Summary:Sometimes, it's a visit for tea. Other times, someone's had their entire House stolen and met the wrong edge of a blade. Regardless, a missing door is no small deal for Constantine and the Sorcerer Supreme. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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Normally when someone knocks on the door to the Sanctum Sanctorum, the sound varies by person. Often it's a polite rat-tat-tat. Periodically a distant bell with jingle, or a gong will chime. A visitor with an emergency gets a brisk *knock KNOCK* to show the urgency of their callign.
The pounding at the front door of the Sanctum sounds like a giant playing a drum. The whole Sanctum shakes in response, then falls silent.
"Strange! Open the bleedin' door you daft wanker!" comes an irate Liverpudlian accent. "I know you're here, I can see the bloomin' light on in the window!"
When the door opens, John Constantine's slumped against the doorframe. A gash on his head is leaking a steady trail of blood and his palm is putting pressure on his upper tricep. A rag pressed into service as a tourniquet does little to staunch the bloodflow.
"The House of Mystery's been nicked!" he says— and his eyes promptly roll into his head and he collapses on the front stoop.
The sharp inhale coincides with the near-slosh of the dark tea upon the weathered pages of the tome currently spread across the study desk before Stephen. He sets the tea aside, his brows gathered in what has to be a tremendously-stormy frown. Even as he's rising to his feet from the plush chair, the silvery wards of the Sanctum report to him both the nature of the visitor and the state of the man.
"Here, now," he shoots over his shoulder as he jogs out into the hallway, headed for the grand staircase. The crimson Cloak of Levitation alights upon his frame in a riffling of fabric and he leaps the bannister fearlessly, knowing the relic will keep his dignified head from smashing on the glossy floor below.
The door is pulled open and the Sorcerer Supreme immediately grimaces. "Gods below, John, you're only missing a — !!!" He's learned the hard way not to dive after fellow fainting practitioners due to pins in palms and scars on skin. It falls upon the Cloak to slip beneath John's prone body and lift up the Mage. Now sling-gurney in red, the Cloak and its invalid are directed to a fainting sofa in the tea parlor just off the entryway. "Watch him," Stephen commands of the Cloak after it returns to hovering in the air. The relic wiggles its collars and lifts a point of hem almost as an uncertain finger, but does linger nearby. As quick as a cat, Stephen's scrounged up the medical kit from the kitchen and jogs back again.
"John? John," he says a bit more sharply as he stoops over the man. Two fingers press against the flittering pulse at John's neck.
John's eyes flicker and he tries to bat Stephen's arm away. The motion's sharp but feeble. He's not so sallow in the face that he looks jaundiced or anemic. The bleeding definitely isn't slowing down on its own, either.
"'m awake," John moans. He twists and tries to sit up a little more. "Cor, that was a mistake," the magician complains, putting a palm to his forehead.
"Get out the stitches and work fast," he tells Strange, and starts trying to shrug out of his heavy tan overcoat. "I don't know who or how, but once I figure it out I'm going to nail some bleedin' pig's arse to the wall. My /house/, Strange, they took my /house/," he seethes around gritted teeth.
"…your house," echoes the Sorcerer more than a little dubiously. He wonders briefly at the possibility of concussive injury alongside the scalp wound, but John's not slurring and his limb function appears only mildly impacted. "I suppose you'll have to explain what happened while I work unless you'd like to be put under a brief trance for the stitching. It'll be the Cloak holding the needle and thread."
The relic waves the corner of its hem again in an innocent greeting and acknowledgement. What a weird world: sutures by garment.
Stephen presses sanitized dressing against the scalp wound to see if he can clear away some of the blood and check whether or not a simple set of butterfly bandages will do to hold the skin shut. His eyes are narrowed and sharp, old memories both mental and muscle alike crowding at the front of his brain. By the looks of things, the scalp wound is doing what scalp wounds do best: bleed heavily. There's some bone exposed, but the ivory gleam isn't chipped — thank the gods.
Stephen presses the sterile dressing against the Mage's head as he pulls aside the fabric of sleeve as best he can to observe the arm wound.
He clicks his tongue. "I'll be honest with you, John, you'll want the trance."
"No bloody time for the trance," John snarls at Strange. "I've got a runnin' start just to get moving the second we're done here. An hour in the trance is about fifty-five minutes more'n I've got."
He digs in his pockets for a pack of cigarettes. It's slapped twice and he pulls one between his lips. "I'm fine. Fucked if I'm gonna let a little pain slow me down." A gimlet eye flashes at Strange— John can't be hurting quite as bad as he's pretending not to. "I thought you were a doctor in your old life, eh? No magical needle and thread laying around? Potions of wellness? Figure'd you'd at least have a snifter of opium and cocaine laying around for a bloke."
He cups fire in his palm to stoke his cigarette, uplifts his chin at Cloak. "Assistant's not bad looking though."
Despite his scowl, there's also the barest hint of a smile at the edges of Strange's lips.
"Don't encourage it," he mutters as to the Cloak. The relic, however, waves both hem-corners at John in a silent mimicry of cheerleading — rah-rah, who's the man, if you don't bleed out, that's a good thing!
"I'm more than happy to pour you a draft of a healing potion, but you'll suffer some adverse effects for it. You're aware of the quid-pro-quo rules of magic." He eyebrows down at John. The bill does come due at some point. "Either that, or you can shut up and let me work before you stain my sofa further. I need silence to concentrate. Do you think you can manage this?" The old imperiousness of the surgical suite shadows his words, calm as they are.
John exhales twin plumes of smoke down through his nose. "Ah, fuckoff with that Zen shite," he mutters. "Tit for tat, my ass. Fine, you don't have opium and you don't have a cheap cure-all, uncork the good drink and let's have up," he tells Strange. "I'll stay mum if it'll keep you from impalin' me."
He slides the tourniquet higher on his shoulder, slips a metal rod through it, and twists hard. His face goes chalk white with the pain and he hisses, but the bleeding stops almost immediately.
"Ayyy, hurry up and get this mended," John hisses. "Long as I don't bleed out I can slap some cure-all on it and be in fighting shape soonest."
"Gods below, you idiot." Stephen barely restrains himself from slapping the Mage's hand away from the tourniquet. "Fine. Be silent and hold yourself still. I need to suture the transected muscle before you go imbibing the draft unless you'd rather a clot of scar tissue instead of full muscular function."
Piqued beyond his former statement as to the Cloak wielding the needle and thread, the silver-templed Sorcerer instead utilizes a simple spell akin to telekinesis to begin stitching the arm shut. His eyes lid to half-hide the frosted-lavender glow of color about his pupils and the set of his jaw in concentration makes his cheekbones stand high. Far quicker than by even the fastest surgical hands on the planet, the laceration on John's arm is shut with a combination of conventional and complex suture patterns.
"Keep your thick skull still, I need to sew the head wound shut too," he grumbles and then gestures to bring the needle and thread up towards John's scalp. Quickly and accurately as he can manage, the flap of skin is sewn closed as well.
Surely the alcohol's for cleaning as he daubs it over the stitches and not in spite. "Now don't be a stubborn jackass. Stay prone, because if I come back and you've torn those stitches, it'll be your own damn fault." Throwing the bloodied dressing to one side, Stephen rises to his feet to momentarily leave the tea parlor once more. He's not go but for another minute and returns with a steaming mug of tea heavily laced with healing tonic.
"It'll taste like death," he warns the Mage, his expression and tone not in the least joking.
John's already sitting up contrary to doctor's orders, using a scalpel from the kit to slice away his ruined shirt sleeve. He's at least favoring the injured arm and trying not to move it.
The tea's given a look. The look's transferred up to Stephen. "It's called a shotglass, Stephen," Constantine says primly, and takes the cup. "I'm not the bloody queen 'ere to be impressed with a tea service." He takes a sip. "Woahgh." Constantine winces, sniffs, holds his breath, and chugs the scalding hot liquid as fast as his stomach will allow.
"-Bollocks- that tastes like pure shite," he hisses. A flask's produced from his pocket, unscrewed with a practiced flick of fingers, and he gargles what smells like strong, bitter old scotch.
"Fancy a nip? Least I can do," John says, waggling the heavily rune-engraved flask at Strange. "Now get your bib and your booties on," the magus says, and starts to his feet. "We've got to find my House."
Stephen has his arms folded and himself planted in front of the fainting sofa even before John makes to get up. The Cloak is there in a fluttering flash of crimson fabric to back him up and swat harmlessly at the Mage's uninjured shoulder as if to make him recline once more.
"Sit down, John Constantine, and let the damn healing draft work. You can wait another three minutes unless you want to lose feeling in your hand. Additionally, you can explain how you managed to incur a laceration with a shearing edge that appeared to me to be caused by something at least the size of a dagger. Did you forget how to duck too, while you were at it?"
The Sorcerer clad in the storm-blues of his mantle means well, but he's intending to at least get an explanation before he allows further galavanting.
"Christ Strange, did you swallow a dictionary or something?" John's already ashed out one cigarette and makes another appear with a flicker of his wrist. Fingers snap, he cups fire in his hand, and stokes another to life with quick flutterings of his cheeks.
"Three minutes," the magus acknowledges with a grumble of frustration. Fighting past the Cloak looks a little beyond him at the moment.
"And it was a sword. Not a dagger. Didn't get a good look at the perps, either," John admits. "Parked the House over in Chelsea for a few days. Looking for a fayling who skirted on a favor for me."
He flexes his fingers. "Anyway. Figured I might drop in on you sooner or later, anyway. I was gettin pissed at a pub on 8th, I walked out back to whistle up my front door, and they blindsided me. Didn't smell brimstone or incense. Fought pretty well," he admits. "First one got me in the arm before I flashed the lot of 'em, and I was scarperin' when someone got lucky with a blind throw of a brick. Next thing I know I'm half crawlin' on the gutter trying to get my tits under my nose, and I watch 'em just… grab the door." He gestures with his free hand. "And they phased out, whole kit. Door too." Concern creases his brow. "We've got to find her, Strange," he insists. "Anything strong enough to keep House from my Calling is someone we /definitely/ don't want rooting around in her wine celler, if you catch my meaning."
Stephen narrows his eyes as he listens. Swords, while narrowing down the possible identities of the perpetrator, are still broadly used in their weird little world of magical impossibility. His attention drops to the twitch of the Mage's hand and he marks it; good, the draft is already working at reattaching severed nerves against the body's natural inability to do as such. Those dark brows knit harder more to hear of how unfortunately easy it was to make off with the House of Mystery's door.
"…gods below." Long fingers span his own eyes momentarily in a transparent gesture of frustration. "That is perhaps the understatement of the century, pending on whether or not they find one particular hallway within that House's basement. If you're not still drunk, you can try a scrying upstairs in the third floor Loft. First of all, however, lift your hand and show me five mudras of varying form. I need to see how the draft is progressing in your healing," he explains still sternly.
John turns his right wrist over, flips Stephen the bird, then flashes a 'v' and thbbts at him. "Jog on. I'm fine. I don't have time to sit and heal right now." He gets to his feet and starts tugging his coat awkwardly over his relatively useless arm. The cigarette traces bobbling curves in the air in front of him, smoke rising unevenly in front of his face.
He starts towards the stairs with the even gait of a professional drinker. "Besides, I still have my good left hand. Never done it with your left 'and, Stephen?" he calls back, with a merry chuckle and a sly grin. "Totally different experience, y'know."
"I'm not going to dignify that question at all, John," calls Stephen from the tea parlor, having stepped aside to allow the recalcitrant Mage to leave. He does have half an ear on the off-chance of a stumbled step and potential faceplant as he takes a moment to move the medical kit and its used contents off to a side table for now, sure to be addressed at a later time. Can someone say 'biohazard'?
He rounds the corner out into the entryway and travels across the open space of the foyer with his usual brisk stride. The Cloak returns to his shoulders and idly billows in his wake until he catches up to John on the first landing. Sunlight shines down through the stylized stained glass window featuring the Eye of Agamotto.
"We'll conduct a basic scrying formulated off your own perceptions of the door itself," he explains with the distant professionalism he's known for; only cats are more aloof. "If these fail, then I will attempt it." He leads the way up to the second floor and then up the shorter hemmed-in stairway leading to the Loft.
"The crystal ball set beside the bookshelf there will suffice in your attempts." Strange points at a perfect transparent orb about the size of a bowling ball resting in a dark-wood cupping of raised support. He himself wanders over to the Book of Vishanti. The Sight will allow one to see the briefest flickering of sky-blue light dancing around the book before it opens to Stephen's scarred hands. He flicks through pages with the idle frown of the scholar, apparently searching for some nugget of important information.
"Go teach yer gran to suck eggs," John tells Strange with a defiant upthrust of his chin. He's pale and moving slowly, though admittedly most men would be flat out on the ground with that wound and the medicine's side effects. He just looks shaky.
Could also be the bourbon in his system. John smells like a distillery.
"No one with enough moxie to snatch House is going to be dumb enough to leave themselves open for a simple scrying."
"Also, the crystal ball makes you look like a poncy git who escaped from a gypsy camp and calls himself 'Voltar'."
He walks around the summoning circle on the ground. "Could try an enhanced calling," John ventures, eying the circle. "See if we can pinch a bridge from 'ere to the door. We'd need… uh, let's see, a ram's horn trumpet, some powdered diamond, Egyptian black cypress. Probably fresh out of virgin blood," he laments. "That'd help."
"I suppose we could try this extremely delicate and difficult process you're suggesting, but you could also save yourself from the poncy git telling you 'I told you so' if it is as simple as a scrying because the perpetrators overreached in their initial assumption to their personal safety." Stephen flips another page in the venerable Book and allows himself a thin smile to barely break the well-groomed lines of his goatee.
"Surely you wouldn't allow a chance for me to tell you as such?" This commentation is just this side of sing-song. "I've another simpler idea yet, but please, by all means." He gestures towards John without looking at him. "Drain yourself further and completely negate my efforts earlier so I can tell you 'I told you so' in this regard as well."
"Bloody hell, Strange," Constantine growls. "You damn Yankee hedge magi think you've got the answer to everything. What's the plan if it's… Felix Faust, or Baron Mordu?" he challenges. "Gonna walk around the Astral, whistle him up, then whip out the six shooters for a duel in the street?"
He inhales hard on his cigarette. "Fine. Fuck. Make it quick, eh? If it'll shut yer gob. Just try not to advertise to every bleedin' sorceror in New York that we're on the hunt for the House."
A thoughtful expression crosses his face, but evaporates in an instant. "I'm gonna make a call while you're workin'." John stomps around, finds a mirror, and turns it to face himself. He spits once on the surface and cleans some dust off with his thumb. "Koute, koute, rev san respe," he murmurs. The mirror fogs, and then reveals the rawboned features of a dark-skinned man in a fantastically adorned black tophat.
"Midnite," John says, jovially. "Been a day. D'you thin—" He's cut off by a scowl, a barked invective in Haitian Creole, and the image abruptly vanished.
John stares at the mirror, then casts an awkward half-glance over his shoulder. "Guess he's not taking my calls," John mutters.
With a mildly smug cast to his face, the silver-templed Sorcerer glances over at John. "Tsk. Impatience will get you nowhere fast…" His murmur contains all the nuances of a professor speaking to a fellow student, even if their masteries in their fields are truly masterful in turn. He lets the thread of conversation go, however, once his fellow practitioner begins to communicate via the small mirror.
Closing the Book of the Vishanti, Strange ignores the crystal ball entire to step up onto the hexagonal wooden dais beneath the Window on the Worlds. Taking up a cross-legged 'lotus' sit, he flicks his fingers upwards from where the backs of his hands rest on his knees in order to lift from the ground. Patterned in the broken fall of light through the Anomaly Rue, Stephen hovers there three feet from the ground, half-hidden by the draping of his Cloak, and closes his eyes to focus.
The world around him falls away as he opens up the Sight to his inner eye especially. Having taken John's measure earlier from his spilled blood, the Sorcerer then attempts to throw a web outwards over the city itself. It is subtle, gossamer, and no more than a breath of disturbance in his exacting care. It vibrates…so faintly off towards the docks of Brooklyn. His serene face turns towards it almost as as compass point and his brows begin to meet once more. The door is…
…no, was there at one point. Like the blood spatter from prey escaping a noose, the mystical signature begins and ends there. Stephen straight-up scowls, still searching despite the dead-end.
John's breath is on Stephen's ear abruptly. "No luck?" he inquires, a little over-loud. "/Shocking/, I say sir, absolutely /shocking/," the magus assures Strange. "To think someone would take measures to dodge magical scrying after stealing THE MOST VALUABLE BLOODY QUONSET HUT IN THE VAST EXPANSE OF BLOODY CREATION!"
John lights up a fourth cigarette, the butt from #3 flicked off into a corner of the room. "I told you, it'd take more than some magical thugs to nick the House from me. They moved her door. I don't think Thor himself could move the door if she didn't want him to," John frets. He paces in agitation.
"I imagine she's locked up tight, yet. But I didnt' think moving the door was possible either," he allows. "Fuck it. If she's been breached, then we've got a shit five years of work policing up the stolen bits and we're knackered from the getgo. If not… then we need to work fast, before they batter down 'er doors."
"So. Who's got the chops to steal House?" he inquires of Strange. "Any of your ilk running around outside lately, licking their lips at the idea of owning the Sanctum?"
The tiniest flinch comes in the Sorcerer leaning slightly away from John at his side. A supremely long-suffering sigh escapes Stephen after he has the sanctity of his personal space once more. His eyelids slowly rise to showcase the dimming of the Sight in use.
"You'd be surprised at the number of idiotic things I deal with on a regular basis, John," he asides in a tone truly dessicated. "Someone attempting a heist of this nature and forgetting to cover their tracks was a possiblity we could not ignore." Regardless, still seated in mid-air, he rotates to face the pacing practitioner nearby, his scarred palms still resting on his knees.
"I have dealt with interlopers to the Sanctum before, but no one has the balls to tempt my wrath through taking its entire frame from its grounds. Very few of my ilk have the brute strength of mystical force for such a thing as stealing your House. I expect help from beyond." And both know precisely what any form of 'beyond' could entail.
John leans sideways and gives Stephen an Extremely Skeptical look. He nods patroniizingly. "Oh, yes, there's a conversation I want to have. Shall I whistle up Dream, then? Have a little confab with the Lord of the Dreaming? 'Allo sir, yes, I've misplaced the House of Mystery, mind nipping by and helpin' me find it? Yes? Cor, you're all right, give m'luv to Eternity when you see 'em."
John hangs up an imaginary phone and stares at Stephen. He flails violently in all directions and ends up thrusting empty palms at the Sorceror Supreme. "Bloody /fucking hell/, Stephen! How'd the Vishanti act if you polite dialed 'em up to let 'em know someone had scarpered with the damn Sanctum?"
He flicks ash from his cigarette with a flick of his finger and dangles it from his lip. "We're gonna need help. You, me, any other dick-swinging bloke who can rub two fingers and summon fire. Or lass," he amends. "I'm as progressive as the next fellah. Rights of women, and all."
"Who's on your shortlist of trustworthies in the 'heavy hitter' category?"
Stephen outright rolls his eyes at the fervent display of behavior but seems to relent on his own attitude just as quickly afterwards. He assumes a stoic set of features and thins his lips in thought.
"I have the entire coterie of the Avengers at my fingertips, if you prefer any of their ilk. Otherwise, my summons within the realm of the Mystical are rarely ignored. I have contacts with the WAND wing of SHIELD as well as more minor practitioners locally spread. I might even be able to entice assistance from one Loki Odinson if we're desperate." He offers up this option with a glint of warning in his eyes. The Trickster is well-known for mercurial aid.
"And no, I do not intend to reach for our own deitic patrons, John. I was implying that the culprits of your House-napping may have reached beyond the veil between worlds for additional power."
John stares at Strange. "Blimey, you're talking about dialing up the Keystone Cops to catch Jack the Fuckin' Ripper!" he objects.
"Fuck. /Fuck/," John snarls, and vents his frustration by ashing half his cigarette with one long inhale. "Fine. Only people you trust, though. And ones with some proper fucking chops. None of this bush league shite where we bring in bleedin' amateurs with one trick to their name."
He ashes the cigarette out on a plate and flicks the butt into a corner of the room. "I need a shower," he concludes, wearily. Shoulders slump. "And a fresh pack of fags. And a hot meal," John adds, and slouches to the stairs. "Dial 'em up then, Strange. Fuck it. Let's 'em all see me at my nadir," John snarls.
He stumps down the stairs, angrily.
"My House. Took my /fucking/ /House/," he gravels, all the way down the steps.
Behind him, in measured steps, Stephen patiently attends. After all, the practitioner was recently indisposed on the fainting couch freely bleeding not so long ago. He follows John sedately down the steps, his fingertips steepled at a slim parted angle before his chest.
"We will get your House back, John. Do not mistake any action of mine as disinterest. I would prefer to get back the missing nuclear codes, if you will." Walking across the foyer, he pauses at the front door to give John a level look.
"I shall contact you as soon as I've the necessary man- and woman-power to tackle the problem. In the meantime, as your doctor," he stresses, " — do take your shower and eat and then rest. I would prefer you at your best rather than wondering if your stitches will continue to hold for another handful of days."
"Duly noted, Doctor." John pauses inside the doorway to a bathroom, turns, and stares at Strange. "So I'm gonna shower a pint of blood and shite off me at this point. Unless you're gonna offer to come in 'ere and scrub me bum— piss off, aye?" he demands, and kicks the door shut with a heavy nudge from his worn old Oxford dress shoes.
"Bollocks," Constantine mutters, and prepares to throw himself under some hot sudsy water.