They came down out of the mesas at last over a long line of craggy hills, avoiding Red Rock. Angel could smell more water and less dust in the air. The soil changed, growing softer under his feet. Buffy called this place the Lap, and pointed to the immense meditating statue. The desert was by no means a region of death, as humans usually thought, but the Lap was certainly a zone of more life. Scattered fields of grain appeared almost at once and quickly merged into a great belt of wheat, rice, and corn, broken only by roads and scattered clusters of houses.

Buffy walked beside him, wearing loose drab cotton clothes that were nonetheless a massive step up from the rags she'd had. He wasn't entirely sure why she'd bypassed the gate to Malfeas and her townhouse, but hell wasn't a place he'd wanted to go even as a guest. She had bargained for an outfit several times on the way out of the highlands, making a small step up each time, and he wasn't even sure how she'd managed it. Since when had a California girl learned how to make best use of the barter system? She glanced at him, and he realized he'd spoken that aloud. Well, muttered it anyway.

"Cyan wasn't all that pleased with my set of powers, and I don't understand all the details, but she did say that knowing Ebon Dragon Excellencies was really useful in the Realm." Buffy didn't sound chatty exactly. More as if she were unburdening herself of secrets she'd rather not keep.

"Excellencies are...powers that enhance your natural abilities?"

She nodded. "But it's not as simple as being super-strength, or super-stealth, not for me. Or maybe it's more simple. Each of the Yozis has a theme. The Ebon Dragon is sneaky, and underhanded, and he breaks the law. He's out for himself. And I must've unconsciously learned to use that to sneak around in the dark and hunt vampires and demons, because the others are never more than so-so for that and Malfeas can't sneak worth a damn. But that's just a tiny part of his Excellencies. Most of the Yozis are evil the way Chthulu is evil. They embody these concepts of the universe and they're big and they step on humans like bugs. Not cause they hate us, just cause they don't really care about us. But the concept the Ebon Dragon embodies is evil, or something awful close to evil. He's darkness and lies and being selfish and I'm...ashamed to be even a little associated with him."

"But?" There had to be a but, or she wouldn't have said it was useful to have.

"Xander and I are 'anathema' in the Realm. It's illegal to use our powers. It's illegal to do most things, or even be here. Hell, it's illegal for us to exist. That doesn't make much difference to Xander's powers. But mine...it makes them a lot more effective. How's that for irony?"

Angel thought that one over. "So you can do whatever you want and be better at it because it's wrong?"

"Well, it's not quite that easy. Even the Ebon Dragon isn't much good when things are just crimes for the sake of being crimes. It's illegal for me to sell bread here, for instance, and he's too malicious to waste time on that. But as long as I can be a little sneaky or selfish about it, that's good enough to help a little."

"What are you even planning to do here, Buffy? I mean, if it's illegal to be here in the Realm..." Angel found his gaze drawn to the immense statue. It made him think of seeing Ellis Island for the first time, but the Penitent dwarfed Liberty.

"I can't stay away forever, Angel. The Realm is the most advanced society in this hellhole. The Solars had this utopia and these other minor Exalted destroyed it, I don't even know why. Jealousy, I guess. Cyan claimed the Solars went mad, but she works for the Ebon Dragon and I know she lies every chance she gets." She stared at the Penitent too, frowning, but also studying it as if she sensed something about it that he couldn't. "What's left of that world's knowledge is here, and I have to figure out how to get it or we'll never go home."

"Fred tried," Angel pointed out. "She knows a little something herself."

"She tried for years to get home from Pylea, too, but she didn't know enough. Who knows how interdimensional travel works here? I'm not even sure we didn't travel through time. Can she do that?"

Angel shook his head helplessly. "I don't know."

"I think Buffy senses it," Willow said to Giles. "It's hard to say. Maybe she's just detecting the beings I can sense living there; we know she can do that."

"Can you tell what it is?" Giles himself was vaguely aware of the mystic forces emanating from the statue. He lacked the sensitivity of a full mystic training, never having done more than dabble himself, but it was impossible not to notice the immense magical power the Penitent had been designed to command.

Willow scrutinized the Penitent. "It's a...a landscaping tool, I think. I mean on a mystical level. If it were in our world we could close every Hellmouth in existence at once-or rip them wide open. And that's just a side-effect. It's meant to alter mystical currents on a huge scale." She glanced at Tara briefly. "At least, that's what I think."

Tara nodded. "It might open other kinds of dimensional portals, but I'd have to see the controls to be sure. I don't have a clue how it works." Willow spread her hands in agreement.

Wesley laid a hand briefly on his holster, making Willow wonder what use he thought a gun would be here. How much ammunition did he have? "Something like that would have to be heavily guarded. I'd guess that the entrance is near the top, which means we have a long way to go to get there."

"At a glance," Giles asked him, "would you say these people are capable of such a feat of magical engineering?"

"I suspect Buffy's information is accurate," Wesley said. He peered up at the statue again. "While sorcery often has less effect on the population at large than technology, a feat like that would require dozens of enchanters working for months or even years. They would have to be specialists, so there would be many more working in other fields. The society would have to be overflowing with advanced magics. I don't see any sign of such a thing here."

"I concur," said Giles. "Buffy's story, or rather Cyan's, would seem to be confirmed thus far. The question then becomes, what is Cyan lying about?"

"It's not as bad as Pylea," Gunn muttered. Fred gave him a sidelong glance. "It's probably not as bad as Earth a couple of hundred years ago. That looks rough, but at least they're not all black. Or white, or whatever."

"If you say so," Fred mumbled back. So it wasn't racial slavery. Fine, that just meant that it could happen to anyone.

There weren't actually that many of them, she tried to tell herself. The Lap was swarming with farmers tending to their crops, with only a relative handful of workers on chain gangs repairing roads or shoveling manure. But every crack of the whip reminded her of the collar she'd worn around her neck for three years. It might not be direct neural-induction pain, but it was still pain.

"Yeah," said Gunn, "I'm just trying not to notice it too." He set his jaw and looked away. "It's not our world. It's not our business."

"Glad you didn't say that on Pylea."

"Pylea was a petty feudal kingdom, Fred. This is a massive empire. I hate what's happening here, but we don't stand a chance. Even Buffy's out of her league, if the rulers all have superpowers."

"Yeah, well, I thought you were saying not being race slavery made it better. But now that you mention it, that's exactly what it is." She jabbed a finger at a woman passing by in fancy clothes, with leaves in her hair and rough green skin. "Bet you never see them on the chain gangs."

"It doesn't matter, Fred. Just what are you going to do about it?"

Fred watched another whip crack above another set of shoulders and felt her collar zap her again. "I don't know. I really don't."

Xander wasn't sure what to do with Anya. Sure, she was thrilled that he was back from seeming death, and with superpowers at that. But he could've done with a little less clinging. The idea that he-the last of the Scoobies to still be an ordinary schmoe-was suddenly a superhero empowered by an ancient intangible weapon was simultaneously heady and terrifying. At least Buffy had some level of understanding what she could do. She'd had the powers for five years, even if she was just now starting to understand her limits or lack thereof.

Could he turn his skin into brass? Or anything along those lines?

Every time the group had stopped at a farmhouse he'd let Anya steer him into some little private or semiprivate spot and given her some smooches. And every time... Sure, a little of that was Anya rather than anything he was doing. But not much, he suspected. What else was he capable of now? Could he leap tall buildings in a single bound?

"...and I don't know how they expect these peasants to keep producing efficiently without any kind of financial incentive. Don't get me wrong, I remember feudalism, but I also remember how beating the peasants too much just made them angry enough to rebel even if you went ahead and killed them for it..."

Was he expected to lead that kind of rebellion here and make it succeed? If he'd properly pieced together what Buffy had said, these lesser Exalted, the hereditary Dragon-Blooded, were in charge of this empire. He was just one guy, and there were thousands of them, and...

Come to think of it, Buffy must have felt like this every day for the last five years.

"Surely they see they could do so much better if they offered the peasants a good 401K plan..."

Xander looked at her. "Maybe I can get them to see it," he said. She blinked at him. "Somebody's gotta do it. Might as well be us."

"Look at the Loom. Seriously, Ayesha, look."

Ayesha Ura looked, and wondered what the hell Chejop thought they could do, even together. "Cascade failure. Errors building upon errors. But you see that it's trying to compensate." She pointed out the intruders who had caused the problem. Essence was building around them, shifting the weave.

Chejop just shook his head. "There's no way that can work, Ayesha. I know you oppose me; I know your previous incarnation opposed me. But at least acknowledge that the Solars were thoroughly mad by the end. You thought you saw a way to work through that madness, and I understand your position, that there was a chance. If we guided them. We are not guiding these interlopers. We have no easy way of even contacting them. They are not integrated into the Loom of Fate. Worse, look at the first of them, the most powerful. She's no Solar."

"She was once," Ayesha argued. "She's not an akuma; she has the same free will all of us do. She needs to know what's happening. What her arrival has triggered. We can persuade her to make the right choice."

"Or we can kill them and end the disruption to the Tapestry."

"The same choices as always, Chejop. What if that doesn't end it? Those Exaltations are loose for a reason. The ones they were meant for have been shunted aside or killed by the disruption to Fate. They're congregating to the disturbance to repair it. For once, Chejop, let them. Let them do what they were meant to do."

Chejop Kejak set his jaw. "The Exaltations were meant to kill worlds. They did so, very efficiently. And had we not stopped them, they'd have killed their own. Our own."

Ayesha sighed and raised an eyebrow. "Okay. I'll not dispute the point. But then tell me: what's that doing with them?"

Cordy watched Dawn curiously. "She just keeps looking south. Even when we had to make that big detour through the maze, she always knew which way south was."

"She has a good sense of direction," said Spike. He was a terrible liar, she remembered that much. Cordelia had never understood why, given that he couldn't feel guity about it. "Anyway, there's plenty to stare at back south. Hey, she's not looking that way now." He pointed to Dawn, who was now staring at the Penitent.

"Yeah, well, who wouldn't look at that thing sometimes. Also...check out our four biggest mystical types and Buffy all studying it. I don't think it's just a monument."

"Anyone could've guessed that," said Spike. "Even if it's a religious icon, that's a lot of work. It's bigger than the Sphinx or the Pyramids, and I'm sure they took years or decades. Must've been carved from a mountain." He paused. "Cordelia? Something the matter?"

Something was the matter all right. Cordelia rubbed her temples. This one was just a headachy vision, not one of the nasty ones where she felt the injuries of the wounded, but it didn't look good. "This isn't the kind of place you expect squid-people to live, is it?"

"Squid-people? Nope, not unless it's fertile here cause there's an ocean underground. Hey, maybe there's an ocean underground?"

"Well, I don't know, but we should go ahead and warn Buffy about it." It was the least they could do. Wonder what it had to do with injustice and the helpless, though?

"Buffy."

Buffy came to a halt. It wasn't often that someone, even one of her friends, blocked her path like that, and she barely knew Fred Burkle. "Yeah?"

"Buffy, we have to do something. You have to do something. It's you and Xander here, and Xander barely even knows what he's doing. At least you've been the Slayer for years." Buffy wondered if Fred really understood just how few worse things she could've said right now. "They keep slaves here, Buffy. We can't just walk through here and ignore what's happening."

Buffy groaned. "Fred, I don't want to, believe me, but surely Xander's told you this is out of our league. You don't understand the scale of the problem. Anyway, I have to get out of here before the prophecy comes true and I free the Old Ones. Trust me, that'll make things a lot worse."

"How much worse can it get, Buffy? I was in a hell dimension and it wasn't much worse than this." The pain on Fred's face...Fred was still young, still pretty, but sometimes her face filled with worry lines that made her look a thousand years old.

"I promise you, Fred, there's worse." She glanced at Angel. Though, to be honest, her own brief experience in hell hadn't been too different. An industrial scheme rather than an agricultural one. Still, surely it hadn't been forced labor that had turned Angel into a feral monster. "At least no one's being eaten."

Fred stared at her in horror. "Buffy, you don't even know that. For all you know these people are the main course every Sunday. Why did you have to mention it?" Surely that hadn't happened in Pylea, but Angel had used the term "cow-slave". Maybe it had? Fred surely hadn't been in any danger of being cut up like a side of beef, at her size, but that didn't mean she hadn't seen it done.

"Fred, I swear to you that if I had any idea how to go about freeing these people I'd do it. Surely you know me that well. Have you got some kind of plan?"

Fred pouted. Well, that was the best way Buffy could think to describe the sullen look she got. "Have you thought of asking Wesley and Gunn? They made it work in Pylea. Xander told me this empire was bigger, but still, there must be some way."

"Fred, there are lots of innocent people here who'll suffer in a revolution, do you reallize that? If we try something like that people will die, and there's no guarantee it'll work. You've got to think through what you're talking-" Fred's eyes bulged in fury and she spun away. Well, at least Buffy had gotten through to her that far.

Fred stalked off into the field toward an overseer. "Fred! Wait, what are you doing?" Buffy darted after her, leaping over the hedge that Fred had avoided.

Fred spun back for a moment. "What you won't. I'm not going to walk through this place and gawk the way you are." And she seized the overseer's whip. The big man looked too stunned to react until Fred slammed him in the stomach with the huge butt of it and he doubled over.

"Fred! Fred, please, listen to me. We can't risk making a scene here!" She seized Fred by the wrist and-

It wasn't as if she had any chance. Even Xander had been a hero for years. Fred? She was a failed physics student and an escaped slave from hell. A different hell. She spent her nights scribbling equations on the walls of her cave-er, her room-until she could stay awake no longer and passed out clinging to Feigenbaum.

Buffy grabbed her by the wrist and she knew she'd done what she could. Buffy would see she was serious and now she and Xander would do what had to be done...

Buffy began to apologize to the overseer as she dragged Fred away. So Fred did the only thing she could think of on short notice. She balled up her fist and punched Buffy in the face. Heck, she wasn't even surprised when Buffy grabbed her wrist again before she could connect. Something had to get through to her-

You could do something yourself.

Great, now she was hearing voices in her head again. Darn flashbacks. She did what she'd always done in Pylea. What do you mean?

You're a survivor. You work it out.

I can't liberate one work gang, let alone the million slaves in an empire.

Because Buffy has the power, but not you? And yet you stand up to this one girl you think can take on an empire.

Someone has to.

So do it, stranger. And know that Luna has your back.

Nobody should have been able to wriggle loose from Buffy's grip. Surely not this little slip of a physicist who didn't look as if she'd had anything fattening since puberty. Somehow Fred did, though. Her arm writhed, flexed, and slipped out of Buffy's hand like a greased pig. Had Fred ever tried to catch a greased pig, down there in Texas? She'd have to ask.

Buffy tried to catch hold of her arm again, but it whipped about like a tentacle and slapped her in the face. Fred must have had more nails than Buffy realized; she felt them rake across her face, catching, scratching. She really didn't want to hurt the girl, but they'd already drawn way too much attention to themselves. They'd be lucky if Fred wasn't hauled off to jail for street brawling in a farm town like this.

She was going to have to try a sucker-punch. She'd be gentle. She swung her fist.

And Fred caught it.

A slimy tentacle wrapped around Buffy's arm just before her fist hit a razor-suckered pad, just sharp enough to hurt. Fred's face was changing, too. Her hair slid from her head, the back of which rose up in a great finned crest. Her mouth stretched into a sharp beak. Fred's body and legs twisted, flexing bonelessly, and more suckers grew up the back of her legs.

A silver-bright disk flared to life on her inhuman forehead.

They spoke as one, though hardly with one intent.

"Holy shit!"

Xander's eyes bulged. From the symbol on Fred's forehead, this must be yet another manifestation of being Exalted. Clearly the shapechanging wasn't designed to mesh with the environment, though. This arid farm country was no place to turn into a squid-person, however useful those tentacles might be.

And there was going to be more trouble. Buffy had meant to stay incognito here; she'd said there would be more of these mini-Exalts running around the Lap, and now those not-quite-human faces were popping up all over the crowd. With a sigh, he leapt forward and grabbed both girls' arms before they could resume fighting.

"Hey! I thought we'd agreed not to do this kind of thing in public, Buffy!"

Both of them glared at him. Then Buffy turned and glared at Fred again, and Fred opened her mouth-well, her beak-probably to start protesting again about leaving the slaves.

"It's too late for that now! We're out in the open and now we're going to have to fight and let the others get away. Buffy, you're going to have to take charge, because neither of us know anything about our powers, but I expect you to take it. Clear? The rest of you guys, slip out with the slaves if you can. Anybody who wants to be free, follow those guys!" Finally he turned back to Buffy. "I'm guessing we want to lead them on a chase before we get away. Ideas?"

Buffy groaned. "I'm sorry, guys. I was trying to get Fred to not be conspicuous, but I guess that ship has sailed. Metaphorically speaking."

Fred shrugged her tentacles, not having bothered to change back yet. Xander hoped it wasn't going to be too hot for her. "Too late to fight over it. Besides, you probably did me a favor. Er...guys? The fuzz are here."

"I see about a dozen of them, so guys...follow me!" Buffy spun on her heel and dashed off the road into the fields. Fred glanced at Xander.

"Last one out of sight's a rotten egg!" They ran.

Tepet Lisara was, in all honesty, glad she wasn't here with her whole dragon. Unfortunately, she did have another five Dragon-Blooded with her, and six more elite mortals in tow. It wasn't exactly the best situation to get her reputation back. Still, there were three of the Anathema.

She flared her anima into a corona of flame. "After them!" She hadn't heard of Anathema tending to run from combat, but they looked young. And she dashed off into the field. For some reason the other officers hesitated before following her into the stand of corn. Didn't they realize how important it was to deal with Anathema?

Buffy was pounding her way down the rows when she realized she wasn't just hearing feet hitting the ground. A crackling roar filled the air behind her. She started to turn, then thought better of it and extended her other senses first.

Insignificant Embers Intuition

Well, there was irony for you. There was nothing insignificant about the blaze roaring up behind her. Did these Dragon-Blooded not even care about burning their crops? Buffy's ideas about where food came from were a little vague, but she'd lived through a drought or two. "Guys, you can't take this heat. Especially not you, Fred. I'm going to try and hold them for a minute while you get out of the field. Whoever's leading this detachment is...no offense, Fred...out of her mind."

Fred murmured something to the cornstalks about being sorry-was that an Exalted thing too?-and dragged Xander through the rows.

Buffy took a deep breath. This was going to suck.

Viridian Legend Exoskeleton

The leader, wreathed in a flaming aura, drew a truly gigantic sword and charged at her. Buffy braced herself. Her skin was still flaking off; she was going to get burned, though maybe not too badly. To her surprise, the flames surrounded her without searing her skin, though her clothes caught fire almost at once. When was the last time anyone had tried to burn her, anyway?

Her opponent brought her sword down-it looked like a ginormous meat cleaver-and Buffy danced out of the way. There was that, at least-a sword that big was too heavy to swing quickly, even for Exalted. By the time the rest of her opponents got into position, her skin was nice and shiny and ought to stand up to the impact. She made a token attempt to beat the fire out of her clothes, but they fell about her in burning rags. "I just bought those, you cheap Human Torch knockoff!" At least the flames were keeping the ordinary soldiers at bay.

The woman in flames only sneered at her as her counterparts closed in. They seemed a little more sensible, not having set themselves on fire, but the aura wasn't hurting them. Each of them raised a sword-a more sensible design, Buffy thought, but still huge-and closed on her.

Swords didn't intimidate Buffy, not even ones this large, though she did have to keep telling herself that she was all armored up. Where the hell was she going to find some more clothes? A sword came raking across her belly, and she seized it, yanked it away from its owner, and tossed it aside, forcing the next soldier to dodge out of the way. She leapt forward into a cartwheel straight through a blazing patch of corn, kicking two more soldiers aside on the way. That left the fifth-she was a little concerned about her odds here-whom she collided with and slammed him into the ground.

"Turn, Anathema! Turn and face Tepet Lisara!"

Buffy turned with a grumble in her throat. "Look, Lisara, I've danced this dance before with-" Who had Xander said? "Weylan and Yudani. They couldn't take me down and neither can you." She couldn't even remember fighting them; she wasn't sure she had. But if it helped keep this Lisara on her toes...

Lisara lifted the gigantic cleaver again and brought it down. Buffy took a deep breath and caught the massive thing between her hands. Angel's sword. She had caught Angel's sword this way. Of course, it hadn't been wider than she was and as tall. Buffy heaved, knocking Lisara off-balance, and immediately had to swing a hand backwards to deflect another incoming sword strike, which clanged off her arm. "You know, you guys are starting to get on my nerves." Where had Xander and Fred gotten to? At least they were out of the blaze.

Fred had reverted back to human form as soon as she dodged back out of the cornfield. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to have shaken these wyld-hunters or whatever it was they called themselves, and though she had the clear intuition that she could make herself all squid this really wasn't the place. Though there was a river around here somewhere; there had to be for all these crops.

Xander shouted at a scurrying group of slaves, warning them that safety was in a different direction from where they were running, and they turned, but slaves weren't going to be any help to them, and she suspected the wild hunters were harder to persuade than ordinary people without superpowers. She hoped that Buffy hadn't ended up with all of them pursuing her after they were supposed to run away as a group, but if they were all going to catch on fire that way a squid wasn't the best thing to fight them as and she wasn't sure what other powers she even had yet.

What she needed was something to put together, something to build, but all she saw were farm implements, nothing even so complicated as a toaster. Now there were plenty of rakes and shovels and hoes lying around, and they'd make great polearms if that were what she needed. No good. Where was electricity when you needed it? Of course these guys could probably make it, but that was no good. They might not even know what it was.

A mill. What could she do with a mill? Wind would work. Water might be better. There were water mills as early as the late Roman Empire, and she'd probably feel better sunk in the water even if she stayed with half-squid instead of full. The biology of that had to be seriously bizarre.

A lot more of the corn than she had hoped was going up in flames. That was going to be no good at all. Stupid wild-hunters! They were killing their own people here just to get Buffy. And, well, her and Xander, but it was Buffy they were mostly chasing after.

"Xander!" She waved him toward her. "Get over here, and, um, see if you can get me some help!"

Buffy was just trying not to think about the fact that she was stark naked in the cornfield. As long as she was a brass statue it was almost kind of okay, which was weird and didn't make a lot of sense but there it was. But sooner or later she was going to go back to being just a girl in her skin-

She dodged a burst of fire, which of course set another patch of wheat ablaze. "Yeah, you people are seriously not familiar with the phrase 'destroy the village in order to save it'. Unless you are, in which case you have some issues with priorities." Her reading on politics and geography was really sketchy but she was pretty sure the Lap was ithe/i main agricultural zone for the whole empire. If they didn't get the fire under control there'd be a major famine.

Did that make it her fault? Their fault? Okay, technically Fred had started it, but she was just trying to free some slaves.

"Better to see the Lap burn than to let you spread heresy," Lisara spouted, trying to close on Buffy with her gigantic cleaver of a sword. Buffy rolled her eyes. Okay, no more blaming herself. Infernal or no Infernal, she wasn't the one making the inferno here.

She charged at Tepet Lisara. Buffy could catch swords between her hands a few more times, if it came to that, and damned if she was going to let these crazies burn this world's grain supply. If this wasn't a hell dimension already they were doing a good job of turning it into one. Lisara brought the sword down, and Buffy raised her hands, and...had to dodge a blast of swirling air. Her ankle twisted, not hurting in the least but throwing her off balance, and with a grunt she flung her hands in front of her face and gave a sort of hard push she felt in her mind as well as her muscles...

Invulnerable Wounding Futility

The cleaver bounced off her wrists, twisting in Lisara's grasp, and bashed obnoxious fire chick in the face with its hilt. Lisara stared at Buffy as if soldier-girl had just managed to fall on her own butt while doing calisthenics. Her nose looked crooked and there was a nasty gash on her forehead where the back of the sword had hit hard enough to tear the skin.

"Hey, Lisara, you may have heard this one before, or maybe not depending on how much time travel I'm doing here, but...stop hitting yourself!" Lisara blinked twice before snarling something-probably a curse. Buffy didn't have time to think about it; two more supersoldiers were closing in on her waving smaller swords that were probably just as nasty and twice as fast. She just hoped Xander and Fred had managed to lose the rest of them.

Fred was pretty sure that she'd been reported as an anathema (and was there a maranatha in there somewhere?). That wasn't going to be her priority just now. For one thing, the soldiers who weren't organizing a bucket brigade were trying to use their auras to help douse the flames in the cornfield. The farmers Xander had recruited were doing what he said, but that didn't stop them from glaring at the two of them. At least they were pragmatic; if the devil told you how to save your cornfield, and it didn't involve falling down and worshipping him, you picked up your tools and went to work.

She could really have used some hard rubber hoses, but she was going to be able to make do with the treated leather the farmers had brought up. "Okay, fasten that on here! And here!" Xander repeated her instructions for those who didn't hear-or pretended not to-and they got to work. She just hoped she was going to be able to move the thing when it was done. She had a water mill, a windmill, and a river, and the whole contraption was crude but hopefully effective. "Xander, you got the pulleys?"

"Pulley one is in place. Pulley two needs one more bolt. There!" Well, it had better be ready. She kicked the valve, letting it spin. The water mill drove river water in, the windmill forced it out, and the pair of them together ought to...yes! Yesyesyes! Fred tugged the windmill to the left, and the massive spray of water shifted, spraying the far edge of the flame, soaking it. She could feel the burn in her shoulders, but the windmill had been made to be mobile, and it turned as she pulled it, arcing back to the right.

This might be a hell dimension, but there was no way in hell or out of it she was letting these people starve.

Wesley only wished the slaves listened to his orders the way they listened to Xander's. Or Buffy's, for that matter. Still, if they were going to be free it wouldn't do for them to only follow orders. Now he just had to figure out how to get them out of town before the soldiers finished fighting the fire and chasing Buffy, Xander, and Fred.

"Giles, we need to go right! No, I know it's clear over there but there's a detachment of soldiers on the way!" He leapt down from the pole-some sort of signal device? a broken windmill? part of a huge fence around that mansion ahead?-whatever the hell it was, and took off in the direction he meant the newly liberated to go. The fire was starting to ebb, but an arc of it was still moving toward the road, and anyone who didn't run was going to have the best escape route cut off.

Couldn't have that. It wasn't proper to let the people you'd rescued die when you didn't have to.

Buffy had them on the ropes.

Well, two of them were down, two more of them had flared auras in ways they didn't seem to want, a fifth had taken off out of the cornfield, and Tepet Lisara was sweating like a stuck pig. Did stuck pigs really sweat that much? Anyway in someone who could set themselves on fire it clearly didn't mean she was too hot.

On the other hand, Buffy's own caste mark was burning bright green on her forehead. She'd had to catch a couple more strikes from that stupid gigantic cleaver. There was still no sign of Fred or Xander, though there was an immense firehose arc of water swinging back and forth over the blaze Lisara had started. This didn't look like the sort of place that had fire trucks, so maybe it was her friends' work. Lisara was still on fire, and the drenching water didn't seem able to put her out, though she steamed like a teakettle every time it passed.

Maybe it was time to show the better part of valor, which was...what was it? Oh, yeah. Running like mad. She took off, charging directly at Lisara, who raised that big honking sword...and jumped.

Somehow Buffy had expected to come down. She felt something under her feet, at least, and she took off running before she registered that the path ahead was nice and clear when it should have been full of cornstalks. Should she look down? Probably not. Buffy looked down anyway.

Unimpeded Perfection of Exertion

She was running on top of the cornstalks, dashing across a field of plants that should have crumpled under her weight. She saw her foot land on a leaf that should have bent and fallen, saw it spring back up as if she was light as a feather, as if the leaf were a trampoline. Well. There was definitely some compensation for being an Infernal going on here.

Water sprayed her in the back. She shook it off and kept running as the great stream of water swung ahead of her. Steam rose behind her as Lisara, at least, kept pace with her. Burning Girl might not be able to run on top of plants, but her aura let her sear a path through them, even as soaked as they were getting. That said, Buffy was starting to worry that they were going to get beyond the range of Fred's improvised fire hose. Not only would another huge section of the fields go up in smoke, but there was the risk that the fire would cut Buffy's track right out from under her.

The arcing spray of water made its way back toward her over the cornfield. Beyond it she could see the Penitent, really just the leg of the gargantuan statue. Of course, if she got up there somehow she'd only end up inside the city, but even in the Lap there was probably someone she could contact. Or she could get out again once the coast was clear, though that would probably mean losing the Scoobies and Team Angel again. How exactly she was going to get in, well, that was another matter. She kicked off, trying to speed up, and found herself climbing a hill, which made no sense whatsoever. Did she seriously dare looking down again? Sure, what the hell, why not?

She was running on water.

Foam-Dancing Haste

Not even on the surface of a lake. She was running up the spray of water from Fred's improvised hose, trailing lines of green light behind her feet, scattering droplets as she went. Glancing along the arc she saw a huge windmill that probably wasn't just blowing the water like a fan, though that was certainly the way it looked from here. She offered Fred some silent congratulations, and probably Xander too; he was good at construction.

Even running on water wasn't exactly giving her a lot of added room, and she was getting higher. There was going to be a drop-off coming up unless she headed for the windmill. Or she could

Sky-Vaulting Surge

jump?

It wasn't as if she'd never taken a running jump before. And she was good at it, no question, even superhuman. Had she ever really done anything like this, though, hurtling through the air trailing green light tinged with glints of metallic yellow? The Penitent still towered above her, but she was heading for the leg, at least, coming up on the great stone wall, and for all the height she'd gained she was still far, far too low. Coming down already, legs still pumping, and she was going to hit the

Gravity-Rebuking Grace

wall!

Rising again, legs carrying her up what had to be a sheer cliff, if you could call the carved side of a statue a cliff, and she had hit hard, absolutely, but she was still running, still climbing. She was going to make it. She was seriously going to get up and over the leg of the statue and into the city she'd seen glimpses of. Not that she was too sure that was the best place to be, but maybe she could manage to lose her pursuers there.

God, she was running up the side of a freaking statue. If she wasn't getting away now, how could she possibly escape? Buffy looked back. Up, it felt like.

Tepet Lisara was airborne, propelled by a column of fire and still coming after her, searing her way across the sea of wheat and corn. She was far behind, but she could see Buffy and where she was going. Buffy could feel her chest starting to burn; she couldn't keep up this pace forever. If she stopped before she reached the top, she would fall, she was certain of that. If she reached it, she'd find herself in a maze of streets, but she was glowing brighter than she ever remembered glowing before, and that would take some time to fade. She would find some way to hide. If.

And Tepet Lisara suddenly wobbled, the fire that was carrying her forward sputtering. Going out. Lisara was falling. Buffy seemed to hear the distant echo of a splash. Rice. She'd crossed a flooded field of rice. That was some weakness. Buffy reminded herself that she had weaknesses of her own, and probably didn't know them all yet. Her lungs were on fire. Her legs felt wobbly. That was weakness enough.

Over to the side she saw some kind of rush toward the ankles of the statue. That was where the gates were, probably, the nearest one at least. There would have to be tunnels. Stairs, probably, or a very long ramp. Buffy was going straight up the side at a run. In the city, even the rest of the supersoldiers probably didn't know yet what was going on. She could hide there. She could...

She was at the top. She was up and over the wall, in the outskirts of the city. Next to her rose great blocky buildings, warehouses maybe. Buffy's last few steps had taken her to the top of a little wall facing the edge of the statue, a guard against anyone careless enough to slide off the side. She slipped down the inside, crouching there, breathing harder than she could ever remember in her life. Her forehead stung, and golden-green fire glowed around her, but here the narrow alleyway between buildings was empty. She could rest here, catch her breath, as long as the blaze died down before anyone came along. She'd have to find clothes. But she could do that.

Buffy looked up. She had run all this way, barrelled across a mile or more of corn, run up the side of a statue taller than any skyscraper. And she was still only on top of a leg. Towering above her was the real summit of the thing, the Penitent's damaged face miles higher than she'd already come. Something about it called to her. Something else about it grated on her like the jagged edges of a fractured bone grinding against each other. She could maybe go up there. The great engine might fire up for her, or it might chew her up and spit her out.

She sighed. Not now. Not yet. Maybe not ever, if she got home soon. And even if this was a power that could send her there, she needed to bring her friends with her. This wasn't a place she wanted to leave any of them, least of all Xander and Fred, who were here in a strange world with much less understanding of their power than she'd ever had.

The blaze was already fading. The brass on her skin began to corrode, then flake away, leaving only pale pink flesh. There would be wash on the line somewhere. Maybe clothes stored away. Sure, most of what she'd seen growing here was grain, but there were vegetables, and more importantly there was cotton. Somewhere here they made clothes.

The warehouses might be full of workers, but surely not all of them. The one on her right looked dark and quiet. She prodded the door, and it opened on shadow. All right then. "See you soon, guys," she murmured to herself. No question about it.

It wasn't a navigable river by any means, but not navigable and not swimmable weren't remotely the same thing. A huge swath of the fire was out, and wyld-hunters were bringing the scattered sections Fred couldn't reach under control. There'd be a few months of minor hardship, maybe, but anyone with sense would have huge granaries somewhere in a place like this. Some poor people might starve; she hoped not. No one else was likely to.

Fred let her arms burst out into tentacles again, grabbed Xander out of the windmill tower, and leapt into the river. Rendesvousing with Team Angel and hopefully some escaped slaves would be the easy part, preferably before the soldiers caught any of the slaves and dragged them back to work. With a little luck the soldiers would keep looking for anathema and the slaves could scatter into smaller parties and go somewhere safe.

Then would come the hard part. She was pretty sure she'd seen Buffy take a flying leap at that statue. If she was ok (please be okay, you were cool) she was inside the city and they were probably still wild-hunting her. Either Buffy was going to have to get out, or they were going to have to get in and find her. At least Xander's powers were inconspicuous.

She didn't have all that far she could travel down this river, unfortunately. It was broad and, unfortunately, shallow. Fred skimmed beneath the surface as long as she could, lifting Xander up for a quick breath whenever he tapped her shoulder, but she didn't think she'd gone a mile when the river just plain got too shallow to swim any longer.

Fred surfaced, changing back, and pulled Xander to the bank. He coughed and sputtered and finally asked, "Where the frilly heck did you take us?"

She shrugged. "Away."

A girl watching them from the bank cut in. "Where you need to be." Fred stared up at her. That wasn't the kind of answer you got from random strangers. That was a seer's answer, and in her limited experience seers were bad news. "Most people I don't give my real name, but you can call me Shaia. You guys look like you need help."

A/N: At this point the question may well arise as to what kind of Charm set I'm giving Buffy. No, it's not simply a random array of whatever superpowers I see fit to hand out to make her badass. I began with the presumption that Buffy has unknowingly been a Slayer caste Infernal for five years, the same as the length of time that the Infernals have been in Creation anyway. She has the Ebon Dragon as a favored Yozi (Malfeas, as she said, is lousy at sneaking). She also has quite a few Adorjani Charms, though no really exotic ones. (Technically, at this point in the story she doesn't actually have all of them yet, but they are accounted for.) She has First Excellencies for both Malfeas and the Ebon Dragon, which is usually a no-no in terms of points, but those two don't have a lot of overlap.

I then took as a working assumption that an episode was equivalent to a session. This averaged out to a fairly high level of experience (I don't recall quite how much), and I used the elder Exalt tables to work out how many Charms she should have in addition to her starting set (thirty). This seemed like a lot, and I was surprised to have to use the elder Exalt rules, so I used the Abyssals in the Scroll of Exalts as a comparison (since they have very similar experience charts and the Infernals there are all starting level). Most of them were weaker than Buffy, but a few were considerably more powerful even though no Abyssals have been around for more than five years (most notably Weeping Raiton Cast Aside, of course). The only remaining fudge was with the level of experience characters are normally allowed to keep banked. There I decided to let the demands of the story hold sway, but an easy explanation is that Buffy has never had a tutor who really understands what she can do. Having those two different Excellencies hasn't been good for her development either. Buffy either has or will soon manifest about forty charms from her current experience. She has Essence 4. I tried not to get too deep into stats beyond that. Everyone else who Exalts in the course of the series will be at starting level for their type.