The Angel's Knight #32 - The Belly of the Beast
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110 miles north of Los Angeles, October 16, 2017
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Darla:
We enter a chamber and I recognize it. I have seen it in my dreams. Reason says that it's impossible for a place this huge to exist beneath Sunnydale. The impossibly high ceiling should cave in under the weight of the city, even in its ruined state. Reason, I'm sure, has no place here.
Stone pillars abound around us, impossibly ancient, yet seemingly untouched by the forces of time. A flickering light fills the giant chamber and we all know where it comes from. We cannot see it yet, but we all know it is there. We can feel it.
With every step we take my mind seems to become clearer. For so long I had no idea what I was, who I was supposed to be. I am not Darla, I know that now. Darla died many years ago, reduced to dust by Angel to save the life of the girl he loved. Vampires don't come back from true death.
Wolfram & Hart created me and made me believe I was Darla. For someone ... something like me, belief is all it takes. I believed I was Darla, therefor I was Darla. I had her memories, her habits, everything. But I wasn't her, could never be her. I think Angel knew it, deep down he knew it. That was why he could never kill me.
I look at Celeste, my beautiful daughter. Angel's daughter. She has opened my eyes to the truth. I am what circumstances have made me, a creature of myth that adapts to the tale it is set in. Wolfram & Hart needed me human, so I was human. Then they made me into a vampire, so I was a vampire. Then Celeste was born and she needed me to be something else. A person that could keep her safe in daylight as in the night. Someone who could be there at all times.
And now that I know? Can I be what I want myself to be? If yes, what do I want myself to be? The undead seductress? The helpless human in need of a savior? The whore who wouldn't repent even on her deathbed?
I am none of these things. What do I want to be? I don't know. Maybe I'll never know. But I do know that the one skin I ever felt comfortable in, the one role that ever felt natural to me, was the one of Celeste's mother. My beautiful girl. I will keep you safe, no matter what. Heaven or hell, order or chaos, good or evil, angels or demons, I don't care. They'll have to go through me to get you.
No one will ever be allowed to hurt you.
#
Giles:
My parents always wanted me to be a watcher, as everyone in our family had been for generations. Only they are not my parents, never have been, and the time when my very being adapted solely to the expectations of others is over.
Rupert Giles died decades ago. He was a foolish young man, drunk on the power of magic, a victim of his own overconfidence. He died bleeding in the rain, buried beneath a rusting car, forever forgotten even by those who helped put him there.
As I walk through the underground chamber, passing rows upon rows of stone pillars, I find in myself the resolve I always thought was the result of my training, my upbringing. It wasn't. Whatever it is, it's solely mine. A Watcher wouldn't have tried to take Buffy's place when she went to fight the Master. A Watcher wouldn't have disregarded the Council over the Cruciamentum test.
My life before coming to Sunnydale is but a shadow, the best effort a hollow creature could produce at being a dead man. It was only here, among the only real family I've ever known, that I came to be alive and whole. Stuffy Englishman, dashing rogue, father figure for a group of teenagers whose own fathers never deserved the name? All that is me. Part of what I am, part of what I want to be.
How much of it resulted from their expectations? I don't know, neither do I care. It is the life I have led, the life I want to lead. Knowing what I know about myself I wouldn't change a thing. Nothing important anyway. I would still be there with them, would still keep doing what I am doing right here, right now.
I look at Darla, the other who is like me. A creature of myth, or that is what Celeste called us. Born from the fires of the Torch, the very prize we are fighting for here today. Something that could never have existed in a rational world, but we are far away from the rational world now. Darla knows it, too. Strange that this person whom I've never met before should be the closest thing I have to a sister.
The teenager walking by her side flashes me a grin and I find myself smiling back. I have my suspicions about her, about who and what she is. I don't know whether I or anyone else here will live long enough to find out for certain, but it doesn't really matter. We are doing what we have always done, the one thing we do better than anyone else. Saving the world. For the first time or the hundredth, it doesn't really matter. This is our part in the story, that is what we are here for.
The light in front of us grows brighter and we no longer need the flashlights. Light and shadows dance along the walls, along the pillars, over our faces. I look at the people here with us and I see the same determination in all of them. Are they afraid? Yes, only madmen wouldn't be. That fear doesn't matter, though. Not today.
I look at the girl, Diana, the new Slayer. Something is different about her now, has been different ever since she confronted that thing that made itself look like Buffy. Was that also someone ... something like me? Something that was told to be Buffy, therefor it was? We'll never know now, I guess. But Diana? I can see her changing even now, as if the proximity of the Torch is burning through the fog that surrounds her young mind.
What are you going to become once all the illusions and lies are burned away? And why can't I help the feeling that I already know?
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Tara:
I look at you and am almost torn apart by conflicting emotions. I never loved another person like I love you, Willow, and it hurts so much. It hurts that I still love you, even after everything you did, both to me and to others. Why can't I stop loving you? Even now I think it would take nothing but a single one of your kisses to wash the past away.
Willow and Amy's mother, Catherine Madison. I look at them and there is no dividing line between them. No separate auras, nothing that says they are two different people apart from the fact that they happen to have two separate bodies.
The main reason I left all these years ago, the main reason I ran away from Sunnydale, wasn't that Willow had raped my mind. It wasn't that she had gone behind my back and tried to raise Buffy as a zombie. All that hurt, hurt almost more than I could bare, but it wasn't what drove me away.
It was when I looked into her eyes and saw no regret. She didn't think she had done anything wrong.
We are walking through a giant chamber deep beneath the Earth, what could be the most important battle of our lives just minutes away, and all I can think of is you, Willow. Just moments ago I caught myself trying to come up with some idea on how to help you, to separate you and Catherine without killing either of you.
I wish I could let go. The air around us is charged with power. I can feel destiny approaching, bearing down on us like an express train. Closing my eyes, I turn my vision inwards and see the dark stains in my own aura. Hatred, unresolved rage, so many things I have never been able to face. Today they might kill me. I need to be focused. I need to be clean.
Our prize comes into view, but I have no eyes for it. Something else has to come first. I approach Willow and Catherine, both their heads turning to look at me. Two mouths open to say something, but I cut them (her?) of.
"I have to say this," I tell her, only looking at her face, not really caring how many people are looking out from behind those eyes. "What you did to me ... I don't think I can ever forgive that. And I will never understand how you could justify it to yourself. But all that doesn't matter right now, not anymore."
I swallow. I have waited so long for this. I have seen a scene like this in both my dreams and my nightmares. They never seemed to differ much. Now it's real, or as real as anything possibly can be in a place this far removed from the mundane world. Here, now, I can finally say the words I wanted to say for so long.
"One thing has never changed. The year we were together was the happiest time of my life. It made me the person I am today. And I wouldn't change it for the world."
The look on Willow's face (and on Catherine's probably, but I don't look at her) almost breaks my heart.
"I never wanted to hurt you," she whispers in that strange doppler-voice.
A hundred vicious replies buzz through my heads, a thousand verbal ways of hurting her right back for how she hurt me, but I swallow them all. This isn't about revenge. This is about me being free.
"I know that," I simply answer, leaving the rest unsaid. Your intentions were always good Willow. You always wanted everyone to be happy.
I turn away from her, from them, and I can feel two pairs of eyes boring into my back. It matters no longer, though. The important things have been said. The rest ... well, maybe if we somehow manage to survive all this. Maybe.
#
Faith:
The prize comes into view and I can't hold back a gasp. It's not because of the great visuals, though they are breathtaking as well. It's at least as tall as the statue of liberty, maybe bigger. A big honkin' cup like something out of a medieval movie and it's filled with fire, flames dancing towards the distant ceiling of this impossibly huge underground wonder- cave.
What makes me gasp is the feelings, though. I have never been good at putting them into words, always been more into action than words. Now I wish I had the words to describe how this thing makes me feel, words apart from 'fucking great' and 'really wicked'.
I look at this giant thing before us and, even if that kid Celeste hadn't told us a thing, I'd know what it was. I can feel it from here, the power inside that giant contraption. God, it makes me tingle all the way down to my toes. Celeste said that the origins of the Slayer lie here, that we were made directly from that thing to protect the balance between the supernatural and the mundane.
Right now I believe it. Every single word of it.
Becoming the Slayer was the best and the worst thing that ever happened to me. The best because I had never before had anything even resembling purpose. I wasn't living, I was just existing, waiting for the world to fuck me over as my drunken whore of a mother always told me it would. The worst because it gave me more power and responsibility than I could handle at that age. I wasn't ready for it, I was a borderline basket case, and it pushed me right over the edge.
For the last sixteen years, ever since I felt B die all the way from my prison cell, I knew that I had to be the Slayer now. I had to live up to that responsibility, whether I was ready or not. There was just me, no one else. No one to take the blow, no one to lead where I need only follow. Just me.
And now, standing here, staring into the flames, I know. I am the Slayer. Whatever doubt I might have had left is gone, burned away by that fire. I am the Slayer. I have a purpose, and it lies right here, right now.
Odds are I will be dead before the night ends. I have never felt so alive before.
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Diana:
I am changing.
I stare into the flames and I know I'm changing. Not just in my mind, where phantom memories dance, darting back and forth to show me glimpses, but never more than that. My body is changing. This body, which I have supposedly lived in for seventeen years and change, is transforming right before my eyes. Not just my hair, which is almost completely blond now.
I have grown shorter, just a little, but noticeably. My skin tone has changed, paleness giving way to a natural tan I never had. My face feels different, the bones having shifted, almost like a vampire's game face.
I am not afraid. Some part of me seems to know what is happening and finds it good, knows that it is right. This body, this changed body, it feels comfortable and familiar like an old, well-worn pair of jeans.
Memories are returning, but I doubt they are those of Diana Knight. There is one thing I'm pretty certain of by now, a knowledge that has manifested itself more and more clearly with every step we took through this underground cavern. I'm not Diana Knight. She died that night on the way to the hospital and whatever ... whoever came back, it wasn't her. It was me. Whoever I am.
I remember a conversation. Someone telling me that I could go back, but that I wouldn't remember my name, my life, everything that I am. That I would have to find out for myself. I remember resigned acceptance, as if such things had happened to me before, as if I knew the strange and roundabout ways this game is played.
The flames of the Torch are flickering high above me, but it feels like I'm looking directly at them, as if they were reaching out to embrace me, welcome me back like a long-lost lover. I have been here before. Not like this, not with these feet, not by going this way, but I've been here before.
With a gasp a memory comes flooding back, the same I've seen in the chamber above. I remember dying. Falling forward, cold liquid closing around me, all that is keeping me alive leaving in a rush of warmth. But I can't go, I know I can't go. There is too much left undone, things I need to take care of. Something is there, something to replace the warmth with. Something that can be whatever I want it to be.
Then another memory, another time I died. I know that I have to give my life to save the world, my blood is all that stands between the lives I'm sworn to protect and complete destruction. I do what must be done, give my all, but this isn't the end. The thing inside me, the thing I took with me from the chamber above when I died the first time, isn't going away. It's still there, waiting for me to tell it what to do, what to be. My life is gone, my blood spilled, but death won't take me. Something is keeping me alive.
I want peace. I remember that now. I so longed for peace. Rest. I didn't want to have the weight of the world on my shoulders anymore. I wanted someone else to step up, to make the hard choices. I wanted a place where there was nothing but peace, where I knew the people I love would be safe and I could lay my arms down at last.
I got what I wanted. I got what I expected. And now I know it was a lie. Nothing but smoke and mirrors, no more real than the hell dimension Angel spent centuries in, no more real than the giant tentacle creature the Master unleashed.
I know who I am. And I know they lied to me when they sent me back. Those bastards lied to me.
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Angel:
It's the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, but we don't have time to sightsee. I can hear them moving, hundreds of feet hurrying down the steps to claim the prize before we can. Only I don't know anymore whether we should. What will happen if we win this battle for the Powers That Be? Do we want them to win? Do we want anyone to win?
Only one thing is certain. We can't allow the others to win. Those things that are rushing to fight us, vampires, demons, dark witches, mantises, zombies, all the creatures the darkness of human imagination has ever spawned, they can't be allowed to get their hands on this, no matter what.
We have to fight, no matter who maneuvered us into this conflict, no matter the reasons. The alternative is unthinkable.
I know something is happening to Diana. I can see it, but even more important, I can feel it. But I can't! It can't be happening, I can't allow it to happen, can't allow myself to even consider it.
Because if it's happening, if it's true, then the rest is also true. The vision Cordelia saw. The thing that will happen here, with us.
It can't happen! Please, God! Don't let it happen!
TO BE CONTINUED
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110 miles north of Los Angeles, October 16, 2017
#
Darla:
We enter a chamber and I recognize it. I have seen it in my dreams. Reason says that it's impossible for a place this huge to exist beneath Sunnydale. The impossibly high ceiling should cave in under the weight of the city, even in its ruined state. Reason, I'm sure, has no place here.
Stone pillars abound around us, impossibly ancient, yet seemingly untouched by the forces of time. A flickering light fills the giant chamber and we all know where it comes from. We cannot see it yet, but we all know it is there. We can feel it.
With every step we take my mind seems to become clearer. For so long I had no idea what I was, who I was supposed to be. I am not Darla, I know that now. Darla died many years ago, reduced to dust by Angel to save the life of the girl he loved. Vampires don't come back from true death.
Wolfram & Hart created me and made me believe I was Darla. For someone ... something like me, belief is all it takes. I believed I was Darla, therefor I was Darla. I had her memories, her habits, everything. But I wasn't her, could never be her. I think Angel knew it, deep down he knew it. That was why he could never kill me.
I look at Celeste, my beautiful daughter. Angel's daughter. She has opened my eyes to the truth. I am what circumstances have made me, a creature of myth that adapts to the tale it is set in. Wolfram & Hart needed me human, so I was human. Then they made me into a vampire, so I was a vampire. Then Celeste was born and she needed me to be something else. A person that could keep her safe in daylight as in the night. Someone who could be there at all times.
And now that I know? Can I be what I want myself to be? If yes, what do I want myself to be? The undead seductress? The helpless human in need of a savior? The whore who wouldn't repent even on her deathbed?
I am none of these things. What do I want to be? I don't know. Maybe I'll never know. But I do know that the one skin I ever felt comfortable in, the one role that ever felt natural to me, was the one of Celeste's mother. My beautiful girl. I will keep you safe, no matter what. Heaven or hell, order or chaos, good or evil, angels or demons, I don't care. They'll have to go through me to get you.
No one will ever be allowed to hurt you.
#
Giles:
My parents always wanted me to be a watcher, as everyone in our family had been for generations. Only they are not my parents, never have been, and the time when my very being adapted solely to the expectations of others is over.
Rupert Giles died decades ago. He was a foolish young man, drunk on the power of magic, a victim of his own overconfidence. He died bleeding in the rain, buried beneath a rusting car, forever forgotten even by those who helped put him there.
As I walk through the underground chamber, passing rows upon rows of stone pillars, I find in myself the resolve I always thought was the result of my training, my upbringing. It wasn't. Whatever it is, it's solely mine. A Watcher wouldn't have tried to take Buffy's place when she went to fight the Master. A Watcher wouldn't have disregarded the Council over the Cruciamentum test.
My life before coming to Sunnydale is but a shadow, the best effort a hollow creature could produce at being a dead man. It was only here, among the only real family I've ever known, that I came to be alive and whole. Stuffy Englishman, dashing rogue, father figure for a group of teenagers whose own fathers never deserved the name? All that is me. Part of what I am, part of what I want to be.
How much of it resulted from their expectations? I don't know, neither do I care. It is the life I have led, the life I want to lead. Knowing what I know about myself I wouldn't change a thing. Nothing important anyway. I would still be there with them, would still keep doing what I am doing right here, right now.
I look at Darla, the other who is like me. A creature of myth, or that is what Celeste called us. Born from the fires of the Torch, the very prize we are fighting for here today. Something that could never have existed in a rational world, but we are far away from the rational world now. Darla knows it, too. Strange that this person whom I've never met before should be the closest thing I have to a sister.
The teenager walking by her side flashes me a grin and I find myself smiling back. I have my suspicions about her, about who and what she is. I don't know whether I or anyone else here will live long enough to find out for certain, but it doesn't really matter. We are doing what we have always done, the one thing we do better than anyone else. Saving the world. For the first time or the hundredth, it doesn't really matter. This is our part in the story, that is what we are here for.
The light in front of us grows brighter and we no longer need the flashlights. Light and shadows dance along the walls, along the pillars, over our faces. I look at the people here with us and I see the same determination in all of them. Are they afraid? Yes, only madmen wouldn't be. That fear doesn't matter, though. Not today.
I look at the girl, Diana, the new Slayer. Something is different about her now, has been different ever since she confronted that thing that made itself look like Buffy. Was that also someone ... something like me? Something that was told to be Buffy, therefor it was? We'll never know now, I guess. But Diana? I can see her changing even now, as if the proximity of the Torch is burning through the fog that surrounds her young mind.
What are you going to become once all the illusions and lies are burned away? And why can't I help the feeling that I already know?
#
Tara:
I look at you and am almost torn apart by conflicting emotions. I never loved another person like I love you, Willow, and it hurts so much. It hurts that I still love you, even after everything you did, both to me and to others. Why can't I stop loving you? Even now I think it would take nothing but a single one of your kisses to wash the past away.
Willow and Amy's mother, Catherine Madison. I look at them and there is no dividing line between them. No separate auras, nothing that says they are two different people apart from the fact that they happen to have two separate bodies.
The main reason I left all these years ago, the main reason I ran away from Sunnydale, wasn't that Willow had raped my mind. It wasn't that she had gone behind my back and tried to raise Buffy as a zombie. All that hurt, hurt almost more than I could bare, but it wasn't what drove me away.
It was when I looked into her eyes and saw no regret. She didn't think she had done anything wrong.
We are walking through a giant chamber deep beneath the Earth, what could be the most important battle of our lives just minutes away, and all I can think of is you, Willow. Just moments ago I caught myself trying to come up with some idea on how to help you, to separate you and Catherine without killing either of you.
I wish I could let go. The air around us is charged with power. I can feel destiny approaching, bearing down on us like an express train. Closing my eyes, I turn my vision inwards and see the dark stains in my own aura. Hatred, unresolved rage, so many things I have never been able to face. Today they might kill me. I need to be focused. I need to be clean.
Our prize comes into view, but I have no eyes for it. Something else has to come first. I approach Willow and Catherine, both their heads turning to look at me. Two mouths open to say something, but I cut them (her?) of.
"I have to say this," I tell her, only looking at her face, not really caring how many people are looking out from behind those eyes. "What you did to me ... I don't think I can ever forgive that. And I will never understand how you could justify it to yourself. But all that doesn't matter right now, not anymore."
I swallow. I have waited so long for this. I have seen a scene like this in both my dreams and my nightmares. They never seemed to differ much. Now it's real, or as real as anything possibly can be in a place this far removed from the mundane world. Here, now, I can finally say the words I wanted to say for so long.
"One thing has never changed. The year we were together was the happiest time of my life. It made me the person I am today. And I wouldn't change it for the world."
The look on Willow's face (and on Catherine's probably, but I don't look at her) almost breaks my heart.
"I never wanted to hurt you," she whispers in that strange doppler-voice.
A hundred vicious replies buzz through my heads, a thousand verbal ways of hurting her right back for how she hurt me, but I swallow them all. This isn't about revenge. This is about me being free.
"I know that," I simply answer, leaving the rest unsaid. Your intentions were always good Willow. You always wanted everyone to be happy.
I turn away from her, from them, and I can feel two pairs of eyes boring into my back. It matters no longer, though. The important things have been said. The rest ... well, maybe if we somehow manage to survive all this. Maybe.
#
Faith:
The prize comes into view and I can't hold back a gasp. It's not because of the great visuals, though they are breathtaking as well. It's at least as tall as the statue of liberty, maybe bigger. A big honkin' cup like something out of a medieval movie and it's filled with fire, flames dancing towards the distant ceiling of this impossibly huge underground wonder- cave.
What makes me gasp is the feelings, though. I have never been good at putting them into words, always been more into action than words. Now I wish I had the words to describe how this thing makes me feel, words apart from 'fucking great' and 'really wicked'.
I look at this giant thing before us and, even if that kid Celeste hadn't told us a thing, I'd know what it was. I can feel it from here, the power inside that giant contraption. God, it makes me tingle all the way down to my toes. Celeste said that the origins of the Slayer lie here, that we were made directly from that thing to protect the balance between the supernatural and the mundane.
Right now I believe it. Every single word of it.
Becoming the Slayer was the best and the worst thing that ever happened to me. The best because I had never before had anything even resembling purpose. I wasn't living, I was just existing, waiting for the world to fuck me over as my drunken whore of a mother always told me it would. The worst because it gave me more power and responsibility than I could handle at that age. I wasn't ready for it, I was a borderline basket case, and it pushed me right over the edge.
For the last sixteen years, ever since I felt B die all the way from my prison cell, I knew that I had to be the Slayer now. I had to live up to that responsibility, whether I was ready or not. There was just me, no one else. No one to take the blow, no one to lead where I need only follow. Just me.
And now, standing here, staring into the flames, I know. I am the Slayer. Whatever doubt I might have had left is gone, burned away by that fire. I am the Slayer. I have a purpose, and it lies right here, right now.
Odds are I will be dead before the night ends. I have never felt so alive before.
#
Diana:
I am changing.
I stare into the flames and I know I'm changing. Not just in my mind, where phantom memories dance, darting back and forth to show me glimpses, but never more than that. My body is changing. This body, which I have supposedly lived in for seventeen years and change, is transforming right before my eyes. Not just my hair, which is almost completely blond now.
I have grown shorter, just a little, but noticeably. My skin tone has changed, paleness giving way to a natural tan I never had. My face feels different, the bones having shifted, almost like a vampire's game face.
I am not afraid. Some part of me seems to know what is happening and finds it good, knows that it is right. This body, this changed body, it feels comfortable and familiar like an old, well-worn pair of jeans.
Memories are returning, but I doubt they are those of Diana Knight. There is one thing I'm pretty certain of by now, a knowledge that has manifested itself more and more clearly with every step we took through this underground cavern. I'm not Diana Knight. She died that night on the way to the hospital and whatever ... whoever came back, it wasn't her. It was me. Whoever I am.
I remember a conversation. Someone telling me that I could go back, but that I wouldn't remember my name, my life, everything that I am. That I would have to find out for myself. I remember resigned acceptance, as if such things had happened to me before, as if I knew the strange and roundabout ways this game is played.
The flames of the Torch are flickering high above me, but it feels like I'm looking directly at them, as if they were reaching out to embrace me, welcome me back like a long-lost lover. I have been here before. Not like this, not with these feet, not by going this way, but I've been here before.
With a gasp a memory comes flooding back, the same I've seen in the chamber above. I remember dying. Falling forward, cold liquid closing around me, all that is keeping me alive leaving in a rush of warmth. But I can't go, I know I can't go. There is too much left undone, things I need to take care of. Something is there, something to replace the warmth with. Something that can be whatever I want it to be.
Then another memory, another time I died. I know that I have to give my life to save the world, my blood is all that stands between the lives I'm sworn to protect and complete destruction. I do what must be done, give my all, but this isn't the end. The thing inside me, the thing I took with me from the chamber above when I died the first time, isn't going away. It's still there, waiting for me to tell it what to do, what to be. My life is gone, my blood spilled, but death won't take me. Something is keeping me alive.
I want peace. I remember that now. I so longed for peace. Rest. I didn't want to have the weight of the world on my shoulders anymore. I wanted someone else to step up, to make the hard choices. I wanted a place where there was nothing but peace, where I knew the people I love would be safe and I could lay my arms down at last.
I got what I wanted. I got what I expected. And now I know it was a lie. Nothing but smoke and mirrors, no more real than the hell dimension Angel spent centuries in, no more real than the giant tentacle creature the Master unleashed.
I know who I am. And I know they lied to me when they sent me back. Those bastards lied to me.
#
Angel:
It's the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, but we don't have time to sightsee. I can hear them moving, hundreds of feet hurrying down the steps to claim the prize before we can. Only I don't know anymore whether we should. What will happen if we win this battle for the Powers That Be? Do we want them to win? Do we want anyone to win?
Only one thing is certain. We can't allow the others to win. Those things that are rushing to fight us, vampires, demons, dark witches, mantises, zombies, all the creatures the darkness of human imagination has ever spawned, they can't be allowed to get their hands on this, no matter what.
We have to fight, no matter who maneuvered us into this conflict, no matter the reasons. The alternative is unthinkable.
I know something is happening to Diana. I can see it, but even more important, I can feel it. But I can't! It can't be happening, I can't allow it to happen, can't allow myself to even consider it.
Because if it's happening, if it's true, then the rest is also true. The vision Cordelia saw. The thing that will happen here, with us.
It can't happen! Please, God! Don't let it happen!
TO BE CONTINUED
