Past and Future Tense

Chapter 2: Exhuming

The woman's eyes were closed, and her left hand was risen, as if to block something. Her whole body seemed to be frozen in motion, and Picard wondered what had happened in her last moments of life. Irina stood beside him. "We must move to the side. She will continue in motion when she is released from the spell. Worf, you should stand beside me. Buffeia will try to kill you when she sees you, as I did."

Worf looked at the crystallized woman. "I would not harm her."

Irina chuckled. "You are strong as any Fahm. But I assure you, she is by far the stronger, and you have only your Starfleet weapon. I will protect you from her, because if she killed an innocent man it would weigh heavily on her heart."

Worf growled a bit at the thought of needing protection from such a tiny woman. But Irina had not insulted him. She wished to prevent misunderstanding, and Worf could respect that.

Nomei approached them from the back of the room where she was assembling the things she needed for her spell. "I am ready."

Data and Picard stood to one side, while Worf and the Hands were all on the other side. "Data, record this for later analysis." Picard wanted to understand this magic that the Toprakin used.

"Yes, sir."

Nomei held her hands cupped together, an assortment of dried plants, dried blood and crystals held in them. Then she began chanting in an ancient language that the universal translator refused to translate, and had every time she used it. "Ors a Kinando! Lud on dirak ni dubrisai! Altus kirn dul masai li'unda. Mus! Amus kin a Toprak!"

Light passed from the hands of Irina and Arik to those of Loris and Shoal and then to Nomei's, where it infused the ingredients of the ritual and passed up her arms and into her face. Briefly, her eyes turned blue and her hair turned white. Then the whole of the light shot forward and into the crystal, which then disintegrated, leaving the space-time within it free to rejoin the universe at large.

Buffy held her hand up to her eyes as Danaila, an evil Toprakin witch, completed the spell she was working on. The light was blinding, but she came out swinging, intending to behead the witch with the scythe as she came down. But the blade met with nothing but air when she hit the ground and opened her eyes.

She spun around, looking for Danaila, but instead, she found herself in a new place. Instead of the forest they had been fighting in, Buffy now stood, crouched in a defensive position with the scythe at the ready, in some kind of pyramidal stone temple. She paused for a moment to allow her eyes to adjust, listening for any sound from her attacker.

What she found were about twenty Toprakin, three humans, and two other creatures. One looked like a stone statue, with bronze hair and amber eyes. The other seemed to be a black, balding vampire with his game face on, and she decided that her aggression would best be used by beating some information out of him. But as she approached the vamp, one of the Toprakin stopped her. Damn, I hate how short these people make me feel.

"No, Buffeia. He is not a Fahmyr. I have seen him in the light of the sun, and he has helped us to dig you out."

Buffy looked up at her. She was dressed to the nines and armed to the teeth, but it was more the way she moved that told Buffy she was facing a sister Slayer. There was a small strain of similarity in every Slayer's fighting style that came from the beast within, and no matter how they were trained, that strain showed through. It was predatory.

Which begged the question, "What the hell is going on here?"

The other Slayer answered her. "The witch Dana locked you in time while you fought her. She did the same to the other four Hands, and when tombs were built in your honor, she then hid them. Thousands of years have passed since that day."

Thousands? After a moment, she asked, "How many thousands?"

"Five and a half."

"Danaila got all five of us. What about the kids? Tera, Daniel, Joyce, Angel?"

"No. They became the Hands after you, along with others, and they defeated Dana, but they had no way of reviving you, nor of finding your tombs." She sighed. "We have found all the tombs, but yours is the first we were able to uncover. The aliens you see among us were able to help us with the excavation. Your children and Wello's had long, fulfilled lives, Buffeia, and had many children of their own."

Buffy winced, both at the mispronunciations and at the thought that her children were long dead. Then she looked up at the other Slayer. "You look like me."

She smiled. "Yes, I think I do. I have been told that our family descended from Anjail, son of the First Hand."

Buffy sighed. "What's your name?"

"Irina."

She looked behind Irina to the alien she had protected. "And who's this guy?"

He spoke for himself, extending a hand for her to shake. "I am Worf, a Klingon."

She took it, and he didn't wince at her grip. "Name's Buffy. You sure you're not a vampire?"

He snorted. "Completely." Buffy felt people approaching from her rear and she turned around. Worf said, "This is my Captain."

The man was tall and old, with a bald spot that had nearly taken over his head, but he was pretty good looking for that age, with a strong face and a very nice build. He, too, held his hand out in friendship. "I am Captain Jean Luc Picard, of the Federation starship Enterprise." As she shook it, he continued. "If I may say so, you don't seem very similar at all to the Toprakin."

She grinned. "Yeah, and you sound like you're from the Land of Tweed." At his confused look, she elaborated. "England."

"Perish the thought. I'm actually French."

"Wow. So, when the guys and I came here, it was by accident. We thought we were in an alternate dimension, on an alternate Earth, where humans just evolved a little taller and didn't lose their tails."

"So you are from Earth."

"Yeah. We must have gone through space and time, not to another dimension. If It's been five and a half millennia since the last time I was awake, what year is it now back on Earth?"

"By the old Gregorian calendar, it is the year 2376."

Doing some quick math in her head, Buffy said, "So we landed here in 3139 BC from AD 2005. We actually traveled 5144 years back in time across who knows how many light years in a matter of seconds." She shook her head. "That's a hell of a trip."

The statue guy said, "Toprak is approximately 5144 light years from Earth. It would seem that however you traveled, you stepped into the moment in time on this world that was visible from your location. From Earth, Toprak is in the Scorpius constellation."

Buffy blinked. "He said that he would hurl us into the eye of the scorpion. The mage that sent us here. He said if he couldn't kill us then he would just get rid of us, and then he did his mojo and wove this huge, sucking portal, and said it would hurl us all into the eye of the scorpion. Then we would be someone else's problem." For a moment the past haunted her. Every time she laid down some roots—. Shaking herself, she changed the subject. "Okay. So, Irina."

"Yes?"

"You found the other four. Let's go and get them out. The five of us need to have a party."

Okay, here's the next chapter. I know, it took me forever, but I'm not a fast writer. I write a little every day, but I've got too many things floating around my computer, many of which haven't even made it here. So review if you liked it!