snags in the dark

Snags in the dark

Disclaimer: Faith and Co. belong to Whedon and Co.; the glitterhaunt and the cildabrin belong to WotC.

“Well, it is about time that you got back,” Steve Peters turned to Collins, Weatherby and Smythe. “What took you so long?”
“An amateur witch messed with a pair of antherions just to keep her husband in line,” Collins said with a grimace. “Also, you do not want to have Weatherby cook for you ever again, you hear me?”
“Come now, it wasn’t that bad!” Weatherby protested.
“Pal, mountain giants cook better than you,” Collins shook his head. “And speaking of giants, something bad is cooking-up in Scotland, and it’s not just giants, either.”
“Forget Scotland, we got California on our hands,” Peters turned to the others. “Associate Branson had called about a day or two earlier saying that now both Slayers were hospital-ized.”
“Well, that Faith Anonymous girl was still in a coma from that massive damage inflicted on her. But what about the other one?”
“Apparently, it’s an allergy to some fruit,” Peters said. “Er- Weatherby, you okay?”
“I- I am fine,” the amateur mage said. “W-What about the Councilors? D-Do they know about that?”
“Of course! We sent them a report as soon as Joseph and his team have left.”
“And t-their response?”
“None so far,” Peter shrugged. “Is something wrong?”
“P-probably not,” Weatherby shook his head. “C-Can we go and rest now?”
Peters looked at Collins, who nodded, agreeing with the ama-teur mage.
“Very well, and we’ll contact you if something comes up,” Pe-ters added.
Collins and the other two left.

There was a knock on the door. “Who is it?” Rupert Giles called out, his voice almost back to normal.
“Giles, it’s us!” and Xander didn’t sound too well himself.
Giles reluctantly opened the door. Outside stood both Xander and Anya, and both of them looked worse for wear.
“Well?” Anya asked in her habitual curtness. “What has hap-pened to you?”
Giles winced. “Either someone has started following Eulad’s rules to take us on, or I am completely lost, or Hellmouth is just being its’ own charming self again. Take your pick – all choices are bad, really.”
“Er, what are Eulad’s rules?” Xander asked, but Anya inter-rupted him:
“Giles, why have you arrived at that conclusion?” she asked.
“One question at a time,” Giles hurriedly said. “Eulad was of the maenad race, right Anya?”
“Yes.”
“She was also first of the chaos mages, and pretty much wrote the handbook – the expanded version – on chaos magery and magics, including how to use chaos to its’ full offensive poten-tial.”
“And you think that somebody is using them against right now?” Xander said.
“Yes. If this is an assault, that it is most unpredictable and il-logical. First Buffy falls to some brief medical curse, and then that colossal fear assault I experienced later.”
“Wait a second. There is/was a curse? I thought it was an al-lergy!”
“Xander, no Slayer has ever fallen to a natural disease. Super-natural like mummy rot and lycanthropy yes, massive body damage yes, but no sickness, and that includes allergies.”
“All right, and that fear assault – are you sure that it was di-rected at you? Such spells tend to have a wide range of effect, you know?” Anya said knowingly.
“No, and that’s the problem. Knowing how much the Hell-mouth affects the probability ratio, it is safe to say that you got a point at least.” He paused. “And you have something to add?”
“Giles,” Anya finally said, “I think last night when we were driving home, Xander and I were assaulted by one of them air-jellies, I think.”
Giles stared. “You sure? Airjellies are some of the most inof-fensive oozes, and they don’t go so low to attack cars or people either.”
“That’s the point, we don’t remember much. But what we do know is that something took-out my car, causing us to crash. However, we were pretty much unharmed, so that makes me wonder was it an accident-“
“-or did someone just want to have you out of the way for the night,” Giles concluded.
“Exactly.”
Giles, Anya and Xander stared helplessly at each other, not knowing what to say.
“So you want to have some scones and hit the books at the shop?” Giles finally broke the silence.
The other two consented.

“Hey master, look at what I found!” one of the vampires hur-riedly produced before Adam something that resembled an overgrown, bloated jellyfish. “One of them airjellies!”
“One of what?” the cyber-demon asked in his usual tone. “I do not follow!”
“This!” and the vampire thrust the airjelly to Adam. It twitched and tried to zap them with its’ tentacles.
“I do not follow. What is it? It looks like a living cloud – or a gi-ant single-cell organism,” Adam repeated. “How can it exist?”
The vampire blinked. “By magic, I guess,” he said, no longer so proud of his doings.
“And what is ‘magic’?” Adam persisted. “I do not follow.”
“It’s a sort of energy,” spoke another voice.
The others stared, for the speaker was no vampire, but one of other evil creatures attracted to Adam. He described himself as a Shapechanger, and since he at least once changed into a brown bear, nobody felt like disapproving him.
“What sort of energy?” Adam continued.
“I do not follow. Basically, magic is used to power others up, if you follow me.”
“How?”
“Well, there’s that ritual-“
“What is a ritual?”
“Think of it like a computer program that allows you to use energy or a fuel resource.”
“How?”
The shapechanger looked at Adam with a carefully guarded face. “Give me a bit of time, and I’ll show you.”

The strong can also be subtle
-- A Raka disciplinary credo

“Look, can you tell me where are we going and what you have done to Leslie?” Warren griped, as he, Faith and her mon-strous pet walked to some spot in the mountains.
“We’re going to an abandoned sanctuary, and Leslie is off to England, in a very good company, to steal something for me,” Faith replied.
“Steal what?”
“Three very ancient, very major artifacts,” Faith replied flatly, “and that’s the information you should be concerned with, al-right?”
Warren paused, looked at the cildabrin, and decided to hold his peace. “Fine and where are we going?”
“To the anti-Hellmouth.”
“Say what?”
“Look, technically Hellmouth is like a monstrous whirlpool, sucking everything down, into the lower planes,” Faith said. “This place, where are we going, does not have that quality; in fact, it can sort-of purify one’s spirit and body.”
“And it is unheard-of-?”
“Well no, it is heard of. Once, there was this sect of the meta-minds that had used it often enough for their rituals. However, after one of their lower members, a man named Pavelec, used it to become a psion incarnate instead, and things went down-hill from there.”
“Will we run into any of them there?”
“I hope not – I am not really looking for a fight of that caliber,” Faith admitted. “Now is not the time for a big fight.”
“What is it time for?”
“To prepare for a big fight,” Faith smiled. “Believe me, when Leslie and Monique will contact me, there’ll be plenty of fight-ing and more! But for now – we wait.” She paused and added. “Hopefully.”
“Hopefully?”
“Yeah. Because Giles is smart, and if Leslie wasn’t the only Associate here, we might hit a snag.”
“A snag?”
“Just shut up and let’s go.”

“So Weatherby, why the stutter?”
“Nothing,” the other Agent shook his head, trying to ignore the other two men.
“Don’t lie,” Collins shook his head. “You may’ve fooled Steve, but you can’t fool us. Spill.”
“It’s—it’s the other Slayer! No Slayer has ever caught an al-lergy after she’s been called, or any other normal sickness for that matter!”
“So it’s a magical sickness – or an actual curse,” Collins shrugged. “I am sure that the Councilors know what they are doing?”
“That’s what you said when we went to Bialystock,” Smythe piped-up. “That went rather poorly, as the same Councilors pointed-out.”
Collins glared. “Smythe, shut-up. I head it up to here with you and your comments.”
“Fine, but what do we do?”
“Nothing,” Collins said, with a touch of cold bitterness in his voice. “For if necessary, the Councilors will tell us what we shall do personally.”

The doorbell rang at the “Magic Shop”.
“Who is it?” Anya called-out.
“I-it’s me, Tara.”
“Oh. Hi. How was last night?”
“O-okay, c-considering that Mrs. Summers spent it with us,” Tara said. “An-anyways, I came over here t-to tell you that Buffy’s c-clean.”
“Hah?”
“She wasn’t c-cursed, a-at least not directly or personally,” Tara said. “I-is something wrong?”
“Yes,” Giles sighed. “For a Slayer cannot have any allergies or other natural sicknesses. A curse on the other hand-“
“T-there wasn’t any curse! I swear!”
“Tara, no one is accusing you of anything,” Giles wearily said. “Only you have kind of confused us further. I don’t suppose you felt anything else last night – whether magical or just un-explainable.”
“No. Slept like logs, all three of us,” Tara said, still somewhat guiltily.
“Oh. Great. That certainly clarifies things a lot,” Giles said, somewhat bitterly.
“Sorry,” Tara said, looking somewhat miserable.
“That’s okay,” Giles said. “Just give me some peace and quiet to think.”

“Well?” Adam’s voice resonated through his underground stronghold. “How you finished?”
“Yes,” the Shapechanger replied calmly. “I have.”
“Well, show me!”
“Fair enough. First, drink this – it’s all part of the protocol.”
Adam drank. Then his usually emotionless face turned subtly surprised, and dark oily smoke began to pour out of various parts of his body.
“By the forest of harpies, it began!”

The sanctuary, Warren decided, didn’t look like much: a circle of short, bronze columns (now tarnished) and a circular bowl-lie indentation in the middle. However, Warren was also a wiz-ard, and so he knew that appearances can be deceptive (espe-cially when dealing with the oozes and such).
“Now what,” he turned to Faith.
Only she wasn’t there.
“Er, where is she?” he almost asked the cildabrin, when he no-ticed something – a strange shadow on the ground.
Slowly, he looked-up and saw Faith, serenely standing several feet above the ground, above the indentation, flicking matches both into it and onto the short columns. Immediately the latter burst into flames.
“Oh boy!” Warren gulped and stepped backwards, not caring about the cildabrin anymore – now he had greater worries on his mind.
And then, as the fire began to give-off smoke, Faith began to chant – and everything started to grow blurry.
Warren blinked, and fainted.
Faith ignored him, as she casually absorbed the power re-leased by the sanctuary and felt her new-gained freedom, brought by her escape from the Gates, grow stronger.
Of course, she knew, this was nowhere near enough. Nothing will ever be enough until she regained what she had made and lost and regained her oldest – her first – her stolen – identity. Then, and only then, the first stage of her plan would be com-plete. Then, would she raise the Oskerei, and destroy the one organization that always frustrated all of the Devil Princes and Arch demons.
She would destroy the Watchers’ Council.
Of course, she knew that that won’t be simple, even if she was 100% successful on that night with the zyern, for if the con-nections of the Council – active connections, that is – weren’t completely severed – then she might have to simply fail, and that would be bad.
Well, actually it would simply be failure, but at such levels, even failure would be most unpleasant.
“Watching over your handiwork?” a new voice spoke.
Faith looked. The newcomer rose up out of the stony ground. Its overall shape was humanoid, except its skin appeared to shimmer, almost as if quicksilver dusted with a layer of spar-kling powder undulated gently. Its eyes were large for its face, and they glistened like molten emerald. Tiny shards of multicolored crystals protruded from its body at random places and at random intervals. The creature glowed with light of many hues.
“We haven’t met,” Faith stated flatly.
“No, we haven’t. But we and the siabrie have good relations for this century, and so we glitterhaunts knew of your reputation and grieved that you failed to keep it up. But that is nothing compared to what you have done!” the glitterhaunt pointed back towards Sunnydale.
Instinctively, Faith looked. And stared. It seemed like a black cloud had appeared above the town and it stabbed deep into the town’s side.
And from where it had stabbed, several voices arouse and spoke us one:
“We have contact!”

“Well, this is a nice way of killing time,” Xander sighed, as he and the girls, waited for Giles on top of the basement stares. “Hey Giles, did you find what you were looking for?”
“No, net yet,” Giles said firmly. “And I do hope that it wasn’t lost in that explosion. The Council would never forgive me if I let it perish!”
“Nice set of priorities, G-man,” Xander griped, but then froze. “Hey Tara, are you okay?”
“I’m not sure, I feel-“And Tara promptly fainted, right into Xander’s arms.
“Giles!” the young man yelled. “We got a problem!”
Giles quickly raced upstairs. When he saw Tara, he only said:
“Oh boy.”

“We have contact!” Adam said in eldritch voice, as his eyes turned completely black; in fact his overall appearance had grown darker and tarnished.
“Glad to hear it,” the other male said. These were his last word, as the changed-Adam suddenly struck out with his hand-blade and sliced him apart completely.
“Your job is done,” changed-Adam rumbled. “Now I under-stand. Now I have power!”
He turned around and left the chamber.

“Oh boy,” Faith groaned. “I should have known that he’ll ap-pear sooner or later, especially after I lad Kakistos here. Still, he certainly acted quickly for him.”
“Why wouldn’t he – after you escaped his grasp, again?” the glitterhaunt said reproachfully. “Now you’ll need friends to stop him!”
“Friends?” Faith actually laughed incredulity in her voice. “I’ll need allies, also minions, but friends? I am incapable of mak-ing friends, for I am hollow!”
“Mayhaps, but I will still pray for you and your redemption,” the glitterhaunt said as it sank back into the mountain. “Re-member that!”
“Redemption,” Faith said quietly, remembering her vision when she had escaped the leopard and left that darkened wood. “I believe someone tried to redeem me before. And she failed.”

“Well, hello again!” a male intern said cheerfully to Giles, Xan-der and Anya. “Returned to visit your sick friend, have you?”
“Well, no,” Xander said embarrassed. “We’re here actually be-cause of Tara there. She has kind of fainted earlier, and still hasn’t fully recovered.”
“Oh boy,” the intern’s face turned cloudy. “This isn’t very good: there’s some sort of a flu going on around and your friend may’ve caught it.”
“Is it dangerous?” Giles asked, while cleaning his glasses.
“No, not really,” the intern said. “Follow me.”

Inside, the hospital now appeared more orderly than on the night when Buffy arrived in it. “Hey, I do remember you!” Anya said loudly, as they were waiting for Tara’s check-up to be completed. “You were the guy that asked about Leslie some-body, right?”
“That’s right, Leslie Branson,” the intern nodded. “You haven’t run into her back then, did you?” The others shook their heads. “I thought so. Dr. Stafford is going to be displeased.”
“Yes, well, that’s enough Ben, run along,” the aforementioned doctor finally appeared. “Mr. Giles? Kids? Hello again. Mrs. Summers and your friend Willow are talking to your friend Buffy.”
“Can we talk to her?” Xander asked Giles.
“Good idea. Run along, I need to ask the good doctor a few questions,” Giles nodded.
Shrugged, Xander and Anya left, leaving the two grown-ups alone. “Well, I guess you know that I am the Council’s Associ-ate?” the doctor asked.
“Yes.”
“And that Leslie Branson is the other one?”
“No, that is actually a surprise,” Giles said, frowning. “And she is really missing since that night?”
“Yes.”
“Could she be taken by a vampire or some other undead?” Giles supposed.
“Unlikely. The Agents cleared-up the hospital; any non-human creature here would feel extremely uncomfortable and be forced to leave as soon as possible.”
Giles wasn’t reassured. Several months ago Buffy had to kill a demon that was hunting this same hospital obviously unaf-fected by the Council’s measures. “Still…”
“Stafford. Can I ask you something. Are you sure that Buffy is allergic to guavas?”
“Yes.”
“Completely sure?”
“Yes.”
Giles frowned and looked very unhappy. “I think I need to look over that file of yours,” he said.
“Is it Council business?” Stafford asked.
“Precisely.”

“All right, what has happened?” Warren demanded as soon as Faith came out of the trance. “How did you do that?”
“Rigorous training with a shaman,” Faith shrugged, “plus a few sacrifices along the way. That’s not important.”
“Oh? And what is?”
“That,” Faith sighed wearily, “that while Leslie and Monique are doing my bidding in England, I’ve got to save the world here. Again.”
“Again?”
“Yes, again. B would’ve had a fat chance discovering Big Boss’s plan if I wasn’t the one to rub into her face. I made her a hero, and she stabbed me, she would’ve killed me for Ange-lus whom she dumped a few hours after that!” Faith’s eyes glittered with unholy rage. “No, kiddies. This time, there won’t be a happily-ever-after.”
“You okay?” Warren nervously asked.
“No. I got to save the world from annihilation, and besides you and my new friend, the closest hand is a blonde cheerleader brat and I don’t mean Harmony!”
“Yes, well, how are we going to do that – and from whom?”
“From Angra Mainyu – and how is going to be tricky.”
Warren blinked. “Anger who?”
“Angra Mainyu – also known as the First Evil.”
“Mama.”

Deep underground Adam brooded. The ritual at the end of which his conscious got bound with the conscious of the Other left him with a steady-sounding voice in his head. Any ordi-nary human – or demon, or vampire – would have been driven mad.
But Adam, on the other head, was not so much a single being, as a robotic computer that had a whole jumble of human and demon voices stuck in his CPU, all telling different things. Thus, the voice of Angra Mainyu just became one of many in a head of a thing that even the vampires considered crazy. But – there were some changes in Adam’s being. One of them was the enhanced senses: he could literally see the darkness inside his followers, and found them good. Two was that he could tweak this darkness, and that looked… interesting.
Not-quite-smiling, Adam set to work.

A phone rang. “Who is it?” Quentin Travers spoke.
“Hello, Travers,” Giles spoke in a voice that would spook a glaistig. “We need to talk.”
“Giles, how did you get this number? Has one of the Agents given it to you?”
There was a pause. “What Agents?” Giles said, sounding genu-inely confused.
“Three Agents were sent to Sunnydale about a day ago. Ha-ven’t they contacted you?”
“Oh boy. Quentin, we’ve got a big problem here.”
“Really?”
“Hear me out. About a night or so ago for you, one of the Asso-ciates, Leslie – Branson, I believe – has contacted the Agents HQ because of Buffy falling ill.”
“Yes, so?”
“So, that Associate has disappeared off the face of the Earth, as far as I am concerned, and your Agents have never con-tacted me or the other Associate. And that’s on top of Buffy be-ing sick.”
Quentin paused. “Giles, you’ve read the archives as often as I. You know that the Slayers can’t get sick.”
“That’s the problem. I’ve just looked over Buffy’s medical files, and she does now have an allergy to guavas.”
Quentin chewed his lip. “Can you fax it to the Council?”
“The Council has a fax?”
“Just do it!.. Is that all?”
“Well, one of Buffy’s friends – a Wicca – is currently sick with some flu, somebody has unleashed a ‘fear’ spell all over the town last night, and other two of Buffy’s friends were attacked apparently by an airjelly.”
“What’s an airjelly?”
“It’s small ooze that lives in the sky; for further details go to Williams’ department.”
“Right. Sounds to me like you got a chaos mage.”
“We got, Travers.”
“Yes, we. And Faith is still in the coma?”
“Well, she’ll be checked again this noon…”
“Right. Well, keep an ear on the phone, measures will be taken and you will be contacted. That is all.”
“Right,” Giles said.

“Hey, guys! How are you doing?” Buffy greeted her friends with a smile. “Do you care to say a while?”
“Sure,” Anya replied, “just one sec. Willow, Tara got flu.”
Surprisingly, both Willow and Joyce exchanged glances. “Tara… she’s a friend of yours, right?” Buffy said, sounding not very sure.
“Yeah,” Willow nodded in a general way. “So Buffy, why the shaky voice?”
“Weird dreams,” Buffy grunted noncommittally.
“Well, Tara said last night that it wasn’t a curse, like with Mrs. Madison,” Joyce told her daughter.
“Yeah, I thought so,” Buffy said. “It didn’t feel witchy, you know? Or warlocky.”
“Oo-kay. But you still think it felt like magic?”
“It felt like a master vampire punched me in the face after a really long wind-up,” Buffy said. “I kind of blacked-out after that, and…”
“And what?”
“I kind of feel all stiff. Itchy also.”
“Itchy?”
“Well, pins and needles kind of itchy.”
“Oh. Well, will it wear off?”
“You tell me.”
“Right.”
At that moment Giles walked-in. “So how is things?” he asked, rather briskly.
“Hanging in balance,” Buffy said. “Oh, and Giles? As I told the gang just now, I don’t think that what got me was a curse. I can’t explain it, but… why are you staring at me?”
“Sorry,” the ex-Watcher replied. “I guess I was just entertain-ing the idea of a chaos mage behind all of this for so long that hearing the final nail in the coffin is just too hard.”
“Right. So what you and doctor Stafford talk about?” Anya asked again.
“Just the paperwork. Buffy Summers, you are free to go home.”
“Yay!” Buffy grinned, and then paused. “That’d be cooler if it wasn’t for the pins and needles.”
Giles blinked. “Pins and needles? I think I got another theory?”
“What, Hellmouth acting up isn’t theoretical enough for you?” Anya replied.
“Let’s save it for the back-up,” Giles said. “Now let’s get out of here. We need to talk.”
Suddenly, Giles was pulled back into the corridor. “What?” he asked.
“Miss McClay is having a seizure! She keeps babbling about the balance and the betrayal of Gehenna, whatever that means!” Dr. Stafford hissed to him.
Giles stared. “Is that it? I mean, she’s not… changing in some way, is she?”
“No, but want to come?”
Giles didn’t hear him – he was already partway down the cor-ridor.

“So, how are we going to save the world?” Warren asked Faith. “Do we need an army or what?”
“Or what,” Faith said calmly, “or what. Thanks to Big Boss’s machinations, I already got an army in storage. What we need are intelligent allies, and Buffy and her gang will do nicely.”
“But how will we persuade them to join us? We are at a some-what disadvantage, you know.”
“Exactly. Which is why I shall join up with them – in time,” Faith said, smiling in a peculiar way. “But for now we let them and Adam lock horns, oh and each of us is going to do that voodoo that we do so well!”
And her laughter rocked through the sewer corridor.

Oskerei. Supposedly another synonym for the Wild Hunt, the Oskerei were created by the vampire Aurelius to destroy the Watchers’ Council. (See legend.) Currently they are lying dor-mant, and aren’t supposed to come free until the end of time…

-- Unknown about the known, volume “Nightstalkers”