A/N: This has already been uploaded to my deviant art. As I've got the next chapter in the works and don't think I'll be losing steam this time around I've decided to go ahead and upload it here. R&R Please, if you will.
The full moon was a ghostly sight behind her cloudy veil. She was framed between the bony branches of two trees as she shone her fragile light upon the young woman sitting at the crossroads. The young woman's chest rose and fell with deep breaths as she tried to find the rhythm of the magick that lay dormant within her, around her, and above her. Her dark eyes fluttered open and her gaze turned to the pearl in the heavens for guidance. As she began to reflect upon her conundrum, her eyelids dropped again. Her mind grew dark as her spirit reached out for guidance from a world beyond her conscious understanding.
Elsewhere, in a dimension where magick was much more flamboyant and unabashed, a clearing was lit not by the frigid light of the moon but by the dancing light cast by the unseen inner fire of a chaos practitioner. The world quivered as one reality peeled away from the other and he found himself momentarily thrust into the fabric between worlds, not for the first time. Something was different though, he was drowning in it and he felt himself reaching in all directions for something, anything to hold on to. Just as he finally managed to grab something, he found himself back in his body.
He grimaced. He'd failed to take into account the difference between his actual and physical age. Yes, he was fortunate he hadn't been permanently left without body and anchor. The memory of the experience began to fade and much later when the brats arrived, it was gone.
"Ha! There! See, when the worlds divided, the helmet split too. You're not all here Nabu and you're losing hold on that poor soon-to-be-dead girl," he ends with a laugh and a mocking sing-song, "She gave herself for nothing." As the words left his lips, something prickled at the far edges of his mind, a memory trying to breathe new life, he smothered it.
Everywhere she touched felt like velvet. It was pressing in, trying to snuff her out and make her into more velvet. She was powerless to resist as threads of it dug in where her skin should be. Then, something squeezed all the velvet out and she found dirt beneath her hands. Sharp little rocks dug into her knees. There were voices but she couldn't tell them apart over the loud buzzing in her head. She looked up and made out a dark shape coming towards her through her blurry sight. There was no time to react. The figure grabbed her. Her stomach protested the motion but there was nothing to throw up. Her vision turned red and then black as consciousness gave under the burden of its new reality. Her dreams were plagued by screams.
Klarion dropped the girl on the couch unceremoniously. Teekl, for his part, leapt onto the arm rest and watched the girl with a swaying tail. Klarion eyed his cat for a moment and chalked up the odd behavior to curiosity before examining his new surroundings.
"Don't wake her Teekl," he called over his shoulder as he plucked a photograph from a bookshelf.
The cat meowed his assent and reconsidered the idea of pouncing on her. Deciding it was best not to anger his master after an encounter with Doctor Fate, Teekl sulkily obliged. He settled himself down and glared at the girl, as if she was to blame for his master's mood.
Klarion slipped the picture from the frame and rubbed the corner, examining the face, before it caught fire. The ashes were still drifting around the room when he pulverized the frame and all the others in sight. He didn't need them, he had the faces memorized and those people would never make it home, as people anyways. His magick was already taking care of that. He smirked. Three tiny mice would make their way home where Teekl would make a snack of them.
Teekl turned his head to glare at his master indignantly. Had he not just said not to wake the girl? Said master, though aware of the glare through their psychic connection, appeared oblivious to it and disappeared into the dark hallway after casting a brief glance towards the kitchen. Teekl's glowing eyes stayed focused on his back until he stepped into the first bedroom, breaking the cat's physical line of sight.
If he had to guess, she'd choose the bedroom he'd just stepped into. No doubt she'd want to sleep in the room she believed would facilitate her escape.
"Ylno nepo ot evas reh efil," he said with a grin and a wave of his hand. He wouldn't want to lose his new toy after all.
Not feeling like taking the time to change the entire room with baby magick when he had other things to attend to, he pulled at the very atoms of the objects in the room. The change was subtle but sufficient to hide the personality the room had been given by its previous owners. He reduced the pictures he could see to ashes.
On the dresser, he found a journal. He leafed through the turmoil of a teenage girl before making the ink pour out of the pages and into a bottle he produced for the purpose. You never knew when bottled teen angst could come in handy.
He walked back into the hallway and waved the doors to the other two bedrooms closed. With a shudder, they both locked magically. He left the door to the bathroom unlocked at the thought of the mess he might return to find. The smell was bad enough after he'd disposed of someone, he couldn't bear the odor without the pleasure of someone's ill-fated demise.
"Stay here Teekl. I need to keep an eye on her," Klarion said as he walked past the cat and to the door.
The dim dusty light of the hallway was glaring compared to the cool darkness of the apartment and Klarion made a sour face, skin pulling tight against bone, as he closed and locked the door behind him.
As an afterthought he muttered under his breath, "Enon lliw retne enon lliw evael tsel I lliw ti os."
"What was that son?" an elderly man asked as he turned the lock to his apartment. He slipped the key out of the lock and looked at the witch boy up and down. "Isn't miss Hellene a little young to be havin' a boyfriend? Do her folks know about ya? You haven't met them have ya?"
"No, not any of them," Klarion said while locking his dark eyes to the man's faded blue ones, "and neither have you!"
The man nodded slowly as his key dropped to the floor. Klarion had a hard time containing his disgust, not that he was really trying, as saw drool trail down the man's chin in his peripheral vision.
"Oh, once your brain comes back, be sure to pass on the message to everyone you encounter," he said while walking past, not breaking eye-contact.
The man's eyes glowed red for a moment and the next moment old man Jerry found himself standing in the empty hallway, out of breath, with the prickly feeling that he'd just lost something. He spotted the key on the ground and his heartbeat slowed. That was it, he didn't lose it after all. He bent down to pick up his key and turned towards his door.
"That's not right. I was going somewhere," he said to himself as he changed direction, heading towards the stairs.
The stairwell was unusually dark, the only other light filtered in from the bottom of the stairs where Klarion's silhouette could be seen. The man crossed himself, thinking he'd seen the devil, and decided to try the other staircase.
Klarion couldn't help an amused scoff as the man fled back into the yellow light of the hallway above. The light was abruptly cut off as the upstairs door swung shut. For a brief moment, the witch imagined that the darkness was pressing in on him, stealing his breath. He pressed back with his magick only to feel it slide through the air having met no resistance. The corners of his mouth twitched, as if unsure of what expression to make before settling on anger. Uncertainty was not an emotion befitting a Lord of Chaos.
He must have been fighting specters in the stairwell longer than he thought because the old man had made it down the stairs. He watched the old man wave at the dark-skinned woman behind the counter. Despite his nasty experience earlier, he slipped back into the darkness of the stairwell to observe his handiwork.
"Going out so late Jerry?" the middle-aged woman asked.
"Yes, gonna check on the grandkids. Strange night, ya know?" he replied.
"My kids are off in college. I was so relieved that they didn't go anywhere," she told him.
"Good thing no kids were staying in this building," he said with a small laugh, "Can ya imagine what all that excitement would have done to my old bones?"
"No kids?" the woman asked with a puzzled look.
She froze for a second, eyes briefly flashing red, before she smiled and said, "Well, we've got new tenants for 2B and they're young but not that young. Oh, hey Jerry, could you throw these out for me? These letters keep coming for 2B but the names don't match any of the previous tenants."
"Sure," he said as he took the envelopes from her before walking towards the door.
"Have a nice night Glenda!" he called over his shoulder as he stepped into the street.
She was waving goodbye to Jerry when Klarion walked back into the room. Her shriek as turned around was sharp enough to make him glad he'd left Teekl upstairs. He winced at the sound and shot the woman a nasty glare. Her voice died away to a whisper before her chest heaved with the force of a cough.
"Sorry. You startled me," she said, voice still raspy from the cough.
He was unsatisfied with the apology and was very tempted to turn her into something Teekl would find snack-sized. Fortunately for her, she was the best way to spread the memory-loss he'd started upstairs. They'd pick up their mail and forget a neighbor. He grinned at the thought and like Jerry before him, walked into the night.
Long after Klarion had left the building, the chill inspired by his smile clung to Glenda. She decided she'd have to talk to her boss about who exactly he was renting out apartments to. Next, they'd be having The Joker as a tenant.
The night air brushed against his skin. Normally, he'd find the sensation pleasant but on that night his emotions were more conflicted than usual and unpleasantly so. He should be feeling elated at the mischief he caused, annoyed at having his fun cut short by Doctor Fate, and devilishly pleased at having helped pull the wool over the eyes of the entire world. Instead of being a pleasant brew, as it should have been, it was embittered by unanswered questions and the frustration that came with them.
He was on his eight or so, he wasn't really counting, looter turned slug when he felt Teekl's presence strongly in his mind. It seemed the girl was waking up and he wasn't feeling much better. If only there'd been some decent people out and about. For the moment, he now felt too much like one of the no-fun good guys for his liking. He supposed it was just as well for he had lost track of time and his colleagues would be less than thrilled if he was late. He found a suitable dark alley and summoned himself a portal. In a flash of red, he found himself outside of the apartment door.
Glass shattered on the floor followed by a thud next to him. Klarion raised an eyebrow at the woman passed out on the floor before bending down to pick up a square of some sort of baked good. He took a bite and quickly spat it out.
"Gah, looked like strawberry," he whined before wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
He waited for the taste to subside before opening the door and stepping into the darkness of the apartment. He almost hesitated at the memory of the experience in the stairwell but carried on.