The Male Slayer - A Buffy The Vampire Slayer Fanfiction

IX. Quor'toth (Chapter 2)

James looked up with hope that all the gargoyle-bat creatures had flown away. He sighed with relief and relit his lighter timidly in case any were still hanging around. Luckily, they weren't, and James persevered down the cave.

As much as James had hoped it would open up at some point, it didn't. In fact, it got tighter, as James found himself squeezing through passages in order to continue. James didn't really know why he was continuing down this cave, he felt it was almost luring him in with it's mysterious nature, like he was under a spell.

Further and further down he went, until he couldn't go anywhere. He had reached a dead end. James looked up to see how tall the cave was, but couldn't even see the ceiling through the darkness.

He decided that turning and leaving would be his best option, whatever curiosity he'd had had wore off, his interest peaked. It wasn't until a chill ran down his spine that he stopped suddenly. It was almost like the breath of some large creature had just hit off of his back, and James dreaded to find out if that was truly the case. 

He shined the lighter dimly through the darkness and found himself staring right into the eye of the chameleon, that hypnotising spiral of it's iris all too familiar to James. 

"Hi there," he said shakily, backing up as the lighter's reach faded away from the chameleon, it's eye looking around to find James again. It let out a roar that almost deafened poor James and he decided now was the time to high-tail it out of that cave. 

Trouble is, he could hardly see and found himself running into dead-ends left and right. Tutting in frustration, he could feel the chameleon's presence wherever he went, and figured it's tail was creeping up slowly. He wasn't about to fight it blind, so James persevered and finally saw a glimpse of light in the distance. 

His face lit up with hopefulness, but slowly dropped when the light revealed itself to be the chameleon, lighting up the entire cave with it's luminous glow. 

"Oh dear," James muttered, preparing to face off against the chameleon. "Alright, you big thing, let's get this over with." 

The chameleon's tail lit up right next to James and instead of attacking him, it headed off down the tunnel, in the opposite direction. James was taken aback, but wasn't about to give up the potential idea of finding a way out of this place, so he followed it. 

Sure enough, a few minutes later, James was out of the cave and back in the hellish landscape of Quor'toth's surface level. James turned to the tail of the chameleon and patted it gently. A coo could be heard from down the tunnel and the tail rubbed on James's face lightly before disappearing back down the tunnel. 

"It was just scared for it's babies, it wasn't actually a bad creature." James thought to himself, with a smile on his face. 

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"Oz!" Marcie exclaimed to the rabid werewolf, which had just finished snacking on some turtle-demons. Oz growled at Marcie, and she backed off. "Whoa, now." 

Oz began to sniff the air and slowly approached Marcie curiously. She stuck her arm out for him to sniff properly, and after he did so, Marcie watched as he began to change back to normal Oz, wearing only his stretchy sweatpants, that he always wore in case of a sudden wolf transformation, so it didn't end with embarrassment when he changed back. 

"Marcie?" Oz asked faintly, still slightly out of it. 

"Yeah, Oz! It's me!" she told him happily. She lightly cupped his face as he lay in front of her. 

"We aren't in London anymore, are we?" he said, looking around at the jungle. 

"Quor'toth." Marcie replied. Oz rolled his eyes in frustration.