Title: Heaven's First Law
Author: Sarah T.
Disclaimer: All Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel characters belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, David Greenwalt, Greenwolf Productions, Sand Dollar, and the Kuzuis. No infringement on any copyrights is intended.
Distribution: Unfit only, please.
Notes: This seemed sort of an arbitrary challenge to me, unless the writer did something with the concept of the alphabet...
A, thought Willow as she ran, was the first letter.
B was next, wasn't it?
Cliffs suddenly materialized beneath her feet, and she threw out her hands, the air thickening around her. Down she fell, but she'd slowed herself enough that she landed without breaking anything. Everything did go bluish-purple around her for a minute, but she was pretty sure that Chaos was the problem there, not her eyes.
Feathers rained down around her--a side effect of the spell in the new environment, maybe. Getting to her feet, she started running again, even though she didn't know why she was bothering, with the world going mad around her and all her friends dead.
Had Tara even noticed what was happening before that dragon had bitten her in two?
Instinctively, she swerved as a jet of liquid nitrogen sprang out of the ground in front of her and gasped as she moved, "C, D, E, F, G, H, I..."
Jews, or Semites, anyway, had been among the first ethnic groups to even have an alphabetical order, so this was kind of appropriate, she thought randomly, and wondered whether Gematria would still work now. Keeping the order straight in her mind was almost impossible. Letters corresponding to numbers, proceeding in sequence? Madness in this world, even if her thoughts _hadn't_ always been so disorganized. Nonetheless, as she chanted the series, the rate of change in the world around her seemed to slow. Owls that were swimming through the ground near her suddenly got stuck, flapping their wings and squawking. Perhaps if she'd stayed by the portal and tried this there, she might have slowed the invasion of their world?
Quiet answer in her mind: nothing could have done that, except the one thing that Buffy would not do, and had killed Giles for trying. Running her hands through her hair, which had changed to some kind of sticky gelatinous mass like cold spaghetti, she shouted, "J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R..."
Suddenly, before her stood Ethan Rayne--or she thought it was him; his body kept dissolving and reforming as she looked at him. "Tell me, little witch, did _you_ do this?"
"Uh, yes," she lied (there was some way it was true--she could have killed Dawn herself, after all--and she might take responsibility for once).
"Very good; I always knew that if Ripper was cowardly enough to let you alone with the magic, you'd blunder into greatness. Well, do you like your handiwork?"
"X...T...V...S...U...W...Y," she stammered, unable to cling to the thread while having a conversation, and the world rippled around her slipping mind.
"You don't, I see; but I adore it, and so I'll reward you for it with a quick death," and he raised his arms.
Z, she thought: Z was the end, she was almost sure...
