The Burning Darkness
Chapter 37
The Strength to Carry On
Time seemed like such an odd concept for the Titan's. They had been studying, and researching, and brainstorming for days. They at first felt like time was just going slower because they were researching. A task, they all agreed, was a very slow use of time. No matter how long they studied, the sky never changed, it was always a dull grey hued blue. The sun never seemed to move. Eventually, they started having to take shifts sleeping. This carried on until eventually tempers began to flare for them all. After too long, Cyborg finally decided to check his chronometer, somehow he had forgotten about it. He checked how long it had been since he had first plugged back into the towers systems.
The tower date and time stamp showed three days had passed since they had first arrived back in the tower. They all stared in shock. The conditions around the tower hadn't changed in the slightest. It was eternally a grey dusk. Three days had passed and the world didn't change at all. Somehow time had seemed to stop the day and night cycle of the world. They all knew what they had to check. Three days had gone by. They had spent three straight days studying and researching every piece of knowledge and literature Raven had at her disposal. It was true Raven had actually owned hundreds of books. She was exceptionally well versed in the arcane arts. This meant slow study for most of the team because they could not translate the dozens of languages spoken in her texts. So more often than not they would have to read translated versions, or just skip that tome and move onto one that they could read. Book by book. Page by page. Paragraph by paragraph. They trudged through it all. They all new deep down what had happened, but they just needed to find some proof that they were right or wrong.
The tower had multiple time recording systems. These were both analog and electronic. As long as there was even the slightest amount of power, at least one time recording would be on file. This would be the definitive answer of what they all feared, and knew deep down was the case. Cyborg turned on the large screen television and put the time stamp file from the last system exit before they returned three days ago. The digital readout on the screen tore down any hope that they had left that they were wrong. It had been twenty three years since the Titans had left Titans tower. That battle with The Master had somehow propelled them all forward in time two decades. They had not only failed to stop The Masters plan, but they were now cursed to see the wretched outcome of his success.
The group morale collapsed. Everyone, Raven and Nightwing included, felt despair and sorrow crash over them. The world had been destroyed. Everyone they knew was dead, or worse. They hadn't seen or heard any signs of human activity since they had arrived back at the tower. Not one light at night, not one car horn, not one peep. They had failed, and they all felt the weight crash upon them as a wave upon a grain of sand.
Starfire collapsed into Nightwing's arms. She let the tears flow out of her like Niagra Falls. She felt all her strength leave her and her joy of flight abandon her. The gravity of this world, and the decay that enveloped it, pulled her down like an anchor. As Starfire felt her hope die, she got another strong sensation. She looked up to see her beloved fiancé nod at her, bend down, scoop her up bridal style and begin to whisk her away. They needed to be alone, and she did nothing but let him carry her in his strong arms away from the despair of the room.
Cyborg and Cyberstrike immediately went down to the garage. They both refused to fully accept what had happened and fell back on old habits. Cyborg's old comfort in tough times was to tinker with his car and new designs involved. Cynthia fell into the habit of following him down to watch him work and shamelessly flirt to see how long it would take for him to give up on tinkering with the car to tinker with her instead. At first it was all going similar to the way they used to do it. He would walk a lap around the car deciding where to start. She would sit up on the work bench, right in the middle, somehow blocking the whole thing. He would then say where he was going to start; she would make a subtle innuendo about starting the wrong engine. He would then go to the bench and give her a kiss before reaching for a tool. They made it that far before she collapsed in tears into his chest. Cyborg froze, he couldn't move. His denial was telling him to keep doing what he was doing. His heart would have none of it. It told him to man up and take care of the woman clinging to him for all they were worth. He finally broke the denial and collapsed with her to shed all the tears they had for the world that had been destroyed.
Raven's strongest coping mechanism in crisis was to fall back on knowledge and books. She let that old habit take hold with vengeance. She began devouring ever word and letter of every page and book at her disposal. She was not alone in the least. Her kids saw her and were inspired. They knew that they could give in to the pain of loss, or they could make their surrogate mother proud and find a way to change the world for the better. So they grabbed every book they could read and went to work with pencil and paper. They couldn't understand everything being said, true, but that didn't slow them up much. They would read a page; write down what confused them or went over their heads, then went to Raven for clarification. After several hours and dozens of books, Raven stopped herself long enough to marvel at the sight before her. Her kids were fighting harder than anyone else to fix the world. They were taking notes, verbally comparing them, and pouring themselves into the work. She was never more proud of them than she was right now, and knew they were going to be the ones to break this thing. They were creative, insightful, and most importantly, they were unorthodox. In the notes they had collected over their extreme study session, they had managed to jot down notes and follow trails everyone else hadn't even conceived of. True, most of the trails led to dead ends, but they opened up more possibilities that could break this thing wide open. She decided she needed to prove herself to them for once and jumped into the discussion fervently. The little family became an amazing think tank. They knew, together, as a family, they would solve this.
Bumblebee found herself as the odd man out. She didn't mind though. She decided she had another personal project to work on. The Titans Tower mainframe had been a massive archive of data. It would collect and store all broadcasts that had to do with damage and loss that came too it. She began going through every file she could find starting the day the Titans had left the tower to go after The Master. She slowly put together a trail of breadcrumbs. It had started out simple enough. Reports trickled in from all over the world of small conflicts breaking out globally. Small skirmishes between nations. After two days, it erupted into full scale war. The reports from them were all about the monstrous weapons and attacks being done globally. The world started tearing itself apart. Metahumans, machines, soldiers, and monsters all were destroying anything and everything to gain the upper hand.
Then the reports of the dead rising again started to show in small pockets. Then, over the course of a few weeks, it stopped being pockets of the dead rising. They turned into reports of entire armies rising from nowhere. Then the armies began sweeping over everything in their path. They couldn't be stopped. How could you stop an enemy that could militarize the dead? The army of the dead swept over the unprepared and defenseless world. The armies rose in the middle of civilian populations. They would recruit thousands before any government could respond. Any government response was worthless anyway. They had already exhausted large portions of their military in full scale war. It took less than a year for all transmissions from governments to cease. Over the course of the next five years, transmissions of any kind decreased until one day. They ceased all together. The world fell silent for the first time in recorded history.
Lithuana and Changeling both transformed into birds and flew. They didn't know where, but they flew. They stayed within eye shot of the tower. This meant the possibility of a large distance as birds have exceptional vision. They flew up at first. They then flew within inches of the water. Skimming the surface. They rose, dipped dived, glided, rolled, and everything else they could to fight the feeling of hopelessness. They had failed their ultimate purpose as protectors of the Life Shard. All their power and then some was brought to bear against The Master and his minions of death, but that was still not enough. The Life Shard was shattered. They sought to find even a trace of it anywhere within miles of the tower. They could see nothing. It was gone. There were no signs of life anywhere. There was nothing but rot and death. Animal and human bodies everywhere, long since dead and decayed to not but bones. The only sign of the Life Shard they could see after flying, until what would be the wee hours of the morning under normal circumstances, was at the tower. It was this sight that finally gave them true hope. With the love and loss, the sorrow and relief of survival, the tower was vibrant with the light of the shard. It was alight that was vibrant when life flourished, but now it was the last rose in a garden of death. This was all they strength a protector of the spirit would need. They felt a new fire ignite within and decided, they would never surrender, not until their final breath would they give in.
The next morning all the titans united in the common room to take stock of everything. They had spent their night doing all they could to collect themselves and their spirits. It had been a very difficult battle but the titans knew that if they had defeated Trigon, that The Master would fall as well. They would never surrender. They decided to count supplies and convene to decide what the best course of action would be. They started with supplies. They were better off than they had feared. They had about a weeks' worth of food and water. Changeling and Lithuana gave up their supplies because they had managed to find some small pockets of fish in the water and would use them for sustenance. Cyborg could go up to a month without food safely, so he gave his rations to help everyone else. This gave them hope that they could last for a while.
After they took count of supplies, they took stock of any new knowledge that may have been gained. Raven and her kids had found out quite a lot. There were old myths, legends, and hidden lore that told much about The Master. The land he had come from was an alternate dimension. In this reality the damned existed forever. It was thought that only one who had somehow had a direct spiritual attachment to the life force of their universe could ever escape that place. What Raven and the trio had hypothesized was that The Master had used some strange connection to their universe to not only stay linked to their world, but used the link to subjugate the energies of that world to his will. How he had done it, they hadn't the foggiest. Until they remember that Lithuana knew about The Master.
Lithuana and Changeling sat on the outside of the group meeting, silently listening and not inputting. That is, until all eyes turned to her. She knew the question was coming, but she dreaded having to speak it. She had gained all of her old master's powers, and most of her memories. This included what had happened to The Master. She alone knew his origins and she wished her master had done more to stop him. Lithuana moved to the center of the group and began.
"It all began with my master. She had often told me she was not the first keeper of the path, and knew not where it all truly began, but I know that The Master was her master…"