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The workshop fell into a silence so complete that Constantine could hear his own heartbeat echoing in his ears. The stranger stood at the edge of the magic circle, his expensive suit immaculate despite having materialized from shadows, his smile carrying the kind of patient satisfaction that spoke of long-laid plans finally coming to fruition.
"You didn't answer her question," Constantine said, lighting a cigarette with hands that were steadier than they had any right to be. "Who are you?"
The stranger's laugh was like velvet wrapped around a razor blade. "Names have power, John Constantine. Surely someone with your experience understands the danger of giving away something so fundamental." He gestured around the workshop with proprietorial satisfaction. "Though I suppose you could call me your patron. Your benefactor. The architect of your current circumstances."
Nergal shifted in the shadows, his massive form radiating menace. "I know what you are," the demon growled. "I can smell the stench of the First Fallen on you. You're one of his creatures."
"Was," the stranger corrected with amused tolerance. "Past tense, my dear demon. I severed those particular ties some time ago. Independence, you understand it's so difficult to pursue one's own agenda when constantly answering to higher authorities."
Constantine felt pieces clicking into place with the inevitable certainty of a trap springing shut. "You're the one who arranged my death in the DC Universe. You pulled the strings that got me killed and reincarnated here."
"Guilty as charged." The stranger produced his own cigarettes the same brand Constantine smoked, which somehow made the gesture more unsettling. "Though I prefer to think of it as relocation rather than death. Your soul was far too valuable to waste on something as mundane as actual mortality."
Zatanna stepped closer to Constantine, her hands weaving protective wards that filled the air around them with crackling energy. "What do you want?"
"What I've always wanted to watch John Constantine dance to music only I can hear, believing he's making his own choices while playing precisely the role I've written for him." The stranger lit his cigarette and took a contemplative drag. "Though I must admit, his performance in this reality has exceeded even my most optimistic projections."
Before Constantine could respond, the workshop's protective wards began screaming not audibly, but in harmonics that set his teeth on edge and made Nergal's form flicker like a badly tuned television. Something was coming through the barriers, something powerful enough to override protections that should have kept out cosmic-level threats.
"Ah," the stranger said with satisfaction. "Right on schedule."
The wall of the workshop exploded inward, stone and mortar vaporizing as raw probability manipulation tore through the church's ancient structure. Through the smoking hole stepped a figure that made Constantine's breath catch in his throat a woman in her late twenties with dark hair and eyes that held depths of power and loss that he recognized all too well.
She wore civilian clothes jeans, boots, a red leather jacket that had seen better days but the air around her writhed with barely contained energy that made reality itself seem negotiable. Scarlet light played around her fingers as she surveyed the workshop with the kind of focused intensity that suggested she was seeing far more than just physical objects.
"Someone's been playing with chaos magic," she said, her accent carrying traces of Eastern Europe that spoke of origins far from American soil. "Chaos magic that doesn't belong in this reality."
Constantine felt his enhanced senses picking up the woman's mystical signature, and what he found there made his soul resonate like a tuning fork. She was a chaos magic practitioner not just someone who used it, but someone who embodied it, whose very existence was a testament to the power of will over law.
"Wanda Maximoff," the stranger said with the tone of someone introducing old friends. "Allow me to present John Constantine, late of another reality entirely, and the source of the dimensional disturbances you've been tracking."
The woman Wanda turned her attention to Constantine with the kind of focus that felt like being examined under a microscope. "You're the one who's been causing probability cascades across the Eastern Seaboard. The chaos magic signatures I've been detecting don't match any known practitioners in this reality."
"Because they're not from this reality," Constantine replied, studying her with equal intensity. "Just like I'm not from this reality. Though I'm guessing you already figured that out."
Wanda's expression shifted from suspicion to intrigue. "Show me."
Constantine hesitated for a moment, then reached out with senses he was still learning to trust, letting his chaos magic signature brush against hers. The contact was like touching a live wire raw power that recognized itself in another, potential that called to potential across the void between souls.
Wanda gasped, staggering backward as the full implications of what she was sensing hit her. "That's impossible. Chaos magic doesn't work that way. It can't cross dimensional boundaries intact."
"Unless," Constantine said, understanding flooding through him, "someone arranges for it to do exactly that." He turned to glare at the stranger. "You didn't just reincarnate me in this reality you made sure I'd retain abilities that shouldn't be able to exist here."
The stranger's smile widened. "Chaos magic is rather like a virus, John. Introduce it into a system that lacks natural immunity, and it tends to spread in fascinating ways." His eyes shifted to Wanda. "Miss Maximoff has been wondering why her own abilities have been growing stronger lately, why reality seems more malleable around her than it used to be."
Wanda's face went pale. "You're saying his presence here is affecting my powers?"
"I'm saying his presence here is unlocking potential in chaos magic that this reality has kept safely contained for millennia. The structured approach to mysticism that your Doctor Strange represents has served as a kind of cosmic vaccination against the more dangerous applications of will-based reality manipulation." The stranger took another drag of his cigarette. "But vaccinations can fail when exposed to sufficiently virulent strains."
Constantine felt the blood drain from his face as the full scope of the manipulation became clear. "You're using me as a vector. My presence here isn't just destabilizing dimensional barriers it's teaching chaos magic practitioners like Wanda techniques that shouldn't exist in this reality."
"And what's wrong with that?" Wanda demanded, scarlet energy beginning to swirl around her hands. "You think the current system is working? You think the careful, controlled approach to magic has made the world safer?" Her voice carried decades of frustration and loss. "I've seen what happens when chaos magic is suppressed, when people like me are told our abilities are too dangerous to use properly. Sometimes the universe needs a little chaos to keep it honest."
Before Constantine could respond, alarms began sounding throughout the church not electronic alerts, but mystical warnings that spoke directly to the supernatural senses of everyone present. The workshop's protective wards were detecting massive incoming threats, entities powerful enough to make the earlier dimensional enforcement drones look like children's toys.
"They're coming," Zatanna said, her face pale as she read the magical harmonics flooding through the church. "Multiple entities, Class Seven classification minimum. The kind of things that usually stay locked up in cosmic prisons."
The stranger stubbed out his cigarette with obvious satisfaction. "And right on schedule. You see, John, your little demonstration earlier that elegant fusion of chaos magic principles with Marvel's structured system has attracted attention from quarters you're not quite ready to handle."
Constantine felt reality beginning to shift around them, the workshop's carefully ordered environment starting to buckle under pressure from forces that existed outside normal space-time. "What have you done?"
"I've given you an opportunity to prove your worth," the stranger replied. "Miss Maximoff's chaos magic abilities are about to be pushed beyond their current limitations. She'll need guidance from someone who understands the true potential of will-based reality manipulation." His smile turned predatory. "Consider it your first test in your new role as chaos magic consultant to the Marvel Universe."
The church's main doors exploded inward as something vast and terrible forced its way through the entrance. Constantine caught a glimpse of writhing tentacles and eyes like burning stars before Wanda threw herself between the entity and the workshop, her hands weaving patterns in the air that made reality ripple like water.
"I can't hold it," she gasped, scarlet energy pouring from her in waves that barely contained the cosmic horror trying to manifest in their reality. "It's too big, too ancient. My chaos magic isn't designed for this kind of threat."
Constantine made a decision that would haunt him for the rest of his existence in this reality. Instead of running, instead of trying to find some clever way around the crisis, he stepped up beside Wanda and added his own chaos magic signature to hers.
The effect was immediate and terrifying. Their combined will struck the invading entity like a hammer blow, but instead of simply repelling it, something else happened something that made the stranger laugh with genuine delight.
Reality around them began to rewrite itself on a fundamental level, probability cascading in directions that shouldn't exist as two different approaches to chaos magic merged into something entirely new. The entity wasn't just banished it was retroactively prevented from ever having existed, erased from the timeline with the casual efficiency of a cosmic delete key.
But the backlash from that level of reality manipulation tore through both Constantine and Wanda like a physical force, leaving them gasping and bleeding as the workshop's protective systems struggled to contain energies that threatened to tear holes in the fabric of existence itself.
"Magnificent," the stranger said as the chaos began to settle. "Absolutely magnificent. Do you understand what you've just accomplished?"
Constantine wiped blood from his nose, his enhanced senses picking up changes in the local dimensional framework that made his soul ache with recognition. "We've broken something that was meant to stay fixed."
Wanda struggled to her feet, scarlet energy still crackling around her fingers in patterns that looked different somehow more complex, more dangerous than they had moments before. "I can feel it," she whispered. "The barriers between what is and what could be... they're thinner now."
The stranger nodded with paternal satisfaction. "The first crack in the cosmic order. The beginning of a process that will either save this reality... or destroy it entirely."
As if summoned by his words, new alarms began sounding not just in the church, but across the entire city, as every mystical practitioner and supernatural entity in New York suddenly became aware that something fundamental had shifted in the nature of reality itself.
Constantine realized with growing horror that his presence in the Marvel Universe wasn't just causing minor dimensional instabilities anymore. He and Wanda had just rewritten the basic rules governing the relationship between will and reality, and the consequences of that change were about to ripple outward through every corner of existence.
The game was no longer about survival or adaptation. It was about damage control on a cosmic scale, and Constantine wasn't sure any of them were prepared for what was coming next.
/-\
If you wish to read more and if you like the story don't hesitate to support me because I really get exhausted of this work than check out my Patreon at
" https://www.patreon.com/Its_Zack/ "
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