Mist of Shadows
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Mist's Jumps Part 33
🕑 Added 2018-01-01 07:37:01 +0000 UTCEmperor Palpatine scowled as a strange vertical line of light appeared out of thin air in the middle of his private office. “Guards!”
The line of light twisted and expanded into a door to a forest clearing. Xander stepped out of the door and glanced around the Emperor’s office. “Look, it’s a lich.”
“Who are you?” Palpatine demanded.
“I’m the dark lord exterminator,” Xander replied enthusiastically as he used a touch of magic to lock the doors in the office so the guards Palpatine called couldn’t get in without blasting down the door.
“I’m fairly sure that’s Harry,” Hermione piped up as she walked through the portal.
“Ruin my fun.” Xander held up his hand as the Emperor sent a wave of lightning at them and absorbed the attack. “Rude much?”
Hermione cast soul trap on the emperor then gestured and used her telekinesis to rip the man’s head off.
Xander turned and looked at Hermione. “I was having fun taunting him.”
“Don’t worry, there are other…” Hermione trailed off as one particular memory jumped out at her. “Son of a bitch cloned Anakin.”
Xander blinked. “What?”
“I’d always wondered how Anakin went from a hero to a villain, turns out he didn’t, the Emperor cloned him, stuck him in carbonite and replaced him with an unstable clone.”
“Huh, that actually explains a lot.”
Hermione smiled as she ‘found’ the location where the Emperor had stashed Anakin in his memories. “We should be able to thaw Anakin out now that I know where the Emperor stashed him.”
“Good.” Xander walked around the desk and grabbed the dead man’s lightsaber. “Yoink.”
“This can’t end well,” Hermione muttered as she glanced at the lightsaber in Xander’s hand.
Xander pouted, “It’s a lightsaber, didn’t you want a lightsaber growing up?”
“Maybe,” Hermione admitted as she as she reached out with her technopathy and sent all of the Emperor’s personal files out over the holonet. “I just sent all of his personal files to the holonet, including all of his personal notes about what he was going to do to various groups when they stopped being useful.”
“I can’t say he didn’t deserve it but that’s still cold.”
“Puck used to rant about how incompetent he was, I had to listen her rants, I might have taken some revenge on the guy. We should probably head to his private workshop and collect his lightsaber crafting equipment and holocrons before we pick up Anakin, Yoda and Kenobi.”
Xander stuck the lightsaber in his inventory. “Did you bring a potion of youth for Kermit and Kenobi because they’re more than a little past their expiration date?”
“I have one, I’ll just duplicate more. Kenobi and Yoda helped make the mess, they should have to live long enough to fix it.” Hermione opened a door to where the Emperor’s lightsaber equipment was then walked through the door and looked around the workshop.
“In other words, a nice quiet death of old age isn’t an option?” Xander asked with amusement as he followed her through the door then glanced around the semi cluttered workshop.
“I’m not sticking around long enough to fix things considering the empire should fall apart without the Emperor and Vader. Besides, Anakin should be able to teach Luke better than the couple of scattered lessons Yoda gave him in the original movie.”
Xander shook his head. “We should probably take a couple of hours and use doors to get rid of some of the Moffs and admirals while we’re at it, minimum effort for maximum gain for our time. Besides, they caused a lot of problems in various books. You should have a decent idea which ones are worth keeping.”
Hermione scowled as she looked through Palpatine’s memories for information on the worst Moffs and Admirals and found plenty of choices. “This could take a while.”
0o0o0
Pandora watched with half her attention as the city vanished between one instant and the next revealing a city sized section of empty riverbed and massive walls of water. She smiled as the massive walls turned into massive waves of rushing water that rushed to cover the empty bedrock. She teleported back up near her father so that she could get a better view. “Sweet.”
Mist stuck the large snow globe he needed both hands to comfortably hold into his inventory and watched the water rush to cover the bare earth that his spell had uncovered when he stole the island. “We should have brought a video camera.”
Leah smiled slightly she called down from where she was floating above the group recording everything with her phone. “Don’t worry, I’m recording everything.”
Willow teleported back to the group with Buffy. “We grabbed the last of the captured humans.”
“And got a decent number of scans of separated shadowspawn,” Buffy added as she watched the river quickly reclaim the empty land where the island had been. “I killed 107 shadowspawn.”
“32, I didn’t know it was a competition,” Willow complained.
Sin snickered, “My minion got 76, I’m sure we’ll catch up.”
“My minion got 21.” Jack looked at his sister. “How many monsters did you kill?”
Pandora sighed. “None of them, I was rescuing captives.”
“There is always next time,” he replied smugly.
“Right, next time,” Pandora replied with a touch of annoyance as she raised her hands. She gestured at the shadowspawn on the north side of the river as she shouted, “Bloodfire!”
Jack stared in shock as tens of thousands of shadowspawn on the north side of the river instantly exploded and caught fire with a dark purple almost black fire. “Fuck!” He gulped as she spread her arms and the fire spread through the ranks of shadowspawn twice as fast as a horse could run, easily consuming everything it touched. “We can count that as one, right?”
“One army, sure,” Mist replied with amusement as he watched the fire spread through the army of shadowspawn consuming every monster it touched and moving faster the more lives the fire claimed.
“I thought angels were supposed to be nice?” Jack asked warily.
Pandora smirked at her half brother.
Willow asked in disbelief, “Where the hell did you find that?”
Pandora turned to look at Willow. “In your book, Morgana Le Fay had some rather nice spells and by nice I mean rather nasty and dangerously effective.”
“I didn’t see any army destruction spells in there when I looked.”
Pandora shrugged. “I might have scaled things up a little bit and played with Dad’s spellmaker a bit but the basic spell was in there.”
“Does that spell work on vampires?” Buffy asked hopefully.
Pandora shook her head. “There are better spells for dealing with vampires. The Bloodfire spell is only really useful if you have a group of monsters together.”
Jack shivered slightly as he looked at the destruction his sister had caused. “I’m so glad I have magic resistance.”
Pandora turned to look at her brother. “I’m glad the entire family has magic resistance, there are a lot of scary spell…” she gestured with her left hand and tossed a bolt of lightning at a demon that had teleported in behind Egwene with his blade raised. “Demon!”
Egwene spun and dropped ten feet to get some distance from the demon that had tried sneaking up on her. She lashed out with a blade of air and scowled as the weave unraveled as it touched the demon.
Jack blurred forward and jabbed the demon in his eyes with his thumbs as he channeled lightning through his hands into the demon.
Leah watched in disbelief as the demon’s head exploded. “What the fuck?”
“Language,” Mist replied absently as he tried to figure out how Jack had killed the demon with a shocking grasp spell.
Buffy stared at Jack as she asked, “How many times have you upgraded your shock spell?”
Jack caught the demon’s body with telekinesis as it dropped toward the ground. “It’s one of my favorite spells, I wasn’t counting.”
Egwene glared at the dead demon. “I might need to work on upgrading my abilities more than I have been.”
“Me too,” Buffy admitted reluctantly.
“That’s probably a good idea.” Mist was just glad that her demon hadn’t been nearly impossible to kill. He turned to look toward the north. “Do you want to check on the other large armies first or work on cleaning up the blight first?”
Jack floated the demon’s corpse over and started looting it.
Willow glanced toward the north. “We might as well scry for any large armies first then drain some of the corruption out of the world considering we probably need to grab Rand and his children from the mirror world if we want to keep the tree from being corrupted.” She was just hoping that the mirror world they needed was running faster like in the story.
“Shouldn’t corrupting the CP bought tree be impossible?” Sin asked as she looked at Mist.
Mist turned to look at Sin. “Probably but I doubt the copies have the same amount of corruption resistance and I’d rather use the original on Willow’s world.”
Buffy nodded. “I vote for dealing with the armies first then dealing with the corruption up north.”
“What are you planning on doing with the city in a snow globe?” Leah asked hoping that she could get a copy of it.
Mist turned to look at his daughter. “Nothing right now, it’s basically in stasis in my inventory which means we have time to come up with a plan. I figure we can offer them the chance to relocate elsewhere once we use telepathy to scan for darkfriends considering this part of the world is basically toast.”
Pandora said, “If nothing else, I’d like to walk all of the channelers past my copy of the Nymph Mirror.”
Sin laughed. “That would certainly give us a decent collection of fun loving girls with interesting abilities if we cloned them.”
“That was the plan.” Pandora finished mentally, ‘at least the first part.’
“No objections,” Mist admitted. He figured they could destroy all of the major groups of shadowspawn south of the blight then work on removing the corruption before they moved onto the next mirror world to see who they could recruit/help.
0o0o0
Chris frowned slightly as he watched Dawn toss two pairs of bracers to her new pet toad who was sitting on her desk. “I don’t care how useful it is, it’s still creepy.”
Dawn snickered as the hatbox sized toad ‘chewed’ up the bracers then spit out a new set of silvery bracers. “It goes nicely with our gocha cheat.” She gestured and summoned the silver bracers to her hands then looked at them with her identification ability. “Not bad, I think we found our new bracers for the troops.” She smiled at Wyatt and Chris.
“What do they do?” Wyatt asked.
“They give you enough armor that you’re basically bulletproof and decently melee proof.”
Chris raised his eyebrows. “Decently?”
Dawn smirked. “You’d need at least slayer strength to get past it and you’d need a weapon that wouldn’t just break on impact and even then I doubt it would be more than a flesh wound. It’s not as good as some of our stuff but it’s a good start.”
Wyatt said, “I’m suddenly glad that I’m not back home, I have a feeling the elders would be showing up right now, spouting crap about the greater good and balance while trying to steal the bracers.”
Chris laughed. “Probably.”
“I’m just glad that we don’t have to deal with that type of crap on a regular basis.” Dawn smirked as she pulled a copy of her panties out of her inventory and tossed them to her toad. “Let’s see if we can get some decent clothing upgrades.” She grabbed a silk shirt out of her inventory that had been one of her early experiments with enchanting that boosted alchemy skill and tossed it to the toad. “Hopefully we get something interesting.”
Chris shrugged. “I’m sure we’ll get something interesting eventually.”
Wyatt watched as the toad ‘chewed’ the two items up then spit out a pair of red silk leggings. “Anything?”
Dawn caught the leggings and looked them over with her identification power. “Neat, they boost the quality of alchemy ingredients and boost the effectiveness of anything you make while wearing them.”
“Anything or anything with alchemy?” Chris asked assuming it was the second but hoping it was the first.
“Sorry, just anything you make with alchemy,” she replied as she duplicated the leggings twice then put the original set in her inventory. “Here.” She handed both of the men a set of leggings to take apart and experiment with.
“It’s still rather impressive,” Chris agreed as he stuck the leggings in his inventory.
Wyatt asked, “What’s next on your list?”
Dawn glanced around her room at the various expanded trunks she had stacked everywhere. “I have a vacation home, I wouldn’t mind making a duplicate and setting one of them up as a lab if I can, do you want to help me move everything?”
Chris laughed. “Not particularly but we should probably take a look at the vacation home to see if you can use it as a lab.”
“Sure, we might as well,” Wyatt agreed.
Dawn walked over and picked up her fusion toad and put him back in the large aquarium she’d built for him then pulled her vacation globe out of her inventory and set it on her desk. She focused on the globe and teleported with her friends.
Chris blinked as they found themselves in an open air lobby with a nice tropical island breeze keeping everything from being too hot. He smiled at the gorgeous looking naked blue haired woman standing behind the counter. “Seems a bit empty.”
The woman behind the counter spoke up, “The Island is reserved for our most valued guests. Mistress Dawn, would you like someone to show you and your guests around?”
Dawn smiled as she looked at the woman behind the counter. “That sounds great.”
Wyatt smiled as the woman walked out from behind the counter. ‘Perfect face, voice, breasts, legs and waist.’ He had a feeling this was going to be his new favorite vacation spot as long as Dawn was willing to share.
0o0o0
Heather scowled as she looked down at the Tremalking island from where she was flying over it with her cousin and half sister on their copy of Xander’s invisible flying carpet. “There is something rather depressing in watching a hundred percent of these fuckers lose the challenge.”
Helen rolled her eyes. “Dad’s story painted them fairly badly, what were you expecting?”
“A bit of exaggeration? I mean, shit all they had to do was not kill their children or themselves at the end of the mental simulation and they would have went to a nicer mirror world but no, can’t have that. I fucking hate religion, it’s just depressing.” Heather smiled slightly as she saw one of the orbs of light fly through the door they’d opened to the stedding where they were processing all of the channelers they found. “Hey look a channeler.”
“What does that make, seven so far? Not exactly useful considering we’ve already copied all of their trade skills by killing temporary copies of their experts. If I wasn’t worried about Piper and Phoebe complaining about leaving them to die when they cleanse the source, I would.”
Heather said, “I’d suggest using a spell to erase that part of their religion but the girls would freak.”
“Considering how central their religion is to their way of life, it would be about the same as killing them,” Helen agreed as she pulled her phone out of her pocket and dialed Faith’s number.
Faith answered half a second after the first ring, “Yo, what’s up?”
“Heather and I are dealing with the Amayar on Tremalking, how long do you think it will take to cleanse the source and which world are you going to do it in?”
“Willow’s, Mist is already planning on setting up alternate towers and schools and binding any of the Aes Sedai that want to stay.” Faith wasn’t a fan of slavery but they weren’t planning on making them slaves, they just wanted to make sure they weren’t going to abuse their powers if they wanted to stay.
“That’s certainly one way to make sure they behave. We’ll probably be done here in thirty minutes, do you know where our next assignment is?”
“I’ll check.” Faith pulled her phone away from her mouth as she turned to look at Puck and Umy. “Where do you want Helen and Heather to go they finish moving all of the Amayar on Tremalking?”
Umy looked at the collection of labeled pins sticking out of the world map they’d printed out. “We have the rest of the Sea Folk islands covered so you might as well head back.”
“What about the town in the Blight?” Helen asked curiously.
“We’re saving the Blight for Chris, Wyatt and Cordelia or Mist.”
“I guess that works.”
Umy said, “Don’t worry, there will be plenty of monsters to hunt when you’re older.”
“We’re teenagers, not children.”
Umy snorted. “You can take that up with your father when he gets back, I’m sure he’ll let his daughters run around in a monster infested wasteland if you ask real nicely.”
“Fine, we’ll head back when we’re finished.” Helen ended the call. “No dice for going to the Blight to fight monsters.”
Heather shivered slightly as she thought about the blighted land she remembered reading about. “Considering how nasty that place is, I can’t say I blame the adults for not wanting us to go there.”
“I guess,” Helen muttered as she tried to relax as she waited for the orbs to stop showing up so they could go back to Emond’s Field and get something to eat before they worried about their next project.
0o0o0
Circe looked away from where Rand and Nynaeve were working on cleansing the local magic and over at her alternate, “Anything?”
Phoebe pulled her attention off the creepy ancient stone buildings she could see through the trees and looked at her twin and alternate. “You mean other than the same sense of death and worse from the city that we’ve had since we got here, yeah nada.”
Piper kept her eyes on the shadows the trees made as she said, “Just keep your eyes peeled in case something tries a last minute attack.”
Circe glanced at Moiraine and Lan who were keeping an eye on Nynaeve and Rand. “We’ll be fine.”
Violet glanced over at the massive city sized dome of midnight black energy growing out of the main part of Shadar Logoth. “How sure are you that no one is going to stop us?”
Puck smiled at her new friend and her sister’s girlfriend. “Without the dark god around to warn his minions ahead of time and without the Forsaken to open gateways, we should be done cleansing the source before they can get anyone here or even close.”
“I forgot about that, I’m just used to being able to apparate places in a reasonable timeframe.”
“Being able to teleport makes getting around easier,” Phoebe agreed as she shifted her attention to the dome of large ball of black energy floating over the city.
Piper frowned as both Phoebe and Circe twitched and blanked out like they were having a vision. “Great.”
“Do they do this a lot?” Lan asked warily as he glanced around, scanning the forest for any signs of trouble.
“Now and then.”
Circe screamed as her and Phoebe came out of their vision together, “Shit!”
Lan drew his blade and slashed at the flaming haired woman that appeared out of thin air. He wasn’t amused or really surprised when his blade failed to cut the woman’s arm that she used to block his strike with. He brought his blade back around to try to hit her in the face more as a distraction than anything else.
Phoebe gestured toward Lan and cast the strongest armor spell she could as the woman swung the back of her hand at his head in what was a rather pathetic if powerful as hell backhand.
Piper gestured and tried to freeze the woman as Lan sailed through the air. Sadly her power failed to hold the strange woman in place though it ‘froze’ some of her flames for a second or two before they started moving again. “Crap.”
Moiraine ignored the fact that she recognized the woman as she lashed out with a cable width of hardened air and tried to kill the Elaida look-a-like. She wasn’t terribly surprised when the power seemed to dissolve around her.
Elaida turned to look at Moiraine. “I’m going to enjoy killing y-” she cut as Phoebe’s fist struck her in the neck and sent her into the unstable dome of dark energy at near the speed of sound thanks to the force of her sneak attack.
Puck gestured and orbed the group back to the base camp across the river and a decent distance away as the giant dome of dark energy started to go unstable. “Let’s not do that again.”
Rand stopped pulling in a river of power as the dome they could see across the river imploded with a horrific wail of anguish or at least that was what it sounded like as air rushed in to fill the massive void. “Bloody ashes…” He trailed off as he felt the world almost sigh in relief as Shadar Logoth was destroyed or maybe he was just projecting his feelings. He briefly considered pulling himself to his feet for a better look then decided not to as his legs felt a bit like water and he doubted it would give him all that much of a better view.
Nynaeve stopped pulling in power as she staggered to her feet to check on Lan.
Lan took a second to run a mental check for injuries then rolled to his feet and caught Nynaeve as she collapsed. “I’m fine love.”
“Good…” Nynaeve trailed off as she fell asleep in Lan’s arms.
“Leo!” Piper snapped.
Leo orbed in. “You called.”
“Please make sure that Nynaeve and Rand aren’t going to die on us.”
“Of course.” Leo walked over to check on Nynaeve. He looked at Lan. “With your permission?”
Lan nodded slightly. “Please.”
Leo reached out and healed Nynaeve. “She’ll be fine, she’s just exhausted.”
Violet smiled at Rand. “That went better than I was expecting.”
“Hopefully we won’t have to do this a third time,” Rand complained as Leo walked over.
“Do you want me to see if I can heal some of your fatigue?” Leo asked as he looked down at Rand who was sitting on the ground.
“That might be a good idea,” Rand admitted.
“I’m going to fly up for a better look.” Puck flew into the air and headed toward the massive crater as Leo worked on healing Rand. She stared down at the massive rounded crater that was maybe three miles diameter and several thousand feet deep. “That’s going to be a bitch to fill in.”
Rand smiled as a lot of the tiredness faded. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Leo helped Rand to his feet. “You should probably take it easy for a couple of days.”
“Don’t worry, I’m planning on it,” Rand agreed. It was nice not to have the fate of the world on his shoulders anymore.
Circe said, “We should probably start building some walls around the land we want to claim before someone realizes it’s safe to claim.”
Moiraine tilted her head slightly. “That might take awhile considering how long the land has been cursed.”
Rand glanced at Lan and Nynaeve then looked back at Phoebe. “Now that we’ve dealt with the source, how long until we can reclaim the Blight?”
Phoebe said, “Willow has a tree that should help remove the corruption in the tree, we just need to pick up a couple of people to make the process easier and faster.”
Lan asked, “What about the shadowspawn?”
Puck pointed at Rand. “I have a magical item that allows a person to review memories, Rand should be able to figure out how he created the storm of destruction in the Stone of Tear the last time around and recreate it in the Blight.”
“That would be useful,” Rand admitted.
“Let’s head back to Emond’s Field and rest up for a couple of days, that should give Willow time to collect some of the people we need to make the plan work.”
Moiraine frowned slightly as she looked at Lan and Nynaeve. “I’m going to need to head back to the White Tower to give Siuan a report soon.”
Piper said, “Let’s head back to Emond’s Field, get Rand and Nynaeve settled so they can get some sleep then we can grab some food and figure out what to tell them. I can orb you there after lunch.”
“Thank you, I’d rather not let the tower discover the weave for gateways at least until we’ve caught all of the Black Ajah.”
Rand scowled as the thought about the traitors in the Black Tower, hopefully without Taim it wouldn’t be as bad. “At least you have a list, I need to talk to Logain about making a list of the people that fell or were turned.”
Puck shivered as she thought about getting forcibly turned evil. “Hopefully we won’t have to worry about them turning anyone to the darkside this time around.”
“With any luck, we’ll be able to deal with the shadowspawn before that becomes an issue.” Piper orbed the group back to Emond’s Field.
Moiraine blinked then glanced around. “Some of your abilities are going to terrify the Tower.”
Circe smirked as she headed for the inn. ‘Good.’
0o0o0
Spike frowned slightly as he watched Harry, Morgana and Prue finish construction of the large hundred foot stone tower they’d started crafting less than a minute earlier. He still wasn’t used to how much magic Willow’s new friends had. He glanced at the spiral staircase that went around the outside of the tower. “What’s the trick?”
“Trick?” Lily asked with amusement.
Spike gestured around the section of the Blight they’d burned to the ground so they could work without the plant life trying to kill them. “You don’t build towers in a wasteland without a good reason. You certainly don’t give them an easy way to the top unless you’re pulling something, thus what’s the trick?”
“We’re using an overpowered magical lure, it should pull everything from a hundred mile radius.” Lily pointed at the top of the tower. “At the top of the tower is a dungeon entrance that should be more than sufficient to kill everything in the Blight.”
Spike frowned slightly. “Why wouldn’t they just leave once they get inside?”
Harry explained as his group flew down and landed near Spike and Lily. “For a couple of reasons, other than fades which are the commanders most of the shadowspawn aren’t all that smart, average vampire minion at best and most of them aren’t even that smart. They’re also lazy and greedy and will probably be rather hungry by the time they get to the dungeon. I’m also making the dungeon portal one way, in order to leave they’d have to get past the dungeon boss and take the exit portal.”
“We might have made the boss an overpowered nightmare.” Prue smirked as she thought about the nightmare of a boss they’d created. While most of the group could have killed him without any significant effort, she doubted any of the shadowspawn had a realistic chance of killing him or even hurting him significantly before he destroyed them.
Spike raised an eyebrow. “That’s not even remotely fair.”
Harry smirked. “That’s the beauty of it, it doesn’t have to be. The prize for the lure is sitting there right when you walk in the dungeon, with nothing overly dangerous to stop you from getting it which increases the power of the pull and makes everything more effective, it’s just getting out that’s the death trap, something that the lure doesn’t care all that much about.”
“Nice,” Spike agreed with amusement.
“It certainly makes it a lot easier to lure them to their deaths,” Morgana agreed.
“Does the lure work on the monstrous animals in the Blight?”
Lily glanced up at the sky as she answered Spike’s question, “It should work on anything tainted with the dark god’s energy.”
“What happens if they bring enough of an army to beat the boss?” Spike asked curious how thorough Harry’s plans were.
Harry shrugged. “That shouldn’t be a problem, not only is the boss supernaturally strong and durable a couple of the magical items in the second trunk at the beginning of the dungeon create a powerful avarice field and function as quest items. Not only will they be tearing themselves apart within ten to twenty minutes thanks to the avarice field but the items being out of the chest causes additional mobs to spawn, extremely dangerous mobs that will stop at nothing to return the ‘quest’ items back to the chests.”
Spike laughed. “You’re a bastard. I guess that just leaves one question, what happens to the dead monsters?”
“That’s the only real flaw in the plan, we could have just had the dungeon eat them but we didn’t really want it getting corrupted so we’re sending the dead monsters to a linked magical trunk.”
“That’s possible?”
“Probably not but we’re looking at killing tens or hundreds of thousands of extremely tainted monsters and I’d rather not risk it. Besides, if we’re collecting the dead we can eventually toss them into a pocket dimension with a tree that eats corruption and get something decent out of them.”
Lily said, “Which would help supply our group with enough apples to make everyone a minor god.”
Spike snorted. “I’m suddenly rather glad that Willow met you guys after Sunnydale because I can just picture you setting up a couple of vampire lures in town then selling videos of us running through her death traps.”
Harry rubbed his chin. “Now that you mention it, that’s not a bad idea, I bet Leet could edit some interesting video together into a horror movie.”
Prue chuckled at the look on Spike’s face. “Don’t worry, the dungeons are set up to kill shadowspawn rather than regular people.”
Spike glanced up at the top of the tower. “Right, considering my alternate form is a vampire, I’d rather not take the risk.” He was just happy that Xander’s magic rod had given him an alternate form that didn’t catch fire in sunlight and didn’t have to drink blood, well that and the fact that no one had actually made any jokes about Xander having a magical rod.
“Probably for the best,” Harry admitted as he opened a door back to Emond’s Field. “We should probably leave before the monsters start showing up.”
Spike glanced at the door that Harry had opened. “Is there any reason not to open a bunch of one way doors to other worlds to lure shadowspawn into your dungeon?”
Lily frowned as she noticed a group of monsters heading toward them in the distance. “We’d need to empty the magical trunk it dumps the bodies into faster but other than that, not really.”
Harry walked through the door to Emond’s Field. “In that case, let’s talk to Buffy about learning to create pocket dimensions and Willow about getting a copy of her tree.”
“How easy is it to create a dungeon?” Spike asked as he followed Harry through the door.
Harry let the portal close once Lily, Prue and Morgana were through the door. “Designing the dungeon is harder than actually building it.”
“In other words, easy enough, right?”
“Yeah, what are you thinking?” Harry asked curious where the vampire was going with his idea.
“I was just thinking that we should make a couple of dungeons that aren’t meant to just slaughter the monsters as it makes things more interesting if they have half of a chance to win.”
“I think you’re missing the point, we’re trying to kill the shadowspawn,” Morgana pointed out.
Spike laughed. “That’s what the lever that drops them into a giant blender at the end is for, part of the fun of watching horror movies is the anticipation. It’s not going to make much of a video if the first group of defenders always slaughters the monsters. Maybe toss in some assassins or various horrible traps that pick off the shadowspawn one by one.”
Harry chuckled. “Now that you mention it, I have a feeling Leet and Uber would get a kick out of recreating a lot of dungeons from old games, some of them were certainly nasty enough to qualify as death traps or maybe that was just Dudley’s lack of skill.”
“If nothing else it might keep them out of trouble.” Prue smiled at Harry’s look of disbelief. “For a couple of weeks at least.”
“That I might believe,” Harry agreed as he walked into the inn to talk to Leet about creating some interesting dungeons.
Willow smiled at Harry’s group as they walked into the inn. “How did your mission go?”
Harry glanced around the room at the natives then walked over and sat down across from Willow and the ‘new’ slayer Leah. “We built a tower in the Blight that is connected to a dungeon that should draw in shadowspawn.”
Prue sat down next to Harry. “We’re planning on using doors once we get a couple of details sorted out to pull additional shadowspawn into the world for the dungeon to consume.”
“So something like the Roach motel, the demons check in but they don’t check out?” Leah asked with amusement.
“Something like that, yeah,” Spike replied with amusement.
“That’s nasty, what do you need help with?” Willow asked curious how she could help.
Harry said, “We need to talk to Leet about dungeon designs, Buffy about making a pocket dimension and you about getting a copy of your corruption eating tree so that we can just dump the dead shadowspawn into the pocket dimension so they don’t cause the dungeon to twist in strange ways.”
“That sounds like a decent way to reduce the total number of shadowspawn. It also wouldn’t be a bad way to make sure we have plenty of apples to improve everyone.”
“Any ideas on how we’re going to fix our old world?” Spike asked warily.
Willow smiled slightly as she thought about the story that Mist had written about a version of this particular world. “I have a couple of ideas but they’re going to need to wait until we’re done making some crystal apples and I’ll need to talk to Pandora about the plan.”
“Have fun with that, I’m going to grab something to eat before Mist tries to drag everyone up to the Blight to cleanse it.” Lily orbed back to the slice of heaven to grab some waffles.
Harry smiled as he saw Leet and Uber enter the inn, “Just the people I wanted to talk to.”
“It wasn’t me, we didn’t do it, these aren’t the droids you’re looking for,” Leet replied good naturedly as he walked over with Uber. “What’s up?”
Harry chuckled. “Spike mentioned that you might like to create some death traps dungeons so we can make survival horror movies with shadowspawn.”
“Hell yeah, to the pain,” Leet exclaimed enthusiastically ignoring several of the locals that were giving him weird looks.
Uber laughed, “I’m in.”
Leah shook her head. “I’d feel sorry for them but they’re worse than demons.”
“Hey,” Spike muttered.
