This is 'it' that I was talking about. Pretty damn good chapter if I do say so myself.
Leave plenty of reviews, it'll make me write faster.
Chapter 41 Metamorphosis
12:30 PM – Sunnydale Highschool
The air was perfectly still, and there wasn't even a sound to be heard in the wreckage of the once immaculate corridors of Sunnydale's Old Highschool. Not even a Slayer's hearing could penetrate the silence. Buffy crept forward, with a broadsword in her hands and held out in front of her. She took about ten paces forward and looked around the wreckage in front of her. There was still nothing, no movement or sounds what so ever. Usually she'd expect to hear the sounds of at least a rat or something, but they were all gone. She took one last inspection and turned around and went back out into the daylight.
"It looks all clear," she said to the large group that had assembled out the front, consisting of everyone that they could pull together to do this. The group split up and began to head in different directions. Faith was leading a team of Slayers who would enter the school from around the back. Oz's group, consisting of Naomi, Natalie, Brett, and Daniel was accompanying Cassia and a few fighters that they'd picked up from Willow's spell, were going to guard the perimeter of the school and make sure that nothing got in from the outside, and more importantly, nothing much got out. The witches from the English Coven were going to help Oz's group. That left the Scoobies and Angel's former group accompanying Buffy. They walked up to her, and she turned around and together, they entered the school.
Faith sucked at being the leader. She didn't want to do it, and she had rattled off a huge list of names of who would be better to do it than her, but she had been stuck with the job. Wesley and Giles's understanding of it was that she was the only other 'evolved' Slayer, and that the other Slayers would look up to her. Also there was the fact that most of the Slayers knew who she was after the occurrences with the Coven in England.
It was lucky for her that Skye was helping her out with the leadership role. The two had formed a bond since Faith had awoken at the Coven in England, and she thought that Skye was an alright girl, and a damn good Slayer from what she could tell so far.
"You feeling anything?" Skye asked Faith, snapping her out of her thoughts as they walked around the school to enter it from the other side.
"Nothing from my Slayer senses. But I'm feeling something, from that sixth sense they are always talking about," Faith replied.
"Me too," another one of the girls said, obviously listening in on their conversation.
"Well, we know it can't be vamps," Rhonda said, who was Skye's friend. "Cause, you know, daylight and all." About half a minute later, they found out that it wasn't vampires that they were feeling, but something else; Bringers. They seemed to appear out of no where, and attacked with a ferocity that almost none of the girls were prepared for.
Faith immediately whipped out a short sword that she had attached to her waist and started hacking, looking out for the deadly knife blades of the Bringers. She managed a couple of quick glances at the Slayers that she had with her, and was relieved to see that they were all handling themselves against the Bringers alright. It was a matter of minutes before the corpses of the Bringers were all lying on the ground around them. After a quick check, there were no serious injuries, just a couple of deep cuts that would need stitches on any normal person, if they weren't a Slayer with accelerated healing. They had just regrouped, when another lot of Bringers appeared and started to attack, but this time there was about twice as many of them, and they were all using swords instead of daggers.
"Someone doesn't want us getting anywhere," Faith muttered to herself right before she picked up a knife from the corpse of a dead Bringer, and used it along with her short sword.
Everyone was moving around, keeping an eye on the surrounding buildings and down the street. She could see that they were all trying to keep busy, and to make sure that they'd see anything before it tries to kill them. Cassia could see the werewolves spreading out, and some of their features starting to emerge. She could see the normal regular humans, of which she was a member, all gripping their weapons tightly and becoming very edgy as the sounds of fighting could be heard from either inside, or down the side of the school. Cassia was standing in the middle of the road, and she was watching as Amanda and her team were walking around the park opposite the school. She watched Amanda closely, as the abomination she was. Cassia watched with pure loathing as Amanda looked up into one of the trees, and then with what could be described as unnatural feline agility, jumped up into it, leaping up from branch to branch, until she was on the top. She knew that Amanda wouldn't have made a single sound, and that she would have barely made the leaves on the branches move at all as she leaped up them. They were all abominations to nature and to mankind, and the people who had created them had no moral guidelines what so ever, and they were apparently fighting for the side of 'good'.
Cassia closed her eyes as she stood in the middle of the road. She could now sense those very people had created Amanda and her group. Samantha and Montague had split up and were now spreading out, like all the others were. Cassia shifted her attention off of them, and to her surrounding environment. She could now feel everything around her, all the people, all the animals, the few of them that there were. It was almost better than sight itself. She could feel the very strong presence of Willow as she walked with Buffy's group. She could feel the 'odd' sensations of Buffy and Faith, and when she probed the feeling deeper, a great dread and fear came over her. She decided that she didn't want to know. Cassia knew that there were very, very, powerful magicks in use in the reconstructed basement of the school, but she couldn't even get any hint at what they were.
At that moment, Cassia's attention shifted to the area that she was now occupying. She had felt a 'tremor' of magickal energy. She used her senses to investigate it further, and a very, very small hole in the dimensional walls surrounding the school. She asked the Earth to allow her to see what it was, but was denied. She decided to use some of her own power, much like Willow and the rest of the witches that she knew of did, and she gasped, stepped back and opened her eyes as she realised what was there. She was surprised to see that a man was standing right in front of her, speaking to her.
"…you going to just stand there, or are you going to do something…" he started.
"Get your weapon. They're already here," Cassia said to him as she realised that there were beings waiting right in their area. The only thing was that they were out of phase with reality, and therefore couldn't be seen or detected until they wanted to come out.
Ever since they had entered the area, Willow knew that something wasn't quite right. She could feel it in the air around them. There was far, far, too much energy floating around than there should have been, even for a Hellmouth. They slowly made their way to the basement, and Willow and the rest of the group were extremely surprised when they reached it with no opposition at all. A number of them entered the room, while the rest of them stayed out in the corridor, to make sure that nothing could get through into the room from the outside, and, to act as backup in-case things went bad.
They rounded the corner into the rebuilt library/basement and could see the figures of Ethan Rayne, Lindsey McDonald and the Old One, Caelecae, standing and looking right at them.
"Lindsey. Should have known you'd have something to do with all of this," Wesley said to him.
"How nice of you to show up. How's Fred doing?" Lindsey said to him. Willow looked to Ethan Rayne and got a feeling of what she must have looked like when she went over the deep end. He was a sickly pale colour, with black veins bulging out of his skin. His eyes and hair were completely black, and when he spoke, she could tell that it wasn't his voice.
"All the gang's here," he said as he looked at them, although half of everyone that he'd know of 'the gang' were in the corridor around the corner. Without warning, a ball of magickal energy formed in Ethan Rayne's hand, and he hurled it towards Willow. It impacted straight on her chest, and she was knocked backwards into Wesley, falling unconscious for a couple of seconds. When Willow awoke, it was like nothing she'd ever seen before. The entire world around her was dancing with colours representing various magickal energies which were swarming around the room. She looked over to her friends, and was confused at the looks that they were giving her. They had all stepped away from her, and were now looking at her as if she had grown a second head.
It was then that she felt it. The energies that Ethan Rayne had put into her body were anchored in and spreading, very quickly. They gave Willow feelings of incredible pain, darkness, longing and sorrow. She could feel it spreading throughout her veins, and into her mind. She felt herself losing control of her mind. The power inside her was increasing exponentially, and she couldn't counter it. It had spread throughout her entire body, and Willow only felt completely helpless as she lay on the ground, not able to get up or do anything. It was then that she felt that the infection was moving out of her body, towards Ethan Rayne, and taking all the energy and power that it could, with it. It was essentially draining Willow, and she knew that it would kill her if it was able to continue. The pain started moments afterwards, as it felt as if her entire body was on fire. She opened her eyes and pleaded with Giles, the first person that she saw, to do something about it, but it was then that she saw the magickal barrier separating her from the rest of the group, which must have been pushed backwards at some point in time. She could feel herself writhing on the ground, and suddenly she noticed that someone was screaming, which was her.
Apart from the pain, she could feel that her whole body was now numb and limp. She couldn't even move her limbs, even though she was trying as hard as she could. She briefly got a glance of her friends, who she could see were now fighting off some Turokhan Vampires. That's when she became aware of another presence in the room, one which was right next to her. Without any other words to describe it, it was evil, pure and utter evil, and Willow could feel it coming closer to her body. She opened her eyes, and looked around as she lay on her side, but she couldn't see anything there, although she knew that it was right in front of her. If she could, she would have been trembling at the feeling of it's entirety, it's power, and it's pureness. It was like nothing else Willow had ever felt before, and she could feel it entering her body.
She knew that she was letting out a scream which was like nothing else she had heard before, as she feared for the existence of her very soul. It was entering her body, pushing her soul and brain to the side as it inhabited it and took control. Willow went to close her eyes, but she couldn't. She tried again, but she realised that she couldn't because 'it' was controlling them now.
With all her might, she reached out with what remained of her mind to the power of the Earth, to establish a connection with nature and to ground herself. If she pulled it off right, Willow should have essentially unlimited power to use to rid herself of this infection which was inside her. She was trying so desperately to connect with the elements around her, but she was hindered somehow. What usually would have worked, didn't. What she could usually sense, she now couldn't.
"Too Late Little Witch," a voice said to Willow inside her head.
The Old One, Caelecae was getting out of the indentation in the bricks that her body had made in the wall. She was pissed, and obviously coming towards her. Willow noticed that she was now standing up, and that her body was moving. She knew that she had some lost time, as she couldn't remember how she had been able to do all of this.
"You've given this Witch more power than even I have. What have you done human!" the Old One exclaimed at the figure of Ethan Rayne, a mere stupid tool to use in this campaign. Willow knew that she didn't have a high opinion of Ethan, but she knew that she didn't think of him as a tool to be used. She watched as the Old One came towards her, and Willow watched as she raised her hands, and dark, black energy emanated out from them, hitting Caelecae and sending her flying backwards into the wall again. Willow could feel the thing inhabiting her body, and she knew that her body was being controlled. Caelecae got up and stood in front of Willow, and Willow watched as the Old One was flung to the ground by what seemed to be nothing. She could feel herself walking up and standing above the Old One, and she could feel the pure, un-channelled power flowing from the Earth itself, through her body, and being used to defeat Caelecae. She watched as Caelecae started to tear at her stomach, as Willow's hand was pointed towards it. She watched as a realization went through the Old One that it was going to actually die, and she saw the pure fear in it's shells' eyes.
The infection that had taken over her body was now leaving her, and Willow could feel some kind of control coming back over her body. The negative feelings were slowly subsiding, and Willow's mind began to cease to panic. Before Willow knew what had happened, she had slumped to the floor again, not able to move her body. Her head was tilted to the side and she was looking at the form of Caelecae, or what was left of it anyway. The shell was lying on the floor, not moving, it's eyes closed. Even though Willow couldn't move her body, she could tell that Caelecae was dead. Pain was still coursing through Willow's body, but she was distracted from it when she saw movement from Caelecae. Willow got the same feelings as when the infection had invaded her body, but this time they weren't inside her; they were emanating from Caelecae. It's eyes shot open, and Willow was horrified to see that they were pitch black, darker than anything she'd ever seen before. She watched as a metamorphosis began to occur to the Old One, as it's hair and, eyes and skin turned from a reddish colour, to a black colour.
"Come on, we've got to leave," Willow heard a voice screaming. She could feel her body being lifted off of the ground and carried in someone's arms. She could see that they were moving very fast, for someone who was carrying a limp, lifeless body in their arms, and she guessed that it was Buffy.
It had all gone terribly wrong for them inside the school. People were badly injured. Giles, Gunn, Wesley and Connor had to be literally dragged out of the school, meanwhile Willow needed to be carried. When they had reached the outside of the school, they could see that it was total chaos, and that they hadn't fared any better. Blood was over everyone, and most of it was their own. Faith's group were mostly injured and they had lost some in their numbers. It was then that the 'thing' had come through the outer wall of the High School. There demons everywhere outside, and they had a rough time trying to escape until the now black Caelecae had let out an almighty roar, and all the demons and bringers had stopped in their tracks and cheered like they were at their favourite hell lord's gathering. It had given them enough time to escape.
Once they were back at the Summers Residence, Buffy had put Willow down on her bed. She was still in the same state, not moving, but with her eyes open. They had tried to get her to talk, but nothing had come out. They didn't even know if she was able to talk. No one knew the meaning of what had happened in that basement, and no one knew what it meant for Willow.
It was just after sunset when she heard it. A blood-curdling scream came from upstairs, and Buffy raced upstairs to her room. She could see Willow huddled up in a ball in the corner of the room, her knees pulled up to her chest and she was screaming.
"Willow, Willow," Buffy saw a Tara say who was kneeling down in front of Willow. Buffy watched as Tara put a hand on Willow's arm, and Willow shot up and raced across to the other corner of the room. Her hair and veins were still black, but her eyes were back to their normal colour. Buffy watched as Willow sunk down to the ground, sobbing and holding herself, with tears streaming down her face. She watched as Willow curled up in a ball, and buried her head into her knees. It was then that Buffy noticed that her whole body was trembling.
It'll be explained what happened to Willow, and What happened to Caelecae next chapter. These next chapters, I'm gonna try to make a bit dark, so, yeah.
Leave us some reviews and tell us what you think.
6