PRELUDE MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2408 TITANS TOWER PEREZ ISLAND, NEW AVALON Raven levitated just above the roof of Titans Tower, facing east, her eyes closed. Far off ahead of her, Zeta Cygni was just rising from the waters of Lake Daniels, its first rays racing across the calm surface of the lake to touch her face with the warmth of dawn. People sometimes looked at Raven's manner - dark, mysterious, shadowy - and assumed she shunned the daylight. Actually, for some purposes she quite liked it. Dawn was a very useful time of day for meditation: quiet, peaceful, relaxed. Some days the whole world seemed to settle into a state of silent, expectant order. This... "Good morning, Raven! Do not mind us; we are off to school." ... was not one of those days. Like a brick through a window, Koriand'r and Gar Logan barged onto the roof and ruined the whole effect. Trying not to show that she was irked, Raven replied without turning around, "Great. Knock yourselves out." "You sure you don't want to come with?" Gar asked, sidling up behind her. She didn't even have to look at him to see the stupid grin on his face. "You're gonna miss all the fun... " "Fun," Raven said sardonically. "Right." "Garfield is right," said Kori thoughtfully. "School has many good points. The learning is interesting. And even when the learning is not interesting, there is much to do. And, of course, the rest of us are going, except for Cassandra, and we would appreciate being able to do the hanging out with you there." "You can do the hanging out with me here," Raven said patiently - very patiently, for Raven. "After school." "It is not the same," Kori protested. "We will be discussing all the wonderful things we have done at school, and you will be left out because you were not there to do them." "So I'll sit over in the corner and read. Like always. Big deal." "C'mon, Raven," Gar cajoled. "You know you can't bear to be away from us all day, every day. It'll be fun." "Don't make me teleport you to the middle of the lake," Raven replied evenly. "Too much introspection can be harmful," Kori pointed out helpfully. "And besides, your navel is not -that- interesting." Gar turned to the Tamaranian, arching an eyebrow dubiously at her. "Debatable," he said. "Very, very debatable." Raven made a very small growling sound. Gar sighed. "C'mon, Kori," he said. "This isn't getting us anywhere. Let's just leave boring old Raven here by her boring old self. We're gonna be late if we don't." Kori made an unconvinced, worried little noise, then relented. "Very well. But I remain concerned!" she insisted. "Excessive solitude erodes the neeblefrex." So saying, she took to the air and cut across the bay toward downtown. "See you after school, grumpy," Gar added, then shifted to a pterosaur (why be a boring old -bird-? Some ladies might be skywatching this morning) and headed after her. Raven sighed. It was nice to have friends - nicer than she would have believed, not too long ago - but what a -pain- they could be sometimes. "Imagine it," she mumbled to herself, adjusting her position slightly and recomposing herself for meditation. "-Me- going to -school-." She gave a derisive snort and cleared her thoughts. Cleared her thoughts. CLEARED... her THOUGHTS. "... damn," she muttered. HARKNESS STREET HIGH SCHOOL CLAREMONT, NEW AVALON The branch of the Avalon County Public School System serving the district known as Claremont maintains three schools, one for each of the customary Zeta Cygnan school divisions: kindergarten through fifth grade, sixth through eighth grades, and ninth through twelfth grades. The last of them - last stop on the road to adulthood for the young people of New Avalon's most eclectic neighborhood - is Harkness Street High School. Like everything else in New Avalon, the school building isn't particularly old; but like many things in the city, it was built to -seem- old, and with considerable skill. A great, rambling, Gothic pile of grey stone, it lurks at the end of Harkness Street near the lakeshore. It's the only building in the school system to have gargoyles. Tourists often mistake it for a priory or an opera house. It has by far the most character of any of New Avalon's public high schools, which is a point of pride for its students and faculty alike. Harkness is a quiet street as Claremont streets go - mostly residential, lined with brownstone townhouses and artists' lofts. It's not far from the action, though. Strange Street, the main drag that cuts diagonally across Claremont, is only two blocks away. There can be found the best coffee shops, bookstores, and secondhand clothes shops in all the sphere, as well as street vendors, fresh-fried donuts, the Little Sisters of Althena convent store, and much more. All this, and the population of Claremont itself, make Harkness Street High the destination of choice for the student interested in the arts or the odd. The school's management not only knows this, it wears it as a badge of honor. Harkness High meets all the requirements for a public school's curriculum, and meets them well; it has science programs, for instance, and good ones too. But the school's heart and soul is letters, and no one pretends otherwise. Raven stood on the sidewalk in front of the building's main entrance, looking up at its glowering Gothic facade, and she had to admit she rather liked the look of the place. It had a peculiar dark charm (a bit like Raven herself, Gar Logan would have said, if he were out of kicking distance) with its weathered grey stone, its dormers, and its cunning stone gargoyles. The building looked slightly out of place surrounded by green lawn at the end of a pleasant street on a sunny day, but Raven would have bet it looked just right on a rainy, foggy night. She stood looking at the school for several minutes, trying to decide whether she really intended to go inside, or had just come down to have a look at it out of curiosity. Then she sighed, muttered, "... i can't believe i'm doing this," and went in. Once inside, she wasn't entirely sure what to do. It wasn't like she'd ever been in one of these places before, or had any idea at all how they worked. She looked vaguely around the entrance hall for some clue, and received one, in the form of a large sign which read, Visitors Please Report To Office -> "OK," Raven said, a sort of verbal shrug. Gar Logan had just finished drawing a rather nicely rendered cartoon caricature of Raven's "go away before I kill you" face in the margin of his notebook when the classroom door opened and a girl came in he didn't recognize. She was small, not much taller than he was, and interestingly dressed even for a Claremontian. Her style was Gothic, but a sort of classy Victorian Gothic rather than the highly affected, often trashy style Tim Drake had derisively nicknamed 'TackyGoth'. She wore low suede boots; nicely cut, close-fitting black trousers; a snug waistcoat-like jacket of dark purple velvet with buttoned-back satin lapels; and a white silk blouse with a wide collar and broad cuffs folded back on the outside of the jacket. A black ribbon encircled her slim throat. From the front of it hung a round scarlet gem set in a thin gold ring. With a slow vertical pan, Gar took all this in appreciatively - it was nice to see somebody who took a little care with her clothes, with all the TackyGoth chicks around here - before he got to her face. Then he was so surprised he snapped his pencil, because the face - dusky skin, dark violet eyes, little scarlet gem in the middle of the forehead, purple hair swept back from a widow's peak - belonged to Raven. "Hi," she said in her usual quiet, slightly hoarse voice. "I'm a new student. Mr. Dodds told me to start here." Gar blinked and turned to Koriand'r, who sat on his left. That wasn't much help; she just beamed happily at him. He turned a little further to look in the seat behind her, but Vic Stone just shrugged. He turned forward again, looking up to where Tim Drake sat in the front, but -he- was just looking at Raven with that little I-know-something-you-don't-know smile of his, even though Gar was SURE Tim couldn't POSSIBLY know something he didn't know right NOW... could he? Argh! That was what was so annoying about Tim sometimes. "Come right in," the teacher was saying while Gar took care of all that. "What's your name?" "Raven," said Raven. "Well, welcome to Harkness, Raven," the teacher said. He was a tall, strong-looking, sandy-haired fellow with a hawk nose and a mildly fey air about him that was common to sorcerers. Raven hadn't been expecting to find that in a public school teacher. He smiled - a small smile, not unlike one she herself might have used - and went on, "I'm Mr. Hall. I teach history here. We're just getting settled in right now, you haven't missed much. Let's see... " Hall looked thoughtfully around the room. "Why don't you take the empty seat next to Garfield," he suggested. "Thrilling," said Raven quietly. Mr. Hall didn't seem to have heard her as she made her way to her assigned place and sat down. For a couple of minutes, she resisted looking at Gar. She knew what would happen if she did. He'd lean over, give her the eyebrow treatment and the big toothy smirk, and say something like, "I knew you couldn't keep yourself away," and then she would have to kill him, which would probably earn her a detention. Finally, inevitably, she had no choice. She could feel his eyes on her, and she knew if she didn't confront him, it would only get worse. So she turned her head and looked, preparing to give him her most withering glare. But all he did was smile at her. It wasn't a leer or a smirk or a smug grin - just a "glad you could make it" sort of smile. Having primed herself for his particularly obnoxious brand of silliness, Raven found that mildly unnerving. She looked around the room, seeking her few friends amid the faces of strangers. Vic Stone grinned; Koriand'r beamed; and up front, Tim Drake looked briefly back over his shoulder and gave her his slightly sly smile, the one that said something had just unfolded exactly as he'd predicted it would. Like all of Tim's friends, Raven hated that smile. Well, not really. She got through the first class without much difficulty, endured the cheerful bombardment of her friends during the brief pause between classes, and then made her way through the unfamiliar corridors toward her next destination. The interior layout of the building was a bit peculiar, especially given its fairly straightforward exterior. She got lost twice looking for the next room, a place which housed a class none of her friends was in, before finally locating it up on the top floor at the end of the east wing. Quietly, hoping to be as unobtrusive as possible, she opened the door, slipped inside, and closed it behind her. Then she turned to face the teacher - - and froze, her eyes going wide with shock, at the sight of him. He was a huge and burly creature, mostly humanoid, with bright red skin, a lantern jaw, faintly glowing orange eyes, bristly black whiskers, and the filed-down stumps of horns on his forehead. He was dressed (rather jarringly) in a tweed suit such as one might expect to find on any teacher of a liberal-arts subject at a public school, complete with bow tie and suede elbow patches. Well, -one- suede elbow patch, anyway. His right sleeve ended a bit before his elbow, having been tailored back to accommodate his forearm - a massive cylindrical structure which appeared to be made of stone, ending in an equally massive stone hand equipped with three thick fingers and a thumb to match. He had it lying on the lectern in front of him, and as Raven stared in astonishment, it moved, the index finger tapping his notes. Raven was frozen in shock not because he was a demon, though he most assuredly was. She'd seen those before. She even knew what sort of demon he was - a greater horned pit fiend, one of the more dangerous denizens of the Pit. No, what seized and dominated her attention was the stone hand. She'd seen its unmistakable shape before as well. "(anung un rama!)" she gasped under her breath, almost involuntarily. The air in the room reverberated as if a cannon had gone off. The windows shattered, exploding outward to rain down into the thankfully-empty courtyard. Students dove under the long slate tables which served this particular room in place of individual desks. "JEEZ!" cried the demon, reeling backward. He regained his balance, grabbed the lectern with his flesh-and-bone left hand, and added in a deep, rumbly voice, "Damn, girl! What're you trying to do?!" Raven stared at him, still a bit in shock (compounded by his completely atypical reaction). "I - I don't - " she stammered. He read the situation from the look on her face, sighed, and addressed the other students, who were mostly picking themselves up off the floor. "OK, kids, that's all for today. Why don't you, hell, I dunno, finish the period in the library. Read up on the Babylonians." "Not the most auspicious of beginnings," said Principal Wesley Dodds mildly. "No," Raven agreed. She was putting on her very best stoic front, the alternative being to collapse in utter shame. "Still, it's my fault," the principal added, causing Raven to look sharply at him. Dodds smiled. "I knew you were a sorceress," he said. "Therefore it should have occurred to me to warn you about Hellboy. Students familiar with the occult are often startled by their first encounters with him - though not normally with such dramatic results," he added with a chuckle. Raven blinked at him. In the time she'd lived in this world, she'd formed the opinion that its culture was rooted entirely in technology - that magic was, if not dead, at least quite seriously marginalized here. To have encountered a demon teaching a class at a public high school had been a sizable shock. To hear the -principal- of a public high school speak so blandly of sorcery was another, and Raven had had quite enough shocks today as it was. The surprise caused her to take another look at Dodds and his surroundings. This was the second time Raven had been in his office, and both the first time and this time she had been a bit too preoccupied to see it as anything but a standard administrative sanctum. Now that she took a closer look, though, she realized that, like so many things in Claremont, it was just a little... odd. Dodds himself was an unremarkable-looking specimen, a human male in his early middle years, possessed of neatly trimmed dark hair greying at the temples and a kindly face with unexpectedly mirthful eyes. He was dressed in a somewhat old-fashioned double-breasted green suit with a diagonally striped tie. Nothing particularly peculiar there. His office looked just as normal, on the surface, but now that Raven really looked, she could see a few little details that shouldn't quite have fit. What high school principal, for instance, had a crystal ball on a side table in his office? What high school principal had a first edition of Randolph Carter's "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" on the shelf behind his desk? Now that Raven really looked around, there were a few things about Mr. Wesley Dodds that struck her as decidedly weird. But then, the whole school was like that. Hellboy was the most obvious example, but hardly the only one. There was something strange going on with that history teacher, Hall, too, to say nothing of some of the students. Had Raven had her feet under her a bit more, she would have found the place enormously intriguing. As it was... "I'm not sure coming here was a good idea," she said. "On the contrary," Dodds replied, shaking his head. "This is the best place in Avalon for you to be. Coming here -unprepared-, on the spur of the moment - that wasn't the best idea," he conceded. "But the day is hardly lost. You certainly made an impression on your Paranormal Survey teacher," he added, smiling. "And my classmates," she said. "Oh, I wouldn't worry about that," Dodds said. "Survey of Paranormal Activity is an elective, and Mr. Hellboy's students are accustomed to peculiar things happening in his class. Why, last year they were driven from the room by a plague of -frogs- one morning." He smiled again. "No, if anything, you've demonstrated that you belong in that class." His smile became kinder as he saw the lingering uncertainty in her eyes. "Look," he said. "Why don't you go home, get some rest, regroup, and try it again tomorrow? There may be a few other surprises in store, but none as big as Hellboy, and once you've got the lay of the land around here, I promise you, you'll like it." Raven wasn't so sure, but she agreed to give it a shot. The next day, she learned to her quiet, restrained delight that he was absolutely correct. I have a message from another time... /* Big Country "All Fall Together" _Wonderland_ */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited and Bacon Comics Group present UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT RAVEN: BLOOD TIES "A Dream of Darkness" Part 1 of a 3-part mini-series scripted by Benjamin D. Hutchins pencils & inks by your visual cortex letters by Benjamin D. Hutchins editor: Benjamin D. Hutchins dialogue assist: Anne Cross Bacon Comics chief: Derek Bacon (c) 2004 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited TEN MONTHS LATER CEPHIRO The man in black rounded the shoulder of one of the numberless dusty mountains west of Shalhara expecting to see what he had always seen: the wall and tower of Azarath, secret refuge of Cephiro's most ancient mystic order. Many had been the time, since he left Valhalla in search of things of greater interest in the living world, that he'd rounded that mountain and seen that view. The very first time he came here, he'd shocked the robed brothers who lived behind that wall by seeing their stronghold where everyone else saw only another useless, dusty canyon. Now, though, it was his turn to be shocked - something that happened to him very infrequently. For when he stepped out of the mountain's shadow, what he saw... was devastation. What had begun as a homecoming of sorts instantly became an investigation. His eyes took in the scene carefully, judiciously, logging every detail for later consideration, even as one corner of his mind was still filled with disbelief that this could happen. The walls of Azarath were breached, the stout gate gone altogether. The tower had fallen, its ancient stones smashed to pieces. The buildings of the compound were broken and burned. Everywhere lay the bodies of the brothers of Azarath. The man in black narrowed his eyes. This hadn't been done long ago. The fires were still smoldering, the bodies still fresh. Carefully, stealthily, he entered the ruined compound. The dead monks had been killed in a variety of ways. Some had been cut down by swords. Some had had their necks crushed. Others seemed to have been struck by lightning. Still others had died from strange burns whose cause the man in black couldn't determine. A complete search of the wreckage took two hours, at the end of which he was confident that whoever had done this was gone. So, too, were the brothers of Azarath. Of all the people the man in black knew had lived here, only two were unaccounted for. Of those who remained, only one was alive, and the man in black knelt at his side now. The monk was terribly wounded, but he was a strong and stubborn man, and the spark of life flickered in him still. As he felt the hand of the man in black on his shoulder, he stirred and opened his eyes, slowly focusing them on the newcomer's face. "Ying... Ko," he murmured. "Tsian. What happened here? Who did this?" "It was the... the Dark One. He and his minions... there was no warning. None. We tried to stop them, but... their powers... their weapons... like nothing we'd ever seen. He wanted... his daughter." The man in black drew back in surprise, his eyes widening. "The Dark One lives? Did he get her?" Brother Tsian shook his head. "No. The master... banished her... a year and more ago." "Sheng." "Yes. He sent her... away from us... as soon as he was master." "Where is Sheng now?" "Gone," Tsian replied. "Fled... when the Dark One attacked." "He -abandoned- you?" the man in black said, incredulous. Tsian nodded, casting his eyes down as though the shame were his. "He abandoned... us all." The man in black bowed his head, his free hand clenching into a fist. "He will pay," he promised. He didn't speak again until he had finished treating the monk's wounds. "You'll be all right now," he said, standing. Tsian nodded, pulling himself slowly to a sitting position, leaning against a chunk of rubble. "Ying Ko... you go to find the master?" he asked. The man in black adjusted his long coat and turned to face the wounded monk, his pale blue eyes like slate. "I go to -punish- the master," he replied, and then he was gone. MONDAY, JUNE 29, 2409 STRANGEFATE BOOKS NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI Raven woke up the way people do it in comic books - translated instantly from horizontality to a right angle, from sleep to full wakefulness in a heartbeat. For a moment she sat fully upright, looking around her odd little apartment as though expecting to find an intruder looking back at her. She put a hand to her chest, feeling a twinge of pain there, but she knew it wasn't real. It was an echo of the dream. The dream she'd been having more and more frequently over the last couple of years. The dream that, even though she must have had it a hundred times by now, she still couldn't remember upon waking. As she did every time the dream wrenched her from sleep, she composed herself into a meditative posture as soon as she had control of her faculties, sinking deep into herself and searching for anything, any image, any symbol, from the dream that she could drag into the light of her conscious mind. Nothing. There never was anything - just that twinge of pain on first waking, a momentary surge of panic, and a mounting sense of dread. This is getting ridiculous, she mused to herself. She glanced at the clock and found that it was just about time to be getting up anyway. Switching off the alarm setting, she got out of bed and went to the compact, neatly designed bathroom in the corner of her loft to shower. She'd first had the dream during her time on the road after her expulsion from Azarath. At the time, she'd thought little of it. She had troubling dreams with reasonable frequency; it was part of the price one paid for dealing with the forces she commanded. Over the years, she'd learned to focus past them. Then, after arriving in Midgard, it had come again. And then again, and thereafter with slowly increasing frequency. At first, it had troubled her about monthly. Lately it had been more like every week. This was the first time she'd had it more than one day in a row, and she didn't like what that implied. She toweled off and got dressed with a resigned sigh. At least she'd gotten most of a night's sleep before it came crashing through this time. And at least school was out for the summer. Raven went downstairs to the first floor, which was a bookshop run by an occultist and mystic named Jason Blood. Blood was one of the very few - two, actually - people she'd told about the dream, and though sympathetic, he hadn't been able to offer much insight. His specialties lay in ritual magic and demonology, not dream-questing and portents. The other person she'd told about it, her teammate Cassandra Cain, had been even less help, practically speaking. Cassandra had no experience of the occult at all, other than what she'd run into in the course of being a costumed hero in a place like Claremont. She, too, was sympathetic - Raven was one of her few close friends, and vice versa - but couldn't offer any useful theories as to what it might mean. She or Blood might have been able to help if Raven could -remember- anything about the dream itself, but of course she couldn't, and that was what she found most worrisome of all. Raven opened up the shop. It was a nice day, a little cool for late June, so she propped the door open before flipping the sign in the window to "open" and taking her usual place behind the small counter in the middle of the shop. Business had picked up considerably in the near-year since Blood had taken Raven on to manage the place, not because she was a particularly talented business manager, but because word of mouth was everything in Claremont's small business community. It hadn't taken long to get around that the new girl down at Strangefate knew her stuff, made good recommendations, didn't put up with a lot of nonsense in the shop, and wasn't hard to look at. All the same, Mondays were always a bit slow, which suited Raven fine. She had reading to do. Since Blood had proven unable to help her with the dreams, she'd been on a research binge, checking all the shop's serious texts one by one for any useful information they might contain. Although Strangefate Books did carry regular books (some of them quite rare and valuable), its strength was in occult and mystic texts, and Raven was convinced that somewhere in its library lay the answers to the questions that lately perplexed her. So far she hadn't found them, though she had learned a good many other things of interest. That was the problem with researching a problem in a library as close to one's heart as this - there were a million other interesting things that could lead a person astray. It made the process take longer, but it was more interesting for all that. After a few hours tracking down what had looked like a promising lead only to see it peter out again, Raven put aside another tome and sighed. "I don't know," she said. "What do you think, Solomon?" The shop's grey tabby cat lifted his head from the counter, blinked thoughtfully at her, and then went off to investigate the top of the Biography shelf. If he had the wisdom of his namesake, Solomon kept it to himself. Raven shelved the book she'd been looking in and considered what to check next. Maybe "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" would have something. She'd read it before, of course, but not recently, and Randolph Carter -was- one of the greatest dream explorers in history... She turned from the shelf to see someone standing just inside the door to the shop - a dark-haired Asian girl in her mid-late teens, dressed in unremarkable street clothes. She smiled as Raven turned to look at her. "Lunch?" Cassie Cain asked. Raven blinked, then looked at the clock. It was, indeed, noon. She'd been so wrapped up in her research she hadn't noticed. She put up the "Back at 1 PM" sign, locked up the shop, and followed Cassie to the noodle shop where they always had lunch on Mondays. "How goes the project?" Cassie asked over the preliminary soup. "Frustratingly," Raven replied. "Every time I think I have something, it goes nowhere." She lowered her voice to an even more private tone and added, "I had it again this morning." Cassie's eyebrows rose. "That's the second time in a row. Has that happened before?" Raven shook her head. "You really need to find an expert," Cassie told her. "The only one I trust is Jason," Raven said. "And he can't help you." "Right." "There's nobody else? What about Hellboy?" "He specializes in mystic evils he can go up to and punch. Not really helpful here," Raven observed dryly. "Mm, point," Cassie agreed, nodding. "If I were being stalked by Karl Ruprecht Kroenen - " "Again," Cassie interjected. Raven nodded without breaking stride. " - again, I'd call Hellboy. For this... " She paused, thinking. "There's one other person who might be able to help me... " She sighed, rolling her eyes at the irony. "But I have no idea where he is." SAITOU, CEPHIRO After weeks on the run, looking over his shoulder with every other step, Sheng had finally reached a place where he felt safe. He was in Saitou, the City at the Center of the World. The balcony of his suite at the Saitou Imperial Hotel overlooked the very campus of Tenjou Academy itself, the school where the protectors of Cephiro were trained. Even the Dark One himself wouldn't dare show himself in -this- city. Not with the last Ohtori and her rose-sealed guardsmen holding watch less than half a mile away. The former master of the Order of Azarath, now (as far as he knew) its last survivor, sat at a table just inside that balcony and looked out at the lights of Saitou. The clock in the gleaming white tower of the Master Mage chimed out midnight. Sheng raised a glass in toast to his own powers of self-preservation. As he did so, a dark shape dropped out of the sky onto his balcony, then rose to its full height, blotting out the view of the campus entirely. Sheng dropped the glass and sprang to his feet, surprise entirely precluding fear in his heart for the moment. He'd been found? But how? And by whom? The cloaked figure on his balcony didn't look like the Dark One or any of his minions - Before his eyes, the figure flickered and vanished. As it did so, a cold, mocking laughter filled the room, and suddenly Sheng knew exactly who it was. Now the fear rushed out at him, for he knew that in his preoccupation with escaping the Dark One, he'd overlooked a possible enemy who had no compunction at all about striking in the shadow of the Academy... and who might have even less mercy. Still, he was the master of the Azaran Order, not a defenseless old man. He mastered his fear, pushed it away, and focused his mind. The clouded mind sees nothing - focus past the haze and see! There! A dark shape, indistinct, but certainly there - moving in to attack - Sheng pivoted, moving to block and counterattack - too FAST - A fist smashed into his jaw from the side opposite the one he'd been expecting, sending him sprawling. He rolled back to his feet, concentrating harder. The bastard was faking him out, making him see -ghosts-. Two could play at that game. Sheng turned his focus inward, felt time slow down - - but all that did was make it seem as though the next blow lasted twice as long. Time snapped back to normal as the ex-monk collided heavily with the corner of a bureau, then felt himself seized and hurled into a full-length mirror. "How could you abandon your brothers?" the voice that had laughed at him demanded. "How could you banish the girl?" "You're a fool, Ying Ko!" Sheng snarled. "I banished her to try to protect the Order!" "Liar!" Another heavy blow came out of nowhere, sending Sheng reeling. "You -ran-. Turned tail and ran, and left your brothers to die!" Another blow. "Ten thousand years of honor wiped away with a single act of cowardice." Another blow, this one powerful enough to knock Sheng all the way back against the wall. The man in black suddenly appeared in the middle of the room, his eyes burning with fury. "Where is she?" he demanded. "I don't know!" Sheng replied. He wiped blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of a hand, then went on, "I sent her away in hopes that what happened to Azarath wouldn't happen. When it did happen, I didn't want to go! The others begged me to leave. 'Save yourself, Master,' they said. 'The Order must survive!'" The man in black shook his head. "You ran from the Dark One because you're a coward," he replied with grim certitude. "And you banished her because you knew she would find out how Master Tsung really died." Shock filled the fallen Azaran's eyes. "Wha - HOW - " A touch of icy mirth appeared in the eyes of the man in black as his fists filled with glittering silver. "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" he inquired, then answered his own rhetorical question over a fusillade of gunfire. Then he stepped out onto the balcony and turned his eyes toward Tenjou Academy. FRIDAY, JULY 17, 2409 9:47 PM Raven hadn't actually been looking for anything out of the ordinary. She was just on her way downtown, heading from Perez Island to Claremont, when she noticed an unusual amount of foot traffic that seemed to be converging on a particular warehouse in the industrial district between them. Especially unusual given that it was nine in the evening. There just wasn't a lot of action to be had in the warehouse district at that hour. Not legal action, anyway. All the same, she was tempted to pass it by. It had been a long week, and she still had work to do tonight - it was inventory time at the shop. She normally enjoyed inventory time, but tonight she wanted to get it done with as soon as possible, because she was behind on sleep. Over the last couple of weeks, after all her efforts to crack their mystery had dead-ended, she'd been having that dream - or at least she assumed it was the same one - every night. Over the past couple, it had even happened twice in the -same- night. It was getting harder to get back to sleep after them, harder to recenter herself. She'd had to get by most nights this week on meditating rather than actually sleeping, and after a few days that started to take its toll. All the same, this was damn peculiar activity, and she couldn't just pass it by. These folks were up to -something-, and it wouldn't take her too long to slip into the warehouse and find out what it was. Once she had, she was glad she did. What she found, set up in one end of an innocuous-looking dry-goods warehouse, was a makeshift auditorium seating several hundred. As people filtered into the building in ones and twos, they changed their clothes in an anteroom so that they could take their seats in uniform, facing the ersatz stage draped with an enormous flag. An enormous red flag, with a white circle and a black swastika on it. Raven had heard rumors that the Federation Nazi Party had a Bund in the Republic of Zeta Cygni, but this was the first time anyone not part of it had ever actually seen it, and she'd stumbled across it by accident. Sometimes, she remarked wryly to herself, it's better to be lucky than good. She kept to the darkness at the top of the stack of crates that formed the auditorium's back wall. People don't tend to look up, and even if someone here had, he wouldn't have seen her. She was just one more shadow among the shadows. They kept filtering in, one or two or three at a time. Raven's eyes grew wide in the shadow of her hood as she watched the place fill up. She had no idea there were so many Nazis in New Avalon. Admittedly, a few hundred wasn't much in a city with a population of more than ten million, but... She waited until the people stopped coming - the meeting was apparently scheduled to begin at 9:30 - and the speakers began. It was the usual humanocentric hogwash with oppressed worker overtones, nothing too surprising... until they started talking about assassinations. That changed everything. Too many of them to take on my own, she thought. I'll have to go outside and call for backup. It shouldn't have been a problem. She was, after all, a master of stealth, and most of these guys weren't professionals. Besides, their attention was centered on the speaker. They would never know she'd ever been there. Just as Raven began to get up, something happened, something she'd been dreading since the dreams started gaining in intensity. A few months before she'd left Azarath, during the cosmically chaotic last days of the Grand Tournament, her dreams had sometimes come with such force and insistence that they overtook her in -waking- life, rather than waiting for her to go to sleep. So it happened now - a brief but vivid transportation completely out of reality. She struggled to tell herself it wasn't real, fought to return to the world of the here and now, but the images had to play to their conclusion - and when they did, the violent shock at the end wrenched a soft cry from her despite all her efforts to keep silent. She fell back into her body with a start, knowing she'd made a sound, and clutched at the rough wood of the crate. For an instant she thought perhaps they hadn't heard her - - until one shouted "There! Up there! A spy!" They came after her like a howling human tide. Raven fought for control as she pushed herself up and took flight. She darted from crate to crate, using the tops of the stacks for cover, trying to will herself into the shadows again, but it wasn't working. The crowd of Nazis was locked on and raging, boiling around the bases of the stacks of crates like surf among rocks. Lights started to come on all over the place as some of them reached switch banks. If I can just make it to the skylight, I'll be fine, she thought. I can disappear into the city and - Red-hot pain tore through her left arm, shattering what remained of her concentration. Flight became impossible. She lost all control, rebounded from a crate, and crashed painfully to the concrete floor, then slid a few yards (leaving a smear of blood on the floor behind her) and fetched up against the corrugated tin of the far wall. Armed Nazis filled the aisles around her, boxing her in. Raven dragged herself painfully to her feet, closed her good hand around the gunshot wound in her upper arm, and betrayed no sign of the turmoil within her as one of the Nazis pinned her on the beam of a powerful portable spotlight, throwing her shadow into sharp relief on the wall behind her. "Well," said a man as he made his way to the front. He was the one who had been speaking, a beefy blond giant. The stereotypical Nazi poster boy. Raven might even have laughed if she hadn't been in so much pain. "I recognize you," said the Bund leader thoughtfully. "You're one of this city's crop of semi-sanctioned vigilantes. I forget which -one-, exactly, but I suppose it doesn't matter. There won't be much crime for you to fight at the bottom of the Oxbow River, anyway." He raised the pistol in his hand, leveled it at Raven's forehead, and smiled sardonically. "Any last words?" he inquired. Raven glared venomously back at him, her dark violet eyes daring him to do his worst - but then her half-shadowed face did a very odd thing. The pain and defiance were wiped suddenly away by a look of sheer surprise, as if she'd just heard some silent message. Then - to the distinct disquietude of her captors - she smiled a dark, unsettling little smile... and laughed. The laugh was a dark, sinister chuckle - a sound so unexpected out of a girl like her, especially one who was helpless, wounded, surrounded, and about to die, that it sent a cold thrill up the spine of everyone in the room. She looked the Bund leader right in the eye, ignoring the muzzle of his pistol. He froze, unable to squeeze the trigger, as her gaze lanced through his eyes and straight into his brain. He couldn't see anything but her dark violet eyes, and so he missed what everyone around him saw next. On the wall behind her, Raven's shadow seemed to -shiver-, and then... it -changed-. Her shadow flowed outward like a spreading ink stain, growing wider and taller, becoming not the shadow of a slender teenage girl in a hooded cloak but that of a big, broad-shouldered man in an overcoat and a slouch hat. Raven closed her eyes; the Bund leader took a half-step back, drawing a gasping breath as though he'd just surfaced from a dive into water, nearly dropping his weapon. "The weed of crime bears bitter fruit," Raven said, her soft voice seeming to come from everywhere at once, cutting across nerves already made raw with fear. Still holding her wounded arm, her head bowed and her face now completely hidden by the darkness of her hood, she seemed to sink backward - into her own shadow. As she did so, the shadow itself seemed to come -toward- her captors, expanding away from the wall as if gaining a third dimension. It all happened at once, her receding, it advancing, so that no one watching could really tell quite exactly -what- he'd seen. There was only the impression of the two simultaneous movements, and then a completely different person was standing in the glare of the light. He was tall and strong, dressed in black from the crown of his slouch hat to the toes of his jet-black wingtips - black buttons on his half-caped overcoat, black leather gloves on his hands. The only color on him came from a glinting scarlet and silver ring on his left hand and the slash of a scarf covering his lower face, a deep and lustrous red like the pool of Raven's blood he stood in. He raised his head, and the searchlight fell first across a hawk nose jutting out above the scarf, and then a pair of bright blue eyes with the same cold intensity Raven's had shown just before she'd closed them and disappeared. "Crime does not pay!" this apparition informed the Bundists in a rich, deep, dark voice that, like Raven's, seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. "What - ?!" the Bund leader gasped, taking a half-step back and raising his pistol. "The Shadow knows!" declared the man in black - and suddenly he had a gleaming nickel-plated .45 automatic in each hand. The warehouse filled with gunfire, flashes of light, acrid smoke, and the panicked screams of the Bundists - and over it all, filling every nook and cranny of the building, as pervasive as the air itself, there was a maddening, mocking, deafening laughter that seemed to have no source. Seventy-eight seconds later, there was only silence. Jason Blood found himself uncharacteristically concerned. Not that he was normally an unsympathetic man, although centuries of a cursed existence -had- toughened his spiritual skin just a bit; it was just that normally he didn't -have- to be concerned about his employee/tenant. She was, after all, a talented occultist in her own right, a much more powerful sorcerer than he would ever be, and a card-carrying super-hero to boot - more than capable of looking after herself. Still, there was something in the air that made him uneasy tonight, and Jason Blood wasn't a man who ignored feelings like that when they came along. He put down the ledger book in his hand, pulled on his coat, and started toward the shop door. He didn't get there. Before he could, the shadow of the bookshelf nearest the door quivered, then rippled like a pool of water, and a person fell out of it to the floor. With a small exclamation, Blood realized the person was Raven. He sprang to her side, bending down. She was only partly conscious, and the bloody wound in her upper left arm obviously had something to do with it. Carefully, Blood picked her up and carried her to the chair by the register. Her eyes flickered open and focused slowly on him. "J... Jason?" she murmured. "Easy," he told her. "Rest here. I'll get you something for that arm." He straightened and started to make for the artifacts area in the back of the shop, but before he'd taken more than a step or two, there was a loud banging on the door. The noise alarmed Solomon, who jumped to the top of the nearest shelf and peered warily at the entrance. Blood turned just in time to see the door crash open, courtesy of the heavy boot of a masked, helmeted man in a grey and black uniform who stood outside holding an assault rifle. A dozen more like him were arranged in a wedge formation behind him, and behind -them-, a blandly handsome blond man in an ornate black robe appeared to be levitating slightly. "Guten Abend, mein Herr," the robed man said. "Jason Blood, I presume? Permit me to compliment you on the wardings on your shop. I was only able to transport my squad to your doorstep!" Blood's face darkened. He took several steps toward the door, ignoring the ominous clicks and ratchets as the armed men fanned into the shop and leveled their weapons at him. "Get the hell out of here, you Nazi hedge wizard, and take your storm troopers with you," Blood growled. Sturmbannfuehrer Karl Kreutzmacher of the First Special Sorcerous Unit chuckled. "Now, now, Herr Blood, there's no need for this to get nasty. We've no quarrel with you. Just give us the witch and nothing need happen to you or your very handsome shop." Blood stared with calm loathing at the mage. "Leave now," he said slowly, "or suffer the consequences." The mage shook his head. "I see you're not prepared to be reasonable about this. Too bad," he said. Then he snapped a command in German to his men: The armored men raised their weapons - - and Jason Blood threw down the small glass vial he'd palmed while issuing his ultimatum. It shattered on the rug in front of him, releasing a choking cloud of mystic black vapor that sent the soldiers reeling despite their gas masks. The effect wouldn't last long - it'd take only moments for the mage to throw down a counterspell and dissipate the cloud, and Blood was no wizard, only a very experienced occultist. Still, moments were all he needed. When Kreutzmacher spoke his words of command and waved away the cloud, it cleared to show Jason Blood surrounded by a faint yellow-orange light as he began to chant: "Change, change, the form of Man! Free the Prince forever damned! Free the might from fleshly mire! Boil the blood in heart of fire!" As he spoke, the glow around Blood exploded into a full-blown firestorm, but instead of burning within it, the man's form seemed to melt and flow like wax. His voice, too, twisted as he spoke, deepening and becoming rough and guttural, as his form hunched over and grew impossibly broad. A crown of horns sprouted from his brow, talons from his fingertips, and his eyes became bottomless pools of scarlet flame. Solomon, no fool, cleared off and hid under the stairs. He knew from experience that there was no percentage in sticking around when Jason said that. The creature speaking had ceased to bear any resemblance at all to Jason Blood as it chanted the final couplet: "Gone, gone, the form of Man! Rise the demon ETRIGAN!" As the monster lunged for the first of his men, Sturmbannfuehrer Kreutzmacher tried to to think of the words to a spell of banishment - but all that would come out of his mouth was an inarticulate scream. The Shadow was mildly consternated when he didn't find Raven waiting outside the warehouse for him. Obviously she hadn't felt safe there, and her brush against his own power had given her the strength to shadowgate to safety. Hoping she hadn't been followed - in his experience, the Nazis kept sorcerers of their own close at hand - he prepared to follow her. Jason Blood politely declined to explain precisely what had gone on, except to say that the men must have broken into his shop intending to steal and picked up the Wrong Item, If You Know What I Mean. It was clear the police thought there was more to it than that, but they didn't press. They knew Blood was on the Special Squad's ally list, and figured Hammer or Kohle or somebody would be down to talk to him in the morning. So they thanked him for his cooperation and took their leave with the last of the paramedics. They hoped the Special Squad would get -something- out of him, since it was for damn sure nobody was going to get anything useful from the white-haired old man in the black robe. All -he- would do was shiver and recite the Lord's Prayer in German over and over again. Blood watched them go, then swung the damaged door to, smiled, and said without turning around, "You can come out now, Lamont. They've gone." The Shadow appeared from the same patch of darkness that had disgorged Raven earlier in the night. "Jason," he said. "Where is she?" Blood turned and smiled at the cloaked and hatted figure. "Upstairs, in her sanctum sanctorum. I thought I recognized your fingerprints on her training... though you yourself are much more than you were when we last met, aren't you? Very interesting." "And you're still just the same," The Shadow replied. "That's part of being cursed, dear fellow," Blood said. "Nothing much ever changes." He chuckled. "I dare say our long association has changed Etrigan more than it's changed me. You'll notice he neglected to burn down my shop. There was a time... " The Shadow nodded. "I remember. Upstairs, you say?" "Third floor. Be careful," Blood added as The Shadow turned toward the stairs. "She's touchy about company." Raven sat on her meditation cushion, breathing slowly, and tried to sort through the jumble in her head. Trying to recall any of the waking dream that had caused her to be spotted by the Bundists was as futile as trying to dredge up any details of the sleeping dreams that had plagued her for months. She did, at least, have the luxury of not being in the process of bleeding to death any longer, thanks to a deeply foul-tasting potion Blood had given her once he... or whatever he'd become... had finished with the Nazi hit squad. Still, the experience had left her weak and shaken. She would have preferred to go to bed - but she had too much to do, too much to try and sort out in her mind, before sleep would come. She opened her eyes, knowing what she would see, and rose slowly but steadily to her feet. "Ying Ko," she said. The Shadow stood before her, silent and unmoving, for a moment, his pale blue eyes searching every corner of her soul. Then he took off his hat, pulled down his scarf, and by those two simple motions was transformed from a mythical avenger into a human being. Some of his friends knew him as Lamont Cranston, but Raven - who had been raised by him as much as she could claim to have been raised by anyone - knew his -real- name. "Kent," she whispered. Kent Allard smiled and - much to her surprise - hugged her. He'd never done that before, not even at their closest moments back in Azarath. Touching was forbidden inside the monastery except during training or medical treatment, and until her exile by Master Sheng, Raven had never left the compound. She was frozen by shock for a moment, then returned the embrace, a bit clumsily thanks to her lack of practice. When they separated, he doffed his half-caped coat as well, dropping it to the floor next to his hat, and then sat down in front of her meditation cushion. She took up her accustomed position on it, and for a moment, they sat there just looking at each other. This was a much more accustomed form for their interactions to take, and Raven felt immediately more at ease. She heard a soft sound behind her and turned to see a dark figure standing just inside the big round window that dominated the street-facing wall of her loft. This didn't cause her any alarm; she could tell instantly who it was, and knew that no one could come in through that window who didn't have her express permission to do so, anyway. "Hi," Batgirl said quietly. "I was just passing by. I saw ambulances. Cops. Trouble?" "There was," Raven replied. "It's taken care of." Batgirl nodded. "You all right?" "I will be," Raven said. Batgirl hesitated, then noticed the black-clad man sitting on the floor behind Raven. "Sorry," she said. "Didn't know you had company. I was just... " She paused, searching for the word. "... Concerned." Raven smiled slightly (and a little tiredly). "Thanks," she said. "I'll explain tomorrow." Batgirl nodded again. "OK. Bye." "Bye," said Raven, but Batgirl was already gone. "Interesting friends you have," Allard observed. "You have no idea," Raven replied. Allard sat gazing thoughtfully at her for a moment. Even without his Shadow persona in place, his eyes were penetrating and keen. Raven shifted slightly, unsure quite what he was seeing. "You're troubled," he said finally. "Yes," she said. "Tell me." So she did - about the way her dreams had grown more disturbed since she came to Midgard; about her inability to consciously remember what she was dreaming; about her vain attempts to track down the source of the problem in the dreamlands; about the way the dream had finally come to her in waking life, leading to her little problem with the Bundists. "And even after that, you don't remember the dream itself?" Allard asked. Raven shook her head. "No. Nothing." Allard frowned. "That's very strange - and probably significant," he said. "Have you consulted an authority?" "There -are- no authorities here," Raven replied. "At least none I know of. Jason's expertise... " "Is in different spheres, yes, I know," Allard said. "He and I have some history together." He considered for a moment, then stood up and said, "Well, let's see what we can find out." Raven nodded, then followed him up to the roof. Like many of Claremont's buildings, Strangefate Books was a bit odd, architecturally speaking. Though Raven's loft contained a cruciform of dormers, making the building's roofline look peaked from all four sides, there was a flat square space in the middle of the roof, as if someone had been planning to build a cupola up there and never quite got around to it. Raven spent quite a bit of time up there, especially at sunset and sunrise - the building happened to be positioned so that it had decent views to the west and east despite the height of the city around it - and recognized why Allard wanted to try his experiment there. After the dream's latest manifestation had almost landed Raven in a small box for eternity, he suspected she might be more comfortable exploring it in the open air. She wasn't sure of that logic, but far be it from her to argue with someone who was tring to help her. She sat down on the roof and composed herself for meditation - but she kept her eyes open, because she'd need them for the next part. Allard settled himself as well, lowering his face and closing his eyes. When he opened them and raised them to hers again, his face had changed, taking on the harder-edged, hawk-nosed profile of his true self. The Shadow raised his left hand so that the glittering scarlet ring on his finger came into Raven's field of view. "Look into my girasol," he told her, his voice low and full of intensity. "Let the barriers around your mind fall away. Open your mind to me. Open your -dreams- to me. Let us walk the paths of your sleeping mind together... " Raven concentrated on the flickering light at the heart of the fire opal. She had little choice in the matter, really, but her own concentration would help the process that much more. She felt reality falling away - the loft, the lingering pain in her arm, the exhaustion, everything. The only thing that existed was the will behind that bottomless gem. Raven opened her eyes and had no idea where she was. It brought to mind a basement, or maybe a dungeon - dark, stone-walled, low-ceilinged. The Shadow stood next to her, cloaked and hatted again. In front of them was an iron-banded door of heavy blackened timbers. Try as they might, neither Raven nor The Shadow could open that door. It had no visible lock to be picked; it resisted brute force and sorcery with equal indifference. It simply wouldn't budge. "That's it? My terrifying dream is a locked door in somebody's basement?" Raven inquired in a tone of undisguised disappointment. "No... that's just as far as we could get," The Shadow replied. "Whatever the images you've been dreaming are, you've got them very tightly locked away. You saw it yourself. We can't get through that door." "So.... that's it, then? This will just keep happening?" Raven asked in a tone of more-than-faint dismay. "-Nobody- can help me?" "I wouldn't say 'nobody'," came another voice. The Shadow and Raven were on their feet in an instant, turning toward the sound of the voice. There was a man standing at the streetward edge of the roof's flat part. He was dressed in a neatly tailored double-breasted suit with a diagonally striped tie and a fedora hat; the tails of his unbuttoned trenchcoat fluttered lightly in the evening wind. Of his face nothing could be seen, because he was wearing an old-fashioned gas mask with two round glass eyeports and a snout-like filter canister. "Who are you?" Raven demanded. After the evening she'd had, an intruder on her rooftop during what had been a very private moment was the last thing she was liable to welcome. "A friend," the man replied, his voice made muffled and eerie by the gas mask. "An ordinary man with an ordinary name. But once upon a time, when I dressed like this every night and chased all -society's- nightmares... they called me by another name." "The Sandman," said The Shadow in a voice that mingled surprise and satisfaction. The masked man bowed cordially to him and said with a smile in his voice, "It's nice to be remembered, Shadow." "How can you be alive?" asked The Shadow. "How can -you-?" the Sandman replied. "It's a long story." The Sandman inclined his head. "And so." The Shadow chuckled darkly. "Mm. Can you help Raven?" "I hope so. My dreams rarely lead me too far astray, and they've been saying for months that she would need my help." Raven gave him a look. "-Your- dreams?" The gas mask's unnerving, glassy gaze turned to fix on her. "Surely you didn't think you were the only one whose dreams have meaning?" he asked mildly. Raven looked back at him and couldn't think of anything to say for a moment. Then, slowly, feeling her way, she said, "How are you supposed to help me?" "I have a certain way with dreams, a way even your friend here cannot match," the Sandman replied. "But first, you must do something for me." Raven eyed him warily. "... What?" "What else?" the Sandman asked. "Sleep." Then he gestured, and Raven saw that he had a gun in his hand. She started to react - why was The Shadow not doing anything? - but before she could, the gun had flooded the rooftop with a heavy purple gas. In the course of her costumed career, Raven had been drugged more than once, but she had never in her life encountered a gas like this. She didn't even have a chance to marshal her energies to mount a mystic defense, something that had worked against poisonous gases in the past. One second she was surrounded by purple gas and wondering what was wrong with The Shadow's instincts tonight - who knows what evil, hell! - and the next... Raven opened her eyes and had no idea where she was. The first thing she saw, unavoidable in its vastness, was the sky. It stretched endlessly above her, unobstructed by anything, a huge expanse of featureless, brooding blood red. That was jarring enough that the rest of her surroundings took a moment to register - but they were just as surreal, if not as hugely arresting, and it took her a moment to take them in. There was no horizon. The sky extended up as well as down. Raven was standing on a disk of black stone perhaps fifty yards in diameter, ringed by crenelations like broken teeth. The surface was paved in black flagstones with an inlaid pattern in stark crimson. From where she stood, it took Raven a moment to figure out that it was the stylized design of a rose. She'd seen something like that before, hadn't she? Somewhere? Sometime? She turned around and saw a gate looming up behind her, at the edge of the platform. It was about ten feet high and wrought in black iron, with a distinct theme of thorns and torturous vines, surmounted by a distinctly wrong-looking black iron rose. Beyond it, a set of stairs wound away up and vanished in the endless scarlet sky. Raven whirled again to see The Shadow standing beside her, his pale blue eyes painted bloody by the reflected sky, and next to him the trenchcoated and masked figure of the Sandman. "Where are we?" she asked him. The Sandman didn't reply; only laid a gloved finger against the "snout" of his mask, then pointed. Raven turned to see three figures - where had they come from? - standing in the middle of the platform. One was a man she didn't recognize, stocky and strong-looking, dressed in black jeans, brown leather boots, and a blue sweater with the sleeves rolled up. He had long, straight brown hair tied back in a ponytail and a close-trimmed brown beard, but the rest of his face was indistinct, as if she couldn't quite focus her eyes on it. On his back he wore a pair of swords. Facing him was a figure in a dark cloak similar to Raven's own. With the cloak draped fully and the hood drawn up, nothing more about that one could be seen. Standing off to the side was a third figure, and with a cold shock, Raven recognized herself. She looked wrong. Her face was slackly expressionless - not just her usual neutral look, but a lack of any look which spoke of a complete absence of will. Her eyes were as blank and glassy as the lenses of the Sandman's mask, and her clothing was strange. Instead of her customary bodysuit and hooded cloak, she was wearing a peculiar dark violet dress that seemed to her onlooking self like an unholy combination of a ballgown and a band uniform. It was comically unsuitable and weirdly sinister at the same time. Raven found herself wanting very much to leave. That didn't seem to be an option, though, so instead she furled her cloak a little tighter around herself and watched. No one spoke. If Raven was hoping for any exposition that might explain who these people were or how they'd come to be here, she was to be disappointed, for there were no words. The man in the blue sweater simply drew the longer of his two swords and squared off against the cloaked figure, who paused for a moment, then reached up with a slim brown hand and threw aside his cloak. Raven gasped involuntarily. "That's - " she blurted, but was unable to finish the sentence. The Shadow nodded. "The Dark One," he said. "The Fallen Prince," Raven murmured, wanting to disbelieve, almost succeeding. She no longer could when The Shadow dispensed with titles and spoke the Dark One's name: "Akio Ohtori." Raven stared with a combination of fear, hatred, and fascination at the silver-haired, dark-skinned, lethally handsome figure in black silk as he drew his own black blade and faced off against the man in blue. In a barely audible voice mixing awe and revulsion, she breathed, "... my father." Akio twirled his black sword experimentally a couple of times, seemed to find its balance to his liking, and then lunged, taking the offensive immediately. The man in the blue sweater faded back and parried, then counterattacked. "But who is he fighting?" Raven murmured. The Shadow smiled very slightly. "Who indeed?" he asked rhetorically. The fight that followed was one of the most amazing displays of swordsmanship Raven had ever seen, on both sides. She had heard, of course, the legends surrounding Akio Ohtori's skill with a blade. He was said to have been the greatest swordsman in all Cephiro before the Rose Knight had finally bested him. The other man's skill and power seemed just as great, though. Both men were doing things with their blades that were downright superhuman. Neither seemed to have the upper hand. At least until the man in blue crossed up one of Akio's attacks, twisted his blade out of position, and set himself for a final strike. Raven was interested to see that there was no joy on his face as he prepared to take his opponent's life; only a grim, almost resigned sort of satisfaction. She would have thought any right-minded individual would have exulted in the killing of the Fallen Prince. Of course, the last Raven had known, Akio was already dead, so perhaps all bets were off. Just as the man in blue prepared to drive home his blade and end it, though, something happened that filled Raven's whole being with horror. The -other- Raven - who hadn't so much as moved during the whole of the fight, even when the combat came near enough to her that most people would have considered at least stepping out of the way - raised her hand. Before her dreaming counterpart's horrified eyes, she gestured silently and froze the man in blue in his tracks, aborting his deathblow. He was quick and strong-willed; it took him only a second, a shockingly short time, to throw off her spell and free himself... ... but in that second, he was lost. He broke free and started to recover his position, but Akio was already there. Around Akio's black blade, dark blood bloomed on the back of the man's blue sweater. Akio drew his sword back out. The other man's katana clattered to the stone. He fell slowly to his knees, then pitched forward onto his face and lay motionless in a gradually expanding pool of crimson. The dark swordsman stood looking thoughtfully at his fallen adversary for a moment, then crossed to the dream-Raven, smiled at her as if in thanks... ... and then, without warning, ran her through as well. Raven the dreamer felt the streak of scarlet pain lance through her as well, and, as it had in the warehouse, it brought her back to reality. She fell backward out of the dream and fetched up with a jarring bump on the roof of her home. For a couple of seconds, she lay looking up at the night sky through glassy, unseeing eyes, half-convinced that she really was dead. Then she snapped the rest of the way back to reality, blinked, and sat up, feeling gingerly at her chest as if half-expecting to find a bloody wound. Her face was bathed in sweat and her heart was hammering. She felt as if she'd just sprinted as far as she could go before she dropped. That familiar twinge of pain was there in her chest - and now it had an explanation. The Shadow lay sprawled next to her, still unconscious. The Sandman was nowhere to be seen, but Raven found next to her a small piece of paper folded into the shape of a rose. She picked it up, carefully unfolded it, and found that it had a short poem written on it in spidery calligraphy: The Dark Prince's methods Are cunning and cruel; But even this creature Must still play by rules. He learns to exploit them And so, too, must you. - the SANDMAN Raven read the poem twice, puzzling over it, then folded it up and tucked it away. The Shadow stirred, then got to his feet, looking grim and determined. "Come on," he said, turning to go. "Where are we going?" she asked. "To see the man who just lost that duel," he said. On a different night, some part of Raven might have been amused that the building they went to was on, of all streets, Allard Avenue. Tonight, it mostly escaped her notice as she and The Shadow alighted on a balcony overlooking the courtyard of the smaller building next door. Raven turned a quizzical look to The Shadow, but he only nodded toward the courtyard, pointing. She turned back and saw a man emerge from the building, walk to the middle of the courtyard, and stand looking up at the sky as if in thought. The Shadow handed her a pair of electrobinoculars. She focused them on the man's face, then looked at The Shadow in surprise. "That... " She looked again. "That's the Chief of the IPO. The one they call Gryphon." The Shadow nodded. "Yes." "Why would I dream he was fighting for me?" Raven wondered softly, looking through the binoculars again. "I've never even met him." "Never?" "I've only been in the same -room- with him once, and that was at a reception dinner at the Monolith." The Shadow arched an eyebrow. "What were you doing there?" "Stalking the Markovian ambassador." Raven lowered the binoculars to give The Shadow a wry glance, then resumed watching Gryphon. He was just standing there, looking up at the sky, not quite smiling, not quite crying. Raven knew how he felt. "Of course," The Shadow said with a dry chuckle. Silence prevailed until Gryphon turned around and went back into the building. Then Raven handed back the binoculars and asked, "So why did you think our paths would cross?" The Shadow looked at her pensively. "Because you studied with me, and so, after a fashion, did he. And because he's that kind of man. He's a human crossroads, a nexus point. If he doesn't find trouble, trouble finds him. I will introduce you - " "Not tonight." Raven was emphatic. "I suspect he's leaving town soon," The Shadow pointed out. "Things haven't been going very well for him." "I know. I -do- read the newspaper." "Then you know you don't have much time." "He doesn't need this right now. He just lost the woman he's spent his entire life with." Raven's voice trembled, just slightly; she turned away, looking back down at the building where Gryphon had disappeared. "You're going to have to meet him sooner or later." Raven spun to face him fully, a flash of real anger in her eyes. "I said no!" she snapped. If The Shadow was taken aback, he hid it well. He just gazed levelly back at her for a moment, then inclined his head. "Very well," he said. They didn't talk again until they were back at her loft. There, they stood for a moment in silence before The Shadow spoke. "Understand this, Raven: What the Sandman helped you see tonight was real," he told her. "Perhaps not literally - it may be a metaphor - but the Master of Dreams doesn't deal in false prophecy. You face a grave danger, your father is involved, and I cannot help you." "It's between him and me," Raven replied. "No one else." "Your dreams beg to differ." "I won't involve a complete stranger," Raven said. "Especially not one who has enough of his own problems." The Shadow regarded her silently for a moment, his eyes unreadable above his scarlet scarf. Then he inclined his head and said, "Then seek your own path, if that's what you wish - but mind your step. The going will be treacherous... " He faded from view like dissipating smoke, only his voice remaining behind as he added, "and there will be no one to catch you if you fall." "There never has," Raven replied, but by then she was talking to an empty loft. /* The Sisters of Mercy "Under the Gun" _A Slight Case of Overbombing_ */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited and Bacon Comics Group presented UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT RAVEN: BLOOD TIES "A Dream of Darkness" Raven Cassandra Cain (Batgirl) Wesley Dodds (The Sandman) Kent Allard (The Shadow) also featuring Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran (Starfire) Garfield Logan (Beast Boy) Tim Drake (Robin) Victor Stone (Cyborg) Carter Hall Hellboy Tsian Sheng Jason Blood Etrigan and Benjamin D. Hutchins (Gryphon) with The New Avalon Bund of the National Socialist Federation Workers' Party written by Benjamin D. Hutchins with a dialogue boost from Anne Cross and notion wranglin' by the Usual Suspects Bacon Comics chief Derek Bacon (Lightnin) with much owed to lots of people RAVEN: BLOOD TIES Vol. 1 No. 1 BACON COMICS GROUP 2409 E P U (colour) 2004