June 5th 2016 The Moon 5:00 PM EDT

I had no fucking clue where we were supposed to go. It wasn't like back in the Nightside where my aura sight couldn't be used, or like Lex's base where it was somehow blocked. It was that EVERY fucking direction was full of powerful magical shit. I turned to look at Taylor. "Ok, who the fuck is this guy? The amount of powerful items here make it seem like we wandered into that warehouse from raiders of the lost ark. Hell, I think the ark of the covenant might actually BE in this base somewhere." I pointed in a random direction. "Probably over there."

Taylor snickered. "The world's most fanatical hoarder. The Collector is just what his name sounds like. He collects. He's like those old people who spend all their time on QVC, except in this case, QVC would be the sum total of human history. He spends all his time either looking for expensive or rare objects, or hiring people to find them for him. That's what he was doing working with Tommy. If there's something ancient or impressive you want it's probably in here somewhere, though it might also be somewhere else. I suspect he cheats by snatching forgotten versions of things from later in the timeline when people don't care where they went."

I snorted. "Well that's definitely not going to make finding the things we need more difficult. If there's this much ambient power floating around I can't help look for anything though. You're going to have to use your gift to track down the gear we need. At least the ward scanner. I can find shit that goes boom if we get close. Ambient magic or no looking directly at an item will still tell me what it does."

Taylor just sighed, rolling his eyes before closing them and taking a deep breath. A deep breath that preceded the use of his gift which I was seeing for the first time with my aura sight open. I yelped in pain and reeled back, my brain on fire from the massive overload of power when I looked at Taylors gift. I slammed my eyes shut, falling to my knees in agony as I tried hard to forget the sight of the gift in my enhanced vision. I could still see it behind my eyelids though, a twisting mass of energy that existed in far too many dimensions.

Taylor's gift wasn't void magic, but it WAS something that existed on a much higher level of reality. I was pretty sure wherever he got it, it wasn't from something human or even human related. That kind of power almost definitely came from a higher dimensional entity. It hurt my brain to even look at, and that was after twisting it in knots for literal months to enable myself to manipulate reality. I was pretty sure a normal person's head would have exploded just from seeing that, and I cursed myself silently for forgetting to shut my aura sight off when he did that.

When I opened my eyes I saw Zee shouting at Taylor, who looking mortified by his dead first love's daughter being angry with him, and Drea at my side checking on me. She'd pulled me into her chest, stroking my hair and making low shushing noises that told me I'd been screaming almost as well as my dry mouth did. I groaned and looked up and she pulled away. "Are you alright Morgan?" Her lilac eyes were wide with fear and concern. "That sounded horrible, what just happened? I've never seen you like that."

I smiled up at her, pecking her softly on the lips. "I'm fine, love. I just looked somewhere I shouldn't with my aura sight. Here, help me up?" She did, and I put an arm over her shoulder. Less because I needed to and more because I wanted to. She was looking around worriedly, and I grabbed her chin and pulled it up so I was looking her in the eyes. "Hey, you alright? Not just because of this, but in general. This whole trip has been nuts. I talked to Zee about it but we've been kind of ignoring you given all the stuff she has going on."

Drea leaned in to kiss me again, this time longer and slower before pulling away. "I'm fine. I realize Zatanna has a lot to deal with, I don't begrudge her the attention." She hip checked me. "We're all going to be together a long time. I don't mind being patient as long as I get my attention in the end. We have a daughter, Morgan. Things aren't exactly casual, and being in a serious relationship takes work and commitment. The fact that you thought to check on me shows you know that, and as long as you do I don't need to be the center of attention at all times."

I put my forehead against hers. "How are you so damn perfect?" I paused. "Well, you're a literal goddess and the physical manifestation of the concept of a 'dream girl' so that probably doesn't hurt. But still. I love you Drea. You're the kindest, most patient, most thoughtful woman I've ever met, and Zee would agree with me on that. Once this is over I want to go on vacation, just the three of us." I gave her a hot once over. "Somewhere beachy. I want you in a bikini for as long as humanly possible."

She pouted at me fetchingly. "A bikini? I don't think that's really appropriate." I raised an eyebrow, put off by the sudden derail in the mood until she grinned wickedly. "Even tiny scraps of fabric would get in the way of what I have planned. Better find a private island somewhere and just enjoy ourselves completely naked." With a twinkle in her eye she leaned up to peck my lips again before darting away. On her way off to calm Zee down she stopped and looked over her shoulder. "Oh, and Morgan? I love you too."

I watched her walk over to drag our girlfriend away from a wilting Taylor for a second before heading over to get between them. "Enough baby. I'm fine. It wasn't Taylor's fault. I was stupid and looked at him with my aura sight when I shouldn't have. I had the sense to avoid using it in the Nightside, but I forgot that Taylor's gift is one of the more powerful abilities in that shithole. Even the other Nightside residents respect it, and I should have taken it as a hint that it might be out of my depth. Hell, I could consider it training."

She stared past me for a bit at Taylor, but I could feel through our bond and even see in her eyes that this wasn't about anger. She'd been scared. It had been a while since I'd been in bad shape like that, she'd gotten used to not having to worry about me. I put my hand on her cheek, turning her head to me and giving her a soft smile. "I'm fine Zee. It's ok. It was a stupid mistake and one I won't make again."

She pouted for a second before heaving a sigh. "Fine, but you owe Drea and I a nice date after this. I don't care if we have to find something in the Nightside, you better really wow us." She turned an apologetic expression on Taylor. "I'm really sorry John, I just got so worried about him. It wasn't fair to take it out on you. Can you ever forgive me?" Her big violet eyes shone with remorse and apology and her lip quivered as she stared at him in shame. I almost winced just from catching the edges of that.

Taylor looked like he'd been hit by a bus, which I assumed was a factor of Zee's absurd charisma score. Zatanna uses puppy dog pout, the technique is super effective. Even with my mental resistance I'd have folded like cheap cardboard if she looked at me like that. He cleared his throat to get us back on track. "Of course, I'd never hold that against you. It's a good thing to take care of the ones you love. No harm, no foul. Besides, I managed to track down the artifact we need, it's nearby."

I cocked my head and he gestured for us to follow, explaining what he'd seen. "I recognized the thing when I saw it. It's called the eye of odin. Gold eye shaped setting with a bright blue gem in it. You put it over your eye and it reveals all traps and defenses when looking through it. Extremely expensive and powerful artifact, and probably one that'll be guarded. Between Jim and Tommy though I don't foresee a problem getting our hands on the piece." He led us down a hallway, holding up a hand to stop us for a second as what appeared to be a robotic sentry rolled by.

It wasn't as advanced or impressive as the external guards, but from the aura it looked pretty damn sturdy. Still, with the security system as a whole treating us like we belonged it wasn't doing more than a cursory scan as one of the layers of protection. With Tommy taking care of the big stuff I was able to flex a bit and make sure it didn't notice us. The scan picking up nothing as it had been all along was a small lie, and an easy enough tweak to make to the situation with my ability.

Once it was gone we started moving again. I naturally made zero noise, even without my ghost powers I still had my old reliable ninja training, and my ability to move undetected was unmatched by any normal human. The others were...less stealthy, for the most part. Artemis and Jim were both moving in silence, but Taylor, Suzie, John, Zee, Tommy, and Drea were all stomping along like a damn marching band. Luckily without anyone to hear it that wasn't an issue, but I was still more than happy when we arrived in the room where Taylor had sensed the eye.

When I did step inside, I froze in place for a minute. "I...I know this room." Everyone else froze too, waiting for me to speak. The room was a wide, domed structure with several small but well lit stair cases leading up to a stage like level, and a huge metal superstructure over it that looked kind of like a jungle gym. What really gave it away though was the huge metal upside down triangle with a stylized E on it. "This is the fucking moon base room from the second Austin Powers. No time machine that I can see, but it's literally an exact duplicate otherwise."

Zee looked around like a kid on christmas. "Oh my god it is! The chair is even here, it's got the little joy stick on the arm rest and everything! That's so cool." She was almost glowing with excitement, and I couldn't blame her. This was just such a surreal experience. But sadly we didn't have time for tourism. Aside from the stuff from the moon base, the walls were lined with shelves covered in boxes, jars, bags, and even a few orbs of floating substance that appeared to just be hanging in space.

Taylor gestured across the room, ignoring the set dressing as he pointed at one specific shelf behind quite a bit of powerful warding and defenses. My aura sight was picking up enough energy coming off that thing to deep fry a sun. On the shelf sat a few impressive and useful looking items, but the one we were looking for was in a simple wooden box, sitting on a bed of purple velvet. The box was propped open so I could see the gold shape of the object, not that I was stupid enough to think it meant getting it would be easy. We had found the eye of odin. Now we just needed to get it.

June 5th 2016 The Moon 6:00 PM EDT

I had no real idea how to get through the wards on the shelf. Granted, I was a master at security systems, and my void magic skills were pretty decent, but actual ward schemas were more of Jim thing, with Zee being our second string in terms of magic cracking. It was funny because my girl had never really been a thief, nor trained with my mentor, but just by virtue of her magical knowledge she was far and away the second most qualified of us to get through the protections in place over the Eye of Odin.

Zee walked past me and stood in front of the shelf, scanning it carefully. She bit her thumb cutely as she studied the spellwork, her impressive magical knowledge slowly taking apart the intricacies of the defenses and laying bare their secrets as I'd seen her do so many times before. I smirked to myself in triumph when she finally opened her mouth to share her understanding with me, turning to look at me with a confident expression on her face. She put both hands on her hips and decisively stated. "I don't know what this is."

I blinked. "I...wait, what? Then what the hell were you just doing staring at it? You looked like you were immersing yourself completely in the magic so you could properly disarm it?" I rubbed the area above my nose as I felt a headache coming on, retroactively embarrassed in my confidence in the occasionally flaky love of my life. In my defense she was usually reliable about magic stuff.

This time she just shrugged. "It was pretty. The design is really complex and impressive, but I can't make heads or tails of where it starts or end. Some kind of recursive mobius structure I think. Either way, void magic or not I have no clue how the hell I would go about deconstructing something like that. I'm pretty sure Jim is going to have to be the one handle this." She shot my mentor an apologetic smile. "Sorry about that Mr. Craddock, I'm kind of embarrassed but this is pretty out of my depth."

Jim just waved her off with a chuckle. "No need, dear girl. Learning to construct wards and learning to break them are indeed similar arts, but only in the initial stages. In the later levels ward schema are specifically made to be counterintuitive to prevent cracking. You education with Nimue has been progressing well for your age, and you've clearly put quite some time into personal research, but there is no substitute for experience in such matters, not even talent. Leave this to me."

He stepped up and raised a hand, his ghostly glove gliding over the glowing gossamer shielding. Where his fingers traces I saw the protections I could see with my aura sight flicker into existence, traceries of lightning in the air. He gave a relieved sigh. "Ah, good. I had worried that it might be concealed or encrypted, but it seems that this particular structure is built with other goals in mind. I won't need to rely on your aura sight for this spellwork Morgan my boy. Simply give me a moment to study it."

I nodded, though he didn't see me do so. That hadn't been a request, more of a notification of intent. I waited a few minutes and stepped up next to him. "Is this really that complicated? I've seen you crack the wards on Shadowcrest itself. This is just a shelf, are the defenses really that much higher of a level compared to Zee's crazy powerful haunted house?" It was hard to believe this Collector guy had those kinds of resources at his disposal.

To my surprise though, Jim just shook his head. "Different goals. This is an internal system. It's designed under the assumption that the thief will have either snuck past the wards carefully or set them off and be in a hurry. Zatarra's wards were made for defense, these are made to be a time sink. They are, frankly speaking, an incomprehensible mess. They're needlessly overcomplicated and contradictory in structure because the point is that the thief is supposed to lose hours trying to sift through the nonsense so they get caught."

An expression of realization crossed my face. "Ah, I get it. The Collector is expecting whatever defenses we have against his wards to break down, if we have any at all. Then he can just mob us with robots while we're stuck here unable to get what we want." I paused. "So...is that going to happen? Because if it is I feel like we should make some kind of preparations, or maybe even run away. I don't think I can take an army of those robots, they were pretty fucking powerful when I fought them earlier."

Jim batted his hand in the air like he was slapping away a fly. "Bah, leave me alone boy, I almost had it. I said the thief is SUPPOSED to spend hours lost in the nonsense. I am not your average thief. I can get this open in only a few minutes if you can shut up and let me focus. Go stand over there and let me work." His voice wasn't mean or snappish, just distracted. Jim tended to be blunt when he was in mid task, and I didn't hold it against him.

I walked over to stand by Zee. Her eyes were fixed on the apparently entirely visible structure of the wards as Jim worked, trying to learn as much as she possibly could by watching. I considered interrupting but in the end I just shook my head and headed over to stand by Drea instead. I put an arm over her shoulder. "So, imminent danger aside, that whole thing is pretty beautiful right? Like I see things like this a lot with aura sight, but I've never seen a ward scheme visible in the normal spectrum like that before. I guess the distraction is part of the whole trap."

She rested her head on my shoulder. "It is pretty. Zee was right. I have to admit, I don't mind taking a little break while we let Jim do the work getting us in. We should have down time in more of our operations, it's nice to take a minute to catch our breath. Though I'm skeptical we could enforce it in most circumstances." She pursed her lips in mock concentration. "Say, do you think our enemies would accept a legally mandated fifteen minute break if we proposed it? Just had them stop the fight so we could recharge a bit?"

That mental image made me snicker. "Oh I'm sure. Maybe if we bring snacks for everyone. Some capri suns and a sleeve of crackers with some kind of dip. Or maybe little cucumber finger sandwiches and some thermoses of tea, given our recent time in the UK." I turned and called over to John. "Hey, you guys are like...legally obligated to stop and drink tea when it's offered right? It's like that old story about vampires needing to count grains of sand before they can cross them I think."

He shot me a gesture that looked like a peace sign, but based on context and attitude was more like a middle finger. " Sure, just like you Americans have to eat a whole apple pie every day to wash down your big macs." I snickered at the acerbic tone. I didn't actually believe any of the stereotypes about british people, but I was always curious to see how John was going to roast me back when I brought it up. He strolled over to stand by us to watch Jim work. "Anyway, do you lot know when he's going to be done? My hands are itching just sitting here like this. I feel exposed."

The smirk dropped off my face and I turned to watch Jim seriously. I'd been trying not to think about the possibility of us being caught. Tommy was handling the security system, but it wasn't like that was foolproof. The longer we stayed here the more likely we might slip up and get caught. I was pretty sure I could handle another dozen of those robots no problem. I was pretty sure I COULDN'T handle another hundred of them.

Luckily, Jim's voice floated back over his shoulder, his tone detached as he concentrated. "Rush a miracle worker, get lousy miracles. Lucky for you all I'm about finished with this. This configuration is a mess, and the recursive nature of the enchantment makes it worse, but by necessity its not exactly flawless. I just need another second and..." There was a loud zap and a shower of red sparks as the entire defensive structure dissolved into motes of light, only drawing a small yelp from my mentor as he pulled back his hands.

He looked back at me, and after an aura check to make sure there were no defensive redundancies reached down to pick up the box containing the Eye of Odin. When no alarms went off we all breathed a sigh of relief, even me, which was probably stupid because I was the one who gave the ok, but sue me, things went wrong sometimes. Once that was done I turned to the rest of the moon base chamber, scanning everything nearby with my aura sight in an attempt to find some weapons that could be used to charge me up.

The first reason we came was the Eye, but I also needed something powerful enough to dump into my void form to get the points needed to pick up the resurrection artifact for Zee's mom. To do that I needed something even more powerful than Black Adam's lightning, but preferably spread out over a longer time. So maybe a few items that were only close to as strong used all together. I sifted through the racks, looking for any sort of powerful looking weapon, and I managed to dig up a few of them from different corners of the room.

First up was a small and extremely well crafted bronze laser pistol. The thing was polished to a mirror finish and had a mother pearly grip, with a few dials on the side of it that could be adjusted to focus or widen the beam, as well as to turn it up or shift the energy type. I knew almost nothing about how it worked, but I DID know from the aura that it was powerful, so I narrowed the beam, cranked the power, and then handed it over to John. Then I picked up a huge chromed laser cannon, then a massive yellow blaster with a glowing neon green canister as the fuel source.

I passed them out as I found them, making sure that each of my group had a weapon (Suzie apparently carried a laser cannon on her and waved me off as I offered, pulling it from seemingly nowhere), even if it was just a generic plasma blaster, and I stuck to energy rather than physical damage types. Once that was done I headed to the middle of the room and had everyone surround me. "Alright guys. Once I'm shifted start firing right away. Staying in this state drains my energy constantly, so if we don't keep up the output it'll be counter productive."

They all nodded and then I shifted. I changed my state to a living shadow, but as before, I reached out to my bloodline, opening a Hole in the world as I did it, and BECOMING that hole. I felt myself fundamentally alter, embodying the void itself, in a way I hadn't felt when I did this before. Some sort side effect of my bond to Morana probably. Regardless, I was ready, and everyone started firing. I felt the energy pour into me, my spirit drinking it in like dry ground soaked up water in the desert. I didn't use points to sustain myself, but my power, and I felt my head start to throb. I ignored it. Now wasn't the time for that. Now was the time to get stronger. I had a life to restore.

June 5th 2016 The Moon 7:00 PM EDT

The energy from all the guns was...a lot. Like, an absurd amount of power. Even in void form my brain whited out from the input. I felt like my head was full of tv static, and I had to work hard to force myself to stay aware between the pain of my power use and the overload of the energy. Which was weird when I was thinking about it because I had no brain. I wasn't even sure what was hurting. Though I supposed that was always true. Brains didn't actually have nerves in them and couldn't feel pain in any case.

Whatever the reasoning I could feel both sensations, energy and agony, coursing through me and growing by the second. The contrast made them both more intense, and it was almost impossible to ignore them, but I knew I had to keep my wits. If I lost my cool I'd shift back, either from getting lost in the power or from blacking out in pain. Either would spell disaster, as aside from not collecting the points I needed I'd be taking physical form in the middle of huge clusterfuck of powerful energy attacks.

I held on for what felt like hours, but was probably a few minutes under the barrage. Eventually though I just couldn't take it anymore and officially signaled to my friends to stop. They slowly let off the pressure, allowing the energy to dwindle, and as they did I felt the pain in my head begin to climb. The less the energy was there to take my mind off it the more I slowly lost my grip on consciousness. The pain was becoming unbearable. The energy finally bled off and I triggered my shift back to solid form with a muted scream.

There was a burning smell as I reformed, slamming into the ground a smoking mass of twitching ghost devil. I groaned aloud, somehow managing to stay conscious, but unable to form any coherent words, or even sounds that weren't just garbled grunts of agonizing torment. It took a few seconds for my brain to reboot enough to actually rasp out a very soft. "Ow." I had a brief flashback to the blackout I'd had when I absorbed that lightning bolt and wondered if maybe it would have been smarter to slow play this plan, despite the strain of keeping up void form for too long.

I'd gotten so excited to help Zee I'd jumped the gun, like I always did when I found a convenient solution. I saw a path ahead and charged down it without looking, usually headlong into a tank of hungry sharks. I shook it off and stood up on wobbly legs. At the very least this was my own power, which had never really damaged me. A bit of pain was unfortunate but not the end of the world, and I hadn't done anything too reckless. I closed my eyes to check my points. Eleven million. More than I needed by a solid million points.

I'd keep them for a rainy day in case I needed them for a perk or wanted to build a construct that could swat a city like a fly. Regardless though, I had enough. More than enough actually, and plenty left over to open up a shadow portal back to Julian's place. I somehow doubted we were going to make it back to the door out in the sea of tranquility. Before I could summon the portal though, I felt a shudder in the floor as something hit the wall on the other side of the room.

I turned to Tommy, who was wiping blood from his nose. "Sorry kid, some kind of dedicated scan. The Collector has plenty of tricks up his sleeves. I'm guessing he had some sort of conceptual defensive wards on this place, they were probably just set up to activate sparingly. Even for him it would be tough to output that kind of energy. Conceptual effects are notoriously difficult to produce repeatably. Either way, I did what I could but he found us out. He's coming for us." He sounded grim at the prospect.

I could certainly understand the sentiment. I wasn't feeling amazing right now either, and while I didn't know exactly what he would send I was guessing based on the robots from earlier it wouldn't be simple to deal with. I turned to my friends. "Alright, anyone who has any tricks, smoke em' if you got em'. Jim, any chance you could arrange for a ward that'll keep them out like theirs did to us? If you can buy the time I can set up a portal for us to use to get back to the Nightside directly from here."

My mentor shook his head. "I don't think so. I mean, I can try, but I can't promise anything I can set up that quickly will be able to hold off the robots I saw earlier, and that's assuming that he doesn't have anything else to throw at us, an assumption I'm not at all comfortable making. I'll do what I can in either case." With that, he turned back to the door to the moon base chamber and rapped his cane on the floor, beginning a long, slow chant of muttered syllables as he began to weave together magic.

I turned to Artemis and Wally. "The two of you have some sort of lightning trick you do together, and robots run on electricity. I can't know for sure it'll do much, but I figure we might as well swing for the fences. Can you two set up for a ranged assault once they get past Jim's barrier?" There was no if involved in this, just when. Jim was amazing, but we didn't have nearly long enough and this wasn't his territory. Artemis just gave a solemn nod, dragging Wally off to set up for a series of lightning based bow attacks mixed with a bit of cosmic super force.

I would have liked to prep more, but I was forced to throw out any thoughts of arranging our defenses when the wall was ripped away by a huge, bulky robot that had to duck to get through even the massive gap it had made. Once it was in the room I was able to see that the thing was about twenty feet tall, and I gulped slightly at the aura it was putting off, because it was pretty obvious it was different from the others in more ways than just visually.

Visually though, it was pretty distinctive. Aside from being twenty feet tall, it had other key differences. Firstly there were no legs, the bottom of the machine rolled in on tank like treads that ate up a surprising amount of ground. I would have expected it to lack mobility, but the torso was made of a series of overlapping metal plates that allowed full mobility at the waist to offset the stationary base, hence the bending over to get inside.

The shoulders were heavily plated with thick riveted steel, and the red glowing eyes were set into a block head bisected by a jagged line separating top and bottom, allowing for the effect of sharp metal teeth when the top and bottom of the head separated from each other. One arm was topped with a huge double headed axe blade, and the other with a spinning buzz saw. The red eyes of the massive robot glared down at me with a malicious gleam, and I swallowed hard at the sheer size of the thing.

There was a massive flash of lightning as Artemis fired her arrow, Wally charging it up with the speed force before she loosed the attack. There was a massive flash of crackling electricity as a purple lightning blast came blasting across the room and smashed into the robot as it was stopped by a web of arcane symbols courtesy of Jim's earlier casting. The robot took the blast head on, being driven back about ten feet and tearing up the floor of the moon base, but otherwise seeming not to be effected other than a scorch mark on its chest.

I cursed and turned to yell to Artemis. "Focus on the smaller ones. I can deal with the big boy!" I wasn't actually sure I could, but with the current amount of points I had I could do some serious damage even without relying on my power directly. My head was still smarting and I was pretty sure telling any lies to the world was out, but I had plenty of inherent gifts and tons of fuel to use them with.

I shifted into my shadow form, and once I did I called up a massive amount of dark energy, creating a shadow construct and merging it into myself, making a massive shadow version of myself. Once I was up to size with the robot I reached into myself and shifted back. I almost staggered at the drain of points needed to solidify something the size I currently was, but luckily I could actually do it since my body was partly ectoplasm in the first place. Even during the fight with the Monkey Prince I hadn't been able to become physical again after I'd upsized like this.

When I became physical again, it was with a view of a robot of pretty much equal size to me, albeit much wider. I conjured Tartarus in one hand and an Abyssal Alloy tower shield on the other. Seeing all my friends standing around at a height that barely reached my knees was...shocking, but pretty awesome. This was something I'd really looked forward to try, and now that I was happening I was geeking out a little. I wasn't sure if the extra points allowed it or I had just changed that much from all the training and the whole sphere of the gods trip, but either way, the fact that this was now and option amazed me to no end.I triggered my armor to keep me safe and increase my power passively, though I couldn't fuel the demonic power augmentation right now.

I poured in some points (thank the gods I had them to spare because my brain was slag and my actual power use wouldn't be an option for another few hours probably) and sparked up the lancer configuration on Tartarus. The huge robot let out a buzzing roar as its head levered open, mouth parting like a bear trap, and a whistle of steam billowed out at my face from inside it. I raised the shield, absorbing the superheated mist (which was fucking neon purple for some reason.

Despite the strength of my Abyssal Alloy I could feel the shield begin to soften, and I had to reinforce the damn thing by compacting the structure with more ectoplasm. The cooling frost of the ectoplasm and the condensing of the metal into a smaller area undid the softening effect, actually seeming to have improved the shield as I smashed it down to buckler size with a hefty expenditure of points. I wasn't quite low enough to break the ten million mark and defeat the purpose of coming here, but I was getting close. I needed to create the portal or I wasn't going to have the points to throw us all that far soon.

I tanked another blast of steam, and the new condensed shield was able to hold up fine...until the axe blade smashed into it, driving me back a step even in my armor. This thing was strong as fuck, and I felt my concentration shake a bit. With a quick grin I dipped back and created a clone. I left it in my place as I flickered through my shadow form and used the points from the larger me construct to make the duplicate. I checked the progress of the portal and grinned. It was done. I dropped us all through it, watching in amusement as the robot demolished the shadow construct clone I'd left behind. Mission accomplished, now for the hard part.

June 6th 2016 The Nightside 8:00 PM EDT

It was time. When we got back I'd headed for my phone and spent that ten million on the resurrection ritual. The version I'd found was some kind of gothic seeming magical construction that needed lots of candles and blood and ingredients and shit. The main component of the ritual itself came in the form of an ancient looking scroll that would dissolve into the magic once the ritual began, but unlike some of the others, this one was designed to be sold separately from the spell, forcing the caster to actually supply the materials.

Lucky for us, the Nightside was a black magic hellscape where you could get literally anything as long as it was mystical and morally questionable, so picking up the mats wasn't difficult or even that time consuming. There were a few small items that we needed to substitute based on some factors like the time, positioning, and the identity of the target. The scroll was absurdly detailed, and half the information was formuli for finding the proper conditions rather than direct instructions on how to proceed.

Still, despite how fiendishly complicated it was, between Zee, Jim, and I, we had plenty of magical heavyweights, and deciphering and arranging the ritual wasn't too hard. We had to rely on Taylor, John, Tommy, and Julian to retrieve the supplies in time, because based on the formulas we had deciphered the night of June sixth, two thousand and sixteen, was important numerogically due to the repetition. That would at least help lessen the power demands, which was going to be a big factor.

As I set everything up in a small courtyard inside Julian's house (small compared to the house itself, the courtyard was actually much larger than it should be considering the area of the place from the outside) I had to ask Taylor. "So, just out of curiosity, why are we doing this at Julian's place? I'm sure you have better places. Not that I don't appreciate his letting us use the house, but I bet we could do this much easier in an older and more powerful location. What about Strangefellows? It's the oldest bar in the world right? I bet there's plenty of powerful magic to harness there if we put in the time." I was still hoping we could streamline the process. Despite having all the energy and materials, this was going to take hours because of the less than optimal conditions.

Taylor stared at me in absolute horror. "Are you out of your bleeding mind? Strangefellows isn't just a mystically significant location or an ancient bar, it's the resting place, a term I use loosely in this case, of Merlin Satanspawn himself. If you think I'm anywhere close to stupid enough to let you attempt a RESURRECTION ritual anywhere near Merlin's grave, you're either an idiot, or I have a bridge I can sell you." The genuine fear and warning in his voice was actually kind of off putting having seen what it took to scare the big detective. Either way, I took his point.

I held up both hands. "Check. Not Strangefellows. Probably for the best anyway, we've got this place mostly set up and changing venues would be a pain, even if it might save time in the long run. Thanks by the way, for helping us get some of the materials. Between the fifty pounds of malachite, the eighteen dragon statues carved from blood jade, the obsidian skulls, and the djinn tablets, I'm not sure even my absurd resources would have been enough to get our hands on all of it in time."

He waved me off. "I'd have helped even if this wasn't to bring back Sindella, since it IS, there was no way I wouldn't call in some favors." He looked sadly at the ritual. "It is a shame this thing won't work a second time. I'd never deprive Zatanna of getting her mother back, nor would I miss a chance to see Sindella again, but I won't deny I wish we had another shot. It might be nice to see my dad again after all these years. I have a lot of questions for him, but more than that I just miss him."

The far off tone of his voice kind of hit me where I lived, because...I hadn't seen my dad in months. Hell, for him, it had been years. He was never the most touchy feely father, but I knew he loved me, and since I got back I hadn't bothered to track him down to check in. I felt like kind of an asshole for that, thinking back, and I realized that I missed him too. I'd gotten so used to pushing him out of my mind that I lost track of that, but it was true. After this mess ended I was going to visit him. I'd bring Kit with me, and we could all have dinner together as a family like we should have from the start.

I shook off the thought. It was a really nice image, but we had other things to worry about. I didn't have any response to Taylor's sorrow, so I didn't bother responding, just left him to his thoughts and got back to working on the final touches of the ritual. Zee and Jim returned as we were putting on the last touches. After helping set up, the two of them had headed for the Doormouse's place to catch a door to Shadowcrest to dig up the grave Zee had buried her mother in. Apparently they didn't trust the normal Gotham graveyards, which was fair, so they buried her at home.

Even with access though, Zee needed Jim because of some defenses that were in the way of her ability to actually retrieve what was now pretty much a skeleton that we could use as a focus for the ritual. When they got back they were carrying what looked like a duffel bag in one hand. Despite the informal carrying method, I could see Zee treating it with as much care and respect as possible, and I hurried forward to help her gently set it down and begin taking out the bones, unzipping the bag and pulling them out one at a time.

Being no longer connected to one another the bones had gotten a bit mixed up, every distinct part of the skeleton not connected by something like the rib cage lying in a pile of very random looking individual shapes in the bag. We took out the easy to identify stuff like the skull and rib cage and laid it on the platform in the center of the courtyard (we'd used the malachite to craft a sort of weird version of a jade bed). Once that was done, we started to pull out individual pieces, laying them out in the full and perfect pattern of a functional skeleton.

I mentally thanked my past self for my perfect memory, because without it I'd never have been able to properly identify what each piece was and where it went. Luckily Jim had made me study all number of antiquities and important historical artifacts for my education so long ago when I first became his apprentice. Among that number was something called an ossuary, which was a holy room that held the bones of saints. They were also sometimes MADE of the bones of saints, and therefore I'd been tasked with learning about the skeleton as a side project in case we ever needed to rob one.

Me having a perfect memory had been somewhat unexpected for Jim, and I suspect he forced me to learn way more supplemental information that he might not have required of Artemis or Reggie out of a desire to create a better apprentice and give me a deeper foundation. One of the things that most people didn't know about my mentor was the sheer absurd depth of his knowledge regarding his field of expertise. Jim was one of the most brilliant and talented appraisers on the planet by sheer virtue of years of hard work, and I knew and appreciated him wanting to pass that on to me and prepare me for the work he knew I would have to do. The magic was important, but his knowledge was an equal part of why he was such an effective master thief.

Regardless of the reason though, I was able to put together the skeleton, helping Zee along as well, thanks to that information, though even I had to stop and look up a few things. Bones, especially the smaller ones, looked incredibly alike. The distal phalanges at the tips of the fingers and toes are extremely similar in appearance, and telling them apart was an exercise in annoyance that required us looking up multiple pictures. I tried to do most of the work because handling these was clearly distressing my girlfriend, but she never complained, clearly too focused on getting this done and seeing her mother again.

Once we had it all set up, she stood back and I began the execution of the ritual itself. First off was the preparation of the malachite bed. The multiple basins full of relatively fresh blood (we were insured the people who shed it were fairly compensated and still healthy after the donation) were dumped onto the malachite slowly as the candles were lit. The malachite had been inscribed with spiderwebs of delicate and unique runes and as the blood was poured onto the gemstone and the runes themselves began to absorb the deep red substance.

As the runes began to glow, the green of the malachite shifted in hue, becoming darker and richer. Still green, but less the green of growing things and more the green of the darkest plants in the depths of the deepest forests. As the majority of the blood was absorbed a thin sheet of it rolled over the edges of the chunk of stone, sliding down to the floor and flowing out along the series of carved lines we'd chiseled into the flagstones of the courtyard with Julian's permission. Within a minute, the green of the malachite was unstained as the runes had absorbed all the blood save that which had flowed to the floor and a thin layer clinging to the formerly white bones.

The eighteen dragon statues were placed in three expanding rings of six along the pattern of the carved array, and as the blood pooled through the channels and reached the base of each statue the eyes began to glow the same red as the runes on the bed. Once all three rings were lit, the candles flared up, the flames taking on the same red tinge as the blood and runes and casting strange dancing shadows across the courtyard.

With this point reached, I unrolled the scroll and began to chant. The words were strange and alien, but after I started the text began to flow from my lips without my conscious control, as if it was being pulled from me, and bringing a pretty solid chunk of my vitality with it. I was just lucky I had so much of the stuff. The runes on the page, twin to the ones on the bed, began to glow the same color, eventually sparking up into red flames like the candles. The leaping light cast strange shadows through the malachite bed, and as each flicked moved the shadows along the bones some of the darkness stained and clung to the blood.

It looked, oddly enough, kind of like a 3D printer of blood and shadow, and as the spell siphoned off my life energy to fuel itself I felt a rising of ancient and primordial powers in the courtyard. The moon above us, formerly bright and clear, began to tinge red as the skeleton slowly filled out to show itself as first an indistinct figure, and then a body. Hair began to grow from the scalp, and the darkness receded to show smooth, healthy skin.

Finally, I reached the end, invoking several gods I'd never even heard of with words I knew I shouldn't understand but did, and there was a flare of power. The candles sparked up, soaring flames leaping like a butane torch before consuming the candles and seeping into the blood trails. Suddenly the whole circle was full of bloody fire that was siphoned into the bed causing all the powerful runes to blaze up with bright light that was absorbed by the bloody shadowy form. The candles went out, the moon faded to white, and the dragon statues crumbled to dust as the bed turned clear as glass. Then, when silence had completely consumed the courtyard, the form on the clear bed opened its eyes, and sat up.

June 6th 2016 The Nightside 9:00 PM EDT

The severity of the situation was kind of undercut by Zee's yelp as she realized her mom had been resurrected bare ass naked and threw a quickly conjured cloak over her, turning to glare at me as she noticed me looked. I averted my gaze, pretending to be distracted, though I couldn't help but mentally high five myself. If Sindella was anything to go by Zee was going to age pretty gracefully. I shut down that thought pretty quickly though, given the bond between Zee and I an the irritation I could feel coming through it.

Jim stepped up next to me. "So, not to detract from the moment, but are all the rituals you get from your power so...busy? This is the first time I'd seen you use one of them myself, and that was incredibly flashy and dramatic. Most mystical workings don't bother with so many effects."

I paused. "Actually...yeah. Same with the ritual I used to convert the girls into elves. To be fair my power brings spam to life, and spam emails are all about hype. I makes sense that the rituals produced from them would be over the top and flashy. That's what the spam writers would be focusing on." I hadn't really considered that the magic might be different, but given the weird variances in my ability it wasn't a huge shock.

As we talked, I watched Zee throw herself on her mother and begin to sob uncontrollably, barely understandable words between her tears. Sindella looked shocked and a little confused, but I was guessing she could sense her daughter's nature because she adjusted to the teenager clinging to her pretty quickly. I imagined she had seen plenty of crazy shit in her life anyway, plus dying of cancer isn't the type of thing you lose track of so she probably knew she'd been dead. She just held her daughter, making quiet shushing noises and stroking Zee's raven hair as she wept.

I looked over and saw Taylor staring at her like he'd seen...well, a ghost. I figured that I should give him time to get his head on straight, so I stepped up to introduce myself to my future mother in law. I suspected I'd like her better than Zee's dad. I probably couldn't like her much less. When she heard me approach she looked up cautiously and I just smiled, holding up my hands. "Miss Sindella. It's nice to meet finally meet you. My name is Morgan O'Malley. Your daughter is my..." I trailed off. How did I describe what Zatanna was to me? Girlfriend? Fiance? Lover? "Everything."

Zee buried her face in her moms chest a bit deeper to hide the blush I could feel anyway, but I could feel that she knew I meant it. I pulsed some love over to Drea to make sure she didn't feel like I was ignoring her, but all I felt was pride and reassurance. She loved us both, and loved how much I cared for each of them. Sindella, for her part, raised an eyebrow. "Well, that's certainly a weighty statement young man. I suppose I can't very well throw stones at the lengths you'll go to. Resurrecting the dead mother is a strong move. That'll earn you some brownie points."

Her voice was soft and gentle, with a crisp accent that reminded me of the more upscale brits I'd met like Jim and Julian. There was a slight bite to her voice that might have been traces of a different accent. I assumed Turkish. I smiled widely at her teasing. "Well sure, I have to go out of my way to dote on her or she gets all overbearing and whips me into shape. I think it should be pretty clear who wears the pants in our relationship."

Zee jerked her head up and glared at me. "You bad mouth me to my mother again and I promise you I'll be wearing pants for the next few years, and I'll make sure Drea does the same. We'll see how funny you are when you haven't had sex in fourteen months." Her lips were twisted into a scowling pout that I could see twitching as it tried not to become a smile as she said it.

I put my hands up in surrender. "Yes dear. No need to go for the jugular I was just kidding." Since she was teasing I didn't mention that she would probably lose her mind going that long without sex. We hadn't gone more than a few days without sleeping together in a long while, and I was pretty sure her species actually needed it to stay functional. Granted she could always sleep with Drea, so it might be best not to push her.

Sindella giggled, a sound that was odd to hear from my girlfriends mother, especially when I noted that she was only in her mid twenties. Being dead for sixteen years was pretty good for the skin apparently. "Alright you two. As cute as your flirting is I'd like to get to know my daughter and her...whatever word you would use. I have questions, not least of which is why you now have pointed ears and purple eyes. Those can wait for a bit though. For now I should probably go get dressed. Does anyone have some clothes I could borrow?"

Zee looked down at herself. "I...um, my measurements aren't exactly standard, especially since I became a heavenly punishment elf. Maybe Artemis could lend you some. I'd ask Drea but honestly she's so top heavy even I don't fit into her clothes properly." She frowned unhappily. "I'm such an idiot. Of course a resurrection spell that used bones wouldn't create clothing. I should have thought of that. I'm sorry mom. It must be so embarrassing to stand around wrapped up in that stupid conjured cloak. That thing won't even last more than ten minutes or so."

She shot Artemis a pleading look and our blonde companion took off for her room to pick up some clothes for the elder Zatara lady. After she was gone, Sindella turned to kiss her daughter on the forehead. "Peace, love. A bit of nighttime nip is nothing compared to the chill of the grave. I'm covered for now and there are clothes coming. For now just let me look at you." She pushed Zee back, holding her by the shoulders smiling proudly. "You're so beautiful now. A bit changed I can tell, but I can still see myself in you, and some of your grandmother too." Her smile fell. "I missed so much."

She was immediately swept back up into a tight hug as Zee fiercely contradicted her. "No! You missed a bit, but I'm only still young. We have plenty of time together, you can still see me do more than a bit of growing up, and you're back now. No guilt or regret. It's a happy day. We're together again, as a family." She closed her eyes, lying her head on her mothers shoulder happily as she enjoyed the peace of the embrace.

The older Zatara seemed to have noticed something at that comment, and she flicked her eyes around curiously. "Speaking of family, where's Gio? I can't imagine him letting his precious baby perform a powerful and presumably deeply unpleasant ritual all on her own. Did he help you set this up?" Her smile was exasperated as her gaze roamed around the courtyard, until it settled on a tall, dark haired form and stopped. She stared for a moment before speaking. "Ah. Hello Johnny."

Taylor stared back, silent for a moment, and when he responded his voice was rough with emotion. "Sindy. You look good." He paused, a look of panic stealing over his features as he looked at me. "Wait, is she healthy now? Your ritual didn't bring her back with the cancer still in her did it?" He clearly hadn't considered the possibility, and I didn't blame him for the terror of worrying he might have to watch his first love waste away to death right in front of him.

Luckily I was smart enough that I DID consider that possibility. I gave her a quick scan with aura sight, being very careful to avoid looking anywhere but at her. Just like I'd gathered from the ritual details she was perfectly healthy. I shook my head at him reassuringly. "No. It's fine. I just double checked and she's alright." I didn't mention that I could have cured her cancer anyway if needed. It didn't really seem relevant.

There was a sound of a clearing throat as Sindella attracted our attention. "If you two are quite finished I can answer questions about my health for myself thanks." She turned back to Taylor with a fond smile. "I'm fine Johnny, really. My body feels better than it has in months...or probably quite a bit longer considering my daughter's new age." She looked down. "Speaking of age, how old are you exactly darling? I feel like a bad mother for even having to ask but aside from knowing you're a beautiful young woman I find myself woefully underinformed about my own child."

Zee just clung to her side. "I'm sixteen, though I'll be seventeen in just a few months. It doesn't make you a bad mother not to know, you weren't here but that wasn't your choice. We can catch up on all of that now. As for daddy..." She trailed off. "Daddy's been away. We got sucked into a portal a few years ago, at least a few years over here, and he thought I was dead. He chose to take up the mantle of Doctor Fate so he could keep the world safe since I wasn't around to look after any more. I haven't been able to reach him in the times we've spoken. Doctor Fate doesn't really deliver messages."

That was about the kindest way she could have described the series of events leading to her becoming basically an orphan, and it somehow made me even angrier that she was still making excuses for him to her mother despite her pain at what he'd done. Sindella looked crestfallen, but I could tell she was too overwhelmed to try to pick through that information. I had a feeling Zee would be answering lots of questions later but she just grabbed her daughter and pulled her close. "Oh baby, you've been all alone haven't you?"

I felt a swell of love from Zee over our bond as she squeezed back. Her voice was soft and heartfelt as she told her mother. "Not for almost a year now. I have the best family. A sister who cares about me, a boyfriend who adores me, a girlfriend who takes care of me. I have so many things in my life that other people don't get." She paused, seeming unsure if she wanted to keep going, but she finally forced herself to continue and pulled back, smiling up at her mother. "I even have a daughter of my own, even if she was born through magical means instead of biological."

Sindella's eyes went wide and her brows flew up. "Well. That's...I'm not sure how to respond to all of that. I'm glad you're happy at the very least. You can fill me in on the details once we have some time to talk. For now it seems your friend is coming back with some clothing and I'd very much like to get dressed." It spoke to the crazy shit this woman had been through that hearing her sixteen year old had a kid hadn't thrown her too much once she heard it was a magical thing. Then again she HAD grown up in the Nightside.

Artemis did indeed come back and pass some clothes over, and I made a wall of shadows so Sindella could dress privately. Once that was done she gave a sigh of relief. "Well now. This has all been very exciting, but also draining emotionally. I think we all need a chance to get to know each other somewhere relaxing and pleasant." She turned to Taylor. "Say, Johnny. Is the Arcadian Project still around?" I wasn't sure if I liked his answering grin or not, but I supposed it was better than wounded shock. Probably.

Ok folks, Sindella has returned! I'm enjoying the chance to introduce her and do some fun things with both canons. As usual my pat-reon has five advance chapters as well as five of greed god and now nine of my original novel at that site /malcolmtent. I hope everyone is enjoying the story because I have lots of big things planned.