Summaries
Summaries for each issue of the Season Eight series. Please realize that there will
be spoilers! Seriously, they're summaries - spoilers abound, totally unmarked.
Read at your own risk.The Long Way Home, Pt III
In her dreamspace, Buffy (much to her disdain) is greeted by Ethan Rayne, who takes her on
a tour of her memories, to retrieve one he claims will be important to affecting the
battle that is going on outside. He takes Buffy through her memories and dreams, back
into a small cage with a hampster wheel and three X-shaped cage crossbeams. Buffy
doesn't quite understand the meaning of the memory, but Ethan advises her to just
memorize what she sees, because she will need all the help she can get.Outside, Amy and Willow are engaged in a very flash witchfight in the air above the castle. Willow absorbs Amy's magic, and "decodes" it, warping her spell over the zombie hoard so that instead of attacking the castle, they behave as though they're at a very fancy dress party. Amy ups her magickal attacks, causing Willow to briefly go "dark", before Dawn steps in (literally) and squashes Amy underfoot. Willow and Dawn chat (briefly), and Willow magickally contains Amy, ending the attack.
In Buffy's room, willow examines the Slayer and announces that she can't reverse Amy's spell, and that someone passionately in love with Buffy will indeed have to kiss her to wake her up. Luckily, she also mentions that someone among them is in love with Buffy (though they may not know it), and their kiss will do the trick. Willow orders the room full of Slayers to close their eyes, and, with the kiss, Buffy awakens.
Somewhere presumably pretty far away, Giles has a discussion with a demon representative of the breed that attacked Buffy at the church in Issue 1. The demons are not happy with the loss of three of their kind, and asserts that they were lured to the church, which Giles suspects was done in order to engineer a conflict between the demons and Slayers. The demon is suspicious, but agrees to alert Giles if it should find any information on the symbol that was carved into the chests of the dead hostages.
In Scotland, Xander advises Andrew via telephone to keep an eye out for information on the symbol, before going into the infirmary to check on the Slayers wounded in the zombie attack. He checks with Renee, who is wounded and feels guilty for not raising the alarm about the attack sooner. Xander reassures her (in a very cute and butch-like manner) that she did well.
In the basement, Buffy and Willow examine a bound Amy. Willow assesses that Amy has been working magick with help, and runs a trace to find out where she teleported from. In the meantime, she and Buffy chat about time passed. Willow mentions that she and Kennedy are still together, though taking it slow, and asks about Dawn's situation. Xander soon joins them, and they chat until Willow gets a reaction from her trace. She only is able to tell Buffy that she sees a military-like organization, before the trace turns into a portal (a trap), and Amy and Willow are sucked away before Buffy or Xander can stop them.
In the labs of the military installation, Willow is bound to a table by magick, while Amy stands by her side, and a demonic shadow (Amy's boyfriend) explains that though he and Amy are contracted to kill Buffy, whom they assume will follow after Willow soon, it is Willow who has really "gotten under his skin". In the light, the figure is revealed to be a skinless human body - Warren Mears.