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(no subject)

Characters: Giles and Benu
Where: Between the Old Castle and the Mountains.
When: RD6
What: After getting scrambled by the barrier around the Old Capital's castle, Giles winds up in the middle of nowhere and is greeted by the Voice of Chaos.

The land had once been a farm. Quite recently been a farm, if the condition of the farmhouse was any indication. But the fields lay plowed, but untended, weeds starting to reclaim the land once so carefully ordered. There were many farms like this, some left abandoned after then younger generation fled to the towns to find escape from farm life, others where the well had dried up and the entire farm moved to a more fertile area less prone to dragons. Land was only as valuable as the resources near by, after all.

This farm, however, had met a different fate.

The Hero of the Mountain had passed by this farm, breathing new life into it with her magic. The well, on the verge of drying up, had sprung back to its former glory, the encroaching woods pushed back and the soil returned to it's most abundant.

But it hadn't lasted more than a day after the Hero had continued on. The well had fully died out, the woods rushing forward, worse than before, and the soil grown more rocky and arid. The miracle withdrawn, the farmers had left, their last hopes destroyed.

It was a good place, Benu reflected with an idle smile as she sat on the roof of the farm house, legs kicking back and forth lazily. Nature growing to reclaim its lost land, chaos overwhelming the painstaking order that humans had tried to force on it. Soon the wilds would devour every sign of order, turning the farm back into woods and grass.

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"I suppose not," says Giles, after some thought. "Polar opposites, and all that. The absence of light is darkness and, um, vice versa." Then, after taking another slightly helpless glance around, because he doesn't actually recognize this place at all...

"Am I, um, still on the right side of the Thorns, at least? I'm afraid I didn't mean to come here..."

"You are still in the Kingdom of Order, lost Spirit. For now."

...this gives Giles some pause, during which he visibly parses what she's just said.

"Do you mean that, um, I won't be heard long, or...do you mean that, um, th-that this won't be the s-so-called 'Kingdom of Order' for long?"

"Does it matter?" Her smile grew as she spun in place, skirt twirling out around her and sending out sparks. "All of time shall dissolve soon enough..."

"It matters to me. I'm, um, I'm stranded in an area I'm unfamiliar with, I-I've left my friends back in what was probably quite literally a ghost town, a-at the least, I need to get back to Schwanheim...can't even contact them on the Orb without some sort of description to give." He flinches slightly as the sparks light the still air, but more out of surprise, than anything else.

He's never had a reason to fear Benu's fire.

Indeed, her fire passed through him harmlessly... though it left small scorched marks on the ground under him.

"Then be assured that both are true. This kingdom shall fall soon enough... and those who are able to move shall. Unless you fear you have no motion left in you, such as you are..."

"Motion isn't the issue. Motion is, um, one thing I have to spare."

It was part of what had let him get to the old capital so quickly, even in step with some of the other heroes on horseback. He never tired, never needed to sleep, could simply walk and walk as the world turned and changed beneath him.

"We will stop this. Whatever this, um, is."

She laughed with a light and airy sound that seemed to echo. "But why?"

"People will die, otherwise. And, um, even if it has its uses...being a ghost isn't, um, isn't a fate I would inflict on anyone, if I had the choice."

What's dead should stay dead. The alternative for all involved can be...difficult. Especially in a world like his, when even the world itself turns against the dead.

"Including yourself...?"

"Including myself."

An answer given without hesitation. Yes, there are people he misses, people's he's glad to have the chance to see again, to be with...but this isn't a life, and it's taxing on him, it's an effort to pretend to still be human.

"I'm happy to help, of course, any way I can...but, um, yes. It's, i-it's not fair, inflicting this on anyone."

"This too, can be mended..."

"Can it?"

Subtly but, to someone like Benu, noticeably, Giles starts paying a bit more attention. "From, um, from my...admittedly stymied inquiries, I gathered the impression that this place seemed, um, a bit limited, in terms of banishment spells. Granted...well, research is, um, is a bit beyond me, like this."

Another airy laugh, this one almost fond as she reached out a hand to trail a finger down his cheek, the sensation as real as if they both were tangible. "Would you wish Death...? Or true Life..?"

And touch is a sensation he's already become so unfamiliar with, so much so that Giles flinches back slightly when she proves able to reach out and touch him, just like that. It takes him a second to actually parse the words and, when he does, Giles' expression becomes one of mingled suspicion and...consideration.

"You can't give me that," he says flatly. She can't. It's not a thing that can be done.

Even if it's been done before, those are meant to be exceptions.

"Have I not before?" she returned pleasantly, seeming amused at his reaction. "As Order wanes in this world, so wanes the power that holds fast its laws..."

"That was for a few minutes. That was a...a party trick. With, um, w-with ashes for a prop. An exceptional party trick, mind, but..."

...but it made sense, on a logical level. If Benu really was an agent of chaos, really was out to undo the order of this place...this wasn't a sensible world. This was a fairy tale place.

A lot of rules didn't apply here already.

"...why? Just...just to see chaos done, then?"

A part of him, a part that remembers how Giles acquired a chainsaw scar from shoulder to hip, screams at him to shut up. The part that agreed to get into that situation in the first place shoves it away.

"I am not a creature of Order who does things for reasons past my own whim," she returned with a smile.

"Do you mean to say that even your whims have no reasoning, then?"

She's a fascinating girl, if nothing else. Giles is aware that, in a physical body, she'd probably progress to "strange" and maybe even "frightening", with her ability to spit sparks like a volcano.

But he's not in a physical body, is he?

"No one that, um, isn't a minor deity could live like that. Certainly not us."

Her smile grew, looking almost predatory like a cat at his observation.

"A whim may have reason, it may not. But to say which would be so dull, would it not?"

"And beings like you are all about excitement, aren't they?"

And if Benu gets bored...well, things could go a lot harder on all of them than they already are.

Even so...

"This...it, um, i-it wouldn't be a favor, would it? I mean, I've, I've done nothing to warrant a favor from you."

"Would you reject it if I said it were? Not that it matters... The world will come as We wish it. A seed sown matters not in a field already overgrown..."

"I'd, um, be more likely to accept it, actually."

'Favor' carried less implication of requiring a return...

But, viewed that way, he was already in debt to her. A few minutes, yes, it had just been a few minutes, but it had been a stab at the laws of nature and reality all the same. How much power did she have? How far did her infleunce spread? What, exactly, was her sphere of influence?

...all questions he could answer if he could pick up a damn book.

"Fine."

Again, that predatory smile. "Take my hand, lost Spirit... and through Fire, be reborn..."

She held out her hand with a flourish.

There's a second, just a second longer of hesitation, as Giles weighs what he's due to gain versus what he's due to lose. He's made deals with demons before. Sometimes they end well. Sometimes they really, truly don't.

It's all a matter of getting away in time.

And only because he's done it before, only because he has all the confidence in the other heroes and none in himself, does Giles take her hand and grasp it tightly.

Her fingers curl around his hand, her smile growing before she dissolves into flames, the fire rapidly twisting out to envelope Giles, sinking into him.

It is not a kind transformation and the flames carry with them their deep heat as they engulf the spirit, racing down and wrapping themselves around to sear that which has no flesh into that which does.

I will walk through the fire. 'Cause where else can I turn? I will walk through the fire, and let it burn...

Oh, Buffy...

And that's the last thought Giles has, as he watches the hot, all consuming, life giving flames race up his arm and along his body. After that, the pain blots out everything. He can't even scream, because when he opens his mouth to do so the flames race down into his chest to restart his heart to beating.

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