Meetings in Strange Places, Part I: Getting on with it

 
Wesley is up in his room putting a last few items in a canvas haversack. He would have liked something more rugged, but he needs to travel light, and anyway, there's little chance of severe weather where he is going.

When was the last time he had actually done something? Was it his last journey to where he must return yet again? Back to the Death Realms.

It seems, Wesley muses with an unhappy smirk, that for him, at least, Milliways is itself Bound to Geburah. Or perhaps he simply has a way of bringing some form of Death with him wherever he goes.

No matter. The threat to him, and to Illyria, has come from there all along. And by his reckoning, he’s allowed that threat to go unanswered for at least a year-and-a-half now. Only the Powers would know what his adversaries have been up to there in all that time.

Come to that, the Powers probably haven’t a clue either.

He closes the outer flap of the haversack and cinches it. Durable enough, he supposes. And certainly light. His coat had proved warm enough on his two previous visits, and he's had worse pillows than one made of canvas.

Putting the haversack over his shoulder, he walks over to the small table by the door and picks up on the amulet he had left there. The very last thing he would need.

He takes a moment to study it. How long has he had the thing now? Must be nearly two years. Ever since he first found it in that shadowed cathedral. An eight-pointed silver star within a ring, all fused to a silver chain. Eight points, symbolic of the Sephiroth of Tiphereth. Or so his best guess would have it. At least it fit an item that allowed him to journey from the bar safely, if never to the safest places.

It's been well over a year since he's used it. No wonder he feels so trapped here.

But that had been Fred and Illyria, each in her own way demanding he exercise more caution, and stop endangering himself by leaving the bar. But neither of them were here now. And there were matters to be settled.

The Senior Partners. Cyvus Vail. Perhaps even his own father. Any of them could be out there waiting.

Well. They wouldn’t have to wait any longer.

[Continued]