Stowed away in the dilapidated ruins of an ancient city was a chamber untouched by the hands of time. In it was said to be the key to harnessing a power older than both Chaos and Order. But the chamber safeguarding the key had only recently been uncovered by a locator spell. Soon spell casters of all sorts, good and evil, would hear its call and in turn be drawn to it.

Zatanna, Artemis, and Robin headed down one of many underground tunnels. Miss Martian, Superboy, and Kid Flash were on the opposite end of the city, trying their luck at maneuvering to the hidden chamber by a different route. Aqualad waited above ground as their lookout.

"Can you sense it yet Zee?" Robin asked. The tunnel walls were too close together for comfort and the Team had to shuffle sideways in order to move. Not that Zatanna exactly minded brushing shoulders with the boy wonder.

Zatanna drew her eyebrows in concentration. "We're definitely getting closer," she confirmed. "But I think I'm sensing something else, a—another presence maybe?"

'Do you think it's Abra Kadabra?' Artemis wondered silently, clenching her green bow more firmly.

'I'm not really sure,' Zatanna admitted, 'but do we know if Kadabra is even after it?'

'That was the tip we received,' Aqualad answered pensively, 'It is likely, however, that others maybe after the key as well.'

Robin opened his mouth to put in his say, when the tunnel suddenly opened up into a vast chamber. For a moment he just gaped. The walls and ceiling of the chamber looked sounder than those of the tunnels, and heaps of treasure were piled around a pedestal which stood at the chambers heart.

Ingrained in the pedestal were clusters of gemstones, but it was obvious to Zatanna that the true treasure was the brass key, a literal key, resting atop it. It radiated raw power capable of satiating even the most ravenous of necromancers. A power such as this was supposedly capable of empowering mere mortals and the magnitude of the key's magical capacity was unbeknownst to even some of the more prominent Homo Magis.

Zatanna ears were suddenly ringing. A faint melody played in the back of her mind. Its lilting tune called to her, told her to go to the key. She had to have it. It was rightfully hers.

"Look out!" Artemis cried. A tall pony-tailed man stepped into view. He sported a surly expression and his single gold earring gleamed.

'Aqualad to team. Report.'

'Aqualad, we're in the main chamber. Kadabra-" Robin's voice trailed off.

Guided by Kadabra's magic, one of the chamber's supporting pillars hurtled towards Zatanna. But the key was just within reach and Artemis's warning was wasted on the entranced magician.

"Emoc ot em. Tel em Kcolnu ruoy rewop!" Zatanna's veins were fueled by a blazing fire as magic burst from within her. But her's was not the only spell to be cast on the key at that exact moment. And the simple spell went very wrong very fast as the key's power was pulled into two opposite directions.

Upon hitting the ground, the fallen pillar crumbled where Zatanna had stood. Only she was no longer there.

Robin was running, running against time but he knew he was already too late. This was supposed to be a regular mission. A simple assigned task. Get the key. And get out. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. They'd had a plan. Why hadn't Zatanna stuck to the plan?

"Zatanna," Artemis murmured in a strained, hollow sort of voice. "She's... she's..."

"Gone," Robin whispered. "She's just... gone."


It was strange to think that with the uttering of a few short words, a hasty enchantment, the simplest of spells, everything had changed.

Zatanna raised a tentative hand to her forehead, and brushed aside tendrils of hair. She was drenched with sweat, and her clothes clung damply to her skin. Where am I?

The overhead sky was stark white, as was the landscape that carried on indefinitely, except for faint splashes of grey, black, and red. The air hummed with magic. A dark and ancient sort of magic that made goosebumps lift along her arms. Artemis? Dick? Miss Martian? she mentally called, willing for the psychic link that enabled them to communicate non-verbally. "Looks like I'm on my own," she sighed, struggling to her feet.

Zatanna gave an involuntary gasp as her vision went black. No... that wasn't right. Everything around her had simply darkened. "Thgil emoc ot ym spitregnif!" she cried. But the incantation was only part of the spell. She had to focus. Zatanna envisioned a ball of pure bright light appearing in the palm of her hand, but instead of feeling the rush of adrenaline when she spellcast, she felt a knife being brought down on her forehead. She would have given an anguished cry if her throat hadn't suddenly closed up. Her head pounded menacingly against her skull. Just a headache, she ordered herself to believe, it's just an ordinary throbbing headache.

Yet she couldn't refrain from thinking back to when her father had lectured her on anti-spell wards, which acted as a sort of magical barrier, and could leave one's psyche permanently damaged. Only now that he was gone did she wish she'd payed closer attention - not just to the lecture, but to the sound of Giovanni Zatara's voice. Zatanna thought back to when she had said "I may have saved Fate from Savage, but I can't save my father from Fate." That small sentence carried the tremendous guilt that had weighed on her chest since losing her father. Her fault. No matter what anyone said, it was entirely her fault.

Massaging her temples, Zatanna traipsed forwards. She couldn't dwell on what was done, only on what could still be. And right now, she needed to find a way out of this plane of reality. For starters, there had to be an end to this expanse of black. And she wasn't about to stand around in the dark waiting for whatever was out there to come and find her.

She staggered on through the pitch-blackness in silence, not yet ready to test her voice after her last painful attempt at invoking the mystic energies. The sheer silence of this 'realm', if that's what it was, was leaving her feeling quite perturbed. But even more startling still was the loud hiss that resounded as her stiletto was brought down on something resembling a tail.

"Mrow." A pair of luminous crimson eyes flashed malignantly at her. Her surroundings flickered and in an instant she could see again.

She stumbled backwards as the cat lithely darted out of sight. She'd seen that particular cat before but she quite couldn't pinpoint when. Zatanna narrowed her blue deep-set eyes. If you're here then your owner must be too.

She couldn't exactly chase after the cat in her stilettos, and it seemed that any spell Zatanna attempted would only rebound its magical force upon her, but at least she knew that she wasn't the only being here.


A long hand with sharp black fingernails reached out. "Oh there you are Teekl." The cat jumped into his arms, and he slowly caressed his familiar's fur.

"I should have my new toy by now. Someone's not playing fair." The key had been an inch from his grasp when he felt himself being pulled by some opposing force. It was those little sidekick brats, he was sure of it.

But why had he been sent back here? To a world he had locked away in his subconscious? This plane of existence had already been ravaged by chaos. And he didn't need to feed yet.

Klarion was about to phase out of this world, when he felt a chill run through him. Someone had used a guiding spell. It was the faintest tingle of magic.

"Baby magic."


Zatanna knelt over the pale ground and traced four arrows pointing north, south, east and west through the chalky white substance she could only assume was dirt. Next, she drew an arrangement of runes. It was a simple guiding spell that didn't require an incantation. It only worked for someone who had magic running through their veins. The guiding spell was a kind of magic, but at the same time wasn't.

Zatanna examined the runes for a moment. They were intricate symbols that after years of studying, she had learned to read with ease.

Guide me, point me

Lead me, find me.

For a moment she thought she could feel a sudden gust of wind whistle through her hair, but she didn't feel a particular pull in any single direction. Just the overwhelming feeling that there was activity from all around.

A bony finger tapped on her shoulder. Zatanna's heart was in her throat as she turned on her heel. It was a hunched woman with wisps of white hair. Her face was buried in the bushel of roses she bore in her arms.

"Do you know where we are?" Zatanna asked aloud, her voice scratchy but audible.

The woman flinched and one of the red roses fell from her arms. Zatanna automatically stooped to pick it up. But the moment Zatanna touched it, it crumbled into dust.

She could hear her blood pounding in her ears as the tip of her shaking fingers skimmed over the rest of the rose petals. They each in turn broke away into nothingness. Now the woman's face was no longer hidden.

Her waxen skin was stretched tightly over her bones, and without the assortment of roses to conceal her, Zatanna could see see her emaciated, skeletal figure.

She forced herself to focus not on the woman's ghastly appearance, but on her eyes. The window to one's soul. They were glazed over and pure white.

Without warning, the old woman's hand shot out and closed around Zatanna's wrist. "Let go!" she cried, trying to wrench her arm out of the woman's grasp, but to no avail.

The woman raised a gnarled finger and gestured to a vantage point in the distance, where a flickering purple glow reached up to the sky, and just like the roses, she crumbled to dust.