Epilogue
"You have got to take this seriously Ash."
Lilia raises her voice a bit over the phone.
"You can use the hellmouth's power to your advantage..." she continued.
"That's great!"
"For a price."
"Oh. Not cool. Oh. I just had a bad feeling about what you're going to say next... it has a lot of latin terms"
"You beat me to it."
"No! I can barely say one word in Latin!"
"That couldn't be accurate. You studied Latin for the slayer's ritual."
"I did? Oh yeah! But..Is there any workaround for that?"
"Nope. "
"Ugh. When are you coming back anyways?"
"I don't really know... I have a lot of stuff to take care of. So many things to learn. Anyways, going back, as I've said you can..."
"I can use the power of the hellmouth yada-yada.."
"I'm serious here! You might need to use it someday. You would need to let it consume you just enough to overpower it afterwards..."
"Easier said than done."
"It seems like you're not bothered by this at all."
"Look Lil, I can take care of myself. Thanks for the warning though. I'll read these latin scripts and uh, memorize it."
"Okay. You're not being sarcastic are you?"
"No of course not! Well then Lil, I got to meet up with my dad. Some important matters I guess..."
"Alright. Um, please do send my regards to Uncle."
"Sure. Bye."
"Bye."
Ash walks in to her dad's office.
"Ash, I have a job for you."
"A job? I'm not a demon hunter."
"I know, but you are the slayer."
"Yep. Shouldn't it be obvious by now?"
The vampire's claws impaling my stomach made me scream. The pain was excruciating... I kind of thought that it was almost intolerable until I felt the adrenaline pumping wildly in my veins. It ticked me off alright that I was able to shove his face to the ground and smash it almost instantly, and turned him to ashes. I knew I didn't have enough power to even heave the simple knife to close the hellmouth, shit happens. Good thing about it is that I was a quick study. I memorized the lines of the dreaded script and had the dark powers consume me. It was almost easy, not having a soul and all - nothing to corrupt, nothing to take of course, too much of something is always bad...
"You okay?" She said as she was pressing on her own wound.
"I'll survive."
"Good."
Ash collapses on the ground as the dawn breaks.
Is she gonna be okay?
Yes. Stop being such a whiner. I gotta get some sleep. You take over from here.
We got home from Braskan that same day. I woke up in a hospital bed with a brace on my left arm - must've passed out again on the plane. It stings but it's tolerable. Besides, I'm sure I'll heal in a few more hours. I sat up, jumped right off from the bed. I had to limp though, I just found out that I also sprained my ankle. Damn Crimson's not being careful.
I heard that.
Oops, sorry. Well, you haven't been careful. You have to remember that we are occupying just one body here. You get this body hurt, it will still hurt when any of us takes over.
Yeah, you deserve it. You are lazy.
I am. But see, I'm not a slayer. You are. You have insane strength and agility so it's not very likely for you to be careless.
Stop fretting already! I did what I had to, I get hurt, you get hurt, we all get hurt.
Cole disrupted the internal conversation the Khulay descendant was doing, when he walked into the room.
"Crimson isn't it?"
"Yeah. How'd you know?"
"Hmmm, for one, you don't sound all perky... yeah... well, that's about it. Must be tough dealing with the creatures who came out of the hellmouth. "
"You have no idea. Good thing I brought the simple knife with me. Tell me the truth Ninong... you're not trying to get us killed right?"
"What kind of a question is that? I gave you the information that was passed down by HDA. I didn't think that a hellmouth was opened."
"Sorry Uncle," Rush took over. "my other personality is having an anxiety attack. He pretty much got beaten up by a bunch of supervamps... see this hand? I can't feel anything on my 5 fingers."
"It's already being investigated."
"Don't you think it's a little strange that HDA wasn't aware of that hellmouth?"
"I can't know for sure..."
Author's Note: I just added this as an epilogue.. found it from my pile of written drafts. Since I''m still suffering from insomnia, I thought I'd just edit a few lines and post it. I don't know how to continue it anyway because it's not really a part of the LOS arcs.
Legend: Crimson/Blood - underlined font; Rush/Rhum - italicized font;
Bold font - flashback
Normal font - present time