FrenzyAren
patreon
SM/DC Chapter 110 : Shadow & Fate
🕑 Added 2025-05-05 20:31:34 +0000 UTCInside The Library -
Arthur’s boots echoed softly on the stone floor as he walked slowly between the towering shelves, fingertips grazing the leather-bound spines.
He pulled one book out and opened it, the pages brittle and faded.
His eyes narrowed.
“…I can’t read any of these,” he muttered under his breath, frustration barely contained. The text writhed across the page like it was alive, ancient glyphs reordering themselves only to mock him with unfamiliarity.
Across the room, Kara was hovering quite literally above a collapsed pile of scrolls and rotting parchment. She waved a hand in front of her nose.
“Well, like I said before…” she grimaced. “I hate the smell of old—”
“Not a fan of books?”
The voice came from right beside her.
Kara yelped and whirled mid-air, instinctively pulling back her fist with heat vision charging in her eyes.
Standing mere inches away was an old man.regal in posture despite age, cloaked in robes that shimmered faintly like starlight. A silver cane rested in one hand. In the other, he held the unmistakable Golden Helmet of Nabu, its surface gleaming even in the gloom.
Arthur’s head shot up at the sound of the voice. He snapped the book shut and slid it back onto the shelf before calmly approaching.
His gaze swept over the figure, reading the posture, the presence, the calm weight he carried like a man with nothing to prove.
Then their eyes met.
The old man’s voice was soft.
“Welcome, Arthur Blackwynd.”
Arthur blinked once, slowly.
“I am Kent Nelson.”
The two stood still one cloaked in ancient magic, the other draped in dark mystery. Kara floated slightly behind Arthur, her heat vision dissipating but her eyes still wary.
Arthur gave a subtle nod, hands at his sides but ready for anything.
“…Pleased to meet you,” he said simply.
A pause.
Kent looked between them, his expression unreadable… yet not cold. The golden helmet in his hand pulsed faintly, like it recognized Arthur's presence.
The library seemed to breathe around them, shelves creaking under unseen weight, magical tension coiling in the air like a storm waiting to break.
There was a pressure that whispered to their very bones, reminding them this was no place of ordinary knowledge. This was a vault of secrets too dangerous for daylight.
Arthur stood still, his breath slow, reading every flicker of movement in Kent Nelson’s posture.
The sorcerer smiled, faintly, as though sensing both Kara’s and Arthur’s tension thrumming in the room like a bowstring.
“What’s with the looks?” Kent asked, the corner of his mouth twitching. “You have nothing to fear from me. I merely wish to help.”
Arthur took a step forward, boots echoing softly on the stone floor.
“I appreciate it,” he said carefully. “But there’s one thing I don’t understand.”
His eyes didn’t waver.
“If you already know what’s happening with the League, the whole possession thing, Raven, Trigon then why didn’t you do anything about it?”
The question lingered in the air like a challenge.
Kent’s eyes sparkled with something ancient. Not arrogance… but burden.
Then he laughed.
It was a low, hollow chuckle. like someone who’d seen this conversation play out a hundred different ways, in a thousand different timelines.
He looked directly into Arthur’s soul.
“If I told you,” he said quietly, “would you even understand?”
Arthur didn’t blink. “Try me.”
Kent’s voice shifted.
It echoed not in the library, but in reality itself. As though it passed through a dozen dimensions before reaching them.
The air changed. Pages rustled from unseen winds. The walls pulsed.
Then Kent spoke, voice layered, like the chorus of all his past selves.
[“Yes, I see their fall.
I see the fire in Superman’s eyes…
The void in Diana’s soul…
The shadows that now wear the Bat’s cowl.”]
A tremor passed through the floor.
Kara looked around, unnerved, as if the very stone beneath them recoiled from Kent’s words.
A swirling shimmer manifested behind the old sorcerer a portal made of woven light and memory. Within it, images danced like flames the Justice League, warped and terrible, tearing across continents like wrathful gods. Cities fell. Oceans boiled. Hope burned.
Kent gestured toward it.
“Trigon’s corruption was not unforeseen,” he said, his tone calm. “It is balance Order’s grim reply to a world of unchecked chaos.”
His gauntleted hand hovered above the portal. Light rippled at his touch, yet he did not pass through.
“I could stop them,” he said, and even the possibility made the library groan. Dust fell from the rafters, books trembled on the shelves.
“I can help them. I could burn the corruption out, chain their souls in light, and banish the Demon King’s influence back into the pit from which it crawled.”
The air felt like it might shatter.
Kara’s breath hitched.
Arthur said nothing his stare never wavered.
Then Kent lowered his hand, and the light dimmed.
“But in doing so,” he said quietly, “I doom us all.”
A hush fell like a thunderclap.
He stepped away from the portal. His voice, now quieter, held a weight that bent time.
“A thousand futures bleed into my sight, Arthur Blackwynd.
And each one ends in silence… if I act.”
Kent turned, the golden helmet in his hands catching what little light remained.
Then, his tone shifted personal, raw.
“You, however…”
He took one step closer.
“You are the variable. The wild thread the tapestry did not account for.
Not bound by fate. Not bound by me or anyone A strange thing, indeed.”
The helmet began to hum in resonance, and from Kent’s palm rose a sphere of radiant energy.
“You must walk where I cannot,” Kent said softly.
“You must make choices where I am forbidden.”
“You must become what the world needs, not what it expects.”
Arthur stared at the sphere.
At his own reflection in the Helm of Fate eyes shadowed, face half-lit by the spinning threads of possibility trapped within the light.
Then he looked up.
At the old man standing before him, more myth than man, holding time and silence in his weathered hands.
“I get it,” Arthur said at last, his voice low but sure.
He turned away, took a few slow steps as if thinking but there was no hesitation in him anymore. Just clarity.
Then, with a quiet smile and a sideways glance, he added,
“You…”
“You’re not exactly here in this place, are you?”
His eyes narrowed, sharp with realization.
“And we’re not inside the casino anymore… are we?”
Kent let out a breath of amusement, the faintest flicker of pride crossing his face.
“Very perceptive of you, Arthur.”
Arthur turned fully to him now, gesturing toward the looming walls of the library, the arcane glow that pulsed beneath the tiles, the whisper of books written in dead languages no one else could read.
“This is a small section of your Tower of Fate,” he concluded, his voice tinged with certainty.
“A pocket illusion tucked into the folds of reality. You pulled us into it the moment we stepped inside the room, the whole mirror nonsense was another illusion.”
Kent didn’t confirm, but he didn’t deny it either.
Arthur’s eyes glinted with something harder to place. Insight. Or perhaps… respect.
“And there’s another reason why you can’t help the League directly. Something worse than consequences. Something you can’t share.”
Doctor Fate was still.
The golden helmet in his hand shimmered with the soft echo of hidden truths unspoken, but not unfelt.
Arthur let out a small sigh, then nodded once.
“No need for me to know the details. Not now.”
“I’ll respect that.”
Behind them, Kara stood with her arms slightly raised in helpless confusion, her brow furrowed so hard it looked like she might sprain something.
“Okay, does anyone want to explain what is going on or are we still talking in magical riddles and cryptic poetry?” she asked, only half-joking.
Arthur glanced back at her, gave her a half-shrug. “Later.”
Then he stepped toward Fate again, squaring his shoulders.
“So.”
“Where’s the source of the problem?”
“Where’s Raven?”
Kent’s tone dropped like a bell tolling through fog.
“Azarath.”
Arthur exhaled through his nose. “Of course it is.”
“Any way inside?”
Kent nodded slowly. “I cannot enter. But I can open the way for you.”
He raised his hand toward the wall behind him, and the stones began to part like curtains drawn open not by force, but by will. Beyond, a swirling vortex of energy formed, pulsing with a rhythmic hum, almost like a heartbeat from another world.
“Beyond that path,” Kent intoned, “lies either salvation… or your unmaking.”
Arthur looked into the portal. There was no fear in his face, only a readiness.
“We’re in luck,” Kent added, stepping beside him. “The realm of Azarath is accessible now. This very place is a magical convergence point. A gateway between planes.”
Arthur grinned. “Cool. Let’s do it then.”
Kent held up a finger. “Except… we need a powerful anchor. Something that can keep your essence tethered to this realm while at the same time it should have some link to the one you seek, should the forces in Azarath try to tear you apart you can return here safely.”
Arthur’s grin faded.
He was halfway to rolling his eyes when something clicked in his mind. His hand moved instinctively to his coat, reaching into an inner pocket.
He pulled something out, an artifact, small but glowing faintly with dormant power, heatless flame coiled within glass and silver. He looked at it for a second… then stretched out his hand toward Kent.
“Will this do?”
Kara said in surprise “that’s the artifact we found in Raven’s Room!”
Kent’s gaze fell on the object. His brow lifted, surprised not just by what it was, but that Arthur had it.
A quiet moment passed between them.
Then Doctor Fate nodded, slowly.
“Yes,” he said, taking the item with both hands.
“That… will do perfectly.”
Comments
Bendoumi Anes
There are beings like Darkseid, the New Gods, the Old Gods, Angels & Demons, the Monitors and the Endless. only one of them exist across all universes as single entities. I'd like to keep Arthur among them.
Mecha Destroyer98
Rereading this part does Arthur have no variants of himself across the DC multiverse or something like is he the only one of himself that exist?
