Blood Bound - Maskingslade
Going outside the Tower wasn't exactly high on the list of things Raven enjoyed doing. She stood out clearly enough with her ashen gray skin, and the bright blue of her cloak may keep her anonymous, but not exactly unnoticed. And Jump City knew what their heroes looked like, even if the dark recluse one didn't make many public appearances.
But there were a few reasons that Raven would leave the Tower. Aside from the obvious distress calls and grocery runs, the one thing more important to Raven than being sure that her stock of tea never ran out was her stock of books.
And not just any books. No, the Barnes 'N Nobles that littered the blocks around the tower wouldn't suit her purposes. Instead, the empath glided down a side street, not exactly well-traveled by Jump City's more normal residents, and stepped through the doorway that lay at the bottom of the concrete steps.
The store itself had a relatively low ceiling, but was still more than enough to move around in. The wooden chimes clunked over her hooded head, but the few occupants already in the store were already lost among the books. Among the customers of this store, she barely stood out.
As far as Raven may be from Azarath, she could still find some magic tomes in Jump City. It wasn't the magic she was used to using, but still powerful, and using this different kind of magic was like stretching her muscles in ways they weren't used to. Neither painful nor unpleasant, but the sensation of power that flowed through her body always left a different aftereffect, much like the third or fourth day after a new workout.
Scanning the shelves towards the back of the store, Raven's gaze glided over some titles she knew well, and others only in passing. Under tutelage from Malchior, as much as she loathed the source, she truly had learned a great deal about the magic that was out there, and even her time searching for the source of the Mark of Scath had given her a lot of books to check into.
So it was only after she was replaced an unfamiliar title on the shelf she'd pulled it from, unable to remember if she'd heard the name before, that Raven became more aware of her surroundings, and far from liked what she felt.
The auras that Raven could identify without a second's thought wasn't an expansive number. Robin, Starfire, Beast Boy, and Cyborg's auras were almost as familiar to her as her own. Trigon's was always linked too closely to her own to be able to fully distinguish, but the sixth aura filled her with a sickly coppered dread that caused a cold sweat to prick at the back of her neck as she forced herself to step from beyond the shelves, following the source of the sensation.
She didn't know why, and wasn't in the mood to ask questions, as she summoned the black magic to her fingertips.
But seeing Slade anywhere in the city was never a good sign.
