The Dowager of the Irreverent Vulgate in Unrent Veils crouched above the Well of Udr, meditating on the Beyond. Infinite universes composed the Beyond, and somewhere among them, an Anti-Creation with which her world could join and be annihilated in perfect Oblivion.

From time to time she wondered in what sense these cosmoi were real, for if they continued, had true Oblivion really been achieved? But tonight she felt assured, the Abhorrence of Life embracing her like a lover. She would find Anti-Creation, and soon. She felt a presence reach out to her, calling from the Beyond.

"Come, come to me," she crooned, "come and catch my hand." She stretched out her arm into the Well, heedless of Oblivion. The Well lay Beyond Oblivion, and even if it did not, the Abhorrence of Life would protect her.

A hand caught hers. The Dowager did not start back in surprise. Anything might wait for her. Anything might come to her siren call. She merely drew back and pulled with a fraction of her strength.

A slender woman's hand had locked its fingers to hers. She pulled, and the brunette rose from the depths, her eyes wide with madness. This did not disturb the Dowager. Madness was the air she breathed. She understood that only a madwoman could desire the Abhorrence of Life as consummation, and did not care.

"Beautiful," the madwoman in her grip breathed, and this did surprise the Dowager, just a bit. The hand she held was the hand of a Sidereal Exalt, somehow arisen from far enough Beyond Fate to make Oramus quail. "Gan sends greetings, Dowager. See the Turtle of enormous girth? On his back he holds the Earth." A child's doggerel?

That was all right. The Dowager knew children very well indeed.

Chapter 85-She Left the Web, She Left the Loom

Amy tried to suppress a shiver. The woman in this room was swathed in bandages that covered her face. "We don't understand it," the nurse said. "Her main injury at first was a stab wound, but soon thereafter she developed a radiation burn. She's got full-on radiation sickness now. If you can't heal her, she won't live out the night."

Amy made herself walk to the bed as Kate asked, "But you called me first. Why?"

"She asked us to. Ms. Maclay is some sort of antiquities dealer. Said she knew you."

"Maclay?" Amy jumped a little. Hadn't Faith said Willow's girlfriend was named Maclay? God, she wanted to be out looking for Faith. "Ms. Maclay, can you hear me? Do you want me to heal you?"

"...please..." It was the faintest whisper of a voice.

Amy laid her hands on the stricken woman and released a breath that sparkled mistily in the fluorescent lights. Ms. Maclay inhaled the shimmer, then sat up in bed and clasped Amy in her arms. "Thank you. Thank you so much. She said nothing could save me."

"She?" Kate asked. "Who did this to you?"

"I don't know. She burned. She burned with green and silver fire, and she said..." The woman paused in confusion. "She said she'd go after my sisters next. I don't have any sisters. I'm an only child. Nurse, can you-?" She motioned to her head. After a moment's consideration, the nurse cut the bandages with a pair of scissors and began to help unwind them.

"Ms. Maclay," Kate said, "you told me you haven't had much contact with your family in years."

The woman's skin was patchily disfigured and speckled with blood; her black hair had plainly been falling out in clumps. She nodded. "My family is Assembly of God," she explained. "My father was abusive...said I was a demon or a witch or something. When I left, I left the church and eventually started practicing Wicca. I thought I might as well be what they said I was, at first."

"Can you cast any actual spells?" Amy wondered.

"A few," Ms. Maclay agreed. "I think maybe suppressing my potential so long hurt it."

"Do you have any pictures of your family?" Kate asked.

Ms. Maclay asked for her wallet, then shuffled through it, eventually pulling out a small image of her as a child, along with a man and woman, the latter holding her. Both were sandy blond, with rounder faces than hers.

Frowning a little, Kate asked, "Is it possible you're adopted? They don't resemble you at all."

"I...might be. Mom couldn't have more children, but she always called me her 'little miracle'. I guess I just assumed she was my biological mother."

Kate nodded. "It's not as hard as it used to be to track down biological relatives. You might have sisters you've never met. Want to help me find them?"

"To keep them safe? Absolutely. Can I get released from here?" The nurse hurried off to find a doctor and some paperwork. "Should I come with you to your, um...headquarters?"

Amy nodded. "Probably that'd be safest."

"We'll get you checked out and take you there ourselves," Kate said, "and we'll start tracking down your sisters right away, Prudence."

"No," Glory said. "You don't understand. She's...do you realize what she's done to me already? You think I bring tribute to any common Exalt who comes down the pike?"

"Um," Tara said, "no. I wouldn't expect you to. You understand I'm not trying to hurt her. She needs help. She-"

"I can't outfight her. You don't see at all. I am Glorificus the Almighty. I command the allegiance of thousands. In the Wyld, I am omnipotent." Glory leaned forward across the table. "Balor once gave me a wink, don't you get it? And Raksi still took me to pieces. Your plan isn't going to do anything but piss her off."

Tara leaned back, frowning and fidgeting at her hair. "Fred beat Leviathan. She-"

"That's great. That's worth watching with popcorn. That's not where you are. You can't take over Sperimen the way she took over Luthe. She'll eat you alive and crap you out, and...then do it again literally." Glory stood up. "That's it, I'm going to go tell her. I can't leave without permission and I can't stay here and keep this quiet."

"Glory, please..."

"Hell no." The raksha who would be hellgoddess strode off to get her better.

Tara leaned back, relieved. Everything was going according to plan.

"Your plan's not working," Anja said. Buffy just met her gaze. "You're disturbing the Mask of Winters all right. But he hasn't realized it's you. He's not focusing on Gem, he's looking at Lookshy. You're too far away to be a plausible threat. The real you, I mean, and your kingdom."

Buffy crossed her arms under her flea-bites and kept her eye fixed. "You're saying I'm not real."

Anja spat at her feet. "This isn't time for some game! The Mask of Winters could kill you with a dirty look!"

"Exactly," Buffy said. "That's exactly the right time for games. If he notices me, I mean really notices, he'll kill me."

"Pardon me," said the Sage of the Depths, "but are you telling me you're simply unwilling to put your life at risk? Because if so, you are simultaneously doing too little and too much. If-"

Buffy cut him off. "It's not that at all. I'm choosing the right moment to show myself. Here's the thing: I've died before. All of me. It totally sucks, but to save the world? Here I am putting myself on the line. We're the Slayer. If I get through it somehow, yay me! But if I die, I'm still out there. I don't understand all the wacky philosophy, but all of me isn't going to die, and that's good enough for this me. Okay?"

Anja thought that over. "You show your face and the Mask knows you're behind the sabotage. He kills you, but that...doesn't stop it somehow?"

"Geran Devon's the Slayer, and I'm his Watcher. Elloge's his patron, so he's mucho better at the hit-and-run than I ever was. Killing me will end his training, which sucks, but it won't stop him, and it won't stop his Rose Thorns either."

"His Rose Thorns?" the Sage asked.

"His Scooby gang. His bunch of saboteur buddies. He's managed to find an Outcaste, maybe two, and a couple of thaumaturges. It doesn't sound like much, I know, but my Scoobies managed under Mayor Wilkins's watch for two whole years before he started even worrying. They didn't even know thaumaturgy." Buffy put on a smug grin.

"Was Mayor Wilkins a Deathlord?" Anja asked. She wanted to ask if Buffy was revealing the real plan, or just another layer of subterfuge, but at least she saw that Buffy really had done this before. She might be outmatched in a contest of wits with a Deathlord, but she wasn't just flailing blindly.

"You know, I don't even know what Richard Wilkins was," Buffy admitted. "He turned himself into a powerful demon, but I don't know what his Circle was, even. But he was three steps ahead of us right up until Graduation Day."

"And on Graduation Day?" Anja lifted one eyebrow slowly.

"We blew him to smithereens," Buffy said calmly. "The eclipse happened, he turned into a huge snake demon, his vampire army got stymied by a bunch of students with crossbows, his movements got corralled by more students with flamethrowers, I reminded him I'd stabbed his favorite foster daughter in the guts, and then I led him on a merry chase into a room full of high explosives. Boom! Dead Mayor Snake. Any questions?"

The Sage rubbed his bald head. Anja took that to mean he had nothing, so she asked her question. "Is there still a place here we can party together before the endgame?"

Buffy shrugged. "All I wanna do is have a little fun before I die. I got a feeling I'm not the only one."

"Sage, will you join us?" Anja knew he didn't care about sex, but he might enjoy getting good and stoned.

"I am in," the Sage said agreeably. "This will rival the battle with Leviathan. I prefer to go into it with an easy mind and a smile on my face. How long do we have?"

"Until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard," Buffy deadpanned. Anja had no idea what she was talking about. Nor did the Sage, to all appearances. So neither of them spoke up. "See what I have to work with?"

None of Ragara Myrrun's training hsd prepared him for this.

He was a student again, learning incomprehensible "modern science" and a history of a world without Exalts, a world of mortals alone. His martial arts functioned. His elemental charms functioned. No one paid them any mind, unless he hurt someone, and even that was quickly forgotten or hidden away.

The history was a lie. This world swarmed with demons, especially the undead demons called vampires, and other creatures were secretly present as well. Even an unshaped raksha managed to crawl free through the dreams of a comatose little boy.

The science was a half-truth at best. Even with only the Emerald and Iron Circles functioning, sorcerors and necromancers wielded dangerous power in the shadows. Thaumaturges and martial artists blended into the population even better. No one mentioned essence power, but it surged just out of sight.

One Exalt held it all at bay. Only one, and her Anathema. Oh, there were mortal occultists of various sorts, and enough of them to hold back disaster where the Slayer could not be just yet. But world-ending threats emerged when and where they were least expected. Lost artifacts, new artifacts, monsters created by mad geniuses...it never seemed to end.

Somehow the mortals thrived. The middle-weight dangers seemed to have vanished, or perhaps been pushed out of the dominant nations. Vampires might devour individual mortals like berries. At the other end of the scale, a Metagaos jouten might threaten to suck the world into its maw, though these always failed. But no dragons set whole cities aflame; no Wyldstorms mutated communities; no zombie armies emerged from Shadowlands.

Was this what the "Slayer" had done? Eliminated the middle range of threats? And that had made space for un-Exalted humanity to squeeze the small ones into hiding? It seemed plausible enough. But this was all a simulation in the endlessly-deceptive Wyld.

"This is what really happened in my world," insisted the raksha. "I'm just showing you." But he couldn't trust her, of course. She kept trying to batter at his mind and body, though so far he had held her off. Defense alone would always fail, eventually, and he lacked the power to twist the Wyld back against her.

"Why have you not gone further?" Myrrun asked. "If all the demon races were destroyed or banished, most of the existential threats to your world would end with them."

"I guess it would be too conspicuous?" the raksha guessed. "And I don't think people would put up with it. To kill all the demons faster than they could make more there'd have to be..." The raksha paused thoughtfully. "I guess I have to go ahead and call them death camps. That wouldn't go over well."

"Put them in Malfeas?" Myrrun suggested facetiously. "Or in the Wyld, or the Underworld? Surely you can hide these things as you hide everything else."

"We shouldn't," the raksha said. Morality from the Fair Folk? It must have been a game of some kind. Strange. "We keep humanity safe. No need to go further than we have to."

"Better," Myrrun said, still puzzled. "What if I explained the Five Noble Insights to you?" It would be futile, of course. How could a raksha learn to follow the Way? But it might keep him sane longer to repeat the truth, for himself.

The raksha nodded. "Okay. Tell me. I'm willing to learn."

He doubted that very much.

Raksi beckoned, and Tara stepped closer to her. She couldn't help it. By her calculations, this was all of Raksi, as she had hoped. Glory's warning had made her uneasy enough to merge her selves. It had to be all of her, if Raksi was no more powerful than she had seen. And at worst, if it turned out Raksi had one remaining body, it would be weaker than Tara. "Glorificus says you're plotting against me. I'm terribly disappointed." Her words tugged at Tara's heart, all but breaking it. "I have to be sure you're not going to try to betray me. So."

"Glory didn't understand me," Tara whimpered pitifully. "I c-could n-never hurt you, noble Queen of Fangs. I wanted to show you how t-to reach other worlds. I've worked out how. I c-could take you to mine, I know how valuable that would be to you."

Raksi stood and strode over to her. "Your world. Where the dead can be made alive." Her eyes gleamed. "You can show me this. These wonders, even though they may be few, that even the Solars failed at."

"Yes," Tara said weakly. "I can d-do that. From here. New Sperimen is Elsewhere, outside the Loom."

Raksi's nails raked her neck. "Show me. Show me the path to your other world. I will give you rewards beyond all imagining, Glamorous Alabaster Sorceress. Show me." Raksi's lips brushed hers.

Tara breathed deeply. She had to be calm. "From the center of the room," she said, and made herself walk there. "The geomancy resonates here. Are you sure this is all of you? Losing contact with yourself m-might be b-bad."

"I am all here," Raksi said, breathing heavily in anticipation. "Do it."

Tara spoke the word, and the green portal coiled open before her just as she had hoped. She had feared she wasn't smart enough to match Fred, even as an Exalt. "Hold m-my hand?"

Together they stepped through the portal, and Raksi's eyes gleamed with wonder and greed as she stared at the towers that scraped the sky itself. "It's...it's beautiful. You didn't describe half of it. This is a wonderful gift, Tara Maclay."

Tara forced her mouth to open. "Om? Do you remember me? Tara? This is my friend Raksi."

I REMEMBER YOU. YOUR SOUL IS THAT OF THE TRANSCENDENT ARCHITECT. WELCOME, TARA. WELCOME, RAKSI. The crystal city thrummed. Raksi peered uncertainly at its spires.

This was the moment of truth. "Om, my friend is a danger to herself and other people. I need your help to confine her." Raksi's head snapped around, her mouth open. "Be careful. She's very powerful and her mind is unwell."

OF COURSE, TARA. I WILL HEAL HER IF AT ALL POSSIBLE. IF NOT I WILL KEEP HER IN SAFETY AND SEEK FURTHER HELP.

"You bitch!" Raksi leapt at her, transforming as she flashed through the air. Her jaw stretched out into a muzzle full of sharp teeth. "You ungrateful bitch!" Crystal golems caught her in midleap. She shattered them, but more emerged from the walls faster than she could destroy them, until she was buried in a swarm of moving statues.

Tara bit her lip, fighting the urge to fall to her knees and beg forgiveness, to plead with Om to let her lover free. It was for the best. Raksi needed more help than Tara alone could give. "Tara! Please! Stop this, Tara! I love you!"

Tears blurred Tara's vision. "I love you t-too, Raksi. I'm so sorry."

"Tara, I'm pr-mmph!" Raksi pried an arm off her muzzle. "I'm carrying your child, Tara! Stop th-!" The crystalline robots sealed her behind a massive golden door, cutting off her screams.

IS THAT TRUE, TARA? THIS MUST BE VERY DIFFICULT FOR YOU.

Tears streamed down Tara's face. "It c-could be. I d-don't know. Can you tell if she's...if..."

RAKSI IS INDEED PREGNANT, TARA. I CANNOT CONFIRM THE PARENTAGE AT THIS STAGE.

"Goddess, I...I d-don't even know if I want to know." She buried her face in her hands. "Keep them safe. Do what you can for her, Om. I...I have to go."

OF COURSE, TARA.

Difficult? Om had no idea.

"I can't release her, Xander, not till we've confirmed that she's free of further programming." Fred turned away from the video feed of Anya's cell. "I hope you understand."

Alexander rubbed his chest where the stab wound had been. "No, I've got no objections. I feel bad for her but I absolutely agree that we can't risk letting her loose right now. Anya's always been pretty scary."

"So I guess the wedding's delayed again," Mnemon muttered. "Buffy, is this how matters usually run with your friends?"

"Well, somebody does tend to go evil at least once a year," Buffy acknowledged. "Anya kind of had her turn at the start, though, when she was gettibg over being a demon."

"Also weird stuff happens to someone at least once a month," Xander said. "Getting split in two or turned invisible. Love spells, rat transformations, you name it, we've done it."

"Will you be able to confirm her state of mind any time soon?" Mnemon asked. "Or do we need to have someone else officiate?"

"I don't know any easy way of doing that," Fred said unhappily, "but I'm sure there is one. I'll consult with Towers of Azure."

"If you need someone," Sulumor said, "I shall volunteer. But I'm not sure my ceremonies would be appreciated."

"Yeah, no," Buffy said. "I'm concerned we'd have to eat the guests."

"How do ya mean 'eat'?" Cearr asked. Cyan, Buffy, and Mnemon all gave him a level glare. "Forget I asked."

The sun was setting behind Willow as she trudged the last few yards up to the towers of lost Sperimen, and the jungle rang with the calls of crickets and birds and frogs. "They say Raksi rules here," Willow said. "I was afraid it was her."

"I don't suppose she has anything decent on the menu?" Green Aurora asked. Willow met her eyes but said nothing. "My stomach's been making noise for hours."

"We'll kill some food in a bit if we need to," Willow said, and didn't bring up what Raksi might have to eat, what with the sudden distraction of two figures walking out of the tangle of vines that hung from the ceremonial gateway. One was Tara, and Willow broke into a run. She didn't stop on seeing that Glory was the other, just flung her arms around her girl. "Eugh," Glorificus said, and shied away from them as Tara kissed Willow full on the lips.

But the kiss was brief, and Tara sagged down onto a tangle of vines. "Tare, sweetie, what's wrong?"

Tara begin to laugh, even as tears rolled down her cheeks. Willow's heart rose into her throat, but Tara's laughter slowed after a moment, declining into a hitch in her breathing. "I'm sorry, Willow...I didn't mean..." She stopped and began again. "Welcome to the campus of Sperimen. Registration is open for the new semester and tuition...tuition is free. And I guess...I guess I'm the new Queen of Fangs."