Order of Business

"Rollo, what do we do?" Varden asked as we watched the Dragon calmly prepare.

"We do nothing until she calls, and then we do everything," I replied and ignored as my brother rolled his eyes.

Our vampire mistress added to her normal armored leather pants with a fully reinforced black leather jacket, covered in sharp pointed studs. She left the jacket undone for flexibility and put her left arm through the brace of a small steel shield. Her hair was pulled tight into a ponytail and she added gauntlets and her heavy studded mace. I think that this might be the most covered that I've ever seen my Master.

At the other end of the room, the Destroyer or the Dark Knight, or just Faith now I suppose, stood and waited. She had her old leather jacket on and looked much like she did when she first invaded the Empire of the Dead. She twirled her red axe, though for some reason, she demanded to call it a Scythe. In my opinion it would not be very efficient at cutting wheat but I was not the man or the great bear that was going to argue with her about it or likely anything else for that matter. If she were to survive this night I might go and find her an actual scythe to prove that what she held was a battle axe but I found it unlikely that the dark slayer would be in any condition to chat with once this fight ended.

I had seen the Dragon through warfare and blood and destruction on several continents and through several centuries. She was truly a goddess of combat. Belle Morte's bloodline fed to powers of sex just as the Dragon's fed into the red lust of battle. In Italy I had once watched from a hillside as she cornered two hundred mounted Moor warriors by herself in a small valley. Seeing her rend her way through both man and beast to slaughter them all, I had come to the conclusion that she was untouchable by any who would challenge her.

I wondered briefly how much my mistress might be harmed by the death of her human servant and with our influence here in the forum diminished, we would be in even greater danger from the others on the council and I worried that I should have found a way before now to ensure the safety of my beautiful wife and daughter. The time for that was past though, as the two leviathans slowly started walking towards each other.

"Secure the doors!" I commanded Varden. "We still are under threat, no matter what occurs here." For once he heeded me without comment and I watched as they came to the center of the room.

"Just me and you, or are you going to make me hurt Rollo and the boys too?" Faith asked, with a nod of her head in my direction.

The Dragon found reason to smile at the question and replied, "I need no help from others to discipline my own. You should consider your actions carefully, Faith, I would forgive you now but if you choose to go further, I will have to hurt you and I do not want to do that, Child."

"My life is all about getting hurt, why should you be any different, MOMMY?" With those words, Faith swung the axe but the Dragon blocked it with the shield, well in advance.

My master attacked with the mace and the slayer dodged as the two started to move faster than a normal eye could follow. They swung and blocked and jumped and kicked at each other as they danced around the room. Faith displaying lightning quick reflexes to dodge and duck the ferocious assault as the Dragon pressed her before managing to get my master off balance with a shove and then immediately putting the pressure back on her.

"Child, I see your attacks as you think them," the Dragon announced as she dodged an axe swing and ducked a roundhouse kick. "You can not win."

"I can feel you trying to feed me power, so you might as well stop, shit like that only works once on a slayer," Faith said as she lunged with the stake end of her weapon, only to find that the Dragon had already moved aside and then grabbed the slayer and launched her at the stone wall.

The slayer got her feet under her just in time to jump and get a boot on the wall to backflip over the Dragon as she followed her in. The vampire, spun around but failed to block the axe as Faith stabbed the blade point at her. The tip of the weapon sliced through the armored coat near the left armpit and the Dragon roared in fury as she blocked the next three punches and kicks before throwing her own massive right elbow that connected and sent the slayer flying backwards.

"I guess that's first blood for me, Bitch!" Faith yelled, wiping her face with back of her hand as the Dragon had the coat gaped open to inspect the freely bleeding wound. "Oh and for your information, I can also feel you trying to keep my slayer calm. Knock yourself out, but only I can do that and since I'm not dying and searching for a way to survive this time, I'd like to see you roll me again." With those words, the slayer launched forward and ran at the Dragon and the fight was back on.

My brother and the ten members of his den had the main doors barred and now were leaning against them to watch the battle. Many of the mistress's servants were pressing into the other entrances to watch as the other twenty-one bears in my den came to stand around me.

Faith could be heard grunting during the blur of their movements from hits the Dragon was scoring. The clang of axe on shield rang continuously and in their flowing dance, it gained almost a musical rhythm to it.

The two warriors separated again, as my master peeled the distorted shield off of her arm and threw it away and Faith ran her tongue over a deep cut on her lip. They were both battered and bloody from small nicks and scratches.

The slayer watched as the Dragon felt the wound in her armpit again and said, "Yea, getting stabbed with a weapon that was forged for the sole purpose of killing vampires probably does suck. I wonder what it's doing to you?"

"Not nearly enough and not nearly quick enough to help you, whore," the Dragon responded as she walked forward again.

Walking to meet the challenge, Faith said, "Whore? I guess you're not my mommy anymore, huh?"

They clashed and the axe and mace clanged together and held as they tried a test of strength. The Dragon was winning when Faith dropped and swept her ankles with a kick. The slayer tried to follow up but the vampire spun back to her feet and managed to knee Faith in the face in the process, knocking her back, but only for a moment. Faith launched forward again and rained attacks at the vampire, trying to get through her guard but she blocked them all and their combined speed increased as they tried to overpower each other.

Caspian and Luther, two of my brother's bears, were creeping toward the blur of the two fighters. I ran forward and grabbed Caspian and flung him back to his alpha. Luther had a throwing dirk that somehow he thought he could pick a target in the blur with and I managed to kick him in the stomach as he threw it. The blade stuck into the floor a few feet in front of us and I grabbed it and stuffed it into his throat. Dragging the dying bear back to his master, I threw him at Varden's feet and backhanded my brother.

"Command your den or I will!" I roared into his face and backhanded him again.

He was stunned by the blows but nodded and kept his head low as he pulled Luther further from the fight. My mistress would break honor when she felt like it, but it would only be by her choice. She would have killed us all for interfering in her duel.

Faith's cry of pain caught my attention and I turned to see her fly into the wall, drop the axe, and slump to the ground. The Dragon had connected with her mace and rushed in to finish the fight. She swung the heavy mace again but Faith just managed to slide to the side and it missed by less than a few millimeters, making a spiderweb of cracks on the stone wall as it slammed into it and the impact caused the handle to shatter in a burst of splinters.

The slayer used the distraction to spin to her feet and ram the Dragon's face into the cracked wall with a roar of fury and followed it up by thundering punches down on the vampire, slowly driving her to the floor. Faith's face was swollen and a massive bruise was forming as she bent quickly and picked up her red weapon. The Dragon caught her arms and they struggled against each other with Faith using a knee to lean over the battered vampire and hold her down as she tried to get her arm free to attack.

The Dragon grappled to keep the arms from coming down with the slayer's Scythe. She was snarling and managed to hold the weapon off with her left arm as she flung the gauntlet off of her right hand and even as she struck under the hem of Faith's leather jacket, the fingernails were growing and hardening into claws. She had rammed her hand with strength and speed right into Faith's stomach, burying it to the wrist in a spray of blood.

Faith screamed an inhuman shriek as her slayer took over and jumped away from the vampire. She had intestines falling out and as the Dragon weakly got to her feet to follow, she had to push them back into the wound and hold them in place. As the vampire came at her, Faith paused for a moment before throwing the axe softly, high up into the air. The Dragon stopped in confusion and the slayer charged in and drove her shoulder into the vampire and rode her to the ground.

"Rollo!" my mistress screamed when she hit the floor and by incredible luck or an absolutely amazing sense of coordination, the slayer simply reached out a bloody hand and caught the falling weapon and rammed the wooden stake right into the Dragon's heart before I could even react.

She rolled off of the pinned vampire, failing to pull the weapon free and then staggered away from it, pushing her insides back in with a groan as I came forward with my den at my back. I got to my mistress and put myself in between the slayer and her. We looked at each other for moment and I saw that she was barely able to stand. She had her jaw clenched, probably from the pain of the huge hole in her abdomen and most of the side of her face was likely broken from the mace strike. I sent her a message by glancing at a side exit that we both knew led to a way out of the Dragon's halls. She took a step back towards her weapon, still stuck in the wooden floorboards through my mistress's heart and my den reacted and closed ranks. The slayer gave the slightest nod to me and then charged through the crowd at the exit I suggested and disappeared down the hallway.

The Dragon would live. Once the stake was pulled out, she would heal the wound in short order. She had told me that Faith had chosen to save my daughter's life and now I felt we were even.

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"Dark Knight!"

Faith spun towards the call and saw the large French vampire Arturo standing in a small passageway. He was the one that helped the girls escape, she thought. She really wanted to get somewhere safe and get help for the guts she was holding in with her hand and then get amazingly drunk to forget all of this happened before crawling back to Buffy for help in getting the Scythe back.

"That exit is sealed, follow me!" he said frantically and then sped off down the passageway.

She lumbered after him and came around a corner to see the hallway ahead completely empty. She paused, wondering where the guy went and glanced behind her in time to see him swinging a large stone block at her head. She tried to twist away but the block smashed right into her left temple and she went down instantly.