Chronicles of a Fallen God-King

Book One: To Be Blue

Authors Note: Hmm, the lack of reviews is kind of disappointing, but I guess I'll just forge my way through and continue writing at least for a little while longer, hopefully more of you guys will find your way in here and bless me with a short little review letting me know what you think sometime.

Thanks to one review though, who took it upon themselves to kick me back into gear here. I was so busy with school and such, but since that's finished for the summer,I'll bearound to update like crazy from now on.I've got a new fire for this story thanks to you. The chapters will be longer from now on, and there should be more meat to the story. I hope this fic turns out to stay true to the Buffyverse for you.

Disclaimer: Nope, still don't own any of the characters seen on Angel the Series. I know, I think it's horrible too, and I'm fighting for the legals over the characters Fred and Illyria, but it doesn't look like it's going my way at the moment…

Chapter Three:

Pylea. I had heard of that name before. And just from the memories that I had inherited from Winifred Burkle either. I remembered that she had once been enslaved in that dimension, having been sucked through into it by her Professor who could not take that someone was better then he. She had stayed there for years, fleeing for her life from people who would wish to punish, torture and then ultimately kill her, had she been caught. But she had been smart, even then when she was all alone. She had found a way to survive.

Even though her memories of Pylea were plentiful, they were not my own, and also not the ones I remembered best. I had walked before, in my own time, and in my old life, through these lands. Although, as had Earth, the land had changed. When I had first visited the land, the ground was red and brown with dirt and lifeless soil. At first I had assumed that the planet was no longer inhabitable, and had died ages before I arrived; it's life all dust and bone by now. But I found a species living in the very rocks I had figured would never sustain life again, their skin green and scale covered; they were lizards. They slumped when they walked, their shoulders limp, and the ones who still had tails, dragged them behind them.

I wondered if they still inhabited this place.

"I have been here before." I heard myself say openly, sharing another piece of the past with the people around me. "Not as Winifred, but in my past. When I was able to travel through the alternate dimensions as I pleased. The land here has changed greatly over the course of time though…" I said, taking a few steps up and opposite hill from where Wesley and I had come from, not bothering to see if anyone was following me. If they were smart, they would.

As I rose up the crest of the hill, my eyes fell down onto I scene I hadn't expected to have seen. Hunters. Clad in animal skins they hunted a herd of creatures that frolicked together on four legs, their shiny coats glistening in the dying sunlight. They did not see the Hunters fast approaching, clubs and spears gripped tightly in the hands. They were to be killed with their backs turned, as cowards. Rage boiled up inside me as I remembered another scene from my past. My own death, where my back had been turned, and I hadn't been expecting it to happen. I had just been great enough, to have my followers find a way to bring me back into the realm of the living.

I started down the hillside, bent on destroying the hunters whose faces I could not see, when a hand grabbed my arm. I turned, expecting to see Wesley, but instead saw Angel. He shook his head at me, and pulled me back down the opposite side of the hill, to where we had started out from. "What do you think you are doing?" I asked him, spitting my words from between my gritted teeth. I wrenched myself out of his grip and glared at him, my eyes locked on his as I waited for a response.

"We can't afford a fight right now." Angel replied, the same spite towards me just as fresh as always in his voice. "Lets just take it slow, you know what I mean?" He asked me, his face inches from my own for a moment, before he sighed and pulled away again, not giving me a chance to speak. "Of course you don't. You're all for the misery and suffering of anyone around you just so long as you get the answers you need." The vampire growled, prowling around me with his hands on his hips, his jaw set in deep thought.

"How dare you pass judgment upon me so quickly?" I hissed at him. I could sense Wesley tensing beside me, trying to keep me from a confrontation that was bound to occur, as Spike simply watched, his arms crossed against his chest. "You know nothing of me," I said sharply, feeling another rush of adrenaline and power flow through my veins. "In all the time I've been here, you've done nothing but try to hinder my powers and prosperity."

"Illyria." Wesley said sharply to me, his voice warning me, that the water I was treading in was dangerous.

Spike stepped in, and to my rescue. "Hush, let the lady speak. She's got a point, let her make it."

Angels voice broke in once more, this time directed towards Spike. "Spike this is between me and-"

"Enough." My own voice commanded to the group of men around me. "I grow tired of this conversation." I said, waving them away as I turned from them, my anger nearly reaching its breaking point. Suddenly, I could feel my own powers grow and expand, escaping my own grasp. I wasn't sure what I had done until I turned to back, to see the three men, completely frozen in time along with a flock of birds that soared above their heads, and the leaves of the trees also. My heartbeat skipped for a moment as I realized what I'd done. What I'd been able to do here.

My powers had grown in this new dimension again, surpassing even where they were before I had had them taken away. I had completely frozen the stream of time, for everything within my eyesight. With one quick, proud smile at my accomplishment, I took my leave of the three, climbing over the crest of the hill to look down the other side again. The hunters had finished their ugly deeds now, and were carrying the creatures they had murdered in cold blood on their shoulders and back to whence they came. Keeping myself out of their own eyesight, and in the growing shadows of dying light- I followed the men as they made their way home.

As night finally fell upon the grove of trees I walked through, the group of men became harder to spot, fading in and out of shadows in the moonlight. They spoke loudly and without fear of behind heard, hoisting their own prizes over their shoulders every so often while they spoke of matters of the day. I didn't dare check behind me; for fear that I might lose the creatures path and be stuck in the middle of nowhere for one whole night, or longer. Yet a nagging worry touched the back of my mind, a worry for what I had done to Wesley, and the others. They hadn't followed me yet, so I had to assume that they were still frozen in time.

As time passed, the worry began to grow slowly. I felt my feet stop carrying me suddenly, and I turned back, to look behind me for the first time in hours. As I had suspected, only darkness covered the grounds behind me. The part of the shell of myself that was Winifred Burkle would have turned back, and gone to see if there was any way to undo what had been done. I shook the thought from my head. Sharing her body did not make me her. So I turned back to push forward again and follow the creatures back to wherever it was that they were headed, when I realized I couldn't see them anymore. I couldn't hear them either.

No torches burned brightly in the distance any longer. My head cocked to the side for a moment as I analyzed my situation with distaste. Could the creatures have slipped off to the left of the right while I had had my back turned to them? Instinctively, with my head bowed slowly, I slid forward softly over the grounds, as a hunter seeking its prey. I stalked my way down a row of trees, through waist length grasses. I heard nothing at all. The night was completely silent.

That was when it had occurred to me, that it was in fact too silent. Things seemed to have stood still in the tension that was the moment. That was when something had hit me—hard—from above. A form had leapt onto me, pushing me to the ground. Instinctively, I threw my knee upwards, between myself and the form on top of me, and kicked the warmness of the other body away. I rolled away; into taller grasses where I might have been able to stay hidden long enough to formulate a plan of attack, and maybe even glimpse my attacker.

"Stay down." A familiar voice called to me through the grasses. "They'll find us if you move." Gunn said, peering at me from between the sheaths of green surrounding us both. I stared at him, my eyes wide with shock. I knew that he had entered the portal before any of us had, but I hadn't expected that he had actually survived. The wounds he bore had been mortal, at least while on Earth. He should have been dead by now. I supposed he knew that, judging by how carefully he was guarding his life and my own now. But I paid heed to his warning and kept my head low, scanning the grasses surrounding us for some sign of movement. And then I heard it.

There were more footsteps, many this time. Whoever it was, it was not the same people that I had followed before. At least a dozen tall figures swathed with dark velvet cloaks walked about twelve feet from where I lay in the grass beside Gunn. I could not see their faces, but the men chanted in hushed whispers, candles clutched in their hands, which was stained a light red with the demonic blood that flowed through their veins. Winifred Burkle remembered these men, or men akin to them anyway. Priests, who held power in these lands. They had played a large part in the enslavement of the humans who were sent to Pylea. They kept them against their will, worked them until they were cold, and broken.

Winifred's life was alike to that of every other mortal, short and uneventful; at least until she had come to the City of Las Angeles. She had seemed to fit in well in her classes that she took and her job at a Library was going well. It wasn't where she wanted to be, or to go with her life, I could feel that much as I relived her memories inside me after I became aware of the persona that had once inhabited this shell before myself. She had had hopes and dreams of a future beyond her grasp; at least it became that way after I had murdered her. But it was apparent that she was pleased with the direction she was heading, until the day she found the book.

I could see her in my mind's eye, sitting at the computer at the front desk of the library, plain as day. A stack of books sat in front of her, on the countertop, the books on the top perched precariously at angles, so that the stack stuck out like a patch of barbs amidst pages of literature. Winifred's fingers glided over the small rectangular board with letters written on the smaller rectangles inside it, writing up a lab report on the importance of star strings in interplanetary travel in the future. I knew that only because I could see the words appearing on the screen before her as she typed into the night, her vocabulary one to match my own.

The Library had closed hours before, and the whole building was serenely quite as she sat at that desk, and finished typing, printing the essay out into the tray on the printer. With a small, contented sigh, Winifred collected the papers and pushed them into her bag with the rest of her things, and tucked the bag underneath her chair. She clicked out of the file on the screen of the computer, and shut down the computer before moving on to the stack of books residing on the countertop.

Glaring at the books with a severe dislike, Fred collected a stack of them in her hands and headed off into the stacks to shelf the books. The rest of the books in her hand went by fairly quickly, as Winifred was quick with finding the correct place for things. And finally, she was left with one last book in her hands. She frowned behind her glasses as she surveyed the leather cover with the embossed symbol on the cover. She'd never seen this book before.

"Must be one of those new age Horror novels or somethin'," Winifred said softly to herself, her fingers grazing the cover. Her boss had said that they were expecting some new books to come in soon. This one had to be one of the new ones. Funny, she hadn't seen any packages arrive during the day. Her curiosity piqued, Winifred opened the cover of the book, to a random page in near the center. A passage of text stood out, the letters bolded against the rest. "What the…" she muttered to herself, grazing her hand over the text, which wasn't English at all.

She muttered the words aloud to herself, cradling the book in her open palms as she tried to decipher the meaning of the vowel less words. Soon, she was nearing the end of passage, and a sudden light from behind her enveloped her, and a force grabbed at her insides, and felt like it was yanking them from her—using her insides to hoist her upwards from the ground, and into a new world, the book ripped from her hands, where it fell onto the floor, closed and looking no less devious then any other book they had encountered.

Winifred was shaken awake violently by equally enthusiastic hands. For a moment she wasn't sure what had happened to her, and while her eyes were closed she suspected it was all just some horrible dream. But the hands pushing at her became more urgent, nearly strangling her. "Alright, I'm awake." She spoke softly, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Her glasses were beside her on the blurred table. She reached for them groggily, and placed them on the bridge of her nose as she yawned in sleep.

Suddenly, she gasped and nearly fell from the straw bed she was sitting in. A creature with pale pinkish skin sat in front of her, its skin slimy and cold against the skin on her neck. It was then that Winifred realized she wasn't being shaken awake at all. Instead, a cool metal collar was being clasped around her slender neck- the collar that would keep her prisoner for years on Pylea. The first few hours went by in a daze of horrifying confusion and pain as the pink skinned creature, which for some reason kept calling her 'cow', dragged her around the old, medieval style town. Each time that Winifred began to say something, a sharp pain expanded across her neck from the collar, and hit her spine, temporarily immobilizing her from the pain. It didn't take her long to realize not to speak.

She saw others like herself, men and women in rags of clothing, similar collars to her own snapped around their necks. None of them looked her in the eye as they passed, instead keeping their eyes on the floor and following their own masters. Nothing was making sense anymore. What had reading that book done to her? She didn't have time to dwell on it, when the male creature she was following suddenly spoke.

"Head up cow," The crackly voice of her master called out to her, stopped in front of her. The two stood at the gates of a large castle, looming ominously over their heads. It was the first castle Winifred had ever seen, and she stared at it with her eyes wide and jaw agape. "The priests are going to want a look at you. Strange thing it was, a cow falling from the sky and into my barn. Damn near killed my prize sow. Maybe I should just tell them you did." He said in retrospect, his eyes distant as he mulled over what he should do. " 'Only good cow, is a dead cow' I always say." He added, as the gates to the castle opened before them. "But, no. The priests are going to want to see you." He repeated, taking Winifred by the arm, and pulling her foreword roughly.

"Illyria." Gunn said softly, his hand on my arm, tugging me roughly as he tried to pick me up. I was still half buried in Winifred Burkle's past and the feeling of the hand on my arm immediately brought up my defenses. Had I not been more tied to reality, I could have taken the life of the mortal who dared place his hands on me. All I could feel was Winifred's fear of the moment, and the grip on my arm was all too familiar. Suddenly I was back- staring into the eyes of Charles Gunn as he tried desperately to pull me to my feet. "Geez, did you fall asleep or something?" He asked me.

I chose not to reply to him, and scanned the grasses once more. Any hint of the Priests was gone now, seeming to have melted into the shadows. "I know of those men." I told Gunn, looking back to where the cloaked men had walked past us before.

"You too, huh?" He asked me, turning away and leaning against the nearest tree, trying to catch some sort of movement in the night. "I thought we'd gotten rid of them the last time we were here though." He said, more to himself then to me. "But whatever's the case, things have defiantly changed around here." Gunn seemed to be lost in thoughts now, and seemed more in his own memories then in reality. "What took you guys so long?" He asked suddenly, turning back to me, his eyes shining with a fierce intensity.

"How long have you been here without us?" I asked him, hoping that the answer would be 'hours', and not any time longer.

"Long enough." Gunn said, stepping closer to me again.

It was then that I noticed the collar around his neck.

xXx

Authors Note: Well, there you have it; another chapter, and more mystery thrown in. I took a little bit of artistic license with the memories of Fred before she was sent to Pylea, because that was never really explored in Angel, and I thought it would be nice to show just how connected Illyria secretly feels to Fred.

I also decided to bring the Priests back to Pylea again. I mean, it was clear when Groosalugg came to LA for the first time that things had changed for the worst in that dimension, and there's no reason why other priests wouldn't be out there somewhere. And in the Pylea episodes of Angel, they were by far the greatest threat in Pylea, so it would make sense that there was more then just one sect of them.

Let me know what you think of this chapter.