Ahahahaha. Yeah. This wouldn't leave me alone, so here it is? Yeah, apologies in advance. For everything.
Nightwing really wasn't feeling the aster. He wasn't in the mood to deal with Klarion, and today he was being extra annoying with his choices in spells. Instead of sticking to his weird fireballs, be was throwing out the odd spell to trip them up. Dick, Kaldur, and Superboy were trying to keep the witch boy distracted while the others were trying to do some damage to the enraged sabertooth Teekl. They'd all done this song and dance before, but that just meant the Klarion knew exactly what they were trying to do. He was doing a frustratingly good job at attacking all of the team, not just the ones with their focus solely on him.
Dick flips to the side to avoid a beam of magic, then sprints forward to try to land a hit with his escrima sticks. Klarion dodges with ease, but Dick keeps the pressure up when he sees Connor coming in from the other side. He finally gets a hit in when Klarions attention shifts slightly to Superboy. It doesn't do nearly as much damage as Dick would have liked, Klarion has been extra careful to stay close to his familiar this time around. He finds himself smiling anyway when Kaldur manages to catch Klarion completely off guard. Nightwing gets another hit in, and it strikes much harder this time.
Dick backflips away a few feet when Klarion snarls. Out of the corner of his eye, Dick sees Impulse grab Robin by the arm and launch the smaller boy forward. It's been something the two had been practicing for a while. Giving someone as talented with hand to hand as Tim a burst of speed or a bit of extra punch to a jump kick was definitely something worth looking into, especially when it worked like it was now. Tim's right knee hit Teekl square in the eye, and Dick could hear the crunch of bone from across the warehouse they were fighting in. The roar from the cat was only rivaled by its master. Tim quickly uses his left foot to spring off the monstrous cat's face, out of range of deadly claws and teeth. The jump was a bit unsteady, they were still working on it after all, but Bart speeds to his side in time to steady his landing.
Dick realised his attention was on the wrong person a half a second too late.
He turns to face Klarion again, just in time to see him rushing past him, charging straight at Tim.
"You worthless brat, look at what you did to poor Teekl! I'll make you pay for it, tenfold!"
Klarion slashes his arm through the air dramatically, but it's obvious that it's not just for show when Tim's knees buckle instantly. Dick rushes after Klarion, no way he was going to let him touch his little brother. Not after Jason, and not after Wally. Impulse obviously had a similar idea, but Klarion blasts him aside with a signature fireball. It was at point blank, even someone as fast as Bart couldn't dodge at that range. Klarion starts chanting, and based on how long it's taking to say the spell, it's for nothing good. Dick catches sight of Teekl's face over the top of Tim's head. He feels a moment of pride at his younger brother's work. The cat's eye is sealed shut by blood, and it's face is slightly deformed from the broken eye socket. The pride rushes into dread when Klarion's words echo back into his mind. He pushes his legs to move a bit faster. No doubt Klarion was going to keep his word on tenfold the pain.
Klarion is standing in front of Tim's slouched form, arms spread wide as he continues the spell despite the shape his familiar is in. Dick doesn't stop to think of the repercussions as he jumps to tackle the boy attacking his brother at a full sprint. There's an echoing boom of a finished spell, and Dick finds himself bouncing off a force field of magic. He lands hard, but he rolls to his feet quickly. He growls menacingly when he sees the fading shape of a pinkish bubble surrounding Klarion. Even as the color fades, he can see the shimmering tale tale sign of magic rippling around him. He looks up as a similar noise comes from his left. The same pink bubble is now around Teekle. Dick rushes to reach the last person that might disrupt the spell. He scoops up Tim, and runs face first into a third bubble. Teekle has returned to its normal size, unworried now that it has a barrier of magic keeping safe from the dread feels more like a bucket of ice water has been dumped over his head, but he sets his baby brother down so he can use both hands to work on trying to break the spell keeping the two of them trapped.
Dick forces all of his worry to the back of his mind, he can deal with it after he figures out how to fix this. He notes how there are lines carving themselves into the floor, and watches out of the corner of his eye as they start to form a pentagram, Symbols slowly start to join it in the concrete floor. It really wasn't looking good.
Dick starts hitting the force field with a new vengeance, Tim safely out of rang of any sort of shrapnel it might cause. Dick puts all his weight into his hits, straining against the rebounds of his staves bouncing off again and again. No way he was going to go down without a fight. His mind buzzes, trying to find a way out of this. He pulls birdarang after birdarang out of his belt, trying to find some sort of chemical weakness in the spell. Foam, ice, even the small explosive, nothing was working. He chances a glance at Klarion.
The witch boy is grinning in triumph, his face taking a more demonic look as he continues his spell. Dick is trying his best not to listen to the pained and panicked voices of his team mates. The steady beats of the weird bo-oing-ing the force field made as he and Superboy pounded desperately to try to break the spell reminded him that he would be leaving a lot of people behind if he died today. The witch boy is suddenly receiving the brunt end of his bat glare with the thought. In the space of one word leaving Klarion's mouth, Dick found that he could have the last laugh. Seeing as this spell was taking over thirty seconds to chant out, it was powerful and at an extremely high difficulty level. That means it's probably extremely draining. And with the state Teekl's in, it'll probably force the witch to retreat to wherever it was he disappeared to for a good few years. His friends and family would be safe, and that's all that really mattered.
The look on Klarion's face is growing more smug by the moment, and as he pauses to take a breath, it reaches a high with a manic grin. He's definitely a second away from finishing the spell. Dick flashes a smile of his own, one the practically splits his face in half.
"See you in hell, you monster."
Dick laughs at the furious look on Klarion's face as the runes on the ground start sizzling and a bright red light blocks his vision of everything he knows. Strange black shapes start levitating out of the glowing runes, and lash towards him, knocking his friends away from the runes. They start to pull him down, and it seems the force is enough to make the floor split. Dick grits his teeth, and the last coherent thought he has before blacking out is that Klarion definitely stuck to his word of tenfold.