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SM/DC Chapter 114 : The Hammer That Broke the Seal
🕑 Added 2025-05-09 20:43:28 +0000 UTCA low, guttural chuckle rumbled from the chained demon’s chest, deep enough to make the cracked stones beneath their feet vibrate.
Arthur didn’t flinch.
His blade remained drawn, its edge humming with blue lightning. His eyes, sharp and cold, locked on the demon with surgical precision.
“So you can talk,” Arthur said, voice dry. “Good. Saves me the trouble of carving answers out of you.”
“Seriously?!” John groaned, throwing up his arms like he’d just witnessed someone kick a hornet’s nest. “What part of ‘apocalyptic demon sealed in a goddamn arena’ made you think antagonizing him was a bright idea?! Bloody hell!”
Kara stepped cautiously beside Arthur, her cape fluttering in the violet wind. “That attack didn’t even scratch him…”
Zatanna’s brows furrowed as her eyes scanned the magical chains. “Why the hell did that trail lead us here, John?”
John bit down on his cigarette and exhaled smoke through clenched teeth. “I don’t know, alright?! I followed the spell to Raven’s aura. Maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t.”
Trigon laughed again, louder this time mockery and madness woven into the echo.
“Look at you.” His eyes danced across them. “Children playing war. Lost, confused, swinging blades like you understand it all.”
Arthur didn’t respond.
He rose.
Levitating off the ground, his cloak fluttering behind him, Arthur ascended slowly until he hovered face to face with the demonic titan. The wind stilled around him, and his glowing blue eyes burned like twin stars of judgment.
“Where is Raven?” Arthur’s voice cracked like thunder.
Trigon grinned, a horrible display of jagged teeth. “My daughter?” He tilted his head mockingly. “Why, I wonder that myself these days…”
“Arthur!” Constantine hissed from below. “Goddammit, what are you doing?! You don’t poke sleeping giants, and you sure as hell don’t fly up to their faces and demand answers! Ugh nevermind we’re so bloody screwed anyways.”
Arthur’s expression didn’t change. He raised his fist slowly, fingers tightening until the shadows around him crackled with pressure. His voice was low. Cold.
“Stop lying, demon. All of your cursed eyes scream deceit. You know where she is.”
Trigon’s grin didn’t falter. But his eyes gleamed.
Then his tone shifted just slightly.
“And you…” he said, leaning ever so slightly forward in his chains, “should stop pretending that you don’t.”
Arthur’s gaze sharpened.
The arena went still.
Zatanna blinked. “Wait… what?”
Arthur’s voice came slowly, bitterly. “You invaded my consciousness,” he said. “Not long ago. That wasn’t a dream. You pulled me into your realm while I slept. You're saying she is there.”
Trigon’s laugh came again but this time it was quieter, darker, as if he found satisfaction in Arthur piecing it together.
Arthur’s jaw tensed, then without another word, he descended back to the ruined floor.
The others watched him silently.
Then Trigon’s voice boomed again.
“You have my gratitude, Shadow King. Every step you’ve taken since you came to my daughter’s existence has weakened the chains that bind me. Soon…” His chained arms shifted slightly. “…I’ll be whole.”
“And your world?” His voice lowered, ominous and cruel. “Your world will BURN.”
Arthur didn’t turn around.
He simply muttered as he walked past his companions:
“Good luck with that.”
John spat out the butt of his cigarette and stomped it underfoot.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered, lighting another. “Now I’m gonna need a drink.”
****
They walked in silence through the ruins of Azarath.
The broken city stretched endlessly around them.
And behind them…
Only the laughter of Trigon echoed.
Low. Mocking. Relentless.
Each note a shadow claw scraping at the back of their minds.
Arthur walked ahead of them, silent. His shoulders taut beneath his dark cloak, fists clenched at his sides. He hadn’t spoken a word since they left the arena.
Then John broke the silence, his boots crunching over broken stone.
“Whoa, whoa, hold up!” he said, gesturing like someone trying to pause a disaster. “You don’t just walk away after that, mate. You’ve got something to explain.”
Arthur kept walking.
“Don’t,” Kara said sharply, stepping between John and Arthur’s back. Her eyes narrowed. Protective.
John blinked at her, caught off guard. “What why? You don’t.."
Then he paused. The gears in his mind spun fast, connecting dots he didn’t like.
His hand slowly dropped to his side, and a grim realization fell over his face.
“Oh…” John’s voice dipped low, roughened with dread. He turned, locking eyes with Arthur’s back. “…Oh, bloody hell.”
He pointed a finger at Arthur, the tip of his cigarette burning down to his knuckles.
“That’s how it happened. That’s how Raven lost control over Trigon. That’s how his soul escaped the gem.” He took a breath and exhaled smoke like venom. “It was you. You’re the reason the prison cracked.”
Arthur stopped.
Zatanna’s eyes widened as it clicked in her mind, too. She whispered, more to herself than to them
“The power of love huh…”
John snapped his fingers. “Exactly! Raven the Raven the most disciplined telepath I’ve ever met! The girl could suppress an apocalypse with her heartbeat steady. She never let emotions cloud her judgment. Never. Not until you.”
He marched forward now, waving the smoking stub of his cigarette toward Arthur’s back. “You got inside her defenses, didn’t you? Not just magically you got into her heart. You made her feel something she wasn’t ready to deal with, not with a ticking time-bomb demon father lodged in her soul!”
Kara’s lips pressed together.
Zatanna looked between them, eyes softening. “She always carried everything alone. But this time… she let someone in and this happened..”
John scoffed, pacing in a small frustrated circle. “Fantastic. Fan-bloody-tastic. Now we know the full story. Trigon slipping through wasn’t an accident, it was a crack. A small one emotional, human. And you, Arthur…” he turned, leveling a tired look at him, “…you were the hammer.”
Arthur finally turned around. His eyes were distant, glowing faintly blue beneath the shifting light of Azarath’s broken sky.
He said nothing for a moment. Then
“I have no control over what she feels, but we’ll fix this.” His voice was heavy with resolve.
“And I know now where she is.”
The wind picked up, howling softly through the broken arches and shattered towers.
“She’s in his realm, a hell sort of dimension.” Arthur said, each word like stone. “Most likely trying to contain his soul… alone.”
John rubbed his face, dragging his fingers down in disbelief. “She’s insane, but do not underestimate her, she could very well do this on her own.”
“We still gonna help,” Kara said quietly.
Zatanna looked up at Arthur. “Then we go there.”
Arthur nodded, raising his head toward the sky. His jaw tightened. “No more trails. No more guesses. I’ve seen that place before, he pulled me there in my sleep.”
Then John exhaled and flicked his burnt-out cigarette aside.
“In that case,” he said, voice low and dry, “I did mention there's a gateway to his realm. A backdoor to daddy dearest’s domain, hidden beneath the temple. I can open it.”
He stepped forward, hands already slipping into his coat, rummaging through charms and cursed totems like a man checking ammunition before a final stand.
“What’s more to lose for me, right?” he added with a half-laugh, bitter and broken.
Arthur turned to him, eyes narrowing slightly. “You don’t do these kinds of spells without a cost, do you?”
John paused. Just for a second. Then he smirked, without humor.
“No.”
His voice was quiet. But honest.
“But it doesn’t matter.”
Kara frowned, visibly unsettled now. She looked between them.
“Wait, what do you mean ‘cost’? What kind of cost?”
John didn’t answer.
Zatanna stood off to the side, her expression unreadable. She didn’t interrupt. Didn’t object. She just watched John, her silence heavy like she knew exactly what the cost might be.
Kara’s brows drew together. “You’re being vague on purpose. Someone want to clue me in?”
Arthur looked at John again, and for a rare moment, there was something like respect in his eyes.
But his tone remained flat, grounded in grim understanding.
“You’ll bleed for it,” Arthur said. “In more ways than one.”
John gave a lazy shrug, but his eyes betrayed him haunted, flickering with things he didn’t say out loud.
“Always do,” he muttered. Then he clicked his fingers, drawing out a blackened talisman etched in infernal script.
****
Temple of Azarath -
Within the crumbling heart of the Temple of Azarath, Massive pillars stretched toward a ceiling lost in darkness, and at the far end half-buried in rubble, veiled in dust stood a colossal stone gateway, circular and cracked with age. It was inactive. Dormant. Nothing more than a weathered relic, long since swallowed by time.
John Constantine stopped before it, his expression grim.
“This is it.”
He pulled off his coat and tossed it aside, already rolling up his sleeves. The others stood a few paces behind him Arthur, Kara, Zatanna watching in silence, tension etched into their faces
the Demon King Longsword materialized in Arthur’s hand its blade radiating cold authority. Ready for whatever lies beyond that portal once activated.
He stepped forward slightly, his grip firm around the hilt.
“Do your thing now, John.” His voice was quiet, but it cracked like thunder.
Constantine glanced back, lips twitching at the command.
“Yes, yes, I’ll open it.” with a dry mutter that couldn’t hide the edge of apprehension in his tone.
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