Night of the Cursed

by A-LionGleek

The titans have finally returned from Tokyo, but before long they end up at work once again to foil the newest plot cooked up by their arch nemesis, Slade, and his new compatriot Vandal Savage. And to make matters worse, if they don't stop this plot, then there will literally be Hell to pay! Rated T to be safe.

15. A Costly Defeat

Hey there everybody! I am so sorry that it took so God-awfully long, but here's a brand new chapter! I really hope you enjoy reading this and leave a CONSIDERABLY large number of reviews (though I'd best warn you, this chapter will probably get extremely hard for some of you guys to read near the end). But nonetheless, have fun, and try not to worry too much (and be prepared to get a case of tissues. Some of you might very well need one). In this chapter, having finally caught up with Savage, an epic battle unfolds. However, the end of this battle will leave a painfully high cost for the Titans, particularly Robin, to handle. Will Robin (and I do mean Robin) be able to walk out of this upcoming horrifying incident in time to save the world? Find out, in this brand new chapter.

Once again, just to remind you all, I do not own Teen Titans or any other elements of the DC universe, and certainly not any religious elements either. And now, without further ado, onward with the fic!

Chapter 14:

A Costly Defeat

Savage halted, and turned his head in time to see the five teenage heroes running into the valley behind him. The Titans skidded to a stop, and Robin pointed at Savage before yelling, "It's over Savage!"

Savage chuckled, shook his head from side to side, and then stated, "Over? On the contrary boy wonder, I'd say it's only just begun."

Robin snarled, and then continued, "Well you may have made it this far Savage, but your plot ends here! Now hand over the Infernal Key or we'll leave you here to find out the hard way whether or not you'll be able to escape from a sinking island!" The other Titans' eyes widened at the sound of this. Robin had never before dared to threaten to leave any criminal, let alone a real villain like Savage, to such a fate.

Savage grinned wolfishly at the irate boy wonder, pressed his hand up against his head as if straightening out a crick in his neck, and said, "Well I can definitely say that it would certainly be a good challenge to see if I can successfully escape from this island when it sinks at turn of day. After all, I've already survived this long and have managed to walk out of even worse catastrophes in one piece. A sinking island would make a good challenge."

Robin's eyes narrowed. "So you're not going to hand over the key and make it easier on yourself?" he then asked.

"Hand it over?" Savage asked. He then chuckled, drew out a wicked sickle-shaped bone blade from his coat, and said, "Since when has that ever worked for you?"

"I was kind of hoping you'd say that," Robin growled.

"Well I'm glad to have not disappointed," Savage stated without missing a beat. He then snapped his finger and said, "But you won't be directly fighting me just yet."

No sooner had Savage said this when a large serpentine plume of black smoke rocketed through the sky from directly above Savage and then crash-landed next to him before solidifying into the form of a very familiar looking demon.

Upon sight of the demon in question, Beast Boy smirked, shook his head side to side, and said, "You're just a real glutton for punishment aren't you Abby?"

Abaddon chuckled, and then said, "You may have managed to survive against me, but will you have the same luck against all five of us?"

At that moment, right before any of the Titans could wonder about the meaning behind Abaddon's statement, they were all sent stumbling around when four other massive plumes of smoke suddenly appeared out of nowhere and zoomed so close by them as to almost directly plow into them. Even in the midst of getting knocked off balance, the five teenage heroes were able to notice that each of the four newly arrived smoke plumes were of a different color than Abaddon.

Seconds later, right as the Titans managed to regain their footing, the four smoke streams came to a crash-landing right in front of them and between them and Savage. Upon landing, the smoke solidified into four other demons. When the demons in question opened their eyes and stared at the Titans, the teenage heroes' eyes widened as they found themselves realizing just what these particular demons very likely were. Their suspicions were only confirmed when the four new arrivals stood up straight, revealing themselves to be the exact same height as Abaddon. This factor combined with their physical appearance exactly matching their statue counterparts from Lucifer's Crypt was enough for the Titans to recognize them for who they really were.

Abaddon grinned wolfishly at the five very unnerved teenage heroes, spread his hands out to his sides as if to gesture for them to behold the four demons that had now arrived to help him, and said, "Say hello to my four compatriots, Samael, Azazel, Lilith, and Asmodeus, my fellow Knights of Hell."

Samael grinned, his red eyes agleam, and stated to the Titans, "So you're the little kiddies that broke Abaddon's record. I daresay I wouldn't have guessed it just from looking at you lot."

Azazel chuckled, raised up his claws, and then coated them in electricity before stating, "But nonetheless, it is quite a pleasure to meet you, not to mention to do battle with and perhaps even kill you."

"Yes indeed," Lilith stated, her icy blue eyes taking on the same cold and calculating appearance necessary to match her similar toned scales. "It would be a great honor to do battle with the likes of you considering how much his Malevolence has come to respect you five."

"Yes," hissed Asmodeus, his frill extended to the fullest and his long forked tongue sticking contemptuously from his jaws. "And you may have survived against Abaddon, but rest assured, you will stand no chance against all five of us."

"Darn right they won't," Abaddon said as he proceeded to rapidly teleport over into a position that allowed him to be standing right next to Asmodeus. "Not this time."

Robin stared intently ahead at the five formidable demons, and snarled silently as he realized just how big of a fix the Titans had now found themselves in. "This makes me almost wish that we were dealing with Trigon," he thought to himself.

Savage chuckled, waved at the Titans and said, "Farewell Titans. I do hope you enjoy your quality time with my friends here. Take care." At that, Savage turned and rushed over towards a small slope leading up towards the top of a cliff overlooking the valley.

Robin cursed mentally at the sight of Savage leaving the valley. "He's getting away again," he thought to himself angrily. Then he heard the sound of inhuman snarling coming from in front of him and his friends, and he bitterly remembered that Savage was currently the least of his problems at that particular moment.

"Attack!" Samael roared.

In a flash, all five of the powerful demons rushed towards the Titans, hissing and roaring in challenge and bloodlust.

"Titans move!" Robin yelled. The five teenage heroes hurriedly jumped in random directions to evade the charging demons.

Unfortunately, the Titans had literally just jumped off to evade the charging demons when Samael yelled, "Spread out!" The five Knights of Hell transformed into their incorporeal forms without even pausing in their running, and each one headed off towards a different Titan.

The black smoke that was easily recognizable as Abaddon landed right in front of Robin, who had been lunging towards the bottom of the slope that Savage was currently in the midst of ascending. It reverted back to its corporeal state and grinned wolfishly at the now very irate boy wonder before saying, "Nice try bird boy, but you'll need to fly faster than that if you want to reach your destination before nightfall."

Raven was the next Titan to find her path abruptly blocked by a demon, and the sorceress could tell from a single glance at the amber yellow smoke that slammed down in front of her that she had drawn the short straw in this particular situation. Sure enough, the yellow smoke reverted back to its corporeal form and revealed itself to be none other than Azazel. At the sight of Raven silently groaning and rolling her eyes to Heaven, Azazel chuckled, lifted up his left hand, and caused his fingers to become coated with crackling streaks of electricity before saying, "Lights out Raven; or should that be . . . lights on?"

"Why do I always end up battling the electrokinetic demons?" Raven asked to herself.

"Simple mathematics daughter of Trigon," Azazel replied with a cruel smirk coming on his face, "simple mathematics."

Cyborg, meanwhile, just barely managed to skid to a halt when a stream of virulent green smoke plowed down on the ground in front of him before reverting back to its corporeal form. Asmodeus hissed in delight at the sight of the irritated half robot teenager that now stood before him, and said, "Going somewhere chrome dome?"

Cyborg growled, converted his right arm into its sonic cannon form, and pointed it at Asmodeus before stating tensely, "There's only one green bean on this island whose allowed to call me that, and it sure as Hell aint you!"

"You've certainly got the Hell part correct," Asmodeus stated before hissing teasingly at Cyborg.

The next Titan to end up face to face with a Knight of Hell turned out to be Starfire, and the demon in question proved all too easy for the Tamaranean to identify upon sight of the blue smoke that landed in front of her. Lilith sneered at the alien princess upon reverting to her corporeal form. "You must be feeling quite proud to do battle with a fellow female warrior," stated the single female Knight of Hell.

Starfire glared at the icy blue demon, her eyes glowing dangerously green. "I will feel proud to stand over you in triumph!"

Lilith sniggered, and stated, "You sure seem rather hot under the collar. Maybe I should cool things down for you," before then causing her hands to become engulfed with swirling miniature vortexes of icy wind.

The final Knight of Hell to come to a landing was Samael, and his distinctive blood red smoke form rocketed down hard onto the ground right in front of Beast Boy, shocking the changeling sufficiently enough to cause him to involuntarily revert from his peregrine falcon form back to human form and then land right on his backside. The crimson demon smirked mockingly at the changeling upon sight of him in his current position, and said, "Come now, is that the proper way to be positioned when about to engage in a duel?"

Beast Boy snarled, prepared to get back up on his feet, and yelled, "I don't know! Is that the proper way to be positioned when you're about to get your butt kicked?!"

Samael chuckled, shook his head side to side, and then barked, "You sure are confident. You certain that your bark is not better than your bite?"

"I haven't even begun to bite," Beast Boy growled before then jumping up with a back flip before landing on his feet with his right hand lying palm down on the ground and his left hand raised at a slant into the air.

"Oh really?" Samael asked. "Well then, go ahead. Let me see if your claws and fangs are as fast as your wit!"

"Gladly," Beast Boy snarled before turning into a tiger and leaping straight at Samael. At the same time that Samael jumped out of the way of the pouncing green tiger, Lilith cartwheeled out of the path of a laser blast fired at her from Starfire's eyes, Asmodeus ducked down in time to avoid getting struck by Cyborg's sonic blast, and Azazel jumped right over Raven in time to avoid getting pounded by a wave of dark energy that Raven attempted to hurl at him.

Meanwhile, Robin found himself the odd man out in that he ended up dodging an attack from Abaddon instead of the other way 'round. Abaddon, noticing that Robin was still angrily gazing past him towards Savage, chose to take advantage of Robin's distracted state by lunging towards him in an attempt to bite him. Fortunately, the sound of the snarling noise Abaddon made right before he jumped knocked the boy wonder back to his senses just in time for him to jump to the side and evade getting himself on the wrong end of Abaddon's teeth.

Seconds after snapping his jaws closed on empty air, Abaddon turned his head in the direction Robin had jumped; just in time for Robin's foot to come plowing into his face. Abaddon went stumbling backwards, and right as he regained his footing, he was knocked off his feet when one of Robin's explosive fire disks landed right at his feet and went off. Robin was in the midst of preparing himself to rush towards Abaddon when he heard laughter coming from the slope where Savage was.

Robin looked straight at the slope, and saw that Savage was only a couple feet from making it to the top of the slope, and he growled bitterly. "I can't let him get away," he thought to himself. But then he heard the sound of Abaddon groaning as he slowly tried to get back up on his feet, and he cursed mentally when he also realized that he couldn't just leave his friends to deal with their attackers alone, much less with Abaddon still in the picture and capable of providing reinforcement for his fellow Knights of Hell.

Starfire noticed Robin in the midst of his current dilemma, and she hurriedly yelled, "Go Robin! Go after the savage one! We will handle things here!"

Robin turned his head quickly to face his girlfriend. "No!" He yelled "I'm not leaving you guys!"

"Do it man!" Cyborg yelled without even missing a beat in his current double arm wrestling match against Asmodeus. "Savage needs to be stopped! Take him down!"

"They're right Robin," Raven said. "We can't let Savage get away. If he succeeds in opening the Alpha Devil's Gate with that key, the entire world will be doomed, and this time for real. Go after him, we'll take care of things here." Right as she said that, she hurriedly levitated upward in time to avoid getting smacked in the chest by Azazel's stegosaur-like tail.

Robin briefly paused, unsure of what to do. "Are you sure?" he asked hesitantly.

"You heard them!" Beast Boy howled after having managed to briefly knock away Samael. "Go after Savage and kick his butt already! We'll handle these Godforsaken lunatics! You go save the world!"

Robin hesitated for just one more second. "What about you?"

"Don't worry," Beast Boy stated. "We'll be fine. Now go, go!"

At the sound of this, Robin reluctantly tore his gaze away from his friends, just in time to see Abaddon teleport directly in front of him. Fortunately, the boy wonder was prepared, and he hurriedly drew out a pen-like object from his belt, pressed down on the hilt end, and jabbed it onto the demon's chest. Upon contact with Abaddon, the Knight of Hell howled in agony as he learned the hard way that this particular gadget was Robin's equivalent of a Taser. Within seconds, Abaddon collapsed onto his belly, still crackling and sparking with electricity, and Robin hurriedly jumped over the now once again prone demon before rushing off towards the side of the cliff overlooking the valley from the side opposite the entrance.

Seeing how very close Savage now was to the top of the slope, Robin hurriedly drew his grappling gun from his utility belt and fired at the top of the cliff. The hook jammed onto the cliff edge, and the pulley rapidly retracted, dragging Robin up into the air towards the cliff. Robin let go right as he was seconds away from plowing into the cliff face, thus propelling himself upward sufficiently enough to land right on top of the cliff just as Savage reached the top of the slope leading up to it.

Savage skidded to a stop in surprise at the sight of the boy wonder abruptly coming to a landing right in front of him. Robin turned his head to face the immortal cave man, his eyes narrowed underneath his mask, and he pointed at Savage before yelling, "This ends now Savage! Now give me that key!"

Savage chuckled upon hearing this statement, his earlier smug confidence returning, and promptly purred, "Never."

"Have it your way then," Robin growled as he proceeded to summon his sword.

Savage raised his left eyebrow at the sight of the weapon. "You absolutely certain you're willing to engage in that kind of a battle?" he asked with an almost amused tone. "I'll have you know that I've fought centuries' worth of sword fights before now. Are you really sure that you're willing to try to go against an enemy with as much sword fighting experience as I?"

"If that's what it takes to teach Lucifer a lesson in patience, then you can bet on your life that I am!" Robin yelled.

Savage whistled. "Very well then," he stated as he drew his scythe-like bone blade back out from his coat once more. "Let us begin our duel then."

In that instant, right before either of the two combatants even made a move, a large stream of black smoke plunged down in front of Robin and solidified back into Abaddon, who stood firmly in front of the boy wonder with his arms spread out to his sides as if to say 'None shall pass'.

Right as Robin was about to growl in anger, Savage calmly stated, "There is no need for that Abaddon. Let him fight me."

Abaddon turned his head to face Savage. "You are certain of this?" the demon asked.

"I'm as certain of this as I am old," Savage responded. "The boy wonder already has his mind set on doing battle with me instead of doing a rematch with you. Therefore, I might as well give him at least that satisfaction."

Abaddon appeared to think to himself, and then nodded. "Very well," he said. "You may proceed." He then proceeded to teleport out of Robin's way and reappear a couple feet to the left of the boy wonder. "You may begin," said Abaddon.

The two combatants faced each other, and then Robin let out an angry yell before jumping towards Savage with his sword at the ready to slice at the immortal caveman. Savage calmly lifted up his bone blade and blocked Robin's sword as it was swung downward towards him. And just like that, the battle began.

. . . . .

Meanwhile, back in the valley, the other Titans allowed their battle with Abaddon's fellow Knights of Hell to unfold in full force. However, as the four teenage heroes soon discovered, Abaddon's four compatriots were just as formidable as their shadowy companion had been, if not even more so. Much like Abaddon, the four Knights of Hell that were currently doing battle with Robin's friends were incredibly strong, fast, and durable. And to make matters worse, they appeared to be very much aware of how powerful a weapon their own elemental attacks could be if used to the Titans' advantage, as they made painfully obvious care to not use any element-based attacks unless their targets were not standing within so much as a foot from any of their comrades. But even in spite of the staggeringly high odds that were very clearly against them, the Titans within the valley continued to battle their Hellish foes with everything they had.

"Eat this Sludge Head!" Cyborg yelled as he fired a sonic blast at Asmodeus. The verdant green demon lazily leaned to his right, and avoided the attack. The demon then retaliated with a swing of his wickedly sharp right hand claws. The cybernetic teenager just barely managed to duck in time to avoid getting decapitated.

Unfortunately, it soon turned out that Asmodeus had been expecting for Cyborg to duck, as he then kicked Cyborg right in the jaw seconds later. The blow sent Cyborg stumbling backwards, and by the time he managed to regain firm footing, he was too late to dodge Asmodeus' next attack. The attack in question consisted of the Knight of Hell summoning a large boulder simply by causing it to pop upwards out of the ground with a stomp of his left foot and then kicking it straight at Cyborg. The boulder plowed into Cyborg's chest, sending the bionic teenage hero flying backward.

Cyborg landed hard on his back, and seconds after he groaned, and started to position himself as if about to try to get back up, Asmodeus suddenly appeared directly to Cyborg's left as if he'd teleported and hissed smugly as he threateningly lifted up his barbed tail. In a flash, Cyborg rolled over to his right just in time to avoid the incredibly swift scorpion-like sting attack that Asmodeus attempted to strike him with, the barb jabbing forcefully right down on the area where Cyborg's face had been mere seconds earlier.

Without giving Asmodeus time to reposition himself to make a second attempt, Cyborg spun himself around in a way that allowed his legs to sweep Asmodeus' own legs out from under him, causing the Knight of Hell to collapse painfully onto the ground. Taking advantage of his newly found moment of opportunity, Cyborg hurriedly got back on his feet, jumped back a few feet, and fired a missile at Asmodeus. The missile crashed into the demon, and the resulting fiery explosion sent him rocketing through the air before crash landing painfully up against one of the walls of the valley.

Asmodeus managed to get back on his feet just in time to see Cyborg send an entire volley of missiles flying towards him. Eyes briefly widening, he quickly raised up his arms and fists as if to block the blow. A large barrier of rocks and dust rose up directly in front of him at the exact same time, and the missiles harmlessly exploded upon contact with it. Asmodeus hurriedly lowered the barrier, lifted up his right fist, and slammed it down on the ground, creating a powerful earthquake-like shockwave that send Cyborg rocketing backward.

The cybernetic teenager bounced across the ground three times in his rapid backward flight, and when he finally came to a stop, he didn't even have time to get back on his feet before Asmodeus caused a gigantic tree root-like object to rise from the ground, wrap around his ankles, and lift him up off the ground. Exactly one or two minutes later, Asmodeus had proceeded to cause the gigantic tree root to go swinging around in random directions, causing Cyborg to be swung around and painfully slammed into the ground as well as the cliff walls surrounding the valley. When Asmodeus finally finished the devastating assault by having the tree root emphatically slam Cyborg down on the ground one final time, he caused the root to sink back into the ground and then walked confidently up to the prone half robot teenage hero.

As he stared down at the just barely conscious cybernetic teenager, Asmodeus chuckled, and arrogantly hissed "I'll bet environmentalists would have gotten a real kick out of seeing you, a machine, get his butt kicked by a tree root." Cyborg groaned in response. Asmodeus smirked, licked his chops, and said, "Well nonetheless, farewell," before abruptly causing his forked tongue to rapidly extend out of his mouth and wrap tightly around Cyborg's neck. Right as Cyborg reflexively grabbed onto the part that was now coiled around his neck, gasping and wheezing for air, Asmodeus lifted his tongue upward, bringing the now very much endangered bionic teen up onto the tips of his toes, laughing smugly in triumph as he continued to tighten the makeshift noose he had around the teenage hero's neck.

However, Cyborg was not about to go down that easily, and right as he was seconds away from losing consciousness, he tightly clenched his right hand around the area of the tongue that directly branched onto the portion around his neck before then delivering a lightning fast uppercut to Asmodeus' jaw with his left fist. The blow struck Asmodeus with such a tremendous impact that it not only sent the Knight of Hell flying backward, but it also caused his tongue to snap right out of his mouth by the roots.

"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" Asmodeus howled in agony as he suddenly felt an indescribable pain in his mouth from where his tongue had been. "AAAAAHHHHH!" he growled again as he placed his right hand up to his throat reflexively. "AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!" he roared as he leaned over with his eyes closed and his hand still up to his throat from the pain.

All of one second later, Asmodeus was knocked down onto his side when Cyborg's right fist rammed into the side of his face. He hadn't been lying down on the ground for two seconds before Cyborg grabbed him by the throat and slammed him up against one of the walls of the valley. Asmodeus had just enough time to briefly gasp from the pain before Cyborg started brutally pounding his right fist into Asmodeus' face again and again.

Barely conscious, Asmodeus couldn't have felt more relieved when he felt his tongue finally regenerate itself and the debilitating pain from its removal finally cease. Immediately taking advantage of his newly regenerated tongue, the demon curled it up into a ball like a noise maker from within his mouth, and then abruptly snapped his mouth open and caused it to spring out at Cyborg, resulting in the balled up portion at the very end of his tongue slamming into Cyborg's face. The blow caused Cyborg to let go of Asmodeus and stumble backwards as if he'd been punched, and Asmodeus promptly took advantage of Cyborg's newfound state of unbalance by swiping the bionic teen's legs out from under him with a sweep of his tail. No sooner had Cyborg landed on his back when Asmodeus jumped up into the air so that his clawed feet landed right on Cyborg's belly.

No sooner had Cyborg screamed from the pain of Asmodeus' claws digging into his stomach when Asmodeus proceeded to jump up and down again and again, causing his foot claws to dig deeper and deeper into Cyborg's abdomen as well as cause what appeared to be small crater-shaped dents to appear in the metal of that area. Right as Asmodeus was about to land down on Cyborg for the 27th time, Cyborg grabbed the demon by the right ankle and proceeded to propel it away so that it caused Asmodeus to fly headfirst right into the trunk of a nearby tree. The Knight of Hell crumpled to the ground, hissing and groaning in pain from the painful impact with the tree.

Right as Asmodeus got onto his hands and knees, he heard Cyborg yell, and looked up just in time to see the bionic teenager barreling towards him with his right fist drawn back. Quick as a viper, Asmodeus straightened himself up on both feet and slapped his palms together as if trying to cause a thunder clap. While the gesture didn't end up causing a thunder clap, it did cause two large slabs of earth-based material to rise from the ground on either side of Cyborg and slam together on him. When the earthen slabs came apart and slammed back down into the ground, the utterly smashed Cyborg groaned before crumpling flat on his face.

Cyborg managed to open his eyes just in time to see Asmodeus slam his right fist on the ground, causing a large line of stalagmites to abruptly start sprouting out from the ground and expanding rapidly straight towards Cyborg. Eyes widened, Cyborg hurriedly rolled away to his left just in time to avoid getting impaled by the stalagmites that erupted out from the ground in the area he'd earlier been lying down.

Immediately after the stalagmites retracted back into the ground, Cyborg got up on his feet, glared furiously at the now very irate looking Knight of Hell and yelled, "I am really starting to get sick of you!"

"Oh you will get sick," Asmodeus hissed, his tongue extended and vibrating crazily in the air and his verdant green eyes taking on a venomous glare. "Very, very, very sick." No sooner had Asmodeus said this when his jaws snapped open, his frill extended to full length, and he sent a tsunami of virulent green poison gas pouring from his mouth straight at Cyborg.

Swearing under his breath, Cyborg hurriedly ran off to his right to avoid getting engulfed in Asmodeus' devastating poison breath. He soon found himself continuing to run in a full circle as Abaddon proceeded to turn himself around in an effort to trap Cyborg. Unfortunately for the demon, right as Cyborg was inches away from running straight into the leftover gas from when he'd first started running away, he ducked in time for the poison gas to form a ring around Asmodeus. Right as Asmodeus was about to shut off his continuous stream of poison gas, Cyborg caused a small welding torch-like device to extend from his right middle finger, ignite it, and press it up against the gas. The resulting explosion sent Asmodeus hurtling up into the air before landing face-first back on the ground with a thud.

Cyborg smirked at Asmodeus as the demon started to get back on his feet. "So, how'd you enjoy the grill?"

Asmodeus snarled, directed a hateful glare at Cyborg, and extended his frill before venomously hissing, "I will melt you down you infernal piece of junk!"

Cyborg chuckled, waved his finger teasingly at the Knight of Hell, and stated smugly, "Sorry pal, but you need fire to melt down metal; and last time I checked, you're buddy Samael is the pyrokinetic one around here, not you."

"I don't need fire!" Asmodeus roared. "Not when I have acid that can do the job for me!"

Asmodeus promptly started hurling a rapid fire volley of sickeningly yellowish green bubble like orbs at Cyborg. Cyborg just barely managed to deploy his arm shield extensions and raise them up in the proper defensive position. However, exactly three minutes later, the brutal onslaught of corrosive acid bubbles proved powerful enough to melt the shields down to nothing.

Cyborg's eyes widened at the now blaringly obvious empty space where his shield extensions had been, and he managed to look straight towards Asmodeus in time to see the Knight of Hell resume his unyielding volley of acid bubbles. With his shields no longer available, Cyborg had no choice but to run off to the side again to avoid getting splashed by the dangerously corrosive acid. And as it turned out, this acid was very corrosive indeed, for mass torrents of acrid greenish yellow mist began to rise from the ground that the acid bubbles landed on. Cyborg whistled silently in alarm at the sight of this. "This is so not good," he thought to himself.

At the same time that Cyborg was fighting his terrifyingly sickening battle against Asmodeus, Raven managed to quite skillfully hold her own against Azazel in spite of the painfully obvious elemental type disadvantage she had. Not too long after Cyborg had found himself forced to run in order to avoid Asmodeus' corrosive volley, Raven had shouted out her mantra and caused a small jet of flame-shaped shadowy energy to spout from her hands towards Azazel, who jumped over Raven to evade the blast. Right as Azazel landed and straightened back up, the sorceress turned around swiftly to prevent the demon from attempting to strike a counter attack, her left fist glowing with obsidian energy. Azazel hurriedly blocked the blow by lifting arms up in front of his face with his fists clenched.

Seconds after Raven drew her fist back from Azazel's arm guard, the Knight of Hell abruptly jabbed his left fist at her in a lightning fast punch. The demon's fist pounded into Raven's face before she even had a chance to react, and the sorceress was sent stumbling backwards.

Snarling gleefully at his current moment of newfound advantage, Azazel dashed headlong towards Raven at a speed that briefly reminded Raven of the similar lightning speed at which the honorary Titan Kid Flash and his uncle the Flash were capable of running. Unfortunately, she'd only managed to think about this similarity for all of one second before the literal speed demon plowed into her so quickly that the impact caused her to involuntarily start spinning around like a top.

Raven didn't even have a chance to start slowing down in her spinning before Azazel proceeded to run at her randomly in all directions, slamming into her at lightning speed again and again. Over time, in spite of her continuous rapid spinning, Raven managed to summon her obsidian energy and cause it to create a swirling spherical barrier of shadows around her. "Beast Boy would so get a kick out of seeing this technique," she thought to herself right as the swirling barrier fully formed. Due to how much of a fan Beast Boy was of several different manga and anime, she knew that Beast Boy would probably be able to note how very similar her current action was to the defensive spinning technique used by Neji Hyuga and the other members of his clan in the Naruto series, which just happened to be Beast Boy's number one favorite anime/mange series of all time.

However, Raven thought about this matter for all of three seconds before she heard an almighty pounding noise coming from directly in front of her, and she instantly halted her improvised spinning defense just in time to see Azazel get sent flying straight up into the air as a very obvious result of his tremendously fast speed in combination with what must have been a very painful head on collision with her swirling shadow barrier.

Immediately after Azazel finally started plummeting downwards, Raven hurriedly extended her still energy gloved hands towards the ground in front of her and chanted, "Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos!"

The large lob-shaped pillar of rocks that jutted out of the ground in front of Raven at an upwards slant pounded into Azazel's stomach right as he was about to land headfirst on the ground. The impact sent the Knight of Hell flying straight towards one of the walls of the valley, which he crashed into with such a tremendous impact that he was effectively pummeled about three feet within the interior of the rocky wall, comically leaving behind an Azazel shaped hole in the wall at the point of impact.

In spite of herself, Raven found herself smirking at the sight of the humorously shaped impression left in the wall. "First Naruto, now Looney Tunes," she thought to herself. "Beast Boy would have a field day."

Raven was promptly brought back down to Earth when she saw Azazel slowly squeeze his way out of the valley cliff wall, snarling and grunting from the effort, and also looking very appropriately dusty and dirty from the experience. Soon after Azazel had managed to get his head, arms, upper torso, and left leg out of the cliff wall, he snarled angrily at Raven, and then snapped his fingers.

Raven had just raised her eyebrow in confusion as she attempted to figure out what Azazel was doing when she suddenly found herself screaming in pain as she was unexpectedly engulfed in electricity. Strangely enough, the electrical energy appeared to have come from beneath her. In the midst of her electrocution, Raven managed to look downward, and saw what appeared to be a circular field of amber yellow energy directly beneath her feet. From this field spouted the electrical tendrils that were now zapping the living daylights out of her. Groaning in a mixture of pain and self-irritation, she closed her eyes and thought to herself, "Clever bastard."

Seconds later, Azazel dismissed the ground-based lightning field, and Raven crumpled down on her hands and knees, panting from the pain and exhaustion. Azazel then proceeded to teleport, and Raven made no hesitation in looking up when she heard the sound of him reappearing from his teleportation coming from directly above her. Her eyes widened at the sight of Azazel falling straight down towards her. However, it wasn't so much the sight of Azazel falling towards her that caused her eyes to widen as it was the sight of him positioning himself in midair so that she would be stabbed by the horrendously sharp spikes on the tip of his tail when he landed.

Hurriedly, Raven melted into the shadows to escape, and Azazel landed on empty ground, his tail spikes harmlessly plunging into the dirt right in the area where Raven's back had been seconds earlier. Azazel snarled upon the sight of his failed attack, and he got back up on his feet before then looking around to see if he could catch the sorceress when she reappeared from her current teleportation, crouching like a velociraptor as if in preparation for lunging at Raven when he actually did manage to see her. However, right as he was looking in the direction of the cliff wall that he'd been pounded into, he heard Raven's voice from straight above him yell, "Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos!"

Azazel snarled in anger and pain as a large bolt of midnight black lightning struck him in the back with such force that he was slammed down hard on the ground on his belly. Against any non-electrokinetic foes, this attack would have very likely been enough to knock the enemy unconscious. However, Azazel was left only slightly winded, and Raven had a feeling that this was more of a result of his impact with the ground then of actually getting hit by the shadowy lightning bolt.

Azazel pushed himself back up onto his feet, growled irately at Raven, and promptly lifted up his right hand so that he had his clawed fingers pointing straight at her. Raven, remembering what had happened when the subordinate electrokinetic demon from the home invasion three nights prior had taken on a similar position, hurriedly swooped away to her left just in time to avoid getting herself deep fried by the bursts of lightning that sprang out from Azazel's finger tips.

Raven swooped low towards the ground, gliding in front of Azazel just in time to catch a glimpse of him with electricity crackling around his jaws. Raven hurriedly glided away just in time to avoid getting struck by the blinding bolt of lightning that he fired from his mouth at her. And before long, Raven found herself continuing to dodge multiple other lightning bolt breath attacks that the demon fired at her in similar fashion.

However, Raven's luck at escaping briefly ran out when she ended up gliding directly behind Azazel and the demon caught her in the chest with a blindingly swift back kick that he directed at her with his right leg without even turning his head to face her. The sorceress was sent hurtling backwards by the force of the blow.

Raven just barely managed to get firm footing before falling flat on her back, only to then get sent pounding right into one of the valley walls when she got struck right in the chest by yet another (but this time successful in striking its mark) lightning bolt breath attack from Azazel. The sorceress crumpled to the ground, and eventually started crawling forward away from the cliff wall, panting and gasping from pain and exhaustion.

Unfortunately, Raven had only crawled forward by about a foot or two when she suddenly felt something grab onto her cloak and pull on it roughly. She screeched in shock as she found herself getting roughly dragged backwards. Azazel must have been especially pissed, as he then teleported while still clutching onto Raven's cloak, thus dragging her into the teleportation with him. And when Azazel ended the teleport, Raven had just enough time to notice that Azazel had teleported to about several feet above the ground from where he'd earlier grasped her cloak before the demon threw her down hard at the ground.

Raven hit the ground with such a tremendous impact that she bounced across the ground five times before painfully skidding to a halt on her belly. Raven groaned, and got herself on her hands and knees. However, at the sound of running feet alongside electrical crackling coming from behind her, she turned her head in time to see Azazel dashing towards her with a crackling orb of electricity in his left hand that reminded Raven very much of the chidori technique used by Sasuke in the Naruto series.

Very much eager to avoid ending up on the receiving end of Azazel's chidori-like attack, Raven hurriedly whispered out her mantra, causing a large tree to become encased in umbrakinetic energy and then uprooted. No sooner had Raven uprooted the tree when she caused it to swing around like a baseball bat and smack into Azazel, sending the Knight of Hell careening backward. By the time Azazel landed and got back on his feet, Raven had managed to levitate a good distance above the ground and send a large crescent shaped wave of dark energy barreling down towards him.

The energy blast slammed into Azazel with such force that it sent him stumbling backward, leaving him just barely able to prevent himself from losing his footing entirely. And the fact that Raven continued to send a ceaseless volley of crescent-shaped waves of dark energy certainly didn't help. The ninth blast Raven sent his way was enough to finally knock him off his feet and onto his back.

At that moment, with Azazel incapacitated, Raven hastened the speed at which she fired her volley of shadow energy waves, making sure to not give the Knight of Hell even the slightest second of reprieve. She knew that if she was to defeat him, now was the best time, and that she would need to give it everything she had.

Unfortunately, in spite of how Raven was indeed able to prevent Azazel from getting back up on his feet, the demon still had a trick or two left up his sleeve that didn't require standing up. As Raven continued to pummel him into the ground with her continuous waves of dark energy, he quickly coated himself in electricity, absorbed it, and then proceeded to unleash an ear splitting ultrasonic roar. The already powerful attack turned out to have been massively boosted in power as a result of the electricity that the demon had coated himself in beforehand. This same charging technique also caused the roar to have an additional effect of emitting a large electrical shockwave from his body at the exact same time as the noise waves emitted from his mouth.

The powerful combined attack plowed into Raven and sent her plummeting to the ground. Right as she got on her hands and knees, groaning from the effort, she heard Azazel shout behind her, "Venatio Fulmina!" She whipped her head around to look behind her, and saw Azazel slowly rise up into the air with a yellow aura around him and his hands raised up in the air. Seconds later, right as what appeared to be a plate-sized vortex of crackling yellow energy appeared directly above Azazel's hands, a single boulder-sized storm cloud suddenly appeared directly over Raven. The bottom of this cloud started crackling ominously with electricity.

Raven hurriedly took on her Spectral Raven form and glided out from under the cloud just in time to avoid getting charred by the maelstrom of lightning that dove down from the cloud. However, as Raven soon found out, this newest trick of Azazel's wouldn't be that easily evaded, for immediately after unleashing that first blast, the cloud proceeded to follow her around the valley, letting off an increasingly fast paced and rapid fire storm of lightning bolt maelstroms. It took all the strength Raven had just to stay a single inch out of reach of the deadly attack. "It's going to take a miracle to survive this," she thought to herself as she continued to try her utmost best to avoid the hellish storm that Azazel had summoned. "I can only hope that my friends aren't suffering similar dire circumstances."

Sadly, Raven's friends were indeed suffering very similarly life threatening situations. Beast Boy in particular had found himself fighting a tremendously punishing battle against Samael at the exact same time that his friends were busy dealing with Samael's Hellish compatriots. At the exact same time that Raven was in the midst of flying around to escape from Azazel's nightmarish storm, Beast Boy turned into a lion and lunged at Samael. Samael ducked, and the verdant green lion sailed harmlessly over him.

Unfortunately for the demon, Beast Boy was prepared for this possibility. Seconds after he landed directly behind Samael, the changeling directed a thundering kick at him with his hind legs. His strong hind paws pounded Samael in the back right as he straightened back up to his full height, sending the Knight of Hell hurtling forward.

Samael landed on his belly, and it seemed as if only mere seconds had passed before he heard the sound of apelike hooting and bellowing coming from behind. He turned his head in time to see Beast Boy barreling towards him in the form of a gorilla. Samael snarled, jumped back onto his feet so he could face Beast Boy, and shot out a jet of flames at Beast Boy from his mouth. Beast Boy jumped into the air to avoid the fire, and he grabbed onto a sturdy tree branch in midair before using it to propel himself into changing position before letting go, and thus sending himself flying towards Samael from the demon's left.

Samael noticed too late what Beast Boy had done, and before he even had a chance to shut off his fire breath, the green gorilla landed directly next to him right at the same that his clenched fists slammed hard onto the ground. The impact of the gorilla's fists was strong to knock Samael off his feet and send him rocketing away to his right.

Samael slammed into one of the cliff walls surrounding the valley, and slid down to the ground, hissing and groaning from the force of the impact. However, right as he managed to slide all the way down onto his backside, he heard heavy footsteps coming from the front, and he opened his eyes just in time to see that Beast Boy had taken advantage of Samael's time in the air to transform into a rhino and was now thundering straight towards him.

Hissing in consternation, Samael hurriedly jumped up on his feet and sent a second jet of flames rocketing towards Beast Boy, but this time from his hands. Beast Boy was moving too fast in his headlong charge towards Samael to stop in time to dodge, and the fiery blast plowed into him, sending him flying backward.

The charred up green rhino landed hard on its side, and had just enough time to snort and grunt in discomfort before it heard the sound of an inhuman snarl coming towards him from the side and slightly skyward. Thinking quickly, Beast Boy turned into a crocodile and snapped his jaws in the direction he'd heard the sound coming from without even bothering to take a good look at just what it was that he was attempting to bite.

As it turned out, Beast Boy had chosen very wisely in trusting his instincts; for the source of the noise turned out to be Samael in the midst of jumping towards him while in the midst of positioning himself so that the tip of his tail would slam down painfully onto Beast Boy upon landing. And even better, the jaws of Beast Boy's crocodile form snapped painfully right over the tip of the demon's tail.

Samael shrieked in agony as he felt the crocodile's strong jaws clamp down on his tail, only to then howl in surprise as he felt the creature lift its head upward, propelling him forward through the air by his tail before then slamming him down hard on the ground. Samael had just managed to pant on the ground for about a second before Beast Boy repeated the maneuver, but in the opposite direction.

Thus Beast Boy proceeded to slam Samael on the ground left and right for a good few minutes until he eventually finished the attack with a final emphatic slam straight downwards. This emphatic finish sent Samael bouncing along the ground a good few feet in front of Beast Boy. When Samael got back up, he looked back behind him in time to see Beast Boy rushing towards him as a wolf. The demon hurriedly lifted up his right fist, engulfed it in flames, and slammed it down on the ground. In a flash, a pillar of flames erupted from the ground directly in front of him.

Seconds after the first flaming geyser vanished into thin air, an entire line of them began erupting from the ground rapidly while progressing straight towards Beast Boy. With a shocked yelp, Beast Boy just barely managed to skid to a stop in time to lunge out of the path of the flaming pillars. Right as Beast Boy managed to regain his bearings and look back towards Samael, he saw the demon summon a burning ring of fire around himself that he then caused to explosively increase in diameter.

Beast Boy hurriedly turned into a pteranodon and took to the air just in time to avoid getting roasted by the blazing ring of fire. He flapped on directly over Samael before then turning into an apatosaurus. He landed on the ground within the ring of fire with such a colossal impact that Samael was sent flying right over the wall of fire directly behind him. The ring of fire faded away into smoke soon after Samael landed. Beast Boy immediately took advantage of the demon's current incapacitation by shifting into a smilodon and rushing towards him with a savage roar.

Unfortunately, right as Beast Boy lunged at Samael, the Knight of Hell got back on his feet, grabbed the green saber-toothed cat by its iconic fangs right when they were inches away from jabbing him in the face, and used them as leverage to lift Beas Boy up into the air and then slam him back down on the ground.

Fortunately, Beast Boy had landed on his belly when this attack had occurred. And so, right as Samael was about to lift him up again, he transformed into a triceratops, thus causing Samael to promptly lose his grip on Beast Boy when the fangs he'd been grasping onto abruptly vanished seemingly into thin air. In that instant, right as Samael was briefly standing still and agape at the empty air where he'd previously been grasping onto fangs, Beast Boy lowered his head slightly to the right, and then lifted it back up so swiftly that the side of his nose horn smacked Samael right in the jaw and sent him flying. The demon only came to a stop when he pounded headfirst into the trunk of a nearby tree. At the sight of Samael lying on the ground groaning after his impact with the tree, Beast Boy snorted, and then transformed into a t-rex before rushing head on towards the demon, letting off a triumphant roar of bloodlust.

Unfortunately, Samael managed to recover right as Beast Boy was about five footsteps away from snapping him up into his jaws. Reacting quickly, he unleashed a powerful ultrasonic roar so loud and strong that it sent the mighty green t-rex flying through the air. The dinosaur landed hard on its side a sizeable distance away from Samael.

Beast Boy hurriedly reverted back to his human form and looked back up towards Samael, only to curse mentally and hurriedly jump away as a tiger when Samael spewed out a second fiery breath attack. In midair, Beast Boy flipped over and transformed into an emperor penguin. He landed on his belly and proceeded to slide himself along the ground to continue his dodging of Samael's fiery breath.

Eventually, when Samael finally had no choice but to shut off his fire breath, Beast Boy swerved around so that he slid directly in front of Samael, and then turned into a python in order to stop his rapid sliding movement before proceeding to slither towards him. The demon proceeded to lob a continuous volley of fire balls at the large green serpent in an effort to roast the snake, but the shape shifter cleverly slithered around in an s-shaped path to artfully dodge the fire balls hurled towards him.

When Beast Boy had slithered up to exactly one foot away from Samael, he lunged forward, transforming into an elephant at the same time. This transformation occurred just in time for Beast Boy's newly acquired trunk to slam down on Samael's head and pound him down on the ground. With Samael thus incapacitated, Beast Boy grabbed him by the tail with his trunk, lifted him up, and proceeded to slam him down on the ground again and again.

However, Samael still had a few tricks up his sleeve, and he quickly caused his hands to glow brightly with orange energy before clenching both of them around Beast Boy's trunk. Beast Boy trumpeted in agony and shock as he felt a sudden devastatingly searing pain on his trunk, and he let go of Samael's tail. The Knight of Hell landed on his feet, and then abruptly lifted his head upwards to face the sky and spread his arms to his sides before letting out a mighty howling roar. As if in direct response to this savage battle cry, a pillar of fire erupted from directly underneath Beast Boy, sending the emerald green elephant rocketing upward, bellowing in pain and fright.

When the fiery pillar vanished, a charred up and barely alive elephant was revealed, and it started to plummet downwards. Fortunately, the elephant was still conscious, and right before Samael's watchful eyes, it transformed into a flamingo and flew away from the area that it had been blasted up from. Samael snarled at the sight, bared his teeth, and caused them to burst into flames before then lunging upwards towards the green flamingo with his flaming jaws agape.

Beast Boy hurriedly reared up in the air, stopping himself just in time for Samael to rocket upwards directly in front of him in a slight slant, the demon's fiery jaws snapping shut onto thin air seconds after the tip of his tail harmlessly passed by the hovering green flamingo. Seconds later, having failed to snap Beast Boy up in his jaws, Samael began to hurtle downwards towards the top of one of the cliff walls.

However, Samael wasn't about to give up that easily, and right as he was inches away from a face first plowing straight into the cliff, he latched his right hand onto the cliff edge and proceeded to use the cliff wall to propel himself upwards in the direction opposite the cliff. No sooner had the Knight of Hell thus propelled himself directly over Beast Boy when he flipped over so that he was facing straight downwards, engulfed his now clenched right fist in flames, and proceeded to snap himself into a full on downwards dive bomb attack towards the green flamingo with his flaming fist fully extended down towards the changeling.

At the sight of Samael hurtling straight down towards him with his fist ablaze, Beast Boy the flamingo let out a shrill squawk of surprise, and hurriedly turned into a butterfly before hurriedly flapping away to his right. Mere minutes later, Beast Boy the butterfly felt what appeared to be a tremendous wind billow downwards right behind him, and he instinctively knew that he had now just barely managed to dodge Samael in time to avoid getting pounded by the demon's flaming fist.

Samael landed fist first on the ground, the flames on his fist exploding into a miniature ring of flames before Samael crumpled onto his feet. Soon after Samael straightened back up afterward, he had just enough time to snarl irritably to himself before he heard something land behind him, the distinctive sound of a transformation also coming from behind him, and then suddenly felt a pounding impact upon the back of his head that sent him flying forwards. The sound of the landing object had come from Beast Boy landing on the ground in the form of a tortoise, the sound of the transformation had been Beast Boy morphing from his tortoise form to his giraffe form, and the impact with the back of Samael's head had come from Beast Boy kicking the demon in the back of his head with one of the giraffe form's rock hard hind hooves.

The Knight of Hell landed flat on his face, and by the time he managed to get back up on his feet and turn around, he had just noticed Beast Boy standing nearby in the form of a giraffe before the changeling swung his long neck towards Samael and the demon was sent flying backward as a result of the changeling's horned head slamming painfully into the demon's jaw.

Samael crashed headfirst into a tree, and landed hard on his belly. He got back up, snarled at the green giraffe, and lunged towards it with his claws crossed and ablaze. Beast Boy morphed into a frog and jumped away just in time to avoid getting struck by the x-shaped slashing attack that Samael unleashed upon the ground he'd been standing on with his flaming claws.

Soon after Beast Boy had hopped a good distance away, he reverted back to human form and turned his head to face Samael just in time to see the demon stand up. Samael then took one look at Beast Boy, snarled, and abruptly appeared to burst into flame. Beast Boy's eyes widened at the sight of the now entirely ablaze Knight of Hell. The now literally fiery demon growled at Beast Boy, hissed out, "Time to be roasted," and then transformed into his incorporeal form. As a result of the state he was in when he transformed, Beast Boy was very shocked to discover that Samael had now effectively turned himself into a flying stream of flames.

The floating jet of flames reared up like a snake, and then rocketed towards Beast Boy. Very much uneager to get roasted, Beast Boy morphed into a kangaroo and bounded out of the way. And for the next few minutes, Beast Boy continue to hop and jump away in a desperate effort to keep himself out of the path of the dreaded flying stream of flames that Samael had become. But of course, Beast Boy couldn't keep himself entirely out of Samael's path forever, and when Samael at one point crash landed 'head first' so to speak mere inches behind Beast Boy, the green kangaroo was sent flying through the air before he landed hard on his belly, but thankfully had enough time in between the brief flight through the air and his landing to revert back to human form.

Before Beast Boy even had a chance to get up, Samael took a hovering position directly above the changeling and then rocketed towards him in a downward slant from his right. Beast Boy hurriedly rolled to his left, and the flying flame jet harmlessly plowed down on the empty ground he'd originally been lying on. Samael rose back up in the air and attempted to dive bomb Beast Boy from the opposite direction, but Beast Boy simply rolled over to his right and Samael again crashed down on empty space. For another few minutes, Beast Boy and Samael continued this deadly game of cat and mouse, until at one point Samael prepared himself to attempt a dive bomb attack for the thirteenth time. Upon sight of how Samael appeared to have taken a position indicating a dive bomb attack coming from his left, Beast Boy hurriedly rolled to his left right before Samael even began to move.

However, as Beast Boy soon discovered the hard way, Samael had tricked him. Instead of taking the direction that he'd indicated, Samael instead dived straight towards the area where Beast Boy was rolling to right as the changeling came to a stop at that particular area. The impact sent Beast Boy flying, and he landed painfully on the ground, grunting and groaning in pain as he ended up bouncing across the ground several times before eventually skidding to a stop inches away from plowing straight into the roots of a tree. Beast Boy had just managed to get on his hands and knees and shake his head to clear the pain when he felt an intense heat coming from his right, and he turned his head in time to see Samael, still in his flying flame jet form, hurtling head on towards him.

Beast Boy hurriedly transformed into a vulture and flew off into the air just in time to avoid getting blasted by Samael, and the fiery jet crashed straight into the tree. No sooner had the resulting explosion cleared away when Samael reverted back to his corporeal form and shut off his fiery coat. Beast Boy landed behind him and reverted back to his human form. Samael looked straight at Beast Boy, snarled, and caused his hands to go ablaze. Beast Boy shrieked, morphed into a cheetah, and hurriedly ran off right as the demon began hurling a massive rapid-fire volley of fire balls straight towards him.

As Samael continued to senselessly hurl the fire balls towards the evasive green cheetah, he yelled, "You cannot escape me forever changeling! Sooner or later, you will end up on the receiving end of my wrath!"

Beast Boy panted and gasped as he desperately pushed himself to continue to remain safely out of the path of Samael's furious volley of flaming orbs. "At this rate, that assumption is going to prove very much correct," he thought to himself. "Good God, why do I always get the difficult jobs?"

Meanwhile, Starfire was fighting her own terrifying battle against Lilith. However, unlike her friends, Starfire had been terrified about her chances from the very beginning of the battle. For unlike her friends, she had no factor that would allow for her to have a natural immunity to demonic possession. As her friends had explained over the course of the previous days, they had several factors that allowed them to not have to any fear of falling victim to demonic possession. Robin was protected by the fact that he'd been baptized. Cyborg had also been baptized, and even had the added security of the computer half of his brain. Raven, being part demon herself, was naturally immune to being possessed by a demon. As for Beast Boy, his baptism combined with the willpower of the Beast made him more than capable of making all attempts of possession by demons futile.

However, she herself, having been neither baptized nor gifted with any elements to give her added security, was very much vulnerable to possession. And to make matters worse, she had a nasty feeling that Lilith knew that. That being said, the fact that Lilith still hadn't yet possessed her and defeated her from that point onward made Starfire very, very worried. In spite of her fear, she still tried her best to make herself look as brave as possible by taking on as confident a stance as she could with her fists blazing with her distinctive star bolts. But even so, her fear was as clear as the nose on her face.

Lilith smirked maliciously at the Tamaranean warrior princess, and caused her own hands to become encased with small flurries of icy wind. "Someone's certainly high strung right now," she hissed. "I think you could definitely use some time to chill out and relax. Care to allow me to help you out with that?"

Starfire responded by lunging through the air towards Lilith with an inarticulate shriek of rage. Lilith calmly cartwheeled to her left, and Starfire soared right past her. Seconds after Starfire managed to bring herself to a halt, she found herself briefly stumbling forwards on her feet when she felt an icy object crash into her back. The object in question, had been a bowling ball sized sphere of ice that Lilith had hurled at Starfire immediately after getting back on her feet following her successfully dodging Starfire's attack. She chuckled as she saw Starfire turn her head to face her. "That certainly felt refreshing, don't you think?"

Starfire snarled, summoned a new pair of star bolts, and then shouted, "The only thing that will refresh me now is melting you down!" With an inhuman howl of fury, she abruptly rocketed up into the air. This action left Lilith quite visibly shocked. Having been expecting for Starfire to launch her star bolt attack at her while still on the ground, the Knight of Hell was left quite off guard by the Tamaranean's unexpectedly taking to the air. From her newfound position in the air, Starfire snarled, her eyes glowing dangerously green, and sent both her star bolts rocketing down towards Lilith so fast that they seemed to merge together to form a single giant star bolt. The attack came so fast that the still stunned Lilith didn't even have a chance to see the attack coming, let alone attempt to dodge it. As a result, Lilith was sent flying backward when the two star bolts smashed right into her chest.

Lilith crashed straight into one of the cliff walls of the valley, and landed on her belly, grunting from the pain that came with the impact on both her back and her stomach. She only managed to wake up fully from the impact when she heard Starfire's angry shriek coming from very close in front of her. She looked up in time to see Starfire rocketing towards her with her fist drawn back to punch at her.

Lilith hurriedly jumped, positioning herself so that she delivered a powerful flying ninja kick right to Starfire's face at the same time. The kick struck Starfire in the face so hard that the Tamaranean was sent rocketing up into the air. And when she first started to hurtle down, she came to a painful landing by slamming right into one of the cliff walls, and unlike Lilith, her face half was the part that impacted with the wall. She landed on her back, and whimpered in agony.

At the sound of a draconic shriek coming from above her, Starfire's eyes snapped open, and she screamed in horror as she saw Lilith hurtling down towards her with her fist both glowing with an icy blue energy and lifted up as if about to strike. Starfire hurriedly rolled out of the way, and Lilith's fist harmlessly struck the ground where Starfire's face had been mere seconds before. Seconds after this happened, Starfire turned out to be all the more lucky to have escaped when a large line of gigantic razor sharp icicles spouted out of the ground directly in front of Lilith.

Panting in a mixture of terror and relief, Starfire immediately took to the skies once more. Lilith, however, was not about to let her prey escape from her reach again that easily, and she caused a massive pillar of water to erupt from the ground directly beneath Starfire, and the watery blast was enough to send Starfire hurtling around in the air before eventually falling right back down on the ground once more. Promptly taking advantage of Starfire once again being on the ground, Lilith caused a massive ring of what looked very much like arctic fog to heavily cloak the area around the Tamaranean.

Chuckling darkly, Lilith summoned a small shower of hail to fall down on the area surrounding the large mass of fog. The hail landed on the area with just enough force to make it sound as if Lilith herself was running in circles around the fog. "This ought to do the trick," she thought to herself as she did this. She knew that Starfire, being unable to see anything through the fog, would likely attempt to rely on other senses such as hearing to attempt to figure out from which area Lilith would attempt to strike her. Therefore, to take advantage of this possibility, Lilith had chosen to fool Starfire into thinking that Lilith was changing positions and then strike from the very same position she'd already been in when she'd summoned the fog. Hissing in triumph, Lilith snapped her fingers and lunged in the direction of the fog right as it started to fade away.

However, the instant the fog had faded away, Lilith found herself shrieking in shock in midair when she saw that Starfire had not only remained facing the exact direction she'd faced when the fog first appeared, but also now had her right fist drawn back as if ready to punch something. Seconds later, as Lilith awkwardly flapped her arms around in the air as she hurtled towards the very much well prepared Tamaranean, Starfire pounded the demon straight in the face with her fist, sending the Knight of Hell rocketing backward.

Lilith was just barely able to position herself so that she was able to very shakily land on her feet, only to then be painfully pushed backwards when she was struck in the chest point blank by a laser blast from Starfire's eyes. The laser blast proved strong enough to push Lilith right up against one of the cliff walls.

The Knight of Hell slumped down towards the ground until she ended up sitting up against the cliff wall as opposed to standing against it. She had just managed to shake her head side to side to regain her bearings when she heard Starfire's savage warrior shriek coming from in front of her, and her eyes widened so as to get a good look at the area in front of her. At the sight of Starfire gliding head on towards her with her right fist drawn back yet again, Lilith hissed in fright and teleported away just in time to avoid getting punched in the face a second time, and the furious Tamaranean's fist pounded up against the cliff wall segment where the demon's head had been positioned with a sufficiently strong enough impact as to cause a soccer ball-sized circle of cracks. She hovered backwards a couple inches so as to gain sufficient distance between the cliff wall and herself and then landed back on her feet before preparing herself to look around to see if she could successfully get herself in the right position needed to see Lilith come out of her teleportation.

Unfortunately, before Starfire even got the chance to turn around to face any direction apart from towards the cliff wall that she'd earlier pushed Lilith up against, she was suddenly tripped up from behind when Lilith abruptly reappeared directly behind her and swiped her legs out from under her with a swing of her tail. She jumped backwards right as Starfire slammed down on the ground on her back. No sooner had Starfire thus been rendered briefly out of commission when Lilith lunged into the air towards the downed Tamaranean much like a cat, even letting out a draconic snarl of bloodlust as she pounced towards her intended prey.

Fortunately, Lilith's predatory battle cry had the unintended effect of snapping Starfire out of her dazed state, and she had just enough time to quickly look in the direction she heard it coming from and prepare herself before then proceeding to do a back flip in a way that both allowed for her to get back on her feet, and for both of her feet to slam straight into Lilith's chest in a powerful kicking attack that sent the Knight of Hell flying back away from her. Lilith landed hard on the ground and bounced thrice further away before sliding to a stop just inches away from plowing into the base of a tree.

Lilith heaved herself back onto her feet, snarled at Starfire, and caused a large wave of water to rise up from the ground behind her, even going so far as to jump up on top of it as it rose higher and higher. Having thus positioned herself much like a surfer, Lilith sent the wave rolling along towards Starfire at a speed that she could tell for a fact would allow it to reach Starfire's position far more quickly than the Tamaranean would be capable of taking off into the sky again.

Unfortunately for Lilith, what she hadn't counted on was just how strong Starfire's energy attacks actually were. As a result, she was caught quite off guard when the massive jet of star bolt energy that Starfire hurled at the wave proved powerful enough to evaporate a large hole within the wave. Barely even allowing a second to pass upon ceasing her volley, Starfire rocketed up through the makeshift escape route she'd created, soared up above Lilith, who was now off balance from the now unstable wave, and did a front flip maneuver that ended with her right foot pounding down on the back of Lilith's head.

The blow left such a tremendous impact that it not only propelled Lilith straight downward, but also cut the wave completely in half, causing the two large masses of water that were created as a result to harmlessly splash down on the ground before vanishing away. Lilith didn't even get the chance to get on her hands and knees before Starfire proceeded to uproot a tree lift it up in the air and then slam it downward right on top of Lilith in a motion much like the way one would wield a hammer.

Starfire managed to pound Lilith in this manner eight more times before Lilith finally managed to hurriedly get back on her feet, summoning water at the same time. And to further shake things up, Lilith even made sure to cause herself to rapidly spin around in circles while the water was still streaming from her hands, producing a large whirlpool-like vortex around herself right as Starfire was about to swing the tree at Lilith like a baseball bat. As a result of Lilith's well timed counter attack, the tree ended up being not only impeded in its movement by the resistance that came from striking the boundary of the whirlpool, but the strength of the vortex even proved powerful enough to yank the tree directly into the water, dragging Starfire along with it.

Starfire shrieked as she was unwittingly dragged straight into Lilith's watery vortex. For what seemed like an eternity, Starfire was violently swept around through the water before Lilith then caused the entire watery mass to explode upward in a massive ring shaped geyser. And after the water descended, Starfire didn't even have a chance to regain her bearings and prevent her fall before Lilith jumped into the air and blasted her with a powerful jet of water that she spouted from her hands. The watery blast pounded into Starfire's abdomen and sent her plowing down onto the ground.

When the water subsided, Starfire managed to open her eyes in time to see Lilith diving down in the sky towards her. Reacting purely out of instinct, Starfire fired a laser blast from her eyes. The lasers struck Lilith in the face and sent her hurtling skyward. Starfire immediately took advantage of the opportunity to get back on her feet. Unfortunately, Lilith also landed on her own feet, and she reared upward with her clenched jaws now starting to seemingly overload with icy mist. Starfire hurriedly took to the air just in time to avoid getting caught in the blast of the subzero breath attack that Lilith unleashed seconds later.

Before Lilith could even straighten back up from letting out her icy breath attack, Starfire hurled a star bolt straight into the demon's mouth, causing a miniature explosion within the area. Lilith howled in pain as smoke began to billow from her mouth and she stumbled backwards, hissing in agony and flailing her arms around as if in an effort to grab hold of something. Lilith was sent even further off balance when Starfire slammed her point blank with a jet of star bolt fire. And unlike the shot to her mouth, this blast was enough to push Lilith straight up against a cliff wall with a pounding impact.

Lilith groaned in pain after the star bolt flame jet faded away, and immediately made an attempt to get back up on her feet. Unfortunately for her, she had only just started to straighten out her legs when Starfire landed a couple feet in front of her and started rapidly throwing an unyielding volley of star bolts at her. Lilith tried her hardest to hold her ground, but the furious onslaught of star bolts made it completely impossible for the demon to stop herself from being forcibly moved backwards and remaining up against the cliff wall.

Starfire growled and snarled in fury as she continued to brutally batter Lilith with her near endless storm of star bolts. As she continued her assault, Starfire menacingly snarled, "I HAVE FOUGHT YOU LONG ENOUGH!" In a flash, she began to gradually, yet quickly, increase the intensity of the star bolt volley. As the storm of star bolts began to become increasingly quick, strong, and brutal, Starfire savagely yelled, "YOU HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO LIVE IN THIS BATTLE AGAINST ME FOR TO LONG, AND NOW, X'HAL HELP ME, I WILL VANGUISH IF IT'S THE LAST RATHAHNG THING I DO! YOU HEAR ME!?"

Lilith gasped, choked, and wheezed as she continued to feel the ceaseless wave of star bolts blasting her.

"DIE!" Starfire howled as she increased the intensity of her volley. Lilith snarled in pain and discomfort as she felt her ribs fracture under the impact of the star bolts.

"DIE!" Starfire growled as she increased the intensity of the volley yet again. Lilith gasped and hissed in agony as she suddenly felt her left leg give out with an ominous crack under the force of the assault.

"DIE!" Starfire roared as she proceeded to increase her onslaught of star bolts to its maximum capable intensity. Lilith had only enough time to make a slight, near impossible to hear, whimper of fear before she ended up getting pounded so hard against the cliff wall by the incessant volley of star bolts that it crumbled behind her, and she tumbled down backwards into the large hole that was formed as a result. Seconds later, more rocks from the cliff began to break apart from the wall and collapse down on top of her, seemingly burying her alive. And even after the rock slide had settled, Starfire still continued to fire her star bolts at the area in a blind rage for about 4 to 5 minutes straight before finally calming down sufficiently enough to end her unyielding storm of star bolts.

For a brief moment, Starfire remained standing where she was, staring intently at the large mass of rocks that had collapsed upon Lilith. After about a minute, Starfire found herself wondering whether or not she'd perhaps killed Lilith. "Is she dead?" She thought to herself.

Then, she heard a rumbling sound coming from in front of her, and Starfire looked straight back at the rock pile just in time to see the rocks briefly appear to tremble before the entire top part of it came flying upwards, and a pair of clawed demonic open palms shot up from within the rocky mass. Seconds later, right after the rocks landed in front of a surprised Starfire, Lilith reared up from within the rocks that remained, a murderous snarling glare on her face, and Starfire's own eyes widened in horror as she realized that she was now in a very tense situation.

Lilith growled, "Now you die!" With a snarl, she jumped out of the rocky pile she'd been buried under, and caused her fist to slam down on the ground when she landed. In a flash, Starfire was sent hurtling skyward by a watery geyser that erupted from underneath her. When Starfire was about ten feet off the ground, Lilith caused all the water to converge together into a massive sphere before causing it to flash freeze. With Starfire now effectively sealed up inside a giant orb of ice, she lifted her hand, causing the sphere to be telekinetically lifted up further into the air at an alarmingly fast rate. Seconds later, when the icy sphere was about twice as many feet above the ground as it had been at its creation, Lilith swiped her hand downward, causing Starfire's frosty cocoon to come rocketing back down to the ground, crashing landing with such a colossal impact as to both shatter the ice and leave Starfire emphatically slammed down upon the ground.

Starfire had literally just gotten herself onto her hands and knees, groaning from the pain of the impact, when she heard Lilith shout a phrase in a language she could not understand. She turned her head just in time to see Lilith rise into the air on thin air, glowing with blue energy as a large swarm of ominously sharp looking icicles materialized in the air around her. Starfire's eyes widened, and her unease only increased when all the icicles seemed to position themselves so that they were pointing straight at her.

Acting purely on instinct, Starfire jumped up into the air and started flying. A small circle of eight icicles jabbed into the ground right where Starfire had been standing seconds earlier. As Starfire continued to hurry through the air, more and more groups of eight icicles continued to dart at her and jab menacingly into whatever target they happened to strike instead of her. At one point, when the icicle spikes started getting unnervingly close to her, Starfire grabbed onto a large boulder and positioned it directly to her right side as a shield. As a result, the icicles harmlessly pounded against the boulder and shattered upon contact.

Starfire let out what sounded half like a terrified scream and half like a despairing whimper as she felt the icicles slam again and again into the boulder she was shielding herself with. "This is the not good," she thought to herself. "This is most definitely the not good." As she continued to think this, she looked towards the direction where she'd last seen Robin making his way to pursue Savage, and saw him on the top of a cliff wall clashing his sword with a bone blade wielded by Savage. Half admiring and half in tears, Starfire sniffled, and mentally stated in her mind, "Robin, I wish you the best of luck."

Gritting her teeth, Starfire mentally prepared herself to continue her very difficult battle against Lilith, for she knew that Robin greatly depended on her and the other Titans holding off the Knights of Hell long enough for him to stop Savage and reclaim the Infernal Key from him. And so, she continued to engage in her desperate battle against Lilith. The other Titans fighting alongside her, likewise continued to engage in their own punishing battles against Azazel, Samael, and Asmodeus, for they all knew just how much Robin was counting on them in spite of his initial reluctance in leaving them to deal with the nightmarishly powerful demons. But even as they continued to fight, none of them needed to be a genius in order to tell that they were fighting a losing battle.

. . . . .

Meanwhile, Robin and Savage were fighting their very own fantastic battle. For quite some time now, the two warriors had endlessly clashed their blades. Robin, to his credit, had managed to more than capably hold his own against the immortal caveman in spite of the latter's boasted centuries of practice. Even so, Savage still had the upper hand when it came to overall body strength, and Robin wasn't entirely certain at the current moment just how much longer he would last.

However, what Robin didn't know was that Savage himself was beginning to wonder just how long he himself would last in his current duel with the boy wonder. Although he had been telling the truth about taking part in sword fights before over the course of his many years, he hadn't fought nearly enough of them to gain the centuries' worth of experience that he had bragged about to Robin for the sake of a bluff to attempt to discourage him. It had been many decades since the last time he'd ever even used a sword in combat, and considerably longer still since he had ever fought a sword fight that would even remotely qualify as an honest sword fight. Over the last few years, every time he'd used his sword, Savage had tended to use it against weak opponents who had little chance of properly defending themselves, and had often been able to defeat them with very little effort.

Now, with his current opponent having managed to survive as long as he currently had as well as block all of his strongest and most powerful attacks with almost contemptuous ease, only then did Savage realize just how lax and careless he'd become in regard to his sword fighting abilities. Granted, with how very uncommon it was to encounter anyone these days who used such a weapon, he hadn't really needed to keep his skill in that area at all that professional a level. In fact, the only people he'd ever encountered before now who could truly hold their own so well in a sword fight these days were Slade and Batman. And of those two, the only one he'd actually fought in such a manner was Slade during a practice duel. But now, in a real battle against an opponent who had very obviously taken the opportunity to not only take the training on how to wield a sword but also continuously practice with it so as to not lose his edge, Savage could tell (though he wouldn't admit it out loud right there in front of Robin) that he was in trouble. In spite of all the sword fights he'd taken part in during the previous years of his life, the fact that he'd so foolishly allowed his many years of experience to drain away and dull out his skill put him at a severe disadvantage against this considerably younger opponent who'd obviously gone to the trouble of maintaining his own razor sharp skill.

In fact, when Savage just happened to catch a glimpse of Abaddon still standing nearby watching, he mentally winced when he saw the very disapproving glare directed towards him from Abaddon's face which the demon made no effort to hide. Even the swarthy Knight of Hell could tell just by looking at the current spectacle unfolding in front of him that Savage's skill at sword fighting in its current state was beyond unacceptable. He himself had always made sure to constantly train alongside his fellow Knights of Hell day after day after day for all the countless eons that they had existed, for they knew how wise it was to always keep their skills sharpened and well honed. And Savage could tell that if it hadn't been for Abaddon's willingness to respect his own wishes, the demon would have already intervened by now.

Eventually deciding to try to get Robin to lose his edge by making him angry, Savage directed a smirk at the boy wonder and said, "I will admit, I underestimated you. I must admit, your sword fighting ability reminds me very much of the similar skill level that my old partner Slade has."

Savage found himself victoriously cheering mentally when he saw Robin's eyes briefly narrow at the mention of Slade combined with the implication the boy wonder could very clearly hear within the statement. Chuckling, Savage continued, "Now that I think about it, from what I've been told about you, not to mention now managed to see in person, you remind me of Slade in more ways than I thought possible."

At this point, even Abaddon could now see how very clearly tense Robin was getting from Savage's continuing to compare him to one of the Titans' greatest enemies. Both Abaddon and Savage could see how Robin had his masked eyes narrowed viciously, his teeth gritted in a feral snarl, his body all tensed up, his fists tightening and loosening in an alternating pattern on the hilt of his sword, and even hear him growling and grunting furiously like an animal. Robin was now very clearly fighting with all his willpower not to go flying off the handle right then and there, and Savage knew it. A wide grin now on his face, Savage then stated, "In fact, if it weren't for the fact that I've actually met the only two boys who fit that category from a biological point of view, I would think that you were his son."

At the sound of that last statement, Robin completely lost it, just as Savage had expected. With an inarticulate roar of rage, Robin lifted his sword upwards and charged towards Savage. Savage smirked smugly at the charging teenage hero like a wolf, and positioned his sword so as to unleash a forward jabbing thrust that would pierce him straight through his chest. However, much to Savage's surprise, right when Robin was three steps away from getting into the position in which he'd planned to stab him, the boy wonder jumped into the air and flew at an upwards slant in Savage's direction quite out of reach of Savage's blade.

As Savage found himself gaping open mouthed at Robin, the boy wonder did a quintuple front flip through the air, and then slowly hurtled at a downward slant straight towards him, and with his sword risen up and at the ready to unleash a downward slash that would slice him in half! Savage hurriedly lifted his sword up to the appropriate blocking position, and the blade of Robin's sword slammed down on the bone blade with an unearthly clang.

Snarling, Robin rapidly kicked his left foot against Savage's chest, using it as a means to propel himself backward. He flew off of Savage, tossing his sword in the air towards the direction he himself was heading and did a triple back flip before landing palm first on his right hand and using it to propel himself up into the air again. Thus he turned his landing into a comfortable triple somersault before skidding to a halt on his hands and knees after his fourth landing. All of two seconds passed after Robin came to a full stop before he lifted his right hand up in the air without even looking in the direction he'd lifted his hand in, and his sword landed perfectly back in its grasp.

At the sight of this famous cinematic scene reenacted directly before his eyes, Savage gaped at the Dark Knight's prodigal son in clear surprise. Even Abaddon looked visibly shocked. At the sight of the stunned look on Savage's face, the still dangerously angry boy wonder glared menacingly at Savage. "HOW DARE YOU COMPARE ME TO HIM!?"

Roaring savagely in fury, Robin rushed towards Savage yet again. This time, Savage didn't even have the chance to properly position his sword for unleashing an attack of his own before Robin drew his sword back in a position that clearly indicated an incoming sideways slashing movement from the right, and Savage was forced to hurriedly position his arm so as to be able to initiate the appropriate blocking technique.

However, Robin had tricked Savage yet again, for mere seconds after Savage had gotten himself ready for the block, Robin rapidly switched his sword from his right hand to his left in almost a blink of an eye. Savage's eyes widened at the unexpected technique, and Robin unleashed a guttural howl of rage before jabbing his sword towards the immortal caveman in a straight upwards slanted thrust. Savage only managed to survive due to a reflex action from his shock at Robin's switch-hand technique causing his head and neck to just happen to move to the left in time for Robin's sword to come to a stop a mere centimeter away from Savage's neck instead of jabbing clean through his neck the way Robin had been intending. Savage didn't even realize just where the sword even was until he saw Robin draw it back, and he briefly gaped in shock at the empty air where the sword had been before being drawn back to attention by another angry howl from Robin.

Savage was only able to block the vicious stroke that Robin sent his way through sheer luck, and before long, he found himself on a desperate game of defense as Robin unleashed a blinding assault of slashes, cuts, jabs, and thrusts, leaving Savage absolutely no time to go on the offense and forcing him to resort to a repertoire that consisted entirely of blocks and dodges. As this happened, Savage cursed mentally, for now it seemed that his last ditch effort at getting Robin to lose his edge had only given Robin a brand new edge. While Savage had managed to gain a very slight advantage in Robin's newly triggered rage, he had also given Robin a currently far more powerful advantage of his own in that his attacks were now unbelievably faster than they'd been when Robin had been calm. "Of all the rotten luck," Savage thought to himself. It would now definitely take a miracle to defeat Robin in this duel now.

As Robin continued to unleash his unbelievable barrage of blows, he proceeded to angrily shout, his intensity increasing with each word, "I! AM! NOT! ANY! THING! LIKE! HIM!" Soon after shouting that last word, he struck Savage's blade with such a strong blow that the entire bone-made weapon went flying out of Savage's hand and landed right back at the bottom of the nearby cliff. Savage briefly stared agape towards the edge of the cliff as if the action would somehow magically cause his weapon to return, then nervously turned his head back to Robin just in time for the boy wonder to send him flying backward with an almost inhumanly strong flying ninja kick to the face.

Savage flew backward at such a high speed that he was only to come to a stop when he pounded into a large tree behind him with an almost earthshaking impact. In fact, soon after Savage slumped down to the ground after contact with the tree, the tree tipped over and slammed down on the ground, its roots popping up from the soil, effectively becoming uprooted. To the dazed Savage, Robin seemed to appear directly in front of him out of thin air as if he'd teleported.

Snarling, Robin grabbed the immortal caveman by the lapel, dragged him forward, and placed the tip of his sword against the villain's throat. "DON'T YOU EVER COMPARE ME TO THAT PSYCHOPATH!" Robin roared. "I AM NOTHING LIKE HIM! ALWAYS WAS! ALWAYS WILL! I HAVE FRIENDS THAT I BOTH TRUST AND LOVE! AND ALL HE CARES ABOUT IS DEATH AND DESTRUCTION!"

Savage could only gape in surprise at Robin as he continued to stare angrily down at him with his sword to his throat. However, when he then saw Abaddon staring towards them with a smirk on his face before then gesturing with a sideways motion of his head towards the area at the bottom of the cliff, Savage smirked straight at Robin before saying, "Well everything you care about will soon be lost."

Robin glared confusedly at Savage. "What is he talking about?" he thought to himself. Then, with a shriek of shock, Robin found himself flying away to the side seemingly without any aid. He slammed up against a tree, his back pressing against the hard bark, and found himself strangely pinned to it by an invisible force. And to make matters worse, the impact against the tree was strong enough to cause him to involuntarily let go of his sword, which bounced thrice before coming to a stop a foot or two in front of Savage. As Robin struggled to try to escape from whatever was pinning him up against the tree as well as figure out just what was holding him in place, he managed to take a look in the area opposite from the direction he'd been sent flying, and cursed mentally when he saw Abaddon standing nearby with his hand extended towards him. He had completely forgotten about Abaddon. "And even worse," he thought to himself. "Apparently, he has telekinesis."

Abaddon smirked at the boy wonder as he growled and squirmed in his vice-like telekinetic grip, then gestured with his horned head towards the area at the bottom of the cliff wall that they were gathered on. "Observe little bird," he stated smugly. "I'll allow you that."

Growling, Robin turned his head to his right so he could look at the area Abaddon had indicated. At the sight of the scene that awaited him down there, though he allowed no visual sign of it to be exposed, his heart sank. His friends all appeared to be in severely bad condition. Beast Boy in particular, was on his hands and knees, panting heavily towards the ground. The four demons they'd been fighting, however, were standing not too far away from their respective opponents, smirking smugly and looking as if they hadn't even broken a sweat.

Unfortunately, as Robin would soon find out, this particular scene was not the worst of what Abaddon had planned for him to observe. Seconds later, right as it looked as if Beast Boy were about to attempt to force himself back on his feet, Samael's right hand suddenly rocketed forward and grabbed him by the throat before lifting him up high enough in the air so that they could directly look each other in the eyes.

The crimson demon chuckled and smirked at the sight of the changeling alternating between coughing from the tight grip on his throat and snarling defiantly. "My you look cold," Samael stated darkly. Beast Boy growled, his emerald eyes blazing venomously with defiance, clearly not about to admit defeat. Samael chuckled again at the sight of this, and then stated, "Why don't I go ahead and warm you back up?" At the sound of this last statement, Robin found himself staring particularly intently at Samael, for despite the words the demon had said, the tone with which he'd said them was enough to make the boy wonder feel very worried about just what the Knight of Hell was planning to do.

Seconds later, the hand Samael had around Beast Boy's throat began to glow with a fiery orange light. Beast Boy's eyes abruptly widened; but then they closed, his teeth gritted in a feral snarl, and his face tensed up. Then, much to Robin's horror, the changeling's head jerked upward and back and he unleashed a pained animalistic howling. "MOWRUHAL! MOWRUHAL! MOWRUHAL!" Beast Boy roared inarticulately in agony as the orange glow appeared to intensify.

At first, Robin was still uncertain as to just what was happening in spite of his knowing that Beast Boy was obviously in great pain. But then, when he saw smoke suddenly start to rise from Samael's hand and Beast Boy's neck, Robin's eyes widened in horror as he realized what was happening. "He's incinerating him!" Robin thought to himself in his mind. In a flash, he attempted to throw himself to his right, but Abaddon's telekinesis kept him firmly pinned up to the tree.

Seconds later, Raven turned her head to face the direction that she could hear Beast Boy's pained shrieking, and her violet eyes widened as she too realized what was happening. In that instant, in an exact opposite of her usual behavior, she ran towards him with her face clearly expression a look of terror and concern. "Beast Boy!" she yelled.

Unfortunately, right as Raven was five steps away from Beast Boy, Azazel pointed his finger tips from both hands at her, and then sent tendrils of electricity spouting out from them. The ten bursts of lightning crashed straight into Raven's chest and started to violently crackle and spark, causing Raven to tense herself up to a halt. Her own eyes closed, and her face took on an expression very similar to the one that had been Beast Boy's face before he'd begun his pained howling. But unlike the changeling, Raven stalwartly refused to let herself be reduced to the same state as her verdant green friend. She had always been stronger than that.

Cyborg caught an eyeful of what was happening to his chromatically challenged friends, and he promptly caused both of his arms to convert to sonic cannon form before pointing them straight at Azazel's head and Samael's left side, which were positioned so that he could easily strike them without running the risk of catching Raven and Beast Boy in the blast. "No way am I letting you do that!" he yelled as he started to charge his sonic lasers.

However, right as Cyborg was about halfway finished with charging up his sonic cannons, Asmodeus placed both of his hands up against the open barrels of the cannons. Cyborg's one human eyebrow rose in confusion. But then he heard a hiss, and he suddenly felt an unbelievable pain directly inside the area where the barrels of the sonic cannons were located that felt as if they were being dipped in some sort of boiling liquid. Screeching in pain, he took a closer look at the demon's hands, and found his eyes widening as he both saw that they were glowing green and heard what sounded like some sort of bubbling liquid pouring off of his hands and into the sonic cannons. "This better not be what I think it is," he thought to himself.

Sadly, his suspicions proved all too correct when he suddenly felt himself jolting uncontrollably and his mechanical parts started crackling and sparking as if they were violently experiencing a power surge. "Oh dang!" he thought to himself. It appeared that Asmodeus was causing acid to flow from his hands straight into Cyborg's internal areas and that it was now beginning to melt him down from the inside.

Starfire's eyes widened at the sight of the terrible agony her friends were being forced to undergo, and she promptly prepared herself to take off and rocket to her friends' rescue. However, right as her feet were about a foot off the ground, she suddenly felt a chilling sensation on her farms that appeared to press up against the sides of her arms almost as if there were metallic bars rising up from the ground and pressing up against her arms so as to prevent her from moving. She managed to take a good look at just what was pinning up against her arms, and saw that they had been pinioned in an outstretched sideways position by none other than large icicles sticking out of the ground.

At the sight of this, Starfire looked directly in front of her in time to see Lilith standing there with her glowing blue hands raised, and a cruel smirk on her face. Seconds later, Lilith maliciously hissed, "Time for me to get to know you on a more personal level." Starfire's eyes widened again, and she gasped in horror as she realized what Lilith was about to do.

Robin soon reached the same conclusion that the Tamaranean had come to, and he angrily shouted, "Don't you dare!"

With a hiss that sounded almost like a chuckle, Lilith collapsed into her smoke form, positioned herself in a way that made her look like a scrunched up airborne inchworm, and then rocketed straight at Starfire's face. Starfire's head jerked upward involuntarily at a slant as the icy blue smoke that Lilith had become proceeded to start tunneling into her mouth. Robin could only watch in horror as Lilith proceeded to rapidly slither her way into Starfire's mouth.

No sooner had the last of the smoke entered Starfire's mouth when the Tamaranean's head abruptly lowered back into the position it had been in before Lilith had entered, her eyes shut tight. Robin hadn't even seen her close her eyes. "Oh please no, please no," he thought to himself for the next few seconds.

Then Starfire opened her eyes, but they were no longer truly Starfire's eyes. They were now glowing a solid blue in a way very similar to the way her eyes naturally glowed green when she was angry or how the basilisks' eyes had glowed red when charging their lethal eye beams. Then the sudden uncharacteristically emotionless expression that had come upon her face the moment the last of the smoke entering her mouth changed almost instantaneously into a sadistic grin, and Robin immediately knew that there was no doubt about it now. Lilith had now taken possession of Starfire's body.

Starfire looked upward towards Robin . . . "No, not Starfire, Lilith," Robin thought to himself. "Lilith's the one actively looking towards me right now." Then Lilith directed Starfire's head to look towards the other three Titans in the area as her fellow Knights of Hell continued to have their way with them. "There," Lilith then said . . . but in Starfire's voice! "Much better now don't you think? Now why don't you be a good little girl and stay still while I make you watch my compatriots kill your friends!"

"Get out of her!" Robin yelled indignantly.

Lilith looked at Robin, her devilish grin still on her 'borrowed' face, and said, "Oh I think not. I quite like this host, and I'm certainly not going to let her intervene, let alone save you or your friends that my compatriots are taking care of right this very moment."

At the same time that Lilith said this, while still painfully enough in Starfire's voice, Cyborg could only grunt and growl as he looked towards the possessed Tamaranean, a glare on his face as he too furiously thought to himself that Lilith needed to seriously get out of her current stolen body. The big brother figure in him was very much in disapproval over Lilith's currently being inside Starfire.

Beast Boy and Raven, however, had other things to worry about. Raven, tensing herself against the pain, began to push herself against the electricity blasting at her from Azazel's fingertips and walk the last few steps towards Beast Boy, extending her right hand. Beast Boy managed to see this, and he instinctively extended his left hand towards Raven. Raven managed to take four steps before she found herself having to stop because of how intensely stronger the electricity was becoming as she got closer in proximity to Azazel. Despite how hard she and Beast Boy struggled and stretched their arms from their current position, their hands were just out of reach of each other, and they grunted and groaned from a mixture of pain and despair.

Then, all of a sudden, Azazel shut off his bursts of electricity. Raven collapsed onto her hands and knees as a result of still being tensed up for the impact with the electricity, and she gasped in pain and relief. Then she managed to look up towards Azazel with a confused look on her face. Why had he turned off his electricity?

Azazel's fellow Knights of Hell also were gaping at their comrade with incredulous looks as they saw this unexpected action. In fact, they were so surprised that Samael and Asmodeus even ended up unintentionally shutting off their own attacks, thus allowing Beast Boy and Cyborg to have a much needed break from the agonizing experience they were being put through. As they gasped and wheezed in pain and relief, they both looked towards Raven and Azazel, clearly wondering just what was going on. Robin, Abaddon, and Savage also gaped at the scene. "What in his Malevolence's name?" Abaddon asked in confusion.

About a minute later, Raven noticed Azazel direct a look towards her that she could have sworn looked almost sympathetic, then close his eyes briefly, and then open them before gesturing with his left hand towards Beast Boy. It appeared that he was silently stating 'Go ahead'. Raven's eyes widened in surprise and confusion, and she pointed towards Beast Boy herself, her own facial expression asking for confirmation of what he was letting her do. Azazel nodded, the sympathetic look still on his face, and he repeated his earlier 'go ahead' gesture. Panting in relief, Raven struggled back up onto her feet, took the final step towards Beast Boy, and extended her right hand back towards him.

Beast Boy, not even caring at this point how very out of character Raven's current behavior was, instinctively extended his own left hand towards her and eagerly clasped onto her right hand. For a few merciful seconds, they stood like that, panting and gasping in relief. Raven then looked up towards Beast Boy's face, and found herself giving off a small weak smile at the sight of the changeling directing a half cheeky and half relieved toothy grin of his own towards her.

Then, the moment ended, and Azazel pointed his fingers back at Raven. Tensing up, Raven and Beast Boy tightened their hold on each other's hands, closing their eyes as they braced themselves. Seconds later, Azazel resumed his electrifying attack, and Samael and Asmodeus resumed their own attacks. This time, both Beast Boy and Raven let out a pained howl as they felt their incineration and electrocution resume, but not once did they let go of each other. Cyborg, meanwhile, grunted and groaned as he started crackling and sparking in lights again from the acid being released violently into his system. Lilith, on the other hand, merely caused her earlier look of confusion to be replaced with yet another sadistic grin on the face of her stolen body.

After what felt like an eternity to the two chromatically challenged teen heroes, they involuntarily let out a particularly agonized sounding roar of despair as the pain from their respective situations became far stronger than before. As this happened, Beast Boy found his vision from within his closed eyes become nothing but a pure blank mass of red light while Raven's own closed eye vision became clouded by what appeared to be a massive white light. Seconds later, their vision went completely dark once more, and their minds went blank. But not once did they let go of their hands.

When the two chromatically challenged Titans abruptly relaxed in position and ceased their agonized howling, Azazel shut off his electricity and Samael let go of Beast Boy's neck, shutting off his fiery hand at the same time. The two teenage heroes crumpled to the ground, still clasping each other's hands. Both looked in very horrid condition. Raven's already pale skin had turned an ominous shade of pure white, and her hair and clothes had been charred to a coal-like shade of black. Beast Boy, however, was hardly recognizable anymore, as his entire body, clothes, skin, and hair included, had become cloaked up in such a thick layer of ash that he might as well have been made out of coal. Seconds after they landed, a small plume of smoke rose up from Beast Boy's newly blackened hair and a couple weak bursts of electricity crackled up on Raven before then blinking out.

Samael and Azazel chuckled, stared each other in the eyes with quite literally devilish smirks on their faces. Then they looked straight at the two teenage heroes that now lay prone at their feet, leaned towards them with one foot forward each, and placed their left index fingers on their respective targets. No sooner had the two Knights of Hell positioned themselves in that manner when they proceeded to activate their mind reading power, their eyes turning pure black as a result of their activated mental abilities.

From his unwilling post against the tree up on the cliff, Robin continued to stare at his two prone chromatically challenged friends and the two demons they'd been battling, wondering what was in fact going. "What are they doing?" he thought to himself, not yet fully understanding what was happening. "Why did they stop attacking? And . . .," then his eyes narrowed as a particularly eerie thought came into his mind.

"Wait a minute," Robin thought to himself. "Why aren't they moving?" This time, the question he mentally asked himself was referring to Beast Boy and Raven rather than the Knights of Hell that had been so brutally attacking them not too long ago. Then his trained eyes noticed something else about the two fallen Titans that made him feel even more worried, to the point that his narrow-eyed glare became a painfully obvious look of concern and nervousness. "For that matter," he thought to himself. "Why aren't they breathing?"

Cyborg, much quicker on the uptake at that particular moment, closed his eyes, slowly nodded his head up and down in a respectful motion, and then looked towards them with a weak smile on his face as he felt his systems start to wind down as a result of the intense damage being dealt upon his interior programming by Asmodeus' acidic flood. "It was nice knowing you buddy," he thought to himself. He then chuckled weakly in his mind, and stated in an almost whisper-like tone, "I always knew you two would get together at some point or other." Then, with a resigned sigh, his human eye closed, his red eye dulled to a complete black, and his systems shut down completely.

Asmodeus shut off his acid streams, let go of Cyborg's arms, and smugly stepped to the side. Seconds later, the cybernetic teen fell face-first upon the ground, his sonic cannons reverting back to Cyborg's hands. The verdant green Knight of Hell let out a small hiss of pleasure, placed his clawed left index finger on the back of Cyborg's neck, and his eyes turned almost completely black.

Robin's eyes narrowed at the sight of the change in color of the demon's eyes. He remembered one of the demons from the demonic advance party that had invaded the tower three nights prior; or more accurately, he remembered how its naturally black eyes had seemed to turn an even darker shade than normal during the time in which it had claimed to be reading Cyborg's mind. "That must be why Asmodeus's own eyes have now turned from green to black," he thought to himself. "But why is he trying to read Cyborg's mind?" Then he looked back at Samael and Azazel and thought, "On a similar note, why are Samael and Azazel trying to read Beast Boy and Raven's minds?"

A few minutes later, the eyes of the three Knights of Hell reverted back to their normal color, they chuckled darkly in pleasure, and then they stood up. As Robin continued to watch, the three demons looked straight at Abaddon, who was looking down towards them with a facial expression that appeared to be silently asking for some sort of confirmation. Abaddon's three male compatriots smirked, and then nodded their heads up and down. "Radio silence on all three of them," Samael stated. "The job is done."

"Good," Abaddon responded. He then turned his head to Savage, who nodded his head.

"You've done well," stated the immortal caveman. "You are dismissed."

In a flash, Azazel, Samael, and Asmodeus assumed their incorporeal forms and rocketed off into the sky before slithering off towards further down the path towards the area further in the direction Savage had originally been heading before Robin's interruption. Robin's eyes narrowed as he pondered what the demons had said. "Radio silence?" he thought to himself. "What does that mean?"

Then he looked at his three prone friends for a couple more minutes, noted how they were even now still not moving, and began to wonder just what sort of reason the demons would have possibly stopped attacking them in light of how they'd appeared to be making it quite clear that they'd planned to . . .

Then it hit him, and his eyes widened in horror as he finally realized just what 'radio silence' meant in the context that the three Knights of Hell had just referred to the phrase. "No," he thought to himself. Looking closely at his three fallen friends once again, very visibly shaking, he then thought, "It can't be." His three friends still didn't move. "No, this isn't happening, it can't be!"

But it was happening. The demons who'd attacked them had attempted to read their minds, and judging by their 'radio silence' comment, they'd gotten absolutely no reading from the three teenage heroes. And as Robin very painfully now remembered, Raven herself had once explained that there was only one way that a being could ever leave absolutely zero mental readings for a being that could read minds or attempt to establish psychic contact. As much as Robin now didn't want to even consider admitting it, Beast Boy, Raven, and Cyborg were now lost in a way that allowed little to no chance of return. His friends, were now dead.

As if in confirmation of this, Robin then heard a tragically familiar feminine voice state, "Brings back memories doesn't it?" He turned his head towards the area he'd heard Starfire's voice coming from, and growled angrily as he saw the still very much possessed Tamaranean now standing free of the icicle restraints with her feet flat on the ground. Lilith smirked, the face of her stolen body taking on a sadistic Cheshire Cat-like grin, and then hissed cruelly, "I hope you enjoyed the show Boy Wonder."

Robin snarled indignantly. "Get out of her right now, or I swear to God . . ."

"What?" Lilith retorted in an almost mocking tone. "What are you and God gonna do? Last time I checked, you're not exactly in the proper position to be carrying out any threats. And besides, it's not like you have anything to threaten me with anyway."

Robin growled at the insulting retort. He was not in the mood for any banter. Lilith chuckled, placed her 'borrowed' hands on the hips of her vessel, and stated, "But nonetheless, I'll be leaving this host real soon."

Robin knew better than to sigh in relief. He had a very bad feeling that Lilith wasn't about to let him, or Starfire for that matter, get off that easily.

However, even with Robin's current suspicions, what Lilith did next still took the boy wonder by surprise. "But first," Lilith stated, "there's one last little detail I'd best take care of before I leave." And then, much to Robin's horror, she caused Starfire's neck to jerk to its left so fast that Starfire's head and neck rapidly turn a full 360 with a sickening crack.

"NNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Robin roared in anguish. He may have not been a genius in Tamaranean anatomy, but even he could tell that there was no way a Tamaranean could possibly be any more capable of turning their head at that kind of angle, let alone at the speed with which Lilith had committed the action, and living to tell the tale than an Earthling like himself.

Lilith cackled maliciously, gave a slight mocking wave at Robin with her stolen right hand, and said, "Toodleoo," in a sickeningly sweet tone. Then Starfire's head involuntarily jerked upwards and back as a torrent of blue smoke proceeded to erupt out of her mouth and rocket into the sky before hurrying off in the same direction that three similar plumes of smoke (albeit, of different colors) had traveled. Seconds after the last of the blue smoke exited Starfire, the Tamaranean briefly seemed to glance weakly towards the area in front of her. Then, with a weak gurgling noise, her eyes rolled up towards the top of her head before closing, and then she fell straight down to the ground, landing flat on her back.

Robin stared in horror and despair at the sight. "No, this isn't happening," he growled viciously to himself in his mind. "This can't be happening! It can't!"

"Oh but it is."

Snarling in fury, Robin jerked his head away from his fallen friends to direct a murderous glare towards Abaddon. "STAY OUT OF MY HEAD!"

"Oh yeah?" said Abaddon. "Says you and what army? Last time I checked, your army is currently not in any position to help you."

Robin snarled and tensed himself up as he began to struggle even more furiously against Abaddon's telekinetic hold. "When I get out of this," he growled, "I will summon my sword, and so help me, I will slice your bloody head off."

"Wow, I'm trembling in my boots," Abaddon responded sarcastically. Then he grinned, and stated smugly, "Oh wait, I don't have any boots."

"Very funny," Robin grumbled. "How about you let me see how funny you are after I slice you in half?"

"Sorry little bird," said Abaddon. "But that won't be necessary. Tell your friends I said hello."

At the sound of that, Robin tensed up. "Oh no," he thought to himself. "He's gonna kill me."

"There will be no need for that Abaddon."

Abaddon turned his head. Savage shook his head up and down. "Let him go Abaddon. Rejoin your fellow Knights. I'll deal with this one."

Abaddon raised his eyebrow. "You are certain?"

"Yes Abaddon," Savage stated with a more than slightly aggravated tone. "I'll be fine. Now release him and let me handle things here."

Abaddon narrowed his eyes, looked at Robin, then at Savage, and then nodded his head up and down with his eyes closed before saying, "If you say so."

With a wave of the demon's hand, the invisible force pinning Robin against the tree finally vanished, and the boy wonder fell flat on his face. Abaddon made a 'tsk, tsk' noise, looked over at the face planted teenage hero, and said, "Consider yourself lucky that my former client is so merciful. But rest assured, if you're still alive when he's done with you, I'll make sure you suffer a far worse fate when our army reaches you." After stating this ominous warning, Abaddon shifted into his incorporeal form and hurtled off after his fellow Knights of Hell.

Robin slowly got back on his feet, groaning from the effort. By the time he was fully upright, he could see that Savage was still standing exactly where he was, not having moved a single muscle. At the sight of the immortal caveman still standing in the exact same position as before and without a single emotion betrayed on his face, Robin glowered at him, clearly not in the mood for any games.

"What do you want Savage?" Robin grunted irritably. "If you're gonna gloat, then suck it up. I'm not in the mood."

"I can see that," Savage responded, and he turned his head to look at Robin clearly. "And that being said, I'm not going to gloat. And before you ask, I'm not going to kill you either."

Robin's eyes narrowed. "And why not? You already had your friends there kill of mine. What makes killing me with your hands any different? After all, you were willing to do exactly that during our little duel earlier."

"True," Savage admitted. "But now, let's just say that times have changed." He gestured towards the four corpses in the valley below. "First off, at this point, killing you would be rather redundant, not to mention far too easy for me at this point if you attempted to try to do battle with me in your current emotional state. Second, it isn't really all that necessary. Considering the current emotional and mental state that you will definitely be in at this point, not to mention just how high the odds will soon be in my favor, it really won't be all that necessary to kill you right now. And besides, let's just say that killing you right now would be much too kind."

Savage gestured towards the corpses of the other Titans once more, and proceeded to explain. "You see boy wonder, you could have stopped this from happening. If you hadn't been so focused on me, or as willing to respect your friends' wishes as you turned out to be, you could have helped them defeat their attackers. Granted, you'd certainly be in a real attempting to catch up with me in time to prevent me from opening the Alpha Devil's Gate at that point, but your friends would have nonetheless at least still been alive."

Robin growled. "Tell me something I don't know."

"Needless to say," Savage continued as if he hadn't even heard Robin's comment. "It would be much better for me to just leave you here to live with the aftermath of your decision, and for that matter the guilt of more or less being the one responsible for their loss."

The immortal caveman turned around to face the direction he needed to follow to reach the Alpha Devil's Gate, his face firm and determined, and stated, "As for me, I shall resume my little day trip. But while I'm at it, I might as well at least give you these." As he said this, he drew out what appeared to be a large tablet, a small chalice, a black staff with a ruby at the tip, and a soccer ball-sized orb that appeared to be made out of a diamond-like material from the folds of his cloak. He then tossed them over his shoulder, and they landed right at Robin's feet with a thud.

Robin took a slight glance at the objects that Savage had unceremoniously dumped at his feet, then back at Savage with his eyebrow raised. "And why would you give me these? Don't you need them?"

"Need them?" Savage asked with a hint of amusement. "Hah, don't make me laugh. I highly doubt I'll need those at this point. Considering how long it's now taken for me to get ahold of the Infernal Key, I've had all the time needed to commit all the spells and other information within that tablet, particularly the phrase I need to say in order to activate the key and open the Devil's Gate, to memory. And besides, considering how long I've now been working in Lucifer's service, I'm sure that he and the Knights of Hell will be more than willing to put in a good word or two for me so that their underlings will obey me without my even needing to have the Fallen Tools, let alone the Infernal Tablet, within my immediate possession."

He then turned his head to face Robin. "And besides, you can also consider my leaving you these items as both a consolation prize and my own personal form of mockery for you for this occasion." He turned his head to face the direction of the Alpha afterlife portals once more. "Farewell boy wonder," said Savage. "It was a true pleasure to have done battle with you. But now, let's just say that I have serious business to take care of at the moment. And as for you, feel free to linger here and grieve for your loss as long as you wish. After all, it's currently only 1:00 in the afternoon, and I have only to wait until 7:00 pm at the earliest and 11:00 pm at the latest before the Infernal Key, or any other key of Dante for that matter, becomes fully capable of doing its work."

He nodded his head as if in confirmation of his own statement. "Once again, farewell." Savage walked away, and Robin remained standing where he was, watching as the immortal caveman continued to walk further and further away from him. Around five minutes later, Savage reached a sufficient distance for Robin to be capable of neither seeing nor hearing him. For another tense few moments, Robin clenched and unclenched his fists again and again and snarled in a mixture of irritation and grief as he tried to decide whether or not to just run after Savage or stay behind to properly examine and realize the full horror of what had just happened to his friends.

For a tense moment, he was strongly considering running after Savage with his sword drawn and uttering a bloodthirsty howl of fury and grief; so strongly in fact, that he could have at one point sworn that he heard Batman's familiar stern, cold, and firm voice inside his head commanding him in a tone that brooked no argument to do exactly that. But then, with a sigh of both exasperation and despair, his body relaxed, and his head hung forward, his arms going limp at his sides.

"What would it matter?" he thought to himself. "It wouldn't do any good. Savage is right. At this point, I wouldn't stand a chance against him in my current emotional state." He then turned his head to look down towards the four corpses in the valley at the bottom of the cliff wall he was standing on. "Besides," he thought to himself with a heavy sigh. "What kind of friend would I be if I just threw myself away after how they practically sacrificed themselves for me?"

Soon after he had that thought, he felt a slight tear come out of his left eye and start to slide slowly down his cheek. He closed his eyes, clenched his fists, and began to tremble as he struggled to keep his newfound sadness contained like Batman had trained him to do. But in spite of all his efforts and his using every technique that Batman had ever taught him, he didn't need to be a genius to tell that he was now fighting a losing battle. "Yeah right," he thought to himself. "They didn't sacrifice themselves. Who am I kidding? They didn't choose to die for me. They didn't choose to die at all."

Sighing again, Robin opened his eyes, looked down towards his friend's bodies once more, and then turned to face the slope that Savage had used to reach this area. "Forget saving the world. I can afford to set aside an hour or two to show some proper respect for my friends like they deserve." And so, with his mind set, the boy wonder solemnly made his way back down to the valley, not even bothering to make a note of the pitch black nimbus clouds that were now gathering in the sky, let alone how much more time he was now allowing for Savage to properly set things up for opening the Alpha Devil's Gate at 7:00 that evening.

. . . . .

Robin sighed, his head resting smoothly on his hands as he continued to watch the bodies of his friends from his position on the log he was currently sitting on. It was now 2:00, and he had spent the entire hour or so he'd currently spent within the valley sitting right there on that log. Even now, he still could hardly believe that his friends were now dead.

"Dead," he thought to himself. He hung his head. "Of all the fates that we knew were capable of befalling us in our line of work, and we still never truly believed that that particular one would befall any of us in the way it's just happened, let alone at this particular time."

He clenched his fists as that particular thought caused him to remember just how young they'd all been. Cyborg had admittedly been 19 years old, had been 15 when the Titans had first formed, and would have turned 20 that November. In other words, he'd practically already been an adult. But even so, this time had not by any means been the right time at all for him to die. There'd been so many things that he'd still wanted to do, so many people in Jump City, particularly among the disabled children, who'd looked up to him. He'd even had the potential to possibly get a girlfriend. Robin found a brief weak smile come on his face as he remembered the young blonde woman who worked with disabled kids that they'd saved three days ago. Truth be told, while he had indeed been considering how useful an ally she would be on the day they'd met her, he'd also been making careful note of how she and Cyborg had interacted. "To think that I was able to read all the subtle hints they dropped in just that first meeting and not even have the courage to admit my own feelings for Star," he thought to himself. Then he sighed, for now Cyborg was gone, and he'd never meet her again. He'd never even gotten the chance to learn her name.

Then he looked at Raven's deathly white and frazzled corpse that even now maintained an undying grip on Beast Boy's charred up hand. Raven had only been 16 years old. She would have turned 17 that October. And to make it even more heartbreaking, after how she and the others had managed to defeat Trigon and overturn her supposed destiny the previous year, she'd quite literally had her whole life ahead of her. And now, in a very cruel irony, that very same chance that she'd never thought she could even hope for had been so heartlessly ripped away from her. He clenched his fists and snarled angrily with his eyes on the verge of tears. "Just because she was half demon didn't mean she deserved this!" he howled to himself in his mind.

Then he looked at the horribly burned up and blackened corpse that had once been his very, very, very green friend Beast Boy. He had turned 17 that March, and had just as much too look forward to as all the other Titans. And as Robin very painfully now remembered, he'd even been promised to finally get a moped just like he'd always begged and pestered the other Titans about. Robin then made a note yet again of Beast Boy and Raven's interconnected hands, and found his heart sink further as he realized that, if they'd been given the chance, they would probably have made a pretty good couple. "They probably wouldn't have admitted it to me if I told them, but they were totally made for each other," he thought to himself.

Then he looked at Starfire. At this point, he found himself quite visibly fighting to keep his emotions bottled up like he'd always been trained and told. Starfire, much like Raven, had only been 16 years old. She would have turned 17 next month. And what made the sight of her corpse all the more heartbreaking to Robin was how, unlike Cyborg, Beast Boy, and Raven, Starfire didn't even seem to have a single mark on her. While Cyborg had darkened in tone in his metallic parts (in fact, Robin quite frankly thought it was a miracle that the acid Asmodeus had put in him hadn't melted them all down entirely from the outside as well as the inside), Raven had been turned a deathly white, and Beast Boy was covered in such a thick layer of ash that he looked like a solidified shadow, Starfire looked almost completely untouched. Robin couldn't even see any obvious signs of her neck being broken. Robin found himself even further on the verge of giving into his desire to grieve when he thought of how very short a time they'd spent as a real couple after four and a half years of painfully obvious romantic tension, combined with everything that he'd had planned for the future with her.

He could even now remember the plans he'd made. He'd finally been ready to openly accept his feelings for her and truly allow both Starfire and himself to really let go and enjoy themselves as lovers. Hell, he'd even been very strongly considering the possibility of actually marrying her at some point after they reached adulthood. He'd even been willing to take off his mask for her and both show her and the others his face and tell them his secret identity.

Letting out what sounded like a mix between a sob and a snarl, Robin stood up, turned his head upwards to face the sky, and then pointed his right finger almost accusingly towards the large mass of nimbus clouds that now appropriately covered up the area where the sun was at that particular moment. "WHY DID YOU LET THIS HAPPEN!?" Robin yelled. "WHY DID THEY DIE!?"

There was no response to Robin's shouts. Robin growled, lowered his head tensely, and then raised it up again rapidly before furiously roaring, "WHAT DID THEY DO TO DESERVE THIS!? WHAT DID I DO!?" Still no answer came. Robin started visibly shaking, both from grief and rage, and then he shouted, "I BELIEVED IN YOU! WE ALL DID IN OUR OWN WAY YOU KNOW! WHY DID YOU LET THIS HAPPEN!?"

Robin gasped and panted for a couple seconds as he found small tears starting to seep out of his eyes, out from underneath his mask, and down his cheeks. Then he howled, "I THOUGHT YOU CARED ABOUT HUMANITY! I THOUGHT YOU AND YOUR ANGEL BUDDIES WANTED US TO STOP THE APOCALYPSE FROM HAPPENING! I THOUGHT YOU WERE ALL ACTUALLY HELPING US DO EXACTLY THAT THIS TIME! IF YOU WANTED US TO SAVE THE WORLD, WHY DID YOU LET THEM DIE!?"

Robin leaned forward slightly by bending his knees, his head hung low and his arms raised with his clenched fists. Then he looked back up at the sky yet again, the tears in his eyes starting to become bigger and more fast numerous, and he despairingly snarled, "WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THEY NEEDED YOU!? WHERE I TELL YOU! WHERE?!"

Thunder rumbled in the sky. Robin growled, glared at the clouds in question with equal parts grief as with rage, and then shouted, "IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MAKE ME FEEL BETTER?! WELL I HATE TO BREAK IT TO YOU, BUT IT'S NOT WORKING!"

A flash of lightning appeared in the sky, and Robin heard the sound of thunder accompanying it soon after it vanished. "OH, DOES THAT MEAN YOU'RE ANGRY NOW!?" Robin shouted in a challenging tone. "ARE YOU GOING TO TRY TO SMITE ME WITH LIGHTNING?! WELL GO AHEAD! FAT LOAD OF DIFFERENCE THAT WILL MAKE! THE WORLD WILL STILL END! WANT TO KNOW WHY!? I'LL TELL YOU WHY! BECAUSE YOU ALLOWED FOUR OF THE FIVE PEOPLE WHO'D BE EVEN REMOTELY CAPABLE OF STOPPING IT AT THIS POINT TO DIE! AND I CAN TELL YOU RIGHT NOW THAT THERE'S NO CHANCE IN HELL OF ME STOPPING YOUR PROBLEM CHILD LUCIFER BY MYSELF! SO GO AHEAD AND KILL ME! I DARE YOU! GO AHEAD!"

The only response Robin got was three subsequent bolts of lightning dropping down from the sky, but quite a few miles further inland then he currently was. Robin rapidly inhaled and exhaled heavily, his fists alternating between clenched and unclenched. Eventually, Robin looked straight back up at the sky once more and despairingly roared, "WHY!? WHY DID YOU LET THIS HAPPEN!? WHY DID THEY HAVE TO DIE!? WHY DO I HAVE TO BE THE ONLY ONE ALIVE!? WHY!? WHY!? WHY!?"

In response to this final anguished rant, a single lightning bolt that was considerably larger than the previous ones that had appeared struck the very tree on the cliff top area that he'd been pinned against by Abaddon not too long ago. And then, seconds later, the ominous mass of storm clouds finally unleashed the rain that they'd been holding back. The rain came down in torrents. As this happened, Robin finally lost it, and with a despairing whimper, he hung his head, his fists relaxed and hung limp at his sides, and he started to weep profusely.

As he proceeded to finally let his bottled up emotions out, Robin found himself very briefly catching a subconscious glimpse of the disapproving look that Batman had always given him every time he'd made a less than satisfactory performance in his training or field work. Robin could tell that he was openly showing his emotions, and he knew that this was something that Batman had strictly trained him to avoid doing whenever possible, particularly at times like this. But Robin didn't care. He wasn't Batman, and if he wanted to openly grieve for his friends and let his feelings out instead of keep them unhealthily bottled up inside him, then he could damn well do exactly that.

Briefly pausing in his grieving, he looked up towards the corpses of his friends. He sniffled at the sight of Raven, Beast Boy, and Cyborg. But when his gaze landed on Starfire, he promptly broke down again, leaning his down and unleashing a heart wrenching sob. Sobbing without end, he slowly walked straight over to Starfire, came to a stop directly to her right, and then got down on his knees, placed his hands gently on the area where her arms met up with her body, and lifted her up so that it was almost as if she were sitting down and leaning slightly backwards, her long red hair dangling down far enough for the tips of it to touch the ground. Visibly shaking, and with his teeth gritted in a snarl of grief, Robin looked intently at the strangely peaceful looking yet nonetheless heartbreaking and beautiful face of the fallen Tamaranean princess, almost as if he were begging for some sort of end to this unbearable living nightmare.

"Star," he stated in a tone so low that he barely even heard himself say it. "Remember last night? Right after we got back to the tower? Immediately after the others had gone to bed but just before we did? You remember what we said?"

Starfire did not answer. Robin sniffled, hung his head, then lifted it back up and said, "I remember what we said. You asked me what if there was wrong, and I told you that I was worried about what might happen tomorrow, which in this case is today. And I also stated that it could end very badly, and that I wanted to know with absolute certainty that you were ok with the risks that would be involved with today's mission. And I remember telling you directly after you asked why I wanted to know this that I was worried that I would lose you and the others."

He took a deep breath, sobbed softly for a few seconds with his eyes closed, then opened his eyes again and stared back at Starfire's lifeless face before continuing, "I remember closing my eyes then and hanging my head. I couldn't even bare to look at you at that moment for fear of seeing you look betrayed for what I thought you would take as underestimating your own abilities. But then you hugged me, and that was enough to shock me into opening my eyes back up and looking at you again. And you then said that I wouldn't need to worry, and then I briefly cried, and told you to promise that you wouldn't leave. And I very clearly remember saying at that moment, and I quote, 'Don't leave me. Promise that you won't.' And you said that you would never leave me. Well, here we are now. I'm still holding you to that promise Star."

Starfire still didn't respond. "Come on Star," Robin sobbed. "Please Star. You have to wake up." Starfire remained silent and still. "I mean it Star," Robin moaned. "You can't do this to me. You can't. You promised me Star. Please Star. Don't leave me."

The rain intensified, and a small series of lightning bolts flashed through the sky, but Starfire still didn't move, and even now continued to stay silent without giving any response to Robin's desperate pleas. Trembling with grief, and very clearly letting tears pour from his now narrowed eyes like waterfalls, he mournfully whimpered, "Don't leave me Star. Please don't leave me. Star, I mean it. Don't . . . leave . . . me. I love you Star. I really truly do. And I know that you didn't need to hear me say it in order to know after all we've been through, but I still wish that I could have actually said it out loud at least once before now. But here I am right now Star. I love you."

At that point, Robin completely lost it yet again, and with cataracts of tears pouring ceaselessly from his now closed eyes, he wrapped his arms around Starfire's corpse as if attempting to hug her, and proceeded to let the last of his grief, sadness, and despair leave his system, howling and bawling heartbrokenly like a baby. And for the next few minutes, as the storm continued to rage on around him and the unattended corpses of the other three unlucky Titans, Robin continued to embrace Starfire's body, weeping, sobbing, and bawling like there was no tomorrow (which at this point, was far more likely than not going to be a very real possibility). In fact, the world could have ended right then and there, and he wouldn't have cared. Batman himself could have reminded him of how much danger the world was still in at that moment, and he would have shouted, "LET IT END!" right in the Dark Knight's face. At that moment, all that he cared about was properly allowing himself to grieve for his lost friends and hold on tightly to his beloved and ever so precious fallen star.

After what seemed like an eternity, Robin finally managed to stop crying. Coincidentally enough, the rain began to wind down right as he was starting to finally calm down from his grieving. Soon after the rain stopped entirely, he sniffled, wiped his face with his gloved right hand, and then gazed one more time at Starfire's face. Then, with a sigh, he gently laid her back down, and then stood up. He looked around at his friends' corpses, then towards the cliff where he'd battled Savage, and then at the sky.

The boy wonder sighed, and hung his head. "What am I going to do?" he thought to himself. "I know that they'd want me to go after Savage and stop him from opening the Devil's Gate and releasing the demons from Hell. Heck, I'm sure even Batman would be telling me to do exactly that." He looked back at his fallen friends yet again. "But how? There's no way I can stop Savage now. Not without them. I wouldn't stand a chance at this point on my own."

He sighed, looked down at his feet in a mixture of grief and shame. "But what other choice do I have but to try exactly that? They're dead, and everyone knows that you can't bring back the dead. You'd need help from an angel or demon to do that . . ."

Robin's eyes widened, and his head jerked up as he suddenly came up with an idea. "Wait a minute," he thought to himself. He turned his head to face the edge of the cliff wall where he'd battled Savage earlier. "Could I really . . . ?"

Not even daring to answer his own question, Robin hurried up the slope and back to the area where he'd originally been pinned up against the now quite charred up tree. But he wasn't paying any attention to the tree itself. He was looking nearby the ground where he'd been standing after Abaddon had released him. "They'd better still be there, they'd better still be there," he thought to himself.

Sure enough, when Robin looked straight at the area in question, he could see clear as day that the Infernal Tablet and Fallen Tools were indeed still lying right there where Savage had left them after tossing them over his shoulder at him in his own personal way of rubbing the loss of his friends in his face. But now, instead of the purpose that Savage had originally intended, let alone what Lucifer himself had designed them for, the sight of these objects gave Robin newfound hope. He now had a very daring idea, and he would need these very objects in order for it to work. He wanted, no needed, his friends back, and the most conveniently available means of which to do so had at one point quite literally been lying at his feet.

However, Robin knew too well how his current plan was not without risks. He'd heard enough stories, received enough lectures and warnings, and read enough files from the Brotherhood of Dante's database to understand perfectly well how dangerous it would be for him to attempt what he was currently considering. In fact, for just a few seconds, the boy wonder hesitated. At that particular moment, he could almost swear that he could hear Batman himself shouting and barking at him irately in pure unadulterated disapproval and damn near growling for him to not even dare think about what he was currently very, very willing to attempt. He wanted so badly for his friends to be back, and he knew all too well that whether or not he in the end pulled through with his current idea was all too likely going to be the difference between salvation and damnation for the entire world. But even so, there were still so many dangers attached. Could he really do this?

Then he remembered the last few minutes he'd spent wallowing away in pure heartbreak; and at the same time, the hero in him remembered just how much the world was now depending on him without even knowing what was happening. And in that instant, he made up his mind. "Like they always say," he growled determinedly to himself as he got down on his hands and knees and began to scoop the Infernal Tablet and Fallen Tools up into his arms, "desperate times, call for desperate measures."

And there you have it everybody! Another chapter done! God this has to be my longest chapter yet (I apologize in advance if the length scares any of you off). On another note, I am so so sorry if I made any of you cry or similarly extremely sad with this chapter. And believe me, I hated writing that particular part of this chapter just as much as you all likely hated reading it. But just in case this is enough to serve as a threat to whether or not you continue to read this, fear not! I have a plan, and trust me, Beast Boy, Raven, Cyborg, and Starfire will not stay dead for long! Come on, did you really think I'd be THAT cruel ^_^ (and I apologize in advance if that makes me sound SUPREMELY CONCEITED :/) Well anyway, I very much hope that you enjoyed this chapter (in spite of the real tear jerker I included) and that you all leave a nice bunch of reviews (and I do mean ALL; seriously, I'll be very surprised indeed if this chapter doesn't receive more than 1 review).

Coming up next: Robin makes a daring move in his newly self assigned mission to bring his fallen friends back from the dead. But just how far is he willing to go to make this wish come true? And what price will he have to pay in order to make it real? Will it be something he's willing to pay to get his beloved family of friends back and save the world? Find out next time, on Night of the Cursed.

P.S: By the way, just so you all know, for everyone who noticed my change of cover picture for this story, just so you know, the picture in question is not owned by me. It was created by the very talented DeviantArtist, Gretlusky (whose work is PHENOMENAL!). In fact, that same image helped inspire a certain moment within this chapter (and I'm sure you can guess which one).