Uncaged
Disclaimer: I do not in any way, shape, or form own the show Teen Titans, nor the various DC comics on which this fanfiction is based.
For a moment, Jinx feels the stare of the sorceress on her in the same way she'd felt knives on her skin before.
Something about the witch seems different to the meta, in a way entirely separate from Etrigan, who as she understands it is at least similar in age, or even from Doctor Fate and his helmet with a spirit older than she could comprehend.
Behind the large, ornate golden mask, she feels a stare locked onto her as it breaks her down to the barest elements of her soul and assesses everything along the way.
Then the attention shifts in dismissal, the immortal's amusement clear even across the large meadow, and irritation quickly blossoms.
Shaking her head, Morgaine raises the Excalibur and, with a flourish, drives it down into the ground.
Were she a betting woman, Jinx would wager the sword is in the exact center of the large stone circle.
In a rising chorus, her voice echoes through the area in a similar hissing lilt that Raven had so recently made sound almost poetic, but far harsher sounding from the immortal's tongue.
"Géill mo béic anois, ná faoi mo beidh, mé dó thoghairm na cumhachtaí den seo ársa scoilte ar oscail sa doras ná cosán ar na Réimse na Sí!"
At the end of the immortal's speech, Stonehenge is encased in a golden glow that burns the meta's eyes.
In Jinx's arm, Raven seems to stir as the stone slabs begin glowing dimly.
Her eyes open to slivers, and Jinx is startled to find the orbs revealed to be lenses of flickering red, black, and white, the colors seeming to battle with each other.
"Need… to stop…"
"What the hell's she doing?" Jinx demands to Etrigan, panic clear in her voice. "I've seen this trance last through a goddamn bomb going off over our heads."
Etrigan studies Morgaine with disdain, his teeth bared in a snarl.
"The harpy's tryin' to bring the Fae here."
"The Fae? As in… like… gossamer wings and wands and shit? 'Cause I gotta' say, the vibes I'm gettin'-"
"Not the race, you daft chaus. The realm," he interrupts with a growl. "Stonehenge's been used as a Faery Ring to commune with those accursed tricksters in the past, and I'm guessin' the hag figured out that that's because the damned thing sits on top of a portal right to 'em, if ya' can pull it open enough."
Jinx's eyes move down to her shivering lover, a harsh expression taking form.
"Yeah, that'd probably do it."
She grabs a hold of Raven's cheek, and leans her head until her forehead rests against Raven's disturbingly warm one.
"Raven, I'll take care of it. Sleep."
"She'll… kill," Raven murmurs, her eyes widening slightly more.
"Ārāma," Jinx growls, shaking her head when she realizes her slip into a different language. "Your creepy Latin thing's rubbin' off, Rae. Sleep. I'll take care of it."
Something in Jinx's words, whether her assurance or the accidental magic, seems to relax Raven, and her eyes slip closed once more.
As soon as they close, the psychic's entire body is enveloped in a thin shell of soul-self.
"Good. Is Excalibur necessary for her to pull the portal open, or to keep it open?" Jinx demands of Etrigan while turning back towards the sorceress.
Before he responds, she brings her palms together and pink light sparks to life between the closed hands.
"Never mind, either way she'll be screwed without the damned thing. This ain't happening when we've already got Hell to worry about. Dhvansa karanā!"
The light flashes into a small nova of pink, and Jinx slams her fist into the ground.
Around where her flesh impacts with grass, the area's green color turns black, and a small tremor runs through the meadow.
From the stories she'd heard, she was nowhere near on the late hero Terra's level with her own control over the Earth, but her lover had made sure over the last year to bring her far closer.
What had started out as episodes of migraines from the strain had quickly become a part of the meta's nature in the same way that calling on her hex magic was, if far more straining by way of being external.
With a grunt of effort, Jinx slices the hand in an arc from where it landed, and immediately, a massive spray of rock and earthen debris rises.
Her spell moves through the shaking ground like an arrow in a straight path for Morgaine.
The sorceress rises and begins murmuring some spell of her own, and Jinx's eyes narrow in concentration.
Her fist clenches, and the line separates, becoming three erratically jerking trails in the grass and dirt.
While Morgaine's spell destroys the two heading for her own body, the third slips underground unnoticed.
Believing the power of the spell dissipated before reaching her, the witch's eyes widen behind her mask when suddenly Excalibur vibrates, and in a spout of rock and smoke, is sent soaring high into the air.
As soon as the weapon leaves the ground, Stonehenge loses its glow, and Jinx locks eyes on the falling blade.
She points a finger at Excalibur, and the digit glows vibrantly for the barest of moments.
When the glow disappears, a spike of her hex magic is flying through the air, far faster than Morgaine's levitating body.
With a jerk of her wrist, the bolt circles back and slams into the blade.
A violent spark of magic discharges before the sword is sent spiraling towards the meta, and more importantly away from the immortal.
"It'd be smart not to touch that accursed weapon, chaus. It won't like you very much," Etrigan warns.
"Yeah, already figured that out. Better than letting her get it again," Jinx responds through grit teeth.
"Gaoth," Morgaine's voice rings out, grabbing the meta's attention, "a thabhairt dom cad é mianach!"
The wind suddenly rises to a harsh screech in the meadow, and the sword's spiraling movement jerks to a halt.
Excalibur begins slowly moving back through the air towards Morgaine's outstretched, open hand, the immortal's body wrapped in a halo of gold light.
Jinx takes aim at the sorceress and both of her hands turn entirely to pink sparks and light.
She releases the power then, unleashing an array of hexbolts onto the distracted witch.
The bolts seem more an annoyance than any real threat to the sorceress, and for a brief moment, Jinx hopes the sorceress mistakes her efforts as her ability, to give her any edge she can find.
Jinx presses the distraction, though, and while the witch is focused on blocking the magical pellets, she pulls on more power.
A large spike releases from her palms between the waves of stinging bolts, and with a flick of her wrist she knocks Excalibur free from the wind's hold and back towards her.
The meta is in the process of jumping to catch the falling blade when Morgaine's magic begins reaching for her.
Even without her lover's empathic abilities, Jinx can feel the sorceress's irritation despite the distance between the women.
"Who dares to interfere with my affairs alongside that atrocious thruaill?" Morgaine asks in a smoky English accent.
Jinx ignores the question in favor of leaping after the magical sword.
Morgaine points at the ground, and just as Jinx's hands are wrapping around Excalibur's hilt, a spike of grass-covered rock lurches upward, aiming to impale her stomach.
With a curse, she swings her leg and curls into the momentum she's created.
Her stomach manages to curve around the path of the rock's tip, narrowly avoiding a gruesome death.
As soon as her feet touch the ground, the area begins to rumble.
It's all the warning she needs to move into a cartwheel backward, dodging each spike that rises to follow her.
Her mind empties of everything as she focuses on surviving, her adrenaline sending heavy pulses of magic through her veins.
Even the fact that the old sorceress gets her hands on Excalibur is irrelevant in the face of the certain death chasing her.
With each leap and flip, she moves closer to the sorceress with an increasingly bright glow to her eyes and sparks of green light flickering around her palms.
"You're quite skilled at running away," Morgaine quips, seeming to have let her anger turn to amusement while playing with the meta.
"I've got other tricks, too," Jinx responds flippantly.
With the next spike, she comes down on the flattened side and uses it as a springboard.
Morgaine takes a step back in surprise as Jinx leaps straight at her from the newest protrusion.
"Pannāmāya Jahannuma!"
Jinx lands in a crouch at the immortal's side, an open palm flying towards her.
In an instant, the air turns to a thick steam around the women and emerald-colored flames leap into existence.
Jinx pushes energy into her palms, fueling the torrent of magical fire against the unprepared immortal.
The sound of laughter behind the wall of magic doesn't reassure the meta's confidence, nor does the expanding golden glow of Excalibur shining through.
With a curse, she cuts the feed of her energy off and leaps backward, putting as much distance between them as possible.
The steam dies down while Jinx curses at the sweat breaking out along her neck.
"A decent display. However, I hope you're done doing your warming up process, as attacks such as that will not be enough to distract me from my intentions, much less hurt m- ugh!"
Her insult is interrupted by a new torrent of fire, this one flickering with deep obsidian within.
"How 'bout my fires, witch?" Etrigan snarls as the immortal is pressed back.
Watching the sorceress being pressed back by Etrigan, Jinx realizes that she won't be getting her hands on Excalibur again any time soon.
And that her pride's less important at the moment than stopping Morgaine from opening the portal.
With a muttered curse, she spins away from them and begins running towards Stonehenge's pillars while a new plan begins taking form.
"If you can't snatch the key, just break the damn lock," she mutters to herself, pushing more effort into her run.
When she reaches halfway between the circular structure and the fighting immortals, Morgaine seems to grasp what her plan is, the unsettling feeling of her attention alerting Jinx.
Jinx keeps running when Morgaine slashes Excalibur through the air, pushing Etrigan back several feet.
The hairs on the back of her neck rise as more Gaelic rolls through the air from the sorceress, and she immediately pulls to a stop when the ground begins cracking ahead of her.
As a massive figure begins bursting up from the ground, a horrific sound like dozens of dogs yelping and crying in unison fills the air.
The sound is nightmarish to Jinx's metahuman ears, and she forces herself to fight through the wave of pain that rises.
By the time she's again able to see straight, she finds herself staring at a monstrosity that even most of Raven's books wouldn't do justice.
The creature is at least three times her size in both height and width.
As it shakes dirt and rocks from the leopard-like torso making up most of its body, the ground trembles underneath.
It stands on four legs very much like a lion's and ending in a stag's hooves, though thick scales take the place of where Jinx expects to see more fur.
At its hind end, a massive tail swings back and forth along the ground, the spike at the end raising clouds of dust and dirt.
It finally seems satisfied with its task of cleaning itself, and a long neck turns when its attention shifts to Jinx.
The creature's head is that of a snake, though from the large size and spiked crown, the meta can't even begin guessing at what kind.
Its small, beady black eyes lock on Jinx, and its mouth splits open to release another horrific, canine chorus.
"Is this-"
"A Questing Beast," Morgaine supplies with a laugh. "Kill her, denizen of the ancients, and help me release magic back unto this hideous world," she adds in command to the monstrosity.
Jinx starts backpedaling at the same time the creature releases a screeching cry and stomps a small crater into the ground beneath it.
While the sounds of Etrigan fighting the no longer amused immortal rise, Jinx feels every instinct she has screaming to grab Raven and run from the nightmare given life.
And then it moves, and she realizes that the Beast is too fast to let that happen.
Its hulking form moves at her in a blur, and she finds it waiting for her by the time she turns to run.
"Oh you've got to be shitting me," she hisses, meeting the monster's glare with feigned courage.
The sound of dogs rises, and the ground begins violently jerking beneath her feet as it charges at her.
She begins a mockery of a dance with the creature then, diving or jumping out of the way of its every bite or swipe with its claws by an increasingly smaller margin.
In the midst of another attempt at clawing her face off, the Beast spins around and sends its tail careening for her retreating form.
Cursing, Jinx flips over the shovel-like blade at the end, only for the rest of the tail twitch upwards.
The thick, fatty skin grazes her stomach and sends her off-balance, and high into the air.
She sees its gaping maw snapping towards her, and with a defiant shout, throws a pink blast that sends her spiraling out of its path.
It manages to land a strike regardless, albeit a nonfatal one as its long fangs tear a gash across her left shoulder.
It finally manages to land a strike, its long fangs tearing a gash across her left shoulder.
Pain ripples through her, and she forces herself to move back from it despite the blackness coating her sight.
Her vision returns quickly, and she loses any attention she was paying to the immortals and their fight when the pain increases.
Putting every bit of energy into not being ripped to bare shreds by the Questing Beast, she begins blowing chunks of fur and skin from it, only for the creature to regenerate immediately.
The longer she fights for her life, the more she feels anger bubbling through her.
While quick to irritate, she always prided herself on being even harder to make legitimately angry than even her lover during the early days of their relationship, when she actively fought against it.
With the beast's vested interest in trying to kill her, on top of the other stresses of the previous several hours, though, she finds herself quickly deteriorating into that unusual state.
And despite knowing it's going to make her sloppy, the Beast keeps too much of her attention for her to stop it.
While avoiding the creature and lashing out with her hex magic, she suddenly realizes how close they are to Raven's unconscious body.
As does the monster.
Its fierce assault abruptly ends as it turns towards the far easier target, and it begins charging at Raven.
Something shifts in Jinx's mind, and she feels a strange sensation flowing through her body as she watches the creature rushing towards her relatively defenseless girlfriend.
"That isn't happening," she snarls.
She brings her hands together, and a bolt of pink lightning launches into the Beast's side, sending it flipping end-over-end in a cloud of smoke.
It quickly rises back to its hooves, shaking its head dazedly as its eyes lock on her.
A screech fills the air as it charges at her once more, with Raven in its direct path.
Moving on instinct, Jinx slams her fist into the ground and releases several pulses of magic into the soil.
The earth rises in front of the running beast, and a net of solid bedrock quickly traps it.
It bites and claws at its restraints as Jinx pulls on the earth, dragging the creature back to her and leaving a massive fissure in its wake.
Her eyes glowing pure white, Jinx takes a running start and leaps, landing squarely on the Questing Beast's serpentine neck.
"I've had about enough getting looked down on today. You came up from the Earth, right? I'm putting you right the hell back," she snarls in a voice she barely recognizes.
Pink bolts of energy start arcing off of her body, casting a neon glow over the entire meadow as she pulls magic to the fore.
"Sêka mērh the Pr̥thvī!"
Her voice echoes through the air, seeming to gain a strange quality the longer it lasts.
The glow leaves the field, and instead wraps around the beast's body, coating the entire creature in Jinx's magic.
As though she stands on a melting ice cube, the Beast slowly dissolves under her.
In a matter of seconds, the ancient creature, as well as the earthen net trapping it, seem to have vanished entirely.
More magic flows from Jinx, and a halo of green fire explodes out from the meta's hands into where the creature had stood.
An explosion sets off when it hits, and when Jinx's vision clears from the blinding white light, she finds herself holding a small, pink gemstone.
With the creature's death, whatever had changed in her reverts, and she finds herself resisting falling to her knees in a puddle of exhaustion.
The gemstone shines in her grip, and clarity returns to her mind.
She only then notices the blood coating her arm, and the realization that her sudden change had been caused by the Questing Beast, and that she likely should be dead, is both terrifying and incredibly interesting to the meta.
Shaking her head, she quickly moves to Raven's side and reaches past the wall of soul-self covering her.
The energy accepts her presence, and with a smile, she drops the magical gem into her lover's slackened hand.
It seems to resonate with Raven's chakra gem, and Jinx again ponders what exactly she did.
Morgaine and Etrigan, however, have no such problem, and as Jinx kisses her slumbering lover and begins heading once more for the stone pillars, anger pulses through the sorceress.
"Had I suspected that wretched child wields that form of magic, I would never have put such a magnificent creature through that," Morgaine mutters.
"She's a cheeky chaus," Etrigan laughs. "Ya' picked poorly, witch, and now you'll need to sleep in the bed you've made."
His hands come together, and a stream of Hellfire releases into the sorceress.
Glaring from behind her mask, Morgaine erects a wall of magic and redirects the flames, sending him dodging further and further away.
Using her free hand, she buries Excalibur into the ground, and golden light leaves her eyes.
"I will not let a lowly thrauill stop me any more than I will an eternal fool, Jason Blood. I would think you'd know me better than that."
As Etrigan looks for a way around the onslaught, Morgaine carves a complex sigil into the dirt with the magic sword, which begins glowing red once completed.
"Many creatures of old live on these isles yet. I have everything I need at my disposal to keep her at bay until I've finished you and done what I set out to do."
Light filters out through her mask as her eyes glow, and the ground cracks around her.
"Éist le mo ghlaoch agus teacht a scriosann mo naimhde, Cú Sidhe!"
For a horrifying moment, Jinx thinks the sorceress has raised another Questing Beast.
She quickly realizes the sound of baying dogs is different this time as it reaches her ears, however, and turns her gaze to find five creatures, roughly the size of a young bull each, lurching at her from the shadows of Stonehenge's pillars.
While Etrigan uses the moment to circle around Morgaine and throw a spell that turns the grass black as it goes, Jinx finds herself quickly surrounded by five of the strangest wolves she's ever seen.
Each of the creatures is covered in shaggy, dark green hair shot through with patches of white occasionally.
Long, braided tails coiled around their stomachs, seeming to form an armor of some kind.
What really worries Jinx is that each and every one of them has paws easily as wide as Mammoth's hands, ending in hooked blades for claws.
Their rumbling growls send the ground atremble, and Jinx finds herself wondering how she'd so quickly gone from sleeping comfortably in her lover's arms to being surrounded by Celtic dog-monsters while a demon and immortal witch fight nearby.
Before she can release the growing laugh at the absurdity, one of the dogs, a Cú Sidhe if she'd caught Morgaine's spell correctly, tenses and lunges for her…
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Author's Notes:
All-together, the first spell is "Obey my call now, and under my will, I do summon the powers of this ancient rift to open a doorway and pathway to the Realm of Faerie." in Gaelic, at least according to Google Translate since it would've taken me a long time to compile it from my dictionary. As such, it's probably a rough translation, but likely not entirely off-base.
Ārāma- Hindi: "rest"
Dhvansa karanā- Hindi: "destruct, blast, subvert, etc."
Gaoth- Gaelic: "wind"
a thabhairt dom- Gaelic: "bring me"
cad- Gaelic: "what"
é- Gaelic: "is"
mianach- Gaelic: "mine"
thruaill- Gaelic: "wretch"; from what I remember of the comic's version of Le Fey, she's pretty condescending. I just might have a weird penchant for giving bad temperaments to those who speak Gaelic due to familial experiences, though, so I could be wrong.
Pannāmāya- Hindi: "emerald"
Jahannuma- Hindi: "gehenna, inferno, nether world, etc."
A Questing Beast is an old Celtic- and British-mythology creature. It was a monster as I described, but I wanted to have fun with the aspect that it's a creature born of chaos.
Sēka- Hindi: "compress"
mērh the- Hindi: "into the"
Pr̥thvī- Hindi: "Earth"
Éist- Gaelic: "listen"
le- Gaelic: "to"
mo- Gaelic: "my"
ghlaoch- Gaelic: "call"
agus- Gaelic: "and"
teacht- Gaelic: "come"
a scriosann- Gaelic: "to destroy"
naimhde- Gaelic: "enemies"
Cú Sidhe are gigantic, otherworldly dogs as described, that are told to be harbingers of death and are known widely around the British Isles.
Hope you're all enjoying as immensely as I am, and would be glad to hear your thoughts, whether you are or not. See you next time!