FIC :: Filks and Fables (1/3)

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

TITLE: Filks & Fables (1/3) 
AUTHOR: Soren Nyrond
DISCLAIMER: Characters in this part belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. 
SUMMARY: It's got Buffy and Willow in it; it's another in the series; it will end eventually.
SPOILERS: None except that this bit is (to all intents) smut-less
AUTHOR'S NOTES: All nice feedback welcome. Thanks to all those who've written so far.

 
  
Filks and Fables - - Part 1

 

 

Urmelwen had helped the two of them prepare for their transit through the Necromancer's portal.

"My magic can't help you once you're in the next realm," she said, "but I can certainly try to do everything possible to get you in peak condition."

"What are these realms ? Is there a way to get us home ?" Willow (ever theResearch Girl) asked.

"Could you get us home ?" Buffy (more pragmatic) asked.

"I can't send you direct - once you're in Scriptator's realms, only he or ahigher Power can release you. But he often borrows people, for his fictions, and then returns them . almost unharmed. Some don't even know they've been borrowed."

 

Their armour they left behind: "Whatever clothing and equipment the scenario needs will be provided as you arrive."

Willow's magick bag was going with them, but seeing Scriptator hadn't been refilling it, Urmelwen gave Willow free run of her laboratories and store cupboards (with a slim and attentive elf-maiden to assist her with whatever she wanted) to stock up with anything she thought she might need.

"But what about the time ?" Buffy said, when Urmelwen asked whether she'd like to have a rest and a massage, perhaps even try out some elfin weapons to see how they felt to her.

"So long as you leave here today, you won't lose time over your friend. Scriptator's realms run on their own, plot-driven, clocks. I can warn you . say, an hour ? . before the danger-point. Up till then, you will arrive inthe next realm - whichever that is, and I have no way of knowing, because I stay in this one - at exactly the same time as if you had gone through from the Tower the instant after you'd rescued me."

Buffy didn't understand magic: she did recognise when it was being used, though.

So, in case it survived to the other side, she took an enchanted sword, anda magical shield that shrank to the size of a quarter when it wasn't wanted.

Both she and Willow took pouches of gold nobles, again just in case they survived the transition.

And they insisted on taking bottles of Urmelwen's cordial with them: two each, in little pouches which fastened to their belts.

 

Then, in two clicks of her fingers, she restored them to the Necromancer's Tower, and activated his portal. They were just stepping through, when they turned to thank her - and, in the instant before the transition swept over them, saw not Urmelwen the elfin princess but Toiranda the girl-thief standing, waving farewell to them.

 

 

It was time, Buffy Summers decided, to find this Spectator, or whatever he called himself, and have a Slayer to Speculator talk - a serious talk, withstakes and crossbows and perhaps boiling oil, or melted lead . something lingering .

Whoever he was, he was a perv of the first order. Buffy's attire in the new reality she and Willow had been catapulted into proved it. All she wore seemed to be a flouncy shirt too small for her, with the result that it fitted skin tight at the waist (which it barely reached) but left her - upper body - incompletely covered, and liable to . bounce, and a pair of black Capri-type pants, again skin-tight, with a centre seam in a very disconcerting position, and with no apparent way of removing them. Oh, and big, wide-topped leather hip-boots, that didn't look good for kicking in.

Not that Willow was in a better position. Her magick bag had come through unscathed but it looked heinously discordant with the rest of her clothes, which were a version of Buffy's Halloween outfit, but with a murderously tight bodice-cum-corset, and nineteen (they had counted them) layers of petticoat.

Snugglies were very definitely off the menu (which was a pity because they had both decided that a bit of snuggle time at the start of the adventure, rather than later on, when they were hot and sweaty from a fight or something, would be a good tactic).

And as weapons, between them, they had one poncy rapier-type sword (and Buffy had never liked that sort of a blade: she'd always found excuses when Giles had produced it, and had managed to dodge most of those lessons by pointing out how unlikely it was she'd "run across" one in Sunnydale). Oh, andhalf a dozen stakes hastily improvised from wood lying about by the roadside.

 

And they were (as previously) on foot. Buffy could cope (though the boots weren't really made for it): Willow couldn't.

"We need horses," Buffy said. "Or, rather, love, I need a horse and you need four, a carriage, and driver, and a postillion."

"My postillion has been struck by lightning," Willow said, inconsequentially, and giggled. Buffy panicked - oh, Goddess, no, she murmured, don't let her be channelling Cordelia.

"Ahem - sorry about that," Willow added, in her normal voice: "Don't know what came over me. Horses ? Arabian ? Percheron ? Appalloosa ?"

Buffy looked at her: "Pardon ?"

"Didn't you have the horse-craze ?" Willow asked: "I thought all girls wentthrough it - mine lasted all of three months, before Ira took me to a stables and I smelled what it's like with a lot of them together."

"Oh, hey, yes," Buffy said, flippantly: "Only where I was, it was more motorcycles - it's hard to plan for horses in an apartment block."

"Ok, okay - so what do you want ? I'd say an Arabian for you: best be a gelding, stallions can get tetchy. And for me, perhaps a golden Palomino . oh, no, if I can have what I want, it'll be a nearly-wild mysterious Camarguais."

>From her bag she pulled her wand, and intoned several syllables, dropping some herb or other to the ground, as she paced backward carefully. Then sherepeated the process, with slightly different syllables.

"Okay, find shelter, sit wait for transport."

"Pardon ?" Buffy said.

Willow giggled: "She said I could have what I wanted, so I took a book - a book I took, some spells to cook, and bring some luck, and get me - "

"What sort of book ?" Buffy asked, breaking into the sing-song rhyme.

"Spell-book - nothing dangerous: nature spells, wicca-type stuff."

"And you just cast ?"

"Animal Summoning," Willow replied. "Look, there they are. Need saddles now - see what I can whip up."

 

The horses had come out of nowhere - well, at least, nowhere logical. Theywere in a sort of New England landscape, with tree-lined roads (were thosepoplars or cypressus ?), and agricultural fields. Presumably there were farms, but in case those farms could spot a stolen horse or two, Buffy kept them moving.

She had no idea whether they were going the right way. They had "materialised" on the side of a road - one way looked to be going towards mountains, with no sign of a town, the other might have led anywhere. And since "anywhere" included the possibility of a town, and lunch, and a bed, and information .

She also wanted a get a move on in case the spell expired and the horses (not to mention the saddles that had appeared out of thin air) just vanished.

 

She was worried about Willow - having a Warrior Scout around was one thing;in Clomisport she had seemed to be a slightly amplified witchy version of herself. But here she was acting half like a bubble-headed Brittany-the-cheerleader girl, out of it, making up little songs and giggling. So far, when Buffy had talked to her directly, she had got the old Willow. But, being frank with herself (which was easier than being frank with someone else, when the whole world expected her to be Buffy), Buffy had to admit that shewas coming to rely on Willow the Wiccan wonder for a bit of extra "zazoom"in a tight corner (and a healthy (and stimulating) cuddle during the quietbits). If Will went off on an empty-head trip at a key moment, her wiccanknowledge just wouldn't be there.

 

How often, a few minutes later, she wondered, had she heard the phrase "Don't wish for something: you may get it" ?

There were three of them on foot and a fourth on a horse. The horseman hada sabre, the three footpads carried nasty-looking cudgels.

"Get them - they're the ones !" the horseman called.

Buffy vaulted to the ground and managed to kick one footpad approximately where the monkey kept his nuts. Then it was rapier against cudgel - for about thirty frustrating seconds.

She dropped the rapier and reverted to Slayer-style. One footpad took a flying jump into the horseman, and Buffy grabbed the other and throttled him till the first got up again (the monkey-nut man was still lying in the roadattending to his agony). Then she dropped the throttlee, and delivered a full-force punch to the first man's forehead. He dropped, totally unconscious, by which time the throttlee was vaguely breathing again, and was helping monkey-nut off the floor and into a hobbling, halting flat-out retreat.

Then Buffy remembered the horseman. To find that he was astride his steed,like a monumental statue.

"Do we want him for anything ?" Willow asked, a dreamy look in his eyes. "I can send him away, if you want."

 

 

End of Bit 1

Bit 2 to follow