The Hart
“-illuminus,” she finished. The spell took effect immediately. Her clear plastic canteen glowed with the brightness of a chemical flare, but gave off no toxic fumes. She even got a senior-prom effect when she shook the water inside it.
Willow now strode confidently through the winding tunnel as it crept higher and higher. Ahead of her, she could hear the distant sound of a battle. She rounded a corner in the tight tunnel and found herself on a sort of balcony, looking over a vast gorge, at the bottom of which was a glass-like lake of water. From the balcony stretched a rope bridge, all the way across the gorge to the plateau on the far side. It was from this plateau that the sounds originated.
Willow could see a moving ocean of creatures, rippling and swaying in harmony, except where they surrounded one tall figure. In the light of her canteen, Willow caught the flash of steel. A sword was clashing against the creatures on the other side. They were being tossed this way and that, some off the plateau entirely. All of them were hissing or wailing.
At first, willow was content to just watch the fray. It was neither Spike nor Buffy in the fight. She could see that much. But as she squinted, the light of her canteen narrowing at her command upon the figure of interest, a realization struck her. It made no sense and flew in the face of everything she had just witnessed, but Angel was standing among the little creatures, wielding a sword, and fighting for all he was worth.
“Consumus!” Willow shouted, angling her canteen at the mob around the vampire. Each goblin caught in the beam of focused light burst into flames, shrieking madly. Willow swept her beam of light around the milling army, incinerating many of them. She was careful not to hit the vampire at the center who was still hacking off heads and trying to get a good look at where this wave of fire was coming from.
When the masses were either mostly carbonized or decapitated, Willow began to make her way across the bridge, taking care not to look down. Angel was still fighting with the remaining goblins, some of whom were equipped with crossbows while others with stakes. The redhead was about halfway across the swaying bridge when she heard a distinctive shout of pain. She looked up from the rotting wooden planks to see Angel fall to his knees, the area around his chest where the bolt had penetrated turning quickly to ash.
Willow dashed across the rest of the bridge, ignoring the vicious rocking she was inducing. When her feet finally landed on solid stone, the sheer lack of sideways motion made her stumbled and hit the ground at Angel’s remains. Her mouth hung open as, from the dusty cloud, the figure stood again. He shook himself off, brushing the grey ash from his newly restored leather duster.
Without seeing the woman at his feet, he looked around in surprise at the burned bodies around him. “Well that’s new,” he said, impressed.
“Spike?” Willow said quietly. “How-?” Spike whirled around to see Willow slowly standing before him. “-what...” she said, confusion playing across her features.
“What, the dusted thing?” Spike asked, a little more calmly than he had imagined. “Yeah,” he said trying to sound casual. “Apparently I can’t be killed,” he looked from his dirty clothes to her eyes again. “Some prophetic quirk I imagine,” he added.
“But you- you were just Angel,” she stammered. “Like, right before you appeared, before he- you-” She frowned and looked away, puzzling over this.
“I was what?” was Spike response. When she didn’t answer him, he looked at the sword in his hand. He distinctly remembered dropping it in order to punch a demon before he had died last. His mind clicked. “Oh, you bloody git!” Spike shouted into the darkness of the cave. “You been plannin’ this the whole soddin’ time, haven’t you?” he demanded of the darkness. It did not answer.
Spike whirled around to slice the head of the last approaching demon clean off. It fell to the floor, across the charred body of another. Now none remained alive. Willow looked back to Spike, who was looking back at her. There was a cold anger in his eyes, not directed at her, but at his destiny. At the fool of a chess player who was moving his pawns. “Let’s go,” Spike said at last, turning and stepping over the blackened bodies, heading towards the source of the original dim glow; a door at the wall of the far end of the plateau.
Willow followed, holding up her canteen for light as she jumped from one clear patch of stone to the other. Some of the bodies twitched in death.
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