Raven dropped to a quadrupedal posture, wings flared and tail arced over her head as she turned towards the voice that had startled her so. She immediately regretted the instinctive action when she beheld a teenage girl of about fourteen years cowering back from her. Raven rose to an upright posture and clasped her wings about her shoulders, cloak-like. Her tail set to a more languid motion, swishing about gently as she said, "Do not be afraid. My name is Rachel. I'm a friend of Jon's."
The girl peeked through her hands and relaxed somewhat at the non-threatening posture Raven had taken. Her head cocked slightly to one side as she examined the nude girl in front of her before she exclaimed slowly, "I know you... don't I?"
A brief flash of Skuld's introduction ran across the surface of Raven's thoughts as she replied, "In a sense. You are Jon's sister, Kate?"
She nodded, confirming the designation before saying, "That's what Jon calls me, although I am not actually his sister. I just wear her form and take her name when Jon needs to talk to me."
"I see."
"He hasn't come to talk to me in a very long time," she confided in a near whisper. Raven could not help but be simultaneously amused and alarmed by the innocent gravity with which this was pronounced. "He used to talk to me often," the mental projection that was called Kate continued, "but ever since The Incidents started he hasn't."
Raven could hear the capitalization in Kate's voice. "What are these 'Incidents'?" she asked carefully.
Kate shuddered, a spastic ripple that crawled up her torso and set her pageboy cut to quivering. She hugged herself and crouched down, tucking herself into a rather small ball of humanity. She was whispering something to herself, which Raven's enhanced hearing could just barely pick up.
"Evil, dark, bad magic." Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. "Jon disappeared, but then he came back... but he didn't talk to me anymore!" The tears flowed freely now. "Then he kept going farther away... and I can't find him."
"Kate," Raven said softly as she crouched next to the weeping girl. "What is your function in Jon's mindscape?"
A delicate sniff, and then a single word that sent a dagger of ice into Raven's heart.
"Hope."
Raven thought furiously as she stood in the small shower that Kate's RV had to offer. The water was nearly steam as it left the shower head, but the scorching liquid soothed the knotted steel of her muscles without burning or causing discomfort. Kate had offered her hospitality once she had composed herself, and had joked weakly that since Raven was already naked, she might as well take the opportunity to freshen up.
Wryly, Raven reflected upon the fact that she was essentially washing imaginary dirt off of an imaginary body with imaginary soap in an imaginary shower.
It was a wonder that more metahumans didn't require regular counseling.
The Incidents were, apparently, times when Jon used "vulgar magic." Generally, the mages of Jon's home-dimension were required to use their magic with a subtlety that bordered on the absurd. Rather than hurl a lightning bolt, a power line might snap and drop 10,000 volts instead. Tossing a fireball was out of the question, but someone might decide to light a cigarette while refueling at a nearby gas station. Vulgar magic was defined as those times when, rather than hiding behind coincidence and luck, spells became all flash and awe.
"No mage, a Chronicler specifically," Kate had explained while pulling down towels and gathering shampoo and such, "ever resorts to such measures lightly."
The reason was because of his magic's mechanism of action. Reality was a matter of consensus, and the vast non-magical majority were allowed to cast a vote as well. A normal non-magical would accept that a shooter's gun could jam, but wouldn't accept bullets stopping in mid-air. When vulgar magic was used, reality had a tendency to throw its weight around.
The actual phrase Kate had used as she laid out an outfit for Raven was, "Paradoxing reality often results in one mother of a bitch-slap."
Which was confusing enough, considering his current predicament of being... well, rather far from home. Why was he still collecting this Paradox debt? Or rather, why wasn't anyone else? The only answer that seemed to make anything approaching sense was that since no-one else thought they should, there was no way they possibly could. That is, Jon's magic was sabotaging itself with a sort of kill-switch that was engaged by illusory limitations.
Raven turned off the shower, leaving only the steady dripping of water off her skin as counterpoint to her thoughts. Jon's magic was potentially limitless...
… and would continue to be so until he believed that it was limitless.
The two girls sat at the small table that served the RV. In its center a lonely, dusk-pink rose stood withered within a pot shaped after a turtle.
Outside the sky had grown dark, and the inky night pressed strongly against the windows. Within the RV every light blazed, but not a ray of it escaped the confines of the vehicle, this last bastion of hope in a soul otherwise given over to dark passion and saurian logic. Raven knew without being told that to step outside now was folly.
Raven studied her reflection in the window, the glass mirrored by the perfect blackness outside. While she had forgone her wings and tail as a matter of convenience in the cramped confines of the RV, she had retained the sweeping horns. She also noted clinically that her eyes had changed somehow. Not in any way that was immediately noticeable; they didn't have slitted pupils or glowing irises or the like. Rather, they seemed... both harder and softer at the same time. They gazed with an intensity that was discomforting, and had an ancientness about them that seemed out of place on her seemingly young face.
Frowning, she examined her hair. The centuries of bestial living had ended with her hair being a thick, matted carpet laying heavy upon her back. It never fell in her face, partly due to its general filth and partly because her horns kept it swept back. After her shower, however, it fell long and luxurious, a deep violet waterfall that terminated at her knees. For some unknown reason she had hesitated to will it away, and had tamed it somewhat by confining it to a thick plait that ran the length of her back.
Kate spoke during all of this, but Raven had long ceased listening. She wasn't just a hopeful personality, she was Hope. At least, as far as Jon was concerned. As long as she was being factual, Kate was a tolerable and informative companion. Her perceptions were coloured by her archetype, however, and this made her quite useless for planning and the like.
Eventually, jaw-breaking yawns forced Kate into retiring for the night. Raven blinked as she found herself laying down next to her after apologies for the lack of separate beds and entreaties to share hers. For the first time in over three-hundred years, Raven closed her eyes and attempted to sleep.
Raven started awake, fangs bared and eyes flashing a lurid red. The shadow crouching on the foot of the bed jerked and then attempted to flow away. Raven's power uncurled and lashed the being in place, immobilizing it. A soft chuckle floated through the air, followed by Jon's voice saying, "Go easy before you wake her."
Raven sat up and crawled towards the shadow with Jon's voice, glad for and embarrassed by the silk negligee Kate had loaned her. While she wasn't nude, she was suddenly acutely aware of the sensual image she portrayed as she slinked on hands and knees across the bed. She was a study in contradicting emotions, all breathless hope and giddy anticipation which delighted and confused her.
"It's good to see you again, Rachel."
"Jon," her throat closed and she had to try again. "Jon, what's happening?"
"You know what's happening as well as I could tell you," the shadow replied. No matter how she twisted or focused her vision, she could not penetrate the umbral cloak around the voice.
"Are you ok?"
"As well as can be expected given the circumstances," he replied. "I can't really speak much. I wasn't supposed to be discovered. I just wanted to see you one last time... in case."
Raven scowled with the full fury of her heritage. "In case what?"
"You will leave here when you wake," Jon said. "You will exit our mindscape and go forth to do battle with Zarach for the last time. The both of us bound our word with magic, so there are only two possible resolutions to this bit of our story. You are now gifted with full access to your supernatural abilities, so Zarach has fulfilled the deal I made with him, thank God. You also bound your word, with Blood, and so must kill Zarach before the sun sets in that long-forgotten physical reality. Else, both of us are lost."
Raven thought a moment, and a sharp smirk etched itself upon her features. "Your mindscape... I spent centuries here, learning myself and my powers... how much time has passed on the outside?"
Although the shadow was featureless, a sense of smug satisfaction exuded from it. "According to my rough calculations... about three minutes."
For the first time in her existence, Raven giggled unabashedly.
"You wake soon, Rachel. I must go."
The shadow slipped its bonds and drifted towards the window. "Wait!" Raven called suddenly. The shadow halted. She bent her head and placed her horn against the back of her left forearm, then jerked her head up sharply. The skin parted smoothly, and blood welled black in the darkness. "Jon, on my blood I vow thus: we shall see each other again after tomorrow."
The feeling of a grin left the shadow. "I know, Rachel. Now... awaken."
Raven's eyes opened slowly, soaking in the light that flooded through the windows. She stood and stretched, a satisfying crackling rippling down her spine. She removed the negligee she had borrowed, folded it, and placed it on the foot of the bed where Jon had sat in her dreams.
She closed her eyes and fixed an image in her mind. A cloak formed about her, white with shifting patterns of dove gray. Her brooch sported a gold triquetra, filled with emerald and bound in a circle of lighter green. Her eyes opened, four-fold, scarlet embers banked hot and steady. She inhaled, and blew out her breath with a force that set her blood to tingling.
Kate woke and sat up, rubbing her eyes free of sleep and gazed with wonder at the girl standing there. "Raven?" she said tentatively.
"Yes," Raven replied. "Thank you for your kindness, Kate. I have to go now."
She walked through the RV with steady steps, pausing at the door to look back with a smirk. "And by the way... call me Valkyrie."