Tower of Fable (3/4)

["C S Armitage" <soren_nyrond@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

And here we go again !!!


TITLE: Tower of Fable (3/4) 
AUTHOR: Soren Nyrond
DISCLAIMER: All characters in this part belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Some ideas have been borrowed for elsewhere to illuminate this story: they did once belong to Other Companies (and still do, I imagine), but since they are by way of being generic concepts, I don't think anything's awry.
SUMMARY: It's got Buffy and Willow in it, and another generic city-state. Also an NPC of the classic variety (all right, the same one as in Part 2). If anyone spots any original plot-lines, do let me know, they're getting to be an endangered species round here..
ARCHIVING:: What archiving ?  
SPOILERS: None 
AUTHOR'S NOTES: All nice feedback welcome. Thanks to all those who've written so far. For the Far Side of the Woodland, I promise, I am considering putting in some smut soon.

 

 
Tower of Fable - - Part 3

 

 

As the three of them rode through the East Gate of Clomisport, two things were engaging Buffy Summers' mind. The first was whether they were going toget to Giles, and get home. The second was what Toirandy looked like under her clothes.

She was gawkily adolescent, and held herself immaturely. But Buffy remembered the younger Willow Rosenberg, who had also not made the most of herself(unlike Cordelia "That's my card, with my cell-phone number, and my hours of operation and prices; blue-star specials for quarterbacks and college boys; discount if you bring your own . you know" Chase, with her designer clothes, car and adoring sycophants - mind you, Buffy also remembered the evening she had spent with Cordelia and Harmony after she'd dealt with the Bilitis demon - a good thing there's been a rug in back of the Queen C) and reckoned Toirandy had substantial potential.

Then she glanced at Willow, at her Willow, and she saw potential realised, and a sudden heat licked at her, which she firmly repressed.

 

They rode out from Clomisport, round the docks and up into the lee of the ridge. The wind was blowing form the bay and it was far nicer to stay in the shelter of the little hill-crest. Ahead of them flew Willow's little bird-guide, making it clear which way to go. Willow had also (almost off-handedly) cast two more spells, one to warn of pits and traps in the road ahead, and the other to warn of Evil in the area around them, and now she was studying the books from her backpack.

They were fascinating: full of spells Willow found she felt she knew, and at the same time was sure she had never seen before. Names of other mages -Chestromær, Follin of Birdscarp, Gliandrenth, Jorgon Polysyllable - dotted the pages, and the spells seemed amazing: Levitation (though that neededquicksilver), Clairvoyance (which needed an eagle's eye: Willow felt sure there was one in the Sunnydale magic shop catalogue, but this wasn't Sunnydale), Sphere of Total Protection (if she hadn't lost her marbles . ).

And, tucked at the back of one book, she found a smaller booklet: a pad of pages, made of something like onion-skin, all bound in silk. The spells inhere were of a different order: they were not to do with offence, or defence, demonology or necromancy, but with enchantment. Spells of Sanctuary, and Discretion, of Seduction and Ecstasy, of Bonding and Fulfilment. Giles had never broached such matters, himself, but one or two of his books had told Willow that such spells existed. And here were the formulae.

And (it occurred to her, in the same sort of vaguely impersonal way that the business with the Moon Sword had taken place) she had not one but two subjects were she minded to try the spells out. Not only Buffy, whose mind she adored and whose body she thought she knew almost entirely, but also thisToirandy - young, presumably unschooled, perhaps then capable of some different responses, perhaps more intense in some areas. All in the spirit of scientific enquiry, she told herself.

 

The bird-creature led them, unerring, right along to the farther end of theridge, where it ran down into the ocean itself, to end with the Necromancer's Tower poised on the farthest spur. Then, suddenly, it wavered and fellapart.

Willow's intuition failed her: had the spell run its course, expired, or had some other, baneful, influence intervened and interrupted it ?

Buffy didn't mind either way.

"Look, your Spot-the-Evil spell hasn't - What is it ?"

Willow's lips were pressed tight.

"Don't go forward - dismount now, Buffy, and you, Toirandy."

"I said - I'm Randy," was the immediate protest but she did it. Buffy had already got off her pony and stood, sword ready.

"What is it, Will ?"

"The other spell, the Spot Traps one, says that there's something just along the path a bit, by those trees." Willow dismounted carefully, not wanting to lose the image she had in her mind.

Pace by pace they advanced, and little by little Willow worked things out. The path between two trees was trapped as a trigger for some other spell.

"Till it's triggered, I can't tell what it is," she admitted. "I'm not high enough level."

"You're doing fine, Will," Buffy said. "We just need - "

"You need me," Randy said. She whirled off her cloak, draping it across her pony's back, and then plucked from a bag she had been carrying a set of tools. From what looked and sounded like a plumber's kit she created a six-foot-long iron pole. Then she fastened spikes to either end. Then she started tossing things onto the danger area. When she'd tried rocks, a branch,some food and a dead rat, she looked up.

"I'd say it works only on living animal-type things. Which means, since I didn't bring a guinea-pig with me - "(Where did she learn about guinea-pigs, Buffy wondered to herself, and mightn't it be fun finding out ?) " - thatit's down to me."

And, with no further warning than that, she took the staff and, planting one spiked end square into the danger zone, vaulted up and over.

The trees on either side flailed out with branches, seeking to capture and enfold her. They missed, and Willow chanted a counter-charm and waved Buffy forward.

"Quick - I didn't dispel it, only interrupt it."

Randy met them on the other side, a gamine grin across her face.

"Well, do I get my reward now ?" she said, licking her lips.

"Later," Buffy said. "We've a scholar to rescue, remember ?"

Which reminder also served to focus Willow's mind, which had slipped to observing how Randy's shift had come clear of her pants, revealing a neatly muscled waist, just big enough to grip and, with a bit of effort, maybe pick her up and .

 

>From then on all three of them kept their eyes open and their senses on alert. Three more times they encountered traps - a pit in the road, and a patch of weed set to entangle anyone who used the "obvious" route round the pit; a remotely-triggered bank of crossbows (one fired, but Randy hurled herself aside and it just ripped her shirt; philosophically the girl-thief justreknotted what was left of the fabric around what both Buffy and Willow noted were small, apple-firm breasts, with surprisingly pink nipples and aureolae); and an area of ground which Willow said was enchanted with a Confusion spell, and through which they went roped together, following one of the ponies which (as Willow had said) was unaffected.

 

Then they were at the Tower itself. There was only one entrance to the stone-built square construction: a door square in the fifty-foot width of the landward side.

"I can open it," Randy said, confidently; "But - "

"Yes ?" Buffy said.

"You do know what you'll face if you go in, don't you ?"

"Tell us," Willow advised.

"He's a Necromancer: he raises the dead. There'll be skeletons and zombies- all that sort of thing - and worse: they say some of his creatures can suck the life right out of your body."

"Oh, those," Buffy said, matter-of-factly.

"Is there any problem with that ?" Willow asked, settling her backpack morefirmly and gripping her wand (an oak, ash and thorn mix she had crafted over three nights of a full moon while watching over Oz) in her hand.

"All right," Buffy told Randy: "Get it open."

 

Randy shivered: this was real adventure, and with people so cold-bloodedly confident it heated her blood just to think of it. She'd known that they were special: she'd seen them kiss each other. But this spoke to a deep chord in her spirit - these were the sort of people she ought to be with: her other friends, chambermaids, scullion girls, pertly prim page-girls in the noble houses, were mere shadows compared with what Buffy and Willow could do for her . to her .

 

The door opened slick as silk, and they stepped into a vaulted entry-way.

They had taken three steps in (the ponies had been left tethered at the edge of the wood, so it was just the three of them) when, from among the jumble of rubbish on the floor, four skeletons reassembled themselves from pilesof bones and, picking up swords, moved in.

Willow quickly chanted a ward to hold them from her, and as Randy tried to avoid the undead guards, Buffy cut them to pieces (or splinters) with half a dozen precise blows, wishing all the while that Giles was there, to see her use his schooling so well.

Willow's rowan rod pointed upward, and they moved to a door which hid a stair that ran up the outside wall.

"Traps ?" Buffy queried.

"No idea," Willow admitted. Buffy's raised eyebrow bade her continue: "Thespell only works in the outdoors: I'd have to cast a different one for in here."

"I'll look," said Randy, and wriggled between them, rubbing up against bothgirls. She went up the stair crab-wise, bracing herself against either side, gently tapping each tread with her pole (which she had reduced down to three feet in length). "All clear," she called from the top.

Buffy went up in one explosive surge, almost running into Randy at the top,and scooping the slim girl up and out of the way. Willow followed, gentlynudging Randy forward again. The second floor was wooden-floored, with big crates spaced round walls pierced with slit-windows.

The rowan rod said that they needed to be higher. Fortunately there was a hatch in the wooden ceiling, and a ladder propped against one wall.

"Check it first," Buffy said, as she steadied the ladder for Randy.

"I will," Randy insisted. And she did. But when she pushed upwards on thetrapdoor, it proved to be a real trap door.

The crates suddenly fell open and zombies - animated corpses set on killing- emerged. Buffy had to let the ladder go, leaving Randy to dangle from the edge of the hatch. Willow didn't have time to cast her ward before one of the things reached out for her. She dodged aside and willed fire to come from her hands, immolating the creature.

Buffy was finding these tougher: they didn't fall apart when hit, like the dry-as-bone skeletons had, and lopping off an arm just meant your opponent came at you one-handed, while the arm flopped round on its own, looking foryour ankle. But brutality (as faith had once observed) got results. Cut the head off and the body was helpless. Or shear off both legs and let whatwas left fend for itself. She took one or two blows, but these things weren't armed with weapons: all they could do was flail and grope and after one or two of the college-frat parties .

 

Finally it was over and they had time to look for Randy.

Except that she wasn't there.

"Where did she go ?" Buffy queried. "She didn't run out, did she ?"

"Not that I noticed," Willow replied, catching her breath (Buffy, as usual,seemed tireless).

"Pity if she had - cute little thing."

"Good legs, nice ass," Willow said, absent-mindedly.

"Oh, yes, and cute ti- Were you noticing ?"

"Only as much as you," Willow said, squeezing Buffy's taut buttocks briefly. "Come on, we've Giles to find."

She gestured upwards and the trap-door exploded up and away. Buffy hauled the ladder vertical and Willow ascended. Then, while one of Willow's minorspells held the ladder steady (she seemed to have absolutely no limit on her magical energies, she noted), Buffy scampered up it.

 

Here there was a big stone doorway against an outer wall - Willow knew it at once for another gateway. There was no sign of Randy, but there was alsowhat looked like a well-head. Looking over, they saw that, impossible though it might be, there appeared to be a shaft leading down, through the floors of the Tower, and into the substratum.

A noise from behind them startled them: Buffy turned, and nearly cut Randy's nose off. The girl had apparently come from nowhere - actually, Willow saw, down a rope from the ceiling, carrying a book.

"He's gone," she said, "Look."

The last entry in the book read: "I am commanded to send the scholar forward. But I mistrust the one who called himself Scriptator's emissary. I shall travel with the Giles to Scriptator's court. Lanos: if you return from obtaining the cockatrice heart, prepare it as usual. Then look after things in my absence until I return."

 

"So where do we go now ?" Buffy asked.

 

 

 

End of Bit 3 (of 4)