7. "Digging Up Trouble"
Tara had spent the time Willow was connected to the virtual world fretting. Tara had readily believed Willow's earlier assurances that they could handle this themselves but the experience at the school had undermined that confidence. In living with LJ from day to day it had become surprisingly easy to detach the girl they were raising from the seemingly invincible Slayer they had encountered in the past. Now it seemed they were being drawn back into their old life, and as difficult as it was to admit they might need that power to help them.
When Willow untangled herself from the complex headset of the VR system she was all business, still resolute that they could deal with whatever this investigation threw at them, "I was right, found him hanging out in the middle of a war game, and he did try and banish his bad luck."
"Banish it?" Tara frowned.
"Seems nothing worked to change his luck so he thought he would just send it away. The thing at the school doesn't cause bad luck; it is bad luck." Willow sounded fascinated.
Tara couldn't share the feeling. Even if they were a little rusty they knew how to fight demons and bad spells, bad luck was something else altogether, "So what do we do now?"
"I think we have enough to put together a locator spell; there should still be enough of the boys magic hanging around it for us to track it." Willow knew that wasn't exactly what Tara meant but she was still working on exactly how they were going to fight the, manifestation.
"And we aren't going to call LJ?" Tara could guess the answer but the question had to be asked.
Willow shook her head vigorously, "Absolutely not. She's out of harms way and that's where she's staying."
LJ was leaning on her shovel trying not to look as if she was slacking. She had been given two-foot square of ground to dig a 'test pit' in. She was expected to dig it spadeful by spadeful, and each scoop of dirt had to be run through a sieving machine to see if there were any small finds concealed in the crumbly soil. Doctor Ryman and his colleagues would have been pleased with the painstaking way she was examining every clump and particle. They would have been less pleased with the way she surreptiously kicked some of the dirt she had sieved back into the hole.
So far this was the only way of sabotaging the dig LJ had come up with, and it wasn't proving terribly effective. Se had been counting on her fellow students being as desultory in their efforts as she was; someone though had started talking about Incas, Mayans, and gold, and suddenly people were working with a will. The steady progress was alarming but there was nothing LJ could think of to stop it except for a little magical sabotage, and that could have consequences later, especially if any of it went wrong.
Caught in the dilemma LJ tried to come up with some spell that would be safe, or at least 'plausibly deniable' if the parents heard any stories. LJ was so busy trying to come up with something that she almost missed the excitement. It wasn't until she saw that everyone in the dig had gathered into a knot that she wandered over to join them, and the hairs on the back of her neck began to stand up; the magical energies that hadn't been much more than an echo had intensified, their pattern sharper and more active, clearly detectable without any special measures.
"This is quite remarkable." As Ryman was speaking his voice was trembling with ill concealed excitement. LJ couldn't see over the heads of the men in the group so she unceremoniously elbowed her way to the front to find the source of the excitement.
The disk clutched in the archeologists hands was made from some sort of dark stone, intricately carved into a precisely circular shape, almost mechanically precise, formed by something more than simple hand tools, something powerful. LJ was convinced of it, all the magic of the site seemed to be passing through it, connecting to this chunk of stone. She maneuvered herself to see the upper surface of the disk. It was carved with the same animal symbols that LJ had seen worked into the fabric of the site.
"Those symbols have to be Inca." A female colleague of Ryman's was announcing confidently.
"Related perhaps, but they were never seafarers, how would they have gotten here?" Ryman was equally certain.
"How would any of them have gotten here?" The other archeologist snapped back.
The argument let LJ slip close enough to brush her fingers across the edge of the disk, enough to her understand its nature. The disk was a seal, a lock, a warning.
The priests had been insistent, the ancient dead were unquiet they must be taken far from the nation; to a place where they could be bound, and never found by those who followed the cult of the ancestors, who insisted upon trying to rouse them from their slumber.
The task was no simple one; the priest who led the expedition followed signs and portents, carrying the warriors and slaves, and the burdens the slaves carried, to a land beyond any known to the nation. By the time they arrived the slaves had been replaced several times over. Those who perished from sickness and exhaustion were fortunate. The wretched creatures that reached the chosen place were sacrificed to power the great binding spell.
The seal was forged to mark this place and warn away those who would dare disturb it, and if they chose to ignore the place was far enough from the nation that they would escape the evil consequences.
LJ wanted to throw up; she had felt the awfulness of the magic, and the terror that had driven the priests so far from home. They needed to get out of this place, and do it now.
If we just had Xander to fetch donuts this would be just like the old days, Willow decided as she looked around her living room. There were magic books everywhere as well as little bags and jars hastily purchased from the best magic store in San Diego. It did look rather like Giles' apartment; if the Watchers living room had been three times the size and much better furnished.
Willow had a tablet in her hands but Tara was still working with a pen and paper, even years spent with a technophile like Willow hadn't made her trust the machines entirely, she liked something that couldn't 'crash'. "How does that look to you?" she held the pad out to Willow.
"Old fashioned." Willow smiled, "But I think that's it."
"We should probably go back down to the school to work it."
"And we had better load up on some tactical spells." Willow suggested.
"Is bad luck going to be affected by fireballs or force fields?" Tara wondered.
"Only one way to find out. "Willow pointed out, trying to sound confident. She hadn't come up with anything definitive that would attack this thing. Her best guess was to treat it as a spirit, and hit it with as much power as they could muster, which she wasn't going to admit to Tara because that would bring up the subject of calling in LJ and that definitely was not going to happen.
Willow was so lost in thought that she forgot to pick up her tablet as they gathered their supplies, thus she was left in the dark when an urgent message tried to reach her, "Willow? It's Wesley Wyndham Pryce. I have some urgent news that may concern you, please call me as soon as you can."
Trying to restrain her sense of panic LJ was following the scientists and the disk as they made their way towards the cabins and all the analytical equipment. LJ's instinct was to order them to put it back where they found it, except that the best she could expect was to be laughed at, more likely they would order her to her tent, "Are you sure you shouldn't just leave it in situ? Look for other artifacts?" her comments didn't even obtain a response as everyone was far too interested in their find to pay attention to a babbling student. For the scientists this was the vindication of their excavation and they weren't going to let it out of their clutches.
Sadly that determination was about to be undermined by the workings of chance. Ryman stepping on a rounded stone wouldn't have been a problem if a small tremor hadn't run through the ground and made his foot slip across it. That in turn wouldn't have been disastrous if his elbow hadn't struck the handle of a shovel being carried by one of his colleagues and made his hand spasm. Again disaster wasn't inevitable, except that the disk struck a sharp stone that took a chunk out of the carved face, cutting right through one of the icons.
The archeologists cursed and swore, heedless of the presence of the teenage students, "The damage isn't critical." Ryman insisted.
"Don't bet on it." LJ muttered sarcastically. A much more powerful tremor ran through the site, to the accompanying sound of cracking stone and low moans.
8. "End Of The Innocence"
The name of the game with this locator spell was 'triangulation'. Willow and Tara had begun setting up the spell at three points around the perimeter; doing their best to look inconspicuous as they worked. "Are you sure this is real Mandrake root?" Tara wondered.
Willow examined the dried piece of plant matter before she dropped it into the small jar they had placed on the ground. There was a puff of blue smoke as she did so, "Guess it was," she announced.
They worked their way through the remaining two sites as quickly as they could and when they were done Willow murmured the incantation that tied them together, expecting lines of energy to lance out and intersect somewhere in the heart of the school complex. Instead they wavered and wobbled before they pointed away from the school and came to a vanishing point on the horizon, "Ok now that's weird." Willow muttered.
"Maybe we were, you know, unlucky, and the spell went wrong." Tara suggested.
Willow considered that but there seemed something very definite in the way the lines were pointing. Trying to figure where the lines might be heading Willow reached for her tablet, and found an empty pocket, "Marvelous, never leave home without it except today," she muttered.
The tablet was sat right where she had left it on the coffee table. She noticed the blinking alert telling her that there were messages waiting and ignored it; she needed to figure out where the spell was directing them, and besides if it was LJ she would rather have something definitive to tell her before replying. With a map of the school area called up Willow added a line along the direction the spell seemed to be pointing and began to zoom out, "At least it doesn't point out over the ocean." Willow commented.
Tara nodded, and then froze, "Will can you highlight the location of the field trip on that thing?"
Willow's eyes widened in shock and she hastily highlighted the location. The line ran right over the top of it. 'It followed them." Tara whispered.
Willow cursed, loudly and fluently in a manner that would have astonished her daughter. She hastily called up LJ's contact number; only to get an unavailable response, and another reminder about waiting messages. Hastily she stabbed the replay button, hoping it might be some sort of message from LJ. The sound of Wesley's anxious voice took her completely by surprise, "Callback, connect all listed contact points for Wesley Wyndham Pryce."
The tablet obeyed and a few moments later Wesley's tired sounding voice answered, "Willow is that you?"
"It's me, what was so urgent Wesley?" Willow had the dreadful feeling she already knew the answer.
Wesley confirmed their suspicions, "The current Slayer has been critically injured."
Tara gripped Willow's hand, "How critical is critical?"
"She isn't expected to last the night." Wesley admitted grimly, "It may not come to that, it may not even affect you, but I felt you should be forewarned, just in case."
"Thank you Wesley." With that Willow unceremoniously broke the link, "We need to get to her, right now," she stated grimly.
"Isn't there a picture of the site somewhere? Something we can use to focus on to teleport."
Willow hacked into the tablet with desperate determination. The problem was that dig hadn't attracted a lot of attention after it had been started, all the images she could find were months out of date, taken before they had even started to work, "It'll do." Willow announced and took Tara in her arms. Tara wasn't convinced the image would but they had to try. With the picture firmly in their minds they dematerialized; right into a maelstrom.
To Tara they seemed to have been thrown into the middle of a first class roller coaster, turning her upside down and inside out. It was a matter of astonishment when she found herself standing on a dirt road with Willow next to her apparently both in one piece, "Where exactly are we?" she asked woozily.
After a couple of attempts Willow managed to focus on the tablet in her hands and get GPS to locate them, "We're five miles from the dig." Willow was torn; that was a long way out, on the other hand they could have wound up anywhere on earth.
"Do you feel up to trying again?" Tara asked anxiously.
As much as it pained her Willow had to shake her head; the first attempt had left her drained, and without a proper focus the next time could be worse.
"Then that only leaves one option." Tara looked at the map on the tablet screen and set off down the road to the site with Willow hurrying along beside her.
LJ was running towards the bus when the ground cracked beneath it to allow the right wheels to sink into the dirt. She ran up and kicked the jammed door in frustration. The pain penetrated her panic, and she was horrified, your first real run in with the bad guys and you want to hide on the bus? Great way to impress the parents.
That thought calmed her right down. She began to look around for something she could use as a weapon, preferably something large and sharp. LJ wished she had brought a rapier with her, or one of those sabres Mr. Meyer had shown her. She began to ransack the packs of the other students until she came up with a machete, it was hardly ideal but it would have to do.
The dig site was absolute chaos; students and scientists were running around trying to dodge what was emerging from the cracked and broken site . Emaciated and ragged in the remains of ceremonial clothes, wielding axes and swords edged with razor sharp obsidian, the black stone catching the sunlight as they swung the weapons around. Only their inability to choose amongst their rich selection of panicking targets was sparing the students and scientists from being sliced to pieces by the wizened things.
The unquiet dead, zombies, LJ realized, could be worse I suppose, how hard can a bunch of dead things be to pound on? It simply didn't occur to her that the undead might be hard to kill, and so in blissful ignorance she charged into the melee.
Jeanette was rather bemused. Her last clear recollection was of standing in the middle of sewer pipe surrounded by dead demons before collapsing into the murky water. Now she was simply roving a formless void trying to decide on her next move, assuming there was a next move. The possibility that she was in fact dead was one that she was finding increasingly hard to ignore.
"You aren't actually dead," Jeanette jumped at the sound of the voice and turned to see an archaically dressed middle-aged woman standing in the middle of the emptiness.
"I suppose that's good news." Jeanette was dubious at this new appearance; the woman didn't resemble anyone Jeanette knew, so it didn't seem likely to be some hallucination her subconscious had dredged up.
The Second of the Circle of the Glade understood the hesitation, "I'm not some figment of your imagination, I'm simply a visitor here."
Jeanette adopted a defensive posture, as ridiculous as it might be in this corner of her mind, "Oh really?"
The Second waved the gesture away, "Oh come now," the second hesitated, "I was going to say that if I wished you no harm and reassure but the truth is that I am here to do you harm."
That left Jeanette far more bemused than any reassurance could have, "What are you talking about?"
"Simply this, right now you are lying in a hospital bed, with perhaps a few hours to live."
"But I am alive." Jeanette wanted to be very clear on that score.
The Second nodded, "As I say however you are dying, it is simply a matter of when."
"So you say." Jeanette was beginning to be angered by the woman's attitude.
"Jeanette I bear you no ill will. I find this course of action repellant; the only thing more terrible than asking you to let go of your life is the consequences of you holding on."
Jeanette was appalled; she appeared to be trapped in her own head with a madwoman, "Let go of it? Simply give up and die? That's why you're here, to ask me for that?"
The Second looked sheepish, "Yes it is."
Jeanette laughed though there was nothing of amusement in it, "What would make you imagine even for a moment that I would simply surrender?
The Second locked her gaze with Jeanette, "This would"
Jeanette tried to flinch but was held in place as the link between them opened out and images filled her mind, visions of what might be. There were images of terror and death but also of hope and life; just not hers. What made it worse was the absolute certainty that they were the plain unvarnished truth, there was a quality to them that brooked no argument. When they finally faded Jeanette wanted to scream, wanted to deny the terrible logic of what she had to do.
Instead the Slayer squared her shoulders and faced the Second. She was the Chosen One after all sworn to fight the darkness; even unto death, "How do we do this?"
"It's rather old fashioned," the second explained, "you simply take my hand and we walk away."
As she was speaking the Second moved closer and extended her hand. Jeanette made to take it but hesitated, "There's one thing I need from you before I do this."
"I will give it if it's within my power." The second promised.
"I want your assurance that she won't be alone, that she won't have to face this by herself."
The Second smiled, "Now that I can promise, they may not know it yet but her allies are already caught up in her Destiny."
Satisfied Jeanette grasped the offered hand.
The nurse watching over Jeanette from her workstation was taken by surprise when the alarm sounded. The young woman's vital signs had been weakening but it was slow change. Now they had suddenly crashed. The nurse summoned the emergency team but was quite certain it would do no good, the poor girls time was up, simple as that.
Willow: ...I have to tell you....
Tara: No, I understand you have to be with the person you l-love
Willow: I am
at: 2/9/04 5:03 pm
