A clear, cool night, city lights a mile away a stark contrast to the imposing forest equidistant across the water, a soft, constant, and slightly salty wind drifting in from across the ocean…a good night for thought, for contemplation, Raven believed. Nights like this, the others were inside, watching or playing something on the massive television or poking fun of each other, she could retreat to the roof and meditate, exerting control over emotion and thus power.
As she lifted her feet from the ground, disobeying physics as she hovered a couple of feet off the ground, he cloak remained firmly held by gravity, revealing a pair of still slender, pale greyish legs to the night sky.
Her mind drifted away from the stickiness of reality, floating into the ether that exists amongst all things, unheard, unseen. Her mind appeared as colour and noise, a picture of dimensions that stretched out before her an endless, compressed landscape that ever-changed, shifting and inconstant with her thoughts.
Out there, in that realm where the impossible was made real, thoughts turned into substance, something twitched. Raven's eyelid twitched also, an involuntary muscle spasm, and at first, she was willing to believe it was just that. Then it happened again, and this time, it wasn't her. She could feel it, the flicker and twist of another mind, and whoever it was, they were powerful. It took a good deal of pain and effort to make yourself heard in the thoughts of another, and to do it without direction…who- or what, was doing this?
In a rush she pulled herself back into reality, cautious but still afraid of what may happen were she to come into contact with such a mind, one that could pour out raw power and still remain in control. The mind needed control, unless that mind wished for anarchy. In Raven's head, where everything, emotion, thought, was all kept on a tight leash, it was practically the antithesis to her brain.
Raven did not yet want to return to the warmer indoors with the others – though she never voiced it, she held within her a quiet contempt for those she called teammates; they were too brash, frivolous and uncontrolled. Their dancing minds always interrupted her quiet meditations, disturbed her focus with roaming thoughts. As far as she was concerned, they weren't really fit for combat, much less organised teamwork, and her careful pressure on their minds had often been the only thing keeping them together.
She decided to remain out a while longer, but not to meditate, not with a rogue mind running amok, but rather to run through recent events, get them in order and put some reason to them. With a heavy sigh she began. Yes, there had been an escalation in villain activities, but there was no coordination between them, no common goal or purpose, nothing to link one event with the next apart from the fact that all the perpetrators were evil and some villains repeated crimes.
Something was spurring them on, pushing them harder and harder to strain their foes, but whatever it was seemed to have no semblance of strategy, and only seemed intent on giving the Titans a hard time, rather than outright denial.
The last time there had been any mass uprisings they had been coordinated by a higher power, directed by a hidden arm and in the end the Titans around the world had been brought to their knees. Groups all over the world were once again chatting about the amount of villains they were putting down, but Raven could not find the method, if indeed there was one.
"Yo, Raven, you feel that?" The voice made her spin, to watch Cyborg, the heavyweight of the team, emerge from a hatchway that she herself had used only minutes earlier. "A couple of minutes ago most of my electronics fired off all at once, and Robin's belt started mouthing off at everyone." Victor Stone, known these days as Cyborg, had been a military technician, until one of his newer weapons had malfunctioned and exploded while Victor was in the vicinity. The nature of the weapon had devoured most of his organic body, though he held out – mostly through sheer force of will and determination – long enough to be rebuilt using his own work into biomechanics. Many of his colleagues had been ready and willing to accept him back into the team, but the military had him honourably discharged to avoid the political implications of harbouring mechanically enhanced soldier. His life from there hadn't been the best, he couldn't keep a stable job for his 'enhancements' but luck and a little hand from fate had seen him become one of the founding bodies for the Teen Titans, though nowadays they were just the 'Titans.'
"I checked, but it was only our personal equipment that went on the fritz, anything that didn't connect to us wasn't touched." He brought her out of the train of thought, and then she would need to decide whether or not to tell him.
No, no point in worrying anyone until she knew a little more about what it is. "Oh, sorry, Cyborg." She replied, accompanying it with a dismissive wave, "I wasn't concentrating in my meditation, I might have just missed my mark a little. Don't worry about it."
"Really? Well, at least it wasn't anything to worry about then…wait a sec, you don't normally 'miss your mark.' Is something up?"
Raven's face turned grim with irritation for the barest instant before she was able to conceal it, at his drive to be concerned. She didn't want him to always be prying into her business. When she said don't worry about it, she meant don't worry about it. "No, everything's fine. This sort of thing happens from time to time, though normally it just ends up with some idiot in the city throwing up in a dumpster."
The male Titan grinned at the joke. "Well, just wanted to make sure. I don't want someone yanking me around just because I'm made of metal, y'know?"
"Yea, whatever. Just go back inside and leave me alone." Cyborg was a little put-off by Raven's abrasive manner, but obeyed the order anyway, dropping back into the hatch and pulling it shut behind him with a solid thud. "Bit late for that, I've been controlling you for years…" she added to no-one in particular.
Dropping the shield around her mind, she let power seep out, a black, opaque sheet of energy that washed over her, forming around in a perfect sphere, and she, encased in the dark glowing case, sunk into the rooftop, intangible for moments, to find her room. The sphere rose up outside the door and unfolded like a flower, disappearing rapidly as she reabsorbed it via her feet.
For a moment, Raven did not move, tilting her head slightly to observe the lettering above the sliding automatic door, that read Raven, in big, thick, lettering. She raised one hand and the door slid open at her touch, and then she was within the safety of her sanctum, her private room, insulated and quieter than the rest of the tower.
Her room was much unlike those of her teammates', bookcases fixed to the floors lined the longest of the two walls, each filled with unmarked books – they had been marked, but she had removed them so that only she could determine the contents of each one – and a space when a dresser stood, on top of which lay a couple of books already open, and a hand-mirror ringed by darkened ivory spikes.
She moved quickly to her bed – near-circular and fit close to one of the short walls – beside which was a circular tower of shelves, resting upon which were rows and rows of various ingredients, alchemical or exotic, used in various practises of magic.
She multi-tasked, telekinesis to draw a seven-pointed pentagram on the floor with various ingredients as she searched the shelves for the appropriate works to use. Selecting a pair of books that slipped off the shelves to hang in the air, she moved swiftly back to the pentagram and lowered herself to sitting in the centre. With a word and a flick of the wrist she ensured the door could not be opened, and then got to work. The books spun without a hand to move them, back and forth to pages seemingly at random – but Raven, she was in control – words plucked from pages and placed in her mind, forming a sentence, a command, power that was dangerous to confine individually and so remained within books until needed.
Little bits of reality started to flake off inside the pentagram. You see, Rachel, or Raven as she became known, comes not from words as we know, but the floating city of Azarath, a dimension in itself, where magic and power are more…commonplace. The walls of reality there were stronger, her spells were so too, but not here…she detested that as well, another thing about the universe, it's lack of strength. The pentagram kept the damage confined to that little patch of reality, and now, after it had been resealed and used a few times or so, it had become easier to use as here inter-dimensional breach. As the spell finished forming, Raven opened her mouth, speaking in the tongue of Azarath, a voice that, to our ears, sounds like a pleasant music, which sharpens the more vulgar the speech. "By this ancient tongue I break down the walls of mine understanding, and open to the channels of thy eternity. Through the five curses and equal blessing, I become less yet more than I may be, and offer my soul in gambit for this knowledge."
She knew what she was risking – it was possibly the ultimate price – but if she wanted to stretch herself this far she needed to take a gamble on her fate, to even glean the slightest understand of the mind that she had witnessed. A thin mist of power drifted into the ether as Raven's consciousness separated the link from the body, and she went exploring.
Here and there she glimpsed active minds within the mass of colour and emotion, minds that had some 'extra' sense, granting them some brief insight into the world beyond reality. She began to see fragments that the mind had left behind – they were painfully obvious, whoever it was did not have much training in concealing their passage – it stood out like blood on white paint, but even a trail as clear as this…her mind screamed out not to follow, the sheer stupidity of such an act. But…she might not get another chance, it was rare a mind so powerful was so woefully untrained…
Critic." the thought appeared so suddenly and unbidden it could only have been another mind. Well, if it could use telepathy and knew she was there…might as well oblige.
"What?" she formed the thought and sent it back. "If someone's going to do this sort of thing, it's just insulting to leave their trail plastered over everything."
"What, and you're a master at it? Hmm? Let's see…oh, you are. Damnit! I'm not very good at this yet, alright."
Raven's heart skipped a beat. She thought it was just another mind, one versed in traversing the mindscape, maybe the Herald, no…this was the mind she was searching for, the inept one. "Well, since I can already find your mind, how about you tell me where you are and we work this out face to face? I don't like sitting in another dimension for any longer than necessary."
"Ah…well…I don't actually know where I am. I'm new to all this, I know how to do it but refining isn't the easiest thing to do…don't insult me, I haven't had much practise, after all."
If Raven had a forehead at that point, she probably would have dented it on the desk by now. She was dealing with an absolute amateur!
"Excuse me! Not completely, I have done a bit of work already, I worked out how to pick my way into your thought patterns, after all."
It was a start, but they had some work to do. "Are you somewhere material?"
"Yes…I think."
"Then get out of my head. I'll look around see if I can find out where you are, then we can work on refining your aim a little." her tone rose to one of superiority at the end, confident in the claim. A twitch and flicker of her mind and she flicked away the consciousness, having located it more substantially during the conversation, and her mind began to retreat to the constraints of flesh.
Great, even more on her plate.
"You never told us anything."
"I see no obligation to."
"We had the right, and you made a choice above your jurisdiction."
"You two had your sides; I had to make the choice for the sake of neutrality – and for the sake of everything else. Don't lecture me."
"We exist for the sake of it! As long as we both live, what's the need for this damned fight?"
"Every war ends – you two were procrastinating-"
"No, the champions were. You decided to thrust their responsibility upon us, deprive us of any choice!"
"Calm down, dear. This is quite unlike you. Every champion until now were not bound by restrictions – a by-product of being ruled by the priests. I couldn't change the rules of engagement, so I reset the fields, made new champions…and new rules to go with them. Now, piss off. I'm already in enough trouble with this damned avatar, having you badgering me and using up your time doesn't help either of us. You will kill her, and that will be that. Don't bloody badger me about it again, you will find no answers!"
In a howling tornado of noise and a brief flash of pain, Menthis was cast back into her body. It was as she expected; he wasn't going to budge. If you were neutral you had no obligations either way, so he couldn't be swayed to any particular reasoning, and she couldn't confront him…she didn't yet know where he was, or what he looked like. He had been lucky enough to find a host before he ran out of energy, and now she couldn't safely track him…well, in the end, there would be one of two outcomes.
Either they would break free, or one would kill the other. Best to prepare for every eventuality.
Pushing back from the small wooden table and chair she had been sitting at – pointless really, she was going to dissolve the pocket-dimension when done anyway – but it just felt more natural to stand before you left. In response to her thought patterns the colour began to dissolve, the whole room – very pain – undulating as the walls of reality broke off and disappeared into the heart of creation and oblivion, and Menthis floated off into nothingness, absent-mindedly flicking through the realities for somewhere to go. For now it didn't matter what she did regarding her sister, she had to gather forces – another one of the damned rules.
He'd been thorough in determining their fate, to be sure; she couldn't find any loopholes, at least not at her end. Ideally, she needed someone neutral to carry messages.
That would have to wait.
Time for a little acting.
Aiira tossed another pebble into the sea, watching it sail out to about half a mile before bursting into bright scarlet flames as she directed her psychic will onto it. It was already becoming boring, and she had work to do…a little longer. This was all new, she needed to calm down a bit.
Lying back on the sand she took handfuls of it, testing it. Sand…they didn't have it where she came from, but she knew of it regardless – one of the many things that ascension to champion and brought with it.
She had to admit, it was kinda nice, there was a whole load of stuff she could do now. It meant a holiday…if she could ever get back, at least. A tear dripped from her eye to the gritty sand she lay on at the thought…she had heard the explosion, but not of the destruction it may have wrought. Menthis had seen it coming, so why hadn't she? Ugh…well, if what she had been taught was anything to go by, she would have to die.
Another tear…dragged into a war she had known nothing about. Good and evil, simple balance…what had happened to it all? If what she was being told was true…champion of light, she had to gather allies, win the war. Her hands released the sand and moved up in front of her face. Perfectly smooth, different hands. She didn't want to complain, she liked this body, it was better than her own, but it would take some getting used to.
What sort of war, anyway? She spoke aloud the words that had been used, phrased in the tongue of the gods.
"One of light and one of dark, fates burning bright in the endless destruction. One shall rise and one shall fall, no impasse can be reached, no deal can be brokered. Each backed by warriors that respect their purpose, champions of their worlds, demagogues all, council sought, taken or dismissed, this thus marks the end of all that will and all that is." It made no more sense than when it began. There would be a war, that much was clear, she was the light…she needed to find the darkness, and she needed allies to help her.
This consciousness she had stumbled upon might be the first step, one way or another. Practise, work on it…sword-work, another thing to sort out. Leaning up on her elbows she glanced up at the stars once again, then vaulted to her feet. Time to test another one of her new abilities.
Extending one hand, Aiira called out to Syr, the blade granted to the champion of light. The sword wasn't her natural weapon of choice – she had formerly felt more at home with the spear, the reach it gave, but since the transformation her thinking had shifted, the long-sword seemed like a weapon she could now be more at home with, more versatile, a weapon you could use no matter what, perfectly balanced.
Fragments of light started to form in the air around her, converging on a line, merging with each other and shaping themselves into something not quite real. The blade she saw was simple, four-feet in length with no embellishment, the hand guard two bars of the same glowing white stuff of reality. Indeed, it was a weapon she was honoured to be wielding.
Aiira began to train on that beach. She knew the moves of course – they had been imprinted in her mind during the transformation – but she had not yet used them, they were untested in her hand, so she started to get the feel for it: Thrusts, slashes, dodges, parries, feints, more exotic moves that I cannot put names to, and then she started to use her body more, elbows, feet, a brutal combination of blade and body.
As she finished the routine, a practise that had taken the better part of an hour, Aiira felt a presence nearby…nothing distinct yet; she still had work to do on that. Syr stayed ready, playing it safe. Dying wasn't her part of the prophecy, after all.
"I saw you from the tower." The voice came from the wood that edged the beach.
"But you still chose stealth?" She didn't have time for this.
"You asked me to find you; you didn't ask how." Ooohhh…this was the mind she had conversed with…well, it was a step in the right direction, at least.
"Well, you also said you would help me get some practise. We can't do that if you hide in the shadows." A pretty obvious attempt to draw the other out of the darkness, but you always tried the obvious before going to more subtle methods.
"I'm still deciding whether or not to trust you, and I don't make mistakes." It was a voice of a girl – a young woman, likely, but they weren't normal, not if they could walk freely through the mindscape without being discovered. Aiira frowned as she thought things through.
"Would you rather I put Syr away? It-"
"Syr? Oh, the blade. I don't see it making a difference – It's made out of raw power. I know the rules for those weapons."
Aiira shrugged, not really worried either way. This mysterious other had it right; she could recall the blade whenever she wanted, so for now it mattered very little whether or not she was actually holding it. "How about a name, then? We should at least know each other if we plan on doing any real intimidation."
"Fine, whatever. It's Raven."
"Why am I not surprised? Sounds about right. I'm Aiira, at least, I think that's what I'm still called. I don't know if I got given a new name – it's possible, I guess."
"Try making sense. You're not casting spells, so stop trying to speak like you are." Great, now this 'Raven' sounded even worse for wear.
"I'm still trying to get over the fact that I'm suddenly well over an eternity in age, and trying to work out what all this knowledge is for. Give me a damn break…and I don't want to keep talking to the air around me. Show yourself before I make you."
"Fuck's sake…" a shadow detached from the treeline, even so barely any more substantial in the darkness. The figure became apparent, wrapped in a dark blue cloak, the hood concealing the face aside from a pair of dark eyes and a small red jewel that seemed just pointless. "Happy now?"
"Not really, but I have many more questions, most of which you probably won't have the answer to. Now, how about we try and resolve this impasse and see where things go from there? I can tell you're pissed off at having to deal with this, but you're going to have to get past that or neither of us are going anywhere."
"Yea, you're right. I am pissed off. Pissed off because I have to put down a dozen super villains a day, pissed off that I have to keep five loose cannons under control, and pissed off that I have to deal with a raw mind running around the place. Yes, I'm pissed off, and I hope you take it as credit that I am managed to keep my own power under control at the minute."
"Yea, and I'm nothing to do with any of it, so don't take it out on me. I'm being civil, at least do me the courtesy of returning the favour. Since your problem seems to be the lesser of the two, how about you explain to me what it is, and what we're going to do about it?"
I have to give Aiira credit, she was coping remarkably well for the situation. Before now her life wasn't that bad, she was doing alright in her studies, enough friends to get by…being pulling into a war is most definitely something she wouldn't have wanted. Yea, when I got dragged into this living hell my life before had been shit in a can sitting in a microwave – it could barely have gotten any worse. What happened to me – you'll find out, don't worry about it – made my life a whole lot better. My life in that hellhole ended and a new hell began, sure it was a trade but it's good enough…what happened to me was nothing compared to the pain Aiira and Menthis were forced to endure.