Took me three weeks by my count, but here is chapter 6 of my Ravencentric pseudo epic. Anyone ever hear of the quote, "If a gun is introduced in act I, it should go of by the end of the play."? Well I had a few guns lying around, and I set them all off at once this chapter as befits the finale. This is it, the last chapter and then I'm done. Anyway, disclaimer time: I don't own Teen Titans in any way shape or form. That honor belongs to someone at Cartoon Network and I have no intent of challenging that person! I don't seek a profit from this and hope this doesn't get me sued! On with the show!
To Know the Name of your Enemy
By Wordbearer
Raven entered the main room of Titans Tower with the pink light of early morning staining everything. She silently walked over to the offset kitchen, pausing as her foot sank into a patch of damp carpet. Annoyance flickered briefly in one eye before her normal deadpan look reasserted itself and she carefully made her way through the scattered party debris. The others had decided to hold a celebration in honor of Terra's ascension to Titan status, not a prospect that thrilled the dark mystic. It had been loud and long, Terra fitting almost perfectly into the group dynamic as Raven reverted to her role of token participant. She had snatched a few slices of pizza, thwarted Beastboy's efforts to drag her into the celebration, and then faded into the background prior to leaving for her room unnoticed.
It did not surprise Raven in the least that the mess was still here. She set about clearing the cluttered kitchen counter with a sigh, having no intent of drinking her tea at such a noisome surface. Yellow had begun to bleed into the sky when Terra entered.
She was clad in a pair of green pajamas as she blinked sleepily at Raven from the doorway, "You're up and dressed this early in the morning? I knew that you got up before me, but this is ridicuolous." Raven said nothing. Terra squinted at a blinking digital clock.
"It's 6:30 in the morning. What are you doing at the sink?"
The cloaked half-daemon put the last dish in the dishwasher and finally answered, "Making this place look like a pack of animals doesn't live here."
"Oh," Terra gave the cluttered room a glance and continued softly.
"Guess we did leave the place a mess. Party broke up late and we stumbled into bed half blind."
The blond narrowed her eyes in reflection and asked, "Is something bothering you Raven?"
The response was curt and severe, cold with Raven's monotonic inflection, "Of course not, you saved the day and got a spot on the team. What is there to be unhappy about?"
Terra blinked but continued, "I don't know, you seemed subdued last night." Raven raised an eyebrow skeptically, prompting Terra to hurry on.
"I mean, even for you. You were so quiet that you disappeared and I didn't notice until Beastboy pointed it out." Raven set her water boiling, staring into the wall.
At last the dark mystic spoke, "I was tired last night, that whole ordeal took a lot out of me and I was in no mood to be social. After I left I spent the rest of the evening meditating. The thin blond scratched her head, hesitating to ask her next question, but persisted. Raven turned toward to the stove as her water boiled and Terra quietly asked.
"Could I ask you one more question?"
"Yes?"
"Yesterday while I was repairing your charka thing I heard a voice in my head, called itself Trigon. I hope I was hallucinating because I don't want anything that says 'flay the soul from your blank' to be real…" Raven's eyes widened in shock and a light bulb broke as some of her control slipped at hearing these words flow from Terra's mouth. The blond knew that she had hit some major nerve. However, by the time the dark mystic had turned around, her grey features were composed again. Terra waited expectantly for an answer. Raven was gathering here thoughts when an arrogant sounding, male voice echoed in her head.
"I hope that I haven't caught you at a bad time, Dark child. We need to… talk at this time."
The half daemon looked around the room in confusion for the source of voice. Terra was puzzled by Raven's behavior and questioned, "Now what is it?" The other didn't have a chance to reply as light flooded the room. A small pop of displaced air followed as it rushed to fill the void left by a vanished figure. Terra blinked and looked around for Raven in vain.
In an effort to fill the newly silent chamber, she said to herself, "That's one way to avoid a conversation." Her eyes locked on a scorched patch of tile in the kitchen.
"I don't think that she meant to leave though…" The thin blond hurried towards the door to get the others.
Raven reappeared sprawled on the ground, next to a half deconstructed shelter at the edge of the island. She got to her feet and was looking around her. She sensed the visitor before she saw him, her empathic senses picking up on his potent aura even suppressed as she normally kept them.
He spoke from behind her, "Ah, Raven. It is such a pleasure to speak with you. You are held in such high regard by my patron Trigon." Raven narrowed her eyes over her shoulder at the red skinned speaker whose translucent braincase glimmered faintly in the dawn light.
The dark mystic's response was low and calm, "You must be Psimon." Psimon positively stank of daemonic power, his aura thick with extra dimensional energy.
He gave a sardonic bow, although his lightless eyes were deadly serious as he spoke, "Correct. Do you also know what I said to your friends prior to sending them your way yesterday?"
Raven's eyes were cold as she turned around and faced the black robed figure. He laughed at her lack of response, "Your silence tells me that you do. I meant what I said. I have been given great power that I may use as I will. The only precondition regarding its use is that I kill you with it."
Raven's response was curt, "Then why don't you do so. You're going to bore me to death at this rate." Psimon's face twisted in anger, his ego tweaked by the flippant answer. He slipped his arms out of his black robe, staring imperiously at the petite girl before him who hid her face in shadow by raising her hood. Psimon's voice was almost a growl as he spoke.
"That will be the last thing you say in this world, darkling. Say 'thank you' to your father on my behalf when you see him on the other side." He gestured and a veritable cloud of objects lifted into the air above him, shrouding him in their collective shadow. Raven's eyes widened briefly in alarm at the sheer mass of objects levitated, but managed to calm herself as he gestured again. The objects blurred as they flew towards her, seemingly hungry for the half daemon's blood. A black barrier rose seconds before impact would have occurred, ringing deflections sending projectiles on wildly variant vectors. The barrier flowed around to the left as the barrage continued. Raven formed a dome as objects darted toward her from all sides at supersonic speed. One hit would be enough to kill or seriously injure her. A predatory smile gleamed on Psimon's crimson face as Raven's eyes blazed white in response to the strain.
Psimon kicked it up a notch and Raven's black dome was rendered nearly invisible as the barrage thickened. Dust devils whirled as airborne streams of dirt impacted the half daemon's barrier. Her eyes twitched in strain and a mound began to engulf her shield in earth. Black sparks arched from the barrier as the last of it was encased. The mound rose and rose until it was twice the height and width Raven's ebony shield had been. Psimon smiled complacently and relaxed when the mound slumped inward, telegraphing the collapse of Raven's bubble-like shield under tons of earth.
A thunderous clamor of falling debris hid his whispered comment, "It is over. With the death of Raven, I am free to…" He faltered as a cloaked figure rose from a glistening pool atop the mound.
Raven was battered and dust covered, her blue cloak streaked with dirt and blood from a dozen small cuts. Her eyes flared and a rock caught the black clad figure on chin, knocking him to the ground. She didn't get another chance to act as Psimon telepathically filled her head with noise. Her nose bled as a cacophonous wailing made it impossible to think. Raven was writhing on the ground in pain. Psimon smiled thinly at the spectacle and directed a telepathic message at the tormented Titan.
"Pitiful. The way Trigon spoke of you, I was under the impression that this would be a challenge. But you're just another defenseless prey without a shining glass bauble to protect you. What happened? You were such a good little killer at the tender age of six…"
Raven struggled to think through the chaos in her head, managing to whisper, "Stop it."
"Why?" Because the truth hurts? Because you're less than human, merely a daemon?" Raven held herself up with trembling arms and looked at the smug figure with eyes that sporadically flashed white.
Psimon continued, "But you aren't a full daemon are you? Just another crossbreed born of rape." Raven's eyes flared red just before she slumped to the ground, her strength exhausted.
Psimon continued mockingly, "Like all crossbreeds, you fail. Too afraid of the world, your potential, your heritage to do anyone any good. In fact, I'll kill you right now and put you out of your misery." He turned away from Raven in a display of arrogant unconcern gesturing at a stone as it rose into the air at his silent command. He almost missed the soft rustle of cloth as Raven rose to her feet and the subsequent snap of unnatural growth.
The dark mystic towered over him, her petite body enclosed and suspended by the vast flowing length of her now living cloak. Ebony tendrils clutched the ground and left trails of frost in the morning air. Four eyes blazed red in the shadows of her hood and her mouth opened in a feral snarl. Psimon was unafraid, almost ecstatic, as she closed on him.
His eyes locked on Raven's form as he whispered, "This is what Trigon meant…" he was unresisting as black tendrils dragged him into the darkness that lurked under the cloak, darkness with a hundred thousand icy teeth. A shredding noise began to emanate from the confines of the living cloth. Raven glanced around the island with unhuman disinterest just before her cloak bulged alarmingly in response to Psimon's determined resistance. All four eyes opened wide in pain and Raven clutched the ground fiercely. A strange scene ensued, raven in all her terrible daemonic glory concentrating inward as her cloak bulged and stretched alarmingly. With each bulge, the cloth ripped, ebony spurts of ichor spurting out in miniature streams that vaporized even as the morning light hit them. A terrible buzzing arose in the depths of her cloak as great rifts tore through the central portion of the living fabric that bore her up. The cloth ripped with a snap and the dark mystic was thrown onto the ground ten feet away, hard. Her quartet of eyes bled light form the corners as she held them shut in reaction to the sheer pain of the experience. Raven tried to wrap herself in the ragged remnants of the writhing fabric that bled even more as she curled into the fetal position.
Psimon stood slightly crouched, his black robe shredded and hanging off one shoulder. He was cut all over as if he had dived into a pool of shaving razors and a crack ran through his brain case. The blue fabric of Raven's sundered cloak lay all around him like a filthy pool and its fringe of tendrils boiled away like mist as he walked over the weakly thrashing fabric towards the fallen mystic. A ring of flying rock shards orbited around him at lethal speed like a buzzsaw.
Frost encrusting his red skin, Psimon panted in the half-daemon's general direction, "Most… impressive… dark… child. That attack would have killed one who hasn't floated in the Abyss naked and survived. I won't make that mistake again. You die now." Psimon focused and the deadly projectiles spining around him stilled, hovering in midair prior to being sent after their target. Psimon was about to act when some sixth sense made him look behind him.
A starbolt blasted Psimon from his feet from behind. His head hit the ground as Robin's voice cried out, "There's no way we're going to let you hurt her, you monster. Raven is a Titan and that means you're going down. Titans go!" Starfire, Robin, Beastboy, and Terra were airborne, closing with the red-skinned villain from the general direction of Titans Tower. Psimon tilted his head and clicked his tongue in amusement at this latest wave of reinforcements. Raven lay ignored as the fight flared up, huddling in her cloak on the ground and staring at nothing. Psimon deflected a second wave of starbolts with a gesture and sent the glowing spheres slamming explosively into Terra's stony mount. The slab of rock shattered, Terra sent sprawling to the ground. Robin acrobatically leapt from the exploding rock and directed an overhead kick at Psimon, only to be struck by an invisible shockwave and hurled into the air. Beastboy soaring in bird form was hit by Robin and fortunately, deshifted just before they both hit the ground, knocked cold. Starfire angrily hurled herself at the glass skulled figure only to drop to the ground in agony as her senses' were telepathically twisted by her target. Too exhausted to revert to her human form, Raven's eyes opened in sudden realization as she was hit by an epiphany. Terra grunted as she hurled a large rock at the seemingly invinsible foe. Smiling coldly, Psimon grabbed the airborne rock with his powers, wrenching it out of Terra's control seconds before it would have hit his back. He split the rock in two, sending each piece at a standing female Titan. Starfire was defenselessly clutching her skull in pain and the hit drove the air from her lungs. Terra tried to redirect the projectile, but Psimon gave it a boost and the rock clipped her in the head. The blond lithokinetic lay still, bleeding from the scalp, last of the Titan's to fall.
Ignored and slowly regaining strength, Raven murmured, "I've been fighting the wrong enemy. Psimon isn't a threat, he's a tool, a pawn, a weapon running on burrowed power. With any luck, the power source will be my father…"
Psimon chuckled as he walked toward her, "The Teen Titans ground beneath my heel as if they didn't exist. Now this is power. Now to fulfill my bargain…" He gestured with his left hand and held his right palm level. A shard of glass darted over his palm and began to spin like a drill in the air, promising death. He gestured again and Raven was dragged aloft, her ragged cloak partially covering her flesh as it oozed darkness.
"You die, girl. Know that your death is the beginning of my deification." The petite half-daemon turned her face to look directly at her tormenter with her hood askew. Psimon paused, genuinely disturbed by the expression he saw. Raven stared at him with four flame red eyes, their depths not alive with mindless rage, but penetrating human intelligence. She smiled slightly, the normally friendly gesture ruined by her razor sharp teeth.
Psimon demanded, "What's so amusing?"
She replied evenly, "You're nothing, Psimon and I will defeat you without so much as laying a finger on your sorry excuse for a human body." He quirked an eyebrow in confusion, but before he could do anything Raven began to speak. It was in a low whispering tone and small insects dropped dead as a stream of sibilant syllables flowed from her mouth in an endless word that was as old as God itself. Psimon reacted immediately, flumes of dark red mist exploding from his body in a colorful display of extradimensional physics. He dropped to his knees as energy poured from every pore in his body and into a stream that flowed toward the reciting figure of Raven. She didn't falter in her speech for to say only part of a True Name is to doom your soul to an eternity of slavery. The red mist flowed into her body and turned black as her aura absorbed the rich daemonic energy that pulsed to a rhythm so like her own. She could have been speaking for an instant or an eternity as soul rending pain cut through her psyche at the vile recitation. On some level Raven knew that her daemonic heritage was the only thing that kept her from dropping dead as she spoke and was grateful to Trigon for that small blessing in the face of her many curses. Psimon crumbled to the ground, his eyes now a milky white as the last of Trigon's gifted power was rent from him, for the power was imbued with the daemon lord's essence and flowed in mindless loyalty toward the reciter of his True Name as would Trigon himself if he were present. The last of her father's name trickled past her bleeding lips and Raven opened her eyes to find herself lost in a thick black cloud of energy. The power rippled at the edge of control and lashed out at random. The island shook. Objects took to the air, glistening black before slamming back to the ground. She narrowed her eyes in concentration, consciously reverting to human form as she channeled the power back into the Abyss via the gate in her soul. The effort was tremendous and in conjunction with the ravages of reciting Trigon's True Name, she slumped to the ground. Breathing heavy and fast, she barely held onto the edge of consciousness.
She looked blearily out of the corner of her eye at Robin as he cautiously took Psimon's pulse. "…Seems to still be alive…"
Starfire's concerned voice sounded light years away as she spoke, "How is Raven?"
Someone lifted her numb arm and said, "She's alive, but doesn't look so good."
Robin's insistent command echoed weirdly in her ears, "Get her to the infirmary! Starfire and Beastboy, watch Psimon in case… Terra you have transport duties." Raven's dazed hearing didn't pick up the blonde's reply. The ground rocked beneath Raven and Raven vaguely saw a golden glow engulf the dirt in front of her face. A shadow dimmed the light as someone hopped on the slightly bouncing stone sled. The last thing the dark mystic heard before unconsciousness claimed her was Terra's insistent request.
"Whatever you do, don't die on me Raven. I won't pretend to understand what just happened and you can be darn scary at times, but just don't die on me…" The darkness engulfed Raven's sight.
Raven opened her eyes to see infinite white light in all directions. Her confusion was replaced with fear as she realized that she couldn't feel her body at all. Or anything else for that matter. Her composure was on the edge of shattering when a familiar voice spoke,
"Hey, Raven. Long time no see." The deep laugh that followed filled her with both dread and pleasure.
She asked hesitantly, "Cyborg? Is that you?"
Humor bled thickly from the reply, "You could say so. Cyborg isn't the name I would use right now, but it will do."
Anger colored her voice, "Is this a dream? If it is, please let me off at the next stop."
"Still testy, Raven… No, this isn't a dream. I'll just say that your little spat with Psimon knocked you out of the ballpark…" Raven reflected on the number of meanings this term could have and settled on the most dire to get it out of the way.
Curtly yet with traces of fear in her voice, "Am I dead?"
Cyborg's voice was vastly more serious now, "No. You aren't. But it was close and I decided to snag your spirit for a little heart to heart before sending you back to the land of the living since I am the one in the white robe and playing the harp."
At this mention, guilt rose in her thoughts, Cyborg cutting in with fierce intensity, "Oh no! No pity parties for you. Yes, I'm dead. No, it's not your fault. I expect you get over that nonsense pronto!"
"What right to do have to tell me to…" Raven trickled off as she realized she was apparently arguing with her dead teammate.
Cyborg sounded self-righteous as he spoke, "Every right. You internalize everything that happens to you, with good reason I now know, but if you don't loosen up sometime… Well, you just blow up. What does that do for your track record if you destroy the tower because someone used up the last of your tea to flavor his tofu recipe?" Raven would have blinked if she had had eyelids or eyes at the time.
Cyborg sounded more jocular as he added, "That's a heads-up by the way. He'll try it in a few days. Insider info, trust me…"
Serious again, "Well, you have to go back now or your visit is going to become permenant. Just give Terra a chance, okay? She's not that bad, a tad insecure, but you two can help one another." Cyborg's voice began to fade as the white glow began to dim.
Raven called out, "Wait! Cyborg! Are you mad at me for causing your death?"
Cyborg jeered kindly, "Heh. What did I tell you about it not being your fault? Besides, death gives you a whole new perspective on things, trust me. BB is going to kill when he sees the video game systems they have up here…" With that, the light blinked out.
Raven snapped awake with a small cry in the darkened infirmary and a dozen small objects scattered across the room were engulfed in black before her reserve took its customary place of primacy. She worked her mouth and realized that it was numbed and wrapped in bandages. A loud wheezing snore caught her attention and she looked over at Terra who was sleeping in a chair against the infirmary wall. Raven started to cringe as she spotted the drool that was working its way down the blonde's chin, but halted herself. Dream or no dream, she felt better after that chat with Cyborg, or whatever it was that had his voice, than she had in a long time.
Speaking in a soft wondering tone, Raven said, "Maybe I should give Terra an opening? What could it hurt?" Terra released a loud, high pitched snore at that moment that made Raven want to hurl a pillow at her such was its piercing, repulsiveness.
"Or maybe not. I suppose that I can sleep on it." The half-daemon settled back on her pillow and simply enjoyed the darkness, awaiting Terra's awakening with quiet contentment. She eventually accepted the Terra's erratic snores for what they were; a sign that she was not alone in the shadows.
So you made it down here. Honor and glory onto you, oh brave reader(s)! What did you think? Good? Bad? Don't care? Leave a reveiw and tell me what you think of this chapter or the story as whole. I am grateful for your time and thank you all for your kind reviews.
