Beast Boy's hand had barely touched the iron-wrought door handle when an earthquake-like rumbling began to shake the stones of the castle.
Robin crouched in a ready-like stance and Beast Boy pressed hard on the latch, pushing against the heavy oak door to see what was on the other side.
This is it, he said, now thinking about something other than the door. This is the final fight, I can smell it.
With his left shoulder he forced the door open only a few inches, then a few more. Robin got behind him and helped him push, and as soon as it was over a foot and a half wide, they slipped in quickly.
Inside was a cold, empty English study of stone and wood. The bookshelves were empty and cobweb-ridden. A huge fireplace lay at the farthest end, burned out and empty, with nothing inside but dust and ash. There were markings on the floor, as if furniture had once been there but had been removed, only leaving shapes of clear stone between lines of dust.
On the walls there were blank spaces where many paintings might have been hung before; more hounds and horses, no doubt. Instead there was only one left.
Robin approached it while Beast Boy examined the rest of the room, pushing and pulling on empty shelves, looking for hidden switches. The painting before Robin was one of a brilliant white castle with gold finishing and pearl inlay. The clouds above it were blue and sun shone warm on a lush, manicured garden and brilliant, crystal clear fountains and ponds.
He frowned.
"This looks like the castle we're in," he said to Beast Boy who was still looking for secret passages. "Except…"
"Except what?"
"It's more cheerful."
Beast Boy crossed the room and gazed over Robin's shoulder.
"I don't see how this will help us-"
As he spoke the castle shook again, and outside the sound of screeching and roaring erupted. The windows to the balcony in the hallway shattered and shards of glass blew into the room. They shielded their faces and Robin cried out in shock.
"What the Hell-?"
"Malchior!"
Without hesitation Beast Boy was out of the small room and jumping from the balcony, his form shifting from man to beast with the flap of strong eagle wings.
"No!" Robin ran out and called after him to try and stop him, but Beast Boy was gone, and a massive, purple dragon was flying through the air after him spitting flames of black and green.
"Beast Boy," Robin hissed, "what are you doing!"
He was about to run back down the corridors where he and Beast Boy had come from when he heard a noise coming from the empty room.
It was like a knocking.
The hairs on Robin's arms stood up as he approached the room, unsheathing his sword, readying for a fight. He stepped in carefully, convinced now that Beast Boy might have been right, and some hidden passageway had opened as soon as Malchior had reappeared.
There was no one inside though. The room was still just as empty and dusty as it had been before, as if no one, not even Malchior, had lived there in decades. He relaxed, sheathed his sword and turned away again, making to close the door carefully behind him.
Then the knocking came again.
Robin froze. The sound was coming from the painting.
He approached it once more, carefully, and as he squinted closer he could make out a dull pink handprint, mirrored backwards, on the surface of the canvas. Right beneath that was a single, shining painted window, just like he and Beast Boy had sworn they'd seen below in the courtyard. As if someone in the painting was home.
He raised his hand to gently cover the marking, as though that would explain things, and his hand went straight through.
Robin barely had time to gasp aloud when he fell, absorbed by the dimensional magic of the portal, and then everything went red.
...
Beast Boy wasn't sure what he was doing, but he challenged the dragon anyway.
His roar was loud, his giant tyrannosaurus jaws gnashing and snarling up at the flying dragon that spit fire just above him. He dared Malchior to come down, to land within enough distance for him to sink his teeth deeply into his scaled throat.
But Malchior did not land. Instead he perched upon the roof of the castle, tile and shingle crumbling under his weight, and the dragon, remarkably, spoke.
"You're still here," it snarled and spit through open jaws. "I was oh so hoping you had given up."
Beast Boy roared again in response.
Malchior shouldn't have been surprised. The ship may have been sinking, but the castle was a lifeboat that would hold until he was ready to leave. What he hadn't imagined was that one of his walls had been taken down. It must have been and he, Malchior, had been too wrapped up in a sham ceremony to notice.
His acrid blood boiled beneath his scales. Raven had betrayed him for them, these Titans. Fools who didn't understand or deserve her, did not know what she was capable of, what the Titans could do if only they treated her power with the awe that it deserved. Malchior had lost his chance at a permanent vessel, an intact soul, and a companion for eternity.
Because of them.
He could not speak any longer, his fury was too great, and so he flew down and met Beast Boy's tyrannosaur with a powerful show of force, spitting flames and clawing and the two were screeching as bloodthirsty predators tend to do.
...
Robin fell into another dark room and crashed onto a hardwood floor. He groaned and got to his hands and knees, making to jump up and run back through the painting where he'd come from when he felt someone's hands on his shoulders.
"Malchior?"
"Raven?"
"Robin!"
Raven pulled him to his feet and he felt her wrap wet arms around him. The metallic bite of copper was in her hair, all over her skin.
"You're bleeding," he choked out as she hugged him tightly.
"No, the bleeding stopped, I'm just… I-I'm just…"
Robin understood.
"I missed you so much," he told her. "Beast Boy's been so worried, you wouldn't believe. How are you feeling? Your face…"
She was covered in a cold, clammy damp upon feverish skin, and in the darkness, though he could not see her very well, he felt her shivering against him.
"I'm falling apart, Robin," she told him. "Psychic connections and this fever are burning away my mind. Malchior he… he wasn't going to kill me but I think staying here any longer will do it for him."
"What happened with him?"
Raven couldn't even begin to explain what she'd almost done with Malchior moments ago – to gain unfathomable power, but to give herself wholly to another being. No, that would have to wait, if she decided to tell anyone at all.
"Later, we have to get out of here, the painting-"
Robin understood and, taking Raven's hand in his, he pressed his gloved hand to the painting once more – on this side the painting showed the castle for what it really was: a dark, gothic, sad place covered in bramble and rain.
His hand went through after some struggling, but as he tried to pull Raven out with him, he felt his grip loosening without his permission.
"Raven," he said firmly, "hold onto me! Do not let go!"
Raven took both hands, her palms still slick with half-dried blood, and wrapped them around Robin's wrist. With a single glance behind her, she took in the light of the dying hearth of the fire, and bid the Red Room farewell.
It took all their strength, but Robin pulled and pulled Raven with him through the painting.
When she emerged into the cold, dark empty version of the study, Raven gasped aloud, as though she were finally breathing easily after hours.
"Folded," she told him, "I've been folded into Malchior's reality. This one is closer to the tower, we just need to find a way out."
A roar erupted from outside, shaking the foundation of the castle.
"Malchior-?"
"No," Robin said, putting his arms out to steady her. "No, that one was Beast Boy."
...
Malchior was not bound by the rules of the game, it was his own game after all, and so Beast Boy was careful not to lose more stamina than necessary.
He couldn't keep transforming, or Malchior would outlast him easily in the fight. It would have been easier, he knew, to turn into something small and attack him from the shadows, but after committing to the form of a T-Rex, he was afraid that it would be his most powerful weapon for now.
Where is Robin, he wondered.
Malchior bit down on Beast Boy's shoulder and Beast Boy cried out in a piercing screech. He rolled and pulled Malchior with him, the two landing in the wet, roiling grass and mud on the garden grounds of the castle.
Malchior's tail shattered the stone fountain and water and blood pooled at their feet as the battle raged on. Beast Boy headbutted the dragon's snout and Malchior reeled back and hissed, his forked tongue spasming and twitching with absolute fury. Beast Boy took that as an opportunity to retreat a few steps and transform back into his human form.
He only had a few seconds to take cover before the dragon spit more green fire, hot and blistering through the damp garden grounds.
Beast Boy ran for cover and hid between the hedgerow of an overgrown garden maze. He bought himself enough time to dig through his pack for something that might save him.
A potion.
A card.
Anything.
He flipped frantically through the deck of cards and spells and stumbled across something he'd once used when playing the RPG game back at the tower with his friends.
It would be the absolute last of his points if he played it, so he had to make it count.
Beast Boy crushed the card in his hand, and from where the card had once been, a strong steel staff appeared. It was sharp and terrifying, a scythe blade made of obsidian and a hilt and grip carved from amethyst manifesting from the dark assassin magic that Beast Boy's character could possess.
Scythe: Magic Weapon; indestructible. Has the power to poison its enemies and its users alike. Proceed with caution. Lasts only one battle. 1,000 card casting points.
He marveled at how light it was, could feel it pulsing with powerful energy, flowing into him, strengthening himself and his resolve. Beast Boy emerged from the hedge maze twirling Scythe high above his head, almost drunk with the power of it.
"Malchior!"
Malchior turned quickly at the use of his name, and his dragon eyes turned into cat-like slits as they observed their prey once more, his nostrils flaring and throat boiling with hot flames.
Beast Boy grinned, baring his sharp teeth.
"Let's fucking end this, what do you think?"
Beast Boy half-turned and planted his right foot behind him as Malchior lunged for him, jaws blazing with fire and fury. He kicked off at the right moment, got beneath Malchior's jaw, and aimed for the dragon's throat.
...
Robin and Raven made their way down the hallways of the abandoned castle together, hand in hand. She was shivering, her legs creaky, her face and eyes hot, but she was still alive, and she would leave this place if it was the last thing that she would ever do.
It might very well be, she thought.
They rounded a corner and emerged at the grand staircase wrought with iron that Beast Boy and Robin had scaled earlier. Standing guard were hundreds of cold, empty suits of armor.
"Come on," Robin told her, lending his arm and taking her step by step down the stairs. "I have to help Beast Boy."
"How is he?"
"Beast Boy?"
Raven didn't know how to frame her question properly.
"Well, you said that he was worried."
Robin hesitated. He wasn't going to be the one who told Raven that Beast Boy had started to care deeply about her – in what way, he didn't really know, but it wasn't his place, and so he said instead, "you've been on his mind. On all our minds. You know that."
Raven nodded. "I just hope he's focused right now."
...
Beast Boy only just missed Malchior, scraping instead the right shoulder of the lizard. Where Scythe touched the skin it bubbled and gave off an acrid smell of hissing, poisoned flesh.
Malchior screamed.
He writhed and spit flames back at Beast Boy, his eyes wide with shock. Beast Boy did not stop. He would kill the dragon if he had to.
He would save Raven.
Beast Boy ran forward, but Malchior recollected himself. The two clashed, Scythe and dragon fangs scraping and ringing out in the rainy gardens. Beast Boy would duck, Malchior would swipe at him with his claws. As soon as Beast Boy took a swing of his own, Malchior would slither just out of reach, leaving nothing but sputtering flames and crushed plants in his wake.
The dance continued like that, eviscerating the grounds, smashing walls to stone, and tearing apart fountains and puddles of rainwater. Beast Boy was soaked to the bone, bleeding badly from scrapes he'd received from Malchior's claws; and those were just the ones that had barely nicked his skin.
Beast Boy felt his stamina bar go down, even if he couldn't check to see it. He was growing exhausted, and it would only have been a matter of time before Malchior finished him for good.
It would have been.
Malchior crouched across the courtyard on all fours, his dragon scales dripping with blackened blood. The poison from Scythe was working its way through the dragon's body slowly, taking the giant beast down minute by minute.
Though the reality had been designed by Malchior himself, and although he was not completely bound by the parameters of the game, the effects of Scythe still showed. The poison still bit into his blood and rendered him weak.
It would only cease when he was ready and able to leave this dimension for good, and he wasn't.
...
As they made their way down the grand staircase, Raven felt herself begin to tingle. It was small at first – a warm sensation, unlike the kind that came with fever.
In her fingers she almost felt stronger, and in her stride she realized she was growing more steady. She stopped on the stairs, just before they reached the first floor in the grand foyer, and let Robin go. He bounded down the last five stairs and turned.
"Raven? We have to go!"
But Raven was blinking down at her arms which, though still streaked in dark blood, were healed.
"I'm healing…" she whispered. Then she looked at him. "Robin, I'm healing!"
"What does that mean!"
"It means I'm getting closer to my body. Malchior is… his reality is breaking, we have to go help Beast Boy!"
Raven stumbled down the last few steps after him and tried to start running. As she did, a creaking, squealing sound echoed around them in the foyer. The heads of the statues of armor, once previously facing forward, were now staring at them.
Robin immediately took a stance and reached for his sword which sang out of the sheath. Within Raven bubbled the smallest echo of her powers, and so she raised her hands, too.
The suits of armor were tall, silver, sharp in their metallic design, and topped with long, purple feathered headdresses which billowed out the top of their helmets like violet flame. As though they had signaled one another, all ten suits of armor lining the walls of the foyer – five on each side – stood to attention and drew their swords.
"You can't take them all," Raven said. She attempted a simple shield spell, but other than a little fizzle, nothing happened. "We can't take them all, and there are more upstairs-"
"You are our Hero, Raven," Robin interrupted, a small, cheeky smile on his face. "Tell me what to do."
Raven stood frozen on her feet as the first five suits of armor advanced. Their steps were in perfect sync and they moved toward them like a hive mind, a well-oiled machine.
"I know," she said quietly. Then she said it again. "I know! I know what to do!"
Robin waited for her to explain, but Raven yanked on the pack shouldered to his back and forced him to take it off. As she dug through for the deck of cards, Robin met the first suit head-on.
It was nearly six feet tall and strong, even for how hollow it was. Its sword was sharp, too, and Robin felt it cut through his cape when he dodged. The second suit of armor wasn't far behind, and Robin watched as Raven retreated from the center of the room with the deck of cards clutched firmly in her hand.
"Keep going, I'm halfway through the deck!"
Robin deflected blow after blow, but five suits of armor were quickly overtaking him. He couldn't imagine what ten would be like. He took a slice to his forearm and he cried out, then another to his thigh. Just as he felt his arms start to weaken from clashing so forcefully against the suits' swords, Raven found the card she was looking for.
"Robin invokes," she yelled above the din of the fight, "Scatter!"
The suits of armor immediately halted in their attack then, swaying on their feet in confusion, they began to stumble around the foyer. Scatter was a card that confused and disoriented hive-mind units and forced them into confusion for up to three turns. Since that was less than five minutes, Raven had something to combo it with.
Raven raised another card. "With the last of his points, Robin invokes Restful Dead."
"But they're not dead," Robin countered, retreating from the center of five confused suits of armor. "What will that do?"
"Inanimate humanoids have undead souls in them, remember? That's what the game said, so that's what I'm doing."
Robin was amazed when the suits went from stumbling to collapsing. Even the other five against the opposite wall, who had yet to attack, were beginning to crumple and fall down to their knees in what would prove to be a deep, restful sleep.
"Run," Raven told Robin, and the two made their way out of the castle and into the pouring rain.