The waiting was the worst part of it.

It always was.

He’d spent too much time waiting over the years. Waiting for chances that only came with patience and diligence, waiting for word to send him where he might be needed, where he might make a difference; waiting – too often waiting – for Buffy to come back safe from patrol, for evil to show its face, for corruption to take hold of the world. Waiting, sometimes, for bad news, for the inevitable to unfold and fate to twist the knife; waiting for hope to be rekindled, clinging to faith in the darkness.

Waiting – enduring – while horror claimed him, while his blood turned to ice and his soul howled in endless pain.

Waiting for rescue to come, waiting without hope, but still waiting.

And waiting now, for dispassionate assessment, for final judgement.

For death.

He had no illusions about that. He might almost welcome it, in a way. At least death would be an ending, a means to draw the line and say enough.

…a report about yet another unfortunate suicide …

The Warder’s words haunted him with mocking irony. He’d sought to escape from Salamiel’s tender attentions that way more than once; he’d never managed it, and he suspected his tormentor had found his attempts at doing so a source of amusement rather than concern. There had even been days since – dark days, submerged in misery and self-loathing - when he’d seriously contemplated taking that final step. But he never had.

Not for want of courage. Not even for want of means; after all if he really wanted to, it would be a simple enough matter for him to flick open one of his hidden blades and draw its razor sharp edge across his throat. That would be messy, though. And not at all pleasant for anyone who might stumble over the corpse afterwards.

Which might be why he’d never done it, even when the memories had hammered at him with unbearable persistence. He’d lived with the grief of death too often to wish it on the people he cared about. Besides, he knew what Buffy and the others had been prepared to risk for his sake – and there was a part of him that clung to that with stubborn pride and treasured affection. They hadn’t let him down. How could he tarnish that gift by throwing away the life they’d fought so hard to save?

So he’d fought hard to resist those impulses – and now fate was throwing them back in his face with scornful contempt.

Because if he was about to die – and he had every reason to believe that was the most likely outcome of whatever was about to happen to him – then the reason they’d give would be a lie the world would be more than willing to believe. Even Buffy – whose faith and belief in him had carried him through some of the darker moments in recent days. He knew what sort of impression he’d made earlier that day. Of course she’d accept that he’d been pushed too far, that he’d been driven beyond endurance by event and circumstance. Give his halting confession, his too honest exposure of the wounds in his soul – why would she think otherwise?

She would mourn him, and bury him, and get on with the life she’d come back too, hurt by his abandonment, but forgiving of his choices – and she’d never know the truth of the deceit, never ask what needed to be asked, or do what needed to be done.

The demons would win.

That was probably what rankled most of all.

Abject despair welled up from the depths of his heart, tightening his throat and prickling his eyes with the threat of tears. He fought it back down again, shivering with the effort, determined not to break down in front of the pitiless gaze of the watching guards. In some ways this was the moment of his trial; although he wasn’t aware of it then, the steel in his bones was nothing beside the steel with which experience had tempered his soul. Even engulfed by hopelessness, he chose valor over cowardice - chose to face what was to come with resolute dignity, even if doing so was a pointless, empty gesture that only he would recognise.

Somewhere in the distance – muffled by intervening wood and steel – someone rang a bell. Not an alarm bell, not even the insistent ripple of a school bell – but a single, clear note of summons, ringing with imperious demand. The two guards exchanged a glance.

Then they opened the door.

A dark, foetid musk rolled out, a wave of odious warmth laced with echoes of old sweat, older fear and ancient decay. It was accompanied by a low gasp of sound, a murmur of anticipation voiced by an as yet unseen crowd. The space beyond the doorway was an odd mixture of light and darkness, one that obscured what lay ahead; there were dim shapes and the sense of something moving, and beyond that a halo of illumination, as if the subject it displayed were the focus point of a spotlight. Giles blinked, letting his eyes adjust to the sudden shift of light, which seemed oddly soft and golden compared to the harsh electrics of the passageway. It had taken him some time to realise that the subtle changes in his eyes were a lot more than simple cosmetics; even now he was uncertain of the limits of his altered vision. A lifetime spent behind glasses hadn’t prepared him for sudden pinpoint focus, an ability to adjust to extreme low light conditions and a much wider range to his visual spectrum. He was beginning to suspect that he might even be able to perceive a limited level of infrared – although that only seemed to work when there was no other source of light, and even then the heat source still had to be reasonably strong to register.

The blink worked magic; he was staring at a scene straight out of ancient Rome, albeit one overlain with modern trappings and the advantages of technology. The hall beyond the door had probably been intended to serve the prison as a secure sports arena, the sort of institutionalised gymnasium where rival establishments could conduct a mockery of competition while spectators watched from restricted and manageable benches. There was a short narrow passageway ahead of him, leading to a large open space surrounded by a paneled barrier that was at least shoulder height. There was a glass panel the same height again standing above the barrier, isolating anyone behind it from the action they observed. On the far side of the space, overlooking everything, there was a raised platform, a private box, set apart from the rest of the spectators’ space. It was that which was illuminated - by the shaft of a spotlight, which pierced down from the shadowed ceiling. In the centre of it, comfortably ensconced on a high backed leather chair, was Henshaw, holding court with the arrogance of emperors. Seated on either side of him were his senior supporters; Wilson on his right, and another man , dressed somewhat incongruously in a white coat, on his left. There were more uniformed guards standing behind them – and around the whole arena, positioned at the back of the crowd that occupied the common benches.

A big crowd.

It looked like the whole of the prison population had been turned out to watch the show. They sat shoulder to shoulder in rows four or five deep, a sea of shadowed gray in which hints of eyes gleamed with anticipatory fervor. They were murmuring softly, an odd noise for such an extensive gathering. As the door swung open one or two of them began to drum out a soft slow beat, their fingers tapping against the wooden benches on which they were sat.

All of that, he registered in a wary glance – and then immediately forgot about most of it, since what really caught his eye was the shiver of movement and the stir of shapes that occupied the centre of the makeshift coliseum. The polished floor was in shadow; the victim entering this diabolic court was probably intended to see little more than hints of activity, bare glimpses of the horror awaiting him.

But he had been gifted with the vision of angels – well, a fallen one, at least. He could make out much more than hints and intimations. Could see exactly what his fate was intended to be.

The bulky, armoured bodies were just as the grimoires described them; their angled, jointed legs jutted up around flat turtle-like torsos – although no turtle alive ever possessed the hook-like limbs that emerged from beneath their shells. Dark eyes gleamed from under the arch of their armour, sitting above sucking mouths ringed with several rows of teeth. The biggest ones were nearly three feet across, although most were only half that size. Creatures like them had once scuttled through the catacombs of Rome, corrupting an entire city and bringing about the fall of an Empire. They had seduced the minds of the rulers of the known world and driven them mad with desire. They had driven the Vandals to sack that same city with fearsome bloodlust – and they had sent the fanatics of the Inquisition to murder thousands of innocents, all in the name of a God of Love.

Tyrant bugs.

The floor was heaving with them.

Giles’ heart – already burdened with guilt, and racked with despair – sank like a weighted stone. There were some days when it just didn’t pay to be an expert in demonic lore; when faced with something this loathsome, ignorance really would have been bliss.

"Why don’t you come in, Ripper?" Henshaw’s invitation was hardly meant to be friendly; one of his men reinforced it with a jab from another of the electrified prods. Giles stumbled forward with involuntary reaction, the shock reverberating through his bruised and battered body with startling pain. A bug scuttled away from under his feet and he nearly tripped, twisting round so that he hit wall instead of floor, his shoulder slamming up against the side of the narrow passageway.

The watching crowd drew in a collective gasp – and then let it out again as he pushed himself back to his feet.

Henshaw stood up, nodding to the waiting guards, who immediately closed the door, locking their prisoner in with the squirm of the Aslewaugh. The light from the corridor must have been keeping them at bay, because they began to swarm into the passageway, scuttling up the walls and staring at their latest victim with predatory consideration.

"I said, come in," the Warden commanded, beckoning imperiously. Giles swallowed against the dryness in his throat and took a cautious pace forward, stepping over a bug and then freezing in place as another one crouched down in preparation for a leap. The resumption of stillness seemed to work; the creature lost interest and scuttled away. Henshaw laughed. It was echoed by a ripple of matching amusement from the gathered crowd.

"Don’t think caution will save you," he advised. "They’re just getting the measure of what you are, deciding which of them will get to feed. Normally we offer a challenge; a man who can stay on his feet as far as the centre of the court gets a place on the benches afterwards. And if they can cover the distance without one of them so much as touching them – well, that never happens. No-one’s that innocent. Wilson here made it with only two latched on to him; and that was pretty impressive. Of course, the ones they bring down they keep, so it’s safer to keep walking, no matter what they do.

"Actually," he smiled, "in your case – you’d probably be better off just sitting down right there and letting them get in quick. Not as entertaining for the rest of us, but – I’ve decided - if you make it to the centre spot? She’s going to get what’s left of you. She hasn’t fed for a while. And I like to keep her sweet if I can."

"Sir?" Wilson questioned, sounding somewhat alarmed. The Warden turned and smiled at him.

"Don’t be squeamish, Martin. We’ll be saving the County the cost of a trial. Everyone’s guilty of something – and if he did what they say he did, Ripper here will be nothing but a husk long before we let her out. In fact," he added thoughtfully, "I’m surprised they haven’t gone for him already."

So was Giles. Henshaw might think he was in charge of events, but the Watcher knew that the Aslewaugh were little more than appetite and mindless desire. There was very little that would hold them back once they had sight of potential prey. His shoulders were crawling in anticipation of their attack; surely it wouldn’t be long before one or more of them scented the taint he carried - the weight of his guilt and the nature of the demon he’d become? And then there were the echoes of his past, the less savoury moments in his life, which a lifetime of regret had never quite been able to erase.

In Tyrant bug terms, he ought to be a veritable smorgasbord.

So why hadn’t they mobbed him?

What were they waiting for?

The soft drumming from the gathered prisoners picked up in volume as more and more joined in with the slow, rhythmic beat. Giles swallowed against the taut dryness in his throat and took another cautious pace forward, slowly easing a bare foot past angled legs and back onto the polished floor. His heart was beating twice as fast as the measured cadence from the crowd, hammering inside his chest with terrified expectation.

The first bite would probably be the worst. There’d be a moment of exquisite pain - and then the numbness would creep over him, enslaving him to the Tyrant’s spell while his creatures greedily sucked the darkness out of him – and the strength of his soul with it. There probably wouldn’t be much left for her. No fight left in him by then, no protest or resistance as the Aslewaugh brood mother claimed the purer, sweeter stuff for herself.

He wondered if he’d still be conscious when they started in on his flesh – and whether he’d care even if he was.

The Alsewaugh were watching him, their restless movements beginning to still as they registered his presence in their playground. He was the target of hundreds of eyes – the centre of attention for both the mortal and the demon crowd. Maybe Henshaw was right. Maybe the best thing to do was to simply sit down and let the bugs do their worst.

Only – he’d defied the Incandescent in every moment of their time together – and despite the hopelessness in his heart, there was a little piece of him saying he’d be damned if he just gave in to these things after all of that.

He’d make the walk; meet the challenge. Face his fate like a man.

Even if he couldn’t exactly call himself one anymore.

He took another step.

And another.

The drum beat began to falter. The entire audience were leaning forward, holding their breath in anticipation. Henshaw, who’d settled back into his chair, was among them; his eyes were narrowing in wary confusion. Beside him, Martin Wilson had shuffled forward to the edge of his seat and was beginning to look decidedly concerned.

The bugs were almost completely still by now, crouched low to the ground in huddled clusters, so that he was forced to step sideways before he could move forward again. Dark eyes swiveled to track his progress, hungry eyes that saw through flesh and bone to measure the soul that lay beneath. His skin crawled as he took yet another step, wondering when they were going to make their move.

"This isn’t right," he heard Wilson mutter as the Warder leant forward to catch Henshaw’s ear. "They never wait this long."

"They’re just playing with him," the Warden assured him, although he didn’t sound entirely convinced. "All the more for her, you know?"

"What if we’re wrong?" Wilson asked worriedly. "What if he’s as innocent as he claims?"

Henshaw laughed. "Now, that would be something, wouldn’t it? Walk the walk and walk free. Won’t happen, Martin. Never does. The less they take, the more she gets."

The warden sat back with a anticipatory gleam in his eye; his head warder subsided warily, his eyes firmly fixed on the man in the midst of monsters, taking one careful step at a time.

It was an ordeal its victim would never forget. Each wary pace was made with a caught back breath and a pounding, panicked heart. One wrong step, and that would be it. It would only take one. He’d go down. They’d swarm over him and then …

No more terror. No more grief. Just an end.

He paused for a moment, caught by that thought, by the temptation it offered – and then he shuddered and stumbled forward again, rejecting the idea, refusing to accept the concept of surrender. You didn’t give in to the dark. It had to come and get you, had to drag you down, kicking and screaming to the very end.

Or else you had to jump, the way Buffy had done. Defiantly. Brilliantly. Filled with righteous fire.

He didn’t feel filled with anything, right there and then. He’d ridden the emotional rollercoaster all the way to the top, and now he hung suspended over the precipice, waiting for the final drop, the last tumbling part of the ride. His world was nothing but black and white, the gleaming eyes of the bugs and the siren light over the Warden’s box, pulling him forward. The faltering, fading drum beat provided a counterpoint to his racing heart.

And still he walked forward, one step after another, picking his way through the sea of Aslewaugh, feeling their hunger rake across his soul again and again. He didn’t understand why they didn’t move. He didn’t understand at all.

A long, wary pace, past the largest skulking bug; it gnashed its teeth and shifted slightly from side to side – but it didn’t lunge up, didn’t even try to bite. Nor did the next.

Or the one after that.

The drum beat died away completely.

There was nothing but stunned silence as he took the final step forward, arriving at the centre of the space unencumbered by any of the lurking parasites. He managed one more pace – and then dropped to his knees with a gasp, wracked with the adrenaline of terror and anticipation, felled by the sudden comprehension of what had just happened.

They hadn’t touched him.

He had walked the gauntlet and they had judged him clean.

No human judge could have made such a profound pronouncement. He knew what he had done, and, whatever anyone might say, he knew the horror of it, the truth of his guilt. But the Aslewaugh were nothing but mindless parasites; they feasted on evil and they would find it, no matter how deeply it lay buried in a man’s soul, no matter how ruthlessly it had been concealed by excuse or justification. For them to let him pass – to assess him and reject him, unworthy of their insatiable appetites – was to be gifted with unconditional absolution.

And he finally understood what Buffy had been trying to tell him, all along.

That the gift of the Archon hadn’t just driven back the onslaught of darkness. It had restored his heart and redeemed his soul.

It was as if weight fell away from him, freeing a little of the light he carried, letting it creep into his wounds and ease a little of the pain. Not the guilt – which was something he needed to face, accept and move past in order to go on with his life – nor the grief, which belonged to scars he would never entirely lose; but the fear faded, and with it, some of the abhorrence for what he’d become. His body might have been reshaped in a demon’s image – but he could finally face the nature of that change, and, by doing so, came to understand that he – and he alone – would be the one to determine what became of the Incandescent’s legacy.

From darkness, the gift. From judgement, the justice. From wisdom, the way. Know thyself …

Garbled words on the wind, the advice of ancient spirits, to whom he should have been paying closer attention.

Freed from the numbing weight that had oppressed his soul for so long, other emotions bubbled up, released from festering wounds and desperately seeking expression. Angry emotions, raging against the evil that had been done to him and the extremes it had driven him to: fury at the depths of helplessness to which he’d been reduced, and bitter, seething indignation at the arrogance and obsessive perversions of the creature who had corrupted him.

The Incandescent was dead, released from his madness by the very man he’d chosen to be his heir. But there were other evils in the world: demons to fight, malevolence to thwart, terrors to overthrow. Right now, for instance, he was kneeling in the middle of a nest of Tyrant bugs, while their victims bayed for his blood and their chosen host watched the spectacle with a quiet smile on his face.

The same smile, no doubt, with which Caligua had watched the insanity of his games.

The men the warden had fed to his pets might be lawbreakers, guilty of their crimes – but no man deserved to have his soul slowly sucked out of him, while his will and his sense of self eroded away. The whole situation was a travesty of justice, a mocking carnival designed to conceal the obscenity it supported, the vile appetites of nothing more than foul, filthy parasites.

For the first time in a long time, Rupert Giles got mad – and let Ripper out.

He stood up slowly, a small smile curling onto his features; a smile of reckless confidence, one that didn’t care for consequences, just wanted action - and plenty of it. He’d spent a long time learning to curb that side of his nature, learning how to channel his restless need for thrill and excitement into more constructive stimulation. He knew the harm that could result from succumbing to those kinds of temptations and had long since suppressed both the need and the desire to pursue them. But there was still a part of him that echoed his undisciplined youth, and for once the more civilised, measured aspect of himself moved aside to give it free reign.

He mentally stepped over the waiting precipice, choosing it, hurtling down the slope with an inner scream of furious defiance. Since it was still extremely likely that he was going to die, he might as well go down fighting.

And he might as well do it with style …

"You have to stop this," Wilson was on his feet and pleading, speaking to the Warden with desperate appeal. "He’s an innocent man! You saw – you can’t let this happen!"

Henshaw simply smiled. "Sometimes it can be necessary to sacrifice the innocent, Martin. So that the guilty can know the price they will have to pay." He lifted himself out of his chair and moved forward to the rail, looking down at his latest victim, a quietly sorrowed beneficence written across his face. "You understand that, don’t you?" he asked, studying the handcuffed man the way a child might study the bug it was about squish under its shoe. "It’s all in the service of the greater good. Feed the demon, and he will serve you. Starve him – and he will devour the world."

Giles clenched his fists, tensed his arm muscles – and tugged. The chain between the cuffs tightened, and then broke, ripped apart by a combination of righteous fury and a strength spawned in hell. Fingers laced with steel slid into the cuffs and cracked the inferior metal, letting the weight of them tumble away. He paid no heed to the bruises his actions raised. Pain was something he was intimately familiar with; compared to what he’d survived, the momentary damage held no pain at all.

"The trouble with demons, Warden," he said with quiet certainty, "is that they are demons. They don’t play by the usual rules."

The Warden laughed. "You speak like a man who knows, Ripper," he said, sharing the joke with his audience, who murmured a discomforted response. Wilson was staring at their prisoner with startled eyes. Men who could rip their way out a pair of regulation handcuffs like that were few and far between.

Giles’s response was wry. "You could say that," he observed confidently. There were skittering noises behind him; the Aslewaugh, confident in their judgement, had begun to creep forward en-masse – intending, no doubt to herd their victim to his doom. Henshaw nodded to the men on the far side of the gym and they moved to open the door that lay there, letting in another wave of noxious air.

"Henshaw," Wilson pleaded with a look of agitated horror. "You can’t be serious. He’s an innocent man. For god’s sake – get him out of there!"

Henshaw shot him an impatient look. "What’s done is done," he announced firmly. "So sit down and enjoy the show – or I’ll make you part of it."

"I’d do what he says," Giles suggested, giving the distraught warder a reassuring smile. "This could get a little messy."

Something was oozing its way out of the door. Something with lots of angled legs and a bulging, bloated body, like a fat distorted spider. The Aslewaugh’s brood mother was huge, cumbersome and reeking of decay; she crawled forward with dripping jaws while her children scurried around and over her with eager speed.

"I really am sorry," the Warden said, not sounding sorry at all. "But she so rarely gets a fresh, untainted soul. This will be a real treat for her."

"Oh god," Wilson groaned, subsiding into his chair and shaking with helpless horror. "I never thought – I – I’m sorry," he murmured. "I’m really, really sorry …"

"Sha, sha, sha," the gathered prisoners began to intone, once again banging bare hands against the benches to raise a faster and more demanding drumbeat. Giles swept them with a wary look. Zombies, all of them, enslaved to the tyrant’s will, empty of defiance, empty of desire.

"You did see the inscription, didn’t you?" Henshaw asked conversationally, sinking back into his chair to watch the inevitable play out. "The one over our main door? Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."

"Dante’s Inferno," the scholar noted abstractedly. He was more concerned with the progress of the monster that was crawling towards him. She was armoured on her back and sides – but her belly was soft. Vulnerable. And he had a trick or two up his sleeve.

"You know the reference?"

Rupert Giles – earthly Watcher, student of history and expert in the occult – knew it intimately. Too intimately perhaps. Because it was the prince of Malador, heir to the Incandescent and last of the Grigori, who answered the question with a knowing smile. "I know the place," he declared, extending his arms and the blades with them; metal shnickted into place with a soft, defiant ring. "I happen to own my own little piece of hell."

Long Sea Crossing. Chapter Two Part Six. Disclaimer:This story has been written for love rather than profit and is not intended to violate any copyrights held by anyone - Universal, Pacific Rennaisance, or any other holders of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys or Buffy the Vampire slayer trademarks or copyrights.
© 2003. Written by Pythia. Reproduced by Penelope Hill