Fic : Fimbul (6/?)

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

TITLE: Fimbul (6/?)
AUTHOR: Soren Nyrond
DISCLAIMER: Several characters in this belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. I'm still poor, I'm still harmless, and (frankly) I write like a lemming in terminal descent.
SUMMARY: Another part, short and (so far as I remember) smut-less
SPOILERS: None -- except that there are undoubtedlu lots of spilling mustakes throughout.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: All nice feedback welcome -- thanks for the nice comments so far. I think this probably represents over halfway through, as inspiration is as free-flowing as water in the Negev.
ARCHIVING: Wait and see if I ever finish the thing. If I do, whoever wants it can probbaly have it.

  
 
FIMBUL  
By Soren Nyrond
Part 6 :: Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow
 
 
 
Rupert Giles slammed the door behind him. The clouds and the snow had returned, from nowhere, as afternoon had turned to early evening. Sunnydale was once more blizzard-wrapped, and while he and Xander hadn't seen anything awry in the cemetery (which argued that the vampire population was not responsible for this latest crisis) neither had they seen any clue as to exactly what was going on.
Xander had gone home for extra blankets and a book to read, and Giles was left, as Watchers, he knew, often were, to wonder where his Slayer was.
 
Buffy Summers was just licking her lips, and trying to work out where in the flavour charts, alongside caffe, mocha, latte, strawberries, Belgian chocolate, caramel, and Rocky Road ice-cream, to put Willow Rosenberg. Mind you, Willow had, Buffy had to admit, several subtle variations in flavour, depending on where you licked her, and what you'd done to her in the minutes before you licked her.
Willow lay back, half-wrapped in the blankets, and contemplated something equally abstruse: had the third time counted, or hadn't she really come fullstrength ? What criteria could you employ, and whose assessment did you take, since the two participants were, ipso facto, participants and therefore not objective observers ?
"We should report to Giles," she said. "And I should check to see if the computer's got more clues."
"You're not going out on your own," Buffy said. "Hang on - what time is it? Willow, we're locked in."
"No, we're not, lover," Willow replied. "Follow me." She led the way backdown the stairs, and uncovered a fire door into a back alley. "That's theother way the teams get in. Come on - if I'm not allowed to be alone, youhave to come with me."
"Anywhere," Buffy replied, only half-joking.
 
 
They rapidly agreed, once they saw what the weather was like, that they needed to keep hold of each other, to make sure they didn't get knocked over by the sudden gusts of wind, and they needed to stop and cuddle at intervalsto keep warm. Not that either minded.
Unsurprisingly, the computer lab was next to deserted, but Willow had a pass-key and they got in and got the print-out.
"Do we have to read it here ?" Buffy asked. "It'll be warmer at Giles's, and I know where he keeps the marshmallows."
"We really ought to buy our own," Willow said.
"Nahh !" Buffy replied: "We pay him back by going over there and letting him remember what youth is like."
"And," Willow asked, as they navigated a bit where the wind threatened to pick both of them up, "it still counts as good paying-back when you fill hisspare bed with biscuit-crumbs ?"
Buffy shrugged (or did the best she could under her jacket and the circumstances): "I seem to remember you ate a few, too."
"Yes, but not in quite as . imaginative a way as you."
 
Giles opened the door, then held it longer as Xander arrived. The snow that tried to follow, the three youngsters tried to throw back out, in a scenereminiscent of a W.C.Fields movie Giles had once seen.
"H..h..hot chocolate ?" Xandeer shivered. Giles gave himself up to anotherraid on his cupboards. The younger generation were all very well, but they ate and drank like the barbarian hordes, he thought - there were fewer ofthem, but they did as much devastation. And thinking of devastation brought him back to .
"Did you see anything, while you were out ?"
"Nothing significant," Buffy admitted, trying hard not to watch Willow biting her lip. Lovely, yes, she amended, but not significant. And I won't tell Giles we spent most of our time in Make-Out Tower.
"We got the latest print out," Willow said, waving the slightly damp wad ofpaper.
"What does it say ?"
"Haven't had time to look yet," Buffy said, and, at Giles' pointed look, "It's cold out there, and we didn't want to risk the snow stopping us gettinghere."
"Yeah, snow," Xander said, with his 'thoughtful' expression on: "D'you reckon that's going anything to do with these frost giant thingies you were telling us about, G-man ? Only I brought research material." The plastic baghe unearthed from his jacket proved to contain twenty or thirty 1970s and 80s four-colour comics, of a Norse-fantasy-superhero flavour.
"Hey - nice stuff, Xander," Buffy said, grabbing two.
"Careful: they're . they were . valuable."
"It's still pretty much the same," Giles reported, from the table. Willow was already going on-line with the PC she had insisted Giles acquire, for the more recondite searches that she didn't want showing up on the logs of the college system .
"Several linguistic variants this time - Anglo-Saxon, Middle-English, Franconic, Norse and Proto-Muscovy, I think - oh, and derivative Latin."
"Latin ?" Buffy said. "I thought that was Romans, not Norwegians."
"Some," Giles replied pedantically, "of the Norse migrated to Constantinople - or Byzantium - presumably the legend went with them."
"The poploce have withdrawn," Willows aid: "They've orders to let the Army handle it, after the second outbreak."
"Second outbreak ?" Giles queried. "Where ?"
"Suburban house - except now it's eighteen feet thick in ice and there's major evacuation for streets around. Wait . "
She pressed keys and then waited for another screen to download.
"Make that a third - on Becquerel - "
"Becquerel !" Buffy said - that's two blocks from Mom's gallery !" 
"She's in Encino, isn't she ?" Xander said.
"Yes - buying; but she can't afford to lose - "
"Don't worry," Willow said: "Sounds like a small incident - drug store: manager got out alive."
"I don't care !" Buffy replied. "I need to go check !"
She was grabbing her coat and heading back for the bleak black snow and wind laden outdoors, before anyone could stop her.
"I'll try and keep up with her," Xander said, as he followed, shivering at his own vanity.
 
 
It was not what the Jotun had wanted - the drug store had been no part of its plan. That had been down to the weakest of its servants. Well, when the Gods came to do war with it, the Jotun knew who was going to be in the front line. Give them a weak one, make them overconfident, and clear out thedross.
By now it was much stronger. The weather had been easier to call this timeand its creatures had found more heat to fuel its day-time growth. Now itwas the size of a great gorilla - half man-ape, half minotaur. Its horns and claws oozed the intense cold, its feet stamped ice into crushed frost beneath them. The school was one ice-cavern now, the ice frozen and refrozen until it took on the consistency of steel. The Gods would not find this an easy arena in which to fight.
It rallied its creatures once more - even the weak, rebellious one, which had tried to freeze an old man who wouldn't sell certain magazines to a high-school boy - and commanded them to go out and extend its kingdom further.
< Kill - slay - slaughter > it commanded: < I need more food, more warmth, more power >