Cyborg was slumped against the tree on top of the grassy knoll of the cave.
The night was growing weary on him, and the lion had not attacked in minutes.
Fighting something so quiet, so dangerous, was taking his nerves to task. He was exhausted, tense, and on red-alert at all times. He hadn't spotted the white tuft of fur in a while, and Cyborg was now fearing that the lion was just watching him.
Tormenting him.
He had thought he would rest against the tree for a moment, but even though he sat there, he was not resting. He was going crazy.
It was then that he remembered all the potential help that could be found in his bag. He'd been so happy with his big axe, he didn't even think about using spells, and while berserker characters couldn't really cast, there were traps and there were bonuses he could use.
Cyborg grinned reading through them. Any one of them could help him through this fight, but he didn't know which one to pick.
He checked his stats.
Barely any damage had been made to him during this game of literal cat and mouse. He was almost level 10 but his card-spending points were low. It would be his first card use, but his cap was a meager 700 card points.
He frowned down at the prices in his deck.
Some were combos that, when combined, cost him almost all of his points. Others were powerful, but cost nearly the full 700, too. He started to get worried.
What if he saved himself here, but couldn't help out his team later?
Cyborg still had his axe, he guessed, but that didn't mean it would get them out of a sorcerer's spell or a ghost's trap.
He hissed under his breath as he caught sight of something that moved between the corn. He begrudgingly raised himself to his feet, heart thumping.
It could be anywhere, he thought.
His anxiety grew with every second he stood there, flipping through cards, counting out points in his head.
He'd been excited at first, thinking each card was perfect, but now he suspected that not a single one of them were worth the cost.
Cyborg twisted and turned, stashing the cards back in his bag, fearing now more than ever that the lion was right on top of him. Just above him a slight rumbling echoed in the branches of the tree.
He had only a second to think that there had been no possible way the lion could have climbed the tree without him noticing, before the great jungle cat launched itself from the branches with a feline scream.
This time, Cyborg wasn't fast enough to deflect the cat, and it managed to scrape a huge slice into the metal part of his skull.
Cyborg blinked and stepped back, and though the metal parts of him didn't hurt when damaged, the circuitry severed stunned him a bit.
It was maybe a millisecond, but it was enough time for the lion to attack again, biting at his stomach. The lion probably expected to take hold of mushy organs and easily broken tissues, but it was wrong.
Cyborg struggled beneath the weight of the cat, his breaths coming out strangled and belabored. He tried to strike at the lion's face but its claws scraped and tore at his metal body.
He nearly screamed from the sharpness of the noise it was making. It sounded like someone was playing a violin with a butcher's knife.
He clenched his teeth and tried to get out from under the beast somehow, hoping and praying that he could at the very least get it off of him long enough to run for it.
"Get off me you damn cat!"
He punched it square in the nose.
The animal hissed and jumped away, patting at its own face with big paws before it disappeared again into the corn fields.
Cyborg pulled out the mirror quickly, checking his health and stamina bars. Both were dangerously low. He reached for the cards again but stumbled on uneven ground and they fell and scattered upon the earth.
Quickly he grabbed a dark red potion that read: 'Avalon Water': replenish to full health, reduce one-third of stamina.
In a panic he drank it.
The armor weighed even more heavily upon him, though his health bar went up, pulling him down to the ground. The stamina bar was almost nonexistent now, and he realized his mistake.
He was cat food now, he was sure of it. Regardless of the health that he'd replenished, he was a tank and needed that stamina to keep going. Cyborg hoisted his heavy body up on his axe, balancing on the strength of metal and wood, fearing for his own fate.
He'd severely miscalculated the math, and now scanned the cornfields with even more terror.
The lion knew it, too.
Instead of creeping out, stealthily like a cat should, the lion emerged proudly and dangerously, eyeing up its prey. It licked its sharp fangs and a rumbling in its throat echoed in the dark arena. The moonlight showed the little white tuft of fur, and reflected those bright, hungry silver eyes.
Cyborg lifted the axe a final time and met his foe head-on. The great screaming of cat and man shattered the peace of the arena and crows took flight.
He and the lion met, playing violin with a butcher knife together as teeth and claw and axe scraped and clanged against one another. Cyborg let out one long gasp of air when the cat headbutted him, and then he was down on the ground.
He couldn't move, and the weight of the cat pinned him to the wet earth. Two massive paws rested on his chest while its teeth searched his body for something soft enough to devour. When it gave up, it lunged for his face.
Cyborg closed his eyes in terror, and an instant later woke up on the floor of the Titan's kitchen.
...
"No!" Raven cried, knocking over her teacup and splattering it all over the game board. "No…"
Malchior dabbed at the drops of tea on the board with a purple handkerchief and hummed a little to himself.
He wished more than anything that the fool Boy Wonder would have plummeted straight down and off of that cliff, but this would work, too.
How alone Cyborg will feel, Malchior thought to himself as he carefully folded the handkerchief and left it to rest on the grate of the fireplace to dry. Waking in the real world, knowing that he failed his friends? Delicious.
Malchior stretched his body and felt the tense, borrowed muscles of his vessel give way and crackle.
Contrary to what Raven might believe of Malchior, he hadn't underestimated the Titans and their ability to defeat him. Even before beginning this game, Malchior knew that they could easily cut down most, if not all, of the monsters that he had the small amount of strength to conjure.
He had almost been nervous before, but his lion had prevailed. All his doubts in an assured victory was over now.
Everything was over now.
"Oh dear," he said, unable to contain his smile, "I didn't see that one coming."
Neither had Raven.
"He did his best," she whispered as Cyborg's piece faded from the game.
His figurine with the large axe, powerful armor, and the confident stance was gone. It faded from Malchior's illusion just as quickly as her hopes.
"What happens now?"
"Now? Now it is checkmate, my love. Beast Boy cannot continue and neither can the wager. The gate won't open. The game is over."
"I meant for my soul," she snapped. "I never agreed to your bargain."
"Ah, but the ceremony was set in motion, so technically," he said, holding up a clawed finger, "you can still agree. It doesn't have to be painful, Raven. You don't have to go unwillingly into the void. I…"
She watched him hesitate before he continued.
"I don't want that for you."
"You only want a body," she said. "You don't care how you get it."
He stared at her. Raven had never before looked so defeated.
"Raven," he said slowly, "if you remain unwilling, I'll have no choice but to keep you here. Time will pass slowly, and your body will give out, or your fevered mind will burn you away. Your soul will become separate from the reality that you know, and I will still lay claim to it."
It would be gruesome; tragic. And once it was all over, her soul would remain, the key ingredient to the spell that would offer him the true form he'd been working toward for over a millennia.
Ever since Rorek trapped him in that book.
The sour taste in his mouth didn't go unnoticed when he considered Raven's mortal death. He grimaced at how it was nearly too easy to dispose of Raven's body.
"What if I just remove my soul from the equation?"
Malchior grew dark. "A soul can be changed," he said, "reshaped through reincarnation or recycled into the earth, but never destroyed, Raven. You know it is impossible. Do not say such a thing again."
Raven's soul was precious to Malchior. Like his own it was dusted gently with both new and old book smell, littered with herbs and dried flowers that you found in tea shops and iced over with horror, terror, guilt and bloodlust.
She was just like him, even if she didn't want to admit it.
His perfect match. Probably his only match for the rest of his existence. The cultivation of her soul was his only chance at a permanent vessel, a life beyond the ghostly reality he was living now.
Malchior stared at Raven's expression, her eyes glued to the game, tears pooling as she realized what he was saying was true. Her eyes were truly violet, paired with her hair and brows. Every scar, every scratch into her pale, grey skin that was so uniquely hers was laid bare: a small cut etched into one eyebrow healed over into a white scar, soft wrinkled lines near her eyes suggesting years of laughter and grief, and the curvature of her lip which had once been split open, and resewn by the miracle of regenerative cells and tissue.
Could he really put an end to all that? Let her body die and then rip her soul from the ether, only for him to consume it as one would take a tonic for their ails?
No. It is unthinkable.
He couldn't destroy her, though he desperately wished he could.
"Please," he said at last. "I can return you to your body. You don't have to die first. Just say the word."
Malchior wanted to reach for her, to touch her. She was an imitation, an illusion, a replacement so that her mind could cope with being suspended in time and space.
Yet, even though her form was false, and he was desperate to reach for her, he knew that she wouldn't allow him to touch her again.
He could. Easily Malchior could reach over, run his hands through her hair and nip at the scar against her mouth, the dip of her throat, kiss her brow and rest his forehead against hers. He could stare into her violet eyes and watch her stare back.
But he also couldn't. He had to wait.
He wanted her to choose him.
No, he could not touch her again without consent, but he breathed her in, reclining his neck in a relaxed pose against his chair. He could almost taste the blood pulsing through her throat; feel her gentle, butterfly breaths and her beating heart that rested beneath the most perfect form.
He spoke without thinking.
"What do you feel for him? For any of them?"
Raven, shocked by the question, turned. A single tear fell and she quickly wiped it away with the sleeve of her sweater. Malchior looked back, both genuinely curious and terribly irritated; as though he just couldn't understand what her friends had that he did not.
Raven sighed and considered what he meant. She wasn't angry with Malchior anymore, she was just so defeated.
So tired.
"I feel…"
He waited.
"I've never had family," she said at last, "you know this. Connection? Emotional, physical? None of it. Not even a hug. It was… inappropriate for Azarath."
Malchior tilted his head, evaluating. Listening.
"I found them," she said, waving her hand over the game board. "They took me in and loved me and, no matter what happened, they stood by me. I nearly destroyed the world… They were there to help. Somehow, I think they were worried more about me than all of humanity."
Both of Malchior's eyes finally turned back into slits like a cat, and she shivered as he stared.
"Family. They are my family and I love them."
Her voice broke on the word 'love'. Malchior considered this. He frowned despite himself and puzzled her words through his mind.
"Loyalty," he said at last, "and love. I realize that these must matter a great deal to you, don't they?"
Raven blinked at him. It was like speaking to an alien.
"Yes, those are both pretty important to most beings. Even the non-human ones."
"Yes, but they matter to you," he said again.
Raven frowned now.
"What are you trying to do?"
He didn't answer, but she could tell. He was trying to dissect her. He wanted to know what it would take to get her to say 'yes'.
He needed her soul to stay alive, but Raven realized with a jolt that he wasn't going to take it from her.
"Somehow," she said carefully, "your kindness is greatly off-putting."
Malchior wrestled with a snide comment and let it go.
"In a soul bonding ceremony oaths are made by both parties. If loyalty is what you would ask of me, I'd be willing to grant it, Raven."
He won't let me die.
Raven quickly wondered how and if she could use that to her advantage. There had to be a way out of here.
"And love?" she asked.
With snake-like eyes it was difficult to see his expression change, but there it was. A moment of weakness. He already loved her, perhaps more deeply than she'd ever imagined, and it angered him.
"I don't think I need to tell you," he hissed softly, "that I could offer you anything and grant it just as easily."
"And you would? Anything?"
"I would."
Raven's mind was racing. There must be a loophole here, an oath she could ask of him that would break the illusion long enough for her to regain her body back and then her powers.
She didn't have to wait here like a damsel in distress. She only needed a few seconds of her power back, and if she lost and he finally won, at least she could go into the void fighting.
The problem was, of course, that a soul-binding ceremony couldn't be easily tricked.
"Don't forget, Raven," he said, breaking her away from her thoughts, "that your oath to me must be fulfilled in full."
"A new body," she said, dismissing him. "I know-"
"Any oath that you agree to," he interrupted. "A pair bound for eternity will always include a little… give and take."
Raven almost gaped.
"You're going to ask more of me? More than giving you my soul and building you a vessel from scratch? Don't you know how difficult, how nearly impossible it is to do that already! What makes you think I can even accomplish this in the first place?"
"You don't have to do anything, really," he said. "I have the spell, you have a soul. That's all that is required."
Raven rubbed her face with her hands.
"What else are you going to ask me to do?"
Malchior's eyes widened a fraction.
"Are you agreeing? Are you prepared to join me?"
Raven swallowed and lowered her hands. He was staring at her, eyes like a snake, but with the twisted heart of a man laying bare his desperate hopes.
"Yes."