A/N: Ok, so welcome to my story, this is an AU fic and I don't own the Teen Titans characters. Honestly not 100% happy with this, but I never seem to be with anything I write, so I'm posting anyway. Any thoughts/comments/questions/whatever feel free to leave in a review or PM.
Prologue - The Summoning
Jennifer - or Jinx, as she bitterly called herself sometimes - had never had anything in her life go well. It was like she was a magnet for misfortune. When she was just a baby, she and her birth parents had been involved in a car accident, a six car pile-up on a highway. Miraculously, no one was injured - except for her parents, who both died at the scene from internal hemorrhaging. She'd been too young to blame herself then, barely even old enough to remember. But later in life, when she knew it was because of her, she would have nightmares about it.
After that, she'd been put into foster care, as no relatives had come forward to claim her. As far as Jennifer knew, she didn't have any and it was probably better off that way. Once she was in system, she was constantly followed by accidents and disasters, either to adoptive parents or to the large foster buildings she stayed in. Electrical things would short circuit and start a fire, burning a house down. Part of a roof beam would rot through and collapse just as someone was walking under it. Stairs would collapse and trees fall down, all for no reason. No, the reasons were obvious, natural causes and reactions, and yet the frequency with which they happened only around Jennifer...You couldn't call that a coincidence. She was cursed.
Eventually it became obvious to everyone in the care system, and she stopped getting adopted. People would see her and ask, only to be moved along, "suggesting" they adopt such-and-such instead, that they would be more suitable for their environment. It wore on her, ground her down. It also made her angry.
It's not like I asked for this! Jennifer would scream internally. She knew it wasn't the adults fault, but she couldn't help but resent them. She was just a kid, but no one wanted trouble, and trouble was what she was.
Eventually Jennifer had had enough and she decided to run away. Why should she stay if no one wanted her? She could hear them all talking behind her back, about how she was cursed, bad luck walking. So she packed up her few meager possessions one night and just walked away. It shouldn't have been that easy of course, especially for a 10 year old, but as usual things weren't working properly around her and none of the locks or cameras worked, and really, would they have wanted to stop her anyway? Probably not.
Jennifer's life had improved a lot after she struck out on her own. There was no one to yell at her when things broke down or someone got hurt. She didn't grow attached to those same people, only to have them leave her somewhere again, or worse, get seriously injured. She'd left Steel City a year after she'd started living on the streets and traveled around the world, stowing away on boats - she never, ever used airplanes - or working for her passage where she could. Never for long journeys, her luck wouldn't hold for that long, but those times at sea had been precious to her, times of peace and tranquility.
After a few years she'd found herself in Jump City and settled down into a new life. During her time on the streets, she'd taken an interest in the more lawless side of life and always found someone in the cities she stayed in to mentor her a little in the arts of stealing. It was a great way to earn money for yourself, if you were good at it, didn't get caught or get too greedy - and Jennifer liked to think she was accomplished for her years.
So when she'd gotten to Jump, she kept up her lifestyle and inserted herself into the thieving part of the city, scoping out various areas and learning which ones not to steal from, either because of high police activity or quick responses, or because it was somebody else's turf and she didn't want trouble. Eventually she'd even made friends around her own age, or as much as Jennifer was ever able to make friends with the things that happened around her. Still they'd seemed to take it in stride whenever something odd happened, and they made life bearable.
Gizmo - god save you if you ever used his real name - was more of an electronic thief than the more traditional kind, like Jennifer was, so he spent most of his time cooped up in a small, cheap apartment with his "girls"; walls of computers, monitors and various equipment that made as much sense to Jennifer as music to the tone deaf. Still, he could do some amazing things with all of it and he'd saved her a lot of trouble before on jobs. It was nice having someone take care of cameras and alarm systems for once.
Mammoth, otherwise known as Baran Flinders, was...well, muscle was the only way to describe it. He was as tall as most fully grown men and fairly bulged with muscles. He was handy for a heavy heist, or if she needed a spotter and he was surprisingly light on his feet. And of course, on the very odd occasions she ran into trouble with the owner or a police patrol, he was invaluable. He lived in another apartment in the same building as Gizmo - they told her they'd been together for a long time - and whenever Jennifer saw him he was either working out on a rather extensive personal training set, or smashing down food like it was going out of style. He also wasn't too much of a talker, but Gizmo more than made up for that.
So life had been looking up for Jennifer since she moved to Jump City. She was comfortable there. She even went to school! She'd missed out on most of the early school life, going back and forth between homes, but she'd managed to convince Gizmo to falsify some records for her and had managed to get into a high school in the area, saying her parents constantly traveled for work. A phone call from Baran and they seemed to have bought it, so she'd even started having a 'normal school life'. She avoided making any constant friends, but she always put on a happy face and got along with everyone. Well, most everyone.
Still, she couldn't avoid the bad luck that constantly followed her, though the incidents had lowered in severity. Anytime one happened that clearly because of her, it always brought back those memories and feelings, especially if someone was hurt or it was a close call. That's why, when one day she was in a second hand bookstore and found a book on magic, Jennifer thought her life was improving. Jennifer hadn't thought that straight away, of course. She didn't believe the book was actually magic, at least at first. But when she'd gotten to her home - an abandoned warehouse of some kind she'd claimed and renovated - Jennifer had decided to try one or two of them out, just for giggles. That's when she discovered that magic was real, and that maybe it was the answer. She could never have guessed what it would bring into her life.
It had been about five weeks since she'd picked up the nameless book on magic. Book? Maybe I should start calling it a grimoire. That's more magic-y, right? she mused as she was setting up a ritual altar in an empty corner of her warehouse. She hoped she was doing it right. She opened up the book - "Grimoire!" she shouted to herself - with it's cracked leather cover and quickly turned to where she'd inserted some slips of paper with notes written down.
Jennifer hadn't managed to get far through the book yet - just a couple of spells for light, or fire and one for invisibility, great stuff for a thief - and the reason she'd made notes was that after a certain point the language in the book changed, into something she'd never seen before. Luckily someone, a previous owner, had written down partial translations and notes of their own in a language she did recognize, even if she couldn't actually read Latin. Still, Jennifer had managed to work her way through a rough translation, like she had with the words and phrases she couldn't understand at the start of the book, however it felt incomplete. Probably didn't help that sections of the back seemed burnt and covered in something that blocked out large sections of text. "Ink, probably," Jennifer muttered to herself as she spread her notes out over the pages. She hoped the stuff she'd improvised worked.
"Ok," she said to herself as she looked over her instructions, "coloured candles, check."
She used a compass and placed a black candle on the norther end of the large table, a red candle at the southern end, a yellow one to the east and a blue one to the west, but didn't light them yet. Putting a small white candle in the center, she turned back to her notes.
"Abramelin Oil, check. Chain, check. Cup, check. Athame, check. Rabbit, check."
She placed each item on the table in front of her as she listed them, except the rabbit, which was knocked out in a cage at her feet. The vial of oil she placed with the athame to her left, next to the red candle. The cup directly in front of her and before the white candle and the chain to her right, next to the yellow candle.
"Golden coin, courtesy of some rich dude, check. Incense, check. And pretty shinies, check!"
Again, she placed the items on the table as she 'ticked' them off, the coin next to the black candle and the small sapphire and amethyst next to the blue candle. The incense went into the center with the white candle.
Jennifer breathed out deeply and looked over the altar she'd set up, noting everything was in place, then she checked the time with an antique pocket watch she'd taken a liking to lately. Just before midnight, perfect, she thought. It was time to start. Her aim? Summon something that could give her answers or reverse this luck she was born with. Taking a deep breath, she put her pocket watch away and started chanting.
"Hecate, deity of magic, by the light of the Dark Moon we beseech thee,"
Jennifer repeated this three times as she lit the yellow candle, representing the element air. The use of 'we' and the repeated chant were because the book implied that this particular task be undertaken by a trio, but since Jennifer didn't know anyone remotely connected to the world of magic, she was stuck doing it by herself.
"Klêidouchos, holder of the keys, we offer this gift in exchange," she lit the blue candle, element of water, and passed the gem stones she'd placed there over the flame as she repeated this line.
"Propylaia, She before the Gates, accept the Keys and turn thine eyes and thoughts away," she lit the red candle, of fire, as she chanted and picked up the chain, shaking it thrice before putting it back down.
"Chthonia, of the Earth, take this coin and accept this sacrifice and let the Paths Between open for this moment," the black candle was lit and a faint breeze stirred in the room, though the flames didn't flicker, flaring up unnaturally high and straight.
Jennifer hated to do it, but she reached down and unlatched the cage by her feet, reaching and grabbing the small animal inside before rising and placing it on the table. Grabbing the athame and the oil, she popped the top off and poured it over the blade, silently infusing it with her will and desire. Putting the vial down, she picked up the rabbit with her now free hand, held it over the cup and, closing her eyes - quickly pressed the blade against it's small throat, letting it's life blood drip into the cup below it.
After a minute she put the dead animal down and held a hand over the now full cup and pricked a finger with the athame, letting a drop of her own blood fall into it.
"With the passing of the spirit through the layers of the world, heed our call," she quickly put down the athame and lit the white central candle, to represent the spirit and Aether. The blood gathered in the cup slowly formed a dark red sphere and floated up, until it was eye level. She lit the incense and finished with her chant,
"The four elements call and the Spirit reigns over all, Hecate of the Crossroads, shepard us aid in our time of need."
The breeze that had stirred earlier picked up in intensity, blowing smoke from the incense over the orb of blood, then throughout the room, far more smoke than should be able to come from such a small thing. It hazed her vision, until all she could see were the five pillars of fire, larger than life and the dull red gleam hanging in midair. Suddenly it elongated and swirled around the table, passing through the flames and giving off a sweet scent, before undulating it's way upwards, passing through the roof like it wasn't there.
Gradually the smoke cleared from the room and the candle flames burnt down until they were normal. No sign of blood, even what hadn't gotten in the cup. The coin and gems were gone. She waited for something to happen, but just like that, it seemed like a normal night again. I guess it didn't work, Jennifer thought with a sigh, bending down to blow out the candles of her ritual and to start cleaning up. What a waste of perfectly good sellable gemstones. It was a mostly improvised ritual in the first place, so she hadn't exactly expected it to work...but she was still disappointed.
"Oh my, how wonderfully inviting of you!" a deep voice suddenly exclaimed behind her, echoing upon itself and causing Jennifer to nearly jump out of her skin. She whirled around, finding nothing behind her and whipping her head around, trying to find the source of the voice. It hadn't sounded human. Unless human voices suddenly started sounding like they spoke the same thing in multiple tones, slightly out of synch. So her summoning had worked?
"No circles of protection? No symbols of binding?" she still couldn't see it, but somehow she knew the owner of the voice was shaking it's head at her. Jennifer felt something sharp slide down her back, sending an unnatural cold straight to her core as the voice continued, "Not a charm or amulet on your person. What were you thinking, girl. And these offerings...paltry, only fit for the dregs, they are."
Jennifer turned around slowly and finally saw the figure, bending over her offering altar. Or rather, she saw a tall, black silhouette bent double and examining said 'offerings' with quadruple eyes of red. She couldn't discern any details apart from those burning eyes and a tall, slim figure made of darkness. Perhaps there were no details to see? It was the first time Jennifer had ever encountered a being from a different realm before, so she couldn't know if it was actually made from shadow or if it was some illusion. She shivered as those eyes looked up and into her own, dread spreading throughout her body and paralyzing her where she stood.
"Hmm, still, I should be more grateful, don't you think?" it directed at her in a disturbingly friendly fashion."Though the means are crude - insulting, actually - you did manage to bring me into the mortal realms. By yourself, no less! Truly, that in itself is quite the feat. It's been so long since I've been to this realm that I feared all people of Power had long perished!"
It fell silent after that, staring at her, two eyes on one side rising slightly higher than the other. Was it raising an eyebrow at her? Waiting for a response? But Jennifer was still too scared to reply. She didn't really know why, it wasn't threatening her or anything, but those undertones to it's words...and the aura it gave off, it made the air heavy, hard to breathe. It chilled her to the bones. Jennifer didn't know what she'd expected to summon tonight - to be honest, she had thought it would fail, like it initially seemed to - but it hadn't been something so...dark. What had she gotten herself into?
"What, no begging for my favor, demands for rewards? I thought you humans were all for that kind of thing," it said, suddenly towering in front her, having grown bored of waiting. A long, thin arm appeared from the mass of darkness in front of her, five pointed talons reaching out and cupping her chin, the eyes narrowing in concentration as Jennifer felt something slithering in her mind. "Ah," it said, in sudden understanding, "I knew you were a novice, but really, this is just too amusing. You don't know anything, not the basic of basics, and somehow you summon a demon. Not just any demon, but myself! I am truly humbled at how Jinxed your life is," it continued with a laugh and bowed to her mockingly, the use of her self-imposed nickname causing her to flinch unconsciously, the talons leaving thin trails of blood along her face.
Jennifer didn't even notice the pain though. One word kept resounding in her mind; Demon. She'd summoned a demon? Surely it was a joke, the universe pulling a huge prank on her. Her luck couldn't be that bad. But she knew it was.
Damn it! My life was supposed to be turning around! she screamed inside her head. She didn't know any facts about demons, but every religion or mythology she'd heard of said they were bad news. Despair washed over Jennifer and tears streamed down her face as she prepared to die a horrible death.
The demon opened up a mouth full of white fangs, lit from within by an infernal glow and leaned toward her, inhaling deeply. It tasted her despair, that nothing in her life would ever go right, that she'd die a failure. Her anger, at herself for screwing up, at the universe for an empty, unfair life. Her fear of the creature in front of her and the death she thought it represented, mixed with a tired relief that it would all be over. The demon tasted all this and more and made a satisfied sound, "Ah, ambrosia. Yes, nothing can compare to the mortal world. You all pack so much emotion into your short, short lives. It's...heady." It's eyes closed as it inhaled again, then they snapped open and speared into Jennifer's soul as it grinned, all fang, and said, "Of course, your flesh is quite succulent as well."
Her fear spiked then, her heart nearly hammering it's way out of her chest as adrenaline surged through her body, as her fighting instincts kicked in. I need to get out of here! Jennifer thought, escape finally coming to her mind, but too late. Though she was free from the paralysis of earlier, there was no way she could escape from something like this. But she tried anyway.
Turning, she sprinted for the door that lead outside, her night vision and familiarity allowing her to move in the nearly lightless space. Panting, still somehow in one piece, she fetched up against the wall next to the door and yanked it open, the cold light of the moon and the crisp winter wind flooding into the room. She took a look back as she ran through to the door, anxious to know where the demon was, only to find it exactly where it was standing when she first started moving, staring after her. Jennifer didn't question it, she just thanked whatever gods were listening and ran into the city. She had some acquaintances she could stay with until she figured this out.
As she ran into the cold night however, a voice slipped into her mind, the voice of the demon. As thanks for your hard efforts, my gift to you is your life. Of course, she hadn't gotten away, she'd been let go. Train your Power and perhaps, when we meet again, we can have some fun, the voice continued with a laugh, otherwise I fear that bad luck of yours will take a sudden turn for the worse. Like it hadn't already, Jennifer thought as she continued running mindlessly, the words in her mind swimming like black snakes in her vision. The mortal world has changed a lot since I was last here; I can tell it's going to be fun. Here's my name, as an extra service; Scath. Remember it.
The demons name resounded with power in her mind, burned with a fiery glow and branded itself into her memory. Her nerves felt like they were on fire, and as Jennifer crashed to the ground, her final thoughts before oblivion took her were that she wished she'd never set eyes on that book.
The demon Scath stood in the middle of an empty alley and looked down at the passed out form of the pink haired witch. Usually such physical details passed right by it, though that wasn't to say it didn't pay attention when it had to. But it's other senses were far more potent and provided much more detail than mere physical sight; the flow of energy in the air, currents of magic in the earth, a persons aura, the signals the brain sent throughout the body. All this and more were available to it's eyes, rendering physical sight all but useless. However, the pink of this witch's hair pervaded all layers of Scath's vision, almost like an actual manifestation of her innate power, it glowed around her head like a halo.
Scath sighed it's disappointment silently to the world. It would have been nice if I'd been able to use you girl, it thought to her. It had gleaned much while it had been in her mind, about the world as it was now, but mostly about her, and she intrigued it. It actually couldn't believe that backwater ritual she'd come up with had worked. In all it's long life it had never seen someone quite like her.
Unfortunately, it had also seen in her mind that - though her power was sufficient to host and be of use to it - she simply wasn't compatible. Scath could have forced itself in and taken over, of course, but it would have left her a mindless husk. It had plans for its time in this world - which would be very long - and it thought she might be useful later on. At the least, she would serve as a backup if it couldn't find a more useful tether, or if something went wrong.
Satisfied it hadn't damaged a useful tool, Scath turned it's attention outwards in search of a host. In a perfect existence, it wouldn't need one and could simply exist and exert it's power over this plane in it's true form. Unfortunately, the natural order of things placed limits on what it could do outside of a proper summoning, or without a host or tether of some kind native to that realm. It also constrained its natural form, a sensation it was glad it had nearly forgotten. Stretching out its shadows as much as possible, turning the alley pitch black, Scath tried to alleviate the feeling of it's mind being squeezed through a pinhole and into a smaller vessel, while it spread it's senses through the city it found itself in, looking for a compatible host.
Flying over the city like a bird of prey, its talons dragging through various minds in search of something, it finally felt something in the southern section of the city. Scath felt a great power, but when it had touched the mind, it also felt pain, fear, anger, hopelessness and hatred. Mixed with other emotions, it was a tangled skein, but one that drew Scath like a lodestone once it found it. Here...here was someone it could use.
Forming its shadowy mass into the shape its senses had taken, Scath took the skies, arrowing in on that mind. It had no concerns about losing track of the witch behind it. Scath's name, freely given, had marked her and she was also his original summoner, albeit accidentally. She was tied to him tightly, though she didn't it. It laughed to itself as it winged away, the sound igniting nightmares in the people throughout the area, all except the pink haired witch, who was in a place too deep for dreams.
A/N: The magic ritual was kind of hard to do and there's a lot of symbolism and behind the scenes connections between the various names/objects, although in saying that Jinx also didn't do it completely right, so there was a lot of stuff left out. I'm using a bunch of sources and kind of jamming everything together. Basically all the names she used are various different names for Hecate. I originally thought of using the Selene/Artemis/Hecate trio but decided it would make more sense if it was just Hecate, assuming you know or look up much about them. Interestingly, I saw this on a Wiki page after I'd already written this out: "One interesting passage exists suggesting that the word "jinx" might have originated in a cult object associated with Hecate." But since it is a wiki page, who knows.
Tune in next time for some Raven.