The Devil's Due (Raven)

Participants: Cassandra Cain / Raven
Open/Closed: Closed
Location(s): Blackgate Penitentiary, Gotham
Time of Day: Late evening
Weather: An unseasonably warm evening, though it is chill within Blackgate
Summary: Following a string of strange happenings at Blackgate, the inmates are slowly losing their sanity. The supernatural is to blame, and Black Bat and Raven are hoping to solve the problem before the entire prison is lost to madness.

Blackgate Penitentiary was eerily silent. As the two figures, robed in shadow, strode with purpose between cells lit by harsh overhead lights, they weren’t met with the usual jeers, shouts and threats that inmates were famed for. While only weeks before many of the small, enclosed rooms had been occupied, most now lay empty, their thick steel doors sat open, allowing passers-by to view the unmade cots and sparse furnishings within. Bar the sound of the visitors’ footfalls, every corridor they turned down was possessed of a similar quiet – even those incarcerated remaining seemed afraid of raising their voice.

Those gone had been moved to Arkham Asylum. Despite showing none of the signs of insanity Arkahm was famed for upon entering the Penitentiary, mass hysteria had spread through inmates like a plague. Fevered dreams, rash behaviour, speaking to imagined figures – one by one the criminals housed in Blackgate had seen their sanity fractured. Questions had been raised, inquiries held, but not a single member of the GCPD or local law enforcement agency could quite understand the sudden bouts of madness. Neither could the psychiatrists at Arkham.

It was at that point Gotham’s vigilantes were alerted to events.

Analysing data from the penitentiary with an obsessive compulsion common among the city’s Bat family, Cassandra Cain noted the incidents had begun to occur with the arrival of a maximum security inmate – by all accounts a distant individual who barely spoke a word during his trial or resulting imprisonment. Kept away from the prison’s general population, it seemed strange his arrival should have triggered the hysterics it had.

Then she had visited his cell.

His walls had been covered with strange iconography, and just standing at the door, looking through the small viewing portal at his hunched figure, she had felt uneasy. For nights after her brief visitation, she had experienced strange dreams, heard things that had never been uttered. Though not an expert in the supernatural, she understood the hallmarks of its presence. And thus, she had called for aid.

Leading Raven, daughter of Trigon, down another long corridor, she slowed toward its end, where the lights flickered and hummed loudly. Clad in her faceless mask and Black Bat attire, Cassandra gestured at the hallway’s dark end, where through the gloom, a door was situated. “Help,” was all she had to say.

Lavender eyes didn't leave the door, even when Black Bat turned to say that single word and indicate it. Walking through any concentrated location of twisted, vile souls was always a trial for an empath. Such malice and perversion trying to worm their way into her chest made her skin crawl and stomach turn. Blackgate was different than even those, though. The second Raven had entered the complex, she'd known as much.

Every step closer to that high security cell made her supernatural senses scream more and more shrilly. Now that she was at the end of the corridor that lead to that lonely door, every instinct that the sorceress had begged her to run. Had life been different for Raven before that day, she well may have. Little evil this world or others had compared to that of her father's.

The empath reached out, finally turning attention onto Black Bat. With one finger she drew in the air, forming a sigil of deep violet light. With it finished, Raven made a sweeping gesture and the sigil drifted forward, sinking into Black Bat's cowl-shrouded forehead. "To be safe," was all she said by way of explanation. Then Raven faced the door again and marched forward.

The air quivered and tension built in it with each step. The darkness brooding behind that door didn't want Raven intruding - was worried what it would mean for its carefully-cultivated garden of madness. She got to the door and reached out a hand. Pain sank its fangs into her arm and she gasped. Raven didn't retrieve her hand, though. Instead, her expression steeled and she forced it open anyway.

Cassandra Cain

While Raven’s eyes were fixed on the lonesome cell door ahead, Cassandra’s gaze was firmly affixed on the empath. Her head tilted, Cain watched the woman’s every move; she caught the slightest shifting of her feet, sensed the flicker of eyelashes and noted the even rise and fall of her chest. Cassandra knew what fear looked like, and Raven, though she had every right to be, was most certainly not afraid. Wary, perhaps, of what lay in the shadows of Blackgate, but not afraid. To some, that may have provided comfort. Cassandra was simply impressed.

When the former Titan finally broke her stare, it was to turn toward the Bat at her side. Raising a hand, she gracefully traced signs and shapes in the air, and in her finger’s wake, lines of deep violet blazed against nothingness. Naturally cautious around magic, Cassandra found herself watching it intently, almost stepping away from Raven when, with a sweeping motion, she cast it toward her cowled forehead. Frowning beneath her mask, she raised a gloved hand, her fingers tracing across the dark material just above her eyebrows. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. “Safe? How?”

Cain was used to keeping herself safe. It seemed odd to her that a glowing circle would provide her much in the way of protection. Not that she doubted Raven’s statement. It was curiosity that had her ask.

It was the hooded figure that moved toward the cell door first, and the darkness in the hallway seemed only to deepen. The flickering light went out fully, and shadows lengthened in a manner that science could never have explained. Cassandra trailed at Raven’s heels, following her expert lead. She was, after all, far more well-versed in the arcane than any of the Bat family could ever hope to be.

When Raven reached toward the metallic door, hiding the prisoner within, Cassandra was quick to detect the pain she experienced. A gasp, followed by a tensing of muscles, from wrist to arm. Rushing to her side, she stopped herself from taking hold of the empath and pulling her back from the dark portal, given pause by the other woman’s resilience and persistence, forging on and pushing the door open despite the hurt inflicted upon her.

Again, Cain found herself impressed.

Stepping past Raven and into the shadowed cell, she glanced back at the cloaked woman briefly, checking on her wellbeing one last time – if the Outsider was seriously wounded, Cassandra was almost certain Jason would never forgive her.

Raven

Black Bat moved, unnaturally quiet, past Raven and into the cell itself. The sorceress closed her eyes, shoring up her power and resistance one final time, then followed. She was hardly over the threshold when the heavy door slammed shut, so loud the frame strained, behind her. Its numerous locks fell into place - some automatically, others that should've been manual sealing anyway.

Raven hadn't flinched at the noise. She would've been more surprised if something of the sort hadn't happened. Her lavender gaze fell on the figure sitting against the padded wall on the other end of the room. His hair was brittle with grease and dried sweat, his eyes unfocused and drool dripping from a mouth that was limply agape. The remnants of what had once been a straight jacket lay in perfectly symmetrical strips in front of him. Six, all told.

She studied her specimen for a long moment. Silence was so heavy in the air it pressed on her eardrums. Raven gestured for Black Bat to stay near the door, then took one careful step forward. Two. She was near the middle of the room when she stopped and gently lowered down until she sat, legs folded under her. Raven watched the man, and was not disappointed when, several heartbeats after she'd been seated, his pupils snapped in her direction and focused on her.

"I am Raven," she said softly. "You may know my father." And the inmate's cracked and bloodied lips twisted into a sneer, splitting new tears in the skin and letting more crimson bead and mingle with his spittle.

Cassandra Cain