Well, it's about time for exposition, right? And while the comic writers like to add some space orgasms in between to spice it up, I think I'm going skip those and go with something a little less pornographic, sorry. =) We'll return to our regular programming next chapter. :)

In other news, I've managed to turn this chapter and the next two into only two chapters, so we're down to twenty chapters total. Won't be long now... Thank you for all your encouragement and support! Much love to y'all! :)

This lovely banner was made by Tumblr's nurfherder, who has also begun drawing Embers in comic form here. :)

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“You!” But the first moment of surprise is immediately replaced with an it-all-makes-sense-now epiphany, and Buffy Summers isn’t known for contemplating new revelations when there are asses to kick. She grabs the closest thing that can be used as a weapon- in this case, what looks like a cattle prod leaning against the wall- and runs toward Orkanel, swinging it at him threateningly.

One of the guards moves to block her, grabbing her by the wrist and trying to shove her back, but even the enormous man towering over her threateningly isn’t stronger than a slayer, and she shoves him aside and goes back for Orkanel, single-mindedly focused on the leader.

Until the cool metal of a gun is pressed to the side of her head. “Don’t move,” another guard speaks up from behind her, and she freezes instinctively, her hand still tight around the cattle prod.

“Drop your weapon,” the guard orders. She lowers it, surreptitiously flipping the forked end as she does. All she needs is a distraction, and she can-

With two of its keepers distracted, the lamiabane lunges forward, caught up in the promise of slayer blood, and the gun loosens against her skull just long enough for her hand to shoot out and jam the cattle prod into the guard’s knee. He curses loudly, and she takes advantage of his distraction to yank the gun from his hands and level it at Orkanel, her left hand moving to point the cattle prod at the lamiabane threateningly. “Tell your men to back off,” she snaps, grimacing at the pain in her leg at her swift movements and taking a shaky step forward.

Orkanel nods blithely, raising a hand in assent. “Of course.” But he doesn’t look very concerned, and she tenses automatically, glancing around the room with wary eyes directed at undisturbed guards. Spike, where are you already?

“The lamiabane are quite the danger, yes?” Orkanel says suddenly. “That bite must be very painful.” He glances at her left leg with critical eyes. “And while they naturally avoid humans, this breed is still quite dangerous when it comes to any prey.”

“What’s your point here? Because I’m not much for automatics, but I think this one’ll do nicely,” Buffy points out, cocking the gun experimentally. She sees the flash of fear in Orkanel’s eyes before he’s calm again, and it makes her almost nauseous, even after all she now knows that he can be held responsible for. She’s not a killer. And she doesn’t know what she’s going to do with him, but no matter how much she wants to wipe the smug confidence from his face, it isn’t going to be like this.

He smiles knowingly. “Any prey,” he repeats. “Your pet vampire, your best friends, your little sister…” He nods to a large window that covers the side of the room, overlooking the arena. “All gone because you wouldn’t behave.” She stops cold, a dark and terrified chill running through her that has nothing to do with the slayer-hunting demon a few feet away. Orkanel gestures to a chair beside the window. “Now, why don’t you take a seat?”

She edges closer to the window, her weapons still raised, and glances down at the room below, where the lamiabane she and Spike had killed earlier still lie in testament, where Dawn and Willow and Xander are all huddled against one wall as Spike stands in front of them protectively. And with defeated reluctance, she lowers the gun.

“Well done.” A guard takes it from her, shoving her down into the chair and wrapping chains around her arms and legs roughly, ignoring her strangled cry at his handling of her injured legs. Soon, she’s trapped in the chair and chained to the wall beside the window, a clear view of her friends in peril below and Orkanel’s suddenly concerned expression before her. “We’ll have to do something about that bite,” he says suddenly, turning to rummage through a desk behind him. “We can’t have you dying of the lamiabane venom.”

“Your concern is touching,” she snaps out through gritted teeth. “But I thought that was kind of the whole point.”

Orkanel glances up at her, startled. “Oh, you really haven’t worked it out yet, have you? Quite disappointing.” He twists something open that she can’t see and turns around, holding up a small needle. “Why do you think I opened that building in San Francisco? Why I hired your best friend as my associate? Why you haven’t been harmed until now?” He sighs heavily. “I was so cautious about the San Francisco area, freeing only one lamiabane there to take care of the other slayers present. You, after all, are the one slayer who needs to live through these attacks.” He’s walking toward her as he speaks, and with his final words, he stabs the needle into the side of her arm. “Simone had said that you had no contact with the other slayers. I’ve been moving gradually because I didn’t want to have to hold you for this long.” He sighs. “But Simone had been a disappointment all along. I might’ve known.”

“Simone. You were working with Simone?” The throbbing in both bites lessens almost immediately, returning to a manageable ache as whatever Orkanel had injected in her- Is it an antidote? Please, let it be an antidote- works its magic. “But she’s-“

“Dead. Yes, she was useful while she lasted,” Orkanel acknowledges sadly. “Full of fervor and hatred and eliminating some of the ones who would persist in destroying this world we’ve built. I found her when she was still amassing troops out in Italy, and I’ve been working with her since…but once she learned that you were off-limits, that my goal was her eventual death, I’m afraid she wasn’t nearly as willing to help. And she became a liability.”

“But…why?” And she isn’t sure she wants to know the answer, but she needs it regardless. “Why do I need to stay alive? Why are you doing this? Because as far as revenge goes, you’re doing a pretty crappy job of it,” she points out, testing the hold of the chains with legs returning to full strength. 

“Revenge?” Orkanel shakes his head. “Oh, no, naïve young slayer. I’m afraid I have a bit more on my mind than simple revenge. You deserve death, certainly.” And there’s something chilly and unyielding in his eyes at the words. “But you’re the last slayer of the line, the last untainted by the spell you wrought upon the line, and so you need to survive.”

“I’m not-“ She stops. She isn’t going to expose Faith to Orkanel, to give him any more ammunition for whatever genocide he’s planning. And while she wonders at keeping her friend alive as a prisoner, at allowing Faith life at a cost, she knows the other girl’s decision without further meditation. 

The antidote is so close, and Buffy doesn’t intend to leave without it. “I’m not going to let you hurt them,” she finishes lamely.

Orkanel smiles. “Do you think you have a choice? We’ve bred thousands of the beasts, enough to wipe out every last slayer on the face of this Earth. I’ve only held them back to keep you unaware, to keep you far from danger and far from revelation.” He frowns. “I didn’t count on your vampire being in contact with other slayers, or you discovering the lamiabane so soon. You weren’t to know until hundreds had died.”

Bile rises in her throat at the image, at Faith and Satsu and Kennedy and hundreds more falling to a disease while she lived in blissful ignorance thousands of miles away. “Why? They had nothing to do with taking away the magic. This wasn’t their fault, just mine.” She inhales slow, tired breaths. “I did it. I broke the Seed. No one else needs to be hurt for me.”

And Orkanel laughs, not quite mockingly. “Do you think that I’m like your little friend, set on obtaining the impossible? On finding her demon lover and returning magic to the world?” He shakes his head. “No, this is about balance. Three years ago, a foolish little girl decided to tip the scales of good and evil, and the Earth has been crying out since.”

He turns to pace the room pensively. “We Wiccans were concerned about the ramifications. Some praised your decision, stood behind it and worked with Willow Rosenberg and your abominations. Some split, left the coven, sought to right the balance before evil itself stepped forward to do the same.”

“You went to Simone.” 

He nods. “A slayer set on murdering other slayers? If nothing else could repair the balance, it would be her. I used her for my purposes, aided her when she needed it, and we worked until you unleashed Twilight on the world.” His eyes darken. “It was a tragedy far worse than even I had anticipated. And then I knew that nothing could be resolved with just a rogue slayer and her team. It was up to me to restore balance, to eliminate the excess slayers before Twilight rose again.”

“So…what? This is for the greater good?” Buffy’s words are scathing, her tone furious, and she’s struggling not to take his words to heart. More good, Bigger Bads. Spike had said it once, right after Twilight. But she hadn’t thought of it since, hadn’t contemplated the original spell as anything more than regaining the ground that the First had stolen from them. She’d had to do it, to save the world, and she can’t regret it happening. “Murdering girls slowly and painfully? That’s not heroism, it’s sociopathic. You’re twisted. And it won’t work.” She glares up at him. “The slayer line is over. All the potentials have been activated. And if you kill them all, no one’s gonna be left to be called next.”

But Orkanel is smiling at her claim. “Do you think I haven’t considered that, little girl? The slayer line remains, and it continues through you alone. The vessel of the spell is broken and reformed, the missive of the slayer remains, and you will linger here until a new generation will give rise to new potentials.” He moves toward the back of the room, past the guards and the lamiabane, and retrieves something from the back wall that makes her gasp. “I could hardly believe my luck when Willow brought it in to research it,” he remembers, lifting the repaired scythe and placing it delicately on his desk. “The Powers are certainly with me now, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’d say that the last time these Powers started up with me, I forced magic out of the world,” Buffy points out, her eyes glued to the scythe, feeling old power and energy running through her at just the sight of it. “I’m not so sure they like you as much as you think they do, huh?”

Orkanel waves his hand dismissively. “Never mind that. Magic will return slowly, in due time. A world this steeped in power has cracks, enough for it to seep back into our world. By then, the slayers will be gone, and the world can return to harmony again.” His eyes glitter with cool malice. “And until then, you will suffer as we have, seeing the murder you’ve wrought. Seeing the way you’ve doomed all these girls to certain death, to watch your world fall apart the way you’ve brought it on to so many others.” He nods to one of the guards, who retrieves what looks like a walkie-talkie and speaks into it rapidly. “And we’ll begin now, yes?”

She follows his gaze to the window beside her, down to the arena where Dawn and her friends have been held prisoner. They’re sitting now, Dawn bent over Spike and wiping at his injuries with a tissue while he scoffs, Xander speaking in low tones to a devastated-looking Willow. And panic bubbles up, fast and terrified and frantic. “No. Don’t hurt them, they had nothing to do with this- with any of this!” She struggles against her chains, her heart crying out in sheer frustration. “They’ve suffered just as much as you have!” She remembers Willow’s grief, the distance between them now. Xander had almost lost Dawn, and they’d all lost Giles. And Spike had been uninvolved until after they’d had no choice but to fight back. “They’re innocents here!”

“Tragic, really,” Orkanel agrees. “Their only great sin is that you care.” And the door to the arena rises open and a herd of lamiabane emerge, more than they’d fought before.

Abruptly, Spike runs to the other side of the room, shouting something she can’t quite hear. “My. I didn’t think the vampire would be the coward,” Orkanel comments interestedly. 

She ignores him. Spike has a plan, of course, and she has more faith in him than to write him off immediately. And sure enough, the lamiabane herd turns to chase him, drawn in by their natural prey instead of the humans gathered on the other side of the room.

A word escapes her, a voiceless “No!” that Orkanel hears regardless, and he steps forward to stand beside her, his eyes fixed on what’s going to be a bloodbath below.

“Perhaps I’ll have the beasts retrieved once your lover is gone,” he muses. “Spread out the pain, let each death cause maximum grief.” 

“Oh, god,” she whispers, and then there’s Xander, hurtling across the room to taunt the lamiabane, to distract them from Spike. One turns away from Spike to lurch toward Xander, and Buffy watches with breathless terror as Xander dodges its teeth to headbutt its snout. Spike shouts something urgent from where he’s using his dagger to defend himself against another one, but Xander ignores him, pummeling the lamiabane with stupid, stupid! intensity.

And Dawn’s moving, too, leaping onto Xander’s demon and stabbing at it with what looks like the tooth of one of the dead ones, shouting obscenities loud enough for Buffy to hear them and hanging on for dear life until it shakes her off and sends Xander flying across the room, momentarily stunned.

“They’ll fight and fight until they can’t fight anymore,” Orkanel notes. “And you’ll curse yourself for what you’ve done, for what you deserve, but you’ll never be able to undo it.” He looms over her, the Wiccan serenity gone and replaced with a cold sneer. “All because of you. Just another travail you’ve brought upon your people.”

And there’s a stubborn voice in her mind, one she recognizes even as its speaker continues to shout down lamiabane in the arena below, and it resists Orkanel’s words even as she feels the burden of them weigh her down even more.

I love you all, she says silently, watching as Spike makes his way over to Dawn to forcibly throw her out of danger. She says something that looks like Screw you! and runs back forward to defend her friend. Willow watches helplessly from where she and Xander are caged in by another lamiabane. I’m so sorry.

There’s a flash of blue in the window, so quick that when Buffy blinks, it’s gone, and she stares down at her friends again with renewed urgency. Spike is getting that delicious ass of his most thoroughly kicked, and she strains against her restraints with desperation as a lamiabane fixes its teeth on his neck, instantly incapacitating him.

“It’s interesting, actually,” Orkanel says conversationally. “The coven has kept several of the lamiabane on hand for millennia, and there’s no record as to why their venom only dazes vampires but kills slayers. In fact, it’s never been reported to the watchers, never a threat that they felt needed eliminating, because the original lamiabane were so sedate that no slayer be at risk from one of them. It took months before my people were able to turn the lamiabane into weapons.”

“Goody for you,” she mumbles, blinking when the blue flash reappears in the window’s reflection. For a moment, it nearly leaves an impossible imprint on the glass, and she shakes off defeat, her boldness returning. “You know you’ll never be able to get rid of all the slayers, right?”

Orkanel raises both shoulders in a simple shrug. “No matter. I only need enough gone so that the danger to the balance is lessened. As long as I have the last original slayer, I control the slayer line still.”

“Wonderful.” She wonders if that’s what’s going to happen when Faith dies, if she survives to the next generation of slayers and can pass forth the power. Orkanel has already doomed his own plan- the one part of his plan that she endorses- and he has no idea, too caught up in elaborate designs to discover his one fatal flaw. 

“Do you feel it?” Orkanel murmurs suddenly, moving to stand behind her. “That helplessness, the knowledge that someone else is destroying everything you love?” She looks down, watches a bloody Spike stagger at a demon that’s lumbering toward Dawn. “All for your misdeeds. For your selfishness and betrayal. You’ve destroyed them.”

And something rebellious rises within her, perhaps brought on by the frustration at being trapped, or by the nearness of her scythe, or by the swirling darkness she can see reflected in the mirror…or maybe by the words of someone she loves finally getting through to her…and she shakes her head disgustedly. "No." She straightens. "You know what? It isn't. All this time, I've been finding any- every reason possible why I was responsible for this. I've been blaming myself and hating myself for it. But it's not me. I'm not the one who developed the lamiabane. I'm not the one who's trying to kill my friends and my slayers. That's all you. So congratulations, Orky. This is your show, and I’m nothing but the audience.”

And then she pauses, because there’s rightness to her words that she hears only now, once they’re coming from her own mouth. She’d done things- awful, disastrous things- a year before. Some had been her choice, some hadn’t, and some had merely placed her in a role and forced her into them. And yeah, she holds fault for parts of it, but it isn’t just her burden. 

This isn’t her burden, and as keenly as she feels the deaths of the fallen slayers, it’s time to put the blame where blame is due. 

“Brave words,” Orkanel acknowledges easily. “Easy to speak, more difficult to believe.” He smiles, glancing down at the arena. “We’ll see what you’re pontificating when your vampire is nothing but dust, when your friends are cursing you with their last breaths. Won’t we?”

It isn’t going to come to that, Buffy thinks with grim acceptance. The cavalry’s here.