Trigger Warning: Mention of Past Rape and Attempted Suicide
The two stood in silence as Robin waited for Arella to begin.
"As you now know, I am indeed Raven's mother," she told him, her face an emotionless mask. "But what you do not know is how she was...conceived."
A soft sigh passed through her lips.
"Long before I became an Azarathian, as you read in this city's library, I was known as Angela Roth, a young girl with no place to run for comfort. For as long as I could remember, my parents had abandoned me, leaving me to be thrown from one foster care system to another, like a boat forever doomed to be tossed about on stormy waters. I yearned for spiritual comfort, and I sought out multiple churches, but my soul found nothing there that would appease its immense pain. And so, out of desperation for a place to call my own, I was seduced by a group that I would later discover to be Azarath's direst human enemy."
Robin gulped, recalling the note he had discovered in the school's warped history room about how Trigon had been created, and shakily asked, "The Church of Blood?"
Arella nodded solemnly, and she whispered "Yes, my child, and it is right for you to speak that vile name with such care. It is frightening indeed, to know that for whatever horrible reasons they have, a group of humans would madly desire to worship the fiend created from the first Azarathians' long-expelled hatred."
"When I first joined them, I was enamored with what seemed on the surface to be a sincere desire to help me heal from the painful loneliness that I had endured for years. At the time of my entrance into the cult, I was only 18. I had no foster home to go back to, and the Church members told me that they would forever give me a home to call my own, so long as I did what they told me to do. Perhaps the first warning sign that I failed to recognize with them was that I was, evidently, their only female member."
He paused in confusion, and asked her, "Wait, but what about their mothers? Their sisters?"
All she did was shake her head sadly, and tell him, "Gone, my child. Only the Divine knows what became of them."
"Because, as I told you, I was aching to finally find some semblance of peace, I foolishly agreed to bend to whatever strange doctrines they would place before me. Their leader, that monster who is called Brother Blood by the rest of the Church, implored me to allow myself to be used in a ritual that would make me, in his words, 'the bride of Satan'...to no longer be just a street rat ignored and spat upon by the rest of humanity, to be feared and respected. My bitterness towards my mistreatment at the hands of others blinded me to the consequences of my acceptance."
"On the night the ritual took place, Brother Blood and his attendants inscribed a sigil onto the floor of their 'sanctuary', if you will. They had me stand before this sigil in wait, as they intoned words in a language that I had no hope of understanding. It sounded unearthly, more ancient than Latin, Sanskrit, or any other elder language of the Earth. Whatever they said...it worked. In a cloud of flashing smoke and fire, the man appeared. The one that they told me would bed with me...my angel...my would-be king."
Robin shuddered involuntarily, as he imagined how the scene continued. An ominous sense of dread had fallen over Arella's words, and a shadow of residual anguish covered her face.
"What happened...after the man was summoned?" he asked her hesitantly, seeing the pain on her face.
Arella gritted her teeth, and whispered, "I was...taken to bed by the man that Brother Blood summoned. I was exhilarated. Here, I thought, the long years of loneliness were about to be justified by this grand moment. But, just as we were about to consummate, he...transformed. Transformed into..."
"Trigon" Robin muttered, and all he wanted to do was hold Arella and comfort her, as he watched the woman quiver from the horrid memories of that distant night.
"I had no say in what happened next, and I had no hope of fighting him off. I was powerless against that wretch. When he was finished with me, he disappeared bellowing with that horrible laughter, mocking me as I lay on my bed, cowering and weeping after being lied to by the men that I had trusted. Brother Blood and his fellows refused to offer me any comfort or compassion, and they reveled in their successful venture to have Trigon's seed begotten."
Robin told her softly, "I'm so sorry...I'm so...you didn't..."
Arella said back, "Nobody deserves to suffer what I did at the hands of the Church of Blood. The fate those vile men had in store for me, from the instant they lured me into their clutches, nobody deserves to experience, be they man or woman."
"Under the cloak of night, while the cultists were busy congratulating themselves on tricking me into falling for their trap, I fled. Though I did not know where to go, I did not care, only to put as much distance between myself and the Church as possible. But while I eventually managed to put plenty of physical distance between myself and the wicked hands of Brother Blood, my soul could not hope to flee from the emotional ravages of my time in their servitude. In time, I came to fully hate myself for not seeing the cruelty underneath their masks of kindness."
"All the meanwhile, I was painfully aware that I had a child growing in my womb. Even though this child, without a doubt, was sired by that demon, I could not bear to wish death upon it. In a way, the child was all that I had to comfort me in the months following my escape from the Church. But as the summer months dwindled into the cold emptiness of winter, my hope too faded away, and I sought a means to end my suffering forever. I found a forgotten bottle of sleeping pills in the slums of the city. My desire was to use them to give myself eternal rest and the ultimate escape from the horrors that I had suffered."
Robin could see her in his mind, like the history text from the library had described, curled up in one of the shadowed alleyways of New York City, the empty pill bottle next to her as she waited for death to release her.
"As the shadows fell upon me, a new light came into my path. Somehow, my agony had alerted the people of Azarath to my location, and an entourage of their missionaries hurried to my side. With whatever mystical abilities they had received by the training of the Third Azar, they sensed my imminent death, along with the nature of the child within me. Even though they were wary of my history, and who I had been tricked into consorting with, they gently carried me to the sanctuary of Azarath, to the temple where I came face to face with that wondrous woman."
"Azar gladly healed me, and promised me that here in the city of Azarath, I would be forever safe from the clutches of Brother Blood. She gave me my new name, which, as you know, translates to 'Messenger Angel'. For the sake of my child, Azar also promised that she would watch over me and my offspring, so that both of us would know true peace after my long, painful journey. When I finally gave birth to my daughter, Azar swiftly named her, and gave me a nursemaid named Galya to help me take care of her."
"Alas, peace would not come easily for me and Raven here, for as you saw in the shadows of the school, Joach and those likeminded individuals actively despised us both, and it was not until I nearly ended his life in murderous fury that the entirety of Azarath finally accepted that nothing could send me and Raven away. Azar was furious at her people's malice, and deliberately took Raven under her tutelage in the safety of the temple. To further add insult to injury in the eyes of those who hated us, on her deathbed, Azar chose me as her successor, and transferred her many abilities to me, including her cherished gift of foresight."
"But how did Trigon destroy this place?" Robin wondered silently. "I don't understand. Somebody here had to have opened a way for him to arrive here...but who?"
Arella continued in a grave tone.
"Not long after Azar's passing, in the tenuous months afterwards, my daughter had a vivid dream of who appeared to be an ancient Azarathian man, from what she believed to be the generation of the first Azar. In this dream, the man appealed to her desire to learn the entire truth about her father, by instructing her in a ritual that he said would reveal all. Raven, my innocent child who was only seeking guidance on her heritage, fell to the trap haplessly. The ritual she performed was not one of clarification, but one of summoning."
Robin gasped, and shakily asked Arella, "N-no! Are you seriously telling me-"
"Yes, child," Arella told him softly. "It was Raven who called Trigon into Azarath. But she had been lied to, as her mother was lied to years before."
The pieces fell into place within Robin's mind, and anger for his teammate flared violently.
"That bastard!" he snarled, and Arella nodded, her own rage narrowing her eyes venomously.
"Brother Blood impersonated himself as an Azarathian into my daughter's dreams, in order to trick her into unwittingly giving Trigon the entryway he needed into our sanctuary, and to obliterate it as he and the Church of Blood had desired for so long."
The two of them paused for a brief moment as the full scope of the story weighed down on Robin. At last, he finally understood why Raven had refused to tell him about her mother. The shame and residual terror of her role in Azarath's destruction must have been too great a barrier for her to open up any further.
Arella gazed up at the grey sky above them, and Robin knew that she was burdened with the memory of her people's genocide.
"We were no match for that fiend," she told Robin quietly. "Though we all banded together, we could not hope to withstand the demons that he summoned. We were powerless against the ultimate might that he unleashed on Azarath. Those of us who hadn't been mauled and burned to death by Trigon and his servants were instantly wiped out by the nova that he released, crushing the city to ruins, and sending the rest of us to the paradise beyond."
She looked at Robin now, miraculously still wearing her emotionless mask after what she had described to him.
"As for my daughter, she was unfortunate enough to witness her father's entrance into our home. I was there, outside the temple, watching Trigon leer at her through the lone window outside her room. Even from a distance, I could see the look of sheer horror on her face. In my desperation, and in a bid to prevent her from seeing the full length of the tragedy that was about to ensue, I used Azar's power to forcibly teleport her to Earth, to the outskirts of the city where you, her and the rest of your friends would eventually meet for the first time."
Robin would never forget the memory of when his team had first come together, on a night in Jump City when Starfire, first an unknown alien girl on what seemed to be a violent rampage throughout their city, nearly overcame them. Raven's timing during the fight had been impeccable, as her suggestion to the three boys that fighting wasn't the answer to Starfire's fury was key to Robin seeing that all his future teammate wanted was release from her bonds.
"For a few years before that meeting, my daughter wandered the streets of Jump City like I once had within New York. Using the powers within her, she changed her white robe into one much darker, a deep blue reminiscent of the grief she was carrying. The memory of what she had seen befall Azarath would leave my poor daughter scarred, and terrified of the possibility that Earth would end up suffering the same destruction. Thankfully, because she was able to trust in you four, Earth escaped Azarath's fate."
Robin asked her, "But, I don't understand. If Azarath was destroyed, then...why...?"
Arella nodded at him, and looked around them at the massive skyscrapers shrouded in the swirling fog and dancing snow. From the beginning of his dream, Robin had been baffled by the bizarre nature of the city he was in.
"My child, before I continue, you must be aware of what your friend, the half-machine, half-human one learned when he finally reached his destination. Azarath was, and still is fully conscious and sentient. This sacred place has a mind of its own, and its prime ability is to manifest the deepest thoughts of those who belong to it."
A shudder went up and down Robin's spine, as his question of why the buildings of the city seemed to have a mind of their own was finally answered.
"Each of us, Raven included, were tied to Azarath, and Azarath to us. In the beginning, the first Azar and those who followed her here longed to see the realization of the paradise that had been taught to them by their teachers. This place heard their wishes, and willingly chose to aid them in creating the buildings you have seen. Even the violence it faced at the hands of Trigon and his servants was not enough to fully destroy it, because its last daughter had escaped unscathed. This whole time, Azarath has been in a perpetual dying state, unable to end its torment because Raven lived on. It begrudged her not, but nonetheless ached for release. Ironically, it is Brother Blood that has given Azarath its chance to accomplish that."
Robin only stared at her in confusion, and Arella continued on.
"When Brother Blood and his helpers invaded your home, they subdued Raven by plunging her into a ritual that targeted her hidden, repressed memories of the horrors she experienced on Azarath, both at the hands of her human tormentors, and of the knowledge that she had opened the way for our people to be slaughtered. At the instant this ritual was triggered, Azarath and Raven unconsciously reached out to each other from afar, and Azarath decided to manifest Raven's darkest nightmares as its new form, in order to exact revenge on the people it knew to be ultimately responsible for its agony."
She paused as Robin sputtered, "Wait, then those corpses! Those are-"
"Yes. What you saw were the cultists who were caught unaware by the first transformation that Azarath undertook, and by the manifested creatures that it created out of Raven's subconscious. You see, Brother Blood's plan was to take Raven back to Azarath, and to have the entirety of the Church follow him there. Their intent was to blaspheme this holy place with their dark magic, but Azarath would never allow that. It willingly transformed itself into the hellish place that Raven's distorted memories perceived it to be, and massacred more than half of the wretches stationed here. Brother Blood and the three men you saw in Raven's room barely managed to escape to their destination."
Robin looked around him, at the fog, and turned back to Arella, asking her, "But this fog? And the snow?"
She looked around likewise, and murmured, "From what I have seen, this fog represents her foggy, repressed memories that she has struggled to restrain for so long. As for the snow, I believe that it represents the sheer fragility of that repression, as you have seen by how quickly the flakes melt."
"Something else that I have realized about Azarath's transformed state is...the prayer horn that we listened to, that told us when to gather in the center of the city for mass prayer sessions...it changed. On the day that Trigon invaded this place, Azarath deliberately changed its voice from a beautiful, clarion note into something similar I once heard during a terrible weather crisis in New York City. When Trigon came here, the prayer horn sounded eerily like the emergency sirens I heard long ago. That is what you and your friends have been hearing."
Robin perked up and pleadingly asked her, "So you do know where Raven is? Then I beg you, tell me!"
Arella told him solemnly, "Yes, I do. Brother Blood has failed to detect me as I have moved about invisible to his eyes, and the eyes of his subordinates. They foolishly decided that fleeing into the underground inner sanctum of Azarath would give Blood the privacy he needs to complete his ritual. Unbeknownst to them, they fled into the core of the nightmare, and Brother Blood is now the last cultist standing. Azarath has successfully slaughtered the rest of them by using Raven's nightmares against them."
He shuddered again, and then said to Arella, "Can you show me how to get there? I've searched all over this place for clues, but I can't find any entrance to the underground part you've mentioned."
Arella, to Robin's confusion, paused, and refused to meet his gaze for a moment. When she looked back at him, there was a tone of remorse in her voice.
"I will teach you how to break the barrier that Blood set up over the stairs leading into Azarath's core, certainly my child...but before you and your friends proceed, there is another truth about the ritual that I feel obligated to tell you alone, because you seem to be the most levelheaded of my daughter's friends."
Robin gulped, as Arella took a deep breath, and spoke to him softer than he had ever heard her speak.
"My child...at the end of this journey...my daughter is doomed to die."