Fiction 37b37- Potential

Series Title: 37 By 37

Story Title: Potential

Author: Restive Nature

Rating: PG

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Buffy the Vampire Slayer or The Belgariad. They belong respectively to Whedon and to the Eddings’.

Genre: Crossover of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and The Belgariad.

Type: Stand Alone

Pairing: Glory/ Torak

Time line/ Spoilers: Season 5 of BtVS and between the Belgariad and the Mallorean for Eddings stuff.

Summary: Torak has found a better candidate to take over as the Child Of Dark.

Feedback: Always welcome!

Distribution: Ask first please.

A/N: This is for the TtH Fic-for All.

Potential

Power, darkness, dominion over all.

That was what he had sought and that was what he had lost in that final battle between his chosen affiliation and the accursed Child of Light. The vessel had not mattered. That it was a boy, little more than a whelp, had been an insult, Torak had decided in the vastness of his new prison.

The powers of his opposite, though he laughed to call it that, the battle coming down to the choices made, had been enough to force his Spirit to flee. That had been the agreement, though Torak chafed mightily under it.

But when he saw his chance to live on, if only as Spirit and memory, rather than to be totally decimated and thrust into the recesses of the past, eventually fading from the hearts and minds of all, Torak grabbed onto that promise with both hands as it were.

He was gone before his corporeal remains had even finished it's topple to the ground. The earth that represented only a small portion of that which had birthed him. Because yes, even Torak could admit that there had to be something there in this vast universe for which his Spirit was able to take hold of while he willed himself into the existence he had chosen eons ago.

The memory of lucidity in ages past, of knowing that there was a possibility of his personal downfall, made Torak realize that his plans, those that he could use the Darkness for, needed flexibility. That was one lesson that he had only recently realized he might need. It was perhaps not weakness to bend, not debilitation to deviate from one's path when necessary. After all, not everything that could be used was set in one's path. And that was what drove his Spirit to roam now. To find that probably inconsequential thing, a barely tangible droplet, but a Darkness near to his own...

And finally he was called. Following the thread of that Darkness that took him to a world much like the one he had been forced to abandon. But with the new fruition of his plans, he would re-enter that world and make it tremble as was just and right and his due.

Uncaring of the rest of the world as it appeared to him, finding pockets of Evil lurking about here and there, was uninteresting. It had been much the same before and it had amused him to push those pieces around a board, like a game. But there was one, ripped, shattered, much like himself, bitter and agonized.

“Always babe,” he heard the ephemeral, lesser spirit whisper, the voice feminine in nature, though a hint of a deeper pain gnawed at the edges of it. “Just my fuckin' luck that it'll be always!”

Torak regarded the lesser spirit. He could see that it had known Darkness, a large piece of it. The lesser Spirit had known evil, depravity, had gloried in it. But, like a spreading, wasting sickness, there was also the taint of righteousness that it writhed under, seeking escape from.

“Get up and fight you moron!” the feminine voice hollered and Torak allowed himself to see what the being was reacting to.

Another being touched also by Darkness, much too lightly for Torak's taste's was murdering another inconsequential being, though the action, he could see quite clearly was being fueled by a fool's righteousness. It amused him. If only momentarily.

“Damn it, Ben!” the feminine seeming spirit howled. “You let it end like this and I will make your unlife a living Hell, don't think I won't!”

“Hell is such a very mundane thing though,” He finally spoke, garnering the lesser spirits attention immediately. There was defensiveness in it that slowly, as it realized what was before it, melted away.

“Well hello there big, dark and delicious,” the lesser spirit almost purred. The thoughts that Torak could conceive from it were amusing, if rather base in nature. It was what lurked behind those thoughts that he wanted.

“We can play these pointless games, should you care to,” he murmured to the lesser spirit, capturing her attention immediately, “or you can desist these exhortations to a losing battle and flee before your ability to do so is negated,” Torak instructed. It took only infinitesimal moments for the reasoning to penetrate the spirits consciousness that it retained, to understand what He was saying and the meaning behind it.

“I stay here, I really bite the big one with Benny boy, don't I?” it spoke, anger and awe coloring it's consciousness. Torak's amused silence told the lesser spirit everything it needed to know. “Well screw that!” it semi-roared. The lessening of the voracity of it's own voice caused a startlement that propelled the spirit to the shelter Torak offered.

“Very good,” Torak praised.

“So what you got for me that's better than what I had?” the lesser spirit that he perceived had called itself Glorificus, demanded of him.

“As I noted,” Torak reminded the being dryly, “hell, or the dimension of, too low, too mundane. I offer everything.” With the push of one well acquainted with the ability to take what he wanted, Torak showed her his new vision, leaving the former being gasping at the enormity of it settling in the Beast's mind.

“Chaos,” it breathed out, the anger fading to make way for awe alone. “Yes!”

“And thus,” Torak boomed across the universe, “I name thee Zandramas!”

37b37- Take It Like A Man