Divine Interventions (14/16)
Sep. 25th, 2005 03:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alixtiiTitle: Divine Interventions (14/16)
Fandom: Buffy/Angel
Characters: Dawn, Amy, Cordelia, Ethan, Willow, Kennedy, and others.
Rating: The overall fic will include material up to and including NC-17; most scenes are considerably milder, though.
Warnings: Het, femslash, BDSM, noncon, underaged—but none of these as the main focus of the fic.
Warnings for this chapter: Violence.
Timeline/Spoilers: Takes place after “Why We Fight.” Spoilers up to “You’re Welcome.”
Notes: Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spikendru for a great beta.
Previous chapter can be found here.
All chapters can be found in my memories.
Chapter Fourteen
“Beyond life, beyond death, Darkness I summon thee. Accept this sacrifice, and imbue me with your power.” The Wiccan struggled, trying to resist, but Alexia simply flooded her with a wave of black magicks, wearing down her resistance as she attacked and corrupted the girl’s very soul. Alexia felt the power flowing out of the Wiccan and into her, similar to but not the same as Rack’s power-granting touch. Dropping the girl on the ground, Alexia stepped forward into a pentagram that was permanently etched into floor at the center of the temple.
“Mother of the Nile,” she invoked, reading from the parchment the young Wiccan had brought, “grace us with the magnitude of Your power, with the magnanimity of Your soul, and with the magnificence of Your glory. Isis, Queen, release the ancient barriers which separate us from Your mercy. . . .”
* * * * *
Amy concentrated in communion with the other Wiccans as Vaughne directed the spell.
“Goddess Hecate,” Vaughne invoked, “we are Your children.”
Yeah, thought Amy. Biologically in one instance—or as biological as one could get with an incorporeal Being. She was dying to ask Althanea just how she had been conceived and carried, but figured the elder witch would see that as an encroachment on personal matters.
“You are our mother,” Vaughne continued. “Reveal to us our sister who has gone astray, so that we may find her and work Your will.”
The energy channeled, Amy could feel the locator spell working, and in a moment a location shifted into the group’s collective consciousness. Okay, Althanea, Amy could hear Vaughne think, it’s your turn.
Amy could feel Althanea drawing on the group’s energy, preparing for the next step of the process. “Discedere,” she whispered, and Amy could feel the world shift around them as they quickly broke their connection to the material world and just as quickly reestablished it.
When she opened her eyes, they—all the Wiccans, as well as Dawn and Cordelia—were in a giant marble temple. Amy knew Dawn hadn’t been thrilled at the prospect of leaving Kennedy and Kelsenia with only Ethan and Beth, both of whom were morally ambiguous at best, to protect them from Willow, but had agreed that stopping the Rite of Isis had to demand as much of their resources as they could possibly spare.
“So that You, Goddess Isis, will bless Your children with the gift of Your presence—”
The high priestess of Osiris—Alexia, Althanea had said her name was—stood in the middle of a central pentagram, reading from what Amy recognized as the copy of the Rite of Isis that Dawn had received at Wolfram & Hart. Which meant that the moment she finished, reality was going to begin going kablooey as the gods got down and dirty.
Obvious goal: make sure she didn’t finish. Amy stood up quickly, raced towards the central pentagram—and was thrown back instantly by an invisible force. Shit. Of course the Temple of Osiris would have protective wards built into its very structure.
She glanced at Vaughne, then reached out with her mind reinstituting the circle between the Wiccans. Possibly with the power between them they might be able to penetrate the wards.
Dawn, on the other hand, had suddenly pulled a handgun out of her purse. Apparently deciding there was no time for the magical method, she fired it several times aimed at Alexia. The bullets traveled about half the distance to the high priestess, then hovered in the air for a moment, stopped by the wards, before falling to the ground. It was very Matrix-y.
Amy didn’t have much time to appreciate the artistry of the image, though, as she concentrated on piercing the wards. They were deep and they were strong, possibly hundreds of years old. And they were rooted in the darkest of black magicks.
“You will never stop the will of the god Osiris,” a young priest said as he made his way to them. “It shall be done.”
“Not if we have anything to say about it,” Dawn said as she turned the gun to face him.
He only laughed. “Do you really believe my life holds meaning in the greater scheme?”
In the center of the temple, Alexia seemed to be finishing the Rite. “In supplication, we have come to you, Goddess; in divine sovereignty, may Your will and that of Your children be done.”
And in that instant, the world went mad. It wasn’t completely obvious at first, but Amy could sense the changes occurring at the deepest levels of reality. The gods were free, and They weren’t about to wait to put Their omnipotence to work.
* * * * *
“It’s happened,” Beth said, but it wasn’t really necessary. Ethan could feel the way the world had shifted, changed, grown more chaotic in a single moment now, just as well as the blind seer. He didn’t see how anyone with even an inkling of magical sensitivity could have failed to sense it.
The gods were free, and now the world belonged to them. The universal laws which they had all learned to trust were suddenly rescinded in favor of the caprice of divine beings.
Of course, gravity seemed to still be working—for the moment. Most of the gods’ desires, after all, would clash, and they could only hope the result would be some sort of equilibrium. Even now, he knew, Hecate and Janus were using Their powers to keep the Earth as close as possible to its former status quo. Already the changes he could notice were relatively minor—for example, the grey shirt he had been wearing had suddenly become a bright orange. He wondered which deity would care what color shirt he was wearing, but recognized that something so minor would be far beneath the concern of Hecate and Janus. They were busy making sure the entire human race wasn’t turned into Smurfs or anything of the sort.
A god of chaos and a goddess of witchcraft working together to preserve the natural order of the universe. It was the type of irony that a chaos mage could appreciate.
But the longer the Rite of Isis was in effect, the better the chances that some god would come up with some thing to do which would throw the Earth completely out of balance, upsetting the finely-tuned chaos he loved so much. Something that Janus and Hecate wouldn’t be able to stop.
So he prayed—not to Janus, who was busy at the time, but just hoped in general—that the others would be able to reverse the Rite of Isis before it was too late. And that Osiris didn’t wipe them all out with a single thought. With Janus and Hecate tied up counterbalancing the wills of thousand minor gods and Powers, there was really very little restraining the Dark God at the moment. Which made the future disturbingly bleak.
Ethan glanced over at Beth. “Any idea of whether they’ll make it through this?”
The boy turned, saying nothing. His blind eyes stared out at Ethan as if in reproach.
“No, of course not,” Ethan said at last. “They don’t tell you stuff like that.”
When the boy spoke, Ethan detected a very real fear in Beth’s voice—something he had never heard there before. Beth had always been so unruffled, confident in his knowledge of what was coming next. “They’re not telling me anything,” he said. “They don’t need me anymore, not with the Rite. It’s all gone, and I can’t see a damned thing.”
* * * * *
Cordelia could sense the way the world changed when the Rite of Isis was completed. Even more so, she could sense the changes triggered in herself. Instead of the more-or-less human body she had inhabited for the last few days, ever since she had incarnated, now her Higher Power-ness had come back into play, a nexus of energy brimming with power beneath her skin apparent to anyone who had the sensitivity to see beneath the surface. Not to mention she now emitted a quite visible glow even for those who lacked that sensitivity.
She walked towards the center of the Temple, cutting through the wards like a knife through butter. She glanced at Alexia, who was lying unconscious on the floor, but ignored the Osirian priestess, deciding she was no longer a threat. Instead, she called out so that her voice echoed through the Temple, and permeated even deeper into the Otherworld: “Osiris!”
In the center of the temple, above the pentagram, a vortex of power and wind begin to form—and within the vortex, the shape of a face began to form. Osiris.
“You dare to summon me, Power?”
“Oh, I think the time for due respect pretty much went out the window with the Rite of Isis,” Cordelia said, trying to convey more confidence than she felt. Chances of fooling the Dark God were low, but perhaps she could refrain from having the morale of Dawn or the Wiccans get any lower.
“A mere Higher Power thinks that she can stand up to a god?” Osiris boomed.
Cordy knew quite well that against Osiris she was hopelessly outmatched, but she knew also that she had no choice, not really. Hecate, Janus, and a small number of lesser gods and Powers allied with Them were busy keeping the world from going—perhaps literally—to Hell in a handbasket as the whims of various gods and Powers caused ever more deviations from the normal balances of the universe. No one had the power free to deal with Osiris Himself. The best Cordy could hope would be to keep the Dark God distracted until Dawn or the Wiccans managed to find some way to reverse the Rite of Isis.
“I have had enough of your meddling, Power. You and your mortal allies, seeking to obstruct My will. This ends here.” A wave of death magicks emanated from the vortex, directed at Cordelia, Dawn, and the Wiccans. Cordelia instantly threw up the most potent shields she could manage, holding off a good deal of the magic, but she could tell it wasn’t enough. Her physical form disassociated as she threw the very core of her being into reinforcing the shields, but still the onslaught continued. The constant barrage of death magicks was quickly weakening her, and she knew it would not be long before they destroyed her completely. Instinctively, unwillingly, she retreated into herself, and she could hear the screams behind her—if behind was a word that could really be applied in her incorporeal state—as the magic began to do its work.
I’m sorry, Buffy, Cordelia silently thought as she prepared to meet oblivion. I tried, Angel. Then, suddenly and inexplicably, the onslaught of magic stopped. Cordelia could not help but give in to the temptation to use some of the last remainder of her power to view the temple, trying to discover what had happened to save her and the humans.
In the entrance to the Inner Sanctum stood a familiar black-haired woman with an angry look on her face.
“If anyone is going to be killing my friends,” Willow said, “it’s going to be me.”
* * * * *
Amy pulled herself to her feet as the sudden pain in her chest instantly abated and watched as Willow made her way to the center of the temple. “Do you truly think you can succeed where a Higher Power has failed, witch?” Osiris asked.
“If I’m looking for the latest gossip, I’ll go to Cordelia,” Willow said. “Otherwise, I never did find her good for all that much.”
“You have not begun to witness My wrath,” the god promised, and Amy could sense Him releasing another wave of dark magicks. Willow rose a hand, summoning shields to protect them all from it. Amy could feel Osiris strengthen the magicks, until even Willow was straining.
“You are merely mortal, girl. Soon you will learn the error of crossing a god.”
“Behold,” rang out Willow’s voice, “the man is become as one of Us, to know good and evil, and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.” Except her voice rang out from the opposite direction from which Willow now stood. Amy turned, to see the white-haired Willow now standing in front of Osiris as well.
The two Willows stood next to each other, each reaching out with their magic to restrain the Dark God Osiris, their wills for the moment united.
“Now!” shouted Dawn.
Amy nodded and reached out with her magic. “Let the spell be ended!” she shouted into the wind and the vortex. In an instant, where there had been two Willows there now stood only one, her hair a bright red.
“Gods and goddesses of above and below, I revoke your lease to walk this Earth,” the now-complete Willow incanted. “Return now to the worlds beyond this world, realms beyond this realm, to the seat of your power where no mortal may tread. Be at peace, and leave us to our destinies uninhibited.” She smiled at Osiris, a slightly sinister smile with the barest hint of Dark Willow still within it. “Thou hast no power here, Dark God. Abjure!”
And, without even a flash, it was ended. The vortex was closed; the wind stopped; Osiris was gone.
“Wow,” said Willow. “That was a rush.”
TBC. . . . here.
Fandom: Buffy/Angel
Characters: Dawn, Amy, Cordelia, Ethan, Willow, Kennedy, and others.
Rating: The overall fic will include material up to and including NC-17; most scenes are considerably milder, though.
Warnings: Het, femslash, BDSM, noncon, underaged—but none of these as the main focus of the fic.
Warnings for this chapter: Violence.
Timeline/Spoilers: Takes place after “Why We Fight.” Spoilers up to “You’re Welcome.”
Notes: Thanks to
spikendru for a great beta.Previous chapter can be found here.
All chapters can be found in my memories.
Chapter Fourteen
“Beyond life, beyond death, Darkness I summon thee. Accept this sacrifice, and imbue me with your power.” The Wiccan struggled, trying to resist, but Alexia simply flooded her with a wave of black magicks, wearing down her resistance as she attacked and corrupted the girl’s very soul. Alexia felt the power flowing out of the Wiccan and into her, similar to but not the same as Rack’s power-granting touch. Dropping the girl on the ground, Alexia stepped forward into a pentagram that was permanently etched into floor at the center of the temple.
“Mother of the Nile,” she invoked, reading from the parchment the young Wiccan had brought, “grace us with the magnitude of Your power, with the magnanimity of Your soul, and with the magnificence of Your glory. Isis, Queen, release the ancient barriers which separate us from Your mercy. . . .”
Amy concentrated in communion with the other Wiccans as Vaughne directed the spell.
“Goddess Hecate,” Vaughne invoked, “we are Your children.”
Yeah, thought Amy. Biologically in one instance—or as biological as one could get with an incorporeal Being. She was dying to ask Althanea just how she had been conceived and carried, but figured the elder witch would see that as an encroachment on personal matters.
“You are our mother,” Vaughne continued. “Reveal to us our sister who has gone astray, so that we may find her and work Your will.”
The energy channeled, Amy could feel the locator spell working, and in a moment a location shifted into the group’s collective consciousness. Okay, Althanea, Amy could hear Vaughne think, it’s your turn.
Amy could feel Althanea drawing on the group’s energy, preparing for the next step of the process. “Discedere,” she whispered, and Amy could feel the world shift around them as they quickly broke their connection to the material world and just as quickly reestablished it.
When she opened her eyes, they—all the Wiccans, as well as Dawn and Cordelia—were in a giant marble temple. Amy knew Dawn hadn’t been thrilled at the prospect of leaving Kennedy and Kelsenia with only Ethan and Beth, both of whom were morally ambiguous at best, to protect them from Willow, but had agreed that stopping the Rite of Isis had to demand as much of their resources as they could possibly spare.
“So that You, Goddess Isis, will bless Your children with the gift of Your presence—”
The high priestess of Osiris—Alexia, Althanea had said her name was—stood in the middle of a central pentagram, reading from what Amy recognized as the copy of the Rite of Isis that Dawn had received at Wolfram & Hart. Which meant that the moment she finished, reality was going to begin going kablooey as the gods got down and dirty.
Obvious goal: make sure she didn’t finish. Amy stood up quickly, raced towards the central pentagram—and was thrown back instantly by an invisible force. Shit. Of course the Temple of Osiris would have protective wards built into its very structure.
She glanced at Vaughne, then reached out with her mind reinstituting the circle between the Wiccans. Possibly with the power between them they might be able to penetrate the wards.
Dawn, on the other hand, had suddenly pulled a handgun out of her purse. Apparently deciding there was no time for the magical method, she fired it several times aimed at Alexia. The bullets traveled about half the distance to the high priestess, then hovered in the air for a moment, stopped by the wards, before falling to the ground. It was very Matrix-y.
Amy didn’t have much time to appreciate the artistry of the image, though, as she concentrated on piercing the wards. They were deep and they were strong, possibly hundreds of years old. And they were rooted in the darkest of black magicks.
“You will never stop the will of the god Osiris,” a young priest said as he made his way to them. “It shall be done.”
“Not if we have anything to say about it,” Dawn said as she turned the gun to face him.
He only laughed. “Do you really believe my life holds meaning in the greater scheme?”
In the center of the temple, Alexia seemed to be finishing the Rite. “In supplication, we have come to you, Goddess; in divine sovereignty, may Your will and that of Your children be done.”
And in that instant, the world went mad. It wasn’t completely obvious at first, but Amy could sense the changes occurring at the deepest levels of reality. The gods were free, and They weren’t about to wait to put Their omnipotence to work.
“It’s happened,” Beth said, but it wasn’t really necessary. Ethan could feel the way the world had shifted, changed, grown more chaotic in a single moment now, just as well as the blind seer. He didn’t see how anyone with even an inkling of magical sensitivity could have failed to sense it.
The gods were free, and now the world belonged to them. The universal laws which they had all learned to trust were suddenly rescinded in favor of the caprice of divine beings.
Of course, gravity seemed to still be working—for the moment. Most of the gods’ desires, after all, would clash, and they could only hope the result would be some sort of equilibrium. Even now, he knew, Hecate and Janus were using Their powers to keep the Earth as close as possible to its former status quo. Already the changes he could notice were relatively minor—for example, the grey shirt he had been wearing had suddenly become a bright orange. He wondered which deity would care what color shirt he was wearing, but recognized that something so minor would be far beneath the concern of Hecate and Janus. They were busy making sure the entire human race wasn’t turned into Smurfs or anything of the sort.
A god of chaos and a goddess of witchcraft working together to preserve the natural order of the universe. It was the type of irony that a chaos mage could appreciate.
But the longer the Rite of Isis was in effect, the better the chances that some god would come up with some thing to do which would throw the Earth completely out of balance, upsetting the finely-tuned chaos he loved so much. Something that Janus and Hecate wouldn’t be able to stop.
So he prayed—not to Janus, who was busy at the time, but just hoped in general—that the others would be able to reverse the Rite of Isis before it was too late. And that Osiris didn’t wipe them all out with a single thought. With Janus and Hecate tied up counterbalancing the wills of thousand minor gods and Powers, there was really very little restraining the Dark God at the moment. Which made the future disturbingly bleak.
Ethan glanced over at Beth. “Any idea of whether they’ll make it through this?”
The boy turned, saying nothing. His blind eyes stared out at Ethan as if in reproach.
“No, of course not,” Ethan said at last. “They don’t tell you stuff like that.”
When the boy spoke, Ethan detected a very real fear in Beth’s voice—something he had never heard there before. Beth had always been so unruffled, confident in his knowledge of what was coming next. “They’re not telling me anything,” he said. “They don’t need me anymore, not with the Rite. It’s all gone, and I can’t see a damned thing.”
Cordelia could sense the way the world changed when the Rite of Isis was completed. Even more so, she could sense the changes triggered in herself. Instead of the more-or-less human body she had inhabited for the last few days, ever since she had incarnated, now her Higher Power-ness had come back into play, a nexus of energy brimming with power beneath her skin apparent to anyone who had the sensitivity to see beneath the surface. Not to mention she now emitted a quite visible glow even for those who lacked that sensitivity.
She walked towards the center of the Temple, cutting through the wards like a knife through butter. She glanced at Alexia, who was lying unconscious on the floor, but ignored the Osirian priestess, deciding she was no longer a threat. Instead, she called out so that her voice echoed through the Temple, and permeated even deeper into the Otherworld: “Osiris!”
In the center of the temple, above the pentagram, a vortex of power and wind begin to form—and within the vortex, the shape of a face began to form. Osiris.
“You dare to summon me, Power?”
“Oh, I think the time for due respect pretty much went out the window with the Rite of Isis,” Cordelia said, trying to convey more confidence than she felt. Chances of fooling the Dark God were low, but perhaps she could refrain from having the morale of Dawn or the Wiccans get any lower.
“A mere Higher Power thinks that she can stand up to a god?” Osiris boomed.
Cordy knew quite well that against Osiris she was hopelessly outmatched, but she knew also that she had no choice, not really. Hecate, Janus, and a small number of lesser gods and Powers allied with Them were busy keeping the world from going—perhaps literally—to Hell in a handbasket as the whims of various gods and Powers caused ever more deviations from the normal balances of the universe. No one had the power free to deal with Osiris Himself. The best Cordy could hope would be to keep the Dark God distracted until Dawn or the Wiccans managed to find some way to reverse the Rite of Isis.
“I have had enough of your meddling, Power. You and your mortal allies, seeking to obstruct My will. This ends here.” A wave of death magicks emanated from the vortex, directed at Cordelia, Dawn, and the Wiccans. Cordelia instantly threw up the most potent shields she could manage, holding off a good deal of the magic, but she could tell it wasn’t enough. Her physical form disassociated as she threw the very core of her being into reinforcing the shields, but still the onslaught continued. The constant barrage of death magicks was quickly weakening her, and she knew it would not be long before they destroyed her completely. Instinctively, unwillingly, she retreated into herself, and she could hear the screams behind her—if behind was a word that could really be applied in her incorporeal state—as the magic began to do its work.
I’m sorry, Buffy, Cordelia silently thought as she prepared to meet oblivion. I tried, Angel. Then, suddenly and inexplicably, the onslaught of magic stopped. Cordelia could not help but give in to the temptation to use some of the last remainder of her power to view the temple, trying to discover what had happened to save her and the humans.
In the entrance to the Inner Sanctum stood a familiar black-haired woman with an angry look on her face.
“If anyone is going to be killing my friends,” Willow said, “it’s going to be me.”
Amy pulled herself to her feet as the sudden pain in her chest instantly abated and watched as Willow made her way to the center of the temple. “Do you truly think you can succeed where a Higher Power has failed, witch?” Osiris asked.
“If I’m looking for the latest gossip, I’ll go to Cordelia,” Willow said. “Otherwise, I never did find her good for all that much.”
“You have not begun to witness My wrath,” the god promised, and Amy could sense Him releasing another wave of dark magicks. Willow rose a hand, summoning shields to protect them all from it. Amy could feel Osiris strengthen the magicks, until even Willow was straining.
“You are merely mortal, girl. Soon you will learn the error of crossing a god.”
“Behold,” rang out Willow’s voice, “the man is become as one of Us, to know good and evil, and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.” Except her voice rang out from the opposite direction from which Willow now stood. Amy turned, to see the white-haired Willow now standing in front of Osiris as well.
The two Willows stood next to each other, each reaching out with their magic to restrain the Dark God Osiris, their wills for the moment united.
“Now!” shouted Dawn.
Amy nodded and reached out with her magic. “Let the spell be ended!” she shouted into the wind and the vortex. In an instant, where there had been two Willows there now stood only one, her hair a bright red.
“Gods and goddesses of above and below, I revoke your lease to walk this Earth,” the now-complete Willow incanted. “Return now to the worlds beyond this world, realms beyond this realm, to the seat of your power where no mortal may tread. Be at peace, and leave us to our destinies uninhibited.” She smiled at Osiris, a slightly sinister smile with the barest hint of Dark Willow still within it. “Thou hast no power here, Dark God. Abjure!”
And, without even a flash, it was ended. The vortex was closed; the wind stopped; Osiris was gone.
“Wow,” said Willow. “That was a rush.”
TBC. . . . here.
