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 14c:
The church
"With that he'd..." Xander drifted off as he realised what he was being told.
"End the Slayer line for all." Brouhm finished off for him. "But the Scythe was well hidden."
"I can't say I'd like to go looking for a mystical weapon underground at a hellmouth." Xander paused as though rethinking his comment. "And now I'm just wondering if I've ever done that exact same thing."
"It wasn't in Sunnydale." Brouhm stated.
"But that's where he found it." Xander argued.
"When The First persuaded Caleb to first start looking it had been buried for a long time. Not even The First knew where it was simply because it hadn't looked for it the previous time it had moved."
Xander returned a blank look.
"When the Scythe is used to teleport to the location of the current Slayer, it disturbs the magical area during it's arrival. It's not enough to affect anything permanently, and it'll be completely undetectable after a few months, but initially nearly anyone sensitive enough might realise something had changed." Brouhm explained. "A very small subset of the Watchers knew about it, and they knew that upon the death of a Slayer they could discover geographically on the planet where the next one would be located by waiting for the Scythe to move."
"A very small subs-" Xander began, "Like some inner council that was blown up..?"
Brouhm grinned. "More like an outsider that followed their own rules."
"But-" Xander tried to guess at who he was talking about. 'Giles..? He's as lost as we are when it comes to discovering the newbie Slayers. Unless he's realised you cannot track the Scythe when it isn't been transported after the Slayer.'
"It's irrelevant now, that man is gone." Brouhm dismissed any possible question before reminding him. "There are too many Slayers, I've no idea where it would end up even if it Merkak was alive to teleport it."
"It's in the Council vaults in Oxford." Xander replied without thinking.
"Anyway, the Scythe was safe." Brouhm explained. "So The First needed to find other ways of carrying out it's plan. So it recruited the Bringers and organised them to start killing the potentials."
"What was Caleb doing during this time..?" Xander asked.
"The First was showing Caleb the role of the Watcher's Council in all of this. It showed him their list of potentials, of more girls who were going to be corrupted just like Buffy and Faith were. It showed him the truths they were hiding from the general public, of the dangerous artifacts they had locked away, access available to only the most senior among them. It showed him who he had to stop."
"The bomb..?" Xander queried, remembering some of Giles comments.
"Caleb tried to back down." Brouhm confessed. "Taking human lives was far different to taking demonic ones... it was a threshold he couldn't cross."
For the first time during the tale, Xander was impressed by one of Caleb's actions. "But he..."
"The First got angry with him and attempted to kill him." Brouhm sighed, "It's a difficult thing to persuade, but the First can only act it's influence within another's body if that person freely allows them access. The First fooled Caleb by offering to show him a future of what might be if the action was not performed. But instead of dying, Caleb was able to absorb some of The First's essence. He was somehow powerful enough to accept being partially merged with The First... something no other has been able to do." Brouhm paused letting that set in. "To be fair, while I, via either Slayers or stories Watchers have told to Slayers, have heard tales of others dying at the First's hands in this manner. It's never been tested against a Slayer before." Brouhm stated, answering Xander's unvoiced question. "But Caleb's own moral code, which had been taking a beating prior to his being empowered was no match for The First. Each merging was slowly destroying his soul. Creating in it's wake a serial killer unlike any other. Convinced that he was in the right, and that The First was simply God asking him to do it's bidding, Caleb became something to be feared even among the demon populations. It became obsessed with the Old Testament, believing that to be the true word. God wasn't loving, God was to be feared."
Xander stared down at the man below him, a man cursing a cruel and unforgiving god. 'And The First took that full circle.' He thought bitterly.
"By this time, The First was simply keeping Caleb topped up, ensuring that he would do it's bidding, increasing the lies so that Caleb would perform the very painful merging willingly. Killing the Watchers Council was one thing, but when he took the first potential's life... a girl who, even if everything he had been told was true, had done nothing wrong other than be born as someone who may one day be the Slayer. By that point it was obvious The First had it's army of Bringers and Caleb was it's rightful general."
"An army with only two intentions, to end the Slayer line and to release the Turok Han. While not the most powerful of creatures from the demon dimensions by a long way, those creatures had by far the most lasting effect on the human population."
"Caleb set about hunting the potentials in far greater number than ever before, killing any Watchers that attempted to protect them. Being dressed as a priest and able to move far more freely than any Bringer ever could, his success rates far surpassed those of even large numbers of Bringers. Leading to the situation where the remaining ones were brought to Sunnydale for sanctuary, any that could be contacted were given the same message." Brouhm explained.
"Caleb liked the fact that they were being grouped together as he figured it would make killing them all that much quicker. The fact that they would eventually be heading there to release the Turok Han just made the whole thing more efficient. Having been made aware that a solitary Turok Han had successfully been released, Caleb and his army were going to release hordes of the Turok Han and concentrate on killing all known potentials in the confusion." Brouhm paused. "That plan changed when they thought they kind of got lucky. And in reality, so did you."
"We both got lucky..?" Xander checked he'd heard the last comment correctly. 'I think we got lucky in the end, but The First was planning this for at least two years; we were completely outclassed.'
"Faith was brought to Sunnydale, and when she came so did the Scythe."
The cave
Tu'ron walked out of the cave followed closely by the others. She stood there staring at the Scythe that had just granted her immortality. Holding it in her left hand, she walked a few steps away from the others heading for something else she'd spotted.
Faith thought back over what she'd just seen. 'The creature was just absorbed into the Scythe's blade.'
Tu'ron knelt down on the desert floor casually picking up a small jagged rock barely the size of her fist. Squeezing it tightly she continued to press down, her eyes never leaving their focus on the object in her hand.
Suddenly the rock split in two, some smaller pieces of loose gravel falling free as she opened her hand to see her achievement.
Tu'ron balanced the rock parts on her hand, rolling them out of the way so that she could look at her fingers, examining them closely. A few small indents scattered randomly about, and part of her palm and little finger were bleeding slightly. But that was the sum total of the damage done.
It hurt but not anywhere near as much as it should have done.
Faith laughed as she watched Tu'ron examining her powers. She remembered a time when she'd done similar things herself. 'Though mine manifested more slowly.' Faith thought back to such a time. 'Just increasing constantly with each day for about half a week.'
Tu'ron reclosed her fist, gripping the two pieces so that fit close together.
'You can't force them back into one rock.' Faith wanted to remind her host.
Tu'ron merely readjusted her grip until they felt comfortable. Then she wound her arm back and lobbed both pieces as far as she could.
She watched as they separated in the sky, still flying upwards.
'Okay, but you can do that.' Faith conceded.
Tu'ron instinctively returned the Scythe to a two-handed grip as she watched the stone fall to the ground many hundreds of paces away. Once it landed, she began examining the Weapon, a puzzled expression on her face and she looked at the object that was protruding from the bottom of the handle. Which had previously ended at the ornamental nob. Nearly all the symbols were gone now, a more detailed examination resulted in the discovery of only two remaining characters.
Walking over to Merkak, Tu'ron pointed out her discovery.
'Yeah,' Faith thought. 'I thought we were done now. Slayer seems complete, Scythe seems complete... no more messing.'
Merkak simply smiled in response. "Those are for me, when the time is right hopefully it will let me communicate with my husband."
Tu'ron turned to face the cave entrance, a sad expression on her face.
As if reading her thoughts, Merkak comforted the younger woman. "It's okay. That's just his body. His soul lives on in there." She stated, tapping the blade of the Scythe.
"With the creature..?" Tu'ron asked.
"Hopefully not." Merkak replied. "But from what I've understood, souls inside weapons have no physical presence other than that of the object they're in. So he can't be in any danger."
"Okay." Tu'ron agreed, still unsure but figured that someone who built Soul Weapons would know more about them than she.
'Yeah, fucked if I know either.' Faith added silently.
Turning the Scythe upside down Tu'ron pointed to the wooden object that had grown out of the hole created in the ornamental nob. It was about the same thickness as the rest of the handle, but had been sharpened so that it ended in an impressive looking point. "What's that for..?" Tu'ron queried.
"I have no idea." Merkak responded honestly, running her hand over the edge. "Ow... but it's sharp."
If Tu'ron had been able to communicate with Faith all she would have heard was her continuous stream of laughter.
The church
"Faith's arrival changed Caleb's plan." Brouhm replied. "Killing the potentials was becoming a time-consuming task, and that was only for the ones that they knew about. What about all the other potentials who were unknown to even the Council..? Both Buffy and Faith had belonged to that group, they weren't discovered until they'd received the Slayer's gifts."
"The same potentials we're having problems locating now." Xander muttered under this breath.
"But when the Scythe moved..." Brouhm began, allowing Xander to fill in the blanks.
"They could now locate it easily." Xander agreed.
"They were able to discover the Scythe's whereabouts within a day of arriving in Sunnydale." Brouhm informed him. "And killing hundreds maybe thousands of potentials, now got simplified to merely killing two Slayers. Releasing the Turok Han at that point would have been counter-productive."
"Holy fuck!" Xander swore as realisation dawned. "If we hadn't been able to empower all the potentials, we'd have been wiped out by the Turok Han."
"True." Brouhm stated, "But the world has survived their arrival before, I'm fairly sure it could again."
"Fairly sure..?" Xander asked in a worried tone.
"Populations were smaller then and more spread out." Brouhm answered. "I can't imagine what might have happened if, between the Turok Han and the regular vampires, a large section of California had become infected."
"And with new infectees not necessarily sharing any 'normal' vampire traits." Xander went wide-eyed at the possible implications he could imagine.
"Luckily that did not happen." Brouhm stated, bringing Xander out of his imaginations. "And there are more urgent matters to attend to."
"Right." Xander agreed automatically, unable to drop the previous subject quite so fast. Finally his brain caught up with what Brouhm had said. "Wait, what matters..?"
"With all the recent changes to the Slayer line I don't know if another from Caleb's will be called." Brouhm informed him. "And we have no idea if one is, will they share similar characteristics such as age and gender like they did from Tu'ron's."
"Who is Tu'ron... never mind that, why would one be called at all..?" Xander challenged, mind racing over everything he'd learnt so far. "Caleb was killed with the Scythe. So his line should end, like it was designed to do."
"Like it was designed to do..?" Brouhm asked, to which Xander nodded his certainty. "You mean in the way that it was designed to kill one solitary immortal Slayer, should she be unable to handle either the transformation or if successful the many years of constant battle."
"Okay, fair point." Xander conceded.
"Never mind that it's never been tested on either the original Slayer, nor any of those from her line." Brouhm continued.
"I said I understand." Xander repeated.
"And the fact that my best estimate if I had any at all, would have been killing any of the three possible Slayer lines should have resulted in the termination of all of them. Something I believe you may have disproved when you empowered all the remaining Slayers from the original line."
"Okay!" Xander put up his hands in the surrender position, just as something occured to him. "Three lines..?"
"If the newly empowered Caleb produced his own line, which would be my guess this room represents. Then I see no reason why Buffy's resurrection and re-empowerment wouldn't produce a line of her own."
"Great. Just great!" Xander complained, throwing his hands up in the air. "So just when I thought looking for a bunch of adolescent Slayers was going to be complicated enough. Now I've possibly got a man in his thirties who may or may not exist, possibly being Slayerized too."
Xander paused to take a breath before continuing his rant.
"And someday, we might also get women in their early twenties going through the same thing; although I hope it's not for a very long time, if what amounts to basically a coffin buried in the ground turns up here then I apologise in advance but we were a little pre-occupied at the time."
Brouhm simply raised his eyebrows at the last one.
"Shit!" Xander exclaimed as something else occured to him. 'What if we've activated all potentials from the other lines too... there could be- No wait. We've been actively looking for any women showing signs of entering Slayerdom. None in their twenties have turned up. So we should be fine, unless of course it's cos Buffy hasn't died... for a third time. So we might only have two entire lines wandering around the planet. Man, my brain's going to melt if this keeps happening to us. I've really got to find some way to get Willow or Giles in here to talk to this guy, hell even Amy would have been a better choice.'
"If the lines follow the same rules as the previous one," Brouhm began. "Then whoever received Caleb's line is going to remember times when they felt completely justified in killing young girls."
'Please let there be only one, please let there be only one.' Xander was firing on all cylinders by this point. "Wonderful... a perfectly normal person might have already woken up to discover that they've had dreams of being a serial killer, their targets identified by ghosts of dead people pretending they're some sort of god... is there anything else you'd like to tell me before I go completely insane..?"
Brouhm sighed before beginning carefully.
"I know what The First told Caleb about you." He began, continuing in a low quiet voice obviously not wanting to agitate Xander further. "I've seen your life through Buffy's eyes, Kendra's eyes and those of others... like Amanda." He stated carefully.
Xander simply looked on in wide-eyed wonder, unable to stop his brain going over those fateful words. 'You're the one who sees. Sees what..? What did The First see in me that I don't know about myself..?'
Brouhm looked regretful. "It's possible. I don't know if it's true, but there's nothing in anything I've seen that can determine one way or the other."
Xander's mind ran away with the statement. 'It's The First, it lies about everything. It probably just said something to put me down so that Caleb would be willing to see me as an acceptable casualty... Though everything it's said has had some truth, simply taking the truth and twisting the perspective to achieve it's goals. Was it telling the truth..? Making everything up to persuade Caleb. Truth or lie or something inbetween..?'
Xander asked the question he wished he didn't have to. "What exactly did The First say about me..?"
End chapter 14c