I want to 100% apologize for the late post! I am so sorry! School started up again this week and I've been swamped. I know this chapter isn't long enough to make up for it, but I promise that I'll be updating this Sunday! Thanks to everyone viewing and favoriting!
Let me know any critiques, questions or suggestions in the comments, as always!
She dragged her thumb over a smudged part of the mirror and sighed. It was clear and clean again, but there was no one on the other side.
"Congratulations, Raven." Malchior poured her some tea. "Your pawns have defeated my rook, it seems. Though, you my queen, are going to be far more difficult to capture." He smiled.
She felt like throwing up. "My friends. Not pawns. They're real people with real thoughts and feelings. They're not some magical creature you pull out of a deck and throw to the wolves."
He looked sarcastically confused. "They're not?"
"No!" She hissed. "How can you be so cruel? How can you be so insane?"
She had barely contacted them in time. Their stats were dropping by the second. Every blow, every shot and they were down. Close to the edge. She fretted on the plush sofa, begging the mirror to reveal her friends to her. Just to get a glimpse of them, Cyborg, Star, Robin…Beast Boy. She desperately wanted to make sure they were safe or to hear the words that they were saying. The little figures on the board moved slowly, like a blur, so she knew that they were living and talking, but she wasn't part of it. She couldn't hear them or understand their movements. She needed to be with her friends. She wished so badly that Robin were the hero again, calling all the shots.
How he lived each day being responsible for all of their lives, she'd never know.
Meanwhile he'd sat there, smirking the whole time, watching her panic over a static-y mirror conversation. She'd been trying to save their lives and he'd had another cup of tea.
"Solitary confinement can drive any mind toward the brink of insanity." His words snapped Raven back to attention. He tapped her knee that was covered by the white blanket. "I'm not alone this time, though. Maybe you can bring me back?"
"Maybe you're too far gone."
He frowned. "Why do you make things so difficult?" He raised the teacup to his lips again. "Honestly, Raven. We can never just have a nice conversation anymore."
She gaped at him in disbelief. "Do you think I'm playing with you?"
"Well you are 'playing' the game." He smirked.
"I am NOT exchanging witty banter with you. I am NOT attempting to flay you with words or kill you with looks!" She dug her nails into her palms. "I am trying to keep my friends, no, my FAMILY alive for as long as it takes before they can get here and rip you apart, and release me from this damn spell." She wished desperately for her second pair of eyes to appear, but they hadn't since Trigon was destroyed. She had never liked them, but at least they were intimidating.
Raven took her teacup and threw it as best she could into the fire. It crashed and splintered, the tea sizzling the logs. "I am not thanking you for whisking me away from reality. Not this time. I'm not your damsel, I'm not your QUEEN. I'm 'Raven'. A person you have never tried to get to know, and a person who you have never even considered to have a consciousness other than the one that could release you from your book and satisfy your magical needs." She leaned back into the couch and crossed her arms. "Stop pretending like we have some sort of grand past. If anything, you are a blip in my memories that I rarely reflect upon."
To add insult to (what she hoped was) injury, she turned her face away from his gaze and refused to respect him with eye contact.
Malchior, finally, had no words. He stood quietly from his chair and disappeared from the room. She hadn't noticed the door behind her before, but made a serious mental note. She tugged at the blanket that was confining her legs and attempted a custom-spell that she'd been rolling over and over in her mind for an hour. The blanket gave a little, and she nearly teared-up in relief. It was working. All she needed to do was get it off of her and she might have a chance. There was nothing she could do strapped to this ugly couch.
While he was gone she spent time whispering a few more incantations. She pulled and tugged and stretched her legs as far as she could. It was hard, but it was working. Suddenly, the door creaked behind her and she stopped, looking cool and unimpressed. She turned her head to see him reappear with a new teacup in his hands. He didn't seem angry or upset in any way. This disappointed her.
"Here, love." He set the rose-colored cup in her violet-tinged saucer, whose mate was still burning, and re-filled it. "Try not to break this one, it's a favorite."
When she reached down to throw this next one in the fire (in hopes of getting him to leave again), he grasped her wrist tightly; painfully. "Gently, dear." He hissed, his fangs showing in the firelight. "I know you're trying your best, but in the end you don't really want me to be angry with you."
She gulped a little. His eyes were like sharp glass. She could cut herself on him. "I don't?"
He shook his head slowly and gripped her harder, his nails biting into her skin again. She fought to keep her face straight, but it became too much and she winced, then whimpered, and finally pleaded: "S-stop!"
His eyes narrowed and he squeezed a little more before finally releasing her. "There." He finished.
Raven didn't like being taught lessons by beings she found inferior to her, but in this moment she allowed herself to shut up and just keep going. Her friends were her greatest hope right now, and she needed to do everything she could to get them to victory.
A grandfather clock, somewhere in the room, ticked the seconds by slowly. It was awkward, and frightening to know that each second with him could be her, or her Team's last, but she persevered. They were already at level 3, and she had great faith in them. They were the Teen Titans. They were an epitome of teamwork, greatness, selflessness. Heroes. Today, and for the next few 'days' to come, they would be her heroes.
…
Beast Boy was tired. They'd left the bridge behind and continued their way toward the creepy, purple castle in the distance. Without any answer from Raven in the mirror, they'd decided the best plan was the old plan. Keep going, find her, beat the crap out of her captor, then wake up and forget that any of this had ever happened.
He grumbled at the boots on his feet, missing his own ones he'd left back in the treasure chest. At this point he was half tempted to go barefoot. At least then he'd feel a little more at home. Though, he had to admit, the dragon-scale leather he was sporting did look pretty damn bad ass. He stretched his arms over his head and his shoulders popped. He gnawed upon his lower lip, thinking. We should have been there a long time ago, and who knows what we'll run into on the way there…
This whole game was already wearing thin, but based on Cyborg's calculations of distance, they still had such a long way to go.
Now that the game had officially started, Cyborg's scanners were finally measuring some progress on their part. They weren't able to continue forward before because the "magic" of this place was preventing them from beginning the game prematurely. Beast Boy had commented that he'd never been premature in his life, and then Cyborg had smacked him.
Still, just because they were finally making progress didn't mean that Beast Boy wasn't exhausted over their snail's pace. He'd taken the T-car and Robin's motorcycle for granted. They had been far more efficient with that kind of machinery. He recalled all the times that he had effortlessly bounded after them as a cheetah or flew alongside them as a hawk. Now they had to slug along with a more human stride, when all Beast Boy wanted to do was be inhuman, and tear Malchior to shreds.
Some guys just don't know when to quit. Beast Boy's nostrils flared a little and he tried not to hiss in frustration. How can he do this to her again? Talk about 'real' evil. Grappling with the situation had been easy when they were fighting off monsters and running for their lives in some less-than-cuddly enchanted forest, but now they were heading to what he assumed was the next checkpoint in the game. There was nothing here to occupy his thoughts until then. After all, no one wanted to play I-Spy with him.
"Guys, come'on. I'm bored out of my mind and I swear, if we don't do something soon-"
"Look out!" Robin shouted, ever vigilant. A spear flew past Beast Boy's head, just barely shifting a few hairs on his head. He froze for a second in shock, but jumped back to attention.
"What was that!?" He morphed quickly into a tiger and felt his stamina lessen. He remembered his stats book and felt his fur stand on end. I won't be owned by Malchior's stupid game.
He roared at the approaching army of orc-like goblins protruding from all sides of the forest. The first wave reached him and Robin, while Cyborg hurled a sonic blast behind them and went to flank the hoard. They were outnumbered three to one, but of course that didn't stop them from trying. From above, Starfire's battle cry could be heard before two goblins burst into green flame.
She threw a card from her deck, it bounced off of Robin's head and he caught it. It read '1+Up', with a description of increasing a level and stats for whatever hero uses it.
Robin looked up, confused. "Starfire, you're supposed to use this on yourself!"
"No, you use it!" She called back, flying off to set another part of the hoard on fire. She dodged arrows coming her way and starbolts flew from her eyes toward the archers.
He was confused by her gift, but his heart warmed. He couldn't think about it for long, though, and activated it quickly between swipes of his sword. Beast Boy fought ferociously beside him, and when Robin suddenly burst into white light he was a little startled. Goblins stepped back a little and covered their eyes, allowing Cyborg and Beast Boy to take a few good shots at them. Finally, Robin returned to normal, and a '1+UP' sign showed above his head for the remainder of the fight. He applied his stat boost toward his energy in the battle, and they quickly defeated the hoard after that.
When Starfire gently floated down to the ground beside them, she smiled happily at her boyfriend who sheepishly smiled back. He asked, "Why did you give me that item? That's a rare item."
She nodded but said, "I know that you will put it to the best use."
Robin blushed a little and she kissed his cheek, making him blush harder.
"Alright, alright love birds." Cyborg cut in. "We're up another level, well Robin's up two levels, but we're still only at level 4."
"Five." Robin smirked. "Halfway there."
Cyborg huffed. "Yeah, yeah good for you. Just remember, we're only halfway there."
Beast Boy saw what he was getting at and groaned. "Goodie."
"Look out!" Starfire called, pointing above their heads.
Beast Boy reacted a little late and got clipped in the head by a low-flying dragon. He tripped and skidded on the ground, but collected himself quickly.
"Hey!" He yelled up at the familiar sight. "You pathetic excuse for a reptile!" Beast Boy shifted into a T-Rex and challenged the monster with his own gargantuan roar.
The dragon touched down with a loud thud and hissed. It shifted, too. It shifted into a form that was both alien to them, and all too familiar.
"Greetings, pawns." It spoke.
Starfire wanted to gag at the sight. This man before them was broken and twisted, his skin was punctured by black scales. His teeth had ripped apart the mouth that it spoke from. His nails curled into hooks more deadly than she'd ever seen in a human.
"You are a rotting sight to look upon." She stated, calmly.
If Malchior had feathers instead of scales, they would have been ruffled. "You're no Da Vinci either, dear."
Starfire didn't understand the reference, but Robin did. "Hey!" he snapped. "What are you doing here? This isn't part of the game."
"I just came to give my…congratulations on defeating my Leviathan. I see you all need those health packs you earned, though. Not very careful, are we?"
"No." Cyborg growled. "No. We're downright dangerous." He adjusted the axe in his hand. "How about we end the game right now, and take out player 2?"
Malchior rolled his eyes. "Relax, Tank." He waved away the animosity in the air, his claws glinted in the sunlight. "I just thought you'd all like to know, that every moment you struggle with goblin hoards and river worms, your poor Raven loses time."
Beast Boy returned to his regular form. "Losing time? What do you mean?" He stalked up toward the dragon-man, but felt a barrier stop him. He halted about 6 feet from Malchior and growled.
"I've done nothing. You're the ones crawling your way over the map like pathetic slugs." He pulled out something from his pocket and tossed it to Robin. Beast Boy, rather apologetically, intercepted it mid-flight and snapped it up.
"What is this?" He challenged, not taking his eyes from the monster before him.
Malchior rolled his own 'borrowed' green eyes at the changeling. "If you looked at it you would know, fool."
Beast Boy dared for a moment to peer down at it for only a fraction of a second, snapping his eyes back up, like an animal on the hunt. "An hourglass."
"Mhm."
Robin tapped Beast Boy's shoulder. "Let me look at that." He took it from his friend gently and turned it in his hands. The sand, purple in color, was falling slowly into the open basin beneath it. He turned it upside down, and was surprised to find that the sand was still flowing into the same basin, regardless of gravity's pull upon it. In other words, it was going to fill the empty basin no matter which way you tilted it. Up, down, sideways? Time would still flow the way it wanted.
"What happens," Robin frowned. "When the sand runs out, Malchior?"
The dragon, unnerved by the use of his name by someone other than Raven, pretended to be interested in something behind Robin. "I don't know, to be quite honest. Perhaps you shouldn't allow yourselves to find out." He then pulled a small watch from his coat and scratched the face with his claws. The sharp sound made Beast Boy shy away internally. "Tick-tock, Titans." He mused, absently. In an instant he was a dragon again, taking off into the blue sky.
Beast Boy watched the black mass fade into the direction of the castle and bristled. "He's insane."
"He's not getting away with it." Robin stowed the hourglass away in his pack and shouldered it. "Let's go, team."
…
"Gah!" Raven hissed at the cut on her face. He'd hit her. She had it coming, she nearly escaped, but it still hurt like Hell.
The blanket was discarded behind her, its charms undone by about thirty of her own design. Her sweatpants hugged her waist with their little white drawstring, but she shivered in them anyway. Her crewneck was huge on her but she'd neglected to wear something warm underneath, instead opting for a tank top. She shivered, her body was developing a fever with her cold, and evolving into what she thought was the flu. She felt sick.
"Sweet, stupid Raven." He cooed quietly, his claw cutting into her cheek as he 'gently' caressed it. "My beautiful Queen has dismantled my beautiful charms." He glanced behind her at the discarded cloth, both irritated and impressed.
"I did my best." She whimpered in front of him. Her skin was sore and prickling, the way you feel when your whole body aches. This was the worst illness she'd thought she'd ever experienced. It made sense when she was severely dehydrated, hadn't eaten anything for a while. Her mind may be playing tricks on her in this fantasy world, but her body on the cold tower floor didn't lie.
He felt her shiver beneath his palms and he smiled. "I know what would warm you up." He leaned in close to her.
"Forget it." She snapped, stepping back quickly. "I told you not to come near me again, or I swear…" She felt dizzy from the slap, ache-y from her sickness and her knees started to buckle. She hated that he snapped her up so quickly, bridal style he carried her back to the couch where he promptly shackled her ankles to the couch.
"How medieval." He tsked at her new situation. "You are supposed to be a queen, my dear. Not some lowly, broken doll upon red plush." His claws gently ran through her short hair. He could feel the goosebumps on her skin, and the heat she was giving off from a fever. "It had never been my intention to harm you, darling. Though now, I fear, you might not make it to the final round. You won't die from this flu, of course. Provided that you're crumpled body can get some water in it before the fever burns you out."
"How long are we going to be here again?"
He actually laughed out loud, bellowing almost. "Oh, with the pace your great 'army' is moving at? I'd say an eternity."