Author: mkcrl120
Disclaimer: All the characters mentioned in this story belong to Joss Whedon or Mutant Enemy or some other people. I own nothing and wrote this just to get it out of my system.
Summary: Set two weeks after the events in Explaining Africa 3
Authors Notes: I have no clue about Africa. Which is probably always a good place to start writing a story. So if details I've used for place names, and tribal names and whatever are wrong then just (correctly) assume I have no idea what I'm doing.
Rating: 15 by English standards (mainly for language)
Chapter 10b:
"To begin with," Brouhm began walking up to the three men standing near to one another, Xander hurried to keep up with him. "You must first learn their speciality."
"Specialty..?" Xander asked, eye flicking at the three strangers now that he was close enough to get a decent look. They were dressed in ceremonial robes, much like Brouhm himself was. The clothes were similar enough, but each had distinctive patterns on them. Each wore a different coloured headscarf.
"There is no real translation for what they did, but the closest I suppose would be to say that they were the demon-tamers."
"They tamed demons..?" Xander asked in a surprised voice, his memory unwilling bringing up images of Spike after he first got chipped by the Initiative.
"Not in a house-trained kind of way." Brouhm corrected, apparently trying to guess at his inner thoughts. "Nor any circus or wild-horse way you may be thinking of."
'Least he isn't reading my mind.' Xander realised when the guess was some way off the mark, having been worried about the possibility since the Faith-virginity comment.
"They weren't the options that immediately came to mind." Xander answered. "I was thinking more of Spike and his little army chip."
Brouhm paused again, "I only have brief information on the details of Spike and his chip. I realise it became a problem that needed to be dealt with." He answered after some time. "It also caused some of the issues between Buffy and the new Slayers."
Xander replied without thinking. "Okay - you know about me and Faith; and you know about Buffy and the potentials... but you don't know about Spike..?"
"No-one can know everything." Brouhm responded with a smile. "Not even me."
"Are you going to explain it to me..?" Xander challenged, beginning to lose patience.
Brouhm didn't seem to take offence. "I am explaining it to you - this is just the long version."
"Okay..." Xander forced himself to regain control of his temper.
Brouhm simply regarding him with a knowing smile, and patiently waited for him to calm down. When it seemed that he was confident that Xander was paying attention he continued. "These are the demon-tamers... to fully understand what that means first we must understand what went before."
"If this story keeps getting put off til we get to the Big Bang then I'm outta here now." Xander informed him, trying his best to add some humour into his initial reaction at having the explanation delayed again.
"I can only go back to what we believed in my time." Brouhm answered quickly, "And much like yourselves a lot of it was still lost to history."
"Fair enough." Xander answered, "If this is the 'The Earth Is Older Than You Know' Watcher spiel then I've heard it... I've even had to tell a few people it myself."
"I guess it could start like that." Brouhm admitted. "But following your Big Bang theory then it's about four point five billion years old, and this story isn't anywhere near that old."
"You know the Big Bang theory..?" Xander opened his mouth in disbelief. "How-"
Brouhm interrupted quickly, "This story begins sometime after mankind has begun to walk the Earth. So by comparison, it's fairly recent." He joked and gave Xander a large wink.
"Yeah, Willow mentioned something about the last second on a clock or something." Xander grinned back. "I got about a third of what she was saying, cos surely there weren't clocks before humans came along... or are some demons partial to them too..?"
"Demons have been here for as long as mankind can remember." Brouhm stated.
"According to Giles they were here first." Xander responded, pleased that they finally seemed to be getting somewhere.
"Possible, who can know..?" Brouhm shrugged. "But demons were here because of one fact. To begin with the dimensional breaches were all open."
Xander raised his eyebrows.
"I believe you've seen firsthand what can come through..?" Brouhm asked. "Those were the type of beings free to roam between this dimension and their own."
Xander's mind flicked back to what he'd seen arise in the old high school library, the Turok Han that had seemed to be innumerable from what he'd heard and the distinctive memory of what the Mayor had turned into. These and many other images, some things his imagination had only dreamed up from either Giles' books or Anya's stories.
"Mankind stood with others native to this dimension and this planet." Brouhm continued. "Stood alongside them and tried to stand together to hold off against the invaders. Invaders, which by comparison your recent plague of Turok Han were considered rodents at their feet."
"There were many defenders then, of many different types; some so powerful they would later be considered this planet's gods, the Weres, the Primals, the Everliving, Raisers of the Dead, various types of enhanced warriors, the Possessors of special weaponry, Witches, Warlocks, in fact any human who had a gift of magic or various natural talent, many creatures of magic that are either extinct or believed to be myth by the time we reached my time never mind yours, others that I couldn't even begin to describe in terms of what you might be familiar with. They all stood together and even then wouldn't have been able to hold off any concentrated effort from those of other dimensions."
Xander just tried to imagine what that must have been like, his own experiences with creatures from the other side generally ended badly.
"There was no way they could have survived let alone won." Brouhm stated. "So humans came up with a plan so typical of our species."
"What..?" Xander asked, unable to stop himself being dragged into this story.
Brouhm gave him a really disturbing smile in response. "They discovered ways in which to cheat."
Back in the apartment
"What..?" Amy asked, turning to face Shote.
"Xander wasn't enough to make the Exchange." He responded to her. "Him not being a Slayer and all."
She turned to where Roger was staring between the portal and the two of them. "Why did Xander go in, but you two couldn't..? I mean can you guys go in now..? Did you try to enter before the portal was ready for you..?"
At her look he added. "I don't know how magic works I thought that was your part."
"We really should have tried it with Willow here." Amy muttered to herself, "Or at least one of the Devon Coven."
Faith turned to them. "Red..? Shit yeah, I'd be a lot calmer if she were here when the magic box started going off script."
"So can you enter it now..?" Roger asked again.
"Try it." Faith commanded them in response. "Back up, Rog." She ordered him too.
Amy swallowed hard before exchanging another solid glance with Shote. Nodding her agreement, they both lined themselves up with the portal and walked forward.
The cave
"We cheated." Brouhm repeated.
"How can we cheat..?" Xander asked. "I thought we and a whole lot of other species were going to die out."
"The first cheat was that those who would be Gods found ways to share their power." Brouhm stopped obviously waiting for Xander to come to terms with that.
Xander nodded to explain that he understood that one. 'Seen enough spells that call upon others for the power source.' He thought to himself.
"Once that cheat had been discovered the next was obvious." Brouhm paused, apparently waiting for him to guess.
"Stealing powers from the Gods..?" Xander offered.
Brouhm smiled at the response. "Sort of, but the pre-historic Prometheans you may be thinking of came a little later. That was a later cheat and one that didn't work quite so well."
"First they learned to steal them off the more powerful demon force. The demons weren't from the same dimension, there seemed to be as many different dimensions as there were different mystical portals."
"Hellmouths." Xander translated for him.
Brouhm was quick to correct him. "Not really, it's a generic term given to dimension portals where certain types of demonic forces have been known to come through. Also all Hellmouths are believed to connect to this dimension just under the planet's surface. The theory is that the Hellmouths may all connect to the same dimension on the other side, but similarities in what comes over led people to assume even if there are different dimensions there can only a handful at most. Certainly not a different dimension per Hellmouth."
Xander rubbed his temples as he silently wished he had a Watcher here to take notes for him.
"Portals though," Brouhm continued on regardless. "Can connect in a variety of ways; they can be underground, aboveground, in water, high in the atmosphere, be so small that they could be stored inside something as small as an amulet. Some are more controlled access-wise, others exist in a shut state and need to be opened each time something wants to pass through, some closed themselves off in order to defend their dimensions from demonic invasion overlapping from ours. Some were ambivalent to our cause and some even sent defenders to help, the more powerful of which joined our own native powerhouses in setting themselves up as Gods; the lessers ones either returning to the home dimension or chose to live amongst us."
Xander was thankful as Brouhm seemed to notice his predicament and moved back to the original topic. "Different dimensions had different beings coming through from them. It would be fair to say that a lot of them didn't get on with one another. Seen as challengers for their own attempts to overthrow our world. People simply offered to work on their behalf in order to grasp a fraction of their powers. Those gifts would then be used to defend our world, if we happened to be defending it against those that also threatened them then so much the better."
"My enemy's enemy so to speak." Xander agreed.
"More complicated than that." Brouhm informed him. "More like you'd be borrowing the power from one demon, and I'd be borrowing it from that demon's enemy; but we'd be working together to get rid of both of them."
"Sounds almost political." Xander muttered to himself.
"So now you had a lot of normal humans borrowing power from a variety of beings who each had their own agendas. In some cases they truly were on our side, but for the most part if they discovered what we were up to it was over for us." Brouhm paused to let that sink in. "They'd take the betrayal out on any humans or our native allies of ours."
"So it was a tightrope." Xander answered.
"But we were getting a lot of experience dealing with demons up close and personal." Brouhm explained. "Then we learned a few other tricks. Have you ever heard of Essence Of The Demon..? A lesser version with fewer casualties was known as Aspect of the Demon."
Xander looked up, trying to re-familiarise himself with the term. He was pretty sure that had come up when Buffy developed the ability to read minds. He was always confused as to why Brouhm didn't seem to know that as it occurred around the same time as when he lost his virginity to Faith. "Yeah, but isn't it fatal..?" He asked aloud.
"Sometimes." Brouhm shrugged, "Not often, that's not the real risk."
"But Buffy almo-" Xander began, only to be interrupted.
"Ahhh, something happened to Miss Summers." Brouhm nodded in understanding. "Slayers are a special instance in that case. I'll explain it later."
'There seems to be a lot he's going to explain later.' Xander reasoned to himself, trying to work out the exact list of things that had already been put off.
"The real risk when absorbing the essence of the demon is that you don't know which parts you're gonna get." Brouhm explained. "Or if you'll have control of the demon, or if it's influence will take over you."
"Like with vampires..?" Xander queried.
"Very similar. Yes." Brouhm responded, giving him a smile to show his approval. "I'll come to them later, as they're also a special case."
"Directly attempting to steal the essence of the demon, unlike borrowing or calling on some of it's power gives the thief the potential to be as powerful as the demon in certain aspects."
"Sounds useful." Xander admitted.
"After a while it was considered too dangerous." Brouhm informed him. "Most people using it got overwhelmed by the demon essence and basically became as bad as they were. The few that did retain control of their own mental faculties spent a long time struggling against it before they could actually use the powers in any way. To give you an example of what we're talking about D'Hoffryn absorbed the essence and several aspects of a demon - and he was considered one of the more successful cases."
Brouhm guided him to a different part of the cave, one in which a large demon was shackled both by chains and magically if the glowing green balls surrounding him was anything to go by. All of the balls seemed to have a tail attached, giving them the impression of a miniature comet.
Xander guessed that this was another frozen statue, and if it had been live then the greens balls would probably be encircling the creature, helping to keep it in place. 'That's the demon that came out of the portal.' Xander thought, immediately recognising it's powerfully built form.
"This was another more unfortunate product." Brouhm explained. "His mental capabilities were virtually removed, leaving behind this mindless beast that existed only for combat. Strengthwise he barely got a fraction of the demon whose essence he stole." He paused before continuing. "Least we think it was a he, the creature has no genitalia that we've been able to recognise and no means of reproduction that we have been able to identify." Brouhm shrugged. "Maybe it doesn't even need to reproduce, this creature was a legend in my time. I was the one that- sorry, getting ahead of myself. As far as we're aware it cannot die."
Xander looked confused by that particular relevation. "Erm. Spike broke it's neck. And I'm pretty sure he's just a regular vamp, all his personal claims of being the Big Bad aside."
"He may have temporarily put it down, but by no means did he kill it." Brouhm informed him. "As far as we're aware this creature cannot be destroyed... that was why it was needed as part of the-" Brouhm drifted off before completing the sentence.
"Those formed by asborbing aspects of the demon were the first in what were originally called the man-demons."
End chapter 10b
A/N: So that's my version of 'History Of The BuffyVerse Part 1' - what do you all think so far..?