Author's Note: Unreserved apologies for the vast delay, my literary time has been devoted to a vast science fiction work, if you have brought yourself to bve patient, my sincere thanks, if not, well, its understandable.

Inexorable

Revealing the cannon concealed within his right arm, Cyborg advanced forwards into the embrace of the dust cloud. Out to his right Robin was circling into the smoke, with Beast Boy completing the pincer formation from the left. Hovering above the ever-expanding sheets of shattered debris was Starfire. At a signal from her communicator, she dived into the dust and was swiftly enfolded.

Cyborg prowled slowly along the road, swinging his cannon in wide protracted arcs from side to side, and reacting with superhuman speed to point it directly at the source of any suspicious sound.

He had advanced over fifty meters before the frantic tearing sounds of combat came to his enhanced ears.

Circuitry pinpointed the sound to a bearing to his right. He speeded up his pace, still using the muzzle of his cannon to guide his way, and activating a lamp that slid seamlessly from within its barrel.

The thin beams of light failed to penetrate the murk floating upon the air. Cyborg cursed quietly and proceeded. He was now off the road, in amongst buildings crushed by some force of incredible magnitude. Cautious of an ambush he sent three beams of blue light blasting away before him, hoping to flush out any potential ambushers. Nothing jumped from behind the ruined walls, and Cyborg continued to move forward through the cloud.

The sounds of combat were more immediate now, and encouraged him more and more to simply throw caution to the winds and charge.

He strained his ears, both biological and mechanical, to try to identify some patterns in the sound.

Suddenly, from behind him there was a noise. He spun on the heel of his right foot, dropping defensively to his left knee and firing a blast from his cannon at the source of the sound.

A crow fell from the air, its feathers fried away to reveal its repulsive burnt body. The stench of fried flesh rose from the bird in lapping waves.

Cyborg resisted the urge to kick the carcass savagely away and rose slowly to his feet, his caution restored.

Robin dodged another bolt of golden lightning hurled in Olympian style at him from the hands of the Lord Trigon. He tossed a bomb towards the daemon in counterattack and projected a piton cord in the direction of the buildings behind him which, unlike the unfortunate constructions that he had already retreated through, were largely intact.

The cord retracted into its launcher, whisking Robin away and narrowly saving him from being crushed under a blow from a fist twice the size of his entire body. Said fist smashed a meter deep crater into the road on impact. Sailing backwards, Robin breathed a sigh of silent relief.

But the respite ended quickly, as respite is often wont to, the roaring form of the daemon overlord was clarifying out of the dust.

Robin braced himself against the wall, extending his new Tamaranian staff and whirling it experimentally.

Trigon rushed forward bellowing, hurling a ball of lightning and lifting his leg to crush Robin underfoot when he dodged.

Robin burst forwards off the wall, extending his legs and sailing through the air so that only the hem of his cape was singed by the blast of inhuman power streaking towards him.

He raced along the daemons leg, hacking with the staff, and speeding himself forwards with it in the same motions. Where the metal came into contact with ethereal daemonic flesh Trigon burned.

The daemon was enraged, a golden inferno rippled across his skin, shielding him for a moment as the scorch marks left by the staff healed with unbelievable speed. Robin leapt away but seconds before the fire reached him and it sucked hungrily at his boots as he tumbled backwards through the air.

Robin's feet flipped over his head and met the ground first, skidding against the momentum of his move. He dug the point of his staff into the tarmac and vaulted to his left. He bent his knees from the impact and was running in a massive arc as soon as his feet met the ground. From behind him came the sizzling sound of the lightning striking the road along which he was now running.

A green bat, small and unassuming. It flaps its flesh wings and stretches its jaws wide, emitting a sound too high to be audible. For a moment it falls into indecision, bobbing first left, then right, then left again. Seconds pass as it makes up its mind, and it propels itself to the right with an energetic brandishing of it wings.

Beast Boy looked around with his ears, pinpointing the sounds that made up his vision with powerful accuracy. From a long way off to the right came sounds of tumultuous destruction. Collapsing walls and gutted buildings. But in front of him, towards the centre of the dust could, was where the truly worrying sounds came from. The noise of uncountable feet tramping in unison, of a horde, nay an army, came on the wind from that direction. So it was not without reluctance that he flew straight towards it.

A good distance from the marching soldiers he alighted, shifting from as if his skin was as flexible as water, into a massive creature of green scales and teeth, large, sharp, lethal teeth. He stood in a half crouching birdlike stance, hugely muscled legs bent at the knee, tiny useless arms tucked into the chest, and tail extended rigid behind. His back was horizontal, leaving his reptilian predator's head low, its nostrils slowly dilating to sniff the air.

Then suddenly he charged like the animal whose form he had assumed.

The Templar Acolyte soldiery didn't know how to respond to the crashing of this prehistoric beast into their unprepared front ranks. It came relentlessly, kicking and biting and lashing out with its meters long rigid tail.

An Acolyte in the third rank dived to one side as the creatures foot swept inexorably through three of his comrades he lifted his wand and depressed the catch sending a burst of sorcery rolling towards the monster. To his horror it shrugged of the beam as if he were spraying it with water.

The wands were a new Technomancer innovation, taking the from poles roughly a meter long and thin enough to rest comfortably in the hand, with grips and firing catches at one end. They greatly improved efficiency. Now, instead of having to tame the sorcery every time you wished to attack, you simply took from a large reserve of already controlled power.

The Acolyte ducked as the thing's tail swept over his head. The monster was shrieking in pain, one of the shots from a Wand had struck it square in the face, splashing out over its ugly muzzle and sinking into its eyes. The thing lowered its head and roared. The Acolyte could feel the air shaking itself, and the throat of the creature throbbing in time with the sound. Seeing a chance he hefted his wand and took aim, blasting a beam into the back of the animal's throat.

The howling of the beast suddenly took on a different quality instead of anger; there was pain, and a request for assistance. To the mounting dismay of the Acolyte, that assistance was barely seconds in coming.

Starfire heard the scream, homing in on it and charging bolts of energy around her fists, her eyes widened as it changed from a roar of rage to a shriek of pain.

With a cry of her own she dived with the grace of a swan into the fray.

Wait, these wretches were of the same sort as those who attacked Tamaran. So now you are hear you vile scum, screamed her mind, for that you die!

Gathering destruction around herself like a hurricane Starfire struck forth. A Princess of the House Royal is as an embodiment of the Tamaranian Gods: equally mighty, equally destructive. Waves of soldiers broke against her and were thrown sailing. Nothing penetrated the virtual wall of whirling fists and crowning energy. She seemed to have grown the ten arms of the War God.

The Acolyte dived to the ground behind a low wall and muttered a blasphemous prayer of thanks that the fireball girl had passed him by. He risked peering over the wall. Immediately his head drew back as another soldier slammed into the wall with such force that most of his bones must have been broken. Not least his neck, it was pointing in very much the wrong direction, lolling back over the wall while his body slumped dead in front of it.

The Acolyte grabbed his comrade's wand, placing it next to his own in his hand.

Again, he ventured to raise his head above the wall. He was now behind both the beast and the fireball, perfect.

He raised the cylinder of one of the wands and took careful aim, targeting the back of the fireball girl; from behind she didn't quite seem so frighteningly ferocious.

He fired.

A searing bolt of golden lightning struck the road in front of Cyborg. The surface bubbled; sucking ravenously at his feet as he pounded after the ghostlike figure of Robin ahead of him, pursued inexorably by the roaring might of the Lord Trigon.

He called out, coughing against choking dust. Robin swung around, dropping into a cautious stance ready to leap away at less than a moment's notice. He replied, but the sound was lost like a drop in the ocean that was the Lord Trigon roaring in triumph.

Cyborg's neck snapped round, the daemon lord was standing over him, waves of hatred descending golden from his eyes to smite his half mechanical from into the ground and dissolve his soul in scourging agony.

He leapt away, a little too late, the bottom half of one of his mechanical legs was fried off completely. Augmented nerves shut down completely, blanking out the pain and creating a surreal feeling of invincibility. His mouth was open in preparation for a scream of pain, which never materialised. Instead what came was a cry of rage, he hefted his cannon arm, propping it on the opposing limb, and pointing it directly into the vicious sneering face of the daemon towering over him.

The blue beam of dancing light smashed into the face of the abomination full on. The Lord Trigon staggered, actually staggered backwards.

Robin was beside him, supporting him and letting them limp away from the screams of the daemon.

It was painful, Raven had discovered, to sit on the edge of a battlefield. For her to fight, regaining consciousness was not going to be enough, she would have to regain strength as well. It was a pity then, that all the sorcery for miles was being absorbed into that screening orb of dust, which as she had deduced by now, was magically sustained.

All she could do was pace, and listen to Scott's endless stream of anecdotes regarding Azar and her early visions. Azar obviously had been refining her ideals for quite some time before Raven was introduced to them, Scott's stories and comments and ruminations turned out to be extremely enlightening, but unfortunately her mind had no room to focus, emotion clustered on all sides and she had to direct disproportionate energy into forcing them back into place.

"She spoke about daemons once you know," said Scott absently.

Raven's scything legs halted mid-pace, and her head whipped around so quickly that the two actions combined threw her momentarily of balance.

"What?" A coldly voiced demand.

"Azar talked about daemons, in fact one summer she was obsessive about them and spent her time doing nought but writing and ranting. By the end of the third month of it we'd all had quite enough of her grand theory."

Who were we? wondered a stray philosophical corner of her mentality, which she quickly rounded up and controlled.

"Tell me." Another demand.

"Well, it was very convoluted, but at the bottom of it all was a kind of dual world, surrounded by magic. Daemons come from the other one, and need some kind of link to appear in our world," he frowned and looked far away trying to remember, "at least I believe that was the essence of it."

"Raven?" This was asked hesitantly.

Then again, more urgently, "Raven!"

But again, Raven had fainted dead to the ground, as if her life was trying to cram the number of times she would ever faint into as short a time span as possible.