About a few minutes later, Constantine showed up outside Wayne Manor. He was t by Butler Alfred and protective gear along with disinfectant spray. Alfred, wielding the disinfectant spray gun, sprayed Constantine for a few minutes. By the ti Constantine erged from the thick white mist, he reeked of disinfectant all over.
After a couple coughs, he waved his arm in front of his face and walked into the manor's hall. He stopped about two ters away from Aisha and Dick, not by choice, but because Alfred, putting down the disinfectant gun, started cleaning his double-barreled shotgun.
Just as Constantine was about to protest against Alfred's action, he heard Aisha uttering a bizarre and ethereal lody. Instinctively, Constantine looked up with his hands lit up by magical glow, and then stared solemnly at the ceiling.
Bruce did the sa, only he saw nothing in particular. He squinted, looking at Constantine, noticing faint light gleaming in Constantine's eyes, resembling the magical brilliance of his hands.
As Constantine was about to cast his magic, his serious face abruptly altered. His gaze, which was previously on the ceiling, landed on Aisha's face. Aisha opened her mouth with a snap, and Constantine froze there.
Throughout the entire process, the two acted as silent play actors performing to the air. Bruce, Dick, and Alfred saw nothing.
Suddenly, Constantine straightened up, lowered his hands, and looked at Aisha. He then turned to Bruce, asking, "Your daughter... did she have any anomalies before?"
Bruce wanted to reply but Aisha's life had been nothing but anomalies, there hadn't been any normal tis for him to compare. Thus, he didn't know where to start.
"She could be like , born with an affinity for magic, or maybe, she is also a cursed one, destined to deal with these odd things." Constantine's magical glow died down as he glanced at the ceiling of Wayne Manor, "A long ti ago, I accidentally cast a summoning demons spell and then..."
He shook his head, not describing what happened next, but Bruce could already imagine. Bruce furrowed his brows and asked him, "You an, Aisha just summoned a demon?"
"No, it might be worse than that, a kind of dark creature that I've never witnessed before. Yet..." Constantine looked in Aisha's vertical pupils and said, "They were all swallowed by her, gnawed in the head, and then, gobbled into her stomach..."
Aisha began to shriek again, saying things about being "so full" and "yummy". Bruce hugged her, checked her over, and over and found no injury or character change. So he asked Constantine, "Can I see the kind of creature you ntioned?"
"You can't use magic so you can't see it," was Constantine's initial response. Yet when both Bruce and Alfred stared at him intensely, he relented and said, "Fine, in honor of the money you loaned ."
Constantine snapped his fingers, and clusters of flas appeared before him. He waved his hand, and the flas fell into a straight line and then circled in the air.
The flas hit the ground with a "whoosh" sound, and with a "psssft" sound, the flas shot up, the connection between each fla forming a complex magic array. The mont when the lines lit up, Bruce felt as though the world in front of him had transford.
All the furniture and walls around were warping, emitting different light, as if his vision was intoxicated by so hallucinogens.
Bruce shook his head hard, and when he heard the song from Aisha's mouth, it was not just a simple nursery rhy anymore. It was accompanied by an ethereal and strange cawing sound.
Suddenly, a strange scream ca. Bruce looked up and saw black-winged creatures flying in between the twisted ceiling patterns. They tried to land on Aisha's head and shoulders, but Aisha grabbed them and stuffed them into her mouth.
The scream was ear-piercingly shrill, breaking Bruce's illusion almost instantly. When he looked down again, all he saw was the innocent face of Aisha.
He took a deep breath, stabilized his emotions, and turned to Constantine, asking, "Is this the world you see?"
"Not exactly. I only occasionally use this vision. What you just saw was not an illusion, but another real world that exists, which we call the Spirit Realm."
"You must be proficient in casting magic in this world without any distraction, otherwise you could be devoured by this world forever."
"So what was she singing exactly? And what were those black creatures?" Constantine asked in confusion. He was about to move forward when the sound of a shotgun loading echoed. He took two steps back, reached out his hand and said, "No, don't, don't point a gun at . I won't approach her."
"It's a nursery rhy." Bruce realized that the current situation was beyond his control. Luckily, he wasn't the lone-wolf Riddler yet. After making a few phone calls, Constantine, Hal, and Shiller appeared in the hall of Wayne Manor.
These people, known to Bruce, were users of special energies. They all had experienced using magic-like energy and had a certain understanding of mysticism.
Shiller held Aisha, checked her with the Gray Mist vision but found nothing unusual. Hal's Green Lantern Ring was not usable against the Parallax, but he comndably checked on Dick. The scanning results showed that Dick too was unaffected.
"Let think..." Shiller sat down on the couch, cradling Aisha. He set Aisha aside, stroking her hair, and said, "I know... the darkness and chaos in Gotham aren't entirely down to the system."
"After all, Brude Haven, which is very close to here and has the sa system, doesn't have this problem. This indicates that there must be so kind of mysterious power lurking within Gotham."
"I've always wondered what they're using to control the city; rain alone, wouldn't be enough."
"Now it seems they've created a nursery rhy. The nursery rhy is not just a simple song; it contains so occult power. Even though the lyrics are difficult and the tune is complex, it can still be spread among the children."
"A child singing this nursery rhy might draw those dark monsters. However, because not everyone can observe the spirit realm described by Constantine, they would be influenced by these dark monsters without realizing it."
"Even without investigating, we can tell that those monsters would never teach them well. Their dark energy might make all children in Gotham more violent and wicked."
"I can hardly imagine." Hal concluded, "Don't they have any morals or conscience? How could they do this to the children..."
Hal loved kids. During the ti he traveled back and forth between Gotham and the Green Light Corps Headquarters, he occasionally visited the vocational school in Living Hell to lecture about airplanes.
At first, he also struggled with the children's naughtiness and disobedience. However, when he shared stories of legendary pilots, the innocent eagerness in the children's eyes was unmistakenly genuine.
"I always believe every child has potential to change," Hal said, ruffling Dick's hair. "Their backgrounds might be rough, but with proper education, they can improve, or at least not end up worse."
"However, Gotham hasn't gotten better after so many generations. " Bruce leaned his elbow on his knee, resting his cheek on the side of his hand, "Throughout these generations, it's not that no one has attended Gotham University or even prestigious universities in other cities."
"Many of them returned to Gotham, but none of them managed to bring any positive change to the city. They blended back in, like a drop of water returning to the river, and vanished without making a ripple."
"So, to truly reduce cri, we must first solve this problem." The muscles on either side of Bruce's nostrils twitched, making him look sowhat indifferent. When he appeared this way, Shiller could always see the shadow of the mature Batman in him.
"Aisha could consu those monsters," Constantine suggested, deep in thought. "But if she's our only source of defense and she has to eat while singing, it would be tough for her to consu all the dark power in Gotham."
"Eat! Yummy! Aisha eat!" Aisha started to shout. Kids her age are always hungry, regardless of whether what they're eating is human food or not. The poor thing was hungry again, even though it hadn't been an hour since her last al.
Aisha was about to start singing again. Constantine extended his hand and a fla ca down. Hal dodged the flas and said: "Wow, cool!"
Waving off the complint with a smug smile, Constantine was about to say sothing, but Aisha's song had already started.
Under the spirit vision, Aisha's song was mixed with a grating sound that made one's teeth tingle, like a giant creature grinding its teeth. Shiller listened carefully; it sounded familiar. Wasn't this the sound of Parallax grinding its teeth?
No wonder Aisha could gobble up monsters so easily. Now that her body shrunk and her mouth wasn't as big, however, she couldn't swallow more than one monster at once. If she were still the yellow fear monster Parallax, her capacity would be far greater.
With the magic array taking effect, Shiller's vision started to change, but it quickly stabilized. Everything was seen through a bluish-gray filter. Gray mist said inside his head: "Detected changes in visual nerve signal, adjusted back to normal perception."
So, Shiller could see the monsters far clearer than anyone else. To others, the monsters were just a mass of winged, black mist, but Shiller saw them as flying owls.
And they were not ordinary owls. These owls were just skeletons, but the feathers were still clinging to the bones. From the eye sockets of the skull, green flas flickered; behind their wings, a black energy trailed. As they hovered in the air, they made an irritating sound, almost like a sneer.
Seeing them circle towards Aisha, Shiller snorted and looked up at the monsters.
He slowly reached for his umbrella. The energy, which he had collected from Nal in the Marvel World, was released from the gray mist and led to the tip of the umbrella.
Everyone's attention was drawn to his movents. They saw Shiller wave his umbrella, and point it at the owls in the sky, shouting:
"Call God guard!"
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