First of all, this is rated a very VERY strong T for violence, language, and probably more. Like sex jokes. Cause I'm dirty. I'll probably change it to M after a couple chapters. Heads are gonna roll. Literally. Blood, gore, all the good stuff. I'm warning y'all now.
Heads.
Will.
Roll.
I mean, this story literally starts off with a double murder. Fun stuff!
A few comments before you start reading:
- This takes place between Seasons 1 and 2
- Robin has become Nightwing, they've recruited Zatanna, but the others will join later
- I have completely ignored Klarion's origins and taken many liberties with his powers
- Kinda did the same with Constantine (Yes, he's in this, woohoo!)
- You may also note some new powers for Aqualad, mostly stuff that makes sense for someone from the depths of the ocean (like enhanced vision... because hello it's dark down there!)
Now... let's begin!
Because every good story
Starts with a murder
Or two
"Aww, why won't you talk?"
The voice of a young boy whined.
"Nasty, nasty little humans!"
The boy cackled as he sat on top of a desk with his legs crossed child-like and a cat purring in his lap. He looked to be a young teen, tall, thin, and lanky, with jet black hair gelled into a stylish coif, two stumpy black horns protruding from his skull at his hairline. His grey eyes glinted red with magic, skin tinged blue in its paleness.
The two hostages in his thrall were struggling against the magical ropes that secured their limbs and gagged their mouths. One of them was an old man with wide blue eyes and a balding head, a man known as Dr. Leon Thompson, archeologist and history professor for Penn State. The young, unfortunate man bound beside him was his student assistant, dressed primly in a sweater vest and neatly-pressed slacks. No wonder Klarion itched to tear him apart. His outfit was so... preppy.
The Witch Boy giggled at the fear in their eyes, so thick in the air he could taste it – and it was delicious!
His fingers twitched, causing the bound humans to float upwards, knocking a few of their notes off of the table in the university office. The door had been sealed shut by magic, it was a late Friday evening, and no one was on campus. No one would save them tonight. In his lap, his familiar Teekl preened as it shared his pleasure.
"If you don't tell me what I want to know, then I will resort to some very painful measures…" Klarion nearly clapped in glee at the thought, a wide grin on his face. The professor and his assistant exchanged nervous glances. "Of course, I will be more than happy to begin…"
"W-Wait!" Dr. Thompson's muffled voice cried through his gag.
Klarion actually looked disappointed that they had caved so easily. And here he had been looking forward to drawing a bit of blood. Red was such a pretty color! He sighed and snapped his fingers, the gag on the man's face disappearing.
"M-My notes are hidden in the b-books!" The old man gasped, licking his lips in an effort to get rid of the awful residual taste of magic. "One page in every book! Please, just let my student go!"
"Every book, you say?" Klarion glanced over the jam-packed bookcases that lined the walls of the professor's office, ignoring the man's plea and the student's whimpering. "How clever."
With a wave of his hand and a few short mumbles, Klarion's eyes glowed red for a moment and a swirl of magic seemed to whip through the small room like a whirlwind, violently yanking out every book and opening them with their pages flipping fast. The notes he was after were picked out and floated down towards Klarion, arranging themselves in a neat pile in front of where he sat. When it was done, the books were unceremoniously dropped, a string of thuds echoing in the office as the books piled onto the floor, making their owner and his student flinch at their mistreatment.
Klarion slowly reached out to the notes and stroked them, before gathering them in his hands and carefully shuffling through them with uncharacteristic gentleness. His eyes flickered across the pages faster and faster, holding his breath as he realized the authenticity of the notes.
"Well, what d'ya know…" He whispered, looking down at Teekl with wide eyes. "Those filthy humans actually got it right for once."
Teekl meowed loudly in triumph as Klarion's eyes glinted red. He turned to the two humans in question, a dark chuckle escaping him as he addressed Dr. Thompson.
"All your colleagues made fun of you for chasing after fairytales…" He chuckled as Teekl leapt onto the floor and he floated into a standing position. "And you never realized that you had found the real thing… oh the irony…"
The doctor gasped. "They're real?!"
"Did you ever stop to think that there was a reason your ancestors tried to hide all this?" Klarion asked in a taunting voice. His eyes darkened as his words turned into a growl, "Or why your ancestors tried to exterminate us?"
The two hostages gulped as the crazy, whimsical demeanor vanished, only to be replaced by a vengeful boy whose anger was reflected in the dark red magic that emanated off of him in waves. A razor-sharp grin crawled across his face as his eyes darkened until they were completely black.
"Unfortunately for you two, you have served your usefulness." Klarion held up his hand, fingers wide and slowly making a clenching motion. Two magical ropes appeared around their necks, glowing red as they shrunk smaller and smaller, the humans desperately gasping for air. "But like all mortals, you must die."
The two men twitched a few more times before they suffocated, Klarion allowing their bodies to drop to the ground. Teekl hopped on top of the assistant and shredded his sweater vest with his claws while Klarion snatched a folder from the desk and deposited the notes within. The familiar was just about to bite into the student's neck when his master snapped his fingers.
"No eating." Klarion tutted. "That one would give you indigestion anyway. Too much cologne."
Teekl whined in protest, but soon jumped off of the body.
"Let's go, Teekl." Klarion hummed in content as he waved his hand, the door unlocking and swinging open as he walked through. His familiar bounded after him, leaping onto his shoulders and curling its tail around his neck, his purring reverberating through the boy's shoulders.
"At long last… I've found the others."
The Young Justice team was grim-faced as they arrived at the university, the entire history department cut off by yellow caution tape with the police milling about. The chief detective seemed to hesitate at the sight of them, but wordlessly let them through, leading them down the hallway to the crime scene.
Everything was a mess. Although the bodies had already been moved, the office showed signs of intrusion: the shelves were bare of everything while the books that had once sat there were strewn haphazardly around the office.
Zatanna gasped as they entered the office, grabbing her head as she grits her teeth. "Guys, I'm sensing some seriously bad juju in here!"
"You mean magic?" Wally asked in a doubtful voice.
Zatanna's face was pale, almost nauseous as she nodded, not even bothering to scold Wally for his condescending tone. "It's dark magic… really, really bad stuff."
Nightwing got to work inspecting the scene from top to bottom with the help of Zatanna while the rest of the team had split up to speak with witnesses. Aqualad remained just outside the office and turned to the detective.
"Tell us what you know." The Atlantean ordered.
The man sighed and rubbed the back of his head, messing up his hair. "It's not much. The murders happened a few days ago, rigor mortis had long since set in by the time we got here. The victims must have been killed over the weekend, no one found them until Monday morning. There is evidence that they were killed by strangulation, but we can't identify a murder weapon – no rope burns or fingerprints on the bodies. As you can see, the entire office has been ransacked, but as far as we know, Dr. Thompson has not been working on anything outstanding enough to warrant something like assassination."
"So no motive." Aqualad frowned.
"Not as far as we know." The detective shook his head negatively. "No enemies either, the man mostly kept to himself. His colleagues say that he mostly worked on private projects when he wasn't on an official job. Not much of a social life; no family except a brother in Virginia."
"What about the student?" Aqualad asked him.
The detective sighed again and shrugged his shoulders. "Completely normal kid, no bad history, honor roll student all his life. The professor is the higher profile here, I think the kid just got caught in the middle of it – whatever 'it' is."
Aqualad sighed and nodded, waving the man off as he turned to speak with his team. Nightwing was using his tweezers to collect hair samples while Zatanna had her eyes closed and was doing… something with magic, he would guess. Superboy and Miss Martian were speaking with the first responders while Artemis and Kid Flash approached.
"I talked with the secretary." Kid Flash said as he moved toward Aqualad, flanked by a frowning Artemis. "She was the one to discover the bodies this morning. Poor girl."
"She said the door was locked when she came in, but she could smell something bad from outside." Artemis wrinkled her nose at the thought. "So, she became suspicious and asked the janitor to use his master key and open it up. It wasn't a pleasant surprise."
"Whoever was here was using high-level magic." Zatanna joined them as she exited the office. "More powerful than me, certainly. I think he used magic to kill the victims, and that's why we don't have a murder weapon."
Kid Flash snorted at the thought of magic, but was quickly interrupted by an elbow to the ribs courtesy of Artemis.
"Can you guess who it might be?" Aqualad asked her, ignoring the couple.
"It's… familiar…" Zatanna frowned. "I can't place it, but I'm almost certain I've faced this person in battle before."
"I don't think these hairs are human." Nightwing's voice carried over from the office as he held up a plastic bottle to the light, whatever within it flashing red. "We should go back to Mount Justice so I can analyze it further."
Aqualad nodded and turned as he heard Superboy's heavy footsteps behind him, followed by the quieter cadence of Miss Martian.
"I have permission from the coroner to examine the bodies." She told the group, shivering at the thought.
"Hey, that's great!" Nightwing exclaimed as he exited the crime scene, the detective in him making him immune to dead bodies. "Zatanna and I will take a look after I examine my samples."
"Ew…" Zatanna grimaced. "But I suppose Bird Boy has a point. If they were killed with magic, I will know."
Both M'gann and Wally shivered at the thought of just walking into the morgue, let alone examining bodies.
"I talked to some of the police." Superboy said. "Nothing unusual was reported all weekend. Whoever it was hid their tracks very well."
Aqualad sighed; this case was already off to a bad start. "Alright, let's head back to base and let Nightwing analyze his evidence. Zatanna, you and Miss Martian head to the morgue to examine the bodies. Nightwing can head over when he's done."
Miss Martian shuddered. "Do I have to?"
"You can sense things other things the rest of us can't." Aqualad pointed out. "Even if it isn't magic."
"Y'know, sometimes I hate when you're right." The Martian muttered, earning a sympathetic pat on the back from Kid Flash.
A couple hours later the team was back in Mount Justice, Nightwing had disappeared into his personal labs while Zatanna and Miss Martian had gone off to speak with the coroner. Aqualad, Kid Flash, Superboy, and Artemis were in the main room looking up at a giant screen where they were speaking to Batman.
"An unusual crime for sure, but there is not much the League can do for us." Aqualad told him, hoping that Batman would allow them to continue their investigation. The League was too quick to jump in and help their sidekicks, in his opinion, and Kaldur preferred his team working on their own.
"Still, the fact that something has Zatanna worried bodes ill." Batman murmured, his eyes flickering to something off the screen as the sound of his fingers clicking across the keyboard filtered across the audio. "Zatanna is young but she has a good sense for magic. If your murder case involves dark magic, I'm reluctant to let you kids do this on your own."
"Come on, Bats!" Wally protested. "We've been doing this for a couple years now, with minimal League interference. We can do this!"
"We're not kids anymore." Connor growled, glaring up at the screen.
Artemis placed her hand on his shoulder, calming her boyfriend and shushing him with a look. They heard Batman release a deep breath on the audio.
"I'll have one of my contacts look into it. Plus, he might be able to help Zatanna figure out what they are dealing with." Batman paused to see the disappointed faces of the kids in front of him, and sighed. "If it makes you guys feel any better, he's not with the League."
That seemed to mollify the teenagers a bit, their shoulders relaxing. Batman hung up on them as Nightwing walked in and reported his findings. He had found four DNA samples at the crime scene, and only two matched the murder victims. The other samples were distinctly not human, one of them barely humanoid while the other seemed to be an animal of some sort. Still, it was not much to go on, so the group took the zeta tubes into the city and went to meet up with M'gann and Zatanna at the morgue.
Wally and Connor were extremely uncomfortable standing in the same room with twenty or so dead bodies, even if they were stored and out of sight, so those two stayed outside while Kaldur, Artemis, and Nightwing walked into the dissection room.
"Oh thank goodness you're here!" M'gann exclaimed when they walked in, looking a little greener than usual. "Now Zatanna won't be alone with the bodies! I gotta get out of here!"
She nearly bulldozed her teammates in her haste to leave the room, joining Superboy and Kid Flash outside. Zatanna was staring down at the bodies with a deep frown, her skin a little paler than usual even as she waved her hands across the blankets that covered everything but their faces.
"Either of you sense anything?" Kal asked her as Nightwing walked up to the magician and gently ushered her away from the bodies. The Bat kid rubbed her back comfortingly as Zatanna spoke, failing to hide her trembling fingers.
"They were definitely killed by magic." She said, her gaze avoiding the bodies while Artemis walked over to the metal slabs and pulled the sheets over the faces of the victims. "It's all over their bodies, and there's residue where it touched them. I think –"
"Well you certainly don't disappoint."
A voice spoke from the doorway, a thick British accent accompanying the dry sarcasm dripping from his words. The young heroes turned to see a young man walk in, probably in his twenties or around Roy's age, cold blue eyes studying them with condensation, messy blonde hair falling into his face. He was dressed in a long coat and ripped jeans, dark circles under his eyes making him look older than he probably was.
"Who are you?" Aqualad asked defensively as the rest of the team tensed at the sudden intrusion.
"Relax mate." The man waved them down as he casually approached the table and looked down at the bodies laid out on the gurneys. "Bats sent me."
"Wait! You're Constantine, right?" Nightwing asked, suddenly recognizing the guy as someone Batman had contacted once or twice whenever there was something supernatural going on in Gotham.
The blonde man lazily tilted his head to glance at the sidekick form the corner of his eye. "Yep. John Constantine, arcane detective extraordinaire… or somethin' like that." He drawled.
Zatanna pushed past her teammates and approached the gurneys, standing across from the man known as Constantine as he yanked the sheets off of the bodies and stared down into their wide eyes and pained expressions.
"Can you sense what I do?" She asked him, a hopeful look on her face.
"I can probably sense more than you." Constantine told her, a severe expression flashing across his features as he passed his hand over the bodies and something flickered around them for a second. The blonde cursed under his breath. "Damn… good thing Bats sent me."
"What is it?" Artemis finally spoke up.
"Ancient magic, kids." He said as he pulled a strange device out of his jacket pocket, clicking it open, emitting a soft green glow that he directed down onto the bodies.
The green light revealed red residue on their necks and on their wrists and ankles. Red glowing particles hovered around those areas, which Constantine carefully reached out to stick his finger in, avoiding touching the bodies. He brought back a finger covered in the red stuff, which he slowly rubbed between his forefinger and thumb.
"I should be able to trace the magical signature from this." Constantine told them as he put away the device and pulled out a small box inscribed with seals in order to preserve the magic residue that he scraped off his fingers. Then he and Zatanna replaced the sheets on top of the bodies.
"Meaning we find the killer?" Kaldur asked him.
Constantine shrugged. "Only if they're still on this plane of existence."
"You mean Earth?" Nightwing asked in confusion.
"No, I mean if they are even still in this dimension." Constantine muttered, looking exasperated. "Magicians are hard to track because we can cross into worlds beyond space, and sometimes, beyond time. And with ancient magic like this, whoever we're after can probably do both."
"Greeeeeeeeat." Artemis drawled.
"Let's go to my house." Constantine said as he walked away from the gurneys and towards the door. "I keep all the magical supplies there. It'll be easier to track your killer that way."
The team glanced at each other questioningly.
"Batman trusts him." Nightwing pointed out as he met Kaldur's eyes.
Aqualad sighed and nodded. The team exited the dissection room, following Constantine towards the exit.
"Who's this?" Connor asked suspiciously when they reached the entrance to the coroner's office, having not seen the dour man enter the office before. M'gann tried to get a read on the man's mind, but he seemed to have some pretty strong mental shields.
"This is Constantine." Aqualad introduced them. "Batman sent him."
"I thought we told him that we don't need help!" Superboy growled.
Constantine chuckled darkly at this. "Sure ya do. You kids don't even know what you're dealing with!"
Connor turned to glare at the cocky Brit, but Kid Flash patted him on the back, easing his anger. "Come on, Supes, at least he's not with the League."
"Thank god for that." Constantine muttered as he snapped his fingers. To the astonishment of the teenage heroes, a house suddenly appeared in the middle of the road, but the civilians walking by did not seem to see a thing.
"What the –"
"My house." Constantine told them, interrupting Wally's exclamations as he strolled up the steps onto the porch. "Everyone in! I don't like having it on this plane for very long."
The young justice members exchanged bewildered glances before they all scrambled to enter the house, the door swinging shut behind them and the sounds of the city suddenly disappearing. The windows became dark as the streets and sunlight faded away, only to be replaced with darkness. They were standing in an elaborate foyer, a rich red carpet beneath their feet, the walls and floors made of rich mahogany, polished to perfection.
"Welcome to the House of Mystery." Constantine's voice drew their attention as he walked easily through the maze of corridors, eventually leading them to a large library, the shelves filled with books, scrolls, and lined with maps and various artifacts.
"Don't touch anything." He called over his shoulder just as Wally was about to touch a rather awesome looking African mask. "Everything in here is magical and dangerous. Magic isn't all unicorns and sunshine, y'know."
Artemis glared at her boyfriend as he sheepishly backed away from the mask. They all gathered in the central sitting area, Constantine waving for them to take seats around the coffee table while he disappeared and came back with a map of the earth and laid it flat on the table.
"Darling, would you provide our guests with tea?" The magician called aloud as he walked around gathering various devices and magical supplies.
The young heroes glanced at each other with raised brows wondering who the man could be talking to, only to gasp as cups of steaming hot tea appeared in front of them, floating in the air until they reluctantly took ahold of them.
"Don't drop them, their ancient Chinese porcelain." Constantine told them as he approached the coffee table and began drawing a diagram of some kind across the map.
"Wha – how did – what…" Wally stuttered staring down at his cup of tea with wide eyes.
"Magic house." Constantine told him with a deadpan voice. "The House is sentient, so don't insult it. She get's angry."
"The house is alive?!" Connor exclaimed, while beside him M'gann was reaching out with her mind to communicate with the House.
"Oh my!" The Martian exclaimed as her eyes flew open, turning to stare at Constantine. "It is! I can feel her! It's just like talking to my ship!"
The rest of the team turned to stare at Miss Martian.
"Riiiight." Constantine drawled, having no knowledge of the relationship between Martians and their ships and thinking that the girl was just crazy.
He turned back to the diagram he was drawing and began to sprinkle purple powder onto the map, picking up a chain necklace with a quartz crystal attached at the end of it. He pulled out the small box that carried the magic residue and opened it, dipping the tip of the crystal into the red glowy stuff. Zatanna leaned in close with an excited expression, ignoring the annoyed glares that the Brit was sending her way, studying his every move as she attempted to make sense of his magic.
"Look kid, if ya wanna learn just ask." Constantine muttered as he rudely pushed the girl back into her seat. "But I can't work with ya breathin' down my neck."
Nightwing made to protest the man's rough treatment, but Zatanna waved him off. The blonde magician stood over the table holding onto the end of the chain, the tip of crystal hanging down from it just barely grazing the map, glowing red with magical residue.
"Okay, listen up." Constantine told them as he began to gently sway the chain in a circular motion. "This is a tracing spell. It will match the magical signature of the residue to its owner, and the crystal will point to the location of that person on the map. That is, if they are currently on Earth."
Wally scoffed at the mention of magic, only to suffer from several glares directed at him from his teammates.
"Let's begin." Constantine stated as he began to murmur words under his breath, low and guttural and completely incomprehensible to the young justice team. Zatanna strained to understand what language he was speaking in, as there were a few that held magical power, but could not recognize the words.
The chain began to swing faster and faster until the crystal suddenly yanked forward and stabbed through the map and into the table.
Constantine ceased his mutterings and they all stared down at the location of the map.
"Well… looks like we're going to Massachusetts."
"Salem, Massachusetts." Klarion hummed as he walked down the streets of the colonial city, earning strange looks from the civilians milling about with Teekl curled around his shoulders (and the horns, but that was secondary, no?). The city had changed a lot over the years, wooden buildings replaced by metal and glass, the streets wide and paved, horse and carriages replaced by cars and bicycles. Still, many of the buildings retained their colonial architecture, an echo of the past that still seemed too soon for him.
"Good memories, right Teekl?"
The cat hissed in displeasure.
"Yeah, agreed." The witch boy chuckled as he turned down a small alleyway that led to a small cemetery behind the old church that had stood over the village since the colonial era. Where once the cemetery had been placed at the edge of the village, it was now swallowed up by the city, hidden behind apartment buildings, the church steeple now dwarfed by skyscrapers. Religion was outdated now, it was a weekday and the church was empty.
It was easy for Klarion to unlock the back door and sneak in.
It felt like stepping back in time, walking down the aisle of the church as the sun shone through the colored glass and dust floated in the air. Memories came unbidden to him, of screaming and yelling, fire and pain.
"Witchcraft! Devilry!"
The building was silent save for the whisper of Klarion's footsteps on the worn carpet, his grey eyes flickering over the altar as he stopped just before the steps leading up to it.
"Ye shall burn for thy sins!"
Then his gaze drifted downwards, landing on the worn tile beneath the altar, a small, nearly invisible cross carved onto the tile centered underneath the altar.
"Pray for mercy, sinner!"
Hundreds of innocents had died in the witch hunts, pathetic humans driven by fear, taking pleasure in the pain of others. They killed those who were different, those who were misunderstood, and yet they were all equally human.
Except one.
Klarion approached the altar and knelt down in front of it, reaching underneath the table and pressing his fingers against the worn-down carving on the tile. A templar cross, every side equal in length, nearly invisible as the years weathered it away.
Teekl jumped off of his shoulders as he stood up, the cat leaping onto the wall and making his way into the rafters. Klarion curled his fingers, calling forth the magic that coursed through him like blood in the veins, red magic crackling at his fingertips. He raised his hands and blasted the altarpiece right out of the ground, the table flying backwards and into the windows above them, shattering the glass which rained down like colorful raindrops. Then Klarion aimed down at the tile floor, sending a condensed beam of energy towards the ground, incinerating the stone beneath.
Eventually the floor gave way, revealing a hidden chamber beneath the altar area, the walls crudely carved by pick and hammer, the floor covered in dried, decayed soil that had been sitting there for centuries. In the middle of the chamber sat a pristine sarcophagus, a coffin of white marble, inscribed with seals of old, ancient words worn by time but their power remained.
Klarion ceased his attack on the floor and dropped into the alcove, approaching the sarcophagus.
"Ouch!" He hissed as the coffin burned his fingers at the touch. The words carved along the rim of the lid glowed, glyphs of protection warding him off.
"Mrow…" Teekl called from above, perched primly on one of the wooden beams supporting the ceiling.
"Yes, I know, Teekl." Klarion snapped back. "I was just testing the strength of the wards!"
"Meow!"
"Yes, yes, I'm hurrying." The witch boy muttered as he pulled out a folded piece of paper from his pocket and looked over the diagrams that Dr. Thompson had compiled. The man certainly was proving useful, wasn't he?
Putting the paper away, Klarion began chanting under his breath, the red hue of his magic darkening to dark purple as he walked around the sarcophagus and began to press against the invisible protections that kept it from him. He saw the words in the marble begin to glow bright white, proof of the strain he was placing on the wards. He pressed further, placing his hands on top of the lid of the coffin and gritting his teeth as his skin began to burn.
"A little more…" He muttered, the skin on his hands and wrists blistering and peeling, the bones aching. A shrill sound filled the air as the wards began to unravel, the lid of the sarcophagus cracking vertically down the middle.
Klarion gasped as the seal finally gave way, a small blast emitting from the coffin that pushed him backwards and into a stone wall. The two halves of the lid fell away, revealing the inhabitant of the sarcophagus.
"Mrrrow!" Teekl exclaimed as the demon cat leapt down and landed on his master's shoulders, purring in satisfaction as he rubbed his head under the boy's chin.
"I… I did it…" He breathed in surprise, carefully approaching the open sarcophagus and peering inside. His eyes widened at the sight that greeted him, the breath leaving his body.
"Oh Teekl…" Klarion murmured. "She's beautiful."
The House of Mystery had transported the team and Constantine to Massachusetts in seconds, but by the time they had figured out where the magical signature was coming from, their murderer was already gone.
They had been walking down the streets of Salem, earning shocked looks from the civilians that rarely saw superheroes in their city. Constantine was leading them, his crystal necklace floating in front of him and acting as a homing beacon, the crystal tugging on the chain in the direction of their culprit, glowing red with the magical residue. It eventually stopped in front of an old historical site, the original church that was built when the colony had been established.
"We should go inside and look for clues." Nightwing said as he and Aqualad began to walk up the steps.
"Wait!" Constantine hurried up after them and stood in front of the doors. "Let me check for any barriers or booby-traps."
"Heh, booby." Wally snickered, earning a smack in the back of the head from Artemis.
"Seriously? You're 19 years old!" The archer complained.
Constantine waved his hands over the door frame for a moment, before carefully opening the doors. "Oh dear."
They all peered into the church, gasping in surprise at the mess that greeted them. The colored windows above the altar were empty, the glass scattered around the altar area in little shards. The altar had been overturned and thrown backwards, and a giant hole was now carved into where it had previously sat.
"Klarion!" The original members of the young justice team exclaimed in recognition.
The Witch Boy stood in the middle of it all, his body hunched over something in his arms. He glanced up at them, startled eyes narrowing in anger as his familiar hissed at them. Then Klarion's body flickered and he disappeared with whatever he had been holding.
The crystal in Constantine's hand went limp and stopped glowing.
"Ah, shite." Brit muttered.
"What does that mean?" Zatanna asked from his side.
"It means that he has left this world." The Brit growled. "Probably hiding in another dimension."
They quietly walked down the aisle, Constantine on alert for any magical attacks. When they got to the top of the stairs and looked down into the hole, Constantine cursed under his breath while the teenagers gasped again. A sarcophagus was nestled in a hidden chamber, its lid cracked in two.
And it was empty.
"Well, I'm sufficiently whelmed." Nightwing muttered.
Klarion isn't very nice, is he? His attitude will definitely be canon in this one, if a little darker.
Okay, I know I shouldn't be starting ANOTHER story but... but this one is good. I promise guys. And for my other readers I promise that I'll be updating "Between the Devil and the Deep" really really really soon! Like really soon! Promise!
Consider this part 1 of the Prelude.