With the instinct that rats have telling them to abandon a sinking
ship, Amy Madison headed for the hills when things went pear shaped
in Sunnydale. Literally, the hills. She’d known there were
caves there, vast networks of tunnels, and for some reason, this
sounded safe to her. Goddess forbid she’d actually leave town
like all the sane people, no, she had to go revert to her ratty
self and find a warren.
It
wasn’t that bad, really, not too damp or smelly, but it was
still a cave. Yet she’d crouched there for a few weeks, munching
on the food she’d brought, reading books-spell books of course-
by lantern light.
Then
that feeling again. The one that made her skin itch and lungs twitch.
It hummed inside her veins and caused her to endlessly check her
escape routes, one by one. It said the end is freaking nigh, she’d
better do something about it.
Amy
wasn’t a particularly religious person, not really, but when
those first tremors started rumbling through the caves, she suddenly
wished she’d been a little less mischievous. Yes, that’s
the term, mischievous. Not malicious, not evil, maybe a bit wicked,
but not bad enough to condemn her for what she’d done. Not
like her mother.
And
as far as Amy was concerned, being crunched up in whatever apocalypse
that the Slayer hadn’t stopped this time wasn’t her
idea of a good time, hell or no. With the first waves of magic powerful
enough to peel her metaphysical skin from her soul, Amy scrambled
to collect her belongings, particularly the beloved family spell
book, and clutched them tightly to her chest. Then she started circling
round and round, feet drumming out a panicked tap-dance on the stone.
“Enough.
Stop it. You’re not a rat any more. Do something about this.”
So
she opened her spell book and flipped through scanning each page.
There! She found what she wanted and gathered her will, her energy,
her magic. Nearly breathless with panic as the first stones started
to crumble in the far wall she whispered, “Goddess Hecate,
preserve me, take me from this place of disaster to safety, a place
where I will be protected.”
She
wasn’t sure if the burning sensation was her body being ripped
to shreds in the Sunnydale cave system, but when she popped out
of the flash onto moderately solid ground, still intact, still clutching
her belongings, she started to cry. Alive. Breathing. Air in and
out.
Calling
on Hecate was never the wisest thing to do, and while a powerful
deity, she was unpredictable. As far as Amy was concerned, alive
was just fine by her. Sunnydale was destroyed, that much she knew,
and possibly the rest of the world was next. She felt a moment’s
pang for the world she had left behind, for the souls that fell
in whatever the final conflict entailed.
She
heard nearby shouts, and cautiously stood, looking around for the
first time. It was a beautiful place, though almost sterile, dim,
ringed around by a dense white mist. There was magic in the land,
but it was faint, dying, and she shuddered. To live in a world so
drained of power - it would be frustrating.
There
was a manor house not too far away, where the shouts came from.
A group of people tumbled down the stairs, lean to the point of
being gaunt. They were dressed in old fashioned garb, leggings and
tunics, hair held back in braids. One pushed her way to the forefront.
“A
witch! You have come to set us free, to let us into the world again!”
The woman was tall, graceful, with long dark hair. She held one
hand to her side carefully, as if it had been wounded long ago,
but she still nursed the phantom hurt. Amy leaned back unconsciously
from the intensity of her gaze.
“Diana,
give her pause.” A second woman appeared, and Amy noticed
that all of the assembled throng weren’t quite…right.
They looked like people, but not human people. They glowed faintly,
their ears were different, their postures not quite right. The woman
who spoke now was older, but not by much. “Please, Witch,
we offer no offense. My name is Sorcha, and we’ve been waiting
for your arrival for many years now. How are things down in the
Old Place? Have the witches returned? How is the rest of Tir Alainn?
Did it survive the conflict with the Black Coats?”
Amy
eyed the people warily, but sensed nothing but desperate hope at
her arrival. “I am a witch, but how did you know? And what’s
Tir Alainn? Or these Old Places? I come from a very different world,
one that was destroyed, seeking safety.” Something in her
broke just a little, and she wiped the tears from her face. “I
don’t know what you want, but if I can help, I will.”
Pulling
the oldest and most precious spell books from her sack, she offered
them to the woman in front of her. “If I know anything, it’ll
be in here. This is my world now, too.”
Diana
breathed a huge sigh of relief and snatched the books, eagerly flipping
through them. Sorcha shook her head and took Amy’s arm. “Come
with us, child. We’ll see you fed, meager though it is. You
can tell us of your world.”
A bit
numb, Amy nodded. Whatever tricks Hecate played this time, she could
happily say she was delighted not to be a rat.
~Fin~
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