Fool's Adventures: A Demon's Souls/Buffy the Vampire Slayer Quest

Pages turned between your fingers as you held a tiny little paper bound book in your hands and read it in silence.
"...and so Damien kissed me, his velvet lips on mine drowning my senses in their sweetness. Lightning shot through my brain as I clutched at him like a drowning woman. My heart thudded along with his and his hand tugged sweetly at my hair."
How... odd.
You were entranced with this creation you held in your hand. Your eyes dashed from word to word and your hands couldn't leave them as you hovered gently over the floor and Annie lounged besides you in a sprawl.
The past hours of turmoil were just gone. Shoved away and replaced with this. You turned the pages one after another at a savory pace. An emotion matching that pace slowly began to fill you up. The story was holding you in the palm of its hand. And the delightful, actually delightful thing, was that this was an awful example of writing!
Terrible, this Damien is completely amateurish in his manipulations. It amused you so much to read these fumblings and the prose. The prose made a part of you smile for how simperingly romantic it was. It fondly reminded you of all the braves who would propose to guard your heart in the Tower, rescue you from it. Not knowing you didn't have one to guard.
The story of a banker trying to woo his woman tugged at your mind, pulling it out of its labyrinthine mosaic of agony. But, it was fleeting, like toying with humans. And that made you fondly remember a man, a prisoner, who strung along one of your 'maids'. And you laughed gaily as you remembered what you did to him, turning him into a Mind Flayer. A guard of twisted flesh for your domain, and even made the woman a 'friend'. Until you ate her soul one darkling night. You have fun, actual fun, placing the face of that man on the face of this Damien figure.
The Things have fun too, all the little babies in your head dancing and capering at the adventures you show them. Too stupid and unfinished to understand anything but the suffering the characters go through as they navigate a web of their own manipulations.
It is easy to put yourself in the position of their friends and "loved" ones as a manipulator. Imagining yourself causing all of this and then perverting it at the end.
You lean back and find a comfortable back to lean on. Annie. Your train of thought changes.
"Annie my dear," you say as you stretch and turn to sit shoulder to shoulder with her. You hold up the book, a finger holding your place elegantly. "I find the human passion for love so delightfully limited."

She smiles at you, getting some of the context through your tone. "Oh? What do you mean my Lady?" She asks as she salutes you with her drink and takes a breath of her cigarette. You can feel everything in you, all of your emotions, and all of the Things, rushing forward as if great double doors were thrown open.
"Ah! Here and in everywhere I have seen, from the lands of fair and rotten Latria to the cold snow of Stonefang. Here in this town of thousands." You say as you wave your hand around at the walls. "Love is believed to be this great and wonderful thing, which brings pain and then happiness and more of itself." You lean forward as you proselytize, shaking the book and letting it fall open as you speak faster.
"But," you raise your finger, "It is not. This is a lie humans tell themselves to feel like heroes in their own stories. In their own Souls."
Annie raises her eyebrows and leans forward, caught in the flow of your preaching.
"Love is a betrayal of the self. You must take from within yourself and give it to someone else. In that action you tell the lie to yourself that your Soul does not shiver in delicious agony. That is a choice that Fog Demons cannot make, because we consume ourselves in self-love perverted into hunger for more of our own Soul."
You see her eyes widen in realization as she lowers the bottle of rum. "Power." She says. You nod.
"The Soul is the root of Power. In our self love our Soul is consumed and perverted and that love is itself consumed." You grab a 'whiskey' from the cluster beside your sworn Knight. The cap pops off under your magic and you take a delicate sip, the alcohol going down smoothly.
"What humans get wrong if they expose this lie to themselves, is trying to manipulate others to get every piece of love for themselves. They try to have their paramours give everything to them and give nothing themselves." You say with iron conviction, and then you show your particular spot in the book and say. "Like this Damien figure in this book. He is trying to emotionally manipulate his paramour, reasoning it as 'wooing' her. And he is so amateurish, because he thinks he broke through the lie. Though not ever phrased like that to himself."
You shake your head. "Humans are fools for love."
Annie starts laughing then and you look at her, pausing. Her happiness buffets the air as she rolls over, clutching her stomach as she curls away from the drinks. It settles something in you to see such a reaction from her.
Shortly though she stops and lays down fully, stretching, carefully taking breaths on her cigarette. Then she smirks at you. "Got that right my Lady." She says with a satisfied tone. She shakes her head. "Most of my boyfriends were total assholes, for reasons basically boiling down to not treating me like a person."
She shrugs. "Frankly I decided I was more important than them." She blinks and exhales a breath full of alcohol stink. "Then I went cuckoo and it stopped mattering."
You hand her the book and pull another one out of the stack behind you. She takes it and begins to read, sitting up to grab her drink again. Then she keeps going and reaches over to the gramophone and sets one of the disks to playing. Orchestral music fills the room as you sit shoulder to shoulder, paging through your books and laughing over the idiocy in their pages as you drink. Eventually cigarettes find their way into your mouth and you find them acceptable. Their poison does nothing to you, nor does the drink really affect you like it should, but the tastes and celebration and taking from Annie's soul more than makes up for any mortal lacking.
You eventually take to trying on your dresses, and seeing Annie in them. You know inside that the best thing you liked was being admired as you tried on the dresses. One after the other after the other. Your covetous mind cooed over the sequins as your face stayed stoic and imperious or cunningly manipulative. Music played as you danced to them and you sang in your native tongue to the rising strains of Russian classical. Sometimes Annie would wonder what you were singing meant and so you'd tell little stories.
Yellow, blue, black, pink. Dazzling sparkles and trails of cloth and all sorts of other little wonders followed you as you sung about snowy nights on your towertop. You even pulled out and wore the yellow piece you had gotten what felt like so long ago, when you met that woman Joyce. After you put that on you decided it was going to stay on and the rest of the night was spent drinking and dressing up Annie as she drunkenly read the dumbest lines from the three novels you had.
Eventually your Knight fell asleep after drinking her entire bottle of rum and sharing with you some very strange drinking songs. They fit well as war ballads to your ear. Now she was laid out by the door. You could tell though that she'd wake up if you needed her.
Though to put your things in order you didn't need her. But... hmm. Your eyes drifted back over to the books. Then the rest of you followed. I can have her clean tomorrow.
You pull open the pirate novel, your favorite. How... delightfully odd. You thought to yourself, again. The sounds of ominous wind chime giggles filled the Manor.
***
Quiet scraping filled the sanctum as you floated serenely near the door. Your Knight was picking up the remnants from your 'party'. Along the way most of the alcohol had been consumed by you, barring one rum bottle, along with two packs of cigarettes. All the remains of that were gone now and Annie was currently carefully organizing things. Unfortunately the shelves were unsalvageable, your inhuman strength having ripped them completely out of the stone walls and bent their anchor bolts.
Instead Annie was carefully arranging things based around your wardrobe and chair and the anchor point sigils in each corner of the room. Hmm. I will need to adjust those tonight. You thought as your eyes passed over the anchor sigils. The Hellmouth had shifted somewhat. Your chair was back in the far left corner and Annie had brought down a low end table from one of the fourth floor rooms. Neither of you go in there so it was easy to salvage furniture from the bedrooms.
With the end table beside your chair she had your most actively used books stacked on top of it neatly while the rest went into the bottom of your wardrobe. The other things like the various odd ingredients she carefully put away in a cabinet set up behind your chair, again taken from the upper floor.
"My Lady?" You looked up at her curious question. "Where are your book and scroll?" Annie asked you as she held a dusting cloth in her Glove. You blinked, thoughts slightly offset as you realized she missed the obvious.
"They're with me." You answer simply. Annie nods, confusion seeming to abate, even if the book and scroll don't appear to be on your person. You're just, holding them, inside. You don't need to carry them outside your Soul right now. With that addressed it doesn't take much longer at all for your Knight to finish up and be ready to leave.
The sun was descending and the traffic thick as you arrived at the school. You can already feel their Souls, the Warrior's entire posse was here. Though there are a few others around near the edges. You will have to keep an eye on them. It was odd to you that they were here, you had understood that most humans avoided this place on the weekends. You hide away a thought to discover why later.
Getting in was not difficult, as you spotted a partially cracked door leading into the administration portion of the building. Quickly moving down the halls you head towards the library where the Souls you've come to see are gathered. Gliding into the library you find all of the computers turned off and partially taken apart? You are not sure, nor paying attention to that since they are inactive, looking at the group gathered around the tables poring over a very large selection of books.
"Hey boys and girls, we're here." Annie's voice announces you energetically. You see her waving at them out of the corner of your eye with the Glove. "Ah! It is a pleasure, we have a lot to show you." Giles says as he straightens up from the right hand side of the table and turns towards you.
The girls both grin at you, Buffy pushing her hair back as she and Willow exchange a glance which goes right over Xander's head. The boy seems slightly morose, deep in his expression where most would miss it. Which makes sense given what Annie told you about the conversation at the Bronze.
Then they turned to you and Buffy spoke up as they examine your shiny yellow dress. "That cut looks really good on you, where'd you find it?" Her tone was surprisingly guileless. Your train of thought tilts for a second, then you push it aside and put on a fake smile as you look at her and slowly walk closer.
"Maple Street. I actually met your mother there in a funny little coincidence." Your voice was light. You looked at them both as a part of you purred at their admiration. Willow was interesting in simple jeans and a loose sweater, a style hunched in on itself. Except the jeans, which were very slightly embroidered with needle work flowers by the front pockets. "Did you embroider those yourself Willow?" You ask as you catch Xander watch the three of you with interest in his eyes.
The mage-girl nods slightly, her response quiet. "Yeah, I've been teaching myself. Helps me think." She says a little awkwardly, with her typical embarrassed chuckle. You just smile and then look up as you get within a stride of the table and stop.
Past them your eye is drawn to a rather odd and displeasing book set off to one end of the table. It was the book Annie had described to you last night. You did not like the imprint it left in the Hellmouth. You smiled at everyone and looked to Giles.
"Please share Giles, I don't think we have a lot of time." You say as you step forward and lean on the table with a subtle authoritative bent, noting with pleasure the interest everyone directs your way. You note with a pleased and malicious thought how the color of the yellow dress, the first one you got, improves the attention you get. You won't be seen in anything except your best. As befits a Queen, even to these mortals who don't know that.
Taking a seat near the librarian's you rest a hand on your chin. Giles takes the moment to start pulling things closer to his side of the table. "It took us some time, but after suggestions from Willow and Xander," who both brighten to differing degrees, "we found where to begin." The librarian starts as he pulls open a small book, almost a journal and gestures to the blank paged prison sitting on the table.
"The inspiration came from what I gather the Italians performed to first seal him in the 15th century. We unfortunately could not find the original example of the ritual nor any other form, but tracing the original ritual's purpose, effects and target we were able to find a similar theory in this." He said as he showed you the journal.
It was leather bound and soft from age in your hands as he passed it to you, open to a specific page. The ritual was an interesting one to you. It touched on matters of Soul and distance you had not seen in this world's magics yet. With your dark eyes roving over the surface you listened with one ear to his continuing explanation.
"It is a record of an old Slavic warding ritual for trapping spirits of lightning who disobeyed Thor. An interesting concept from a historical perspective, but ah, that's for another time." This should work. You think to yourself. You heard him sigh and look up, to see a pained expression on everyone's face. Though Buffy's is the least contrite and Willow's is as you expected the most.
"We aren't going to be able to trap him in the book again." He says, a deep pain in his voice. You raise an inquisitive eyebrow. Behind you Annie raises her voice.
"We're going to have to destroy school property after we trap the critter in it, aren't we." She says confidently, and with very well hidden relish.
Giles winces and sighs as he takes his glasses in one hand and rubs his nose. "Yes." Then he shrugs as he reaffixes his scholarly persona. "But needs must as they say." You glance at the book, thinking.
You want it. It needs to burn. A prison for demons needs to burn.
Putting those thoughts aside you look at Giles and nod. "Indeed." You have already read through the ritual as laid out in the book and thus set it down on the table. But you knew it wasn't the full scope of it, there were pieces on a conceptual level which would not do as you wished.
You lean closer. "Pass me the rest then please?" Giles smiles slightly and begins to explain what they have in mind to modify the lightning ritual, with the others occasionally speaking. Annie hangs behind you silently, calm in the midst of all this arcane explanation.
A quarter of an hour later and you're heading to the computer lab. You 'sneak' in easily. The boy takes up a watchpost at the door on Giles suggestion and Buffy and Annie take up position around your chosen computer. One near the back of the room and the windows, each girl on either side of the computer and Buffy having gotten a pair of fire axes from a weapon locker in the library. She handed one to your Knight easily as they took up positions on either side of the computer. That left you, Giles and Willow to mark the circle and set down the ingredients.
Burnt wood, glass, lizard scales and many other small things set at the cardinal points of the ritual made for a rather busy mess. The three of you arranged yourselves in a semi-circle around the computer. You hold one end of the arc with Giles at the head and Willow at the other end. Buffy and Annie are a meter inside the circle and standing to either side of Giles. Annie is closest to you and watching the computer warily, she seems to have decided to worry about getting everyone out of the circle while Buffy hits the computer, if necessary.
Giles holds open a book, another notebook, in both hands, looking somewhat confidently at the target of this particular ritual. Everything invisible, Hellmouth and demon, was quiet. Distracted you think. "Ready?" The librarian asked as he straightened.
You waved a hand languorously, while Willow nodded and said "Yeah!" Enthusiastically. With that he starts chanting in a guttural, consonant riddled language. Human you are sure, and one you understand easily. You follow after him along with the mage girl as your hands rise in a facsimile of prayer.
"O ware lightning
O ware lightning
Ware your brother thunder
He comes for you
Here, come to my door
It is open and the hearth warm."
You can see the circle light up from within in a pale amber color as the offerings catch alight. The Hellmouth flows towards the group, spinning clockwise past your back. You could see the light of Moloch's Soul stream through the walls and ceiling towards the computer in front of you. The next verse begins to pull on the demon.
"O lightning I name myself your kin
Kin and lover and child
Come, come to my hearth
I have a home for you
Where you may repose forever
and a day."
Sparks startle Buffy and Annie as they leap from the computer, arcing all around it as Moloch became tied to the computer. His attention, the component needed to tie him to it. He roared through the device, crackling sparks reaching out from the screen as Giles moved to the next verse, the scholar's voice calm and level. The fury of this amatuer demon amused you and you felt yourself smiling and the Things capering.
Your senses are linked now by the ritual as your energies mix with those of Giles and Willow. Their breath fluttered in your ears, and you feel like you were holding hands with them even across the distance separating you.
"O lightning do come in
I am your kin and kith
Look at this table I
Have made for you
Savor these offerings
I hand to you freely."
There was no pause between this verse and the next as the lightning curved into a cage around the computer, its frame and the table charring black like your dried ichor.
"We come to you with open door
Free and true
Come in
Come in lightning
Face your kin in our shared hall
We share love free and true
Come and be bound to our hearth!"
You could see the flow of energies, and feel Giles' breath hitch as he noticed the problem as well. You are binding the creature, but too slowly. He will gather power, and while his lightning nature allows you to trap him, that nature will also allow him to slip the noose if he gathers enough power. With a push of effort the librarian changes his next words, trusting you and Willow to follow along and change the narrative of what you are doing.
"O lightning we see you now
No lightning you are
Moloch we name you
Moloch
Moloch
Moloch
Know your name true
An intruder in our hall
Be bound by sin
And your doom.
By the power of Thor
We command you!"
The nature of the ritual changes, becoming one of just entrapment and slithering away from its nature of temptation like a snake and its skin. As you start the next verse you feel a Soul approaching, one aged with the beginnings of wisdom.
Your chanting takes on more urgency, beyond the ritual reaching a crescendo, tugging the others along after.
"We know you true
Moloch be ye
The Corruptor be your title
And demense."
The boy bursts into the room during the middle of the verse. "Guys, Jenny's coming!" The shout pulls everyone's attention except for yours and Giles towards the door. The flow distorts. A frown builds and the Things cease their capering with your emotions, pit like eyes staring out of yours.
"Wearying influence be your curse
No more we say
In the name of the Thunder King
We shall strike ye!"
You finish the verse and on the indrawn breath for the next the door flies open again as Xander backs away. Slamming against the wall it makes everyone in the room flinch as that Soul you felt pushed through the door.
"What the heck is going on here!?" A taller woman with dark black hair and dark eyes yells. Witch. You know her for what she is, your eyes don't lie to you as magic hangs around her. Nor do the emotions in your head, the Things silent.
She's stepped too close and you hear a rip on the magical plane like steel tearing as the Hellmouth reacts to her presence. The ritual breaks, and the ritual's words freeze in everyone's mouths. "Fools. I would give you love, but you spurn me with lies?" A voice fills the room as the cascade of magic turns into a massive rippling dome of lightning burning the ceiling and destroying the lights as everyone steps back.
He sounds like a friend.
My faithful Knight.
That, burns. It burns in the fire within you, the skull resting at the center of your true self shrieking and the Things cower away from you. It speaks again. "Begone." There is then an almighty boom.
Annie is struck by a rippling sheet of lightning as wide as she is, the energy stolen from the Hellmouth by Moloch. The force sends her flying through the air as her Glove glows like a star. It is too fast for her to scream as she collides with the ground and slides. Smoke rising from her jacket.
A moment takes you out of the circle and then you lurch over her. "Annie?"
She doesn't move and the glove begins to cool. Her Soul is within her still, confused by the strike of lightning.
Then she coughs and flips over on her side, opening one eye to stare at you. "Ow." Her voice is rough, like she just got done with a handful of cigarettes and smoke leaks out her nose.
You offer a forearm and she grips it with her flesh hand and slowly pulls herself upright with your assistance.
"Oh f-" The woman, Jenny says again before cutting herself off and you look over at her briefly. You look back at your Knight. Can't lose another one. "Um, well this is awkward." You hear the witch say.
You can hear Giles shyly stutter and fumble around unseen behind you, with a hissing sound of crumbling paper. "Ah hmmm. This uh, isn't what it looks like?" He finally gets out.
Annie carefully stands on her own as the Glove returns to its proper color and heat. Then Buffy speaks up as she pushes suddenly frizzy blonde hair out of her face. "I think there is some explaining. That we all need to do?"
The silence is palpable.
What does the Idol feel about the woman barging in?
[] She feels Anger.
[] She feels Irritation.
[] She feels Surprise.
[] She feels Caution.
[] She feels Frustration.
[] She feels Bemusement.
[] She feels Hate.

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