All-Chemical Spider #107
The coat landed on Constantine's shoulders in a single motion -- his hand snatching it from the chair arm while he was still rising, the collar turning up on its own before his fingers had fully closed on the lapels.
He straightened with ease, like stepping into a second skin.
"Generous as always," he said.
He turned from the hole in his wall toward Jake, and the book was in his other hand, and his thumb was already working along its spine.
"Pardon me if I don't reciprocate the kindness." His eyes moved over Jake, and the corner of his mouth moved with them. "It's bad for my reputation."
The copper light left his palm before the sentence completed, a concentrated bolt of it, dense and fast and trailing a sound like a struck bell.
Jake's right arm came up on instinct, the dagger manifesting in his grip in the half-second between the bolt leaving Constantine's hand and its arrival, and the blade caught the energy on its flat.
The impact folded up his arm and drove his shoulder back, and the light scattered around the dagger's edge in a copper fan and burned itself out against the plaster behind him.
Constantine looked at the blade.
"Made yourself at home with that I see," he said, and switched his attack.
The fireballs were green and came without ceremony, three of them in quick succession leaving Constantine's free hand. Jake went sideways off the wall, his web line finding the ceiling, and the first one passed through the space his chest had occupied, the heat of it real enough to feel through the suit.
He swung wide and low and the second came at his feet and he pulled the arc upward, the ceiling taking his weight, and as the third came in direct and fast he let the dagger expand in his grip.
The haft lengthened, the blade spreading, its form shifting through his palm into a flat web of dark metal, the lattice of it wide enough to catch the fireball in its gaps and hold it, and he hurled it back.
Constantine stepped aside and the fireball took most of a bookshelf with it, and the barrier that came up from his other hand was too late for the shelf but absorbed what came after, a circle of amber light settling into the air in front of him and sitting there, patient.
The book was open on his palm now, the light catching the pages.
Constantine's eyes moved over them and his lips moved with them.
The coat lifted from his shoulders at the hem and the sleeves, rising, extending, the tan fabric catching no light because it was suddenly taking in light instead, the color of it deepening toward a dark shade.
Then Constantine rolled his shoulders and the coat left them entirely and rose into the center of the room.
It hung there.
Jake dropped from the ceiling and held his position, watching it, his senses spooked.
Constantine moved to the far end of the room and was crouching, the chalk already in his hand, the hand moving in short precise strokes.
Jake saw the lines going down on the floor and understood the shape of what was being prepared and closed the distance immediately. He went for the coat.
It came apart, dissolving at the seams into threads, into elements. What moved out of it moved fast and low and without the shape of anything that belonged in a room or belonged anywhere with a name.
The first one hit him with the weight of a thrown body -- a shivering, wet knot of blackened, soot-caked pipes that hissed with the sound of a dying lung. It impacted his chest and carried him back into the wall.
He felt its dark energy through his palm -- a hot, tar-thick vibration -- as he found the edges of the thing pressing him against the stone.
He drove the short blade into the center of it and the dark energy in the metal spread through the contact. The thing screamed with the sound of a dry, hacking cough, and the hold broke.
He hit the floor already moving.
Two more came at him from the threads still unwinding from the coat's levitation. He swung under the first -- a jittery, spasming cluster of yellowed, black-stained fingers that twitched with an erratic, nervous rhythm. He used the wall as a transit point, his mechanical arm finding a ceiling bracket that bent under the grip but held.
The second one was a bloated, translucent sac that leaked a stinging, fermented heat and reeked of stale spirits. He caught it midair, firing silk in two quick lines that wrapped the shape of the thing and slowed it enough that he could drive his possessed palm through its center on the follow-through.
It came apart the same as the others and the dark energy absorbed what came off it and the throbbing in his arm went one register hotter.
Constantine's chalk was still moving in the far corner of the room. The coat was still in the air, and more things were coming out of it in sequence.
One came low in a long, slow, circling approach. He let it circle, firing a line at the coat's hem instead, and pulling himself upward.
He came down on its trailing edge with both feet and the sword manifested in his grip and he drove it through the thing's center as his weight came down through the hilt. It came apart, shedding flakes of dry, grey skin.
The coat changed.
The threads retracted. The things coiling in the fabric went still and what had been a levitating column of material resolved instead into a single suspended shape -- the coat, fully formed again.
"You want it that much," Constantine said, standing behind the completed circle.
The book was open in his hand, his shirt untucked and his tie knocked sideways.
"Take it."
The coat crossed the room, it's threads untangling as they found Jake's shoulders. The collar found the back of his neck, the lapels pulling around his chest, the hem dropping to mid-thigh, and then the buttons closing on their own, and his arms came up to pull it off and found that the motion completed but the coat remained, and the next motion found the same resistance, and the one after that found more.
He fired a web line at the wall before the pull began. The coat held him against the anchor without effort, levitating him towards the circle.
He fired a second line at the far wall and it held for a moment and then the coat took that too, and he was moving through the room two feet off the floor at a pace he couldn't interrupt.
He let the lines go.
He drive the sword across his own chest, blade angled outward, trying to cut whatever the coat was extending into the air to move him.
The tip found resistance that gave slightly and then built, and he pushed through it and the resistance built faster than he could cut, and he drove both hands outward and the cutting stopped having a direction to go.
The circle was below him.
The chalk lines lit from underneath, a deep amber, the geometry loading with intent, and he was inside the ring with the coat still closed over his chest and his feet still above the floor and his hands unable to find purchase on anything because magic was not a surface.
Constantine came to the edge of the circle with the book open and one hand extended, and the light coming off the pages was the same gold Jake had last seen rising from his own chest in the clock tower, and his eyes met Jake's over the rim of the circle.
"I warned you," Constantine said, and the careful enunciation was back. "Glad you didn't listen."
He began to chant.
The chalk lines climbed in their brightness and Jake felt the coat tighten fractionally across his ribs and the held moment of the circle working itself around him.
He brought his right arm across and the blade cut at the circle's inner edge and found the same mounting resistance that had stopped him before.
The gold light from the book's pages moved through the air toward him, and connected to his chest. His heartbeat faded and transformed to the sound of gears turning.
Jake looked at the gold light connected to his chest. Listened to the sound of gears clicking.
He didn't panic.
The coat was on his shoulders.
"Register totem," he said.
The interface updated:
🕷️
[Totem collected!]
Category: Rare
Reward: +72h to your Time Bank
Redeem totem to receive reward? (Y/N)
🕸️