Chapter Three
Lions, Tigers and…oh my, what's that?
Faith was dreaming.
In her dream, she was standing in front of a huge, very steep mountain, at the top of which rested a giant egg.
Surrounding the mountain were various groups of people - to the right and left were a large gathering of men and women respectively, and all were throwing fire at the egg - though some were trying to destroy it, while others attempted to encourage it to hatch. Behind the mountain was a gathering darkness, a great looming shadow the Slayer could not see through, but she knew that whatever was hiding within it and coming swiftly closer meant the egg and everything else in existence great harm.
In front of her, attempting to scale the mountain were thirteen men and women. They were hindered in their efforts to reach the egg both by the slipperiness of the mountainside and their own comrades, - whenever one person gained a head start on his or her colleagues, the others would respond by pelting the upstart with rocks and lightening bolts in order to bring him back down to their own level. Still, even with this amount of infighting, the thirteen steadily gained on the location of the egg.
In response to this, the fire bolts thrown by the women to the left and the men to the right gained in ferocity, as some switched their focus from the egg to the climbers, but it was to no avail. Whenever one of the thirteen was successfully destroyed, another would rise from the ashes and start the arduous climb from the beginning.
Just as the foremost of the climbers reached the ledge on which the egg rested, tremors shook the mountain and the contents hatched. From the ruins of the once beautiful shell rose a great gold and red patterned dragon, who raised his head to the skies and uttered a cry so piercing, Faith was sure it should have woken her up.
But it didn't, and the dragon turned his attention to the people attempting to reach him. With a roar of fury, he spat out a great burst of flame that fully engulfed his enemies and when they screamed, so did he. The thirteen scorched men and women fell to the ground at the foot of the mountain, only to begin their climb anew.
Having rid himself of his most pressing enemies, the dragon turned on himself. Scratching, clawing and biting at his own side, the beautiful animal seemed determined to rip himself in half.
Not being able to watch this insanity a moment longer, Faith was about to attempt to reason with the majestic beast when a tall, balding and bespectacled figure sporting tweed stepped into her path.
"Extra mature Cheddar? Or would you prefer a mild Harvati with dill?" asked the strange man.
Before Faith could reply, the dragon stilled in his intent on injuring himself and turned his great head to look directly at her.
The fury in his eyes was so great as he opened his mouth and projected a huge spout of flame towards her, that she almost cried out loud, but just as the flames were about to engulf her, she felt a sharp pain in her side and was pulled back to consciousness.
Faith woke to find Willow repeatedly poking her between the ribs with the point of her shoe.
Still groggy from sleep, she briefly debated ripping the witch's leg off and clobbering her with it but had to quickly abandon that plan when it became clear that she simply would not be able to summon the necessary energy.
Instead she settled for a glare and a threat.
"You snore, and you end up in the river. Just so we're clear."
"That's rich coming from you. I actually almost recast my locator spell at one point, because I was positive an entire community of lumberjacks had managed to sneak up on us and were all sawing at the same time."
"Funny," the younger girl muttered darkly. This was one of the few times where she was almost positive that she'd just had a Slayer dream. She'd never really had very many of those traditional visions before, or at least not until Willow cast her now infamous spell on the Potentials. Since then, she had had more and more odd dreams and most of them featured the Cheeseman in some capacity or other.
She'd thought about asking Buffy about him at one point, after a particularly vigorous nightmare in which she was strapped down on a table while the First and a giant crooning bat-like creature discussed how best to harvest her organs. The Cheeseman had appeared in the midst of this discussion and proceeded to place a BabyBell on each of her eyelids, - explaining that she would need them to pay the ferryman.
In the end she decided to keep the strange dreams to herself, she had learnt in prison that dreams were particularly revealing about a person's insides and Buffy was one of the last people she wanted poking around her psyche. Nevertheless, these visions made her very nervous and a nervous Faith had a tendency to lash out and cause bodily harm.
Shaking herself mentally, Faith decided to save freaking about odd dreams for another, less boring time. Willow had already fallen asleep she noticed, the older girl was obviously more exhausted after her day trekking than either of them had realised.
Despite her assurances to the witch that she would no doubt soon become disenchanted with the woods surrounding her, Faith was feeling no such thing. Her boredom stemmed from the lack of being able to explore her new territory - night was usually active time for her and it felt weird to be sitting next to a fire, hugging her knees.
Sure, she had initially been a little surprised to find herself in a forest when moments before she had been groaning at her TV, threatening it with ritual disembowelment, but strange otherworldly woodland areas did have their own unique charm and anyway, it wasn't like she'd had anything specific planned for the upcoming weekend.
Therefore, she'd taken the whole magical relocation issue with far more aplomb than anyone – herself included – would have expected. Ok, so the situation would be vastly improved by the absence of a certain irritating redhead, but beggars could not be choosers and neither – apparently - could accidental inter-dimensional travellers.
However, she had been expecting, no - hoping for a little more in the way of wildlife. If the trashy science fiction novels Andrew (and to a lesser extent Xander) was so fond of were to be believed, herself and Willow ought to have been attacked at least ten times over by now,- by vicious man-eating wolves or rabid killer bears from out of space, perhaps even giant bladder-ridden squirrels.
Eyeing the sleeping girl before her and the darkness shrouded woods surrounding the two of them, Faith sat, hugging her knees tightly. Not so much as a mouse was moving in the darkness beyond their meagre fire.
"It was quiet…too quiet," she whispered in the darkness, sniggering softly to herself. Sometimes she really missed Sunnydale.
Faith was snapped out of her wildlife ridden reverie when she felt an unnatural presence moving towards her.
She could never explain the feeling she got when a demon approached her, the closest she came to explaining it was a serious case of the Goosebumps, as if someone were walking over her grave.
Once alerted, she stooped slouching near the fire and drew herself up to search the darkness surrounding their impromptu camp with her Slayer sense enhanced eyesight. She thought she could see something moving about thirty paces ahead and slightly to the right of her position, but whatever it was that was moving out there was too dark to see properly.
She was about to poke Willow in order to wake the other girl, when said Wicca woke with a start.
"My perimeter spells just went off! Something's moving out there."
"Way ahead of ya, Red," came Faith's familiar drawl in the darkness, "it's over there…can you make out what it is at all?"
Concentrating on the vague direction towards which Faith was waving, Willow caught a decidedly unpleasant sensation… whoever or whatever was crawling around out there had some serious darkness attached to them.
"It isn't pretty; whatever it is. Feels really nasty, like a pit of sentient razorblades if that makes any sense…" there she trailed off as the creature in question stepped into sight.
Facing the two girls was a man wrapped in a black cloak, hood pulled low over his face, very effectively hiding his features. He stood silently, cloak utterly still in the slight breeze that had picked up over night. He seemed to be regarding each girl in turn, while hissing faintly, before he slowly began to move towards them.
"Uh…can we help you?" asked Willow nervously.
When the stranger failed to answer, she tried once more.
"Er…do you understand what I'm saying? Parlaiz vous Anglais? Sprechen Sie Englisch? Uhm…anything?"
Once more the stranger failed to answer, instead moving closer. He did not walk so much as slink along gracefully,- if Willow had not already felt that the man facing her wasn't altogether human, his movement would have decided her opinion on the subject as his sinuous strides were very much reminiscent of Spike on the prowl.
Gulping nervously, Willow edged closer to Faith and whispered out of the side of her mouth, "You ever read the Lord of the Rings?"
"Nope," came the reply, "saw the movies though."
"I thought they were a bit over-rated personally… anyway, are you thinking what I'm thinking?" asked Willow, carefully backing away from the man ahead of her.
"Possibly,' the Slayer murmured back, before she grabbed a stout burning branch from the fire and raised it in front of her, "Yo, creepy dude! We ain't got no mystical jewellery so you might as well just turn 'round and slither off the way you came."
"Uh huh, what she said," added Willow, nodding energetically, "No shiny gold rings here, no sir! All we have are these earrings from Tiffany's and you can't have those 'cos Buffy gave them to me for my birthday…" there she broke off because the man facing them again stopped moving. Slowly, in a manner no doubt meant to intimidate, the man pulled back his hood.
The face that greeted both girls sent them stumbling back in shock; under black lifeless looking hair was a visage one only met in nightmares and even then, not very often. Most of the features were unremarkable, except for the eyes which were highly noticeable in their absence. Instead, pale lifeless looking flesh glistened in the dim firelight, sickeningly reminiscent of a slug's underbelly.
"Holy crap man, what happened to your eyes!" came Faith's slightly inelegant yelp from the position she had jumped to, much as she would hated to admit it – even to herself - this stranger scared the hell out of her.
"Wow, that's gross," agreed a squealing Willow, adding in a slightly less shaky voice, "and if you don't mind my asking, just exactly how do you SEE?"
When the stranger once again failed to respond, Faith addressed the older girl, the disgust in her voice carrying clearly, "Ew, you don't think that maybe this is the dimension where they have plenty of shrimp but no eyeballs, do you? 'Cos if it is, I'll be wanting to make a complaint. That's just plain wrong."
Maybe it was the mention of shrimp, but the stranger suddenly hissed, "Hungry!" quite a feat considering there were no s's present in his exclamation, "You will be good to eat," he added in an unpleasantly hoarse voice, pointing and leering at Willow and Faith in turn, "and you I shall keep for later. Do you like games, little girl?"
"Gotta say, that's a definite no," came the Slayer's revolted reply.
"Not that I'm complaining or anything," added Willow sulkily from where she was hiding behind Faith, "it's not as if I'm really into the whole torture and rape thing, but how come I'm always the one who gets to be food? I can be playful. Occasionally I'm even kinky!"
"Wouldn't take it personally Red," soothed Faith, never losing sight of the thing slowly stalking nearer, "demons just wanna use me and loose me…it's a guy thing I guess. You on the other hand look yummy enough to eat; I reckon it's a backhanded sort of compliment really."
"Oh," came Willow's reply, "Well, I suppose that's alright then. In that case, I don't mind being designated food, as long as I don't actually get eaten, how's about that?"
"Very sporting of you," agreed the Slayer.
Swivelling his eyeless head between the two girls, the hooded man-thing hissed angrily, "Fear me mortals! I shall wear your eye-teeth around my neck and feed your bones to the trollocs!"
"Uh huh, sounds wicked," Faith responded, wondering absently whether trollocs were eyeless demon pets. At the same time, she was trying to calculate how best to go about killing the snaky looking man-thing. Judging by the ease of its movement, it would be a serious opponent in a fight, - doubly so considering the sword she saw glinting sinisterly at its side. Stumbling into an unknown tree-dimension had left her dangerously unarmed, the only weapons on hand were the flaming branch she had already equipped herself with, as well as the rocks which could be seen, liberally scattering the ground. Of course, there was also Willow. "Now there's a thought," she mumbled to herself.
"Willow," she called softly, "how are your feelings on the subject of fireballs?"
"Very positive," came the instant reply, "Will you be wanting cover only or direct assault?"
"Why not both," the Slayer responded, already moving towards the creepy eyeless thing before her, "I personally reckon that overkill is just enough kill."
"Now?" came the question in the dark, Willow had seemingly positioned herself a few paces back and to the left.
"Now!" agreed Faith, bursting into action. She reached the demon in three strides and quickly found that she had not overestimated his abilities, if anything, she had under-assessed them. It turned out that eyeless or not, the man-thing was quite capable of dodging both her and Willow's combined attacks easily while holding her at bay with his sword, though that didn't leave a lot of time for it to press an attack of his own.
Keeping the demon at a safe distance using her flaming branch, Faith waited for an opening. It came when one of Willows fireballs glanced off her opponent's side, leaving him momentarily unstable. He regained his balance almost immediately, but Faith had been waiting for this opportunity and seized it without second thought. Closing the distance between them, she roughly kicked the demon where she estimated his eyeless balls to be and with a sharp sideways wrench yanked the sword from his grasp. Almost simultaneously, one of Willow's fireballs reached its desired target and Faith leapt out of the creature's reach as he began to pinwheel in an attempt to rid himself of the flames.
"Stop, drop and roll," Willow quipped as Faith deftly decapitated the burning creature, then huffed moodily when he apparently failed to notice.
"Hello! You've literally just lost you head! Die already!" the Slayer told the twitching headless body. She'd dropped the demon's sword the second she chopped his head off, not wanting to be in contact with it any longer than necessary. She wasn't sure what it was that bothered her so much about the weapon, but it felt wrong in her hands, almost as if it was as evil as its owner.
Both girls moved to stand out of the jerking body's reach and were regarding it silently until finally Willow asked, "Should we maybe be dismembering it some more?"
Thoughtfully, Faith replied, "Don't think so. Feels pretty dead to me…maybe these things are like chickens, too stupid to realise when you chop their heads off."
"Maybe," Willow agreed, adding, "I don't really feel like sleeping anymore, shall we just carry on walking?"
"Might as well," the Slayer replied, "who knows how many more of these bastards are out creeping through the woods. As far as I'm concerned, the sooner we reach this village of yours, the better. I don't suppose there's any chance that it's populated with eyeless demon spawn, is there?"
"Not to my knowledge," came the Wicca's answer from the fire pit where she was busy heaping wet sand onto the dying flames, "I think it's just a normal old village…or as I said before, cows."
Scanning the once more silent forest, Faith nodded silently to herself. It was just as well. Truth be told, she wasn't feeling especially keen to face another of those creatures anytime soon. They really were quite unspeakably hideous, - not to mention ever so slightly intimidating.