Beast Boy tapped his foot repeatedly and stared over Robin's shoulder, much to Robin's irritation.
The mirror from Starfire's bag wasn't complying. He tried tapping it, flipping it from side to side, even yelling at it, but he couldn't get a hold of Raven like he had before. She wasn't trying to contact him either and it was scaring all of them.
"If we lost-"
"We did not lose," Beast Boy snapped again.
"If!" Robin bit back, turning, "If we lost, then we need to act fast. We need a backup plan."
"What do you mean?"
A low rumbling shook the trees in the distance. Birds took flight and then disappeared into nothing at all, like pixels in a broken video game.
"I mean that Malchior is taking this world apart, and we're still in it," Robin finished.
Beast Boy blinked. The trees that had begun to rumble were beginning to disintegrate, too. They were turning to ashes and dust as they watched. He stared at the dark, disappearing world behind them and gulped.
"Oh. Okay, good point."
"We should...run, yes?" Starfire asked.
"Run where?" Beast Boy accused. "Through the massive wall?"
He gestured behind them. Cyborg's battle was still etched in mosaic form with crystals of shining blue and grey, and the lion was still onyx black, its pearled jaws still firmly closed around Cyborg's throat. Starfire looked away.
"If we can't get through and get to Malchior," Robin said, "we'll disappear, too."
"But that means…"
The two men stared up at the wall, fearful of what might happen. What might have already happened.
"It means he is gone," Robin said, his voice firm and sad. "Now we have to keep going. For him, and for Raven."
"Gone…" Beast Boy repeated.
His best friend was gone.
"Then we must prevail!"
Robin and Beast Boy turned to see Starfire stomp ahead of them furiously and plant her feet firmly on the ground. She held her hands out, palms forward, and she was charging a starbolt.
Robin tried to make her stop.
"Wait, Star don't!" He was worried about her mana supply. "You can't blast through that wall even with one hundred starbolts! You'll just exhaust yourself!"
She didn't listen.
"Go and find Raven!" When she spoke again they realized she was holding a card in between her teeth.
It read: 'Apocalypse'.
"I shall take this wall down," she finished.
"Starfire, no!" Robin cried, lunging for her. "It'll kill you!"
It was too late. With a sonic blast that shook the world, a force that even Malchior felt from his castle, Star's spell tore away at everything in its path. The beam was blinding, and both Beast Boy and Robin saw stars as it lit up their eyes, the sky, everything.
A screaming pierced through the light and a mountain fell in the deep distance. The great and final stone gate collapsed into ashes, and Starfire disappeared, out of the game forever, in a green fizzle of light.
"Starfire!" Robin cried, falling to his knees.
No, no, no!
"C'mon dude, we gotta go!" Beast Boy had to pry Robin up from the pathway.
He pulled him over his shoulder, morphed into a horse and carried him, galloping toward the dark castle in the distance.
Where the wall used to be, a fizzled corpse of whatever boss monster Beast Boy had been supposed to fight lay smoking. Starfire had destroyed that as well. He gulped a little, his powerful stallion form taking him faster and faster toward the castle. He had to hurry.
After what happened to Cyborg, to Starfire, all Beast Boy wanted in that moment was to see Raven, to hug her and hold her and to keep her safe. No one else was going to die.
He had to help her, he had to run.
...
Starfire awoke dazed and confused on the Titan's living room couch.
Knowing better than to think it was all a dream, she reached over immediately and touched Robin's hair.
"You are unharmed," she whispered, happily.
She realized then that Malchior had lied, and she was forever grateful for it. To know that they would recover in the Titan's tower was a relief.
Cyborg must be close by.
He was picking at food in the kitchen when she awoke, and now he was rushing over to her, his arms outstretched to pull her in closely. She smiled at his hug. To others it would have been bone crushing, but to her it was the only hug strong enough that would envelop her and keep her steady. She nodded afterward.
"You are home. Alive. I am glad."
Cyborg looked down at the floor, sheepishly.
"I misplayed everything, I never should have lost. It's all my fault." He sank down to the floor, leaning against the back of the couch. "I am so, so sorry."
"No, Cyborg," she said and knelt, holding her hands to his face. "We thought you were dead, gone forever from this world. I am overjoyed that that is not the case."
She tapped her forehead to his, and he blinked a few times before he crumpled into sobs. It had been killing him ever since he lost, having to watch over his friends as they fought the good fight without him. He never expected them to wake up, and it had all been his fault. But she was right, they were alive, and maybe they would all be together again.
But he wasn't expecting Starfire to wake up alone.
"What happened?" he asked, wiping tears from his eyes, "Star, ya' gotta tell me, how is it going in there?"
"I thought I was sacrificing myself, though I have to admit I am glad that I did not have to. I took down the last gate. They are on their way to the castle now. I know that they will be victorious."
Cyborg tried not to apologize again, knowing there was nothing he could do now. Instead he smiled at her and pulled away, his hands on her shoulders.
"I know it, too."
Then Starfire gasped, "Oh! How is Raven?"
He took her to the sickbay where Raven's body was still lifeless. The small beeps of the monitor kept track of her slow heart rate, and her face was even more pale than usual. Her skin, hot to the touch, was clammy and wet.
"Her condition is worsening," he told her.
"Will she not recover?"
"Not without her powers back, and certainly not with all the meds I'm pumping into her. They'll only hold her for so long, but soon they'll hurt her rather than help. She needs to recover on her own, but she can't do that if she's not eating."
"An IV?"
"Not enough."
Starfire nodded. "Then we wait for victory."
Cyborg gulped a little, fighting back the rest of the emotions he didn't want Star to see. Only one little sister was safe. The other?
Suffering.
"Yeah," he agreed, "we'll just keep waiting."
...
A large wrought iron gate came into view, so Beast Boy morphed out of his horse form and he and Robin jogged the rest of the way.
Now on two legs, Beast Boy's stamina bar began to slowly recover. As they approached the property, the castle looked bigger than they had ever thought it could be.
Why Malchior needed to create such a massive structure for one little game was beyond Beast Boy. His eyes scanned the building, and he deduced that Malchior wasn't even using the whole castle. In fact, only a small light glowed from a little tower window above a large balcony. Beast Boy sniffed the air for signs of enemies, twitched his ears, but all was silent.
"We should do a perimeter check. We need a plan."
"No," Beast Boy said. "Look."
The landscape behind them was nearly gone now, only the castle and its massive grounds the constant in a black abyss; a video game without code, a blank screen.
"You were right, this world is sinking and we're still on board."
It was hard for Robin to argue, but he knew that going in without a plan was destined to fail.
"We have no idea what to prepare for."
"We have to save her," Beast Boy said.
They only had one shot at this, and since the game had technically ended, even with Starfire blasting away the final boss, they needed to convince Malchior to keep playing.
If they had come up with a sturdy plan beforehand, then Robin wouldn't have had the feeling of impending doom rotting in his gut when they passed quietly through the gates.
A light rain began to patter down onto the stones in the courtyard of the castle as soon as they entered. Large gargoyles on the sconces looked as if they were drooling down the walls when the rain began to overflow in the gutters. Beast Boy shivered, thinking that this place vaguely reminded him of a video game he'd played once.
The boss battle for that game had not been easy, and he imagined that this was going to be more of the same.
"That light is where he's keeping her," Beast Boy said, pointing. "We need to get up there."
"We can try to get inside. Pick the locks?"
"I don't know if it'll be that easy."
"We have to try."
As they approached the castle, the pair kept cover in between hedgerows and garden plants that grew out of stone pots and planters. There were fountains that bubbled gently in the gardens and made eerie splashing sounds in the distance. Stone knights clutching their swords stood vigil against the walls.
The rain-soaked them through as soon as they were standing before the great double doors to the great dragon's keep, and Beast Boy dug through his pack for something that would help.
"You're low on card points," Robin warned him.
"Yeah, but your class isn't as good at lockpicking as I am," Beast Boy replied.
Robin watched with trepidation as Beast Boy raised his card up to the great double-doors. He slipped it between the crack in the doors and slid it downward like a credit card.
Nothing happened, but then he reached for the handle, and the huge iron handle clicked, and the door was unlocked.
"Help me," Beast Boy said quickly, and the two men pushed hard on one of the wooden doors.
It took a lot of effort, but the door scraped along the marble foyer inside, and they were greeted with the thick, dusty air of a building that hadn't been used in decades.
Beast Boy and Robin stepped into a tall room with a black iron staircase, black and white marble tile, and a chandelier that was lit with black flame candles. In the rafters, the fluttering of something like birds or bats echoed eerily around them, and the huge windows that wound up along the spiral staircase were covered in heavy purple drapery.
"The guy knows how to decorate," Beast Boy snapped.
"Focus. We need to get to the tower room."
"Okay, let's go."
They cautiously approached the iron stair and began to climb. Nothing seemed to jump out at them from the shadows. Nothing hissed at them from the rafters.
"It's almost like," Robin began.
"No one is home," Beast Boy finished.
They began to sprint up the stairs faster than before. When nothing challenged them, Beast Boy began to panic. Blood pounded in his ears and his skin prickled as if he were about to fall.
She's here, he told himself, she has to be. There's nowhere else.
They reached the top of the stairs and went right. The balcony they had seen before with the single tower light was somewhere in the western wing of the castle, and there were plenty of windows to give it away. They ran and ran down long corridors, past candelabras with more black flame candles. The carpentry below their feet was plush and purple. The paintings on the walls had thick layers of dust, but they looked European.
The eyes of hounds, dragons, knights and maidens fair followed them from the painting frames as they ran in search of Raven.
Finally, Robin began to slow down, and the grey light of a rainy evening was glowing through large windows.
"The balcony is out here," he said pointing to his left. They could see the black, wrought-iron railing once more.
"But there's no room here, this is still a hallway," Beast Boy said, his voice hitched to a panic. "The balcony was glowing, the tower room is supposed to be here!"
"Calm down, it might have been the candles that we saw, not a room."
Beast Boy didn't think so, as the blackened flames gave off hardly any light at all.
"Maybe it's a magic castle," Beast Boy offered. "Maybe-"
He stopped talking and looked to their right. There was another thick wooden door standing opposite in the hallway from the balcony.
It was dark mahogany, and there were black iron roses etched into the wood, snaking upward toward the handle and even further along the door, as though it were in a garden trying to hide from prying eyes.
"This has to be it," Beast Boy whispered, and he reached for the handle.