturing at them. The throne itself was elegant in its simplicity, a single piece of metal that was painstakingly sculpted and pulled into an elegant and graceful shape, reminding Zatanna of a bird soaring into the sky.

Atop the throne was the most beautiful woman Zatanna had ever seen. It was like she had been forged from the very earth herself: dark caramel colored skin pulled from earthen clay, thick curly red hair tumbling down like a waterfall to her waist, the elegant blue gown was the sea as it shifted and moved on its own. Even from her sitting position she easily managed to command the room, dominating it with her presence.

Standing in front of her in private conversation was a human man. He was in his late forties or early fifties, clean shaven, dark hair brushed back, and wearing a simple black tuxedo. He rested much of his weight on a long black cane that he gripped in his left hand, the top adorned with the skull of some kind of corvid. Zatanna was automatically reminded of that old English professor that had been around since the 50s, that she was sure resided at every university. The stranger caring the same universal disdain for the world around them through sheer body language alone.

As they walked down the aisle towards the throne, the servant began to announce loudly.

“Presenting to Her Royal Majesty, The Queen of Faerie, The Lady of Twilight, The Wind of Change, The Great Muse, and the Vengeful Wind, Queen Titania, the Mundane travelers Jericho Drumm and Zatanna Zatara!”

As they were announced, the Queen and the stranger broke away from one another to turn to address their new arrivals. As the man turned around, Voodoo froze in his tracks. And all Zatanna could do was stare up at the eyes of the stranger who looked very pleased, eyes the color of a dying ember, the same as nightmarish creature she had seen in her dreams.

And across the room, Anton Arcane smiled back at them both.

“Jericho! What a pleasant surprise!"

What Are You Listening To?

_{Been on a city pop bender recently}

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

Jailbreak In Fairyland I

_{The Station, Betwixt the Realms
Time is like an illusion dude}

---

“My dad always taught me that Merlin closed the link between Faerie and the Mundane to prevent a war from breaking out after humans invented cold iron.”

“That is the lie that we are sworn to tell, a lie to protect the balance.” Voodoo explained as they walked.

“Protect it from what?” Zatanna questioned as her voice rose in intensity. Zatanna knew that her father wasn’t particularly a paragon of truth, and yet these more recent discoveries stung with a pain that lies never carried before. Perhaps, it was the fact that he was dead. All that was left of him was a stackful of his journals and the childhood memories that she had. The lies took away those memories, toxifying them with the distrust and resentment that had come to define their relationship in the later years. It made her question if even those early memories were actually as good as she remembered of if she was just too naive to see her father for what he was.

“From every young magic-user who after reading the Tempest believed that they could triumph where Prospero failed.” Voodoo coming off with the tired tone of a professor’s introductory lecture that they give at the start of every semester for the past fifty years. “Conflict between the Mundane and Faerie would be inevitable”

“So you stifle curiosity for a measure of security?” Zatanna retorted incredulously. As a matter of principal, Zatanna disagreed with any argument that relied on the basis of any kind of inevitability. A narcissistic impulse asserted by an ability to prod, warp, and tweak the laws of reality itself. Such abilities made a viewpoint of anything less than seizing the bull of life by the proverbial horns seem fatalistic to the point of nihilism in comparison. Why admit defeat or live in fear when you can just ask the universe nicely to do as you want.

“We do not wish to forbade curiosity timoun,” Voodoo insisted gesturing broadly with his staff as he walked. “We only wish to cultivate it such that it can’t become tainted by more base desires.”

Zatanna snorted in disbelief

“I see why you and my father got along so well ” Zatanna replied rolling her eyes.

“We both were well aware of the consequences of not seeing the bigger picture.” Voodoo agreed either choosing to ignore or having been oblivious to the open hostility in Zatanna’s comment.

Quickly realizing that a continued pursuit of the debate was pointless Zatanna held her tongue. Instead, she tried to wrap her head around the layout of the station, as she attempted to keep track of the path that Voodoo was following. Much to her frustration this task was much easier said than done. The further in they went, the further that Zatanna was reminded of old childhood memories of being trapped in a corn mazes around Halloween, the white marble hallways and the ornate gilded doors began to blend together into one entangled mass within her mind, just like those seemingly endless rows of corn. The confusion was only made worse by the station’s escheresque properties as there was often moments after heading up a staircases, she could of swore that they were actually going down. Persistent as always, Zatanna continued trying to count the turns, staircases, and doors as she went encouraged only by the fact that Voodoo and the other curious travelers that rushed past her seemed to know exactly where they were going.

Before Zatanna was able to crack the code they arrived to a new section of the station. A hallway that seemed to doubleback and swallow itself emptied them out into a much larger cathedral-like space, marble transitioning into worn stone. The ceiling above them had expanded dramatically stretching literally skyward as what was once matching marble ceilings having been replaced with a van Gogh style night sky except that the stars actually twinkled and the clouds move slowly across the frame. Descending from this nightscape and lining the walls of the “cathedral” were large stained glass windows that took Zatanna’s breath away as she could of swore they managed to capture colors that didn’t even exist. Each window depicted a scene of intersection between Faerie and the Mundane: King Arthur receiving Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake, the exploits of Fionn Mac Cumhaill, and finally at the far end of the cathedral sitting above the large set of double doors that Voodoo was leading her towards was the Severance.

The scene showed Merlin’s Severance of the Realms.Two opposing armies, one from Faerie and the other from the Mundane world, faced one another as the skies above them were cast red as if to foreshadow the violence destined to take place. Standing betwixt the two great armies was the wizard Merlin holding his staff high above his head calling down a burst of red lighting from the bloodstained skies. Looking up at the piece, Zatanna felt a wave of unease wash over her as she noticed Merlin’s eyes. They were locked in rigged concentration and full of great power and judgement. This judgemental gaze either through some simple perspective trick or minor enhancement followed you wherever you went in the room. Zatanna wanted nothing more to escape its spotlight gaze, but Voodoo walked across the space with at a slow and persistent pace, and Zatanna did not want to risk going ahead of him as she did not know if the station’s geometry would continue to twist.

Pulling her eyes away from stained glass in an attempt to alleviate the pressure Zatanna looked around the cathedral. It was only then that Zatanna noticed that the crowds that persisted in the rest of the station were absent. The only other beings in the room were clusters of hooded figures praying at a series of small altars that lined the walls. They wore long black robes and Zatanna could only assume the strange noises that emanated from the shadows of their hoods was some sort of prayer.

In her observations, she took a step closer and as her foot made contact with the floor each and every one of the hooded figures all turned to face her. The chanting was now directed fully at her causing her entire begin to be assaulted with a sea of unfathomable noise. The words spoken were in an old and forgotten tongue but the fear they carried was all the same. Zatanna found herself unable to move as the muscles in her legs seized. She tried to mutter out a spell but when she opened her mouth, the only words that spilled out were the same ominous chanting. All the while the hooded figures moved in closer their bodies stuttering forward like they were a frame behind the rest of reality.

Suddenly Zatanna felt a hand grasp hers and turn her away from the chanters. Voodoo pulled her along never breaking stride. His grip on her hand was like a vice and she would of complained about the bruising she was going to have if she could talk. Purposely keeping his head towards the floor Voodoo began to whisper instructions to her, his voice cutting clean through the chanter’s cacophony.

“Don't run. Just keep walking forward and whatever you do, don’t look back.”

Half walking, half being pulled along, Zatanna followed Voodoo as he made a break for the door. As they increased their pace, the chanters’ volume crescendoed matching their pace. Zatanna had to put in active effort to try and combat whatever enchantment was laced into the twisted prayer that sought to immobilize her. Thankfully, Voodoo was helping her ever so often squeezing the hand that he still had a hold of. The pressure and arrhythmic nature of the pulses helping disrupt the drone’s trance.

They were only halfway to the door and Zatanna could of swore that the hooded ones were gaining on them. A chill ran down her neck as it felt like a set of fingers was inches away from grasping at her head, their assailants so close that their chanting sounded like a whisper in Zatanna’s ear. As they got closer, the chanting grew less and less unintelligible, the words becoming clearer. A promise of peace and rest and all that was needed from her was to turn around.

Zatanna slapped herself hard across the face as she ran nearly toppling herself over. The sting of the impact flooded her senses as neurons and synapses flared. The chanting seemed more distance, the words that she was hearing a minute ago back to a meer garble of noise. Finding something to grasp onto she focused in on the pain in her face and throughout her body. There was the feeling of pins and needles in her hand from Voodoo’s stress grip as blood circulation began to be cut off. There was the feeling of pain in her feet as she was currently in a deadsprint in heels of all things cursing herself for not choosing more practical footwear to go with her show outfit. And she pulled all that pain closer constructing a mental bulwark against the enchantment.

As they neared the exit, Zatanna saw Voodoo’s mouth began to move as he began to recite a incantation. His words were drowned out by the noise, but the power that they held was all the same. Energy swirled around his staff before exploding outward in a burst of concessive energy. Projected forward, the column of pure force slammed into the large double doors causing them to burst open with a concussive boom akin to a cannon shot. In their haste to push the last few feet towards the door, they fell through the open doorway, the pair of doors slammed shut behind them. From the otherside of the door the chanting could still be heard accompanied by the sounds of claws scratching feverishly at wood. Eventually, the clawing stop and the chanting grew dimmer and dimmer, until there was finally silence again. And very slowly the door to the cathedral began to sink into the surrounding wall before soon enough it was gone in its entirety.

The silence that now surrounded Zatanna was almost as deafening. The magician suddenly becoming aware of everything again from her laboured breathing to thunderous drumming of her heart as it threatened to burst free. She pulled her fists together into tiny shaking balls digging her nails as hard as he could bear into her palms.

“What in the hell....” Despite it only being a whisper Zatanna felt like she was screaming, the sound of her own voice strange on her lips.

Voodoo for his part seemed less shaken by the whole affair. He was already on his feet brushing the dust off of himself. The tip of his walking staff still caught in the afterglow of the spell that had been fired off from it moments earlier. Catching his eye, Zatanna reflexively flinched at the anger that was there but also noted that there was concern there as well. Leaning on his staff, he looked down at her shaking his head.

“I warned you not to stare.” He stressed using the same tone you would when discipling a child for doing something that they wouldn’t know was wrong.

“You didn’t tell me what I should not stare at! I was fine up until now looking at whatever I wanted! So maybe next time you should be more specific old man! ” Zatanna argued pushing herself up from the ground. She pushed herself straight into the older man’s face her eyes flaring with anger and magical energy as they did. Voodoo might of just saved her life, but she wasn’t about to let him chastise her. She shook her head frustrated,“What the hell were those things anyway?”

Voodoo looked like he had seen a ghost. The rest of his face was the still the age-worn visage that she had come to expect, but there was something in his eyes. It was gaze that Zatanna was all too familiar with. It was the same one that her father had whenever he thought about her mother. Taking a step back from her, Voodoo quickly regained his composure. Whatever brief glance Zatanna had acquired vanished back beyond the walls that he had carefully curated over the years. There was a brief moment of painful silence as Voodoo looked down and played with his staff.

“Well,” Voodoo started with a brief cough “I suppose my instructions... could have been a bit more specific yes. And those things serve as another line of defense for the station.”

“Defense,” Zatanna asked shaking her head “You’re telling me that those things are there on purpose?”

“Not necessarily,” corrected Voodoo, “it was more like they are the original owners of this place. The station was built on top of the ruins of their cathedral. And any attempts to remove them... only lead to a bolstering of their numbers.”

“Well isn’t that lovely,” Zatanna muttered taking a few precautionary steps away from the wall where the door once was “You mind if we get as far away from here as possible?”

Voodoo chuckled.

“Now that is a plan that I can agree with.”

The door had emptied them out onto what looked like a more traditional looking Tube platform. Travelers of all shapes and sizes gathered on the platform many carrying bags, sacks, and there was even a strange blue goblinoid creature that had what Zatanna could only describe as a three-headed peacock in a large birdcage strapped to his back. The same announcements that a normal line would get about minding the gap, and being observant were piped in from an unknown source, but the lines were also repeated in several languages that sounded completely alien to the magician’s ears.

Claiming an unoccupied bench, the pair made themselves comfortable. Zatanna tried to start up a conversation with Voodoo, but the older magic user had conjured a large black tome out of thin air with a snap of his fingers and was enraptured by his reading. On a whim, Zatanna took out her phone. To her surprise, despite being what she could only assume was several hundred feet underground she still had perfect reception. Even though it herwas n phone it felt almost voyeuristic as she scrolled through her emails, texts, and social media. Her regular life, the life of Zatanna Zatara, Vegas’ greatest magician seemed like it belonged to a different person, somebody she wasn't. It was like that life was an artist imitation of the strange, bizzare, and colorful world that she was currently submerged in.

Strangely enough despite his severe distaste in modern technology, in that moment looking down at her phone made her think of her father. He would of had to deal with his duality serving as a guardian of this magical world and a father in the mundane one. All of her life, she had resented the training, the drills, the ceaseless preparation that he made her endure, and even know she still thought there would of been better ways to go about it, but she was able to understand it a little better. Dealing with things like this everyday, Giovanni must have not seen any other choice. It wasn’t like he could pretend that this danger didn’t exist.

The shrill sound of the whistle on an approaching train drew her attention. Putting her phone away, Zatanna looked around as the platform began to come to life as the train approached. Zatanna looked over at Voodoo who seemed unconcerned still just silently reading his tome. Zatanna tried to follow his example and wait patiently but it just wasn’t in her. Standing up, she pushed her way through the crowd towards the platform’s edge. Peering down the the tunnel and far off in the distance, a light was beginning to get closer and closer.

As the light drew closer, Zatanna began to make out the approaching vehicle. It looked like one of those old steam locomotives that were now regulated exclusively to display pieces in museums. Yet despite its antiquated appearance it was moving at speeds that could rival a modern bullet train. It's charcoal black exterior blended with the darkness of the tunnel save for the few gold leaf accents scattered about its body. Its whistle continued to blare as it drew closer to the station. Zatanna could see sparks jumping up from the tracks as the breaks were thrown causing metal to scrap against metal generating heat and light. The screeching noise reverberated across the platform and despite an obvious effort, Zatanna was sure that they were still going too fast and the train was going to overshoot the station. Yet as the train entered into the light of the platform it appeared almost as if the air surrounding it became thicker as the jelly-like substance helped pull the locomotive to a full stop.

A cloud of white steam coated the platform like a thick fog. Zatanna tried to push the steam away from her face, coughing as she did. As she coughed, an ocean of activity moved all around her. The doors on the train opened letting loose a tide of travelers. Some of these individuals stopped to embrace friends and family that had gathered on the platform while others rushed past and headed back into the station. And after this first wave of departures began, a great embarkment began as many more on the train rushed past Zatanna to get aboard. All the while strange stout reptilian looking conductors shouted amongst themselves up and down the platform as they ushered the new batch of traveler’s in. This push and pull of moment nearly knocked Zatanna over but she managed to maintain her balance and not get trampled underneath the feet of the crowd.

“Impressive isn’t it?”” Voodoo called from behind Zatanna as he wisely choose to move from the bench only after the initial rush.

“It’s all very Hogwartsy... “

“Hogwhat?”

“Really? Of all the cultural references you don’t know?“

Following Voodoo onto the train, Zatanna was immediately struck with the ornateness of it all. Embroidered red carpeting on the floor, the walls rich dark-almost chocolate brown wooden paneling, and a chandelier with real crystal in every car. It called back to level of excess that was rarely seen in the modern age of mass transit whose philosophy was more geared to carrying the most people in the most effective and cheap manner. Instead it seemed to invoke distant images of luxurious ground travel that was still conjured with titles like the Express d'Orient. And even Zatanna, who self admittedly grew up in a very privileged background felt very small walking through its corridors.

Eventually, the two of them found a booth in a cabin near the far end of the train. A few small clusters of travelers were grouped together but compared to the initial rush outside the dull noise of their conversations was like being in a monastery. An androgynous figure dressed in a waiter’s uniform moved from booth to booth taking down drink orders. Zatanna slipped into one side of the booth scooting all the way down towards the window which overlooked the now mostly empty platform save for a few of the lizard conductors that were loading luggage into the train’s undercarriage. Voodoo slipped into the seat across from her and with another snap of his fingers conjured the book that he was reading earlier.

“How long will it take us to get there?” Zatanna asked curious

“As long as it takes.” Replied Voodoo flatley

“Oh thanks for that insightful information.”

At that moment the waiter that had been moving around the cabin approached their booth. At first glance, they looked almost human to Zatanna. They were cast in hues of white and black, ivory colored skin paired with short hair and eyes both ink black in their coloration. Their face seemed more more angular than any regular human proportion like it was constructed exclusively from sharp sweeping lines and harsh angles. Even their ears as opposed to being rounded were pulled back ending in fine sharp tips, like the end of a quill. And as they smiled, Zatanna had to fight the urge to shiver as it revealed a mouth filled with rows upon rows of sharp knife like teeth.

“And will you be having tea or coffee today ma’am?” They asked their voice rising and falling in a sing-song pattern.

“Tea,” Zatanna answered “no caffeine though... something herbal if you have it?”

“As you wish ma’am” The waiter responded scratching something the order down into what looked like a piece of wood with a sharpened fingernail. “And you sir?”

“Coffee, black.” Voodoo responded without looking up from his book.

Just as the waiter left them for the next booth the train began to move. As the light of the platform was traded for the darkness of the tunnel, Zatanna pulled herself up against the window laying her head against it. In her first moment of peace in what felt like days, the young Zatara felt sleep slowly began to take over her. She didn’t fight it as she closed her eyes and let the slow vibrations of the train as it moved through the tunnel rock her to sleep. And just like the world that she once knew, she to was swept away by the darkness.

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

Yeah, I don't think I have any issues.

@Inkarnate

Thank you Gowi-Senpai.

_{In other news I should sleep cause its like 1 Am.}

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

@Lord Wraith
Roger that boss, the changes have been made. Rest of the sheet is the same save for replacing John with Frankie if that saves you guys anytime.

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

@Lord Wraith
That's a fair point. (Just got of work now so I'm looking some stuff over/slowly reading through where I left off in the IC) Thanks for alleviating some of the unnecessary stress.

Not too worried about the Constantine matter, I had a few ideas even like two months ago with replacing John with somebody that would work a little bit better with the story. Kinda ambitious me to pick such a highbrow ticket as an NPC anyway, so I kinda knew something like that would eventually happen. So we can just officially consider him un-NPCeed and I'll edit the sheet to reflect that soon. And of course if they want to hash anything out with me with what they wanted to use Zantanna to do a potential collab or something in the future, if they really needed that arc I would be more than happy to do that as well.

So I guess what I'm saying is I'm willing to at least take the shot. What did Michael Scott/Wayne Gretzky say? "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take and all that."