Shadows And Creatures Of The Day, Teen Titans; Chapter 19: A Bridge Between Worlds...
/A/
"Conspirators...only those that walk the way of the blind and caution is taken here." A far from great old dragon's wings were held back to keep the treasure; all the secrets from those that had eyes as crows or flying vermin...rats also knowingly kept hidden, for someone was making way into the great forest...the mountains were not safe anymore. The wills of the past long gone and the fires burnt to ash along side him the great forest and mountain elemental known as Earth grumbled in his cavern and sighed with all his strength.
It was soon dying, the flowers he gave to the world made from earth and the wood that befell its fate...why, in all the years it had never been so tiresome to remain a cavern kept guardian next to Lady Raine...his one true gift to half the populace of all human leavings...
She was a pretty solid person built by the earth mother as a protector against the humans that sided with those to oppose her 'once' brothers and sisters. She gave up her soul and formed a very strong bond with the dragon to protect the mountain and the forests. Magic like no other, her name stripped of her and her world brought back from hundreds of years of years of suffering the world of a human girl...
They were together though she was silently, boldly but surely turning to the age to relinquish all sorrows from the creatures...whatever they were knowing supposed to commit to...
A hearing of spirit would be known at the isles of time. A fantastic journey into the depths was about to begin...far far from the shore of a certain somewhere.
/
"Nina..? Nina dear?" Both Maya and Takahara Shoji hung their heads. She was still in deep, contemplating whether the daemons were real...whether Big brother had survived; that he had yet the demon creature wasn't giving up? When she was supposed to take over in Ro-
The boy who had fled for a new world...the missing Titan. What was his name again?
Her vision blurred and her fists shook. This wasn't her mission! To be swept aside and to wait and wait!
Missing her chance to console Brother Cy was crushing her deeply. Her playful nature was just a side affect of who she really were likely to be. Now carefully she got up from the sofa. Her eyes still stiffly filled with haze. This wasn't earth anymore. It was a really cold place to turn to.
"Who-
She turned to the tree, she would never forget the white wolf's fangs in front of her... her view still covered over by fog.
"Where am I! What's going to happen?"
The wolf only grinned that wide toothy grin. "How did you get from the earthen plane to my own domain?"
She slowly felt for the air around her. This wouldn't fry her circuitry would it? He was a large beast that she had only witnessed from her late night study of the great wide world she had been born into.
His left paw as this was called, that the ancient feeling told her was about to drop forward. He was coming closer still.
"Who are you? I cannot help you with anything-
"I'm...not sure..." she gazed to the sky. Her eyes closing slowly as she fell into the deepest sleep ever known in the other world.
"When you are sure, child of an iron heart - come to me..." The wolf looked at her with dismay, soon looking back to the messenger behind him with a growl.
/
"Why, have you come..Your life is not yet taken. Go home." Bao Shi Lan...was on the other plane. She wasn't allowed here. ~ This must mean trouble...~ The old wolf smirked; in a huff he was already less confident. And showing confidence wasn't a cake walk for the demon wolf incarnate. He was the king's other self besides the beast after all...
"You are called to meet him. I am only here to tell you this." Hissed the little eleven hundred year old.
She had to leave this unprotected plane while she still had two ears and lips to suppress her worries. For making the wolf's grow wasn't her's to deal with now...Her master would have her soul trickle from her lips instead...
/A
"Humph." Rini was sitting with her arms crossed on the sofa. Her legs were pressed on top of the rest that was most likely understandable. At this time there wasn't a word said. Raven had also come running after Starfire, the link was much more damaging so they were pulled back to the crime scene.
She was shocked and angry that someone who did not belong in their home had scared poor Star.
"Did you get a good look at him? Star?" Raven waved a hand in a fan motion over her friend's view.
"Define, a good look...he wasn't anything like Robin as...as...HIM self!" She was still holding her fists and she began to glow green with pulsing energy all around her body!
"He...she...it was not believable at first...though this person did have longer hair...but everything about him was no good!" Fury and confusion continued to arise within her.
"He is no.. good!" giving up when the floor had been singed she almost collapsed into a chair that had been put there in place of her movements. Raven very much wanted to contact Isis - yet it was Isis whom contacted her!
Beginning in her head the goddess contacted her so that she could no longer see where she'd been sent to. "Isis! What happened?" The lady stood in mourning blue over her form. "We are no longer in hiding..." she gasped...was that a tear in her eye?
It was. And that teardrop had Roku written all over it...
"Someone attacked the kingdom, and stole important documents with much about the dragon elementals..."
"What...?" Raven gaped at the importance of this explanation. "Why didn't you call the...guardians? They were with us all this time!" Her choking voice made her cough here in this misted place.
"Like I have told you...we know Roku, and he is no god...he is what your kind call a 'soul stealer'..."
/
So this is what it all meant, they were afraid of a monster soul taking spirit. How could the only goddess she'd made contact with and studied under since Azar on her own world of Azarath...LIE?
"You...you used us to get rid of Robin...He would leave you alone and then everything would be quieted...all the fighting...they all knew what he could do to stop...of all the gods and spirit, Time!"
Her fear of losing her friends to this...plotting sadist did not cool her rage. "We'll find him...he can't be under your spell forever, unless you want to lose your only access to the human world..."
Raven watched as the goddess began to shake. She wasn't afraid to fight...what was wrong with this picture...did Roku do something to influence this sensitive balance between the gods? There had to be more...
"He almost killed the priestess you sought out during the wars of last end and began anew! WE had to condemn him to the pits of dark and no more, he was a threat to us all!"
Raven was not here to hear the god's complaining, sorrowful as it was. A pit...that was true, he fought to find a way out. There was no way if it was spirit law to pull someone into dark nothing. They could not use their senses nor write a spell or speak in the language that had been a rite as a being of space time.
It was useless when under 'gods'.
But Roku? A soul stealer...? That would make his continuing race a...demonic one...! A lowlife nothing in itself to feed from what humans could not comprehend. And spirit lived to help or hurt. Harm or guard...whatever the rite...It was physically impossible to do much else to gain rank to the highest life possible. No...he was a wolf in sheep's clothing alright, he wanted to suck the life out of anyone he could get his claws on...like a devious glutton...Raven's arms dropped to their sides. "I...want to help you. We defeated Trigon; my father ." Isis was driven to her knees by this...boy child! He was key to being the savior of time itself!
"How do we stop him? No way is ever any good...we have learned his tricks inside and out, he is another master of the balance AND space time...!" She wept into her palms and shed the tears of a godmother to the boy. As the guardian of the mother of Richard Ainsley the second .a.k.a Richard Grayson she knew it was already hopeless...
"He's on Earth, I saw him in the past and the present day during my meditation. A woman and man...they must be the ones responsible for the time shift in the past."
Isis stood on her own, Raven backed up as she now stood against the unmasked foe. A lady queen, she had dug her way out to blossom into a godly queen in moments of time. She changed her fate, though it cost her a son and a husband and king. Her poor brother Seth was gone into the mist...that broken soul had sold it all to a larger threat. Roku. He would not stop until his son stood there beside the great evil king he yet was to become.
"We are lost...We need a guide once more. He...
Isis gathered a breath to speak. "He said that is the only way... our balance is no more. And we are sorry if you could not trust us..."
"What did he say to you? Roku can't threaten the mother! He's not in the shape he was during..."
She stopped standing to stare at a shadow in this foreboding place of dark. "Someone is watching..."
"Saw that before you." Raven boasted though this was a horrible time for it. Her manner was sure, however not as freely driven as the two were to fight.
/
It was stringy looking and stalk sensitive in built. Like the teens were when they only ate pizza every Friday and Tuesday night. Raven used that to fuel her power and emotions. The enemy was a mad thing. It had huge eyes and looked as the devil black imps did in books of the satanic language of fools. Yet cautious ones at that. They knew of the bright and the damp, dark cold planes of time space.
~ Do not see? ~
"You can speak, monster? Then come from the shadow you hide underneath...NOW."
"I don't know if-
"Wait for my signal", Isis the Nile queen of legend said to her partner.
Raven did not want to wait, he was holding lies between his teeth. Those jagged sharp points chomped on a fly as it broke by the creature's eyes. Long bony fingers reached to devour, the godless way to eat passerby.
"No way..." It was like a soft zzzap! The teeth were all carnivore. But what felt unreal by the most part was how it juiced out the soul of that darn fly. And a gleam of green was no more. Poof.
"Spit it out. He was not the main attraction of today." Another made the two women shiver slightly. "It's you..."
Roku had arrived to the spirit other-world plane...with help from an imp...
~Shifter's baaack!~ The demon was a shrimp as it shifted into a vulture next to Roku, as it was made to do.
/
"Welcome, my honored guests...-
"Be...silent you vile, thing- Raven looked up at Isis and frowned to mind speak.
~He's not-
"Roku!" The god bowed to them as he allowed shifting Shifter to join him. Wings out in the open.
"Did you no guess whom I was? How sorry my dear...how very foolish."
"You are foolish soul reaper! For having so many of us destroyed!" Raven nudged her side woman and growled at the way her emotions flared.
"Was my mole successful? Thwarting your highest honor student was my goal really...i must have miscalculated." The god rubbed his chin.
"Of all my failing students, poor Darkness had to be one of the lazy-
"You...Lady Dark and light? Why them? It was Robin all alo-
"IT is not proper to interrupt. So, didn't Azar's foolish monks tell you before you were thrown from their world to save her last remaining...gem..." He was grinning wasn't he...not because of that fact. But because of lord Trigon who had been a case of his since birth. He had failed his higher up! After all, Roku had always been the better fighter...
What does the boy have to do with your escape and ensnaring my people?
"Why...!" The god grinned and chuckled to Isis with his arms open to her and her friendly messenger. Raven was caught in between a heated display of emotion and mentally, it hurt...
"They are spirit are they not? They belong not to the world of mortal nor to you an immortal." Raven's eyes were directed on Roku. The god had a heavy barrier blocking out any rescuers...from the outside.
"I...fear he is correct..." Nearly shaken by the mad demonic man and powerful dark lord aside from the two- Raven quickly thought of a way to escape this soul searching prison. "We have to fight. He intends to submerge both our worlds into darkness-
The god let out a laugh that felt like a shock more than a fear of its sound or tone. But, all in all there had to be a way to trap him in this cage of torment..!
She turned to Isis who's aura took the most energy to conceal from such evil forces. She was in danger of losing the battle and her powerful form, She reverted back into an animal for her magic and soul to be saved. Turning Raven into what she was most associated with – The Raven.
They had been saved in the light blast that covered every inch of this dark, dark plane. Next to her in her own room was ISIS. She lay there as a sow or female cow with a solar disc to represent her among the gods between two marked horns on top her head. In fact...that was Isis and Hathor's own marked spiritual body!
Her last one had disappeared! The cow only blinked while chewing its...lip...? "Oh crud!" Raven gasped up at the clock...midnight? Where was everyone? Searching, she bet. For herself and the others?
As if gripping a steely claw...her foot!
"Oh no...oh god!" she panicked and flapped her two arms or wings furiously!She was...was...-
~Can you hear me Raven? I am right beside you... ~ At last she could find peace yet there was much to be done. ~I can!~ She squawked in her new tongue. ~I hear you Isis! Where are you?~
Turning her bird neck to the- cow? Her heart beat fast and the feathers on her chest ruffled into a lump. She wanted to hide and crawl into a-
~No!~ Isis the cow brought herself to stand on all fours. She had eyes the size of grapes. Dark and soft as well as strengthened by a plea to her high one. From a friend.
~You have that power as well, I wish for you to grab hold of your senses. WE have to save your fellow Titan!~ She shifted to walk forward towards the door that was far to narrow yet may have been their only option...
~Perhaps there is a way...sorceress and priestess Ravenna..~ Raven's birdy mouth twitched as she fluffed herself down.
~Wha-
Why, in all due respect great lady...do you keep referring to me as someone I've never even met or heard of? She isn't me-
~Lend your body to her, for I am afraid to remain powerless just as you are.~
She turned to raven as she pondered the raven's eyes. ~If not just for the fullest of moons!~ She was quick to explain and was serious.
~How...~Raven tapped a table top with her sharp beak and shivered from an open window letting in air. ~How do I contact the dead?-
~She is not dead, only vanished unto spirit as a messenger...~
~So...she was real? A-and lived in...~
Roku's time came into her thoughts. The son and father were connected, were the guardians not the only ones with past lives? But maybe-
~Ravenna was a lady of prophet not by choice...but by rite.~
~No...that's...impossible!~ the poor fowl's brain racked with activity as it flew onto the bed. Her bed. Was this bird her for now...? would the real Ravenna's spirit attach to her in their fight against the evil king of dark spirit?
~I-I've never been so afraid...they- the gods, guardian and spirit can know...do anything!~
Even attack and enrage the balance one last time or yet to come...for an eternal night...
Raven spoke so loudly as she screeched into the night...~I..I'm sorry Dick...you'll just have to wait for me to come to you...~ she thought to herself sadly. Soon it began to thunder in the night sky. As the dragon danced across the city.
/
Is this short! I'm beat since by chance I use my right hand a lot. That stinks. Well, review if you've gotta! I'm setting up the next two chapters to be-
...must...not say what I'm up to in the next story...!
Oops! I said it!