In his "Bostan", Saadi of Shiraz stated an important truth
when he told this miniature tale:
        A man met another, who was handsome, intelligent, and
elegant.  He asked him who he was.  The other said: "I am the Devil."
        "But you cannot be," said the first man, "for the Devil is
evil and ugly."
        "My friend," said Satan, "you have been listening to my
detractors."
         - Idries Shah, "Reflections"
        (quoted in "The Axemaker's Gift"
         by James Burke and Robert Ornstein)


        Raven woke to find herself in an unfamiliar room.
        It was an old-fashioned bedchamber, elegant but dark in decor.
The bedding was of black silk, the furniture of black-varnished wood.
The rug and heavy drapes were a deep, brooding red.
        Raven got carefully out of bed and was surprised to feel no
pain, given that the last thing she remembered was being heavily
slugged.  She was preoccupied enough with that pondering that she
didn't immediately notice the way she was dressed - in a black silk
nightdress that was unlike anything she owned.
        A quick and cautious examination of the room revealed two
doors.  One was locked, and probably led to a hallway; the other
opened into a palatial bathroom in black marble off to one side.  She
went in, quickly determined that redressing her was all her mysterious
captors had done, and washed up.  Emerging, she noted a small wardrobe
and checked it for more suitable clothes.  What she found in it was a
dark, somber outfit that reminded her a bit of a school uniform.
        "You have to be joking," she said softly aloud.
        Still, it was the only thing in here aside from the
nightdress, so she put it on.  As she dressed, she realized with a
mild pang of alarm that her girasol ring, a gift from The Shadow, was
missing.  So, for that matter, were the clothes she'd been wearing
when Etrigan had clobbered her - her normal working clothes, cloak,
garnet clasp, belt, gauntlets, and all.  With the ring gone as well,
she was shorn almost entirely of focus items - only the little jewel
on her Ajna chakra remained.
        Fully outfitted, she stood in front of the wardrobe's
full-length mirror and regarded herself.  In the dark pleated skirt,
deep-violet blouse, and half-caped black blazer, she looked even
younger than she really was, and she felt the lack of a cowl acutely.
In the back of her head, she noted that it was more-than-faintly
ridiculous to feel exposed and vulnerable just because of the clothes
she was wearing - but there it was.
        Raven went to the drapes and pulled them back, revealing a
black wrought-iron French door opening onto a small stone balcony.
The vista beyond confirmed what she had suspected when she awoke.
Wherever she was, it wasn't anywhere in New Avalon.  Nowhere in the
Zeta Cygni Sphere could boast - if that was the word for it - a view
like this.
        To be honest, the view on the ground was nothing too odd.  She
was in a building overlooking what looked like a small square, around
which were arrayed a number of other buildings - the town square of a
small city, perhaps, or a college campus.  The buildings were Gothic
and rambling, of dark carved stone and sporting gargoyles, and the
trees growing along the edges of the square were gnarled as if by
wind.  The whole thing wouldn't have looked too out of place if it
were plopped down in the middle of Claremont, Raven's neighborhood
back in New Avalon.  Hell, her high school had gargoyles.
        What gave the whole thing an air of surreality was the sky.
Even on the strangest day, New Avalon's sky was never blood-red.
        Raven heard the click and clatter of the bedchamber door being
unlocked.  She turned to see a young blonde woman in a black-trimmed
gold uniform standing in the doorway, a bunch of black iron keys in
her hand.  Raven's breath caught momentarily in her throat as she
recognized the woman - slate-grey eyes, scarlet facial markings, and
all - as one she'd seen once before, in a dream she could not now
remember.
        The blonde didn't seem to know her, though, aside from the
fact that she'd obviously expected to find Raven right where she did.
        "You're awake.  Good," she said, her flat tone of voice
indicating that she didn't really think it was good or bad.  "Come
with me, please."
        Raven folded her arms.  "I'm not going anywhere until I get
some answers," she replied.
        "I can't provide any," the blonde replied, as though it wasn't
any particular concern of hers whether Raven ever left the room.  "I
can only take you to the person who can."
        Raven gave her a hard look for a moment, then decided she
wasn't going to get anywhere by being obdurate.
        "All right," she said.  "Let's go."

        The man in black stood at another window, his hands folded
behind his back, looking out at the scarlet sky with a thoughtful look
on his face.
        "You're sure I can't convince you to stay a while?" he asked
in a light, conversational tone.  "The next few days promise to be
most interesting."
        The hulking yellow-skinned figure to whom he spoke sneered,
making its ugly face even uglier.

"Your ambitions do not interest me,
Your foul tricks even less.
I've other things to do and see,
My own plans to address."

        Akio Ohtori turned to the rhyming demon and smiled coolly.
        "You're just as charming as Belial said you'd be," he
replied.  "Very well, then, Etrigan, you may go."
        Etrigan stalked a few steps closer, glaring hard at the
black-clad figure with the glowing coals of his red eyes, and went on
in an even darker snarl,

"My father's debt to you is byegone.
I've played my role, I've done my part.
If e'er again you call me, Trigon,
I promise you, I'll eat your heart."

        Then, with a flash of fire and a whiff of smoke, he was gone.
        And just in time, too.  A moment later the tall, narrow double
doors at the end of the room opened and Nanami Kiryuu appeared between
them.
        "She's ready," Nanami said.
        Akio smiled.
        "Excellent."

               I have a message from another time...

      /*  Rob Dougan  "Clubbed to Death 2"  _Furious Angels_  */

                     Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
                                 and
                          Bacon Comics Group
                               present

                UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT

                          RAVEN: BLOOD TIES
                       "Some Trick of Mischief"

                    Part 3 of a 3-part mini-series

                   scripted by Benjamin D. Hutchins
                 pencils & inks by your visual cortex
                   letters by Benjamin D. Hutchins
                     editor: Benjamin D. Hutchins
                   Bacon Comics chief: Derek Bacon

                (c) 2004 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


                       FRIDAY, JANUARY 8, 2410
                               03:19 AM
                            THE DOCKLANDS
                        NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI

        Tech Sergeant Mark Klayburn was more than slightly nonplussed
to realize that the International Police agent apprehending his task
group was no less a personage than Benjamin "Gryphon" Hutchins, the
Chief of the IPO himself.
        Now, that's just not fair, the Sky Raider thought petulantly.
What's he doing out here at 3:20 on a Friday night - er, Saturday
morning?  Bad enough we have to be on the lookout for Batgirl and that
-Hawk- nut, now the freaking Chief is prowling the streets at night?!
        Klayburn was a smart soldier; he knew when he was outclassed.
He turned and triggered his thrusterpack, figuring to make a quick
escape.
        Gryphon sprang after him, jumping from the street to a stack
of crates to a taller stack of crates, and intercepted Klayburn's
outbound vector.  His sword flashed, and for a split-second, Klayburn
expected to feel the bite of steel and then nothing.  Instead he felt
a faint tug at the straps securing his thrusterpack, a couple of
seconds of baffling freefall, and the heavy, no-nonsense WHOMP of the
street coming up to meet him.
        His protective gear, built to shield him from nastier spills,
served him well.  He scrambled to his feet in time to see his pack,
sailing on without him, spiral wildly twice before plowing explosively
into the side of the old-fashioned brick warehouse across the street.
        Blinking, he felt at his flightsuit and realized that the
straps had all been neatly severed - but that was the only damage he
could find.
        Didn't touch me, he thought.  Didn't even cut my -flightsuit-.
Holy -crap-.
        He spun to see Gryphon turning around as well, his katana
glittering in the yellowish light of the floodlamp over the warehouse
door.
        "Be smart," Gryphon said.  "I'm in a mood."
        Klayburn considered the advice quite seriously, and was on the
verge of taking it when he saw something that changed his mind about
his chances - namely, his squad's heavy backup, a DG-series
battlemover, looking out of the shadows behind the Chief, its pulse
cannon at the ready.
        Then Gryphon did a thing that struck Klayburn as both odd and
unsettling.  He seemed to know that the battlemover was there -
indeed, it would have been hard to miss the sound of its pulse cannon
charging - but all he did was grin slightly.  He didn't even look.
        An instant later, with a swooshing sound and a gust of wind, a
scarlet shape suddenly resolved itself in the space between the Chief
and the battlemover.  As the pulse cannon salvoed, Klayburn realized
that the shape was a blonde-haired woman in a long red coat, standing -
actually, hovering - with her back to the Chief.  She'd put herself
right into the line of fire, and the pulse cannon barrage struck her
full in the chest.
        She didn't even move - just absorbed the barrage, then darted
forward and knocked the battlemover's weapons array off with a single
thunderous punch.
        Klayburn decided he'd rather face the Chief.  Keeping an eye
out for the sword, he lunged, thinking to use his close-quarter
training to go for a disarm and then - 
        Gryphon wasn't there.
        Blinking inside his helmet, Klayburn turned - 
        WHAM
        The Sky Raider was unconscious before he hit the pavement.
        Gryphon stood for a moment in the follow-through position, his
katana raised high above his head, butt end at eye level where it had
just smashed into the side of the Sky Raider's helmet.  As follow-
throughs went, it looked more like a ready position, and indeed he
went to an overhand ready before flowing into a well-practiced sweep-
and-sheathe.
        Turning, he grinned at Paige Guthrie, who had, in those same
four seconds, stripped the battlemover of its limbs, put it on its
back, torn off the forward hatch, and extracted the pilot.  He hung by
the front of his jumpsuit bunched in her red-gloved fist, his flattened 
hands upraised in the universal sign for "please please oh God don't
hurt me."
        Paige returned the grin, relieved the Raider pilot of his web
gear, ziptied him, and dumped him with the others, then went to the
Chief's side.
        She started to say something about a good night's work, but a
yawn interfered before she could get it out.  She covered it with the
back of a hand, then gave him a sheepish look.
        "Past my bedtime," she said, grinning wryly.
        Gryphon chuckled.  "Head on home," he said.  "Thanks for your
help."
        "At 3:30 in the morning?" Paige asked, checking her watch.
"If I go home now, Jubilee will ask me if I was eating crackers."
        Gryphon gave an exaggeratedly weary sigh, which made Paige
laugh.
        "'Night, then," she said, then kissed him on the cheek.  "Be
careful."
        "I'm headed straight home as soon as the cops get here," he
promised.
        "Call me if you need anything."
        "Sure.  See you Monday."
        Paige lingered for a moment, as if unsure whether she should
leave him alone.  Then she smiled, turned, and flew away.
        He watched her go; by the time she was out of sight, lost in
the city's nightglow, the police had arrived to take charge of the
night's catch.
        Gryphon had seen the last of the Sky Raiders packed off to
jail and said goodnight to the last of the cops, and was just turning
to head up to the N station and catch a train out to Crescent Heights
and home, when he saw the dark shape looming in the alley nearby.  For
a moment his hand went to the grip of his sword; then he recognized
the outline, and his wariness was replaced with puzzlement.
        "Etrigan?" he said.  "What are you doing here?"
        The yellow-skinned demon stepped out into the pool of a
streetlamp and replied,

"Forgive me if I seem quite terse;
It's hard to double-cross in verse.
In fact, I think I'll go and cease
For now my earthly stalking;
My hold on Blood's frail form release
So he can do the talking.
Gone, gone now, Etrigan,
And rise again the form of Man!"

        By the time he finished the last line, Etrigan's hulking form
had collapsed like an extinguishing flame into the smaller, slimmer
shape of Jason Blood.
        Gryphon waited patiently for Blood to get his bearings; he
knew how disorienting the transition from one form to the other could
be.  When he saw that Blood had gathered his wits, he said calmly,
        "Jason, I repeat the question."
        Blood gave him a thin smile.  "What am I doing here?  That...
is a long, strange story, old friend, and I could do with a drink."
        Gryphon thought about that for a second, then shrugged.
        "I was just on my way home."

        It was nearly four AM before Blood finished explaining just
what his demonic alter ego had done, by which point Gryphon looked
like he was trying to decide whether to throw the man through a
window.
        Instead, he got up from his chair, went to the wall safe in
the corner of his study, and started dialing the combination while a
tiny red light read his retinal pattern.
        "What are you doing?" Blood asked.
        "Getting ready for a long trip," Gryphon replied.  He opened
the safe to reveal stacks of currency, racked weapons - everything the
action hero on the go might need to get a bunch of things done in a
hurry.
        As he pulled a pistol from the rack and checked it, Gryphon
glanced back over his shoulder and said, "You should too."
        Blood shook his head and replied, "Etrigan can't retrace his
path.  There's no point in calling on him again.  The mechanism that
got him wherever he went was only good for one journey."
        "Then we'll have to take the long way," Gryphon growled.
        "We don't even know where he went.  It wasn't Muspelheim,
though there was a certain resemblance."
        Gryphon shrugged into a shoulder holster rig and shoved the
pistol into it, then started rummaging among the heaps of money.
        "Any trail can be followed," he said.  "I don't know how to
trace a magic portal, no, but I know people who can."
        "Don't be in such a hurry," Blood said.  "Dashing off half-cocked
is just going to buy you trouble.  You need to make a plan and proceed
deliberately."
        "DeLIBerately?!" Gryphon burst out.  "Your pet demon just
handed my apprentice over to a Duke of Hell, Jason.  God only knows
what he could be doing to her right now!"

        "Tea?"
        Raven gave a nonplussed sort of blink.
        Akio shrugged.  "Suit yourself," he said, and poured himself a
cup.  "It's Darjeeling.  Really quite good."
        "What do you want?" Raven asked flatly.
        Akio smiled.  "You're very direct."
        Raven fixed him with a level gaze and replied dryly, "I'm not
chatty with kidnappers."
        Akio had the grace to look chagrined.  "Please.  I've already
apologized for the rather abrupt way you were brought here.  Normally
I'd have sent Touga, but after his little misunderstanding with your
friend Mary, I didn't think it prudent to send him back to that city.
And, just for the record, my instructions to Etrigan did -not- include
hitting you."
        "You still haven't answered my question."
        "It isn't every year a man discovers he has a daughter he
never knew.  Is it too fantastic to suppose that I just wanted to see
you?"
        "Yes."
        Akio surprised her by responding to this flat rebuff with a
merry laugh.
        "You're a hard-headed one," he said, his green eyes twinkling
with mirth.  "Just like Arella."
        Raven raised an eyebrow.
        "Who?"
        Akio looked surprised, then faintly outraged.
        "The monks never told you your own mother's name?" he asked.
        Raven slowly shook her head, interested despite herself.
        "Did they ever tell you why not?" Akio asked.
        Raven hesitated - she didn't want to get into any kind of
discussion with the man, but on the other hand, this was something she
had always wondered about, and who else could possibly tell her?
        Then she decided there couldn't be any harm in it, took a
breath, and said, "They felt it best that I not be reminded."
        Akio shook his head.  "Fools," he said.  "No past, no
heritage, no -name-... it's no wonder you feel so disconnected."
        Raven felt her eyes going wide, reined them sternly in.  Don't
show emotion, she told herself.  Don't let him see how right he is...
        Akio took a sip of his tea, put his teacup down on its saucer,
and leaned forward in his armchair.
        "I can tell you about her, if you like," he said gently.
        Raven forced herself to remain skeptical.  "In return for
what?" she asked.
        Akio smiled.  "Nothing material," he replied.  "Only that you
hear me out on another matter afterward."
        Raven looked thoughtfully at him for a moment, her natural
tendency toward caution warring with a need she hadn't really known
she possessed.
        Just hear him out?
        Slowly, she nodded.
        "All right."

        "What I really wonder about," Gryphon mused as he and Blood
waited for the tech crew to warm up the Stargate, "is why."
        Blood arched an eyebrow.  "Why what?"
        "Well, two whys, actually.  One: Why did Etrigan come looking
for me, then let you tell me what he'd done?"
        "Double-crossing this fellow Trigon, I suppose," Blood
replied.  "Etrigan resents being drawn into the politics of the Pit,
especially given that he's in exile and can derive no infernal
advantage from participating.  He'd have been doubly incensed at being
asked to dance for some neophyte duke because of a debt owed by his
father.  Belial and Etrigan have never gotten along.  And... well,
he'll hate me for saying it, but... in his own strange way, I think
he's a bit sweet on Raven."
        Gryphon gave the occultist a sidelong look and suppressed a
snort.
        "What was the other why?" Blood asked.
        "More of a what, really.  What does this 'Trigon' want with
Raven in the first place?  I know she's a witch, but they must have
plenty of those in Hell."
        "I'm as much in the dark as you on that point, I'm afraid,"
Blood replied.  "Trigon's an unknown quantity.  He's only been a
significant figure in the Pit for a short time, and Etrigan has been
in exile for more than a millennium.  They had never met before.
Etrigan knows nothing about him."
        "How short a time are we talking about here?"
        "I'm not certain, but I gather it's incredibly short, by the
standards of Hell," Blood said.  "Only a matter of a few years...
perhaps even less.  Etrigan notes rather resentfully that he's a
'jumped-up damnedsman', which I take to mean that he's a cursed mortal
soul raised to demonhood by the Burning King.  Very unusual, that."
        As the Stargate began to turn, Gryphon lapsed into deep
thought, pinching the point of his bearded chin between thumb and
curled forefinger as the furrows in his brow grew deeper.
        "A few years... hmm," he murmured, the words almost drowned
out by the sound of the awakening gate.

        As it turned out, Akio didn't just tell Raven about her
mother.  That would, truthfully, only have been half the story.
        Raven knew fragments of her mother's history from things the
monks had let slip and the results of a few attempts to find more
information over the years she'd spent in Azarath.  She'd long
believed that her mother had been a competitor in one of the previous
iterations of the fractured, looping Rose Tournament that had so
warped the face of Cephiro between the death of Prince Dios and the
the elevation of Prince Tenjou - and, indeed, she learned now that
she'd been right.
        But in order to explain how the girl named Arella had gotten
there, Akio had to explain why the Tournament had existed in that
strange and damaged form in the first place, and for that he had to go
back to the beginning - back to the days of Dios and Zagato, to
Emeraude's choice, to Anthy's jealousy.
        It was the same story he'd told Corwin Ravenhair at Christmas,
with one critical difference.  It had failed with Corwin because he
held too strong a belief in his own knowledge of the parties involved,
especially Anthy.  Raven had no such knowledge to fall back on; she'd
spent her time in Midgard scrupulously -avoiding- any situation in
which she might get to know Anthy, or Utena, or anyone else who might
have been able to tell her the truth about the Grand Tournament.
        Without personal knowledge of any of the players to
counterbalance it, Akio's tale of deception and betrayal rang more or
less true to his current audience.  Raven could easily imagine someone
backed into a corner like the one Akio described reacting the way he
claimed he had.  She didn't believe it was a hundred percent true -
what person's life story is, when told by the owner? - but she found
herself inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.
        Except... 
        "Why did you destroy Azarath?" she asked suddenly.
        Akio paused, blinking, his train of thought momentarily
derailed.
        "I didn't," he said.  "Who told you that?"
        "A traveler who passed by not long ago.  He said a survivor, a
novice, told him the Fallen Prince had razed the monastery."
        Akio knew there had to be more to it than that - casual
travelers didn't just pass by Azarath and then happen across Raven in
Midgard later - but he let it go and concentrated instead on the
question asked of him.
        "I've never even been to Azarath.  I wouldn't be so foolish as
to return to Cephiro, not now.  I -did- send Touga and Nanami there a
few months ago, after I learned of your existence, but you weren't
there.  That was the start of the trail that led me to find you in
Midgard."  He frowned thoughtfully.  "Perhaps... "  Then he half-turned
in his chair, picked up a telephone on a side stand, and said into it,
"Touga.  Come here."
        A few moments later, the tall redhead Mary Batson had
described entered the room, looking faintly puzzled.
        "Yes, Lord Akio?"
        "Raven tells me people described as my servants destroyed
Azarath not long ago," Akio said, standing.  "You wouldn't happen to
know anything about that, would you?" he continued, his voice calm and
casual as he crossed the room to face his black-uniformed minion.
        Touga's look of confusion deepened.  "No, Lord Akio, I - "
        "Touga," Akio said, his voice like black silk.  "Don't lie to
me.  Did you and Nanami, failing to find Raven there, take out your
frustrations on the monks?"
        "It wasn't like that," Touga replied, looking indignant.  "We
would have left them in peace, but their master ordered them to kill
us.  He was - "
        "How -dare- you overstep your orders?" Akio demanded, showing
the first real spark Raven had seen from him.  His emerald eyes
flashed with anger as he took a few steps away from Touga, then
rounded on him again.  "I told you to go there and learn what you
could of my daughter, not wipe out Cephiro's most ancient holy order!
There will be consequences for this, Touga."
        "But I - " Touga began, then clammed up when he saw the look
his master shot him.
        Akio paced for a moment in obvious agitation, then turned to
Raven and asked,
        "What should I do with him?"
        Raven blinked.  "Pardon?"
        "Touga.  What punishment should he face for destroying
Azarath?"
        "Why are you asking me?"
        "It was your home," Akio replied, as though it should have
been obvious.  "Not the most loving home you could have wished for, I
know, but your home, all the same."
        Again Raven suppressed her surprise - how did he keep knowing
what she was feeling?  She got slowly to her feet and walked across
the room, then stood looking at the two men for a long moment.
        Akio turned away from his servant, put his hands on Raven's
shoulders, and looked down at her, his eyes intense and bright.
        "I failed you in many ways, Raven, but you are my daughter,
and one of my servants has destroyed the place that was your home.
Consider this a hollow gesture, if you like, but I feel it's one I
must make."
        His eyes bored into hers as he added in a quiet tone charged
with energy, "I leave his fate up to you.  Decide."
        Raven pulled herself away, turned, and walked a few paces
away, using the maneuver to conceal how rattled she was.  This wasn't
going anything like she'd expected an encounter with her father would
go.  She'd often pictured the scene in her mind, once she'd grown old
enough to know, or think she knew, what he was.  In her mental plays
she'd always been cool, tough, and remote, handling him with a faintly
disdainful aplomb.
        She didn't want to warm to him.  She didn't want to like him.
She certainly didn't want to be impressed by him.  And yet... 
        She hesitated for a moment, then turned around and glanced
from Akio to Touga and back again.  A million things raced through her
head.  She couldn't say for certain that she'd ever loved Azarath.
Indeed, when she'd left, she'd done so hating the place, hating the
sanctimonious, cold dismissal she'd received from Master Sheng, hating
the way the other monks wouldn't look at her as the master showed her
the back side of the door.
        But before Sheng's rule, there had been good times.  Not very
jolly ones - it was a monastery - but she had been fond of some of the
monks, and of all those who lived there and were full initiates,
Master Tsung had been as close as she got to a friend.  The old master
had been a kind and gentle man... but Sheng had been a cruel and
vindictive coward.  Raven could easily believe that he would have
ordered an attack on her father's emissaries.  He'd cast her out
partly in blind panic that they would one day find her there, after
all.
        No, Raven wouldn't mourn the death of Master Sheng.  Some of
the others... but then, they didn't have to follow his order.
        She lowered her head, closed her eyes, and murmured almost
inaudibly, "forget it."
        "I'm sorry?" Akio said.
        "I said forget it," Raven repeated, her voice clearer this
time.  "It's done.  Punishing him won't bring Azarath back."
        Akio turned a thin, cold smile to Touga.
        "It seems my daughter is more forgiving than I am," he said.
"You're in luck, Touga.  You may go."
        Touga nodded stiffly, having clearly not understood what had
just transpired, and left the room.
        Raven turned and went to the window, looking out at the
scarlet sky.  Akio waited until Touga had gone, then crossed to her,
hovering just out of intrusion range.
        "Where are we?" Raven asked.
        "That's what I wanted to talk to you about," Akio said.  "But
first, I owe you the rest of your mother's tale."
        Raven blinked, as though she'd forgotten that part altogether.
She turned; Akio gestured her back to her seat, returned to his own,
and finished the story.
        It wasn't a happy one, but then, Raven had known that already.
That her mother had fled to Azarath (with someone's help, people didn't 
just -go- to Azarath, but Raven never had known who showed her the
way), unaware that she was carrying a child, she already knew; also
that the unfortunate woman had died giving birth to that child, who
the monks of Azarath named Raven after that famous bird of ill-omen.
        What Raven hadn't known - couldn't have known - was what had
driven her mother to take that action.
        Arella, Akio explained, had been the front-runner in her
particular version of the Grand Tournament - a strong-willed, tough,
resourceful young woman with some peculiar ideas about the nature of
things, who had gotten caught up in the Tournament by happenstance and
become determined to win it because of an attachment she'd developed
to the Rose Bride, Akio's cruel and manipulative sister Anthy.
        For his part, Akio had tried to dissuade her from
participating in the Tournament, but had been unable to do so.  Seeing
that simply asking her to withdraw was futile, he'd set out instead to
court her - break his sister's hold over her, and thus remove her
reason for competing.  That had worked - after a fashion.
        Once she and Akio had been lovers - faced with the crushing
realization that nothing was what she thought it had been, that the
Rose Bride was using her and lying to her about the true purpose of
the Tournament - Arella had simply -cracked-.  The emotional pressure
of her impossible situation had done what the simple physical danger
of the Tournament could not.  Heartbroken, she renounced her Duelist
status and fled from Ohtori Academy.
        Unable to follow because of the constraints of the Duelists'
Code, Akio had never known what had happened to her, though he had
done as much as anyone in his position could have done to find out.
        "In time," he said, pacing past Raven's chair and back again,
"I moved on.  What else could I do?  But I never forgot.  There were
other Tournaments, other... complications... but I never forgot
Arella.  Her face haunted me at night.  It haunts me still.  That's
why, when I found out I had a child who was born in a far-off land
beyond Shalhara, I knew at once who her mother must have been."
        Turning, he smiled down at Raven with a trace of mist in his
eyes and added, "Had I but seen you, I'd have had no doubt at all.
You're very like her."  He brushed the knuckles of one hand down her
cheek, the touch feather-soft and startlingly unexpected, and added in
a tone not far short of a whisper, "Your face... brings back many
memories."
        There was a long, brittle pause, the moment seeming frozen in
time like a film of ice on an autumn pond.
        Then Akio withdrew to his chair, sat down, and said with an
air of reluctant finality, "And that... is all I know."
        Raven gazed silently at him for a few moments, not certain
what to say.  She felt overwhelmed by all that had been done and said
over the past few hours.  However she'd expected the situation to
unfold upon waking from Etrigan's sucker punch, none of her mental
images had been anything like any of this.
        "... Thank you," she said finally, her voice even more hushed
than usual.
        Akio spread his hands.  "You're her daughter.  You deserve to
know your mother's name."
        Raven recalled herself with an effort from her musings and
asked slowly, "What... did you want to ask me about?"
        Akio shook his head.  "Not tonight," he said.  "This has
been a lot for you to absorb.  Rest now.  We'll talk again tomorrow."
        He called for Nanami, and the blonde conducted Raven back to
that same bedchamber.  She mustered a flash of spirit when Nanami got
out her keys before leaving the room.
        "Am I a prisoner?" Raven asked rhetorically, gesturing to the
keys.
        "Of a sort," Nanami replied matter-of-factly.  "The grounds
can be dangerous, and there are students whose studies shouldn't be
interrupted.  For your safety and their peace, you mustn't leave this
room.  Lord Akio will explain tomorrow."  Then, softening slightly,
she indicated a bell rope next to the door and added, "If you need
anything, ring."
        Seeing that Raven was going to offer no further comment,
Nanami withdrew and locked her in.
        Raven stood looking at the door for a few moments, then went
to the French door and out onto the balcony.  It was a good 40-foot
drop to the courtyard, not a fall she would be eager to try, but it
wasn't as if that would be a big problem - she could -fly-.
        On the other hand, even if she got out of the room, where
would she go?  She had no idea where she -was-.  What lay beyond this
peculiar school campus?  Whose was this angry red sky?
        What did her father want?
        Unconsciously, she put her fingertips to the spot on her face
where he'd touched her.  The place had burned dully for seconds
afterward, or so it had seemed to her.
        Her mind whirling, Raven changed back to the nightdress she'd
awakened in, arranged herself above the bed, and tried to meditate,
but the peace within simply would not come.  She had a hard enough
time just mustering the concentration to levitate, something that was
normally as unconscious as breathing.  After an indeterminate time of
fruitless trying, she gave up and decided to try sleeping instead.
        What's happening to me? she wondered as she closed her eyes.

        Gryphon spent the day in a frustrating search for answers that
preferred to stay hidden.  He went to Tomodachi to consult with the
most powerful arcanists he knew - the three Norns - but even they
couldn't trace Raven's whereabouts, not even with the aid of her
girasol ring, which they found on the floor of her loft in Claremont,
and the presence of a creature who had been wherever she now was.
Trying from the loft and from Belldandy's garden back on Tomodachi,
the responses they got back from their efforts were meaningless, the
mystic equivalent of radio static.
        At day's end, the only fact Gryphon had was that wherever
Raven was, it was a place beyond the Norns' ability to find - a
chilling thought indeed, and a concrete fact but not a helpful one.
        He found himself once again in a situation he was ill-prepared
to deal with, all the more so because it was so similar in some
respects to the situation that had befallen him the previous summer.
A person he cared for had been snatched away, and he could neither
figure out where she was nor begin to conceive of a plan for rescuing
her.  Though in this case he had the agent at hand, he could learn
nothing from that, knew nothing about the overall author of the drama.
He faced dead ends at every turn.
        Gryphon was once again helpless - a feeling he despised.
        Not quite knowing what else to do, he sent Jason Blood back to
New Avalon, then went to Kaitlyn's house.
        As it happened Kate wasn't home - ironically enough, she was
still in New Avalon, as was Utena - but Anthy was, having come back a
day early to make sure the place was ready for reoccupation after
everyone's absence over the Christmas holidays.
        Thus, as it nearly always was, the house at the end of
Wildwood Road was a well-lit and welcoming place.  As he was ushered
inside by Anthy, Gryphon felt the warmth of the place after the cold
outside and realized how tired he was.
        Anthy didn't know him as well as her husband did, but she
could sense that he was in a gloomy mood all the same.  He carried it
on his face the same way his son Corwin did, and Anthy certainly knew
all of -his- looks.
        "Are you all right?" she asked, putting a hand on his
shoulder.
        "No," he replied, and explained as best he could what was
going on.
        "Oh, dear," she mused when he'd finished.  "That doesn't sound
good at all.  What will you do next?"
        "I don't know," Gryphon said, lowering himself into a chair in
the living room.  "I'm... if Bell and Urd couldn't find her... what
chance do I have?  They're -goddesses-.  I'm... just some guy with a
sword."
        "You're tired," Anthy told him, handing him a cup of hot cocoa.
        "I am that," he admitted.  "But I can't... I can't just -stop-.  
She's -out- there somewhere, and... "  He paused, his voice trailing
off, and then looked down into his mug of cocoa and added in a smaller
voice, "I can't believe this is happening again."
        Anthy settled herself in the chair opposite him and nodded
sympathetically.  "You've grown very fond of her in a short time."
        Gryphon shrugged.  "I do that.  Ask Utena," he added with a
rueful chuckle.  "The thing is... I get the feeling this is related to
something in her past, and I don't -know- much about that.  She didn't
tell me and I didn't ask.  Hell, I don't even know where Azarath is."
        Anthy blinked, breathing in sharply.  Gryphon gave her a
puzzled look.
        "You know it?" he asked.
        "I think so," Anthy replied, wide-eyed.  "It almost seems too
fantastic.  Azarath... Azarath is in Cephiro."
        Gryphon leaned forward.  "What?!"
        Anthy nodded.  "It's a mystic enclave in the western mountains,
beyond the deserts of Shalhara."
        "Home to an ancient order of monks?"
        "Yes."
        Gryphon stared hard at her for a moment, then sat back.
        "Well, I'll be damned."
        "I've never heard of a woman ever being accepted in Azarath,
though... unless... "
        "Unless what?"
        "I don't know yet," Anthy replied, her face deeply thoughtful.
Then, standing, she said in a brisker tone, "You're exhausted.  You
should get some sleep.  Come on - I'll make up Kaitlyn's room for you.
In the morning we'll talk about the next step."
        Gryphon gave her a surprised look.  "We?"
        Anthy smiled archly.  "Do you know a third Cephirean witch
I've failed to hear about?"
        Gryphon chuckled.  "No, I can't say I do."

        When Raven woke, she had no way of telling how long she'd been
asleep.  The scarlet sky outside the window was unchanged.  She wondered 
if this place even -had- day and night.
        Without any clear idea of what to do next, she rose, washed,
and dressed.  She had the distinct impression that she'd slept poorly,
but nothing in her memory that she could point to as a reason why -
not that just being here wasn't unsettling enough to disrupt a person's 
sleep.
        Having dressed and spent a bit of time trying unsuccessfully
to fathom the blood-red sky, Raven turned toward the the door, only to
have it click, clatter, and open before she could make a move toward
the bell pull.

        Akio was waiting in his high-ceilinged study, as before.  Today 
he had not a cup of tea but a tall, narrow glass of wine.
        "Sleep well?" he asked.
        "Not very," Raven replied.
        Akio nodded regretfully.  "Many new students have a hard time
settling in.  It's the sky.  I hope to be able to do something about
that soon."
        Raven raised an eyebrow.  "Do something about it?"
        Akio nodded.  "The time's come to tell you where you are,
Raven.  It's part and parcel of the thing I need to explain.  You did
promise you'd hear me out."
        Raven nodded.  "I did."
        Akio smiled.  "Excellent.  Sit, then, and I'll tell you all
about it."
        Once they were situated, back in the armchairs facing each
other across the little table, Akio took a sip of his wine, put his
glass down, leaned back, and said,
        "What I need from you is help establishing my little realm
here."
        Raven gave him a deeply skeptical look.  "You want -me- to
help you consolidate your position in Hell."
        Akio gave another unexpected merry laugh.  "Oh, no, no, my
dear girl.  We're not in Hell.  I'm not so foolish as to try to build
a kingdom for myself in Lord Surtur's own lands."
        "Then what -are- you doing?"
        Akio's smile broadened.  "Isn't it obvious?  Cephiro belongs to
my sister and her thralls, and Muspelheim's filth and politics aren't
to my liking... so I'm building my own world."
        While Raven tried to digest -that- little revelation, Akio
sprang up and strode to the enormous window at the back of the room.
She got up and followed, and as she arrived, he threw out an arm in a
sweeping gesture and said proudly,
        "This is Oriphos, the Eleventh World.  As Cephiro exists in
the gap between the Heavens and Earth, so Oriphos occupies the space
between Earth and the Hells."
        "... Ambitious," Raven said after a moment's dumbfounded
pause.  It was a breathtakingly colossal understatement - she had
never heard of -anyone- attempting to create an entire -world- before
- but what else could she say?
        "A little too ambitious, in fact - which is where you come
in," Akio said with a touch of chagrin.  "I need your help to complete
a ritual that will fully fix this world and establish its autonomy
from the rest of Creation.  My power alone isn't quite up to the
task."
        Raven gave him a hard look.  "Why me?"
        "Who else could I ask?" Akio replied.  "My sister would as
soon have one of her minions kill me, and the sons of Surtur would see
my little project as a betrayal.  Touga and Nanami have their talents,
but they aren't sorcerers.  They don't have the blood for it - but you
do.  You're my daughter.  Together we could set the seal on Oriphos's
creation."
        "And then what?"
        Akio shrugged slightly.  "Then nothing," he said.  "This is my
retreat from damnation.  The only reason I accepted Surtur's offer of
resurrection as one of his legions was because I saw in it a path to
power.  The only reason I played the game of infernal politics to gain
my current position was to achieve that power.  And the only use I have
for that power is making my escape from Surtur's dominion.  This," he
added, gesturing to the view beyond the window again, "is my escape."
        Seeing that she still didn't quite believe him, he turned and
put his hands on her shoulders, looking her in the eye.
        "Raven," he said, "you must believe this.  Whatever you think
of me - and I've made mistakes, I admitted as much to you when we last
spoke - I only want to be left in peace.  Please... help me complete
my sanctuary here so that I can -find- that peace.  And afterward... "
He paused, collecting himself, as if what came next was something he
didn't really want to say.  "... you never have to see me again."
        Raven looked back at him for as long as she could bear to,
then turned her face away from his.  She felt strange, stranger than
she could ever remember feeling.  Too fast, it was all happening too
fast, her thoughts and feelings normally so carefully controlled were
unraveling into a jumbled tangled mess.  Some of the loose feelings
she couldn't even -name-, let alone put back in their boxes and up on
their shelves.
        She needed to go someplace quiet and familiar - her loft, her
shop, the Chief's office, Batcave jr. - sit down for a long minute and
just shut everything down, stop thinking, stop feeling, let everything
fall back where it belonged.  She needed to talk to someone she
trusted - Cassie, Kori, Gryphon, hell, even Gar - and get an outside
perspective on what was happening to her.
        She couldn't do any of those things.  She couldn't even think
of them.  Faced with such profound inner turmoil, all she had left was
instinct... and instinct told her to believe in her father.
        "All right," she said.
        Akio's smile was the broad, bright, guileless smile of a man 
who's just achieved a great dream.  There were tears in his eyes as he
took her in his arms for the first time.
        "Thank you," he said.  "You don't know what this means to me."
        Raven stood frozen for a moment, paralyzed by the crescendo of
noise in her head that was caused by his embrace; then, hesitantly,
slowly, she raised her arms and hugged him back.
        "What do I have to do?" she asked when the moment was over.
        He smiled.  "Time enough for that tomorrow," he said.  "For
today, let me show you around the place you'll be helping to save."
        He offered his arm.  Raven hesitated for just a moment, then
took it, and with a broad smile Akio showed her out of the room.
        For a moment, the study was silent; then Touga Kiryuu stepped
out of the shadows at the far corner and leaned, arms folded, against
the wall.  A moment later, his sister Nanami entered the room through
the double doors, having just seen Akio and Raven leave the building.
        "So that's it, then," she said, sounding casual.  "She went
for it."
        "Seems so," Touga replied with a smirk.  "Now he'll set the
hook, and tomorrow he'll take her to the End of the World."
        Nanami shrugged as if the matter were of little consequence to
her.  "Probably."
        Touga grinned lazily.  "It's a very great privilege, don't you
think, to watch such a master at work?" he asked.
        "You disgust me, Touga," Nanami replied.
        "Perhaps I do, my darling sister, but I'm all you've got."
        Nanami shot him a dagger look, then turned and left the room.
She went to her own bedchamber in the south wing, locked herself in,
and then opened the chest at the foot of her bed.
        In the bottom of the chest, under folded uniforms and things,
was another, smaller box, this one locked and heavily warded.  Nanami
opened it and took out a small golden object - an amulet about the
size of the palm of her slender hand, oval and golden, flat on the
back with a hemispherical bulge on the front.
        She'd found it amid the rubble of Azarath after Touga and Akio
had finished razing the place and slaughtering the monks.  Before they
had destroyed the abbot's office, it had been on his desk.  Touga had
picked it up, fiddled with it for a moment, dismissed it as a
paperweight, and then, seeing Nanami's interest in it, offered it to
her as a gift.  She'd had to pay unpleasantly for it - that was
generally the way of her brother's gifts - but she'd had a powerful
inkling that it was in some way greatly significant, so she'd paid.
        Now, feeling it cold and inert in her hand, she hoped she'd
made the right decision.
        Down to Plan C, she thought to herself.  I hope this trinket's
good for something.

        Gryphon didn't expect to sleep well, and indeed he didn't.
        He also didn't expect what sleep he got to be of much use to
him, and in this, at least, he was mistaken.
        Since some time before he encountered Raven on Ishiyama, he'd
occasionally had strange dreams featuring her.  Some of them were
meaningless, mental tone poems of light and shadow, color and shape.
Some were strange in ways that were common in dreams.  A few were
disturbing - violent and weird, full of symbolism unmistakable as such
but beyond his comprehension.
        The dream he had now was one of those, a dream of mortal
combat on a strange black disk of stone suspended in an endless
blood-red sky.  Gryphon remembered fragments of these dreams after
waking, and some of them he rather liked.  This wasn't one of them.
He'd never been a big fan of dreams in which he died.
        There didn't seem to be any way around it, though.  The dark
and indistinct figure he was fighting always put up a good fight, and
on the occasions when Gryphon gained the upper hand, the weirdly
garbed, blank-eyed Raven who observed - indeed, seemed strangely to
preside over - these battles always intervened.
        This was one of the things that made him a bit reluctant to
take Raven in when she'd appeared to him on Ishiyama.  Certainly it
could be argued that taking as an apprentice someone who repeatedly
betrayed him in dreams wasn't a smart thing to do; but, as he'd told
her at the time, he wasn't smart.
        Now he did what the dream obviously expected him to do, if
only because the alternative was just to get speared right away,
something Gryphon pretty much always tried to avoid.  He fought - 
fought hard - gained the upper hand... and died.
        That was where this iteration got strange.  Customarily, it
ended there, with the dark figure's last thrust of his black iron
sword wrenching Gryphon awake with a gasping exhalation and a
momentary whispering echo of pain in his chest.
        This time, the blow seemed almost to knock his point of view
out of his body, as it were.  He watched himself crumple to his knees
and fall forward onto the black stone to lie inert in a growing pool
of scarlet.  He watched the dark figure of his adversary cross to the
glassy-eyed Raven, smile at her, cup her chin in one of his hands, and
drive his sword into her chest in turn.
        Things got even stranger then, for though she stiffened and
clawed at her attacker's arm in the manner Gryphon would've expected
of someone just impaled through the chest, the sword didn't emerge
from her back.  From the place where it sliced through her strange
dress and into her body came not blood, but a crackling leakage of
white-edged black light.
        Raven's head tipped back, the same black light shining from
her eyes.  When her mouth opened in a silent, anguished scream, it
shone from there as well.  Grinning broadly, one hand still on the
sword's iron grip, her black-clad assailant bent to kiss her.
        Before the black light exploded and wiped away the world,
Gryphon had just enough time to notice that Raven's shadow, faint and
indistinct in the dull red light of the sky, wasn't Raven at all.  The
bell shape of the dress was the same, but - 
        Gryphon was halfway out of bed, his katana snatched from its
scabbard hanging on the bedpost and raised in a ready position, before
he was even aware that he was awake.
        He stood there for a second next to the bed, breathing hard,
scanning the dim confines of the room for danger, but of course there
was none.  It was Kaitlyn's bedroom.  The only danger here was that he
might accidentally find a good book.
        Shaking his head, he put his sword away, and was just about to
consider going back to bed when the door opened.  Gryphon pivoted, his
hand reaching toward the hanging weapons again, but the figure
standing in the doorway was Anthy.  Her nightgown was rumpled and her
hair disarrayed, and even in the low light he could see that she had
an oddly intense look in her eyes.  He'd never seen her in any
condition other than "serenely unruffled," so it was a bit of a shock.
        "What?" he said.
        "I know what's happening," she said.
        Gryphon gave her a confused look.  "What?"
        "I know," Anthy replied.  "Who Raven is, who's taken her, what
he wants with her.  Everything."
        "How do - "
        Anthy put a hand on his arm and looked straight into his eyes.
        "I saw your dream," she said.
        "And it made sense?" Gryphon asked, raising his eyebrows.
"Sure as hell didn't to -me-."
        "Oh, yes.  Perfect sense," Anthy said, nodding gravely.
"Something terrible is happening.  Raven's become the hub of a huge
and sinister machine... and its architect is my brother."
        Gryphon's eyes went wide.  "Your brother's dead," he said.
"Utena killed him."
        Anthy gave a sad, dark smile.  "Well, actually, -I- killed
him... but his ingenuity is as great as it is twisted."
        She explained to him, briefly but completely, Corwin's
discovery over Christmas - how Akio had been raised by Surtur himself
to take a place among the nobility of Muspelheim, and how he had
climbed from there to the position of duke in a meteorically short
time, apparently positioning himself to take a shot at revenge on his
sister and her loved ones.
        Gryphon listened to the recitation, then stood silent with a
thoughtful look for a few moments.
        "Jason -said- the one Etrigan was working for had only been a
noble for a short time... but I thought it fit -too- neatly, and
besides, the name was wrong."
        Anthy nodded again.  "No doubt he's known by another name in
Surtur's court.  Probably several, in fact.  Demons guard their Names
jealously."
        Gryphon looked as if something had just occurred to him.  "Wait.
This happened over Christmas?  So that's why... "  He trailed off, then 
asked, "Why didn't any of you tell me?"
        "None of us likes to ask others to solve our problems for us.
If I had ever met Raven... I would have recognized her, and I would
have warned you.  As it was... "
        "As it was," Gryphon cut in, his voice and face showing traces
of the reflexive anger that comes from hurt and worry, "I still
deserved to know if someone was gunning for you three."
        "Two of us are Utena and Corwin," Anthy replied mildly.
"Keeping you apprised of all their mortal enemies would require daily
reports."
        Gryphon couldn't help it; he had to laugh at that.  "You have
a point."  Then, pulling himself back to the topic at hand, he asked,
"Where is she?"
        Anthy shook her head sadly.  "That I still can't say," she
said.  "It's the one answer your dream didn't hold."
        Gryphon turned, fists clenching, and made a frustrated
snarling noise.  "Then we're right back where we started," he said
angrily.  "Without a - "
        Then he stopped, as abruptly as if someone had just shut a
door in his face.  First he looked surprised; then his face took on a
look of faint wonder.
        "... dreams," he murmured.  "Dreams... holding -answers-."
        Seized by a sudden intensity, he turned to face Anthy again,
his expression hard to read.
        "What?" she asked.
        Gryphon cracked an ironic little smile, held out a hand, and
replied, "I need you to come sleep with me."

        It was Raven who introduced Gryphon to the dreamlands, showing
him how to take control of his dreaming self and find the stairway
that led down from the wholly illusory world of everyday dreaming to
the edge of the true land of dreams.  Master Tsung, the kind old
master of Azarath for most of Raven's life, had shown her the trick
and conducted her on her first tours of the fantastic otherworld that
lay below, and she had done the same in turn for Gryphon.
        Anthy, though a witch of considerable experience, had never
been there, and so, as he had done with Raven, she held Gryphon's arm
as they descended the seventy steps to the cavern of flame.  She
looked slightly different in dreaming than she did in waking life.
For one thing, she was wearing a scarlet gown very similar in style to
the dark violet one Raven had worn in the strange and violent dream.
For another, she showed no sign of her waking body's six-month
pregnancy - for her child was elsewhere, dreaming her own private
dreams, as we all do before being thrust rudely into the waking world
at birth.
        In the cavern of flame they paused briefly so Gryphon could
introduce Anthy to Nasht and Kaman-Thah, the two bearded priests who
greet all travelers to the dreamlands.  Then, short of time, they
pressed on down the seven hundred steps to the Gate of Deeper Slumber,
which opens onto a mystic forest known simply as the Enchanted Wood.
        Anthy was struck at once by the Gate's resemblance to the door
leading into the Secret Forest on the campus of Tenjou Academy, and
further by the Enchanted Wood's resemblance to the forest itself.  At
first she thought this was very odd, but then she realized that it
wasn't, really.  Cephiro's existence fills a gap in the universe
between the world of men and the world of gods, and its fabric is
malleable to a sufficiently strong will.  That some of its ancient
structures should mirror those found in the world of Midgard's dreams
really wasn't so strange after all.
        A few hundred yards into the wood, they came upon a tree with
a great hole in its trunk, a remnant of some long-lost branch.  Gryphon 
paused here, delved into his pockets, came up with a pen and a piece of 
paper, and jotted a short note, then tucked it into the hole.  To
Anthy's questioning look he only smiled grimly, then led the way deeper
into the wood.
        It was night, and the moonlight penetrated the dense canopy of
the oaks and ashes only spottily, but Gryphon seemed to know just
where he was going, and Anthy didn't mind the dark.  They proceeded in
silence along an almost imperceptible path.
        Anthy was just about to ask where they were going when another
figure appeared from the trees in the path ahead of them - a man in a
long coat and a fedora hat.  As they drew nearer to him, Anthy at
first thought that he wasn't human - that his face had an odd snout
and strange, staring, glassy eyes - until she realized that he was
just wearing an old-fashioned gas mask.
        "Wes," Gryphon said.  It was the first time he'd spoken since
they'd come down the seven hundred steps, and Anthy was mildly surprised
that he sounded normal.  She'd been half-expecting voices to have an
otherworldly hollowness in a place like this.
        The other man's did, but that was mostly because of the mask
he was wearing.
        "Benjamin," he replied.  "I got your message."
        "Can you help me?"
        "Not with this, I'm afraid," said the masked man Gryphon had
addressed as Wes.  "This is a situation well beyond my modest power
here... but I know someone who can.  Do you know the way to Ulthar?"
        "Yes... Raven showed me."
        "Then she may yet have saved herself," Wes said with a note of
satisfaction.  "Go there and ask the cats of a man named Carter.  If
-anyone- can help you, he can."
        Gryphon tilted his head curiously.  "The cats?"
        "Oh, yes," the masked man said, and Anthy could picture the
fond smile on his face from the tone of his voice.  "Randolph is a
great friend of cats."
        Gryphon nodded.  "Thanks, Wes."
        "I'm only sorry I can't do more.  Good luck."
        With that, Wes vanished back into the wood, leaving Gryphon
and Anthy alone again.
        "Well," he said after a moment's thought, "let's go."

        Akio was true to his word.  He spent the day showing Raven all
around his little kingdom - from the campus of Ohtori Academy, to the
nameless little town around it, to the seacoast, to the mountains in
the west.  As she watched the strange countryside roll by under the
scarlet sky outside Akio's big black car, Raven wondered idly who the
people she saw in the streets were, and who the students of the
Academy.  Were they new-minted like the realm in which they lived, or
had Akio found somewhere people willing to come to this place and help
give it more of a semblance of reality?
        She didn't give it much thought, though.  What little capacity
for coherent thought she had left was given over almost entirely to
puzzling over the situation in which she found herself.  She was in a
surreal and nascent world, one carved out of the nothingness between
layers of Creation by the will of one man.  She was being driven
around that world in a black Thunderbird by that man, a man who just
happened to be both a Duke of Hell and her father.
        Except... he wasn't acting like her father.  She supposed she
really couldn't blame him for that, since until very recently he
hadn't been aware he had a daughter, but all the same, it was a bit
unnerving.  The way he lounged behind the wheel, steering with one
hand, gesturing with the other, talking about this and that, and
the way he looked at her - especially the way he looked at her - he
was more like a man courting a potential lover.
        And the strangest thing was, Raven didn't think she minded
that idea.  She was vaguely aware that she probably -ought- to,
although the exact reasons for it weren't coming to mind right at the
moment... but the thought was vague and the reality nonexistent.
There was a curious feeling of... of -inevitability- about the whole
thing, as if they were just playing parts, as if everything were
scripted and the ending never in doubt.  Eventually he would make his
move, and she... would... 
        ... would... 
        Raven shook her head, trying in vain to drive the images from
her head.  That wasn't - he wouldn't - she couldn't - 
        "Is something wrong?" he asked solicitously.
        She shook her head again, not fitfully but negatively now.
"No," she said, too hurriedly.  "Nothing.  I was just... thinking."
        Akio smiled lazily and said nothing.  He knew full well what
was happening to her; he'd seen it, after all, again and again, times
without counting.  The end was always the same.  She'd struggle with
herself, her sensibilities grappling with her instincts, and once she
reached that precarious point where everything was balanced on the
razor edge of choice, he'd give her a gentle little nudge and she
would fall straight into his hands.
        It always happened that way.  Even with the Rose Knight it had
happened that way, though breaking down her resistance had been the
greatest uphill battle of his career.  That had taken -months- of
careful, steady, sure-handed work.
        He didn't have months now, but Raven wasn't as hardened as
Utena had been.  Utena had been a proud young woman, aware of her own
beauty and the strength it gave her, secure in her powers of choice.
She was naive, yes, and that was eventually her undoing, but her
romantic nature had given her a self-assurance in matters of love that
was hard to undermine.
        Raven had no such foundation.  Raised by monks, accustomed to
shadowed anonymity, she had no real idea of what passion was supposed to 
be like, nor even any particular belief that it existed for her.  Who
he was might give her a bit of trouble - indeed, was the primary thing
giving her pause right now - but she had none of the pride, none of the
assurance that had made Utena's dignity such a high wall to scale.
        Akio turned a corner, glanced at Raven's futilely pensive
expression, and smiled again.  A dusky little witch with a face like a
brooding angel - it'd be like having Arella -and- Anthy again, and at
the end of the sport stood the door to enough power to cement his
revenge.
        "Why did you kill me?"
        Akio blinked.
        "... I'm sorry?"
        "I had a dream," Raven said slowly.  "You were there... fighting 
against another man I know.  You killed him... and then, when you were
done, you killed me, too."  She turned to give him a searching look.
"Why would you do that?"
        "I... I don't know," Akio replied, frowning thoughtfully.
"The meanings of dreams are often shrouded in metaphor... "  He
trailed off, gazing into the middle distance as his hands drove the
car more or less by themselves.  Then he asked, "This other man - who
is he?"
        "A friend back in Midgard," Raven replied.
        "A... special friend?" Akio asked gently.
        Raven considered the question - she knew what he meant, and
the implication brought another strange feeling to the small legion of
them warring in her heart.
        "... Of a sort," she said finally.
        "Is he the kind of man who would understand my situation?
Would he approve of your helping me?"
        "No."
        "Well, there you are, then," Akio said, sounding satisfied.
"Your yearning to know me battling against his forbidding influence."
        "But why would you kill me?" she asked again.
        "How did I kill you?" he wondered.
        "You ran me through with your sword."
        Akio looked enlightened.  "Ah.  Well, I don't wish to seem
indelicate, but... "  He made a sorry-but-it's-true kind of shrug and
went on, "The sword does represent at least one very common metaphor
in dreams."
        Raven looked at him as if not taking his meaning for a moment,
then flushed and looked away.
        "I'm sorry," he said.  "I've made you uncomfortable.  That
wasn't my intention.  It's just... "  He looked lost for words for a
moment, then switched hands on the wheel so that his right hand was
free to gently cover Raven's left.
        "You look so much like Arella... " he said, his voice quiet.
        She turned to give him a surprised look, saw the shame and
contrition on his face, and felt a little pang of guilt that her
reaction had made him feel that way.  She tried to give him a smile,
so that he would know it was all right, but it didn't quite feel right
on her face.  Smiles rarely did.
        He seemed to understand anyway, and the small, sad smile he
gave her in return had some gratitude in it.
        They drove in silence to the top of the mountain overlooking
Ohtori Academy, so that he could show her what the campus looked like
from high above.  It turned out Oriphos did have day and night, though
no sun was visible; as they stood looking down at the campus, the red
sky began slowly but noticeably to darken, and lights started shining
in the windows of the school buildings.
        The view, allowing for the eerie, lowering crimson sky, was
spectacular.  Standing at the edge of the high, sheer crag looking
down at it, Raven - who had no fear of heights among the tallest
towers of Avalon - felt faintly dizzy.
        Akio seemed to sense it and moved a little nearer, putting an
arm over her slim shoulders.  She accepted the support, leaning
slightly against the warmth and solidity of him.  It gave her another
feeling to add to the mishmash of uncontrolled sensations racing
through her - an odd sense of security that she had scarcely ever felt
in her life.
        She turned her head to look up at him, and he surprised her by
leaning down and gently kissing her.
        It wasn't her first kiss, but not by much.  It lasted for only
a few seconds, but that was enough to set her already-unstable head
spinning and her heart thumping heavily in her chest.  She was both
relieved and disappointed when he released her and said softly,
        "It's getting late.  We should go back to the Academy.
Tomorrow will be a very busy day."

        How long it took them to reach Ulthar Anthy couldn't say, for
time is a peculiarly fluid thing in dreams.  Looking back on the
distance it seemed like they'd covered, she would have said there was
no way they could have completed a journey like that in less than
several days, but the sun had only risen and not gone down again in
the time since they'd encountered the masked man called Wes in the
Enchanted Forest.
        Ulthar was a grand and ancient city, like something out of an
old picture book, but it was welcoming and pleasant, and it had more
cats in it than Anthy had ever seen in one place before.  They weren't
mangy strays, either, but every one sleek and smug; clearly, Ulthar
was a place in which cats were valued very highly.
        Gryphon, feeling faintly silly, asked one of the cats where he
might find a man named Randolph Carter.  To his moderate surprise, the
cat gave him a long and thoughtful look, then turned, trotted a few
paces away, and turned back with an expression that clearly said, "Are
you coming or what?"
        Night was at last coming on as the cat led the dreamers to a
cottage on the city's outskirts, not far from the river Skai.  The cat
led them into a pleasant, firelit sitting room of a kind that wouldn't
have looked out of place in twentieth-century New England - a place
startlingly familiar to Gryphon, whose roots were in that time and
place, though he had never been there before.
        In an armchair before that fire was a youthful-looking man in
old-fashioned tweeds, to whom the cat conducted them like a chamberlain
presenting guests to a person of great importance.  He rose, thanked
the cat cordially for his services, then turned to his guests with a
smile.
        "Mr. Hutchins," he said, and then bowed deeply to Anthy and
added, "Lady Anthy.  Welcome.  My name is Randolph Carter."
        "I apologize for barging in on you like this," Gryphon said,
"but I have a problem, and a friend of mine told me you might be able
to help."
        Carter nodded.  "You were directed here by one of my most able
and trusted agents," he said.  "I'll do everything I can for you."
        Anthy gave the two men a curious look.  "The man Benjamin
called 'Wes'?"
        Carter smiled.  "His name is Wesley Dodds, and he's an old,
old confidante of mine - a friend from the waking world, and those are
rare enough nowadays, for I haven't walked in that world since this
man's grandfather - " (he gestured to Gryphon) " - was but two years
old."
        Gryphon outlined briefly what was going on - it didn't take
much, since Carter seemed to know most of the background information
already - and finished with a request that fell just short of a plea
for help.
        Carter thought for a few moments, then said,
        "As it happens, I think I know where your friend's been taken.
For months now I've heard whispers of a new kingdom beyond the
impassable mountains of Leng, one which began as a dream and is now
being carved out of the dreamlands and made real."
        Anthy's eyebrows went up.  "Has that ever happened before?"
        "Only once," Carter told her.  "It's a bold move.  Very few
beings possess the imagination, the mastery of lore, or the will to
attempt such a feat.  In any case, I would guess that your friend is
there.  The rumors say the place's name is Oriphos, and that its ruler
is a dark prince with a nasty sense of humor who doesn't welcome
trespassers."
        Gryphon gave a grim smile at that.  "He certainly won't
welcome me.  Can you tell me how I might get to a place like that?"
        "Not easily," Carter told him, "but there is a way.  Oriphos
is a new realm, in the process of being made real.  Its creation is
not yet complete, though, which means that it's still tenuously
connected to the land of dreams... and that's the gap in its defenses.
If all other means of entry are blocked - and I would assume that they
are - a sufficiently bold person could cross into it from the
dreamlands."
        "How can a dreamer cross back into reality without his body?"
Gryphon asked.
        "Oh, he can't - so you'll have to take it with you."
        Gryphon looked puzzled.  "How does a waking person enter the
dreamlands?"
        Carter smiled and glanced at Anthy, who returned the smile and
nodded.
        "It's all a question of going through the right door," he said.

        Upon returning to the Academy, Akio conducted Raven to her
room himself this time.  Having shown her inside, he paused in the
doorway, put his hands on her shoulders, and looked down at her as if
searching for words.
        "Raven... " he said after a moment.  "I just want you to
know... how grateful I am that you're doing this for me.  You... the
fact that you believe in me is the most wonderful thing that's
happened to me in a long time.  I feel lucky just to know you."
        She looked back at him, at a loss for words.  For a long time,
they just stood looking at each other.  Slowly, slowly, they moved
closer... 
        ... and then he kissed her again.  Hesitantly at first, and
then, as she didn't resist, more firmly, more urgently.
        Again that strange sense of inevitability stole over Raven.
She felt herself responding, awakening to the sensations, wanting more,
yet on some level not wanting to want more (if that made any sense,
which, at that moment, it didn't to her).  The dissenting voice was
weak, and grew weaker as Akio's embrace tightened, his kiss became 
more insistent.
        Past and future, already garbled concepts for her in this
strange place, vanished altogether, and there was just the moment: the
heat, the intensity, the richness of sensation - the subtle scents of
roses and candle smoke, the softness of the silk bedding as he eased
her down, the warmth of his hands as he ran them down her flanks -
        "stop," she said, almost inaudibly.
        "What?" he asked distractedly.
        "Stop," Raven said, her voice only slightly louder.
        "Why?" Akio asked, kissing her again.
        She got a hand between them and pushed him back.
        "You're... my -father-," she said.
        Akio smiled, his green eyes glinting, leaned down, and
whispered in her ear, "What does that matter to people like us, in a
place like this?"
        He moved to kiss her again; she turned her face away so that
he ended up kissing the side of her neck instead.  Even now the touch
sent a hot shudder through her, a surge of feeling comprised of equal
parts desire and shame.  She put her hand on his shoulder and pushed
him away again, though it cost almost all her remaining strength to do
it.  With that breathing space gained, she turned her face back up,
looked him in the eye, and - after a last internal struggle - spoke a
single syllable:
        "No."
        He blinked down at her, the word seeming to snap him out of
his own reverie.  The expression that spread over his face next was
almost the look of a man suddenly realizing where he is.  He backed
abruptly away, dragging a hand down his face, and when he opened his
eyes again they were full of apology.
        "I'm so sorry," he said.  "You're right, of course, I - "  He
stopped.  I what?  After a short search, all he could come up with was
to bow his head and say again, "I'm sorry."
        Seeing him so stricken, Raven almost went to comfort him - but
if she did that, if she touched him again, she knew everything would
start all over, and she wouldn't have the strength to stop it a second
time.
        He sat there for a moment more, composing himself.  Then he
rose, went to the door, turned, and said, "If... if you no longer want
to help me... I understand."
        Raven shook her head.  "I said I would; I will.  I just... "
She trailed off, not certain how to explain to him what she was
feeling.  Hell, it wasn't like she could explain it to herself.
        "I know," Akio said.  "I shouldn't have - I couldn't help
myself.  Let's... just try to forget that this happened."  Then, with
that decision made, he brightened slightly and bowed to her.  "Good
night, Raven.  Tomorrow... tomorrow we'll do great things."
        Raven sat and searched his face with her eyes, trying to come
up with something, anything, to make the moment less... less awkward,
less -disjointed-... but she could come up with nothing.
        Akio seemed to understand anyway; he smiled a bit sadly, a bit
wistfully, and shut the door.
        Raven gazed at the closed door for a moment, then turned,
flopped down on her back, and stared up at the ceiling.
        Was that right? she wondered.  If it was, why doesn't it feel
right?  Why do I feel as if I've thrown away a gift without even
opening it to see what's inside?  What just -happened-?  -Why-?
Metrion!  What's happening to me?!
        The confusion, the conflict, and the uncertainty only grew
worse the more she tried to make sense of them.  Eventually,
overwhelmed by the tangle of sensations, she turned on her side,
curled into a ball and, weeping bitterly, dropped off into a fretful,
miserable sleep.

        Now that he was actually on the dueling platform high in the
clouds above the campus of Tenjou Academy, Gryphon instantly realized
why the cruel disk of black stone in the scarlet sky of his dream had
seemed horribly familiar.
        Here, though, the sky was blue and lovely, and the stone of
the arch and crenelations a pure and shining white... and off to the
side, at the end of a short catwalk over the yawning emptiness of the
sky, stood the door of which Randolph Carter had spoken.
        He and Anthy had hurried to Cephiro as soon as they returned
to the waking world from the churchyard near Carter's cottage in
Ulthar.  Now they stood before the Rose Gate, she garbed as
ceremoniously as possible in her present condition, he taking stock of
what he was to take with him on his expedition into the dreamlands.
        He was leaving behind many things.  The gun which he'd taken
from his safe before setting off with Jason Blood, for example, was
staying.  He knew enough about his adversary to know that it would be
of no use to him.  He wore simple, sturdy clothes - a blue Tactical
Division sweater with the gold Star of Avalon on the front, cargo
pants, his best traveling boots, a black trenchcoat - and carried his
dai-sho, the katana Ryuu-no-tsume and the wakizashi Ryuu-no-ha.
        On his left hand he wore the silver and rose-pink signet of
the Order of the Rose, which had gained him admittance to this
platform in the first place.  Around his neck he wore Raven's girasol
ring, which was far too small for any of his fingers, on the same
chain as the runic pendant Skuld had given him before the -last- time
he'd faced the End of the World.
        Aside from that... nothing.  Food would be of no use in the
dreamlands; nor would a compass; nor would a map... and once he was
through to Oriphos, he would be too busy to eat and too near Raven to
need navigational aids.
        Assuming, of course, that he wasn't already too late.
        Anthy finished her preparations at the Rose Gate, then turned
to Gryphon and said,
        "Are you ready?"
        "Ready as I'll ever be," he replied.
        She beckoned him onto the catwalk leading to the Gate.  When
he stopped before her, she raised her hands and placed them on the
sides of his face, staring into his eyes.  A strange look came into
hers - the look not of his daughter-in-law and friend, but of the
witch Anthy Tenjou, High Priestess of Cephiro and Truthsayer to the
Prince and the Pillar.
        "Midgard-Knight," she said to him (her voice just as strange
as her gaze).  "The path ahead of you is lined with dangers and leads
to a shard of oblivion made real by a demon's hatred.  Only through
boldness and cunning will you survive.  Only by daring an abyss never
crossed by waking man will you triumph.  Do you dare?"
        Gryphon looked straight back at her.
        "I dare," he said, his voice firm and slightly rough.
        Anthy smiled, just a little, through the fey prophet's mask
her face had become.
        "Go, then," she said, and, turning, she opened the Gate with a
gesture.  Blinding white light poured out of it, making Gryphon squint
and raise a hand.
        As he stepped past her toward the light, Anthy dropped all
pretense of priestly impartiality and kissed his cheek.
        "Good luck," she whispered in his ear, and then he was through
the Gate and gone.

        Raven woke the next day feeling cold, stiff, and empty.  She
rose, bathed, and dressed in a fresh uniform mechanically.  Her head
felt as vacant as the rest of her; instead of the furiously swirling
jumble of emotions and thoughts that had mounted within her since she
first came to Oriphos, she felt only a sort of cool numbness.
        When she went to the door, she found it unlocked.  By now she
knew the way to Akio's study.  She went to it and found him there,
sitting at his desk looking over some documents.  He was dressed
differently today; instead of the black, slightly martial garb he'd
worn since she arrived, he wore dark slacks and a red silk button
shirt, and had his long silver hair pulled back in a ponytail.  The
effect made him look younger, which gave Raven her first real feeling
of the day - a low, dull ache.
        He smiled at her, apparently suiting deed to word after his
assertion the night before that they should pretend their brush with
indiscretion had never happened.
        "Good morning, Raven," he said.  "Are you ready?"
        Raven nodded, though she wasn't really certain of her
readiness for anything.
        "Good," Akio said, standing.  "Let's go, then.  No sense in
wasting time."
        "Where are we going?" she asked as they climbed into his car.

/*  Electric Light Orchestra  "From the End of the World"  _Time_  */

        Akio switched on the radio, turned it down low so they could
talk over it, and steered the Thunderbird around the corner of the
campus and up onto an elevated highway before replying.
        "In order to anchor this world in reality," Akio replied, "we
need to be at its furthest edge."  He shifted gears, urging the
Thunderbird on faster.  The lightpoles along the sides of the road
whipped past with a quickening repetitive sound that Raven found, in
her off-kilter state, strangely engrossing - almost hypnotic.
Whoosh.  Whoosh.  Whoosh.
        "Tell me something," Akio asked suddenly, instead of answering
her initial question.  "Don't you ever get frustrated?"
        "What do you mean?" Raven asked.
        "Living in a world so... -mundane-," Akio said.  "Surrounded
every day by people who can never grasp what you do, what you -are-."
He turned to her - the highway was empty, the car hurtling along in
its lane as if on rails - and fixed her with a sharp, intense look.
"Always having to hold yourself -back- because if they knew what you
really are, what you could truly do, they'd hate and fear you even
more than they already do."
        Raven wanted to deny it, but the counterarguments wouldn't
come to her mind.  She looked at a loss for a few moments, then
managed to say, 
        "I... sometimes."
        Akio smiled.  "Well, my dear, all that's over now."
        Raven blinked.  "I don't understand," she said.
        "You will in a moment," Akio replied, his smile getting
fiercer.  "You asked me a moment ago where I'm taking you.  Now it's
time for you to see it for yourself.  My darling daughter, I show to
you now - the End of the World!"
        With that, he shifted gears again and sent the black T-bird
howling forward faster still, so fast the dashed white line in the
middle of the road blur into a solid stripe.  Bracing his hands on the
the windshield frame, he vaulted out of his seat, briefly made a full
vertical handstand on top of the windshield frame, then toppled
forward against the slipstream and landed in a neat surfer's crouch on
the hood.
        With the car's slipstream blasting his hair from its ponytail
and into a wild, feral disarray, Akio slouched back against the
windshield like a man relaxing on a sofa, tore open his shirt to bare
his slim chest to the wind, and laughed.  The car kept tearing on,
apparently driving itself, plunging onward at a freakish, impossible
speed toward - 
        In that instant, Raven indeed understood - understood
everything, in a heartsick flash of recognition made all the more
bitter by the worthlessness of its timing.
        A second after that, she understood nothing.
        Nothing at all.

        Later in his life, when Gryphon was asked about his
experiences in the caverns of Leng, questing from the dreamlands to
the outskirts of Oriphos, he would generally decline to answer, except
to say that it was noisome, squamous, eldritch, cyclopean, and
loathsome, not to mention redolent with noxious exhalations of an
insalubrious character.
        He said it with a light tone of voice and a smile, but those
who knew him best could see something deep in his eyes that put the
lie to the levity.  Whatever he'd faced in those caverns, he'd escaped
permanent physical harm, but no one challenges the dreamland's deepest
horrors and walks away unscathed.
        In any event, escape he did, rising from the Great Abyss to
emerge on a black and desolate mountainside under a brooding scarlet
sky - a hundred yards from the edge of a modern six-lane superhighway.
In the distance, perhaps a mile away and a few hundred feet lower in
elevation, the highway ended in a little town huddled around the edge
of an oily green bay, and on a hill overlooking the town was an
institution that, to his New England eyes, had to be either a school
or a mental hospital.
        "This must be the place," he said, and set off toward the road.
        Pressing on, Gryphon noticed as he descended the rocky
mountainside toward the highway that the road was empty.  That, the
sky, and the general surreality of the whole scene put him in mind of
the postapocalyptic movies that had been popular when he was a boy, in
the late twentieth century, when the human race still thought itself
alone in the cosmos and the threat of nuclear annihilation hung over it.
        After a moment of this rumination, he felt a strange sensation,
as of something twitching inside his shirt.  For a second he thought
some horrid thing from the dreamland abyss had gotten in there, but a
quick check revealed nothing out of the ordinary - except... hmm.
Interesting...
        Before he had time to consider that further, he realized that
the road wasn't quite empty.  A car was approaching, and approaching
fast by the growing howl of its engine.  An instant later it zoomed
past, the sound of its engine bouncing maddeningly off the sheer black
cliffsides, and roared on down toward the town.  From this distance,
at that speed, he couldn't be sure, but it had looked like an old
Thunderbird.
        He'd been able to see even less of the people in it, but what
he did see was enough.  The driver had been a tall, dark man with a
wild streamer of silver hair; the passenger had been small and slim,
almost invisible at this distance, but topped with a smudge of dark
violet of an unmistakable shade.
        Gryphon narrowed his eyes, clenched his jaw, vaulted the
guardrail, and started running.

        Nanami Kiryuu looked up as the study doors opened to see Akio -
windblown, barechested, disheveled, and grinning like a freshly-fed
wolf - sweeping in, followed by a demurely composed little figure in
black.  The blonde felt her heart sink as she saw Raven's eyes: blank
and glassy, her pupils invisible, with all the expression and depth of
a pair of billiard balls.
        "So it's done, then," said Touga from the divan he was
lounging on by the fire.
        Akio nodded.  "Done, and none too soon.  We leave at once to
complete the Tournament."
        Touga stretched out, his hands behind his head, and smirked.
"You look positively gleeful.  I haven't seen you like this for a
while.  Whatever horrors can you be contemplating, to put a smile like
that on your face?"
        Akio chuckled.  "I'm picturing the look on my dear sister's
face when I kill her lovers and take her child away from her."
        "Remember our bargain, Akio," Touga said, raising an
admonishing finger.
        Akio laughed lightly.  "Don't worry, Touga.  You'll have your
toy.  It's all arranged with Lord Surtur.  You help me give Him Cephiro,
and once He's through with Tenjou, she's all yours... just like your own
beloved sister."
        Touga's smirk became a sly, evil grin.
        "Excellent," he said.
        Nanami suppressed a shiver just before Akio turned to her.
        "Nanami," he said, "see that my bride is properly dressed for
the ceremony, will you?"
        This time Nanami wasn't suppressing a shiver as she rose and
nodded.  As she went to Raven and conducted the blank-eyed, empty-
minded young witch from the room, what she was hoping didn't show was
the little smile that kept trying to edge onto her face.
        The boys thought they were so fucking clever, the both of them.
        Nanami would see about that.
        She took Raven to her bedchamber, unlocked a compartment at
the back of the wardrobe, and carefully dressed Akio's prey in a
special gown.  It wasn't really necessary; having been shown the End
of the World, and with certain other enchantments completed on her
while in the pliant state it induced, Raven was fully locked into the
local copy of the Dueling Code.  She didn't need the party dress to be
this dark tournament's Rose Bride... but tradition was tradition.
        Nanami deftly buttoned the jacket up to Raven's neck, but left
the shoulder cord with its scarlet throat gem unfastened. Instead, she
quickly removed the stone from the cord and withdrew another item from
the spot at the small of her back where she'd hidden it.
        Before he died, the prior of Azarath - the monastery's number-
two man - had told her the name of the object Touga had retrieved from
the wreckage of the abbot's office.  Nanami still didn't know what it
really -was-, but with a name like "the Eye of Azarath", she figured
it had to be important and powerful.
        She hoped like hell she was right as she affixed the Eye to
the end of the cord and then fastened it at Raven's throat in place of
the dress's usual gem.
        Then she took the newly invested Rose Bride back to Akio's
study and presented her.
        Akio smiled broadly and wickedly at the sight of her - hair
neatly brushed, golden tiara just so, and all.
        "Perfect," he said.  "Thank you, Nanami.  You stay here in
case the students need anything.  Touga, come with us.  You will stand
watch at the stairs.  I won't stand for any disturbance."

        Five students were standing around the central courtyard,
speculating in low tones as to the identity of the mysterious stranger
in a student's uniform who had been haunting the administration
building for the last few days, when the school's front gate burst
inward as though a truck had hit it.
        The students scattered, jumping for cover with cries of
consternation as pieces of mangled wrought iron and sheared bolts
pinged and skittered over the courtyard flagstones.  The main pieces
of wreckage, constituting the bulk of the left and right halves of the
gate, clanged down in a ragged V formation, pointing the way to the
opening that they had sealed a moment before.
        Standing in the open gateway was a lone man with a sword in
his hands.  As the clearing dust revealed him, he was standing in a
follow-through position, his blade presented, as though he'd just cut
the gates down with a single blow - which, in fact, he had.
        Gryphon let the impression soak in for a moment, then swept
and sheathed his blade.  The Dragon's Tail was a master-level stunt,
one that combined the telekinetic Force disciplines of the Jedi with
the swordsman's own ki focus and the mental shorthand of a sword blow
to generate and control a concussion wave.  It wasn't very useful in a
duel because it had a long lead time and required intense concentration,
but it was terrific for making an entrance.
        The five students picked themselves up from where they'd thrown 
themselves and stared at him.  He noticed that they were armed.  A
couple of them started edging their hands toward their swords.
        "Be smart," he told them flatly.  "I'm in a mood."
        Four of them blinked, then put up their hands.  The fifth, a
slim young woman with short black hair, turned incredulously to her
classmates and snapped,
        "What are you doing?!  He's one man!  We have a duty to defend
the Academy!"
        "I dunno, Leyna," a sandy-haired boy said nervously.  "Look at
him, he's -into- it... "
        Leyna disregarded her classmate's warning, drew her saber, and
charged, shouting, "For the Black Rose!"
        Gryphon didn't draw either sword.  Instead, he let the girl
charge, and then slipped sideways out of the path of her lunge.
Surprised at his speed - for he was not a slender man, but rather had
the stocky, broad-shouldered build of a wrestler, and didn't look
quick on his feet - Leyna corrected her path, pivoting on the balls of
her feet and sending her blade in search of his throat.
        He swung his left hand up, intercepting the strike, and
smacked the flat of her sword with the heel of his hand.  The blade
jumped, passing clean over his head, and Leyna felt something in her
wrist twinge and smart as she tried to recover.  The next time she
came after him, he stepped inside the arc of the blow, trapped her arm
between his side and his elbow, twisted a nerve cluster so that her
hand went slack and the sword fell, and then judo-threw her so that
she landed hard on her back a few yards away, the wind rushing out of
her in a great WHOOF.
        That was enough for Leyna; she lay on the ground, making the
odd little hiccupping noises of someone trying to remember how to
breathe.
        Gryphon straightened, turned to the others, and saw that none
of them wanted to offer him any trouble.
        "She'll be all right," he told them, and then turned and made
for the administration building.  He didn't need to ask directions;
the layout of the campus was different from Tenjou Academy's, but the
resemblance between the buildings was obvious, and the designer's
tastes were predictable.
        He stood on the steps of the building, looked up at the
clocktower that crowned it, and muttered wryly to himself,
        "'What in the midst lay but the Tower itself? / The round squat
turret, blind as the fool's heart... '"
        Then he chuckled darkly went inside.

        At the base of a winding spiral staircase, he found an iron
door, and beyond that door a dungeon-like room of black stone.  At the
far side of that room was another door, this one made of heavy black
timbers bound together with iron bands.  Between him and that door
stood a tall, slender man in with long red hair and an ironic smile,
dressed in black robes that rather put Gryphon in mind of Jedi garb.
        "So," said he.  "You must be the man they call Gryphon.  I
must say I'm impressed - I didn't think you'd make it this far.  Lord
Akio suspected you might, though... which is why I'm here, and not
downstairs witnessing his triumph."
        Gryphon gave him a disinterested once-over.
        "You must be Touga Kiryuu."
        Touga bowed formally.  "The same.  I've been wanting to meet
you.  You know I'm the only Duelist who ever beat your precious
'daughter'?"
        Gryphon nodded.  "I did know that, actually, though I
understand you cheated."  He gave the redhead a tight, nasty little
smile.  "And that she humiliated you in not one but two rematches."
        Touga flushed.  "You bastard!  Who do you think you're talking
to?"  With movements made jerky by his fury, he yanked his broadsword
from its scabbard at his hip.  "I'll show you what happens to people
who don't give me respect."
        The First Lensman chuckled grimly.
        "OK, boy," he said.  "Show me."

        "Well, here we are, my dear," Akio Ohtori said pleasantly.
"The Dueling Floor of Oriphos.  Seven hundred seventy steps below the
basement of my tower - hanging in the very borderland of Muspelheim
itself.  If you concentrate, you can smell the brimstone."
        Seeing Raven's glassy eyes, he laughed, chucked her under the
chin, and added, "Not that you can concentrate."  Stepping away from
her, he spread his arms wide and went on, "My crowning achievement,
this.  When I told Touga and Nanami that I planned to create my own
realm to replace Cephiro, they were incredulous, but when I told them
I further intended to reconstruct the Dueling Code within it, they
were -aghast-.  After all, it took the concerted efforts of the
Trinity of Cephiro to create the original.  No Working I know is
greater in complexity or scope.  Creating Oriphos was easy compared
with making this."
        He turned back to face her, his smile predatory, and went on,
"And it was all for your benefit.  My own flesh and blood, a witch of
unmeasured power... and an initiate of the ancient house of Azarath,
as well.  You didn't think the other monks knew, did you?  You thought
that was your secret, yours and old Master Tsung's.  No woman had ever
been accepted as an initiate of Azarath before, taught the inner
secrets of the order, given a share in the true power... but you were,
because that old fool Tsung thought you had potential.
        "Well, he was right.  You did have potential.  But where Tsung
planned to use you as a weapon against me, whether his brethren agreed
with his plan or not, what he was actually crafting was not a weapon
but a repository.  Incidentally, he also authored his own destruction; 
when Sheng discovered his blasphemy, he poisoned the old man and took
his place.
        "He dared not try to kill you, knowing that you were a witch
-and- an initiate, and that you still had some supporters among the
other monks, but he was at least smart enough to cast you adrift.
That made you harder to find, and I admit I was annoyed when I learned
of it, but in the end, it made you easier to deal with.  You recovered
well, but being cast out left you off-balance anyway... off-balance
and vulnerable.  All the more so because you thought your new life had
made everything better."
        He crossed the floor, took her chin in his hand, tilted her
face up, and gave her a mocking kiss.
        "Fool girl.  With the rest of the Azaran Order dead, all their
ancient power is locked away in you, and in this place I will extract
it.  You are a Rose Bride without a champion, and that means your soul
belongs to me.  As for the rest of you..."  He smiled his cold, cruel
smile again and went on, "... well, it won't be good for much once
I've torn out your soul, now, will it."
        Raven, of course, made no reply.
        "Goodbye, my darling daughter," Akio said mockingly.  "I'll
remember you... fondly."  He bent to give her one last kiss before
getting on with things, and as he did, he spied movement out of the
corner of his eye.
        "Eh?" he said, and turned to see a figure emerge from the
shadow of the archway leading onto the platform from the stairs.
        "Touga!" he barked, furious.  "I told you I wasn't to be
disturbed.  What's the meaning of this?"
        Touga Kiryuu stood silently for a moment, looking at Akio with
an unreadable expression on his face.  As a trickle of blood ran down
his chin from the corner of his mouth and his eyes glazed over, he
said in a faint, bubbling whisper,
        "... he's... here."
        Then he keeled over forward, flopping to the stone on his face.
        Out of his back jutted a wakizashi with a gleaming silver
tsuba and a bright-red rayskin grip wrapped in black cord.
        From high above, Akio heard the clang and clamor of Ohtori
Academy's black iron bells, singing their cursed chorus for the start
of the Black Rose Tournament.

             /*  J.A. Seazer  "Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku"
       _Shoujo Kakumei Utena: Zettai Shinka Kakumei Zenya_  */

        Another figure, this one shorter and broader, stepped out of
the archway onto the platform, stopping next to Touga's body.
        Akio mastered his surprise well, taking a few steps away from
Raven to better confront the intruder.
        "So you're the famous Gryphon," he said calmly.  "I understand
I have you to thank, indirectly, for my present condition."
        Gryphon stood where he was, booted feet spread to shoulder
width, and said nothing.  While he fixed Akio with a flat stare from
his ice-blue eyes (just like the eyes of that thrice-damned godling
who'd cursed him at Anthy's "coming-out party"), his right hand took
hold of the wakizashi's grip and casually wrenched it from Touga's
back.
        "Well?" Akio asked after a few seconds.  "Get on with your
heroic speech.  Your type always has one."
        Gryphon shook his head.  "No speech."
        Akio raised an eyebrow.  "Really?  Not even 'free her or
die'?" he asked mockingly.
        Gryphon raised one corner of his mouth a few angstroms.
        "'Or' implies a choice," he said.
        Akio gave him a bored look.
        "I don't know what you think your presence can accomplish,
First Lensman, but you can't interfere.  You may be a member of the
Rose Knight's order, but you've no standing here."
        Gryphon's smile increased fractionally in both size and
nastiness.  He raised his left hand, showing Akio a glint of silver
and scarlet on its third finger.
        "Haven't I?"
        Akio looked puzzled for a moment, then glanced sharply to his
right as Raven, her eyes still cold and empty, stepped up next to him.
        "He has my ring," she said, her voice as flat and cold as a
desert at night.  It wasn't really her speaking, but the Dueling Code
speaking through her as she continued tonelessly,
        "He is my champion."
        Akio looked first amazed, then infuriated, as the implication
sank home.  He was trapped by the rules of his own game.  Now he would
have to fight and win against his bride's champion before he could
claim her power.
        "... Damn you both," he said through his teeth.
        Gryphon drew his katana and smiled much more fully this time,
a rakish grin that showed his teeth.
        "Maybe."
        Raven fitted them both with black roses, though both knew that
the flowers were merely symbolic.  This would be a fight to the death
and both men knew it.  Gryphon had already killed creatures beyond
counting just to get here, not least Touga Kiryuu, and he would never
let Akio escape while he drew breath.
        Stepping back, Akio waited for Raven to take her assigned
place off to the side, then drew his black iron sword, a gift from
Surtur to replace the one he'd lost when his sister had slain him in
Cephiro.
        Gryphon cricked his neck first one way, then the other,
eliciting a couple of satisfying cracks, then rolled his shoulders and
assumed a loose and easy ready stance.
        For a long moment, nothing happened.
        Then Akio drew his lips back from his teeth in a cruel smile
and attacked.

   /*  Juno Reactor  "Feel the Universe"  _Beyond the Infinite_  */

        He was good, -damn- good, one of the best swordsmen Gryphon
had ever faced.  He'd been expecting that, though.  There was no
underestimation here on either side.  Akio knew that the man he faced
was a warrior not lightly regarded in the Pit itself, and when a
mortal man earned the respect, however grudging, of Surtur and his
princes, that was a fact of which it was wise to take note.  For his
part, Gryphon had heard of Akio's prowess from Utena Tenjou, a woman
whose own ability with a blade was roughly the equal of his own.
        They used all their skills and tricks as they clashed and
reclashed, ducked and parried and riposted, their blades singing and
sparking as they criscrossed the arena.  Not only was Akio highly
skilled, but Gryphon couldn't remember the last time he'd faced an
opponent with this kind of ferocity.  The man fought like... well,
like a demon.
        In battle, the urbane veneer Akio kept in place most of the
time was stripped away.  All the animal cruelty came onto his face,
and his hair, already wild from the ride to the End of the World,
stood on end like the mane of a beast.
        Black petals from the twisted roses growing on the platform's
jagged crenelations swirled around them in the hot winds of upper
Muspelheim, adding another layer of surreality to the scene as they
fought.  Though both were using all their skill, neither used any
ability outside swordsmanship.  Gryphon remained visible, not even
trying to use his power to cloud the minds of men.  Akio's sorcerous
talents remained silent.  It seemed as if both were determined to
decide this battle with their swords alone.
        Gryphon got so absorbed in the rhythm of the fight, his
concentration so deeply devoted to anticipating Akio's moves and
trying to obscure his own intentions, that he forgot all about the
portents he'd seen in those violent and fragmentary dreams.
        Thus, when Akio did finally make a mistake and leave himself
open, it never occurred to Gryphon what would happen next.
        When the Fallen Prince overbalanced himself just slightly -
the error so minute that a less experienced swordsman than Gryphon
wouldn't even have noticed it, much less been able to exploit it - the
First Lensman seized the opportunity, crossing Akio up and twisting
his sword completely out of his hand.  As it clanged to the black
stone of the platform, Gryphon finished pivoting through the disarm
maneuver and launched his next strike seamlessly.  Akio was already
diving for his sword, and he'd have it back in another second, but he
wasn't going to -get- another second -
        Gryphon saw Akio's eyes dart left.  In his peripheral vision,
he saw Raven to his right - saw her twitch under Akio's fierce gaze
and jerkily raise a hand, like a puppet with a sticking joint -
        Cold black light surrounded Gryphon, freezing him in place,
just as it had on Ishiyama when he and Raven had first met.  Then he'd
been able to free himself in little more than a second, but with
Akio's sword back in his hand and the dark warrior lunging, he wasn't
going to -get- another second -
        On Gryphon's left ringfinger, Raven's girasol pulsed,
crackling with its own black light.  The spell surrounding Gryphon
shattered.  He pitched free, twisting, only held up for half the time
it would have taken Akio to have him dead to rights, but it was long
enough.  Akio's thrust, which should have taken Gryphon in the heart,
instead sliced into the top of his right shoulder.  The First Lensman
cried out, dropping his wakizashi almost at Raven's feet, but his
quick reflexes saved him from worse than a deep flesh wound as he
ducked away from the cut and came up with his katana at the ready.
        The wound was already knitting, and he ignored the pain with a
facility born of experience as he took Ryuu-no-tsume in a two-handed
grip and switched smoothly into the Asagiri Katsujinkenryuu's single-
blade sub-style.  This method was actually the heart of the Asagiri
kenjutsu style; the two-blade version Gryphon sometimes practiced was
an elaboration of the core method he'd developed.
        Losing one of his swords and half the strength of his off arm
didn't make him easy prey, but it did make him have to work harder to
keep himself ahead of Akio, and though the wound was already healing,
he was still losing blood, which didn't help.  Within a few exchanges,
it was clear to him - and, unfortunately, to his opponent - that he
was starting to lose.
        Before too much longer, "starting to lose" had changed to
"definitely progressing toward defeat", thanks in large part to a leg
wound that led to a badly-timed dodge which in turn incurred an
abdominal wound just short of Very Bad Indeed.  Bleeding from a dozen
places and with some of his wounds interfering with his fighting
abilities, Gryphon knew that he was definitely on the slippery slope
to dead.
        He was vaguely surprised - as he often was in such situations - 
to find that he was less upset about that than he'd have expected.  He
wondered idly whether that was because he truly accepted death as a
warrior should, or just because he expected something strange to happen.
        What neither man realized was that, off to the side, something
strange had begun to happen.
        Though Raven had mostly convinced herself (before Etrigan
abducted her) that she had escaped the threat of ever being in this
position, she was a cautious witch by nature, and like any cautious
witch she'd hedged her bets.  Knowing that the premonitory dream
called for her to betray Gryphon and freeze him for Akio to kill, she
had laid a simple enchantment on her girasol ring that would cancel
the spell she was most likely to use for that purpose.
        When Etrigan had attacked her, she had barely had the presence
of mind to slip the ring off and drop it, but do so she had.  The rest
had worked just as planned, freeing Gryphon from the trap faster than
he could have freed himself and - at least in the short term - saving
his life.
        It had another, unexpected effect as well.  The immobilizing
spell was so simple, and Raven knew it so well, that she could cast it
even without her conscious mind actually present, something Akio must
have known.  Having it blocked by a countercharm she herself set,
though - in effect, having cast a spell against herself - caused a
strange sort of mystic shock.  Under normal circumstances, she would
just have found it uncomfortable and slightly disorienting.
        Now, it had the effect of cracking the thick layer of ice that
had paralyzed her mind since she'd been shown the End of the World.
        Slowly, slowly, as she stood rooted to her spot and watched
Akio slowly gain the upper hand over her champion, Raven felt herself
coming back to life.  It felt very much like climbing up out of a heavy
dream, one that relinquishes its dreamer back to the waking world only
with great reluctance - that same swimming-upward-through-tar feeling,
complete with the desperate but illusory need to breathe.
        Her eyes came back first, gradually losing their billiard-ball
sheen and taking on the light of life again while the rest of her
remained immobile.
        Almost imperceptibly her lips parted, and through them came
three nearly-inaudible syllables:
        "... azarath."
        Having spoken the word, Raven felt herself surge back into her
body.  That was exactly the sensation of it - as if her whole essence
had been bundled up and stuffed into a small space in the very back of
her head, and now was bursting forth and flowing down to fill up the
vessel of her body like water poured into a waterskin.  Her hands
twitched, then curled into fists, and her voice was something like
normal as she bared her teeth and grated out the second word:
        "Metrion!"
        With that said, she felt nearly whole again.  Fully aware of
herself once more, she could feel the enchantment of the Dueling Code
all around her, smothering her, slicing into her, keeping her cruelly
pinned to her impartial observer's role.  Her heart screamed for
vengeance against the evil creature who had played with her, used her,
nearly -taken- her with such cold calculation, but her place as the
Rose Bride wouldn't let her act.  She railed against it, her body
bowstring-taut as if the spell were a physical enemy she could fight.
        Raven's jaw muscles twitched and ached as she strove with all
her fury to speak, the Dueling Code itself seeking to keep her from
speaking the last word...
        ... but speak it she did, and in doing so unlocked a chamber
within her that she hadn't even known she possessed.
        "ZINTHOS!" she screamed, the word exploding out at the top of
her voice.  As it did, the golden amulet at her throat suddenly popped
open.  The hemispherical bulge divided horizontally, its halves sliding 
away to reveal within a glittering golden eye.
        Gryphon and Akio, locked in combat, hadn't even noticed the
change in Raven until the last word burst forth, ringing the air
around the dueling floor like a giant crystal bell.  They both
recoiled as if from a physical blow, knocked sprawling to the stone
floor.  Gryphon, who had been taking the worst of the confrontation,
was knocked all but senseless, his body refusing to obey him.  He
could only lie and watch what happened next.
        As Nanami had surmised, the Eye of Azarath was not simply the
abbot's paperweight.  It was Azarath's most ancient, holy relic,
rumored to be the literal eye of the long-dead Rune God who wrought
Cephiro itself from the primordial darkness.  It was the key to the
mythic power of the Order of Azarath - and, called upon by the
vengeful soul of the last surviving initiate of that order, it
responded.
        With a blinding blaze of pure white light, the Eye unsealed
all the power of Azarath at once, drew it from its hiding place in
Raven's soul, and then dumped it all back in again, for Raven was the
only Azaran initiate left.
        Even this could not free Raven from the pivotal place she
occupied in Akio's black Dueling Code.  The Code was so fundamental to
the whole fabric of the world that not even the Eye could remove its
influence completely.  The final duel of Akio's "tournament" had
begun, and it could not be stopped, only ended.
        Raven would be forced to remain in Oriphos until the duel was
won, and her fate would be decided by its outcome; the Eye could do
nothing about that.  What it -could- do was strip away the part of the
Code that interfered with her freedom of action - release her to take
an active role in determining what her fate would be.  No Azaran would
be allowed to be a mindless, neutral pawn in another's bloody game.
        The immobilizing claws of the black Dueling Code were too
deeply imbedded in Raven to be torn away, but the Eye would not abide
its master being in thrall to any other enchantment, however great; so
instead she was torn away from them.  In a single shattering
transcendent moment, Raven of Azarath was torn down to nothing and
built back up again - OUTSIDE the cage of the Rose Bride's forced
neutrality.
        Akio, stunned but in generally better shape than Gryphon,
dragged himself up to one knee and shielded his eyes with a hand,
trying to look beyond the blinding light of the Eye and see what was
happening.
        A moment later the light died down from an arclight glare to a
much softer light, like the glow of a lamp - and Akio drew back with a
gasp of utter shock.
        Standing where Raven had stood, blank-faced and glass-eyed in
her Rose Bride's gown, a few moments before, there was now a figure
draped from head to foot in a flowing cape of purest white, her hooded
head bowed.  At her throat, holding her cloak together, the Eye of
Azarath continued to gleam softly with a quiet crystalline sound.
        "Impossible!" Akio roared, consumed with fury.
        A gust of Muspelheim's hot wind swept across the dueling
floor, first rustling Raven's white cloak, then blowing it back to fan
out behind her like wings, revealing that her clothing beneath it had
changed as well - to the low boots and snug bodysuit of her normal
"working clothes", garnet-studded golden belt, bejeweled gauntlets,
and all.  The fabric of this, too, was a pure, almost shining white.
        As the wind died away, her cloak settled around her again and
the Eye of Azarath closed.  With the snuffing of its light, her clothing
returned to its normal dark-blue hue.
        A moment later she raised her head, and her cowl's shadow slid
back as she did to reveal her chin and mouth.  The latter was pressed
into a thin, hard line.  Above it, her eyes snapped open, glowing a
cold and furious white from the shadow of her hood.
        When she spoke, her voice had a hollow, sepulchral ring, as if
she was speaking inside a great vaulted chamber somewhere as she
intoned gravely,
        "The weed of crime bears bitter fruit, Father."
        Then, moving with a fluidity that seemed all the more stark
after the wooden rigidity of the Rose Bride, she surged forward, her
cloak flying around her.  Gryphon's fallen wakizashi was a streak of
silver lightning in her hand as she hurled herself at Akio with murder
in her eyes.

          /*  Evanescence  "Everybody's Fool"  _Fallen_  */

        Gryphon hitched himself up on an elbow, his other hand pressed
to the gash across his middle, and watched in painful awe as his
transformed apprentice did her level best to rid the world of her
father.
        Unfortunately, though Raven was a talented swordswoman for her
relative inexperience, a very competent combatant in a highly
effective empty-hand style, and a thoroughly enraged witch who had
just received a major power boost, she was still going up against a
Duke of Muspelheim who had been a powerful warlock and a fantastic
swordsman before his death and damnation.
        Faced with his daughter's mystically-charged wrath, Akio
stepped away from the swordplay-only tack he'd taken in dealing with
Gryphon and uncorked his own sorcerous power.  The result was a whole
different kind of duel, but one which saw Raven taking as much, if not
as bloody, a pounding as her mentor had in his own solo excursion.
        As he watched, Gryphon slowly dragged himself upright, from a
disordered sprawl into an almost meditative seiza posture.  Then, as
he saw Akio begin clearly to get the better of Raven, he closed his
eyes and turned his concentration inward.
        Thus, he wasn't watching when the culmination came.  Raven
used a shield of her trademark black light to ward off a bolt of
lightning from Akio's outstretched left hand, then drove forward at
top speed and brought Ryuu-no-ha around in a gleaming arc intended to
relieve the Fallen Prince of his internal organs.
        Akio slipped back, used his superior reach, and interposed his
black iron sword, a blade forged in the fires of Hell itself.
        With a bright and brittle sound, the blade of Gryphon's
wakizashi shattered against the Muspel-iron.  Brilliant flecks of
broken metal sprayed Akio like shrapnel, a few of them raising thin
lines of blood on his face.
        Gryphon opened his eyes.
        Raven reeled, staring in shock and horror at the broken stub
of what had been a thousand-year-old sword.
        Akio grinned, shot out his free hand, and seized her by the
throat.  He raised her clean off the ground, slowly tightening his
grip, and kept grinning as he drew back his blade for the kill.
        Something heavy and solid plowed into him from the left,
breaking his grip - damn near breaking his ARM - and making him drop
her.  Raven landed on her feet, but immediately crumpled to her knees,
grabbing at her throat and coughing.
        Gryphon left Akio in a heap on the stone and rolled to his
feet, thinking to himself that that wasn't a bad flying tackle at all
for a man who'd never played much football.
        Akio pulled himself to his feet, recovering his poise in an
instant, and then recoiled in surprise as he saw his original opponent
back on his feet.  The cuts and gashes in Gryphon's clothes were still
there, but the flesh underneath was perfectly whole.  It was a
spectacular example of Detian forced regeneration, a biocontrol skill
the First Lensman had taken more than four centuries to master.
        Akio snarled and threw himself forward.  Gryphon blocked him
and counterattacked, his movements sure and fluid now.  If he was
rattled by the destruction of one of his cherished clanswords, he
didn't show it at all.  His eyes were clear, his face almost
expressionless, his breathing steady as he renewed his clash with the
Fallen Prince.
        This time, Akio wasn't inclined to play nice.  He called on
all his powers to help him crush his enemy.  Gryphon responded in the
same vein, learning to his pleasure that demonic dukes apparently had
no special immunity to the Clouded Mind.  Like smoke, he flickered in
and out, here and there, maddening his opponent and leading him to
waste many powerful attacks.
        When Akio did eventually get a feel for what Gryphon was
doing, he prepared a thrust not at where his enemy had last been, but
where he expected the man to be - only to have his blade glance off a
floating sheet of deep black light.  Raven was back on her feet and
lending her own prowess to her champion.
        Akio cursed her with all his black heart.  He remembered the
way the Grand Tournament had turned when Anthy had somehow wriggled
free of the Rose Bride's neutrality and started aiding -her- champion.
No one and nothing could stop Utena Tenjou with her dark witch at her
back.  The only way Akio could defeat her was to seize the strings of
his sister's entangled heart again and force her to betray her pink-
haired girl-prince, and even then it had only delayed the inevitable.
        This was different, though.  This wasn't the Grand Tournament.
This was HIS tournament, HIS Dueling Code, HIS WORLD - and if Gryphon
was Utena's equal with a blade (and he might well have been), well,
Raven was no Anthy.  She'd worked with the man only a few months, and
had held herself back from fully bonding with him in the process.  Her
fear of her own emotions had kept her from truly opening her heart to
him, and that would keep their cooperation from being perfect.
        Case in point: The counterspell she threw to prevent Akio from
blasting her champion with hellfire actually hampered Gryphon for a
moment, related as it was to the immobilizing spell with which her
mindless puppet self was supposed to help Akio win this thing back at
the start.  Had the two been working in true, full concert, Gryphon
would've been expecting that side effect and would have adjusted his
strategy accordingly - but they weren't, he wasn't, and he didn't.
        Akio exploited the minute advantage instantly and ruthlessly,
driving himself forward and striking with all of his strength.
        It was a testament to Gryphon's presence of mind, his skill,
and his physical power that, although completely out of position, he
managed to get his katana into place for a parry anyway.  Akio's blade
slammed against Ryuu-no-tsume's edge with a force like a speeding
truck, the Muspel-iron singing a hateful dirge.
        Unlike Raven, who was barely a novice, Gryphon was a master of
the Asagiri Katsujinkenryuu, which meant he had mastery of a discipline
called the Blade of the Inviolate Soul.  His sword met this impact and
remained intact where another - or this blade in another's hands -
would have broken like a twig.
        The vibration of the powerful and awkward impact screamed up
his arms, setting all the nerves in them alight with pain.  For an
instant, his hands involuntarily spasmed, relaxing their grip.  The
blow was continuing even as this happened, so that the forces involved
twisted the sword completely out of its wielder's hands and set it to
spinning through the air.
        Gryphon whirled, reaching out with his hand, but the sword was
already behind his arm's reach.  Instantly he marshaled his
concentration, stretching out with the power of the omniversal energy
known to the Katsujinkenryuu's Jedi co-founder as the Force, to snatch
the weapon from the air and call it back to his hand - 
        Akio finished the follow-through from his strike, twisted his
body, and rammed his elbow into his opponent's throat.  Gryphon
staggered, gagging, only his reflexes having saved him from the slow
death of a crushed larynx.  Before he could recover, Akio brought the
pommel of his daemonsword smashing down on the crown of the First
Lensman's head.
        That destroyed not only his concentration, but, for an
instant, his consciousness; the time from the blow to the impact of
his knees on the dueling floor did not exist for Gryphon.  He
recovered his wits almost instantly, though, and turned to see his
katana just finishing its tumbling arc.
        Ryuu-no-tsume clattered to the stone of the dueling platform,
bounced end over end, landed in the gap between two of the platform's
ugly broken-tooth crenelations, wobbled - 
        Gryphon reached out once again with the Force, but Akio seemed
to sense the attempt and kicked him viciously in the face, sending him
flying over backward -
        - and the sword tipped over the platform's edge and vanished
into the scarlet abyss below.
        "NO!" Raven cried, her voice raw with desperation.  She lashed
a hand forward in an ancient sign, trapping Akio in a polygon of force, 
then threw herself forward, thinking to swoop over the platform's edge
and down to catch Ryuu-no-tsume.
        She smashed into an invisible barrier at the platform's edge
and rebounded to fall senseless to the stone, sprawled on her back,
her nose bloodied... for the Rose Bride cannot leave the dueling
floor while the duel is still being fought.
        Akio saw her fall, smiled cruelly, and waved her already-
dissipating charm away.  Ignoring his true opponent for the time
being, he stalked toward her, thinking to exact a little revenge for
her outrageous effrontery.
        Gryphon threw his weight back onto his shoulders, kicked his
feet into the air, and sprang upright.  He had no weapon - it hadn't
really sunk in what that meant in the long term - but he wasn't going
to let that stop him.  He had been a soldier for centuries before
learning the Katsujinkenryuu.
        Darting forward, he caught Akio off-guard, seized his arm,
twisted his sword free, and hurled it away.  It bounced and clanged to
the other side of the platform, though not off it.  Then, capitalizing
on his advantage of surprise, Gryphon launched into a series of quick
and painful barehanded attacks he'd learned from Kei long, long ago.
        Akio, a man of much slighter build, crumpled beneath them,
then stumbled back; then he recovered his wits, gathered his strength,
and lashed his foe with sorcerous lightning.  Screaming, Gryphon
reeled, then fell insensate next to his just-stirring apprentice.
        Akio stood and looked at the two of them for a moment, then
shook his head with a dark chuckle and walked slowly, unhurriedly
across the platform to retrieve his sword.
        All this difficulty was just going to make the victory that
much sweeter, he decided.
        Raven sat up, shook the worst of the cobwebs out of her
spinning head, and pulled herself upright.  She considered lunging
after Akio, trying to keep him from reaching his blade... and then
realized that it would do no good.
        She couldn't win this duel.  Freed from the cage of neutrality
or not, she was still the Rose Bride.  She wasn't a combatant - she
was the prize.
        She knelt down and slapped at Gryphon's face, rousing him.  He
groaned and pushed himself to hands and knees, then got unsteadily to
his feet.
        Akio picked up his sword, turned, and smiled.
        "Ah, good," he said.  "Going to die on your feet.  I admire
your spirit, Gryphon.  You're a good match for Utena.  I'll be sure to
tell her how bravely you met your end before I send her to join you in
Hell."
        Gryphon wiped a smear of blood from the corner of his mouth.
"This isn't over yet, Akio."
        "Oh, come.  You're unarmed, you're used up, you're -beaten-.
Save yourself any more pain and accept it."
        The First Lensman only grinned.
        "Eight-Balls never quit," he said.
        Akio gave him a dubious look, walking slowly closer.
        "I won't presume to know what that means," he said, "but it's
of no consequence.  You don't even have anything to fight me -with-."
        Then, with her champion's death and her own advancing slowly
toward her, Raven did a curious thing:
        She smiled a dark, unsettling little smile... and laughed.
        The laugh was a dark, sinister chuckle - a sound unexpected
out of a girl like her, especially one who was helpless, wounded, and
about to die.  It even gave Akio pause.
        "... Please, Raven," he said, bemused.  "Share the joke with
the rest of us."        
        Raven chuckled a moment longer, then answered him.  When she
spoke, her voice had that same hollow tone it had held when she'd
addressed him after her transformation.
        "The joke is -you-, Father.  Or had you forgotten you made me
a Rose Bride?"
        Akio's eyes went wide.  No, she wasn't going to, she couldn't
know HOW to -
        She folded her hands on her chest, closed her eyes, and spoke
in the ancient language of Cephiro:
        >Rose of the Midnight Tower.  Power of Azarath that sleeps
within my soul, heed your master and come forth!<

        In Randolph Carter's sitting room in Ulthar, Wesley Dodds
smiled.
        "You see, Randolph?" he said.  "It's just as I told her."
        Carter nodded with satisfaction as the two men watched the
scene unfold in the flames of his fireplace.
        "Learn to exploit the rules," he agreed.

         A bubble of white light sprang into being between Raven's
hands and her body, grew as she drew her palms away, and then burst
with a sparkling noise to reveal the grip of a sword jutting from her
upper chest.
        Raven swooned backward, the blade following its grip as she
bent back over Gryphon's ready arm.  He'd seen this before, in the
setup phase for his vaguely-annual full-on sport duels with Utena,
although when Anthy did this, it was Utena's heart she drew the sword
from.  In any case, he knew the steps to the dance, and he couldn't
keep the grin off his face as he put his left hand to the sword's grip
and drew it quickly and smoothly out the rest of the way, feeling his
apprentice's slight, warm weight press on his right arm.
        The sword of Raven's heart was similar to the wakizashi Akio
had destroyed.  It was about the same length, a bit short for a sword,
and formed in the same Asian style; but its blade was straight and
black as night, with only its razor-keen edge below its sawtooth
temper line a bright and shining silver.
        Holding the sword high, Gryphon set Raven back upright on her
feet and said, the words springing to his mind even as he spoke them:
        >Grant me the power to bring the world Revolution!<
        Then, while Akio still stared with a combination of
astonishment and raw hatred, he whirled Raven's heart through a
flourish, set himself, and charged into battle with his dark-eyed
witch flying hot on his heels.

  /*  Overseer  "Supermoves (Animatrix Remix)"  _The Animatrix_  */

        A very close friend of Gryphon's once remarked that he could
never win a really big fight until he'd nearly lost.  Gryphon had, at
the time, accused his friend of making up a koan just to be cute, but
later experience had led him to suspect that there might have been
some truth in it after all.
        Now, with Raven's heartsword in his hands and its owner at his
back, he finally had all the tools he needed to counter everything Akio
could throw at him.  Despite its short blade, the black sword performed 
flawlessly in his hands, doing everything he asked of it instantly,
precisely, without slop or fuss.  It was perfectly balanced, neither
too heavy nor too light.  Its point and edge were equally deadly.
Fighting with it was like wielding a splinter of somebody's shadow.
        The two, witch and warrior, fought together perfectly now.
Akio's estimation of the reasons for their earlier problems had been
dead on: Raven hadn't fully opened her heart to her partner, and that
reserve had held her back.  Now she'd not just opened it, but in a
very real sense -handed it to him-.  There was no hesitation, no
awkwardness.  There were no missed signals.  They fought as one, and
together they were more than a match for even a Duke of Hell.
        Akio fought grimly on, his counterattacks fueled more and more
by rage.  How -dare- they do this to him, to HIM!  How dare this
worthless little girl find the strength to break free of his thrall!
How dare this interfering man get involved in something that was none
of his business!
        He never thought of escape, for escape was impossible.  The
duel had begun; it had to be finished.  He knew that full well - who
better?  He had built the enchantments that ruled it.
        For a time, it seemed like it might go on forever, like the
endless battles of the heroes in Valhalla - but Oriphos was not
Valhalla.
        When the end came, Akio realized with dark, bitter amusement
that he could almost have predicted the shape it would take.  It began
with an infinitesimal mistake by the First Lensman, one which left him
very slightly out of position and vulnerable, by the barest margin.
Akio saw the opening and went for it at once, only realizing once he
was fully committed that it wasn't a mistake at all, but the subtlest
of feints.
        Instead of trying to recover from his error and pausing for
the split-second it would take for Akio's blade to cleave his skull,
Gryphon -dropped to the ground-.  There beyond him, floating a foot
above the platform, her eyes glowing like the white fire of a blast
furnace, her hands crossed before her face, was Raven.
        Akio tried to extend his lunge, carry the strike over Gryphon
and into her instead, and compounded his mistake, for she was - by
design - at the perfect distance away for that to look, but not be,
possible.  She uncrossed and spread her hands, finger crooked in signs,
and called forth the cold, hard light that froze Akio where he stood.
        He snarled and gathered his strength to push the paltry
enchantment away, feeling insulted that she'd wasted such a perfect
opportunity with such a ridiculously weak spell - and then understood
what was really going on.
        Gryphon sprang to his feet, drew himself back, and rammed
Raven's blade straight through her father's chest.
        For an instant, they all three stayed frozen in that position,
as if time itself had stopped - Gryphon with his body arched forward
like a bow, all his strength behind the thrust; Akio with his arm
outstretched and hate-filled eyes wide, the slim blade buried to its
tsuba in his chest and jutting black and gleaming from his back; Raven
levitating just out of reach, hands upraised, eyes blazing.
        Then Gryphon quarter-twisted the blade and drew it straight
back out, flicked the black rose from the mortally wounded demon's
chest with its tip, swept its edge clean, and, lacking a scabbard to
fit it, thrust it neatly through his belt.
        Akio staggered backward, dropped his black iron sword, and
clutched at the wound with his hand before falling to his knees.  His
dark face went ashen, his eyes already glazing over, as black blood
pumped out over his fingers and spattered to the stone floor.
        Raven settled to the floor and stepped up beside Gryphon,
reaching up to touch his hand as he placed it on her shoulder, and the
two of them watched her father die.
        Staring at her with stunned uncomprehension, Akio - after all
that had gone before - made one last attempt at swaying her back to
his side as he rasped,
        "Raven... you are... my daughter... "
        Raven shook her head and spoke a single word:
        "Nevermore."
        With a last spark of rage across his dimming eyes, Akio
reached for her, his fingers bent into claws - and then collapsed on
his face, heaved once, and died.
        Gryphon looked down at the body for a moment, then said
calmly,
        "Well... that's all for you."
        Raven shook her head again, her face grim.
        "There's killing a Duke of Hell, and then there's keeping him
dead," she said.  Stepping toward the body, she said, "Come on - we
don't have much time."
        Gryphon made as if to follow her, but a moment later the whole
dueling platform jerked as though a train had hit it, nearly pitching
them both off their feet.
        "Wha - ?!" Gryphon blurted.  Whirling, he saw, to his horror,
that the stone archway leading to the stairs back up to Oriphos was
sagging and crumbling.  Whatever force had kept the disk of stone
suspended in the scarlet sky was failing.  The platform was beginning
to break loose and fall.
        Turning back, Gryphon grabbed Raven's arm and dragged her
toward the arch.  "We don't have -any- time!" he shouted, fighting to
keep his balance as the platform shivered and jumped.  "Raven!  We
have to go!"
        "No!" Raven replied, struggling to get free from his grip.
"We have to finish this!"
        "RAVEN!" Gryphon yelled.  "It's FINISHED!  Look around!  This
place is coming apart!"
        "But we - " she began, and he grabbed her by the shoulders,
hauling her up so that they were almost nose to nose.
        "Goddammit!" he roared.  "I didn't come all this way just so
you could get killed here!"
        She blinked, the fury in his voice combining with the message
in his eyes to knock everything else clean out of her mind.
        He'd come all this way... through the gods only knew what
horrors and perils, for Raven knew the dreamlands... faced her demonic
father in battle, lost -both- of his ancient swords... 
        ... for -her-.
        The platform groaned, buckled, and began to break up, its
individual blocks separating like the ice on a pond at the end of the
winter.  Raven twisted in Gryphon's grasp, looking back over her
shoulder, and saw Akio's body slip through one of the cracks and
disappear.
        "Raven," Gryphon repeated in a softer voice, "we have to
leave."
        Raven tore her gaze away from the abyss that had just claimed
Akio's remains, looked at the First Lensman instead, and nodded.
Then, hand in Gryphon's, she ran, jumping from stone block to stone
block, across the crumbling and fluid face toward the archway and
safety.
        Twenty feet before they got there, the arch twisted and
collapsed, the last ten steps falling away to nothing.
        With a roar of fury, Gryphon launched himself from the last of
the semi-stable blocks, one hand firmly meshed with Raven's, the other
reaching for the bottom-most remaining stair.
        Not enough.  He could see from here that he'd fall more than a
foot short.
        Well, he thought, it was a good effort.
        Raven saw it too, but unlike Gryphon, she wasn't yet out of
tricks.  She didn't think she could levitate here.  With the platform
below them gone, there was no ground to use as a reference, only the
swirling scarlet mists of Muspelheim's upper sky, and levitation
didn't work well out of sight of the ground.  That, as Raven had
explained to Koriand'r more than once, was the chief difference
between levitation and true flight.
        What she -could- do, though, was play one last trump card.  If
it worked, they were saved.  If not... they were no worse off.
        Shifting her grip on Gryphon's hand, she used his arm as a
lever to propel herself forward, seizing his body in an embrace from
behind.  As her cloak settled around them both, his hand fell short of
the stair and they began the long fall toward Hell.
        Raven ducked her head against his back, closed her eyes, and
spoke.
        "Azarath!  METRION!  _ZINTHOS!_"
        The Eye of Azarath opened again, and her world and Gryphon's
filled with its pure white light.

        A second later, they landed with a solid but harmless WHUMP on
a smooth, firm, and blessedly stable surface.
        Raven slowly raised her head and opened her eyes.
        They were on the other dueling floor - the TRUE dueling floor,
high in the sky over Cephiro.  The sky was a brilliant blue, studded
with friendly, fluffy white clouds.  The breeze was sweet and cool.
Somewhere below them, a carillon of bronze and silver bells was
pealing out a clamorous celebration for a Duelist victorious.
        At Raven's throat, the Eye of Azarath slid shut once more, its
work complete.
        Exhaustion rolled over her like a breaker on a beach.  She
sagged, pushed herself sideways, and slid to the stone floor of the
platform next to Gryphon.  Presently he stirred, adjusted his position
somewhat so that he wasn't lying flat on his face like a corpse,
opened his eyes, and smiled.
        "Looks like we got away with it," he said.
        "I guess so," Raven replied with a weak chuckle.
        Then they both lost consciousness, leaving a deeply bemused
Anthy Tenjou to stand over them and wonder what in the world had
happened.

        Raven woke to find herself in an unfamiliar room.
        It was a smallish but comfortable bedroom, simply but
comfortably arranged, with cheery whitewashed walls.  The bedding was
white cotton, the furniture plain and sturdy blond wood.  The floor
was hardwood with a pleasant blue Turkish rug, and the windows had
slatted wooden blinds which were open to let in bountiful sunlight
through gauzy white curtains.  The room was apparently on the corner
of the building, for there were windows on two of the walls at right
angles to each other.
        She lay in bed for a long time, one forearm draped over her
eyes to shut out the brightest of the light, and thought about what a
colossal fool she was.
        Thinking about the mistakes she'd made, and the prices that
had been paid for them, she felt her eyes get hot and moist against
the back of her arm.  How could she have been so -stupid-?  Oh, sure,
Raven, go ahead, trust your father.  The infernal duke.  Who killed
the monks who raised you and has a legendary vendetta against your
master's children.  That sounds like a good idea!  Why don't you get
right on that?  And for an encore, maybe you could kill some puppies.
        After a while, she sighed to herself and uncovered her eyes,
squinting against the bright sunlight.  That wasn't going to get her
anywhere.  It was -true-, but it wasn't going to get her anywhere.
        Raven got carefully out of bed and was surprised to feel no
pain, given that the last thing she remembered was falling into an
abyss of sleep after taking the beating of her life.  She was
preoccupied enough with that pondering that she didn't immediately
notice the way she was dressed - in a long black T-shirt printed with
the face of an unimpressed-looking cartoon cat.
        Where am I? she wondered.  Who put me here?
        ... And where did they get my Hello Goth Kitty nightshirt?
        She went and looked in the chest of drawers in the corner, and
there found some of her own clothes, neatly folded and ready.  She got
dressed.  She felt considerably more comfortable than she had in -days-
wearing her own clothes again.  Whoever had selected these from her
wardrobe had either gotten lucky, or knew that this black sweater,
wide-collared silk shirt, and purple velvet pair of trousers were her
favorite "civilian" clothes.
        Dressed, she went to a window, pulled aside one of the
curtains, and knew immediately where she was.  She'd only seen the
campus of Tenjou Academy once, while sneaking through it at night to a
rendezvous with destiny in the Secret Forest, but the place was
unmistakable.  There was the stairway to the Forest... there were the
other dorms... there was the square... there was the Master Mage's
white tower.  As she stood looking out at the scene, the tower clock
chimed noon, and a few moments later, streams of students bundled in
their winter uniforms emerged from the buildings, all heading for the
dorms or the dining commons.
        The room had one door.  Raven tried it and found it unlocked.
As she expected, it opened onto a hallway lined with other numbered
doors.  Her cloak was hanging from a peg on the inside of the door.
She took it down, paused for a moment to regard the Eye of Azarath
thoughtfully, then put the cloak on and left the room.
        The dorm seemed to be deserted.  Most of the other room doors
were ajar, revealing that the rooms were empty, apparently as a matter
of course rather than occasion.  Raven followed the sound of voices
down the hall to the stairs, then downstairs and around a corner.
        The room she entered was about ten times the size of the
bedroom, and had apparently been a common room of some kind when this
building was a dorm.  Now it was fitted out like a study.
        Raven would have felt a bit of deja vu at this - waking in a
strange bedroom, going from there to an unfamiliar study - except for
the complete difference in impression this place made.  This study was
warm and homey, rather than sinister and forbidding.  The ceiling was
a bit lower, the walls were white, the floor of polished wood with
another, larger, but just as friendly rug.  There were shelves full of
books, overstuffed leather chairs, a beautiful bronze armillary sphere,
and a big desk made of some dark red wood with a black stone top.  The
high windows had a view of the campus and let in a lot of light.
        After taking all this in, Raven looked at the people in the
room - and then froze in the doorway.  Standing in front of the desk
in a little group, conferring among themselves, were Gryphon and three
other people.  Raven didn't know the others, but could either recognize
them from pictures or guess who they were.  The broad-shouldered young
man with the shock of silver in his coal-black hair had to be Corwin
Ravenhair, the Chief's son.  The dark-skinned pregnant woman in the
grey dress could be none other than Raven's own aunt, her father's
sister, Anthy Tenjou... and the tall, striking woman with the feathery
pink hair was her husband, the Prince of Cephiro, Utena Tenjou.
        These were people Raven had very carefully avoided since
arriving in Midgard, and now here they all were.  She considered
slipping away again, but Utena heard her in the doorway and looked,
and the others looked with her.  Raven was caught.
        She'd almost rather have been back in Oriphos facing the trap
that had awaited her there.  Great Metrion, what must these three
think of her?  They were Akio Ohtori's sworn enemies.  They'd met him
in mortal combat over Cephiro and sent him to Hell, there to be made a
duke by the twisted whim of the Adversary.  And here she was, his
daughter, the foolish little witch who had, albeit unwittingly, led
him to destroy Cephiro's most ancient holy order and who had nearly
handed him that order's power to use in their destruction.
        Moreover, they were the Chief's family - Utena his adopted
daughter, Corwin his son, Anthy his daughter-in-law, carrying his
first grandchild.  Her stupidity had cost him dearly, and only his
skill and courage had saved them all from Akio's plans.
        Her face burning with shame, she tried to form some kind of
apology and back out of the room, but it was too late; Utena had
crossed the room to stand before her.
        Raven opened her mouth to make another try at an apology,
hollow and worthless though it would be, but before she could speak,
Utena reached down, took her hands, looked her in the eye, and said,
        "Raven.  God!  I am -so- sorry."
        Raven blinked, absolutely stunned.
        "... sorry?" she finally said, her voice as dry with unuse as
a rusty hinge.  "What do -you- have to be sorry about?"  She eyed
Utena's face carefully, as if suspecting that she was making some kind
of ill-fitting joke.
        Utena raked a hand back through her pink hair, pushing some of
it behind her ear - a gesture of annoyance, though her words revealed
that the annoyance was with herself.
        "That you had to go through that.  That I didn't do a better
job killing that son of a bitch," she said bitterly.  "That none of us
were there to help you.  We didn't even know Akio had a daughter.  If
we had, my God, we'd have come looking for you right away."  She bowed
her head.  "I'm the Prince of Cephiro.  You needed help and I failed
you.  I'm sorry."
        Raven shook her head.  "No, it's... it's all right.  You
couldn't have known.  But I... I should be apologizing to you."
        Utena looked baffled.  "What the hell for?"
        Where do I -start-? Raven thought helplessly.  All she managed
to say aloud was,
        "I... I was... I didn't know... "
        It was enough.
        "Ahhh," said Utena with a nod of comprehension.  "I gotcha."
Then she surprised Raven again by slipping a companionable arm around
her shoulders and urging her into the room.  "C'mon in here and have a
seat, Raven," she said seriously.  "Let me tell you about -another-
girl who once knew your father.  See if any of the story sounds
familiar to you... "

        The ensuing conversation, from which Gryphon excused himself
for parts and errands unknown, lasted for hours and included a
sumptuous meal delivered by uniformed people Raven took to be some
sort of servants to the Trinity's court.  All three of Cephiro's
protectors had a turn to tell part of the tale, and it was clearly not
easy for any of them to tell.  These were events that had happened
-recently- in the lives of people who still considered themselves
relatively normal, not sometime in the ancient past to mythic figures
like unto gods, and many of them had been wrenching and painful.
        It could have turned into a sort of "you think you've had it
tough, missy?  Hah!" session, but it wasn't like that at all.  Rather,
the Three-who-are-One were simply telling Raven that they knew what
she'd been up against, and backing that statement with proof.  They
wanted her to trust them - they wanted her to see that not everyone
was like her father - and, by and large, they succeeded.
        The chief thing that surprised her greatly about them was how
-real- they were.  They really were -people- under the trappings of
their offices - even Corwin, who was himself a kind of god even apart
from his exalted station in Cephiro.  He was so like his father that
Raven found herself losing her fear of him more or less instantly, and
the others were just as warm, just as genuine.  Utena was just what
she presented herself to be - a strong, noble, kind woman with a
disdain for formal authority and a deep love of justice.  Anthy
was... was like Raven herself, or at least like she hoped she would
someday be: dark, a trifle sly, and a touch mysterious, but confident
in herself and kind to the ones she loved.
        Watching the three of them interact and interplay as they told
their tale, she could see the love they all had for each other in the
quiet ways they supported each other.  A glance here, a touch there,
an interruption to fill in a difficult phrase... they were small and
quiet things, but Raven was a clever witch, and she saw them for what
they were.  In a way, seeing that love so subtly and elegantly
expressed was the hardest part of the whole experience for her; it
left her with the aching knowledge that she had briefly believed
herself to possess such a thing, only to discover that it was a foul
and ruthless lie.  That knowledge made the emptiness within her seem
even larger by contrast.
        All the same, she understood their message and was grateful
for it.  They did make her feel considerably better, especially Anthy's 
assertion that there -had- been a time when her brother was a kind and
decent man.  Utena had met that version of him once, and in a strange
way embodied him herself now.  Heartening (if difficult) as well was
Utena's sad-eyed confirmation that she knew perfectly the feelings
that had nearly overwhelmed Raven on the day before her entrapment in
the Dueling Code.
        ("They -did- overwhelm me... briefly," she said, and to
Raven's shock a real tear spilled from one of the Prince's eyes, to
gleam on her pale cheek before Corwin's thumb gently swept it away.)
        By the time they were done, night had fallen over Tenjou
Academy - that happened pretty early at this time of year - and
the lights of the campus gleamed yellowly in the darkness of the
evening.  Raven stood in the doorway of East Hall (once a dorm, now
the Prince's official residence on campus), shaken but grateful as she
took her leave of the Trinity.
        "I... don't know what to say," she said.
        Anthy smiled.  "You don't have to say anything, Raven."
        Utena nodded.  "That's right.  Friends don't have to explain
these things to each other."
        Raven blinked.  "... friends?" she asked.
        Utena grinned.  "Hey, you helped Dad take out Akio," she
said. "That'll get -anybody- on my Christmas list."
        A few hours before, Raven wouldn't have known how to take
that.  Now she knew Utena's sense of humor well enough to recognize it
for what it was and even muster a smile in response.
        "Come with next time Dad stops by for dinner," Corwin said,
smiling.  "Meet the rest of the clan.  They're harmless."
        Raven actually came up with a small laugh for that.  "I will,"
she said.  Then, sobering again, she looked at all of them in turn,
composed herself, and bowed.
        "Thank you all," she said quietly.  "For... everything."
        Utena put a hand on her shoulder.
        "Good night, Raven," she said.  "You did good.  You messed up,
yeah, but when you had the chance to fix it, you made it count.  In
the end, that's all that matters."
        Raven gave her a slightly wan smile, then turned and walked
down toward the campus.  The three stood on the steps of the old dorm
for a few seconds, then glanced at each other.
        "Tough kid," Utena said.
        Anthy nodded.  "She's rather like you, wouldn't you say?"
        "Actually, I was thinking that she's like you," Utena replied.
        Corwin rolled his eyes in good-natured exasperation.  "You
guys are like Laurel and Hardy when you start with this.  C'mon, let's
watch a movie." 

        Raven found Gryphon waiting at the top of the stairs to the
Secret Forest, leaning against the great stone door with his hands in
the pockets of his grey wool overcoat.  Like Raven, he'd awakened to
find fresh clothes laid ready for him, thanks to the great courtesy of
the Priestess of Cephiro.
        Approaching him, Raven said hesitantly, "I'm... I'm sorry
about your swords."
        Gryphon shrugged.  "These things happen.  They can be
replaced."
        Raven looked aghast.  "No they can't!  They were a thousand
years old, they were your CLAN swords... "
        Gryphon shook his head.  "A sword's just a piece of metal,
Raven," he said gently.  "True, some of them have long, noble
histories, and being a witch, you know that gives them power... but in
the final analysis, they're just tools.  I can find others.  Hell, I
can -make- others."  He chuckled.  "I don't know where the hell I'd
ever find another witch, though.  My kids have the only other one I
know of pretty well sewn up."
        Raven gave him her skeptical are-you-messing-with-me-or-what
face, much more commonly applied to her friend and fellow Titan
Garfield Logan than to the Chief.  He grinned and opened his arms.
After a moment's hesitation, she went to them, letting him draw her in
against his broad chest and tuck her head under his chin.
        The sensations she felt now were very like those that had
flowed through her body when she found herself in Akio Ohtori's
arms... except there wasn't that weird, unsettling edge of half-panic
and involition that had made her feel like she was racing out of
control toward some kind of dread precipice.  It was just... nice.
        Really very nice indeed.
        "C'mon," he said after a few minutes.  "Let's go home."

                      TUESDAY, JANUARY 12, 2410
                          STRANGEFATE BOOKS
                        NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI

        Raven arrived home at a little past midnight, slipping in
through the shadows instead of bothering with the door.  The place was
just like she'd left it, except without the lurking demon this time.
She made a mental note to stiffen the wards on the shop some more.
        That wouldn't be hard with the new power she felt coursing
through her.  She mused over this as she took off her cloak and had
another look at her new amulet before hanging it up.  That was
something she was going to have to sort out as she went along; she had
no real idea just what embodying the power of Azarath meant, except
that it had boosted her teleport range to the point where she'd
catapulted herself and Gryphon clear to Cephiro instead of just up to
the top of the stairs where she'd been trying to go.
        For that matter, it occurred to her with a mild start, she
didn't know what it meant that Gryphon had won the duel.  That hadn't
occurred to her until right now.  The Eye's infusion of power had
broken her free from the Rose Bride's cage of neutrality, but not from
the role itself.  The duel had still been valid - her painful encounter
with the barrier at the platform's edge had been ample proof of that.
So when Gryphon took Akio's rose... he won...
        ... what?
        Raven smiled to herself in the dark.  Time to figure that out
later, too.  Plenty of time.
        One thing she did know was that the Eye wasn't the only thing
she'd brought away from this mess.  Crossing to her bed, she switched
on a light, then removed a slight burden from her shoulder and hung it
on her bedpost.  It was the slim black sword with which Gryphon had
slain Akio, at home now in a scabbard of black wood he'd found for her
someplace.
        By rights, according to what Anthy Tenjou knew about the
workings of the Dueling Code - which was quite a lot - the sword
should have gone away when the duel was finished; transmuted back to
energy, returned to Raven's heart, however you wanted to interpret the
magical metaphor.  Instead, Gryphon had still been holding it when he
passed out on the platform, and had found it with his fresh clothes
when he awoke.  Anthy could offer no explanation as to why that should
be, other than to shrug and point out that Akio's copy of the Code
-had- been a bit broken at the time.
        However it had happened, it appeared that the sword of Raven's
heart had been made permanently manifest... something else for her to
get used to working with.
        She regarded it for a few more moments, then went to the
refrigerator in her miniature kitchen.  As she'd suspected, there was
no food in the house; she'd have to go out if she wanted to do
something about the hunger she felt beginning to gnaw at her belly.
Well, she supposed that was all right.  She wasn't very tired, having
slept into the afternoon.
        She looked around the loft again, pleased to be home - it felt
like she'd been gone for months, not just a long weekend - when her
eye fell on two small items on her kitchen table.
        The first was a small scrap of what looked like parchment,
folded once into a little rectangle.  She picked it up, unfolded it,
and found that it had words not written on it but -burned into it-,
the letters black and ornate.

A thousand apologies, witch most sublime,
For the acts I was bound to commit.
If I have earned punishment for my base crime,
Seek me out and I'll gladly submit.
        -E.

        Raven gave this bit of poesy a peculiar look, then put the
note down on the table and picked up the other item.  This was a piece
of ordinary note paper, except it had been carefully folded into the
shape of a crane.  She almost hated to unfold it, but clearly she was
meant to.  It, too, bore a note, this one written in green ink with a
neat, calligraphic hand:

     Your dream turned nightmare
but your brave heart would not yield;
       now your soul is free.

Well done, Raven.
        - W.D.

        At this, Raven smiled; then she carefully folded the note back
into a crane, crossed the loft, and put it on the little shelf near
the head of her bed.
        When she turned back, there was a masked, black-cloaked figure
crouching menacingly over her kitchen sink, having just come in
through the small window above it.
        "Hey," Raven said.
        "Hey," replied Batgirl.  Then she hopped down from the sink,
straightened up, and smiled.  Raven noticed that she'd changed her
mask since last week.  The new one had actual eyes, one-way white like
the ones in Robin's mask, and left her chin and mouth exposed, like
Batman's own helmet.
        "New mask," Raven noted.
        Batgirl reached up, peeled the mask back, and let it flop
behind her head like a hood.  "Trying it out," she said, shrugging.
"Not sure if I like it yet.  You'd be surprised how cold my chin
gets."  She grinned.  "Does seem to freak the mundanes out a little
less, though."
        "I think just the eyes would help with that," Raven replied
dryly.  "Your old mask made you look like the Bat-Question, which is
just too freaky for most people."
        Cassandra Cain laughed.  "Anyway, just checking in.  I saw
your light.  You've been out of circulation all weekend, and the
Chief's been gone too.  Kori's freaking out.  After that weirdness
last fall, we were all starting to worry."
        Raven gave her friend a tired smile, but before she could say
anything, Cassie noticed the little piece of parchment on the kitchen
table.
        "What's this?" she asked, reaching for it, then pausing.
Raven gave her a go-ahead gesture, and she picked it up and read it,
then gave Raven a puzzled look.
        "Who's E?"
        "Etrigan."
        Cassie blinked.  "What'd he do?"
        "Long story.  He sort of kidnapped me for somebody else."
        "Oh."  Cassie thought about that for a moment, then said,
"This was some kind of demon geas thing, wasn't it."
        Raven smiled slyly.  "You're learning."  Then, nodding, she
elaborated, "They forced him to do it.  Politics of Hell."
        Cassie read the note again, then smiled and put it down.
"Aww," she said.  "Isn't that sweet?  He didn't want to do it, so he
left a note."  She picked it up again, scanned it one more time, and
then went on slowly, "... A creepy rhyming note in which he implies
that he'd maybe like to scene with you, but a note, all the same."
        Raven snorted.
        "So what happened?" Cassie asked.
        "Like I said - long story," Raven replied.
        "Tell me about it over dinner?" Cassie proposed.
        Raven gestured to her kitchen.  "Cupboard's bare," she said.
        Cassie smirked.  "MacCready's never closes.  Buy me a chili dog?"
        Raven grinned and called her cloak to her hand.
        "You're on," she said.
        Cassie changed quickly into some street clothes she'd left at
the loft for just such an eventuality.  As they left, Raven said,
        "Remember what I told you about my father?"


 /*  The Who  "Won't Get Fooled Again"  _The Ultimate Collection_  */

                     Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
                                 and
                          Bacon Comics Group
                              presented

                UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT

                          RAVEN: BLOOD TIES
                       "Some Trick of Mischief"

                               starring
                                Raven
                             Akio Ohtori
                         Benjamin D. Hutchins

                            also featuring
                               Etrigan
                            Nanami Kiryuu
                            Paige Guthrie
                             Jason Blood
                             Touga Kiryuu
                      Wesley Dodds (The Sandman)
                               Solomon
                             Leyna Cardon
                              Rob Doncan
                       Cassandra Cain (Batgirl)

                                 with
        T.Sgt. Mark Klayburn and Sky Raider Strike Team Delta

                            and featuring
                             Anthy Tenjou
                             Utena Tenjou
                           Corwin Ravenhair

                                 and
                   Randolph Carter, Lord of Dreams


                   written by Benjamin D. Hutchins

                   with a plot assist by Anne Cross

     and dialogue nudges + notion wranglin' by the Usual Suspects

        Randolph Carter and certain features of the dreamlands
                      created by H.P. Lovecraft

           excerpt from "The Dark Tower" by Robert Browning

           and the usual much owed to lots of other people

              Bacon Comics chief Derek Bacon (Lightnin)


                          RAVEN: BLOOD TIES
                             Vol. 1 No. 3
                       BACON COMICS GROUP 2410

                          Raven will return

                         E P U (colour) 2004