Chapter 22: Zatanna

As the Hood was finally neutralized, Edward looked at the unconscious body of the man/demon with tired eyes. With his physical condition, this fight wasn't really exhausting to him, but his exhaustion did not come from his body.

Instead, he felt mentally tired. Once again, he had to hit his enemy for several minutes to take him out, it was frankly getting tiring.

While he was thinking though, he suddenly felt a new Chi appear in the room, and he immediately turned around. He saw a girl standing there, she looked like she was around his age, and was quite beautiful.

Medium length black hair, blue eyes and a… peculiar outfit. She was dressed as a magician, not the old wizard kind, but the showy kind. Like an assistant for a prestidigitator. Had it been in any other circumstance, Edward would have taken her as that, a fake.

Even though real magicians did exist, most if not all those who go on spectacles are fakes who never encountered magic before, and use prestidigitation.

However, she was different. Her Chi felt strong, but more importantly she appeared out of nowhere. With his strong senses and Chi Sense, the only possibility for her to appear in this room without him feeling it was teleportation.

And not the portal kind of teleportation he and sorcerers used, but true teleportation that only beings with magic inside them could use.

So he immediately went on his guards as she appeared, he didn't know of her intentions and for her to be able to teleport as she did, she had to be a powerful witch.

She seemed unaware of his wariness though as she looked at him with her blue eyes, and they seemed to shine as she asked "Are… are you Serenity?!"

Edward tilted his head, and still on guard against the girl he slowly nodded. At his nod she jumped on the spot and said "Wow, did you take care of that demon on your own? You're impressive!"

Edward sighed quietly as his body relaxed, and he said "This man draws his powers from his magical artefact, the red cloak. If we can find some way to safely take it off him then…"

As he was about to continue the girl grinned proudly and said "Nothing too difficult for the great Zatanna!"

She pointed her hand toward the Hood and said "Eb deppirts fo rouy lacigam stcafetra."

As her words rung out, Edward felt her Chi move in a weird way he had never felt before, and magic power left her body. The cloak and the boots of the Hood glowed with a blue light, and they began moving off the man's body.

However, as they were able to leave his body, Edward and the girl, who called herself Zatanna, felt the surroundings tremble before a shadow extended out of the cloak.

The shadow grew to touch the ceiling in less than a second, before finally taking a shape. To Edward, it seemed strangely familiar as it looked like the demon he had beaten for the past few minutes, except that it was much bigger, and it's body wasn't hidden by any clothes anymore.

It's grey body bulged with massive muscles, on top of which black lines intersected all over it's body.

It was so tall it had to bend it's head in the room, it looked like it was around three meters tall. Moreover, Edward could feel it was much more powerful in this form than when it was possessing the Hood, it's Chi was much stronger.

The demon finished it's transformation and snarled "How dare you puny humans touch items blessed by the great Dormammu! Your punishment is death!"

It swung it's claw toward the two, ready to cut them into sashimi. As Edward grabbed the girl seeing she didn't move, he dodged while she said "Wols."

The claw instantly slowed down, and Zatanna added "Enogeb."

Her words seemed to have a magical charm to them, and thinking about it they certainly did as Edward saw purple fumes appear from the demon. As it cried in what seemed to be pain, Zatanna said with a large toothy smile "And this, was Zatanna Zatara!"

Seeing her bow toward the demon, Edward felt like facepalming. She really was a show magician, except she had real magic.

As the two thought the demon would disappear, it growled "Foolish witch! Fnjd!"

Hearing the hardly pronounceable word the demon spat out, Edward felt his body become lighter, as if he was trying to enter his Astral Form, before the world turned much more colourful.

Edward knew that phenomenon, they were leaving this dimension. Except that this time, he was leaving with his body, not his Astral Form.

He started feeling despair as he knew that trying to cross dimensions with a physical body was madness, the reason he could do so in the Astral Form was that it could ignore laws of physique, but his body didn't have this ability.

However, the pain he awaited never came, and instead they quickly stopped their travel.

As soon as they arrived, Edward looked around and saw they were in a forest. The trees were quite tall, and shadowed the sky. All he could tell was that it was probably noon here, and there was a single sun in the sky. Good.

As Edward analysed his surroundings, he saw that both Zatanna and the demon looked shocked, but he didn't exactly know what.

After a moment of silence, Zatanna pointed toward the demon and said "Nommus lacigam worra."

An arrow that glowed blue constructed itself out of seemingly nothing in front of her finger, and flew toward the demon at top speed. The process was so fast the demon couldn't dodge, and got it's left shoulder pierced through by the arrow.

It roared as it's arm fell limp, the arrow had severed tendons it seemed, and backed away. It demonstrated an unusually fast speed for it's size as it disappeared among the trees in a matter of seconds.

Zatanna and Edward didn't hesitate to chase after it, fearing the damage it could cause, the first one flying and the second one running between the trees. The demon wasn't that hard to track with the deep footprints it left on the ground.

They quickly left the canopy of trees, and found themselves on a plain. What they saw on the plain astonished them though. There was an army of medieval soldiers, fighting against another army.

But the stranger thing was the other army those soldiers were facing, as they were not humans. Humanoids, for sure, but Edward was pretty sure humans didn't have greyish skin and jagged fangs. One or two could be mutants, but not several tenths.

Rather than humans, they looked like Orcs, Tolkien kind of orcs.

"Did I send us into the Lord of the Ring?!" Edward frowned as he heard an excited voice next to him, what kind of magician was Zatanna? She didn't even know what she was doing!

He decided to ignore the child beside him to pay more attention to the fight before drawing conclusions.

The human side was led by twelve knights, one of whom was wearing a golden crown, so probably a king. But that wasn't the only special thing about him, the man was… glowing.

Or rather, his sword was. And the sword sheath. Edward instantly thought of a magical sword, and as he counted twelve knights, he grew more and more certain they weren't sent in the Lord of the Ring, but back in time. In King Arthur Pendragon's time.

Edward actually knew King Arthur and the knights of the round table were a thing thanks to the magic books he read, as Merlin used to be a powerful magicians who was rather friendly with Sorcerers and contributed magical knowledge to Kamar-Taj.

He then looked at the other side, and saw the demon grovelling at the feet of a woman, who was levitating in the air. She looked gorgeous, and was easily one of the most beautiful women Edward had ever seen, but his attention wasn't directed to her devilish body, but rather the book she was holding as he recognized it.

The Darkhold. The book he had taken from Circe alongside Diana and Stephen. This only reinforced his belief he was sent back in time as it was common knowledge Morgana, the rival of Merlin and one of the strongest witches to ever exist, drew her powers from the Darkhold.

And it seemed he wasn't the only one who caught on that as the other witch next to him said "We are in the Arthurian Legends! How exciting! I'm taking Morgana!"

And like that, she flew in Morgana's direction, not even bothering to come up with a plan. Edward let out a sigh as he rushed toward who he thought was King Arthur.

Obviously, seeing two newcomers, King Arthur and his men were vigilant, but at least they were human. Still, the soldiers tried to block Edward's path as he ran for the king who stood in the back of his army.

Thanks to his incredible skill though, Edward managed to weave between the soldiers, and quickly reached King Arthur, who merely looked at him with a raised eyebrow, his sword grasped firmly.

Edward said "Do you understand me?"

The blond man looked surprised this time and asked back "Are you the warrior from another time from the prophecy?"

Edward hardly concealed his shock as he heard the king, not only did they understand each other, how did he know he wasn't from this time? And what prophecy is he talking about?

Arthur couldn't see Edward's reaction because of the mask, so he said "Are you not?"

Edward replied "Depends… How come we are speaking the same language? How do you know me? And who are you?"

As soon as he asked that, a servant next to Arthur said something, but Edward didn't manage to understand what he said this time.

Edward raised an eyebrow, and Arthur smiled before raising his sword a little and said "We can understand each other thanks to my sword, Excalibur. As for who I am, I am Arthur Pendragon, King of Camelot. For your other questions, you will have to wait until we return to Camelot, Merlin will have many questions for you."

Edward sent a look at the sword, that would be a good weapon for him, but he doubted asking nicely would prompt Arthur to give it to him, nor did he want to just snatch someone else's weapon.

Edward then looked at the battlefield for a while, and asked "Is it your sword that heals your men?"

Arthur grinned and replied "You have good eyes. Excalibur has an ability I like to call the healing aura. Basically, anyone bathing in the aura will be healed, as long as I wish for it."

Edward was impressed "That's a powerful ability to have, this must make any battle quite easier."

Arthur was about to say something when he frowned. Edward followed his gaze and looked at the battlefield. Or rather, above it.

The two witches had been fighting since Edward and Zatanna arrived, and they made quite a ruckus. However, Morgana had quickly proved to be the superior magician as she was currently holding Zatanna by the throat, the later struggling but obviously unable to move out of her grasp.

The Darkhold, which was levitating next to her, opened by itself, and dark tendrils extended from within the pages of the book.

The majority of the tendrils of darkness went for the demon, which had been grovelling since it earlier, and brought it to the witches. A smaller part of the tendrils caught Zatanna in them.

Dark runes suddenly appeared in the air around them, and Zatanna was released from Morgana's grasp, only to cry in pain alongside the demon.

Meanwhile, Edward tried to close in and help Zatanna, but Morgana immediately spotted him and sent a bolt of darkness his way. It came so fast he barely saw it and was struck in the chest. The pain was terrible, and he was sent flying backwards.