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It had been years since the silence of the caverns was broken, or perhaps it had been mere days that felt like years. In the darkness there was no way to track time. Nevertheless, now there was not only a stranger coming down from the surface cave, but two at once, both of them women. Their footfalls were soft and their heartbeats were even, and their clear calm voices did not belong here.
“How about some light?”
“In a sec. I need to get a read on the essence of this place in its natural state before we make any changes to it. You okay?”
“Sure. Cold wet rocks are my favorite thing ever, especially when there’s nothing to stop me bumping into them.”
“Just hang onto my hand, Buff, I got you.”
They would die, of course. If anything alive had ever come down to these caverns, it had not gone up again. Nothing ever would. These two, having somehow known enough to find a way in, should have been more frightened than their hearts and lungs expressed.
The footsteps paused, and the woman who had told the other to hold her hand said, “Okay. There.” Like a forbidden perfume, the long-forgotten scent of magic wafted through the caves. And then...light. It was dim at first, but real. Objects suddenly had shapes again. One of the travelers had red hair and was balancing the source of the light on her palm. The other was yellow-haired and held a sharpened piece of wood in one hand, with steel weapons strapped across her back.
Their surroundings were still cast in deep shadow, but the illumination was enough to reveal the regular cut of the stones in some of the walls. They were evidence that the tunnels weren’t formed naturally; there was some structure here built by human hands, though now it was sunken and abandoned. A history that had been long hidden was now practicable.
“Willow?” said the warrior. “Did you hear that?”
The sound in question had been a thin wordless wail, and it was already gone, but the mage replied, “Yeah. Do you want to check it out? I can probably just set up shop right here.”
So they parted ways, which would likely bring about their deaths even sooner. The mage knelt in the hollow she had found and began to lay out an assortment of tools from her satchel, while the warrior ventured deeper into the caves. Each now had a steady light of her own, and the warrior’s left a long trail behind her, leading back to her friend’s station.
But now there was a new sound, a slow tread coming from the other direction -- a third visitor. Two living humans at the same time was barely possible, but three…ah, but this was no living human. No heartbeat or breath, no warmth in his body. A vampire. Perhaps he had come seeking a lair among the other monsters that dwelled in the caves.
The woman with the weapons heard him coming and stood ready with her back to the wall and the stake raised to thrust, but he wasn’t in her line of sight before she hesitated, furrowing her brow, and then dropped out of her fighting stance. “Angel?” she said, no louder than if she had been speaking to someone in the same room.
The vampire’s steps quickened, thudding over the bare rock until he reached the warrior and stopped short just in front of her. His long coat billowed over a sword at his hip. “Buffy.”
She let out a long breath. “What are you doing here?”
“Searching for a magic amulet. You?”
“Magic dagger. So that’s lucky, huh. It would be pretty awkward if we were after the same thing and there was only one of them.”
His reluctant laugh was awkward enough. It was strange that neither attacked, nor ran from each other, though she surely knew what he was and he surely craved her blood. He had been cloaked in darkness until he came before her, but now the flickering magic light over her head exposed a lonesome, searching expression on his face. This was not right. No vampire should have had such truth in his eyes.
“Are you alone?” he asked.
The warrior -- Buffy -- shook her head and gestured vaguely at the tunnels behind her. “This is a Willow thing. I’m just here as the muscle.”
“Well…I’m alone. So we could search together. Seeing as we don’t need to compete.”
“First I need to find whatever made that creepy whining sound when we got the lights on. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t you, right?”
“No, but I heard it too. Only I thought it was coming from where you just came from, and you didn’t see anything, did you?”
Of course she hadn’t. Her eyes couldn’t see the entity that had cried out at the first light to touch the caves in days or years; even the vampire’s night vision couldn’t have seen that.
She shook her head and looked over her shoulder. “Maybe we should split up.”
“I don’t think you need to worry about Willow. If we couldn’t see it, then it’s probably insubstantial, and she’s got better defenses against that kind of thing than either of us do.”
“Angel.” Buffy put a hand on her hip and tapped the stake against her thigh. “You’re not even looking for excuses to stay away from me. What gives?”
Angel sounded ashamed, which was another thing that should have been impossible for a vampire, especially since his last suggestion had been dead on. “I didn’t know you were here. I swear it. I just thought, maybe this time, we don’t need to stay away from each other.”
For reasons that only could have made sense to the two of them, she accepted that answer, and they carried on together. The light over her head even moved over, apparently of its own accord, to float between them.
Through the twists and turns they walked until they came to a wooden door. It was barred and padlocked, but rotten with age, and one kick from Angel took it down. Inside, they found their first battle: an enormous serpent with a spiked tail which attacked instantly. They dispatched it with ease, moving fluidly alongside each other without needing to exchange any words.
So they had power. Maybe they wouldn’t die for a while yet, after all.
As they checked the dusty shelves and chests in the room for the treasures they sought, Buffy said conversationally, “I feel like we’re being watched.”
Angel straightened up, letting the lid of an empty crate fall from his hand. “I think we probably are. There’s a lot of unrest in this place.”
“Is it dangerous?”
Something that had no choice and no memory and no way to warn them felt that yes, it was dangerous, they should leave immediately and save their lives, but Angel shrugged and said, “No more than any other monsters. I can hear a couple in the next chamber. Ready to go?”
After they had smashed down another door, they found two scurrying red bat-faced demons, noisy but without the power of speech. There were no chests to search. The exit opened to a corridor, and Buffy questioned if they were going to get lost. “This place looks like it could go on forever, and I’m not sure if the glowy tracker thing has a limit.”
“I can find my way back,” said Angel. “But we can go check on Willow now, if you want.”
“No, that’s alright.” Buffy began walking down the corridor, periodically looking to each side for a door or a crossroad. “She’ll probably catch up with us after she finishes her spell.”
“What’s the spell going to do?”
The only door was straight ahead. Buffy lifted her battleaxe and demolished it with a single swipe. “Connect her with some goddess or other who can grant her access to a higher level of magick.”
Angel kicked some shards of wood away from the frame so they could enter. “Then, what’s the dagger supposed to do?”
“Um, I think it’s a source of power she can only use once she gets up to this next level?” She scanned the room and zeroed in on a zombie moaning on the floor.
“Right. So what does she need the extra power for?”
Buffy stabbed into the corpse’s head, silencing it. She wiped her blade clean on its body, then turned back to Angel, who was rummaging through the old furniture and decor in the room. “Okay, honestly, I don’t know. When Willow talks about magic it always sounds like there’s just one thing she needs so she can do another thing and it never really comes to a goal that makes sense to me, so I end up kind of zoning out and just taking her word that it’s important. Is that awful?”
“It doesn’t sound awful to me. You want to help your friend and you trust her judgment.” He tested the handle of a large wardrobe. “Heads up. I think there’s another one in here.”
Together they forced the door open, and the walking dead shambled out. Angel ended this one, and Buffy took a final survey of the chamber and headed for the next one. “I just wish I understood her mindset,” she continued. “It’s not addiction this time, but I don’t think she even knows what she’d do if there were no more secrets left to learn.”
He considered that. “What would you do if there were no more vampires left to slay?”
“That’s easy. I don’t have time to tell you everything, but it’s all in my daydream backlog. Oh look! Skeletons!”
They had just entered a crumbling room which was more richly furnished than the previous ones, or at least it had been in its day. The human remains here weren’t animate at all, and the jewels they still wore must have seemed promising.
As Buffy and Angel closed in, drawn by the shining gem around one skeletal neck, their unseen escort felt a surge of panic. A disembodied voice rang through the tunnels, broadcasting an agony that could not be interpreted. The two warriors were both flung backward against the wall.
“It’s the amulet!” Angel shouted, scrambling to his feet. Buffy was already up and rebounding, but whatever had been loosed was stirring up a maelstrom. Every object in the chamber, except for two cursed skeletons, was rocking against the wind or flying in a mad circle of dust, and Buffy was pelted with broken pottery and golden chains as she shielded her face with her arms. The horrible wailing wouldn’t stop, although even the one who was making it couldn’t bear it much longer.
“O GAIUS TIPHAINEQUE!” came Angel’s voice, barely audible under the cacophony. “ESTO IN PACE!”
The rush slowed immediately, but it took at least a minute for everything to settle. When Buffy was able to look up, Angel was holding the ruby amulet in his palm and looking down sadly at the nobly dressed skeletons, who leaned against each other with their phalanges in a little heap between them. “It was one of them haunting this place,” he said. “Tiphaine, probably.”
“Does that mean they’re gone now?” Buffy asked, but before he could answer, she gasped with a sudden realization. “Angel, my light is going out!”
He reached her side while the little star over her head still provided some luminosity, but the trail behind her had already almost faded out. Angel’s face would be the last thing she saw before the room went black. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “I’ll find our way back to Willow, Buffy, it’ll be okay.”
“I know. It’s fine.” Maybe she was fine, but she didn’t sound happy, and her voice was partially muffled as if she were pressed up against him while she spoke. “So who’s Tiphaine and why were they throwing home decor at me?”
Angel answered quietly, and Buffy was not the only one who kept motionless to listen. “She was the daughter of a count. She loved a young lord named Gaius, and they were betrothed, but he was called to war. When he returned he couldn’t find her. The story isn’t so clear after that, but I think her family betrayed her, telling her that he was dead or he had married another. Somehow they ended up here together.”
“And died here together. Guess it wasn’t a happy ending.”
Tiphaine could still hear them clearly, but she couldn’t make them hear her, and she couldn’t see them in the complete darkness. It wasn’t fair, she felt, that her senses had the same restrictions as the living even though she had no body. “She’s still here,” Angel said to Buffy, as sorrowful as if he actually cared about one lonely ghost. “I don’t know how to help her. I thought if I took the amulet…”
“We’ll figure it out.” Buffy’s voice was calm now. “But wait. I just need this to last a little longer.”
What Buffy needed, why Angel could understand so easily, how they touched each other, Tiphaine didn’t know. All she could hear was Buffy’s heartbeat and breathing, and then, lighter than a butterfly’s wing, their lips pressed together.
The amulet lit up like a flash of lightning, and the red stone shattered. Tiphaine saw a face, but it wasn’t Buffy’s or Angel’s. Gaius smiled, as handsome and chivalrous as the day she had met him, and reached his hand out to take hers.
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Buffy was still blinking away the radiance from the broken gem when she realized that the darkness was no longer absolute. The guiding light over her head hadn’t returned; the source was the chamber door, and as it gradually came closer, she could see more of Angel and their current environment -- including the two skeletons, who looked no different now but seemed to be somehow more at peace anyway.
Angel squeezed her hand and let it go as Willow entered the room, brightening it considerably with the glow above her own head. She waved, showing no surprise at all that Angel was there too. “You found the amulet,” she said to him.
Buffy looked from Angel to Willow and back again. “You said you didn’t know we would be here,” she accused him.
“I said I didn’t know you would be here. Willow conveniently left that out when she asked for my help.”
Willow shrugged one shoulder, looking only slightly guilty. “Okay, yes, I set this up. But it was for a good cause! The only thing that could reunite these poor dead kids was the kiss of star-crossed lovers.”
“You couldn’t have explained that in the first place?” Buffy snapped, exasperated.
“No. Kiss magic has to come from real emotion.”
“Kiss magic?” spluttered Buffy, right over Angel making a similar exclamation.
Willow threw her hands up. “I’ll give you two another minute alone. Follow the trail when you’re ready.”
Buffy frowned. “Don’t you need that magic dagger first?”
“There isn’t one. I just needed to send you on a search for something. Sorry.” She turned and left the way she came in, leaving a trail of light, true to her word. Without her, the room darkened again, but only to the point of a moonlit dusk.
Buffy looked up at Angel, wondering what to say now, and found him grinning. “What’s so funny?” she asked.
“I’m just glad we could help Tiphaine. Okay, and kiss magic. Kiss magic is at least a little funny, don’t you think?”
After a second, Buffy gave in and laughed. “Of all the ways to help someone. Can’t lie, this was kind of fun.”
“Maybe there’s some benefit to being star-crossed lovers,” he offered.
“Angel…is this what we have to look forward to? Separated until death, and then some? Is there some other couple somewhere down the line who’s going to have to kiss in a dungeon to set us free?”
He brushed back a lock of her hair, leaving his hand to cradle her head. “We’ll be fine,” he promised. “Just follow the light.”
They didn’t have much more time to be together, but Buffy refused to spend it feeling sorry for herself. Not when she could spend it making magic.