The Estate, Sidra, Balmia, Tuesday Evening (Fandom Time)

[glacial_queen]

Karla paced back and forth, trying to absorb some of the calm from her garden, trying not to curse her ungainly figure. Even the land in full bloom, laden with fragrant flowers and early fruits wasn't enough to bleed off her fury. Warren's 'birthday' present had been delivered this morning, a bouquet of witchblood tucked in a grinning skull. Karla wasn't sure whether she should be grateful or not that it was only a skull; a head, she might have recognized.

Of course, a gift from Raven was likely coming soon. She wouldn't let an opportunity like Karla and Warren's shared birthday go unremarked. The only question would be if she knew what Warren's gift had been--and, if so, how she would attempt to outdo it.

Once beloved. Once sister. Now they were both hollow, twisted shells of their former selves. Warren had gone to Earth and come back corrupted by Apocalypse, managing to hold onto himself for only a few days before being lost completely. Raven had tried to protect her Queen for as long as she could until Archangel's games had driven her over the edge and released her demonic side. Now Karla was trapped between them as they raged back and forth for possession of everything Karla held dear.

She only wished that was limited to herself.

"Karla, you should sit down." Her former mentor, Helene, had been visiting the day Warren had torn Sidra from the rest of Balmia, using his powers to partially phase it out of reality with the rest of Kaeleer and put it into some kind of time bubble vortex thing that, even now, Karla couldn't quite understand and Warren was not inclined to explain. All she knew was that it cut Sidra off from the Winds, from Portalocity, from any contact with the outside world. A small blessing, that. It meant the rest of Balmia and Kaeleer was safe from them--at least, until one or the other emerged victorious. Karla found it hard to regret her friend's presence here, even though it meant she was in danger. But she needed a mother figure right now more than ever--especially one who was also a powerful Black Widow. "You need to rest."

"I'm not feeling very restful," Karla growled, using a fist to try to ease the nagging sensation in her lower back. A bit of Healing would vanish that pain entirely, but even that was beyond her capabilities now. "And chairs are too much of a pain in the ass to get into and out of unless I plan to stay sitting for awhile." And she didn't. There was important pacing to be done. "You should go inside. One or the other of them will be dropping by soon and you know they don't like it when our little chats are interrupted by others."

Helene grimaced. "I don't understand why you allow these so-called visits," she said by rote. It was an old argument by this point. "They're dangerous--"

"To everyone else except me," Karla interrupted. "I'm the bone they're wrangling over. That gives me a measure of safety. One that you don't have."

"I've seen wild dogs fight over scraps before," Helene retorted. "Believe me, the scraps come in a distant third in that contest. And you can't protect yourself from either of them."

"I am well aware of my limitations," Karla said, trying to find a position that eased her various aches. "But trust me, this is safer than the alternatives. Right now, keeping them fighting each other is the only protection we have."

Helene nodded at Karla's stomach, large and round under her airy shirt. "And when the baby's born? What then?"

"Then I'll have my Craft back," Karla said, ice-blue eyes narrowed. "And then we see about evening the score."

[For the two villains so named! Sidra in Glacia Balmia is now unreachable by phone, computer, or any other method of communication/transportation. Feel free to have your characters notice that, if they're likely to do so! NFB.]

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[trigons_child]

Raven laughed. "Do not be ridiculous," she said. "Your wings were once beautiful, though of course I would have dyed them black. Now they are ugly. More deadly, yes, but that will not stop me from ripping them from your back all the same. Your knives and poisons do not frighten me."

She lazily stretched out with her powers, trying to creep inside his mind. "But I can frighten you," she said. "I can bring your darkest fears to life. You must still fear something."

[wwiii]

"I fear nothing you can touch, demon," Archangel snarled, his own eyes glowing red as her influence brushed his mind and he pushed back against it. "I am Archangel. What can Pride possibly do to Death?"

Together, they made for a lot of very high-profile funerals. That had to mean something.

[trigons_child]

"I can touch Karla," Raven said sweetly. "I can touch her and make her want that touch as much as she shuns yours now. She will never be yours again. And that spawn you have placed inside her will not live to draw breath, I swear it."

She gave Archangel a cold smile. "And you know very well Pride is not my only weapon. There are so many things I can do to you."

[wwiii]

"And yet you consistently fail to do so," Archangel replied, his voice dropping down to a purr. "That must sting you. The daughter of Trigon, one of the strongest beings to ravage the multiverse, and you and I, we're always at an impasse. She leans into you because you will her to do so. When she leans back against me, it's because she knows she's mine."

He fanned his wings and snarled out that last word.

[trigons_child]

Raven bared her fangs with a snarl. That was how he'd pushed her to the edge, poking at her Pride and anger as she'd struggled to protect Karla and try to find a way to turn him back into his true self. She'd attempted once to entrap him within her Soul-Self and heal him, but his razor wings had shredded her soul and left her with barely enough strength to flee. Still, she'd refused to give up until his constant taunts had enflamed her emotions to the point where she'd lost control and let slip her demon side.

"You have failed to remove the only obstacle between you and Karla," she pointed out. "So much for the greatness of your power. And she does not love you. She loves what you were and will never be again. You are nothing to her now."

[wwiii]

"Oh no. I'm so much worse than nothing," Archangel replied, his lips pulling into a cruel grin. Watching her react, watching her snarl, was so satisfying. He'd broken what she once was. She would make a fine puppet, if only he could tame her. "I'm all of the shadows she jumps at in the night. I'm every dream that wakes her up in tears. I'm what she yearns toward when the silence becomes deafening and the emptiness in her bed becomes too cold."

He gave one wing a lazy stretch, and then the other, before draping them both about his shoulders once again, like a cloak.

"And," he added simply, "I'm the father."

[trigons_child]

Red power crackled around Raven's hands. "Not for very much longer," she said through clenched teeth. "I will destroy that abomination within her. And then I will replace it with a Seed of my power. And she will love me more strongly than she ever cared for you. You will be nothing more than a fading memory."

[wwiii]

"And even if you managed that, Raven? Even if by some miracle you managed to destroy me, managed to convince her to let you murder a child she decided to nurture to birth? You would have me to thank, wouldn't you?"

Oh, Archangel revelled in that fact, and the satisfaction he took from those words rolled off of him in waves. He had nothing to conceal, not about this.

"If not for me, you would still be the pacifist healer, the pretty, broken little bird struggling lamely to protect her Queen. Even if you managed to be rid of me, remember, the world as it is now? I made this. And that memory will linger with her until her dying breath."

[trigons_child]

Raven unleashed a blast of energy at Archangel. "You cannot bind Trigon's Daughter to this place forever," she snapped. "I will not be confined to one dimension. Your barriers will fall, and I will take Karla from this place to one you will never find her. You may return to your world and your master there."

She punctuated her next words with another blast of red energy. "Karla. Is. Mine."

[wwiii]

The first blast of energy made solid contact with a raised wing, scattering against a few thousand razorblade feathers like rays of light in a pool.

By the time she threw the second, Archangel was leaping into the air, flinging a few dozen blades in her direction as he did so.

"I suppose I have to give credit where it's due," he said, hanging in the air above her, "you cling very strongly to your delusions, Trigon's Daughter. Perhaps if you held on to Karla with half that conviction, you would be rid of me by now."

[trigons_child]

Giving free reign to her anger, Raven rose into the air as well before the blades could find their mark. It didn't matter that she knew she was being predictable. So many of their battles had begun this way, with him taunting her, her rage growing, and then her attacking. She didn't care if it was foolish or expected. She just wanted to destroy.

"Your own pride is so strong," she sneered. "I cannot wait to feast upon it."

She sent empathic claws against his mind, trying to force her way in.

[wwiii]

Archangel winced, this time. He'd heal from the attack on his mind. He always did. But however fleeting it was, pain was still pain.

It didn't stop him from countering the empathic claws with a mental attack of his own, building a wall in his mind out of razors and poison. She was welcome to go digging deeper if she liked, but she'd have one hell of a time getting all the way through.

"My pride isn't entirely unfounded," he noted, baring his teeth, flashing his claws. "I'm not in the habit of being proud for pride's sake. Can you handle the indigestion?"

[trigons_child]

Raven hissed, recoiling, as his walls slashed and burned her. She was certain she could get through them if she tried, but it might not be worth the effort she'd have to expend.

Her Soul-Self rose from her body. The last time she'd tried to ensnare him in it, she'd been trying to heal. This time she was not holding back. She would wrap him in her wings and fill his mind with how pathetic and worthless he was. She'd show him what he could have been and that nothing was left for him now.

And if Warren was still somewhere in there and suffered along with Archangel, well, she really didn't care.

[wwiii]

"Look at you," Archangel cooed, flaring his wings and throwing another barrage of poisoned blades outward, this time at the glowing red raven that was spreading its own wings toward him. "Look at how much hate you have in you. You'd make a beautiful Pestilence, Raven. Or perhaps a Death, yourself, with a bit of work."

Always a bit of work. That rage, that was good. He could work with that. If he could take it and direct it elsewhere, put it to use...

[trigons_child]

Raven flicked the blades away with her wings, not caring where they flew so long as it wasn't to where Karla stood below them. "Or perhaps you could replace one my brothers," she countered. "Envy? Wrath? I could implant one of Trigon's Seeds within you to see what you could become. Now that would be interesting to see."

Not that she planned on doing anything other than killing him once she had him in her Soul-Self's grasp.

[wwiii]

"And you, under the sway of a death seed?" Archangel let Raven's wings fold around him, seemingly unconcerned about the danger he was in. It wasn't that he didn't think Raven could do any harm to him. He knew full well that she could. She'd made him feel some measure of discomfort in the past, after all.

But she took a risk herself, every time she let her soul come close to him, too.

"We could create such interesting toys out of one another, it would seem."

[trigons_child]

"I will be no one's toy," Raven said. "And I will never serve you."

She wrapped her soul around him, plunging him into darkness. Concentrating, she drew on all her power to attack him from all sides. She battered him with despair and hopelessness and tore at his mind with her empathic claws. She wanted this fighting to end now, with her as the victor. There could be no other possible outcome.

[wwiii]

And this... this was Archangel's favorite part. In moments like this, folded away in darkness, he could retreat into himself, let Warren - actually Warren - take the fore, take the brunt of Raven's attack while he sat in the background, in the shadows, laughing and growing stronger, preparing for an attack made all the more simple by his counterpart's pain.

Raven made his job so much easier. He could put so much more effort into fighting back and re-claiming his love when the opposition that lived inside his own head was left broken and bleeding inside his own mind.

While Archangel laughed in the shadows, it was Warren who took the full force of Raven's attack, now, and it was Warren who screamed and writhed and begged for her to please, please just end it, just end him, make it stop make it stop make it stop...

[trigons_child]

Once, Raven might have faltered. She might have tried to strengthen Warren with love and hope and images of Karla and their child, to give him the courage and power to fight against Archangel and drive him out.

But the Raven would would have tried that was gone.

Now, consumed by fury and Pride and her own lust for Karla as she was, Warren's tortured screams pleased her. Perhaps destroying him utterly would finish Archangel. She was willing to take the risk. And if it didn't, well, then Karla would know for certain that there was nothing of Warren left and stop resisting the peace Raven offered her. Either way she won.

[wwiii]

And in the end, that might even have been the best possible outcome. If Archangel died, his various Blood pets would be free, would have no reason to continue maintaining the shield that his own master had granted him the ability to create.

The multiverse might open up to Balmia again.

Perhaps reinforcements could arrive. There were still pieces of Raven's soul divvied up into those pretty little gemstones out there, after all. There were people who were no doubt worried about Karla's safety who would fall into step and save the day. Perhaps even restore Raven herself, push her demon down and away all over again.

Killing Archangel would be the best thing for all of them.

Killing Warren, meanwhile, would simply be the most merciful thing for Warren. And Archangel couldn't have that. He wanted Warren to suffer, but he appreciated his worth as a toy, as something to dangle in front of Karla in order to make her hesitant to pull away entirely. And so Archangel allowed Raven to devastate him, allowed her to tear him down, to make his heart and mind and soul bleed, until screams gave way into sobs, and sobs into broken whimpers too devastated to have any force behind them at all.

And that was when Archangel pulled Warren back again, looking up with blazing red eyes and laughing as power and poison moved outward from his body in a blast of pure energy and a flare of bladed wings, with no part of him seeing any reason to hold anything back at all.

[trigons_child]

Raven screamed. It took a phenomenal amount of power to damage her Soul-Self, but his wings sliced through it like it was paper. Tattered red pieces fluttered in the air around them.

She struggled to keep attacking Archangel. The pain was too much, so much that she could no longer keep herself aloft. She plummeted to the gardens below, the scraps of her soul following and merging back into her body. Her Soul-Self would mend, but for now it hurt like hell.

[wwiii]

And Archangel could have just let her fall. Could have taken this opportunity to finish her off, in fact. But he could hardly pass up the opportunity to gloat.

After all of this time, Raven was one of his favorite toys, as well.

"So Proud," he practically singsonged as he went into a dive right behind her, reaching after her with catching her in mind. "I really should thank you, Raven, for that. I couldn't have asked for a sweeter birthday present than the damage you dealt him. You've made my own job so much easier for months."

[trigons_child]

So proud she would rather hit the ground than accept a rescue from him. "Enjoy it while you can," she spat back at him. She wouldn't admit failure, either.

Raven managed to collect herself enough to open a portal between herself and the ground. She couldn't use it to escape Sidra, but she could still teleport herself around the city. And if she could trap Archangel inside the netherverse, so much the better.

She tumbled into the netherverse but left the portal open, daring him to follow.

[wwiii]

Archangel was tempted, so, so very tempted, follow behind her into the Netherverse. There was that moment of pride that had him wondering if he could beat her on her own grounds, though reason had him flaring his wings at the last moment, hanging in the air above the portal, but not daring to follow her in.

Even if she remained there to finish this fight, how the hell would he ever get back out again, back to his Karla, if he were to kill her?

He flung a few more feathers in after her, but remained where he was.

"Run away, little Raven," he taunted, calling in through the portal after her. "I do intend to enjoy this. I intend to enjoy this very much."

And with that, he turned to fly back toward the Estate. He and Karla had a birthday to celebrate, after all.