"You brought it, right?" Buffy whispered to Dawn. She new that she should feel nervous … after all, weeks of non-stop effort to bring together hundreds of voluntolds was coming to a head, and nobody was quite sure that her elegantly-simple-yet-completely-theoretical plan would work.
Why aren't I nervous?
Dawn narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips, and responded with a slight shake of the head. "Really? You think I'd forget it?"
Both of their eyes turned downwards as Dawn pulled the corner of an envelope out of her jacket pocket, wiggled it at Buffy, and then slid it back inside her coat.
"Don't lose that," she murmured as she gave Dawn a few pats on the arm that she hoped were comforting. "There ain't anymore where that came from."
Dawn nodded, stared at Buffy with sad eyes, and said, "Sis, I know we've been over this, and I also know it's super selfish of me to be thinking about myself right now, but if you have time after saving the world … don't let me die?"
Every other thought vanished from Buffy's mind as she turned away from the podium Xander was assembling from pre-cut pieces of wood and a few dozen thick, steel brackets and embraced Dawn. The sky was cloudy, the air remained chilly despite the fact that it was nearly noon, and nothing matter to her at that moment besides comforting her sister.
"Hey," she said, "I'll find time. I promise you."
Dawn nodded, pulled Buffy closer, and then pulled away when she saw Xander eyeing them with a suspicious gaze.
"Anything I should know?" he called out as he stood upright, hammer and wrench in hand, and stared at them with a sullen expression.
Buffy reached out, grasped Dawn's hand, and shook her head. "Nothing urgent."
Xander stared at her in silence, his face unreadable, then he crouched and finished securing the last of the brackets. The podium was maybe three feet by three feet in width and length, and about five feet tall … high enough that everybody portaling in would think to look at her.
It looks stable enough.
"Are we ready?" she called out to Giles and Willow.
Willow nodded. "We are."
Giles said nothing for a time, and he appeared lost in thought until Willow elbowed him in the ribs.
"Quite ready," he sputtered. He and Willow looked at each other, then they both sat down cross-legged in the middle of the pentagram. A few gourds, candles, occult symbols, and oversized cards that Buffy was pretty sure weren't for poker surrounded them.
Connor and Colleen were already seated, Angel was keeping an eye on her while also sweeping his eyes over the stadium, and Fred was standing nearby and staring at her with a piercing, searching gaze.
"You ready?" Fred asked when she caught her staring back in return.
Buffy shook her head. "Nope, but we're out of time."
Fred folded her legs with a casual grace and sat herself on the grass of the field just outside the pentagram. I can't imagine what this is going to be like for you … I'm envious, in a way."
Buffy blinked in surprise at the comment. "This entire thing is a nightmare, Fred."
Fred nodded, grinned a lopsided grin that for some reason set Buffy's teeth on edge, then closed her eyes. "Ready when you are."
Buffy gave Dawn one last glance, noticed that she was fingering the envelope in her pocket, then with a nimble leap she jumped atop the podium. She glanced over and watched as Xander and Dawn sat down next to each other near where Colleen, Connor, and Fred were already sitting, and her heart ached when she saw Xander lean over to brush his lips across Dawn's cheek.
Xander will never forgive me for keeping what Dawn and I have planned from him. Maybe he'll say he forgives me, but he never actually will.
She caught Angel staring at her from where he stood, black coat fluttering in the cold breeze that swept through the stadium, and she mouthed I love you to him. He winked at her, returned the sentiment in kind, and even forced a halfhearted smile.
If I thought he could have made the difference, I would have talked Angel out of guard duty. We're bringing a whole lot of folks to Moonridge who don't like me or my friends very much, and if this goes wrong, he isn't going to be able to stop them all.
The alarm on her watch beeped.
It's time.
"Now or never, Cordy," she yelled out.
A bright white light blinked above the pentagram and Cordelia replied, "Buffy, we've been over this already. You don't have to scream at me, I can hear you."
"Here goes nothing," Buffy muttered under her breath.
The rippling, blue-white, electricity-crackling portals, rather than winking into existence one after the other, appeared all at once. They hung in the air above the concrete steps of the bleachers, and as she rotated on her podium, she saw that they stretched around the entire circumference of the stadium. She didn't think it was a coincidence that the portals had manifested near the apocalytes that stood waiting with their stacks of neatly printed incantations.
Incantations written in a made-up language for a television show.
We're all probably going to die.
. . . . . . . .
He hurt, but then again, he couldn't remember a time when he didn't hurt. He didn't need to sleep, though he would have welcomed the oblivion of unconsciousness, and the rays of the sun that permeated the clouds blanketing the sky hardly registered as they turned every inch of exposed skin into rivulets of scorched flesh.
They didn't have to die … I only needed Faith. Why couldn't they just leave?
The faces of the two dead slayers popped into his mind, the one with the short hair and the one with the gray hair and the nose. In quiet moments they appeared in front of him with stern faces and judging, pain-filled eyes, and blood leaked from the wounds that had killed them.
The wounds that I made. That slayer was brave. She kept trying to kill me even as I tore apart her throat.
There could easily have been more dead. His mother would have killed the blonde one, Buffy, that day in the tunnel. The other one, Buffy's sister … Dawn … she could ended up dead, too.
He closed his eyes for a moment and let the agonizing sunlight drift beneath the dark hood that shrouded his face. He wore black jeans, boots, two shirts beneath a hooded sweater and a long black overcoat, and yet his skin still burned. Such as him were not made for walking in the light.
"Jesus Christ, you're melting!" the young man holding a stack of fliers said as he pointed at Joshua with a quivering finger. "Doesn't that hurt?"
Joshua ignored the question, plucked one of the fliers from the man's hand, and tilted his gaze downwards so that he could read what was printed on it. "What does it say?" he asked as he squinted in confusion at the nonsensical syllables filling the page.
"It'll help us fight the First Evil," the man said as he wiped the brow of his sweater along sweat-beaded brow. He had on tactical vest upon which nothing that seemed even mildly useful for fighting was attached, cargo pants, and a long t-shirt featuring an assortment of comic book characters.
Joshua looked about and saw that the lower rows of the stadium bleachers around the entire circumference of the field were nearly filled, and each and every human, demon, alien, or slithering-tentacled-mass-of-a-thing seemed to have one of these fliers in its hands. He opened his mouth to ask another question, but before he could utter a word he felt a familiar tightening sensation along the skin of his back.
It's coming.
The creature, or the First Evil, or whatever you wanted to call it, shouldn't be. He supposed he felt a kinship with it in that way, for deep in his bones, he knew that the same could be said of him. The red-hot magic of the slayer sizzled in his flesh and compelled him in one direction, the ever-present lust for blood, for destruction, for death urged him another, and the conflict steadily ate at what remained of his soul like a spreading cancer.
All they had to do was leave … they would still be alive if they had just left.
"Whatever is written on here won't matter," Joshua said as he crumpled the pamphlet into a ball and dropped it on the ground. "Trust me."
He ignored the protests of the tactical-vest-wearing volunteer and made his way down the concrete steps of the stadium towards the field. There was a tarp on which a pentagram had been traced, he saw Buffy Summers's blonde-hair-topped figure climbing onto a raised dais to give a speech, and when the First arrived … and it would be here soon … that's where it would probably go.
He passed by a long-haired man accompanied by a contingent of armored guards and three fluttering women, a herd of furred, humanoid looking creatures with stalks for eyes that he couldn't put a name to, a pack of lithe women with preternaturally graceful movements accompanied by men in suits he assumed were Watchers … his hand twitched toward the dark wood of the stake tucked into his belt when he saw them … and finally he reached the metal railing that separated the field from the stands. He had just tightened his grip and coiled his legs to jump when Buffy Summers's voice rang out throughout the stadium.
. . . . . . . .
Do I really sound that high-pitched?
Buffy paused to clear her throat, adjusted to the distraction of her reverberating voice, and focused on the people, demons, whatevers, pouring of the portals that ringed the field. It was more than she expected, but fewer than she had hoped.
At least some of them came.
She had spied more than a few familiar faces. Groo, wives in tow, waved at her enthusiastically. Many of the Watchers … the older ones, at least, were known to her, and the ones she didn't recognize gave away their identities via the suits and stiff, thin-lipped expressions they wore. Amongst a contingent of demons who were reading the spell pamphlets with a suspicious eye floated three ample-bosomed women wearing sheer, diaphanous gowns, and she blinked a few times to assure herself that the hairdos she was seeing actually existed on planet Earth.
Those three had better not be the Furies Angel was telling me about.
She had developed an eye for spotting witches and warlocks, and she was fairly certain that hundreds of them were in the stands. They didn't mingle, of course, instead they spread throughout the bleachers and eyed each other warily. The slayers were the easiest for her to spot, and their folded arms, unfriendly gazes, and unhappy expressions represented a painful reminder that for most of them, she remained persona non grata.
They blame me for Kennedy … hell, they probably blame me for a lot more than that, and some of that blame I maybe deserve.
There was close to a thousand beings gathered in the stadium when she glanced over at Willow, waited for a confirming thumbs up, and began to speak.
"Hopefully everyone has grabbed a copy of the spell by now …" she began, and her words trailed off as the sound of her own shockingly nasal, horrifyingly high-pitched voice echoed off the bleachers.
She regained her bearings, blinked a few times, and found that she had completely forgotten what she was going to say.
"Maybe introduce yourself," Angel whispered. He stood next to the podium in his black coat, dark trousers, and black shoes, and it occurred to her that all he needed was an earpiece to look the part of a secret service agent.
"Buffy," Angel muttered in a near-hiss, "they're all waiting."
"Right," she mumbled, then she winced and cringed at the sound of Willow's spell amplifying her utterance for all to hear.
"Look," she started again, and this time she did a better job of ignoring her horribly-shrill-I-can't-really-sound-like-that voice, "we're out of time, and I'm not good at speeches, so I'm going to give it to you straight. If you're here, you know why you're here, and you know what happens if we lose today." She gestured around the stadium at the apocalytes gathered around makeshift tables. "If you don't have a copy of the spell, grab one. The language is … is really old … and I'm not going to bother trying to explain any more than this: it'll give us the power to defeat the First." A hush settled over the crowd. "In a few minutes, we're all going to read that spell at the same time. You all know who I am, you all know what's at stake, so we need to trust each other in this."
Worried, reluctant murmurs began to sprout from the crowd in all directions.
"Or maybe think about this," she hurried to add, "even if you don't trust me, or each other, you can trust this: we stand together, or we die alone." The assembled horde grew still and quiet, and Buffy took a deep breath and continued, "That's the choice each of you have today, help us win, or go find some quiet spot in which to die. And I'm not talking about dying only in this world, either. Heaven, your own personal hell dimension, an afterlife without shrimp, nirvana, wherever you think you or anyone you ever cared about is going, you'll never get there. The First is coming for everything and everyone, everywhere."
Buffy stood up straighter, wished she had brought some cue cards, and let her gaze drift around the stadium while she spoke.
"We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. Instead, we must be united in our common interests. We're not fighting for our freedom, or against tyranny, oppression, or persecution. We're fighting to avoid annihilation. We're fighting for our right to live, to exist."
. . . . . . . . .
"Is she doing the speech from Independence Day?" Dawn whispered to Xander while they listened to and watched Buffy.
Xander leaned towards her and whispered back, "Your sister may have asked me for some inspiration, and I may have pointed her in the direction of the finest movie speech ever written."
Dawn held her hand to her mouth, suppressed a giggle, and shook her head. "Well, it feels rather apropos."
Both she and Xander had copies of the spell sitting in their respective laps, and though she intended to hold the paper aloft and even go so far as to mouth the words, she wouldn't be reading them. For the thousandth time, she reached into the pocket of her coat and made sure that the envelope Buffy had given her was still there.
. . . . . . . . .
Buffy let her desperation bleed into her voice as she spoke. "Nobody is coming to help us, there's only us. Those pages in front of you, if you read them with me, it'll give us the power to beat what's coming. Or, you can throw them on the ground and hope for the best. I don't care anymore, because I know that my friends and I have done all that we can." She held up a closed fist, realized that she was being hopelessly dramatic, and yanked her arm back down by her side. "If there is to be a tomorrow, today has to be the day when we cry out in one voice that we will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on and we're going to survive! So either join me or get the hell out of my way, because there's no middle ground. Not today. This isn't about good versus evil, it's about life versus nothing at all. Make your choice."
There was some scattered applause when she jumped down from the podium, but mostly there was just grim silence.
Angel leaned towards her and whispered, "Buffy, that was …"
"… great," Xander interjected.
Buffy smiled at Xander and then shot an expectant look at Angel.
Angel stumbled over his words for a moment, then said, "That was really rousing. Fantastic job." He rubbed at the back of his neck and cast his eyes towards the stands. "Kind of sounded familiar … in parts."
"Never mind that," Buffy said as she stood on her tiptoes, pulled him down by the lapels so she could kiss his cheek, and murmured in his ear, "this may be the last time we see each other, so hug me like you mean it."
Angel obliged, and her ribs creaked from the strain, but when it was over she felt ready.
"I love you," she whispered. "Watch everyone's backs while I'm gone."
Angel nodded. The sun was behind him, casting his face in shadow, but she tried nonetheless to memorize every hard plane of his jaw, every curve of his face.
She wanted to say more, but there was no time. She gave Dawn and Xander a hug, ignored Dawn's borderline terrified expression, then offered wish-me-luck comments to Connor, Colleen, and Fred, in turn. When there was nothing left to say, she walked over to Willow and Giles and asked, "Where do you want me?"
Willow pointed to a small circle traced near the top of a complex diagram created from what looked like poured salt, playing cards, and other items that undoubtedly possessed some sort of mystical property. "Right there, Buff. On the mark of Sineya."
"Are you ready?" Giles asked.
She snorted, stared downwards, and placed her feet on the circle. "I feel like I should be asking you that."
"We're ready," Willow said after she and Giles exchanged glanced and then confirming nods. "Turn the mic back on?"
Buffy nodded. "Might as well. It's time."
Willow with a quick wave of her hand and a grunting utterance in some ugly, demonic tongue, resumed amplifying Buffy's voice. A few seconds later, Buffy resumed speaking. When it was over, she couldn't recall what words she'd said, not that it mattered very much. Everyone would either help or they wouldn't, simple as that.
Eventually, when there was nothing left to say, she pulled her copy of the spell out of the pocket of her pants. She closed her eyes for a moment at the supreme silliness of hinging the fate of the world on a made-up language spoken by Star Trek aliens, then began to recite the incantation aloud in the hopes it would prompt everyone in the stadium to follow along. The words sounded more like growling than speaking, the syllables were harsh and discordant, and she felt a bit silly at first. Everyone with her, except Dawn, joined in the recitation, and the words echoed in her ears.
She'd heard the enjoining spell in English … it was not a memory one was likely to forget … and she remembered some of the words.
The power of the Slayer and all who wield it.
Last to ancient first, we invoke thee.
Grant us thy domain and primal strength.
Accept us and the power we possess.
Make us mind and heart and spirit enjoined …
At first she thought it might be the wind, or even her imagination, but as the words went on and on and more voices joined in, a power began to hum along the ground. Her hair stood up on end, a ringing sound began to buzz throughout her body, and the dirt beneath her feet rattled as if each particle was charged with a foreign energy.
She glanced over at Willow and Giles and then immediately wished she hadn't. Sweat was pouring down their faces and they were holding each other's hands so tightly that their fingers were turning white. They were mumbling something, a portion of the spell most likely, and Buffy turned back to the page in her hands so that she could continue reading.
The tingling sensation increased, she could feel her bones and joint begin to shake from the strain of what was starting to happen, and then she realized that it was time. She closed her eyes and held out her hands, why she wasn't sure, and because her eyes were closed she did not see that the majority of those gathered in the stadium had closed their eyes, as well, and that they were swaying in place in unison with some unseen force.
She also did not see Giles pull his hand free from Willow's, place it on her forehead, and add a few words to the spell he was voicing. Willow's eyes snapped open, she opened her mouth to protest, but an instant later she slumped over and began to sway in rhythm with everyone else caught in the magic's grasp.
Buffy's last thought before the power began to surge through her was to remember Willow and Giles's warning that above all else, she could not allow herself to forget who she was. She had absorbed the power of three people before, only three, and that had been overwhelming. No one had ever tried to channel the energy of hundreds of other living souls, and if she wasn't careful her essence would be lost amongst the maelstrom.
. . . . . . . . .
No one, not the Watchers Council or even the slayers, realized until years had passed that whatever Willow had done to awaken the Potentials had also put an end to the slayer dreams. The strange, nightmarish, prophetic dreams-that-were-more-than-dreams that gave slayers visions of past and future were infrequent enough that their absence wasn't missed at first. In fact, it wasn't until the Watchers concluded that new Potentials weren't being born that they began investigating other ramifications of Willow's spell, and it hadn't taken them long to discover that the slayer dreams had stopped.
The Slayer magic was broken and nobody knew how, or even if, it could be fixed.
The night after they'd killed the giant snake-demon form of Richard Wilkins … again … she had lain in Angel's arms, reveled in all the making-up-fun they'd had while simultaneously agonizing over Faith's death, and eventually she had fallen asleep. She fell asleep and awakened standing in her bare feet on a hill in the middle of a sun-scorched desert. Bent, gnarled trees, mounds of boulders, and scrub brush met her eyes in all directions, and the ground upon which she trod was little more than a layer of yellow sand. The air was dry and hot, she knew she should be sweating, but she wasn't, and she also knew that she was dreaming.
This is a slayer dream … the first one any of us had in decades. The water of Mimisbrunnr must have done something to me.
The slayer dreams always came with a message, and that message was typically something that she needed to know about the future. The message usually wasn't in the form of a helpful note or email, unfortunately, but whatever it wanted her to learn, that knowledge was important. When she heard footsteps behind her, she didn't need to turn around to know who it was.
"It's been a long time," she called out.
With sinuous, graceful movements the girl moved into her line of sight. The white markings decorating her dark skin were just as she remembered, as were the pale, bandage-like strips of cloth twined around her body.
I suppose this white and red dress I'm wearing looks just as strange to her.
The First Slayer cocked her head and crouched low to the ground. The girl, despite her youth, was a bundle of coiled, watchful menace as she darted glances at Buffy in-between scanning the desert in all directions.
"It's been a hell of a day, and I need my sleep," Buffy said. "So if it's all the same, maybe you could just tell me what I need to know?"
The First Slayer frowned, stood up straight, and began to walk in a seemingly random direction into the desert. When she saw Buffy wasn't following, she paused, beckoned with several fierce gestures of her arm, and then resumed marching.
Time to play Follow the Leader. I always hated that game.
The First Slayer moved fast, and the soles of her feet were apparently used to the blistering heat of the sand and the bits of jagged rock that seemed to exist only so that idiots traversing the desert without shoes would do so in pain. Buffy winced every few steps, gritted her teeth against the pain, and reminded herself that this was just a dream.
A fetid, foul scent reached her nostrils, the First Slayer vanished over a ridge line of rock, and Buffy realized that she very much wanted to wake up. She had a feeling, however, that whatever the First Slayer wanted to show her was probably important.
Maybe this is about the First.
Despite the heat, she felt a chill ripple down her spine as she climbed over the ridge line and descended into a shallow, bowl shaped depression in the rock roughly forty feet in diameter. Within the depression grew not a single plant, and the heat radiating off the stone made the air undulate and ripple.
The First Slayer pointed, and Buffy looked in the direction she was indicating.
In the middle of the indentation in which they stood was a hole about a foot across. Cautiously, with trepidatious footsteps, she stalked nearer and gazed into it. Nothing could be seen within, and given that the sun was directly overhead, she recognized that something unnatural was afoot. Even more unnatural than a slayer dream.
"You don't want me to jump into that, right? Because I'm not going to," she informed the First Slayer.
The First Slayer rolled her eyes, folded her arms, and shook her head.
Buffy cast her eyes downward, shrieked in a manner entirely unbecoming of a woman who had dealt with supernatural horrors the entirety of her adult life, and jumped away from a foot long, jet black ant that had crawled out of the hole. She nearly lost her footing in her mad scramble away from the thing, and was just about to turn and run when a spear descended and pierced the giant insect's carapace. Black, foul-smelling ooze gushed forth, the ant's legs and mandibles shuddered a few times, and then the huge bug lay still. The First Slayer pulled the spear out of the giant ant and proffered it via outstretched hands.
She can't be serious.
"Me?" Buffy asked as she pointed at herself. "I'm a slayer, not an exterminator."
The First frowned and shook the spear as if to say, pick it up, already.
Buffy was just about to argue further when another ant crawled out of the hole. Instinctively, she grabbed the spear and thrust it into the thing's head. The chitinous exoskeleton burst with a crunch, the ant quivered in its death throes just like its brethren had, and then it lay still.
When the third ant crawled out, she repeated the process.
She didn't need to ask the First Slayer what was expected of her, it had become obvious. The ants kept pouring out of the hole, faster and faster, and she whirled and leapt and blinked away the sweat as she killed. The smell quickly became nearly intolerable, and still the ants kept coming in ever greater numbers. It probably was her imagination playing tricks on her, but it began to seem as though the ants were linked to each other and to the dark hole in the stone by glittering, obsidian strands, but whenever she tried to look at one of the black threads straight-on, it vanished.
How many of these things am I supposed to kill?
She continued for a time, and soon she realized that the ants would simply not stop coming no matter how many she slew. They didn't attack her, not really, they just wanted to escape into the desert. Somehow, she knew that she could not allow that, that her life meant nothing in comparison to keeping them out of the world.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to do!" she finally howled as she speared one ant and then flipped backwards and sprinted to catch one just before it could climb to freedom. "Help me!" She spared a moment to turn towards the First Slayer. The girl was shaking her head, tapping her foot against a large rock sitting on the ridge line, and staring at her with a look of utter scorn.
"Look, I don't understand what …"
Her words trailed off when she realized that she did understand. She threw down the spear, ran to where the First Slayer stood, and knelt down next to the rock. "Do you mind?" she asked as she gestured towards the First Slayer's foot, which was still perched on the rock.
The girl retracted her leg, Buffy wrapped her arms around the stone, and then she heaved herself upwards with every muscle in her body. Her neck popped, her lower back cracked, and she could feel her legs tremble and threaten to buckle at the strain. Inch by inch, the rock rose in the air, and eventually she stood upright with the boulder balanced in her arms. It had to weigh at least three hundred pounds.
"Maybe you could lend a hand?" Buffy wheezed as she began to walk downwards towards the ant-hole.
The First Slayer made no reply, which was what she expected.
The ants continued to try to escape, but she was close enough to the hole that she decided not to stop. Foot by weary foot she trod forward until she stood above the abyssal cavity from which the ants were spawning, and then she let the rock go. It fell downwards, smashed against the stone, and settled in the hole. Buffy waited for a few seconds, confirmed that there was not enough space for the ants to escape, then turned to retrieve her spear.
The First Slayer had already retrieved the weapon and was using it to kill the last of the ants that had managed to crawl free.
"I know what you wanted me to learn," Buffy announced with a certain amount of pride. "I don't have to kill all the ants … in fact, I don't think it's possible to kill them all. I just have to keep them from getting out."
The First Slayer smiled, walked forward, and thrust the spear at her chest.
Buffy awoke with a start, drenched in sweat and with Angel's arms draped around her. The dream had given her an idea, and she knew it would work.
I know how to defeat the First.
. . . . . . . . .
"Don't forget who you are," Willow whispered from somewhere deep inside her mind … or maybe it was only her imagination.
The air around her crackled, snapped, and hummed as though she was trapped within a gigantic bug zapper, every hair stretched away from her body, and the chanting and swaying of those gathered in the stadium had become a sonorous, steady roaring in her ears. She opened her mouth to voice a question to Willow, and then the power of the enjoining spell swept over her.
No, it didn't sweep over her, it obliterated her.
Whatever she was, whatever she had been, it vanished before the rushing onslaught of hundreds of souls with their own powers, abilities, and memories. Their lives rushed through her, she felt the weak, pitiful shell of her body wither and melt under strain, and once the marrow of her bones had begun to boil and her brain had turned to a churning liquid she struggled to find an anchor to keep her from being swept away.
I …
She could see the strength flowing into her with eyes that had become more than human, and with senses that could perceive the flow of magic as easily as the pathetic human she once had been could see the water of a river cascading into a waterfall.
Am …
Gravity meant nothing to her, and she willed herself to rise above the ground. As she floated in mid-air and stared in wonder at the small creatures whose energy, whose very essence was being funneled into her, the illusion that was life and death … along with so many other mysteries of the universe … became clear. Her thoughts pulsed like supernovas, and if she wished she need to only extend a finger of the power welling within her to remake any of them, to even reshape their planet if she so desired.
Buffy …
Her body could not contain what she had become, and magic alone kept her arms and legs intact, her heart pumping, and her eyes open. Eyes she didn't need anymore. The matrices of reality itself were there for her to manipulate, and she saw mysticism, spells, all of it for the illusions they were, crude veneers that allowed mere mortals to channel the raw energy of Creation itself. She had no need of such tricks, she had become one with that energy, she felt it sizzle and coruscate through her body. The voices gathered within her, each one clamoring for dominance and fighting to assert itself, and she scrabbled and clawed to yoke their strength and control them for her own end, rather than let them control her.
Summers!
She could remember who she was now, and with the anchor of that recollection the world settled around her. Everything moved slower, each particle of air drifting with the wind visible to her perception, and she could distinctly detect each slow, labored breath taken by those snared by the enjoining spell, along with Giles's rapid, staggered heartbeat. The fear wafted from Dawn … her sister … that's right, she had a sister … and some creature wearing a black coat who felt wrong was climbing out of the stands and onto the field.
Whatever the insignificant being approaching her wanted, it didn't matter. Nothing mattered except the First. Giles and Willow would not be able to hold this spell for long, and …
When she saw Angel … really saw him for the first time in her entire existence … she wanted to weep tears that undoubtedly would have sizzled and melted their way deep into the earth's crust if she shed them. He was so handsome, so fragile, and she could feel and touch the raw, unbridled beauty of his love for her. It was a connection unlike anything she had ever experienced before, and for the first time in her life she knew … she knew … that she wasn't alone in the universe, that he was with her, and that with his entire heart he …
I don't have time for this.
Each second, for her, would have felt like hours if she was bound by a human's perception, but even seconds were too precious to waste. With determined thoughts she forced herself to turn away from Angel and search for the enemy. She could feel the First pulsing against the fabric of reality, boring its way from the nothingness that imprisoned it into the worlds of the living, and she had to stop it. She didn't need a portal, or the Powers, or anything, not anymore, she need only will what she wished into existence.
She reached out a with a minuscule fraction of the forces she commanded, tore a hole in the world, and floated through it.
This is the Undermall.
She recognized it immediately, or what was was left of it. A black substance coated the buildings, the inner walls of the enormous stone ziggurat, everything, and the First's presence had so warped the pocket dimension that no living being of flesh and blood could have stepped foot within without being torn asunder.
Thankfully, she wasn't made of flesh and blood anymore.
Black strands that were somehow simultaneously thinner than the silk of a spider's web and as dense and impermeable as solid rock … no, far denser than that, more like whatever formed in the core of a black hole … reached from the center of the Undermall. through rips in time and space, and stretched into other worlds. She flexed her senses and realized that each of those strands was consuming a reality, and then from that dimension it spread to others, on and on and on. The living creatures that had been in the Undermall had been absorbed, as had countless others throughout Creation, and it was almost too late, she realized.
I hadn't realized how far the First has already spread.
It didn't really matter, she decided. She had been wrong to think that she wouldn't be able to fight and defeat the First, there literally couldn't be anything in any world, anywhere, that she could not destroy. Confidence surged within her and she searched for the enemy she knew would be dwelling at the center of the spider-webbing strands of primordial darkness.
When Angelus stood, everything flowed and bent to his movements as though he were a singularity in motion. He saw her, he smiled, and she saw the end of all things in the endless, bottomless pit of his mouth.
I was wrong … nothing can fight that.
She realized what the First was, what it really was, and the thought crossed her power-enfused mind that she was perhaps the first being in all of Creation to ever really understand its true immensity. A shadow lay beyond everything, and the darkness of the First lurked behind every living soul, every grain of sand, and it pressed against reality, it ceaselessly struggled and surged and searched for weak spots.
And wherever it pressed against the worlds of the living, like a star whose gravity pulled planets into orbit around it, evil grew more powerful.
The tear that Richard Wilkins had made was still there, she could see it now. The hole was infinitesimally small, just a pinprick, but it was enough. The vast, sloughing, effluent darkness of the First surged through that hole, devouring Creation bit by bit, and eventually there would be nothing left.
She saw what Angelus was, too. Even though the strands of dark power that flowed from the Undermall into other worlds connected to him, he wasn't the First, not really. He was a puppet, a shell, a matrix that the First manipulated so that it could communicate and interact with the living. It couldn't do so any other way, because nothing, not men or demons or gods could survive coming into direct contact with the First, for it was anathema to life itself.
"I was wondering when you would come," Angelus said, and his voice cracked and vibrated across space and time with force enough to shatter worlds. She was stronger than any living being, she realized, but she was nothing compared to what she faced.
Thankfully, she wasn't here to fight … not really. What she really needed to do was piss off the portion of the first that was Angelus. All things of physical form had to obey the laws of the body they inhabited, and the First had chosen to inhabit a vampire with a short fuse and a profound dislike of being mocked.
"And miss kicking your ass yet again?" she said, and the mellifluous cacophony of voices that poured out of her throat as she spoke surprised her. "Not a chance. I've lost track of how many times I've beaten you and I'm looking forward to doing it again."
Angelus's eyes narrowed in irritation, she saw the demon that he had been flex as the First responded to the impulses of the shell that it was using, and the black strands reaching into other worlds trembled for a moment and began to reverse their course and flow back into Angelus.
That sight was exactly what she was hoping to see.
This is going to work.
. . . . . . . . .
She smiled at me … I know she did.
And then Buffy, who glowed with the light of a dozen suns and was levitating a dozen feet off the ground, vanished. His heart lurched, he clenched his fists to try to control his fear, and an instant later Buffy reappeared right where she had vanished. She was dressed differently, she hadn't been wearing black jeans and a thin black t-shirt before, but it was her.
For a moment, he wondered if it was over already … Giles and Willow had warned them that time and space would stop behaving normally once the enjoining spell kicked in, but then he realized who he actually faced.
That's the First … or some fragment of it.
"Hello, lover," the black clad Buffy said while she smiled at him. She looked young, younger even than Buffy did now post-Mimisbrunnr-bath. And beautiful, of course, but her eyes and smile were wrong and there was no warmth in her expression.
"Isn't there a fight somewhere you should be at?" he asked.
The Buffy-First shook her head and her smile widened. The sight sent shivers down his spine. "I'm right where I'm supposed to be."
He moved away from Willow and Giles, hoped that the Buffy-First would pursue him, and felt a rush of panic when the thing folded its arms across its chest and planted its feet in the turf.
"You can go ahead and wander off wherever you want, I won't be following." The Buffy-First gestured with her head towards Willow and Giles. "I'm here to keep an eye on them … think of me as a failsafe."
"I thought you couldn't be beaten, weren't even scared of being beaten," Angel said, and he hoped that the quavering note of desperation in his voice wasn't audible to the First.
Buffy-First pursed her lips thoughtfully, raised one hand to stroke at her chin, then replied, "I … the real me … doesn't have any doubts, but this body I'm wearing," she gestured at herself, "it thinks differently, and so I figured, better safe than sorry." She gestured again at Willow and Giles. "I'd rather have them to play with for eternity, but if anything starts to look iffy …" She raised her index finger and drew it across her throat in a slashing motion. "Little Missus Witch and the recently back-on-the-dating-market Mr. Giles are done for."
He threw himself at the First in a lunging, completely undisciplined attack that he would have been ashamed to see from anyone he had trained over the years. He grasped for a handhold on her shirt, drew back his arm to throw a punch, and then found the world spinning end over end as he was flung a few dozen yards away.
The ground rose and smashed into him, he gasped for air, and then he scrambled back to his feet. The First was still sitting there, wearing the love of his life's face, and making no move to attack.
"Come on, finish me off!" Angel taunted it. "I've helped wreck your plans how many times now? That freak, Caleb, he's dead because of me and Buffy. Come get me!"
Buffy-First laughed, part of his soul died at the horror of the sound, and then she shook her head. "You, and others like you, are literally the only beings in all of Creation that I don't want to see destroyed … at least, not until the end of everything else." She sighed, stared at him in amusement, and the expression actually managed to remind him of the real Buffy.
"Why?" he asked. "What makes me so special?"
The smile on the First's face disappeared and it stared off into space, seemingly at nothing at all. A flicker of irritation appeared for a few seconds on its features, then it vanished. "Your two spellcasters are running out of time," it said while she cracked her fingers.
Why me? When I returned from Acathla's hell dimension, it stalked me and tried to drive me insane, but it never tried to hurt me. When Spike regained his soul, it haunted him … but I don't think it wanted him dead, either. Colleen is sure that the First is now manifesting around Joshua … why?
The answer came to him immediately: Giles and Willow had concluded that things that should not be, that defied the natural order of reality, are what allowed the First to manifest, and an ensouled vampire and whatever demon-human hybrid he was now, were creatures that shouldn't exist.
The Anyaverse shouldn't exist either, but whatever Wilkins did split the timeline. Buffy and I, and any other champions of the Powers, we can't visit that reality without splintering reality even further, but the Anyaverse does exist when it shouldn't, and that's why the First is here in physical form.
It was so simple, he didn't understand why he hadn't seen it before. The First had latched onto him and followed him into this reality. Spike gained a soul, and the First's hold on the world grew powerful enough that it could imbue a human avatar with its power. The Anyaverse still existed, when it shouldn't, and that had been wrong enough that the First could take physical form.
We thought that when the Sunnydale Hellmouth was destroyed, the First was banished, but what if that wasn't it at all … what if it couldn't stay here once Spike had died? What if it's only here because I'm alive? What happens if I die?
He visualized Buffy, the real Buffy, in his mind's eye. He tried to remember every strand of her hair, every curve of her body. He had loved her from the beginning, had told her once that in all his years of life, she'd been the only woman he'd ever loved.
She won't forgive me for this.
She'd scream and she'd weep and even if she managed to save Creation, there would be no joy in it for her.
I'm sorry, Buffy.
He reached into his coat and pulled out a compact, blunt-nosed, blued steel revolver that he'd borrowed from Xander.
"You can't be serious," the Buffy-First scoffed as it shook its head. "That won't even be an annoyance."
He lifted the gun and held the barrel to his own temple.
The First's eyes opened wide and he recognized the expression on its face.
It's worried.
"I finally figured it out," he announced. "Me, Spike, Connor, Joshua … we shouldn't be in this world, we shouldn't exist, at all. When we die, you can't stay here … or maybe you're weakened … or maybe I don't give a fuck about the details, all I know is that my death will hurt you somehow, and that's good enough for me."
The First held out a hand. "Angel, listen to me." It was clearly making an effort to more closely ape the real Buffy's mannerisms, right down to the trembling lower lip and the worried, frantic expression in her green eyes. "Think about Buffy, think about how much she loves you and how much suffering the two of you have endured in order to be together. You wouldn't do this to her, I know you wouldn't."
He used his thumb to pull back the hammer of the gun.
. . . . . . . . .
Dawn had gently laid Xander down upon the grass so that his head lay in her lap, and while she waited for Buffy's signal she stroked his hair and tried to remember every detail of his face. Angel was facing off with something that looked like Buffy but most definitely was not Buffy, the real Buffy had flown … flown … above the field and then disappeared in a blinding flash of light that had twisted upon itself like a miniature supernova contained within a crystalline ball, a tall, black-coated figure was climbing down from the stands, and she couldn't find the energy to care about any of it.
This is it. Your time to shine, Dawn Summers.
Any moment now her sister would send her a sign from wherever she was in time and space … assuming she was still alive … and she'd do her part to try to save Creation.
Oh god, please don't let anything happen to Buffy.
She raised her trembling fingers from Xander's scalp, reached, into the pocket of her coat, and withdrew the envelope Buffy had given her. Through the paper she could feel the small, hard object within. Such a small thing, and yet her sister believed everything depended on it.
She wouldn't have asked me to do this if she wasn't sure it was necessary. Buffy won't let me die, I know she won't.
