Buffy & The Four Ch. 05

"Oh," the sleazy blonde said, crest-fallen. "Cannon fodder duty. Gee, how nice."

"What about me?" Dawn asked.

Buffy ignored her and turned to Giles. "I'd appreciate it if you could cover my back. There are an awful lot of those beasts."

"I'm surprised you even feel you have to ask," he said, a little hurt.

She reached out and laid a hand gently on his forearm. "I know I don't." Her eyes connected with his and it was electric. He could see in them that she had complete faith in him, complete trust, and a deep care for his safety. He nodded and she turned to Anya.

"Can your powers help stabilise the rift when Will widens it?"

"Dimensional travel is child’s play, Buffy," the curly haired blonde told her. "Gohnarth's spell is the real problem and it's too strong for me to affect. But I can hold the rift for as long as the magic is passing through it. I think."

"That'll have to do."

"What about me?" Dawn tried again.

"You're staying here."

"What?! No! Why?"

"Because this is too dangerous, Dawnie. There are so many of them that none of us can afford to be keeping an eye on you while we fight." She let the hard look drop from her face as she reached out and cupped her sister's cheek. "I need you to be safe. If I'm worrying about you then I could mess up and that would be bad. Do this for me Dawn."

The teen glanced around the room and saw that the rest were in silent agreement with Buffy, so she dropped her head. "Alright."

"Good. Anybody got any questions?"

Veruca nodded. "How come Dawn gets to stay away? What happened to needing everybody there to give them more people to shoot at?"

When she caught Oz's look of reprimand, she held up her palms. "What? I'm just saying, that's all."

Glancing at each in turn, Buffy saw that they were ready. Setting her mouth into a tight line, she said, "Right. Pick some weapons, then let's go and visit the zoo."

Xander nodded. "But not the Hyena house."

++++++++++

Willow took Faith to one side. "Here, you are going to need this," she said, pressing something into the Slayer's hand.

"What is it?" the brunette asked, glancing down at the long leather cord with a bronze disc dangling from it. There were a multitude of faint runic symbols scratched upon it.

"It's a talisman to enable you to return through the rift. You see, Gohnarth's spell is designed mainly to keep things out, but is almost as effective at keeping things in. Almost. Only with this around your neck will you be able to get back out before the portal closes. Don't lose it."

"You're saying I'm stuck there without one of these?"

"Ahuh."

"Oh. Thanks. Got a spare?"

"No. We didn't have time to imbue two with enough magic to work, so don't lose it. 'Kay?"

++++++++++

"Wow, there is more of them than I thought," Buffy said.

The Scoobies were surveying the zoo from the ridge that overlooked it. Down below, the transformed animals, now all humanoid, milled about while they awaited further command from Ruth.

Buffy looked at Faith and the two Slayers seemed to communicate on an unspoken level. Turning around, she told the others, "Our first job is to get Tara, Willow and Anya into position. Will, can you narrow it down to where you need to be yet?"

The witch was cross-legged, holding a peacock feather to her forehead. "Just a minute," she replied finishing the spell of vision. Dropping the feather, she opened her eyes and gasped.

Down in the zoo, near the polar bear enclosure, there was what looked like a purple storm of light. It sprang from a point in the air, the point where it broke through into this dimension, and roared down into the tiny body of Ruth. At first, it looked like a tidal wave appearing and streaming into the young witch. The amount of magical energy that was being fed to her was astonishing. Dozens and dozens of tiny wisps streamed out from different points of her body and snaked off to each find a transformed creature. The magic was constantly moulding them, keeping them both humanoid, and under control.

"There," she said, pointing. "The Daughters are in the polar bear enclosure and the magic is fountaining nearby. We should have enough room to breach the portal, and still fight them a little away from that."

"Good, that gives us a front line to hold."

"Why are they in the polar bear enclosure?" Xander asked.

Giles put down his binoculars. "Tactics. The enclosure is basically an island, surrounded by a deep pit. It will be very hard to get to them because they have drained the water."

"A little damp crevice ain't going to stop Bee, is it?" Faith said, nudging her fellow Slayer. The scowl she got back seemed to be her ideal reward. After wrinkling her nose in a teasing gesture, she turned to Giles. "Tell me one last time what to expect."

"Well," he began, replacing his spectacles as he did so, "according to the myths, the Machina Demonica funnels the magic through a mystic gem before releasing it into the desired target."

"Mystic gem? Why?"

"It's sort of like a capacitor. The unfiltered stream would be too harsh to be useful, so it floods it into the gem, which releases it in a slow, steady stream over time. The portal should take you to the gem, where I suppose there must be some method for them to pump the mystic energy to it from the machine; just backtrack that method."

"Can't I just whack the gem, then?"

"The gem itself is said to be similar to a huge diamond and is supposedly almost indestructible. Anyway, we need the actual machine destroyed. If not, they may still be able to find a way to use it. If you er... inflict your special brand of maintenance on the device itself, they may not be able to repair it. Or at least not for a long time, depending on how thorough a job you do."

The brunette raised a playful eyebrow. "Special brand of maintenance? Is that the nice way of saying smash it up a little?"

Her watcher smiled. "Actually, it's the nice way of saying smash it up a lot."

++++++++++

Ruth felt giddy with all the power. It filled her with the certainty that nothing could stand in her way. Nothing could stop her. She nodded to her friends and smiled. "Let's get this party started."

With that, she turned to face the collected beastmen and, her voice barely audible, said, "Come to me and assemble. I have orders for you." The whispering wind spell that Kim had cast carried her words to the ears of every intended target.

Mary leant over to Kim. "Let's get this party started? Told you she has a crush on Pink."

++++++++++

"Now's our chance," Buffy said, rising and dashing down the slope toward the gates. Her friends rose too and swiftly followed.

When the Slayer reached the gates, she launched a leaping kick that smashed them inward. It slowed her just enough for Faith to sprint past. "Taking a break, Bee?"

Together, the two Chosen ran for the centre of the zoo.

Ahead of them there was a hulking beastman that had once been an orang-utan. Its amazingly long arms were immensely powerful and the creature had leather padding on its chest as good as armour. The beast was slower than the rest, and so was the last to obey its summons. When it heard the feet racing toward it, it turned and balled its fists. "Oh good, som'in' to bash!"

"This is gonna be a tough one," Faith said, slowing to a walk. Beside her, Buffy nodded and matched her pace.

As the monster advanced, the air beside it swirled into a vortex and Anyanka appeared. Dwarfed by the massive beast, she showed no concern and hit it hard, before it could react. The force of her blow sent the creature hurtling backward, slamming into a concessions stand that crumpled around it.

"You guys go on, I'll catch you up," she said, striding toward the debris as the beastman began to heave his way out of it.

The two Slayers glanced at each other, shrugged, then set off running again.

++++++++++

"The Chosen are going to interfere, Master."

"Yes," Gohnarth replied, his lipless mouth smiling to reveal his needle-like teeth.

Azaroth did not understand. "Isn't that a bad thing, Milord?"

"Far from it. Their meddling will force Ruth to draw more power to fight them. When she does, the tainted stream will corrupt her soul faster, more potently. She will become capable of things she would never have done without our... encouragement. It will mean we get her soul so much quicker."

The throne room echoed with the dreadful laughter of the Demon Lord.

++++++++++

The whole Scooby gang huddled behind the curved wall to the lion enclosure. They were only about thirty feet from the rent in the dimensional wall, although nobody but Willow could see it. To her, it looked like all the purple energy was bursting through a pinprick-sized hole and spreading out quickly into a stream nearly seven feet across as it homed in on Ruth. It was halfway between their current position and the mass of transformed animals.

The crowd of beastmen all gathered around the edge of the polar bear enclosure, looking across the chasm to their mistresses. The Daughters were stood on the island, which was little more than a few little grassy hillocks with a single tree a third of the way along it.

"Where's all the snow and ice?" Xander asked, a little disappointed.

"Hush!" Buffy hissed.

Ruth had walked forward, about ten feet from her three friends, and was giving her version of an inspirational speech.

"My slaves," she said, raising her arms toward the massed ranks of beastmen. "Tonight we will take this town apart, piece by piece. I want them all to suffer. By morning, I shall rule this place, and you will have the honour of having served me well."

Mary leant close to Jody's ear. "She's really losing it now, Jodes. The extra power is doing something to her. Do you think Gohnarth has betrayed her in some way? Maybe done something to her?"

Jody looked just as worried as Mary. "She sure is getting worse and worse. I mean, Ruth was always a bit bossy, but this is ridiculous and not like her at all. There is nothing we can do about it, though."

Kim wrinkled her brow. "I don't like this anymore. I never really wanted anyone to get hurt. Should we tell her that we've changed our minds?"

"Are you nuts? No way!" Jody hissed. "She's too into it all now. Cross her and I hate to think what may happen. No, for better or worse we've hitched our wagon to hers, and we'll just have to see how all this plays out."

"Maybe," Mary said. "But if we get a chance to stop it, I'm thinking maybe we should."

Buffy motioned for Willow and Tara. "Okay guys," she whispered, "it's your show now. Get that thing wide enough for Faith to slip through. Giles, Xander, Oz, Ru, you get ready to help me hold the beastmen off, okay?"

A swirl in the air beside them signalled Anya's arrival. She frowned as she was running her fingers through her hair to comb out several cornels of popcorn. "Damn sticky stuff! Look at what it's done to my hair!"

Tara took out a salt shaker, tipped it up and began to draw a ring around Willow. While she did, the redhead was mumbling an incantation and cupping her hands before herself like a bowl. After a moment, a white light flared with her hands, which she then cast toward the stream of magic. The white light shot forth, warping as it went into a shape that seemed to resemble a dove. It hurtled into the unseen purple energy and exploded in a silent shower of sparks, which cascaded down to the ground unnaturally slowly.

"Ungh! Got it!" Willow gasped, her voice grating with the effort as she seized control of the portal.

Tara unfurled a thin red ribbon, whispered a blessing over it, looped it around Anya's right wrist three times, then took the other end and fastened it around Willow's waist. "Okay," she told the Vengeance demon.

Anya concentrated on opening the dimensional wall. It hurt like Hell, where normally she felt nothing at all, but her will was channelled through Willow and into the gap she had made. Between them, they stabilised the portal and widened it to an oval nearly seven feet in height. When they had it settled, it was simple for them to turn it visible to the rest.

Unfortunately, visible to the rest also meant visible to the beastmen.

"Look at that!" gasped a leopard-man.

"No!" Ruth cried. "Stop them!"

At the command, the entire crowd of transformed animals turned and ran at the Scoobies.

"Go, now Faith!" Willow called, rotating her outstretched hands to mould the mystic energy into the correct form to allow passage through.

Faith dashed for the mystic gate, with Buffy by her side to provide blocking cover.

"Gonna be okay without me?" the brunette asked, with a teasing smile on her face.

"Sure," Buffy replied, setting her eyes on the leopard-man that had reached the portal in front of them. "You only get in the way, anyhow."

Laughing, the two Slayers double-teamed the unfortunate beastman. One swept his legs from under him while the other battered his paws out of the way to land a sickening blow to his throat. As the slower animals raced closer, Faith nodded to Buffy, "See ya in a bit."

When the brunette turned to pass through the rift, Buffy called, "Faith."

"Yeah Bee?"

"When you've done, don't let the portal hit you in the ass on the way out."

Her girlfriend laughed and disappeared through the swirling magical rent. Buffy ducked the fist of a transformed antelope and grabbed him by the horns. With the stomach-turning sound of ripping and cracking, she kept her grip and yanked her arms apart.

Xander, Oz, Ru and Giles had all spread out before the two Wiccans, forming a line of defence. As the mass of beastmen charged them down, Giles held his quarterstaff firmly and glanced to each of them. "Steady yourselves now. No heroics, this is only a holding action, got that? All we need to do is keep them back from Willow until Faith returns."

Ru turned to Oz. "He said all, didn't he? ALL we need to do. Like it was easy or something. Er, hello? Outnumbered by quite a bit here! We're gonna die."

"Not today," Oz said lowly, keeping his eyes on the charging crowd.

Behind them, they heard Tara mutter, "Cadria, take the sight from the unnatural!"

The air in front of the charging crowd suddenly exploded with dozens of red blooms of light, like fireworks bursting at head height. The creatures howled and skidded to a halt, clutching at their eyes in fear.

"Oh no you don't!" Ruth snarled, seeing her army stopped by a mere illusion. Spreading her fingers, and drawing on the Machina Demonica, she reversed the effects of the spell and cancelled the light show. The beastmen seemed stunned for a moment when their sight returned, but then they bellowed and charged once more.

"Nice try, Baby," Willow told her girlfriend through gritted teeth.

Flowing around the battling Buffy like a deadly tide, the monsters attacked the group. The first to reach them was a cheetah-man and Giles dropped him with a lethal combination of blows. Then the wall of beasts engulfed them all and everyone had their own battles to fight.

++++++++++

The beastmen ferociously attacked the Scoobies. Teeth and claws and fists descended on the young defenders. But these humans were not quite the easy prey the monsters were expecting; they had all spent so long aiding the Slayer in her duties that every one of them was more than competent in a fight.

Four huge beastmen charged at Ru, but when they were a couple of feet away from her they scrambled to a stop and began looking worried as they sniffed at the air. One pointed to her and snarled something, before they backed off and headed for different prey.

"Hey, they must be able to smell the werewolf and are too frightened to attack me!" the blonde laughed to the others.

"That's great!" Xander shouted, "Come and stand by me, would ya!"

++++++++++

Dawn looked in disgust at the bloody carcass of the orang-utan-man. Wrinkling her nose, she stepped over an outstretched arm that had far too many new right angles in it, and followed after her friends.

She was furious that Buffy had insisted she stay away. After all this time, her sister still played mom and treated her like a useless little girl! Well, she would prove that she wasn't useless. She would help them, whether they wanted her too or not.

She made her way in the direction she had watched her friends go, and was just in time to see Faith disappear into the portal on her own, while the rest began the battle with the transformed zoo animals.

Keeping out of sight, she unslung the crossbow from her back and put down the quiver of bolts and the sword she had brought. Quickly, she nocked a quarrel, lifted the crossbow and aimed at one of the beasts.

She released the trigger and, with a twang, the quarrel leapt across the forty feet between her and the monsters to bury itself deep in the ribcage of an antelope-man. The luckless beast was flung off its feet by the fatal blow even as the teen was grabbing another bolt.

++++++++++

Buffy spun and kicked back a couple of beastmen. Their pack-mates swarmed forth to take their place though, and the Slayer had to work hard to defend herself. Some of the animals had torn up wooden fence posts and were using them as clubs. That was handy because she disarmed one and then taught it just how it should have used the weapon.

++++++++++

Faith felt her skin crawl into gooseflesh as she stepped through the portal. She was in a room that was roughly thirty feet circular, and the only object in it was a large pillar that supported a diamond the size of her torso at its top. Behind it, there were two huge double doors, with a wooden beam lent beside them. The mystic gem was glowing brightly as it was fed magic through a brass pipe that ran across the floor and through the wall beside the doors.

Walking forward, she pushed one of the doors open slightly to peer out. She was surprised to see a stone stairway dropping away from the beacon room down to a city far below. The sky was dark grey and filled with lightening flashes but, unlike in her world, the lightning here was red. Black clouds rumbled across the sky, illuminated with red glows that made it look as if they were on fire.

"Friendly place," she mumbled and crept out onto the stairway. The city below looked slightly Arabian in nature, with minarets and domes scattered about on buildings that seemed constructed of white, hardened mud.

Hurrying down the stairs, which were about six foot wide before dropping over a precipice on either side to the city below, Faith concentrated on the narrow brass pipe that ran down one side of the steps.

"Not a piece of string in a minotaur's lair, but hey."

A shriek that could have been either inhuman joy or extreme torment made her flinch, but she could not tell where in the demonic city it came from.

When she reached the bottom, the brass pipe ran forward into the side wall of what could only be a palace a hundred feet away. The place it entered was beside an ironbound wooden door that had a hefty looking padlock on it, and a sleeping Hagna supposedly on guard duty.

++++++++++

"Hold it!" Willow gasped, pain coursing through her body.

"I am holding it!" Anya snapped, focusing her power on the portal.

The dimensional walls were not taking kindly to being stretched so wide by the two young women and were straining to close. Slowly, inexorably, the breach was narrowing and they could not hold it for long.

++++++++++

"Stay here and do what you can to stop them," Ruth told the three members of her coven. "I'm gonna go and rip that Wicca bitch into little pieces."

"A-aren't you going to stay here to protect us?" Kim asked, fear in her voice.

Ruth thought about it for a moment, and then shook her head. "No. With this power I don't need to." Lifting her hand, she gestured at the three girls. A rainbow hued dome of light sparkled into existence around them. "There, nothing can get through that."