"It means something like...'Dark Lord of the Crowd of Gods'," Willow explained. "But there's more to it than that. Qemetiel is like...the event horizon of Decreation. Of Oblivion. Anything that gets closer stops existing. The 'crowd of gods' are the entities trapped at that boundary, feeding off the debris that falls in to stay out themselves."

"Clever," Raiton mused, "but too ambitious. You are not lord over the Neverborn, only their servant. Still...I would hear more of these...'qlippoth'. This...'dark qabala'."

For all that Raiton claimed she was just standing by here, idle except to help prepare for the massacre that'd begin in another week or so, Willow suspected she was staying out of her own ambition. She was the most powerful known Abyssal, the hand of the Neverborn in resolving disputes between Deathlords. "Well...it's more like 'dark sephiroth'. The qlippoth are the discarded husks of parts of existence that didn't work out. Though some say they're like afterbirth, never meant to live long." ...broken shells...empty vessels...shattered dreams...

Willow thought perhaps Raiton wanted to be a Deathlord herself. And Willow as her first Deathknight. As a sort of understudy or assistant. If she spoke the truth, the current Deathlords weren't reallly interested in destroying the world, only in power. Raiton, though...she was devoted to the cause. A true believer in hierarchy, even in death. Salina's "voice" was full of derision. At least she and Willow were learning to cooperate. One less competing set of thoughts in her head was of the good.

"You say this knowledge is forbidden," Raiton rasped. In the back of Willow's head the Neverborn muttered something distantly akin to approval.

"Well, not only are you not supposed to study qabala till you're forty, I'm not supposed to at all. I'm a girl. Not that I let that stop me." Girls deserved to understand the world as much as guys. As for the age restrictions, she was smarter than your average eighty year-old scholar, so there.

Raiton smiled thinly, cruelly. "The sephiroth. You called them 'the tree of life'. From the diagram you showed me."

Willow nodded. That was a standard and very basic metaphor.

"You are the Scholar Hanged From the Tree of Life." Raiton spoke it as a pronouncement, not an observation. Willow had been given...not a name, but a title. The sandstorm around the city howled louder-among other, more tangible, penalties-if she acknowledged the name Willow, let alone spoke it.

The title was a curse, too, and Raiton knew it, though almost no one else here would. One of the passages of the Torah-a well-known one, since Christianity had borrowed it-said anyone hanged from a tree was under God's curse.

Well...Willow wasn't exactly a faithful Jew herself these days. And if Christians could appropriate a curse into a blessing, so could she. "Cool."

Chapter 29-Absolute Power Brings Absolute Responsibility?

Raiton released her to wander the palace. Willow was used to evil overlords living in luxury-even the Master had only avoided it symbolically, waiting for the day humanity was overthrown. Raiton lived in a bare cell here, disdaining decorations, food, even a bed and chair. Willow didn't think she had a party planned for the apocalypse, either.

Willow wished she could feel the same. The pretty girl waiting in the hall only made her feel a great howling emptiness inside. Along with the love; she was forbidden that, but not quite denied it. Tara leapt up and clung to her.

"You could join me, y'know?" Raiton sneered whenever Tara was around but had made no move to separate her from Willow. She said Willow could learn on her own.

"I can't understand a word she says," Tara reminded her. "It's this...hissing gibberish. She hates me. That's all I need to know."

Disturbingly, though the Yozis and Neverborn were enemies-or at best, allies with teeth clenched in mutual hatred-Buffy could understand Weeping Raiton, as could Angel, Spike, tbe neomah, and the akuma who helped Buffy. Even DoppelBuffy understood, though she had none of Buffy's other powers. With Buffy still a puppet, DoppelBuffy still ruled in her place, in name at least.

"You know I still love you, babe? Right?" Willow leaned over and kissed Tara with her dry lips. For the moment, her appearance was growing no worse; Willow just looked like a dedicated goth. The black taint still filled her veins, though, and inside she felt dry and empty.

"I love you too," Tara said faintly, sadly. "I wish you hadn't done this."

"Tara," Willow protested, "I'd have died. Raiton thinks death is better than life, but surely-"

"Yes, Will, life is good, but taking it from other people to stay alive yourself isn't! You're...you're...you might as well be a vampire, Willow." Tara must have seen something in Willow's expression that frightened her, because suddenly she burst out, "P-please, Will, I'm so glad I still have you, I'm just afraid of the price. C-come on, let's go get something to eat. Buffy's got really good cooks here."

"I...was going to just make sandwiches," Willow said hesitantly. "We need to talk strategy with Buffy." Tara probably wanted more than just a meal-she'd been upset by the luxury Buffy still lived in as Despot, even allowing for her reforms. She wouldn't ask about the cooks now if it were just about food.

Indeed, Tara immediately drooped. "You always found time to spend with me at home, Will. If you stayed alive to be with me, then b-be with me! D-don't pay the price and then not-"

Willow's heart shattered and that empty, aching void poured itself inside. She could feel the scouring storm raging outside the palace walls, could feel food in the pantries drying to inedible crust and hide. She could feel death, death everywhere. Willow needed life, needed it like a drowning woman needed air, and she reached out for it in its nearest form.

Her lips touched Tara's, and the world blew away in the screaming wind.

*****

"I chose a life in shadow/
Rather than leave you alone/
I knew it'd make you sad, though/
And that chills my soul to the bone/
I had no choice/
Couldn't let you lose my voice!/
I'm under your-"

The argument over Gem and siege warfare halted briefly as music swelled in the nearby hall. Buffy looked up. Was that Willow singing? Willow couldn't sing worth a damn. Sweet must have arrived ahead of schedule. That was okay; she needed him here.

The door burst open, and Willow and Tara spilled in half-dressed and carrying big hunks of meat. Of the two, Tara looked far more distressed-was that a vampire bite on her neck? Buffy was going to have to give Spike a talking-to-but Willow's black eyes gave her a manic expression nothing like her usual friendly humor.

"Shoo!" Willow hissed at the Council. "Horny now!"

"Will! Kinda busy here? As, uh, you're s'posed to be?" She expected trouble from Willow, but along the lines of more complaints that her siege preparations were strategically unsound, not sex on a random table.

Willow grinned broadly, though her expression remained subtly off. "Hey there! You can stay if you wanna, I don't mind, but this doesn't seem like your thing."

"Willow. Mnemon is closing in on us with a Realm legion or two and we need to talk about what you can do to help. You're Exalted now and you're still one helluva witch." Willow ignored her.

"Willow," Tara said carefully. "If you want to have more time with me-if you want to learn about the Exaltations, or anything else-we have to help Buffy. You care about her too, right?"

Willow sighed. For a moment Buffy thought she would deny it, just shake her head and go back to undressing Tara. Then she shrugged. "Okay. If I gotta. What do I need to do?"

*****

Dawn stepped carefully over the threshold and into the Wyld part of Xu-Lak. It felt incredibly dangerous; it felt like home. The towers over here were just as fantastic as the ones in the godly side-many of them were more impressive-but they did things like branch wildly or mirror themselves in the sky or float a few stories above ground. A few were made of peculiar substances like mist, gold, or chocolate.

"I guess the first thing I need to ask is why we don't like the gods or the Primordials or...well, much of anybody." This whole world seemed like a chaotic mess of competing factions.

Glory winced. "Seriously? You want me to be the Exposition Fairy? Well...if you insist." She took a deep breath.

"The whole universe was in a random chaotic state/
Then merely seven thousand years ago the Primordials started...wait/
Autochthon developed tools/
The Exalted host began to rule/
The Dragonblooded lost their cool/
We had a war (they kicked our asses out)/
From thaumaturgy to necromancy/
Should've been a passing fancy/
It all started here in ths Wyld."

That should have conveyed almost nothing to Dawn, yet somehow, thinking over it, she realized that somehow she had a vague outline of the history of Creation (and its associated dimensions) in her head.

Glory scowled. "Did I just burst into song? I did, didn't I? Someone's getting too big for his broaches."

"Who?" There was someone out there who could make people sing spontaneously?

Glory snickered. "First lesson, Summers' Day. Wrong. Question."

"You've said something like that before-"

"And I'll say it again. It's time to take the big leap, kiddo. You're you. That's the problem. Stop being you. Get on in, the fire's fine." Glory spread out her arms and leaned backward into space. "No net," she said, and popped like a soap bubble.

Dawn made a little eep in her throat, and Glory reappeared, seemingly unchanged, on the other side of her. "Boo!" Glory said, and her forehead crumpled as she vamped out. "Just for funsies," she emphasized immediately. "Your turn."

Dawn took a deep breath, held out her hands, and watched them dissolve into mist. The vapor dissipated as the effect crawled its way up her arms. She felt all of herself still there; she felt her body evaporating.

Her brain vanished and she became nothing at all.

*****

"You have to understand how important this is," Buffy insisted. "This is war. You helped me with the Mayor. This is umpteen times that. Mnemon-"

"Bored now." Willow leaned back in her chair. "I want to help you, Buffy, I really do, but why not just...leave? Mnemon only wants to attack Gem because you're the Despot now."

"Mnemon wants to attack Gem 'cause she's a petty, stupid...despot," Buffy argued. "She wants power. She doesn't care about these people or even that I'm supposedly serving the Yozis. I leave, Gem falls to pieces, she takes over and runs my people into the ground."

"Your people?" Willow sounded doubtful.

Tara corrected her. "It doesn't matter why Buffy took over Gem. She's their ruler now and she's not just going to abandon them."

"Buffy, did anyone ever tell you you have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility?" Willow shook her head and sighed loudly.

Inside, Buffy seethed, but she just said, "No actually, just the opposite. In fact I'm pretty sure that's why I'm an Infernal."

"As opposed to dead?" Willow rolled her eyes at that. "I know you'd rather have been a Solar, but that wasn't an option. Well, guess what? You're hero enough for ten Solars. How many apocalypses have you stopped now?"

"Think the figure was two dozen," Buffy said tonelessly.

Tara wore a pained expression. "Buffy, you don't have anything to prove. I agree that you should defend Gem, but whatever you used to be, you became a hero a long time ago."

*****

Well. Trusting Glory had been
the dumbest mistake ever. She must not have been a raksha after all and now she didn't exist any more.

There was a serious flaw in that logic, wasn't there? I think, therefore...

I am.

Dawn Summers had stopped existing. But Dawn Summers had been an illusion the whole time anyway. What was left was whatever she had been before Dawn. The Key...whatever that was. And now she could become whatever she wanted.

What did she want?

That was the question. She was blind, deaf, mute; she was none of those things, not even she. What did a being like herself want?

She chose a variation on a theme. Different facial features, hair color, clothing style...name: Dawn Rosenberg. Sheila was her negligent mother; Ira her reactionary father. (Something odd about that-Willow looked nothing like her dad. Strange.) Much less money to go around; Dawn wore big sis' hand-me-downs, even less in style than they had been when they were Will's. Awfully uncool.

Glory clapped uncertainly. "Ok. It's a first try. You're doing it."

Dawn discarded the phantasms of memories. She'd lived as Buffy's sister most of a year; that tale still seemed awfully real. It wasn't, though. Dawn Harris? No...she'd probably be an abused child and that was no fun at all. And absolutely not Dawn Maclay. Wait...

She was Dawn...Clark. Older, in her late thirties...still attractive but far more mature. Heavier, just a bit, and only a fraction taller. Still a sister. Joyce's. Buffy's...she was Buffy's aunt. A new set of memories that dizzied her for a moment, a funhouse mirror of the old ones. Buffy wouldn't know these; they'd never been made part of her.

Glory pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows. "No need to be a child if you don't wanna. I can dig it."

One more try. This one fought her, though. She dissolved but the new shape refused to form.

Glory still seemed aware of her. "Stories have their own logic. Get creative, kay?"

Taller. Dark hair, almost black. Young-looking but not young. She'd been his favorite. She couldn't be a vampire, not yet at least, that was the trouble...the shanshu prophecy. She'd been human a matter of months, shaped like an eighteen-year-old but with three hundred years of memory. (Ouch!) Dawn, no last name she could recall...Dawn of County Galloway. Liam's bratty sister, turned to be Angelus' partner in crime. Darla hadn't approved but the deed was done.

"Now we're talking," Glory said, beaming. "Hanging onto the sister aesthetic, but you're rocking it."

Dawn sagged heavily against a wall. She was actually doing it, changing not just her shape but her mind. But Glory was right: she was limiting herself. A lot. Part of her-the part that had been Buffy's sister for most of a year of real living and fifteen years' worth of memories-protested that there was nothing wrong with that. But other memories, however flimsy, were part of her now too. And Buffy had turned on her, had called her a worthless hateful thing.

Dawn let the fury pour out. No history this time, just an impulse. Muscles and fangs and claws; spiked armor and a sword. She was the thing that would kill Buffy Summers.

Glory yawned. "Cliche."

There was still enough mind behind the red rage-indeed, the more she did this the more artificial her feelings...felt-to let the new self dissolve.

Dawn dropped onto a couch languidly, filmy clothes folding around her body, apparently sensual but barely sketched in. Curves but little muscle. She raised a bunch of grapes to her mouth and began to nibble.

Glory snickered. "Avant-garde. Not lazy shaping; laziness as a shape. Not very practical, though. Still, you're getting the hang of it."

Her memories were still memories. There were things she wanted...had wanted...could want if she chose. She sculpted a self that looked something like her old one, but taller, a little more mature. Statuesque and powerful. Armor that molded itself to her body.

Glory raised her eyebrows again. "Are we going with the Seven Deadlies now? Mortals are so absurd sometimes. Well, an emotion is an emotion. Lust this time?"

Dawn laughed the rich laugh of self-satisfaction that came with this body. "Call it pride."

Xander didn't stand a chance.

*****

Tara put her hand down hard on the table, and everyone jumped. Especially her. "I'm getting tired of this, Buffy. It's been going on since we got here. I d-don't like your attitude and I d-don't like what it implies."

Buffy tilted her head and stared. "What-?"

"You stood up to my family to protect me. You didn't know they were lying yet. Y-you thought I was going to turn into a demon, a full-on maybe-eat-your-face demon. Why, if it bothers you so much about your powers?"

"But sweetie," Willow pointed out, "you weren't really-"

"That isn't the point, Willow." She turned back to Buffy. "What frightens you so much about your powers? That they're growing? They've been doing that since I've known you."

"They're changing me," Buffy hissed. "I was the one-and-only girl/
The Chosen One, the good guy/
Sure, I was a lonely girl/
The question then was would I?/
Walk away/
Try to live my life/
Forget about it all/
Wait it out, maybe let the world die?"

Willow tried to get a word in edgewise, but Buffy overrode her. "Prophecy fulfilled, I did my part/
I saved the world, it's done/
Every Slayer knows that death's our art/
Well, guess what, I've had one."

Buffy rose, plush skin tarnishing over. "We live, we die, we never get/
to get too strong/
They even have a rit-/
ual to kill us if we live too long."
Flickers of lantern-light danced from her metal second skin now as she pirouetted.

Tara danced into her path. "Look at you now/
shining in the light!"

Buffy skipped easily aside, "See what my pow-/
er really is: a blight?/
I'm changing more than you know, more than you see/
What's going to happen to my friends when nothing's left of me?"

She spun round only to come face to face with Tara, who seized her by the arms. Buffy could have broken her grip with a flick of her wrists.

"We don't care how you look," Tara sang.
"A squid's my friend, a mummy's my girl/
You could read a ram-horned demon like a book!/
Be a hero, give it a whirl." Tara gave Buffy a shove down into one of the chairs. Somehow Buffy didn't resist the push.

"You're afraid power will change you? Already happened," Tara insisted. "You said so yourself: you were a flake. A rich little bitch girl who'd have made fun of Willow and not given me a second look. That's what being the Slayer's done to you. I'm not saying not to be careful about what you learn to do. I'm saying thst so far, power's made you a better person."

"But-"

"Stop! Please./
How can you be so afraid of yourself/
unless you lied/
unless you were afraid of me?"

"It's not the same." Buffy sounded desperate now.

"Nothing is ever the same, Buffy. It's always going to be different, and you're always going to have to decide. But we're your friends...no, your family. We trust you to choose the right thing."

"Really?" Strange how the most powerful person in the room seemed the most miserable. Strange how she trusted Buffy more with power than her own girlfriend. Strange but true.

"Yes, Buffy. We really do."

*****

"So how's it feel?" Willow looked up into Spike's eyes. "Coming over to the dark side, I mean?"

"I don't see it like that at all," Willow said offhandedly. "I didn't kill her. She was already dead. Also, evil."

"Interesting way to put it. Buffy's not gonna like this, you know. Co-workers an' all that."

Willow pushed herself up from Garima's corpse. "Buffy's only involved in this because she has to be. She'll thank me. Think of it as...as a mercy kill. Garima stopped being anything but a meat puppet a long time ago."

Spike hopped up onto a table. "Oh, don't go looking to me for moral condemnation. I happen to think you did the smart thing. Just saying, being trapped inside my own head while you kill me? Not my idea of mercy. Now, question is, where do we put the body?"

Willow spread her hands. "Why hide it? We found it. Anyway..." she continued as black energies spilled from her, "...she'll come in handy."

Garima's corpse jerked its way upright.