"I have half a mind to leave you to your own devices, Bastard!"
Epithumia furiously yelled after Jonathan as he strode out of the room, but there was no reply.
"Are you listening to me?!"
There was a sequence of thuds as a belated response and Drine was quick to let out a series of loud screeches, as a warning, to his mistress. Just as soon as he did, a lumbering shadow creature entered in from the kitchen with a limp Jonathan Crane slung over its shoulder. The red beady dots, that it had for eyes, flashed towards the witch with rage. Epithumia backed away and the cockatoo hissed from the back of the couch, where he was perched.
"You're not Durratine. I'm guessing a lackey perhaps?"
The creature rumbled out a growl before issuing a charge.
"Drine, introduce yourself."
The bird immediately flew to the ground, in front of the large shadow, and began to morph. His size grew and his bones could be clearly heard snapping. His lower beak stretched itself to unsheathe a new set of shark-like teeth. He grew an extra set of limbs and began to shed all of his down feathers in a matter of seconds, leaving a starved, stringy, and grotesque body behind.
Drine lunged at the mass, causing it to drop the unconscious Jonathan to the floor and roar as it tried to remain on its feet. A sound, like the shredding of cloth, could be heard as the demon bird took the talons from his new limbs and dug them into the shoulders of the shadow. He pushed with the momentum of his wings until the thing was slammed against the living room wall. It let out a shrill wail when Drine's beak wedged itself into its neck.
The thing charged, forcing Drine back, and swung him up by his wings throwing him off of itself and across the room. The demon bird slammed into the desk, sending it to shatter into pieces and the papers it contained to fly up in a flurry. A few vials filled with a green substance rolled the length of the floor from one of the dislodged drawers.
Drine scooped up a handful of sharp, wood-shards from the ruble and slunk rapidly to the shadow. Before the thing could react, he smashed their dagger-like ends into its feet, pegging the creature to the floor. It howled and Drine, never losing momentum, sent his claws flying up and through the underside of its jaw, piercing through into its mouth. The shadow gurgled and spat out a black liquid substance before slumping to the ground in a thudding defeat.
As Drine stood back from the dissolving mass, Epithumia ran to Jonathan, who still laid unconscious on the floor. She lifted him and propped him up against the wall.
"Jonathan?"
She checked to find he still had a pulse and sighed with relief. She knew she needed to get him out of there before any more of Durratine's lackeys arrived, so she reached for her satchel and pulled out a special pair of leather gloves and wriggled them onto her talons. If she was to fly him to Jason's she needed there to be a way to do that without her talons digging into his shoulders.
Drine stood in the entrance of the hallway, looking on, when he suddenly rippled out a scream and fell to the ground in a tussle. The creature had reanimated and Drine now was finding its teeth sunk in his back as he struggled to roll it off of him. The floor shook while they thrashed about, and one of the vials, that had escaped from the broken desk, could be heard crunching under their weight. The shards, now covered in the green liquid that they held, sliced into the shadow creature's arm as it promptly released Drine and became more agitated than ever.
Foaming at the mouth and shaking, it began to fight an unseen force and attack the walls and floor, smashing its head repeatedly into both.
Epithumia dragged Jonathan towards the back door by his arms, while Drine grabbed one of the remaining unbroken vials, and stood protectively between his mistress and the creature. As soon as she could, the witch took off into the sky with the doctor in her clutches and Drine, after shaping back into his palm cockatoo appearance, following suit. The creature's screams could be heard over the whistling of the wind as they set their direction to Jason's flat.
She aimed to fly above the clouds to avoid the public eye while the noon sun was still new in the sky, but she suddenly felt an awoken Jonathan struggling in her grasp. The witch knew if he was yelling, she wouldn't be able to hear him, so she thought it best to continue on the course and gave a quick and sharp squeeze to his shoulders. With plenty of miles left before they got to the flat, there was no time for stops. Jonathan struggled like a child for a while, but she felt him stop eventually. Epithumia flew on, smiling at the thought that it could have been he had simply worn himself out.
The window to Jason's flat was open with the curtains breezing out of it. She carefully let Jonathan off on the windowsill and landed as soon as he stepped inside.
"Would you mind giving me an explanation now?!"
He rapidly began to brush himself off and smooth out the air streaked wrinkles in his black turtleneck shirt. Though his orange-ginger hair was never exactly neat, it now was a cow-lick and the man struggled to tame it.
The witch turned to him a placed a finger up to her lips, urging him to be quiet.
The fireplace had died out, leaving the room mostly dark with the only source of light beaming in from the open window. From what she could see in the light, the place looked vacant, minus the other half of the room that was shrouded in a seemingly endless black.
"Jason? I've found Jonah Rance."
The short silence that followed was more than unsettling before an echoed voice reached out from the darkness, and Dr. Fate could be seen gliding out from the shadows.
"Just as the Fates foretold."
Epithumia quietly and protectively stepped in front of Jonathan when Fate turned his attention to him, hoping to explain before any sour conclusion could be made.
"Jonathan Crane turned out to be Jonah Rance, and when I went to his house to retrieve him a shadow demon attacked. I tried to get ahold of Jason, but he never called me back."
She trailed off as she saw sharp movement in the shadows behind Fate. Squinting, she tried to make out the shape as best she could, and as her eyes adjusted, she could just only see a lump on the floor. It seemed to wobble in distress with little reward for its struggle. The sight didn't sit well for her and her eyes then darted to find the couch in the darkness, that was slowly becoming familiar and clear, and when they did, she noticed Zatanna's sleeping form missing.
"Fate, where's Zatanna and Jason?"
Her stern question was cold.
Dr. Fate did not seem bothered by her changed demeanor as he firmly answered, "Jason and Zatanna will play no further part in this quest."
"What are you talking about? I thought you were on our side."
"For the Lords of Order, there are no sides only balance and-"
"Let me guess, order?"
Drine called out from the darkness, that he had waddled into, amidst the conversation, and yanked the chain of a lamp, above the struggling mass, to turn it on and reveal a gagged and tied up Jason and unconscious Zatanna.
"This doesn't look very orderly at all; it looks more chaotic to me." He continued to poke at Fate.
"Oh, how wonderful." Jonathan sarcastically remarked upon seeing the two contained persons.
"Fate, this is obscene. Release them." Epithumia demanded behind a clenched jaw.
"I won't. To do so would be to tip the scale."
"Then why help us at all?! You were here to help keep this demon contained for another year, and now that he's free, putting him back would be against your ideals?!"
The witch was fuming to see her friends betrayed, tied, and gagged. The image burned into her head as a perfect lesson to be learned, and one she thought she had memorized. To her, no matter what label she had put on the people around her, whether they were her friends, family, or companions, they always ended the same.
A vicious cycle of social anxiety, loneliness, and manipulation kept reappearing in her many lives, and she had turned up abandoned, cheated, betrayed, or abused in every situation, almost as if those were the only conclusions to any relationship. She knew she shouldn't have seen this situation any differently, and she kicked herself for it.
"When I first came, there was no balancing force to Durratine. Now that he is free, the Lords of Order have foreseen the scales even out with you as his opposing force, Epithumia Bashem. You are to carry out this quest without the aid of others, for you are to follow your destiny."
"That's a pathetic excuse for what you have done." She spat at him, red-faced and shaking.
"I don't expect you to understand. I do expect you to leave Zatanna and Jason as they are, or force will be distributed."
His fist then warningly began to glow in gold.