Raven flowed smoothly down the street, dodging pedestrians and other obstacles with intense grace. She was in a hurry. Time, something she had an abundance of for a half-millennium, was now an incredibly scarce resource. She gauged the sun in the clear sky and determined that it was still some hours until it set.

Growling to herself in frustration, she increased her speed until he was at her limit. It would have been much easier, not to mention faster, if she could simply fly. Or, for that matter, teleport to where she needed to be. Unfortunately, between the scenes on the newscast and Zarach's uncanny ability to follow her through the Kithados, discretion was of paramount importance. It would be... unfortunate, were she to be delayed due to a misunderstanding with police...

...unfortunate for them.

Finally, she saw her goal. A construction site, strangely quiet for mid-afternoon. When a quick glance around revealed no observers, Raven jumped and cleared the fence surrounding it. Memories brushed by her consciousness, both her own and those of Jon. This was the first place where Arform was encountered. She walked over to a familiar brick wall, half-constructed and already showing signs of weathering.

She lowered her hood, turning green eyes to the red brick. A moment of contemplation, perhaps a vestigial sense of doubt was allowed her. Then, in a shimmer of change, Raven was back to the form she had worn in Jon's mindscape. She released a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. It was much more comfortable to wear this form, with its protective horns, seeking tail, and supple wings, than the glamour of normality she had worn on the way here.

Almost immediately, the familiar red eyes and masked shape of Arform appeared. The world took on a surreal cast as the dreamtime communication of Arform took gentle hold of Raven's mind.

"Valkyrie," it began. "We have waited long for you."

Raven quirked a brow, intrigued. "Interesting choice of greeting, Arform."

Without moving or changing expression in any way, Arform managed to convey the feeling of a shrug. "It is you, as we are us. You are Valkyrie, we are Arform."

"And what, precisely, are you?"

"We are Arform. We are purpose without function. We are balance to disorder. We are magic made mundane. We are the creation that created ourself, and in so doing destroyed us. However," and here the impossibly narrow focus of Arform's attention was turned to Raven, "we have a message for the one known as Rachel Roth."

"I am ready to hear it."

"Then see, Rachel Roth, and understand."


-FLASH-

Jon, looking into a mirror. A tired smile. Deep bags under his eyes, and hand shaking as he gestures a shadow of a wave to his reflection. "Hey Rachel. There are some things you should know."

-FLASH-

Cyborg, sitting outside of a cell. The prisoner, Jon, listening intently as he explained the Titans' fears and experiences with treachery. Listening as he spoke of her heart-break involving Malchior.

-FLASH-

A book, written in a steady hand. The words blurred but for a single line: "From such unions came the first Dragons, huge beasts that could think, reason, and desire as men do.." and the whisper of Jon's voice as he breathed, "Anakim."

-FLASH-

A score of images, Raven and Jon together in each. The poetry reading and their conversation in the alley afterward, Jon leaping towards Raven and bringing her bodily to the ground, awakening in the hospital from a coma, walking to an Arabian restaurant, smoking, fighting, falling, talking-

-FLASH-

Jon and Robin, sitting in a rarely used conference room. "With one dozen victims we're likely looking at three apiece for four Nephilim."

"What's a Nephilim?" Robin interrupted.

Jon looked at him quizzically. "The scion of a fallen angel and a mortal."

A pause ensued as Robin processed that before he whispered, "Raven..."

-FLASH-

Broadway, a private balcony. Raven conversing with the last of her divided consciousness.

"He is no Nephilim," Raven asserted.

"Well... not anymore..."

-FLASH-

"How did I miss this?" Jon growled to himself. "Rephaim. Does this dimension even know of Rephaim?" He scrubbed his face with his hand, roughly massaging a modicum of wakefulness into his bearing. A sudden, heart-lurching moment of clarity and realization. "Dear God... the children... Beast Boy's missing children..."

-FLASH-

Jon, alone in a hotel room, shaking and shuddering as he forced magic into a pendant. Teeth bared, eyes leaking cerulean fire as sweat welled upon his scalp and ran down his face and neck. Intense, fierce concentration and steely willpower holding a nearly palpable sense of retributive fury at bay as he continued to violate the laws of reality.

-FLASH-

Again in the hotel, lit now by guttering candles. Jon, sitting at the room's desk with a quill and paper. The bed, never slept in. His every posture and movement whimpers exhaustion, his eyes wide and glazed as with fever, his chin dipping towards his chest and then jerking back again at irregular intervals. He spoke occasionally as he wrote, voice raspy and deadened, as though the sound would keep him alert and on task.

"We fell through the Void Between Reality which my people call Ungültige Welt, the Null World, this demon and I. We became as one... I have the growing suspicion that these four Nephilim we seek are a different threat than we have been led to believe..."

-FLASH-

On the beach, facing the setting sun. Jon stood with a tall man in a leather duster, some dozen years his senior. Jon pulled back his arm and hurled a glass bottle through the air to land beyond the surf and float out of sight. Turning to his companion, he said, "And the other thing? Did you find it, Harry?"

"Yeah," the man called Harry replied. "2735527684."

Jon pulled his lips from his teeth in a rictus grin. "Perfect."

-FLASH-

Staggering through the spaces between the warehouses, crossing parking lots and avenues with no sense of self-preservation. It was dark, the night of a new moon, and the inky air accepted the mutterings and ravings of the man and drowned them.

"Giants, dragons, and time, time, TIME! Now and then and then! All one, divine station and the fourth dimension," a screaming tear of mad laughter, and then, "Emim! A Titan! Not a giant, but a TITAN! HAHAHAH~!" Jon cackled to the stars, a not-quite-present pulse ruffling the reality around him.

-FLASH-

Interior of a warehouse, motes of dust languid in the thick air. "'The Anointed One,'" he whispered. "Remember. Remember and understand." Jon sat in a circle of chalk, late-afternoon sunlight reluctantly illuminating the interior of a warehouse that seemed peevish and embarrassed to be seen. Reverently, he folded his hands upon his lap and prayed.

"Sáncte Míchael Archángele, defénde nos in proélio, cóntra nequítiam et insídias diáboli ésto præsídium. Ímperet ílli Déus, súpplices deprecámur: tuque, prínceps milítiæ cæléstis, Sátanam aliósque spíritus malígnos, qui ad perditiónem animárum pervagántur in múndo, divína virtúte, in inférnum detrúde. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen."

A pregnant silence enveloped the warehouse, potent and deep. The gears of Fate hesitated, then churned on. "Thanks, Arform. Good luck."

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and began to chant.

"Ygratha Metrintacal Shendrithicadshendrithos... Ygratha Metrintacal Shendrithicadshendrithos ..."

-FLASH-


Raven staggered back from the brick wall, wings spread wide to stabilize her. Arform watched impassively, still half-merged with the wall itself.

"The message has been relayed. Our payment is nearly complete." Where a person may have expressed joy, anticipation, anxiety or any of a myriad of emotions,Arform remained detached, cold and analytical. Simple facts stated simply. "Goodbye, Valkyrie."

Just like that, Arform was gone again.

As she caught her breath from the maelstrom of images and impressions, she thought of two things that had stood out to her. Her personal delivery code that had been unearthed by "Harry," and the incredible amount of magical endurance that Jon had put forth to enchant an amulet, possibly one of several.

She called to the shadowed places around her, and was rewarded with several rats and roaches that fell into form before her. She chittered softly, and a rat stood on its hind legs and nodded. Several roaches riffled their carapaces and fluffed their wings in an affirmative way as well. She opened a small portal to Titan's Tower, and watched as her diminutive servants passed through it to do her bidding.