After fifteen minutes Faith thought she might have made a mistake. After thirty she was certain she was going the wrong way and turned around.

It made no difference. The huge conglomeration of water melted back into confusion and chaos almost at once. No matter how she turned or twisted there was no way to keep it in view for more than a few moments. Fred had mentioned the Wyld, where reality was fluid, but if Faith had managed to leave direction itself behind there might be literally no way back to Creation, let alone back home to Earth.

Faith panicked, spiraling about in midair-well, midflight, anyway. There were no longer any familiar navigation marks, not even gravity to define up and down. "Below" her the shape of a knee flexed. To her "right", a pair of stop signs. "Behind" her there galloped about five hooved things that might have been horses, heading into the sky.

Maybe they knew where they were going. Faith gave desperate chase, dropping onto the last one as she reached it. She wrapped her legs around its neck...and they sank in. Faith struggled, trying to rise and wrench free, but the creature simply galloped higher, its head and neck dissolving into her torso. It was eating her! Faith shoved at the body and barely managed to yank her hands out before they, too, merged inside.

For what seemed like ages she fought to free herself and the creature fought to eat or absorb her. Finally the pull weakened, but at the same time the sensations from her lower body altered. The tail attached to the creature's rump flicked at something, and she felt it; she willed it still, and it stopped. She touched the horse-thing's sides and back, and her hands no longer sank in, but she could feel the contact.

So now she knew what Buffy was afraid of. How the fuck was she supposed to go home looking like this? Worse, she'd been here no more than an hour or so. If this kept up, by the end of the day, she'd be a blob or a ball of mismatched limbs or...nothing. Just dissolved.

Something answered that inside her. The power that made her a Slay...a Night caste shored up her form and made her feel more stable. Why now, damn it? Why not first? But of course she was reacting to a danger she hadn't realized existed.

The rest of the herd was vanishing into the distance. If they got out of sight, her attempt was worse than wasted. She hurled herself into a gallop again and began to close the distance.

Chapter 61-Fantastic Voyage

Faith slowly caught up to the horses and realized as she did that she was in an actual place. More than a place. A small meadow surrounded by trees. A path led off through the forest, defined by a log fence as much as by wheel ruts. Was this Creation? If so, she'd somehow made a big jump.

A windmill and barn came into view, unpainted and a bit ramshackle. A small farmhouse. People stared as she trotted past; they looked entirely human in their ragged grey clothes. She had to be the strangest thing they'd ever seen. Which didn't make a lot of sense. Surely other things came out of the Wyld.

A man with the top of his head shaved appeared on the road ahead. His white robes looked less haggard than the clothes she'd seen on anyone else. "Strumpet!" he shouted, which meant nothing to her, but it was probably the same as "Tramp!" which he said next. "Whore!"

"Hey," Faith growled, "what the hell is your problem?"

"Thou strollst about with thy womanly parts unclad, and wonderst what is my problem?" The monk or priest or whatever he was glared at her, eyes narrow with rage.

"My...womanly parts?" Faith still had her shirt, no worse the wear, and even a sports bra underneath it. She didn't have anything on her horse's ass, but she couldn't see what about it was "womanly", and couldn't reach the damn thing anyway.

"Strumpet!" the monk yelled again.

"Where the hell do you get off complaining and how do you expect me to cover it anyway?" She was on the verge of kicking him in the head and trampling him as she left.

To her surprise the monk pulled something resembling an enormous pair of shorts from his big-ass sleeves. "Thou'lt allow me to help thee?"

Faith snarled at him and began taking off her shirt. To hell with it. No one but Faith Lehane controlled Faith Lehane's sexuality.

"Dost thou not know that these parts teem with raksha? They wilt doubtless ravage thy self-control and make a brood mare of thee, helpless slave to thy lusts."

With her shirt over her face she couldn't see his expression. She pulled it back down. "And that thing'll stop 'em?"

"Doubtless, doubtless. Without it they'll certain sure make of thee naught but an animal in perpetual heat." He looked honestly worried.

"Fine," she grumbled. It wasn't worth the risk. "Help me."

She stepped into it-it was a harness as much as shorts-and let him pull it up over her butt. "Lift thy tail to open the flap for shit. Move it to the side for piss."

"Good to know. And what if I wanna-?"

The monk stared wonderingly at her. "Surely thou dost not wish to let thy animal lusts control thee. If thou wert fully human it might be different, but look at thyself. By proportion thy body is at least four fifths beast, only one fifth part woman."

Was he right? Would she lose control if she gave in to being horny? Maybe it was better this way. Faith wasn't bright, but she was smarter than a Clydesdale. It was a disturbing feeling how secure the shorts made her feel. It didn't make sense for her to be afraid of sex. She was, though.

She felt an odd sensation of eyes on her back, combined with boredom-then a jolt as if she'd been pushed. The monk was gone, though his gift remained. The trees seemed as if they might have shifted about too. Were they just in different places, or were they a different kind entirely?

Whispers drifted out of the woods. "-use is she if-?" "a Solar...just wasn't prepared-" "-well then what-?" "-prepare her-"

"I can hear you!" Faith shouted, and immediately regretted it. If she'd stayed quiet she'd have heard more.

Two young women strolled out of the trees, one no more than a girl of fifteen or so, the other maybe about twenty-five. "Faith!" the younger one called. "We've been looking for you."

Faith frowned at them. They seemed familiar. They looked...kind of like her. The younger one was darker-complected and had straight hair. The older one was fairer overall and tall. "You've been looking for me." She said it flatly, doubtfully.

"Well," the older one amended. "Looking for some help. We need a third to join us."

"I don't know if you noticed," Faith lied, "but I'm just short of useless out here. I'm not sure I can get back at all."

"You're too hard on yourself, Faith," the younger girl said. "We can fix that. You just need some tools."

"Tools?" That didn't sound too bad.

"Graces," the older of the pair said. She reached into her purse and pulled out a golden band that might have been a crown, except that it had a rounded leather section clearly meant to go over Faith's eye.

Faith took it, spun it around, and placed it on her head, removing her eyepatch. The band fit snugly and should have hurt, but was actually very comfortable. "This is a...Grace?"

"A Ring Grace, specifically," said the younger. "By the way, my name is Hope." She reached into her pouch and removed something made from cloth straps, then stared curiously at it. "This was supposed to be your Cup Grace. I don't know what it is."

Faith began to laugh. She took it and turned aside before putting the bra on. "Nice," she said. It also fit her perfectly. "How many of these things are there?"

The older girl stared curiously as Faith pulled her shirt back over her head. "For the...for a Creation-born, only four. Well...unless we made you a Way Grace, and neither of us knows how. I'm Charity."

Faith raised an eyebrow at that. "So we're Faith, Hope, and Charity. And I bet you're helping me out of the goodness of your hearts."

"Of course we are," Hope insisted. "We're sisters."

"Sisters. Yeah." Faith rolled her eyes. "I've never seen-"

Hope removed another item from her pouch, a wooden stake or maybe spear the length of Faith's arm. "Staff Grace. Charity?"

"See, these are yours, Faith," Charity said, pulling the blade that the Mayor had given Faith from her purse. The one Buffy had stabbed her with. The hospital had lost it, or maybe it'd been taken by the Watchers. "We're looking out for you. Remember. See, here's your Sword."

Faith squinted at it. If it was a fake, it was a good one. "What do these do?"

"They'll let you defend yourself better against the Unshaped," Charity said. "And you can shape their dreams, too, so you can fight back."

"I don't think you can learn proper raksha powers like we did," Hope said regretfully. "You're not the right type of Exalted. But this'll be enough. With you on our side we have a chance of getting where we need to go."

"Where's that?" Faith asked, narrowing her eyes. Surely she'd have remembered her sisters before now-well, half-sisters; none of them had the same father-but they had played together in the South Boston slums. She had kept the bullies off Hope and been protected from the gangs by Charity. She couldn't have made it on her own, could she? That felt ridiculous.

"We're trying to get out of the Wyld, silly," Hope said. "There's a shortcut, but we have to go through a breach created by the Thought of Ea Gso, and to do that, we have to get the Craven Emperor to let us pass."

The names left Faith feeling disoriented all over again. "So this Ea Gso opened a breach into Creation from here-"

""The Thought of Ea Gso," Charity insisted. "And yes, it's got to be finished by now."

"Why's the Emperor a coward?" Faith asked. "And if he's so yellow, why open a breach to Creation? Why work with Ea Gso's Thought at all?" She paused. There was something weird about that name.

"Don't try to figure out the Unshaped," Hope warned. "They're insane even as raksha measure things."

Faith sighed. "So what're these things supposed to let me do?"

"The Wyld doesn't have any shape of its own. Someone puts it here. Humans usually can't do it consciously. Now you can." Hope pointed behind Faith, who turned to see a herd of unicorns galloping by. She flinched. "That made you react."

"Well, yeah." Faith pulled out the spear in case the things tried to close in on her.

"Everything reacts to something," Charity said "Raksha play games with the images to see how much they can make the others react."

"I don't think I get it," Faith said, settling onto the ground. "Maybe I'm just a dumbass."

"Charity," Hope asked, "have you ever met a dumb Solar?"

Charity shook her head. "I think they exist, but they usually don't live long. She might be part ass, though. Faith, it's a game. Human children pretend they're Exalted heroes-or Anathema-and play-fight. They don't have real swords-perhaps sticks or toys. They don't wear royal robes or armor. But the stronger, faster child still wins." Suddenly Charity wore a suit of plate armor and held a mace. "Defend yourself!"

Faith leapt up and to the side. At first she thought to roll, but that wasn't going to work. Instead she spun on her front legs in a maneuver she was sure would never work for any horse and lashed out with her back hooves, sending Charity flying.

A wave of exhaustion washed over Faith. Suddenly she desperately wanted nothing more than to curl up and sleep. In the middle of a fight? That was crazy! They were doing something to her. Faith snarled and whirled to punch her other sister in the gut, shaking off the tiredness as if it'd never been there.

By the time she got back around, Charity was back on her feet with an army behind her, a horde of gibbering things that looked half ape and half lizard. She'd just conjured them from nowhere. Oh. Oh!

Faith clenched her jaw. The scene shifted; it shifted because she had forced it to.

A screen of bent cardboard sat in front of her. She was her normal, human self, folded into a folding chair. A map lay on the table in front of the screen, with little tokens in place.

"This is lame," Hope grumbled. "An army just pops out of nowhere?"

Charity shook her head firmly. "It was behind the ridge," she insisted. "It...Don't any guys ever play this game? It'd be a lot more fun with guys." That was a slight alteration, but Faith was proud of it.

"Boys don't have the imagination for D&D," Faith said coolly, though inside she was fighting not to smirk. "They just wave their swords around."

Hope sighed and put her head in her hands. "I wouldn't mind a boy waving his...sword at me."

"You are all of fifteen, missy!" Charity snapped before looking startled at the words. "It is not like this," she insisted. "We're better than those boring b...Creation-born. The stories we tell are real!"

"Realer than this," Faith admitted. "But not as real as us. Right?"

"Would you play a game that could really kill you?" Hope asked.

"Me? Maybe," Faith said. "Not everybody. But life's not a game. Plus being out here's gonna kill me if I don't get some food and sleep."

Hope leaned toward Charity and the two whispered together for a moment. "Get some rest," Hope said. "We'll look out for you. We need you...you're our sister."

Faith wasn't sure how real the fruit they fed her was, but it filled her stomach and didn't shrink her or turn her into a shoe or anything. If anything, it seemed a little tastier than usual, which in retrospect should have warned her that being a centaur was realer than the human-again fantasy she'd conjured up last night. She didn't sleep very well and woke up to find her human half laid on a pile of itchy leaves that at least propped her up a little.

"I shouldn't be here," she grumbled to Charity, who seemed a lot better rested. "I'm not enough Solar to make it out here."

Charity scoffed at her. "You may have come too early, but Solars rise to the challenge in front of them. I heard a tale once that one who'd only been Exalted four years routed the Primordial Oramus in single combat. Besides, you're more than a Solar now. I could open you up a feeding Grace and technically, you'd be one of us."

"Why haven't you?" Faith felt a cold shiver of suspicion. "We're sisters, aren't we?"

"You're an Exalt," Hope said. "It...isn't done. It's risky enough giving you Graces. Most Exalts who can do these things are Lunars who killed us snd made Graces themselves."

Faith growled under her breath. "Nobody's killing my sisters."

"Good," Charity said, "because we're ready to go. Your scene could have used more emotional resonance, but it showed some raw talent."

"How do we get back in?" Faith looked around. "That other unshaped-if it was a different one-didn't want to let me in."

"Oh, the unshaped are either bored by or terrified of Creation-born," Charity said. "It might have been the Craven Emperor or it might not have, but you're with us and you have your own Graces now. The Emperor will let us in together. There."

A squat circular tower rose from the next hill, surrounded by a field of bloodred roses. Faith strode toward it, buoyed by the resounding song that seemed to emanate from the flowers, and her sisters followed. The scent was the song, and together their heady music nearly overpowered her.

Set into the base of the tower was a wooden door bearing a brass nameplate. It read simply, "The Gunslinger". Faith put her hand to the knob, and it swung open.

She stepped gingerly through the door into a city of skyscrapers. For a moment she wondered if she were back on Earth, but she knew of nowhere on Earth where skyscrapers were tangled in vines and coated in rust as high as she could see. It wasn't LA, she knew that much, and it wasn't Boston.

"You know this place," Charity said. It wasn't a question. Hope nodded.

Faith forced herself to ignore the graffiti-"Pubes rule"?-that covered every surface. Way over the skyline she saw a familiar spire. The Empire State Building? She searched for the Twin Towers but couldn't find them. Still... "New York City? Never been here, but pictures...some places're always on the news."

A throbbing, bone-deep rhythm of drums rose from somewhere deep below. "Sounds familiar," Faith said, "but I can't place it. I..." A buzzing followed it, a sound that grew to a roar, voices, voices in the millions raised in fear. "Fuck. If all those people are gonna attack us-"

"Faith. Think. Everything that happens here is part of the game." Hope patted her on the flank. "It can only hurt us if we let it. We can't just will the problem away, though. We have to meet it on its own terms. Run!"

Instead of following orders at once, Faith grabbed each of her sisters by an arm and flung them astride her before breaking into a gallop. Mist, green and low-hanging, began to roll out of some of the manhole covers as she raced by. "Poison gas," Charity warned. "Don't breathe it. Don't even let it touch you."

Faith knew that much. "How do we avoid it?"

"I'm working on that," Hope said. "It's my task to solve. We made the challenge while you were sleeping."

"What else didn't you tell me?" Faith grumbled. "I would've thought I should know this kind of thing. Yeah?"

"If you say so," her little sister said, wrinkling up her nose. "I'll try not to keep anything else from you." The pounding of the drums reverberated through Faith's bones.

"Can you just conjure up stuff? Like protective suits?" That sounded like the easiest way out.

"If we're too gauche about it," Charity warned, clinging tighter as Faith leapt over a pile of rubble, "the Emperor will make the next tests harder. We don't want that."

"At base it's a good idea, though. Where would we find suits in a plaxe like this?" Hope began to look around.

"Some kind of bunker," Faith said nervously, picking up the pace. "In fact if we find a bunker we won't need the suits for a bit." She galloped up onto an ancient wreck of a car.

"Police station!" Hope called out. "The pokice guard might have one."

The station itself was a burnt-out shell, but in fact there was a trapdoor behind the desk. With effort and a little luck, Faith managed to jimmy the lock. "Airtight," Hope said. Getting Faith through the trapdoor was difficult, but it had clearly been intended for several men to pass through at once in emergencies. The big problem, instead, was getting her down the ladder. Streamers of gas were crawling along the station floor when they finally got Faith inside and closed the door.

"Now," Faith wondered, "how long do we wait here?"

"Maybe not at all," Charity mused, twirling her hand through her hair. "I would expect this to segue into another scene."

"We're in a closed-off space," Faith argued. "Unless someone opens that door and we go out, how would there be another scene?"

Charity squinted at the carpeting. "Dig a little deeper." She reavched down and took hold of a barely-visible seam, tearing a segment from the floor and revealing a second trap door as big as the first.

"A bunker in a bunker?" Faith bent way down to open the door, which revealed not a second bunker level but only a hole burrowed into soil. "I don't like the look-" Without warning her hooves were suddenly scrabbling on loose dirt as the bunker floor cracked and shuddered. Hope shrieked and tumbled past her. At the last moment Faith seized her by the hair. She screamed again, only partly from pain; Faith's traction failed and she went sliding into the abyss.

Moments later Charity came rushing down beside them, which even Faith knew wasn't how falling worked. "You wanted to know," she said. "Now you know."

Faith shrugged. None of this made sense...which made a kind of sense of its own; they were in the Wyld, after all. By this time they were plummeting past a dizzying array of alcoves and shelves that held various bottles and jars, paintings and sculptures. How anyone was supposed to use them she had no idea, unless they could fly. She had that option, of course, but there was no point in going back.

Hope plucked a can of soda from one of the shelves. "How does this open?"

Faith popped it for her, examining the unfamiliar zigzag brand logo. "Nozz-a-la", the stuff was called. Um...yeah. "Drink fast," she called, pointing at the pile of brush coming up rapidly beneath them. Hope was still scowling at the taste when they hit bottom, sending the stuff spraying everywhere.

Despite the continued awkwardness of her shape, Faith trampled through the brush and was free of it before the others. The alcove they were in was only the beginning of a long hall full of doorways. "Shit," Faith muttered. "I know this one too. He's reading my mind."

"He's conforming himself to your expectations," Charity agreed. "He knows your memories better than you do. Otherwise, how would he oppose you?"

When Faith glanced back down the hall, there was a glass table, just as she expected, with a key and a little glass bottle. "Come on,"" she grumbled, "we've got to drink that stuff so we can fit through the tiny little door into the garden." Hooves clattering, she made her way down the hall.

"There's not very much of it," Hope observed as Faith picked up the bottle and downed it. It would refill itself. Or something. She set the bottle on the table and reached for the key, only to miss. Her arms were shrinking. Worse, she felt inexplicably muddled. "Faith!" Hope called. "Charity, look around!"

Faith's torso was stretching forward but compressing to the sides. Her mouth and nose cracked and cracked again, stretching out into some sort of muzzle. She could barely feel her fingers.

Something foul was crammed into her mouth, and hands held it shut. Unable to rid herself of the disgusting stuff any other way, Faith chewed and swallowed it. No sooner had she done so than her head began to clear. Her arms had shrunk away almost to nothing, and her trunk had shifted into a horse's neck; now she was changing back just as rapidly.

"It didn't work the way you thought," Hope said. "It shrank your humanity. We nearly lost you."

"Holy crap! You mean I nearly turned into a horse?" Faith grew red as they nodded and handed her her bra. Her shirt was ruined, but the Grace, attuned to her, hadn't been damaged.

She was nothing but a goddamn liability out here and she was going to get them all killed. She was a walking disaster even when she thought she knew the way. Blood boiling, she lashed out with her hind legs, demolishing the door be...hind..."Hey. Alice never got through any of these doors."

Charity shrugged at her. "Take a look, then."

The room behind the door was full of aromatic smoke. "Hey! 'Scuse me?"

"Why should I do so?" drifted toward her on white fumes. "You have destroyed my door and my privacy. I will not excuse you."

"Well...can I make it up to ya?" Faith wondered, stepping carefully closer. Someone in there was smoking some good shit; she felt a strong buzz just from his secondhand.

"'Make it up to me'?", the smoker chuckled. "And how would you do that?" He reared up into view, an inmense multi-legged grub creature with clacking mouthparts. The caterpillar. Of course.

"I, ah..." Inspiration struck. "I got some way better shit." She began to reach for her pockets, but of course she didn't have any. "In my stash," she said, turning and beckoning to Charity. Charity stared blankly at her. "The stash I gave you."

Hope pulled a pouch from her purse. "You gave it to me," she said, passing it forward with a wink.

Faith rolled her eyes. "Delinquent."

"Following in your footsteps."

Faith held up the leather baggie and pulled out dried, shredded leaves. She didn't know-no. She'd harvested these from the clearing where the monk had told her off. They'd been weird mushroom things, only with leaves. In reality she hadn't done any such thing, but she wasn't in reality, and better to know than not know, right? "Take a hit."

The caterpillar eyed the stuff doubtfully before dropping it into his bong. Great gouts of smoke rolled out, and he took a deep hit. His eyes rolled back in his head. "This is indeed delightful. You are forgiven. Take some for yourself." He offered her a smoke.

"Um...maybe it might be a little strong?" She wasn't sure what wild Wyld shrooms might do to her.

"I insist," the caterpillar said, scowling at her. It shoved the pipe into her hands.

This could be bad, real bad. No. She had made the stuff. It would be a good trip, a mind-blowing high but not a dangerous one. She lifted the pipe to her lips and sucked in the smoke.

The hit fractured her consciousness and split her wide open. She could see all the way down to the atoms. Only they weren't atoms, not here. Everything was made of tiny dancing motes of color and light, and they weren't arranged in anything so simple as that. They were in delicate filigree patterns like lace that flowed and shifted.

"Faith?" Charity asked nervously.

"I might be a little high," Faith said carefully. Her words wanted to turn into something else. Flowers maybe. She remembered some story where people's thoughts were manifesting and someone had wanted to give them a tranquilizer but the warning label had said it caused bizarre ideation and that would have been bad. Words were not birds. Or shouldn't be at least. It felt as if there were a lot more words than normal flying around in her skull.

The caterpillar reeled back and toppled off his mushroom. "I think you put him under the table," Hope said innocently.

Faith struggled to focus on the situation. She thought she had won this one, but her head was a vortex of thought and imagery that was threatening to pop off her shoulders and turn into a hurricane. That thought alone seemed to cause the room to start spinning wildly, accelerating till Hope and Charity had to grab onto her arms. The inert caterpillar went rolling off into the distance while the room bucked and swayed, rising, but somehow Faith stayed put at the center of things.

The spinning slowed. The room dropped. Faith's stomach rose into her throat with a lurch. Then, with a metal-rending crash, they slammed back into the ground. Shrieks rose from outside. "Who'd we land on?" Hope wanted to know. Somehow she didn't sound as sympathetic as she should.

"A witch, with any luck." Faith had caught on by now. "Welcome to Oz."

There was no pair of feet under the room when Faith went outside, though. There was a broken white wall of china, with shattered shards lying all over the china floor on one side of it and the grass on the other. That was all, for long minutes. Then people began to peer out from behind little china trees and bushes. At least, they looked like people, though they were no more than knee high and made of porcelain painted in all colors.

"I don't remember this in the movie," Faith said. Had she read the book, or could the Unshaped somehow conjure up what it had been about? It didn't matter, she decided. "Hey. Not gonna hurt you. Just let me get on through and outta here."

Instead of making way, the china people began to sob. Faith scratched her head. What was the matter?

"The wall," Charity pointed out. "It kept them safe. Now anyone can turn up and break them, or carry them off for decorations."

"I'm not sure how much longer I can afford to stay out here," Faith worried. "I might not even be getting real food."

"Then we should be quick about it," Charity said, "but it's unfitting for beings of our station to cause such damage and leave our victims to it."

Faith sighed. "Anyone got some glue?"

A clown in a purple suit strolled up to her fearlessly, his body crazed with mended cracks. His mouth in particular had been cracked open, then pasted and repainted like a wide red grin.

"My lady fair,
Don't stand and stare
At poor old Mister Joker.

In palace green
We'll find the queen
And paste with which to caulk her."

"That wasn't much of a rhyme," Faith said with a groan. "Where's the palace?"

"Three days across the plateau," a milkmaid with a nick in her elbow said. "You must come with us to the Green Porcelain Palace and get the paste we need."

"Three days?" Faith put a hand to her face. "And then how long to fix the wall?"

"Could be weeks," said a farmer. "But you have to. We'll all be shattered to bits!"

Faith turned and studied the broken wall. Its edges went right up to the shattered metal room on both sides. She poked her head inside. There was only the one door leading out. She backed out. "Charity," she said, interrupting her sister as she spoke to Mr. Joker. "That wall ain't half the protection they think it is. If anything our room's the strongest spot in it. We can't stay here as long as they want or we'll never leave."

Charity narrowed her eyes at Faith. "You're saying you won't help people who need us because we endangered them?"

"I'm sayin' it was the Emperor who endangered them, not us. I'm sayin' I'm not sure they even really exist. And I'm sayin' we can't last out here long enough to do the job they want." Faith turned to Mr. Joker. "You don't look afraid of much. Can you work metal?"

The clown cocked his head at her. "A bit. 'Tis not often called for."

"It's called for now. I'll help you weld this into a proper wall section. After that I suggest ya trade for more metal ta reinforce your wall." Faith compared him mentally to the height of the wall. "It's a pretty big job. But I know you can do it. You just hafta buckle down and get to work."

Getting the china people working was a matter of a few hours, but it wasn't days before they could leave. In fact, by the time Faith set off along the wall, they had the beginning of a scaffold in place and Mr. Joker was hard at work welding the gaps in the metal

"I just hope they're real enough to still be there," she muttered to herself as she trotted away. In this direction the wall seemed to extend endlessly out to the horizon and beyond.

"You took my spot," Charity complained. "I was supposed to solve that one." Faith started to protest. "There's an order to these quests. Upset the order and you upset the Unshaped. Don't you see that?"

"I saw you about to trap us there," Faith countered. "I thought you didn't like games that could get you killed." Faith scowled at the infinite expanse of wall. Something was wrong here.

"You wouldn't have died, Faith, you're a Solar-" Faith came to a halt. The wall...plain white china, unpainted, unmarked...it was a trick of perspective. Faith closed her eyes and cantered sideways until she should have struck the wall.

She opened them. Faith stood a foot past a gap in the wall with Hope and Charity staring at her. "This way," she urged. Where'd she seen this trick? "He's scamming us," she insisted. "We can go straight to him. Don't waste time wandering around, c'mon!"

Her sisters followed, talking nervously to each other. Faith couldn't help wondering if it was their doubts that turned the simple maze of walls into a jumbled mass of staircases in under twenty feet. Sure, the stairs had happened in the movie, but a lot later-not to mention they were hard to navigate with four legs and hooves. She managed, with a little extra energy burned.

It was Jareth all right-or the real David Bowie, who she was pretty sure looked a lot older now. Jareth was leaning idly against a short section of brick wall, looking bored. "Everything that you wanted I have done. You cowered before me, I was frightening. I have reordered time. I have turned the world upside down, and I have done it all for you! I am exhausted from living up to your expectations." He didn't sound exhausted. He sounded bored too, reciting lines memorized ages ago. That was all so wrong. Jareth had been the one to prove to her she was bi; he shouldn't look as haggard as this. "I ask for so little. Just fear me, love me, do as I ask, and I shall be your slave."

"Through dangers untold," Faith recited, "and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle, beyond the goblin city. My will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom as great." She left out the part about the child, just as he had. There was no kid here. "You have no power over me!"

Jareth studied her for a long moment. Then slowly, softly, he began to laugh, building to a crescendo. "You really believe that this is about reciting words. You think that because you claim power you must have it. Foolish baby Solar."

"Well," Faith began haltingly, "so the hell what? It's still true, isn't it? I fought my way-"

Jareth seized her by the throat. "You 'fought your way through dangers untold'? Bah. Your 'sisters' led you here by the nose. I marked you because the prophecy of the Herald spoke of it, and because it amused me."

"Marked?" Faith managed to squeak out. Jareth dragged her down closer and kissed her full on the lips, loosing a wave of lust-no! Hell no! She reached up and jammed her thumbs into his eyes, and he backed off, still laughing.

"Marked, I say," he sneered. "Would you have feared to desire me before you entered my realm? Do not be a fool-I see your heart. You'd have bedded me a dozen times over for gain or satisfaction, save that I filled you with mortal terror at the prospect."

Mortal terror was no exaggeration. Faith's heart was pounding like a jackhammer. Hell, she still wanted him even after what he'd done to her. But that would reduce her to an animal, wouldn't it?

"I'm sorry we didn't tell you about the prophecy," Hope said quietly. "We weren't allowed, and anyway all we know is that it exists." Little sister or no, Faith wanted to shove her off the stairway into space.

Instead she glared at Jareth. "What's this prophecy thing?"

Jareth shrugged, a mockery of helplessness on his face. "You don't know? Perhaps you're not even the Herald. You've come all this way, lost your humanity, lost control of your own instincts, and all for nothing. Go or stay. Even a Solar won't last a month out here in the true Wyld, the purity of existence."

How? How was she supposed to know a prophecy she'd never heard? That had only even been mentioned to here moments ago? She couldn't-

Faith glanced back to catch Charity's eye. "From out of chaos will come a Creation-born who wasn't born in Creation. She'll be both Exalted and raksha, and she'll face the Craven Emperor on his own ground and back him off. She and her sisters will pass through the portal and open the way into the world of shape. Then-"

"-that done," Jareth concluded, "the armies of the Emperor shall pass through bringing conquest in their wake." He smiled indulgently. "And here I thought you didn't know it at all. But I see you aren't quite ready."

"Huh?"

"You are not yet quite raksha," the Emperor said, "for you cannot yet feed. Come here." He beckoned her forward.

Faith glanced uneasily at her sisters, but they waved her urgently forward. With a bit of a shrug, she cantered up to Jareth. "Do what you're gonna do."

Jareth pulled her close again. "It is you who must now kiss me, little Solar. If you are not too afraid."

Fury boiled up behind Faith's eyes, and she clamped her mouth onto his, biting his lip till she drew blood. When at last she pulled away, her flanks quivering, only part of the fire was still anger, and the harness thing that had been put on her had vanished like smoke, leaving her wearing only her bra.

"There we go," the Emperor said. "Isn't that better? I've opened your Cup Grace, commoner Solar. Even a minion would be considered one of us now. Perhaps you'll be a big girl one day." He gestured beyond him into the void between floating stairways. Something shimmered there that had been invisible before. "The way is clear."

Faith beckoned impatiently to Hope and Charity. "Get on my back. I'm gonna jump."

They glanced at each other and nodded-not to her-before Charity boosted Hope onto Faith's back, then climbed up herself. "How'd you know the prophecy? I thought we'd failed completely."

Faith winked at her. "I remembered all of a sudden, everything here's made up. Castles, clothes...prophecies...So I bullshitted him. It was my prophecy, an' I made it." Hope opened her mouth as if to protest. "It was what he wanted. I had to prove I knew what I was doing."

Ignoring any further questions, Faith sidled backwards a few feet, then burst forward at full tilt. She reached the edge of a landing and leapt into the air. The shimmer became a burst of blue-white light that gobbled her down, and at once she was falling...falling...

Faith crashed down into the rubble on all four hooves and nearly went sprawling anyway before staggering to her feet. The extra weight one her back from her sisters left it aching. She stared around at the vacant lot, then up at a tower of scaffolding. She hadn't jumped from there-but she could have.

"What do you know?" She knew that voice, that was for sure. "Back in Sunnydale, F? That was dumb."

She was. Faith was back in Sunnydale. It was madness, but there she was. "I do a lot of dumb things, B. Getting lost's one of 'em. You can bet this is the last place I meant to come."

How was she back on Earth? How was Buffy here? She didn't have time to find answers.

Buffy lifted a gun and fired.