Beast Boy almost groaned out loud at the tedium of yet another cheery forest path ahead of him.
He thought he would go insane if he had to look at another balsam or spruce tree, and when a squirrel ran by his path he morphed into a green version of it and asked it a few questions just to break up the boredom.
Apparently, the squirrels in this fantasy world had their own backstories, too.
Sir Cashew Dustington III was on his way to a shelter in the Blackwood district of the forest. As a "Sir of the Trees" it was his duty to warn any and all travelers on the road when danger was coming. There was going to be a dark storm to the north, and he warned Beast Boy not to follow the path ahead of him.
Beast Boy thanked the weary traveler and assured him he'd be fine, that he could become any beast of the forest and that he was one of the strongest superheroes ever known.
The squirrel was skeptical and, flicking his tail to show discomfort, left the green rodent behind him in search of his wife and grandchildren.
Beast Boy waited patiently for the squirrel to disappear into the trees before returning to his normal state.
"Helpful."
He didn't know what kind of dark storm the squirrel had been talking about; perhaps just a thunderstorm within the game. The idea that the storm could be something far more sinister did cross his mind, but there was nothing he could do about that.
"Well," he said aloud, trudging up the forest path, "there is no way that I'm turning back."
Raven was at the end of this path: cold, sick and alone.
No, not alone.
Malchior was lying in wait, haunting her from the shadows; a dark presence. It made him bristle with distaste.
"Stupid, green eyed, dragon-faced jerk."
Beast Boy remembered how Malchior had looked when he appeared before them in the beginning of the game. He thought about the dragon's human form, his neon green eyes, his jet black and plum hair, and the scales and claws that sharpened his otherwise soft human skin. Beast Boy wasn't like that.
His own green eyes were far more natural, even if his skin and hair colors were not, and even though Beast Boy had a slight sharpness to his incisors that normal humans did not, he still was far less threatening than Malchior had been.
An animal, but not a beast.
Beast Boy never cared much about his appearance until recently. He was nineteen, and that meant he'd grown a lot in the past several years. He'd shot up a few inches, gained a bit more muscle and his voice didn't crack anymore. It was a strange experience for him, he thought, to think that people now saw him so differently. Especially girls.
The problem with that, he thought as he hopped a fallen log, was that the only girls who saw him on a daily basis were Star and Raven.
Sometimes Bumblebee and other female Titans interacted with him, but he rarely saw any women other than his two teammates.
How do you judge yourself, you know, in an attractive way, based on that brand of closeness?
They were all practically family. It was an awkward subject to the say the least.
He'd asked Cyborg once about the girls and how they might see him now, now that he looked so different, but it only resulted in Cyborg tormenting him for the question. The jokes that followed were unintentionally harsh and purposefully consistent, and usually ended in Beast Boy blushing and choking on his almond milk. At least a week went by before Cyborg's jokes ended.
He didn't ask anyone how he looked after that.
Beast Boy now jogged steadily along the path, hoping to get to his destination quickly. He was blushing now, thinking about those couple of awkward years between fourteen and nineteen. He shuddered to think that that had ever even been that age: dorky, naive; a puppy dog in love with Terra. Now he was a grown Titan, volunteering to take the most difficult route north toward the literal boss battle.
To prove to himself that he could.
To knock Malchior's teeth in.
To save Raven.
He groaned aloud and kicked up some dirt before him. "Stop that," he scolded himself.
His emotional state had been flaring up, hot and tight in his chest, when he thought about the situation that they were in. He chalked it up to irritability - to frustration and anger at Malchior - but his heart would ache a little in some ways whenever he thought about finally getting Raven back. About them finally holding her close, keeping her safe; healthy and alive.
Now that he knew what the boss sequence was going to entail, he wondered if they would get her back at all.
He kept jogging, ignoring the feeling of an irregular heartbeat.
I probably just need some food in me. I'm tired, he reasoned, it's not...that.
Suddenly he skidded to a halt.
In the distance, maybe another half mile ahead of him, was a wall.
"Looks like the freaking Great Wall of China," he commented to no one.
Beast Boy realized quickly that it wasn't a wall exactly, but actually a large gate. The gate was grey and white, and made of stone, and it was taking up the entire path. There was no way around it, only through.
On the right door of the gate there was a mosaic portrait that was made from beautiful stones and crystals in colors of orange, fiery red and shocks of starbolt green.
"Oh, no."
Beast Boy ran faster and approached the gate in awe, his neck craning up to get a look at the mosaic. At least ten of himself stacked upon the other would have measured its height. It had two stone doors thicker, he thought, than the ones at the tower itself.
On each door was a portrait.
The left gate door mosaic was in the shape of a woman, large but shrunken and old. Her skin was pale and grey, cracking in some places, veiny in others. Her nose drooped over a toothless mouth, and her eyes were glassy and made of white rock.
On the other door, was Starfire. An orange goddess with fiery red hair, she was draped in mage robes of green, just like she would have been if she hadn't torn up her costume into a more practical tunic and leggings.
The gate wasn't just an obstacle, but a depiction of what was to come. The battle that had to be fought before he could advance.
Beast Boy gulped a little.
"A hag," Beast Boy thought, his mind drifting back to the games of Witcher III that he played on his gaming desktop. "She's going to face a hag."
...
The smell inside the cave was, by any Earthling's standards, moldy, sulfuric and overall suffocating.
However, to Starfire's alien nose it was relatively pleasant. It reminded her of the firework festivals on her homeland that, one year, nearly took down the whole castle with the explosions.
Oh, how the planet had laughed at the joyous occasion, and Starfire herself was feeling a little homesick the farther she traveled through the cave. She did have this to say about it, though: it was damp.
Her starbolts fizzled a little when she lit them to see by and it worried her little. There didn't seem to be anything stirring down here. Rather, it was incredibly quiet.
Silent.
She shivered now, it was eerie and unsettling, as though she had been quick to entomb herself in a completely abandoned cavern. Forgotten forever.
Her change in mood was only outrun by her change in pace, and she now trotted through the dark, winding underground. It frightened her to consider that there would be no way to fly, or to escape quickly should conflict arise. The walls felt as though they were trying to close in around her, suffocating her.
Starfire had never experienced claustrophobia before, but she sure as starshine wouldn't forget it.
Starfire finally emerged through one tunnel opening to find herself in a gorgeous underground oasis. A large pool of water and lush green ferns and small marshwood trees grew within the tunnel clearing. In the water she saw the light shimmering of colorful fish, and something small like a frog splashed on one shore. There was a large crack in the ceiling that let in sunlight, and she could smell the fresh air coming through it. A light breeze rustled her long red hair.
She breathed in deeply and sighed in relief.
"That was...scary." The slight ray of sunlight was helping, but it was still very cold and dark in here. She raised a hand and attempted a glowing starbolt to find her way, but it again fizzled in her hands.
Before it went out, she saw that from behind ferns, beneath trees, and in dark corners of the cave, the reflection of what seemed like a thousand little eyes stared at her.
Starfire had only a small moment to gasp aloud before they pounced.
It was a loud fight. The blasting of her fizzled starbolts echoed like firework cracks and booms throughout the cavern, ringing in her ears and disorienting her aim. The flashing was making her sick, but her panic to keep what turned out to be slimy, blind ghouls at bay was stronger than her queasiness.
Starfire hissed Tamaranean profanities at them, wondering just how many she'd have to fight. They were lithe and pale, with gaping maws and empty eye sockets. Their fingers were long, at least six inches, and they grasped at her green tunic, her arms, her hair.
She worried that maybe she wouldn't get to the end of the horde. Her starbolts were still fizzling, flashing in and out of focus, their effectiveness waning with each attack.
The screeching ghouls pulled at her, and she turned and backhanded one across the cave. It flew toward the wall, but never made contact. It hovered blankly in the air, and Starfire's eyebrows furrowed together in confusion. Finally, it fell, and the echoing footsteps of someone approaching her in the cavern caused Starfire to turn and prepare for an attack. The ghouls retreated immediately, disappearing back into the shadows of the oasis.
After a moment, the light of the cavern revealed what looked to be like a horrendous old witch with white-blind eyes and a gaping, dark mouth. The witch began to cackle, and her hands were enveloped in a dark, oozing purple cloud of miasma.
Starfire blinked, wishing she could back away, but the cave did not have an exit. This would be the boss battle, she was sure.
The witch hovered half a foot above the ground and, with clawed hands outstretched, she flew at Starfire with a cackling hiss. Starfire met the witch's grip with her own, and she shivered as she quickly locked onto a pair of cold, clammy old hands. The hag smiled a gaping smile at Starfire, her breath like rotting flesh and graveyard dirt.
Starfire scrunched up her face in disgust and, with her alien strength, threw the witch off of her. The witch flew back several paces, and tumbled mid-air before coming back to a disheveled rest upon the stone floor of the cave.
With a cry Starfire advanced, not letting the witch get another first hit. Her green tunic singed at the hem when her leg came up to catch the witch in the gut. The crackling of fiery magic in Starfire was bubbling to the surface, and the hag cried as her old, flaky skin was met with the heat of it.
While the crone was down on the hard floor, Starfire quickly scrambled through her bag for the deck of cards.
It's time I learned what "summoner" really means, she thought.
Starfire pulled out a vicious-looking card that had sharp edges. It read: 'Venomous Bat'. She put all her hope into the card and collected all her strength. With her starbolts completely gone, this was her last chance.
As the spell warmed up, much to Star's dismay, the Witch's creatures returned to the fight, summoned by the downed hag. The ghouls leapt from the shadows and began to pile on top of Starfire. She screamed and batted them away. As they pulled and poked and slashed at her, the hag began to chant something in a language Starfire did not know.
The hag slowly grew into an even more hideous witch-creature that now stooped low, head almost hitting the ceiling. Her limbs and nose elongated even more sharply and grotesquely, and her eyes sunk into her head and became empty sockets. Then she screeched and the ghouls screeched with her.
Starfire gulped, staring at the card she could barely hold in her hands as the ghouls scraped and tore at her clothes and skin.
"Anytime now, please," she begged the card.
Not wanting to be rude, she allowed the card more time by sprinting back and forth throughout the small cavern, slashing at ghouls as she went. She swore the walls were closing in on her, growing closer as the hag grew larger. It couldn't have been this small when she'd first entered! She couldn't even fly away she tried.
"The summoning card should be working now please!" Starfire cried as the hag bore down upon her. There was a horrifying moment where Starfire thought that she wasn't able to summon anything; that Malchior had tricked her and her friends once more, and that this would be her last moment. The ghouls scattered, and the hag reached for her with elongated, shadow-claws that scraped Star's shoulders with a fiery bite.
Caught in a death grip and now without the hope of the card, Starfire screamed.