"I thought it'd be a matter of saying the words," Faith grumbled.
"Not quite," Xander said. His hand touched her shoulder, and he pointed. "We need a place almost free of the Loom of Fate's influence. But we're sailing into a maze of Wyld zones during Calibration. It won't be long."
The tangle of islands that they were sailing through weren't part of any major nation. Some held city-states, others lacked human life entirely, while still others sheltered "barbarians" who might be anything from a few struggling hunters with stone tools to Waterworld-style pirates running decaying Shogunate vessels.
The clouds gathering overhead shaped themselves like angry thunderbirds and thrashing sharks and mobsters carrying tommy guns-no joke. In the distance two tall islands swam freely among the others as if unconnected to the ocean floor. Another's trees had leaves of brilliant blue. Great serpents and mermaids swam the waters between. Civilization didn't take root here because very little could; the Wyld made for unstable bedrock.
The great grey mobster cloud drew closer. "Get anyone who's not Exalted indoors," Faith warned. "I don't like this."
Xander struck a dramatic pose, and images sprang to life across the visible deck, Buffy and Giles and Willow and Gunn and...was that Faith?...all sketched out in golden light. "All mortal personnel," Xander boomed out in a multitude of deep, deep voices, "take cover. Wyld phenomenon ahead." His words echoed through the towers, kept clear by the power of his shining anima.
"Andre the Giant?" Faith questioned.
"I am the Dread Pirate Roberts," Xander said, his voice no longer echoing but still unnaturally deep, and Faith laughed till she had to hold her sides. Thunder rumbled.
As far as Faith could see, people scurried for the doors to get inside. Even roofed pavilions largely emptied; who could know what the Wyld might do? Thunder sounded again. Where was the lightning, though?
Rain began pounding on the deck with abrupt thunder of its own, sending water spraying in every direction. A drop zinged past Faith, creasing her arm, which stung and bled. "Damn," she growled. She grabbed Xander's arm and together they dove behind the cover of a tower. "Raining bullets. I've seen it all now."
"There's no door here," Xander said uneasily.
Faith shook her head and reached behind her to touch the panel. "There is," she said firmly, and a hatch slid open at their backs. "Don't think that'll be much use at home-no Wyld zones I know of-but I know my way around chaos now." The room was full of whirring machinery; she hadn't taken any time to think what might be inside. "Gun turret?"
Xander nodded. "Got it in one." He glanced at a viewscreen that showed rain ricocheting off the towers. "Couldn't be too much worse than this, I guess."
Faith shrugged. "It could turn to acid and melt the hull." She very carefully didn't visualize that. "It could turn anyone it touches to monsters." Or that. "Or it could just make pretty flowers grow on deck."
"Dawn says she can make this part of the Wyld move so that we end up ahead of the Black Fleet," Xander said thoughtfully. "I'm considering it. It might be the safest alternative."
"We could appear someplace more dangerous," Faith warned him. "Next to it, anyway."
"Fred thinks you should go before we do it, if you can. We're more likely to find a suitable place here."
Faith nodded. "Considering where I ended up when I came here, I wouldn't be surprised. Oh, hey!" The rain had stopped, and she opened the hatch.
Pink and purple flowers covered the deck as far as she could see.
Chapter 71-World Not World
"This?" Pavayne laughed. "This is what comes against me? Hello, little buttercup. I sense the guilt on you, sure, but a little snippet like you no doubt came by it sneaking into nurseries. Do you know who I am?"
The blond girl lifted her chin as if she felt superior to him. Fool. "Know what? I don't care." And she bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. She was afraid of him, whatever she said.
"i am the Reaper. I am Matthias Pav-" The little blond child blew out a pink cloud of frozen mist onto her hand. "Pavayne. I killed more men and women than...what are you sneering at, little trollop?"
The frozen hand plunged into his chest and drew out a glass-clear cleaver wreathed in pale blue flame. It was easily four feet long, never mind that it had just been pulled from his chest. To Pavayne's astonishment, rather than strike at him, the girl shrieked, "Woot woot!" and did a little dance.
Pavayne made a face and a gesture, and the little fool's clothes evaporated into mist. The sword remained, though, and the girl's brows drew together in a scowl. She lifted the blade as if it were made of foil. He opened his mouth and-
The blade sliced through his middle and cut him in two. As his torso slipped off to the left, he felt a force draw him forward, wrenching his ethereal body into the sword. At least, he thought, I need not fear hell.
Then nothing.
Kate Lockley and the Buffybot fled at top speed across the shifting junkpile that constituted the floor of this...dimension they were in. They slipped. They stumbled. They kept going.
They'd made it to within sight of the cyborg zombies' destination: a city of cracked, blackened crystal. Then the creatures now pursuing them had risen from behind its walls.
"What the frilly heck are those?" Buffybot yelled as she slipped and went careening down a pile of oily scrap. It wasn't a bad question; the tentacled spheroids resembled robotic octopi or jellyfish, but they flew through the air at a ridiculously fast pace.
"Dunno," Kate said, "but we're out of sight from the city now." Her revolver appeared in her hand, merged within her grip, and she fired six times in quick succession. Sprays of sparks and metal flew from six impact points, and six octobots slammed backwards into the mass of the swarm. "Whatever you've got, I'd use it now."
Buffybot nodded and grabbed up a random segment of metal plating from the ground. "Nothing special," she said, and sent the fragment spinning like a misshapen frisbee into the swarm. It ricocheted from bot to bot, visibly disrupting the cloud. A few of the creatures dropped from the swarm. "I don't think I have the weapons I need for this fight."
"Well, we're surrounded by broken machines," Kate reminded her. "Improvise." She glanced down at the gun fused into her fist, felt the rounds flowing through her body to slot into the chambers like bugs crawling through her. Alien though it was, she'd learned to welcome the sensation; she was a practical woman. Six shots; six shattered bots. The swarm flew on.
"I have an idea," Buffybot said. "Hang on to your boots."
"Boots?" The shifting junk beneath her feet began to slide in increasingly larger amounts. "Buffybot, what're you do-?"
From beneath the pile something shuddered into view, like a huge spherical camera eye on a stalked tentacle. Then everything moved. "I think I've made contact," Buffybot said.
A floor rose up beneath them, rubble sliding away. No, not a floor, a shell. They were standing atop a robotic crab with the bulk of a blue whale. Grating crunches rose from beneath them as it inhaled the octobot swarm like dust, and a modulated warble like low-pitched modem noise filled the air. "Contact with what?" Kate asked in alarm.
Buffybot stared in shock at the creature. "I don't know!" The crab lurched into motion and began to run. "Stop! We're running away from the portal!" The crab paid her cries no attention. "I don't know where we're going or how to get back," the robot whined.
Kate sank down into a crouch against a slight corrugation on the creature's back. "Maybe it's taking us to its leader," she suggested, half-seriously. "And if it takes us to something we need to shoot..." She held up her gun hand, still merged into one unit. "...we shoot."
"Are you sure we're not in too deep?" Faith worried. "These islands seem pretty weird." Off to the left she could see an immense beehive floating in he water, attached to the branch of a tree that also grew from it. To the right she saw a great pink clockwork glass structure. Ahead there lay a barren hunk of rock with a single spring fountaining from the highest spur.
"We might have to backtrack a little to do the shifty thing," Dawn said, "but out here we can actually make the characteristics we need for the portal. I think that one in front of us will do it."
"An island nothing lives on," Faith muttered. "Great."
"I think it's more than just a dead place," Willow said with a frown, coming up behind her. "It doesn't feel dead exactly."
"What's not dead about it, Red?" Faith peered at the hunk of rock, but nothing moved there aside from the spray.
"I couldn't tell ya," Willow sighed. "Can I try something before you go?"
"Don't unleash any wacky cosmic forces," Faith warned her.
"Oh, nothin' like that," Willow said, baring her fangs. "Shouldn't even hurt much."
Faith held still and tried not to flinch as Willow sank her fangs into Faith's neck. There was a moment of chill before the Abyssal pulled away. "You didn't drink much," Faith said.
"Eh, it didn't work," Faith said back to her.
Faith jumped and yanked out a stake. Her spitting image was staring back at her. "Two Buffys, two Taras, now two mes? Not likin' this, Red. Where-? Aw, I get it."
"I look like you to you?" the other Faith-er, Willow-said. "Cause I still look like Leatherface to me."
Faith reached out and put her hand on the duplicate of her face. "Looks like me, sounds like me, feels like me." She took a deep whiff. "Smells like me." She tilted her head to one side, then barked out a laugh and kissed her lips with her lips. "Even tastes like me. Good one, Red."
Willow put a hand briefly to her lips. "I...that was the first kiss I've had in a while. It was good. Thanks."
"We're five by five, Red. C'mon," she said, and took Dawn and Willow by the hands. She lifted her hands over her head and shot into the air. Dawn let out a little shriek; Willow let out a whoop. In moments they were over to the dead crag of an island, where a mandala of some sort was set into the rock in front of the fountain.
"I've got to learn how to do that," Willow said breathlessly.
"Yer spreadin' yourself out too thin, Red," Faith warned. "Take care of yourself." She stepped up to the fountain and almost stuck her hand into it before thinking better of it. Instead she pictured a rat held in her hand, then set it down in front of the fountain.
The rat scurried up to drink from the fountain. No sooner had the first drops sprinkled on it than it began to shrink. It drank greedily-she'd created it thirsty-accelerating the shrinking. In moments it was a hairless pup. Then nothing.
"Well, now we know why nothing lives here," Dawn squeaked. Willow shook her head and closed her eyes. Faith just grunted. The rat hadn't really had a life of its own, but seeing it "youthen" away to nothing was still freaky.
"Don't touch the water," Faith said. There was no telling about the dose. "I'm gonna get the others." She soared back to the city-ship.
The world flickered and swirled like mist rendered in black and white. Harmony watched contrails spray from the thin hairs of her right arm for a few moments before moving on.
They stood at the base of the Wolfram & Hart tower now. For some reason the building had been devoid of ghosts except that Pavayne guy near the top.
"How far do you think it is?" Gwen asked. She was the only member of the party not attuned to death somehow
Harmony blew on Blind Edge and watched the ghostly flames trail from it. "Head for the subway station," she suggested. From there they could enter the network of tunnels that ran beneath the city. Here they probably merged with the Labyrinth before long. If she was lucky, maybe they could take the subway there. If she was really lucky, maybe she could bend the Labyrinth and get there sooner. "I always wondered why vampires liked sewers and subways," she thought aloud. "We didn't usually go much of anywhere in the daytime even with 'em."
"They're like the Labyrinth," Shoat said. "Maybe they even connect to it from the living world."
"I'd believe that," Marie Santangelo said. Harm didn't know her very well, just that she had some kind of death...bond...thing. "Even if they were aboveground I'd believe it. You should see what the mausoleums in New Orleans are like."
The subway was dark. The subway was damp. The subway was stinky. Harmony was used to all that. The rusted cars and junk heaps that used to be cars that sat blocking the tracks? Those were a problem.
"Wait for it," Shoat said. Harmony made a grumpy face and waited. What was she waiting for?
With a squeal, a rusty, dilapidated train pulled into the station. Wait, hadn't that track been blocked? If it had, the blockage was gone. "All aboard!" Shoat called.
"Convenient," Gwen muttered, but she hopped into the train. Harmony followed to find all the seats occupied by decrepit passengers in various states of bodily disaster. Shoat joined her and waved.
"Standing room only?" Santangelo grumbled as the train left the subway station.
"Sorry," Harmony said, consulting her map. "This'll take us past the geometry stack region in three hours or so...I think."
"What's a geometry stack?" Gwen asked. Shoat nodded, and Santangelo seconded the gesture.
"There's an place where space-time just totally collapsed on itself," Harmony explained. "Gaia used to be integrated into Creation before it was destroyed. The Shadowlands and Labyrinth didn't get destroyed too cause the Neverborn kept them there but they folded up inside themselves. Well...most of them, some pieces just fell into the Void. Anyway, I don't know for sure about time rates and speed here."
Gwen shook her head and whistled. "Sorry," she said a moment later. "I...you've changed."
Harmony just nodded. "People do that."
Kate and Buffybot faced one another as the tram hurtled through unimaginable spaces. The giant crab-bot had brought them to this transport, and now it shot them through great fastnesses of solid iron bulkhead, through bubbles like insulated foam made of metal, through networks of huge buildings that would've been skyscrapers if there were a sky to scrape. They shot up a gallery of counter-rotating capacitors and passed through an ocean of oil.
Buffybot looked out the window. There were gears out there now, turning to move something lost in the distance amid all the shifting parts. She looked back at Kate. "I wish we knew where it was taking us."
"I do too," said Kate, but she just sipped at the cup of nutrient slurry and made a face.
Ahead of them there was a horrifying snik-clack-clack-clack. Kate started to leap up, but Buffybot grabbed her hand and pointed to the window just as the car hurtled off the end of the disconnecting tramline. Buffybot's inertial sensors registered a few moments of freefall before the tram slammed down onto another line and ratcheted itself into place. Now the car was shooting through a forest of flashing crystalline spires.
"Not a regular route, I'm guessing," Kate said, grinding her teeth.
"No," Buffybot agreed, "I don't think it is at all. We're going somewhere-" The crystals around them grew smoky and cracked. "-important-" With a screech, the tram lurched to one side and derailed. "-and that's why we're being stopped. Great." She reached up and popped the hatch.
Kate obviously saw as clearly as she did that a growth of blackened crystal had shoved the tram tracks, wrenching and disconnecting them. In the distance, ultraviolet flares flickered.
"I don't like the look of this," Kate said as one of the nearby crystal growths unfolded splintered arms lined with razor-sharp claws. Buffybot wondered why she felt that needed to be said.
The crystalline thing lumbered toward Buffybot, ignoring Kate, who snarled and began to metamorphose. Buffybot merely hefted a broken spar from the tram track and swung it like a baseball bat. The crystal monster thrummed with vibrations, then cracked and shattered into three pieces. "Breaking up isn't always hard to do!" Buffybot crowed.
The splintered pieces of crystal rose and reassembled themselves into three smaller crystal things. "Careful what you say," Kate warned her. "Don't count your chickens till they're hatched."
Buffybot gave a little whimper and drove the spar point-fiest into the nearest of the creatures, which shattered. Tiny fragments flew everywhere, and Kate yelped sharply as a long blackened shard embedded itself in her left arm-then shot the other two with bullets that impacted with a force that violated physics and shattered them as well.
"Did we get them?" Kate asked as she examined the wound on her arm.
Buffybot looked around at the scattered bits of crystal and realized at once that they were drawing together. "No, they're still alive." She grabbed Kate by the uninjured arm. "Move! Move fast!"
In the distance Buffybot could see spires of a different sort. Though they too looked like great crystal shards, they were joined together in ways that were functional but not regular, and her senses could make out windows and doors. "I'm not sure what kind of city that is, but it looks safer than the one with the zombies."
"Agreed," Kate said, glancing back. No doubt she could see the skeletal forms skittering after them.
In the distance, the city fluoresced, and suddenly the skydome filled with a brilliant violet glow. An angelic figure with weeping stigmata of pure purple light shone above the towers.
It was calling to them.
Faith stood on the barren crag, flanked by Angel and Spike, with TARA behind her. Fred stood there as well; Faith had asked her for one final bit of advice. "You just need to visualize it," Fred said. "The Wyld will shift to open the portal in the right place. Just remember that won't work in a real spot that doesn't change."
Faith nodded. Beyond Fred, on the deck of Luthe, she could see Tara arguing with Willow, who still wore her face. She might have listened in, but decided not to intrude. That was one couple she didn't want to get between. Past them she could see Stephen. She'd begun to think the Lunar might come back with her too, but he seemed to have decided to stay.
"All right," Faith said. She took a deep breath. "Qwrdmlzf!" The portal spiraled open, flickering blue with red lightning. She reached up to feel the cluster of microbots TARA had left on her shoulder, checked Spike and Angel's shoulders as well, and shouted, "Let's go!" Together they leapt through the gate.
The vortex spun them around weightlessly for moments or an eternity before dunping Faith unceremonially on top of Angel's ass. She pushed herself up just enough to look around, copping a feel while she did. The moon shone bright overhead, lighting a field of grass on which black-and-white cattle were munching. And in the middle distance, a stone fortress rose.
"The Cotswolds?" Spike grumbled. "What'd you bring us to the Cotswolds for?"
Faith smirked at him. "You'll see."
Blind Edge struck, and struck again. "I could really get used to this," Harmony deadpanned, and waited for the laughter.
"That's not much of a one-liner," Santangelo said, flinging gouts of pale green fire at the ghosts.
Harmony glanced at Shoat. "You need something that fits the situation better," the kid said. "Something about rigor mortis, maybe?"
"I got nothing," Gwen said, hurling lightning bolts. "Something about getting a charge out of it, maybe?"
"You guys are putting me on," Harmony complained as she ran the last specter through. "I don't pun that badly, do I?"
"It could be worse," Shoat said as she directed her ghostly minions to stand down. "You get a good one in here and there."
"I ought to be as good as Buffy by now," Harmony grumped.
"Yeah," Gwen said, "doesn't everybody? Check tbe map?"
Harmony studied the papers. They changed, of course. They had to to do any good. "Stairwell ahead and to the left, and then we'll be in the Labyrinth proper."
"We're looking for bloody steps made from bone, right? Maybe out of vertebrae?" Santangelo shoved open a door. There were stairs beyond, all right, white and metal, polished to shining purity. "Okay, not what I waa expecting. I won't complain."
Shoat sniffed. "Disinfectant. Hospital smell. Yeah, it's the Labyrinth all right."
Quentin Travers lowered his book. "You! You have no right here, Slayer. This is our pl-"
"You've got power," Faith said. "Money. Spies. Weapons. But you don't have power over me. I'm not the Slayer. I never was."
Quentin Travers reached for the alarm bell and had his hand slapped aside. "You insolent-"
"Yup," Faith said. "Insolent. Thieving. Violent. Sneaky. Little bitch. Got anything else to call me, old white British man?"
Travers made as if to reach for the bell rope again but stopped when Faith pointed a knife at him. "You have me at your mercy. Do your worst."
"Not here for that, old man. You have power. I'm taking it. All you ever existed for was to control the Slayer. Now there's not one. What a waste."
"I trust you have a point?" Travers said it contemptuously. Faith held no interest for him, since she would not submit to his direction.
"I heard you knew about Lilah months ago and you did nothing to stop her. You could've put an end to this before it began. You didn't do a damn thing, and now she's the most powerful person in the world." Faith held the blade to Travers' neck. "You swore oaths to protect the world. Well, ya didn't. That ends now. From now on, baldy, you work for me."
"You wouldn't-"
Faith's knife drew blood. "Fuck that noise, big man. You work for me. Council's mine now."
Travers pursed his lips. "You think it's that easy? Very well. You are the boss. Order me. I...dare you."