LadyAwesome45321: Well, it was a corn maze, after all. Why not have them take the easy way out for once? And about Ray and Nora, I believe they have good chemistry, but (again) I'd have preferred Ray and Zari. Thanks for reviewing!
Guest: Thanks for reviewing! I update this story every Tuesday.
John Constantine woke up from the best sleep he's had in a very long time. So of course, something was terribly wrong. He forced himself to open his eyes to know what was going on. He sat up and felt the iron cuffs pressing against his wrists. Someone had shackled him to the ground, the iron chains long enough to allow him to stand. As he stood, he could not quite raise his arms, but being allowed to stand was already great. Then, John looked around.
His environment was unlike anything he had ever seen before. The ground he'd been lying had been cold to the touch. Uneven dark rock made up the floor, the high ceiling, the walls, giving John the feeling he had been brought to an underground cavern. Despite the rock being cold, it was rather warm inside and some light gave the rock some orangey red color. Yet there were no sources of that light and John did not cast a shadow. Neither did the only two other people in the room, standing only a few yards away: the pale man with the sunglasses and the older, shorter woman he was talking to.
Upon hearing the chains, the man turned his head to him.
"He's awake," he said. The woman now turned to John as well while the pale man approached him. There was a sickening smile on his face and his hands were in his pockets. "I hadn't introduced myself the other day. Hypnos, at your service."
"Splendid," John said sarcastically. He turned to the woman. "Didn't you ever teach your son to not assault men in bars?"
"I'm not his mother," the woman responded in a rough voice.
"She's actually my great-great-niece," Hypnos explained.
The woman also came closer. She wore a dark purple cloak and if she wore something underneath it, John could not see it. Her graying brown hair was largely covered by a veil. It seemed that, if she were to smile, her face might break into pieces. She did not smile often.
"My name is Hecate," the woman introduced herself.
With family relations and names like that, John accurately assumed these were two Greek deities. Though Hypnos seemed to be the eldest of the two, by virtue of being Hecate's great-great-uncle, John believed that Hecate may be in charge of whatever was going on.
He became annoyed with the situation – why was he always dragged into these crazy situations without ever being asked whether he'd actually like to help out?
John turned to Hecate and pulled at his chains without breaking eye contact. "Release me."
"You have no authority here," she stated. John continued to glare at her and Hypnos. He hoped to come over as intimidating.
"Don't play games with me," he said in a threatening tone. "I am the person who stopped the Rising Darkness. I single-handedly killed an angel. I went to hell and back. Now tell me where the bloody hell you've brought me and let. Me. Go."
Hypnos grinned widely when John was done, and the demonologist decided he liked Hecate better – less grins, less drama than Mr. Sandman.
"Funny you phrased it like that." It sounded like he was trying not to laugh out loud. "Don't you recognize it here? Of course, it's different than what you've seen, but there have to be enough similarities?"
Until now, he had not realized the sense of familiarity when he looked around. He did not remember much of his time in hell – only fragments and sentiments – but never the exact look of the location. The heat and light had no source, the rock was cold on the touch, and the general atmosphere contributed to the image. This wasn't where he'd spent his time, but it came close enough.
John's eyes widened in realization and shock.
"He's got it," Hecate said. "Clever boy."
John shook his head, still in denial. "Impossible."
"Very possible," Hypnos said. "There are many religions that have a concept of heaven and hell. But y'know, Hell, Tartarus, …" He shrugged. "It's just a different name for the same place."
Many thoughts crossed his mind, all of them relating to the predicament he was in. Most of them came down to 'every demon here could come in and kill me if they wanted', though some of them were focused on the aspect that he was in Hell. He was there. He only ever would be able to come here if he died. He had died.
But that could not be true. He glanced at Hypnos. If John wasn't mistaken, that man was the god of sleep. He had put John asleep for transportation – John wasn't dead, only a visitor who was still alive. Still, why didn't they go for the easy way and just kill him? What was so important that they needed him to be alive for? Whatever it was, he did not like where this was going.
"If you're not going to kill me, why am I here?" John asked.
"Because I want to make you an offer," Hecate said. She moved closer to Constantine until she was in his personal space. "I need to… harvest something. It's not an easy thing to do. It requires me to be helped by a mortal." Hecate's grin was crooked. "I have chosen you, John. You should be honored."
"Why me?" John asked, the frustration clearly audible in his voice and the anger clearly visible on his face. "There are more than eight billion people in the world. Pick someone else."
"But none of them are you." Hecate leaned in even closer, and John could feel her breath on his chest. "John Constantine. Exorcist, demonologist, master of the dark arts. And you said it yourself; you killed an angel and escaped from here. There is nobody like you, John. You'll do nicely."
John shook his head. "We'll see about that." He refused to take part in her scheme. He sat on his knees to give his arms more room to move around freely. John held the chains in his hands and recited a Latin incantation, while Hypnos and Hecate watched and did not interfere.
The spell backfired – the chains burned his wrists and the palms of his hands. He cried out in surprise and pain. When he looked at his hands, they were red and one of them had a painful blister on it. The cuffs were now more painful than before; he may have a blister on his left wrist, covered by the cuff.
Hypnos laughed. "Please, try that again." But John had learned the message: don't cast spells, because it will hurt you. They really did take their precautions. John's attention went to the chains, which definitely were not normal chains.
"Anti-magic cuffs," Hecate answered his question. "Every time you cast a spell, it will retaliate accordingly." So the worse the results would be, the more John would be hurt by the chains.
"I'll find a way out," John said. Just give him some time, and he would break free, with magic or not.
"How?" she asked. "I made those chains. You can't out-magic the goddess of magic. Where do you think you got all those spells from?" She spread her arms. "I know every trick in your book because I wrote it."
So John was stuck in literal Hell in anti-magic cuffs, with the god of sleep and the goddess of magic. He couldn't easily escape and John realized he was not going to return to the real world soon. It wasn't looking good for him.
"I guess this is the part where I despair and beg you to let me go," John said, and he spat at the ground before Hecate and Hypnos. "Do whatever you want, I'm not going to help you."
"I was hoping you'd say that," Hypnos said. The pale man came even closer to John until they stood next to one another. His presence alone was enough for John to feel tired. But he'd been standing next to Hecate and she wasn't affected. The gods were probably immune to each other's powers or took precautions that John could not take.
"What are you going to do, make sleep?" John asked him. "Joke's on you, I'll just wake up well-rested." Hypnos did not answer John's question. He did take this question as an invitation to talk about his family.
"Did you know I'm a father?" Hypnos said. "I have three wonderful sons, all of them in the family business. Morpheus, Phobetor, and Phantasos. Morpheus is… not present at the moment, so today you'll only meet Phobetor and Phantasos. I've asked them to give you a demonstration of what they are capable of." Hypnos crouched and smiled at Constantine in a sinister way. "Something tells me you've already met them."
They needed John for their plans. The first method of trying to make him comply was allowing Phobetor and Phantasos to do their work.
Hypnos placed a hand on John's head and all the energy left the mortal's body. John laid down and fell asleep. In his dreams, he met Phobetor and Phantasos, who were never personified like their father, but who resided within the dreams of their victims. Phantasos' specialty were surreal scenes that made drug-induced hallucinations look mild and manageable. Phobetor was crueler, for he tormented his victim. He conjured images from the worst experiences to create the ultimate nightmare. Combined, the powers of Phantasos and Phobetor could crush the spirits of even the bravest person, who would remember the nightmares long after waking up again.
John could not escape from these nightmares. His worst experiences came up and were blended together with his failures and his biggest fears. John was unaware he was dreaming, so the nightmares could have a maximum impact. But this was a nightmare you did not wake up from – John was only going to wake up when Hypnos wanted him to wake up, exposing John to the horrors of his own mind.