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(This is original creative material copyright Chris Kenworthy, based on characters that he has no right to owned by someone else blah blah biddy blah...) |
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"Where's Willow?" Amy asked, realizing that she hadn't waved.
"Oh, she must still be up checking in on Cordelia," Giles said. "She'll be along in a few shakes, I'm sure."
"Okay, well, we'll start without her. Ground rules: non-practicioners please stay out of the way and don't bother anyone who's busy with idle questions. Practicioners, I'm going to be working you hard, so tell me when you need breaks. Okay?"
"Okay," said Willow, stepping down onto the landing and smiling.
* * * *
It was at least five Willow-hours of complicated workings, blood tests, preliminary divinations, dry research and unfathomable spells later when Buffy and an exhausted-looking Xander came by the workshop.
"Hey, what have you guys been doing?" Willow called over to them. "Nothing I wouldn't do, I hope!" She winked teasingly at them.
"Nothing you haven't been through, Will," Buffy replied, and Willow made a pretend-shocked face. "Just training."
"Ah," Willow smiled knowledgeably. "So, how tough was it, Xander?"
"Well, I'll live, I think," Xander moaned.
"I was tough on him," Buffy admitted. "But he did very well. I was thinking that we could go out on patrol together after dinner."
"Really?" Xander asked, pleased surprise on his face.
"Yeah," Buffy assured him. It's not like we ever find anything on patrol anyways, she thought to herself.
"Buffy, could I see you upstairs?" Vanessa asked her across the room.
"Uh, yeah."
"Continue this," Vanessa muttered to Amy as she excused herself from whatever experiment was going on at her bench. Buffy followed her dubiously up the stairs.
"I thought it was a good time for us to have that conversation," Vanessa said as she grabbed a container from the fridge and put it in the microwave.
"Um, good time, not so much, but let's hear it," Buffy said, sitting down at the table.
"Okay." Vanessa sat down opposite her, setting a glass of water down in front of each of them. "I'm not just any ordinary practicioner of witchcraft."
"Go on."
"Have you ever heard, from Giles or someone else, of the Children of Avalon?"
Buffy thought for only a second before answering. "Nope."
"Well, it is the Grand Council of witchcraft, responsible for protecting the great secrets of magic and apprehending those who would abuse the art." Vanessa took a deep breath. "I am one of them."
"I kinda figured," Buffy drawled back. "Knew you weren't just telling me all this for the fun of it."
Vanessa gave her a wry smile and nodded. "I first came here to Sunnydale about two years ago, when we first realized that Catherine Madison had gone out of control. I was to deal with her... except that you managed to beat me to it."
"Well, I would have left her for you," Buffy shot back. "Had I but known, that is."
Vanessa didn't dignify that with a response. "I soon came to realize the power of the Hellmouth, and that there were many young people with potential in the area. I started to train them, first Darrell, then Amy and the others. Then came the unfortunate misadventure with Miss Chase, after which I thought it would be best to leave town. We were just passing through town on a routine inspection when we got caught by the Limbo spell."
"Okay," Buffy said, finishing off her water and standing up. "Will there be anything else, Miss Bateman?"
Vanessa sighed. "Jim's a little restless... he doesn't have much to contribute to our investigation. May I assign him to patrol with you and Mister Harris?"
"Sure, whatever."
* * * *
"Okay, attention please!" Vanessa called as she returned to the basement workshop. "First off, Jim, you're going to be going on patrol with Buffy and Xander this evening. Secondly, everyone finish off what you're doing. I think we've learned about as much as we can with these nickel-and-dime tests. It's time for the big secrets. Darrell, Amy -- start preparing the space for the Ritual of Mededelen. Uh... Willow? Do you think you can get the focus ready?"
"Now hold on just a second!" Giles interjected. "What gives you the right to just decide that we're doing this?"
"Angel asked me to conduct this investigation, Mister Giles," Vanessa responded. "As I see it, that gives me the freedom to choose our lines of research."
"But not to co-opt a student watcher without asking her mentor," Giles shot back. "That ritual is... is..."
"What?" Darrell Flatt called out. "Black magic?" He snarled out the words sarcastically.
"No!" Giles shouted back. "Dangerous and risky magic!"
"Don't you think I know that?" Vanessa asked him forthrightly. "But the risks can be negotiated and the danger minimized. Trust me, Giles - I know what I'm doing."
Giles didn't look completely satisfied, but he stepped back away as the witches cleared away a wide space in the middle of the floor and drew a circular diagram on the concrete in colored paints. Jenny Calendar went over to talk to the few remaining observers, who quickly headed off for the stairs.
"Okay, are we ready?" Vanessa looked around. "Willow, wait for me to cue you, alright?" The student watcher nodded.
"Areverden, areverden!" Vanessa called out. "We call upon Wahrthier the Incorruptible, from this lost and lonely place!"
"From the depths of our confusion we call upon the knowledge of the Shadowed one," Darrell continued. "Guselia, parat od venies contratuur."
"From Limbo unto the darker realms we call, yet neither do we call upon the darkness," Vanessa said. "Let the nexus protect us from the greater evils as we speak and hear." She gestured vaguely off in Willow's direction.
Willow came forward and carefully stepped over the threshold of the diagram, into the protected triangle directly in front of Vanessa. "Marnox root," she muttered silently to herself, carefully pressing on something inside a small ceramic bowl with a pestle. "And a virgin's saliva." She blushed faintly, carefully leaned over it and spat, bringing a fleeting smile to Vanessa's face. Vanessa well remembered the days when it had been so easy to provide such a spell component. Willow carefully set the bowl at the point of the protected triangle, near the center of the diagram, and hurried back out.
"All is complete." Vanessa called out chantingly. "The center is defended. Let Wahrthier now come to us in spirit!" A wind blew up and the lights in the basement seemed to dim somehow. "Come!" The breezes grew stronger, and a nebulous something began to swirl at the center of the diagram. "COME!!"
The amorphous darkness clarified into a strangely inhuman face. "Who calls on me??" it said in a booming voice that was somehow not as loud as it seemed.
* * * *
"Well, this Kaliya seems to have been telling the truth about a few things," Darla decided out loud. "This place is precisely Sunnydale, except without the people... and with the changed sky." The multicolored streamers that made up Limbo's sky seemed almost to wave slightly at her in acknowledgement. "Where to next?"
"See what's beyond the town?" the strange bald vampire who called himself Dalton offered. "If this really is a dimensional Limbo, I'd expect it to start looking different somewhere."
"Hmm. I agree." Absalom said, and started leading the way.
Darla sighed and fell back to speak with Luke. "What do you make of all this?" she asked him in a whisper.
"More than strange," he admitted. "But I believe our best choice may be to join with Kaliya. If our Master is no more, what better choice to serve than one whom he treated as an equal?"
"He treated this 'Kaliya' as an equal?" Darla was surprised by that piece of news. "When? I know I knew her, but I can't remember the details."
"You never remember the details," Luke chided her gruffly. "She was in charge at Carnac back in the 1870's. We met with her in Wales, to discuss an attempt to open a portal at the Standing Stones."
"Right," Darla agreed. "They couldn't get an agreement worked out."
"No," Luke agreed. "She came to the Master's court, as well, in Germany. In 1898; you were off with Angelus at the time - hunting Gypsies in Romania." Luke snorted - they both knew how poorly that particular hunting trip had ended, losing the brilliantly cruel Angelus to gypsy magic.
"What did she want?"
"Routine matters, as far as I knew... except that she brought that vamp Jasper with her. He was my doing - an impudent little wretch from that small town in Wales; I'd meant for him to die without even realizing what he'd become. But Kaliya took him in, made him her protege. She'd brought him to 'meet his sire.'"
"Whatever," Darla shrugged this off. "What else do you know about Kaliya?"
"She's got power... quite a bit of it. Strong witch from her mortal life, chose freely to become a vampire and mesmerized a marauding vamp to change her. Worked India for a long time... picked up some strange psychic abilities over there, and foreign magics. No slouch in personal combat, either."
"Remarkable!" Dalton's voice came from up ahead. "Truly astounding."
Darla hurried ahead. Dalton, Absalom, and Jasper were standing beside what seemed like a curved black wall, arching up over their heads until it blended into the sky.
"Limbo ends here, it would seem," Jasper observed. "What now?"
"The Slayer," Luke announced.
"Right," Darla said. "Kaliya may have been telling the truth about Limbo, but I'd like to see the Slayer and her friends firsthand before I accept it all."
"This way," Luke said, nodding his head. "I can smell her - the Slayer. I'll lead you to her."
"You can??" Dalton said wonderingly. Luke ignored him and led the way back into town.
"He can smell her?" Jasper repeated aloud. "Yeah. That's attractive."
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