InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "I am a leaf on the wind."

ᴘʀɪɴᴄᴇss ᴏғ ᴘʀᴇsᴛɪᴅɪɢɪᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ (cigam) wrote in valarlogs,
@ 2016-07-01 22:33:00

Entry tags:

!complete, john constantine, zatanna zatara

Who: Constantine & Zatanna
What: A tour of the Magic Guild turns into a very demonic experience
When: Yesterday
Where: Guild HQ
Rating/Warnings: Fairly low, lots of the voodoohoodoo
Status: Complete

There were plenty of reasons on why John shouldn’t be following an occultist about in a secret cellar. To name a few, he hadn’t glossed on the fact that Zatanna had shown herself conveniently about the time he discovered the glories of what dreaming meant in Orange County. With specific themes to said dreams. He didn’t truly know or understand what it meant, the more he thought on it the more upset or confused he got, so for now he was ignoring it. And the piling evidence of squabbling on the network about every other wank and what they were dreaming on about. A regular shit show.

Sooner or later, he figured, she would have some answers. John more or less had an idea of why she was keeping a close eye on him. Considering he dreamt of being an occultist himself, dabbling in what the odd memories said was only heritage.

“If I see so much as one human sacrifice I’m leaving.” The false warning was more a break for him from the returning thoughts of ‘are they dreams or memories’ because they felt like memories and came as dreams. Annoying bloody rubbish. Aside from what could very well have been a bad first impression and perhaps a worse idea to pursue, well, Constantine would be lying if he wasn’t intrigued just to see all on what she wanted to show him.

What tugged at his nerve was the question on how much Zatanna really knew of him. It had to be a great deal given her keeping tabs and continued presence. He hadn’t bothered to tell anyone anything because, piss on that. Somehow he had the feeling she knew more than he did. Best way to go about ignoring that was to keep following along after her into the open rooms lined with special sigils, artifacts, books in hopes that sooner or later these meetings of magic and cards would fall into place.

Each room was different than the last. John knew what some of them said and where he didn’t it still didn’t feel all that foreign. He felt more at place with a dark and dank basement he’d never been in then the surface of a crowded city. Pausing, he studied one of the open books that looked to be on conjuring. This room was dedicated to it. He knew these symbols. “You said this was all for...practice? Practice for what, exactly?”

The rooms were very cut and dry extensive on learning their specific area. What use did the world have on such concentrated magical studies? With hope, whatever that was now a days, nothing bad.

Yes, John knew those symbols - and Zatanna was aware that he did. She’d brought him here for a reason, to connect a little with the Guild, his own abilities, and her - he seemed willing to see what she had to show him; his curiosity was there, she could sense it, dim and cautious as it was. But baby steps were required with him - there would be no inundating him with far too much, lest she want to risk scaring him away. That was not what she wanted, not in the slightest.

“When we dream, sometimes extra abilities come through, the more we become those people,” she said, coming to stand opposite John, where the book was open between them on the table. Zee leaned on her elbows, looking up through those inky lashes. “Magic and its emergence can be disconcerting at first. A practice space that is well-fortified is important.”

And she would know, she’d used the space plenty. Dreaming of growing up immersed in card tricks and a shuffle of the fingers, her own magic had evolved to the kind laced with blood and promise - she’d buried her nose in the ink of occult books, she’d traveled to lands that tasted like salt and sand on her tongue. Now she felt comfortable with who she was, despite everything. Hopefully he would come to similar realizations, in time.

Those people. When he glanced from the text to meet her eyes the look she got was nothing short of disconcerting. The rest of the lot here were regularly referring to themselves in the dreams as not entirely the same person. How you could be one or the other but still hold the ties was not something John wanted to fret over. There were plenty of other confusing things he was working through then debating the concept of reality.

“It's not the magic part that's unsettling, love.” Dream worlds and crossing realities is what hurt his head. The ‘other’ John was exceptionally more tormented due to an earlier loss and abuse of his lovely father. He was still just in the learning stages of whatever the younger, other version of himself was onto.

Earning an ability along with a new dream couldn't really be counted as a dream then could it? Ugh. Exactly what he didn't want to think about. “Your little club is for what then. An awful lot for just practice and side shows.”

“I would consider it a sense of community - because not only is having a safe place to practice important, but we can also come together with fellow magic users and learn new things,” Zee explained, straightening up to bring a few other books down from shelves - more with those symbols, something familiar, the art of luck (even if he felt like he never had much of it), necromancy, the bloodier and sweatier side of magic. John’s specialties - he was blustery, Zatanna was control, and making your hair stand up on end without scorching anything.

She stepped closer, a rustle of the breezy material of her dress, in a lightly scented cloud of dark spices, and wedged herself in between the edge of the table and him - on purpose, after she set the books down with a gentle thud. “So if magic is not the unsettling part, what is? You’ve dreamed how much?” she wanted to know, because she knew he’d started those adventures. In another life, she’d been his partner in rather unsavory things but eventually became his conscience, in a way. Zatanna wondered if it’d be similar here - though this Constantine didn’t seem so detached from the world yet.

A huff of air escaped his nostrils at the idea of community. Of course there was one in any area of interest, like minded individuals came together to hold hands and enjoy their hobbies in the spirit of together-ness and other such ideas like the ones she spoke of. The occult wasn't for everyone and more often than not it was better to keep it to oneself. Hence the use of her hidey place. Yes, it made sense. Even the John of another time flocked together with a group of mates to dive into the wonders of mysticism and magics.

This one wasn't quite attracted to that idea. This one also wasn't fifteen and thought he knew it all.

“Your convenient timing, for one.” He commented, shrinking back only a slight bit as she had wedged herself into his sight in front of the books. Somewhat demanding of personal information from someone you hardly knew. “What's it to you, hmm? I'm not entirely sure the relevance on what or how much I've dreamt, Zatanna.” What was she waiting for?

Zatanna smiled mysteriously, an amused upturn of her red-stained lips. “It’s a lot to me, actually.” There was just so much - her and him and Nick, street corners, reading palms and cards and money dropping into her hat, when they were all young and together - but things had changed, Nick’s urge for power got the best of him and feeling abandoned, the remaining two turned to each other. Obviously, John didn’t remember yet. Not all of the way.

“We go through alot together - and it will be difficult for you to relive. I want to make sure you know I’m going to be here. For you, with you, no matter what,” she promised, and held out her hands, palms up. “Let me see yours. And tell me what else is unsettling.”

That all was it? And here he was expecting..well, something awful. Or at least more along the lines of being selfish in the way he knew most people were. If she were telling the truth and he would know her eventually--did know her? It must have been awkward. To know and be the only one who did, possibly just as frustrating as not knowing.

For that, John un-tensed slightly as he glanced down to her open and expectant hands before giving in with a sigh because, why not. He placed his hands over hers tentatively, running his tongue along the bottom of his lip in thought on how best to describe the unsettling nature of his dreams. “I thought they were just..I thought I was only still latching onto something that had only just happened, and it was playing over in a different way.” Which is where his initial confusion came from on the lines of losing his mother that he'd never known and his brother just not existing. Abuse from his awful fucking father, the tirade he and Cheryl had attempted to escape from, finding magic. There was only so much you could make up. How badly it hurt when your dad put out his cigarettes in your arm or the scars that weren't there before. “What does it mean? Is it another life? They don't feel like dreams. Dreams don't leave bloody scars or magic you didn't have before.”

Oh, so he did have magic, then. A little of it, stirrings of the coals of a fire that would soon burn brightly. On John’s wrist though, the ink was what Zatanna was looking for - she traced where the double-headed dragon would be, one of many tattoos that he would likely acquire. Unless Orange County didn’t feel like being generous, but she couldn’t imagine otherwise - her own tattoo was on her shoulder, the runes that Nick had marked them with, his personal ones. “They’re memories,” she said, and she didn’t mean to burst the dream bubble but there it was. “Us, in another life. Another time, another place. There’s something about being here that awakens you to everything.”

She traced over the invisible dragon again, opening her mouth to say something - but then the floor split open. Literally, the dirt and the wood below them cracked, the foundation shaking as a green vortex was revealed, and bones held together by that same verdant magic emerged - not just one, but many. Wraiths, hungry for emotion, for life.

So that was what everyone was on about. One of many things, the dreams not really being dreams, their items, their..what was left of another life coming into this one.

Bubble well bursted, John was already considering how he could leave this place and not add to the significant pile of emotions he had from this time and place. She seemed more occupied with whatever she was looking for on his wrist, caught in a memory he hadn’t caught up to yet. He would have asked had there not have been new guests smashing their way into the room.

“Bloody hell,” was all he could breath as he turned grasped Zatanna by the wrists to tug her back with him, brushing aside the table to get further away from whatever the hell this was. The aura was light and wispy. Nothing he had seen quite yet in his dreams or studies. A spirit of some sort--nothing good. “I take it those aren’t members of your guild.” Or welcomed guest, either. They were welcomed only by that beckoning vortex, but they kept on with their sulky approach.

“No, they’re not. I don’t know what these are,” Zatanna spoke, a little breathless from the surprise and the sudden movements - also the sheer shock at seeing what looked like some kind of otherworldly portal right here in the Guild. The creatures that had emerged were slow moving, but just their presence felt like energy was being sucked from her; there was something in her mind that she didn’t like, it almost made her bones feel as if they were made of lead.

They were being surrounded, her and John, and she didn’t know anything about them so it was all going to be trial and error. She called upon the elements first, eci spoken in a command as sharp ice crystals shot from her hands, to all sides, impaling a few of the apparitions and apparently having some effect, thank goodness; some time was bought.

She edged around the table a little, gripping John’s sleeve. “They feel like...are they demons?”

Instinctively Constantine would have thrown things but since the creatures were mostly transparent John assumed that would be worthless. The closer they got the more he felt fatigued, as if they'd been draining something from him. He would have loved to help Zatanna save for he was wildly uncertain of the magic he knew from his dr--memories. It wasn't particularly nice, nor did it really have spirit attacking capabilities.

“Possibly,” nothing in the way he could recall from book or memory, but there were so many religions and parts of the world with their own brand of demon. They didn't all have to come from the First. “They're not physically manifested, not completely anyways.” She had something there, about feeling them, which could be one of two things. “Feeders of a sort, on energy or emotions.”

There was only so much they could be taking and John didn't feel his soul in jeopardy, so that narrowed it down. “Any ideas on how to destroy their little portal? I don't think they'd be able to hold a presence without that or an energy source.” Just wisps after all. Hungry wisps.

They had to get out of here, because Zatanna was coming up short on how to close that portal. Yet, she was stubborn enough to give it a whirl. “I can try,” she said, and switched to the power of electricity - after a spoken gninthgil, swirling party streams of white-hot, crackling energy were expelled from her fingertips. They caught the nearby wisps, beings composed of what looked like a gaseous brightness, and it must have been too much for them - they disintegrated, and she let out a sigh of relief.

Didn’t mean more weren’t going to come out though, so they had to work fast with this portal. “You would close them,” she told John, stepping closer to the dark, stormy energy giving off that green hue, “...you would slide open a zipper in the fabric of the world and then shut the demons away. Do you remember?”

She extended her hands, magic sparking over her palms and in between her fingers - but when she attempted to close the portal, the way she would open and close them while traveling across and through dimensions, nothing happened. Besides blood trickling from her nose.

The way she carried on about what he would or could do almost made it painful to tell her that no, he hadn't remembered doing all that. It sounded rather complicated and..she was bleeding. “Easy there, love.” Looking around he reached for a cloth on one of the nearby tables that he hoped wasn't important, held it up under Zatanna’s nose. “We can figure it out. I don't remember doing any of that just yet.”

Normally John wouldn't think much of what other people's opinion of him was. Given all that had happened in a short time, what Zatanna knew of him and how she wanted to help him with the bloody awful mess it was, he didn't want to not reciprocate that help.

“I can bind them in place for a short while, I think, in the meantime.” Most of what John had begun to study in his memories were demons. It seemed to be what his linage was good for. He had plenty of experience--in those memories--with binding, summoning, cursing. Not on actual demons just yet. “I don't know how long that would buy us.” He'd let her make that call. This was her space, and she knew better than he at this point.

Zee felt a bit faint, but nodded, fingers curling around John’s wrist as he held the cloth up to catch the blood. Trying to close a portal she knew nothing about seemed unwise, but she had to at least give it a shot - there was some serious oomph under her wings, and yet she was not omnipotent. She knew her magic, the family lineage, she knew Constantine’s - old, enduring, powerful. But this, all of this? It was entirely new, and not her ‘dream’ jurisdiction.

“Bind whatever you can, even if temporarily,” she advised. “Then I can teleport us out of here.” And whomever was meant to seal off this mysterious portal, would have to. The thought of losing the Guild was heart-wrenching - she wanted to do everything possible to save the space that meant so much, to so many.

Were there more time he could have marked the doorway but since they seemed more spirit than demon, John assumed that wouldn't work. Demons of the First didn't travel through portals. Nothing like this.

“Right.” Teleporting, he could handle that, given everything else. Since Zatanna looked waive ring, he let her grip his wrist and kept close in case she needed more support. With a free hand he set to cast a sigil, yellow arcane energy emitting in the shape of a mark to bind the demons from escaping that portal of theirs. Something he should have marked under it or along the walls. There just wasn't time. Fuck, he hoped that would work.

Not for long, he knew, this would just be a bandaid until more memories would come. The mark engulfed the rift, energies cracking in protest. The demons screeched like rats stuck under a floorboard. “Looks to be extremely temporary, ready when you are.”

“That was good,” Zatanna praised, a smile breaking out across her features, something pleased - and a spark of it in her eyes too, nearly violet and burning bright. She couldn’t even begin to imagine why she felt so relieved - probably because John was finally here, and he was realizing who he really was, and it was going to be a big mess the more he dreamed but she’d just felt so empty without him and trying to do what he did, and she couldn’t. The ridiculous con man in a trench coat was his own, special person - filling that hollowness, when he wasn’t around, it wasn’t easy.

But things were going to be fine now. There was a demonic portal in the Guild, but things were somehow going to be fine. A turn of the cards would show as much later - she would look deeply into it.

Teleporting, then. Steeling herself against the shriek and screech of the bound creatures, those nails-on-a-chalkboard sounds, she turned and took both his hands in hers while facing him. “Hang on,” she smirked, a love of mischief there in her eyes and in her expression (that was always going to be a part of her) and she spoke the words - emoh su gnirb - before there was a pull felt right behind her navel, he’d feel it too.

And then? They were gone.