Ladies and gentlemen, lads and luvvies, dudes and dudettes…

You're looking at the special preview chapter of Promises and Prophecies Part II: Black Magic. Hopefully if you've read up to this chapter, you'll want to know what happens next, so just to whet your appetites…

An excerpt from Black Magic Ch.2, the rather aptly-titled Apprentice vs. Apprentice;

"…Terra ripped a lump of rock out of the ground and floated over to him on it, then arranged more like steps as she descended and stood in front of him, her hands on her hips.

"Slade was right," she patronised him, looking down at him. "You are pathetic."

Fast as lighting the Boy Wonder was on his feet, and before Terra even realised what had happened he had dealt her a powerful uppercut. He followed through with a dragonfly kick that threw Terra against the far wall. He landed lightly and slid into a battle stance.

Terra struggled to her feet and wiped her mouth, which was bleeding freely.

"Prick," she muttered darkly as she advanced on him again; he couldn't help but be amused by the insult. After all, she was the one who was trying to kill him. He was merely defending himself.

She made the mistake of getting too close and he caught her with a roundhouse, sending her to the floor. Instead of getting up again she merely propped herself up on her elbows and her eyes glowed yellow.

Something – a rock, more than likely – smacked into the backs of his knees, sending him off-balance. Terra realised her second mistake as he landed heavily on top of her. They wrestled on the ground in the dirt, Terra having the upper hand by shooting rock chips at his face to try and blind him. She pitched him onto his back and straddled his stomach, sitting on him contently with her knees on either side of his chest. He struggled underneath her but couldn't get her off. She smiled sweetly at him and moulded herself a pointed taper of rock, sharp like a stake. She held it in her right hand and raised it over his heart; she was going to stick it to him like he was a vampire or something.

He brought his knees up behind her and smashed her in the back, throwing her off his body head-first. Her "stake" got lost in the process and he rolled over and got to his knees as she did the same. Their eyes met and for a few seconds it was almost as though they were play-fighting.

But they weren't, and they both knew it.

They both stood, and Terra rose higher still on another platform of rock, raised her hand and more rocks flew like ravenous birds at him. He parried them off with his staff, but then the metal weapon snapped as a bigger rock came at him. It hit him in the stomach and sent him staggering backwards against the first boulder that had taken out Starfire. He crumpled and discarded the staff, desperately went to his belt, pulled out a pair of birdarangs and sent them arcing at her. She shrieked and shielded her face with her arm, and they ripped the black fabric of her long-sleeved top, baring bloody skin beneath. They clattered to the floor and Terra looked down at them in disgust; her head jerked up again as she heard Robin utter a high-pitched battle cry and too late she found him in front of her, swinging his elbow at her face. She ducked and instead he caught her by the front of her top, grasped her by the waist and threw her across the rocky chamber. The earth-mover tumbled to a halt and scrabbled to her feet, rubbing the back of her neck under the sheet of corn-coloured hair. She straightened up just as Robin threw himself into her, slamming her against the wall. Her face pressed against the sharp wall of the chamber as he twisted her arm behind her back, his mouth centimetres from her ear.

"Tell Slade to cram it," Robin whispered lethally, feeling strands of her long blonde hair tickling his face. He felt Terra struggle against him and pressed harder against her twisted arm. She shrieked and swore at him, calling him things much worse than "prick".

"Taught you how to curse too, has he?" Robin asked, grimly amused.

"I'll kill you," Terra spat.

A sour smile played across Robin's pale, handsome face.

"Not if I can help it, Terra.""

Yeah, Robin and Terra have a bit of a scrap – not to mention a bitchy name-calling session. This storyline does get a bit heavy, I have to admit. It's not really light reading. So many other fics on here are just about relationships between different characters, but have no real… storyline. I mean, that's all well and good – I have written a few of those myself. Underneath Your Clothes and Small Print are prime examples of my fics that are just basically about sexual chemistry. But this… I've worked on this storyline for coming up two years in March 2006. I should therefore hope it's got a pretty intricate narrative… There's a lot of relationship stuff, but it's all relevant to the storyline (one in particular is VERY important…).

Sooo… coming up we've got Terra in place doing Slade's bidding (really bad for our boy Robin) and being pretty bitchy about it. Some more teasers;

- The Titans go to Azarath (which means some OCs. Sorry! I don't really like OCs that much, but they are relevant. I hate it when people make up their own Titans and stuff; you know, "The Titans meet a girl with strange powers, but is she to be trusted?…". I never read fics like that on here. But these are Azarathian people (The Senate, to be precise) and they aren't really in it that much, but I needed them and because there aren't any ever shown in the show, I was forced to make them up. Can't have a whole dimension with no people in it! Plus Arella is in there. I tried REALLY hard not to turn them into Mary Sues, so I hope you like them!)

- SPOILER! No, not the Spoiler from the DC comics… I mean literally a spoiler. There's quite a bit of Robin/Raven in Part II (hope you all like that couple ok). It's really, REALLY important to the storyline; that much I promise. It's not just Robin going; "Oh, boo hoo, I got raped by my arch-nemesis. Guess I'll just leech some "comfort" from my dear friend Raven…". Nope, not at all…

- Um, just all out Raven-ness, I guess. She wasn't in Asylum much, true, but because it's an Azarathian prophecy you can bet she's pretty involved. The storyline is still pretty focused around the Boy-Avenging-Wonder, but Raven gets more involved too. Yay for Raven! Plus the others are, um, in it a lot more too.

- Still stuck with the seer, I'm afraid. Slade's not in the next bit so much, but he does something very bad to Robin… Something which affects the entire story-arc… for the worst, obviously.

- Slight bit of BB/Terra, but not much, seeing as she's on Slade's side. This fic is still set in Season 2, between Betrayal and Aftershock (but after Fractured). Starfire and Cyborg provide some comic relief, of course; Batman isn't in this next bit. He turns up again in Part III, Remember the Titans, I promise!

- And, uh… yeah, you can bet Robin has a hard time of it all over again. I do so love to torture him and make his (fictional) life a misery. Let's just say that he comes to understand Raven's demonic side a whole lot more…

Feel free to make any speculations/guesses in a review! I would be very interested to hear them! Never know, anything you predict might give me another idea to add in…

Hope to "see" y'all there! I dunno, put me on Author Alert or something so you'll get an email notification when I put the new part up. You can always take me off again once it's up. Does it work like that?

Well, never mind! Thankyou all SO MUCH for reading it! Knowing it brings a smile to your face (even if it's a cynical one as you think "Jeez, this is bollocks…") is what makes it all worthwhile!

Gotta fly now. You've been a wonderful audience; and if you're driving, don't forget your car!

Thankyou and goodnight!

- RobinRocks, the Boy-love Wonder x