Chapter 20:
– Dick Grayson –
Gotham's skyline cut a familiar silhouette against the smog-choked night, gothic spires and gargoyles and the distant amber glow of streetlights struggling against the dark. Dick had missed it, in a strange way. London had been cobblestones and hidden magic and a beautiful witch who made his chest ache in ways he wasn't ready to examine fully.
But Gotham was home. Gotham made sense, even when it didn't.
Batman was occupied. The discovery they'd brought back from London—rescuing the British Prime Minister, that an entire shadow government of wizards had been pulling strings for decades, that the implications stretched across every major nation—had necessitated an emergency League summit.
The kind of meeting that happened in the Watchtower's most secure chambers.
It was going to be an international catastrophe when it finally broke. The kind of scandal that toppled governments and shattered public trust in institutions. It would need to be handled with surgical precision, disclosed in careful stages, managed with the kind of delicacy that made Dick's head hurt just thinking about it.
But that was above his pay grade. For now, anyway.
In the meantime, with Bruce locked in deliberations that could stretch for days, Gotham's streets fell to Dick. He'd taken the responsibility without complaint.
Patrol was simple. Patrol was clean. Bad guys did bad things, he stopped them, everyone went home with the correct number of limbs. After the moral complexity of London he craved simplicity. He also craved Amara but knew she was currently on a cruise ship with Raven and they wouldn't arrive in port for days.
Damn, Raven was so lucky…
He fired his grappling hook at a water tower three buildings over, felt the familiar kick of the line going taut, and launched himself into the void between rooftops. Wind whipped past his face, cold and gritty with Gotham's particular blend of industrial pollution.
For a moment, suspended between earth and sky, he felt almost peaceful. His feet never touched the next rooftop he was aiming for.
"What the—fuck—"
The word punched out of him as gravity simply... stopped. One second he was descending toward grimy concrete, the next he was floating, suspended in midair like a marionette whose strings had been seized by an invisible hand.
He twisted, reaching for his escrima sticks on instinct, scanning the shadows for the threat he could feel but couldn't see.
"Hello, apprentice of Batman." The voice slithered through the darkness, feminine and cold, carrying an accent that spoke of centuries rather than geography. It made the hair on the back of Dick's neck stand at rigid attention.
He knew that voice.
A figure emerged from the shadows pooling near an air conditioning unit, and Dick's breath caught despite himself.
She was stunning. Devastatingly, impossibly beautiful in a way that transcended human aesthetics and veered into something almost frightening. A black dress clung to generous curves—large breasts, narrow waist, hips that swayed with predatory grace as she approached. Long black hair cascaded over her shoulders like spilled ink, and her eyes were a vivid, piercing green that seemed to glow faintly in the darkness.
She was Amara's face. Amara's features that were refined, a bit sharpened, and somehow made more dangerous by the weight of centuries behind them. The resemblance was uncanny enough to make Dick's heart stutter, and then clench with wariness when he remembered exactly who he was looking at.
"Morgana," he grumbled, forcing his voice flat despite the fear coiling in his gut. This woman had destroyed empires. Had dueled gods and demons and walked away. Had spent a thousand years perfecting magics that made the darkest corners of his rogues gallery look like amateur hour. "What do you want?"
Oh—and she also HATED heroes after what happened with her son…
The ancient witch tutted, a sound of theatrical disappointment that somehow conveyed both condescension and genuine amusement. She circled him slowly, her heels clicking against nothing—she was walking on air as casually as he might walk on carpet.
"Now, now," she said, her tone light but her eyes sharp, assessing. "You needn't look so frightened, my handsome hero. I wouldn't dare harm someone my dearest apprentice has developed feelings for." She said the word hero like it tasted of spoiled milk, her lip curling with undisguised contempt.
But beneath the disdain, Dick caught something else. A grudging acknowledgment, perhaps. A recognition that, for whatever incomprehensible reason, Amara had chosen to care about him.
Some of the tension bled from his shoulders. If Morgana was here to kill him, she wouldn't be making small talk.
Dick allowed himself a small smirk. "Feelings, huh? Good to know."
Morgana's expression flickered—annoyance, maybe, or something closer to reluctant respect for his nerve. "Don't get cocky, boy. I said I wouldn't dare harm you. I didn't say I wouldn't hurt you a little if you annoy me overmuch." Her smile sharpened, showing too many teeth. "Amara would forgive me for a few broken bones. Eventually."
"Noted." Dick forced his body to relax in the magical grip, conserving energy rather than fighting the inevitable. "So what do you want? I'm assuming you didn't track me down just to threaten me."
"Information," Morgana said simply. She stopped circling, coming to rest directly in front of him. "Amara sent me a message from London. She mentioned running into you, among other things. But I haven't heard from her since."
Dick had been trained by Batman to read microexpressions.
Morgana was worried. The realization hit him strangely. This woman, this monster, she was worried about Amara.
It should have been absurd. It was absurd. But Dick had seen the way Amara talked about Morgana, had heard the complicated love tangled up in every story. And Dick, despite every instinct screaming that he shouldn't help a supervillain with anything, found that he didn't want to lie.
"She went to confront her birth family," he said slowly, watching Morgana's face for reactions. "The Potters as I'm sure you know."
Morgana's expression didn't change, but the air around her seemed to grow heavier, thicker, charged with something that made Dick's skin prickle. "And?" The single word was ice. "What happened after that?"
Dick took a breath. "It was a trap. Her mother, Lily—she wrote Amara a letter claiming she wanted to reconcile. Make amends for abandoning her. Amara went to hear her out, even though she suspected it was bullshit." He paused, struggling to keep his voice neutral as the anger he'd felt for Amara surfaced. "Turns out they never wanted a rekindled relationship. They wanted to use her. They wanted to sell her for money and to use her forced children to continue the Potter line if they couldn't break the curse YOU put on them…" Dick said and narrowed his eyes because this situation was partially Morgana's fault since she cursed the Potters.
Not that they didn't have it coming…
Morgana's eyes had gone very, very cold. Dick couldn't see magic. He wasn't sensitive to it. But in that moment, suspended in Morgana's grip above a Gotham rooftop, he didn't need magical senses to feel what was happening.
The darkness around them deepened, shadows stretching and writhing like living things. The temperature plummeted so sharply that Dick's breath misted in front of his face. The ambient sounds of the city—distant traffic, a car alarm somewhere, the ever-present hum of urban life—seemed to muffle and fade, as if reality itself was holding its breath.
And Morgana...
Her beautiful face had gone utterly still, a marble mask that somehow conveyed more fury than any snarl could have. The air around her rippled and distorted, heat-shimmer without heat, and Dick could have sworn he saw shapes moving in that distortion—faces, claws, things with too many teeth that existed only in the corner of his vision.
"They tried," Morgana said, and her voice was no longer a single voice but a chorus, layered with echoes that came from nowhere and everywhere, "to sell my apprentice. Like cattle. I will punish them all!"
"She already handled it!" The words came out faster than Dick intended, self-preservation overriding caution. Morgana's power was still pressing against reality like a thumb against a bruise, and he had the distinct impression that if he didn't redirect that fury somewhere else, he was going to find out exactly what those shadow-shapes with too many teeth felt like up close.
"Amara burned the Potter ancestral home to the ground," he continued, watching Morgana's face for any sign that the information was landing. "The whole estate. And the old man they were trying to sell her to—" He paused, swallowing against the dryness in his throat. "She killed him too. Him and everyone on his property."
The words tasted strange in his mouth. Not wrong, exactly. Just... complicated.
Because Dick was acutely aware that what he was describing was murder. Multiple murders. Premeditated, deliberate, and utterly without remorse. Amara had burned people alive, had reduced an ancient family estate to ash and cinder, and he was standing here recounting it like a mission report rather than a confession of war crimes.
He should be disgusted. He should be planning her arrest, coordinating with authorities, doing all the things that heroes were supposed to do when villains committed atrocities.
Instead, he found himself thinking about justifying her crimes.
Is this what Bruce feels like? The thought surfaced unbidden, and Dick almost laughed at the bitter irony of it.
How many times had he watched Batman let Catwoman slip away? How many times had he seen the complicated dance between Bruce and Talia al Ghul, a woman who had done terrible things and would do terrible things again?
Dick knew Bruce was sleeping with both of them. Had known for years. And Bruce knew that he knew, which was probably why his mentor had been remarkably restrained in his judgment about Dick's growing... whatever this was... with Amara.
Glass houses. Thrown stones. The whole bit.
Morgana was taking deep breaths now, her large chest rising and falling beneath that clinging black dress. The shadows had stopped writhing. The temperature was slowly climbing back toward something resembling normal Gotham autumn. The pressure against reality eased, degree by careful degree, like a fist slowly unclenching.
And then, without warning, the invisible grip holding Dick suspended in midair simply released.
He dropped. Training kicked in before panic could. He tucked, rolled with the momentum, and came up in a crouch on the grimy rooftop. His heart hammered against his ribs, adrenaline spiking belatedly now that the immediate danger had passed.
"Thanks," he managed, straightening up and brushing grit from his suit.
Morgana didn't acknowledge the word. She seemed to be speaking more to herself than to him, her green eyes distant, her lips curved in a smile that was equal parts pride and hunger. "She did well to see through the deception and punish them! ...It's not enough, of course," Morgana continued, her tone shifting to something more contemplative. "The Potters still breathe. The parents who discarded her, the brother who grew fat on the love she was denied—they still exist in this world." Her smile sharpened, showing teeth. "But drawing out punishment has its own pleasures. Let them live in the ashes of everything they built. Let them wake each morning knowing their daughter did this to them, and that worse is yet to come."
A shudder ran down Dick's spine that had nothing to do with the lingering cold. "Can I go now?" The question came out more weak than he'd intended.
Morgana's gaze snapped back to him. "One more thing, hero." She said the word with slightly less venom than before—still contemptuous, but tempered now by something that might have been grudging tolerance. "Where is Amara now? Why is she not back home yet? Back with ME?"
Dick hesitated. Every instinct screamed that giving a supervillain information about another person's location was a catastrophically bad idea. But this was Morgana asking about her own apprentice. Her own... whatever Amara was to her.
"She's on a cruise ship with a mutual friend of ours," he said finally. "She's taking the slow route back from London. Should be arriving in Gotham in a few days, assuming nothing goes wrong."
Morgana's expression underwent a transformation so rapid and so ridiculous that Dick almost forgot who he was talking to.
The beautiful witch's face crumpled into a pout. An actual, genuine pout, her lower lip pushing out, her brows drawing together in theatrical indignation. She looked, for one absurd moment, like a jealous girlfriend who'd just learned her partner went to the beach without her!
"A cruise ship," Morgana repeated, her voice climbing with outrage. "She's on a cruise ship. In the ocean. Which means swimming. Which means—" Her green eyes went wide with horrified realization. "Other people are seeing her in a swimsuit before I have!?"
Dick opened his mouth. No words came out. What possible response was there to that? He was also kind of jealous as well…
"This is unacceptable," Morgana declared, drawing herself up to her full height, ancient dignity warring with petty jealousy in a combination that should not have been as entertaining as it was. "Absolutely unacceptable. I am her mentor. I have rights."
And then, between one blink and the next, she simply wasn't there anymore. No flash of light. No dramatic gesture. One moment Morgana le Fay was standing on a Gotham rooftop complaining about swimsuit privileges, the next moment Dick was alone with nothing but the distant wail of sirens and the lingering scent of ozone.
He didn't try to stop her. Partly because trying to stop Morgana le Fay was roughly equivalent to trying to stop a hurricane by asking it nicely. Partly because she hadn't actually committed any crimes tonight—being terrifying wasn't illegal, no matter how much Dick wished it were. And partly because, if he was being honest with himself, he was just grateful to have survived the encounter with all his limbs attached.
"What the hell is my life," he muttered to no one, running a hand through his hair.
His communicator chose that exact moment to shriek.
Not the normal alert tone—the emergency one. The one reserved for situations so catastrophic that protocol demanded immediate response regardless of current assignment. The one that made Dick's blood run cold before he even looked at the display.
SOS - PRIORITY ALPHA SOURCE: CYBORG - MASS CASUALTY EVENT IN PROGRESS!
– Amara –
The evacuation was controlled chaos.
Cyborg took point, his cannon arm sweeping left and right as he cleared corridor after corridor. The blue-white flash of his sonic blasts had become almost rhythmic—charge, fire, splatter, advance. Behind him, Starfire zipped ahead and back like a glowing orange hummingbird, scouting for ambushes and incinerating any creatures that tried to flank us with precise starbolt strikes.
Beast Boy, still in his strange horse-dog hybrid form, carried the most severely wounded survivors on his broad green back. An elderly woman with a gash across her forehead clung to his fur with white-knuckled fingers, her eyes squeezed shut, clearly trying to pretend she was anywhere else. A teenager with a broken arm sat behind her, his face grey with shock.
The rest of the survivors stumbled along in the middle of our formation—a ragged cluster of maybe fifty people in various states of terror, injury, and disbelief. Some of them were crying. Some were praying. One man kept muttering "this isn't real, this isn't real" under his breath like a mantra that might actually make it true.
Everyone was doing their best.
Well. Almost everyone.
"I cannot believe I am wasting my talents protecting Muggles," Bellatrix grumbled from somewhere ahead of me, her voice carrying that particular tone of aristocratic disgust she reserved for anything beneath her station. Which, in her mind, was most things. "This is humiliating. When I tell the Dark Lord about this—" She cut herself off, her expression flickering with something complicated before she smoothed it away. "Oh yeah, I betrayed him—nevermind—When I tell people about this, I will be a laughingstock!"
I wondered if she even knew… people?
But for all her complaining, she wasn't actually hindering anyone. And every time one of the creatures got too close to the group—lunging from a side corridor, dropping from a ceiling vent, bursting through a cabin door—Bellatrix was invariably the first to respond. Her wand moved in vicious arcs, dark curses flying from her lips with the ease of long practice.
"Reducto!"
A creature's head exploded in a spray of purple-black ichor.
"Avada Kedavra!"
Another dropped dead mid-lunge, its yellow eyes going dark before it hit the carpet.
"Crucio!"
That one was unnecessary, the creature was already dying from a starbolt wound, but Bellatrix seemed to enjoy watching it writhe in its final moments. Her laughter echoed off the corridor walls, high and wild and deeply unsettling to the civilians we were supposed to be protecting.
Several of the survivors were giving her looks that suggested they weren't entirely sure she was on their side. To be fair, I wasn't entirely sure either. But she was killing the right things, so I decided not to question it.
Raven and I brought up the rear.
It was the natural position for us. We walked a few paces behind the last stragglers, our eyes constantly scanning the corridor behind us for any sign of pursuit.
The ship groaned around us, metal protesting against the thousands of creatures still scaling its hull. Somewhere distant, I could hear screaming—other passengers, other parts of the vessel, places we couldn't reach in time. The sound made something twist in my gut. Not guilt, exactly. I didn't have enough emotional capacity to feel intense emotions for people that didn't matter to me.
But... awareness. The knowledge that people were dying while we shepherded our little flock to safety.
"You're staring." Raven's voice pulled me from my thoughts. I blinked, realizing that yes, I had in fact been staring at her—at the way her cloak billowed slightly with each step, at the curve of her jaw beneath her hood, at the violet eyes that were currently fixed on me with an expression somewhere between curiosity and suspicion.
"You have really pretty eyes," I told her honestly.
The blush that spread across her grey cheeks was immediate and deeply satisfying. She ducked her head, her hood shifting to hide the color, but I'd already seen it. A laugh bubbled up in my chest, warm and genuine despite our circumstances.
"That's—" She cleared her throat, struggling to regain her composure. "That's not why I was staring at you."
"No?" I tilted my head, letting my smile turn playful. "Then why were you staring, little bird? See something you like?"
Her blush deepened. I could see it spreading down her neck now, disappearing beneath her leotard. "I was trying to figure out," she said, her voice strained with the effort of maintaining dignity, "how you suddenly acquired my ability to travel through shadows."
Ah. That was a much more complicated question.
I kept my expression neutral, still looking at her face, watching the way she squirmed slightly under my attention. She was so easy to fluster, this powerful half-demon who could tear reality apart with a thought. Give her a bad guy to fight and she was all cold efficiency. Give her a compliment and she turned into a blushing mess.
It was adorable.
But her question was dangerous. How had I acquired Shadow Travel? The truth was simple. My System had given it to me as a reward for taking her virginity. A neat little notification that had popped up in my mind right after I'd pumped her full of whatever strange substance my tail had produced.
Congratulations on taking Raven's first time! You have been granted the teleportation skill: [Shadow Travel!]
Somehow, I didn't think "my video game power-up system gave me your abilities as a reward for fucking you" was going to go over well. She'd seen some weird shit I was sure, but even that was something I'd doubted she would believe.
Or worse—she would believe me…
Raven was an empath. She could read emotions. I wasn't sure if that extended to detecting lies directly, but I knew she'd pick up on any obvious deception. I needed something that was technically true, or at least true-adjacent. Something that would satisfy her curiosity without revealing the existence of my System.
Or... I could just fluster her so badly she'd forget to press the issue.
Option two it was! "I think," I said slowly, letting my voice drop into a lower, more intimate register, "that you might have given it to me."
Raven's brow furrowed. "Given it to you? What do you mean?"
"When we had sex." I paused for effect, watching her eyes widen. "I think it was some kind of magical STD."
"WHAT?" Her shriek echoed off the corridor walls, loud enough that several survivors ahead of us turned to look back in alarm. Raven's face had gone from blushing to absolutely crimson, her composure shattering like glass. "A magical—I did not—that's not even—"
Two creatures chose that exact moment to burst from a maintenance hatch behind us, their yellow eyes gleaming, their rusty tridents raised for the kill. They were fast, propelling themselves forward on powerful legs, shrieking that horrible wet rattle.
Raven didn't even look at them. She waved one hand in an almost dismissive gesture, her attention still fixed on me with outraged disbelief. Dark energy erupted from the floor in response—shadow tendrils that shot upward like spears, skewering both creatures through their midsections simultaneously. Purple-black blood sprayed across the walls. The monsters twitched once, twice, and went still.
"I did not," Raven continued, as if the brief interruption of violence hadn't happened at all, "give you some kind of magical shadow STD. That's not a real thing. That's not how any of this works."
I raised an eyebrow, stepping carefully around the expanding pool of ichor. "Are you sure? I mean, it's not like you've ever had sex before me." I let my smile turn wicked. "How would you know what's normal and what isn't?"
Raven made a sound like a kettle about to boil over. Her hands clenched at her sides, shadows flickering around her fingers in response to her emotional turmoil. For a moment, I thought she might actually try to strangle me.
Then she let out a long, slow breath, visibly forcing herself to calm down.
"Fine," she said, her voice flat with resignation. "Keep your secrets."
I grinned at her, utterly unrepentant. "I always do."
She shot me a glare that promised retribution at some unspecified future date, then pulled her hood further down to hide her still-flushed face. I hoped it was some sexy bedroom retribution to be honest…
I caught the tiny twitch at the corner of her mouth, the ghost of a smile she was trying very hard to suppress.
…All in all, teasing and flirting with Raven made for a good temporary distraction. But distractions, by their very nature, couldn't last forever.
We reached the casino level after what felt like an eternity of blood-slicked corridors and muffled screaming from parts of the ship we couldn't reach. The space was garishly opulent—red velvet carpeting, gold-trimmed slot machines arranged in neat rows, blackjack tables with green felt surfaces that probably cost more than most people's monthly rent. Crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, their faceted surfaces catching the emergency lighting and scattering fractured rainbows across walls that were mercifully free of purple ichor.
For now.
Cyborg moved immediately to a central position, his mechanical eye scanning the room's layout with tactical precision. I could practically see him cataloging entry points, chokepoints, defensible positions.
"How long until you can punch through the jamming?" Raven asked, her voice clipped and professional. The flustered girl I'd been teasing in the corridor had vanished entirely, replaced by the cold, competent hero.
Cyborg's human eye tightened with frustration. "Still looking at ten minutes, minimum. The interference is adaptive—every time I find a frequency that might work, it shifts. It's like something down there is actively blocking us."
Ten minutes. An eternity when thousands of monsters were scaling the hull, pouring through every breach, hunting every passenger who hadn't made it to safety.
In our current situation, ten minutes might as well have been ten hours. I could already sense the monsters converging on our location. Most of them had now climbed up the ship.
Starfire rose into the air above the huddled survivors, her body glowing with that warm, golden-orange luminescence that seemed to radiate reassurance. "Do not worry!" she called out, her voice carrying effortlessly across the casino floor. "We are the Teen Titans! We have faced many terrible foes, and we have always emerged the victorious! We will keep you safe!"
The reactions from the crowd were... mixed.
Some of the survivors actually seemed to relax at her words. A mother clutched her young daughter closer, but her shoulders dropped from around her ears. An older couple, still in their formal dinner attire now splattered with gore, exchanged glances that held something like hope. A group of college-aged kids who'd clearly been on spring break—their Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts almost offensively casual given the circumstances—started whispering among themselves, phones out, probably trying to document their brush with death for social media clout.
Others were less convinced. A heavyset man in a business suit kept shaking his head, muttering under his breath about lawsuits and negligence and how someone was going to pay for this. A woman in a cocktail dress stared at nothing, her mascara-streaked face blank with the particular emptiness of someone whose mind had temporarily checked out to avoid processing trauma. A teenage boy sat against a slot machine, his arms wrapped around his knees, rocking slightly back and forth.
We'd passed too many bodies on the way here. They'd all seen it.
And then there were the ones who simply... didn't seem to care?
An old man, easily in his eighties, sat hunched on a stool in front of a slot machine that was somehow still operational. The emergency power must have kept it running, its screen glowing with cheerful animated fruits and lucky sevens.
As I watched, he reached up with a liver-spotted hand and pulled the lever with the practiced ease of someone who'd performed that exact motion thousands of times before.
The reels spun. Cherries, bars, and bells tumbled past in a blur of color. The machine let out a disappointing series of beeps—no jackpot today.
The old man grunted, fed another token into the slot, and pulled the lever again.
I walked closer, genuinely baffled. Around us, people were crying, praying, having quiet mental breakdowns. Somewhere above our heads, thousands of nightmare creatures were tearing the ship apart and devouring anyone too slow to escape. And this elderly gentleman was... playing slots.
"Hey," I said, stopping beside his stool. "You do know what's going on, right? The ship is under attack. Man-eating fish monsters. Mass casualties…?"
He didn't even look at me. Just pulled the lever again, watched the reels spin, grunted at another losing combination.
"Maybe he's senile," I muttered to myself, reaching out to tap his shoulder.
The old man finally turned, and the eyes that met mine were anything but senile. Sharp, clear, and filled with a weary amusement that spoke of someone who'd long since stopped giving a fuck about anything. "I heard you the first time, girlie," he said, his voice a raspy growl that suggested decades of cigarettes and whiskey. He turned back to his machine, feeding in another token. "Ship's under attack. Fish monsters. People dying. I got ears."
"Then why—"
"Stage four pancreatic cancer," he interrupted, pulling the lever with another practiced motion. "Doctors gave me three months, maybe four if I'm lucky. This cruise was supposed to be my last hurrah. My final vacation before I kick the bucket." He paused to watch the reels spin, then snorted when they came up empty again. "Way I figure it, I'm dead either way. Might as well enjoy myself while I wait."
What was I supposed to say to that?
"Ain't nothing taking this from me," the old man continued, not waiting for a response. He patted the slot machine almost affectionately. "Not cancer. Not fish monsters. Not the grim fucking reaper himself." Another token. Another pull. Another loss. "Besides, I'm feeling lucky tonight. Got a good feeling about this machine."
"Well," I said finally, shrugging one shoulder. "Can't argue with that logic, I guess."
The old man let out a wheezing chuckle. "Damn right you can't." He glanced at me sideways, taking in my appearance. "You one of them superheroes?"
"Technically I'm closer to a villain…" I said with a second shrug.
The old man turned to give me a look that was equal parts baffled and dismissive. "Why the hell is a villain sticking around to help?" he asked, the question more rhetorical than curious. "Shouldn't you be flying away or something? Saving your own skin?"
It was a fair question. The kind of question I might have asked myself not too long ago.
I opened my mouth to answer, but the old man just waved a dismissive hand before I could get a word out.
"Eh, forget it. Ain't none of my damn business." He turned back to his slot machine, feeding another token into the hungry mouth of the one-armed bandit. "You do you, girlie. I got a jackpot to win." The lever pulled. The reels spun. Another loss. He didn't seem to care.
I walked away, shaking my head slightly at the absurdity of it all. Here we were, trapped on a sinking ship surrounded by thousands of man-eating monsters, and somehow the calmest person in the room was an octogenarian with terminal cancer and a gambling addiction.
Life was strange.
I made my way back to where Raven and the others had gathered near the center of the casino floor. Cyborg had pulled up some kind of holographic display from his arm—a schematic of the casino level, blue lines and red dots that I assumed represented structural layouts and enemy positions. His human eye was narrowed in concentration, his mechanical one whirring as it processed data faster than any organic brain could manage.
"We've got a problem," he said as I approached, not looking up from his display. "This place wasn't designed to be defended. Look at this—" He gestured at the schematic, highlighting sections that pulsed an angry red. "Thirty-seven potential entry points. Doors on every wall. Emergency exits. Service corridors. And these windows—" He jabbed a finger at the casino's exterior walls, where floor-to-ceiling glass panels offered what had probably been a stunning ocean view before it became a portal for nightmare creatures. "They're not reinforced for more than some heavy rain. One good hit and they shatter."
The casino was huge—easily the size of half a football field—and every wall was riddled with potential breach points. Slot machines offered some cover, sure, but they weren't barriers. The blackjack tables could be flipped, but they'd only slow the creatures down, not stop them.
And those creatures were getting closer. We had minutes. Maybe less.
"Can you seal some of it off?" Beast Boy asked, having shifted back to his human form. "Like, weld the doors shut or something?"
Cyborg shook his head grimly. "I could seal maybe three or four before they breach. That's not going to help when there are thirty more they can come through."
An idea sparked in my mind, something so obvious I almost laughed at myself for not thinking of it sooner. I turned to Bellatrix, who was standing slightly apart from the group, examining her nails with theatrical boredom despite the dried gore splattered across her robes.
"Mother," I said, and she perked up immediately at the title, her dark eyes focusing on me with that unsettling intensity she reserved for moments when she felt useful. "Let's use transfiguration. We seal them all at once."
Her brow furrowed for a moment before understanding dawned. "Turn every door and window into solid wall?" She tapped her wand against her palm. "It won't last forever. Transfiguration at this scale without proper preparation... maybe ten minutes before the magic starts degrading. Fifteen if we're lucky."
"Fifteen minutes is what we need," I said.
"I suppose it won't waste too much of my magic," she conceded, as if doing anything helpful for Muggles physically pained her.
We pulled out our wands simultaneously. The survivors nearest to us flinched at the sight.
"Duro!" I commanded, pouring my will into the spell. The incantation was simple—first-year Hogwarts material, had I actually attended the place. But casting it at this scale, affecting dozens of targets simultaneously, required raw magical strength that most witches would never possess.
Good thing I wasn't most witches.
The magic erupted from my wand in a wave of crystalline energy, washing across the casino's eastern wall like a tide of solidifying light. Glass panels shimmered, rippled, and then transformed—their transparent surfaces darkening, thickening, becoming solid stone that matched the walls around them. Doors sealed themselves shut as their wooden frames merged with the surrounding architecture, hinges disappearing, handles sinking into suddenly-smooth surfaces.
Across the room, Bellatrix was doing the same to the western wall, her own magic achieving the same results but what I suspected was significantly more taxing on her magical reserves.
We met in the middle, our final spells overlapping to seal the last few entry points. The emergency exit near the cashier's cage. A service door half-hidden behind a row of slot machines. A decorative window that had probably offered a view of the ship's atrium before the attack.
Stone. Stone. Stone.
When we finished, the casino had been transformed. No doors. No windows. Just solid walls on every side. A complete and total fire hazard in any other situation but perfect for us. Those monsters were going to be very confused when they reached the center of the ship.
The Titans stared at our handiwork with expressions ranging from impressed to deeply unsettled.
"Okay," Cyborg said slowly, his mechanical eye scanning the newly-sealed walls. "That's... actually really useful. I'm not gonna lie, I did not expect the scary evil witches to be this helpful besides killing stuff."
Starfire had a more enthusiastic response.
"Eep—!" The sound escaped me before I could stop it—a completely undignified squeak of surprise as something warm and soft and very strong slammed into my back. Arms wrapped around my torso from behind, pulling me against a body that was simultaneously athletic and impossibly curvaceous.
Starfire's chest pressed against my shoulder blades—her breasts were enormous, easily as large as my own, and I could feel every generous curve molding against my back through the thin material of her uniform. Her skin radiated that dry, intense heat I'd noticed earlier, like standing too close to a bonfire. It should have been uncomfortable.
It was not uncomfortable.
"Excellent work, Friend Amara!" Starfire chirped directly into my ear, her voice bright with genuine delight. Her arms tightened around me in what she probably considered a friendly hug but which was actually threatening to crack my ribs. "Your magical sealing of the entry points was most impressive! You and your mother make a formidable team of the combat!"
And then her hands moved.
I wasn't sure if it was intentional or just a byproduct of Tamaranean social norms that apparently had no concept of personal boundaries, but Starfire's grip shifted as she squeezed me—her palms sliding up my torso until they were pressed directly against my breasts, cupping them through my shirt with the casual familiarity of someone who genuinely didn't understand why this might be inappropriate.
"You are also very soft!" she added happily, as if this were a perfectly normal observation to make while groping someone in the middle of a crisis. "Your body is most pleasant to embrace!"
My brain short-circuited.
On one hand, we were in mortal danger, surrounded by traumatized civilians, and this was absolutely not the time for... whatever this was.
On the other hand, a beautiful alien princess was pressed against my back, her breasts squishing against me, her hands full of my chest, and my [Major Sin of Lust] was purring.
"Starfire." Raven's voice cut through my hormonal haze like a bucket of ice water. I turned my head, as much as Starfire's grip would allow, and saw my half-demon lover standing a few feet away, her arms crossed, her hood thrown back to reveal a face that was decidedly not amused. Her violet eyes were narrowed. Her pale grey cheeks had flushed that lovely lavender color I was beginning to associate with strong emotion. And her voice, when she spoke again, carried a distinct edge that made something warm bloom in my chest. "Get. Off. Her." It came out as a hiss, low and possessive and absolutely dripping with jealousy.
Shadows flickered at the edges of her cloak, responding to her emotional state, and for a moment she looked less like a teenage superhero and more like something ancient and territorial that had just spotted a rival encroaching on its territory.
Oh, that was adorable.
Starfire blinked, apparently oblivious to the danger. "But Friend Raven, I am merely expressing my appreciation for Friend Amara's contribution to our—"
Beast Boy and Cyborg, standing a few feet away, exchanged glances. Then, almost in unison, they started snickering.
"Dude," Beast Boy whispered, not even trying to be subtle about it. "Is Raven jealous? Like, actually jealous? I didn't think she could even feel that emotion!"
"Man, shut up," Cyborg whispered back, though his human eye was dancing with barely-contained amusement.
Starfire finally seemed to register that something was amiss. She released me—slowly, her hands trailing across my body in a way that was probably innocent but definitely didn't feel innocent—and floated back a few inches, her head tilted in that confused-puppy expression she did so well. "Friend Raven," she said, her tone genuinely puzzled, "why are you making the face of anger? I was only—"
Whatever she was about to say was cut off by a notification that blazed across my vision, visible only to me, the familiar black text of my System burning itself into my retinas with an urgency that made my heart stutter.
ATTENTION!Your Familiar Egg is ready to hatch!Please prepare for familiar bonding sequence!
I stared at the words, my brain taking a moment to process what I was reading.
Seriously?
Now?
That thing I'd almost forgotten about that's been sitting in my inventory for days was choosing now of all times to hatch!?
The egg materialized out of thin air directly in front of my face.
I lunged forward on instinct, my hands shooting out to catch the egg before it could shatter against the casino floor. My fingers closed around smooth, cool shell, and I found myself cradling something roughly the size of a cantaloupe against my chest.
For a moment, I just stared at it.
The egg was black. The surface was smooth as polished obsidian, faintly warm against my palms, and when I tilted it slightly, I could have sworn I saw shadows moving beneath the shell. Swirling. Waiting.
"Amara?" Raven's voice cut through my contemplation, sharp with concern. She'd moved closer while I was distracted, her violet eyes fixed on the object in my hands with obvious wariness. "What is that? Where did it come from?"
Before I could answer, Beast Boy let out a snort of laughter that was entirely inappropriate for our current situation. "Dude," he said, elbowing Cyborg in the ribs. "Did she just pull out an egg? Like, from nowhere?" He shifted into a chicken for approximately half a second—just long enough to let out an obnoxious cluck—before shifting back with a grin splitting his green face. "I know we're all stressed, but I really don't think now is the time for breakfast."
Cyborg was already shaking his head. "Man, that's not even a chicken egg. That thing's huge. What is she gonna do, make an omelette for everyone?" He gestured at the huddled survivors. "Actually, that might not be a bad idea. Morale's pretty low. Some comfort food could—"
"It's not for eating!" I snapped, clutching the egg protectively against my chest. The indignation in my voice was entirely genuine. These heroic idiots were mocking what was about to be a profound magical bonding experience! "This is my familiar egg. It's been incubating in my magical core, preparing to hatch into a creature that will be soul-bound to me for the rest of my existence." I paused, glancing down at the egg, which had begun to vibrate faintly in my grip. "It just, unfortunately, decided that now was the optimal moment to make its grand entrance into the world."
The timing really was spectacularly bad. Thousands of monsters outside. Fifty terrified civilians inside. A communication jamming field preventing us from calling for help. And my familiar had apparently looked at all of that and thought yes, this seems like the perfect environment for a birth!
Bellatrix drifted closer, her dark eyes gleaming with something that might have been maternal pride. She clasped her hands together beneath her chin, practically vibrating with anticipation. "Oh, how wonderful!" she breathed, her voice dropping into that reverent tone she usually reserved for discussions of torture techniques and ancient curses. "Congratulations, my darling daughter. A familiar bonding is a momentous occasion—one of the most sacred rituals in our world." Her smile sharpened, showing too many teeth. "I do hope you get something properly dark and terrifying. A nundu, perhaps? Or a basilisk? Ooh, or one of those delightful little creatures that feeds on human despair—what are they called again?"
"This is really bad timing," Raven said flatly, apparently deciding to ignore Bellatrix's enthusiasm entirely. Her arms were crossed, her expression caught somewhere between concern and exasperation. "We're in the middle of a crisis, Amara. Can you... I don't know... postpone it somehow?"
I opened my mouth to explain that familiar bonding wasn't something you could just reschedule, but the words died in my throat.
Because the egg was cracking.
Fragments of black shell scattered across my hands, dissolving into wisps of shadow before they could fall to the floor. And in their place, nestled in my cupped palms like it had always belonged there, was a bird.
It was small—barely larger than my fist, its body covered in downy feathers so dark they seemed to absorb the emergency lighting around us. Its wings were folded neatly against its sides, delicate and fragile-looking, tipped with what might have been tiny flames if flames could burn in shades of purple and black. A crest of shadow-dark plumage crowned its head, soft and wild, giving it the appearance of a creature that had just woken from a very comfortable nap.
And its eyes.
Its eyes were pools of absolute darkness, deep and infinite and somehow, impossibly, utterly adorable. They stared up at me with the guileless wonder of a newborn discovering the world for the first time, and I felt something in my chest crack open.
"Oh," I whispered, my voice coming out softer than I'd intended. "Oh, you're... you're so cute."
The words escaped before I could stop them, entirely undignified and completely sincere. This tiny creature, this impossible little bird that had chosen me, was looking at me like I was its entire universe. Like I was the first beautiful thing it had ever seen.
My [Simmering Fury] didn't stir. My [Major Sin of Lust] stayed quiet. For one perfect moment, there was nothing but me and this small, dark, precious life cradled in my hands.
Starfire descended from wherever she'd been hovering after Raven scared her off me, her face alight with genuine delight. "Oh!" she gasped, pressing both hands to her cheeks in a gesture of overwhelming cuteness appreciation. "The little birdie is absolutely adorable! It is the most precious creature I have ever witnessed! May I hold it? I promise I will be very gentle!"
The bird—my bird, my familiar—chirped at Starfire. A tiny sound, barely audible, but somehow conveying a mixture of curiosity and wariness that suggested it had already developed opinions about the world.
Smart creature. I approved.
But it was Bellatrix's reaction that made me look up sharply. She had gone very, very still. Her dark eyes were wide, fixed on the creature in my hands with an intensity that bordered on reverence. Her lips moved silently for a moment before she found her voice. "Amara," she breathed, and there was something almost like awe threading through her usually manic tone. "Amara, darling, do you have any idea what that is?"
I looked down at the bird. It chirped again, tilting its head to examine me with those fathomless dark eyes.
"A... bird?" I offered uncertainly.
Bellatrix let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. She pressed a trembling hand to her mouth, her eyes actually glistening with what might have been tears. "That," she said, pointing at my familiar with a finger that shook slightly, "is a Dark Phoenix. Also known as a Shadow Phoenix, or in some of the older texts, an Umbral Firebird." She stepped closer, her voice dropping to a reverent whisper. "They were thought to be extinct, Amara. Hunted to annihilation centuries ago because wizards feared their power. The last confirmed sighting was over four hundred years ago, and even that was considered apocryphal by most scholars." She reached out as if to touch the bird, then stopped herself, her hand hovering inches away like she was afraid it might dissolve if she made contact. "Oh, my darling daughter, you continue to exceed every expectation! This familiar is worth more than—" She paused, her expression shifting to something cruel and satisfied. "—worth infinitely more than that pathetic excuse for a phoenix that serves old fool Dumbledore."
A phoenix. My familiar was a dark phoenix.
"Wait," I said, my voice sharp with sudden hope. "Phoenixes can teleport. Flame travel, or shadow travel, or whatever the dark equivalent is." I looked down at the tiny creature, my heart pounding. "Can you get people off this ship? Transport the survivors somewhere safe?"
The Dark Phoenix stared up at me with those infinite black eyes.
For a moment, I felt a flicker of something through our newly-formed bond—a sense of connection, of understanding, of a creature that wanted desperately to help its bonded partner.
And then it chirped.
A tiny, adorable, utterly useless chirp.
The bird shuffled its wings, puffed up its downy chest feathers, and proceeded to close its eyes in a gesture that I recognized immediately. It wasn't preparing to use some ancient teleportation ability. It wasn't summoning the power of shadow flames to save everyone aboard this doomed vessel.
It was falling asleep. Because it was a baby.
"Oh," I said flatly, watching my familiar snuggle deeper into my palms, its tiny body rising and falling with the rhythm of infant slumber. "Right. You're completely useless right now, aren't you?"
The Dark Phoenix, already mostly asleep, let out a soft coo that seemed to confirm my assessment without any shame whatsoever.
I sighed, carefully adjusting my grip so the sleeping creature was secure against my chest.
"Well," I announced to the room at large, "so much for that plan."
"MY EMERGENCY MESSAGE JUST GOT THROUGH!" Cyborg suddenly announced!
And that's when we heard scratching and pounding on the walls all around us…
Fifteen minutes later, the casino had become a slaughterhouse just like the last place we'd fled from...
The transfigured walls were failing. I could see the magic degrading in real-time—stone rippling back into glass, sealed doors shimmering as their frames reasserted themselves, solid barriers developing hairline fractures that spread like spiderwebs across their surfaces.
And through every crack, every gap, every newly-reformed window, the creatures came pouring in.
"LEFT FLANK! WE'VE GOT A BREACH ON THE LEFT FLANK!" Cyborg's voice cut through the chaos, his cannon arm firing in rapid bursts that turned clusters of merpeople into purple paste. But for every group he obliterated, three more squeezed through the widening gaps.
Starfire was a blur of green fire above us, starbolts raining down like a meteor shower, but even her seemingly endless energy was flagging. Her movements were slower now, her shots less precise. A creature's rusty spear had grazed her shoulder at some point—blood trickled down her arm.
Beast Boy shifted forms with desperate speed—gorilla to tiger to bear to something with too many teeth, but the strain was showing in how his transformations flickered at the edges, how his green fur was matted with gore both purple and red.
And through it all, Raven held the center. Dark energy erupted from her in waves, tendrils of shadow tearing creatures apart, shields deflecting rusty weapons, barriers buying precious seconds for the civilians huddled in a shrinking circle at the room's heart. But I could see the tremor in her hands. Could feel, through whatever strange connection we now shared, the exhaustion bleeding through her concentration.
Bellatrix fought beside me, her wand a blur of dark curses.
"Reducto! Avada Kedavra! Crucio—oh, just DIE already!" Her voice had gone hoarse, her movements losing their earlier theatrical flourish in favor of brutal efficiency. Sweat plastered wild dark curls to her forehead, and I noticed with growing alarm that her spells were hitting with less force than before. Her magical reserves were drained.
My own fire roared through the casino, incinerating everything it touched, but I couldn't let loose completely. Not with civilians so close. Not with the baby Dark Phoenix nestled safely in the valley between my breasts. The creature had burrowed into my cleavage like it was the most natural place in the world, utterly oblivious to the carnage around us. Having to protect it meant fighting with one metaphorical hand tied behind my back. Every spell, every movement, every dodge had to account for the fragile life pressed against my heart.
A scream from my right made me spin.
The old man.
The slot machine in front of him was flashing. Lights blazing. Sirens wailing. The jackpot display scrolled through numbers that climbed higher and higher, finally settling on a sum that probably would have meant something if he'd had more than three months to live.
He'd won. Against all odds, in the middle of an apocalypse, the stubborn bastard had ACTUALLY WON!
His wrinkled face split into a grin of pure, defiant triumph. His liver-spotted hand was still on the lever, still clutching his victory, when the creatures reached him.
Three of them. They came from behind, through a window that had just finished reverting from stone, and they were on him before he could even turn around.
Claws. Teeth. The wet, tearing sounds of flesh parting from bone. The old man didn't scream. Maybe he'd made peace with death already. Maybe the cancer had stolen his fear along with his future. Or maybe it happened too fast for screaming.
I watched him disappear beneath a pile of grey-green bodies, watched the slot machine's cheerful victory jingle play on and on while purple-black blood splattered across its flashing lights, and I felt—
Nothing. That was the worst part. I felt nothing. Not horror. Not grief. Not even the vague discomfort I'd experienced earlier when passing bodies in the corridors. Just a cold, clinical observation that one more person had died, and it hadn't been someone I cared about, so it didn't really matter.
The realization should have disturbed me. It didn't.
"We're losing ground!" Cyborg's shout snapped my attention back to the broader battle. He was right. The perimeter was shrinking. The civilians, maybe forty left now, the rest having been picked off during the chaos, were pressed so tightly together they could barely breathe. The Titans formed a desperate ring around them, but that ring was getting smaller by the second.
I caught Raven's eye across the carnage. She looked exhausted. We needed to retreat. We needed to run. The heroes could fly, could carry civilians, could maybe, maybe save a handful of people if they abandoned the rest right now.
I opened my mouth to shout the suggestion—to tell Raven that dying here for nothing was stupid, that saving some was better than saving none, that—
The ship suddenly lurched!
The entire cruise liner jerked sideways like a giant hand had slapped it, sending creatures and humans alike stumbling, slot machines toppling, the crystal chandeliers swinging wildly overhead.
Something had hit us hard. No, I heard metal tearing and groaning. Something or someone just drilled right through the ship.
Before I could process what that meant, reality tore open in the center of the room.
A pitch black portal manifested right next to me and I immediately recognized the magic radiating from it. Through it stepped Morgana le Fay. She emerged like a queen entering her throne room—unhurried, imperious, utterly unconcerned with the chaos erupting around her. Her black dress clung to curves that mirrored my own, the fabric seeming to drink in the emergency lighting rather than reflect it. Long dark hair cascaded over her shoulders in perfect waves. Green eyes—my eyes, our eyes—swept across the casino with an expression of aristocratic disdain.
Those eyes found me. Locked onto me with an intensity that made my breath catch. Even across a room full of screaming civilians and dying monsters, even covered in gore and exhaustion, even with a baby phoenix stuffed down my cleavage—she looked at me like I was the only thing in the universe that mattered.
"Amara." My name on her lips was relief and fury and possession all tangled together. "When I discovered you'd taken a pleasure cruise without me, I was prepared to be annoyed." Her gaze swept meaningfully across the carnage—the bodies, the blood, the creatures still pouring through breaches in the walls. "I was not prepared for this."
A creature lunged at her from the side, a rusty trident aimed at her throat.
Morgana didn't even look at it. She raised one hand in a gesture of casual dismissal, and the monster simply... came apart. It just ceased to be a cohesive entity, flesh and bone and scale separating into component pieces that scattered across the floor like a dropped jigsaw puzzle.
"AMARA!" Bellatrix's shriek of delight cut through my relief. My mother was staring at Morgana with an expression of manic glee, her dark eyes darting between us. "You didn't tell me you had a TWIN SISTER!"
Morgana's perfectly composed expression flickered with genuine confusion. "Wha—"
"Were you saving this as a surprise for Mummy?" Bellatrix continued, practically bouncing with excitement even as she cast a Blasting Curse at a creature trying to flank her. The spell hit with noticeably less force than her earlier attacks—she really was running on fumes. "Oh, this is wonderful! Simply wonderful! Two daughters! I have TWO beautiful, powerful daughters!"
I watched Morgana's face cycle through confusion, irritation, and something that might have been horrified amusement as she tried to parse what the clearly unhinged witch was saying. "Amara," Morgana said slowly, her tone dangerous. "Who is this woman, and why is she calling herself your mother? And is that a Dark Phoenix between your breasts?"
"CHIRP!"
Before I could even begin to explain the complicated web of events that had led to this moment, the ship lurched again.
This time, the impact came with sound—a thunderous CRACK that resonated through the hull, followed by the shriek of tearing metal. The wall nearest to the now-deceased slot machine exploded.
Steel and stone and glass erupted inward in a shower of debris, and through the destruction came a blur of red and blue that was moving too fast for most human eyes to track.
Supergirl was here. Kara Zor-El hit the swarm of merpeople like a blonde missile, her flight path carving a tunnel of destruction through their ranks. Bodies flew in every direction, broken by impacts they never saw coming. The sheer kinetic force of her entrance sent shockwaves rippling across the casino floor.
She came to a stop hovering above the chaos, her small red cape billowing behind her, eyes blazing with that faint red glow that promised heat vision for anyone stupid enough to challenge her. Gore splattered her costume—none of it hers.
"I got an emergency call from Nightwing!" she announced. "So I flew here as fast as I could!" Her blue eyes found mine, and something in her expression softened for just a moment before hardening again as a creature tried to jump at her from below. She caught it by the face without looking, crushed its skull like an overripe grape, and tossed the twitching corpse aside. "Looks like I made it just in time!"
Morgana le Fay on my left.
Supergirl above.
We actually had a chance now.
"Well then," I murmured, feeling a grin spread across my face as my fire magic surged back to full strength. The baby phoenix stirred against my chest, letting out a sleepy chirp of contentment as if it could sense the shift in momentum. "Let's turn this slaughter around, shall we?"
XXX
Thanks for reading!!! You can check out more of my stories on my profile.
Do you also want to read chapters ahead of my posts on this site? You can!
You can check me out on "Pat-reon.-com / Starwaves" to support me and read ahead of everyone else!
Right now, this story is on Chapter: 24 over there!