Secret Underground Lair

"They are going to find out, your inadequecy may get us all killed!" Odin yelled at creature in front of him. "You are a disgrace, you are not worthy to be one of us!" He was angry. He had named himself Odin because with the way things were, he felt as a god. It was only fair to name himself after the all knowing Odin.

"Sir, I am sorry, we didn't think there would be so many of them."

"Well I warned you what was seen, but you did not heed the warnings, now you have killed off 3 other guardsmen, are you pleased with your failure?"

"No sir, I am not." He held his head low in shame.

"Go, I don't want to look at you, you make me sick!" Odin pointed at the door and the creature took his cue. A few moments later another one entered the room.

"Odin?"

"Yes, Mimir, what is it?"

"We have had a vision." Mimir was one of the old ones, he had been around since the battles. He knew why they had come to this place, this place where it was too hot, and the sun shone for too long. At least where they came from they had months of nothing but darkness. The trade off was months of light, but usually by then they had enough captives to keep themselves until the sun set again. Mimir was one of the guardians of knowledge, he was wise and watched over the elders, interpreting their visions and passing the information onto Odin.

"Yes, and what have you seen?"

"The Aurelian has many resources and apparently has human followers. They have set off on a mission of some sort, to the building where Fein escaped from. This building holds much information, including the books of Mordgud and Ygg."

"I suspected this would come to be. Assemble the Berserkers, we will need them to split, I doubt our army is large enough as it stands."

"Of course, we have already begun the splitting. Berserker is preparing them for war. The elders are resting now, I will consult them again once they have recovered." Mimir bowed as he exited the room.

Odin sat in his chair thinking about what had to be done. The Aurelian had not been to their land in many years, but now the elders were becoming more frail, he could do nothing to save them but he could destroy the reason for their failings.

Wolfram, Hart & Angel too.

Wesley and Giles were on the floor of the library. Not only did Wolfram and Hart have a large selection of books on command, they also had a massive collection of ancient texts, some being the only copy on earth. They had translators on call, but Wesley didn't trust any of them.

"This is hopeless Rupert, we have been going through these books for hours and we have found nothing on the demons these vampires originated from." Wesley was tired. They had been researching the symbol on the ring, going through every Demon compendium they could find.

"Well there are still the Lomshat Demonolgy Chronicles and the books of Innishi to go through." Giles was near giving up as well. He was rolling the ring between his fingers. The topaz blue stone was enchanting, the silver ring it was set in constantly felt cold, and more than once he thought it wasn't silver at all, but some sort of blueish colored amalgamation. "Wesley, how many demons have we known which wear rings? How many have we found in the books?"

"Eight, maybe nine, not as many as I would have thought, but we did find refrences to the Camille-Varian, and they did say those rings belonged to warriors."

"What creatures do we know to wear rings as a general characteristic?"

"Well we have trolls, faeries, elves, giants and gods, but giants and gods have long been extinct, they disappeared around the time demons rose."

"So that leaves us with trolls, faeries and elves correct?"

"Yes, but this ring is far too small for a troll, they may not be giants, but they share a taxonomic family. A troll ring would be 3 times the size of that. Are you thinking the Camille-Varian aren't demon-vamps at all?"

"Perhaps, all of the pieces seem to be falling in place. I too know this isn't troll in origin, and the ring is not enchanted, so I doubt this is faerie."

"Which leaves us with elves." Wesley thought for a moment, "Of course! Elves! It makes perfect sense. The coloring, the ring, Spike said they had confronted them in Amsterdam correct?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Most of the elven populations congregate in cold regions, mostly through Nordic Europe and Siberia.It was rumoured there was a group or two which had made their home in Alaska and Northern Canada, but there have been few excursions to the regions to confrim this suspicion. But why would they be this far South?"

"I'm not sure, generally they have no tolerance for the heat, for them to come this far it must be important. Also these are vampire hybrids, so perhaps the heat isn't as bothersome."

"Rupert, this makes no sense though, elves are harmless, they are peacekeepers. The dark elves were wiped out over a thousand years ago, since then the light elves have been peaceful, vampires don't even war with them, they are the Switzerland of the non-human realm."

"Yes, but everything else fits, elves have the visions, they are pale, humanoid in form, the dark elves were rumored to take on a blue hue if I remember correctly, and some elves can self replicate. They don't breed in a conventional sense." Giles picked up a copy of the Svartalfheim Guide to Elven Dynasties. There were few books dedicated to the dark elves, Svartalfheim was one of the only books in existence. "This book discusses the origins of the dark elves, saying that they were thought to have feasted on the flesh of the dying gods when the age of demons began and the age of gods ended. This feasting made them grow strong, but also gave them a hunger for the flesh. They were cast into the bowels of the earth, forced to become forgers and smiths, creating beautiful useless objects. They also dug tunnels to the surface, but not until they had nearly eaten themselves into extinction. Apparently they were cannibals, having craved the flesh of gods, they ate each other to take back the pieces of the gods which had been dispersed through them. By the time they surfaced only 12 had survived, but were much stronger than the light elves, trying to steal their lands and slaughter them. The gods became angry and sent down the last of the giants to quash them, but instead the cunning dark elves drained the giant of its blood and fashioned a castle from its body. From there the 12 seem to have become vampires of sorts. The age of man was rising, and the dark elves believed that man were only small giants and began feeding upon them."

"So these elves were never turned by vampires themselves, instead became vampires through assimilation?"

"Wait there is more here. The 12 elected one named Odin to be their leader, he went down to the light elves land and stole 5 warriors. He split them in two, and dripped his own blood onto their severed bodies. Only one warrior survived, his name being Berserker, when cut in two he copied himself, in so creating an army through splitting. Of the 12 four were ancients, being of the first to feast upon the gods, and thus carrying the visions the gods passed to them upon consumption. Odin named Mimir to be his scribe and to record the visions of the elders. Four others were sent back to Svartalfheim, the underworld to forge weapons for the upcoming battles against those who would threaten their state. The dark elves then began to make weapons for the other dark warriors including the trolls. Wow they must have made Olaf's hammer."

"Olaf?"

"Anya's ex, she turned him into a troll, he had a very large hammer. Buffy beat the hell out of Glory with it, quite an impressive piece of weaponry."

"So is that all? Is there anything else on them?"

"Oh, it appears two of the twelve left the clan. They knew of Odin's intent to begin war on the elves of light, and later the vampires. One went to the leader of the light elves to warn him and to help him prepare for the battle, the other went to the Master of the vampires. With these elves came the secret to killing their brethren."

"Well, brilliant, now we know how to get rid of them!"

"It's not here. The book ends with that. There is nothing more."

"So the Camille-Varian are really what?"

"Dark-elves, the Svartalf. This would figure as to why they can tolerate the climate here, they were working in the inferno's of the earth, its not exactly cool there."

"So there is a way to kill them?"

"There must be. Perhaps this text is mistaken, maybe the Svartalf went to see the Master, he was not the vampire leader, only the leader of his clan, but this mistake could have easily been made by someone not familiar with the vampires."

"Do you think this elf brought the idea of the Crusades to him?"

"I think it's very likely. We need to look into the crusades, see if there is mention of this elf."

"So all the former information on the Camille-Varian?"

"I think it was a mistake, I think that they couldn't find any other reasonable solution than that they had been turned demons, as few are familiar with the dark elves. There is near to no information on the Camille-Varian, except some rumors and descriptions."

"What about the shapeshifting?"

"I think that was because they can split, many texts were poorly translated, perhaps shapeshifting was really shapesplitting."

"That would make sense. I think we have some of the elven texts here, I'll go check storage and the safe."

"I'll look into the Crusades, we have several good recollections from the Watchers journals, and the Council had a book or two on it. What are the chances our Watcher thief stole a copy of the entire watchers library?"

"I haven't been able to come up with a single book that the Council had that this library doesn't have. It's almost suspicious."

Wesley and Giles split up. They only hoped the rest of the group had found as much useful information as they had, but they knew that it wasn't very likely.