Ragara Myrrun drifted above Buffy Summers in the water. He had no doubt she would heal soon, but for the moment she was paralyzed from the waist down. He sniffed the water. No, she was not pretending this time; this peacock of an Infernal would not foul herself for a deception.
Myrrun closed off his breath entirely and let the Water anima go. He could not speak like this, but his apology was made. Save for her pride, this one was not yet evil. He would regret this, but she was Anathema. She must not be allowed to destroy the Realm.
"You're good," the Despot said. He responded with a nod and raised his hand. "You're probably better than me." His hand sliced down at her throat. Sparks flew, and his hand rebounded. Her flesh had broken two of his fingers. "But you're not as good as you think you are."
She began to kick. No matter. He was The Grandmaster. The first Dragon-Blood ever to achieve the Blossom of the Perfected Lotus. She was powerful, but she was not his equal. The Despot rubbed her lower back. "Basalt bones and brass nerves, I guess. Saved my life. A year ago, a month ago, I'd have been wigged. But I'm past that now. I'm not human, not entirely." She closed her eyes, inhaled once, and opened them again. Her eyes flared green. "And I'm okay with that." Her fist closed around his neck.
Myrrun was unfazed. He thrust a knife palm into the suddenly-musclebound gut of the Infernal. She shook it off in a spray of sparks. No matter. She had a weakness and he would find it. She was...she was growing?
"I'm really sick of ruining outfits," the Despot grumbled as she reached twenty feet or more in height. A huge, jointed tail with a wicked barb arced up over her back. "But this? I'm actually starting to enjoy it."
Ragara Myrrun did the only thing he could do. Namely, he tore free from her clumsy grasp easily, spun in the water, and delivered a horrendously powerful roundhouse kick at the inhuman creature before him. She shot from the water like a breaching whale.
Myrrun shook his head sadly. The Anathema believed size would avail her. "The bigger they are," he mouthed. Yards away Buffy splashed down on her back. What a fool.
Though, in fairness, he did want to learn that form.
Chapter 83-The Untranslatable Sign
Luthe winked back into existence in the distance beyond Fred, who shrugged her tentacles. Probably none of the Lintha understood the meaning of such a gesture, but hey, it wasn't meant for them. She jetted off toward her city.
Sometimes all this seemed like a dream. Maybe that was why she'd accepted it so easily. She blipped back to Earth for a few days, entered another dimension, and now she was Cordelia the Queen. Only with more actual authority. One day she'd wake up and be...where?
She understood now what had happened to Luthe. It was the same way she'd gotten there to begin with, that helpful woman who'd taken her rowboat into the white seascape to reach her hidden ship. And then she'd abandoned Fred to Leviathan's stronghold and Xander on a desert island. What had happened to her, anyway, and where did Fred have to go to wring her neck, or maybe drop her through a portal into hell?
She was maybe halfway there when bolts of energy fire started streaking up the water beneath her. More Skullstoners, or had the Realm fleet turned on her? It didn't matter. She gathered herself to become a bird...
And sharp teeth dug into her fins and dragged her down. She rolled her eyes backward. The bone-crusted shark that had seized her could only be Swims-In-Shadow. She wasn't ready to face him, not directly. He was an elder, and she had beaten Leviathan by outthinking him at his weakest points, not fighting him strength to strength.
That didn't stop Swims-In-Shadow from taking a bite out of her fin, clamping down again, and dragging her deeper.
Anya released Luthe and let it drop from warp. She had a couple more zombies to hunt down, but honestly, this was easy. Kicking ass like Buffy could was great! Now she just envied her the increasingly spectacular powers that Buffy had only just stopped hating. What was the matter with that kid, anyway?
Ok, so making a whole city vanish was pretty spectacular. She was getting there.
Anya put regular arrows through the eyes of the last couple of zombies before they could make it out of the engine bays and into the heavily populated levels above. What had their goal been? Surely it wasn't just a crush, kill, destroy mission. No...the specters had made beelines for the higher decks. "Fred," Anya thought out loud. "She got to the bridge and took over the city. Maybe a ghost could do the same, and then we'd have a time getting them out of there."
It wasn't remotely fair that her entire visit with Xander was being taken up by this invasion. Sure, officially she was here to marry Buffy and Mnemon, but she'd been planning to take advantage of the event to take advantage of Xander. Iron Siaka had been gone for days now investigating whatever was going on in Chaya. That had left Anya alone in heaven with her paperwork, some very busy gods, and some Heavenly Ecstasy Aids she'd had quietly confiscated from the remnants of House Iselsi. She'd had an opportunity with Marilaq a'Lam, but Nazri had warned her that sex with the powerful demon-blooded ambassador from Malfeas was strictly against policy, so she'd kept it in her pants. Marilaq had seemed bitter about the whoke thing, too.
"Towers, have I got them all?"
Towers of Azure manifested his holographic form beside her. "No more undead can be detected in the city. However, the submersible fleet is still at large."
"Keep the city rotating and try to pick them off with its weaponry. Let me know if anything gets through. I've got martial arts practice, and Sad Ivory'll be pissed if I miss it."
"Surely the invasion fleets are more important?" Towers suggested with a puzzled frown.
"Pssh. Do you have any idea how many Terrestrials are sailing around out there? It'll be fine."
Tara lounged on a silk-cushioned couch, eating grapes and drinking...well, she wasn't sure what it was, but it was delicious. Everything she'd been told about Raksi was upside-down. The ancient Lunar, far from pushing her into things she was uncomfortable with, gave her pretty much whatever she wanted and promised to treat any of her friends the same if they should arrive. "All I ask," Raksi had said, "is that you live as an Exalt should. Hardship has its place in training, but you've suffered enough. If you want to learn more, indulge your power, and yourself."
Today there was a delegation arriving from deeper into the great Eastern forests, from a city called Xu-Lak. Gods and elementals served Raksi just as mortals did, and so did Fair Folk. There was something familiar about that place name, but Tara couldn't remember what.
"Well," said an even more familiar voice, and Tara froze, "you're a sight for sore eyes. All day it's been nothing but Raksi, Raksi, Raksi. Tribute this, honor that. It's just not in my nature, y'know?"
"I kn-now," Tara managed. She was better than this now. She was Exalted. Glory was powerful, but she wasn't invincible. Not to her. Even Buffy had been able to stop her, with careful planning. But Buffy hadn't had her sanity ripped out. "You l-live in Xu-Lak?"
"I spend time there," Glory said with an off-handed wave. "I live wherever. Not in this excuse for a world, you understand. What were the Primordials thinking?" She glanced around at the pavilion. "I used to think that you Exalted would return existence to its natural state, or at least use your powers like this to do something really imaginative. But, no...same old rules as Creation, with a few pointless addenda."
"What should it look like?" Tara managed.
"No stupid ways to die!" Glory burst out at once. "You have to eat and you have to drink and you have to breathe and you turn it all into nasty gunk. You talk and nothing answers or keeps its word. You die and poof! You're gone with no way back. Where's the drama? Where's the excitement? Things have got to be made out of matter, and just a few kinds at that! It's inane and it's insane and it's all a waste of effort."
"D-do you need anything?" Tara asked, fidgeting. Any moment now Glory was going to get twitchy and plunge her hands into Tara's head.
"Just to talk to someone besides that overblown bitch of a Lunar!" Glory began to stalk up and down. "I mean, really, just because she can do a few tricks in Creation she thinks her shit doesn't stink and we should like kissing her ass! Well, no!"
"M-maybe you should g-go?" Glory would see right through her, and-
"If only! But if we didn't bring her slaves and meat and pretties she'd come make an example of someone and it sure as the thrice-cursed Abyss isn't going to be my glorious all-important self! No, someone would have to overthrow her and..." Glory trailed off and began glancing around at the trees and vines. "...well, that'll never happen. She's way too terrifying."
"...terrifying? Raksi?" Tara shook her head. "That's all just rumor. She pushes me sometimes, b-but she's always n-nice about it." Raksi hadn't done any of the awful things to Tara that she was accused of doing.
Glory dropped down in front of Tara with her arms propping her up on the table and stared, mouth open. "Can I just say: Huh? Do you know we just delivered a shipment of human babies? For food? I mean, they're not our kind, but they're hers and yours. Did you know she eats human souls too? Or maybe you haven't heard how she lures men into screwing her so she can raise their babies as hers, or sometimes even to eat? She doesn't do all that? Hell, she's raised a couple of my kids. That is one messed-up girl."
"She d-doesn't-"
"Open your damn eyes, kiddo! She does. May I never get to die again if she doesn't."
"B-but...but she's..." My friend. My teacher. My lover. My...lover? How did that start? "She's not...she must be..."
"Loopy? By human standards, def. No question about it." Glory twirled a finger around her ear. "Cookoo, cookoo!"
If Willow or Fred were mentally ill, what would she do? Willow had taken care of Tara. "Do you think we could help her?"
Glory's eyes went wide. "Where do you get this 'we', chica?"
"That's a g-good question." Work with Glory? Maybe she was crazy too. Or still. Maybe all this was a hallucination.
Killing Raksi was out, then. Even if she could. But then, what?
Dawn couldn't breathe. She sank deeper into the water, holding breath she logically shouldn't need. There ought to be a way to choose not to need it. She'd done that in the Wyld, after all. She rubbed at the sides of her neck. She could imagine gills there.
Slits broke open on her neck, and she sucked water into her mouth, feeling it tickle membranes in her new gills as it fluttered out. There we go.Bodies were a convenience, not a constraint. For today, she chose to be Dawn Summers, and that was her sister over there being tossed around by some Dragon-Blooded jerkass.
New problem: what to do about it? The Terrestrial host had failed during the big invasion, but in general they were more powerful than raksha, and this guy was clearly tough. She wasn't just any raksha, either, though. She was the Key, a walking breach in reality.
She was bigger than him. She just had to figure out how to use it.
Changing shape wasn't the answer. Buffy was cutting loose, her demon-image flaring, and every time it did her body contorted into something different. (Dawn was proud of her.) A wooden statue covered in thorns. A giant. A girl wreathed in prehensile hair. She had her brass armor on now, too. But his movements were so fast and efficient she couldn't seem to land a blow.
Dawn unleashed the pride that this body resonated with, projecting it into the martial artist's core. He didn't even notice, though she sensed the power it leeched from him. She'd found an attachment he hadn't quite put aside: his self-importance. It imbalanced him. It slowed him. This time, when Buffy locked her fists and hammered down with them, he shot down into the water like a sinking piece of lead.
The man spun in the water and began to rise again, and there was Dawn. This deserved a one-liner, but she wasn't certain she could speak underwater without more practice. So she let her bleeding hand speak for her. Dribbles of red floated away in the turbulence the fight had made.
The martial artist regarded her uncertainly, then turned to face Buffy again. Buffy was gone. There was only a little boy struggling in the water. The man narrowed his eyes and pierced Buffy's illusion, taking him only a moment. But in that moment, Dawn's blood ignited with green light. Water swirled around the portal like a drain.
Dawn grabbed for him as the water carried her toward the rip, but he was too fast for her. Not too fast for Buffy, though. She seized him by the arm and twisted. The monk collided with Dawn, and they spiraled into the portal together.
Dawn dematerialized as soon as she realized she was lying on rough concrete. No bleeding, no portal. Buffy was safe, now. And this guy?
He was on her turf.
...down the drain.
Buffy stared in shock as the portal collapsed. The raksha had come to her rescue. Dawn really did care about her. The least Buffy could be was grateful.
And now Dawn was...inside herself? How did that work? Could she get out again, and if so where?
Only way she'd find out would be to live through this mess, ideally with as many Scoobies as possible. She got herself oriented. There was the surface, sparkling overhead. There was a fleet of black submersibles, and not far away a bony-plated shark attacking a giant squid many times its size. That wasn't right. She'd bet her left arm the squid was Fred, and the shark was working for the Silver Prince...somehow. Hadn't Fred mentioned something about a corrupted Lunar?
Buffy arrowed downward. Sometimes she wished she'd learned this Kimbery stuff ages ago in California-y'know, near the beach-but it usually hadn't mattered to her work. Fred had her arms wrapped around the shark and her beak was chomping at its armor, though not to much effect. Buffy slammed her brass-clad teakwood body into the shark at full tilt, breaking it apart from Fred and hurtling them down into the depths together.
She'd gotten a few yards when the shark mutated and shifted into a humanoid beast with huge teeth and claw-fins and skin like hyperhigh-grade sandpaper. Buffy's armor didn't take more than a few nicks from simple contact, but the monster's bite sank deep into her neck. She punched it in the snoot, but it didn't seem fazed. If there were some way she could get all these transformations at once-
Wait. Had she seriously thought that? But it didn't seem as repulsive as it would have a month ago. And the door opened to her.
An eruption of green flame flash-boiled the water around her, and the shark-man howled. And Buffy...what had she turned herself into? Everything was tiny now.
The arm she seized the shark-man with was an agglomeration of gnarled roots and branches, bound in brass, wreathed in thorns, and coiled around a core of boiling water. She looked at herself, still looking at the shark-man-had she still not managed to get rid of that extra head? Thorny vines curled down from her heads, skull-shaped carvings of teakwood with green water boiling in their three eyes and mouth each. She was some sort of immense tiki- or wicker-girl, two-headed, scorpion-tailed, a monstrous plant-fire-demon thing, and...
And it didn't matter. She was still Buffy. It was okay. The shark-man gnawed at her, carving great wounds into her arm, but they filled right in with brass and stone. Sure, she wouldn't want to try window-shopping at the mall like this, but that wasn't what this body was for anyway.
Sharks and whales swarmed around her, but they weren't willing to close in through the boiling water. Angry ghosts were another matter. At the shark-man's direction they tore through her, wrenching at what must have been her soul, because pain seared through her without any visible wounds. Buffy drew back her arm and flung him, and Fred's tentacles caught the missile and spun him around, wrapping around his neck, trying to choke him. A bone collar protected him, but he was still held fast.
The shark-man shrank out of Fred's grasp. Buffy squinted. He'd become some sort of tiny fish, too small to see clearly. Fred pointed her tentacles and...Buffy couldn't see at first, but then she realized Fred was wrapping the fish in silk.
Then it vanished. Buffy could see clearly that it had dematerialized, though for an instant she didn't realize what she was seeing. The submersibles turned and raced for the surface. There must have been something there, because they had arrived underwater. Buffy swam after them, Fred trailing in her wake.
Buffy broke the surface, and the heat burning inside her burst into churning green flame that filled her and spread out into an aura that looked tight to her but must have ranged at least a couple of feet out. Fred had to swim off to one side before taking on her humanoid-squid form, just to avoid the searing fire. Up here there was a giant soulsteel cactus thing in a rowboat, like an array of clubs made of barbed wire and zombie flesh. That might have been a head at the top, or just a solider club; it didn't look nearly as articulated. Was that Xander up there? With Shadow, and they were hacking away at the zombies in the framework. The huge vessel was pulling away.
Buffy glanced down at Fred. "We can't let that thing escape." Her voice roared like flame in her own ears. She did have ears...she thought. "Who knows what else it'll destroy?"
Cries of terror and rage were coming from somewhere, as if someone were freaking out over a monster. Oh. Yeah. That would be her, and this wasn't going to go over well with the Dragon-Blooded, was it?
"Xander! Shadow! Get down!" She waved at them to get off the ship framework, but they just stared blankly in shock. "Get...off...get off already!" No use. They didn't recognize her. She could char that thing clean in moments with a clear shot, and her own friends weren't giving her the chance. Sigh.
Wow, this thing would've been one hell of a vampire killer, if there were any here. Kinda conspicuous at home.
Buffy pressed her lips together in irritation, then made a careful pushing "shoo!" gesture. "Move, you two!"
Shadow frowned and tugged at her hair. "Xander, I think that's me. I think we should do what she says."
Xander studied her face a moment. "Yeah, I got no problem with that plan. Jump?" He linked arms with her, and they jumped off the zombie boat.
Buffy crossed her arms under her chest, then blew twin jets of green flame at the undead mecha. Shadow lifted one hand out of the water and added her own smaller burst of fire. Xander...shrugged and began swimming toward Mnemon's flagship. Its components in flames, the zomboat began to slowly retreat. "Xander," Buffy said, "make sure Mnemon knows to pursue that thing." Xander saluted briefly and began to climb aboard.
The whole structure was in flames now, and Shadow and Fred turned to swim for the boat, too. With a shrug, Buffy released wicker-creature-on-fire and began shrinking down to herself.
She reached the flagship and draped her mobile hair around her naked body as she climbed the ladder. The Dragon-Blooded either stared or turned away from her. Or stared and then turned away, like Peleps Aramida. Even Mnemon's eyes were wide and haunted. "That really was you, wasn't it? I've never seen anything like that. It was...it was magnificent."
That isn't what your eyes say, Buffy wanted to tell her. "We can't let that thing get away to fight another day," she said instead.
"It has two Anathema in it," Mnemon said without hesitation. "Deathknights."
"Yep," Buffy said, popping the p, and went belowdecks. No one followed.
The wedding might be off.
Fred clambered aboard the Terrestrial flagship Dragon's Fury. "You guys saw that, right? I think Buffy's past her hangups."
Alexander shivered. "She sure is." He glanced around at the frenetically-nervous Dragon-Blooded. "Might not be a good thing."
"You're right," Shadow told Fred, "and she's got the bad guys running. I just wish I knew if we should join them."
Willow stood in front of the tribunal and shrugged. "You can impede me if you wanna. I'm sure the Walker in Darkness'll be reeal pleased to know you stopped his Deathknight."
The black-furred Varajtul glared pointedly at her. "Will you leave this place? We will guide you away from here as fast as possible."
Willow folded her arms. "I really don't know. You people haven't exactly shown great hospitality. All I want is to catch up with a kidnapped friend, and here you are hauling me in front of the judge. Maybe I should get the Walker's attention. Or even the Neverborn."
"No, by no means," the judge said, leaping to his feet. "Our best guides will take you to wherever you must go. This we swear."
"Oh, all right," Willow said. "Just let me cast this locator spell, and we'll be off."