The first thing Raven noticed when she awoke was that her head felt as if she had a thousand white hot knives poking at it. The second was the faint sound of a heart monitor in the background, signaling that she was in the med bay of Titan's Tower and not at the park where she blacked out. The third, was that her limbs were restrained to the bed with heavy steel clasps.
What happened to me? Raven mentally asked herself as she squinted to look around. Robin and Cyborg were talking in the corner in quick, fierce whispers, and it was obvious Robin wasn't happy about something. Raven sensed the tension in the air of the room and the anger and fear that rolled off the two men. Anger bubbled up inside Raven, but a sharp pain in her head quickly drowned out the feeling as an alarm went off net to her.
"Rae, calm down. You're safe in the tower and we're trying to figure out what's wrong with you. Take a deep breath." Cyborg instructed her, and as Raven did so, and calmed down, the sharp piercing ring of the alarm died out. Raven tried to speak, but quickly realized she had no voice at the moment. She motioned to Cyborg for something to write with. He searched around for a couple minutes before finding and handing to her a piece of paper and a pen.
What happened, how did we get here, and why on earth am I tied down? She wrote quickly. She wanted to know what was going on. The last thing she remembered was the fight and then everything was black. Cyborg sat down in the chair next to her bed with a guilty look before he started to speak.
"I know you know what happened Rae, but as for the other two. You did your thing and got us back here, but when we arrived you kinda snapped. The whole four eyes and all. It didn't last long though, you kinda screamed and then passed out. It was a safety precaution." He said. A look of shame crossed Raven's face. She started to wonder how she had lost control around her friends, they weren't a threat and she wasn't in any danger once they had returned.
A dull throbbing in Raven's head tried to distract her. It honestly irritated her that it was there. That, mixed with the fact she had lost control, made her a little angry. Before she knew what was going on, red started to tint her vision. She felt her teeth elongating into fangs, but quickly got herself under control. She looked up at Cyborg and noticed that fear was written on his face. What was going on with her and the control she once had?
"Rae," he started to ask, "What is happening with you? I haven't seen you this out of control in a long time." Worry and concern were evident in his voice, along with fear.
And now he's scared of me again. Nice going Raven. She thought to herself. She grabbed the pencil and started to write again.
Can I go please? I need to meditate and figure out what's going on with me. She asked. Cyborg thought for a minute before sighing and undoing the restraints that were keeping her attached to the bed. Raven rubbed the areas where the restraints had been to try and regain feeling in them. Honestly, Raven was slightly worried about meditating. If Rage had gotten loose then the Titan's definitely had something to worry about. Rage had grown stronger ever since her father's defeat, but she had also been growing more out of control. She couldn't risk hurting the team.
"Rae, just try to control yourself. I know you won't come to anyone if it gets bad, but please remember we're here for you." Cyborg reminded her. Raven nodded and left the infirmary to head to her room. She had hoped she wouldn't have met anyone on her way there, but whatever gods there were seemed to have other plans for her.
Beast Boy stopped Raven in the hallway, and insisted on discussing what "that freaky thing was that kicked our butts" at the park the night before. Raven entertained his questions for a few minutes, but soon found his constant questioning to be irritating. Her head throbbed again as she started to see crimson. Her fangs and claws grew and Beast Boy noticed this.
"Woah, Rae, what's going on?" He started to ask. A demonic shriek came from Raven's lips as she lunged at him. Beast Boy dodged quickly and transformed into a small fly to escape up an air vent. Once Raven had control of her body again, she pulled her hood up in shame. Although she had felt annoyed, that was no reason to attack him.
Raven quickly teleported to her room and sunk to the ground. She didn't know why her demon half kept taking over her. All she knew was that she had let Rage take over to harm her enemy last night and had gotten Rage back under control right before she blacked out. After that she guessed her mind teleported she and the team back to the Tower as a defense mechanism, and Rage had attacked the team.
A sharp jab of pain hit Raven's mind as she thought. What if that demon last night somehow shattered Rage's binding in my mind? seemed to be Raven's main thought. The demon was powerful, but she didn't think it was powerful enough to shatter Rage's bindings she had carefully placed in her mind. Raven sighed and went to search her dresser for the mirror into Nevermore. Once she found it, she sat in the center of her floor and stared into it, allowing herself to be sucked into it.
Raven landed harshly on the barren wasteland that was Nevermore. The rocks seemed to just out at odd angles and the once rolling meadows and hills were now just burnt and baked earth. Strange she thought This is supposed to be Happy's domain, but there's nothing here. It's almost as if it was scorched into oblivion. Raven suddenly felt very on edge. Something was very wrong in her mind and she needed to figure out what it was quickly. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the stones lining up a path for her to walk on. It was obvious that she needed to follow the trail her mind was giving her.
The path was extremely long, and the constant fear of attack by a possibly free Rage made it seem even worse. Raven must have walked for more than twenty minutes before the path even began to give a hint of changing. Raven took this time to consider what was going on. Her emotions were missing, she couldn't control her demon blood, and there was an extremely powerful demon out to get her that seemed to have a personal issue with her. This couldn't end well. It took her a bit more walking before she came to a new area.
Raven gasped as she saw the ruins that were once the dwelling area of timid. The stones seemed to have been crushed as if they were no more than building blocks instead of hard stone. Raven ran her finger over one of the rocks that were next to her. Feeling of sorrow and regret bleed off of them onto her. Raven quickly moved away from them and looked around for her emoticlone. Unfortunately though, she, like Happy, had seemed to have vanished from Nevermore. Raven couldn't even sense the two.
She silently made her way over the rubble and onto the two faced statue that she knew was at the end of it; however, it seemed to have also been destroyed. Deep claw marks were embedded into the statue and the withered trees that surrounded this area. Raven tried to sense Brave and find her, but again her search was fruitless. Worry crept over Raven's skin as the rocks once again formed a path for her. She wasn't sure she wanted to continue with this, but she knew she had to.
The more Raven searched her mind, the more she panicked about what she was going to have to face. Wisdom's library had books shredded and papers scattered along the outside, along with the building itself burning in the cold wasteland of Raven's mind. Love and Lust's are had been scorched much like Happy's had. Sloth's domain had been ruined. Rude's area had claw marks all over it along with burning pieces of tree and sparse grass.
The claw marks had been found in every area. Whatever had done this to Raven's mind, it seemed to be rather proud of that fact. It definitely didn't want to hide from Raven, it wanted her to know that her mind belonged to it. This unsettled Raven even more, but what was worse was the definite lack of her emotions. It was as if none of them had ever existed to begin with. A cold emptiness spread over Raven as she realized this. She felt as if pieces of her own character were missing, which they were.
Raven gulped as she realized where the next path had to lead her. There was only one place she hadn't been, and that was Rage's domain. The fire that seemed to sprout from the cracks in the path added to her momentary unwillingness to move ahead. Raven steeled her nerves as she prepared to face whatever Rage had planned for her inside.
Raven walked calmly as she made her way there. The fire that kept popping up through the cracks seemed to be more for effect than as a weapon, as it didn't burn Raven. Raven was ready for Rage. She had beaten her many times, and knew that this time would be no different. Rage certainly wasn't as strong as Trigon, and she had defeated and sealed him away, so why was she still so unsure of her own mind? Raven didn't have an answer for that, but she did know that she would defeat Rage one way or another if she did turn out to be the cause of this.
Once Raven had reached and entered Rage's domain, she pulled her cloak around herself. Claw marks were over most of the rocky terrain, and lava oozed out of some. The smoky sulfuric stench of the area made Raven want to gag. The flames leaped at her, and singed the bottom of her cloak. Raven walked towards the middle of the area, where Rage should be held.
Raven gasped as she saw the empty stone wall. The iron chains were connected to the wall still, but the middle of them had been shattered. Rage was nowhere to be found, but in the center of the wall were four long claw marks. Bright orange and yellow lava ran from them like blood from a wound. The sheer magnitude of what this meant suddenly dawned upon Raven. She needed to figure out what was going on, and fast. She also needed to warn the Titan's to be careful around her.
Raven quickly floated over the rest of the terrain and made her way to the portal out of her mind. Her last thought before the darkness swept her into it was that the demon she had met had to have something to do with this happening. She didn't know how or why, but she needed to find it and defeat it before it did something worse to either her or her friends or she would really know what it was like to have the wrath of the daughter of Trigon upon it.