FIC: Ravages Of Hell (25/?)
"Nothing electrical, nothing!" Gwen cursed as she kicked impotently at on the thick steel bars that made up the entrance to their cell. "And," she spun around to glare at her companions, "why aren't you trying to escape?"
Groo appeared unperturbed by her anger. "We have already tried and failed to bend the bars, they appear to be magically reinforced." Gwen snorted, that was typical man, always ready with an excuse. "Even if we could escape there are dozens of those demons who captured us. Any escape attempt would be valiant, but ultimately unsuccessful."
"We can't just sit here waiting for them to take us one by one!" she exclaimed.
"We're not, we're waiting for my father," Connor put in from his seat in the shadows.
Gwen shook her head. "Connor, what if he doesn't come back? We've heard no word of what happened and it's been two nights."
Gwen instantly regretted her words at the crestfallen look that crossed Connor's face. Even as she thought of some way to take her words back, Groo spoke, his tone as confident and untroubled as always. "Angel is a true champion, he has fought many battles and always won. He will return."
"Start a fan club why don't you?" Gwen shook her head before turning back to the cell's bars. "I just hope he gets here soon."
Behind her, Groo sighed. "It would seem the women of each of the dimensions I visit are cursed with impatience."
"MEN!!!!!"
The room the magician led them to was long and narrow with a table in the centre and depressingly full books cases lining the walls, the musky smell that she'd always secretly associated with Sunnydale High's library filling her nostrils. At their entry, a tiny brown-haired girl around B's size dressed in a woollen tunic and breeches leapt up from her seat at the table, black eyes gleaming excitedly. "Master!" Faith raised her eyebrows at that. Better not let G hear that, guy was way too big-headed as it was. "These strangely-garbed women," brown-eyes shot them a curious look, "I feel them-."
"Keep your hands to yourself," she murmured, "that's Ken's bag not mine."
"They are Slayers as am I?" the girl finished.
"Most perceptive," Merlin nodded, a proud look on his face.
The brown-eyed girl's eyes widened. "But how-."
"Explanations later, Bronwyn," the magician reproved. "We are a mission of some urgency." Faith gawked when an entire shelf of books levitated in mid-air, hovered for a second and then floated down to the table. "These books will be of use to you." The magician paused. "I'll leave you now, there are certain things I must attend to."
Faith sighed. "Books, I hate books."
The minutes passed slowly as they started to research, Faith's brow furrowing as she struggled with the old-fashioned English. "You are their leader, correct?"
Faith glanced up, the kid Slayer was stood by her, an excited look on her face. "Yeah."
"You must be a mighty warrior to lead others of our Calling into battle," the centuries-past Slayer enthused. "And to have reached such an advanced age." Faith raised an eyebrow, twenty-three was old now? "Perhaps you could teach me-."
"Look kid," she didn't bother with the younger girl's name, "this isn't a holiday or nothing, we're here on serious business."
"Very well," the younger Slayer flushed at her dismissive tone, "I will go and see Master Merlin, perhaps he has some task for me to complete."
Faith nodded. "Sounds like a plan."
"That was a little harsh wasn't it?"
Faith glanced up from her book to see Kennedy staring down disapprovingly. "That's rich coming from Miss Bitchy."
"Maybe I am," the younger Slayer appeared unfazed by her snap. "But that's not the point, for some reason, the dumb kid idolises you, and you blew her off like she's nothing."
"I was doing her a favour," Faith looked down, cheeks flaming.
"Oh yeah," Kennedy sniffed. "it's always a favour to have your idol stamp on your feelings."
"Look," Faith spoke through gritted teeth, "girl needs to learn that I'm not fit to be anyone's idol, murderer remember?"
"Faith," Kennedy's mouth dropped open. "If you were just a murderer, Giles wouldn't have put you in charge of this miss-."
"Look", she interrupted. "Work to do, less chat, more reading."
"Gah." Buffy spat something soft out of her mouth. Body aching and head ringing, she blinked her eyes open. Panic struck as she registered the whiteness surrounding her, her hammering heart only easing when she remembered the avalanche.
"What about the others?" she whispered as another wave of panic hit her. Calming herself, she started to dig herself up and out of the snow. She couldn't be alone, how was she supposed to survive in this world she knew next to nothing about?
Finally she broke through to the surface. Looking up, she noted that some hours had passed, the sun having long since given way to a star filled sky. Shivering slightly with the cold, she began to dig haphazardly, having no real idea as to where the others were.
Suddenly a hand burst out of the snow about twenty paces to her left. Heart lifting, Buffy rushed over and began digging its owner out. "Michelle!" she half-sobbed as she recognised the normally so-stylish French Slayer, the girl left bedraggled by the snow. Grabbing the willowy Frenchwoman's wrists, she pulled her fellow Slayer out before grabbing her in a near hysterical hug.
Pulling away from the other girl, cheeks flushed by the whipping wind, she looked around. "The others must be around here," she declared, face creasing in determination, "we'll split up and dig up every inch if we have to!"
An hour later and the four of them were re-united around a crackling fire, its heat slowly re-animating parts that seemed to have frozen stiff. Finally the Immortal spoke, face still blue. "Tomorrow we head into Hel."
Cloaked in the near-by inn's shadows, Angel stared at the stadium looming up in front of him, a feeling of grim foreboding resting heavy on his dead heart. It had been two whole days since his escape, far longer than he'd envisaged before coming back for Connor and the others, but the delay had been unavoidable. Angel had immediately found himself caught up in a counter-productive struggle between the four main resistance groups which had eventually ended when he'd lost his temper, and rounded up the groups' leaders and 'discussed' their abdications and ceding of power to him. Now he had an army.
He just hoped it was enough.
The ground beneath his feet shuddered, almost knocking the three natives stood with him from their feet, but leaving him unfazed. Angel looked into the previously dark sky, smiling grimly at the fires now illuminating it. The six-pronged attack he'd organised striking at key points through-out Atlantis had begun, now he had to finish it.
He glanced towards his companions. "Get your teams, you know what to do." Without waiting to see if they obeyed, he stared towards the building's entrance, an imposing steel barred gate with barbed wire on top of their spiked heads and guarded by two demons from the species that had originally caught them.
"Human!" One of the demons stepped towards him, eyes troubled as it glanced past him and to the chaos in the city. "Return to your home immediately. Order will soon be restored!"
"Technically," Angel reached inside his jacket and pulled out the broadsword he'd used to such effect two nights ago, "not a human." The demon barely had time to register his sword before his blade was flashing through his neck, decapitating him in a single, effortless motion.
Sensing the demon's partner charging him from behind, Angel reversed his swing to take his other rival's head off. Before the second demon had hit the ground, Angel was striding towards the gates. Looking up, he calculated the leap over the gates was perhaps thirty feet and the gap between the top of the gate and the ceiling was perhaps
Angel sighed. He just knew one way or another this way going to hurt.
Seconds later he was crashing to the ground inside the gate, body cut in half a dozen places. "Let's see him complain," Angel groaned as he stood, "next time I forget his birthday." After a last a baleful glance at the gate, noting the remains of his coat stuck to the gate spikes and flapping in the wind, Angel hurried in the direction he remembered the holding cells being, down a path lined by pillars carved into demonic figures.
Hearing hoarse breathing behind a pillar ahead, Angel kept up the same unhurried pace as he approached his would-be ambusher. At the last second he pulled back, leaving the short but thickly-muscled four-armed demon who leapt at him clutching at thin air for the half second before Angel's sword cleaved his head in. "Ach," he shook his head, "these boyos be amateurs. Have they never seen a vampire before?"
As he reached the entrance to the holding cells, a rickety wooden guardhouse he stopped. "Ah, this might be a little more tricky."
The two demons who guarded the entrance were tall, powerfully built creatures covered entirely in scales and with curved horns sticking out of the sides of their heads. After grunting the pair charged him, ground shaking under him. Angel stepped back, as if to retreat.
And then leapt forward, sword flashing up at the left beast.
And the creature's fist snapped up, colliding with the blade with enough force to snap the blade in two. "Oh," Angel groaned as the right demon engulfed the back of his head in a huge palm and flung him into the air, "this is going to hurt!"
He hit the guardhouse wall and flew threw it, crashing to the brick ground beyond. Rolling up, he saw the two demons rushing him. Tearing a ceiling manacle free, he stepped out of the wrecked guardhouse, and swung his makeshift weapon at the nearest of the two demons.
The manacle's cuff smashed into the demon's left horn, ripping it off is head. The demon threw back its head and wailed en-route to crashing to its knees, its life-blood pumping out on the cobbles. The second demon slowed, dull eyes filling with what Angel guessed was shock.
Before the demon had chance to recover Angel was by its side, broken sword thrusting up and into its thigh. The creature let out a roar before stumbling forward, doubling up as it did so.
The moment its head was in range, Angel grabbed a horn and yanked. The creature screeched as the horn snapped loose, its flailing hand catching Angel with rib-cracking force. Hitting the ground in a heap, Angel was forced to roll to one side to avoid the defeated demon falling on him.
"Oh yeah," Angel mumbled as he clambered to his feet. "If he ever complains about his Christmas presents again, this rescue is gonna come up."
Faith yawned as she entered the quarters that she'd being assigned. It was strange how a day spent researching made her more tired than a night spent partying or a rough fight.
Faith chuckled. Maybe it was her brain was waaaay less developed than the rest of her body. Shaking her head, she kicked off her cowboy boots, unsheathed her sword and threw it onto her four-postered bed, and began unbuttoning her denim shirt.
"Whaa-," the hairs on the back of her neck prickled as her Slayer sense kicked. Faith looked around warily. The candle-lit room seemed empty, but Faith had learnt to trust her instincts. Looking towards her sword, she stepped towards the bed.
Suddenly a tall skull-faced figure with pointy ears, dead black eyes, and a rope-muscled physique appeared between her and the bed. The monster punched at her with a three-knuckled spiked fist, Faith glided away from the attack, raven hair bouncing with the movement. "Shit!" She screamed as pain blazed through her scalp as her hair was grabbed from behind and she was flung to the ground. Faith winced as she hit the paving-stones knees-first. Ignoring the pain, she rolled onto her side and kicked out at the second of her attackers, the creature the twin to the first.
Her blow crashed into the demon's thigh, knocking it back a step. But even as she attacked, a third creature appeared, punching down to cut open her forehead. Blood blurring her vision, Faith gasped open as another of the demons grabbed her hair and yanked her to her feet.
"Big mistake," she mumbled. The moment she was upright, Faith swung her legs up, wrapped them around the neck of the demon in front of her and twisted. As a continuance of her attack, she back-fisted the monster to her right in the mouth.
Blood erupted from the demon to her right's mouth at the same time the air rang to the sound of the other monster's neck snapping. Taking advantage of her shocked captor's loosening grip, she back-flipped into the air, wrapped her legs around her rival's neck and with a flip of her thighs, flung it headfirst to the ground.
The creature's head cracked like an egg-shell on the unforgiving ground even as Faith landed in a crouch. And caught a fist to her left cheek, knocking her down to one knee. Faith blocked a kick at her face on her forearm before leaping up, hooking her arms around the beast's trim waist and tossing it to the ground. Before the beast had chance to retaliate, she'd wrapped her hands around its lean face and twisted, snapping its neck like kindling.
Exhausted, she rolled off the beast, sweat lathering her and breath coming in desperate pants. She laughed raggedly as she raised a hand to her swelling cheek, her palm coming away sticky with blood. "Thank fuck for Slayer heal-, oh crap," she paled as the hairs on her neck prickled again.
Looking up, she saw another six of the monsters materialising in a circle around her, cold intent in their dead eyes. Faith swallowed, no weapons, wounded, and out-numbered six to one. Oh boy, was she in the shit. Faith started to rise only to catch a left to the jaw. Ignoring the pain, she tried to rise again, blocking a foot on her elbow as she reached one knee. "Jesus!" Faith grunted as a foot smashed into her crotch at the same side other boots smashed into her ribs on both side. Body screaming, she slumped to the ground and crawled into a foetal ball to best shield herself from the ceaseless barrage of punches, kicks, and stamps reigning down on her.
Suddenly the door exploded inwards and a resounding voice rang out. "Be gone!" Her six tormenters threw back their heads and screamed before disappearing into the darkness leaving behind the corpses of their companions. Faith looked up dazedly, her vision partially obscured both by a concussion and the blood dripping into her eyes, to see Merlin staring down at her in concern. "I am sorry I was not here sooner, a shielding spell had been placed on this room, it was how I sensed the attack, but also slowed down my aid." The magician glanced at the trio of corpses. "Three Shadow-Stalkers on your own, even the mightiest of Arthur's knights would struggle to defeat one especially when unarmed. Truly you are a legendary warrior."
"Yeah, thanks," Faith spat blood onto the paving stones under her.
"Are you alright?" asked the magician.
"I'll be fine in the morning," Faith replied as she struggled to her feet and turned towards her bed. Damn, just a minute ago it was half a dozen steps away, now it seemed like miles. Faith limped to the bed. "I just need to pass out now."
"So this is Hel?" Buffy asked through chattering teeth. "You know, I thought it would be hotter."
They were under a bleak, stone grey sky and on a path made entirely of bones, she was pretty sure they were human bones but obviously hadn't looked close enough to be sure, flanked by walls of flames and deafened by the screams of those apparently trapped inside the fires. Yet despite the blazing inferno it was bone-chillingly cold.
"Hel was described in Snorri Sturlson's Prose Edda as a place thronged with the shivering and shadowy spectres of those who have died ingloriously of disease or in old age. Hel is also home to dishonourable people who have broken oaths. Hel is cold and low in the overall order of the universe." The Immortal paused. "And I wouldn't look up too closely. Hel was said to be a hall with a roof woven from the spines of serpents which drip poison down onto those who wade in the rivers of blood below."
"Sacre Bleu," Michelle muttered. Buffy knew how she felt.
"Ignore the screams," the Italian playboy winced as a particularly high-pitched screech rang out. "There's no way to help the condemned. And if you step off the path your soul's lost immediately. The only way out of the hall and to our target will be across Gjoll, a freezing river with knives flowing in it."
"So not Niagara Falls then?" Buffy muttered.
"Fortunately there's a bridge across it," the Immortal continued.
"Good, because today was looking like a very bad one for a paddle," she muttered before raising her voice. "So follow the yellow brick road, right?"
It was feet-blistering hours until they reached their destination. "Oh my god," Buffy gasped.
There was no bridge on earth that came close. It was so wide that an army could march across it abreast, a thousand men at once, and so long she couldn't see the other end. A huge arch roofed it and it was lined every twenty paces by ebony statues of death's many faces.
After a gulp she stepped on it and leapt off when a crashing bang sounded. "What was that!"
"I'm sorry," the Immortal had a faintly amused look. "I forget to mention that although the dead can walk on it without sound, it rings out like a thousand step on it for every live person."
"Forgot huh?" Buffy glared at her boyfriend.
"Well maybe not forgot."