The ride home was even worse than the ride to school. Joyce had insisted on taking advantage of Wren's generosity at least until the gallery was open and operating smoothly. According to her the young man spent most of his day gardening or working on his car, and had a lovely singing voice. She'd caught him running through random snippets of the soundtracks from Aladdin and the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Buffy was not reassured, especially when her mother reminded her to be ready for her study group later that night. A bit of genuine confusion and subtle inquiry revealed that Wren would be picking her up at seven. On the night she was fated to die by the Master's hand. A frantic call to Willow and some waiting got Giles on the phone. His advice was as terrifying as it was unhelpful: do what the possibly literal embodiment of evil said and hope for the best.
Advice wasn't the only thing he was willing to offer, though. While he didn't have much in the way of hope that he or even the entire Watchers' Council could actually stop the Lightbringer as an angel, he was also technically the father of demons and might have some of the same weaknesses. Last-minute orders from around the country and from the council itself delivered by a new Watcher might provide a way to contain or banish him when things went wrong. A young man named Wesley had delivered the extra books and materials from the Council only minutes before Willow contacted him. There was hope.
By the time Wren knocked on the door Buffy had choked down what dinner she could and worked herself into and out the other side of an epic panic attack. She felt numb. This was it. She walked to the car with him, noticing a car idling about a block away and the man who'd given her the cross arguing with a man in a fedora and trenchcoat about the same distance in the other direction. The song playing was once again strangely appropriate, and for once she recognized it. The Final Countdown blazed over the stereo system as Wren drove them to condemned building a few blocks from the school. The car she'd noticed idling followed, but neither occupant of the vehicle acknowledged it.
When Wren opened the door for her she took his hand reluctantly, heart pounding in her chest. This was it. Either the Devil murdered her or the Master did. The teens and Watchers piling out of the car down the street only meant her friends would see her final moments. A murmured and irresistable instruction to follow had her entering the warehouse behind him timidly. She caught flashes of surprise and confusion on the faces of vampires before they dissolved into dust at his approach. He stopped at the entrance to a recently excavated tunnel she thought might lead toward the school and glanced back at the entrance.
"You may as well follow closely. It won't change what happens here," he called into the darkness. Giles, Willow, Xander, and a younger man in tweed stepped into the room and shuffled closer. Weapons, elaborate crosses, sheafs of notes, and a few bags hung about them as they obeyed the compulsion. Where Xander had gotten a pistol Buffy would never know, but she smiled at him faintly for going through the effort. The mysterious asshole who'd given her the cross came in only a minute later, followed by the man in the trenchcoat and fedora. The fallen angel issued one last command before turning and leading them into the darkness of the tunnels.
"While you follow you will be silent. It's not every day that you witness such a momentous event, after all."
The walk into the caverns and eventually a buried church-like structure was quicker than Buffy would have liked. Whatever spell had been laid over the group kept them calm and at peace despite the screaming hordes of vampires and other demons that approached only to disintegrate a few steps away without even a glance from the Lightbringer. Places that would otherwise have gone unlit by the torches along the way were instead visible due to an omnipresent aura of silver-white light that radiated from him but cast no shadows. When they finally reached a ruined church with its pool of blood, plethora of demons, and stereotypical vampire at the head Buffy was resigned to her fate. When Wren started talking she sighed at expected villainous monologue.
"Heinrich Joseph Nest...your servants call you Master. You are aware of the prophecy, and the Slayer stands before you. She does not stand alone. Know that while you thought yourself without equal, you failed to consider your betters," he declared dispassionately.
The Master sneered and gestured, for the demons under his command to apprehend them or attack was unknown. They met the same fate as all those before them and crumbled to dust when they approached the group. The calming aura was now tinged with amusement, and Buffy started to wonder even as Willow and Giles both gasped in revelation. If other emotions carried through the spell, why had the monster let amusement of all things through? Was it just to make her feel worse about how helpless she was? That didn't make sense with the enforced calm, but he could probably change it.
Across the room the Master loomed, seeming to grow taller and more imposing in the flickering candlelight. His eyes glowed dimly, but he staggered back when the silvery glow of Wren's light surged. What had most likely been the Master's stronger minions fell to their knees at the brightness and started to smolder. When they burst into smoke and ash the Master growled loud and low, then stepped forward into a shimmering ripple in the air.
"Whoever you are, your power will only feed my own," he said menacingly. "After all this time the barrier is too weak to contain me!" The ripple in the air shattered like glass and fell away like an illusion. "Now, behold the power of the Master!"
There it was. Villain monologue achieved, though of higher quality than most, Buffy mused to herself. This whole aura of calm thing was actually pretty cool now that she thought about it. The Master thinking he could take on Lucifer himself brought a giggle to her lips, but she managed to keep it down to a snort. What passed for eyebrows on the pale bastard's head twitched as he glanced in her direction, then he started issuing commands of his own. She felt them, but they slid off her mind without any effect.
"You will all submit. Kneel before me, and be the feast with which I celebrate my return to this pitiful world!"
Nobody moved, but the Master's gaze did snap back to Wren. He seemed confused. Feathers rustled somewhere in the distance, and the ephemeral silver light grew brighter around him. His dark hair bled from ash blonde to glowing white, massive wings of light sprouted from his back, and his clothes changed from casual wear to an otherwise simple amethyst-trimmed silver robe. Buffy could actually see the aura that had surrounded her and the the rest spread to fill the room, and the Master screamed at its touch. His skin darkened and started to smoke the instant it was exposed, and he stumbled back into the pool of now-steaming blood. The Lightbringer's eyes followed the ancient vampire as he flailed for a moment, then charged with a roar of fury and pain only to be caught by the neck and raised into the air.
"So ends the reign of the Master," the winged man said calmly. An anticlimactic snap and a pulse of light reduced the ancient being to dust, his skeleton hanging in the air for a moment before following his flesh into oblivion. Steam drifted briefly from the closed fist of the fallen angel before his supernatural features fell away and he turned to Buffy, her friends, and the Watchers. He eyed them for a moment before pulling in the aura, leaving each of them in various states of quickly elevating distress. Giles and the new guy quickly started scrambling for their books and other instruments while Xander stepped protectively in front of her. Willow hugged them both, standing sort of beside Xander and sort of beside Buffy but defiant in the face of such overwhelming power.
A small, crooked smile came over Wren's features as he studied them. When the robe melted away into motes of light to reveal his normal clothes underneath and he snorted in laughter everyone tensed. He shook his head, gestured to first the pool of blood, then the floor below him, and finally at the group before simply walking back the way they'd come. Buffy twitched, watching him go. She heard Xander inhale sharply and turned back to see a massively complex diagram glowing on the floor where the Lightbringer had vanquished the Master and a pile of gold ingots where the blood had been. The dust from the vampires and other demons was floating toward a growing sphere in the center of the room.
Before she could react Buffy found herself on her back as the sphere exploded into brilliant white light that washed over the entire cavern leaving a lingering feeling of peace and serenity in its wake. As Giles and his fellow watcher scrambled to take pictures and investigate the remains of the cavern Willow and Xander both turned to hug her close. A few minutes later Willow commented that Buffy'd done a good job of dying her eyebrows to match the rest of her hair.
When the group reached the place they'd parked the Lightbringer was nowhere to be seen, but his keys sat on the hood of his car with a note admonishing the new Watcher (Wesley) not to damage it driving Buffy home and to park it on the street. It was signed only with an elaborate L. The shaken group rode back to Revelo Drive in silence, with Giles driving the Devil's car out of spite and morbid curiosity. There was a box of mix tapes and some paperwork in the glove compartment, but other than that it seemed brand new and empty.
Sunnydale seemed...peaceful, for lack of a better word. The lights shined brighter, the grass was greener, and not a single bump could be heard in the night. The wind carried a bit more dust than usual, but the weather had been fairly dry recently. The lights were on at both Buffy's house and the Maclay home next door. A grinning Dawn greeted them at the door and led them into the dining room to find Joyce and Wren calmly sipping tea and discussing how etiquette might change in a town full of vampires and other demons. Buffy froze, her eyes darting between the two at the table and the exit frantically. Giles groaned and started to clean his glasses while the others guided Buffy to a seat before finding their own.
"So naturally," Wren continued, "in such a place you'd likely find an abundance of places of worship, the graveyards associated with them, and a distinct down-trend in doormat sales. The statistics we've talked about support this, and you can see how it looks. It's like the entire place was tailor-made for the supernatural," he said with a gesture at a stylized map on the table. A few books were stacked nearby, covered in papers and a couple of folders. "The narrative can be shaped in any way you want with such an environment, and if you really wanted to you could even branch out to surrounding cities. It's quite impressive." Joyce nodded along, tracing out paths on the map and flipping to several others under it that seemed to show sewer and tunnel systems connected to the surface.
"It isn't the first thing I'd have guessed, but when you lay it out like that it does fall together nicely. How long ago did you say this started?" She asked.
"Well, Sunnydale was founded in 1899 on an area the Spanish settlers called the Mouth of Hell by the eternally-youthful Richard Wilkins, whose ultimate goal was to ascend to the status of an Old One. It's quite charming and holds to the plot very well, especially given the Catholic mission established early on and eventually occupied by the excommunicated priest Josephus du Lac. You remember the Du Lac Cross I told you about with Angelus, Spike, and Drusilla?" Joyce nodded again, and both Watchers' eyes threatened to pop out of their heads.
"Yes! That does tie it together nicely. And all through it these...Scoobies, you called them? These Scoobies and their Watchers just barely manage to stay a step ahead." This earned another nod from Wren.
"Exactly. That helps keep the dramatic tension from ever completely dying out and allows for more and more powerful enemies over time given the background mechanisms I explained involving Aspect of Demon. With sufficient cleansing it can be turned to even greater good, but the heroes never seem to realize that. It truly is a shame the way the plot came down in the end. So many deaths...but that's why it's a game, right?" Wren's smile, completely innocent, belied the horror of what they were hearing. The fact that Joyce nonchalantly agreed with him and continued to look over the maps was chilling. Wren seemed to notice the group then, and checked his wrist as if there was a watch there.
"Well Joyce, this has been a lovely chat and you make excellent tea but I believe I have to be going. Feel free to keep the maps if you like. You can even frame them. And if you find anything that might work for the items we discussed please remember to show me first."
"Of course, dear. Have a nice night, and tell Tara and her mother we'll be there for the barbecue!"
Giles dropped his bag full of ritual paraphernalia with a resounding thud as Wren passed the group on the way to the door and Joyce started gathering cups for tea and coffee. Questions he hadn't even known to ask had been answered with just that little snippet of conversation, and the puzzle coming together in his head wasn't pretty. The fact that Joyce was now aware of the nature of the town and the threat it represented could be horrifically disastrous or exactly what he needed to keep his emotionally unstable charge on the path necessary. Buffy looked at her mother with tears in her eyes.
"Mom? You... you know? He told you?"
"Of course, Buffy! I don't know why you didn't say anything earlier," Joyce replied with a slightly confused look. Giles inhaled deeply and prepared the speech again, just to make sure the poor woman hadn't been misled. He could think about the rest of what he'd heard later.
"This world is older than any of you know. Contrary to popular mythology, it did not begin as a paradise. For untold eons demons walked the Earth. They made it their home, their...their Hell. But in time, they lost their purchase on this reality. The way was made for mortal animals, for man. All that remains of the Old Ones are vestiges, certain magicks, certain creatures," he began. It wasn't until Buffy lifted the refrigerator as a demonstration and Giles conjured a small fireball that they realized Joyce had believed the entire thing to be a sort of local legend that was being turned into a role-playing game.
Dawn, who'd left with Wren ostensibly for tutoring came back to a rattled group of family and friends with tubs of ice cream and tales of magical fireworks shooting over the warehouses at the edge of town while she talked to the man in question about her hopes and dreams. Careful questioning revealed that he'd told Dawn he was staying with the Maclays next door during his extended vacation, and had easily guided her through both the assigned homework and quite a bit of what she could expect over the rest of the school year.