Return
by Kirayoshi
Mindscape
[reviews]
Chapter eight
Mindscape
"Leave your cares behind,
Come with us and find
The pleasures of a journey to the Center of the Mind!
Come along if you care,
Come along if you dare,
Take a ride to the land inside of your mind!
Beyond the seas of thought,
Beyond the realm of what,
Beyond the streams of hopes and dreams where things are really hot!
Come along if you care,
Come along if you dare,
Take a ride to the land inside of your mind!"
...The Amboy Dukes
"Journey to the Center of the Mind"
White.
That's the only description of the landscape. White.
No ground below or sky above. Neither landmarks, nor ranges, nor horizons. No depth, height or breadth. Nothing at all, save for the constant and unrelenting white.
It was here, in this unknown expanse, where four disoriented figures found themselves. Three of them were long-time allies. The other one was their enemy.
That was understating the matter. The fourth figure was the enemy of the world. Of all that lived.
The evil one stood up, although direction was a relative thing in this strange environment, and examined herself. She seemed to recall that she had been wearing gauze wrappings around her body, but now was clad in a red silk dress. Yes, she mused, more my style. She looked around, and pondered; "Now, where the Sam Hill am I?"
The three others stirred, slowly raising their bodies to a standing position, and looking around them. "You guys okay?" the young dark haired man asked.
"Uh," the redheaded woman answered, "I'll get back to you on that. Next question, where are we?"
"My first guess would be," the older sandy-haired one answered, "in a great deal of trouble!" The evil one had seen the other three and now flew at them in an insane rage, her object their destruction.
"Scatter!" Willow shouted, and the others complied quickly. Glory followed Willow as the other two regrouped. Willow fought back against the mad goddess, and seemed to be holding her own, at least for a while.
"Okay, Giles," Xander said hurriedly, "whatever explanation you have, make it quick!"
"I'm not entirely certain," Giles admitted quickly. "Just before Glory could destroy her mind, Willow was able to recite the Enjoining spell, so I must assume that the spell brought us here."
"Yeah," Xander nodded. "But why'd it bring Psycho-Bitch here?"
Giles pondered for all of a second, before it hit him with a sudden clarity; "No, Xander, the spell didn't bring her here. It brought us to her! The enjoining spell was meant to combine our strengths with Buffy's, to allow Buffy's mind to absorb our might. We must be within Buffy's mind!"
Xander breathed a low whistle. "Well, just when you thought you've seen it all! So, what do we do now?"
Giles regarded the battle between Willow and Glory with a growing fire. "We oust the squatter."
"Best idea I heard all day!" Xander rushed toward the madwoman, with Giles close behind.
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"Nice move, Red," Glory grimaced as she jabbed her fist into Willow's midsection. The wiccan winced in pain but still absorbed the impact, and returned a hard chop to Glory's solar plexus. "But you're outmatched here. This is my mind now, and you're in it!"
"Wrong, you monster!" Willow spat back, as she tossed a quick energy-release spell to knock Glory back. "You've stolen this mind, this body! We're taking it back!"
"Oh yeah? Come on and try it!" Glory pressed her attack, hitting Willow from all directions at once. "I'm in control here, sweetie! What I think..." she split herself into two separate bodies, and they both spoke, "...happens!"
Xander grabbed one of the two bodies, while Giles knocked the other form on the ground with a well-placed roundhouse kick. "Did you think of that one, Glory-Girl?" Xander shouted.
"We won't let you win, Glory!" Giles intoned angrily. "You've caused too much grief as it is, we won't allow you to cause any more!"
"Ah, and you're going to stop me, how?" Glory laughed, as another copy of her body pulled Xander away, knocking him on his butt. "You don't seem to get the underlying concept here, so let me spell it out in simple words." She split herself into ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred bodies, all intent on the destruction of the three interlopers. "This is my mind, now! I'm in charge! Whatever I desire, I create. And what I desire most of all..." Her dopplegangers slowly advanced on the three of them, as they backed away in growing terror, "...is to see the Slay-bitch's closest friends suffer, before I take them out of the picture once and for all!"
The clone army overwhelmed the three opponents quickly enough, and soon had them bound hand and foot. "Yeah, I'm the Goddess here! My body, my mind, my world!" The pure white mindscape suddenly darkened, warped, contorted, twisted into a hellish landscape. Gouts of flame illuminated the distance, and vast crevasses of lava divided the land around them.
"Welcome to my world, people! Coming soon to a world near you!" At the snap of her fingers, the ground below the three erupted, sending them falling, spiraling into the abyss. Willow and Xander didn't bother to speak as they fell, they simply knew that this was their end. There was literally nothing beneath them, the fall would be endless.
"I don't think so," Giles whispered, and suddenly the fall ceased. The three friends hovered over the nothingness below, suspended by whatever unknown force governed this strange world. The landscape shifted again, and the three of them found themselves standing again in front of an enraged Glory.
"Okay, I'm stumped here," she growled, "you were supposed to fall into the Pit of Despair!"
"Did she say, 'Pit of Despair'?" Xander chuckled, ignoring Glory entirely. "Geez, what a drama queen!"
"I think she lifted that from the movie 'Labyrinth'," Willow added.
"Perhaps," Giles suggested, "she's not so much in control of this environment as she would think!"
"THAT'S IT!" Glory shouted, her voice rolling over the surrealist ever-shifting horizons. "I won't have you talking about me in the third person IN MY OWN MIND!" She threw blasts of lightning at the three of them, sending them scattering. Lava bursts and avalanches divided them as they scrambled pell-mell away from the onslaught.
Xander grabbed Willow before a shower of debris could flatten her, while Giles rushed ahead of them. "Quickly, people," he shouted. "This way!" He led the others to a rude cave in the distance. They had to duck low, and run in a zigzag pattern to reach the cave, to avoid Glory's assault as she literally threw the entire land at them. Running for what seemed an eternity, their legs threatening to buckle, their lungs burning from breathing the sulphurous air around them, the three managed to reach the cave before Glory could unleash another volley of destruction on their heads.
Giles ushered Willow and Xander into the cave, and hurriedly ran after them before a sudden cave-in closed the entrance. Xander turned back, unable to see behind him in the rapidly-dimming light. "Great," he lamented. "we got a choice of suffocating or getting slaughtered by Psycho-bitch-from-Hell!"
"Perhaps not, Xander," Giles replied calmly, pointing ahead. "Look over there." Xander and Willow peered ahead of them and saw what Giles saw. A faint glow appeared ahead of them, with a promise of warmth. "Come on," Giles led the others toward the light.
The passageway through the cave was narrow and damp, with an unnerving dripping sound echoing through the air around them. They made their way through the slippery slopes of the cavern, until they reached a widening chamber in the bowels of the cave. The chamber's ceiling was high and curved, with stalactites dangling over their heads ominously. An enormous bonfire lit the center of the cave, casting baleful shadows over the dark rock walls.
A lone figure sat staring into the fire, poking at it gingerly with a hardened stick. The others approached the fire carefully; they couldn't be certain that this was another of Glory's illusions. The figure was crouched by the fire, tending it with care, almost a religious reverence. She wore scant rags, her appearance primitive, her posture predatory. As the others moved closer to her, they could see her features more clearly. Her face, body and hair were caked with mud and her brow was sloped. But her eyes were obsidian spheres, shining with a warrior's strength, containing a fire born of anger, of resolve and righteous purpose.
The three friends knew her. They knew her very well indeed. The Primal Slayer.
The Slayer sat, scribbling in the ground at her feet with her stick, scratching out crude yet recognizable signs in the fire's ashes. She seemed not to notice the interlopers that stood over her, and they kept their silence, afraid to disrupt her work.
Suddenly she turned, and regarded her guests with a harsh gaze. She grunted at them, her gravelly voice saying simply, "Death was her gift."
She pointed her stick at Giles, jabbing him in the ribs, then pointed the stick at an image she had scratched in the ground; a picture of a head. She grunted, assuming that Giles would understand. She then pointed her stick at Xander, then at a picture of a heart. Finally, she pointed at Willow, and at a picture of a pair of wings. "Your gifts," she enunciated haltingly.
Giles looked at the images, crude representations of abstract ideas... then the connection was made. "My God..." he whispered, then fell back. Willow and Xander rushed to steady him, but he managed not to faint. "My God," he repeated, "it's all clear now!"
"Uh," Xander asked hurriedly, "for the benefit of those of us who forgot our window cleaner, care to explain that one?"
"It's her psyche," Giles intoned. "And we're a part of it. We're not who we think we are."
Willow and Xander stared at Giles blankly. "Uh, if we're not who we think we are, then who are we?"
"I call dibs on Tom Cruise," Xander quipped nervously. Giles shot him a withering glance, convincing him to be silent.
"The Slayer knew," Giles rushed to explain, in as simple a way as he could, a mind-boggling concept. "We're inside of Buffy, inside of her psyche. The pictures the Slayer showed us...a head, a heart and wings. Mind, heart and spirit."
"The dreams," Willow suddenly remembered. "She took those things from us a year ago, then just yesterday...she returned them. Saying she'd be back for them."
"And this is how she collects," Xander whistled in awe. "But one thing, Giles. If you're her mind, Willow's the spirit and I'm the heart, where are the real us? I mean, the real Giles, Willow and me?"
"Probably unconscious in the Initiative bunker," Giles answered. "What matters now is that we are not complete in and of ourselves, but part of something greater. We're part of the Slayer."
"No," the Primal Slayer shook her head and barked again. "No...I'm the Slayer. You," she extended her hand gently toward Willow, then waved her hand toward the others, "you are something more. You...are Buffy."
After ten seconds, Willow could say only two words, which eloquently summed up the emotions of the others; "I'm honored."
The pregnant silence was broken by the distant sounds of rocks shifting against rocks. "Glory," Giles shuddered. "She's breaking in."
"Come," the Slayer gestured to Giles with her hand. "Join." She held up her hands, asking Giles and Willow to take them. Giles, Willow and Xander looked into each other's eyes, wordlessly knowing what they had to do.
Giles took the Slayer's right hand, as Willow took the left, and Xander held hands with the other two. They closed their eyes, and meditated quietly on one thought; the true self, the heart, mind, spirit and body joined.
The Primal Slayer chanted, and the others joined in, their voices as one; "The power of the slayer and all who wield it, last to ancient first, we call to thee-"
========
"Okay, gang," Glory chirped happily. "Ready or not, here I come!" She strutted confidently through the cave like she was walking through her mansion. "Let's make this easy, shall we? You just line up in front of me, and I'll kill you quickly, how's that sound? Oh, hey, before I off the three of you, you want to help me with a little problem that's been nagging at me? It's about Dawn. Yeah, sweet innocent Dawnie. It seems that she's still the key, but since the Initiative gave Buffy a transfusion of Dawn's blood, I don't really need her, do I? I mean, I've got Buffy's body now, I guess that makes me the Key, don't it?" She grinned at the prospect. "So, should I just off Dawnie quick or make it last, say over a few centuries of exquisite pain?" She stopped and looked around her, a satisfied expression on her face. "Yep, it's good to be the Goddess."
She glanced toward the bonfire, seeing the shapes of people in its shadows. "Ah, there you guys are. I thought I'd have to hunt the whole cave for you three. Okay, who dies first?"
"You do!" A shape emerged quickly from the heart of the fire. Glory had virtually no time to react, before the impact of quickly thrown punch to the chin knocked her off her feet.
Glory struggled to aright herself, only to be flattened again, by a hard kick to the jaw. "Not this time, Glory-hound," the Slayer shouted. "You tried to kill my sister, my friends, my world...no more! I'm back, and I'm ready to rumble!"
There was no mistaking her voice, or her appearance. Buffy Anne Summers was back, ready to fight and smelling blood. "C'mon, sister. You and me, equal terms, mano a mano. You up to it?"
Glory stood before the Slayer, livid with rage. "NO!" she screamed as she lunged toward Buffy. "It's my body! You can't have it!"
"Try again, Glory," Buffy dodged her clumsy attack easily. "Not much of a Goddess now, are ya?" She slammed herself hard into Glory's back before she could turn around. "That was for all the lives you destroyed!" She grabbed her by the neck and threw her hard into the wall of the cave. "That was for Tara!" She kneed Glory in the groin. "That was for making Willow cry!" She stomped hard on her chest. "That was for Dawn!" She picked up the battered form of Glory and slammed her hard onto the floor. "And that was for anyone I forgot!"
Buffy stepped back and watched as Glory strained, desperately trying to regain her footing. Her body was one livid bruise, her jaw was out of alignment and several of her teeth were broken. "Come on, Goddess," Buffy taunted her. "What's the matter? Why don't you fight back? Smite me, that's what you godlike beings like to do, isn't it? Huh? Where's your omnipotence now, sister?" She lifted Glory up by the straps of her dress, and restored her to an uneasy standing position. "You have no power anymore, here or anywhere else. You've had your chance and it's long gone now. I'm in control here. It's my mind, not yours."
Glory stared down at the Slayer, seeing the look of righteous wrath on her face, and for the first time in her millennia of existence, she knew absolute terror. "Wha...what are you going to do to me?"
"Do?" Buffy asked, smiling with mock sweetness. "Why, I'm going to give you exactly what you want!" Buffy waved her hand, and reality around them distorted, shifted into something else. The cavern dispersed around them, and in its place stood the scaffold where Buffy last stood in life. The setting of her final stand against evil, against Glory. "Look down, Glory," Buffy commanded. "See that?" Glory cast her eyes to the ground beneath her, and saw the vortex. A pure white ball of blinding radiance, as a hundred realities converged, threatening to cancel each other out, destroying all reality in the process. "This is what you wanted, isn't it? Passage to your world?"
Glory blanched in terror as she realized what Buffy had in mind. "N-no," she stammered, "it's not real. It's not real, it's not my way home!"
"To Hell with you, Glory!" Buffy shouted as she shoved the defeated goddess off of the scaffold. She watched with a dark satisfaction as Glory tumbled forever, into the unholy abyss.
Buffy turned away, and the scaffold around her faded into nonexistence. Her surroundings melted away, until she was left with only the ever-present white. She stood there, uncertainty weighing down on her shoulders. Her enemy was defeated, but now what happened to her? She stood alone in the middle of a vast emptiness, feeling that she was waiting for...something. But what?
"Hey, friend," a strange yet familiar voice cheered from behind her. "I gotta say, it's good to see you again, Buffy." The Slayer turned around to see who was talking to her. She was about her size, slight of build, with pale skin and raven black hair. She dressed in a black strap top and leather pants, and wore a silver ankh pendant on the chain around her neck. There was an ageless quality about her, Buffy realized, but at the same time youthfulness, a spirit that she carried as well.
The stranger continued; "And loved the bitch-slapping you gave Glory. Man, what an ego-freak! Good to see her get hers. Best show I've seen since I first saw 'Mary Poppins'. Back during its first run, at Radio City Music Hall. That's when they knew how to present a movie, not like today with those multiplexes at the mall. Anyway, great to see you in action again. I'd shake your hand, but I don't think you'd want that."
"You know me?" Buffy questioned the young woman. "Have we met?"
"Met?" the dark haired woman laughed merrily, as though she had heard a funny joke. "We know each other intimately, Buffy Summers. For the last five years, you and I have been unofficial partners. I'm your gift, Buffy. I'm Death."