19 - In Every Generation There Was A Chosen One. That's Quite A Few.

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THE CHOSEN ONES: There is no dependable information on how many Slayers there have been throughout history. It is impossible to even extrapolate, as the individual lifetimes of the Slayers have varied greatly. Some Chosen Ones have survived their calling for years, sometimes decades, while some died within a week of being called. There is also no indication as to when exactly the Slayer first came into existence, only that it seems to have been long before recorded history. The Council of Watchers, though thousands of years old, is a mere infant compared to the legacy they have chosen to guide.
 

Exert from "The Chosen Ones", published in 2006, written by Wesley Windham-Pryce.
 

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The tingling sensation of going through the Stepping Disk faded and Faith tried to open her eyes. For a moment she debated whether she still had eyes, seeing as they had planned to go to a place beyond the physical, but then banished that thought as nonsense. Easiest way to find out was to simply open her eyes and find out.

She did. Everything around them was a brilliant, virgin white.

"Where are we?" She heard B's voice beside her.

Turning her head she saw them, both Buffy and Kendra, the latter of whom no longer looked all that insubstantial and ghostly here in this place, whatever place it was.

"As you so aptly phrased it," Kendra said, looking around, "this is 'Slayer Heaven'. Though I've come to think of it as the White Room."

Looking at the pristine, spotless white walls around them, Faith shrugged. "Wonder how you came up with that monicker."

"So this ... this is where Slayers go when they die?" Buffy asked.

Her words echoed inside Faith, reminding her exactly where they were. Buffy was a true immortal. Apocalypses and the few things that could actually kill her withstanding she would live forever. Faith would not. She was aging a lot more slowly than normal people, but eventually she would die.

To come here?

"Not all Slayers, no." Kendra said. "There is no such thing as an obligatory afterlife for anyone, we all have some manner of choice about where we go."

She led them along a corridor, also white, toward a large set of doors. White, of course.

"This place, though," Kendra continued, "has ... well, attracted would be the wrong word, but ... let's just say a lot of Slayers have found their way here over the centuries."

"How many?" Faith asked.

Kendra pushed the white doors open, revealing a huge room beyond it.

"About that many." She said, gesturing forward.

The room beyond was at least as large as a football stadium and completely bare, the white walls shimmering in a light that came from nowhere and everywhere. All the room held was a large banquet table, decorated with a simple white tablecloth. The table seemed to stretch on for eternity, no end in sight, losing itself in the white gloom that shrouded the far side of the room.

There were people sitting at the table. People dressed in white cloaks, their faces hidden beneath white hoods. They sat in simple white chairs, hands on the table as if waiting for a meal to be served. Everyone was sitting in the exact same pose, head slightly bowed, unmoving.

There had to be thousands of them.

"Are they ... all of them, are they ... Slayers?" Buffy asked.

"Yes, all of them." Kendra said, a sad note in her voice. "The first and only time I was here I tried to count them. There are at least 3000 of them here."

Three thousand Slayers, Faith whistled under her breath. And here she had thought it a monumental occasion to have three Slayers in the same room, though one of them was dead. Speaking of dead ...

"Why are they all sitting here?" Faith asked Kendra. "Are they waiting for something?"

"You could say that, yes."

Kendra walked forward to the beginning of the table and carefully removed the hood from the first figure sitting there. A wave of black hair spilled out as she did, like an explosion of color in the otherwise monotone room. Faith and Buffy could see a tanned face, Mediterranean features, and a pair of dark brown eyes that opened to look at them.

"Kendra. You have returned." The girl, not older than seventeen or so, spoke without turning her head, only her eyes moving.

"I told you I would, Diana. And I've brought some friends."

Kendra gestured for Buffy and Faith to move forward until they were in Diana's field of vision. Why doesn't she just turn her head, Faith asked herself.

"These are Buffy and Faith," Kendra introduced them, "they are Slayers, just like us. Buffy, Faith, this is Diana. She was the Slayer in the 1920s."

"Hello." Diana said. Her lips didn't move, Faith realized. She spoke to them, but her lips never moved, never changed from that almost-smile they seemed frozen in.

"Nice to meet you." Buffy said after a moment, clearly as confused as Faith herself felt.

"Yeah, what she said."

"You are strange." Diana said after a moment, her voice seemingly moving inside their heads. "You are ... you are alive."

"Last time we checked." Faith said.

"I brought them here from the material world." Kendra said to Diana. "We came because we need your help."

"We can not help anyone." Another voice rang out. "Our destiny has run its course and this is our final destination."

The voice seemed to be coming from the figure sitting next to Diana, a dark-skinned face just visible underneath the white hood. Kendra walked over to drape back the hood, unveiling the face of a young African girl.

"That is Nicky." Diana said. "She has her own opinions on why we are here."

Buffy dimly remembered Spike telling her about a Slayer called Nicky. Wasn't that ... yes, the Slayer who had killed Drusilla, his lady love, back in 1976.

"It was our destiny to fight evil in the world." Nicky continued, her eyes the only thing moving in her face. "We did so and then we died. There is no further destiny for us, so here we are."

"You are wrong." The figure sitting on the other side of the table directly opposite her said. "This is but purgatory. Our true destiny has yet to find us. We are the Chosen and meant for greater work yet."

Other voices rang out on the table, each of them hailing from unmoving lips, set in stone-like faces, only eyes moving to look at them. None of the figures moved, they sat at the table, hands before them, like so many marble statues. But they talked. Loudly.

"As you can see," Kendra told Buffy and Faith, toning out the discussion, "pretty much everyone here has their own opinion as to why they are here and what this place really is."

"Did you ... were you here? At this table?" The thought that her sister Slayer might have been here as well, sitting frozen at this empty table, sent a cold shiver down Buffy's spine.

"No. I visited here once. Shortly before Mr. Giles found me. These Slayers here ... I think they are here because they don't know where else to go."

"What do you mean?"

Kendra looked incredibly sad, looking out across the crowd of unmoving white figures before them.

"All these Slayers here were raised and taught by the Council of Watchers. Just like me. All their lives they were told that they had this sacred destiny to fight evil and they had nothing but that. No hopes, no dreams, no future, only their sacred destiny. The Watchers drilled it into them until the day they died.

"What happens to you after death depends greatly on your expectations. If you are religious and believe you deserve Hell, you go to Hell. If you think you've been a virtuous person, you might go to Heaven or another, similar place. If you ..."

"... expect to spend eternity doing the wild thing with an army of willing, naked studs?" Faith interjected.

"Well," Kendra said, blushing, "maybe there is such a place to. I have no idea."

"What about them?" Buffy gestured toward the white figures.

"They have nothing, Buffy. No expectations. No dreams of what might happen after their death. The Watchers drilled that out of them. It didn't take with every Slayer they had, but everyone who is here does not know what to do now, seeing as they have never had anything but their sacred duty. So they sit here and wait. They don't know for what, but they don't know what else to do, either."

Kendra sighed deeply.

"I think it was Wesley's killing me that saved me from coming here. I didn't understand in life, but I think in my moment of death I finally did. Understood that there was more than sacred duty and killing the monsters. So I didn't come here. They, though ..." her voice trailed off.

Faith saw Buffy begin to tremble with rage, a rage she felt as well. Buffy was the last Slayer who had been serving the Council, even if only for a short time. Faith herself had never been under their tutelage, but she knew what they had done to these poor girls. They had turned them into programmed killers, filling their lives with nothing but death and destruction, even after the largest part of the monsters weren't a threat anymore.

She remembered the quiet satisfaction on Buffy's face when, years ago, the remnants of the Watchers' Council had finally been demolished. They had thought that these old English bastards would never again be able to mess up the lives of innocents again.

And now they learned that they had ruined their afterlives as well.

"We have to do something about this." Buffy said, her voice filled with resolve. "We have to get them out of here."

"Can we?" Faith asked Kendra. "I mean, if we want them to help us we have to, but ... can we?"

"We can't throw them over our shoulders and carry them out, no. We have to convince them to do it on their own."

"But they can't move, can they?"

"They can't move because they don't know where to go. When I came here the first time I tried to convince Diana and a few others to come with me, but I wasn't successful. I had nothing concrete to offer them, nothing that could maybe replace their sacred duty."

"But now we have." Buffy said, determined.

She walked up to the table, where a few of the figures were still arguing. Most of them had fallen back into silence, though. Faces covered with white hoods never moved, but Buffy could feel thousands of eyes following her as she moved to a spot where she hoped most of them could see her.

"We have come for your help." Buffy told the assembled Slayers. "The world, our world is in deadly danger. And not just ours, all the worlds are. The barriers between the dimensions are breaking apart and it could mean the destruction of everything unless we manage to stop it. We need your help to find a magical artifact that will help us undo this damage."

"Our destiny ..." one of the figures began.

"How long have you been sitting in this room?" Buffy asked them. "How long since the first of you came here? Centuries? Millennia? I can't tell you what your ultimate fate might be, but I can tell you that the world you died to protect needs you now, more than ever before."

"We did our duty." Another figure said. "We killed the monsters, just like the Watchers said. Haven't we done enough?"

"Being the Slayer was never about the Watchers. It wasn't about killing Vampires and beheading demons. I know that is what the Watchers told you, but they were wrong. Being the Slayer is about protecting our world. Protecting our people from things they can't protect themselves from. All of you know what it is like. At one time or another every single one of you stood between the innocents and the forces that would destroy them.

"Some of you think that you are here to wait for something. Maybe you were waiting for this. A chance to protect the world once more. To do what we can do better than anyone else. What we were born to do. Do you want to miss this chance? Do you want to keep sitting here in this room, waiting for another chance that might never come? More, do you want to keep sitting here while the world outside dies, knowing you might have helped prevent it?"

Buffy looked at all the white figures, all of whom were now definitely looking at her in turn.

"I need your help. The world needs your help. You are the Chosen Ones. This time you have a choice, though. This time you are the ones doing the choosing. And I'm asking you to choose now."

Buffy walked back to where Kendra and Faith were waiting, never taking her eyes away from the crowd of white-robed figures. None of them were moving.

"Great speech, B." Faith whispered. "You think they ..."

Faith's voice trailed off as the Slayer called Diana slowly rose from the table. Her face, immobile until a second ago, spread into wonder as she felt her body again for the first time in over a century. The white robe fell away from her body.

"I ... I want to come with you." She said after a minute of quiet wonder, looking at Buffy. "If I may."

Before Buffy could say anything the Slayer called Nicky rose well, her chest rising and falling quickly as she drew air into her lungs, feeling alive again after a seeming eternity in this chair.

"Maybe our destiny has not run its course yet." She just said, shedding the white robe.

"Maybe you are right." Buffy smiled at her.

One after the other the Slayers rose from the table, white robes falling to the ground like so many leaves in autumn. The white room was filled with colors as they emerged, dressed in the same clothes they had worn on their dying day, a wild clash of styles and colors from all over human history. Faith, Buffy, and Kendra looked on, amazed, as they came alive once more, thousands of them, and turned to face them.

"Well," Faith said, grinning, after the silence had lasted for several minutes, "it seems we have an army of Slayers. Now what do we do with them, General Buffy?"

For a moment Buffy felt very small under the expectant gaze of several thousand Slayers, but then she reminded herself of what was at stake, what they had to do, and who they were.

"We're going to save the world." Buffy told them all. "What else?"

20 - When Worlds Collide

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EMERGENCY NEWSFLASH: Sensor arrays in the United States, Europe, and at least six other countries have registered a dimensional disturbance of magnitude twelve, at least twenty times stronger than the Golgotha Event. There are numerous reports of time distortions and spatial anomalies all over the globe. All citizens are advised to stay in their homes until the crisis has passed. Repeat, all citizens please stay in your homes until this crisis has passed. We will keep you up to date on developments as they occur.
 

Download from Global News Network Omninet, December 5, 2057

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It began without warning.

Unless, of course, one considers a sky full of souls a warning, in which case the people of Earth had a two week advance notification of what was about to happen to their world. Some people, like Angel and his friends, a few governments that had put their troops on red alert, as well as an army of over 4000 Slayers that was, at this very moment, ripping through time and space in search of a book, had understood the warning and tried to prepare.

Many people, though, had already gotten used to the lights in the skies and the increasing presence of ghosts had, at the most, caused some mild panic here and there. So most people had, as was their nature, begun to pick up their daily routines again, still marveling at the changed skies, yet no longer as worried as they had been when the lights first appeared.

Some of them had seen something like what was about to happen before. Nineteen years ago, in New York. The greater demon Golgotha had breached the dimensional barriers and manifested on Earth, right in the middle of the city. Those that had been there to see it and lived to tell the tale were among the first to recognize the subtle change in the atmosphere. A creeping sensation of familiarity, of nightmares none of them really wanted to remember.

Only this time it was a lot worse.

From one second to the next the sky split wide open, a gaping rend in the very fabric of space. An invisible sword cleaved the firmament in half and from the ugly, open wound a million and more souls poured into the earthly plain like so many insects, their onslaught widening the crack even further.

Gale force winds picked up as the disturbance grew, weather patterns changing as a result of the huge patch of nothing that had suddenly appeared directly over Europe. Over the Balkans, to be exact, though the significance of this location was lost on most observers. They didn't know that it had been here, 150 years ago, that this crisis had been set into motion.

Millions of people looked up into the skies, seeing the gaping wound, saw the gray swirls of the between place behind it. A huge, pulsing nothing hung above their heads, and without realizing it most of them ducked under its weight, as if afraid the very heavens would come tumbling down on them any second now.

Which was very close to what happened next, actually.

The sound was distant at first, little more than a background noise, almost drowned out by the screaming terror of a few hundred million people. Then it grew louder, rising above the screams and the panic, rising above the howling winds, echoing across the entire globe even as the further dimensional disturbances appeared underneath the wound.

People were about to learn the one major difference between Heaven and Hell.

Heaven couldn't wait.

The barriers between worlds tore apart as Raguel sounded the Trumpet of Judgement and several dimensions that should normally be completely removed from ours suddenly overlapped with the Earth. The violent rupture of the Threshold played havoc with the laws of nature. Things that couldn't, mustn't exist in a dimension of solid, real things came pouring in through the crack, became real. Deadly, devastatingly real.

The towering steel city of Heaven manifested in the skies above Europe, Raguel standing on top of the Repository of Souls, sounding his trumpet. Its howl now drowned out every other sound, caused the people to fall to their knees in agony as blood spurted from ruptured ear drums.

The Repository was crackling with a power that, even now, with so much of its precious energy lost, could make worlds tremble. Lightning streaked across the heavens as the air around the floating city caught fire and an army of winged warriors began to descend from it like so many raindrops.

The land below, the land upon which they were descending, had already changed beyond recognition. The earth moved and ripped apart as dimensions converged and became as one. Fire pits opened up to spew flame and brimstone into the blackening skies, armies hailing from the darkest nightmares of the sleeping mind broke free from the soil and screeched in delight as the angels descended upon them, joining them in furious battle.

Hell came to Earth, just like Heaven had. As the angel's Repository blazed in the sky, pouring its power into Heaven's warriors, the razor-spiked Tower of the Damned emerged from the ground like a cancerous growth. Blazing with the power of its captured souls it spread its night-black crown of thorns over the land Hell took as its own, bringing its legions forth from the shattered dimensional walls.

The Threshold screamed as the unleashed energies assaulted it. More rends appeared, the skies now filled with billions of free souls that sought to escape the carnage descending upon the world they all hailed from. But there was no escaping, no safe place, for the dimensions were being crunched together like so many sheets of paper, compressed into one, and there was nowhere left to run.

Angel met demon in furious combat, the rulers of Heaven and Hell not caring that their conflict was only accelerating the damage done by a single magical spell performed so many decades ago. They were beyond caring, their very existence had led them to this day. Raguel had sounded the Trumpet of Judgement and the final battle had to take place here, where dimensions were crashing into one another.

Imprisoned inside the two siege engines, one in Heaven, one in Hell, billions of souls screamed in agony as their power was unleashed in a battle that could only end in annihilation.

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"It's worse than I ever imagined." Angel whispered, seeing the images of the surveillance satellites flicker before him. Images of a war beginning that could very well tear their planet to pieces.

A war he had caused by his actions 150 years ago.

"Not yet," Willow mumbled absentmindedly, staring at her readouts, "but it will be."

"What do you mean?"

"Look!"

Angel looked at the screen again and could do nothing but watch helplessly as Hell's Tower of the Damned spewed out power in all directions, lightning bolts of destruction that struck right in the middle of European cities and towns and ...

... did no damage whatsoever?

"What is ...?" He began.

"They are still slightly out of phase with our dimension." Willow told him. "We can already see them, but they are still on a different plain of existence. For the moment."

Angel understood. So a tiny bit of the Threshold still held, separating them from the conflict that had begun seemingly right in their midst. Angels were tearing into demons, flush with power, and the Hell creatures responded in kind. Energies that made Earth's nuclear arsenal appear like firecrackers were unleashed against one another, hailing from the two giant siege engines that blazed like tiny suns.

A giant firework display that was completely harmless. For the moment.

"How long?"

"Impossible to say," Willow said, "especially with all that power they are pouring out. A few hours maybe. A day if we are very lucky."

Angel nodded, thinking. They had prepared for this day, as thoroughly as they had been able to in the short time they'd had. That time had almost run out now. The Book of Borders hadn't been found. Armageddon was but a decimal point of dimensional vibration frequency away.

"We better get the troops moving while we still can." Angel said. "Willow, please ring up President Chase. I'll inform the others."

Willow nodded as she watched Angel walk out of the room, his back bowed by guilt and responsibility. She knew it wasn't his fault, but no one had yet managed to convince him of that. She just hoped that she would have future chances to try and do just that. Considering where he was about to, though, that chance was slim at best.

With a deep sigh she opened her private comlink to the President's office and seconds later the tired face of Liam William Chase, President of the United States of America, appeared on the screen.

"Aunt Willow?" He said. "I guess I know what this call is about."

"Angel wants to get things moving, Liam. We have only a few hours left, I fear."

"I will inform my staff. I hope those Stepping Disks of yours are everything you said they are."

"I'm not worried about them. Only everything else."

The President nodded, understanding perfectly. For he, too, had seen the images of Armageddon commencing.

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"It's time?" Buffy asked as she saw her husband approaching.

He just nodded, taking her into his arms as they held onto each other for a long moment. No words were needed between them anymore, their bond had become even stronger since the Necronomicon had intruded into it. It scared and comforted Buffy at the same time, but right now she was scared for an altogether different reason.

She felt her husband's determination, his complete resolve to rectify this imagined fault of his. No matter what it cost him. Like so often as of late she remembered the day he had given all his life's blood to close Acathler's gate, the day she had almost lost him.

'Just remember that we are one, Angel!' She sent to him through the bond. 'We'll make it through this together.'

'We will!' He assured her.

Arm in arm they walked down the rest of the corridor and reached the staging area.

"Everything ready?" Angel asked loudly, grabbing the combat gear laid ready for him.

"Bring on the angels!" Faith said with a smugness that was almost genuine, sliding a magically blessed sword into the spine sheath she wore, then strapping two huge guns to her thighs.

"Not to forget the demons and beasties." Spike said from where he stood by her side, loading up his coats with enough guns and ammunitions to supply a small army. All the bullets had runes carved into them, some of them were loaded up with disruption spells and other nasty things.

The Order of Tarakan, the Vampirium's special enforcers, just gave a few grunts to indicate their readiness. They had raided the hastily assembled arsenal provided by Darla's connections to Warwick Enterprises, the world's primary manufacturer of magical weaponry, something Willow had always shied away from. They looked like children who had been given a free pass at the toy factory. Children wearing grim demon faces.

Luke, Darla's blood brother, had gathered the very best of the Order of Aurelius, as well as selected warriors from the ten other Vampire Orders to fill up his ranks. The huge Vampire wasn't a man of many words, so he just gave Angel a short nod.

All in all their army numbered well over 500 people, all of them superb fighters, equipped with the best weaponry money could buy. And this was but the spearhead of the assembled forces, Angel knew. Even now President Chase and his European counterpart were mobilizing their military's finest, their deployment aided by the half dozen Stepping Disks Willow's people had managed to cobble together in all due haste.

Remembering the images he had seen, Angel wondered if they would survive the first five minutes of combat.

"Let's go!" He said, the golden portal of the Stepping Disk opening beneath them.

"Hurry, Kendra!" Buffy whispered under her breath as the disk began to rise around them. "Please hurry!"

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