Author's note: I've decided to celebrate this chapter in a military waySo, Lennox RH, Evilsangle, I salute you. (It's a British salute, being, as I am, British.) Lennox RH, I'm sorry to disappoint you but the violence in this chapter isn't my best, of the combat I have written so far I'd say the best takes place in orbit above Tamaran.
Snow Bites
The Grandmaster watched as slaves filed into a vast chamber below him. The glass between the two poles of power, almighty and helpless, was slightly frosted, impeding vision. That annoyed the Grandmaster.
"The procedure will begin in a few minutes," said a blank faced Technomancer standing at a console on his left.
The Grandmaster smiled eagerly, "Good."
The Technomancer wanted to scream. He wanted to strangle the Grandmaster, to humiliate him, to show him the pain and despair he had inflicted on all of the people the Temple ruled.
His superior signalled to him that the procedure was ready. If anything infuriated him more than the bloody grandmaster and his crowd of daemon worshipping bastard henchmen it was the technomancers above him.
Ever since he had been transferred to the sacrificial mechanics division he had been given orders by cruel and vicious men who revelled in the suffering and pain that they caused, that sentenced their former countrymen to death in the most hideous ways without qualm, hesitation or a moment of second thought. He hated them. Hated them with a hot burning hatred that he could never quench. They made the brainwashed Templars seem angelic.
The man who had gestured to him to begin the incensing was behind him, "Idiot! Why are you staring into space like some meaningless slave! The procedure is ready to begin, get moving before I throw you in the room with them!"
The Technomancer turned rage on his face, "No sir."
"What?" asked the man leaning over his shoulder. He didn't look enraged, he didn't even look angry, just surprised.
"I said no sir." Replied the Technomancer with an acid smile.
"That insubordination would earn you an incensing, but seeing as I'm feeling generous I'll let you get away with a weeks fasting and a months half rations if you begin the process immediately," hissed the superior whose uniform showed him to be a Technomancer Master.
"To hell with you sir," answered the Technomancer, feeling pleased with the shocked look on his superiors face and with his own courage. He knew courage would be short-lived, as short lived as he was going to be.
"Insubordinate wretch!" shouted the Technomancer Master drawing himself up to his full height.
Hatred and anger, pain and fury fuelled the Technomancers blow. His fist landed in the stomach of the man towering in front of him. The Technomancer Master fell doubled up gasping in pain. He smashed his hand home again, knuckle crunching against his opponents nose. The blood began to flow.
He watched with a sneer as his enemy fell backwards. He snarled, hatred robbing him of everything save brutality, he raised his foot and brought it slamming down, again and again.
Firm arms grabbed him from behind and a cold voice said a few words that pinned his arms to his sides and his legs together.
He was dragged down a flight of stairs onto the floor with the execution chamber. The door opened and the two guards carrying him hurled him forwards.
Instead of falling onto a cold stone floor he was caught by a female slave who was roaring in defiance and charging as part of a great mass towards the Temple guards.
The Grandmaster turned away from the doorway and the bloody wreck of the Technomancer Master and looked back through the window of the execution chamber.
The slaves were not standing in subdued rows. That was wrong, they were swearing up at the window, and surging towards the door. He was shocked to see the door was open.
He wheeled to see the door into his control room burst open.
A slave charged in carrying one of the double-headed spear swords, short staffs with great blades on each end, used by the guards. She charged straight for him swing the top blade of her weapon down. The metal clanged off blade of the staff he had snatched from a guard on his right.
The slave girl brought her blade down again and again as the rabble poured into the room, forcing the Grandmaster, his guards and the technomancers who stayed on his side back against the wall.
The grandmaster shouted an order and his guards closed ranks around him, backing against the wall and holding their pikes out in front of them in a kind of defensive wall.
Losing the initial momentum of their victory and the certainty that came with it the attack on them faltered. A quick thinking technomancer had sealed all the doors, trapping most of the slaves in the Execution Chamber, and sealing the rest of them off.
The guards were still trapped and outnumbered thirty-to-one.
The Grandmaster signalled to his defenders to keep protecting him and withdrew into the middle of the defensive circle.
He chanted for several minutes, then jumped up in victory and looked into the execution chamber.
Great three metre high forms were stomping among the petrified slaves, smashing down great broadswords and effortlessly crushing skulls. Within mere minutes all the slaves in the hall were dead, but the rebels in the control room renewed their attack.
The Grandmaster punched a button on the window side console. The Execution chamber began to fill with incense. He tapped another button and the doors unsealed, then he teleported from the control room, leaving everyone in it and the corridor to die a slow and excruciating death.
The Emissary smirked, "Really daughter of Trigon, I expected more than this."
"Who are you?" asked the girl weakly, obviously trying to move her throat as little as possible.
"Hah!" sneered the Emissary.
She dimly heard the leader of this pathetic little band calling, "Raven?"
"So daughter of Trigon, your name is Raven."
The girl she had caught said nothing.
"Now we must leave, or I might have to face the inconvenience of fighting your friends," said the Emissary with a smirk. She muttered an incantation and felt the tingle of teleportation.
The two of them appeared in a snow-covered field.
The Emissary looked out, the setting sun at her back. Only a few metres behind her was a small wood. In front of her the fields rolled away, all crisp with the late November snow. Here and there, mainly on her left, she could see little pockets of trees. The ground sloped away slightly in front of her so that by the time it got to the horizon stained silver by the tendrils of city suburbs it was substantially lower. Grey clouds hung heavy in the sky, filling the seen with a brooding air enhanced by the streaks of red caused by the sun dipping slowly below the horizon.
An artist would have called the view from the shallow hill bleakly beautiful, to Raven it seemed it was just bleak, and to the Emissary it was prime territory for Templar "conversion" the process of harvesting all the soul bearing life and turning the rest of the terrain into a vast engine to support the arcane practices of the Temple.
She heard Raven whom she had dumped in the freezing snow struggling to her feet. She turned, "So daughter of Trigon, what will I do with you?"
"You will surrender to me," said Raven through gritted teeth.
Really, these people were laughable, "Come then, show me why, attack."
"My pleasure," Raven replied thrusting her hand forwards to throw a ball of Darkfire that wasn't there. Raven stared at her hand as if it had betrayed her.
"You'll have to do better than that!" the Emissary cackled, she might have some fun with this girl's allies before enslaving them. Raven stared blankly at her captor; her resolve seemed to have evaporated. The Emissary felt called upon to explain. "This field has been prepared for us, you will not be able to your abilities on anything within three miles, and you won't be moving further than three metres."
She waved a contemptuous hand at Raven who floated before her to the wood; the foremost tree had a heavy metal chain attached to it. The Emissary clamped it to Ravens ankle.
"Just in case your friends manage to escape me I'll need any location devices you're wearing."
Raven stood mutely in front of her.
"Well if you won't give them to me I'll must take every thing on you except the cloak," said the Emissary. She proceeded to do so.
"Don't worry daughter of Trigon, I won't let you die of cold, we're not finished with you yet."
She teleported away from the slightly dazed girl wrapped in the long blue cloak and into the middle of a busy street.
Cars swerved to avoid the figure, screeching onto the pavements and crashing against each other to the chorus of laughter from the Emissary. More came speeding from behind them, too fast to turn or stop. Soon the Emissary stood in the centre of a small circle surrounded by a sea of devastation.
Several fires burned in the wreckage as the Emissary cackled with glee, looking at the destruction her mere appearance had caused.
She reached out into the minds of Robin, Starfire, Beast Boy and Cyborg, subconsciously telling them of the damage.
Within five minutes the Titans arrived to see a dark robed figure surrounded by wrecked cars strewn with the either unconscious or dead forms of police officers.
The Emissary's pale face stared up at the figures circling her with every appearance of satisfaction.
She heard Robin's voice float down to her, "Surrender!"
Her harsh and mocking laugh was all the answer he needed.
He barked his signature line as the Emissary launched herself into the air narrowly dodging a Starbolt and a blast from Cyborg's sonic cannon.
She blasted into the air as her adversaries dived to Earth. With evil grace she rained down golden energy onto her foes and lazily dodged whenever the alien and the half machine on the ground returned fire.
An unexpected Starbolt hit her suddenly in the stomach. She lost her concentration and not being a natural sorceress but one created by a magical culture she tumbled from the sky.
The alien swooped across and caught her, setting her upon the ground. The Emissary's eyes flickered open and the alien bent over looking concerned. The Emissary lifted a hand and sent out a blast of blinding light that left the alien clutching at her deep green eyes.
The Emissary was airborne again and she fought on.
Soon she realised that if the fight went on for too long she would make a fatal error. She quickly decided upon a way of ending the battle.
She swept down towards the leader, grabbing the hem of his cape and hoisting him high in the air.
She turned to see the alien following her into the sky. She stopped rising and turned to see the creature standing in the air, hands glowing green, eyes blazing with an identical shade. "You will put him down," the things voice was quiet and determined.
"Why of course," smiled the Emissary, dropping her quarry from above the height of an office block, she watched the alien shrieked and dived towards him, as he fumbled with his belt and swung to safety. She was so absorbed that she allowed herself to be grabbed from behind by the massive talons of a great green eagle. She shrieked in protest and couldn't focus to build up the psychic energy to throw of the creature and was hit squarely by a sonic blast. She fell instantly unconscious.
Raven shivered, it was late afternoon on a November night and she was getting very cold. She hoped fervently that the when the woman had said that she wouldn't let her die she had been sincere.
In Azarath such crude matters as survival were not considered worth teaching. It was obviously more important to be able to play music and write in calligraphy and compose poetry and fence with three different types of sword. For the first time she saw Azar's great weakness, her love of nobility and peace had created a utopia. A utopia where mental strength and appreciation of art and beauty was increased tenfold, but where physical toughness all activities associated with it was neglected.
Raven had natural strength of will and a physical condition improved by crime fighting, but she'd never been taught to apply it to situations like the one she found herself in.
She despaired of finding a solution without her the use of her power, and subconsciously her thoughts were guided towards any way she could use them.
Her captor had said she couldn't use them within a three-mile radius. She couldn't use them then, simple as that. Despite this her irrational drive to survive continued to search for some loophole that would save her life.
She couldn't use her powers within three miles. Could she get three miles away? No. She was attached to a massive tree with a strong new chain attached firmly round her ankle.
She couldn't use her powers within three miles. Was there something else she could use? No. The woman who had brought her here had taken everything, absolutely everything, from her except her cloak so there was nothing she could use.
She couldn't use her powers within three miles. What about outside three miles? Could she, for example telepathically watch events outside the three-mile open prison? She let her mind wonder over the city, and it worked. But what she saw was not pretty.
Over one of the busy streets near the centre of the city was a great plume of smoke, she flew over to it and saw the battle between her friends and her new enemy unfold. She watched with alternating pride and horror until the battle ended.
When it ended she followed as the Titans trooped back to the warehouse with the smoky mark of Trigon hovering over it, their enemy carted off in a prison van. She realised that her friends had no idea where she was. It was quite shocking that this hadn't occurred to her before, she was meant to be intelligent.
Perhaps here was a way to lead them to her. She couldn't whisper into their subconscious, it was against her basic inhibitions. But there was another way. It was rank with the scent of daemonic possession, but her life was at stake, it was the only choice.
Beast Boy heard a voice; it seemed to already inside his brain and didn't need to come through his ears. The words were unclear but it sounded like, "Raven?"
"Yes Beast Boy, it's me, let me in."
Beast Boy was quite understandably confused by disembodied voices asking to be let in to nowhere. "In where?"
"Into your head," said the voice whose tone sounded very much like Raven as it said this.
"OK" said Beast Boy slowly and unconvinced.
Raven entered his mind. To her wandering consciousness it was like finally lying down after walking for days. There was plenty of clutter in Beast Boys mind, very little of it locked away, most of it floating around near the surface. Raven looked around for a few more seconds, she was wrong, there was plenty locked away, but lots open for anyone to see as well.
Partly out of respect for her friend partly out of fear of what she might find out Raven refrained from looking at any of the emotions and memories in Beast Boys head.
She found the experience of inhabiting a new mind distinctly uncomfortable. She spoke to Beast Boy, "My body is lying in a snowy field somewhere west of the city, about six miles away. I need you to help me very soon or I might die." It was a plain statement, anyone else would have sounded like they were pleading, but not Raven. She said that she needed you and let you make your decision.
"OK," said Beast Boy, "I'll get the others."
Raven felt a surge of pride and happiness in the abilities and trust of her friend.
"Thanks," she said, the word crammed full of pent up emotion.
Beast Boy grinned broadly and went to find Robin, Starfire and Cyborg.
Raven watched from the back of Beast Boy's mind as the titans reacted to the news. When Beast Boy told them what she had said, Starfire gasped to hear that Raven was in fatal danger, Cyborg wordlessly started up the T-car parked outside the warehouse and Robin patted Beast Boy on the back consolingly.
The four of them set off on the outbound road towards where Raven lay, gradually moving closer to the boundary of the zone where Raven would be able to guide them no more.
Beast Boy was intrigued by the sensation of having Raven guiding his actions from the back of his mind. She seemed so much more open when she was there, perhaps it was just the tone of her voice, but there was less guarded caution, less awkwardness.
Raven had never been in anyone's mind before; it would only have been useful in a fight, and to destroy someone's mind from within seemed to her to the most evil act possible.
Raven had Beast Boy stop the T-car just outside the three-mile radius of psychic blankness. She told the Titans where she was as best she could and watched psychically for a few seconds as they walked through the boundary that she couldn't pass.
Raven returned her mind to her body. Comfortable in the knowledge that her friends would find her, she fell unconscious.
