BattleDots
Chapter 4 of “Connections”
By Chani
“That sounded even stupider than the first time I heard it,” Buffy mumbled as soon as Rena was finished. “And I still don’t like it.”
“Neither do I.” Spike knew everyone was giving him skeptical looks, surprised that he would agree with the Slayer on anything. Though he was sure her reasons differed from his, he honestly felt this plan that Willow, Giles, and Rena concocted was, as Buffy had so elegantly voiced, stupid.
“We shouldn’t be wasting time arguing about it,” Rena pointed out indignantly. “Since this fight is Willow’s and mine, I don’t really think—”
“No offense, but we don’t know you and you’re asking us to have an awful lot of trust in you to do this right.” The Slayer crossed her arms in front of her. “How do we know you aren’t going to unleash both of those monsters and—”
“Sure, I really want to be ripped to shreds by these things. Are you—?”
“Look,” Giles pronounced, stepping between his Slayer and the witch. “Rena offered to do the spell to summon the Cristaliphous demon. Since we don’t know what to expect from it, and it may be difficult to control, it’s a good idea for her to be as near as possible to the Neuennymagh demon when she begins the spell. Additionally, the Neuennymagh demon might decide to try to flee and end up wreaking havoc elsewhere, so to be safe, Willow will stay up here and do a spell to contain everything down there so no one can get out or in until she ends the spell. It really does make sense.”
The witch nodded, raising an eyebrow. “You know you can’t fight those things down there, Buffy. If you could, you would’ve done it already.”
“Then take Willow with you,” Buffy insisted.
“You want your friend locked up with a bunch of gargantuan-sized demons??”
“No! But…” Buffy glared at the witch, then turned her attention to Spike. “As soon as she gets down there, those demon spawn thingies are gonna go after her.”
“I can handle those,” Rena grunted between clenched teeth, glaring at the slayer.
Spike tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention. “Okay, let’s say you can. What do you plan to do with the Cristaliphous demon once it kills the other one? There was no banishing spell in any book I looked in.”
She shrugged. “I’ll open a dimensional portal and send it back to…to wherever it belongs.”
“You’re not going down there alone.”
“Watch me.” She looked back at Willow. “As soon as I’m in the crater, start the containment spell.”
“Good luck.” The redhead smiled at her.
“You too.”
Spike reached out to grab her arm in an attempt to stop her from walking away, but ended up grabbing a handful of air. “Bloody hell!” He knew, without even glancing down in the crater, that she had teleported to her destination. He looked over at Willow, who was about to start her spell, then started running full speed toward Rena.
It didn’t take him long to reach the floor of the crater, but as he did an unseen force threw him forward—he assumed it was because Willow had just completed her containment spell. He rolled across the ground, coming to a stop only a few inches from where Rena stood—inside a ring of fire, where she had seemingly begun her spell. He sprung to his feet, giving her an apologetic look as the small circle of fire that had surrounded her disappeared.
“What the bleeding hell are you two doing??”
Spike glared at her. “I…two?”
“I told you I wanted to be down here,” came Buffy’s voice from behind him.
“Aww, crap,” Rena groaned. “Now they see me…and you two, too!”
“What?” The blonde vampire looked up just in time to see the demon clones turn their attention toward the three intruders, but more disturbing was the fact that the Neuennymagh demon had decided to leave its temple to find out what the commotion was about. “Rena…”
“I know, I see it, too,” she snapped, then pointed to large oak tree behind him. “Grab onto that tree…and hold onto each other.”
“What—?”
“Just do it!!”
Spike did as she said, and
wrapped one arm around the tree, then watched her. She moved her hands in front of her, angled outward, with her
palms facing downward—parallel to the ground.
He could see her shoulders moving quickly, as though she were breathing
hard, and she muttered something he couldn’t quite hear. But seconds later, when the ground started
quaking beneath them, he managed to figure out exactly what she was doing—if
not why.
“Spike what the—”
He never heard the end of the
slayer’s question…it was drowned out by the sound of thunder and the booming
noise the earth made as the ground crumbled beneath the clones—effectively
stopping the large demons from advancing on them. Buffy stumbled against him, so he grabbed onto her with his free
arm, wrapping it around her waist. When
he looked up again, he saw that Rena hadn’t stopped with just an
earthquake. Now, there was lightning
shooting from her fingertips into the Neuennymagh demon. The demon flew backwards into its shrine,
crushing the side of it.
The demon stood again, but one small lightning-wielding hand kept it from moving forward. Rena began the summoning spell once more, holding the master demon in place. Minutes passed, though to Spike it seemed like hours, before a purplish cloud began to form around the witch. The Neuennymagh must have sensed the magic being wielded and knew what was coming next, for he growled loudly and tried to move toward Rena. The effort was futile, because the demon was still unable to budge. But it had other ways to fight.
In the blink of an eye, the number of demon clones had doubled, and a good number of them were headed straight for the witch who held their master in place. “Rena!” Spike yelled, realizing the witch didn’t see what was coming. He moved to help her, but before he could reach her, one of the clones attacked, swinging its huge arm at her body. Spike flinched when she flew through the air, then rolled across the ground, stopping only when her head slammed into the tree that he and Buffy had been holding onto.
He dropped to his knees by her, just as she pushed herself off the ground into a sitting position. “Son of a…owww…” She pressed her hand to the back of her head, wincing.
“Luv, you’re bleeding.” He moved her hand away so he could get a better look at her head wound.
She ignored him and stared determinedly at the demon clone that had just hit her. “Concremare!”
Spike looked up as the demon burst into flame. Unfortunately, the Neuennymagh didn’t find the action as impressive as Spike did and responded by instantly creating several more demon clones. “We have to—”
“Shield.”
The nearest clones stopped advancing, and it looked as though they were bouncing off an invisible wall. “How long’ll that last?”
“Hopefully long enough for me to finish this damnable spell,” the witch answered. She got up off the ground, stumbling slightly.
“Your head is bleeding…a lot,” the slayer pointed out, moving toward them. “You can’t—”
“I’m fine. You two get back to where you were.” Rena stumbled back to where she was before. Though she made no motion, the circle of fire appeared again. She glanced back at Spike and Buffy. “None of them should manage to get through the barrier before I finish the spell, but if one does keep it off of me. I’m not stopping this time.”
Spike started to argue, but as soon
as the words were out of her mouth, the purple fog—the same fog that seemed to
take forever to form before—returned, only this time it turned black and
surround he and Buffy as well. The
light breeze blowing the fog around them turned quickly into tumultuous winds.
The sound of one of the demon clones breaking through the invisible barrier
made him look away from the witch for a split second—long enough to see that it
only managed to get its arm inside their protective circle—and when he turned
his attention back to Rena, his jaw dropped open.
She still stood inside the circle
of fire, but right next to her was one of the biggest, nastiest, things Spike
had ever seen. The Cristaliphous demon
appeared to be a combination of a dinosaur, a snake, and a roach. It had hundreds of tentacles on its ugly
gray head, with bulging eyes and a huge mouth that didn’t quite cover it’s
large teeth. He counted four arms, two
on each side of its body—and the same number of wings. When it opened its mouth to roar, it became
obvious why it could kill the Neuennymagh demon—it could swallow the
Neuennymagh demon, its clones, and its temple in one big gulp.
The barrier Rena had created was
no longer deterring the demon clones, and they were now moving toward her. Spike heard the witch say something, but all
the commotion drowned it out. The
Cristaliphous demon, however, started moving in the direction of the other
demon, smashing any clones that stood in its way. Once it reached its destination, it opened its big mouth, picked
up the Neuennymagh demon and swallowed it whole…only to regurgitate it seconds
later.
The Neuennymagh demon came back
out with half of its head burned off—most likely by the other demon’s digestive
juices. It ran around aimlessly,
wailing in pain. Unfortunately, it
wasn’t intelligent enough to get away from the other demon, who stopped it by
biting it in half and eating both parts sloppily, blood and guts flying in all
directions. The demon clones, as well
as the temple, disappeared as soon as their master perished.
“Ewww,” Buffy complained when she
got hit in the head with a piece of Neuennymagh demon. Spike laughed at her, but his amusement
faded when the Slayer pointed toward Rena and whispered, “Uh-oh.”
The Cristaliphous demon, having
destroyed the other demon, was looking for something else to help satisfy its
clearly voracious appetite. It turned
to Rena and brought its ugly head down to her, roaring loudly. She cursed and raised a hand, sending the
demon flying backwards. It would have
appeared to be an easy task, had Spike not noticed her faltering slightly. “I don’t think she can handle much more,” he
said to himself, more than Buffy.
Rena held one hand up and the demon froze in place. She was breathing heavily, swaying forward and backward, but Spike could hear her whispering something…in Latin, he believed, but he couldn’t quite make it out. Once again, tumultuous winds started to blow, only this time a portal opened in the air near the demon she had summoned. The portal grew larger—much larger—and Spike felt like he was being pulled toward it. He grabbed onto the tree again, reaching for the slayer’s arm to anchor her as well. The demon, sensing what was coming next, tried to move away from the portal, only to have Rena raise her hand and throw him directly into its center, closing the portal as soon as he was inside.
Spike hurried to the witch, putting his hands on her arms to steady her. “You okay, luv?”
She put her hand to her head,
wobbling. “Yup. I’m fine,” she answered, collapsing against
him in a crumpled heap.