Hello everyone!
Sorry for the delay, I've been a bit busy.
Here are the 3 chapters, from 20 to 22.
Enjoy them.
Mike.
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Chapter 22: The Infernal Guide
The silence in the House of Mystery library was a living, heavy thing, thick as dusty velvet and as ancient as the books that filled it. The fire in the fireplace was the only movement, casting long, dancing shadows that made the bookshelves appear to breathe.
The team was at their posts, an unlikely assembly of power united by desperation.
Zatanna was on her knees, her face pale and glistening with sweat. With a trembling but steady hand, she traced the last of the intricate seals of a containment circle on the floor. She used no salt or chalk. She used the dust accumulated from a pile of forgotten history books. She was tracing a cage made of the ashes of dead stories. The air around her crackled with tense, contained magic.
Beside the fireplace, Jason Blood stood, eyes closed, hands clenched into fists at his sides. He wasn't praying; he was in a battle of wills with the house harboring him, anchoring its impossible geometry to this single point in reality, a task that made the muscles in his neck tremble with effort.
Batman was a motionless gargoyle in the darkest corner, a pit of darkness in a room full of shadows. His white lenses were the only thing visible, and his gaze did not waver from the man kneeling in the center of it all. He was watching. Analyzing. Waiting.
John Constantine was slumped in a battered leather armchair, looking more like a ghost than Boston Brand himself. He was smoking like a chimney, lighting a new cigarette with the butt of the previous one. His lips moved in a constant, silent mumble: 'We are crazy. We are crazy. We are absolutely and fucking crazy.'
And in the center of the circle of book dust, was Urahara Kisuke.
He was kneeling with casual grace, as if he were about to begin a tea ceremony, not summon a god of chaos. In front of him, on the Persian rug, rested the dark wooden puzzle box. The box was closed. Teekl's hair was inside. The bait was set.
Then, the fire in the fireplace turned icy blue.
The temperature in the room plummeted twenty degrees in a second. Constantine's breath turned into a cloud of vapor.
The books on the shelves didn't fall. They hurled themselves backward, slamming against the wood as if an invisible, wrathful force were shoving them aside. The House of Mystery itself, a conscious nexus of power, moaned. It was a long, low sound, like a whale being crushed, a sound of pure, absolute fear.
And then, the giggle.
It was no longer a distant echo. It was there. In the room. Shrilly, manic, and right behind them.
The reality behind Urahara exploded inwards.
It wasn't a portal. It wasn't a clean tear. It was as if an invisible fist had punched the canvas of the world from behind, shattering it. A jagged hole of absolute blackness appeared, and from it, a figure shot out.
It wasn't just Klarion. This time, he came prepared for war.
He was mounted on Teekl's back, but the orange cat was no longer a scrawny familiar. It was a beast the size of a black panther, its muscles rippling with unnatural power, its yellow eyes burning like two infernal suns, and its extended claws cutting sparks in the air with mere movement. Klarion stood on the cat's back, his arms outstretched, his pale blue face contorted into a mask of pure childish rage.
"CHEATER!" he shrieked, and his voice was a chalk drill on a blackboard, a sound so piercing it made Zatanna cover her ears in pain. "LIAR AND BORING HAT-MAN! YOU STOLE MY TOY! YOU SAID IT WAS BROKEN! LIE! LIE! BUT I FOUND IT! I SMELLED THE TRICK! GIVE IT TO ME!"
The speed was impossible. The instant he screamed the last word, Klarion launched himself from Teekl's back like a blue cannonball, his pale hands turned into claws, aiming directly for the puzzle box on the floor.
He was an inch away from touching the dark wood.
FWOOM!
The circle of book dust Zatanna had drawn burst into cold blue flames. Simultaneously, Teekl's hair inside the box glowed with an orange light so intense the box seemed to become translucent.
Klarion was hit by an invisible force. It wasn't a physical blow. It was a repulsion. As if two identical poles of a cosmic magnet met. He was thrown violently backward, landing in a tangle of limbs at Batman's feet.
The Lord of Chaos stood still for a second, his childish mind processing the impossible physics of what had just happened. He was tied to the box by his familiar's anchor, but the containment circle, energized by Jason's own house, prevented him from touching it.
It was the perfect paradox. A child being shown his favorite toy, but tied to it by a rope exactly one inch shorter than his arm's reach.
Klarion's manic joy turned to apoplectic rage in a nanosecond.
"YOU!" he roared, his blue face contorting into a mask of pure hatred. "TRICK! TRAP! I WILL BREAK YOU! I WILL BREAK YOUR BORING HOUSE! I WILL BREAK YOUR BORING FRIENDS! TEEKL!"
In response to his scream, the Lord of Chaos unleashed a wave of pure anarchy.
The library twisted. The wooden floor beneath Constantine's feet momentarily turned into a seething pit of pale snakes coiling around his legs. He screamed and fell backward, scrambling away. The walls began to drip black ectoplasm that hissed upon touching the carpet. The books began to scream, their pages flapping like the wings of terrified birds.
And amidst this rising hell, Urahara Kisuke didn't even flinch.
He stood up slowly, his wooden sandals making barely a sound. His face showed no fear, no anger. Only the exasperated smile of an adult about to reason with a child in the middle of a tantrum.
"Ah, ah, ah, Klarion-san!" he said, his voice a tone of playful reproach, cutting through the chaos. "What a temper. And what a mess you're making. Didn't your mother teach you not to play with reality indoors?"
Klarion stopped. His rage, for an instant, was overcome by his short attention span. Rules? Manners? In the middle of his tantrum? The sheer audacity of the hat-man confused him.
"It's not a hissy fit!" he shouted. "It's a tantrum! And it's not a trap!" he sneered.
"No, it is not a trap," confirmed Urahara, his smile widening. "It is a game. And the rules have just changed."
He approached the edge of the circle, placing himself between the child-god and the rest of the team.
Klarion squinted at him, his rage bubbling up again. "Game?"
"A much better game!" exclaimed Urahara, his voice suddenly filled with the enthusiasm of a carnival barker presenting the main attraction. "Let's be honest, Klarion-san. That puzzle was boring. I know. Too orderly, right? Too many rules. It was a stupid toy."
"STUPID!" agreed Klarion, stomping the ground and making a crack crackle at his feet.
"But!" continued Urahara, raising a finger. "It turns out that boring puzzle box wasn't the toy. It was the key. The key to a whole new playground. A wonderful place, a place you will love. Filled to the brim with things to break, rules to trample... a place called 'The Dreaming'."
Klarion's rampage ceased, the chaotic energy crackling at his fingertips dimmed, though it did not dissipate. The Lord of Chaos tilted his head, his monumental rage being eclipsed by the only thing more powerful in his arsenal: his cosmic boredom and insatiable need for something new.
"Dream?" he hissed, the word sounding strange in his mouth. "The place of yawns? Sleeping is boring! It's what dummies do when they break! BORING!"
"Ah, but I don't mean sleeping, Klarion-san!" exclaimed Urahara, his voice suddenly filled with the seductive enthusiasm of a carnival barker presenting a never-before-seen attraction. He took a casual step, leaning against a bookshelf still trembling from the child-god's fury. "No, no. I mean the place where dreams come from. The workshop. The source of all stories. The place where boring gray hat-men got all their rules!"
Urahara's smile became predatory. He knew exactly what bait to use.
'He's taking the bait,' thought Kisuke, his outer calm contrasting with the hum of his mind. 'The key to manipulating Chaos is not logic, it is vanity. It is not fear, it is boredom. Do not offer him a punishment. Offer him a bigger stage.'
"Imagine an infinite realm, Klarion-san," he continued, voice dropping to a conspiratorial tone. "A place made of pure imagination, where mountains are made of teeth and rivers flow with ideas. No rules. No physics. No boring adults telling you what you can't touch. The ultimate playground."
Klarion's smile wavered, replaced by a grimace of interest. Teekl, now back to panther size, let out a low, guttural purr.
"And here is the best part," said Urahara, as if sharing delicious gossip. "The owner is gone! He's left, left the door open! And there is another boring kid in there right now, some 'Doctor Destiny', who has stolen the owner's biggest toy and thinks he's king. He is... imposing... his own boring dreams on everyone."
Urahara shrugged, a masterpiece of indifference. "Frankly, it's a mess. It's so... orderly. So predictable. He is a terrible artist."
He paused, letting the implication settle.
"Wouldn't you like to go inside there?" he whispered. "Wouldn't you like to show this 'Doctor' what true art is? Wouldn't you like to show the absent owner who the one true King of Chaos is?"
He was selling the mission of saving the world not as an act of heroism, but as the supreme act of vandalism: breaking into the master artist's private studio and vandalizing all his masterpieces.
While Urahara made his pitch, the rest of the team watched with paralyzed horror.
John Constantine was shaking so violently his cigarette drew small arcs of smoke in the air. 'He's crazy. He's completely and utterly crazy. He's not just playing with fire, he's trying to convince the bloody supernova to do party tricks. He's selling him Armageddon like it's an amusement park. And the little blue bastard... fuck, he's buying it!'
Zatanna, for her part, struggled to maintain composure. The power flowing through her to keep the anchor circle was immense, and the effort made her sweat. 'I can't believe this is working. It's the most insane and twisted logic I've ever heard... but... but it makes sense. Only Chaos can navigate Chaos. But at what price?'
Jason Blood, standing by the fireplace, simply shook his head, eyes closed with millennial resignation. "You are unleashing a hurricane to put out a fire, Urahara..." he muttered, but his voice was lost in the tense silence.
Batman was the only one, other than Urahara, who seemed to keep his cool. He was silent, motionless. He wasn't looking at Klarion; he was looking at Urahara. He was analyzing the manipulator, not the manipulated. He was seeing the "con" in real time. 'He's playing him,' analyzed the detective. 'Using his ego. His boredom. His childishness. As levers. It's terrifying. It's brilliant. And it's the only move we have.'
In the center of the circle, Klarion's rage had vanished completely. His pout had transformed, slowly, very slowly, into a malicious grin full of sharp teeth. The idea of invading an Endless's realm, of desecrating the sanctuary of stories, of eclipsing a rival... was irresistible. It was, in a word, fun.
"OKAY!" he shrieked suddenly, the sound so sharp it shattered several glass jars on a distant shelf. He clapped, and the library shook violently. "YES! LET'S GO! Teekl and I will go! WE WILL BREAK THE DREAM! WE WILL BREAK THE BORING 'DOCTOR'! AND THEN...!"
His glowing red eyes fixed on Urahara. "...I WILL BREAK YOU, HAT-MAN!"
"It's a deal," said Urahara calmly, as if he had just closed the sale of a box of candy.
"The plan," interrupted Batman, his voice a pragmatic growl. "We can't go in there. Blood said it was conceptual suicide."
"For you, yes," said Urahara. "Totally. Your orderly minds would dissolve like sugar cubes in hot tea." He turned to Klarion. "And therein lies the problem, Klarion-san. There is one last rule in this fun new game."
Klarion growled. "NO RULES!"
"A very small rule," Urahara reassured him. "We can't let you have fun alone. It's rude. So... we're going with you."
Klarion's smile vanished. "WHAT? No! Boring! Heavy! Slow! They'll break! I don't want to carry luggage!"
"Ah, but that is where you are wrong!" said Urahara, his tone turning conspiratorial. "The anchor," he said, pointing to the puzzle box Klarion wanted so badly, "the toy you like so much... isn't just a leash. It is a harness. A group harness. You see, when we activate it with your friend Teekl's hair, we don't just tie you to the box. We tie ourselves to you. When you jump into the Dreaming, you will drag us all with you."
"US?!" croaked Constantine, jumping from his chair. "No! No, no, no, no way! I'm not going on that trip! I refuse! I'm staying here, thanks! That will dissolve our minds! It will turn our brains into nightmare soup the instant we cross! It's suicide!"
"It won't," said Urahara with maddening calm. "Not if we are with him. The conceptual anchor will do something wonderful: it will tune us to his... 'frequency'. We will be invisible to the Dreaming, hidden within his own storm of chaos. We won't be invaders; we will be part of his entourage. We will be parasites on the tiger's back. As long as... we don't fall off."
Urahara gave Klarion a knowing smile. "Think about it, Klarion-san. It is a challenge. A true test of your power. You don't just have to enter and break an Endless's realm... you have to do it while carrying four 'boring' and fragile beings on your back, and make sure they don't break."
He leaned in, his voice dropping to a mocking whisper. "Or is it too hard for a Lord of Chaos?"
Klarion's ego boiled. The insinuation that anything could be "too hard" for him was an insult worse than any trap.
"HARD?!" he roared, his voice making everyone's hair stand on end. "NOTHING IS HARD! JUST BORING! Fine! CHEATER! FINE!"
He stood on Teekl's back, vibrating with power and fury. "I'll take you! It will be FUN to watch your boring little minds break! And when they break, I'll use your souls to clean Teekl's boots!"
"How kind!" said Urahara. "Then, it is decided."
The decision was made. Madness had been accepted as the only logical path.
"Everyone, into the circle. Now," ordered Urahara, his cheerful voice cutting the tension like a hot knife.
No one moved for an instant. The idea of voluntarily entering a magic circle tied to the Lord of Chaos was, for three of the room's occupants, an act of professional suicide.
"Oh, come on!" complained Urahara. "Are you going to get shy now? The end of the world waits for no one!"
Batman was the first. Always pragmatic, always moving forward, he took a silent, heavy step, his combat boots treading on the dust of dead books without a sound. He positioned himself opposite Urahara, a shadow of reproach and acceptance.
Jason sighed, a sound that seemed to carry the weight of his centuries of burden. "If the demon survives this..." he muttered, and stepped forward, standing to Batman's right.
Zatanna was next. Her eyes were closed, lips moving in a silent protective incantation, but she walked steadily. She was a professional. She stood to Urahara's left, becoming the third point of the perimeter.
Only Constantine stayed back, motionless in his armchair, his face a mask of pale terror.
"Constantine-san," said Urahara with forced patience. "We don't have all day."
"Fuck you, shopkeeper," hissed John. "I'm going to die here. I'm going to die here, thrown into the realm of nightmares by a demon child and a psychopath in a bucket hat. What a shitty end to a shitty life."
"John, now!" barked Batman, his voice allowing no argument.
Cursing every step, every ancestor, and especially Urahara, John Constantine got up from the chair and dragged himself to the circle, completing the quartet. He stood as far as possible from Urahara, visibly trembling.
"Wonderful. The group is assembled," said Urahara, completely ignoring John's aura of misery. "Right, house rules. Jason-san, Zatanna-chan, your job is the most important. Anchor this house, this library, to this precise point in the fabric of reality. No matter what we feel or see, this is our 'return anchor'. It is our home. Don't let it move."
Both nodded, faces tense with concentration.
"Batman-san," continued Kisuke. "You are the emotional anchor. Your mind is the most disciplined. When the others falter, you won't. Stay focused."
Batman just grunted. It was his natural state.
"And Constantine-san..." said Urahara.
"What?" spat John.
"Try not to scream. You'll scare the local wildlife."
"Go to hell, shopkeeper!"
"Already visited! Very bad customer service and the decor is a cliché!" replied Urahara cheerfully.
With that, he turned to the center of the scene. Klarion, mounted on a Teekl vibrating with power, watched them with manic impatience.
"BORING! TOO MUCH TALK! NOT ENOUGH BREAKING!" shrieked the child-god.
"All yours, Klarion-san!" said Urahara, opening his fan with a snap. "Open the curtain!"
"FINALLY!" roared Klarion.
He didn't open a portal. He didn't trace a circle. He raised his pale hands, clenched his fists, and pulled at reality.
The sound wasn't an explosion. It was a tear. The sound of a canvas of a billion threads being ripped in half.
The House of Mystery library split in two. The fire in the fireplace froze in time, its flames turning into blue ice statues. Gravity vanished, and the four heroes felt their stomachs rise to their throats. The dust from the books didn't fall; it stayed suspended in the air like dead stars. Sound stopped.
And then they fell.
It wasn't a physical fall. It was a conceptual fall. A nose-dive into the "behind the scenes" of the universe, a place where the laws of physics were merely suggestions an editor had crossed out. They fell into the space between stories.
The psychic assault was instant and brutal. Every mind experienced it differently, a personalized attack designed by their own fears.
Batman felt it first. The cold. Not the cold of the Louisiana swamp, but the metallic cold of a Gotham alley. The ground beneath his boots wasn't wood; it was wet, sticky asphalt. The smell of book dust vanished, replaced by the stench of burnt gunpowder and his mother's expensive perfume, L'Heure Bleue. He heard the crack of the gunshot, a sound that had echoed in his skull every night of his life. He heard the snap of his mother's pearl necklace, the rhythmic clattering of pearls against the pavement.
"It was your fault, Bruce," whispered the voice of Joe Chill in his ear. "You should have saved us."
Batman gritted his teeth, the pain in his jaw the only real thing. An animal growl escaped his throat. 'It's not real,' he thought, his discipline armor as strong as his suit. 'It's a psychic assault. Analyze. Resist. Fear is a tool. My tool. Not theirs.' He didn't scream. He refused to scream. He simply... endured, turning the trauma that had defined him into the anchor that now saved him.
Zatanna experienced it as a collapse of language. Magic was her life, and magic relied on order, on words, on intention. But here, words were rotting. She heard her own voice reciting her spells backward, but the words came out wrong, distorted. "!Rorre, rorre, rorre!" (Error, error, error). She felt her magic, her gift, turning against her, threatening to tear her apart. She heard her father, Giovanni, whispering in her ear, not words of encouragement, but senseless gibberish, the logic of sorcery unraveling. 'Dad... I don't understand... I can't read it!' she screamed in her mind, feeling her identity dissolving.
Jason Blood felt it as a terrifying duality. He felt his own mortal mind screaming at the impossible physics, the endless fall. But worse than that, he felt Etrigan. For the first time in the centuries of their bond, he felt the demon, the Rhyming Prince, the monster from Hell... cower. The demon was terrified. Etrigan was a creature of rules, of infernal hierarchy, of ancient and terrible order. This place, this Non-Place of pure conceptual chaos, was anathema to his existence. The demon didn't roar in anger; he whined in fear. 'The demon... is afraid,' Jason realized, and that thought was more terrifying than the fall itself. The bond that held them threatened to break.
And then there was Constantine.
For John, it wasn't an illusion. It was a homecoming. The instant cold of Newcastle. The smell of stale beer, sulfur, and burnt soul. The ghostly hands, cold and wet, grabbed him. Astra. Norfisk. All the friends he had sent to hell, all the sacrifices he had made. They weren't memories; they were real. They were here, in the void, and they were pulling at him, their nails clawing at his essence, their voices whispering a single word: "Guilty."
It wasn't a growl. It wasn't a moan. John Constantine opened his mouth and screamed. A raw, human, and utterly terrified scream that was lost in the void.
Amidst this symphony of personal terror, Urahara Kisuke was falling.
And he was smiling.
His eyes were wide open, seeing not fear, but the spectacle. For him, this wasn't hell. It was a researcher's paradise.
'Wonderful! Simply wonderful!' he thought, his inner voice a murmur of pure delight. 'It's the library... but someone has set fire to all the books at once! And everyone is shouting their stories at the same time! What a glorious spectacle! What a perfect mess!'
He didn't feel Batman's fear; he saw his story: a narrative thread of blood red and obsidian black, so taut and strong he could almost touch it. He didn't hear Zatanna's gibberish; he heard the "conceptual dissonance" of order magic collapsing. He didn't feel Constantine's terror; he felt the "flavor" of his guilt, strong, spicy, and with an aftertaste of nicotine. He was a connoisseur of sensations, and this was a banquet of impossible dishes.
Just when Constantine's mind was about to break, just when Jason's bond threatened to tear, just when Batman's world began to crumble in a rain of pearls... the anchor "activated".
YANK!
It was a conceptual yank, violent and undeniable, that pulled them out of their personal hells. The puzzle box in Urahara's hand glowed like an orange sun, Teekl's hair inside burning with chaotic power.
The cacophony of their minds didn't silence, but it dimmed. It became distant, like listening to an apocalyptic storm from inside a lead bunker. Urahara's plan had worked. They were no longer individuals; they were, conceptually, "luggage." They were hidden safely within Klarion's chaos signature.
The world stopped falling. And they landed.
With a dull, sickening thud, they fell to their knees.
There was no ground. There was no sky. They were standing on... something. A yielding surface that looked like a cloud, but upon closer inspection was made of millions of hourglasses leaking their pale sand upward.
The "sky" above was a swirl of sickly colors, a cosmic bruise of greens, purples, and yellows. In the distance, where the horizon should be, they saw the castle. Morpheus's castle, the Citadel of Dreams. But it was wrong. The elegant Gothic architecture was cracked and broken. From the fissures spilled a darkness that seemed alive, a darkness that crawled and formed terrible new shapes on the landscape. And the mountains, in the distance, were not stone. They were made of gigantic human teeth gnawing at the swirling sky.
Klarion and Teekl landed beside them. The child-god was vibrating with pure joy, arms outstretched.
"Oh, YES!" he laughed, his high-pitched voice the only sound in this silent, maddened world. "YES! This place is wonderful! It smells like broken rules! It smells like crying! This... this is FUN!"
Urahara was the last to stabilize. He landed softly on his wooden sandals, as if he had just stepped off a bus. He straightened his haori, brushed conceptual dust from his shoulders, and adjusted his hat.
He looked at the shocked and trembling team. He looked at Batman, who was on his knees, breathing heavily. He looked at Zatanna, weeping silently. He looked at Constantine, curled in a fetal position, shivering.
Then, he looked at the nightmare landscape, his smile that of a tourist who has just arrived at an exotic destination, one that had exceeded all expectations.
"Right," he said cheerfully to the group. "Welcome to the Dreaming, gentlemen, lady. Please, don't touch anything." He paused. "Or rather, touch everything. But for the love of all that is holy, don't get lost. The reception here is terrible."
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Thanks for reading!
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Mike.
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