(Author's Note: Most of this chapter is basically Efim lecturing. Any paragraph of dialogue that isn't attributed to someone else is Efim's dialogue by default. Sorry for the history lesson, but I had to inflict it upon you sooner or later. There's a reason I labeled this story "Drama" instead of "Action/Adventure," after all—in dramas, the characters usually talk each other's ears off! Not all chapters will be quite so gabby, though.)

Chapter Four: Tenets of the Faith

"Hundreds of years ago, just before the Troubles, there was an era when superpowers were proliferating. Some people found themselves with strange abilities and used them toward evil ends, while others were willing to be civilization's first line of defense against those people.

"Various groups of 'superheroes' came and went, and one of those groups was called the Teen Titans. The original team had a core membership of five, although other heroes became affiliated with them as the years went past. Those Five are the important ones. Four of them had powers beyond those of any ordinary human, for four different reasons. Those four were Raven, the Queen of Air and Darkness; Starfire, the Lady of Kindness; Cyborg, the Master Deviser; Beast Boy, the Lord of Mischief. And they were led by Robin, the Captain of Preparation—yes?"

The green boy held up his hand. "Excuse me, but could you explain those fancy nicknames? What did they mean, exactly?"

Efim smiled. "I was coming to that! Raven is called the Queen of Air and Darkness because darkness was at the heart of her powers, and she clad herself in dark raiment, and it is said that she was always dark and moody, prone to see the worst aspects of things. Yet she was fabled for her courage and her self-control, without which her father Trigon might have corrupted her—and then the entire world—beyond repair.

"Starfire was in some ways her opposite: Full of cheer and optimism, always ready to lend a hand to those who were in trouble, but taking it particularly hard when someone badly failed to meet her expectations for decent behavior. Some prefer to call her the Lady of Sorrows because she, always expecting better things of mortals than Raven did, took it particularly hard when those mortals strayed from the path of righteousness. She was not sorrowful all the time, of course, but when she was, it was a sorrow of epic proportions!

"Cyborg was the epitome of making and using tools; the fruits of the scientific method which was served humanity so well throughout its history when properly applied. It is said that he had voluntarily replaced much of his organic body with stronger and better materials so that he could serve his fellow men more effectively on the battlefields."

(The mostly-metal guy blinked, but didn't argue the point.)

"Beast Boy was randomness and humor; impulse and weirdness. A great prankster, a born raconteur, wildly emotional and prone to sudden mood swings. Sometimes he benefited from what critics called 'dumb luck,' yet he had a positive genius for making it work out in his favor in the long run."

"And Robin was the only member of the Five who lacked any 'superpowers' in his mortal incarnation; yet he was their respected leader for all of that. Why? Because, under the tutelage of a mysterious mortal only remembered as 'the Batman,' Robin learned how to fully develop the potentials of his mind and body to do whatever had to be done. Thus showing that 'powers' were helpful in a hero, but not essential if a person was properly prepared to make the best use of any other available resources.

"And yet, despite their vast differences in outlook and habits, all five of those Titans were able to make common cause for years in the battle against the forces of Evil and Ignorance.

"Thus we remember them as the Queen of Air and Darkness, the Lady of Kindness, the Master Deviser, the Lord of Mischief, and the Captain of Preparation. Of course, each of the Five has many other titles that may be justly applied to them, but the ones I mentioned somehow became the 'standard set.'"

The green boy asked, "All that was in their, uh, 'mortal lifetimes,' right? So how did they die?"

"Do we really want to know?" the girl in midnight blue inquired.

"Certainly we do!" the golden girl exclaimed. "Remember, I learned the hard way that the future can be seen and then changed! How does your saying go? Having four arms constitutes four admonitions?"

There was a pause while everyone else tried to untangle that paraphrased proverb.

The dark-haired boy said patiently, "Not quite. 'Forewarned is forearmed.' But I agree with you in principle."

"Now there's a big surprise," the girl in midnight blue muttered.

Efim said, "Let me save you some time—we don't know how they died! The records from around the Start of the Troubles are fragmentary or simply inaccessible. Eentually they must have died, but we don't know even know where the bodies were buried. If there was anything left to bury? Perhaps the Sibyls have known more, but if so, they do not share that information. Some say the mortal efforts of the Five were all that prevented the Troubles for as long as possible, and that when they died, the floodgates of perdition were opened all at once."

The girl in midnight blue seemed interested by one thing in particular from that explanation. "Sibyls? Who are they?"

"We're coming to that part of the story," Efim assured him. "Perhaps half a century after the Troubles began things had gone to wrack and ruin. The world population was a fraction of what it had once been; large nations had broken up into smaller ones, or sometimes little city-states surrounded by anarchy. Then a woman gradually discovered she had been called to be the First Sibyl of a new faith.

"Her name was Cenobia Craft, and she later wrote that she had always been prone to strange dreams, although until the time I speak of, they never meant much; not to her, not to anyone else. Cenobia was walking alone through this same ruined city you saw today, hoping to find enough food for herself and for three children—not her own, but who had been entrusted to her care. She had hidden them in a cave outside the ruins, and each day she would search another sector of the city alone.

"Of course, all the obvious places, food stores and warehouses, had long since been plundered, but she was hopeful. Then one night Cenobia dreamed, and in her dreams, a woman shrouded and hooded in dark colors spoke to her, bidding her go to a certain place two miles east-by-southeast of a structure at the edge of the city that looked like the skeletal remains of a great T on what had once been a separate island. The woman in her dreams showed her, very clearly, a certain rocky outcropping that she would find when she was viewing the Tower from a certain distance at a certain angle, and instructed her in what to do to make the top of that outcropping rotate and reveal a shaft leading down into the bedrock beneath the city. There she would find large stores of imperishable food and medical supplies and other assets.

"Cenobia awoke before the dawn and found that the instructions of her dream guide were entirely reliable. When she touched the face of the rock in a certain place and spoke certain words, the top of it pivoted away and showed the top of a staircase descending into the living rock. As she descended, followed by the children, lights flickered to life and she heard fans begin to blow. What she found at the bottom was like a paradise to a woman with hungry mouths to feed. She realized that sometime before the Troubles, someone must have gone to considerable expense to secretly create this safe haven for a worst case scenario. She later learned it was a sanctuary built by the Teen Titans.

"There were no other occupants of the bolthole, not even skeletons, so it appears the Titans must have died somewhere else. Be that as it may, Cenobia turned that refuge into a home; first for herself and the children, later for those she trusted enough to invite them to join a new community. The Titans had also left a well-equipped library that was of considerable value in rebuilding a civilization with the best ideas of the Old World from before the Troubles.

"The Queen of Air and Darkness continued to visit Cenobia when it suited her—it was not a thing Cenobia could control—and by and by she began to educate Cenobia in the history of the Teen Titans, and Cenobia taught the children, and as their community grew, Cenobia taught others as well, for they learned her dreams always spoke true in the long run. In time Cenobia became known as the Sibyl, and there were others after her, and today we remember her as the First Sibyl of the Faith of the Five. Although not every single member of our Commonwealth claims to believe in the Five as deities, we all recognize the historical fact that our entire culture grew from the seed of that small community in the hidden refuge."

Efim paused to let that sink in. There was a respectful silence while the strangers assimilated what he had just told them. Finally, the green boy looked around at his friends. "Do we have a secret lair covered with a boulder? Back home, I mean. Something nobody ever got around to showing me?" he added suspiciously.

"No," the mostly-metal guy said slowly, "But Rob and I talked about something like that, just a couple of weeks ago. He said Batman has alternate bolt-holes if anything really bad happens to the Batcave, and we ought to do the same. We've seen the Tower captured by bad guys before, after all!"

"Before we worry about that, perhaps first we should learn more about these Troubles," the golden girl suggested tactfully. "If we return to our own time, and if we know exactly what to expect, we might be able to prepare better the second time around!"

The green boy turned back to face Efim. "So, what caused the Troubles?"

Efim laughed. "Historians are still arguing back and forth about that one. There are several popular theories. One goes that the plague came first, possibly tailored by an alien invader who wanted to soften up humanity. Some claim that Ra's al Ghul used a superweapon to incinerate most of the known oil fields and thus triggered economic collapse. Another theory says that an outbreak of vampirism aggravated the other problems by distracting people from the activities that would have kept humanity well-fed. There is some reason to believe that several of the more clever and destructive supervillains launched separate genocidal plans all at once and the superheroes of the era found themselves swamped and weren't able to stop everything without casualties. Another approach has it that some sort of electronic supervirus caused large numbers of computers to become completely treacherous and command-and-control functions for all large organizations were thereby crippled no matter what sort of physical resources they theoretically had available for emergency action. And then there are those who favor the idea that demonic influence somehow became greatly magnified and triggered outbreaks of violent mass insanity (unless it was just a chemical gas released into the atmosphere in several different places)—"

He broke off. The green boy was holding up his hands in a "stop" gesture. "Okay, okay! We get the point already! Nobody knows for sure what made all that bad stuff happen; it just happened! Things went bad and then they got worse and worse in a zillion different ways before anybody could figure out how to fix whichever catastrophe actually happened first, right?"

"Well . . . yes. As far as we can tell. If you want to boil it down to the bare bones."

"Believe me—I do!"

Author's Note: Be warned that I own thousands of comic books set in the DC Universe. Inevitably, as I try to describe what Planet Earth might look like hundreds of years after the Teen Titans TV series, some of the names, places, concepts, etc., that I refer to will be largely based on my knowledge of the "comic book continuity" even if some of the things referred to were never depicted in the "Teen Titans" animated series—and possibly not in any animated series. I will, however, try to keep such things restrained so that the focus of this storyline is still on the Teen Titans (with the TV versions of their personalities, etc.) and their possible legacy for future generations. I don't want to hopelessly confuse anyone whose primary knowledge of the Titans and the world they live in comes from the TV show!

I mention this now because I prefer to think that Cenobia Craft, the First Sibyl of the Faith of the Five, was descended from a couple of well-established characters in DC's comic books who have never appeared in the "Teen Titans" animated series. (Nor any other animated series, according to my research.) Cenobia herself, however, is entirely my own creation! As is the religious organization which she founded! I won't name her distinguished ancestors here, however—that's left for readers familiar with DC's comic books to puzzle over. (But if you're not a big comic book fan, then don't worry about it! Cenobia's already long dead, anyway, so the peculiarities of her ancestry won't really matter in the ongoing plot of this story!)