"Shaia?" The dark-haired woman whose rowboat they'd boarded ignored him, studying the water. She removed a small pouch from her belt and tossed in a pinch of white powder. Salt?
White swirled up from the river. White splashed into the air. The world drowned in white. "We call this Mirror-Shattering Method." Shaia looked him in the eye. "We don't usually explain in detail, but you people would seem to be a special case. I'm not sure where you're from, but it's not around here, is it?"
Fred shook her head. "None of us, definitely not."
Shaia just nodded. "I am another kind of Exalted which you may not be familiar with, specifically a Sidereal. We're the Chosen of Fate. For centuries, we advised the other Celestial Exalted-the Solars and Lunars. When they fell to the Dragon-Blooded, we...took on a more hidden role." She picked up the oars and began to row.
"What about Infernals?" Xander asked.
"There weren't any at the time. No Abyssals either. All the Exalts at the time served the gods, not the Yozis or the Neverborn. They were...far from perfect, but they didn't start out corrupt."
Fred winced. "Is Buffy evil?" Xander suspected she was sharing the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach at that idea, no matter how short a time she'd known Buffy. Imagining Buffy as evil was simultaneously impossible and, well, terrifying.
"I wouldn't say that exactly," Shaia said with a small frown. "She doesn't have to be. Still, it's going to be a lot harder for her to be good than bad. It's in her nature, and the nature of her powers."
Xander bit his lip in thought. But hadn't Buffy always had these powers? Or had Cyan-or Buffy-lied about that? "How did you know we were here?"
"I followed your threads in the Loom of Fate. You weren't native here, but it's integrating you all as time passes. Except for Buffy. It seems as if Infernals are among the small number of types of being who are outside of Fate entirely. " Shaia paused in her rowing for a few moments before turning the boat to the right a bit. Xander wondered how she could navigate in this whiteout. "In any case, I believed I should get in touch with you and offer my advice. You aren't the first Solar I've gathered up, Xander, but you know the least about what you are."
"And me?" Fred dabbled her fingers in the water as if wondering whether she was expected to jump in.
"I don't have as much experience with Lunars, but there's someone I can deliver you to who can teach you, a very old Lunar who isn't that far from my work, as these things go. He's called Leviathan."
"Leviathan?"
Shaia chuckled. "He spends virtually all his time in the shape of a gigantic orca. At least he's not a sperm whale. It could be hard for you to converse, but who knows? Perhaps that'll persuade him to take human form. I'm surprised he doesn't just forget he was once a man."
Fred shivered. "Sorry. I'm just...I guess that's the point of sending me to him, isn't it? It's all really new to me."
"We've all been there, dear. Don't worry, I'll keep tabs. And I'll make sure you and Xander here stay in touch." The white seas tore, and blue-green replaced them. Fred gave a little jump. The rowboat was surrounded by ocean in all directions, without the slightest sign of land. Shaia gave her a little wink. "No fear, new blood. Sometimes you have to do things one step at a time."
The ocean shuddered. An immense gout of foam shot up not a hundred yards from them, white again, though not the unblemished white of the unthinkable sea they had just traveled. The prow of a small ship pierced the surface, rising, rising, a metallic hull unlike anything she had expected to encounter in this primitive hellhole of a dimension.
"Welcome aboard the Charybdis-class undersea courier Water Lily's Unseen Root."
Slowly Buffy crawled back towards full awareness. A rank smell filled her nostrils, mildew and decay. The blankets she was hiding under had grown grey with mold. She pulled back the covers from her face and peered out. The same mildew stink emanated from the entire box. Only the clothing she'd donned before crawling into hiding remained pristine.
"Blech. As side effects go, this one is downright rotten. At least it doesn't ruin my personal fashion choices." The warehouse was, as she had hoped, still in shadow. She'd suspected as much from the boarded-up windows and dusty crates, but you never knew. The next box over was untouched by the contamination, and she was convinced she hadn't gone to sleep in a bed of filth. It had to be that sickly green glow.
She felt stronger. Sleep seemed somehow more refreshing here than anything she'd experienced in years, but more than that, she'd been bone-weary when she hid here. She'd used more power than she could ever remember doing, putting on that display. Even now, she didn't feel a hundred percent, but she could put up a respectable fight if she had to.
Crawling carefully to one of the windows, she pried loose a board and peeked out. Moonlight glimmered in the empty streets. So far she'd been lucky. If it was luck, and not another power she didn't realize she had. Lisara should have returned to the city and told the guard where she'd been seen climbing the Penitent, and there should be guards of some sort patrolling the area. But no one had found her while she evidently slept for hours.
Silently she padded her way to the door and opened it just a crack. No one was here either. It was possible that the patrols had missed her in the warren of buildings. It was possible that Lisara had been too proud to admit she'd engaged an Anathema and lost her, or even that she'd been arrested for setting the crops ablaze and hadn't gotten to tell her story. And finally, it was possible that a guard was posted to wait for Buffy to appear again.
They would have to wait for a good long while. Well, in theory. "Time to try something new...again. Only without the net, this time." Buffy closed her eyes and concentrated. She shouldn't have to do that once she had the hang of it, but this wasn't something she should be doing in the open anyway, so what the hey.
Though she already stood in shadow, deeper darkness enveloped her. Best to look as unlike herself as possible. The manual had said that this was an illusion, but it would fool touch as easily as sight or hearing. Just how far away from "Buffy Summers" could she get?
Natives of the Blessed Isle tended to look Asian, while Southerners seemed to grow darker the further south you got. Here in the Lap, there were a fair amount of-reflexively she thought "African-Americans", but of course they were no such thing. Still, she couldn't quite stop herself from thinking of that as blackface. She compromised; there'd been Thai students in a couple of her lit classes in college. And...just this once, to see how good the effect was...she modeled her new look on one of the guys. It wasn't as if it were real.
Shadows receded, leaving behind a new shape. If only she could see her face. "Not any taller. Oh well." Her clothes had altered-wait, did that mean she didn't need to have stolen these? Too late to worry over that-into a simple but colorful loose red shirt and greyish slacks. The former looked awfully blousy, but she'd seen men wearing it. It was hot down here. She lifted it and found a solid slab of muscle. "Stupid subconscious. I wasn't going for beefcake." Even to her own touch, the illusion felt real; cupping her pecs, she felt hard muscle with just a touch of fat, and only the faintest twinge of arousal even if she plucked at the nipples. Ok, enough of that!
Cyan would laugh at her for not sticking her hand down her pants and testing that part of the illusion too. No, Cyan was pragmatic; she would agree that Buffy shouldn't do it till she had a private room somewhere. though at that point she'd certainly say go to town on it. And probably bring in an attractive stranger. Well, aside from the stranger part she might take that advice; it'd been a couple of months since Riley left her, and not having had time to think on such things didn't mean she didn't miss them now. If she could find a bed without roaches.
Buffy laughed softly at herself. She could turn her skin to brass, run up the side of a statue, and change her appearance by willing it. Surely she could find a clean bed if she put her mind to it. The main problem was that she still felt somewhat drained. If she put out only a little more effort, she was sure that mark on her forehead would start glowing again, and so much for her disguise if that happened.
Out onto the street. The stars had a hard, bright glitter she'd never seen before, and the full moon rode high. Whatever industry the Lap had-that the Realm had-it didn't produce much air pollution. She could hear the distant revelry of partygoers in the inns, but that didn't mean a lot. She walked around the corner and right into a guardsman.
"Out late, aren't we, fella?" His voice was sharp but not angry; he must be only faintly suspicious.
"I am. Not a problem, is it?" she said boldly. She couldn't think of a story, but she'd heard that was the best way to get away with things: just act like you belonged there.
The guard lifted an eyebrow. "An Anathema ran up the side of the Penitent and disappeared into this area of town. Or hadn't you heard? Two others are lurking somewhere in the province near the city and could be here as well."
A strange notion struck her. Malfeas Essence Overwhelming "And so I have merchandise to check, once I finally get away from my business. I have every right to be here, and I'll thank you not to interfere with me."
The guard threw up his hands. "Sorry, sir. You look very young for your age. I hope everything is all right at the warehouse." He backed away, fidgeting nervously, and turned off down the street.
Who was it again that said Malfeas couldn't sneak?
"Willow, are you seriously proposing that we return to the city?" Giles felt an outpouring of dread at the notion. Who would break cover this time, and bring the authorities down on them once more? He suspected there would be little mercy extended here.
"I'm saying we don't have much of a choice. We need supplies, and I'm the last heavy-hitter you have. If I'm even that here. No offense Angel, Spike. At night you guys might take on a couple of the mini-supers, maybe, but we need to go in the daytime. We've lost Buffy, Xander, and Fred to who knows where, but Buffy at least got into town."
"And you think your magicks are up to the task?" Wesley peered at her suspiciously. "Perhaps more of us should accompany you."
"I'll take Tara, but in all seriousness the rest of you should stay here with the refugees. If someone does turn up, we'll need you to get them away again." She turned her mouth down in frustration. "Good luck. We're running out of superheroes. No offense, but we kind of need them in this world."
Fred gazed at the control room in wonder. God, she was in her element at last. Okay, in all honesty she didn't actually understand the controls, but at least she felt she icould/i understand them, given a little effort. It was good to see Buffy's story about the ancient high tech era verified, though...
"This stuff looks awfully shiny. You keep it well-maintained."
"In fact we do," Shaia agreed. "We don't have Solars to build new magitech these days, so production is very slow when we can get it done at all."
"Can't the-" Xander hesitated. "Shaia, what's the term for the mini-Exalts? Buffy didn't pick that one up, and we keep stumbling over them."
Shaia's laughter was like the ringing of bells. "Dragon-Blooded. Or Terrestrials. And yes, to some limited degree the Dragon-Blooded can be more intelligent and apt at engineering than any normal human. If circumstances had been different, the greatest wonders of the Old Realm would have been lost, but we would have maintained our heavy industry, at least. The Contagion put paid to that, and...a variety of problems...have prevented meaningful recovery."
"Contagion? Look, maybe this is asking too much," Xander said, striding back and forth between consoles, "but is there some kind of information-transfer spell that would tell us what's what around here?"
Shaia laughed. She laughed a lot. It made Fred feel comfortable around her. "In fact there is. I wish I knew it. It'd make my job a lot easier. We use it to help new Sidereals, more than anything, but certainly it works just as well on other Exalts. The Great Contagion was a deadly plague that nearly killed everyone in Creation a couple of hundred years after the Usurp-after the Terrestrials took power."
"Sounds like a bioweapon," Fred opined. Biology wasn't her strong suit, but she knew that: "Illnesses have a strong tendency to adapt to their hosts and eventually burn out. It's no advantage to them to kill everyone."
"Good observation," Shaia said with a smile. "In fact few people realize that that's exactly what it was. A Deathlord unleashed it, and I doubt I can keep that from a mind like yours. I see how you look at this vessel."
"All of that's probably important," Xander said, "but Shaia, you do realize you've left our friends alone with a bunch of escaped slaves? The three of us-well, mostly Buffy-might have-"
Shaia strode forward and took him by the shoulders. She barely reached his chin, but he stumbled backwards all the same. "Do not discount yourself, or Fred, in that way. Yes, Buffy has the most experience of you three, but each of you has worldshaking power, which you desperately need to learn to use-and it sounds as if she also has much to unlearn."
"And our friends?" Xander recovered his balance and tried to push her away, without success.
"Will be all right. Your arrival disrupted the Tapestry; who knows if the Exaltations already attracted to your little band are the only ones? Perhaps your Anya will Exalt next. Or Wesley, or Tara. Several Exaltations that were meant to be embodied were kept from their hosts by the disturbance in fate; perhaps that means they are now meant for your friends, if they show their worth in time." Shaia pushed him down into a seat. "But they must have the opportunity. And you, Zenith, need training most of all. Too many Solars over the centuries have been petty warlords when they were meant to be god-kings."
"God-kings?" Xander's voice rose to a squeak, which Shaia ignored. Xander was undoubtedly a nice guy, but Fred couldn't think of him as god-king material.
Fred looked around at the hyper-advanced technology surrounding her, and chose a distraction. She sat down in her best guess for the captain's chair and started poking at controls. Shaia's eyes went wide in alarm.
Mission accomplished.
Another swig from the water bottle. Willow Rosenberg desperately hoped she wasn't drinking down hordes of unfamiliar bacteria and viruses. Hadn't Buffy said she came down with something awful enough that sorta-dying of radiation sickness seemed like the good alternative?
But the alternative to this was heatstroke, or at least heat exhaustion. This was the nicest, coolest part of the South? Admittedly it was afternoon but the sun beat down on her and just generally kept trying to broil her in her own juices or dehydrate her for jerky. "Somebody please tell the Sun I'm trafe," she muttered. Maybe she was losing her wits. At least she'd decided a year and five months ago that conversing with other gods wasn't the same thing as praying to them, not when you knew for a fact they were listening and willing to respond. Much more comfortable after that.
She was probably the palest person here. She wasn't one of those poor Irishfolk who couldn't tan, luckily, given where she'd grown up, but it took careful control of her exposure and lots of sunscreen to not be burnt every summer. There were a mix of types, but this place seemed like the antithesis of white-bread Sunnydale (the result of various factors, most notably the white man's lack of good common sense, so Gunn assured her). Most common was a light brown, but she also saw people who looked south Asian or as if they were mixed eastern Native American. Yet no one here had ever seen India or Africa or even Kentucky. This world was as alien as if it were a Vulcan city she walked through now.
After hours of climbing through the tunnels (at least it seemed like hours) she'd emerged into a small town of a great city, a complicated puzzle of shops mixed with cozy little middle-class houses-middle class for here, of course, meaning that the best of them were little adobe blocks about the size of a doublewide. With no central air, no running water, no electricity-none of that stuff. They weren't deprived, she reminded herself. They were used to this place, and they had their own methods of beating heat and boredom. This was definitely not where Buffy had climbed the wall, but careful questioning had revealed that no inn worth a hoot could be found on either Eastleg or the Fold. With her power growth spurt, Buffy had surely found a decent inn.
At least there was nothing mazy about the city, which was carefully laid out in a modified grid. Here and there a recess between shops became a ramp, and the next street higher always ran atop the shops and houses of the one you were on. Good architectural decision; potentially awkward sleeping situation, depending on noise control.
"Willow!" She leapt at least half a meter in the air. The only person here who could possibly have known her was Buffy, unless one of the others had come after her into the city. But that deep masculine voice was definitely not her friend's. Had Buffy handed out their names and set people looking for them?
A short man with dark bronzy skin, straight jet-black hair, and folds in his deep brown eyes raced up and seized her around the waist, lifting her into the air and spinning her around before setting her down again. He was lucky he'd done that last bit; she was prepared to slam him backwards with her mind if she had to. Too bad her immediate response was "Eep!"
"I know this looks odd, but Willow, I swear it's me!"
Looks odd? It sounded odd, felt just as odd. Buffy was strong, but she didn't have those big knotted muscly arms. No mundane disguise could have done this to a slender California girl. "More magic powers, Buffy?" She said it under her breath, but the strange man flinched and shushed her.
"Follow me to the Monk's Gaze Inn, Will. I've got to get this thing off before I go stark raving bananas."
"I get the picture." Willow stifled a giggle, slipped her arm into Buffy's, and enjoyed the panicked look on her friend's borrowed face as they strolled away.
"I just figured you would know what it feels like, Angel."
Angel struggled to pick apart the motives of a teenage girl talking to him about what it was like to miss the person you love, to worry that you're never going to see him again. "Anya, I...I miss Buffy, but I've come to understand that we're not going to be together. It can't work between us."
"What?" Anya scowled at him. "This has nothing to do with Buffy, Angel. I know, I know, you never loved anyone before Buffy, we all buy that. I never loved anyone before Xander. Except Olaf, and let's just say that ended badly. But that didn't mean I never was in a relationship, same as you. That's what I was trying to say we had in common."
"Well, when you put it that way...I still don't get it."
"Angel! You know who I am! Put it together already. I was..." She lowered her voice to avoid being overheard by the refugees. "...a demon for a thousand years or so, but I didn't get any less horny. I met people. Men, mostly. That stuff about experimenting when you live long enough is more false than most people seem to realize. Sure, you try it a couple of times, just to see what you're missing, but usually what you're missing is a whole lot of nothing, Shakespearean pun acknowledged but not intended..."
Angel groaned.
"...I dated a vampire named Heinrich Nest once, think you knew him, but we were never in love. His hair was atrocious, for one thing..."
That made him choke, which he covered by coughing into the desert hare he was unpleasantly dining on. Heinrich Nest was better known as "the Master", Angel's own grandsire, and the idea of him dating Anya-or having hair-was impossible to imagine.
"What I'm saying is, I waited a long time to fall in love, Angel. I don't have that much more. I miss him, and I'm worried about him, and it doesn't even matter that he's got superpowers, he's still in a strange world and I just keep losing him, he just keeps running off!"
"I...okay, Anya. It's all right. I understand now." And he did, sort of. He'd given up his own humanity to ensure that Buffy survived; that had been what had taught him his lesson about her, in the end.
He put his arms out. He arranged them, so very awkwardly-couldn't have her thinking he was coming on to her, not now! And very, very gingerly, he gave the poor girl a hug.
They couldn't have been traveling for more than a few hours when Shaia signaled Fred to slow the courier to a stop.
Those first few minutes of panic when Fred suddenly took the controls had made Xander want to puke, but he'd recognized much faster than Shaia that Fred understood what she was doing. The main controls were surprisingly modern, and somewhere between her natural brains and her new powers Fred had intuited the rest. After he realized that she was just skimming along without a care, he'd sat back and watched the show as Shaia continued to shout warnings and directions for another two or three minutes, until finally she too seemed to realize they weren't in any immediate danger. Still, she'd been in a bad mood after she noticed him grinning.
"Fred, we're above Luthe. I'm going to signal Leviathan, and he's going to come for you. Or maybe send one of his understudies. I want you to be properly respectful, all right? He is one of the oldest Exalts still alive, and he is quite eccentric. He's also used to dealing with young Lunars with, ah...mental issues, so you needn't worry that you'll offend him accidentally. Got that?"
Fred nodded, eyes wide, but Xander recognized at once that she was more excited than afraid. He thought he even understood why. She was about to get to try out her new powers in a much friendlier environment than the Lap had been. Even if Leviathan turned out not to like her very much, at least he didn't seem likely to kill her (though Xander worried he might be able to do that in an instant if he wanted). Shaia, oddly, didn't seem to realize that; she turned, in the expectation that Fred was cowed, and worked some controls.
The image of a great octopus appeared on a subsidiary screen, and Fred jumped up to go to it, but Shaia waved her back. "Just a moment. Sage of the Depths, I have a student for you. She needs the tattoos, I expect." Fred mouthed "tattoos", looking startled, and again Shaia waved her to silence. "I know you're pretty isolated out here, and I hate to violate that, but she seems ideal for the three of you." This time, Xander saw the octopus' coloration flicker wildly. "All right, I'll send her down. Fred, airlock one. No...scratch that, go to launch bay two, the empty one. Make us proud."
"Just like that?" Now that it came to it, Fred's eyes were wide with fear once again.
"I have faith in you, kid. You can do it. Just remember to go full squid as soon as you've got the water for it, and stay that way until you learn some more. You revert out there, you die, fast. You take on a form that can't breathe or take the pressure, you die, fast."
The fear in Fred's expression evaporated, replaced by disgust. "I'm not stupid." Then again, that might well have been Shaia's intention. "Just point the way, and you'll see." She turned and stalked out of the room.
"All right, as soon as she's out of the way, it's your turn." Shaia flicked the viewscreen over to an empty room. "Deactivating airlock safeties...go."
The Monk's Gaze Inn wasn't as high-class as Willow had hoped...or maybe she just wasn't used to pre-industrial housing yet. It was, however, noisy, which might have been the reason Buffy had chosen it. As long as they listened carefully they could converse without being overheard. Buffy really never had been stupid; she just had other things on her mind than school.
She did, however, look startled to see Tara walk in a moment after them. "I called her," Willow explained, tapping her forehead. Of course, they could have held the whole conversation this way, but Buffy had never seemed to enjoy that and she was already dealing with a lot.
"Buffy?" Tara said without a hint of real confusion. Naturally. She had recognized Faith in Buffy's body without ever actually meeting Buffy; of course she knew Buffy now.
"Let's go to my room," Buffy said. "I don't care what anyone thinks. I'm...I'm really tired, okay?"
Tara tilted her head for a moment, then nodded. "I understand. I expect it's exhausting."
Willow didn't even have time to take in the room before Buffy dropped the illusion. "Geez, I had to get out of that thing. I don't dare let it drop in public, but I've been out all day trying to find you guys or anyone who could get me back to my place. I guess I could have found a place to hide, but I was too stressed to think of it."
It wasn't a bad room; certainly the bed looked more comfy than anywhere Willow had slept recently. Willow tried not to hold a grudge and plopped herself down on it. Tara was saying, "When you're going to be in disguise like that in the long term, it's better to pick something that matches your self-image. Especially if it feels that real to you. Your aura...your energy...it feels like a real body, doesn't it?"
"In every way aside from being mine," Buffy agreed. "It was fun for a little while, but then...women watching me-no offense, you two, it's just different-people calling me 'sir' or 'mister'..."
Tara just shook her head ruefully. "You don't have to explain."
"I meant to talk downstairs, but then when I got here I just had to come up to the room and get the costume off."
Tara changed the subject. "You've been practicing. You make a mean glamour. I'm impressed, and I bet it won't be so bad if you stick closer to yourself. Have you learned anything else new?"
"I know how to get around the Lap. That's about the extent of it. Also that there's treasure up there in the head. Nobody knows what."
"There's definitely treasure," Tara agreed. "I don't think it's for any of us. Xander, maybe."
Buffy smiled. "It's good to know you're on my team. You know that, right?"
"I know. Buffy, the Scoobies are waiting for you outside the city with the refugees. We're all camped out in a cave, and it's safe but it's definitely not comfortable. We're also missing Xander and Fred; they got separated from us."
"They put out the fire." Buffy sighed a deep sigh. "All I did was run away from a fight."
"You kept them away from the rest of us, Buffy." This funk she was in worried Willow. "They're human. You can't be expected to kill them just to protect us."
"They're supposed to be heroes. This world is supposed to be full of heroes. How did it all go so wrong?" Buffy hung her head, shaking it back and forth. "I need to get out of here. I'm prophesied to make things worse. But they deserve to have someone fix it. What am I supposed to do? How do I leave them like this?"
Willow took one of her hands, and Tara held the other. "Do what you have to do," Willow said. "Whatever you decide that is."
The water pooled around her feet, and Fred did her best to breathe. She could do this. She could endure a collar around her neck. She could figure out how to break it so it stopped hurting her. She could hunt and gather in the wild. She could calm a feral vampire-monster. And she could dive to the bottom of the ocean.
Okay, those things didn't really go together. Except they did. She was a superhero now and that was her power: to survive. She was a survivor. A survivalist. No, that was something else. Little wavelets lapped around her knees.
Was she even going to be able to talk squid? Or octopus? It was a fallacy that those two were the same thing. Cold seawater soaked her pants up to the hips. But the Sage of the Depths wasn't just an octopus. He was like her, a Lunar Exalted. And he had been for hundreds of years. She didn't have to know how, not if he did.
It was time to get changed. The cold hardened her nipples. She didn't need those; she needed her gills. She needed gills. Her throat-
#####
Xander slapped his hands down on the chair arms and jumped up. "She's choking. She's not going to-"
"The water's not that deep yet."
"No, I mean she's choking. She's not going to be able to change. She's-"
"Trust her, Xander. Wait for it."
#####
Her feet had left the floor. The water kept rising, but now it was taking her with it. Only, there was only so much room in the bay. She was treading water and her face was getting close to the ceiling.
Come on. She could do it. It was time, already. She could do it. Her cheek was pressed against the ceiling. Her lips were pressed closed. Water was seeping into her nostrils. Come on. One last breath. Too cold. Too liquid, too, too, too...
Too nothing. Because she was, she was a fucking Lunar.
Her arms stretched out, and her legs flexed, and her head swelled out into a fin-crested cone. The room was shrinking, and she was bigger, far, far bigger than she'd been when Buffy swung a fist at her. Bigger. Water sucked clean of oxygen sprayed from her siphon. Her mouth-her beak-clacked together, snapping. Her hands swelled, fingers vanishing, and what did that matter when she had suckers? (How had she missed those circles on her palms before?) Her eyes. She had eyes bigger than dinner plates. Her bones melted, her body imploded against her immense head, her arms were drawn up around her mouth. Bigger. Her tentacles curled around, still stretching, filling the bay.
The doors burst open, releasing her into her element. And still she grew. And though there was no need, no need at all, she released a trickle of energy. It flowed out of her, and she felt the disc on her forehead burst into life. Into light. A mile below the surface, the full moon shone, a moon the size of her father's truck tire on her massive forehead.
A ring of silver light the size of her grandfather's tractor tire answered. Faintly it illuminated a being like her, not like her. Larger even than she had swelled, its head-body drifted free of internal support, a great bulbous mass, and it had no padded tentacles, but its arms could have wrapped around Water Lily's Unseen Root three times over. If it chose, it could crush her.
Colors and patterns rippled along its body. "Unblooded," it said. "Swim with me."
"Yes," she answered. "Yes, that will be very nice." Which was to say, her own body rippled with patterns of shadow.
"Hunt with me." She understood. And answered.
"Yes. Yes I will." Texas was an unimaginable distance away. Beyond space, even beyond time. And yet, and yet she was...
...home.
"Well, that's that." Shaia turned from the console, and Xander could only watch as the Sage of the Depths swam off-screen, followed a moment later by Winifred Burkle. "I'm glad that went well. My contact with the Lunars is, shall we say, tenuous, especially where those three are concerned. Gold Faction delivers the occasional newbie, and they don't attack us when we do. It's not even a formal agreement, just an arrangement of convenience, and a very recent one at that. You're another matter."
"I'm going to the island." He had to hope the other new Solars were easier to get along with than Leviathan sounded.
"Yes, yes, the island." Shaia bent over the controls, and Water Lily's Unseen Root sped away, toward the surface.
Xander wasn't even really sure he was facing forward. He looked over his shoulder anyway, and wished Fred luck.
"Dear Lord. How did you ever get here? Were you drawn by Buffy's departure? Were you-?"
"Calm down, Giles," said Faith. "You really need to learn the score on this one. When you see Faith, and there's no reason for you to be seeing Faith, it isn't Faith. Which means that...it...is...in...fact..."
"Buffy." Rupert Giles stopped sweating. Or at least, stopped sweating nervously. "Of course I should have realized. Although you have raised a whole host of questions that I had not thought to consider about the source of Faith's powers."
"Come on out, girls. I've had my fun." Willow and Tara appeared in the cave mouth. "Okay, Giles. I hate to lose Xander and Fred, but I'm going to have to trust that they can take care of themselves here. You, on the other hand, are saddled with a large group of people who probably can't, and who in turn are going to make it hard on you to take care of yourselves. I've heard rumors about a big scary bull-monster Anathema who frees slaves and kills slavers. We're going to look for him, and he's a long way east in a town called Chair-squirrel."
"Chiaroscuro," Willow corrected.
"After we drop off our load of free men and women with this 'Strength-of-Many', as the stories call him, we can try to find Fred and Xander. I'm sure they'll be making waves. It's in our nature."
"The Slayer," Giles began.
"Terrorized the demon world for ten thousand years or more. Yeah, we kept a low profile, but we also made modern Earth possible." Buffy turned to look east. "Xander and Fred are nice modern people in this world of medieval screwheads. They'll rock the boat, and we'll follow the waves. But in the meanwhile, we have to get moving. It's a long way where we're going, and we're going to have to pass through a creepy 1984ish place called Paragon, or take the scenic route through the desert."
"Keeping these people safe isn't going to be easy, Buffy."
She only shook her head. "No, it's not. But the merely difficult we do right away, and the impossible we finish by next Thursday at lunch."
"All right, Xander. This is it. Take this luggage up the track there, and my other couple of students will meet you over the hill. I'm going to get a few more things from the ship, and I'll join you in a few minutes."
He pulled the strap over his shoulder. It was time to find out just what he could do.
The island didn't look like much. A couple of scrubby palm trees stood on either side of the dirt path, bearing the stereotypical coconuts. Well, Shaia said the Gold Faction had been a minority for about a thousand years. That was how it went.
Over the hill there was a little village of wood huts, Shaia had said. So she had said. All Xander saw was more palm trees, a little cluster of them that almost obscured the beach beyond. Maybe it was magically hidden somehow. He turned to look back and saw the Water Lily's Unseen Root sinking rapidly into the ocean.
"Hey!" He started to charge down the hill, then realized that if the vessel could dive a mile deep to meet Leviathan's lieutenants, he wasn't likely to survive clinging to the hull. True, he could try it, and maybe he'd even make it inside before drowning, but if Shaia wanted him dead, she had a few centuries of experience on him. His better choice was the equally unlikely task of finding his own way off the island.
First things first: why had she given him the satchel? Was it a bomb? On top of the load was a small cubical box with an obvious clasp. He opened it, and her smiling face appeared above a little projector.
"I'm afraid I have to leave you here, Xander. I can't let you interfere with my plans. Fred will stay out of the way down below, or Leviathan will kill her, just like I warned. And you...well, I've left you enough food to last a week or so. If you can't get off the island in that time or last longer on your own, you're not the Solar I thought you were. When we meet again-and we will meet again-I'll fast-talk you right back to the island. I mean, I could just kill you, but then there'd just be another couple of loose Exaltations running around and who knows where they'd show up next." The image winked. "Think I can't now that you know me? Think again. Long before you get powerful enough to interfere with my business, I'll have completed my task in this identity. Best of luck finding me on any terms but my own."
Well. Damn it.
He was going to have to get creative.
Shaia went back to studying the arcane patterns of the locking mechanism. Surely nothing could hold a Chosen of the Maidens forever. She was having trouble remembering how long she'd been here in this basement, not to mention she'd begun to wonder if her arcane fate had made her very existence slip from the mind of her captor. She did know one thing: she had to get out of Malfeas before he figured out how to achieve what he sought. That would be true disaster. Shaia was certain from what he'd said that he served She Who Lives in Her Name, and (possibly barring a Neverborn) there were no worse hands in which the Blossom of the Perfected Lotus could rest.