He pulled himself out of the rubble and patted himself down, wafting the clog of dust off his pants and shirt with a mildly annoyed face as he did so.
He pulled off his glasses, saw the cracks in the round rims, and even a smidgen of blood, and carefully cleaned off the dust on its surface with his shirt before putting it back on.
He kicked up the knife and ladle lying innocently near his legs and caught them in a swift motion before finally giving the priest a lot of his attention.
The chants were getting more sinister with every passing second and hearing Raven's increasing groans unsettled him more than he was okay with accepting. He had no idea what type of pain she was feeling, but those sounds let him know that it was of the awfully painful variety.
'Right. They need to die.' It was such a simple thought, albeit one that was familiar to him to what felt like a lifetime ago. And now it was all coming back.
A knife and a ladle – that was his weapons option against a party of sorcerers. He almost smiled deprecatingly at the thought.
Five acolytes and a priest. If the earlier show was any indication, then the priest was the sole bulk of the combined threat they represented. He alone was more dangerous than the other five acolytes put together.
The priest was still chanting, but there was no mistaking that he had his blackened eyes on Taro.
"Can't continue standing here, I guess." He softly muttered to himself as he switched the knife and ladle between his hands.
First things first. He had to create enough breathing space for Raven – which meant killing two or three of the acolytes, while also being under the watchful beady eyes of the priest.
They were watching him, but he knew they were wary even as they continued non stop chanting.
The first to make a move was the priest, who summoned two ghostly apparitions that lunged at Taro with deathly force.
He could feel the air turning deathly stale as they flew towards him with mouths opened in silent screams.
Spectres, or death angels like someone he knew once called them, were astral beings of warped emotions, not souls, that could phase in between material and immaterial.
'This is getting a little complicated.' The spectres were inconsequential as it was best to deal with their summoner, especially since he couldn't use magic.
Easily dodging the two angry swipes from both ghostly mirages, Taro's eyes trailed towards the priest who was in the dead centre of their chanting circle and was looking at him with an almost eager gaze.
He felt a cold chill on his back and pivoted to his left, timely dodging what looked like a grab, and also idly noting how inhumanely fast they were. He evaded their attacks two more times before noticing another red glow in the ground, entirely different from the one that held Raven, because demons – six to be exact – crawled out of this one. And they were vastly different from the previous ones he'd seen. These looked more demonic with a hint of personality to them.
He could almost feel the dark glee rolling off of them as they surrounded him, especially as whatever summoning ritual Raven was being forced into was nearing its peak. How did he know? Well, the dark baleful clouds slowly forming weren't exactly subtle.
Six strong demons, six sorcerers, two ghosts, and one traumatized girl to rescue — this wasn't exactly his day job, but he was nothing if not adaptable, even if his rough exterior suggested otherwise.
They attacked him all at once, each one practically salivating at the thought of tearing into him. He was more than happy to oblige — their frenzy made the perfect distraction to take out the sorcerers first.
His blade flew between two of the demons and lodged itself into the throat of an unsuspecting acolyte. The six demons were already upon him, each sporting four eyes and jutted-out bones on their features, and with only a ladle in his hands, he stabbed the end into the eyes of the nearest demon and applied enough force that it pierced directly into its brain, freezing its movements as it instantly died.
Two arms came at his sides, but he rolled under them with belying dexterity and kicked behind him without even looking back at the demon he smacked along the face.
The demons favored wild lunges and reckless charges, which all but put the winning chance in his favor. Grabbing some of the outstretched arms, he flung it over his shoulders towards two charging demons, grabbed another arm, and dragged the sorry demon forward, impaling it through its eyes with his ladle, effectively killing it.
The two spectres were still present but all he could do was dodge them and keep on dodging them while he focused on the other demons. They were a mild annoyance at best.
A demon grabbed onto his shoulders and wanted to take a bite at his neck but instead ate a flabby arm palm strike to its face before having its head grabbed by both horns. Before it could let out an angry growl, it was silenced by a crisp crunch that soon sent it back to hell.
As the demon slipped off Taro's hands, his fingers snagged up and caught a knife between them. The old man looked at it and nodded, pleased with himself. "I was wondering when you would give it back. Good knife."
This time, the priest attacked himself, briefly forgoing the ritual to send dark orbs that struck like lightning at Taro, who flailed comically as he narrowly dodged them while also fighting off the demons.
Another demon fell, and then another, and soon only one demon and the two spectres remained—on lying the two spectres remained as Taro grabbed the last demon, brought it down to its knees with a kick to the legs, and with a forceful jolt, broke the demon's neck backwards.
The priest looked angry at this, the air around him becoming revoltingly pungent, and as he made to act, something caught his attention – or rather, the lack of something.
The knife and ladle was nowhere to be found on Taro's body.
He had barely turned around when two thumping sounds reached his ears, turning only to see two of his acolytes dead, one with a knife straight through the head and the other with the sharpened end of a ladle sinking deep into the heart.
He turned with a furious snarl, conjuring his baleful magic around his hand only for the force of a 10-ton brick to hit him straight across the face in the form of a fist.
The priest's head snapped furiously to the side as his whole body was flung into the wall.
"Now, for the both of you..." Taro strolled towards two remaining acolytes with a lazy gait. "You heard when she was screaming in pain, right? You must have heard it because she was pretty loud."
Their chant started faltering as they were faced with the cold eyes behind round rimmed glasses staring dead point at them, invoking the primal emotion of abject fear as he came closer to them.
Taro's finger's joints popped like a firecracker as the veins and arteries around them became taut and visible.
"Shhh... You don't have to make a sound." He whispered to them, even as they became increasingly terrified of the man in front of them.
The veins wrapped around his fingers so hard like metal wires that even his clean cut nails now looked like daggers tips.
A clear reminder, one the acolytes had no idea of, that Taro was a man who had trained every part of his body to be a weapon. Not just any weapon, but the most efficient weapon for killing.
His hands travelled in a blur, a whiplash effect that left two heads sliding off their necks in a smooth sail.
He released a deep foggy breath and dialled his thoughts down, not to zero but to somewhere clear enough.
Raven's labored breath reminded him of her current situation and I'm the blink of an eye he was by her side, softly holding her head up and checking for her pulse and temperature.
"N…not…..yet."
"Just rest up, okay? I'll take care of it in a minute."
She tried shaking her head but he held her still. "D…don't….please.."
"Shh." She shushed her softly, combing her sweat-soaked hair out of her face. "We'll be back in time for dinner. Promise."
Whatever ritual it was that they did with her seemed to have siphoned everything fuel out of her body, magic and otherwise. And what made Taro even more worried was that despite the ritual having ended, the eerie chill in the air was still present and even growing in intensity.
"Foolish mortal. Nothing on this plane of existence can prevent his descent. Nothing." The priest stepped out of the rubble with a fervent flame smoldering in his eyes as his gaze landed on Raven cradled in Taro's arms.
"Why fight the inevitable when all that lies behind that door is eternal damnation…" the priest's hands spread out as a rapturous gleam took over his face. "But with Lord Trigon, we will be eternally counted as his emissary. Worlds, planets, dimensions unknown… all will be his for the taking. And we? We will be the ones to herald his coming."
"And to that end, he has blessed me with a boon." His gaze fell on Taro and what had been blackened eyes were now two pairs of darkened irises.
An aura of death and decay wrapped around him like a garment as his features slowly grew more demonic.
The air felt like parchment to Taro's lungs as the weight of the priest's presence fell on him.
Still he stood unfazed in front of Raven, standing between her and what felt like the prelude to certain death.
At the very least, the spectres were gone.
"A minute." Taro said as he cracked his neck.
The demonic priest looked at him in silent confusion.
"A minute of my time is all you'll have." He clarified.
A dark snarl, maybe a growl even, escaped from the mouth of the priest.
The precept of a smirk almost tugged Taro's lips as the internal map in his head was completed. Now, as long as he kept his senses open and wide, he could fight in this space with his eyes closed.
The retrieved kinds and ladle flipped from hand to hand as he walked calmly towards the priest.
"You disrupted our evening." He served down and dodged ghostly skulls that seemed to suck in everything they touched.
"You abducted us without our consent." A hexbolt flew past his head, one he had time to dodge at the last second to buy a second of delay from the priest.
The priest started another spell—
"Worst of all: you made her cry."
For a moment, the priest's eyes wavered – or was it that the man in front of him blurred? Honestly he didn't know – and his breath seized. Not in the way that it did when he commune with his dark lord, no. It seized in the way that something was actively stopping him from breathing.
His beady eyes spun inside their sockets, all pointing in four different directions and giving him four different spinning points of views.
Something rocked his head. Something strong. Something heavy. His brain jolted.
What was happening? His thoughts slowed down for a second, more than a second even, before it started catching up to him.
Right. Lord Trigon. His precious spawn. A fat old morbid man. The thoughts were jumbled into each other's strings that made it hard to form something coherent—
"Gahckk!" Everything came to him at once as soon as something cracked into his chest with the force of a medieval battering ram.
In desperation and horror, he swung his left hand forwards with the raw force of magic, only for the lack of feedback from said arm to flow into his brain.
Right. He was so silly sometimes. He must have lost his arm some time ago. Well, he couldn't be blamed since everything felt so woozy all of a sudden.
"Ack!" Spittle flew out of his mouth as a foot caught him under heel and broke something.
He felt a hand grab his head but at this point he couldn't really tell as everything kept moving in concentric circles.
"Wai–" It came like an epiphany to him, but at that moment he suddenly knew how eating one's own words tasted like. His pride wouldn't let him beg to keep his life, but his condition did.
Alas, whatever he tried to say was shoved directly into his stomach. His desperation and creeping fear brought him to the edge.
As one of the priest's of the Dark Lord, he was well acquainted with death. To him, death was nothing more than the begging to true glory. He craved it. He craved the glorious day when his lord finally decides for him to be called over.
But this… this wasn't death. This was the eternal chasm that existed between the mortal coil and sweet release. And a part of his broken mind whispered. 'Can you make the jump?'. But he knew the answer: no, he couldn't.
The chasm will swallow him whole before he could land on the precipice of his craved death.
And his fear and desperation, he called om everything he could. Everything he was.
"Die!—"
Suddenly the scene around him changed. It was a scene most familiar to him. Of tortured souls and weeping faces. An endless sea of the damned in a lake of fire, death, and despair.
"Don't bother. You're dead." A deathly voice whispered with dreadful clarity into his ears. "And Lord Trigon no longer has use for you."
As he was dragged down into death and eternal despair, by baleful hands and boney claws, he couldn't help but feel thankful for a moment before the eternal torture started.
Ahh, o sweet death. How sweet indeed.
.
...
.
Taro watched with dispassionate eyes as the head priest finally faded to dust. At least they were good at cleaning up after themselves, instead of stressing him on how to hide or bury the bodies.
In the blink of an eye he was right by Raven's side and let out a sigh of relief when he saw that she was just out of it in a normal way.
Gently, he scooped her up into his arms and turned to leave the crypt when he noticed that the fog that had permeated the place was now conjugating a few feet away from him.
The first thing he felt when he saw those red eyes that tore through the fog was the certainty of death, and the futility of life. Why bother living when the end result was that?
His breath stilled for a moment and his eyes contracted. He finally got a hold of himself. That thing was dangerous. In fact, calling it dangerous was vastly underestimating whatever it was.
"So you are the mortal that took away with my spawn. How daring?"
"And you're the failed excuse of her father. How disappointing." Taro replied, holding Raven tighter to himself. "And if you didn't get the information, you're her father no longer."
A devilish grin came upon the face in the fog as it drew closer to Taro. "Oh? I see. Marvelous. Those emotions, yes they will do. Care for her mortal. Care for her with all you can. With all you are, because then, and only then, will the casting down be worth it."
It laughed. A dreadful sound to all who heard it and slowly started dissolving, but not before looking at Taro and Raven and smiling even wider.
"Yes indeed. It will all be worth it." And with those clearly ominous words, Trigon the Terrible was gone from the mortal plane. For now.
Taro released his breath and the tension in his muscles slowly peeled away. Magic was so not his forte. Maybe, just maybe, he really might have to pick those missed calls.
With Raven in his hands he started making his way out of the crypt.
Damned wizards and their dreary crypts.
.
…..
.
In an unmarked island in the Northern Sea, one where shadows remained and shadows were adrift, a woman walked through the darkened halls with the grace of cold steel. And behind her, followed a man clad in armor, Deathstroke.
At the end of the hall was a huge door that opened on its own accord to beckon them on.
"Lady Shiva, Slade. He awaits you." A voice of velvet and deep poison said from behind them, and from the shadows cast by the doors stepped out Talia, Al Ghul, sired of the Demon.
In the center of the room was a section cordoned off with dark curtains that denied the silhouette of those behind them, even with the lighting around.
"What is this I hear about a lost shadow, Lady Shiva?"
"In Gotham," Lady Shiva began, "Slade came across one who I believe to be 'The Assassin'."
"Is that so?"
Even without a visual cue, Slade knew he was the one being asked.
He shrugged a little. "I've heard of 'The Assassin', I mean, who hasn't? And if he was anything like that damned fatso, then I'll have no choice but to believe some of his ridiculous workings I've heard of."
Ra's Al Ghul chuckled. "Hear me, Slade. All what you've heard of, are mere tales compared to who he was. You said you met him in Gotham?"
"Yes." Slade replied. "He was with a girl. One that can use magic. His daughter perhaps."
"Hmm, most interesting." The Demon hummed. "And did you complete your task in Gotham?"
This time Slade clicked his tongue in dissatisfaction. "The Bat interfered."
"Well, but of course he would. The Detective wouldn't let unwelcomed elements run amok his city, but no matter."
"What about him? We'll hardly find him if he's actively hiding." Lady Shiva asked, staring directly at Ra's eyes through the curtains.
A beat of silence passed before Ra's voice came back. "If we can't, then we'll leave it to someone who can. I reckon the Detective will be more than happy to do our work for us."