I was spent.
For weeks since the trip to New York I had gone through every book I owned. I had spent a sizable portion of my assets procuring rare or expensive reagents, contacting mages, and hiring craftsmen. Sleep was a memory, my body and mind running on mana and little else. The eldritch debt that I was accumulating was phenomenal, but I somehow managed to keep it contained within the frail cage of my will.
That debt had a purpose, but it was not to be paid now.
Soon, Chronicler.
Yes... soon...
=-=-=-=-=-
"Rae! Package for ya'!"
The deep voice was accompanied by the sharp thud of metal on metal, a robotic fist knocking against a titanium door. Silence greeted the mechanical man. After a few seconds, the door opened to reveal a concerned Cyborg. He peeked into the room, well aware of the danger he was putting himself in, and saw...
Floating in the center of the room in a lotus position, Raven appeared insensate to the world. Her face was peaceful, with a small curvature of the lips that could develop into either a smile or a smirk. Her hair was longer and billowed softly about her head in a phantom wind, violet tendrils caressing her shoulders, chest, and face. Her outfit was of the purest white, offset well by the gold and red of her belt and brooch. A nimbus surrounded her, gray and peaceful in marked contrast to the stark ebony in which it usually manifested.
Cyborg watched, a look of awe upon his face. The outfit he had seen before, once during his ill-fated trip into Nevermore, once during the debacle with Malchior, and once again during the Reign of Trigon. Those times he had felt the power boiling angrily off of the girl he considered to be family. This time, however, the power he felt from her was deeper. Slower. Less agitated.
Suddenly her expression of peace twisted into a rictus of agony. Her clothing flashed black, and her back arched. The sound of cracking vertebrae was almost subsumed by the sounds that emanated from the teen, a simultaneous whimper of pain and snarl of anger. She fell, and upon her landing reverted to her usual appearance, gasping for breath.
He rushed forward and helped her to reach the bed. "Rae, you alright?"
Her eyes opened weakly, before furrowing in confusion. "Cyborg? What are you doing here?"
"I brought your mail from the Ops room. Are you ok?"
"Fine," she mumbled in an exceedingly unconvincing fashion. She sat up before tensing suddenly. In a flash, her cloak was dark as pitch and her eyes gleamed with ruby light. Her brow furrowed and her lips pulled back from needle-sharp teeth in a snarl. "Why are you in my aerie, Golem?" she hissed in a multitonal voice.
Cyborg reeled back from the girl, cold malevolence radiating from her as peacefulness did earlier. "Raven... what's going on?" he asked warily.
And she was back, a pale girl clad in blue with sweat standing on her brow. "I..."
Fate interrupted her then as scarlet light flashed in time with an alarm. "Titans, assemble in the Ops room immediately!" came Robin's voice from the aether.
=-=-=-=-=-
"It's happened. The Nephilim have made their move. They've taken PS118 hostage." Robin's voice was clipped and clear, the voice of a commander. He hesitated a moment, his torment clearly seen for a moment as it twisted his mask into paroxysms that only tangentially resembled actual facial expressions. As suddenly as it came, it was gone, stowed away to be rehashed in nightmares yet to come. "The police have made contact with them and started negotiations. They demand the chance to kill us. To show their sincerity, they've already killed five students... by dismemberment."
Cyborg whistled softly and breathed, "Damn." Beast Boy was a pale green as he explained the new word to Starfire, whose hands immediately burst into emerald points of fire upon her understanding.
Raven smirked, her cloak a darkening navy. "Let's go bust some heads."
"No." Robin looked at her with an implacable expression. "You're injured. You are staying here."
"WHAT?" she asked, gritting her teeth so hard they squeaked.
"I felt it through the bond. You're in no condition to go outside. You're off active duty."
"You can't do that!"
"Rae-" began Cyborg.
She whirled upon him. "Don't call me Rae!"
"Fine," he growled back, "Rae-ven! You are not acting right. Something strange is going on, and I wanna know what it is!"
"Dude!" shouted Beast Boy with the voice of one granted an epiphany. "I bet that Jon guy did do something to her head! He knew about the Nephilim, and now Raven can't come with us, and-"
Raven stood then, cloak the colour of midnight, and interrupted with, "Nobody messes with my mind! Besides, don't you all have some Nephilim to kill without me?" A wave of her hand enveloped the four teens in obsidian energy before transporting them near-instantly through the Kithados to PS118.
"Nobody messes with my mind," she repeated to the empty room as her cloak shifted towards alabaster.
"... Nobody but me..."
=-=-=-=-=-
Jon sat in seiza within a circle scribed in chalk. The early afternoon sunlight filtered to a dirty yellow through dusty windows situated high on corrugated steel walls. Diffuse shafts of light illuminated wheeling motes of dust as they fell and rose, a microcosm of life and death. Silence swallowed all. The place had the air of abandonment found not in derelict warehouses as should be expected, but rather the sepulcher quietude and dignity of an ancient temple or mausoleum.
"Ygratha Metrintacal Shendrithicadshendrithos... Ygratha Metrintacal Shendrithicadshendrithos..."
The voice was smooth and strong, but not overbearing. It was rich in tone, neither deep nor shrill, well enunciated and possessing no discernible accent. It was a voice made for speaking. Imagine a night sky, velvet black, with only a single, dim star drawing your eye to twinkling defiance. The meditative mantra was the star in the velvet silence.
"Ygratha Metrintacal Shendrithicadshendrithos... Ygratha Metrintacal Shendrithicadshendrithos..."
The chalk outline sublimated, rising in gaseous elegance to swirl about the mage within. His eyes were closed, but a blue light seeped from beneath the lowered lashes. The vapours ceased swirling, stopping unnaturally, and then dove towards the man. They entered his ears, eyes, and mouth, a final wisp disappearing into his nose as he inhaled deeply. His eyes opened, a horrific negative; corneas dark as sack-cloth, irises an unnatural orange, and pupils a bright, penetrating white. His lips writhed into a position that was more sneer than smile, right corner twisted far above the left, black teeth gleaming with oily iridescence.
"Raven..."
=-=-=-=-=-
"Why the ever-loving HELL can't you go in there?!"
Robin resisted the urge to massage away the burgeoning headache that was beginning to settle behind his eyes. "As I've told you already, Commissioner, we have reason to believe that the terrorists are metahumans. Their abilities are unknown, but their viciousness has already been well-established."
"So sneak inside and take them out before they have a chance to kill anyone else!"
Strange, thought Robin vaguely. I've never had to stop my hands from unwittingly choking someone before... "As I've said for the past twenty minutes, we're working on the problem."
The man turned away, the cigar stump in his mouth being chewed to a pulpy mass between gritted teeth. His muttering about useless teenage superheroes tipped Robin ever-so-slightly over the edge of patience.
"Look," he said with only the slightest trace of a growl, "if you're unhappy with how we're running things, you can call another group."
The commissioner looked a bit embarrassed as he admitted, "We already did. The Justice League said that they would only step in if the threat was interplanetary or you asked for special assistance."
Robin had to work rather hard to conceal the smirk that threatened at that admission. "We're doing all we can. Cyborg's checking the blueprints and running scans. Beast Boy is doing surveillance and looking for likely points of entry, and Starfire..." he looked out beyond the police cordon to see Starfire amongst a group of ten or so. Their eyes were red, and their bodies shook with grief, anger, or both. Starfire herself stood solidly on the ground, the joy required for flight conspicuously absent. She moved amongst them, giving condolences and reassurance, her face locked into an expression somewhere between compassion and righteous anger, emerald eyes holding beryl tears.
"Starfire," he continued softly, "is giving hope to the desolate."
The commissioner looked over to the alien girl, moving and speaking with a grace that disclosed her royal heritage. "Christ," he said softly, voice choking slightly. A moment of silence passed. "My daughter goes to this school," he said finally.
Robin turned to him sharply. "Is she inside?"
"No," he replied, and gave a gallows chuckle. "She's home sick today. Flu. Begged to go to school today because of some carnival or field trip or something." He tossed the ruined remains of the cigar carelessly to the side. "It's just... the world the way it is... you never know when the ones you have today are gonna to be there tomorrow."
A gloved hand came to rest on the shoulder of the older man. He looked up into Robin's face, cold fury and guilty relief mingling in his expression. "Take 'em down for us, Robin." He cast a look towards lumpy shapes under bloody sheets.
"And take 'em down hard."
=-=-=-=-=-
Raven returned to her room, the last dregs of her anger vanishing as she entered its familiar and comforting confines. They were right, she knew. They simply didn't understand what was happening to her... but then, she hadn't told them, had she? Once again taking the choice of worry from them, convinced that she was relieving a burden rather than creating one.
"Will I never learn?" she muttered to herself as she crossed the cavernous space. Approaching the bed led to noticing the package that Cyborg had attempted to deliver. It had been tossed carelessly to the side, one plain brown paper corner propped against a pillow. She reached for it, caressing the rough twine that bound it and examined the elegant, economic writing that spelled her name and address.
Raven
c/o Teen Titans
PDC: 2735527684
100 Titan's Tower, Titan's Island
Jump City, CA 94100-0000
"It wasn't easy finding your personal delivery code, you know."
Eyes wide, Raven leaped from the bed and spun to face the source of the voice. There, in one of the the shadowed corners of her room, a tall figure leaned nonchalantly with on foot resting on the wall, arms crossed.
"Who are you?" she demanded. "How did you get in here?"
"What's wrong, Raven? Don't you recognize me?" the figure said as he moved closer to the light. Squinting, Raven was able to discern a figure that was familiar to her, covered with twisting lines of ebony ink.
"Jon?" she asked uncertainly.
"Close," he said as he entered the light fully, revealing the abomination that was once a human face. "I'm afraid that your friend Jon isn't here any longer, little blackbird. He made one too many mistakes, you see." A sneering smirk full of black teeth twisted the familiar features. "Paradox backlash can be a real bitch."
Raven drew herself into a ready position, white light seeping from her eyes and onyx energy forming around clenched fists. "What do you want, Zarach?"
"Ah, calling me by name in an attempt to discomfort me with your knowledge. A good tactic, little blackbird, but futile. You see, when you looked into Jon's mind, I looked back." He looked at her in a way that made her skin crawl, and she momentarily wished that her uniform was more conservative than a skintight leotard. "You think that you can beat it. You think that you can defeat the promise of your birth. You are wrong."
"You're lying," she hissed, fury at her fright causing a scarlet cast to enter her eyes.
Zarach scoffed. "Even now the anger courses through you. Even now you desire to rip me into pieces, to subjugate me, to force me to kneel before you and serve your every lustful fantasy." He moved closer, prompting Raven to bare her fangs and hiss in an attempt at intimidation. He ignored it. "You will lose your humanity this day, demi-demon." He paused for a moment, as though in contemplation. "Although, you are rather pretty for a lesser being. Perhaps I shall defile you before I consume you. However," he continued before she could respond, "I did make a deal with my host. You are offered a choice, bastard-spawn of Trigon. I can kill you now, cleanly, and defile your body afterwards. Or," he said as he licked his lips with a blue tongue, "you can choose to fight me, lose, and have me do as I will to you. I hope that you fight."
"Be careful what you wish for," Raven growled as pieces of masonry ripped themselves from the walls to hurtle unchecked at the smirking figure.
"Rachel! NO!" shouted Jon's voice as his colouring reverted back to normal.
Her eyes wide, she blasted the bits of concrete and drywall into dust with a thought. "Jon!"
"Too easy," he sneered as his twisted colouring returned. "Your die has been cast, beast. Prepare yourself for domination!" He lunged forward, leathery wings bursting in gory splendor from his black, eyes bright with hate and fingernails turned to claws.
Raven's soul cried a spectral scream as it enveloped her, causing her to vanish.
A flash of shadow and brimstone later, the room was empty.
Forlorn, an abandoned communicator chirped a nine-note jingle.