Everything either belongs to Joss or it should, no infringement is intended and no profit is to be made. When you get right down to it I'm not really worth suing anyway unless you want a share of an underpaid civil servants wages and it just wouldn't be worth the hassle trust me.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Hyperion Hotel – Los Angeles – March 2004

'Part of me was hoping you were going to have to stake her' Buffy admitted as Drusilla was bought into the conference room. The slayer had only got back from Pylea a couple of hours before and frankly could have done without having to deal with any more complications in her life but she knew it was better to confront problems head on, prevaricating never got you anywhere.

Spike showed Drusilla to a chair directly across from Buffy and sat down beside her. Angel was in Connor's room giving him some much needed pointers on dealing with Drusilla who was still demanding to see her "baby brother" and was on the verge of a major sulk. Given that a Drusilla sulk was a truly epic thing to behold Angel had decided to bite the bullet and let her meet his son, to say he was unhappy about it was a serious understatement however.

Buffy leaned forward and pushed a cup and saucer towards Drusilla, there was no need to be a poor host and they were certainly better off if she wasn't hungry.

Reaching for the crockery Drusilla picked up the cup and eyed the contents disparagingly, the aroma wafting onto her nasal receptors. 'Yucky Pigs blood' she complained, sticking out her tongue.

'It's got Otter blood in it too and a splash of Vole' Buffy replied evenly. 'Dawn prepared it' she explained to Spike who had raised his eyebrows. 'I don't want to know why she's suddenly become a blood cocktail expert' she told him.

Spike shrugged, Dawn had been trying out various combinations on him and the five percent Otter, one percent Vole mix was the best yet, fruity but without being overpowering to the taste-buds, and a hell of a lot better than straight Pigs Blood.

Drusilla daintily sipped the contents of the cup. She had been bought up with good table manners and would never slurp from fine china, the additions made it palatable at least but it was still akin to Decaf Coffee, it was better than nothing, but not remotely a replacement for the genuine article. A nice pint of O-Negative would have really hit the spot just then Drusilla thought to herself but she doubted anyone would be willing to donate and if she helped herself they might let the crazy slayer loose on her.

'You know why you're here?' Buffy asked.

'To see baby brother' Drusilla replied. 'Daddy is getting him all ready to meet me' she told Buffy happily.

The Slayer sighed. 'No I meant do you know why we want you here?' she asked. 'I couldn't care less why you want to be here' she stated.

Drusilla scowled. Slayers were so rude and this one was even more horrid than most, she had killed Great Grandpapa and stolen her Spikey's heart away. Nasty, stinky slayer, she thought then smirked. 'You need me because they made you blind and I can see' she replied. Even the silly Powers-That-Be knew what a spiteful, mean slayer she was, the vampire decided.

'Not as dumb as I thought' Buffy responded, 'of course it wouldn't take an awful lot of brains for that to be true.'

'William had a chip in his brain' Drusilla said, 'still got one on his shoulder about Daddy' she said. 'Nothing in his head now but thoughts about you… and putting Tabasco sauce in Daddy's blood' she added turning towards Spike and given him a look of reproach. 'The boys are ghastly pranksters' she told Buffy. 'When daddy was really daddy, and Spikey was really Spikey, they used to put crosses in each others beds' she confided.

'Well he bloody started it' Spike protested before a glare from Buffy stopped him from continuing his spirited defence of his ongoing, and occasionally very petty, campaign against Angel. The cross thing really was started by Angel, or rather Angelus. Spike still clearly remembered pulling back the covers without looking, jumping in and then doing a very convincing impression of a Harrier Jump Jet eighty years before they invented the damn things, shooting straight up into the air and howling like a Rolls Royce Jet Turbine.

'I am always saddened to learn that even if they were to live several normal lifetimes men never grow up' a cold, harsh voice interrupted from the doorway, 'it robs me of my hopes for my Wesley to ever give up his more juvenile habits.'

'Illyria' Buffy greeted the newcomer, 'don't you spend most of your free time playing computer games?' she asked wryly.

The God-King fired back an icy look that could freeze lava. 'They're good for hand-eye coordination and maintaining my superior reflexes' she replied evenly.

'I'm sure' Buffy replied sardonically. 'What the hell is wrong with her?' she asked pointing at Drusilla who was staring wide-eyed at Illyria.

Images flashed through Drusillas head at rapid pace faster and faster becoming a blur in her mind, aeons worth of history, one vision after another, it was overwhelming. She screamed and put her hands over her ears, closed her eyes, tried to keep it out but it made no difference.

Suddenly Drusilla's eyes sprang back open and the screaming stopped. A tiny trickle of blood ran down from her left nostril and slowly began to drip. 'Handsome man saved from the monsters only to become the worst of all' she said. 'Armies marching, banners flying, rivers of blood' she moaned.

'Bloody hell' Spike exclaimed. 'I think she just tuned into Old One FM.'

Buffy blinked. 'Too much wattage' she responded. 'I hope you haven't broken her' she told Illyria. 'These are hard to get' she added.

Spike glared at Buffy. 'She's a person' he told her curtly, reaching out a hand and taking one of Drusilla's. 'You alright Love' he asked.

Drusilla ignored him completely. 'Cities aflame, bodies stacked like cordwood' she murmured.

'That's enough Dru sweetheart, you'll make her nostalgic and melancholy again and call us muck.'

Buffy couldn't help but nod in agreement. 'Got to agree, couldn't handle another "In my day" lecture.'

Illyria glared at the slayer then smirked. 'They're usually better received by the audience than your speeches' she retorted.

Buffy glared back, Smurfette was getting bitchy.

'Conquest, death and destruction' Drusilla continued, oblivious to those around her, her eyes still transfixed on Illyria. 'Machines of war crushing demons beneath steel treads, explosions brighter than the sun, Empire and Glory.'

Spike frowned. 'I don't think she's talking about the past' he said slowly.

'Me neither and it's starting to creep me out' Buffy responded, casting a wary glance at Illyria.

'I could stand to hear more' the God-King interjected happily.

Caverns – Cuyahoga Falls – March 2004

Giles walked around the statue, it would have been impressive even if it wasn't twenty feet high, the carved stone sculpture depicting the Grand Duke of Hell in soldiers garb, a sword by his side.

'We're hoping that it's not a life sized depiction' Stephen observed wryly, leaning back against the cavern wall. Two fully armed slayers remained by the chamber entrance but otherwise they were alone, with Willow and Kennedy busy preparing items of the magical and non-magical variety to seal the cavern and the three girls who had been visiting the place regularly returned home with a stern rebuke never to do so again. Kennedy was good at stern rebukes.

'It could be a half-scale model' Giles responded deadpan.

'That crown on the statues head is real gold' Stephen told him, pointing up at it. 'Willow levitated up for a closer look' he explained.

'It was probably just lead or something originally before Berith transmuted it' Giles responded. 'You know alchemists called the mythical element that turned base metal into gold after this character' he added. 'So what were you planning to do?' he asked.

Stephen stopped leaning against the rock wall and walked over to Giles. 'Well given that he stopped answering questions, and that he reputedly commands twenty-six legions we thought we'd blow this statue to little pieces for a start and put the best binding spell we can generate around the remains.'

'It's only a representation you know' Giles responded. 'It's not the real Berith turned to stone.'

Stephen shrugged. 'Of course' he said, 'but it is a locus of his power and a place of worship for him' he continued. 'Its destruction certainly can't hurt, well hopefully it'll hurt him, but it can't hurt us.'

Giles nodded. 'I did some quick research on the plane here using that new-fangled computer gadget they've been scanning the library onto' he told the younger watcher, pointing at his laptop bag now resting on the ground nearby.

'Rather more convenient to carry than a stack of books, if to your tastes somewhat lacking in the tactile pleasure of a nice leather bound tome I imagine' Stephen replied with a smile.

Giles nodded sadly. 'Berith isn't just any old Demon with a sideline in foretelling the future' he said. 'I think there's more going on than merely that' he said. 'Baal-Berith is mentioned in the Old Testament, it literally means "Lord of the Covenant".'

Stephen grimaced. 'The Covenant' he repeated. 'Wolfram and Hart, oh that's just bloody marvellous.'

'Yes I think it's a little bit too much of a coincidence too' Giles told him with a chuckle. 'I think we may even be looking at one of the Senior Partners.'

'This close to a Hellmouth that can't be good' Stephen observed. 'Think they've decided it's time for a more hands-on approach? Intervene directly, not through the local offices and the Circle of the Black Thorn?'

'Perhaps we've been too successful for our own good' Giles replied evenly.

'Berith's power peaks in June as I recall' Stephen replied.

Giles smiled approvingly. 'The Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis was still on the Academy reading list when you were there then?' he queried.

'Yes but Pseudomonarchia Daemonum always seemed less florid and commercial' Stephen opined. 'If our crimson friend here does intend to show up I imagine he'll do so at the peak of his strength.'

'We've already dealt with a great number of powerful adversaries who should have been more of a challenge but who weren't because they either underestimated us or overestimated themselves' Giles reasoned. 'We've got to assume that eventually we'll meet one with enough brains to not go off half-cocked because of egotism and lack of preparation' he said. 'If we are dealing with a Senior Partner the size of their pan-dimensional domain and their vast assets must be taken as some evidence of a reasonably adequate IQ, moreover they are extremely patient, I doubt waiting a few more weeks would be too taxing.'

Stephen crossed his arms. 'Well that gives us a few more weeks too' he said, 'to prepare a warm reception for the bastard I mean' the young watcher declared. 'Haven't met a demon yet that liked having an Incendiary Grenade or a Slayer Scythe stuck up his arse and we've got plenty of both these days.'

'You know Stephen we must beware of falling into the trap of overestimating ourselves and underestimating our foe as well' he warned. 'We don't want to risk losing people because we get sloppy or overconfident.'

Stephen straightened up. 'Well Sir I don't know what it's like back in LA these days but here in Cleveland we're always right on the ball and sharper than ever' he declared haughtily.

'That's the spirit' Giles responded positively. 'So when is Willow due back with the supplies for the binding spell?' he asked.

'Shouldn't be too much longer' Stephen replied. 'I'm more worried about the explosives turning up.'

'How so?' Giles queried.

Stephen sighed. 'There's a very real possibility we might bring a fair chunk of Ohio crashing down into this hole' he said. 'We've never actually tried out Semtex Plastique before and I'm afraid Kennedy may overegg the pudding as it were.'

'Well at least it's only a section of park forest we'd be dropping into a cavern this time not a whole town' Giles reasoned.

'There is that' Stephen conceded then frowned. 'I do hope this isn't indicative of a trend' he added. 'We could become very unpopular in various circles, Black Thorn or otherwise, if our Standard Operating Procedure when dealing with Hellmouth orientated problems is a large crater.'

Giles considered the issue carefully. 'Good point' he agreed. 'We'll try and avoid listing it as a recommended tactic in the new handbook.'

'Best nip it in the bud before everyone's doing it' Stephen concurred.

Hyperion Hotel – Los Angeles – March 2004

Buffy dropped into a chair and crossed her arms, Dawn what the hell is this about?' she asked tersely. 'I had a date with a bubble bath and a box of chocolates' she told her sister. 'You'd better have a good reason for dragging half the hotel away from whatever it is they were doing.'

Xander opened his mouth to say something but Anya cut him off. 'If you're planning to ask her if she'd like to double date don't say it' she told him.

'She knows me so well' Xander admittedly sadly.

'You'd have delivered the line better' Gunn told him reassuringly, standing up to pull Cordelia's chair out for her when she arrived. It always looked classy when English did it and she beamed at him.

Emily finished playing with the laptop now connected to the projector and turned it on. 'All yours' she told Dawn.

'Gee thanks' Dawn responded with a slight grimace. 'Okay I think that's everyone' she said looking around the conference room' she said. 'I wish Giles was here for this, he's good at this stuff.'

'Where's Blue?' Faith asked.

'Not invited and for a good reason' Dawn replied. 'She's on the roof playing on her laptop so that'll keep her out of our hair for a while.'

Buffy tapped her wristwatch meaningfully and narrowed her eyes at her sister who decided it might be wise to up the pace.

'Okay' Dawn began. 'As you may or may not know Molly and her crew dropped in on the Deeper Well to check it out' she told them. 'While she was there she took some pictures of the various inscriptions, runes and such and emailed them back here so we could take a look, we figured it would be worth seeing so with Giles in Cleveland Emily and I had a go' she explained as Emily pressed a remote control that dimmed the lights and projected the first slide onto the screen at the far end of the room.

'That's Old Norse' Anya observed, 'carved by someone with atrocious spelling' she added disparagingly.

'Right' Dawn agreed, 'most of the inscriptions are from known languages but we found a few that we couldn't figure out right away so we cracked open the books and got to work' she told them 'Most of it is just names of the various Demons they've got sealed in the well, some of it is gibberish and there's a fair chunk of graffiti which we think the guards put there over the years' she continued. 'There's some great jokes about Drogyn… which I'll save for a later time' she said after Buffy gave her a look.

'You didn't drag me away from the Passions Late Night Special for an archaeology lecture did you Knibblet?' Spike asked.

Dawn shook her head. 'No' she replied. 'Well partially' she admittedly, 'but you'll want to hear this' she told him. 'Well anyhow' she said continuing, 'we did eventually run into a great mass of stuff that we just couldn't translate, it wasn't in any of the books and when we tried asking Drogyn he didn't know either.'

'How did you ask Drogyn?' Angel queried.

'We telephoned him' Emily replied. 'Molly set up a satellite phone at the Deeper Well so we just gave him a bell and he told us he was none the wiser. He hasn't been working there all that long really, and the Well is ancient beyond belief, so it's not too surprising he's not sure what everything craved into the rocks says.'

Dawn nodded. 'So we thought we'd run into a brick wall until Emily suggested we try the Wolfram and Hart language database and that's when we found out what it was' she told them as Emily changed the slide to what appeared to be a mass of geometric symbols.

'Okay spill' Buffy told her. 'What's it say that's so interesting?'

Dawn frowned, her sister had no sense of occasion sometimes, this was a big deal to Dawn, she liked being useful beyond being a blood donor. 'Well to start with the word that cropped up the most was Annwfn' she explained. 'We had to sort that one out phonetically but it's the old Welsh word for the netherworld, where you go after you die I mean, spirits and stuff' she explained. 'The etymology of the word is also thought by some scholars to be "very deep".'

'Etymology?' Gunn queried.

'Study of the origins or root of a word' Dawn explained.

'Very Deep, as in the Deeper Well' Angel noted. 'Makes sense.'

'Right' Dawn responded, nodding. 'Well we were pretty happy at that one' she told him, so we kept right on with the translation' and then things started to get really weird, by which I mean kinda familiar' she told him. 'Especially to Emily' she said, indicating it was time for the English girl to take over.

Emily changed to another slide. 'A good chunk of this passage is worn away but this phrase here translated as "rise again in time of greatest need" and the next section mentioned what we thought at first was something about drawing the sword from the stone' she told them.

Spike grinned. 'The Arthur Legend' he declared.

'Yeah' Dawn agreed. 'It really got interesting when we checked and found out that not only was "Very Deep" the root for Annwfn but Annwyn in turn is thought a possible etymology for Avalon.'

'Avalon?' Spike repeated. 'Oh this gets better and better' he said, then looked around. 'When King Arthur died his body was taken to Avalon' he explained. 'The rest of the story goes that he rests there until the hour of England's greatest need when he will rise again.'

'Surprised he didn't show up in 1940' Xander observed. 'Maybe worse is yet to come for the mother-country' he suggested.

Emily changed slides again. 'So we were pretty pleased with ourselves' she admitted, 'until we got to this section' she told them. 'We think the legends got really badly screwed up at some point, probably intermixed with stories about some Romano-Celtic Warlord in the Dark Ages, but however it happened this text is a lot older than that' she said, then turned to address Buffy directly. 'You'll appreciate this especially' she told her, 'when we double checked the preliminary translations it didn't say about drawing a sword from the stone it said scythe.'

Buffy blinked and everyone looked at her. 'Are you trying to say I'm the rightful Queen of England' she asked eventually, 'because Giles and Wes even joked about that when I pulled the thing out of that piece of rock back at the vineyard' she told them, Faith nodding in affirmation.

'No it's just mentioned in passing as something that happens, part of a prophecy not as an indication that the one drawing the scythe is the rightful monarch' Emily told her. 'I'm afraid it's someone else gets the plum job' she added. 'You might want to start calling it Axe-calibur though' she suggested with a smile. 'I'll stop now and let Dawn translate the most interesting lines.'

Dawn took a breath. 'We've checked and rechecked but here it is' she told them. 'There's some other stuff too but the section that'll really knock your socks off goes like this: "Here lies Illyria, the once and future God-King".'

The room fell deathly silent.

'You're shitting me?' Faith asked eventually.

'Nope' Dawn replied. 'Piecing together other sections, the text is repeated in a few places so you can fill in the gaps' she explained, 'you also get "The Shaper of Things sleeps in Annwfn to rise again in the hour of greatest need".'

'Oh yay another prophecy' Cordelia responded. 'We've got such a great record with those things.'

Fred wasn't having any of it. 'But this isn't the way things were supposed to turn out' she declared. 'Illyria created another timeline, all the prophecies wiped away' she pointed out.

'Prophecies can be changed in order to make others come true' Angel observed. 'Think about Connor' he said. 'Sahjhan altered the Nyazian Scrolls to try and save his life but the end result was that he died because of it, Connor came back from Quartoth a hell of a lot meaner than he would have been otherwise. Destiny isn't written in stone… even if it is written in stone.'

'It's all wheels within wheels' Cordelia said. 'Even if it's not the PTB's, the Senior Partners or other random assholes like Jasmine playing with the levers the gears keep turning and if you club one destiny into oblivion another one comes along.'

'Didn't the Blue Meanie say you signed away the Shanshu' Spike asked Angel. 'In the original timeline she came from?'

'Yes' Angel replied, 'In my own blood to make it nice and legal in the demonic sense.'

'But that didn't happen here so the Shanshu should still be in force and if it is the Vampire with a Soul will become Human' Cordelia said. 'Illyria fixed a broken prophecy by making a parallel universe.'

'And maybe she also made another prophecy come true, in this case her own' Dawn noted. 'Maybe she really is destined to rule again?' she noted. 'The once and future God-King.'

'Which pretty much fits in nicely with all the stuff Drusilla was saying earlier on when she zoned out' Spike added. 'Oh yeah and I checked' he told Angel. 'The Shanshu doesn't say which "Vampire with a Soul" so don't go automatically assuming it's going to be you sunshine' he told him. 'Maybe I'm going to be the real boy' he declared.

Angel rolled his eyes. 'Saves the world once and he thinks he's special' he muttered under his breath.

Xander pursed his lips. 'So we're saying Illyria is the King who was destined to return' he said. 'So she's Arthur right?' he asked.

'Way to keep up Harris' Cordelia responded sarcastically.

'No you ain't getting it' Xander told her. 'When Wes gets back from Pylea who gets to tell him he's Guinevere?' he asked with an evil grin.

Note from the Author

I think I'm the first person to use the Very Deep - Annfwn - Avalon connection for the Deeper Well (with Illyria as Arthur "The once and Future God-King") which I'm pretty pleased about as IMHO it's pretty nifty.

Baal-Berith does mean "Lord of the Covenant" incidentally too.

And I hope you lot appreciate all the damn research that goes into the Fic sometimes :-p