Witches talk about Spell Books / Elena Hikes to Fell's Church and learns Slayer history
Bonnie stood in front of her freshly augmented collection of spellbooks from the Martin stash and willed forth one that would contain the spell known as The Hand of Fate. One book shuddered and tentatively fell to the ground. After thumbing through a couple of pages, she found the spell. The mechanics seemed simple, but she wondered why anyone would want to weaken an area's magical force right before performing an even bigger spell.
Leaving the book open, she brought her mental focus on Merlin's Path Blocker, and half of the books on the shelf immediately collapsed to the floor. She frowned to herself and picked one at random. This time, she had to read through various spell directions carefully to find a mention of it. Nestled in another entry about gathering forth energy for more strength, she found a warning:
If an area is nulled, as through Merlin's Path Blocker, when you enter the area, this spell will dissipate, and you will be left with no magical recourse.
She fished for another book, and after careful perusal found another short passage that referenced it:
Always keep an eye on your ley-lines. Though null-magic areas are extraordinarily rare, you do not want to fly over over a place cursed with Merlin's Path Blocker and plummet.
Bonnie sighed with frustration and picked up another book. The spell still did not merit its own entry, instead found within the description of another spell:
Do not attempt to cast into an area that has been blocked by Merlin's Path Blocker. The backlash is lethal.
Every book piled in front of her was the same. The spell-casting was never described, only snippets of its devastating effects. Bonnie wasn't sure she even wanted to cast it, but her curiosity was growing. She snatched at the piece of paper with Buffy's friend's phone number on it and dialed.
…
Willow was standing on something that could only be described as a yoga ball, stretching her left leg out. The wobble as she changed positions was very slight, and the phone ring didn't send a tremor to it either. She grinned in triumph, then reached for the phone carefully. "Willow Rosenberg, witch extraordinaire!" she announced, keeping her left leg extended.
Bonnie paused for just a moment, slightly stunned by Willow's exuberance. "Uh, Bonnie Bennett, confused witch."
"Bennett," Willow confirmed, "As in Emily Bennett, so you must have encountered my favorite slayer." Willow felt confident in her detective skills. "Right?"
"Buffy. Yeah." Bonnie charged ahead, not wanting to discuss her ancestor at the moment. "I haven't been able to find a full entry of the Merlin's Path Blocker spell you recommended, only references to it."
"Oh, duh. Whoa!" Willow temporarily unbalanced, legs oscillating back and forth. After a recovery with both feet planted in the ball, she continued. "That was exciting. You wouldn't have any because they were all destroyed in 1672. If I was thinking, I would have thought of that."
"I...guess so?" Bonnie groaned to herself, hoping that this witch would make sense. "Why were they destroyed?"
Willow explained, "Well, if you were a witch, you wouldn't want to keep spells like that around. It creates an area of no magic, which can be quite dangerous to witches, especially if we're not expecting them. So witches all agreed to rip it out, tear it up, and burn the pages. As far as I know, there are no surviving books that describe the ritual."
"So what do I do instead?"
Willow considered the dilemma, then decided that the risk of telling someone new was worth the end of a hellmouth. "I'll tell you how to do it."
Bonnie double-taked, "Wait, how old are you?"
"Twenty-eight." Willow bit her lip. "But I've got some older friends." Her eyes settled on her mentor, who was encouraging Willow to raise her leg again. She began to explain the ritual, "Listen carefully and don't ever commit this to paper..."
…
Jeremy couldn't find anything about Buffy on the internet. He leaned back in frustration. Not even a facebook page. His eyes danced around the room to alleviate his slight headache from staring at the computer screen too long. They landed on a picture of Aunt Jenna. He hadn't let himself think about her ever since the funeral.
Buffy did look a lot like her, he thought. Same dirty blond hair and tough attitude. Jeremy considered their likeness fondly. Alaric was right, he decided. Better to welcome new family into his life than feel alone.
Jeremy gave up searching for Buffy, but entered in Joyce's name. Bing delivered a result about an art gallery. The site was obviously years old, with scrolling text lining the top of the site. Joyce Summers had curated an art gallery in Sunnydale, California. He recognized the place, but couldn't remember why.
Another search revealed that Sunnydale was the site of the meteor crash several years ago. The entire town was a crater, and research teams still hadn't been able to get samples of the rock that decimated the town. He remembered hearing about it on the news. It was a freak accident, many astronomers had said. No meteor large enough to create that kind of damage had been spotted in the sky previously, nor were there any satellite images of the crash itself, just the results. And yet, everyone in the town had already evacuated a few days prior for some unknown reason. There were few casualties.
Jeremy folded his arms in thought, then called Bonnie. He didn't think she was being overly cautious anymore.
…
Stefan's phone went straight to voice-mail. Klaus growled in frustration. The boy hadn't called to check in yesterday. He had very specific instructions for Stefan that were to take place every day. Klaus then rang for his sister.
Rebecca answered in her lilt, "I'm not talking to you."
"Talk to Stefan," he demanded, blue eyes flashing in the light speckled under the leaves. "Tell him he has another day or I come back to personally find out why he's being delinquent."
Rebecca smirked with satisfaction. "Anything for you," then flipped the phone shut. She hadn't seen Stefan in school, but she bet that Elena would know.
...
The next day, Elena had jumped at the chance to go to the old Fell's Church with Buffy. She managed to coax Boffy into talking about her family, and Buffy had just finished talking about the divorce.
"I burned down the school gym," Buffy explained, "so he's hated me ever since. Mom took us to Sunnydale and that was the end of our relationship with him. Mostly."
Elena continued pushing, "What about Dawn? What's she like?"
"Well, she's very smart. Like I already told Jeremy, she's in England right now for linguistics. Latin, of course, Ancient Sumerian, a couple of demonic ones." Buffy back-tracked. "She's learning those because she wants to be a watcher. Despite my best efforts, she's as deep in all this stuff as I am."
"Actually," Elena pursed her lips, "I never got an explanation on what slayers, watchers, and hellmouths are. Everyone else seems to know, and I guess they assume I know."
Buffy grimaced. "The long explanation or the short one?"
Elena looked at the path still ahead of them. "The long one."
"Oh boy," Buffy sighed. "We'll start with the easy one. Hellmouths are gateways into hell dimensions. Vamps, demons, evil gods, all sorts of things come out of them. The one up here isn't open yet," she reassured Elena, "but I'm here to make sure it doesn't ever open."
"Slayers, like myself, are super strong, fast, and tough. There used to be only one born into every generation, but I changed that a few years back. Have you seen the commercials?"
Elena shook her head.
Buffy shrugged, "They were Andrew's idea. But anyway, now there's a lot of us and I'm the leader of an army of slayers. I'm on 'vacation' right now with Spike, that's why I'm sans troops. Plus, a lot of them are working on a mission that Faith and Xander can handle."
Buffy mistook Elena's confusion at the new names being thrown around as confusion of Faith's mission. "They're routing a Glexenial Demon out of China."
She forged ahead. "Watchers are the people who watch over slayers and help train, inform, and guide slayers. It used to be a cushy job cause there were only one of us and a bunch of them. But they were corrupt and a bunch of them were offed by the First. So now there's a handful of them and a ton of us."
"Wait up," Elena waved her hands, "How is all this even possible to hide? An army of super-soldiers fighting demons around the world?"
Buffy nodded, "Go figure." She continued, "I suspect that it's not possible. It was probably easier when there was just one slayer. This world's very resistant to the whole demon thing, but I think it'll be a matter of time before the government and media stop censoring it. And then I'll be in a world of trouble. But that's in my future, so I'd really rather not add that to my worries right now."
Elena let this knowledge wash over her. Buffy was far tougher than she had let on before. "Why are Spike and Damon alive?"
Buffy leveled Elena with a glance. "Not every demon, vamp, and monster that goes bump is out for power or killing. In this fight, I have to take all the allies I can get. Spike and Damon have somehow retained their soul, and we have to encourage that. You know this."
Buffy swatted a branch out of her path and felt dumb for answering the wrong question. Elena was actually asking why Stefan had to die. "Stefan was a vampire in the true sense of the word. He might have had his humanity once, but I've been trained to see behind the mask of killers. No one in that school was safe with him."
The ruins of Fell's Church lay ahead of them. They could see Rebecca standing in front of the rock door. Elena stopped and warned Buffy, "That's Klaus's sister."
Buffy trudged onward. "No point in delaying a meet-up that she wants to have."