The Chronicles of Aza- A Slayer's Journey: The Beginning
A/N: The names are pronounced like:
Isumara Adetoun=ee-soo-MA-ra ah-day-TOON
Myra Kanaka= Mie-ruh Kah-NAH-kuh
Disclaimer; All characters from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" belong to Joss Whedon and 21st
Century Fox, et al. No copyright infringement is intended
Isumara Adetoun had felt the Call- almost as she had felt the death of the previous Slayer twenty
years ago- the valiant Myra Kanaka, a half-Hawaiian spitfire who had met her death beneath the
earth in the lair of an ancient vampire and his cronies- who had torn the Slayer's heart from her
body and gorged on her flesh. Isumara had felt it with her power twenty-one years ago, on that
fateful day in 1983 when the Slayer had fallen and was no more. She had felt the pull of the
impending death with her magical senses, as she had countless times before. The red shadow of
Myra Kanaka's death stalked Isumara's dreams. It was even worse when she saw Myra in
person. The death was gathered around Myra's body like a cloak, breathing itself through her
skin. Meanwhile, the demon destined to kill Myra lingered on the edge of Isumara's vision,
fashioning itself as Myra's dark twin, but even then, in its semblance of the Slayer's form, the
fires of its eyes glowed. Isumara had done everything she knew- she had burnt her herbs and
cast her spells, scattered her stones- all in the hopes of averting the horrific death she had seen
for the Slayer. But nothing turned the trick. The demon remained unhurt, casting the oily defiance
of its ugly bubbling laughter into all her efforts. She ignored it and looked deeper into the soul of
the doomed Slayer with her second sight. Ah-there it was- a link, very old, in the soul- like a
scarred over wound, and spreading out from it- demon taint- demon kinship? Demon blood in a
Slayer? Then she understood. During the last trimester of pregnancy, in her ninth month, Myra's
mother had been fed a zari, an elaborate charm mixture of herbs and blood from which demons
were born. In the normal course of things, between the complex magical and chemical
interactions between the zari and the unborn, Myra Kanaka should have been born a demon.
Ironically, some strange fate or destiny had intervened, and Leonora Kanaka had given birth to
a human daughter who would eventually become the Slayer, the killer of all demonkind and
vampires. But a degree of kinship to demonkind remained in Myra's soul and blood, and thus
was the problem now. The demon that stalked her, he who would eventually be her death, had
been made from the same zari, or a very similar one! This gave him almost total power over her,
since their genes were nearly identical from the incomplete action of the zari on Myra's flesh.
"Zari-sister," the thing hissed in its revolting voice, "come to Kradach. Kradach knows your
scent." He, like almost all demons, referred to himself in the third person. If demons referred to
themselves as "me" or "I", it weakened their power over a victim.
"What are you talking about, filth?" Myra shouted. She fired a wooden arrow whose tip had
been dipped in kerosene. It caught fire instantly and hummed through the air, where it should
have pierced the exact center of his heart. Myra always had good aim as an archer. But the
demon brushed aside her fire arrow as though it were nothing more than an annoying mosquito,
wrapping spindly red fingers around it and squeezing until he crushed it.
"Filth," Myra continued, "how is it that true fire does not hurt you as it should? Get back to the
Hell that spawned you!"
"Ah, but it spawned you as well, zari-sister. I will concede that you are one of the oddest
creatures ever born on the earth or in Hell. But no weapon you use against me will harm me,
sister. You are blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh. You were born in the wrong shape, but the
ichor of demons burns bright in your veins."
"What is this nonsense?" she shouted. She spun around, whirling as fast as a butterfly in midair,
and kicked the demon in the head. Hard. In another butterfly motion she attempted to stab a
stake into his throat, but her hand was stopped an inch short of its target. She pushed against
that one inch of distance, but she sweated as though she were trying to move a brick wall with
nothing but her little finger. Her hand was forced down by that same odd force. "I was not born
from zari and khanat as were you, filth. What is this sorcery that stays my hand from killing you,
as it ought to?"
"No sorcery but kinship, little sister." hissed Kradach slyly. "Demons cannot kill their own kin,
by the ancient laws of Ethalkyn the First. And you were born of a human mother, not khanat.
But the rite of khanat is not essential in the making of a demon. We share zari, little one. The
one zari we share was made by the same magician, whose name I shall not speak. It was
divided, half given to my mother-khanat, and half secretly fed to your mother, while yet you
leapt in her womb. You should have been demon-kind, but of course one never knows what
form the genes will take with you hybrids. And so you are human and have become the Slayer.
But it is by the token of this kinship that you shall die tonight." And he laughed chillingly. "The
work of the zari was imperfect, contaminated by your human ancestry, and you, the human
hybrid Slayer, have killed so very many of our kind. And I do mean our kind. Yours and mine."
"Is it true?" Myra asked the Watcher at her side. Amiri Badaku, one whom Isumara had loved
like a sister. Amiri nodded grimly. "Is it not a supreme jest, zari-sister, that you, who should
rightfully be a demon, have gone around on a killing rampage against your own family and your
own race? You have killed your own cousins, aunts and uncles, by the dozens, ever since you
became the Slayer, She who is destined to kill our kind. The great wrong you have done to the
races of the Old Ones therefore forfeits any family loyalty we feel towards you, and the loyalty
we gladly would have offered has faded, in the place of revenge. You are the blackest of black
sheep when it comes to your demon kindred. Although, giving rise to you has given our line a
certain notorious fame. Nothing left but revenge. And it is a revenge I will taste- tonight!"
"Ah, but the old law of Ethalkyn the First binds all demons. If I'm prevented from killing you,
you're prevented from killing me."
"Very good, little sister. I feel your ichor rising. But I didn't say I was going to kill you. I'll merely
cast the spell to make you defenseless, and then, my servants can finish you off. They're not
related to me in any way. Ethalkyn's Law won't touch them. And when I eat your heart I will
swallow the other half of our zari, and my power will be doubled!"
"Nice try." Said Myra. "I'm human and demon combined, but I have chosen the human side.
And I can very easily use my demon side against you. The human blood exempts me from
Ethalkyn's Law, too." Myra darted closer to her demon brother, and thrust forward with a
stake, to once again be stopped by an inch. "I am demon, but I am human!" she cried aloud to
an unseen power. "I choose the human, and I call upon all my human ancestors, male and
female, to assist me in this task! Ethalkyn, put your law aside and let me kill this infidel!" Such a
plea might have worked. Ethaklyn's Law had been broken before, but usually only by powerful
human witches against the smaller demons. Myra was half-demon and so the law bound her
more deeply. Besides, she had no magic whatsoever, and her brother was a great Prince of
demons, gaining in strength and power for thousands of years before this unlikely sister had been
born. They were inexorably linked, she and the demon prince. And so Myra was doomed.
Kradach began to call out a long chant in the hideous language of demons. Myra felt her strength
ebb away from her, her arms and legs dangling limp and useless like the hollow limbs of a rag
doll. She was totally and completely paralyzed, lying there helpless in the dark, sunken pit of her
brother's lair.
"Blood and bone, taken and given Yield to me the flesh of the sister Blood and bone, taken and
given I call on the power of the zari, To free from the error of its host, Who was defiled by the
imperfection of a human And made into our bane, the Slayer. I call upon Yameltsin, he who
engendered us- Behold the work which you have created, and see it unmade! O Zari- pay for
the sins of a host so flawed Let us drink in her death and delight in the wine of her blood!" Myra
felt the demon's power draining away her strength and her will, and she changed. She was held
in awe by the wonder of it, even though the demon had her in thrall. She saw, for the first time,
the battle that had raged inside her blood- the battle that still raged in her blood, despite all, and
the fundamental disunity of her two halves. The red human blood flowed vigorously and made
antibodies against the demon ichor, which it perceived as a pathogen, and the demon ichor tried
to consume the red blood cells that it perceived as a food source. No wonder I had always
been such a sickly child. How on earth did I manage to survive to this age and become an
efficient Slayer? She thought. Then she saw...it. A stinking black thing that grew from the
center of her heart like an evil fungus, spilling its tentacles into her womb. It moved about
continously, still trying to mold her flesh into pure demon, trying to shape what could not be
shaped. But the white blood cells clung to it, fighting its tentacles and trying to kill it, as though it
were something cancerous. It was the boundary between the two intermingled halves, and held
everything together inside her, rather tenously. That must be the zari. She thought. Never before
had she looked so deeply into her own body. But she was dying, and would have no need of a
body any longer, even such a one as ill-made as this. Amiri Badaku, the valiant Watcher, still
tried to kill the thing that harried her friend and companion. She was a powerful witch, and no
kin to demons. She might have succeeded, but she was weary and at the end of her strength.
She lashed out with her flaming sword at the demon who threatened her Myra. The demon
Kradach looked up in mild surprise, and briefly stopped the chant that was going to bind the
Slayer to his will and destroy her. Myra felt a momentary flicker of hope return to her, as well as
some vestige of her old strength. Weakly, she tried to rise to her feet.
"No." said Kradach in a voice as cold as death itself. He stretched out his arm, with his many-
fingered crimson hand palm up. Then he clenched the hand into a fist, and Myra fell to the floor,
cracking her skull as she writhed in convulsions of pain. But Amiri was not finished. She was
singing, and scattering herbs, in an attempt to weaken the demon, and siphon his power away
from him. Myra felt herself healing, felt strength return in such quantities that it was almost
painful. But Kradach was not so easily thwarted. He spoke a single syllable, the weight of that
syllable directed against Amiri. She reeled, wilting like a flower. She almost fell, but then a horde
of demons appeared around her, catching her up and tearing her slowly to pieces. Myra was
forced to look on as her beloved Watcher was tortured to death. When Amiri's bloodied corpse
had been mutilated beyond all semblance of humanity and wrung out like a rag, Kradach turned
once more to Myra. "Now I can deal with you, my little bastard zari-sister." he chuckled
malevolently. He began chanting again, but louder and faster this time, in the clipped and
hastened syllables of an abbreviated demon-tongue. Myra felt the strength that Amiri had tried
to restore be ripped away with such violence that blue lights of pain went through her, and she
lay, curled in a fetal position and shivering with pain, on the hard stone floor. When she was fully
bound, another horde of demons materalized, and she could do nothing against them, since the
spell held her captive in every possible way. They feasted on her flesh till it was bitten to the
bone, and then with an awful wet sound like the tearing of raw meat, Kradach ripped the heart
from his sister's body. The evil zari hung glistening from the bloody red lump from her heart like
so much black seaweed. With a horrible grin, Kradach swallowed her zari and her heart,
declaring, "Now I am made whole!" And Isumara Adetoun, watching from the crystal glass of
her vision, could only wail in despair. Now, that black day on which Amiri Badaku and Myra
Kanaka had died was nearly twenty-one years gone. But exactly four years from that day,
Isumara felt the new Slayer come into the world. On July 7, 1987, Sylvester and Martina
Gonzalez of Los Angeles, California, were delievered of a baby girl. They named her Aza
Faizah (fay-EE-zah) Gonzalez. And Isumara knew, without a doubt, that Aza Faizah Gonzalez
was the Chosen One. The omens were all good: the right year and the right time of day for the
birth of a Slayer; the Slayer's name was Aza, which meant "powerful", and the middle name,
Faizah, "she who is victorious". Already fortune smiled on the tall, dark-eyed little girl, big for
her age, who would become the new Slayer. And when Aza's parents, newly affluent from the
death of a rich relative in Guadalajara, decided to move to the seemingly idyllic, leafy suburb of
Sunnydale, another piece of the puzzle fell in place. Unbeknownst to the young Aza and her
parents, the site of Sunnydale was the ancient Hellmouth, an opening to the Dark Realm and a
magnet of all things paranormal, where a Slayer's presence was absolutely essential. She is
come of age now, in 2004. Seventeen, almost a woman. thought Isumara Adetoun. I must
protect her.