Raven arrived at Jump City General Hospital to find Zarach standing calmly in the lobby, a fact which surprised her and put her more on her guard. The sudden and spectacular arrival of one of the city's heroes (her soul-self's echoing cry was only just beginning to fade away) caused an unwelcome disturbance as observers mobbed towards her. Grimacing in distaste, Raven leeched fear into her aura and gathered shadow around herself. The crowd, perceiving a fearsome visage and palpable sense of menace, scattered and left the two alone in the expansive room.
"Why drive off your admirers, Rachel?" asked Zarach. "Even I could sense the waves of adulation they were putting off. It was... delicious."
"I have a job to do. They were in my way."
"Of course. Always dutiful, even on your last day. Just like before, Portal."
Raven's eyes flashed a bright white as the glass-fronted building became encased in onyx. "DO NOT ASSUME-"
"Assume?" Zarach interrupted with a laugh. "I assume nothing. You allowed yourself to be used as a gateway for your father, to be nothing more than a tether between Hell and this realm. You saw what he had done to your birthplace, to your teachers and family... and you welcomed him into this world with open arms."
A thunderous crack heralded the end of the hospital's windows. Raining glass played counterpoint to the swirling maelstrom of onyx energy that lashed fitfully from the broken building. "I did no such-"
"YOU WANT TO SEE THIS WORLD IN RUINS!" he screamed suddenly. "The darkness within you CANNOT be denied! When Johnny Rancid turned this city into a nightmare through Nosyarg Kcid's power, you squirmed with glee! You fell to the dark arts so easily with Melchior as your instructor, as your desired lover. Did you not know that he was an Anakim? Did you miss the demon pulse within his construct's aura as you missed the taint within Jon? Are you blind, neglectful, stupid, or treacherous?"
The silence that blanketed the area was a physical thing. It was a deep silence, velvety and thick. It was the kind of silence that allowed ambient noise to become readily audible. The screaming of a dozen hundred people as the foundation beneath them shivered and quaked. The sirens playing in the distance, explosions and crackling fire... the sounds of a city gone mad.
"ANSWER ME, THING!"
Raven had lost her boots at some point during the madcap dash across the city and through dimensions. Her left boot currently balanced precariously on the edge of Kobiyashi Tower's roof, and would fall neatly into a trashcan seventy-some floors below in about five minutes. Her right boot drifted along the eddies in the Kithados and would eventually be found and pondered over by a young teenager of Asian descent as he wandered between the walls at an Institute For Gifted Youngsters.
In short, Raven was currently barefoot.
She stepped forward, cracking glass beneath her petite body and lacerating the sole of her foot. She took another step. Another. Dark maroon footprints stretched behind her as she approached the tall man. She noted absently that his wings were gone. His face, reverted to a more human palette, looked back at her from behind twisted lines of ebon ink. She realized, as an epiphany in a dream, that the tattooed lines were a demon binding mandala. Through it all, she spoke not a word, and uttered not a sound.
Silence in demons was a pretty strong indication that something was very wrong.
Zarach watched, intrigued, as his toy purposefully inflicted pain upon itself and drew closer.
"My name..." the voice was a bare whisper, "... is Raven." Her face looked up. Four scarlet eyes pierced Zarach's soul, and for a moment he knew fear. Her voice rose in pitch and became strong, ringing with truth and conviction. "I am Raven, daughter of Trigon, Crown Princess to the Lord of Hell and High Priestess to the Cult of Azar. I am Raven, Teen Titan of Jump City, and Rachel Roth, Friend of the Chronicler known as Jon. I am Human, and I am Demon, and on my blood I vow thus:
"You shall not end this day alive, Zarach Bal-Togh."
And with a gatling roar, shards and slivers of glass flew forward. The cacophonous, continuous ringing became muted as the air became thick with suspended particles, a shimmering cloud that blanketed the lobby. Light refracted through the uneven mounds and cast rainbow whorls upon cheek and chair. A helicopter ("The same one from before?" wondered Raven idly) kicked the dust into dancing spirals of chandelirious colour. When the supply of glass became exhausted, Raven's power latched onto anything else in the room which could be used as an impromptu projectile. Wheelchairs and sofas broke into jagged splinters that were sent daggering through the air, change from a fountain ("Donations to support breast cancer research," she half-consciously noted) bulleted into her opponent, while wires and cabling ripped from the walls and twisted forward in an attempt to bind and choke.
The onslaught was endless, the barrage vicious, and her visage fearsome. Her cloak had shifted to a midnight black, her eyes narrowed in fourfold scarlet fury. Her body stretched and elongated, her teeth lengthened and crowded her jaw with daggers. She stood, lordly, with writhing tentacles of shadow whipping from beneath her cloak, each grasping a new object and flinging it with deadly precision. When the room finally failed to offer up fodder, she took to ripping steel bolts and girders from the very structure of the place to use as her weaponry.
Reason reasserted itself as the building groaned, threatening collapse, its structural skeleton ripped from its body. Raven shrank to her more accustomed proportions, cloak washing to a dull gray that could only be partly attributed to drywall and vent dust. Her eyes cleared to indigo and narrowed against the suspended debris, lashes catching irritants like snowflakes.
Through the thick cloud a silhouette of a man appeared, arms crossed in an 'X' position before his face.
"I told you that your power was insufficient to render my defeat."
The figure disappeared in a lick of flame.
With a spectral shriek of demonic rage, a fiery black bird slammed into the air and imploded into nothingness.
=-=-=-=-=-
Everywhere the duo touched turned to ruin. Dark energies met blazing hellfire, slinging sparks of mana and cinder into the surrounding innocents. Before the long the duelists were confronted with abandoned streets; a thriving city turned to a ghost town through the residents' long experience with their home being turned to a battlefield. Market stalls showed abandoned wares, cars lay quietly forsaken, and the only sound was desolate winds through dark alleyways. They carried the sound of sirens and the scent of smoke.
Neither could gain a positive advantage. For every strike, there was a counter, and then a counter for that. Zarach played, pushing Raven to her limits and no farther. Raven struck back with her trademark energies, found weapons, and barely understood powers over shadows and time. Creatures arose from the sewers and other dark places of the city, made of substance drawn from the Kithados and bearing scarlet eyes as their battle standard. Flame licked across her powers fitfully, the hellfire unable to catch and burn one with demon blood.
Raven sang the cadences of mystical conjuration. Syllables mashed from a half-dozen dead languages flowed smoothly across the cosmos and formed into lightning, chronotons, and xenothium, mundane reality breaking to the greater pull of the Titan's call.
Still, this awesome display of mystical mastery was no match for the sheer destructive abilities inherent to a fully awakened Nephilim. All of her training and not inconsequential power were insufficient to bring defeat to her enemy.
She knew this.
To continue to fight in this way was both exhausting and, to be frank, ultimately pointless.
She knew this as well.
Raven was not what anyone would consider a stupid person. She was, admittedly, lacking in some social graces, and her grasp of technology extended just far enough to be able to set the clock on a microwave, but the humanities and the so-called "soft sciences" were fields she excelled in. As she battled this interloper, she had managed to regain control over herself. However she kept up the appearance of mindless savagery. This allowed her to study her opponent while he was in an unwary state.
=-=-=-=-=-
"... When you stand and look long into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you," Raven thought softly to herself.
That was the key.
Zarach had knowledge he should not. Raven had knowledge that she should not.
The play. When whatever it was triggered the cascade of repressed memories, it hadn't been Raven looking into Jon's mind... rather, Jon's mind had overflowed into Raven's. The time spent in that shared mindscape had left an indelible link between the two, a bond so strong that the absence of it would be as noticeable and crippling as an amputated limb.
In a very real way, they shared parts of their mind with one another. Zarach had been gazing through this window into her soul and picking out information that Jon did not know and that Raven had never volunteered. Zarach had stood long and looked into the abyss...
...and now the abyss had begun to return that gaze.
"Perhaps," Raven thought with a sharp, tight grin, "it is time for Zarach to learn what dangers there are to those who fight monsters."
=-=-=-=-=-
Zarach was perturbed by the sudden smile on a face that had been contorted in rage for the last hour or so. He relaxed when she began chanting to herself, thinking that the poor deluded demi-demon had simply convinced herself that some spell would be powerful enough to end him.
He was half right.
In his ignorant egotism, Zarach simply stayed still while Raven chanted, prepared to relish the look of shock and defeat when whatever paltry parlor trick she attempted next failed.
"Azarath Metrion Zinthos, Carazon Rakhashas Endareth, Vaserics Endrian Nevermore, Nevermore Nevermore NEVERMORE!"
In surprise, he watched as his prey disappeared into a portal. With a sigh (he had hoped that she would try something more amusing than another teleportation) he leaped into the Kithados to follow...
… and found no trail.
As far as Zarach could tell, Raven had disappeared without a trace.