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 11b:
"A Seer..?" Xander asked in an dismissive tone. "That's it... so you're not one of those that created the Slayer..?"
"In one sense, no I'm not." Brouhm smiled. "In another... I'm the only one that created the Slayer line."
"I'm starting to really hate you." Xander mumbled to himself. It was the smirk on Brouhm's face that was putting him off now.
"Ahh, the famous Xander wit." Brouhm teased.
Xander sighed, "How do you know me..?"
"I've been a Seer my whole life." Brouhm began, blatantly ignoring the question. "And some things have always confused me... specifically about my own future."
"Can't know too much about your whole destiny thing... I get that." Xander offered, desperately wanting to move the conversation along.
"I knew about my own death." Brouhm stated. "But I also knew that it wasn't..."
Xander's confused look seemed enough for Brouhm. "You're looking at it there." He answered, gesturing towards the frozen action on the altar.
"You knew she'd be the one to kill you, and you still married her..?" Xander asked, memories unwillingly fleeting back to the false future that had once been shown to him.
"She's not killing me... she's making the necessary sacrifice." Brouhm informed him.
Xander stared at the look in the woman's face. There was nothing there, no malice, no hatred, not even any regret. Maybe it was difficult to make out because it was like capturing a single image, but there was very little emotion there. If anything it seemed to be worry. "Sacrifice..?" He asked.
"She'd never done this spell before... and certainly not one as complicated as this." Brouhm stated. "She wanted to find someone with more experience... but I knew it had to be her."
"This is a spell..?" Xander thought back. In his experience most spells that involved killing people were done by what were essentially referred to as the bad guys.
"Merkak specialises in enchanted weapons." Brouhm explained. "But she'd never done a Soul-Weapon spell before... you may not have heard of it... most of the magics involved aren't practiced much anymore."
Xander's mind automatically conjured up very scary mental images. "Are you trying to tell me that most Witches haven't heard of this but just about every D and D nerd has..?" Xander asked silently wishing it was possible to turn his imagination off. 'Or at least put a delay between it and my mouth.'
"You know about Soul-Weapons..?" Brouhm asked in amazement.
"Hopefully not." Xander answered in a more reasonable tone. "Tell me about them, and we'll both pray I'm wrong."
"Merkak was a very skilled Weaponer." Brouhm stated. "She was known throughout the land as one who could create the right weapon for the right job. Most of what she specialised in were weapons that brought out the best in their wielder. Sometimes though she would be asked to create ones of near perfect sharpness or balance, sometimes she'd be asked to create weapons that could be passed on for generations. Most of these enchantments involve a simply placing of magic and to a lesser extent of placing some of yourself into the blade or the point."
Brouhm paused as though considering what to say next. "She was always weary about creating a true Soul-Weapon. One that essentially imprisons a Soul within it, allowing it to stay as good as new for as long as the Soul resides within. When I met her I told her she would only have to make one in her entire life."
Brouhm stopped, Xander assumed he was remembering something about his initial meeting with the one who would become his future partner. "I didn't tell her that I'd be the one she'd use... but then I didn't have all the information. I just knew if she stayed with me, then that would be the only one she'd ever make. Even I didn't know why we would choose what we did, just that we would."
Xander nodded, the atmosphere in the room seemed to have changed a little now. Unsure if it was due to the topic or if something had actually changed, he decided to ignore it for now. 'Especially as you're in a time-frozen image.' He reminded himself. 'This is more like pressing pause on the Enterprise's holo-deck than anything else. Things here aren't real, you have to remember that.'
"My gift told me that my destiny lay with several people. My wife, those in the other room and the creature with them. But it didn't tell me how or why." Brouhm informed him.
"When I met Merkak, I immediately understood what her part in it was. It was several years before we met the Shadow Men as you call them." Brouhm answered. "It was only when I understood what they were trying to do, that I understood how I could advise them."
Xander smiled. "You realised you were here to guide them to both their next demon and the person they would empower with the tamed essence. To give them a sense of what they thought they were missing."
"That's what I thought too..." Brouhm responded. "But they'd already been thinking ways of how to improve on their current limitations."
Unknown location
Faith stared ahead at the man directly in front of her.
He was a large, black man who seemed to be carrying a few extra pounds. In her peripheral vision she could see two other men standing further behind him, but her body still refused to turn in their direction when she tried instructing it to.
'What the fuck is going on..? Some kind of mind-control shit..?' Faith internally screamed. 'Lemme go, you fuckers!'
The man in front of her spoke in a language she couldn't understand, she turned her face in the direction of a taller thinner man standing by one of the cave walls apparently sorting through a collection of boxes and vials. He was dressed in a similar style to the man in front of her. The main body of their clothing nearly identical with only the headscarf's differing by any real degree. As she idly wondered if the other man's choice of clothing followed the same general lines, Faith suddenly realised that now she had no method of keeping track of the third man at all. 'Defence. Fucking defence... stupid body!!! Don't leave yourself open to attack!' She was mentally raging with frustration as she tried to get her body to brace itself, hoping that it might minimise any possible damage should she be caught unawares.
But still she was unable to regain control, she was still struggling with all of her mental faculties as she watched helplessly as the taller man started to move certain containers forward, apparently in some nearly silent conversation with the third man who wasn't in her line of sight.
The man nearest spoke again, and she felt partial relief as her attention flicked back to him, the other two firmly back at the edges of her vision.
'These had better be the only three in the room.' She realised as her body refused to allow her to do a quick scan of the full extent of the cave.
Suddenly she felt her jaw opening and responding to the first man. 'What the fuck..? I speak foreign now..?' She realised, as the words coming out of her mouth were completely unintelligible to her. 'Mind-control..? Truth serum..? Possession..?' Faith mentally went through a list of what could possibly have happened to her.
'Is Xander here..?' She thought desperately. So far she'd seen no sign of him within the cave, but considering she hadn't assessed her surroundings properly yet she couldn't dismiss the option. She tried listening out for any sign of his breathing, but so far she'd felt partially cut off from her senses and hadn't picked up anything distinctive.
'In fact, I've only heard the most obvious sounds.' She realised with a sinking feeling. 'Must be the effects of the drug. Might not even be able to fight my way out of here, should I get free.'
The man spoke again, holding what looked like a large jug in front of her.
'No!!!!' She screamed again, watching in horror as her hands moved forward to take the jug off the man and drink from it. 'Don't drin-'
She cut off her own thought as she came to a sudden realisation, these weren't her hands. The hands performing the action belonged to someone with far darker skin tones than she had. 'What the fuck..?' She thought to herself. 'This is some of the freakiest shit I've ever been through.'
The person whose body she seemed to be occupying continued the gesture and took a long drink from the jug. To Faith's subdued senses it tasted quite bland.
'Are these people drugging me... her..?' Faith wondered idly as her body didn't feel any worse off from the recent experience.
The third man came nearer now. Once close enough her bent down to her left side, Faith was thankful that whoever's body she happened to be in turned in that direction. 'Okay more cave... and a tunnel at the far end, with natural light filtering through. Probably the best chance of escape.' She quickly summarised what she saw before her attention was forced downward.
To where the man was picking up a large chain. 'No. No. No!' Faith argued, begging her body to let her take control. She felt betrayed when her own hand moved towards the man and allowed it to be cuffed.
She watched intently as he moved to her opposite side and repeated the action. Assessing the cave on this side made her even more agitated; there was another cave tunnel slightly behind her which she assumed would lead deeper into the rockface, but it was the large heavily muscled demon struggling against it's own restraints that upset her most.
'I'm not a fucking sacrifice... Come on bitch, there's no reason to agree to this. Will you fucking move you stupid cunt!' She tried to shout it out loud, but still there was no reaction from the body she was wearing, and no indication that whoever's it was was even aware of her being along for the ride.
When her attention moved back to the man in the centre of the cave she was really ready to kill someone. 'It's a fucking demon... no-one turns their back on a demon. Not even Andrew's that fucking clueless!!!'
The man started offering her other substances to consume.
The first looked like an offering of blood made into a soup-like broth. From some of bits floating into it, Faith assumed it contained quite a few internal organs mixed in there as well. 'Do I look like a fucking vamp!' Faith wanted to ask as the girl did her best to consume some large mouthfuls of it.
From the chewing going on, Faith wondered how she wasn't heaving. 'I know I would be in this situation.'
After finishing the initial course, Faith noticed that the body she was in felt heavier. More drowsy. 'They've drugged you, you stupid bitch.' Faith internally told the other girl off, hoping that maybe eventually the other girl will realise she's sharing a brain with someone.
The second offering came in the form of a green gas. Faith thought they were going to have to drink the liquid producing it, but the acidity from the gas itself made her eyes sting as she approached it. So much that whoever's body she was wearing had to close their eyes when they got too close. Taking some deep inhalations that actually made her nasal passage scream, Faith was glad when that particular one was over.
All the while during this, the two men who had returned to the cave walls were chanting and the man in the centre gave what, if she could understand them, from their tone Faith believed to be instructions.
This continued for several more offerings. Each as confusing as the previous, each causing a different response within her body. Each having a lingering effect that she couldn't quite identify. They came in a variety of forms, some she would have to drink, others to eat, some to inhale and some to be absorbed through the skin. One even took the form of what seemed like a spectral spirit surrounding her and somehow causing her some sort of unidentifiable pain.
Finally it seemed to be over, and the girl dropped to her hands and knees onto the hard rock beneath. To begin with that had began to hurt, but it soon became overtaken by a new sensation.
'Whatever cocktail of shit they gave me is starting to take effect.' Faith concluded as she could feel her body spasming internally. Different parts of her began screaming, each seemingly trying to inform her that it hurt the most. Her ears seemed to be picking up a strange ringing sound, reminding Faith of times when someone had physically tried to beat her into unconsciousness. Her eyesight was interchanging between blurriness and extreme high-definition, something she was pretty sure she hadn't had when standing previously. Various muscle groups twitched and screamed and flexed and repeated the actions again and again, each time picking up speed and making the rotation seem faster. She could feel her heart beating at an extraordinary rate, but never quite reaching critical overload levels.
Again she was forced to her knees by the forces acting within her. Faith had only one consolation from all of this confusion, she was pretty sure with the buzz she was currently experiencing that the result wasn't a certainty if they decided to go for with their demon sacrifice plan right now.
Suddenly she exploded to her feet, arms straining at the shackles connecting her to the wall, muscles pulling hard trying to prove their superiority to either the metal holding her or the rock it was connected to.
When the girl's scream began for the first time, Faith willingly joined it. Both showing their exhilaration over what was occurring.
They moved their head as one back in the direction of the man in the centre, Faith's eyes locking onto her apparent captor.
And then everything froze.
Her body seemed stuck in mid stretch, though this wasn't in any way uncomfortable for her. The three men in the room all seemed to be pretending to be statues. The foul-smelling smoke coming off one of the substances they'd presented her with hung in the air, unmoving.
Confused Faith willed her body to give her control. But still nothing came.
Then from the back of the cave came a girl. Walking freely where everything else was frozen in place.
Dark-skinned, wrapped in crude cloth and bandages that apparently made up her outfit. She moved confidently, almost predatorily, across the cave. Apparently indifferent to the others or even the demon amongst their midst. This girl's concentration was on one thing only. The body that Faith was currently inhabiting.
Faith realised from what little she'd seen of her own arms and legs and torso, that the girl was probably dressed almost identically to how she herself appeared. 'A sister..?' She thought as the other girl stepped through one of the men and stood directly in front of her.
'So that's why she doesn't care about the demon... she's a ghost.' Faith figured, wishing there was some way she could meet the girl's confident stance with one of her own.
The other girl tilted her head apparently searching the eyes in front of her for something familiar. Faith wouldn't regard the facial expression as a smile, as it seemed to be confrontational. Not threatening, but definitely challenging. The girl moved side to side fluidly as she continued to examine Faith's frozen form. 'What the fuck is going on now..?' Faith thought to herself.
Apparently satisfied with whatever she found, the girl spoke in flawless English.
"You think you know what you are. You don't."
She reached out and placed her hand within Faith's chest and then everything seemed to fade away.
Back in the cave
"They had..?" Xander asked.
"They were examining ways in which to put several aspects into a single person. Giving them multiple attributes, basically attempting to create a better warrior." Brouhm stated. "They'd had differing levels of success in combining two different aspects onto a single human being."
Xander tried to digest that new piece of information. "Wow... that's... well one way to be ambitious in your thinking."
"They'd also made several attempts to incorporate demon's immortality, or at least the long life spans quite a few demons had, into the mix. So far they'd been unsuccessful, and were now changing the idea to see if these attributes could be passed down onto the offspring of those that volunteered."
Brouhm paused as though proud of himself. "That was when other parts of my visions began to make sense. I knew the demon they had to remove this from and the person they'd need to successfully take it."
"Impressive." Xander said, intending to fill in the void left when Brouhm stopped speaking. "Wait... you intended to make the First Slayer immortal..?"
End chapter 11b