Holy Flight

It was late at night. Inside Titans' Tower, Raven was in her room. As usual, it was adorned with masks, ceramic figures of birds, and odd jewels. The pages of her books, on their odd triangular shelf, rustled as the strong winter breeze came through her open window. She had forgotten to close it after jumping out for fresh air earlier that day. It was just about midnight now, and she was in the peaceful, cold darkness. Her periwinkle covers were draped over her, and her cloak lay nearby. Inside her mind, broken thoughts were stirring. She knew that she had already saved the world from the prophecy, but she had been having the same nightmares lately. Again, the images started drifting from her conscience.

There was a figure in a dark alley. Bent in and huddled around itself, it shivered. As it tried to escape from the garbage-lined streets, its approaching labeled it as a female. She had shining black hair and eyes like dark opals. Dressed in nothing but a torn grey robe stained with blood, she continued to run until she turned the corner. In front of her – towering over her, in fact – was a monstrous red figure. It had crimson skin and dirty cloven hooves. A loincloth and warriors' armbands lined his powerful demonic figure. Four gleaming red eyes and flowing white hair pierced the darkness.

A flash of white. Then, the same woman, heavily pregnant, was living in the same alley behind a garbage dump. It has apparently been about seven or eight months since the last scene of the nightmare. Again, it is at night, and the woman appears miserably thin. She eats her food from a plate, covered in apple peels and bread crusts that she found in the trash bins. Her starving figure had finished eating its meal when a warping mass of twisted violet energy began to form, swirling and causing noise. She could hear its echo, and it sounded like a voice beckoning her. When she heard her name, she turned, just noticed the portal, and dropped her plate. It shattered into a million fragments, which were pulled through the pool of light. As they vanished into this hole in the air, a hand came through. It was the source of the voice she had heard earlier.

The hand was pale and had a gold bracelet firmly around its soft wrist. Again, it called to her. "Angela Roth… Arella," it said to the confused teenager. Without warning, it pulled her through, and she was unprepared for her travel to another dimension right then. However, as each part of her body disappeared one by one into the hole, it appeared in another part of space. Time. The universe. All around her, clerics dressed in white robes gathered around her, the portal closing. The streets were lined with golden buildings and red glass on all of the windows. A flock of doves were swept with the wind.

The images broke. Raven awakened, falling back onto her pillow and panting like she had run a four-minute mile. That same dream. Again! This was, what, the fifth night in a row now? Should she tell the others? …No, not yet. After all, they were just dreams, right? Even if they were about her past. Despite her fear of the growing night, she decided to get up and get herself a drink. As she put on her blue cloak and headed out, she was startled by a hiss from behind her. She turned around and sighed. It was only the door sliding open. She had to stop being so worried about a little bit of dark and quiet. After all, that's what she was made of, right?

When she got back to her room, a floating glass of cool, fresh water followed her. It was shrouded in the usual black light that marked it as an object under her firm control. When she got back onto her bed, the cold wind blasted her from through the open sheet of glass. She shivered, and crawled back under the covers. After she fell asleep, the dreams continued.

The woman was in a chamber of the temple Azarath, lined with blue symbols to ward of evil spirits. Angela – or Arella as she was named now, meaning "messenger angel" – lay in a bed of red cloth. She was in labor, screaming as the priests and the high magistrate held her down and stopped her from running away. She began to weep as she tried to escape the strength of ten men and four women.

"Kill me… Please, KILL ME!" she cried. The priests around her said nothing, but only held her down harder, firmer, stronger than before. The current images breaks into shards, which fly out of sight as the next part of the dream occurs in Raven's troubled mind. Indeed, a pair of hands is holding up a newborn baby. The child is covered in blood, and it sports sickly gray skin. It takes its first breaths and kicks its strong legs up into the sky. The sky, in fact, has become clouded with mist of a dark violet color. A rumbling sound echoes through the city, traveling up to the tower where Juris, the high magistrate, stands with the infant Raven held high in his old hands. A crack of lightning split the sky, and Raven awoke once again.

This time, she collapsed onto her front as the dream ended for the night.

In the morning, Raven was up bright and early as usual. She was sitting at the coffee table, drinking her steaming herbal tea, when the rest of the Titans burst through the door. Robin led them, and his communicator was flashing from within his utility belt.

"Raven! Trouble!"

She looked up at him, and nodded. After the rest of the team had sped through the front door and off the island, she said her mantra and sailed through a hole in space leading her to her friends. They were at the electronics store, where Control Freak was controlling the televisions and wires to attack innocent customers. By this time, they had all stumbled out of the store in fear of the geeky couch potato villain. He screamed at the Titans upon spotting them.

"The Teen Titans," he called from his perch atop a column of cables and wires. "So we meet again!"

Before he could even attack them, Raven blurted out a spell. Not a spell that she normally used. Not her mantra, and not a spell she had used recently, but the spell that…

"Necrenom Hezberak Mortex!"

Her hands flew up in the air, huge sparks of energy flying from her hands. The black power flowed from the halos around her palms, enveloping the electronics. The machines began to twist and flop themselves about, and they all crashed to the floor, cables cut, monitors all shattered, their cruel faces replaced with static. The light continued spreading, heading for Control Freak. He jumped on top of a nearby shelf and began running for his life, far away from the tendrils of shadow Raven was creating with her spell. Before they went any further, Raven dropped to the ground and the lights in the store went out just before she hit the floor.

Back at Titans' Tower, Raven was lying on the couch of the living room, curled up. When her eyelids fluttered a bit before asking her friends what had happened earlier. With a concerned look, Robin told her.

"You used that spell. The one that almost hurt that child two years ago." He said, wrinkling his brow like always and backing away so the others could speak to her. They were hoping that she was alright, but all she heard were murmurs as she thought about what she had done. The spell that Malchior had taught her? Why on earth would she have even used it at all? She thought that she had her emotions under control. Her thoughts…

The dreams! They must have brought back memories for her. It didn't matter. As soon as she had gotten to her feet, she simply retreated to her room and sighed. Now it was time to call the only person who would really be able to set her mind at ease. The question was, could she? Would she even have the choice?

She decided to do the spell, even if she knew the others wouldn't approve of it. But this spell was different. So, the got out the vials of powder and flasks of liquid. She stirred them all, one into the other, mixing them together until a concoction formed that made her grimace. It was a deep purple, thick and swirling. It was ready for action, even so short after its preparation. She could say the spell now.

"Phasmatis of Azar nostrum deus, dico super veneficus intus vos, adfero rebrith of animus of Arella, Angelus Roth, septumdecim quod nostrum vinco Trigon's sanctimonialis quod pontus. Orior oriri ortus!"

As she spoke the beautiful Latin tongue, she threw a handful of the dust into the air around her room. It fell to the ground, and as the air shed its silky soft covering, a figure began to form. It was a woman, with long purple hair and a white cloak similar to hers, only more of a dress. A dove was perched on one of her arms, and a raven on the other shoulder. This was Arella, Raven's mother.

"Mother… Mother, is that you?"

"Yes, Raven."

The two exchanged loving glances, and when Raven ran up to her mother for an embrace, her arms passed right through the translucent figure. The two voices of the occupants of the room echoed in the empty space.

"Mother!"

"I am only a soul, do you remember? The spell."

Raven dipped her head in sorrow, then continued to speak to this pseudo-form of her deceased mother. If the spell had worked, the person trying to be reached would have to already be in the spirit world, Raven had forgotten that.

"Mother, the dreams. They keep coming. Why?"

"When you defeated your father, part of his influence still haunts you. While I do know that the prophecy is sealed, he is not entirely gone. You were born to succeed him and reign over a new world."

"…Sealed?" Raven asked. She didn't understand how it could have been sealed when her child form had reversed it.

"See for yourself." Arella said, and touched her daughter's shoulder, her hand just passing through. She drew her arm back and hissed silently.

As her mother was getting used to contacting the real world again, Raven un-did the broach that held her cloak together. It draped off and landed on the floor. Raven turned to face her mirror, her head turned around to look behind her as her back faced the large sheet of glass.

She gasped.

Where the stretchy material of her leotard's shoulder had gone, it had been burned away without her noticing it. The pale skin was covered by a crude red circle, swirled around its center as it glowed. It seemed as if all of her marks from before the prophecy had traveled to that one spot and embedded themselves in. Another sinister glow of the marks made her tear her face away and quickly wrap her cloak around herself like a blanket without fastening it.

"Mother…" Raven whispered.

As she spoke, Arella's spirit form began to flicker wildly. Parts of her form faded, warped and twisted. They were rippling and broken when Raven reached out to her mother, who retreated to the face of the mirror. How, Raven did not know. Raven tried to bring her cold hand against the thin glass, but before she could touch it, it shattered into a pool of warping darkness so full of malice that she could not see its bottom.