Urd dodged this way and that, as Mara fired blast after blast at her.
Okay, this is just getting silly, she thought. Normally, Mara would at least taunt me or something, not just shoot at me... and she's usually a better shot than this, too!
She stopped paying full attention to Mara, but watched the demon with only one eye while keep her other on the bas-reliefs. Even with her attention so divided, Mara still missed her. In fact, her shots were even further off now than when Urd was actively evading.
She's not even trying to hit me! Urd realized. This was just a distraction, to separate me from Raven! And it worked, because I couldn't not check what was behind us. Which does raise another question.
She stopped paying any attention at all to Mara, instead stared at the carvings a she flew over them, and still she did not get hit. The shots came a lot closer when she drifted in Raven's general direction, but she managed to keep her flight from turning that way too much, until-
"Ah-hah! There you are!"
She dove towards the bas-relief, touched it, and blended herself with the carving. Now in miniature bas-relief, but properly proportioned, Urd approached the image of Robin and Starfire sitting on a couch, listening to a stereo.
"Hi guys," she said, waving at them as she grabbed hold of the stereo. "I just need to borrow this for a bit, okay?"
Bas-relief Robin and Starfire just looked at each other. Urd sighed.
"I'll just take that as a yes. Don't worry, I'll have it back soon!"
She left the memory and returned to full – or at least full mini – size, bringing the stereo with her. She looked up – and up and up and up – at Mara, and grinned.
"Now let's see what they were listening to," Urd said, and hit play. She realized that this was probably a hole in her plan, as for all she knew, they were listening to Ravel. She hated Ravel.
What came out of the stereo was not Ravel. At first it sounded like a very scratchy violin recording, full of static. Her heart sank. Then the beat machine and keyboard kicked in.
"Dum vita est spes est, deo volente..." the singer repeated twice, and then came the rock. And pretty good rock, too, quite danceable. Even had nice lyrics.
And Mara did nothing. When normally she could not stop dancing whenever she heard rock music.
"Figured as much," Urd said, addressing the silent simulacra of Mara. "But, since you're not really her, I'm guessing you're not a real demon as well. So," she said grinning, "that means I don't really have to hold back.
"Come to me, World of Elegance!"
Raven half-wanted to stop several times during their journey, whenever she noticed a memory that she could fix, but the temple spirit never allowed it. In fits and starts, by concepts that she had to translate into words, it told her that they had no time to fix the individual memories; it had already tried, was trying one last time when it ran into her. But there were too many memories, and they were all interlinked; corruption in one would easily spread into all the others; it was likely that the enemy had already re-corrupted the memory of the Ferris wheel.
But there was a way, at the center of the assault, where they could stop the attack before it continued any further.
There, the temple spirit thought to her, and pointed with a light-formed finger, as they came to rest. The center of our battle.
Yes, she thought back. The wind had long since ceased, and she stood upon the bas-relief memory plain in an eerie stillness.
What lay before them was a strange tableau. Robin and Starfire hung limply and spread eagle, held aloft by fell towers of shadow-wrapped bones. They faced each other, their eyes dead and unfocused, as Starfire's had been when they had found her trying to drown Robin. Raven could see their mouths moving, but could not make out any of the words. The distorting, fibrous tentacles spread out from the bone towers, and plunged deep into the bas-relief memory plain. A hulking, greasy, fibrous mass of pseudo-flesh and shadows hung between them, its tendrils wrapped around the bone towers and plunged deep into their chests.
But several other tendrils and tentacles hung limply, and some had even been severed from the dark mass. For the golden light was there as well, lashing at and assaulting both the mass and the towers, with neither rest nor mercy, sapping away its strength bit by bit. Also, when she looked closer, she realized that tendril implanted into Starfire was starting to work its way free, and that even the one in Robin looked a little bit loose. They fought. Despite it all, her friends fought against the dark phantasy the cruel one sought to weave for them.
That was why the wind had ceased, Raven realized. Guessed. Hoped. It could no longer delay her and maintain the assault at the same time. One or the other.
Which meant, she thought with a sudden chill, that this fragment of the cruel one (and she would have to find a way to pry something more specific than that out of the temple spirit) had chosen to commit all of its reserves to the attack.
Can you distract it for a little while longer?
Of course, the temple spirit thought back with a prideful snort. Or the sense of one, at least. What is your plan, daughter-of-demon?
Watch and see.
She sense its approving laugh as she pushed her hood off of her head and flew up towards Starfire. From somewhere behind her, the Cruxshadows started playing. The mass tried to stop her, with needle-thin tendrils and thick tentacles alike, but she blasted apart or parried every attack, until at last she was face-to-face with her friend.
"Starfire!"
"Raven," Starfire muttered, her eyes staring and dead. "You need to run, or he will get you, too."
"He can't," Raven said. "The enemy is too week to touch me now."
"Enemy? Yes, after what he has done, I guess Robin is our enemy now..."
"No, Star," she said, taking the other girl by the shoulders and shaking her. "There's an enemy in your head and it's lying to you!"
Starfire looked down at her hands.
"You, too?" she said with the calmness of a broken mind. "It would make a nice change of pace..."
Raven let her go and backed away. She floated there for a few seconds, staring at both her friend and the tendril in her chest.
"No," she said. "That's not who I am, Starfire. And this... this is not who you are. That is not who Robin is. The Robin who believed in me would not act like that. The Robin whom you love would not act like that."
"Love?" Starfire said, her eyes suddenly sharpening. "I don't-"
"You do, you always have. That's the truth of who you are, and the truth of who he is." She grabbed the tendril, wrapped it around her hands, and started to pull. "The memories remember themselves, Starfire, so ignore your enemy's re-edit of your life and remember what's real! AZERATH METRION ZINTHOS!" She summoned up her power and sent it flowing down the tendril into Starfire. As she had with the bas-relief memory, she laced that power with everything she knew about the two of them.
And it seemed to be enough, for Starfire's eyes suddenly blazed alight, and starbolts grew and glowed in her hands. With an enraged cry she shattered the bonds which bound her hand and foot to the bone tower and soared away. As she did so many smaller tendrils pulled out of her head and neck and back, and Raven gave the one in her chest a good solid yank, and it slipped out, and fell away; and charged as it was with her power it crumbled away into dust before it even hit the ground.
And then the black mass howled, the same soul-rending animal sound that it – or one like it, at least – had conjured up at the tower. Raven did not get a shield up in time, but this howl was no attack – it was a cry of pain and fury. And on the heels of that cry and Starfire lashed down out of the gray sky, and got in one good pass on the dark mass with eyebeam and starbolt alike, before she came to rest floating next to Raven.
"That... it... the scandal..." she gasped out, too furious to even string together a sentence. "You... Raven, did you see what it tried to make me do!?"
"I'd say it succeeded," she remarked dryly, unable to help herself. Starfire whirled around and glared at her, but Raven smiled. "Still, we did get there in time to stop you, so I think it'll all turn out okay."
"I... yes. Yes," Starfire said, stronger this time, and gave herself a little shake. "Raven, it is still... showing me things."
"I know. We'll have to get rid of that," she said, pointing to the floating mass, "before it stops."
"What it shows seems so-"
"Starfire," Raven said, sharply. Starfire stopped talking and looked at her. "What do you know of him?" she said, more softly, now. "Not what you remember, not what you think you remember. This is a place of the mind, so what do you know?"
Starfire stared up at Robin, where he hung upon his own tower of bones. The cruel one's glamors were starting to fade, Raven noted, so she could see even more of the tendrils which pierced Robin and held him in place. They were far more numerous, and deeper, than the ones which had held Starfire.
"It hasn't changed the real memories," Raven whispered. "They're still there. What it shows you is only a facade."
"He sees it, too," Starfire said, her voice soft and her eyes gentle. "But he is seeing it though his own eyes... feeling it with his own hands..." she continued, her voice now not gentle at all, and her eyes burning like emerald fire. "Raven, this must end, now!"
"Then lets break down that- Starfire!"
From the corner of her eye Raven saw a bone arm rushing towards herself and Starfire. At her warning they broke apart and evaded the blow. Raven turned and saw that the tower which had held Starfire had changed: it had formed massive, hammer-tipped arms, and legs, and had taken on a perversion of the form of a man. It strode towards them, creaking and clacking, and they barely dodged a second and third swing. They fired at it, each shot striking true, chipping away bits and pieces of bone. But the pieces seemed to stop in mid-air, and rushed back to the bone walker, and reformed and rejoined with it.
"Raven!"
"I saw it! We're not doing enough damage!"
"Could you... envelope it, maybe? Crush it all at once?"
"Maybe, but... I'm running into the same problem that thing has," she said, gesturing at the mass as they dodged the bone walker. "If I do that, then I probably won't have the power to keep us in this place, and I certainly wouldn't have the energy to get us back before it finishes with Robin."
"Then I must ask a hard thing of you," Starfire said. "Could you-"
A sound like a sonic boom cut her off. Even the bone walker looked up towards that sound. They saw a small pinpoint of light, with a blazing trail behind it, soaring through the – genuinely – featureless gray sky. It turned almost lazily, pitched down, and came soaring towards them, growing steadily until they could see-
"World of Elegance, lend me your power!" Raven heard Urd cry out. "Abominations! Usurpers! Perverters of love and life and sacred memory! I, Urd, goddess second class, limited license, stand in judgment over you! In the Almighty One's name, stand and face your doom!" She seemed to dance as she spoke, and she moved her hands in a complicated pattern, almost a genuflection. "Fire which burns within all men, raging wildfire and comforting heat, blazing stars and bright candles, life and love, become a cleansing flame in my hands! Ultimate purging spell, judgment of the Almighty, cast down the lies before me! Cleanse by fire!"
Raven could feel the power flowing into and out of Urd, as great rings of runes formed and spun around her and her angel. They were still in miniature form, but that did not seem to matter to Urd as she raised one hand, and began to conjure up a glowing ball of fire. It grew and grew and grew, until Urd almost seemed to be swallowed up by, and the bone walker appeared like unto a gnat before it.
"Burn." Urd commanded, and she hurled the fireball at the bone walker. It struck true, and what little of the walker that was not immediately obliterated blazed alight. The remains stood there, burning, bits and pieces dangling and falling off, until the thing was wholly consumed.
Urd floated down and came to rest between Raven and Starfire.
"Right, now that that's finished," Urd said in a wholly satisfied tone, "let's go get- urk!"
"Ah!" Starfire squeed, smashing Urd and World of Elegance in a crushing hug. "You're so cute!"
"Stafire..." Urd forced out. "Can't... breath..."
"Sorry!"
Starfire released them, and they hung there for a moment, the angel draped over Urd's back, and both looking a little slack-jawed and swirly-eyed. Raven could swear that she saw little chirping birds flying around Urd's head.
"Told you so," Raven muttered.