All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.
It was a time of sorceresses whose powers were real. The measure of them is seen in the fact they never boasted how they grasped the firebrand.
"Appendix II: The Religion of Dune"
It was scene of utter devastation.
Surayya stood next to her ship dazed by the devastation to the Trellian capital city. On her way to the surface she could see the ten kilometer blast crater caused by the "Memories of Dawn" antimatter weapon. Surayya was shocked at the level of damage done to the colony. The blast crater was still glowing from the heat. Black smoke filled the sky. She saw hundreds of thousands of dead and dying lying in the streets. She had to land over a hundred kilometers away to avoid the residual radiation.
"What the hell have they done?" Surayya asked herself as she stood next to her ship. She little time to ponder. The voice of Guerrero came over her radio.
"This is "Memories of Dawn."" She said. "Surayya, you've got to get out of there now!" Guerrero sounded frantic. "There are…monsters there." Her voice was hesitant. "You are not safe!"
"Since when have I run from monsters?" Surayya answered. "Killing monsters is what I do, is what we do."
There was a crackling over her radio. Guerrero was choosing her next words carefully.
"We, the Human defense alliance, wanted our own soldiers, in case we had to go against the slayers. So we took slayers and amplified them. We modified a few slayers with surgery and gene therapy. The Tleilaxu helped. What we ended up with were monsters designed to hunt down and kill slayers. We underestimated the forces we were dealing with. We created monsters and they were uncontrollable. They will kill everything in their path. Surayya, get out of there now!"
"What happened to you?" Surayya asked. She was saddened. She knew her old friend was made of better stuff than this.
"Power corrupts." She said. "You have no idea of what we've been doing all those years since you left the fleet. Remember the first Slayer-Fish Speaker war when Dracula had taken over Fish Speaker command twenty years ago? Remember when the sky above Arrakis was filled with thousands of shiny black ships? You never asked what we had to do to get those ships. We had to make deals Surayya! We had to compromise in order to live in the galaxy. There are forces out there which against we have no defense."
Surayya could hear the pain in her old friend's voice. Something moved to her left. Surayya could hear something approaching. She grabbed her scythe.
"No regrets old friend. You were deceived. Any idea as to where the First is headed?" She asked.
"The only place I can think of is the IX shipyards. The Human Alliance meets there." Guerrero paused for a moment. She muttered under her breath. "It wouldn't dare…." Guerrero remembered the plans they had made to destroy the black hole at the center of the Galaxy.
"Go!" Surayya commanded. She didn't need an explanation. Guerrero's tone was enough for her. Hundreds of kilometers above her, the "Memories of Dawn" changed direction. It burst out of the atmosphere and jumped into hyperspace. Surayya could see it leave as a small bright star.
She felt it a split second before its claws swiped at the back of her neck. Surayya teleported then turned to face the monsters that had snuck up on her. There were two of them and they were a nightmare. They were both over three meters tall covered in a hardened blood red shell. Slimy gray muscles pulled at their exoskeleton. It was hard to believe that they were once girls like her. The monsters came at her moving faster than she imagined possible.
Surayya charged directly at them at full speed. Her feet kicked up tiny puffs of dust. Just before contact, she leapt into the air and brought her full mass and the point of her scythe down on the head of the first monster. It's blood chilling howl filled the air as its head split open. Surayya watched it die before she turned and slammed the heel of her foot down across the face of the second monster. The beast pivoted with the blow. It turned and grabbed Surayya's leg. For a second, she thought it was going to bite her leg off. It had teeth larger than the teeth of a great white shark. The creature slung her away like a broken doll. Surayya arced into the sky then slammed into the ground. In once pounce the monster was upon her. It had her pinned to the ground with its weight.
That's when she began to change. Surayya was an Old One who remembered being human. The energies of the slayer locked inside her, the energies held by every slayer, had been exponentially increased when they created the Destroyer twenty years ago. Surayya relaxed her hold on that manic fire and it consumed her.
Her eyes glowed with the green-white energy of creation. She grabbed the monster by the throat and squeezed. Its voice became a wet gurgle. Surayya stood. The monster was on its knees before her. She didn't need a scythe this time. Surayya brought the fingers of her hand stiffly together and drove it into and through the monsters throat. Pieces of red-green flesh splattered to the ground. She clinched her hand into a fist and pulled it out of the hole in the monsters throat. It was dead before it hit the ground.
In the distance, Surayya could hear the howling of the other two beasts. She turned to the call of monsters and smiled. As she hurried to get a taste of battle Surayya didn't even see the face of the girl hidden beneath the monster she just killed.
The IX Shipyards:
The First appeared suddenly as a shape out of nothing. It still wore the face of Nisha Braun. The First moved down the long dark hallways of the Human Defense Alliance towards its goal. As it moved it could see through the plaz windows row after row of Slayer battleships in dock for maintenance.
"The days before these slayers were much simpler." The First thought. "I could hide in the dark and torture the humans one by one. Now, they organize against me. They even got Angelus out of hell." The removal of Angelus from hell was the reason for his current attack. "I should have stayed on Earth and killed Buffy when I had the chance." The First was full of regrets. "I should have gotten Illyria to kill her."
The first turned a corner as it finally reached it goal. Before it stood a black security door with a high encryption keypad. The first pushed its fingers into the metal box and through the enchanted stones under the circuit board. The First was detected by the magic. The steel door opened. The First walked into the darkness. The door closed behind it. It began to chant in Latin. A schematic drawn in blood lit up the floor. He remembered the ancient magic of the Senior Partners.
Billions of years ago, the Senior partners arose. They were the first life forms to evolve in the universe made from the bones of the Destroyer. The Senior Partners became masters of politics and technology and magic. They had spells of a dark and awful nature that could move the stars themselves. They used that magic to build an empire of trillions. Until one day, that magic turned on them and destroyed them worlds at a time.
The First knew the secret of that magic. It required the blood of the innocent to be spilled. To that end, the Senior Partners build dozens of blood words, enchanted planets set apart for the explicit purpose of being colonized by life forms that they would sacrifice by the millions.
Trellian was one such world. After a hundred million years, the magics of that place were still active. And thanks to the ego of Fleet Commander Guerrero, he had his blood sacrifice. The First completed his ritual. Over two hundred thousand light years away, near the galactic core, five stars began to move towards the deadly mouth of the black hole.