The stink was overpowering, a miasma of blood and rotten guts. Giles held the cloth to his nose. How the vampires endured it he couldn't tell, unless they were only pretending disgust now.
This was not what I came here to find.
The air of the hut blanketed him, close and barely breathable in the heat. He'd failed to keep the others out of the sickroom, but it was plain now that there was no danger. The locals called the illness "Final Viridescence", but he recognized it under a different name: radiation sickness. How she'd been exposed in this primitive hell was beyond him, but the girl dying in the bed must have taken a truly massive dose. Only a few scattered clumps of hair remained on her bloody scalp. Her eyes were clouded white beyond any hope of vision. She whimpered with delirium.
Others in the room were whimpering as well, and Giles was unsure that his voice was not among them.
I came here to rescue Buffy.
The girl on the filthy straw mattress thrashed feverishly, trickles of blood and offal issuing from every orifice. Mewling pitifully, she clawed at her unseeing eyes as if trying to pull away a veil.
How could I have failed so utterly?
Another layer of skin peeled away from Buffy's blotched and bleeding face, and Rupert Giles, Watcher, averted his eyes.
"She's far beyond our help. I'm sorry."
She fell into the radiance.
And through it.
And kept falling. There was ground rushing up to meet her, a great green-brown monolith of a mountain, and plainly her first few moments in some hell dimension were going to be her last, because that thing was going to batter her to pieces long before she stopped rolling. Thunder blasted her ears and light seared her eyes. She couldn't recall what terminal velocity was, but she was pretty sure she'd reached it and it was going to be terminal all right.
A speck was moving below her, rushing up even faster than the mountain. Could it be a bird? A plane? No, nor was it Superman. It was a boat, somehow sailing through empty sky. Buffy envied it. It was evidently not going to dash itself on the rocks below, though for the life of her she couldn't figure out how. Shame, that. Say, was it coming toward her?
She hit the sails first, barely feeling them rip as they tried and failed to slow her passage. Her arm struck a jutting mast, sending her spinning, her legs flailing, ripping down the mainsail as she went. She crashed down onto, into, through the deck, shattering planks like straw. A second deck. Then she struck something that felt softer, say on the level of hitting a pile of gravel, rolled a few times, and was still.
Buffy was lying in a pile of grain spilling from some broken barrels. She didn't try to get up. The notion that there could be a bone in her body that wasn't broken was fundamentally absurd. Shouts rang through the impossible ship, above and below her, and she could hear people scurrying closer. They'd probably throw her overboard to resume her fall.
A man in a ridiculous pirate hat strolled up from somewhere above her head-she was lying on her back, she supposed; talk about being disoriented-and put his hands on his hips. "They told me someone would meet me above the Blessed Isle," he said flamboyantly, "but this is truly absurd." And he burst into laughter. "Why not? Is there anything in Creation that isn't?"
"If you're done impersonating Jack Sparrow," Buffy managed, "I think I might still be alive. Is there a doctor in the house?"
The pirate laughed louder. "Oh, no worries, my fine young lady. I guarantee you'll be well in a matter of weeks. Trust me, you are so very much alive. The mistress would hardly have it otherwise." Shaking his head derisively, he kicked her in the shoulder, which proved to be too bruised to hurt any worse than it already did. "Did you have to wreck so much of my vessel getting here?"
She gritted her teeth and forced a grin onto her face. "Falling out of the sky tends to do that, sorry."
"True enough. I don't suppose you could tell me how you came to be plummeting from the heavens?" The man removed his hat. "Captain Gyrfalcon, in no way at your service but required to assist you somewhat."
Buffy tried to move and found that her left arm, at least, was somehow intact. "I would if i could, but I can't, so I won't. Please forgive me if I don't." Where did that jingle come from? "If you're going to assist me, could you at least get me into a nice comfy chair so I can stop lying around in your cargo hold?" The captain chuckled and gestured to a couple of men on either side of him, who seized her by the arms. Spikes of pain shot through her as they hauled her half-upright-were they crazy? her spine was probably shattered-and dragged her from the wreckage.
"Don't worry," Gyrfalcon shouted after her. "She says they have plans for you that don't involve dying. Yet." He bowed deeply. "Get well soon, little birdie, and maybe we'll find your nest and put you back in it."
She was so going to wring his neck.
"We have to get her out of here."
Giles released a pained sigh. "Xander, I mean Buffy no disrespect, but she will surely be dead in a matter of hours. Her pursuers can do her no further harm. I am deeply sorry, but we must go, or they will find us here with her."
"Giles!"
"Willow, that is the reality of the situation. I will say it again: I am so sorry that we must leave her." Buffy's pitiful keening rose slightly in volume, and he turned slightly to see a clawlike hand outstretched in his direction. "Oh damn. Buffy, do you understand me?" Was that the faintest nod of her head?
Fred took up the bloody cloth soaking in the basin and began to mop Buffy's forehead gently. "Giles, she's so far gone her internal organs are practically liquefying. Moving her will probably kill her even faster anyway." He nodded acknowledgement. "We can't do anything for her." Yet there was that outstretched hand...
"Willow, Xander, get some blankets. Fred, Gunn-find planking of some sort. We're going to make a litter. Spike, Angel-yes, yes, I know-you two carry her. Cordelia, Wesley, Dawn, search this place from top to bottom for any medicines that might make her more comfortable."
Wesley gave him a pained look. "What should I do, then?" Giles muttered to him. "Follow Watcher tradition and smother her with the pillow? She'll be dead before long no matter what we do. At least let her die in the company of her friends." Wesley threw up his hands and began rattling his way up the rickety stairs.
Giles enfolded Buffy's hand in one of his. He could feel nothing familiar in it besides bones and papery skin. The very flesh of her arm seemed to have gone to mush. The poor girl was already rotting where she lay. Again that pitiful excuse for a sound issued from her, and Giles tipped up the bloody basin and trickled water over her cracked lips. What had she to fear, after all? He searched feebly for some apology that might reach her. "I tried," was all he could find before his throat seized.
Falling. Falling forever through rings of light.
Buffy lurched to a sitting position. She felt none of the sensation of movement there had been on the flying boat, and this bed was made of silken sheets and feather pillows. Though she ached everywhere, she felt none of the searing pain that should have resulted from broken bones. How could she not have broken bones? True, she'd been hit by cars and punched through walls-most recently by Glory-but surely not even Glorificus could pack the wallop of falling out of the sky. Had she been out cold that long?
"One day," came a soft call from somewhere in the room. Buffy peered through the darkness and made out a young woman sitting in front of a mirror, combing out her jet black hair as if she could see what she was doing in the dark. Well, Buffy could; perhaps she could too. "You've been unconscious for one day. After literally falling out of the sky. There's promise in that. Still, most Slayers could do so well."
"Most...Slayers?" Buffy saw no point in pretending. Anyone who knew the name probably knew more, enough that hiding what she was would only waste time. "You've known other Slayers?"
The woman turned to face her, quirking an eyebrow upward. "I've met all ten of those currently alive, and several dead ones. They do tend to be on the front lines."
"All...what? I'm sorry, I think I got hit on the head a few time on the way down." Ten Slayers alive? That made no sense, unless this lady meant something entirely different after all. But she clearly meant a warrior of some kind.
"Forgive me. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Nellens Cyan, and you are in my townhouse. I had the good captain bring you here." Nellens paused expectantly, as if Buffy should recognize her. Buffy shrugged.
"Buffy Summers, Ms. Cyan. I'm sorry, but I haven't the foggiest. Everything is so off-kilter I might as well be in gymnastics practice." She began to work out some of the kinks in her bruised muscles.
"Please, Buffy...just Cyan, to you. Nellens is my family name. I am what is known in the Empire as a Dynast. Clearly you have come a long way. It pleases me to offer my hospitality to another of the Exalted."
"Ex...alted?" Cyan frowned for a moment, then nodded. "If you say so. I hate to say it, but I think we're going to have to start from the beginning here."
The tip of Cyan's tongue flicked along her lips. "From the beginning, you say. Well, in that case...I suppose we shall."
"What kind of sickhouse has an escape tunnel?" Fred poked experimentally at the support beams. A little dust fell from the ceiling, but the beams didn't so much as creak.
"One meant to hide evacuees," Wesley put in. "Perhaps even one secondary to the evacuation."
"If it's part of an underground railroad," Gunn wondered, "who's it for? There sure ain't much attempt to free any slaves going on here."
Angel and Spike made their way down into the tunnel, carrying the makeshift litter to which Buffy was tied. She seemed to have lapsed into unconsciousness. Giles hoped they hadn't made even more of a mistake than he believed; her death might be a matter of minutes rather than hours.
Willow was next down. "Guys, we gotta move. People on horseback are headed straight for this place, and I don't think they're EMTs."
"How far off?" Wesley peered down the tunnel, waving his torch about.
"Minutes," Cordelia said, not bothering with the ladder. "If we don't get this trap door sealed up in five we aren't gonna get away."
Tara swung Dawn down before dropping down herself. "Maybe Willow and I should stay behind and try to hold them off." Willow winced, but nodded.
"No," Xander said quietly. "And it's not about chivalry. I've been the fifth wheel ever since we got here. The only one who's more dead weight in this place than I am is Buffy. I'll stay behind, try to distract them. If I somehow manage to convince them it's clear, I'll come after you. If not...well, I hate to say it but you're not losing much."
"Xander, no!" Anya halted when Xander pulled up his shirt, revealing the infection spreading from the wound in his side.
"Go on without me while you have time." He leaned down and kissed Anya on the head, then pulled up the ladder behind him.
Willow's face crumpled as if she was about to cry...then her expression firmed. "We have to honor his sacrifice. Get going. Now!"
Where was she? Buffy darted around the pillars, searching through the maze for Cyan. The angles of this place were all wrong, but this maze of rounded columns ought to be largely immune to that problem. Still no sign of her.
The faintest rush of air caught her attention as Cyan dropped from one of the pillars, knife raised. Buffy spun away, but the blade still scored along her ribs. "You can do better," Cyan sneered, and vanished into the shadows again. One by one the torches began going out, plunging the maze into darkness.
Buffy shrugged. This, at least, was one obstacle she had no trouble with. She did most of her work by starlight, if that. This time the knife came flying through the air at her, as much sensed as seen, and she stepped aside without difficulty. "Better." Cyan's voice echoed through the columns, impossible to localize. The torches were still going out, spreading the darkness until the nearest flicker of light was hundreds of yards away. "At least you know Witness to Darkness," Cyan murmured. "Still, you don't even know what you are. What's to come. You've hardly begun." And a second knife scored along her ribs. This time, a line of green flame flared along what would have been just a scratch. "I don't expect perfect defenses from you, not yet, but you should have been able to evade that. What is it you've been fighting, anyway? Mortals? Mindless zombies?"
"I fight *vampires*," Buffy emphasized. She could do this. The maze blocked her vision in the dark or in the light, so she closed her eyes. She'd fought invisible opponents before. Footsteps. Rustling clothes. Whispered breath. A faint hint of wrongness-there! She performed a flawless sweep-kick and connected, bowling Cyan over. "I fight demons. And yeah, the occasional mortal. Oh, and lately there was this god..."
"A god." Buffy could almost hear Cyan's eyes roll. "You were made to fight and kill beings that are to the gods as gods are to mortals. At least you know some defensive charms. That knife wound should have slowed you a little, yet it did nothing. Either your Hardened Devil Body is stronger than I realized, or you know By Agony Empowered. Perhaps both, given that you survived your fall. Still. Do you sleep?"
"Not much," Buffy said, scanning the room. She threw a punch, but Cyan evaded it with ease. "Less and less time for it. I still like to get a few winks. Oh, and I see the future in my dreams sometimes." A second punch collided with a column, and she had to dance aside before Cyan tripped her up. The pillar shook, and bits of stone sprayed.
"Stop trying to hit me and hit me!" Buffy thought to suppress a laugh, thought better of it, and let the snickers out. "Do you have any idea what that should have done? Even to a stone pillar?" Another knife came at Buffy. This one she grabbed from the air. "I don't know any charm for seeing the future, but perhaps you know a little thaumaturgy."
"What should it have done?" Buffy flung the knife back at Cyan and heard it connect with a meaty thunk. That, at least, she was more than good at. Cyan pried the knife out of the hand she'd thrown in front of her face with a contemptuous sneer.
"You must know Nightmare Fugue Vigilance, even if you don't use it to its full potential. I suppose if you see the future in dreams it makes sense." She vanished into the maze again. "You could have demolished that pillar with a single blow. That knife could have gone right through my hand and into my eyes."
Buffy blinked. "We're sparring. I'm not trying to kill you!" She had broken stone pillars before.
Cyan let out with a groan. "Well, try then! I call this Shadowfire Venom. If you were a mortal, you'd surely die of it." She flung two more knives at Buffy, who dodged without any real difficulty, only to run headlong into Cyan as she flung *herself*. A third knife scored along her arm with another burst of green fire-and something else, a bone-deep numbing pain that sank into her arm and gave her a moment of dizziness. Cyan just sighed as each of them picked herself up. "Well, again...you're not dead yet. I can't believe I'm saddled with such a pathetic excuse for a Slayer, though. Maybe you're not the one prophesied after all. Kejak would love to have played such a trick on us."
"Prophecy?" Buffy could tell she was hurt, though not that badly. She chose not to let it slow her down and slipped behind a column. Two could play at that game. A deep black circle had appeared on Cyan's forehead, like a baleful third eye. "I have a tendency to be prophecy girl. What's that nasty mole on your face?"
Cyan facepalmed. "You've never even flared your caste mark? Bloody hell. No wonder you're nothing. A Slayer should have long ago wiped the floor with me." She shook her head and took on a lecturing tone. "Seven days ago, Sacheverelli sat bolt upright. I don't expect you to understand the significance of that, at least. I saw it happen, and it was absolute terror, because Sacheverelli sees only the truth. So long as he dreams, though, he sees only the past and present. If he were ever to wake, he would see the future, and you could kiss your free will goodbye. It took all that Lucien and the Ebon Dragon together could do to soothe him back to sleep, but as he drifted off, he murmured a few words. That a Slayer would fall from the sky. That the Chosen of the gods would not know her. That all the forces of the Realm would not stop her. And that she would open the mouth of hell and set the Yozis free."
"And you believed this Matchabelli demon?" Buffy kept her voice level. Free the Old Ones? It had to be someone else. But she was a Slayer, even if not in the sense that Cyan seemed to think, and she had fallen from the sky.
Cyan stalked after her. It was getting easier to track her movements the harder Buffy tried. "Sacheverelli is no mere *demon*. Not even a Third Circle. He is one of the Yozis and his power is unimaginable. I don't believe you're the one. I think Kejak planted you somehow as a distraction. Because whatever you are, you are no Exalt, Infernal or otherwise. The idea of *you* freeing the Yozis is laughable. The Ebon Dragon thought I should prepare you, but whether the prophesied Slayer is prepared or not, she *will* free them. Sacheverelli saw it happen. And you, I think I will finish off now."
"Not gonna happen. Because whatever you think I am, I *am* the Slayer. I have the power. I stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness, Cyan, and I kick their asses. That's what I do. That's what I am. It's a thing." She slipped to the side, and astonishingly enough Cyan didn't seem to notice as she readied more knives. Buffy's arm hurt, still, but she couldn't let that stop her.
Cyan flung a knife into the darkness. Far off to the left. And Buffy lunged for her. This fight had gone on for too long. Now she was going to end it, even if she had to kill the woman-who after all was trying to free the Old Ones as certainly as the Master had been.
At the last moment Cyan seemed to notice her and slid aside. Buffy's full-strength blow slammed into the column behind her. This time it *did* shatter, flinging bits of stone everywhere, and Buffy heard a snort of grudging approval as the woman slipped into the maze. No. Not this time.
Buffy struck again, this time driving her fist into a pillar on purpose. And again. And again. Gravel scattered like falling snowflakes. Tumbling columns slammed into more columns, knocking them aside. The maze began to crumble, and Buffy counted her blessings that that was all it was; none of the pillars seemed to actually support anything. "I hope you know I hate killing *people*. It puts me in a bad mood. But if you give me enough of a reason, like freeing the Old Ones? I'll do it."
"Then you're killing the wrong person," Cyan sneered. "It may not be you, but it sure as hell isn't me. Not that I won't help, mind, if it gets me ahead." She lashed out with the knife in her left hand, and Buffy danced aside. She couldn't afford another cut like that last one. The knife dug deep into one of the fallen pillars, metal cutting through stone like butter.
This was her chance. Cyan made the mistake of trying to yank the knife free, and Buffy brought both fists down on her back like a hammer. The other woman seemed to realize her error too late...or not. Buffy's hands passed through her like tarry smoke and plunged into the ground as she overbalanced. She turned the motion into a roll, ripping her hands free, and cartwheeled through the debris, coming up with a good five feet of pillar in her hands. "Slip away from *this*, Aquamarine." She swung the thing like a bat with all her strength.
Another three pillars erupted into bits of stone as Cyan faded back, looking startled. Something stung on Buffy's forehead as if a burning ember from one of the torches had landed there. Maybe it had; they hadn't been put out that long ago. Buffy brought the pillar down, shattering it at Cyan's feet as she skipped nimbly back. The burning sensation was growing worse; she stopped to brush at her forehead but could find nothing to dislodge. "Hey, didn't you say you *wanted* me to hit you?" And she threw herself forward.
Her first blow shattered the woman's left arm-she seemed to favor that one-but Buffy kept pummeling her, one full-strength blow after another. She felt ribs give way, felt a femur crack, and suddenly Cyan turned to smoke again, materializing on the ground a few feet away. Laughing, almost wildly. Literally rolling on the floor as if being beaten to death was the funniest thing that had ever happened to her. Green light kept glinting in Buffy's eyes, though she couldn't see where it was coming from. Her forehead was still burning, though the pain had ceased to matter. "What the hell? You haven't even heard the one about the three vampires who walk into a bar yet."
"I thought...I thought you were a decoy. I thought we'd been played, you silly little girl. From the beginning, I thought you were a fluke; I'd never seen a Slayer look like a secondary student. And then the pitiful fight you put up at first. I lost faith in you entirely. Yet you simply didn't know. I suppose nothing has ever given you a fight worth speaking of. And now this. I bring you in to train, to spar with...and this."
Buffy wanted to protest: she had fought bigger bads than this woman. But then, only Angelus and Glory had ever taken anything resembling her full strength. Her last fight with Angelus had been interrupted, and fighting Glory had been hampered by the need to keep Dawn safe; more than anything she'd just had to run. The Master had been taken down by surprise, the Mayor by explosives, and Adam by an ancient spell. "I'm not...I can't be what you think I am."
"Then you're the best practical joke I've ever seen, Buffy. Maybe you are anyway." She produced a small brass mirror from her pocket. "Look at yourself."
The cavern was little more than a tunnel, supported here and there with wooden struts, and unexpectedly tended upwards into the hills. Giles wasn't sure he felt too much safer emerging from its mouth until Fred spotted the lever jutting from the rock face near the door. She gave no warning before pulling it. Something deep in the cavern cracked like a gunshot, and the earth shook for a few moments.
"Well, that was effective," Fred said brightly. "No one will come after us now."
"Not that way, at least," Gunn said.
Anya sadly queried, "What about Xander? We left him back there!"
"If he can join us," Willow mumbled, "he will." She knew, of course. Xander was likely already dead.
Angel and Spike carried Buffy forward to the lip of the cavern and set her down facing the faint moonlight, where Dawn crouched near her. Buffy keened softly, demonstrating that she still breathed, if not for much longer, but there was a gurgling sound in her throat. It had always been a futile endeavor, bringing her here. She raised her hands weakly and began to claw at her face. Giles sighed sadly and attempted to pull her hands away, but she fought him off with surprising strength. It must be the end, he supposed. She would burn the last of her strength, and then they would figure out how to leave without her, Angel and Spike each took a hand, muscles straining visibly as they tried to hold her back. How could she be so strong, even now? Despite all they could do, she wrenched away from their grip. Her nails dug deep furrows into the blistered skin of her face. A thick layer of it came away, and Giles could bear to look no more. He closed his eyes as the others gasped. She might well have torn her face away down to the skull, in the condition she was in.
"I guess it would be too much to ask you to give me a hand," Buffy said petulantly.
Giles' eyes sprang open. Buffy had indeed peeled the skin from her face; underneath was...skin. Undamaged skin. Her eyes were clear, her face only lightly spotted with blood, with no sign of the horrific sores from only moments ago. She pulled, and more skin came away, clearing her neck, leaving even her hair at its accustomed length as if it had somehow been folded beneath her skin.
"Buffy?" Giles removed his glasses and cleaned them carefully. When he replaced them, the Slayer was still pulling skin from her unaccountably healthy form. With a grimace, she dragged layers of skin from beneath her tattered shirt. "I must confess that I do not understand...what has just happened."
"Thanks for getting me out," she replied. "The short answer is a name: Blight Internalization Transcendence."
"And the long one?"
Buffy sighed, a long deep sigh. "I almost wish I didn't know. So will you. But I'll tell you anyway. It's a long, long, *long* story."
Giles looked around at the cavern and the ragtag band he'd led there. "We have time."