Into the Abyss
by Rainne
Part 5
[reviews]
Willow didn't return Rothschear's book immediately; in fact, after Buffy fell asleep that night, she unwound herself from her lover's embrace and moved to the chesterfield sofa. Once there she lit a lamp, wrapped herself in a blanket, dragged the heavy tome into her lap, and began to read. Rothschear's work was disturbing to her, as much of it was clinical descriptions of mostly painful things he'd done to the Slayer of the time — her name had been Inge, no last name or country of origin reported. Willow was both engrossed in the explanations of sorceries done by a mage so powerful she wasn't sure she could even imagine duplicating his work, and repulsed by the horrific way he treated the girl when he worked magicks on her without her permission.
He was responsible for the incredible speed of Slayer healing, she realized as she scanned through one section of the book. He had discovered this amazing self-healing spell in an ancient Egyptian scroll, or so he said, and had created one of his monsters to test it out on. Once he worked out the nuts and bolts of the spell itself, he picked it apart and rebuilt it so that it would attach itself to the myriad of magicks already involved with the Slayer. Willow studied the method he'd used extremely carefully, thinking that perhaps this spell could be modified and used — with the current Slayers' permission, of course — to make the Slayer even more invulnerable than before, possibly even increasing her average lifespan exponentially. She shivered with glee at the thought, glancing over at the huge antique bed where her lover slept soundly, thinking to herself that even one extra day with Buffy would be worth the effort required to work out and set such a spell.
Unfortunately, Willow learned, this improved Slayer healing was pretty much the only positive thing Rothschear was responsible for. After his success in that endeavor, he began to cook up wild schemes to improve the Slayer, including turning her into a sort of Inspector Gadget, but with the gadgets being actual parts of her body. He wanted to work out a way to build weapons into the body of the Slayer herself, such as stakes in the hands. If he'd been around in the fifties, Willow thought, it would've been laser beams from the eyes. He had to have been insane. But whatever he was, he apparently hid it well, at least for a while. He wrote many times that none of his Council compatriots knew what he was up to, that none of them knew about his experiments. He continued to build his own demons, trying out things on them that he wanted to do to the Slayer. Eventually, he thought he might have come upon a way to make the Slayer able to turn her hands into sharp blades, good for beheading and stabbing. He summoned her to his workroom one morning without telling anyone else, and when she came in he bound her magickally and then set about working his spell.
The spell failed, and the Slayer bled to death before his eyes. When this was discovered that afternoon, he was immediately brought before a Council tribunal, tried and summarily ejected from the Council. Then, Willow realized, Rothschear's true madness began to surface. He continued to make his monsters, only now they were larger and more evil than ever before. He wove spells into them to make them more powerful than the Slayer, but he also wove trigger spells into them so that if they turned on him, the recitation of a simple, two-line hex would disintegrate the beast instantly. She smiled triumphantly — this had been how she'd told Giles to destroy the beast held in stasis in Sunnydale. Rothschear was mad, but he was careful as well, and the combination made Willow shiver.
She flipped forward in the thick book, scanning over different spells and different demons, reading with horror the accounts of the two Slayers killed by Rothschear's monsters. The glee with which the mad sorcerer chronicled the two butcherings — and there was no other appropriate word for them — was enough to turn the young witch's stomach. She finally set the book aside, unable to read farther, and returned to the warm featherbed where Buffy lay. She slid between the sheets and the Slayer moved toward her automatically, reaching for her and pulling her close. She smiled as Buffy's head came to rest on her shoulder, the face as innocent in sleep as Willow imagined she must have looked before she was Called. Willow breathed in the fragrance of her lover — the sweet berry scent of her shampoo, the clean fragrance of her soap, and the musky aroma that was Buffy alone, reminiscent of the carnal pleasures they had shared earlier in the evening. She sighed, thinking that if she could bottle that mix of perfumes and sell it, she'd either become rich beyond her wildest dreams or end up incarcerated as a purveyor of the strongest intoxicant known to modern man. The thought made her grin as she slowly drifted to sleep, the music of Buffy's heartbeat thrumming in her ears.
Two corridors to the east, a certain daywalking vampire slid out of her own lover's embrace, wrapped a robe around herself, snagged a couple of oranges off the table, and slipped out through the French doors and onto the balcony. Under the pale moonlight, she settled onto the deacon's bench near the railing and tucked her feet under herself, concentrating on peeling and then precisely sectioning the hapless fruit. Task accomplished, she sat and sucked each section dry of juice as she looked out over the gardens, thinking so deeply that she wasn't really seeing anything in front of her.
The Rothschear Manuscript. She had found that book two years ago when they first took possession of the manor, lying in the middle of a table in the main reading room with a pad full of handwritten notes by it. She didn't know who, but someone had been studying it and trying to figure out how Rothschear went about doing the things he did. Some of the notes on the pad had been frightening as they had led her to the conclusion that whoever the reader had been, he had been trying to figure out how to harness the mystical forces of the Slayer line in order to cause the death of a Slayer or Potential who turned rogue. She had hidden the book away in the very top of the turret library, which was forbidden to students, hoping against hope that it would never be needed, but keeping it rather than destroying it just in case it ever was. Now, the manuscript was out again, and in the hands of a witch who might be as powerful as Rothschear himself had been. Dakota loved Willow and had faith in her, but as the old saying went, "power corrupts." She would not be quite comfortable again until that manuscript was back at the top of the turret library where it belonged.
The only problem with that was that there were probably a lot of things that Rothschear's magicks could be used for which would be incredibly beneficial to the Slayer line, such as making her completely invulnerable to certain types of attacks. Dakota felt very strongly that this could and should be done, but the risks of unleashing a second Rothschear were so great that she was truly terrified by the scope of the possible destruction. Rothschear's magicks, in the wrong hands, could easily be used to simply wipe out every living Slayer and Potential, possibly ending the line forever. This was too great a risk. It might suck, she thought, getting Called and having a Great Destiny and having your life stolen and dying young, but it's necessary. Someone has to do it; might as well be us. The needs of the many far outweigh the needs of the one.
The sun rose on Dakota as she mulled over her thoughts in a long and increasingly disturbing loop. She watched it peek over the horizon, suddenly entranced by the incredible spectrum of colors that preceded it, a spectrum which, but for the lucky fluke of her Slayer Potentiality, she would not have been able to see. She had never been religious, nor had she ever considered herself to be particularly spiritual, but she took the few minutes as the sun crested the horizon to thank whatever Powers were listening for the fact that, even though she was still a vampire, she was still able to watch the daily mundane miracle of the dawn.
As she sat there, she felt a presence come up behind her, and a warm pair of lips press a sweet kiss to the nape of her neck. She smiled. "Hey, hon."
"Morning," Faith replied, coming around the end of the bench to snuggle up to her.
"So it is," she responded. She laid her head against Faith's and sighed quietly.
Faith laid her hand on Dakota's leg. "What's wrong?"
"What makes you think anything's wrong?" Dakota asked, knowing full well that she wouldn't be able to fool her lover. Faith knew her too well.
"Let's see, you've been sitting out here since the wee hours of the morning without moving, you're watching the sunrise with tears in your eyes but no smile on your face, and you've drained the blood out of two innocent pieces of citrus."
Dakota had to laugh. "Busted." She sighed again, collecting her thoughts, and finally blurted out, "It's that damn manuscript." She felt Faith waiting for her to continue and told her lover everything that she'd spent the last few hours brooding about. By the time she was done, she could feel the tension in Faith's shoulders.
"Why didn't you tell me about this before?" Faith asked.
"I didn't want you to stress about it," she responded. "I figured whoever was trying to work out the spell is dead, I burned the notes, and I stuck the book off in the most remote place I could think of, where none of the kids could get at it. I very nearly burned the book, too, but I kept it on the off chance that there might be something in it someday that someone might need to know. And what do you know, here comes Willow and Buffy, needing to kill one of the dirty bastard's little monsters."
"So, but it's back in the tower, right? It's put back away safely, right?"
Dakota shook her head. "Willow's still got it."
"Oh." Faith was silent for a while, watching with Dakota as the manor began to come to life beneath us. Mrs. Katherine came out of her ground-floor room and went for her morning walk in the garden; a few of the Potentials came out together to go for a morning run; a few of the Partner trainees came out to one of the grassy areas and worked out together, doing mild calisthenics and a little bit of sparring.
"I don't think Willow will do anything," Dakota said finally. "She's very ethical. Or, at least, she's always been very ethical."
"Power corrupts," Faith murmured, thinking of Rothschear and unconsciously echoing Dakota's earlier thoughts. The vampire nodded. Faith thought for awhile longer, then suddenly came to a decision. "Instead of stressing over this, why don't we actually talk about it with B and Red?"
Dakota nodded. "We're going to need to."
"Then we do it this morning. And afterwards, we take 'em riding so they can see our scenic countryside," Faith stated cheerfully, sounding like a bad travel brochure.
Dakota couldn't help but giggle as the two of them shared a brief kiss and then went back inside to have showers and begin their day.