Chapter 3: Arrival

There was mist; green mist with an almost solid feel to it, like jelly. The green glow faded, and it was normal, albeit very thick mist. She thought that she might have something to do. What was it? How odd, the mist parted when she looked at it. Very strange. Presently she remembered something; her first memory. Someone was hugging her. Her sister. Buffy. She remembered crying when she was taken away from her. She remembered Mom, the guys. The guys!

Quickly, she recited, "Those who duly choose, be free of the Vessel." Immediately, she felt the presence of Willow, Spike, Anya and Xander near her. But what she saw bemused her. Where Anya should've been was a short, veiny grey skinned demon with small horns and clawed hands. Where Xander should've stood crouched a hugely muscled, charcoal-skinned beast with massive antlers and cloven hands and feet. Confused she turned to Spike and was faced with... Spike. Normal Spike.
"You alright, Little Bit?" he quickly asked with genuine concern. He looked behind Dawn. "What the soddin' hell are those?"

The short, horned figure stood up and asked "Dawn, are you okay?" in Anya's voice. "Where's Xander?"
"Anya?" asked Dawn and Spike together. The demon put her hands on her hips.
"Of course! Where's Xander? Xander?" she called. A huge cloven hand came to rest on her shoulder as the antlered demon stood next to her. The antlered and horned demons looked at each other and simultaneously screamed. "Xander?" asked the short demon. Ceasing his wail, the larger demon said
"An? What? Where? What?" Then he looked down at his own body and was about to scream again, when he caught sight of Dawn and Spike. "Dawn, you're okay", he said as he ran to her in three huge strides, followed by the other. "Dawn? How come? What's going on?"

Before she could answer he was whacked on the back. "That's for scaring me with your stupid scream, Xander Harris!" said Anya. "For crying out loud, we're demons, remember?"
"Yeah", he nodded. "But what kind of demons are we? And where's Willow?" He was answered as a monstrous black shape stood over them. It was twenty-five feet tall with chasms for eyes and mouth, with huge outstretched wings stretching off into the mist. The creature opened its gaping maw.
"Right here, guys," said Willow,"man, this is so weird!"
"That's because you're a dread," shouted up Anya. "Your natural instinct is to devour our souls and burn our bodies to ash. Fun, isn't it?" But the figure quickly seemed to reduce in size until it was at par with Dawn. Then it shifted form, and was Willow.
"Boy, that was freaky," she gasped "I felt like killing you all, except for-"
"Spike?" asked Anya. At Willow's nod she said "You see, no soul; no food. Its quite fortunate you realised that as a dread, you can shapeshift. Otherwise, we were kind of in trouble."

"What's going on?" asked Dawn. "How come you're all different, but Spike is still the same?"
"Well, he's already a demon" said Willow. "Why become another one?"
"Yeah, great," said Spike "but what about when the sun comes up?"
"Oh, don't worry" said Anya, "Its not that vamps have a problem with sunlight, its that they have a problem with Earth's sunlight. You'll probably be fine."
"'Probably', love?" said Spike. "Why am I not overcome with confidence at that?"
"Um, yeah. All well and good," interrupted Xander. "But antlers?" He pointed to his head. "What's up with Anya and me?"
"Well, I know what I am," said Anya. "This is great! I'm a Vengeance Demon," she said excitedly.
"Why'a so excited, An?" asked Xander. "You were a vengeance demon for – like – a thousand years. I thought you'd want to be something else for a change? Plus; no humans equals no wishes."
"No, not a normal old vengeance demon," she exclaimed, clapping her hands, "a Matriarch Vengeance Demon! If this were Arash-Mahal, I could make new vengeance demons the way D'Hoffryn does. Plus, watch." She too started to shift form, until she looked like Anya again.

Xander stood there, looking at the others with molten silver eyes and said "This is way unfair! You all look normal and I look like Bambi's da-da! What kind of demon am I anyway?"
"Chaos Demon" supplied Spike. "Damn ugly things. You're a bit bigger than the usual ones, different colour, too. And you're not as slimy either."
"Oh gosh, thanks," Xander replied dryly. "So, now what?" he asked nobody in particular, as he towered over them.
"We thought Dawn a way to sense Buffy," answered Willow. "It was in the Book. That's how she found Ri'Oth. Can you sense her now, Dawn?" she asked. "Is she nearby?"
"She was here," said Dawn, who looked around, "she must have been so scared and lonely." She pointed. "That way. Buffy went that way."

Without preamble, the five headed in the direction Dawn had pointed. They decided that should they encounter demons, that Xander, Anya and Spike should deal with them, and that Willow should stay back and protect Dawn. So, those three took point, but they were instantly presented with a problem. The mist was not moving, and had formed an opaque wall before them. Dawn and Willow came forward to investigate, and the mist gave way to the former's gaze. Something very odd was happening.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Dawn now took point, flanked by Spike and Xander. After what felt like two hours of travel, the mist abruptly cleared. Before them lay a stygian landscape out of nightmare. Soot geysers spouted out black dust, and strange feathered creatures, resembling wing snakes fed off the rotting carcass of some immense beast, the pungent odour of which assaulted their nostrils.

In the black, dusty sky raged shooting stars that seemed only hundreds of feet above their heads, and periodically fell to the landscape with rock- shattering crashes. Jagged peaks, most of them active volcanoes stabbed at the sky as far as the eye could see. Turning, they saw the mist was solid in a wall hundreds of feet tall, as far as they could see to the left or right. Rather than re-enter the eerie mist or brave the hell before them, they chose to hug the mist as long as they could, and headed right, in the direction where Dawn informed them she believed Buffy had gone.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

They set up a makeshift camp for some rest, still beside the silent mist. The lands near the mist, however, had started to become less arid and severe. When the sun rose, and Spike very nervously dared a peak from beneath his jacket, Anya was proved correct. It didn't burn him. All they had were the clothes on their backs, and Dawn and Xander would eventually need food, as would Spike. Patrolling their camp, Xander asked Spike what Chaos demons normally ate. "Normally, whatever's handy," came the reply. "Even though, one time I knew a Chaos demon who just loved Taco Bell. Ate the stuff every day, he bloody did. As you can imagine, he wasn't a joy to be around when you're ofactarily gifted."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

After a few hours the next day, they finally left behind the bizarre mist, and continued on into the decreasingly desolate landscape, even finding a bush upon which grew strange sour berries, which Xander wolfed down. Dawn opted to decline them, as she said they smelled kind of like Doublemeat Palace food, of which she wasn't particularly fond. At the mention of a restaurant, Xander became even more ravenous and stripped the small shrub bare.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Later that day, Anya was explaining to Willow and Dawn why matriarch vengeance demons were so miuch better than patriarch vengeance demons when Spike called a halt and hissed "About five hundred yards ahead. Riders, nasty looking fellows headed this way." When asked how many, he replied "About ten of 'em. Sods look like Ankylan demons. Knew an Ankylan named Val Trepkos once. Now there's a bloke who could handle a fight." He turned to Anya. "You said that you had some spell or something to make Red and Bit look like yourself. Best use it." He looked to Willow and said "You two stay with Dawn. Doe-a-deer and me'll see what's what. As Xander complained at being called such a thing, Anya pondered to herself that there was something she was forgetting.

The riders approached on armoured mounts Xander could tell were not horses. They were heavily set, sandy-skinned demons, with a crown-like crest of short horns on their heads that ran down their foreheads to their noses. They wore leather-like armour and carried sabres at their hilts. The head rider saluted Xander, palm raised facing out. "My lord", he said, a mixture of caution and confusion in his voice, "what brings a Chaos General, unmounted, this close to the Buntine Wastes with only an entourage of three retainers and-", he looked beside him to Spike.

Anya snapped her fingers. "Now I remember. Spike, he's-"
"A Vantal!" exclaimed the sergeant. "Kill or be killed!" Mayhem ensued as some of the rides began attacking as others tried to flee. Wondering what he had done to deserve this, Spike put on his game- face – and transformed. Every visible piece of skin on his body grew overlapping scarlet and gold scales, two huge blood-red crests protruded from the chin up his face to his forehead, and continued another foot and a half before ending in a pair of wicked points. Similar crests grew from his elbows. He laid scarlet and gold eyes on the Ankylans, and realised how hungry he was.

Bounding twenty feet over the attacking Ankylans, Spike knocked from their mounts, two trying to flee, quickly tore out the throat of the first with a clawed hand, and impaled another on his elbow. Almost nonchalantly, he decapitated one attacking him from behind with his free elbow. "What madness is this, my lord?!" shouted the sergeant. "Fly, my lord! Fly!" He steered his mount toward Spike and raised his sabre aloft shouting "For the glory of Deetai!" Spike leaped up to him and carried him to the ground. The Ankylan tried vainly to fend him off as he was savagely mauled, but he abruptly stopped struggling. Spike then began to feed.

With Spike satisfied and the sanguineous business over, he resumed his normal form, and observed the havoc he had wrought. Nine of the ten riders lay on the ground, and he had incidentally killed three of the mounts as well. Xander had recovered the surviving animals that hadn't run too far away. The others stood behind him, as he tentatively said, "Is that you, Spike? Are you with us again?"
"What the bloody hell happened?" Spike asked as he liked at his destroyed clothing. They warily approached him, Xander brandishing one of the fallen Ankylans' sabres, as he said
"An says you turned into a 'Vantal' or something. Anya?" Spike turned his attention to her, as she began to explain.

"You see, in certain dimensions where there are little or no humans, vampires have adapted to feeding on demons instead of humans. Worlds like Harn and Pylea, and, I guess Ri'Oth too. But demons are a lot harder to kill than humans, so vamps evolved into Vantals. The main difference is rather than spending around five thousand years as a human-demon hybrid and then becoming a Master Vampire, that is, the demon who possessed the body, you can swap anytime you want between human and Master-form. That's what a Vantal is." Anya finished, feeling quite pleased with her explanation.

Uncharacteristically, Spike had paid attention to the lecture, but said "The one downside being that I turn into a flaming lunatic every time I suit up", sardonically. Anya frowned.
"Well, yeah. Normally that would be true, but with 'The Torment of Memory' hex on you, you shouldn't have gone feral even when you changed. I don't understand that."
"No, you're right", said Spike. "I didn't go feral." The others looked at each other and Willow ventured,
"Um, Spike. You did seem kinda, you know, feral."
"No, Red. I mean I knew what I was doing. I was defending myself from those bloody plonkers. But as soon as I cut one open, I lost it. It was something... beyond bloodlust. I mean, I wasn't even that hungry before.
"Hm," mused Anya, "it was probably just the shock of it for the first time. Maybe next time you'll be able to control it better. That, or you'll kill us all." Breaking the uncomfortable silence, Xander said
"I managed to bring back five of those... horse- things, but one is lame so we'd better leave it. If the guy who got away comes back with buddies, I want to be very far away when it happens."