DVD Commentary: "Divine Interventions" (1/16)
Title: Divine Interventions (1/16) [DVD Commentary]
Fandom: Buffy/Angel
Characters: Dawn, Amy, Cordelia, Ethan, Willow, Kennedy, and others. How many people do you think gave my fic a pass just because I mentioned Kennedy in the header?
Genre: Grön.
Rating: The overall fic will include material up to and including NC-17; most scenes are considerably milder, though.
Warning: Noncon. I do not warn for plot elements other than noncon; I will tell you which chapter the noncon takes place in so you can skip it.
Timeline/Spoilers: Takes place after “Why We Fight.” Spoilers up to “You’re Welcome,” with a nod towards "Smile Time." Assume spoilers for all of the Buffyverse canon in the commentary.
Summary: Unlikely allies must team up to protect Willow from a resurrected enemy and the worshippers of the god Osiris. My summaries usually are summaries, focusing on the plot. Of course, with a longer chaptered fic, I do think there is more of a need to give a potential reader a better idea of what is going on in the story.
Notes: Special thanks to spikendru for a great beta. Thanks again!
The original story is memorified here.
Prologue
Even the most novice witch or warlock knows the Laws of Making. After all, there are only two, and they are easy to memorize. The first is, simply, that anything which has been made can be unmade. The second is that anything which has been unmade can be made again.The best opening lines usually evoke a moment as clearly and vividly as possible. This is why opening with dialogue often works so well; the disorienting effect is mitigated by being within a universe with which we are familiar, and there is no doubt that we are inhabiting a specific temporal moment. There is nothing that has me going for the back button more quickly then a fic which opens with vague generalities and tedious exposition.
I took a risk here, then, in not opening with a vivid moment, but I like to think that I'm not dealing with vague generalities either. Hopefully the information is specific and interesting enough to catch and keep a reader's interest.
Knowing the words is easy. Understanding them is not so simple; even the most advanced mages know that the Laws of Making are not to be used lightly. They are a primordial truth; a description of the underlying state of the universe. They are not something to be manipulated to man’s will.The sexism here was deliberate, although I'm not sure why. Maybe I just wanted the narrator to sound pompous.
We're going to slip into third person limited soon enough and, in fact, we may already be in it. But even if we are, the reader doesn't know that it is Alexia who is thinking these thoughts, and so takes it as an omniscient Hitchhiker-style exposition on what is true about reality. And so, again, the success of the opening rises and falls with whether what I have to say about the mechanics of magic in the Buffyverse is interesting enough for readers to care about in its own right while they wait for me to get to the point. (And naturally a 30,000 word novella is going to make the reader wait for things in a way that a 100-word drabble by its nature wouldn't.
But they can be, if the one who desires to do so is powerful enough. To remake some things-for example, a human soul which has become consumed in the Fires of Resurrection-is beyond the ability of many gods and most Powers. Those who could perform the deed would not. But it is still possible.I open up the possibility of the re-Making of Fred's soul (because, of course, that's what the last paragraph is about) in part because I feel better just having the door opened, and in part because it acts as a cool allusion. I also have a perverse pleasure in opening a door and then not going through it. But it also works as misdirection: anyone who expected me to raise Fred from the dead in the course would be surprised to find that I didn't. Of course, I don't have to--she's still alive at this point in canon, and has at least week or two left to live (at least because I like to imagine months passing in between "Smile Time" and "A Hole in the World") after the fic is over; she and Dawn will meet again in "Sinister Simulacra."
My formulation of the Rules of Making was rather strongly influenced by Orson Scott Card's Tales of Alvin Maker.
The recreation of a single artifact, lifeless, is far simpler. Especially when one is the High Priestess of the god after whom it is named.We've begun to settle more strongly into Alexia's POV.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken
A light from the shadows shall spring
Renewed be the Urn that was broken
The crownless again shall be King.
Alexia had to smile as she recited the words.One of the tricks which I overuse is to have the viewpoint character, as authorial insert, to mimick my own reaction to the text. That way I get away with doing things which are lame or weird or unexpected or whatever, because the characters recognize that what is going on is lame/weird/unexpected/whatever and thus I "earn" it in that fashion. Also, if I have a particularly clever reaction, I can show it to the world within the context of the fic. And I've been guilty of bending characterization in order to do so, usually by making characters more geeky than they arguably were in canon.
Of course that's not an issue here, both because Alexia's smile isn't "clever" but also because she's an original character. I suppose I should say something about OC's here. I've created quite a few, because if you spend as much time developing a single fictional universe you're going to need to add a few more people while fleshing it out. I don't really angst over original characters, or go out of my way to avoid Suifying them. I just try to make them interesting.
And I don't think it's really possible to have a villain be a Mary Sue. Villains by their nature disrupt the narrative flow of a universe--the plot is supposed to revolve around them--and they need to be at least as powerful as the heroes in order to pose a plausible threat.
However, while I have no problem with making original characters larger than life (far from it!), I really went in the opposite direction with Alexia. Looking at her character in retrospect, she's really Amy's foil, not Willow's; Dark!Willow provides more than enough of a foil for Willow. That means that she is constructed out of the same construction of the mundane and the mystical that (my?) Amy is, driven by a strange and often contradictory combination of religious piety (to Hecate for Amy; to Osiris for Alexia) and a self-serving will to power.
Who would have guessed actual spells would have been found in Tolkien.Stealing the spell from Tolkien is fun in its own right, and also means I don't have to come up with a suitable spell--especially as a spell of Making would presumably be very, very powerful and thus very, very special.
She watched as a wind began to pick up around her, a miniature sandstorm forming from the sand of the desert, the sand of the beach, and the sand of the crater.An allusion to Sunnydale's unusual geography as provided to us in canon. We know it's on the shore from, at the very least, "Go Fish," and the desert pops up from time to time but most dramatically in "Chosen." I'm a canon whore, so I try to comply to little nonsensical details as much as possible. Sunnydale has one Starbucks, the good side of town isn't too far from the bad side of town, and they don't have much town, but they do have a mall, a hospital, an international airport, and a University of California campus. I just run with it.
And at the heart of sandstorm, a pottery vase began to form. Soon the storm was gone, leaving the urn on the ground in front of her.
Alexia approached it, taking a vial of hart’s blood from a pocket in her blouse, pouring its contents into the urn. “Osiris, keeper of the gate,” she began to recite, “master of all fate, hear me. Before time, and after. Before knowing and nothing. Accept our offering. Know our prayer.”This entire ritual is taken, of course, from canon. "Bargaining, Part I," to be precise.
As she spoke the words, she was tested. Gashes cut open across her body, blood streaming from her veins. This was what the god demanded of her; she would not fail Him.Unlike Willow, Alexia sees her part in the ritual as a test of her general devotion to the god instead of her commitment to the ritual's specific objective. However, I do think that Alexia is thinking in the long-term about how proving herself to Osiris can better serve her own ends.
“Osiris! Here lies the warrior of dark magicks! Let him cross over.”
Alexia began to feel a lump in her throat. What was this? Aghast, she watched as a serpent crawled out of her mouth. She let it fall onto the sandy ground, and continued to invoke the god.
“Osiris, let him cross over! Osiris, release him!”
Again, there was a wind, blowing around her at gale forces, even stronger than before. She raised her arms to the level of her eyes, trying to shield herself from the sandstorm. Once again, the sand of the desert, the sand of the beach, and the sand of the crater combined to form-Since Rack's body would have been destroyed in the destruction of Sunnydale, his ressurection wouldn't be quite so simple as Buffy's was, although it is achieved by the same ritual.
A man. And, oddly enough, his clothing.The Doylist explanation for why Buffy's clothes are un-decomposed in "Bargaining" are pretty obvious, but it's more or less inexplicable in Watsonian terms. And I think the fact would occur to Alexia.
The man looked at Alexia, uncertain. “Do you know who you are?” Alexia asked him.A reasonable question, given Buffy's conduct in "Bargaining."
The man nodded, slowly.
“Do you remember how you died?”
The man nodded again. “She killed me.”Since I haven't given a description of the man, we don't know it is Rack yet. and thus we don't know the "she" is. We're getting exposition, but in spurts, puzzle pieces that the reader has to put together.
Alexia smiled. “Yes, that’s right. And she’s the reason we brought you back. We want you to take her down.”
The man simply stared at Alexia for a long moment, and then a smile began to spread across his features. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had strawberries,” he said. “I’ve missed that taste."And I think that would be enough for most readers to identify him as Rack.
Rack's motivation in this story is fairly straight-forward: he wants revenge on Willow. Yet note that he's not particularly aggressive in achieving this goal, constantly requiring Alexia to urge him on. Even after having returned from the grave is always calm and collected, and much more interested in the pleasures of the moment than in revenge.
Chapter One
Cordelia Chase climbed the steps of the temple, wondering why she was even bothering to do this. Of course, it wasn’t a real temple, just the mental recreation of one on the Otherworld, formed for her benefit.
Why was she doing this? For the girl who just had to steal Cordy’s boyfriend before she realized she was gay?
Cordelia looked around inside the temple. It was certainly spacious. And empty. “Um, hello?” she asked nervously.
I am here, child.
Cordy started. “Greetings, O Great and Powerful Goddess,” she ventured. Hecate, after all, was a goddess, while Cordelia was only a mere Higher Power. No mater how high you got on the totem pole, there was still someone sitting on top of you.I'm characterizing Cordelia here, but I'm also providing exposition: clarifying some elements of the Buffyverse which weren't exactly clear in canon.
It has been a long time since one of the Powers has come here. Longer still since they have shown the proper respect to their Elders.Hecate's voice, like that of all the gods, is very formal.
Developing the gods' personalities and Their reactions to the events of the Buffyverse started out as just a random cool idea I had back when I was on Fanfiction.net--in particular, I wanted to flesh out Amy's relationship with her religion, and set it up to Willow's "What do you mean Wicca is a religion? I'm Jewish!" attitude. But as I developed Them as characters it occurred to me to wonder what would happened if Osiris decided Willow was too much of a threat, and that was basically the primary inspiration for this fic.
I'm particularly interested in the very idea of Jossverse Wicca, because it's been shown to be so radically different than Wicca in our world. It's not quite a religion, really (especially if one defines religion as something transcendental, as gods and demons and magic are quite clearly empirical phenomena), but it's not just a set of instructions for magic either. And so this is just one of a whole set of stories exploring that tension.
I capitalize the gods' pronouns to emphasize the fact that They aren't just incredibly powerful magical beings--They are also objects of devotion.
Did that mean the “O Great and Powerful” stuff was working?
No. It doesn’t.
Right. Goddess. All-knowing and all that.I'm not a huge Cordelia fan, but her dynamic with Hecate is really a lot of fun.
Of course, Hecate isn't really all-knowing; omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and omnibenevelence aren't concepts which fit comfortably within a polytheistic system (or arguably even within a monotheistic one, thanks to our friend theodicy), although most polytheistic systems include the tension between God as fundamental Source of Being and a human-like person who has affairs with river nymphs. A tension which is reflected rather well in some of the problems with Buffyverse cosmology, in fact. As a general rule, when one begins to think critically about Higher Powers, one gets caught up in paradoxes and nuances. When we begin telling stories about gods, they don't seem all that unapproachable anymore.
What do you want, Cordelia Chase?
“Well, you see, I have a friend. Or had one, when I was human. Her name’s Willow, and-“Somebody actually intimidates Cordelia enough to make her ramble!
I am aware of the witch Willow Rosenberg.
Right. Still all-knowing.
She has been brought to My attention. We have had Our eyes on her for a while now.
“Well, they’re trying to kill her.”
They, My child? Have not creatures been trying to kill the Rosenberg child for years? Did she not live on a Hellmouth?The god has a point, you know.
“The Order of Osiris.”
Yes, I know. Osiris has been angered by the girl. Now He fears her. You wish Me to intervene?
“Only to counteract Osiris’s interference, Your, erm, Worship.”"No interference" rules are almost necessities when you bring gods and Higher Powers into the stories. Of course, I would make the no interference rule a plot point later on and do interest things with it, but I didn't know that when I wrote this scene. Everything you've read so far was part of my original draft on FF.net, and I had no idea where this was going at the time.
You wish to be sent to Earth.
“Willow was my friend. Sort of. I need to help her.”
It can be done. But remember, you will have to sacrifice much of your power as a Higher Power to do it. No one, not even I, can interfere with the free will of a human being.
“I don’t ask it. Only to stop Osiris.”
Then My will be done.
* * * * *
“Who’s the hot babe?” asked Ethan.And now that the we're finished with the preliminary scenes, it's time to throw the reader into the action of the main narrative, starting the scene with dialogue.
Beth Daniels was, as usual, hunched over the blacktop of the prison yard, several colored sticks of chalk in his hand.The second OC (not counting Hecate) to appear in this story. According to most Mary Sue Litmus Tests, giving an OC a name traditionally belonging to the opposite gender is a sign you're probably writing a Mary Sue. That's complete balderdash. Of course when writing an OC you are going to give them a name which is going to be memorable. What else? In a Buffyverse populated by Buffys and Willows and Xanders and Ozes and Cordelias and Harmonys and Aphrodesias and girls named Fred, are you really going to name your OC Bob or Jane? I think not.
Giving Beth that name was partly an attempt to feminize him, partly an attempt to raise questions about his past (why was he named Beth?), and mostly an attempt to create a name for a male character which would be striking and memorable.
Of course, when one enters the world of the story as intimately as I have, the cognitive dissonance quickly dissapears. It doesn't seem odd to me that I should have a male character named Beth any more than it seems odd that Amy Acker's character should be named Fred or Adam Baldwin's Jayne. These are their names. and after a while they seem natural and obvious--what else would they be called?
His latest artistic creation Ethan found especially impressive: a young but mature woman, slender but curved, her hair a dark brown color. She was dressed in a blue blouse and a black skirt with white boots, and on her finger was a gold ring. Ethan was almost half-tempted to straddle the chalk portrait and make love to it. After all, it was the closest thing to a female he had seen in months.
“I don’t know,” Beth answered as he added a few more strokes to the girl’s waist, adding even more to the three-dimensional quality of the drawing. Just from looking at the picture, one would never have guessed that Beth was blind, had never actually seen a woman with his own eyes. The blind child seer is, of course, a speculative fiction cliche, as I mention later on within the fic. But there's a reason that we keep coming back to certain images and character types, and the lack of originality inherent in Beth's abilities didn't seem to be any reason not to insert him into the Buffyverse; indeed, it is because of it that he seems so at home there. The entire point of the Buffyverse, in one sense, is that we are playing with those cliches.
Beth Daniels was, as near as Ethan could tell, sixteen or seventeen years old. What the boy had done to land himself in the detention center was a mystery to everyone, although Ethan secretly thought that the kid had probably used black magic to kill his parents in revenge for their naming him Beth. A boy named Sue, indeed. . . .This paragraph was originally written for Windows of My Soul, which takes place prior to this one chronologically. But I knew people would be reading this piece without reading the other (which is still unfinished) and my wonderful beta spikendru informed me that giving Beth a girl's name was just too disorienting without that piece of--well, not explaining precisely (since Ethan doesn't know why Beth is named that) but acknowledgement.
It also gives about as much of Beth's backstory as we are going to see in this fic.
“She’s yours.”This is the first hint of a subtle thread of Beth's characterization: his misogeny. From his very first line, Beth treats women as objects--Dawn "belongs" to Ethan. He is for the most part an amiable, likable guy in this story, but one cannot forget that even if he didn't kill his parents, he must have done something to merit being incarcerated in an Initiative prison.
“Mine?” asked Ethan. “My past, or my future?”
“Both,” answered Beth.
“I think I’d remember a girl who looked like that,” Ethan observed.
Beth just kept on drawing. “She was younger then, of course,” he said. “This is what she looks like now.”
“So when do I get to meet her?”
The boy paused for a moment, then began to count backwards. “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .”
“Rayne!” cried out one of the guards. “Get over here. You have a visitor!”
Ethan looked from the guard to Beth, then back to the guard, and began to approach the guard.
There was only one type of visitors one received in this type of detention facility-Initiative interrogators. And Ethan was bloody sure they didn’t hire anyone that young, or that hot.Harping on how Ethan thinks Dawn is hot from her picture begins to set up the Dawn/Ethan subtext for later, I suppose, but mainly it's just there because it's the reaction I think Ethan would have when faced with just a two-dimensional picture of Dawn. What else is there to talk about?
“Don’t screw this up, Ethan,” Beth said.
Ethan shrugged and followed the guard into the heart of the facility. The guard led him into a small room, empty except for two chairs, then left. Ethan sat down on one of the chairs, and waited. It was a moment more until the girl from Beth’s portrait did indeed enter. She was dressed just as he had sketched her-the blue floral blouse, the black skirt, the gold ring. Up close, in real life, Ethan could make out smaller details than he could in Beth’s drawing. For example, he could see the exact nature of the girl’s ring-it was fashioned in the design of a snake consuming its own tail.
A Ring of Ouroboros."Ouroboros" is a word I can never remember how to spell.
Which meant she was a Watcher. Not all Watchers wore the ring, of course. But no one did who was not associated with the Council in some way.I don't remember why I came up with that piece of out-of-left field extracanonical detail. Because I felt I needed a way to have Ethan recognize Dawn as a Watcher, I suppose.
“The Council finally found some interest in me again?” Ethan asked, playfully.
The girl simply examined him as she sat down. In her hands, she held several pieces of parchment.
“The Council as you knew it no longer exists,” she said, simply, in an American accent. “I am a representative of the organization which has taken its place, but I must admit that as far as that organization is concerned, they are quite happy with you rotting away where you are.”I think when she says "that organization," she really means Giles. Not that Roger and Lydia wouldn't be perfectly happy to fall in line on the issue.
Ethan nodded, wondering who this young representative from the new Council could be. She seemed to be much too young for a Watcher-hardly old enough to be graduated from high school, yet alone have defended a Watcher’s thesis. If my math is correct, Dawn would be seventeen years old at this point and just finishing her senior year of high school.
Could she be a Slayer? Beth-being so closely attuned to the currents of good and evil, chaos and order-had explained to him how it was that now every girl who could have been a Slayer, was a Slayer. It was not beyond imagining that in the restructuring of the council that would ensue, some Slayers would be given Rings of Ouroboros. Although he had difficulty imagining Quentin Travers or Roger Wyndam-Pryce agreeing to it.Ethan still doesn't know Quentin is dead. He is incredibly up-to-date with major supernatural trends via Beth, but there is a lot that he is out of the loop with. He does, however, recognize the inevitable power shifts that would have to occur within the Council--especially a reforming Council--in response to Willow's spell.
“Have I met you?” Ethan asked the girl. After all, according to Beth, he had.
“No,” said the girl. “But you remember me anyway.”In retrospect, it doesn't look completely in character for Dawn to be so flippant with her status as the Key. Even though Ethan is shown to know that "Dawn Summers" equals "the Key" (and how does he know this?) I don't know how she knows that he knows, or even why she would want to talk about it in an Iniative facility that very well might be listening in. It's usually something she usually keeps very close to her chest.
Ethan had to cock an eye at this unexpected turn. “Really?”
The girl nodded. “Really. Sunnydale, 1997. Hallowe’en. My sister and her best friends were going costume shopping, and my mother made them take me along.This seemed like a reasonable scenario.
We bought our costumes at your costume shop.”
“Really,” said Ethan. Wasn’t that interesting? “Could I ask what costumes you purchased?”
“My sister was a princess. Her one friend was a hooker-although they seemed to think I was too young to find out what that was and kept referring to it by the most romanticized euphemisims. The other, a soldier-a fact which ultimately proved somewhat useful. I suppose we should thank you.”
Everything fell into place. He never met her, but he remembered her anyway. Of course. “You’re her. The Slayer’s sister. The Key.”
The girl sighed. “Neither identity being one I happen to be incredibly fond of. How about just plain Dawn Summers?”At least here she is able to deal with her identity issues more effectively than in canon, although it would be too much to ask for them to go away.
“Of course, Miss Summers. As I remember, your costume was that of Alice Pleasance Liddell.”
Dawn nodded. “I complained that my hair was the wrong color, but you pointed out that the historical Alice Liddell was a brunette. And when the spell was finally broken, it made it all the easier for me to rationalize everything as having been a very, very weird dream. Although the British accent persisted for days.”
“I assume you have not come here to reminisce?”
“No,” said Dawn, and handed him the parchments. “I have here pages of the Tredëscan Codex. They are written in Etruscan, Sumerian, and Egyptian. Loosely translated, they give an account of the end-times. For the most part, they’re your standard fire-and-brimstone stuff.”The Tradëscan Codex was, I think, created for this story. However, I've found creating titles for mystical texts to be difficult, so I've since given up. Whenever I need a prophecy or something to act as a McGuffin (as here), I just use the Tradëscan Codex, which I've renamed my LJ that.
“You know Etruscan, Sumerian, and Egyptian?”Of course she knows Sumerian. As far as I am concerned, Annakovsky's "Umad Learns Sumerian" is canon.
“Among other languages,” Dawn agreed. “You should hear my Italian accent.Since she speaks Italian on a regular basis with Italians in Italy, she's had plenty of chances to perfect her accent. Whereas I imagine Buffy as resistant to picking up even the most basic Italian phrases.
What interests me in these pages is what seems to be references to a friend of mine-the girl who dressed as the prostitute.”
“Willow Rosenberg. The witch.”He was paying attention.
“You do remember. These references seem to be constantly associated with some type of ritual known only as the Rite of Isis. However, when I asked Giles-“
“How is old Ripper these days?”
Dawn ignored him and continued. “However, when I asked Giles, he said there was only one living person known to have knowledge of the details of the Rite of Isis, and that he wouldn’t be able to help me.”
“And from that, you guessed it was me?”
"I did a little more research,” Dawn corrected. “Then I knew it was you.”From the beginning, we see a competent Dawn who is able to act effectively on her own, and it's important that I set that up from the beginning. That's what this story is about, of course; it is about Dawn learning how to do what needs to be done independently of Buffy and Giles. It's a coming-of-age story in a certain sense ('course every story is a coming-of-age story in a certain sense, thank you Joseph Campbell, regardless of the age of the hero), but it's not Dawn learning to be competent so much as learning to recognize her competence and use it as a leader.
Seeing how Dawn is my Mary Sue, I am going to, in the immortal words of FF.net feedback, "show her cool."
“Well, haven’t you done your homework. Now what do you want from me?”
Dawn stared him straight in the face. “Tell me what the Rite of Isis does.”
“And what do I get out of it?”
“Even if I wanted you free, the military would never be persuaded to allow it. It was difficult enough for me to procure an interview.”Relations between the Iniative and the Watcher's Council are strained, and can only guess that Dawn had to pull major favors from Samantha Finn even to get this far. These relations will improve (as a result of Dawn's increased leadership within the Council), but not quickly. In the meantime, Dawn is prepared to get what she needs through any means necessary, which is a major part of the characterization of Watcher!verse Dawn. As much as I disapprove ethically, there is something of a thrill in holding oneself above the law.
“Then you don’t really have anything to bargain with, do you?” asked Ethan. “I’ve been on my best behavior here. Just ask anyone. I have the benefit of every privilege prisoners are allowed to enjoy.”I like the image of Ethan turning into the most docile prisoner once he is incarcerated. In its way, it's the most chaotic thing he could have done.
“Then you won’t help me?”
“I didn’t say that.” He paused, thinking. “You are aware that I worship chaos, I suppose?”Everything about Ethan is nuanced, and there are never any simple answers, which is what makes him so hard to predict. Ethan might be willing to help Dawn because it'll increase chaos, or because he's in a charitable mood, or because he wants to confuse, or to get in her pants. But he'll try to see what he can get out of it first.
Dawn nodded. “In particular, the god Janus-an Etruscan god with two faces, one young and one old, one looking forward and one behind. He was later appropriated by the Romans, who named the month of January after Him. The gates to His temple were closed only in times of peace.”
Ethan had to smile at the girl’s precision. What was she, an encyclopedia? “Which in ancient Rome, was exceedingly rare. You learned all of this along with the languages?”
“Most of it,” said Dawn. “My sister’s boyfriend sort of knows a lot of Roman history. I learned some of it from him. He’s cool like that. And hot.”My image of the Immortal is someone whose charisma is so strong that while it isn't a magical force, it might as well be because it's just that irresistable. So of course Dawn is as enamoured of him as Buffy is--for now.
“Then the Slayer must be a lucky girl,” observed Ethan. “But that’s really neither here nor there, is it? What matters is that Janus has taken a liking to your little witch friend. After all, whether intentionally or unintentionally, chaos usually manages to follow in her wake. And so He would be very sad if something unfortunate were to befall your friend. And I would have to say that the Rite of Isis would be something quite unfortunate indeed.”
“What is it?”
“Aye, there’s the rub, isn’t it? I wish I knew, exactly. Just trust me when I say you don’t want it happening.”
“You performed it once.”
“Indeed. And it was such a powerful experience, it wiped my mind completely clean. Permanent amnesia. I don’t remember a thing. Rather guess that’s what your friend Rupert meant by my not being able to help. Though I don’t blame you for wanting to find out for yourself.”In the finished project, this creates suspense by having an unknown effect hanging over the characters' heads. Even once I figured out what the Rite of Isis would do, I held off on revealing it until the very end.
That doesn't change, of course, the fact that I gave Ethan amnesia so I could put off figuring what the ritual did. A choice I'm glad I made, actually, because when I finally decided what the Rite of Isis did, I had a better sense of what the story was about and where it was going, and so was able to make it fit in thematically.
“Then you can’t help me.”
“Well, I would guess that would depend on the sort of help you want. But if you mean telling you what the Rite is, no, I’m afraid that I cannot do. Not even if I wanted to. Sorry.”Wow, this scene is talky, isn't it? I'm not sure how it could be improved though; it's not as if it requires very much introspection or description.
Dawn nodded. “Well, thank you for your help, Mr. Rayne,” she said, extending her hand. Ethan shook it, politely. Then she left.
Only after he had managed to make his way back to the prison yard did Ethan unclench his fist and look at the small crystal that Dawn Summers had had palmed in her hand.Yeah. She's a badass.
Fandom: Buffy/Angel
Characters: Dawn, Amy, Cordelia, Ethan, Willow, Kennedy, and others. How many people do you think gave my fic a pass just because I mentioned Kennedy in the header?
Genre: Grön.
Rating: The overall fic will include material up to and including NC-17; most scenes are considerably milder, though.
Warning: Noncon. I do not warn for plot elements other than noncon; I will tell you which chapter the noncon takes place in so you can skip it.
Timeline/Spoilers: Takes place after “Why We Fight.” Spoilers up to “You’re Welcome,” with a nod towards "Smile Time." Assume spoilers for all of the Buffyverse canon in the commentary.
Summary: Unlikely allies must team up to protect Willow from a resurrected enemy and the worshippers of the god Osiris. My summaries usually are summaries, focusing on the plot. Of course, with a longer chaptered fic, I do think there is more of a need to give a potential reader a better idea of what is going on in the story.
Notes: Special thanks to spikendru for a great beta. Thanks again!
The original story is memorified here.
Prologue
Even the most novice witch or warlock knows the Laws of Making. After all, there are only two, and they are easy to memorize. The first is, simply, that anything which has been made can be unmade. The second is that anything which has been unmade can be made again.The best opening lines usually evoke a moment as clearly and vividly as possible. This is why opening with dialogue often works so well; the disorienting effect is mitigated by being within a universe with which we are familiar, and there is no doubt that we are inhabiting a specific temporal moment. There is nothing that has me going for the back button more quickly then a fic which opens with vague generalities and tedious exposition.
I took a risk here, then, in not opening with a vivid moment, but I like to think that I'm not dealing with vague generalities either. Hopefully the information is specific and interesting enough to catch and keep a reader's interest.
Knowing the words is easy. Understanding them is not so simple; even the most advanced mages know that the Laws of Making are not to be used lightly. They are a primordial truth; a description of the underlying state of the universe. They are not something to be manipulated to man’s will.The sexism here was deliberate, although I'm not sure why. Maybe I just wanted the narrator to sound pompous.
We're going to slip into third person limited soon enough and, in fact, we may already be in it. But even if we are, the reader doesn't know that it is Alexia who is thinking these thoughts, and so takes it as an omniscient Hitchhiker-style exposition on what is true about reality. And so, again, the success of the opening rises and falls with whether what I have to say about the mechanics of magic in the Buffyverse is interesting enough for readers to care about in its own right while they wait for me to get to the point. (And naturally a 30,000 word novella is going to make the reader wait for things in a way that a 100-word drabble by its nature wouldn't.
But they can be, if the one who desires to do so is powerful enough. To remake some things-for example, a human soul which has become consumed in the Fires of Resurrection-is beyond the ability of many gods and most Powers. Those who could perform the deed would not. But it is still possible.I open up the possibility of the re-Making of Fred's soul (because, of course, that's what the last paragraph is about) in part because I feel better just having the door opened, and in part because it acts as a cool allusion. I also have a perverse pleasure in opening a door and then not going through it. But it also works as misdirection: anyone who expected me to raise Fred from the dead in the course would be surprised to find that I didn't. Of course, I don't have to--she's still alive at this point in canon, and has at least week or two left to live (at least because I like to imagine months passing in between "Smile Time" and "A Hole in the World") after the fic is over; she and Dawn will meet again in "Sinister Simulacra."
My formulation of the Rules of Making was rather strongly influenced by Orson Scott Card's Tales of Alvin Maker.
The recreation of a single artifact, lifeless, is far simpler. Especially when one is the High Priestess of the god after whom it is named.We've begun to settle more strongly into Alexia's POV.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken
A light from the shadows shall spring
Renewed be the Urn that was broken
The crownless again shall be King.
Alexia had to smile as she recited the words.One of the tricks which I overuse is to have the viewpoint character, as authorial insert, to mimick my own reaction to the text. That way I get away with doing things which are lame or weird or unexpected or whatever, because the characters recognize that what is going on is lame/weird/unexpected/whatever and thus I "earn" it in that fashion. Also, if I have a particularly clever reaction, I can show it to the world within the context of the fic. And I've been guilty of bending characterization in order to do so, usually by making characters more geeky than they arguably were in canon.
Of course that's not an issue here, both because Alexia's smile isn't "clever" but also because she's an original character. I suppose I should say something about OC's here. I've created quite a few, because if you spend as much time developing a single fictional universe you're going to need to add a few more people while fleshing it out. I don't really angst over original characters, or go out of my way to avoid Suifying them. I just try to make them interesting.
And I don't think it's really possible to have a villain be a Mary Sue. Villains by their nature disrupt the narrative flow of a universe--the plot is supposed to revolve around them--and they need to be at least as powerful as the heroes in order to pose a plausible threat.
However, while I have no problem with making original characters larger than life (far from it!), I really went in the opposite direction with Alexia. Looking at her character in retrospect, she's really Amy's foil, not Willow's; Dark!Willow provides more than enough of a foil for Willow. That means that she is constructed out of the same construction of the mundane and the mystical that (my?) Amy is, driven by a strange and often contradictory combination of religious piety (to Hecate for Amy; to Osiris for Alexia) and a self-serving will to power.
Who would have guessed actual spells would have been found in Tolkien.Stealing the spell from Tolkien is fun in its own right, and also means I don't have to come up with a suitable spell--especially as a spell of Making would presumably be very, very powerful and thus very, very special.
She watched as a wind began to pick up around her, a miniature sandstorm forming from the sand of the desert, the sand of the beach, and the sand of the crater.An allusion to Sunnydale's unusual geography as provided to us in canon. We know it's on the shore from, at the very least, "Go Fish," and the desert pops up from time to time but most dramatically in "Chosen." I'm a canon whore, so I try to comply to little nonsensical details as much as possible. Sunnydale has one Starbucks, the good side of town isn't too far from the bad side of town, and they don't have much town, but they do have a mall, a hospital, an international airport, and a University of California campus. I just run with it.
And at the heart of sandstorm, a pottery vase began to form. Soon the storm was gone, leaving the urn on the ground in front of her.
Alexia approached it, taking a vial of hart’s blood from a pocket in her blouse, pouring its contents into the urn. “Osiris, keeper of the gate,” she began to recite, “master of all fate, hear me. Before time, and after. Before knowing and nothing. Accept our offering. Know our prayer.”This entire ritual is taken, of course, from canon. "Bargaining, Part I," to be precise.
As she spoke the words, she was tested. Gashes cut open across her body, blood streaming from her veins. This was what the god demanded of her; she would not fail Him.Unlike Willow, Alexia sees her part in the ritual as a test of her general devotion to the god instead of her commitment to the ritual's specific objective. However, I do think that Alexia is thinking in the long-term about how proving herself to Osiris can better serve her own ends.
“Osiris! Here lies the warrior of dark magicks! Let him cross over.”
Alexia began to feel a lump in her throat. What was this? Aghast, she watched as a serpent crawled out of her mouth. She let it fall onto the sandy ground, and continued to invoke the god.
“Osiris, let him cross over! Osiris, release him!”
Again, there was a wind, blowing around her at gale forces, even stronger than before. She raised her arms to the level of her eyes, trying to shield herself from the sandstorm. Once again, the sand of the desert, the sand of the beach, and the sand of the crater combined to form-Since Rack's body would have been destroyed in the destruction of Sunnydale, his ressurection wouldn't be quite so simple as Buffy's was, although it is achieved by the same ritual.
A man. And, oddly enough, his clothing.The Doylist explanation for why Buffy's clothes are un-decomposed in "Bargaining" are pretty obvious, but it's more or less inexplicable in Watsonian terms. And I think the fact would occur to Alexia.
The man looked at Alexia, uncertain. “Do you know who you are?” Alexia asked him.A reasonable question, given Buffy's conduct in "Bargaining."
The man nodded, slowly.
“Do you remember how you died?”
The man nodded again. “She killed me.”Since I haven't given a description of the man, we don't know it is Rack yet. and thus we don't know the "she" is. We're getting exposition, but in spurts, puzzle pieces that the reader has to put together.
Alexia smiled. “Yes, that’s right. And she’s the reason we brought you back. We want you to take her down.”
The man simply stared at Alexia for a long moment, and then a smile began to spread across his features. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had strawberries,” he said. “I’ve missed that taste."And I think that would be enough for most readers to identify him as Rack.
Rack's motivation in this story is fairly straight-forward: he wants revenge on Willow. Yet note that he's not particularly aggressive in achieving this goal, constantly requiring Alexia to urge him on. Even after having returned from the grave is always calm and collected, and much more interested in the pleasures of the moment than in revenge.
Chapter One
Cordelia Chase climbed the steps of the temple, wondering why she was even bothering to do this. Of course, it wasn’t a real temple, just the mental recreation of one on the Otherworld, formed for her benefit.
Why was she doing this? For the girl who just had to steal Cordy’s boyfriend before she realized she was gay?
Cordelia looked around inside the temple. It was certainly spacious. And empty. “Um, hello?” she asked nervously.
I am here, child.
Cordy started. “Greetings, O Great and Powerful Goddess,” she ventured. Hecate, after all, was a goddess, while Cordelia was only a mere Higher Power. No mater how high you got on the totem pole, there was still someone sitting on top of you.I'm characterizing Cordelia here, but I'm also providing exposition: clarifying some elements of the Buffyverse which weren't exactly clear in canon.
It has been a long time since one of the Powers has come here. Longer still since they have shown the proper respect to their Elders.Hecate's voice, like that of all the gods, is very formal.
Developing the gods' personalities and Their reactions to the events of the Buffyverse started out as just a random cool idea I had back when I was on Fanfiction.net--in particular, I wanted to flesh out Amy's relationship with her religion, and set it up to Willow's "What do you mean Wicca is a religion? I'm Jewish!" attitude. But as I developed Them as characters it occurred to me to wonder what would happened if Osiris decided Willow was too much of a threat, and that was basically the primary inspiration for this fic.
I'm particularly interested in the very idea of Jossverse Wicca, because it's been shown to be so radically different than Wicca in our world. It's not quite a religion, really (especially if one defines religion as something transcendental, as gods and demons and magic are quite clearly empirical phenomena), but it's not just a set of instructions for magic either. And so this is just one of a whole set of stories exploring that tension.
I capitalize the gods' pronouns to emphasize the fact that They aren't just incredibly powerful magical beings--They are also objects of devotion.
Did that mean the “O Great and Powerful” stuff was working?
No. It doesn’t.
Right. Goddess. All-knowing and all that.I'm not a huge Cordelia fan, but her dynamic with Hecate is really a lot of fun.
Of course, Hecate isn't really all-knowing; omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and omnibenevelence aren't concepts which fit comfortably within a polytheistic system (or arguably even within a monotheistic one, thanks to our friend theodicy), although most polytheistic systems include the tension between God as fundamental Source of Being and a human-like person who has affairs with river nymphs. A tension which is reflected rather well in some of the problems with Buffyverse cosmology, in fact. As a general rule, when one begins to think critically about Higher Powers, one gets caught up in paradoxes and nuances. When we begin telling stories about gods, they don't seem all that unapproachable anymore.
What do you want, Cordelia Chase?
“Well, you see, I have a friend. Or had one, when I was human. Her name’s Willow, and-“Somebody actually intimidates Cordelia enough to make her ramble!
I am aware of the witch Willow Rosenberg.
Right. Still all-knowing.
She has been brought to My attention. We have had Our eyes on her for a while now.
“Well, they’re trying to kill her.”
They, My child? Have not creatures been trying to kill the Rosenberg child for years? Did she not live on a Hellmouth?The god has a point, you know.
“The Order of Osiris.”
Yes, I know. Osiris has been angered by the girl. Now He fears her. You wish Me to intervene?
“Only to counteract Osiris’s interference, Your, erm, Worship.”"No interference" rules are almost necessities when you bring gods and Higher Powers into the stories. Of course, I would make the no interference rule a plot point later on and do interest things with it, but I didn't know that when I wrote this scene. Everything you've read so far was part of my original draft on FF.net, and I had no idea where this was going at the time.
You wish to be sent to Earth.
“Willow was my friend. Sort of. I need to help her.”
It can be done. But remember, you will have to sacrifice much of your power as a Higher Power to do it. No one, not even I, can interfere with the free will of a human being.
“I don’t ask it. Only to stop Osiris.”
Then My will be done.
* * * * *
“Who’s the hot babe?” asked Ethan.And now that the we're finished with the preliminary scenes, it's time to throw the reader into the action of the main narrative, starting the scene with dialogue.
Beth Daniels was, as usual, hunched over the blacktop of the prison yard, several colored sticks of chalk in his hand.The second OC (not counting Hecate) to appear in this story. According to most Mary Sue Litmus Tests, giving an OC a name traditionally belonging to the opposite gender is a sign you're probably writing a Mary Sue. That's complete balderdash. Of course when writing an OC you are going to give them a name which is going to be memorable. What else? In a Buffyverse populated by Buffys and Willows and Xanders and Ozes and Cordelias and Harmonys and Aphrodesias and girls named Fred, are you really going to name your OC Bob or Jane? I think not.
Giving Beth that name was partly an attempt to feminize him, partly an attempt to raise questions about his past (why was he named Beth?), and mostly an attempt to create a name for a male character which would be striking and memorable.
Of course, when one enters the world of the story as intimately as I have, the cognitive dissonance quickly dissapears. It doesn't seem odd to me that I should have a male character named Beth any more than it seems odd that Amy Acker's character should be named Fred or Adam Baldwin's Jayne. These are their names. and after a while they seem natural and obvious--what else would they be called?
His latest artistic creation Ethan found especially impressive: a young but mature woman, slender but curved, her hair a dark brown color. She was dressed in a blue blouse and a black skirt with white boots, and on her finger was a gold ring. Ethan was almost half-tempted to straddle the chalk portrait and make love to it. After all, it was the closest thing to a female he had seen in months.
“I don’t know,” Beth answered as he added a few more strokes to the girl’s waist, adding even more to the three-dimensional quality of the drawing. Just from looking at the picture, one would never have guessed that Beth was blind, had never actually seen a woman with his own eyes. The blind child seer is, of course, a speculative fiction cliche, as I mention later on within the fic. But there's a reason that we keep coming back to certain images and character types, and the lack of originality inherent in Beth's abilities didn't seem to be any reason not to insert him into the Buffyverse; indeed, it is because of it that he seems so at home there. The entire point of the Buffyverse, in one sense, is that we are playing with those cliches.
Beth Daniels was, as near as Ethan could tell, sixteen or seventeen years old. What the boy had done to land himself in the detention center was a mystery to everyone, although Ethan secretly thought that the kid had probably used black magic to kill his parents in revenge for their naming him Beth. A boy named Sue, indeed. . . .This paragraph was originally written for Windows of My Soul, which takes place prior to this one chronologically. But I knew people would be reading this piece without reading the other (which is still unfinished) and my wonderful beta spikendru informed me that giving Beth a girl's name was just too disorienting without that piece of--well, not explaining precisely (since Ethan doesn't know why Beth is named that) but acknowledgement.
It also gives about as much of Beth's backstory as we are going to see in this fic.
“She’s yours.”This is the first hint of a subtle thread of Beth's characterization: his misogeny. From his very first line, Beth treats women as objects--Dawn "belongs" to Ethan. He is for the most part an amiable, likable guy in this story, but one cannot forget that even if he didn't kill his parents, he must have done something to merit being incarcerated in an Initiative prison.
“Mine?” asked Ethan. “My past, or my future?”
“Both,” answered Beth.
“I think I’d remember a girl who looked like that,” Ethan observed.
Beth just kept on drawing. “She was younger then, of course,” he said. “This is what she looks like now.”
“So when do I get to meet her?”
The boy paused for a moment, then began to count backwards. “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .”
“Rayne!” cried out one of the guards. “Get over here. You have a visitor!”
Ethan looked from the guard to Beth, then back to the guard, and began to approach the guard.
There was only one type of visitors one received in this type of detention facility-Initiative interrogators. And Ethan was bloody sure they didn’t hire anyone that young, or that hot.Harping on how Ethan thinks Dawn is hot from her picture begins to set up the Dawn/Ethan subtext for later, I suppose, but mainly it's just there because it's the reaction I think Ethan would have when faced with just a two-dimensional picture of Dawn. What else is there to talk about?
“Don’t screw this up, Ethan,” Beth said.
Ethan shrugged and followed the guard into the heart of the facility. The guard led him into a small room, empty except for two chairs, then left. Ethan sat down on one of the chairs, and waited. It was a moment more until the girl from Beth’s portrait did indeed enter. She was dressed just as he had sketched her-the blue floral blouse, the black skirt, the gold ring. Up close, in real life, Ethan could make out smaller details than he could in Beth’s drawing. For example, he could see the exact nature of the girl’s ring-it was fashioned in the design of a snake consuming its own tail.
A Ring of Ouroboros."Ouroboros" is a word I can never remember how to spell.
Which meant she was a Watcher. Not all Watchers wore the ring, of course. But no one did who was not associated with the Council in some way.I don't remember why I came up with that piece of out-of-left field extracanonical detail. Because I felt I needed a way to have Ethan recognize Dawn as a Watcher, I suppose.
“The Council finally found some interest in me again?” Ethan asked, playfully.
The girl simply examined him as she sat down. In her hands, she held several pieces of parchment.
“The Council as you knew it no longer exists,” she said, simply, in an American accent. “I am a representative of the organization which has taken its place, but I must admit that as far as that organization is concerned, they are quite happy with you rotting away where you are.”I think when she says "that organization," she really means Giles. Not that Roger and Lydia wouldn't be perfectly happy to fall in line on the issue.
Ethan nodded, wondering who this young representative from the new Council could be. She seemed to be much too young for a Watcher-hardly old enough to be graduated from high school, yet alone have defended a Watcher’s thesis. If my math is correct, Dawn would be seventeen years old at this point and just finishing her senior year of high school.
Could she be a Slayer? Beth-being so closely attuned to the currents of good and evil, chaos and order-had explained to him how it was that now every girl who could have been a Slayer, was a Slayer. It was not beyond imagining that in the restructuring of the council that would ensue, some Slayers would be given Rings of Ouroboros. Although he had difficulty imagining Quentin Travers or Roger Wyndam-Pryce agreeing to it.Ethan still doesn't know Quentin is dead. He is incredibly up-to-date with major supernatural trends via Beth, but there is a lot that he is out of the loop with. He does, however, recognize the inevitable power shifts that would have to occur within the Council--especially a reforming Council--in response to Willow's spell.
“Have I met you?” Ethan asked the girl. After all, according to Beth, he had.
“No,” said the girl. “But you remember me anyway.”In retrospect, it doesn't look completely in character for Dawn to be so flippant with her status as the Key. Even though Ethan is shown to know that "Dawn Summers" equals "the Key" (and how does he know this?) I don't know how she knows that he knows, or even why she would want to talk about it in an Iniative facility that very well might be listening in. It's usually something she usually keeps very close to her chest.
Ethan had to cock an eye at this unexpected turn. “Really?”
The girl nodded. “Really. Sunnydale, 1997. Hallowe’en. My sister and her best friends were going costume shopping, and my mother made them take me along.This seemed like a reasonable scenario.
We bought our costumes at your costume shop.”
“Really,” said Ethan. Wasn’t that interesting? “Could I ask what costumes you purchased?”
“My sister was a princess. Her one friend was a hooker-although they seemed to think I was too young to find out what that was and kept referring to it by the most romanticized euphemisims. The other, a soldier-a fact which ultimately proved somewhat useful. I suppose we should thank you.”
Everything fell into place. He never met her, but he remembered her anyway. Of course. “You’re her. The Slayer’s sister. The Key.”
The girl sighed. “Neither identity being one I happen to be incredibly fond of. How about just plain Dawn Summers?”At least here she is able to deal with her identity issues more effectively than in canon, although it would be too much to ask for them to go away.
“Of course, Miss Summers. As I remember, your costume was that of Alice Pleasance Liddell.”
Dawn nodded. “I complained that my hair was the wrong color, but you pointed out that the historical Alice Liddell was a brunette. And when the spell was finally broken, it made it all the easier for me to rationalize everything as having been a very, very weird dream. Although the British accent persisted for days.”
“I assume you have not come here to reminisce?”
“No,” said Dawn, and handed him the parchments. “I have here pages of the Tredëscan Codex. They are written in Etruscan, Sumerian, and Egyptian. Loosely translated, they give an account of the end-times. For the most part, they’re your standard fire-and-brimstone stuff.”The Tradëscan Codex was, I think, created for this story. However, I've found creating titles for mystical texts to be difficult, so I've since given up. Whenever I need a prophecy or something to act as a McGuffin (as here), I just use the Tradëscan Codex, which I've renamed my LJ that.
“You know Etruscan, Sumerian, and Egyptian?”Of course she knows Sumerian. As far as I am concerned, Annakovsky's "Umad Learns Sumerian" is canon.
“Among other languages,” Dawn agreed. “You should hear my Italian accent.Since she speaks Italian on a regular basis with Italians in Italy, she's had plenty of chances to perfect her accent. Whereas I imagine Buffy as resistant to picking up even the most basic Italian phrases.
What interests me in these pages is what seems to be references to a friend of mine-the girl who dressed as the prostitute.”
“Willow Rosenberg. The witch.”He was paying attention.
“You do remember. These references seem to be constantly associated with some type of ritual known only as the Rite of Isis. However, when I asked Giles-“
“How is old Ripper these days?”
Dawn ignored him and continued. “However, when I asked Giles, he said there was only one living person known to have knowledge of the details of the Rite of Isis, and that he wouldn’t be able to help me.”
“And from that, you guessed it was me?”
"I did a little more research,” Dawn corrected. “Then I knew it was you.”From the beginning, we see a competent Dawn who is able to act effectively on her own, and it's important that I set that up from the beginning. That's what this story is about, of course; it is about Dawn learning how to do what needs to be done independently of Buffy and Giles. It's a coming-of-age story in a certain sense ('course every story is a coming-of-age story in a certain sense, thank you Joseph Campbell, regardless of the age of the hero), but it's not Dawn learning to be competent so much as learning to recognize her competence and use it as a leader.
Seeing how Dawn is my Mary Sue, I am going to, in the immortal words of FF.net feedback, "show her cool."
“Well, haven’t you done your homework. Now what do you want from me?”
Dawn stared him straight in the face. “Tell me what the Rite of Isis does.”
“And what do I get out of it?”
“Even if I wanted you free, the military would never be persuaded to allow it. It was difficult enough for me to procure an interview.”Relations between the Iniative and the Watcher's Council are strained, and can only guess that Dawn had to pull major favors from Samantha Finn even to get this far. These relations will improve (as a result of Dawn's increased leadership within the Council), but not quickly. In the meantime, Dawn is prepared to get what she needs through any means necessary, which is a major part of the characterization of Watcher!verse Dawn. As much as I disapprove ethically, there is something of a thrill in holding oneself above the law.
“Then you don’t really have anything to bargain with, do you?” asked Ethan. “I’ve been on my best behavior here. Just ask anyone. I have the benefit of every privilege prisoners are allowed to enjoy.”I like the image of Ethan turning into the most docile prisoner once he is incarcerated. In its way, it's the most chaotic thing he could have done.
“Then you won’t help me?”
“I didn’t say that.” He paused, thinking. “You are aware that I worship chaos, I suppose?”Everything about Ethan is nuanced, and there are never any simple answers, which is what makes him so hard to predict. Ethan might be willing to help Dawn because it'll increase chaos, or because he's in a charitable mood, or because he wants to confuse, or to get in her pants. But he'll try to see what he can get out of it first.
Dawn nodded. “In particular, the god Janus-an Etruscan god with two faces, one young and one old, one looking forward and one behind. He was later appropriated by the Romans, who named the month of January after Him. The gates to His temple were closed only in times of peace.”
Ethan had to smile at the girl’s precision. What was she, an encyclopedia? “Which in ancient Rome, was exceedingly rare. You learned all of this along with the languages?”
“Most of it,” said Dawn. “My sister’s boyfriend sort of knows a lot of Roman history. I learned some of it from him. He’s cool like that. And hot.”My image of the Immortal is someone whose charisma is so strong that while it isn't a magical force, it might as well be because it's just that irresistable. So of course Dawn is as enamoured of him as Buffy is--for now.
“Then the Slayer must be a lucky girl,” observed Ethan. “But that’s really neither here nor there, is it? What matters is that Janus has taken a liking to your little witch friend. After all, whether intentionally or unintentionally, chaos usually manages to follow in her wake. And so He would be very sad if something unfortunate were to befall your friend. And I would have to say that the Rite of Isis would be something quite unfortunate indeed.”
“What is it?”
“Aye, there’s the rub, isn’t it? I wish I knew, exactly. Just trust me when I say you don’t want it happening.”
“You performed it once.”
“Indeed. And it was such a powerful experience, it wiped my mind completely clean. Permanent amnesia. I don’t remember a thing. Rather guess that’s what your friend Rupert meant by my not being able to help. Though I don’t blame you for wanting to find out for yourself.”In the finished project, this creates suspense by having an unknown effect hanging over the characters' heads. Even once I figured out what the Rite of Isis would do, I held off on revealing it until the very end.
That doesn't change, of course, the fact that I gave Ethan amnesia so I could put off figuring what the ritual did. A choice I'm glad I made, actually, because when I finally decided what the Rite of Isis did, I had a better sense of what the story was about and where it was going, and so was able to make it fit in thematically.
“Then you can’t help me.”
“Well, I would guess that would depend on the sort of help you want. But if you mean telling you what the Rite is, no, I’m afraid that I cannot do. Not even if I wanted to. Sorry.”Wow, this scene is talky, isn't it? I'm not sure how it could be improved though; it's not as if it requires very much introspection or description.
Dawn nodded. “Well, thank you for your help, Mr. Rayne,” she said, extending her hand. Ethan shook it, politely. Then she left.
Only after he had managed to make his way back to the prison yard did Ethan unclench his fist and look at the small crystal that Dawn Summers had had palmed in her hand.Yeah. She's a badass.