[center][img]https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/dd909445d748.png[/img][/center] [sup][h1][b][center][color=black] B U F F Y S U M M E R S[/color] [color=#e6419f]B U F F Y S U M M E R S[/color][/center] [/b][/h1][/sup] [hr] [indent] [color=silver] “What brings you to my door, [i]Eris[/i]?” Hades asked, the shape of his hand a shadow against a vast wall; fingers moving idly, thumb brushing forefinger. As a firepit flickered, a voice chimed. “Nice decor,” she trilled. “A little obvious, but you always were a classic.” “Answer me.” “Fine,” she stepped forward, form shifting as the firelight moved and danced. Her cloth was made of stars; sewn with the night sky. “You broke the rules, or at least, you allowed them to be broken.” “Elaborate,” Hades responded quickly, enunciating each syllable “You let a soul be taken and returned, and not just [i]any[/i] soul.” “The Slayer,” he said in a bored thrum. “That soul was bound in a prophecy once before. A very important one, it had all manner of things to do with areas of my interest–” “I had no choice,” Hades answered. “Oh those Amazons made you do it?” Eris asked, eyes sharp - glinting malice against the flames. “Hades, Hades, Hades… You always have a choice.” She paused, her figure moving; half darkness and half a ghost-light. “Restore the balance and let me reawaken him. Another chance to see his prophecy through. Another chance to knock on the door of the Deeper Well….” She let her words trail to Hades like a promise. “And why should I do that?” He asked once more, his eyes finally alight as two violet orbs. Eris smirked and a sound and chorus of terror came from it. “Because you’re as bored as I am darling. And it’s been oh so long since we’ve had some fun.” [hr] Cordelia Chase lunged forward from her bed with a strangled breath; her body having heaved and snapped upright and dragged by an unseen hand and force. Everything clung to her skin; damp with a cold sweat that didn’t belong to her ordinary dreams and for that moment she did not know where she was again, only where she had walked in the aether and only that it had felt like drowning. The pain was next; a crown of torment that was the price she paid for a gift, tightening like a band of fire, pulsing behind her eyes and she brought her palms to her temples, fingers trembling, fragments of the vision flashing in replay. A voice without a voice, eyes without a face, and a dimension of darkness; beyond it and further down and down, a hollow carved into the bones of the earth; black stone veined and pulsing like a dying heart and in the centre of it a wound; the Deeper Well. She saw figures that were blurred and cloaked, each indistinct but each rank in the way their evil permeated through even this distance. A bargain her been struck, a deal made and calculated. A deal to open it. Cordelia’s breath hitched as the last of the images seared itself upon her; shadows rising from the well, not formed, but free and reaching, coiling and unfurling and setting everything beneath a veil of black. With a gasp the visions shattered and she was left in the dark silence of her room and everything around her felt thin. Her heartbeat was loud in her ears. Before her thought had even formed she had moved from the bed, whatever was coming was bigger than anything. Bigger than the Powers that Be; her jaw tightened. There was only one person who needed to hear this. “Buffy.” [hr] “Apocolyptic threat in Sunnydale? Must be Tuesday.” Buffy quipped as she closed yet another book with a dissatisfied thud. “While I appreciate…” Giles began, raising a brow, “that you’re taking this seriously… Perhaps with more seriousness? We’ve had warning from the Council of a great power rising. An Astrologer from the Coven, actually…” Behind them, a phone rang. “We’ve been at this for hours, Giles. Maybe a break from the books will help,” Buffy said. Giles removed his glasses and sighed, “if you want to go get a coffee, I won’t stop you, but I’ll stay here.” As he placed them back on he looked back at Buffy. It had never been her strength; the researching. It was his, and since her change and since the expansion of her duties there was more to learn and to unlearn. The phone rang again. “But… Yes, she’s read the transits of the next months and it’s a dangerous time, with increased demon activity culminating in the opening of a great wound in the earth, the burial place of the Old Ones. For it to open would be… It would be death to us all, so, yes… Apocalyptic threat.” He picked up another tome. “I just don’t know how, [i]we,[/i] don’t know how its going to happen.” As the phone reached its third call through Buffy picked it up; “Magic Box, can we take a message-” There was a pause. “Cordy?” A longer pause, and Giles watched as Buffy’s expression changed. The slightest change to her eyes, a dissociative glaze that took over as her face lost it’s colour. “Thanks for letting me know,” she said with an eerie calm before putting down the phone again. “Buffy?” Giles’ asked, brow knitting with concern. “The Master. He’s going to open it,” there was something matter-of-fact about her tone that betrayed how she truly felt. “He’s going to open it by killing me – properly this time.” “Good lord.” [/color][/indent]