The Wind Beyond the Walls of the Mind
Chapter 16 - Part1
"Run like Hell!"
by Gaius Petronius
DISCLAIMER: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all the characters that appear on the show are the exclusive property of Joss Whedon, the WB, Fox and Mutant Enemy, Inc. This story can be read on its own or as a sequel to H. P. Lovecraft's "The Haunter of the Dark" from which the Ancient Ones, the Shining Trapezohedron and the character of Robert Blake are derived.
The Wind Beyond the Walls of the Mind is set roughly in mid-season four shortly following the death of Doyle but before the creation of Adam and the death of Maggie Walsh.
Content Note: This part is rated PG-13 for a little raunchy language.
* * * * * * * * * *
Riley stood alone in the middle of a sealed empty room deep in the bowels of the Initiative complex. After much persuasion and trading of perks and favors, Hunter had finally gained him access to Room Alpha 237. For the past two weeks, Riley came here intermittently without the knowledge of Maggie Walsh or anyone else in the Initiative beyond Hunter. Now, Riley stared silently straight ahead as if he were hypnotized.
A massive panel of controls and indicator readouts all positioned around a large screen monitor in the center covered virtually the entire wall facing him. The image of a middle aged man in his mid-fifties seated behind a plain desk in a room equally as barren as the one Riley now stood in flickered back at him. The figure on the screen wore a conservative but extremely expensive suit. His grey hair was thinning across the top of his head. Across the bottom of the monitor screen ran a line of random white letters and symbols on a menu bar. Centered within the meaningless letters was a series of symbols spelling, <<AURELIUS>>. The letters stood out like a drop of red blood on a field of white snow.
The bluish gray light emitted by the monitor screen provided the only source of illumination in the darkness. It bathed Riley in a dull, steely color, giving the young initiative soldier's skin an almost corpse like pallor.
Finally, the unnamed man spoke carefully, deliberately and without the slightest trace of emotion.
"Agent Finn. The Committee has reviewed your report . . . and authorizes your proposed plan of action."
"Thank you, sir," Riley replied dully and without any enthusiasm.
"Remember your objective, Agent," the voice from the monitor continued, "You must salvage what you can of the Initiative . . . and the Project."
"Yes, sir. Sir?" Riley looked up at the screen and tried desperately to conceal any sense of hope or even pleading that his voice might have betrayed, "Can we look for any assistance from the conventional military?"
". . . The Initiative . . ." the voice replied after a moment, "Does not exist. . . . I'm sorry, Finn."
"Understood, sir," Riley responded mustering his best military voice, but inside his heart sank. They were on their own.
"There will be no further communication," the man on the monitor announced with a finality that made Riley shudder.
The image on the monitor winked out leaving only the line of meaningless characters with the word <<AURELIUS>> in the center extending across the screen. In an instant, that too flickered away leaving Riley standing alone in the darkness.
* * * * *
Giles sat at MacDuffie's desk in the New Age Curiosity Shop and searched through several large worn leather volumes in front of him.
MacDuffie paid no attention to his companion but stood across the ill-lit shop at the front window. He stared out into the quiet early evening darkness. There were few cars on the street in this seedier section of Sunnydale even though the night was barely new.
"Rupert, you've been poring over Lecritis for close to two hours now," MacDuffie said, not taking his gaze from the street in front of the window.
Giles sat back and ran his hand through his thinning hair.
"I know . . ." he answered sighing, "But it's in here somewhere."
"The way to save her . . . ?"
". . . yes . . ." Giles replied after a pause.
"I see now the Council's evaluation of you and your Slayer . . . it was accurate," MacDuffie mused, still not taking his gaze from the scene outside the shop, "Buffy . . . she is like a daughter to you."
"And what of it?" Giles snapped defensively.
"Rupert . . . I only said it was accurate . . . their interpretation of the situation and recommended course of action were ludicrous."
Giles, relieved, smiled back at MacDuffie.
"What do you plan to do?" Giles finally asked.
"Keep watch over the Shining Trapezohedron," MacDuffie said calmly as he continued to study every detail of the street outside the window, "Stand guard over all of you . . . and wait."
"Not much of plan," Giles said quietly but there was no criticism in his voice.
"You're the logical one, Rupert. Always planning, always preparing."
"And you, the intuitive one," Giles answered, "You believe in the prophecies and yet, in your actions, ignore them every day."
"I prefer to face things as they happen," MacDuffie nodded as he agreed with Giles' assessment.
"That little vision ability of yours . . . " Giles said, "It does give a Guardian a bit of an advantage."
MacDuffie shook his head and as he spoke, Giles instantly recognized the words of Hamlet.
"Not a whit," MacDuffie recited almost casually, "'We defy augury. There's special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet . . . it will come.'"
MacDuffie turned away from the window back to face Giles.
"'The readiness . . . is all,'" he concluded firmly.
For a moment, neither men spoke. Suddenly, the sound of a small truck pulling up to the curb broke the silence. Giles stood up from the desk and joined MacDuffie at the window. Both watched for a few moments as the noise of slamming truck doors and the clanking of metal on metal filled the shop. Finally, Giles sighed and shook his head.
" . . Xander . . ." he muttered to himself.
Giles turned away from the window and walked towards the front door, followed by MacDuffie as both headed out into the street.
Outside, the buildings all around the shop were run down and the sidewalk and street scattered with loose litter that occasionally blew in the wind. To the left of the shop sat Big A's Camera and Photo, a business more akin to a pawn shop than a specialty photography store. To the right, an open dumpster, almost full, was visible down the alley which paralleled the side of the building housing MacDuffie's shop.
A small delivery truck had just pulled up and parked directly in front of the shop. The parking job was worse than sloppy and a little frightening with the truck's right front wheel sitting up on the curb, the bumper inches away from a fire hydrant. The rear door to the truck's cargo box swung open, exposing to view an entire load of stage lighting, stands, spots, floods and halogen lamps.
Xander scrambled around the rear of the truck unloading the mountains of lighting equipment and positioning the light stands so that the beams would be focused on a area in the street directly in front of the shop. Anya, her arms full of extension cables, played out a series of cords across the sidewalk towards where Giles and MacDuffie were standing. As she passed the two men and entered the shop, she snapped at them through the rounds of cable hanging over her shoulder that almost obscured her face.
"Excuse me!"
Giles stepped aside as Anya slipped through the shop door, then poked her head back out.
"You got 220 in here, right?" she asked brusquely.
"The socket in the back wall by the storage closet," MacDuffie answered without batting an eye.
Anya nodded, and her head disappeared back into the shop.
Giles couldn't take the rapidly expanding zone of chaos emanating from Xander's truck.
"Xander, what in blazes are you doing?"
"Hey, Book Men," was his cheery response, "Give me a hand here."
MacDuffie and Giles joined Xander, receiving lamps and stands as he passed them out of the truck.
"The way I see it," Xander announced as he lowered a spot to Giles, "if Mr. Icky hates light, when he comes to fetch your shining trapezowhatzit, ZAP!"
Xander formed a fist as if he were compressing a joy stick and made a popping noise with his mouth. He then passed a second lamp to MacDuffie.
"This'll be our big time defense perimeter," he grinned proudly.
"There is a quaint logic to it," MacDuffie grinned at Giles.
Giles cast a skeptical scowl at both MacDuffie and Xander.
"Listen, you guys got your books," Xander explained with his arms full of wires and a control panel, "Buffy's got her fists. Willow's the spell girl. Me, I'm gonna do my thing and be army guy."
MacDuffie nodded as he began to understand Xander's strategy.
"Used at a critical moment," he explained to Giles, "These could set Nyarlethotep off guard and buy us time."
Giles sighed, as he gave in to the growing pile of Xander's lighting equipment building up on the sidewalk.
"What do you want us to do?" Giles asked as he resigned himself to another hour of what he considered sheer Scoobie lunacy.
Xander pointed to a specific set of lights, floods and their accompanying stands.
"We got to position all these spots along the sidewalk here so they make a wall of light in front of the shop."
"What if it comes at us from the back?" Giles asked, still deeply skeptical.
"Ah Ha!" Xander announced, "You thought I wouldn't have the smarts to think of that!"
"Did you?" Giles deadpanned him.
Anya poked her head out of the front door of the shop.
"You didn't," she called out.
"Right! . . . Wait . . . Anya? What were we supposed to do?"
"Put more lights in the alley and around back," Anya sang out from inside the shop, "And point some up in the air. It does fly."
"See! Just like she said!" Xander exclaimed at the same time pointing at a set of lights. "We mount up these floods to cover the alley and this third bank takes care of the back of the building."
"And point some up in the air?" Giles asked without enthusiasm.
"Yeah. . . . didn't I just say that?" Xander replied, a control panel firmly under his muscled arm as he jumped down from out of the bed of the truck. He quickly crossed the sidewalk and entered the shop, Giles and MacDuffie following behind. Once inside, Xander set the control panel on a table near the front window and started fiddling with the mounds of wires Anya had spread out across the floor and nearby counters.
"I can activate each bank of lights or the whole wahzoo all at once with this little baby," Xander announced confidently, although the tangle of wires and equipment still had Giles unconvinced.
"Impressive," MacDuffie nodded. Giles only shook his head.
"Well, you both seem to have things well under control here," he said with a touch of sarcasm in his voice as he turned toward the shop door to leave, "I'm heading back to my apartment. I want to cross reference a few of these. You'll let me know if anything develops."
MacDuffie, now studying the mounds of wiring, only nodded perfunctorily towards Giles, who picked up the small leather volume of Lecritis.
"I'm going to borrow this for a little while, Anson. Yours has better annotation than my copy."
"Keep it," MacDuffie replied flatly as if the book had no value to him anymore.
Giles stared at MacDuffie who only watched impassively as Xander and Anya dragged electrical cables around the shop. Giles was about to speak, to ask what was passing through the old Guardian's mind, but he thought better of it and, with the book in his hand, left by the front door. With an effort of will, Giles restrained himself from looking back as he left.
For a few moments after Giles was gone, MacDuffie didn't move. Finally he walked slowly over to a wall cabinet in the shop near the door to the back store room where the Shining Trapezohedron was hidden. The pulsating light leaking through the cracks in the door cast bizarre streaks of illumination across his expressionless face.
Anya caught his movement out of the corner of her eye. She ceased yanking on the tangled pile of cabling at her feet and stared at MacDuffie as he began to fumble with the padlock on the cabinet. Xander, noticing she wasn't helping anymore, eyed her with a puzzled expression.
"Anya?" he called out and when she didn't respond, he dropped his fistful of wires and followed her.
Gathering her courage, Anya strode over to stand near MacDuffie. The streaks of illumination from the storeroom poured the colors of an unknown spectrum across both their faces.
"If Petronius and Alexandros threw it in the sea," she asked quietly, "Why is it here now?"
"An Arab fisherman snagged it in his nets years later," MacDuffie answered, and Anya thought he somehow now looked far older than she imagined, as if he had lived and died many lifetimes in many different forms.
Slowly MacDuffie pulled off the padlock and opened the wall cabinet. Inside, hanging from a hook in the compartment, was a small short sword resting in a worn black leather scabbard.
"The time is near," the Guardian whispered as if speaking to the sword itself as he lifted it off the wall, "I never dreamed I would actually see this day."
"What is that thing?" Xander asked, his curiosity now aroused by something familiar about the antique weapon.
MacDuffie didn't answer but drew the sword out of the leather sheath. He held it in his upturned palms out in front of him with the care one would use for an object that was both precious and irreplaceable. However, there was nothing distinguishing about the weapon. The hilt was wrapped in plain leather and unornamented, the sword stained with tarnish and in places badly pitted with corrosion. The blade itself was dull and deeply notched up and down its length with a particularly large chip about midway up. It's overall condition would render it largely useless as a weapon. Nevertheless, Xander was still strangely drawn to it.
"You like it?" MacDuffie asked Xander.
"Yeah. It's pretty cool," Xander nodded in admiration, "A little beat, but I bet it's seen some action."
"That it has, Laddie," MacDuffie replied as he offered the blade to Xander, "Would you like to hold it?"
"Sure!" he answered quietly but with enthusiasm.
MacDuffie extended his arms and passed the sword to Xander. Xander took the weapon in his hands and held it out upright in front of him. He then moved the sword slowly back and forth in slow motion as if he were parrying an enemy's thrusts.
"This baby is light! She's got great balance," he exclaimed as he turned the blade from side to side.
"It suits you then?" MacDuffie asked.
"Oh yeah! Where'd you get this thing anyway?"
Again, MacDuffie didn't reply. Xander ran his hand up and down the dull blade. His fingers stopped as he examined the deep notch midway up the edge. As his fingers move over the damaged section of the sword, a look of comprehension suddenly swept across his face. Surprised, he stared up at MacDuffie.
"Uh, MacDuff . . . is this what I think it is? Cause if it is . . ."
"It's yours now," MacDuffie interrupted him, "I only need to borrow it until tomorrow night . . . when I'll turn it over to its new rightful owner."
In awe, Xander didn't speak but only continued stroking the old damaged blade. Finally he looked up at MacDuffie and held the sword out to hand it back. Shaking his head, the shop owner refused.
"Ya know . . . I don't, . . . " Xander stuttered as he cradled the sword, "I mean, I haven't really earned this."
"Alexandros," MacDuffie said quietly and Anya felt a chill of excitement run up her spine at the sound of the ancient version of Xander's name, "Earning has nothing to do with it. Change, like a great wind, now sweeps across us all, whether we feel it or not. Much will pass away, leaving that which is young, strong, and full of courage. On that foundation will rest what is yet to come."
"Go on! Take it! Say 'yes.'" she encouraged Xander nudging him at the same time.
For a moment, Xander stared back and forth between Anya and MacDuffie. Finally he nodded in agreement.
"Okay, but only after you don't need it anymore. Deal?"
"Deal," MacDuffie smiled.
Xander handed the sword back to the shop keeper who gently returned the ancient blade to its leather sheath. Then the Guardian slowly strapped it on his belt.
"You better not walk down Main Street with that thing flapping in the breeze," Xander quickly pointed out.
"Xander!" Anya exclaimed.
"Did I ever tell you, you have a dirty mind," he said curtly to Anya.
"Thanks for the warning," MacDuffie answered calmly, "Now I think you two have a defense perimeter to finish."
"Right!" Xander exclaimed, for the first time in months confident that he wasn't just acting on his own and that he wasn't being laughed at behind his back. MacDuffie made him feel his efforts were worthwhile and that he wasn't just the Zeppo of the Scoobie Gang.
Eagerly, he and Anya plunged back into the pile of cords and sockets. As Xander attempted to plug one particularly large socket into the main control panel, there was a sudden snap of electricity and a puff of smoke from the wires where he was working.
"Ow!" he exclaimed jumping back.
"Oh, and don't burn the place down before tomorrow night," MacDuffie called out to Xander as he turned to leave the shop.
"No problem, MacDuff!"
"It's okay," Anya whispered confidently in MacDuffie's direction, "I know where the fire extinguisher is."
Shaking his head and wondering whether Giles wasn't right after all, MacDuffie walked out the front door of the shop into the waiting night.
* * * * * * * *
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