After what had seemed like the longest journey of his life, Beast Boy finally sighted what had to be the most important building within the city, judging by its massive size. What looked like a temple loomed high in the distance, towering over the other skyscrapers.
Beast Boy gazed up at it in awe. The structure dwarfed the Titans' Tower by several stories. He saw the staircase leading up to the main entrance, and groaned at the sheer length of the steps.
"Yeah, that's so not happening."
In an instant, he transformed into a falcon, and flew up to the top of the steps in merely a fraction of the time it would've taken him to walk. When he re-shifted, he wore a smug smirk, satisfied at his successful endeavor to avoid an unnecessary amount of walking.
In front of him stood the massive golden doors of Azarath's temple, gleaming in the grey light. Beast Boy looked up at the doors, and let his thoughts drift to Raven once more.
"I failed her. I blew it. I swore that I would never let her be harmed again after I let out that monster within me. And...she was kidnapped right under my very nose. I failed to protect Raven, just like I failed to protect..."
He shook his head violently, in a desperate attempt to avoid remembering the painful memories of the past.
As he stood enraptured in thought, the darkness began to fall over the city once more, and Beast Boy was left without any source of light besides the pitiful gleam given by his communications watch. He pushed earnestly against the doors, and they slowly swung open into a massive hall, shadowed and beckoning to him. Beast Boy walked in without any second thoughts, aching to do his part to find his best friend.
Just inside the hall was a single flaming torch, hung on a brazier within reach. Beast Boy took it, and slowly swung it around as he took in his surroundings. He was in the first level of the temple, which contained a church-like sanctuary, with rows of seats lining the interior of the chamber. Massive white pillars dotted the hall, and at the farthest end was the altar, with a wondrous symbol glimmering on top.
Beast Boy looked up at the massive twelve-pointed star, made of the purest gold that he had seen in Azarath since he had first arrived. He walked up to the altar before it, and saw that propped on it was a massive book written solely in the Azarathian language, blue runes filling the pages. Next to the book was a small piece of paper, this one written in English.
The Faith of Azarath
"When our forbearers and the first Azar arrived here, they shaped the foundations of our faith and beliefs.
Naturally, one of our greatest desires is to do our part to erase the hatred and violence still consuming the Earth. But most of all, our ultimate wish is to journey beyond even this sanctuary of ours, into the realm beyond, the true paradise that has been sought for so long.
As visitors to this holy temple can observe, our people's sign is the twelve-pointed star that represents the Divine that we dearly adore. Many of us have wondered if there is any specific significance to the number of points on the star. The common theory that has been produced is that the twelve points might be a reference to the original twelve tribes and twelve disciples mentioned in the Holy Word of our ancestors. There is also a lesser discussed notion that the number twelve somehow represents supreme Divine authority and completion. Only the first Azar knew the true story behind this sign, and she has long passed into the paradise beyond this one."
Beast Boy felt a small smile on his lips as he finished reading the text.
"That's cool. So these people actually gave a damn about ending suffering. Good. And I gotta say, the idea of a real paradise...if that's where my Mom and Dad are...then, yeah, I'd wanna go there too."
He sighed, and turned away from the altar, walking away towards one of the hall's corners, where another set of stairs rose up into the higher levels of the temple. His walk was interrupted by the sudden appearance of two white robed figures in the middle of the sanctuary, one a child and the other an old woman with long, gray hair. The two female figures stood together in the middle of the pews, the old woman placing a withered hand gently on the child's small shoulder.
Beast Boy watched them warily as they conversed.
"Miss Azar?" the child softly asked, her head bowed in shame. "Is it...true what Joach and those horrible children said about me? That my father is..."
The old woman sighed mournfully and gave the child a slow nod.
"My dear, I am so sorry, but I cannot bring myself to hide the truth from you. Indeed, it would be pointless, when those people so cruelly attacked you with it."
The child gazed up at the elderly woman in horror as she went on.
"Yes, my child. Like those hateful people said, your father truly is Trigon, our ancient enemy. But dearest, know this: so long as you reside in this temple, so long as you are under my tutelage, I swear to you that no harm shall come upon you. You are a daughter of Azarath, and nobody can take that from you."
Just as suddenly as they had appeared, the two female figures disappeared, leaving Beast Boy utterly confused. When it became clear that the apparition wouldn't return, he continued to move towards the stairs. He climbed the steps slowly, his legs still aching from his journey to the temple.
The next landing delivered him onto what looked like a massive dormitory, with rows of beds lined against the walls.
"Must be the living quarters of the people who worked here."
The room next to the dormitory was clearly some sort of study, with massive bookcases towering into the darkness of the ceiling. Small silver desks spotted the room, most of them containing quills and ink for writing. Beast Boy walked around, admiring the furniture, when his torchlight gleamed on a white piece of parchment with faded blue writing.
He inspected it, to see that the paper had been hastily hidden inside one of the desk's compartments. When he gently pulled the paper out and smoothed it over, Beast Boy could see that the paper contained some strange sort of diary entry from one of the upholders of the temple.
"I have known for the longest time that our leader always makes strong decisions because of the clarity of her foresight gift. Even then, I can't help but silently question what she is demanding of that poor girl.
I understand, by all means, that each and every one of us Azarathians must refrain from anger, but Azar is teaching this child to constantly suppress any remote hint of it. While I understand that this is related to the heritage that she did not ask for, I also know that constantly attempting to bottle up one's fury will never abate it, only allow it to seethe and boil before it finally erupts.
This is an unfair requirement placed upon the shoulders of a little girl who has already been through so much torment at the hands of that monster, Joach. Though I have no desire to openly confront our leader over this, I will not deny my own contempt at Azar's wish to not allow the child to even open her heart up about the pain she has suffered. This is absurd, this is unhealthy, and I can only imagine what will inevitably happen should Arella's child fail to hold her anger in forever."
He pulled back in confusion, wondering who had been the subject of the note. Then, it dawned on him.
"They're talking about Raven, aren't they?"
Beast Boy and the rest of the Titans knew that Raven was constantly struggling to maintain her emotions and remain neutral. For the longest time, nobody was sure why, until he and Cyborg had accidentally ventured into her mind via her bizarre mirror, a portal to her mind. Inside her subconscious, they had discovered the manifestation of her suppressed rage, which had taken the form of none other than Trigon, her demonic father. It was only by urging Raven to combine with all of her other emotions that she was able to subdue her own rage once more.
"But I don't get it. What was this 'Azar' lady so afraid of? What did she think that Raven would do if she lost it?"
He headed back to the stairs, and continued upwards, going higher and higher until he thought his legs would finally collapse. After what seemed like forever, he finally came to the next landing. Beast Boy could see a long hall with numerous doors lining the wall on one side, and on the opposite side, a few vertical slits resembling windows lay, showing nothing but the pitch darkness covering Azarath.
The doors lining the hall were mostly locked, except for one midway down the hall. Beast Boy gripped the bronze knob and twisted it, allowing the door to swing inward. When he walked inside, he saw that it was a storeroom of sorts, with a variety of strange looking potions lining one shelf, and more musty tomes lining another. His torchlight revealed one other piece of paper laying idly next to one stack of books, this one much longer than the small journal note that he had read in the study.
Sudden Disappearance of Juris
"Not long after Arella arrived here under the guidance of some of our monks, she gave birth to the daughter that would come to fill many of us with paranoia over her nature. Out of all of the Azarathians, there was none so terrified of this infant girl than Juris, one of the magistrates. Juris and his close colleague Joach were constantly attempting to make Azar herself see their reasoning, that allowing Raven to exist in our city would only bring destruction.
Naturally, Azar refused to listen to them, and so, Juris hatched a plan to rid Azarath of the innocent girl forever. Because he resided in the temple alongside Azar and the rest of us, he had easy access to the Great Door, the interdimensional portal that was used long ago by the First Azar to lead others here to this sanctuary. At the entrance to the portal, Juris planned a malevolent scheme: to throw the infant into the abyss that lay beyond.
Many of us overheard him whispering madly about this plan, but few of us took it to heart. But it seems that he did attempt to carry it out, for only a few days ago, he suddenly disappeared from the temple and the city. It was the strangest occurrence that we had seen in ages. Galya, the girl's caretaker, went mad with terror when Arella found out that her daughter was missing. Both women came to our temple, and begged our aid in helping. Azar, by her supernatural talents, and with an ominous sense of fear, lead us to the portal. Nobody would have thought to look there, for the Door is only used on missions to Earth.
Sure enough, there she was, the infant sound asleep and unharmed in front of the portal, which had a sinister fading red aura emanating from it. Just in front of the Door was a pile of ashes, which gave off a hideous stench. As Azar explained, it seems that something from beyond the door intervened for the child's sake to save her, while at the same time obliterating Juris completely.
Though Azar did her best to calm us all down, all of us, Arella especially, believed that it was none other than Trigon that was responsible for Juris's passing."
Beast Boy snarled at the thought of some vile man trying to kill off his best friend as a mere infant. He gritted his teeth, and felt his hands curl into claws, the anger inside him flaring up so badly, it was a miracle that he didn't shift into his werebeast form once more.
He took a deep breath, and made himself take a look at the assorted potions in the room. They were a myriad of pretty colors, ranging from a light teal to a vibrant pink. Their labels were only written in Azarathian runes, preventing Beast Boy from understanding their purposes.
While he was checking out the potions, the door slowly swung shut, and he heard a small click as it locked itself without warning. Beast Boy flinched and ran to it, trying to open it but to no avail. He cursed under his breath and backed away from it, trying to think of a plan to open it. Just as he was about to consider shifting into an insect, he froze up as he heard malicious voices coming towards the room.
"We have no way of contacting our fellows outside in the city, and I'm certain that it's this damned darkness doing it! I tell you, it feels like this city itself is trying to kill us!"
Another voice scoffed and replied, "Don't be ridiculous. This place, sentient and murderous? You've read The Shining too much."
"Don't mock me! Also, where did our leader go? He and three of our men went to seize the whelp, but the only message I remember getting from him was to watch out because of 'trespassers'."
"Oh, you mean that girl's friends? How pitiful. Slaughtering a few teens should be easy."
Beast Boy felt a drop of sweat fall down his cheek, as he realized that the men were discussing plans to kill him and the rest of the Titans. He had no way of alerting his friends with the darkness blocking communication attempts, and he knew that based on what he was hearing, these were the same wretches who had kidnapped Raven and wounded Robin in the process.
"Let's keep scouring this building for whatever we can find. The others here with us in this pathetic excuse for a temple will keep searching for those brats too. From what Brother Blood studied, she only had four friends. We in this forsaken place number more than 20. They're completely outmatched."
The voices dwindled away towards the farther end of the hallway. After a few more moments, Beast Boy heard another click from the door, and when he hesitantly went to touch the doorknob, he found it mysteriously unlocked. It seemed that somebody or something had deliberately prevented him from walking out into the hall, in order to keep him safe from the wandering cultists.
He walked back out into the hall, and went back towards the stairwell, refusing to go in the same direction as the vile men. He continued to ascend, and the subsequent landing came sooner than the last, revealing a small hallway with a massive archway at the end. Beast Boy paused in wonder, and decided to investigate it.
What could only be the Great Door mentioned in the note stood erect and barren, no energies swirling within. Beast Boy looked it up and down, remembering the white gateway that had led them to Azarath.
"I don't understand. Why didn't we end up in this temple? Why did that portal deliver us in the middle of the city?"
"...Did that dove deliberately make us land in the middle of Azarath to avoid running into these cultists?"
It was the only logical explanation that he could conjure, and Beast Boy didn't want to waste too much time gazing at the Door. He turned around and headed back towards the stairs, hoping that he was close to finding the "piece of truth" that the poem had described.
He resumed his ascent upwards, until he came to the last landing on the stairwell, which gave way to an even smaller hall with only one door on the left side, with nothing else but a single window on its opposite. Beast Boy headed to the door, and a strange sense of dread washed over him. He tried to understand why he felt such an ominous shift in the atmosphere, and then, he racked his brain over the notes he had read.
"Wait a minute. If Raven lived here in the temple at one point...is this room...?"
The bronze knob turned easily in his hand, and Beast Boy pushed the door open, watching it swing forward into a pitch dark bedroom.
It was one of the plainest bedrooms that he had ever seen. A small, twin-sized bed lay against the wall, covered in simple white sheets with one pillow resting on top. A smaller version of the twelve-pointed star was the only decoration in the room, nailed to the wall in front of him. Besides that, a small chest presumably for clothes was the only other furniture. Beast Boy looked around, looking for more obvious proof that this room's resident was who he suspected it to be. He closed the door, and did his best to scour the room for more clues by the light of his torch.
Without warning, another white robed figure appeared in the middle of the room, a solitary apparition that gave off a faint light. Beast Boy gawked at the girl he saw, who looked meek and weary, kneeling on the floor in the middle of a sigil that looked suspiciously like an occult symbol that he had once seen. The girl's head was bowed in concentration.
"This is it."
She raised her head, and Beast Boy gasped as he recognized a younger version of Raven.
"That kind man in the white robe from my dream...he told me how I can learn more about my father. He told me about this ritual, which he promised would yield the results I'm looking for."
Beast Boy's eyes widened in terror as a sense of what was about to happen dawned on him.
The young version of Raven clasped her hands together, shut her eyes, and began chanting an incantation in what must've been the language of her people. Whatever it was, the sigil she was sitting in flared into life, a horrible blood-red color filling the room. Beast Boy gawked as a loud rumbling could be heard just outside the room, sounding like it was right next to the temple.
Raven opened her eyes and gasped in shock at the sight of the red sigil. Together, she and Beast Boy yelped in alarm as without warning, the prayer horn began to resound viciously, louder than he had ever heard it. Raven turned towards Beast Boy, looking through him to her door and the outside of the temple. The two of them shuddered as a deep, rumbling laughter could be heard outside of the walls, echoing maliciously throughout the temple and across the entire city.
"No...no!" she screamed, and she began to fade away along with the sigil as a massive gust of wind blew into the room between the cracks of the door, blowing away Beast Boy's torch and plunging the bedroom into darkness.
Beast Boy reached out towards where her image had been just a moment before, and cried out "Raven!" as the prayer horn and the awful laughter faded away ominously.
From beyond the door, the revolting stench of burning blood choked him as the immense heat that he had failed to become used to returned. Beast Boy warily eyed the crack below the door, where blood was seeping through, along with a hellish red light. He knew that he had no choice but to proceed into the hall beyond and see what corruption had overcome the pristine temple.
"Raven...Raven summoned Trigon by accident? So that guy in the dream...that couldn't have been a guy from this place! That bastard tricked her!"
"I gotta find my 'piece of truth' and get out of here. Raven..."
Beast Boy walked hesitantly up to the door, and seized the knob, twisting it slowly as he readied himself to see the horrors that awaited him.
