The black steeple of Proserpexa's temple protruded from the ground, the ancient structure looming over the town below. Stone carvings of demons, gargoyles, and various other monsters adorned the surface of the temple. The most prominent one was of a nude snake-haired woman. The statue's mouth gaped open with a sinewy snake-like tongue protruding from within. The thick body of a snake coiled around her body, draping itself over her like a robe.
Only a few yards away from the rising temple stood Willow. The ebony-haired witch's eyes bled to solid black as she raised her arms and began to chant in an ancient tongue. Few, who still walked the mortal plane, would recognize the language. Fewer still was the number who could speak it.
"Proserpexa, I call to thee. Let the cleansing fires from the depths burn away the suffering souls and bring to them the mercy of death." Willow commanded in English.
Bolts of lightning started to crackle between her outstretched hands and the statue of the temple's owner. Powerful winds buffeted the area, tussling her dark hair and equally dark clothing. The ground shook and the winds grew even stronger as bolts of green magical energy shot from Willow's body toward the statue. Each of the bolts of magic grew more frequent and intense as more time passed.
The statue of Proserpexa began to glow a bright yellow-white, the rest of the exposed steeple following soon after. The frequency of the bolts of lightning increased to such a degree that they almost appeared to form a constant connection between the grief-stricken woman and the statue.
Suddenly the stream of magic was interrupted and the glowing subsided, as a dark-haired male stepped in front of the statue and broke the connection. Willow looked at him in genuine surprise at his unexpected interruption.
"Hey there, black-eyed girl. What you up to?" Xander asked nonchalantly.
"Get out of here, Xander!" Willow ordered.
"I'm afraid that's gonna be a negatory. You see you're not the only one with powers. You may be some hopped-up uber-witch, but this carpenter here... well he can drywall you into the next century."
"I'm not joking around, Xander." Willow warned. "Get out of my way. Now!"
To emphasize her point, Willow blasted Xander in the chest with a powerful bolt of lightning. The magic sent the founding male Scooby flying back to land at the base of the Proserpexa statue. Streaks of the same green magic continued to slide across his skin before they seemed to subside. Holding on to his ribs in pain, Xander staggered back to his feet and once again blocked the energy flowing toward the statue.
Xander's actions earned him the first truly hateful glare that Willow had ever given him.
"You can't stop this." Willow warned.
"Yeah, I get that, but where exactly am I supposed to go, Willow?" Xander asked. "You've been my best friend for my entire life. You've seen me at my best and you've seen me at my worst. If the world really is gonna end... then where else would I want to spend my last breathing moments other than with you?"
"Is that your master plan?" Willow asked incredulously. "You're going to stop me from destroying the world... by telling me you love me?!"
"Well, my first plan was to walk you off a cliff and then hand you an anvil, but that seemed a little too cartoony."
Willow sneered at Xander's response. "Always with the joking.
"I'm not joking now, Willow." he replied sedately. "I know that you're in pain. As much as it hurt after I killed that thing wearing Jesse's face, I know that it's barely a fraction of what you're feeling right now. I want so badly for there to be some magic word that I could say or some kind of ritual that I could do to unburden you from all of that, but there isn't." Xander glanced at the temple behind him before he continued. "And because of all of that pain, I know that you're about to do something apocalyptically evil and stupid, but you know what? You're still my Willow."
She watched as he started to move towards her, his arms held wide open in a gesture of love and acceptance. For a second the gesture seemed to work as the inky blackness of her eyes receded, but the effect didn't last for long as they returned to the same dark color moments later.
"Don't call me that." she yelled angrily.
"On our very first day of kindergarten, you cried because you broke the yellow crayon, and you were too afraid to tell anyone because you thought that you were gonna get in trouble. You've come a long way since then. Ending the world? Not your finest of moments." Xander said. "But here's the thing? I love you! I loved crayon-breaky Willow and I love scary-veiny Willow. So if it really is time for me to check out, then it's gonna be right here. If you wanna kill the world, then you start with me. I think that I've earned that right."
Xander's speech had left Willow visibly shaken and upset. Her eyes now returned to their normal color. "You think that I won't do it?"
"That's just it, it doesn't matter if you do! I'll still love you."
"Shut up!" Willow screamed right as she gestured with her hand.
Xander's head jerked to the side like he'd been struck by something. Three large cuts appeared on his cheek looking as if he had been clawed by some kind of feral animal. He touched his hand to his cheek and pulled it away to look at the blood smeared across his fingers. Willow panted as she watched him nervously.
"I love you."
Another gesture of her hand doubled Xander over and sent him to his knees. This time the attack had torn his shirt open. Long, bloody furrows were torn into his chest by Willow's gesture. The bloody marks were to the ugly-looking bruises that already decorated his chest.
Xander panted and grimaced from the agony coursing through him, but he eventually made it back to his feet. "I... love y-"
"SHUT UP!" Willow screamed right as she blasted him with a wave of energy.
The wave of magic crashed into him causing Xander to stagger back, but still, he remained on his feet. Willow unleashed another blast of energy and still he remained standing. Frustration at Xander's continued defiance caused Willow to bombard him with blast after blast of magical energy. Eventually, the force behind the continued attacks had Xander pressed back against the temple which was once again absorbing the energy that Willow's magical attacks against him possessed.
Unknown to either of the two friends, Xander's physical contact with the temple's structure, while it was absorbing the magic from Willow, was also causing the same thing to occur inside Xander's body. Unlike Willow or Giles, Xander was not a practitioner of magic. His body's meager "magical reserves" were quickly filled by the bombardment of power, and with no way to release such reserves through the usage of magic, the energy had to find someplace else to go.
The energy found that place within a long-dormant fragment buried deep inside Xander's psyche.
Ending her attack, Willow watched as a barely conscious Xander collapsed to his knees. Striding over to him, she looked down at him in fury, but the tears that were pouring down her face originated from an entirely different emotion. The magic that Willow had absorbed from Giles had allowed Xander to reach the part of her that was still the woman that her friends knew and loved, but the darkness and anger that still raged inside of her heart had one last card to play.
With a downward swing of her left arm, Willow tore open a swirling blue portal a few feet away from Xander. Gripping her best friend by the throat, Willow hauled him off of the ground and threw him inside of it. However, with the act of banishing Xander from their world, Willow had finally burned through the last of her unbridled fury. The, once again, redheaded witch watched in horror as her oldest, closest friend was lost to an unknown fate.
Hephaestus' Workshop
Planet: Olympus
In another reality, on a planet hundreds of light-years across the galaxy from the one known as Earth, a middle-aged man stood vigilant at a control console as he adjusted the settings and monitored the power levels for his current experiment.
The Goa'uld known as Hephaestus was a contradiction amongst his species. Unlike most of his brethren, whose main desire was to conquer, Hephaestus had little desire to do so. Oh, he enjoyed ruling over his lessers, but it was not the conquering of his enemies that drove him. What Hephaestus desired the most was not to dominate but to build and create. Instead of conquering worlds and destroying his enemies, Hephaestus enjoyed seeing how his creations performed outside of his workshop, in real-world situations. That's not to say that he didn't enjoy battle just as much as the rest of his species did, but his true satisfaction came from watching his devices and machines crush those that they were sent out against.
Something that he got to enjoy doing quite often thanks to his father, the Goa'uld System Lord Zeus, who was the primary benefactor of his ingenious designs.
It was Hephaestus who crafted the thunderbolt that Zeus was famous for wielding against his enemies. The name was sort of a misnomer since the thunderbolt was not a bolt of lightning held in hand, but a silver gauntlet that he wore on his right arm. In the palm of the gauntlet sat a blue crystal, from which said bolts of white energy were released.
Though it was well known that Hephaestus was the primary source of Zeus' advanced weaponry; the fact that he rarely left the planet of Olympus, which lay in a somewhat remote part of the galaxy, and that he had little interest in gaining more political power, meant that other Goa'uld largely ignored Hephaestus.
Though there were some Goa'uld who despised him despite those facts. Individuals such as his brother Ares.
For centuries, Ares and Hephaestus had held a deep-seated animosity toward one another. Their relationship resembled one more like that of mortal enemies than the brothers that they were. Hephaestus despised Ares because of his sadistic nature and constant thirst for battle. At the slightest provocation, Ares would gleefully send out his army to raze planets belonging to his enemies.
Things between the two of them came to a head 20 years ago when Ares sought to eliminate Hephaestus and claim his technology for his own use. An outcome that would have both weakened Zeus and increased the strength of Ares' army at the same time.
The attempt on Hephaestus' life resulted in him being permanently disfigured on the right side of his face. The most intriguing fact about the attempted assassination was not that Ares had tried, but the fact that he'd come so close to succeeding. With Olympus being deep inside Zeus' territory, and Hephaestus his source of technological advantages against his enemies, any attempt on his life would have quickly been discovered by the King of the Olympians. The only way Ares could have gotten as close to success as he did would have been because of outside help. Help that could have come from only one source on Olympus without being discovered. Zeus' queen, and mother to both Hephaestus and Ares, Hera.
Though he never found any evidence to lay the blame for the attack at the feet of Ares and Hera, Hephaestus knew that it could only have been them.
Ares' hate for his brother on the other hand came from a place of more base desires. Besides his need to possess the technological marvels that rested inside his workshop, Hephaestus possessed another prize that Ares coveted more than any other: Hephaestus' wife, Aphrodite.
Whether it was to bow at her feet in worship or to have her share their bed, Aphrodite was desired by all whose gaze fell upon her.
Ares made many attempts to woo the beauty from his brother's side, but his attempts were constantly rebuffed. After the assassination attempt on him failed, Hephaestus threw himself into his work, a desire to never again be so vulnerable his constant motivation. During this period of isolation, Ares eventually succeeded in seducing Aphrodite. For years they carried on a secret love affair, but while Aphrodite would sate her lustful needs with Ares, she always returned to her home, to her husband, at the end of the night.
Tonight was no different as she returned from another tryst with Ares during the latest bacchanal hosted by Dionysus. It was in his private workshop that Aphrodite eventually found her husband.
A feeling of pride swelled within her breast as she watched her husband tinkering away at his latest gadget. He had mentioned to her recently about trying to find a way to secure an endless supply of resources for Zeus. It would seem that he'd made a considerable amount of headway as some kind of large frame stood nearly complete in the center of the spacious shop.
Walking up behind him, she wrapped her arms around his waist and placed a loving kiss against the side of his neck. "Hello, my beloved."
"Welcome home, Aphrodite. I assume that your desire to be entertained has been satisfied?" Hephaestus asked as he continued to work on the device before him.
"Very much so, beloved." Aphrodite told him. "Tis a shame that you did not wish to join us this evening. Dionysus was looking forward to your company."
Hephaestus grunted in indifference to her statement and continued with his work. Seeing that her company would be mostly ignored by her husband for the immediate future, Aphrodite grabbed his chin to twist his face around and kissed him goodnight before leaving him to his devices.
Hephaestus' eyes followed Aphrodite's round and curvy bottom as she walked out of his shop. A fact Aphrodite was well aware of as she added an extra sway to her hips as she left.
Hephaestus and Aphrodite's Private Chamber
Planet: Olympus
A trilling noise echoed through the spacious bedroom, quickly growing in volume. The noise, emanating from a hand-held device, went on for a couple of minutes before it finally broke through the fog of sleep that encompassed its owner.
It had taken a few seconds for Hephaestus' sleep-addled mind to recognize what the noise was that had awoken him from his slumber. Turning his head toward the sound, he spotted the offending item resting on a nearby table. With a tired groan, he reluctantly reached out to grab the device, silencing the incessant trilling. He squinted at the screen, his eyes adjusting to the bright light, and read the incoming message.
After the nearly successful attempt on his life twenty years ago, Hephaestus had installed a sophisticated network of monitoring sensors for the most sensitive areas of his palace. Any unauthorized attempts to access either his bed-chamber or his workshop and the device would immediately alert him. His eyes shot open as he realized the current alert had been triggered from within his workshop.
Hephaestus leaped from his bed and slowed only long enough to slip on a tunic and don his Kara kesh before he raced out of his bed-chamber. As Hephaestus stormed out of the room and made his way to his workshop, he commanded the Jaffa on duty to follow him.
The journey to his workshop was a short one since it was located in the same wing of his palace as his personal chambers. Upon reaching the doorway leading into the workshop, Hephaestus found the bodies of the Jaffa assigned to guard the room slumped on the ground. None of the bodies showed any sign of injury, merely the slackened expressions of death. He assumed that a Zat'nik'tel had been used to kill them.
Sneaking into his workshop through the still-open doorway proved to be much easier than he expected as his eyes scanned the room for the intruder. Unfortunately, the reason for the lack of resistance was due to the deafening sound being produced by the activation of his latest invention.
Hephaestus had been tasked by Zeus with coming up with a way to increase the amount of resources that his empire could gather. His initial idea had been to design and build automated harvesters that could extract valuable minerals and materials from uninhabited planets in the far reaches of the galaxy. He eventually dismissed the idea after realizing the amount of time it would require for the harvesters to reach their destinations, gather the resources, and return home. The time sink outweighed any benefits it might have offered.
It was around this period when some of his Jaffa had stumbled upon a device on a world that had once been under Furling control.
Designed in the form of a six-foot-tall mirror, the device allowed a user to see images of other places. It didn't take Hepahstus long to realize that the things he was looking at were actually alternate realities. Using the controller that had been brought back with it, the user could "tune" into different realities. The mirror also allowed one to travel to said reality simply by touching the glass. A fact that had been discovered by a curious Jaffa that had touched the mirror when Hephaestus had been changing the channel. From what Hephaestus could tell, the locations in the alternate realities of the mirror were always the alternate reflection of the mirror's current location. In this particular case the reality that the Jaffa had been transported to appeared to be one in which Olympus' sun had already turned into a red giant. The Jaffa died within seconds of being transported to the alternate version of where Hephaestus' workshop would have been located.
With the knowledge of what the device was capable of in his thoughts, Hephaestus set out to try to figure out how to use it to accomplish what he needed. After several months of careful testing and study, he concluded that the device would be insufficient for his needs. However, it did open up a whole new line of research for him to explore. It took close to a year, but Hephaestus eventually succeeded in creating a prototype for his own version of the device.
Though it wasn't much bigger than the original, its purpose was to act as a proof of concept for the full-sized portal device once the kinks had been worked out. The main improvement he'd made over the original had been the fact that it was untethered. Once he'd discovered a seemingly safe spot for the Jaffa to explore, it was quickly discovered that there was a matching device on the other side of the mirror.
No matter where reality he attuned the mirror to, his unmanned probes and Jaffa all confirmed that there was a matching mirror in the alternate realities. Hephaestus desired a method that would allow him to traverse these alternate realities at his whim, not just one location. The ability to travel to an alternate reality had been relatively easy to unlock, the setback came in the ability to return from there. After many years of trial and error, his prototype had been completed. While the window effect allowing the user to view an alternate reality was lost once an active two-way gateway between realities was opened, the ability to travel from one reality to another with no more effort than walking in and out of a doorway was worth the loss.
It was this particular device that had been activated by the intruder and, from the growing distortions in the portal window, it appeared to be quickly destabilizing. The prototype's greatest drawback.
While he'd succeeded in recreating the technology behind the mirror, his version had to be constantly monitored. Energy levels required constant adjusting and if left unchecked for too long, or if operated by someone with no idea how to properly work the device, it was liable to overload and could result in a catastrophic explosion.
With his attention focused entirely on the rapidly destabilizing portal, Hephaestus never noticed the female figure in a form-fitting black suit standing over its control console. One of the Jaffa guards who had accompanied him was the first to take notice of her and opened fire on her with his staff weapon. The woman swiftly dodged the energy blasts, her movements unnaturally agile as she used the console to take cover. Hephaestus finally snapped out of his trance, realizing the presence of the intruder.
"You will pay for this insolence!" Hephaestus shouted, his voice booming through the workshop as he raised his Kara Kesh and fired a powerful kinetic energy wave at the intruder.
The kinetic energy wave surged toward the intruder, but she swiftly somersaulted over a workstation evading the attack. She leaned out of cover firing her Zat'nik'tel at one of the Jaffa that had rushed to assist his master. The Jaffa went down instantly, his body paralyzed by the energy blast.
"Well, well, Hephaestus." the woman taunted, her voice smooth and velvety. "I must say, your security measures were quite impressive. Though not impressive enough, it seems."
Hephaestus scowled at the woman's taunting before leaning out from behind cover and firing another energy wave in her direction. For the next few minutes, the room erupted with flashes of light and the crackle of staff weapon discharges. If he hadn't been so focused on killing her, Hephaestus would have been impressed by the woman's agility and combat skills.
However, this was only distracting both parties from their real objective. While Hephaestus and the intruder engaged in their intense battle, the portal generator had only destabilized further under the strain of its unregulated power levels. The device emitted a series of violent sparks, its machinery humming erratically, as the active portal flickered with instability. The surrounding area crackled with raw energy, creating an ominous atmosphere. The battle between both sides came to a halt as Hephaestus and the intruder stared at the malfunctioning device in horror.
Whatever animosity remained between them was overshadowed by the immediate threat the device posed. Hephaestus broke from cover and rushed over to the control console. His fingers danced across the controls, trying to regain control over the destabilized device.
"Jaffa, kree! Disconnect the cabling from the base of the platform!" he ordered, his voice filled with urgency.
The Jaffa guard wasted little time in completing his god's command, but as Hephaestus monitored the energy spikes at the control console he knew that the effort was for naught.
The intruder activated a signal on her gauntlet and moments later a set of rings broke through the ceiling of his workshop and surrounded her before teleporting her out of the area. Hephaestus gave little thought to her escape as he focused on the critical task at hand. With each passing second, the violent sparks grew more intense, and the hum of the machinery reached an alarming pitch. Eventually, the out-of-control energy levels grew too volatile for the device's design to contain.
Hephaestus had only enough time to see a figure be ejected from the active portal before the device erupted in a cataclysmic explosion. The force of the blast sent Hephaestus hurtling backward, his body slamming against the workshop wall with a bone-jarring impact. The Jaffa guard had been killed instantly by the explosion, his body vaporized by the energy released at the epicenter of the explosion. Hephaestus himself only suffered 1st and 2nd-degree burns from the heat from the explosion. However, a large piece of shrapnel had been embedded within his chest by the explosion. Blood trickled from his mouth as he instinctively reached for the embedded shrapnel, his fingers trembling as he attempted to pull it out. However, the fragment was wedged too deeply and any further movement only intensified the pain.
He looked over and saw the figure that had exited the portal lying on the ground nearby. It appeared to be a young Tau'ri male. From the short distance between them, Hephaestus could see that the man was still breathing. As he looked down at the large piece of metal sticking out of his chest, he knew that he wouldn't be for much longer. With no other choice available to him, the Goa'uld symbiote known as Hephaestus unwrapped itself from around his host's spinal column. A few seconds later its serpent-like form emerged from the open mouth of its now-deceased former host.
The symbiote slithered down to the ground, its golden eyes fixated on the injured Tau'ri as it quickly slithered across the distance between them. Hephaestus encountered no resistance as it slid inside the boy's mouth. Its sharp fangs pierced the back of the male's throat, allowing it to wrap itself securely around the boy's spine and begin the process of assuming control of his new host. Dominating the mind of a host was not a gentle process, but it was one that a Goa'uld symbiote knew instinctively how to do.
The process took longer than Hephaestus had been expecting. The boy, who he now knew was named Alexander, proved that even unconscious, he was unwilling to submit without a fight. However, Alexander was only a Tau'ri, and a Tau'ri would never be strong enough to hold off the will of a god. All too soon, Xander's consciousness was forced to the back of their mind, and Hephaestus took full control over his new host body. With the host's mind subdued, Hephaestus turned his focus to assessing the damage that both he and Alexander had received. His own injuries were minor, and thanks to being inside of a host that was far from dying anytime soon, he would survive. His host on the other hand had suffered several severe lacerations at the hands of a woman. It didn't take very long for Hephaestus to identify the woman as Willow Rosenberg as he quickly assimilated more of Alexander's memories. On top of the injuries he gained at the hand of his loved one, Alexander's impromptu arrival had also caused several ribs to break as well as receiving a concussion.
They would be minor injuries for him to deal with in the long run.
The sounds of many approaching footsteps drew Hephaestus' attention outward. From his position, he spotted a cadre of Jaffa enter his workshop being led by a furious Aphrodite as she stormed into the workshop. Even in as rough shape as he was, Hephaestus couldn't help but admire how Aphrodite's beauty as she strode into the room with all the confidence of the goddess that she was.
Her sharp eyes took in the devastation wreaked by the explosion. She saw the body of the Jaffa killed by the intruder's Zat'nik'tel, the destroyed remains of the prototype portal generator, and her husband's now-deceased former host lying on the ground with blood trickling down his chin from his open mouth. Aphrodite ran to him, the worry in her eyes betrayed her hardened expression.
"Hephaestus!" Aphrodite cried out, her voice filled with concern and panic. She dropped to her knees beside him, gently cradling his face in her hands. "My love, what has happened to you? Are you alright?"
"Aphrodite." Hephaestus whispered.
The Goddess of Love and Beauty whirled around ah sound of her name and looked at him with a look of renewed fury crossing her features. Her eyes narrowed as she took in the sight of Hephaestus' disheveled host and her mind jumped to the worst possible conclusion.
"You! You are responsible for this!" Aphrodite hissed, her voice low and dangerous.
Aphrodite's fury was only waylaid when his eyes flashed gold signaling the presence of a symbiote residing within. "Tel Ma Te... Aphrodite."
Hephaestus watched as realization dawned upon Aphrodite's face, her anger giving way to a mix of shock and concern. Her gaze shifted between Hephaestus' former host and his new one before she laid the former host's head down and moved over to her husband's new body. Aphrodite's hand tenderly caressed Hephaestus' face, her soft hands soothing as she traced his cheekbone with her finger.
"You live." Aphrodite whispered, her voice filled with a mixture of relief and love.
Hephaestus reached up to grasp Aphrodite's hand, holding it against his cheek. "The explosion... it nearly cost me my life. If this Tau'ri had not appeared from the portal, I fear we would not be having this conversation."
"Then good fortune has not forsaken us." Aphrodite said, relief in her voice. "But what of the intruder? The one who has caused such damage?"
"Gone." Hephaestus said, his voice lacking the conviction it once had. "But we will find her. And on that day, both she and her master will answer for what has happened this night."
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