Fifty Four
30 June, 2002, Sunnydale
Willow strode to the counter with the pouch of sand from the back of the store where the smoke was still clearing. “It’s safe,” she reported, “assuming you don’t light it on fire or mix it with anything basic.”
“What is it, exactly?” Giles asked looking down, slightly less suspiciously, at the sand.
“Simple teleportation sand,” the witch shrugged as Tara approached, “refined in ways I’ll never understand and metabolized quickly into the body to become inert — that’s why you don’t keep teleporting with every thought after you’ve tasted just a little bit.”
“So we could use this to teleport all of us to the monastery?” Xander had assembled several bags of weapons. “Count me in.”
“Now hold on,” Giles held up a hand. “We need to have a plan first. This is a very delicate situation.” Everyone heard Spike groan from the other end of the store.
“Delicate?” he said angrily. “It’s not delicate. It’s very sodding simple: You beam over there and grab bitty-Buffy before we all forget she ever existed, then you kill that sodding son of a bitch that took her right out from under our noses. What’s so bleedin’ delicate about that? What’s he gonna do? Monk you to death?”
“No, Giles is right,” Anya argued. “I tried to teleport to the front hall of the monastery and instead ended up in some dungeon with another one of those spider things. And by the way–” she crossed her arms, “for the record, I did try to rescue the little twerp but she told me to piss off.”
“You couldn’t have taken her back with you,” Willow shook her head. “Not unless you’d brought extra sand for her – it only works for the person who ingested it.”
“I- I think we should scout it out,” Tara suggested, looking from face to face which now turned to her. “You know– send Willow and me over to look around.”
“Hey, yeah,” Willow’s eyes lit up. “W- we could be all sneaky and cat-burglarish.”
Giles and Xander were nodding. The Watcher opened the pouch and handed it to the witches. “Be careful. If anyone sees you, come back at once.” As they dipped their hands into the pouch, he continued. “Try and find out where they might be hiding Dawn, and how long we have before they begin the ritual.” Spike threw up his hands and shook his head, but everyone ignored him.
Tara and Willow touched their sand-tipped fingers to their tongues and after a moment made disgusted faces. Anya winced and shrugged, weakly. “Maybe it’s a little more than slightly bitter—” and the witches were gone.
30 June, 2002, 60 miles West of Chamdo, Tibet
Loki turned from his desk with a start. His heart pounded. Whistler had been right: Somehow Wilson hadn’t predicted this – because it was the last thing that Loki wanted. Two witches stood between him and the door: the Tara witch and the Willow witch.
Though it had technically never happened, Loki’s battle with Willow had changed him inside. Until then, after becoming a player, he had never encountered anyone more powerful than himself. He had even begun to doubt if the Powers That Be had any real power as he understood the word. But the Willow witch had beaten him soundly.
This Willow, though she didn’t have black hair and dangerous-looking clothing, must be presumed to be as powerful, if not more than the one he encountered. And she wasn’t alone.
With a single thought, he became invisible, tugging the surrounding space around him like a curtain. He saw the two witches blink rapidly as the disorientation of teleportation wore off.
“That was fun,” Willow said quietly. The two girls slowly walked the length of the room, immediately finding the only thing of interest: Wilson.
Loki winced in his cloak of stealth as the two witches looked in amazement at the last image to be displayed; that of Dawn sitting quietly in her room. Shit, shit, shit, he thought as they lifted the sphere from the desk. He drew his hands apart and began fashioning a dark sphere of energy. Anything that emitted its own light could be seen from outside the cloak. It was large enough, within seconds, to be deadly to one of the witches if he were to launch it at them, and he was about to when Tara turned around quite suddenly—
“Ow!” She rubbed her forehead and stumbled back as both witches heard the thump of something hitting the floor. They looked down, Willow still holding Wilson, to see the image on its surface change to that of a blond haired man in white appearing suddenly from nowhere. Both Witches looked up again as Loki appeared —as predicted— from behind his cloak, on the floor. His sphere of energy had been dissipated, but he still clutched a shred of it, hurling it at Willow. It struck the wall harmlessly, however, as both witches had vanished.
Loki glanced to his desk and the empty spot the Dagon Sphere had occupied. “Oh, shit...” There was no time now. If the witches got a look into the future –and considering their limited experience with it, it would provide a very accurate look– then everything could be ruined. Time’s up, he thought to himself, it’s now or never.
30 June, 2002, Sunnydale
Willow and Tara materialized in the loft at the back of the Magic Box. Willow’s hands gripped the red sphere tightly as they both shivered off the effects of the transition.
“That was fast,” Anya raised an eyebrow. “Did Dawn tell you to piss off too?”
“We didn’t find Dawn,” Willow said as she climbed down the ladder. “We were attacked by that Loki person – but we managed to grab this,” she held up the sphere when she got to the bottom of the ladder.
“It’s some kind of witch’s ball,” Tara explained before anyone could ask.
“Not that we’re greedy,” Willow amended quickly. “I could be any witch’s ball... not necessarily... our witch’s ball.” They brought it forward to where the others were gathered. “It’s keyed to predict certain events — like a fortune telling ball crossed with an oracle.”
“What events, specifically, is it keyed to predict?” Giles asked, turning the sphere over in his hands.
“We’re not sure yet,” Willow frowned. “It warned us of Loki’s attack like two seconds before he did, so it must be keyed into events that the holder dictates.”
Giles nodded, running his hands over the sphere’s cloudy redness. Suddenly he started and everyone jumped back. A new image had suddenly appeared. He recovered his composure immediately, though, and placed the sphere on the table. It rolled for a moment, as the table wasn’t quite level, then came to rest against the spine of a book Xander had been reading. Always, as it rolled, the image it displayed remained facing Giles.
The Watcher looked down at the red ball and everyone stepped closer to see what he saw: Mountains. They were flying over mountains. There was the canned, slightly echoing sound of helicopter rotors, then a voice. “I don’t see anything, do you?” The voice was Angel’s.
“Nothing,” Buffy replied as the mountains crept by beneath. “Let’s make another pass, further to the West this time.” Slowly the mountains began to turn as the chopper circled around. Then the image faded and the red clouds closed over the inside of the sphere.
“Buffy and Angel got to Tibet,” Willow observed, then glanced up hopefully to the others. “That’s good, right?”
“Or they will get to Tibet,” Giles corrected. “Though we have no idea when.”
“Well, the sun was still up,” Xander looked out to the darkness beyond the windows of the Magic Box. It was still early in the morning in California. “And they’re on the other side of things... so I’d guess it’s looking no more than an hour or two ahead.”
“This must be how he controls things,” Anya looked greedily at the sphere. “He can see what we’re going to do before we do it.”
“Apparently not,” Giles gave a little sigh. “If he had, he could have been able to prevent you from making off with it.”
“He nearly did,” Willow argued, “but Tara found him inside his invisibility cloak.” The other witch smiled sheepishly.
“I- I kind of bumped into him and knocked him to the ground,” she explained with a shrug.
“Well, now that we have Nostradamus’ crystal ball, we can sneak into the Fortress of Solitude and grab the D-meister, right?” Xander looked from Giles to Willow and back. “Am I right?” he prompted, hopefully.
“‘course not,” Spike replied from near the ladder. “That’d be too direct,” he said scornfully. “We’d better nance about here for another few hours –see how many more paperweights we can swipe from the gift shop– strategizing and whatnot; trying to decide the sodding color of the rescue van.”
Giles frowned. “Spike, why don’t you go outside and pretend to be scary at someone.”
“Wait a minute,” Tara’s eyes widened. “What if he’s been doing more than just observing time...”
There was a short silence as she and Willow approached the sphere. “You mean he’s changing things?” the other witch asked. “How?”
Tara shook her head. “I’m not sure, b- but we know the monks changed history when they added Dawn to the timeline.” As she spoke, the red clouds parted under the surface of Wilson to show a picture of Wilson itself.
“Cronus, father of time...” it was a man’s voice.. Even though it was slightly distorted coming from the sphere, Spike recognized it immediately and shifted uncomfortably. The image on the sphere changed to Warren struggling against the tight grip of two hands.
“Loki killed Warren?” Xander asked, confused. “Why?”
“Hey, guys,” Willow observed, “we’re looking into the past.”
Giles nodded. "It seems Loki was as well, having decided for some reason to change history to his benefit.”
“Well if he can change it,” Willow said malevolently, “we can change it back.” She exchanged looks with Tara. “It’ll just take some time to prepare.”
“What makes you wankers think you have any time left?” Spike said with annoyance.
Willow raised an eyebrow. “We still remember who we’re going to rescue.”
30 June, 2002, 60 miles West of Chamdo, Tibet
Buffy’s face was stained with as many tears as her sister’s was. Buffy hugged her arms across her chest and whispered, almost inaudibly through the chant of the monks, “I don’t want to lose you.”
Dawn’s hand rested above the water, the moment in her mind stretching out into infinity. The crackle of the energy across her hand, between her knuckles. The unending, unchanging hum of the combined voiced of the monks. The sting of the tears as they dried on her cheeks.
Her eyes moved up one last time from the mouth of the urn, settling between her sister and her guide. A monk stood to either side of Angel, making certain he made no false moves, considering his armament. Her eyes moved to the face of the one. Her heart stopped. Charlie. Her hand tensed, her decision made.
With a mind blanked by unquestionable purpose, she plunged her hand into the water, crying out in pain as the Key found its way home.
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