Demons (Damirae)

Chapter Ninety-Five

In what felt like hours but was in fact only a second , the memories swamped Raven, bursting back in to the light after years crammed in the darkness. She daren't look at Adyn, her empathy told her how stricken he was, let alone Damian.

Raven's eyes, perfect blue, fell on that sweet, delicate face, and her mind could only venture to one place. The cliff. The Wastelands. The little hand that couldn't hold on.

But no.

The sweet, delicate face was wrong: twisted. It's eyes lightless, it's lips set in a harsh line. Not Sahara. It's aura was wrong. Powerful, and wrong. But she was there, underneath, that calmness of her aura. It was corrupted. A water bubble surrounded by roaring flames.

"Who are you?"

Damian.

But he knew who that was- or was supposed to be.

"Your end."

Black flames roared around the creature's figure, and her head tipped backwards, a deep rumbling growl worked its way up her throat and leafy with a roar like a hundred thunder clouds. Her arms splayed wide and she rose higher above the throne.

Batman looked at Raven and demanded, "What is that?"

"Something's possessing her.", Raven gulped, her eyes circles. "Something powerful..I don't know what..."

At that moment, a current of black surged through the room, flowing from the creature. Raven's previously seized brothers had taken advantage of the situation to escape over to the entity channeling pure black magic. It tainted the air with a sulphuric taste and Raven found herself coughing uncontrollably alongside the others.

Her mind became foggy, but she had enough sense left in her to create a forcefield, extending it to her allies. Under the translucent dome, she grouped with the other others and tried o make sense of what was happening. Cassandra, who had been closest to the source of the black magic, was on her knees, spluttering something awful. Batman knelt besides her, checking her vitals. Zeela too collapsed, wheezing.

Such a forcefield two years ago would have severely depleted Raven's strength and nearly nicked her out cold; now, with her nearing 17, the demonic age of total maturity, and around the time of the Blood Moon, she could sustain this barrier for an hour or more. She allowed her senses to branch out as she pressed her hand to Zeela's back and assessed her condition.

That was not good.

The magic surge was draining the life force of the sea-dweller. It hadn't been absorbed by the creature, only distorted in to the air, adding to the swirling mass of blackness.

"It's draining their life forces,", Raven explained, checking on Cass and getting the same results, "if we'd stayed in it any longer it could've killed us."

"So what do we do?", Aleil threw his hands up. He looked to his lover, "Any ideas?"

Adyn gave no response. The haunted look on his face hadn't left as he stared at nothing. Raven ignored it all. There was time for sadness afterwards, now was the time for action. There was a powerful creature inhabiting the body of an Al Ghul trying to kill them. On the cliff- off the cliff- in the Wastelands- in the land of the exiled and dead- what could have happened to her?

With a hypothesis in mind that she prayed was right, Raven declared to the recovering group, "I think I know how to defeat h-it, but I can't be sure."

Damian snorted, "It's not like we have a lot of options. Whatever that is, inside her, I'll gladly drag back to whatever hole it crawled out of."