Absolute DC Part 6: Paint It Black

In a hospital in the city of Salem, MS, a young man had just left his critical condition and was recovering in the ICU in the night. He had stumbled home one day, emaciated and at death’s door, and his parents rushed him to the emergency room. When dusk fell this night, a familiar face came to him. It was Dr. Todd Scott, the headmaster of the secret school of magic the young man attends. Todd examined him with his magic powers and found the young man’s own magic power, the power of pyromancy, severely weakened. The boy explained that when he was returning home after their school semester ended, he was attacked by a girl who drained his powers and life force with a touch of her hand. Since Homo magi like them can’t reveal their power to the world at large, the young man feigned being unable to speak so he would not have to explain this to his parents. Todd left to return to the school, The Kent Nelson Institution, ready to look further into this after a night’s sleep. When morning came, the students and faculty of the school saw a news report of three drug dealers in Salem being killed in the night… by being burned alive. Eyewitnesses say that there was a “teenage Caucasian girl with black hair” fleeing the scene. 

Zatanna Zatara, the school’s top student and field leader of it’s magical superhero team, The Shadowpact, knew of the attacked student from Todd and was scrambling to find an answer in the school library’s magic texts and tomes. With Zatanna were other students who stayed at the school’s dorms for the summer, including her boyfriend Dan Cassidy, Shadowpact trainee Greta Hayes, and Greta’s friend Celine Patterson. The thing is, it’s Zatanna’s birthday, and the other remaining students wanted to celebrate. But now, in her panic, Zatanna’s too obsessed with this event to want to do that. Not even when Nimue Inwudu, aka the mystic Madame Xanadu, arrived at the doorstop of the school after traveling all the way from Indiana to give Zatanna “a great gift”. 

The girl from the news report was spotted at the perimeter of the school soon enough, and she was heading straight for the campus! Realizing this, Zatanna conjured a small army of golems from the earth, using the magic incantation “reh kcatta smelog!”, that tried to attack her. The girl dodged them as long as she could, unable to fight stone and earth with flames, but then the hot-headed Celine attacked from the trees with her monstrous, weapon-like appendages extended. For this unsubtle tactic, Celine had her abilities and life energy sapped from her when the enemy grabbed her. The girl’s new power, replacing the pyromancy altogether, tore through the golems with less problem as Zatanna retreated to the school. Once the girl reached the school, Greta tried to fight her enemy with her magic powers (which include intangibility, levitation, and invisibility), but one lucky shot allowed the girl to seize Greta’s life force and have her powers drained. In the school itself, Zatanna used the full brunt of her magical abilities to try to defeat her, but to no avail. After Zatanna had her life energy drained, as well, and Madame Xanadu rushed to her side, Dr. Scott and Dan generated a combined cage of shadow and organic gold to prevent the enemy from advancing further. After Dan asked who she is and what she was hoping to accomplish, she explained herself.

Her name is Alice Zechlin, and she is from Dayton, OH. When she was younger, her ability to drain magic powers from others manifested. When she accidentally almost killed another Homo magi with it, her single mother was driven into depression from her knowing her daughter is “some kinda freak”. In the end, Alice’s mom killed herself with a drug overdose (hence why Alice wanted to kill those drug dealers with her stolen pyromancy). The local hellfire-and-brimstone preacher took Alice in and, realizing her “dabbling in witchcraft”, locked her in a cellar beneath her church where she was flogged and starved. Doctor Fate, the then-headmaster of the Institution, had astral-projected himself into her mind and promised to free her and give her sanctuary in the school. 5 months passed and nothing came, so she felt that she was completely abandoned by Dr. Fate. In the end, the Dayton police found out what had been transpiring in the church and the preacher was arrested, thus freeing Alice. Able to see who among normal humans have magic abilities, Alice, now calling herself “Black Alice”, began killing drug dealers and other repugnant criminals of that sort, with powers stolen from others, as practice to find and take her revenge against Dr. Fate.

Dr. Scott tried to argue that Dr. Fate was lost in the elemental void for five months before he could help Alice, and now he’s willingly gone for good and they have no idea where he went, but she wasn’t hearing any of that. She used Zatanna’s incantations to bust through the cage and fight Dr. Scott and Dan. In the end, Dan decided to sacrifice himself to forcibly replace Zatanna’s powers within Black Alice by having his life drained by her. Now Black Alice has Dan’s powers… but none of his control over it, as Alice begins forcibly and painfully growing spikes of organic gold out of her body! She had no choice but to willingly give Dan back his powers, but, without any power to defend herself, Dr. Scott is able to trap her in shadows.

With their life force returned to her Homo magi victims, the Shadowpact members and the young pyromancer from earlier recovered. And, with some convincing, Alice agreed that Dr. Fate would have returned for her if he weren’t trapped in the elemental void AND that he had disappeared on his own accord. However, she is on the fence about joining the Shadowpact. As for Zatanna, she was recovering in Madame Xanadu’s arms when Xanadu told her what she recently discovered… that Zatanna is Madame Xanadu's long-lost daughter.

Notes:

* Greta Hayes, based on The Secret, is the same young woman rescued by The Stranger during “The Tales of The Absolute” anthology. 

* Celine Patterson is based on Skitter, from The New 52 line.

** No confirmation whether or not Celine and her sister are the daughters of the late Amanda Waller.

* Yes, Madame Xanadu is Zatanna’s mother. Nimue and fellow sorcerer John Zatara were not married, but had a newborn child (yet to be named) together and lived together. Nimue accidentally summoned a demon that blinded Nimue with a swipe of its claws and she thought that both John and Zatanna died in the same attack. Dr. Fate, friend of John Zatara, took the baby, which Fate named “Zatanna Zatara” after her father’s mother, under his care while Nimue was incapacitated; Fate assumed she had also died. Extensive research done by Nimue after first meeting and working with Zatanna during the Crisis of Infinite Earths confirmed that Zatanna is indeed Nimue’s and John’s long-lost child.