Chapter Seventy One: All Quiet?
In the basement of the Slayer HQ all was quiet. All the people present remained in stasis, caught like flies in amber within the green glow filling the building. The Wolfram and Hart mages and the alliance of witches were still spread in a circle around the newly opened Hellmouth, all of them looking down into the depths below but none of them moved a muscle, none of them consciously registered what they were looking at.
Within the Hellmouth far below but not yet in sight of anybody in the basement something stirred, a figure was moving and coming closer to breaking out into the world above. Had any of those watching been capable of viewing what was happening they would eventually have seen the giant figure of the Hellgod Satan coming closer, into sight below them.
It would be a squeeze but the large horned demon head and the massive shoulders would just about be able to fit through the opening of the Hellmouth. But just as Satan was about to take himself up through the opening he heard a voice from behind him, the voice of a young woman:
"I wouldn't do that if I were you."
The Demon Lord assumed that that it was the same young woman, Eve, who had spoken to him shortly before. But when he turned to look he was surprised to see a completely different young woman standing there, further down the slope leading up to the entrance to the world above.
"And who exactly are you," asked the Demon. "Where did you come from and how did you get here?"
"I'm the Key," said Dawn. "Or that's what everybody tells me. I'm sure you've heard of the Key, all the best Hellgods have. That means I'm in charge of all this, not you."
"You think you're in charge of me?" asked Satan, sounding amused. "Does that mean you intend to stop me? Just how do you expect to do that?"
"Me? I don't have to do anything," said Dawn with a smile. "It's already done. I'm just giving you a friendly warning to stay in your own world. You can go ahead if you like. It's your funeral."
Satan, although angry at this further attempt to stop him was no fool. He knew of the Key without understanding much about it and what it was for. He also knew that use of the Key a few years before by Glory had started off the current cosmic sequence of events. It was a powerful thing, maybe even more powerful than he was. He hesitated.
The Demon Lord wasn't simply a large version of an ordinary demon. He had more than extra pounds and extra muscle. He had considerable demon powers and he now used them to examine the woman in front of him. Was this an ordinary woman, perhaps a witch, or was she really something more as she claimed?
Something more was the quick conclusion, something much more. She seemed to have connections off in all directions at once. She seemed to be mystically linked in some way to just about everything and everywhere. Is this what the Key would look like? Could she really be the Key? And if she was what did it mean?
"Tell me more," said Satan. "What have I got to be afraid of? Why is the Key so concerned about my welfare?"
"There's no point in me saying any more," said the woman. "You wouldn't believe me. But I'm sure you'll believe this. There is a cosmic balance, that's why the Key exists, to keep that balance. The world up there is not your world, you know that very well. There are dangers there to your kind that you can't imagine. Stay here and carry on as Lord of all you survey or go up there and be destroyed." She shrugged. "It's your choice."
"I know all about that world," said Satan. "I'm not going into the unknown. I've had agents working for me for a long time. There's nothing there that can hurt me."
The woman smiled, shrugged and shook her head. "Well you can't say I didn't warn you. Anybody who relies on Wolfram and Hart gets what they deserve."
Although Satan had exerted his powers to keep the woman in place at that moment she disappeared, thus once again demonstrating her power and thus the seriousness of her warnings. This left Satan alone to think about his next move. He hadn't reached his present eminence by taking silly chances. And he hadn't ever made the mistake of thinking that the likes of Wolfram and Hart did anything but act in their own best interests rather than his. As always a basic weakness of the evil side of the universal spectrum was that nobody could afford to trust anybody else.
Satan reached a decision. He wouldn't go ahead himself. He would hold back and send some minions on ahead. After all what was the point of having uncounted legions of demons at his beck and call if he didn't use them? If things up there were safe for his demons they would be safe for him and his minions could make it even safer. He could go through after his forces had established a bridgehead.
Satan turned away intending to go back to speak to his chief commanders. But as he walked away from the Hellmouth he heard the sound of laughter behind him. Once again it was a woman only this time it was Eve who he saw when he turned round.
"It doesn't take much to stop you does it?" she said. "Just a few words and you run off with your tail between your legs. Hail the mighty Demon Lord!" and with that Eve gave a short mocking laugh.
"What game are you playing?" asked Satan and now he really was in a fury. "First you try to stop me and now you try to provoke me into going? What exactly do you want? What are you trying to do?"
"Little me?" asked Eve. "I'm just having fun. The Key and I decided to see how many times we could use just words to get you going back and forth here without actually doing anything. You ain't seen nothing yet."
In a sudden move Satan leapt towards Eve but as he reached the point where she was standing beneath the exit from the Hellmouth she vanished again. Once again a woman had defied Satan's powers because he had tried to keep her frozen in place. Without a pause Satan turned and fired a long blast of hellfire towards the woman as she reappeared along the corridor. But the fire washed through her insubstantial form leaving her unharmed. Whoever or whatever she was she did not have a corporeal body in that place that he could damage.
But Satan had ways of dealing with incorporeal beings and he strode towards the woman even as she stood there laughing at him once again.
"Here you go again," she said. "Back and forth, too and fro, never actually getting anywhere, never actually doing anything. Isn't this fun."
Satan now exerted his power to keep the incorporeal woman in place while he seized her, but nothing worked. This was not his Hell Dimension. It was not even the human world above, it was the interface between the two. Many of the powers that Satan could use down below or up above simply didn't work here. Or at least they didn't work against this woman, whoever or whatever she really was.
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"There're all set," said Sam. "Shall I give the signal?"
Jack O'Neill looked around at the other members of SG-1 and the crew of the SG control room. Some nodded. There was no dissent. "OK," he said. "Go ahead."
Sam spoke into the microphone in front of her. "Orders are confirmed, go ahead. I repeat go ahead." She listened to the acknowledgement from the other end and then turned to Sergeant Harriman. "Close the wormhole," she ordered.
They all watched as the Stargate was shut down and the shield was closed.
"Now we wait," said Daniel.
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Eve had disappeared again and once again Dawn appeared. Once again the actual appearance was behind Satan but he was immediately aware of it. He turned and saw Dawn standing underneath the Hellmouth opening into the world above.
"It's best if you put a guard on the Hellmouth at your end and make sure nothing and nobody comes through," said Dawn. "I belong in the world up there so you won't see me again."
Dawn once again disappeared but Satan, his demonic senses now fully alert and concentrated on the strange young woman was able to sense her essence as it rose up and went through the Hellmouth into the world above.
The Demon God paused and took stock before rushing off in one direction or another. He was still angry, very angry since he was not used to being mocked. Nobody in his realm would dare such a thing. But he was not too angry to think.
He could return back the way he came and order some of his minions to go through the Hellmouth ahead of him but he was now having second thoughts about that. It would make him look weak to them. Some amongst his more powerful subordinates might find out that he had been turned back by nothing more than a few words from a young human girl. Yes, she was much more than a human girl but it had been the words which had stopped him, not any display of the power of the Key.
Did he want to risk his subordinates thinking he was weak? They might get ideas of overthrowing him. Yes, he could deal with them but that would mean coming back down to the Hell world. He was about to take over the upper world. He did not want to fight for the world below at the same time.
Stick to the original plan he thought. It is what I have intended for a very long time. It is what I negotiated with Wolfram and Hart and I don't want to fall foul of one of their special contract clauses by changing things now. I will go through the Hellmouth now and nothing and nobody better get in my way If that woman or some other character appears again with some more clever words I shall simply ignore them.
With that Satan stalked forward until he was directly under the Hellmouth entry. Had anybody above and looking down been consciously aware they would have been able to see his massive figure below them as he reached the opening and looked up. At that exact moment the Stargate lying on top of the Hellmouth connected to a wormhole and the energy of the Stargate surged down and around the Hellgod.
As the surge from the wormhole extended it obliterated everything in its way, or at least that is what it usually did. This time things were different. They were different because of the power of the Hellgod. Because Satan knew all about Stargates and how they worked. He knew very well what would happen when a Stargate opened, what would happen to him if he was unprotected. But he was not unprotected, which was why he made no effort to avoid the downwash of the wormhole.
Satan gathered his powers in a shield around himself in the instant before the wormhole hit, having been warned of what was about to happen by the sound coming from the Gate. The wormhole washed in a wave around him but he remained safe and unhurt within it.
So that's the real reason those women, or perhaps that woman in two guises, had delayed him he thought. That's why she didn't want me to actually leave the area altogether in either direction. She wanted me standing in this exact spot at the moment the Stargate opened. Very clever. She expected me to be destroyed. Well she's going to be sadly disappointed.
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"What do you mean it's disappeared," asked Jack O'Neil, speaking into the microphone in front of him.
"Everything went as planned up until we opened the wormhole to the Sunnydale Stargate," said the officer speaking to O'Neil from the Alpha Site through the now reopened SGC Stargate.
"But once the wormhole was open it sort of disconnected. We re-dialled but the system now tells us there's no such place. It's crazy because it says there never was such a place. But we did get a connection the first time. I can understand if something went down in Sunnydale but it's our own computers that are arguing with us."
Jack O'Neil looked at Sam Carter sitting a few feet away and raised his eyebrows. "Any ideas Carter?" he asked. "And don't use the M word."
Sam Carter looked up from the computer screen in front of her. "It's the same on our system. It doesn't just say the Sunnydale Stargate doesn't exist, it insists it never existed. Of course it did, but the good news is that apart from Sunnydale the Gate network seems to be back to normal. Seems something definitely went down in Sunnydale."
"We knew that something would happen and something seems to have happened there, something involving magic," said Teal'c prompting a loud sigh from Jack O'Neil.
"Yeah but what happened and was it good magic or bad magic?" asked Daniel.
Nobody offered an answer.
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Willow blinked. What had just happened she wondered? She had been looking into the hole that led down to the Hellmouth, the hole into which the Stargate had fallen when... When what? She thought some time had passed since she saw something coming up towards her. Something green? Some sort of energy? After that nothing. It was as if she had fallen asleep for a short while and then woken up.
Willow glanced at Tara beside her with a questioning expression. The two of them knew each other well enough to communicate without always using words. Tara shrugged and returned a don't know expression in reply.
By now everybody in the basement was asking variations of the same questions; What's going on? How long did it last? Is everybody alright?
The last question was soon answered. Nobody had been hurt and nobody seemed to be missing. Perhaps more importantly nothing seemed to have come out of the Hellmouth while everybody had been 'turned off'.
But was it possible that something had gotten past them and was now loose in the world? Willow voiced this question out loud but only those nearby took notice amid all the hubbub.
"Another Big Bad to deal with?" said Cordelia in an unworried voice. "Oh no, however will we cope? Do we know anybody who's dealt with a Big Bad before? Or rather do we know anybody who hasn't?"
"It can't be that dangerous otherwise it would have attacked us while we were helpless," said Anya. "If anything got by it can only have been a Little Bad."
"Or a sneaky Big Bad," said Tara with a smile at Willow. "I wouldn't worry Sweetie. We can deal with it if there's anything to deal with. We always have before."
"But what about the Hellmouth?" asked Amy, who had now joined the other witches in their little discussion group. "Where did it go? And what happened to that Stargate? I don't see it anymore."
That was what everybody was asking as they all stared at the ground inside what was still a rough circle of people. The ground was now level and undisturbed. It was as if there had never even been a hole there. The Stargate and the Hellmouth, if they were still there, were now buried under the re-levelled ground.
"So what do we do now," asked Cordelia. "Do we start digging? Or is it better to leave things blocked up like they are now?"
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Outside the building those watching also began to stir. Maybourne and his soldiers, the three slayers and the Charmed sisters all realised at pretty much the same time that the green glow had disappeared. Maybourne at once began issuing orders:
"Detain those women for questioning" he ordered the officer stood next to him and pointed at the two groups of women. "Colonel Knight, get your men in there. That's an order."
But suddenly the women all vanished. One moment they were there. The next they were not. Or that's how it seemed to the Colonel. What actually happened was that Piper heard what Maybourne had said and had frozen him and those around him. Paige had then orbed the slayers and her sisters inside the building.
"What women Colonel?" asked the lieutenant stood beside him. Nobody else had noticed the disappearance, or if they had they did not admit to it.
Maybourne realised that he would be wasting his time trying to explain. Anyway his control of the army unit was not very certain and he decided not to give the soldiers any reason to think he had lost it. The priority was to get into the building and to get hold of that Stargate.
"They must have gone when we weren't looking," he said. "Come with me." And he walked into the grounds of the building following after where Colonel Knight had already gone. As he did so he heard the sound of approaching helicopters.
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"All of the seismic activity seems to have stopped," said Giles. "I wonder if whatever happened has been sufficient to settle everything down."
Giles was talking to one of three groups of people huddled within the basement of the Slayer HQ. Over to one side Lilah Morgan was trying and failing to find out from the Wolfram and Hart people present exactly what had happened and why the Hellmouth had disappeared. Even more importantly why had her plans for an apocalypse coming out of the newly connected Hellmouth apparently vanished without trace?
Another group was the military unit from the SGC who had discovered that their communications had been restored. Captain Dietrich was currently talking to Colonel O'Neill at the SGC to explain what little he knew about what had happened.
"I'll orb up above and see what the Elders know," said Tara who promptly disappeared in the usual shower of lights.
Almost immediately following Tara's disappearance Paige Halliwell orbed in and in the course of the next few minutes the assembled throng were joined by the witch sisters and the slayers. This necessitated a session of comparing notes and bringing everybody up to date which was abruptly ended by Tara's return.
"It seems the unusual spate of earth tremors has stopped everywhere," said Tara, "The Elders think the Hellmouth is connected as planned even though we can't see it."
"And the missing Stargate?" asked Willow. "Do they know what's happened to it?"
Tara shook her head. "Nope, they don't know any more than we do."
"Well if the Hellmouth is still down there underneath us somewhere the Stargate must be down there somewhere as well," said Prue.
"Better not say that too loudly," said Wesley looking at the other two groups in the basement. "We don't want anybody to get the idea that they can dig it up. Things seem to have worked out pretty well if things have settled down without an eruption from this new Hellmouth. We don't want anything to disturb that."
"That's very nice for everybody who hasn't lost their sister," said Buffy bitterly. "I'm gonna get her back and I don't care who or what I have to disturb to do it so you'll pardon me for not agreeing."
A gloomy silence descended on the group and the others in the room also fell silent as they realised that there was still some sort of outstanding problem. Before anybody could break the silence with words of hope and encouragement for Buffy a new Voice joined in.
"Who died? Nobody I hope, or nobody we can't bring back to life one way or another."
Everybody turned to see the newcomer walk out of the otherwise empty shadows on the far side of the room.
"Dawn?" said Buffy. "Is that really you?"