[X] Start searching through other places in the castle complex for Tapparich immediately.
Buffy glanced at Jonathan, who was cringing at the notion of Bantha opening more seals, and shook her head. "No. It won't work. We could lose the Veil, or set off some kind of alarm even if we don't, and then Tapparich will be waiting out here for us ready to fight."
"Not much chance of us avoiding a fight however we do this," Skip said.
Buffy wiped some sweat off her brow. "I'd rather do it somewhere that isn't boiling, and also without the convenient lava pit for him to chuck people into with the telekinesis that we know he has."
"Wait, he has telekinesis?" Angel asked. Apparently his research really hadn't been the best. "Are we sure?"
"Telekinesis, levitation, and soul magic," Nigel recited. Angel got a very worried look.
"Not that kind," Buffy said. "Not that kind, right guys?"
"Probably not without a lot of prep," Jonathan said.
"Great," Buffy said. "Anyway, time's a-wastin', let's go."
"Do we actually have any idea where we're supposed to go? Even if I could hold this forever, and I can't, these pills are running out," Jonathan was stressed.
"What are all these courtiers talking about? They probably know where he is, they might say something if we listen." Angel said. Most of the group all turned their attention to the unseeing Mok'tagar scattered around, even though only two of them knew anything about the language. It was a weird-looking lot, some of them dressed in what looked like medieval period clothing, some in the loose robes the warriors who'd fought the Initiative had, and still others wearing weirder pieces that defied easy description.
"Something about someone's skin?" Skip said uncertainly, leaning in at a group. "They're talking kind of fast."
"Do Mok'tagar actually skin people?" Buffy asked. "Is that where Kathy got her skin? Was there a real Kathy somewhere?" Maybe she should've worried about this earlier.
Bantha himself had missed some of the conversation and was still whining in Mok'tagar, presumably about the vault.
"No, no, they're just talking about the latest fashion from Grashfalar," Nigel said authoritatively. "It's not even the kind they use as human disguises."
"Tapparich didn't go there to oversee a shipment or something, did he?" Buffy asked.
"No, I doubt he'd leave the city outside of an emergency," Skip said. "It's probably just meaningless noble chit-chat."
Nigel listened in on a few more conversations, but couldn't rustle up anything relevant (though apparently there was a warehouse full of kittens somewhere. She had half a mind to loot it when this was all over.) Just when she was starting to really worry about the lack of direction, Bantha seemed to get an idea and started moving with a short growl.
"What did he say?" Jonathan asked.
"Follow me," Nigel translated.
"How informative," Phillip said.
"Not a lot of other ideas here," Buffy said, waving the group to get moving. "Hopefully it isn't just Timmy down a well."
Whatever idea he'd gotten into head, Bantha was moving confidently at least, and soon they were many halls away from the throne room. The temperature thankfully dipped as they got farther away; it probably wasn't actually any cooler than it had been in the castle before, but after being in the presence of actual exposed lava it felt like a big improvement.
Skip had been cajoling Bantha for an explanation as they moved, and finally got him to snap back a few guttural sentences.
"We're going to his room?" Skip seemed confused again.
"That's what he said," Nigel confirmed. "But why wouldn't it be more near the throne?"
"Do feudal lords even hang out in their rooms during the day?" Jonathan wondered. "Don't they have more stuff to do?"
"I definitely don't have time to go home and take catnaps or whatever," Buffy groused.
"He seems rather confident Tapparich does," Phillip said.
Bantha stopped abruptly, examining a pair of doors, and then confidently threw one open. The half-sized Mok'tagar inside looked up, confused.
"He really was leading us to Timmy," Jonathan joked irreverently.
Skip covered his face with his spiky hand. "You've gotta be kidding me."
Angel snapped at Bantha again and that set off an argument. Meanwhile the little Mok'tagar kid got up and looked up and down the hall, totally missing them all, and then shut the door, still looking uncertain.
"Apparently this was where Tapparich's room was about six thousand years ago," Nigel explained.
Buffy would be starting to wish they'd found a better uncle if she hadn't already started to wish that hours ago. "Come on, we don't have time for the recriminations phase. Let's just keep moving, we'll think as we search. Jonathan, did opening the door-"
"That's, well, it's mostly fine, as long as you don't have to smash them down or something. People expect unlocked doors to open sometimes." She could tell he was a little hesitant. She'd try to be circumspect then.
With Bantha entering one of his indecisive periods, she ended up leading the group around. After they got out of what was presumably the kids area, she opened the occasional important looking door, but for long minutes they didn't find much of anything that was relevant, just richly appointed rooms of presumably medieval function and the occasional surprised-but-unseeing Mok'tagar. The place was a maze.
"How much time do we have left?" Nigel asked for about the fifth time.
"Not enough time to keep checking the time," Buffy responded annoyedly. She was starting to think about just bugging back out to Sunnydale again, but they were already so close, and who knew what would happen with the giant invisible horses by the time they got back. She hurriedly passed another pair of chatting Mok'tagar in the hall, both wearing unreasonably poofy dresses for the inside of a volcano. "Do none of these demons ever talk about anything important?"
Nigel turned his head towards them at her comment, "They're complaining about being kicked out of-"
At that moment, Bantha took off running.
"-the library?" Nigel finished.
"Well, there's one guy with the authority to kick anyone out of anywhere," Skip said dryly, before taking off to follow Bantha. The rest of the group took off after him too, redoubling their speed.
At least most of them did. Despite the level surface, Jonathan tripped over his own feet even as they started. Buffy reflexively slowed down to catch him again, but this time Phillip was there too.
"I'll help him, just move. You haven't got all day have you?" Phillip got a shoulder under him and started powering along, so she didn't argue and raced to catch up with Banthasnap.
She was just rounding a corner to get him back in sight as he threw a set of double doors open and charged into the next room. Angel and Skip piled in behind, and she was last through the door, afraid that using any superspeed at this point would shatter what little grip on the Veil that Jonathan had left.
The library room was using the moss for lighting again, but instead of the dimness of the secret passageway it was awash in light, the glowing material thickly slathered on every surface, including the furniture and the floors. The place was big, almost the size of the throne room, and the well organized shelves loomed about twenty feet up. Their contents were as varied as the outfits she'd seen in the castle; there were a lot of normal books, but also wrapped up scrolls, boxes of papers that looked like they belonged in filing cabinets, and angular slabs of crystal.
She could see Tapparich through the forward path between the tall stacks. He was sitting at a huge table near the room's center, scrolling through a hologram-thing coming out of one of the crystals, with one of the filing boxes and a ton of papers and scrolls laid out all around him. There were a couple Mok'tagar to her left and right, and even a few other demons, but they were all skirting the edges and keeping their distance from the Great One in the middle.
And invisible to the others, there was Banthasnap, son of Grezelnspar, moments away from smashing one of the big crystals through his nephew's head, Angel and Skip trailing yards behind. Buffy knew that his improvised sneak attack wouldn't be as deadly as hers, and that the whole team was out of position besides, but the blow came down anyway and she felt the Veil break again as the crystal exploded over Tapparich's head.
Blood spilled from the wound, but not nearly enough. Tapparich wasn't even stunned, and then shouted with rage, sending out a wave of pale energy that catapulted Bantha and knocked both Angel and Skip from their feet. The immense bookcases around them tilted back and forth with the force, and Buffy was even staggered from her position across the room.
Angel recovered first, spinning his legs into a trip that the mok'tagar Great One dodged before rolling up to his feet and slashing with his magic kris. It cut into the loose robes and Buffy wasn't sure if it hit home, but either way the move left him open to Tapparich's next magical attack. His clawed hand swung over his head and back down, causing another energy wave to slam Angel into the glowing stone floor even as the force lifted Tapparich up into the air.
KILL
Buffy was halfway to the melee before a mok'tagar leapt out at her from the aisle. She skidded to a stop as she swung her hammer around and batted him out of the air like a fly, sending his battered body sailing backwards. He crashed hard into another bookshelf that didn't quite manage to tip over, and Buffy was taking off again toward the main fight.
Tapparich was levitating in midair now, shooting down small bursts of force as Skip awkwardly tried to get him with the library table he'd picked up. While Tapparich wasn't slow enough to be hit that way, he was distracted, and Buffy jumped for one of the nearby bookshelves, hoping to bounce off and then smash Tapparich back down to the ground.
He wasn't distracted enough. She rebounded off the shelf just fine, but he waved a hand and a wall of force stopped her dead in midair. He threw another bolt of force at her as she started to fall, shouting and raging incomprehensibly. She managed to reorient in midair well enough to parry it with her hammer, sending the attack ricocheting into a particularly big crystal and exploding it into splinters.
She didn't know where Angel was, but Bantha had recovered during her jump and was throwing books and scrolls up at Tapparich. They did get through his defense, but it wasn't clear if it was because the amount of cheaty magic shields he had was limited or if it was because he just didn't care; they weren't doing very much to him. Instead of replying with more force bolts, he chanted for a few moments, twirled both hands around, and a dull orange energy beam shot out and blazed into Bantha, eliciting a pained scream and pinning the older mok'tagar to the ground. Buffy couldn't understand what Tapparich was saying, but it sounded an awful lot like evil gloating.
BURN
Which was right when Angel landed on Tapparich's back, having steathily climbed up the back of a shelf and then leapt on him when he was busy torturing his uncle. The two of them listed crazily through the air as Angel stabbed at him again and again with the Kris, but ultimately Tapparich threw him off, sending him careening into Skip as he wobbled down himself to make an uncertain landing.
Buffy knew when to press an advantage. She turned on the superspeed, closing the distance with Tapparich in a blink, and then assaulted him with half a dozen hard hammer jabs before exhaustion forced her to slow down again. It was enough damage that any normal demon, or even any exceptional demon, would've probably been down for the count.
Tapparich was made of sterner stuff though, and even though she could see the pain in his face he managed a gesture to replicate the force explosion from earlier, blowing her back and away from him. This time he'd done it close enough to a shelf that the huge stone structure toppled all the way over, crashing down and causing a domino effect that trashed a whole section of the library.
Buffy was about to get right back up and charge him again, but another pair of mok'tagar warriors came at her first. They got a few good hits in with her disoriented from the blast, and she was forced on the defensive for crucial seconds, warding them back by using the length of her hammer as a weighted staff.
Tapparich took some potshots at her as she fought, and a quick scan of the situation showed her nobody was free to help her out. The mok'tagar had come to the defense of their Great One in force, and all her allies in the library had their hands full with two or even three of them at once. She saw Angel beheading one with his sword, Skip impaling another with the spike coming out from his head at an angle, and even a recovered Bantha clawing into another's eyes.
A glance at the double doors showed that Nigel and Phillip had barricaded them with some tables and chairs and were busy keeping even more mok'tagar from pouring in. Jonathan was on the ground next to them and looked barely conscious, though he had a crossbow in hand and was pointing it through a hole in the makeshift wall.
KILL
One of the two mok'tagar Buffy was fighting directly made a wrong move, putting him in the path of a Tapparich force bolt, and she caught him out right after, stabbing the back end of the hammer's shaft straight through his head. Without his partner to help, the other was exposed, and she pummelled him a few times as she shook the other demon's corpse loose of her weapon. Just as she was finishing him off, she heard the chanting again.
BURN
KILL
She got her hammer in the way of the orange torture beam at the last second, but unlike the force bolt this one didn't ricochet away. Instead it flowed around her hammer like a heavy liquid, and Buffy's hands burned with pain as the beam widened. She almost dropped her hammer, thought about trying to dodge when she did.
BURN
KILL
But she knew that wouldn't work, so she didn't let go. Instead she took a hard step forward, feeling like her hands were melting as she fought against a heavy tide. She took another step, and another, and the beam got wider as she got closer. Forcing her grip to stay tight on the hammer was like keeping it on a hot stove, and she didn't let herself look down at her hands for fear she'd see her own flesh melting off.
BURN
KILL
She could see the strain on Tapparich's alien features, but he wasn't letting up either. He went to a knee as his claws flexed with power, and the dull orange energy had covered them completely as well as most of his arms. As she got closer, step by pain-wretched step, she could see blood running through stab-holes in his fancy robes, the wounds either kept open by Angel's cursed weapon or forced back open from his effort now.
BURN
KILL
It hurt so much. It would hurt more if she didn't win. She took another step and it felt like she was wrestling a city bus. The fire on her hands felt like it was cooking her soul.
BURN
KILL
One of the blunt teeth on the front of her hammer just barely grazed one of Tapparich's claws, and then the world exploded.
Everything before this had been tiny in comparison. She could feel the air combusting around her as she rocketed backwards, and the echoing crashes of massive shelves falling in all directions was only outdone by the massive boom of part of the ceiling caving in. Somewhere in the middle of it all she landed, her hair burning and her body battered.
Mostly buried by debris, she rolled herself around frantically to quench what was left of the fire. After it was out, she let out a low chuckle that was almost involuntary. It was nice not to feel burning anymore.
If she'd lost her hammer in the midst of all that, she had it again now, and she used it to lever herself up through the wreckage. She rose up from the tattered books and broken pieces of furniture, and the first thing she noticed was that she could see the sky. Still orange, it seemed much brighter after the inside of the complex, and she had to squint for a second before everything else resolved.
The space around her was an open wound in the side of the mountain, with broken fragments of library scattered all around. The falling pieces of ceiling had cut off most of the room from here, and she desperately hoped that any of her friends still inside weren't buried alive. In better circumstances, she'd immediately be working to dig them out, but she still had more immediate problems.
Across from her, also just getting back up, was a very worn-down looking Tapparich, staring at her in silent hate. She was going to have to finish this fight before she helped anyone. Luckily, they weren't alone out here. Buffy had him two to one.
Metavote: Who else is on Buffy and Tapparich's side of the divide, in the part of the library that's been exposed to the open air?
[] Angel
[] Skip
[] Banthasnap
