I know kinda cheesy, but I'm sarcastic and cheesy myself. If too many people object I suppose I'll change it.
See first chapter for copyright statement and all that.
So please enjoy!
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Please?
Chapter 2
Death and Dying
Or
The Mysterious Combatant
The Wave struck.
Illyria, in front of her companions, was the first to strike back. The first Demon, a rather stupid one with a sword seemed to think that he alone was a match for the once God-King. He was a fool. Illyria took his sword away from him and eviscerated him with it.
And the next.
And the next.
And with each kill Illyria's grief grew.
Wesley should be beside her! Many of her Mind-Threads insisted. He should be here with his allies striking demon after demon to the ground! These worms should bow in fear before him!
Another demon falls dead, a hand span of her sword through its organs. For a moment she looks down at its broken, already decaying corpse. He is dead and he should not be. And I can do nothing. She did not even see the demon before her. No amount of death could assuage her grief.
But she continued killing.
It's what Wesley would have done.
Gunn was the first to fall. His wounds degraded his effectiveness too deeply. His strikes were weak and ineffectual. Still he fought as a warrior to the last and the corpses of over a dozen of his opponents were piled at his feet before his life was spilled out by a demon's blade.
Illyria heard his death cry and turned. The triumphant demon's roar suddenly became a hoarse gurgle as Illyria's sword appeared buried to the hilt in its throat.
Illyria was again weaponless. I have never needed weapons before, why now? Came the thought as she scanned for the Dragon while ripping a demon's head from its shoulders. She could neither see nor sense it. This worried her. It was, perhaps, up to something sneaky.
She gave a mental shrug, unable to do anything about it and returned to killing demons.
XXXXX
A dragon? Impressive! The thought was almost totally ignored as the figure looks at the flying creature.
Looks like I found the battlefield. Was also ignored as irrelevant, but That thing'll tear apart any mortal who tries to fight it! was given special attention.
He considers several approaches and almost immediately decides to rely on simple brute force. His left hand suddenly extends into foot long skeletal digits that curl around a ball of blue- the physical manifestation of a spell –held suspended inside as the right hand closes on formerly empty air just as a crystalline staff manifests. The spells aren't especially difficult, but the timing must be exact, and the dragon must be relatively still . . .
There! The response is lightning quick. A bar of sapphire light shoots from the top of the staff and strikes the dragon's left wing, which is coated instantly in a half-foot of ice.
The dragon begins to fall immediately as its ice covered wing refuses to bend. If the spell had been crafted by one less able than he, no doubt the dragon would have noticed the second bar of sapphire light striking the ground beneath it before its attention shifted to freeing its wing of the icy imprisonment. After all a hundred yard drop onto dirt wouldn't give it so much as a bruise.
Of course a hundred yard drop onto thirty foot tall ice spears was a different matter altogether.
The dragon had just enough time to realize how monumentally it had screwed the pooch before one of the spears penetrated its flame bladder and it was consumed, along with four or five dozen demons, by its own fires. Which also, by pure coincidence, obliterated the evidence of how it was killed.
With the greater threat dealt with, the unknown sorcerer was able to shift his attention to a lesser, but still serious threat to those battling in the alley.
Several giants were marching in the demonic horde, and the stranger was certain that there would be little any of the alley's defenders would be able to hold them off for long once they arrived.
He considered the problem, and was on the verge of deciding on the bigger hammer approach yet again when he was struck by a sudden inspiration and blinked.
Those are your standard giants. Tall, strong, unbelievably sturdy, and very very stupid. He smiled. Nobody with half a brain let giants march with anything other than giants when any half-capable wizard was within effective range. This is just too classic. He thinks as he quickly formulates the spell. This one is much simpler than the previous one, all it takes is a wave of his left hand and a slight shift in his staff's position for a wall of ice three feet thick and thigh high on a giant to appear in front of the fist giants newly upraised foot.
As expected the giant trips and falls flat on his face, shattering the ice wall and incidentally smashing a couple dozen of the tightly packed demons unfortunate enough to be directly in front of it.
The stranger smiles and hurls a carefully aimed ice lance into the unfortunate giant's upper spine before looking for a new target.
XXXXX
Angel wasn't sure what killed Spike. One second he was a force of elemental destruction at Angel's side, and the next he was dust in the night wind. Suddenly Illyria was by his side taking over the space that Spike had just vacated. Angel felt a sudden flush of rage.
Why was this demon that had killed one of his most cherished human friends alive? Gunn was so much better than the Old One, hell Spike was a better person! Yet they were dead, and this usurper was not.
But she fought at his side and he could not deny that he needed it.
The only reason that he was still alive was the blood that he had drained from Hamilton, and even so Angel had a shallow cut across his throat from a sword that had come perilously close to removing his head and a stab wound in his side from a stake which would have pierced his heart save for the enhanced reflexes that he could feel even now fading away.
A small part of him wondered how long he'd last.
He hoped it would be long enough.
XXXXX
Illyria realized that it was almost dawn. The tide of demons had slowed at times during the night, but it had never stopped. The dragon and the giants were gone. One of her Mind-Threads suggested that they had been nothing more than an illusion. It certainly seemed possible.
But what really surprised Illyria was that Angel was still alive. The blood from Hamilton must have been more powerful than she'd thought, but he could not last much longer. The dawn would kill him as surely as a stake through the heart, but there were no doors along the lower floors of the buildings.
She fought on as she considered how to preserve him. It took approximately 7.3 seconds longer than it should have for her scattered, grief stricken Mind-Threads to find an answer.
She turned to Angel after forcing back the surrounding demons by the simple expedient of throwing two of them as hard as she could into the front ranks.
"Give me your hand." Demanded Illyria imperiously.
"What?" Angel yelled over his shoulder, confused by the seemingly random demand. "In case you didn't noti-" He began, but was cut off as Illyria grabbed him roughly by an arm and his pants and threw him bodily up onto a fire escape.
"Go now before sunrise!" Illyria yelled as she returned to fighting the demons which were wearing even her down.
Angel turned and ran up the steps towards the top of the building.
He almost made it.
On the last section of steps a trio of crossbow bolts struck him from somewhere back in the mob of demons. And at least one of them found his heart. He crumbled to dust before Illyria's eyes.
Alone. She was alone. Even when Wesley died she had not felt like this. The others had been waiting at the alley for her. Their fight would continue. Now they were gone. There was nothing left.
Dimly she realized someone was screaming. Slowly she realized it was her voice reflected through the shell. It was not a scream of rage or anger even frustration.
These things she understood.
These emotions she could handle.
It was instead a scream of grief, denial, and horror.
And for the first time since Illyria's resurrection, she ceased to fight the shell.
XXXXX
This series of events had been most inconvenient. The Los Angeles branch of their earthly domain was reduced to rubble and the Circle of the Black Thorn was dead. This was most annoying, but it had been planned for. No matter what happened nothing was going to thwart the Apocalypse that they had been planning all of these long millennia.
So the pre-planned response was activated. An army of demons with several giants and a juvenile dragon. Enough to slowly wear away Illyria's resistance in her weakened state. She was, after all, the only threat to their supremacy.
This however is where things began to go wrong.
An unknown sorcerer killed the dragon and the giants before slashing his way into the rear of their formation. Annoying but not outside their contingency planning. Several humans finding the army. Again not a problem. Humans were easily killed.
Illyria stopped fighting her shell.
This was unfortunate.
But the Senior Partners were careful. They had planned for even this. Three contingency plans were activated.
Their result was . . . unanticipated.
XXXXX
Illyria felt as if she were being torn apart. All of the human emotions that she had felt reflected through the shell had been horrible. They had been like rough cloth on abraded skin. She had thought the suffering horrible.
These new sensations were more akin to wearing a skintight suit made of live pirannahs.
Illyria felt Mind-Thread after Mind-Thread shut down from simple disbelief and flashes of pain as nuroganglia burned out from massive sensory overload. She experienced a moment of sheer, howling, mind-numbing terror unlike anything she had ever felt before.
She was going to die she knew she was! Itsonlyamatteroftim-
No! She was Illyria! God-King of the Primordium! The Essence of Rule! She. Would. Not. Be. Overcome!
With agonizing sloth she forced the emotions back, until once again she was in control of herself.
But they did not retreat nearly so far as they had bare- was it only minutes? –earlier.
Illyria suddenly wondered why the remainder of the army of demons hadn't killed her yet and her eyes flew open in suddenly renewed fear.
And she froze in stunned surprise. What sat less than a yard away was not possible.
It couldn't be possible!
But it was.
XXXXX
So, can you figure out what has Illyria running scared? And who is the Mysterious Wizard? Tune in to the next chapter to find out!
P.S. please don't kill me
On a more serious note thanks to MaskedScissorDoll and Imzadi for the reviews!
Just to clarify the first chapter began like 3 seconds after the end of NFA.
Imzadi wanted to know if Kate would be making an appearance. My response: Get out of my head! Mind reading is not allowed! Bad telepath!