Hellblazer of Equestria: The Trials of John Constantine

Hellblazer of Equestria:

The trials of John Constantine

A Hellblazer and MLP crossover

Chapter 3 Rediscovering History

I closed my eyes and instantly missed my hands.  I needed a Silk Cut so bad I could barely stand it.  It was as if there was some kind of childish torture that I could feel the weight of the pack, feel the weight of my lighter full of hellfire, and not able to really grab either of them.  I let out a frustrated grunt which one of the mares took as directed toward her.

“I’m still waiting for you to explain this!” she shouted.

I looked at her.  If I closed my eyes it was almost like hearing Epiphany before we married.  It was hearing her scream at me for being an idiot and not seeing what was right in front of me.  I couldn’t close my eyes, because I couldn’t let myself go there.  I needed to be focused, and I bloody well needed to fix this.

“She wanted to see me exorcise that bloody demon out of that wo… out of that mare!  She wanted to see how it was done, and her eyes were opened.  She can see things that you can’t,” I explained.

“What are you talking about?!  What can she see that’s making her act so crazy?!” she shouted.

I shook my head and walked to Twilight.  There was a chance to fix it.  A single chance, something I had done with Kat to protect her from the vision.  Something she wore every day because it was easier not seeing than seeing.  I needed something she could wear over her head.  Something that would touch her, and that she could wear whenever she wanted to wear it.  If I was back in Manchester I could get a cheap crucifix from the shop, but I wasn’t.

Besides, the crucifix would be pointless.  The entire reason it works is because people see it as a symbol of their faith.  They’re able to focus on it.  That’s why it takes down some of the more physical beasties from the other side.

“I’m not done talking to you!” she said as she shoved into me.

“I’m trying to fix it!  Bloody hell woman will you let me work for two seconds Pippy?!  Two seconds luv and I swear I’ll listen to anything you say!” I shouted.

“Who the hay is Pippy?” she asked.

“Oh bollocks,” I said before I lowered my head.

“What’s going on?  Who are you, what happened to Twilight, and what are you trying to fix?” she asked.

“I’m trying to fix it so that she doesn’t have to see it.  I need something that she has faith in,” I said.

The blank expression on her face spoke volumes.

“What does she believe in?” I asked.

“Friendship.  That’s what we all believe in,” she answered.

“So, what can she wear that’s a symbol for friendship?  Something that can go around her neck would be best,” I said.

She looked at me confused for a moment before she lifted a cord with some brightly colored rocks on it.

“It’s a special rock candy necklace.  Pinkie showed us how to make them, and only the best of friends give them to each other,” she said.

I looked at it and held out my hoof. She put it on it only for it to fall off.

“Why aren’t you holding it?” she asked.

“How?  It’s a bloody hoof!  How do you hold something with a bloody hoof?!” I seethed.

“Think about holding it plothole,” she said shoving it back at me.

I thought about holding it, and it stayed in place.  Good, now if this was something she had faith in then this would work.  I started toward where she was sitting.  She was sitting at the table, her head buried in a book.  I’ve seen what she was doing before.  Kat, Zed, even Gemma had done the same thing.  Attempting to block out what they were seeing by ignoring it.  I touched her, and she flinched.

“Twilight, do you want me to help?” I asked.

She lifted her head.  Dark trails were carved down her lavender fur from the tears.  I wasn’t sure how long she had been crying, but I could tell that it bad been more than just a few moments.  I lifted my hoof, and showed her the necklace.  A bit of confusion crossed her face.  I focused on the necklace, allowing some of essence to spread over to it.

Enough to power it, enough to capture the faith she had in the symbol, and all that was left was to seal it.  I lifted it over her head, slipped it on, and then leaned forward.  I closed my eyes as our lips connected.

We had to connect, our souls had to go into the aether together at the same time, and that meant briefly finding death.  Typically a good shag would be the easiest way of getting there, but from the way things felt, from what I sensed about her the Princess still had a part of her innocence left.

I may be a bastard, but I’m not a fucking bastard.  Her first time wouldn’t be ritualistic sex.  Instead I felt for her energy, for her soul, and once I felt it I connected to it.  Diving into the aether without the assistance of an orgasm was far more difficult, but not impossible.  I had to pull our souls loose from our bodies.

I felt the first tug, the call, the need, and then another.  Moment after bloody moment I pulled until I saw the ethereal light surrounding us.  That’s when I heard the gasp.

“What happened?” she asked.

“We’re in the aether,” I said.

“Wait, didn’t you say that insanity flowed through here?” she asked.

I could see her starting to panic.  It wouldn’t help if she noticed her form either.  Since I brought her here, since I formed the bond, she took a form suiting to me.  The both of us had become human, or at least our souls appeared as humans.

“Twilight, I need you to calm down.  Right now we’re safe.  Insanity does travel through the aether, but it does it around negative energy.  There’s nothing negative here.  We’re fine,” I said.

“Okay…  Did… did you kiss me before?” she asked.

I nodded.

“We needed to connect together, and I’ve done this before,” I said.

She looked at me for a moment before she reached out toward me.  Her hand stopped and she looked at it.  I watched her eyes widened with wonder.

“What?” she began.

“You’ve taken the form my soul is most comfortable with luv.  This is what I looked like before I came here,” I said.

She looked at the differences between us.  I was clothed, she was not.  It was hard not to look at her.  She had youth, innocence, and beauty on her side.  According to what that git Star Swirl said in his book she would always have beauty on her side.  She didn’t grasp modesty, and for once I didn’t want to act like a right bastard around a beautiful girl.  I pulled off my Trench Coat and draped it on her shoulders, helping her arms through, and buttoning it up.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“I have to seal the amulet I’m making for you.  Twilight, do you trust me?” I asked.

I felt like a sod and a tosser.  I was going to do something to help her, and at the same time it was going to chisel away at her innocence.  I looked in her eyes, waiting for her response.  She nodded, stepped forward, and I pulled her against me.

“I’m sorry that your first time experiencing this has to be because I was too much of a right bastard to stop you from seeing something you weren’t ready for,” I said.

Our souls glowed, and I heard a soft moan come from her.  It passed into her, through her, swirled around her, and the moan built up.  She began writhing in pleasure.  Her physical innocence was protected, but I was stealing her spiritual one.  This was something that should have happened with someone would care about.  It was something that should have happened with the man she wanted to be with for the rest of his life.  It shouldn’t happen with someone like me. She cried out, her face burying into my shoulder.  And then the glow began to lessen.  Her amulet was sealed, and I had stolen something from her she would never get back.

All magic has a price.  Every bit of it does.  There is always a sacrifice that has to be made.  Maybe it’s a bit of your humanity, or something more tangible can be used.  But when it comes to making something that protects your sanity, that shields your mind.  It needs to be something else.  It needs the energy of two souls sharing the most intimate moment they can.  She held on to me as I felt for our bodies.  I felt the connections, and pulled.  I felt us drifting down, moving slowly, taking hours for the connection to set.

And then my eyes opened.  I leaned back, breaking the kiss, and Twilight’s eyes flittered open.  She looked around, and I looked at her necklace.  It glowed, a dark purple.  It was a mixture of her more pure soul, and my tainted one.  I heard another voice, and it became more pronounced as everything became more real.

“What happened?”

I turned to face her.  Twilight had said her name was Rainbow something, but the mistake had been made.  I had already called her by Epiphany’s pet name.  There was no way I could completely stop calling her by it.  From this point on, in the back of my mind, I would want to call her Pippy.  It was going to be something that stayed there.  I breathed out and studied her.

“I helped her,” I said.

“They’re gone,” Twilight said.

“No luv, they’re not.  You can’t see them right now, but they’re still there,” I said.

“How could you help her?  All you did was kiss her for a second,” Rainbow said.

“It was only a second?  It felt like hours,” Twilight said.

I smiled and nodded.

“That’s the aether.  Time doesn’t exist there.  A thousand years can pass in the span of a second, or a single moment can last over a year.  It depends on what part of the aether you enter into,” I replied.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxTwilight’s POV

Sweet Celestia what happened?  I can’t stop looking at him, listening to him explain what happened, and I feel myself blushing.  I need to stop doing that.  It wasn’t here, but then again it felt so real.  I…  I’ve heard Rarity and Fluttershy talk about how it feels.  They talked about the warmth and love spreading out over them, and the way it felt like there was something else there connecting them.

I knew what it was now, and… he was so sweet.  I want to feel it with him again.  I want to be his special somepony.  I want to feel all of that, and I wanted it so bad that I almost didn’t hear Spike.  I turn to see him walking toward me with a letter.

“Twilight, Princess Celestia said that she’s coming.  She’ll be here as soon as possible.  She wants to hear about what you saw, and about him,” Spike said pointing to John.

“Guess it’s time to break out the tea and crumpets,” he said.

“Tea and what?” Spike asked.

“It’s not important.  Spike, I need you tell me when Princess Celestia gets here,” I said.

How can I explain this?  How can I explain what I saw, what happened, and how do I explain John?  I tried to breathe.  Celestia is understanding, and I know that she’s seen so many strange things in her life time.  Still, this is unlike anything I’ve ever read about before.  Sombra was the closest thing to what I saw in the hospital, but what he was and what that thing was is as different as night and day.

If she’s flying here it could take a while for her to arrive.  After all she would have the guards, get her royal regalia together, arrange for a carriage…

“Twilight, I see her carriage coming near Ponyville!” Spike shouted from his new favorite lookout.

“Or she could have just sent the letter, and decided to come immediately,” I thought.

I readied myself, looked back at John, and instantly I felt the blush return to my cheeks.  I needed to have a clear head for this, but after what happened.

“Twi, you’re having a little issue with your wings,” Rainbow Dash said.

I blushed furiously and forced them back down.  Now was not the time.  I didn’t need to think about that.  I waited for a moment before I walked toward the door and opened it.  Celestia walked inside, followed by her guards, whom she ordered to go outside and wait, before she smiled at me.

“Twilight, your letter caused me to have some great concerns,” she said.

I nodded and cleared my throat.

“Princess…  I saw something.  It was something that I can’t fully explain, but it wasn’t really part of our world,” I said.

“I can tell you what it was,” John said.

“I assume you are the new pony Twilight has written to me about.  She has said that your origins are… interesting,” Celestia said.

“Everything about me is interesting luv.  Here, this card should help with the introductions,” he said.

I turned to see him stick his hoof into that oversized coat of his and pull out a card.  He then pulled out a small flimsy pack and what looked like a lighter.  He hoofed the card over to Celestia, and I watched as she looked at it, and then at him.

“John Constantine, Exorcist, Occultist, and Master of the Dark Arts…  I do hope that this card is a joke Mr. Constantine.  Black magic is punishable, and it carries a very sever sentence,” she said.

“Black magic and the Dark Arts are two different things.  Dark Arts implies that I know about Black Magic, but it doesn’t mean that I use it.  Besides, if it wasn’t for me one of your subjects would still be the host to a demon,” he said.

I watched as Celestia’s eyes narrowed.  She pointed her hoof at him, and then at a spot in front of her.

“I want to know about this.  Tell me everything right now,” she demanded.

I had never heard her sound so cross toward somepony who wasn’t an enemy before.

“I informed Twilight about my abilities with the supernatural, and how I could remove certain types of insanity.  She asked me to look at a mare in the hospital, and what was going on was the poor mare was the host to a demon.  Now, I’ve had a moment to look at some of the books you have on magic, and with the exception of this git Star Swirl no one really mentions anything close to that demon.  I understand that his books were written well over a thousand years ago.  So, how is it that a mare gets possessed by a demon when there hasn’t been a documented case of it in order a thousand years?” he asked.

“I do not like your tone,” Celestia replied.

“Princess, it was just a happenstance right?  I mean an accident right?” I asked.

“She said that her employer told her to go into a locked room in an old part of the castle at Canterlot.  A room that was rumored to have been locked by Star Swirl, and had runes similar to this around the outside of it,” he said as he held out a piece of paper to her, “Those ruins are different than I’m used to seeing, but I can tell, by the way they’re arranged, that it was meant as a barrier ward.  He locked something dangerous away in there didn’t he?”

“We had to know.  Twilight, we needed to know what it was that Star Swirl had been working on.  He…  He was so secretive about things, and I remembered that one of the things he worked on after I banished…  After Nightmare Moon, was a spell that would allow me to monitor everypony.  He wanted to make sure that no one else fell to something like Luna did ever again,” Celestia said.

“So, you bloody well sent her in knowing that it could be something waiting to get her.  You let her go in blindly!” he shouted at her.

“Silence!  I made a decision to protect my little ponies, and one that I would make again to ensure their safety!” she shouted back at him.

“Fucking Gabriel all over again.  Thinking that you’re above everyone else, and you use the excuse of wanting to help us as the reason to whatever you want.  So, sending in an innocent woman, er mare is perfectly fine!  Better to risk one soul right?” he asked.

“You are trotting on very thin ice Mr. Constantine.  I wanted to protect my subjects, and I will do what needs to be done in order to protect them.  I regret that Ruby was, hurt, but it just meant that the room needed to remain sealed,” she said.

“And you sealed it back the way he did right?  Good, with just one problem luv.  You let them into your world.  You opened the door, invited them in, and now they’re here.  They’re here, and they’re going to enjoy being here.  At least that git Star Swirl had the foresite to keep them located to a single place.  I don’t know what he did to do it, but he had the understanding that they had to be in a single, lockable, place.  Now, these things are out, and none of your ponies know how to defend themselves.  They don’t know because they’ve faced this before,” he said.

“Celestia, he did save her.  He pulled that thing out and banished it,” I said.

She looked to me, and then back to him.  I could see the way she studied us that she was noticing something.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I… I saw.  I saw it, and then I saw even more.  There’s so much that we don’t see every day,” I replied.

Her eyes softened, and then she pulled me under her wing.  I felt the warmth in the hug.

“I didn’t mean for you to see this yet.  I’ve kept it from Luna and Cadence as well.  It’s something that is very hard to deal with,” she said.

“What… can you see them?” I asked.

“Twilight, I try to help them cross over.  There are many who simply are not ready, but I try to help them as much as I can,” she replied.