FIC: Daybreak Postponed (12/14)

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

Okay, it growed. Major rethink today leading to revision of ending. Please don't archive for now, as earlier "bits" will also benefit from tweaking.

TITLE: Daybreak Postponed [approximately] (12/14)
AUTHOR: Soren Nyrond
DISCLAIMER: All characters in this part belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy -- etc etc as in part (0/12). 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, Idon't think anything's awry.
SUMMARY: Okay -- Final Battle part 1-- smoochies nil(?); punchies some
ARCHIVING:: Please wait till this is through
SPOILERS: None - none of this ever happened in the ME-world
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Molto gratitude for the constructive feedback. And Save The Snippets !!!
  
 
  
DAYBREAK HAS BEEN POSTPONED

By Soren Nyrond

Part Eleven - To The WatchTower

 

 

The six made their way through the corridors of Ravenslaut Hall in a brisk no-nonsense way. Around them the light-bulbs fought a last desperate rear-guard against the encroaching darkness. It was mid-afternoon, and it looked as dark as night. Outside, the weather had reached a murderous crescendoand was apparently considering how to top the effect. Buffy was carrying two stakes in her belt, and the pole from a standing lamp as a first weapon. Faith was equally be-staked but had picked up a solid glass ball-shaped paperweight to, she said, "add weight to her arguments". Zander had gone for chair-legs - two of them, each with a little strut still attached, to covert them into impromptu side-handled batons. Cordelia hadn't wanted to join in the weapon game, but for old times' sake she carried a spatula, and Giles had found her several small bottles and a little bag to carry them in.  

And Willow and Giles had their books. They had a few more after they'd raided the Library.

"I only meant for us to be in there for two minutes, Willow - "

"Giles, there were books there - "

"You can't keep them - "

 

"Guys - directions ?"

"Sorry, Buffy - we need to go back up to the West Annexe."

Buffy thought for a moment, then pointed to a door: "If we go through there, can we get out the far side ? That ought to bring us into the corridor just before the other stairs - the ones we didn't use - that lead up there."

"How - You've never been here before, have you ?" Giles queried. "And, yes, there is a panel - "

Buffy wrenched the door open, and they went into the room, which looked like it was some kind of secretary's office.

"Okay - where's the panel ?"

Giles was just moving behind the chair when Willow, who had been toward the back as they'd come in, gave a muffled gasp.

Darkness had enveloped her, like a living (or unliving) thing. Indeed, very like a loving thing, as it wrapped itself round her trim figure.

"Giles ! Get that panel open !" Buffy shouted, as she vaulted across the desk to get to her wiccan. Cordelia was next closest and, vainly, tried to whap at the inky insubstantiality with her spatula, while faithstruggled to get round Xander to get to grips.  

Fortunately, to stop Willow escaping, the darkness had to exudesome substance, and Buffy and Xander latched on to that - Buffy used Slayer-strength to pull tentacles off, and Xander, once he could get a hold of some of Willow (a hand initially), simply fought to stop the blackness recovering any sort of purchase.

Giles was trying to open the panel in the wall at the back of the room while simultaneously worrying and trying to remember a spell he'd once read, while Faith, finally able to get "in" on the fight (by dint of sending Cordelia to help Giles - "I'll make it up to you later, C: soon as weget clear of this craziness"), decided to see whether a knife (previously tucked into a boot-top) could make any impression of living blackness.

Suddenly Willow got her mouth free and the words for which Giles had been searching rang out. In a moment the darkness withdrew and Faithhad to pull her next blow to avoid it hitting Buffy, who was propelled forward when her latest effort met no resistance, just as Xander was knocked back as an unbound Willow catapulted forward into him.

 

Buffy swung round to stop hitting Faith, and saw that between them Giles and Cordelia had depend the hidden doorway.  

"Quick !" she said, pointing.

Willow, wisely, led the way, and the six of them bulleted into the other corridor in double time, before the darkness (had it had a mind to) could regroup and make a second assault.

"Okay - upstairs !" she said, and pointed the way again.

"How do you know - ?" Giles gasped.

"I saw the stairs when we were up there, and I've been keeping track of the geography," Buffy said, getting her breath back. "So it's just a matter of putting things together."

"Is this the door ?" Faith was asking, and Giles' nod had her pushing it open. Then, as Cordy followed the Slayer in, there was an unholyrow.

Buffy, Giles and Willow got there to see Xander also piling in,to a fight with a couple of hefty-looking lads. By the time that it was over Cordelia's blouse was clearly going to need replacing, and Faith's skirt was perforce several inches shorter, due to portions of it having been used as bindings after they had been recovered from the grasp of one of the young men.  

"And if these were candidates for Watchers," Giles said grimly,"then Quentin's senses have utterly deserted him."

            

"They don't seem to have heard us," Willow said, perched on thecupboard, looking down into the hall below. The others were tidying the room, so as to have room to sit - most of the other furniture had been broken in the fight, and much of it was so badly damaged as to be fit only for refuse.

Giles wiped his brow. "Thank God for small mercies," he said. "All right - we need to lie low, until they do start and they we . erm . 'go in'."

"Just what are we expecting ?" Xander asked.

"Pretty well a full-scale satanic ritual," Willow replied: "Isn't that right, Giles ? Only directed towards the Lucovores and their Dark Masters."

"You seem remarkably . "

"Oh, come on, Giles - I can read, and your book - "

Willow held up the slim volume and Giles patted his pockets andthen said "So that's where that went - I wasn't sure I hadn't just misplaced it."

"You lost a book !" Xander exclaimed. "G-Man, you're slipping !"

"Keep your voice down, Xander," Buffy hissed. "Willow can you - "

"One noise-muffling spell on the way." Willow repled, but Gileswaved her down.

"We can't risk it - we're too close now: they might be able to detect it if we use magic."

"Okay - then we just stay quiet," Buffy ruled. "What about -- ?" She pointed to the unconscious heavies.

Faith pointed to the cupboard which offered vantage to the hallbelow, and which had escaped the damage of the fight. "Maybe they'll fit in here, B, and we can gag them."

Then she opened it, and gasped. It was already occupied, by the body of Professor Hodgson. But there was nothing to be done for him, andhe was reverently carried out and put in one corner, while the two young men were conveyed to take his place inside.

            

 

 

It was ten at night, and the room was dark. The lighting in the Compton Room below was struggling against the preternatural power of the Lucovore influence (though every few minutes one or another of the Inner Circle would murmur a cantrip to reinforce the counter-power of the Watchers).

Then Faith (whose turn it was on watch) hissed a warning.

Giles, Xander and Cordelia stirred and Buffy and Willow unwrapped themselves from each other.

It was Quentin Travers and the remainder of the Inner Circle (perhaps ten of them), who cleared everyone else out, and then gathered, to intone an especially nasty-sounding versicle (which Willow said, and Giles confirmed, was in a bastard Alexandrian-Aramaaic cant).

"All right," Travers said, when that was done. "Thirty minutesand we let the youngsters in. They can undertake the Ritual Cleansings and then I want the first summoning started at eleven. That ought to mean that we can undertake the second Opening of the Way around eleven-thirty and the Road should be fully open by midnight. We ought to be able to hold thesacrifice on the stroke of midnight and then all the power that the Council never dared dream it could have will be ours, as we have been promised."

His voice had taken on a fanatic edge and Giles could not believe that anyone hearing it would not be aware that this was a man not only on the dge, but several degrees over it and hanging, like a freeze-framed cartoon wolf or coyote, over the centre of the precipice just waiting his time to plummet.

There were general sounds of assent, and Giles finally despaired of the Council. Until now he had harboured a final hope that they had simply been stringing Quentin along, in order to prove his corruption, and would then quash him and return sanity to the world he had known.

It was, he gathered, not to be. Somehow Quentin had got to them, one and all, and between the world and utter chaos and destruction lay one Watcher, two Slayers, a witch, a sometime High-school princess, and Xander Harris.