The Wind Beyond the Walls of the Mind
Chapter 23
The Image In The Crystal
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 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.
Content Note: This part is rated PG-13 for a little raunchy language.
* * * * * * *
The Main floor of the Initiative Headquarters was a scene of controlled confusion. Even here, well below ground level, the clap of thunder accompanying the fall of dusk rolled through the entire complex. Soldiers and technicians ran every which way. Hunter, his chair kicked away, paced up and down in front of the bank of monitors and control indicators housed on the Main floor. He stopped first at one, then another instrument panel as he struggled to get a handle on the flood of readings pouring into the Command Center.
Overhead on the catwalk, Riley ran in through the entrance door. He doubled timed it across the metal grating high over the Main floor and almost swung down the spiral stairway four steps at a time. All the while he buttoned up his camouflage jacket which he had hastily thrown over his Initiative uniform. He raced up to the Command Center, pushed past several technicians and halted behind Hunter.
"What the hell we got?" he shouted to Hunter over the confusion.
"What the hell we not got!?" Hunter answered as he pointed to a large monitor, "We're picking up infrared bursts everywhere! Down here at the harbor. Over here there's a super hot spot on the campus."
"That's the library building," Riley said, puzzled.
"We got 'em big time all over downtown!" Hunter continued as he quickly tapped on a keypad to expand the central city grid readouts, "It looks like a whole line of bogies moving towards that block that had all the activity last night!"
"We gotta move fast!" Riley shouted as he snatched up a small wireless headset from a control panel in front of Hunter. The new Initiative Commander's voice boomed over the Initiative address system.
"Attention all personnel! We are going to Code Red! I repeat, Code Red!"
All around the Command Center, above the emergency lighting cells on the walls, red strobes began spinning with a steady rapid pulse.
"This is Agent Finn! Squads Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta are to report fully prepared for engagement to the North exit on the double! All others muster to man the defense perimeter! Repeating, all other squads muster to man the defense perimeter!"
Camouflaged soldiers immediately scrambled across the floor of the Initiative Command Center.
In her locked and guarded office, Professor Walsh, her eyes bloodshot from hours without sleep, glared up from the computer monitor in front of her as Riley's voice echoed from the PA system.
"Well, we'll just have to pick the pace up a little!" she growled quietly as she hunched back over the keyboard and continued working on cracking the Initiative's security codes.
* * * * * * * *
At the base of the hillside overlooking Sunnydale, Willow thrashed her way out of the bushes and onto a street. She stopped to catch her breath as Xander's voice called from the brush behind her.
"Hey, Will! Wait up!"
Xander burst out of the bushes behind Willow. Struggling to untangle himself from the clinging undergrowth, he swatted away a loose stick that stuck out of his hair.
"Willow! What the hell are you doing?!" he shouted over the rolling thunder, "That thing's gonna be all over us in a couple of minutes! We gotta get back to the shop!"
"Xander! Tara's in trouble!" she yelled back and Xander could sense the terror in her voice, "She found something big time that we need to fight the Ancient Ones . . . and It knows! Look!"
Willow pointed in the direction of the Sunnydale campus roughly a mile away. The tips of the claw like red cloud were now visible touching the roof of the campus library.
"Willow . . ." Xander began but Willow interrupted him as she verged on hysteria.
"Xander! Please! You don't understand . . . !" she cried.
"WILLOW!"
Surprised by his outburst, Willow looked back at Xander. Under the failing light she could see the pained expression on his face.
"Will, I know you better than anybody!" he said earnestly, "Who used to put salamanders down your shirt when you were a kid just to make you scream?"
Xander paused. The building wind whipped the bushes behind them.
"And who got his first detention in kindergarten for beating up Jimmy Gulano 'cause he teased you about your red hair and made you cry?"
". . . Xander . . ."
"And who'll always wonder" he continued looking down self consciously at the pavement, "What might have been if Oz and Cordelia hadn't walked in on us in the old factory?"
A streak of lightning, followed by a roar of thunder broke through the turbulence in the sky over their heads. Despite the building chaos around them, Willow couldn't take her eyes off Xander.
"Give me some credit, will ya!" he finally said looking back up at her, "So what are we waiting for?! Let's go get Tara!"
Willow impulsively threw her arms around Xander and for just a moment squeezed him as tightly as she could. Xander wriggled out of her embrace which he imagined was as fierce as that of any Slayer.
"That's nice but no time for the huggies! Come on, the truck's down the street!"
Willow and Xander turned together as one and broke into a run towards the truck with the wind kicking at their heels.
Giles' beat up Citroen screeched to a stop on the street out front of MacDuffie's New Age Curiosity Shop. Buffy leaped from the low slung French auto and dashed in the front door, followed by Angel and Giles. Only Cordelia paused as she scrambled out. Thinking, she stared momentarily at the photographic equipment store next door with its dozens of cameras on display in the window. A bolt of lightning cracked over head and, for a second, the street lamps and the lights in MacDuffie's shop flickered. With a panicked squeak, Cordelia quickly followed the others inside.
As Buffy burst in with Giles and Angel right behind her, she quickly glanced over at Anya who was dutifully manning the spot light control panel and then at MacDuffie who was kneeling beside Faith. Although still comatose, Faith no longer thrashed but appeared to be resting peacefully. Kate stood in a corner and scowled at Angel. Cordelia finally bounced through the door a moment later. Anya scanned the group and a look of panic washed over her face.
"Where's Xander?!" she cried out to Buffy who didn't answer.
"WHERE'S XANDER?!" she repeated.
"He's okay. He's coming," Buffy blurted out, at the same time ignoring Anya's frightened gaze.
Sensing an impending mini emotional crisis, Cordelia quickly stepped beside Anya and placed her hand on her shoulder.
"It's okay," she said in a soothing voice, "He went with Willow to get Tara at the Library. He'll be back soon."
"He better be!" Anya snipped.
As Anya returned her attention to the control panel and fiddled with the knobs and settings, Kate stepped up beside Angel.
"Where the hell you been?" she asked sarcastically.
"Around, trying to find out stuff about the Ancient Ones," Angel answered evasively, looking down at the floor.
Kate sniffed near Angel and crinkled her nose.
"Whew! What is it with you and sewers?!"
Buffy, kneeling down, joined MacDuffie at Faith's side. Outside, the rising wind caused the windows to rattle in their casements.
"Hey . . . I'm back," Buffy said gently, "I promised I would be. You need anything?"
Suddenly realizing the ludicrous nature of the offer, Buffy smiled sadly to herself.
"Sorry about that. Well if you do, I'm right here. Just holler . . . or punch out Cordelia, whatever you feel like."
Buffy rose to her feet. For a moment she appeared lost and unsure of what to do next.
". . . Buffy . . ." Giles said quietly as he stepped up beside her.
Buffy stared up at the impassive face of her Watcher.
"What now, Giles? What do I do?
Giles glanced in the direction of the pulsating light emanating from the storage chamber. Buffy turned momentarily to the still kneeling form of MacDuffie. As he got to his feet, he nodded in agreement with Giles.
Understanding, Buffy faced the doorway to the storage chamber. She reached out, grasped the handle and swung open the creaking wooden door. Like a wave of alien iridescence, the glow of the Shining Trapezohedron washed her from head to foot.
Slowly, Buffy entered the storage chamber and cautiously approached the wooden box housing the Shining Trapezohedron. Behind her in the open doorway Giles and MacDuffie stood anxiously. For a moment she contemplated the pulsing glow emanating from the container. She reached into the box, pushed aside the old excelsium and lifted the Crystal. The entire storage room blazed with the beams of light flooding from the Trapezohedron as Buffy held it out in front of her.
On the cot nearby, Faith's blood red eyes suddenly snapped open as if she could see every image now looming before the other Slayer.
At the same time, Buffy gazed into the Crystal and saw, washed in the color of an unknown spectrum, the slowly opening Void and beyond. Her eyes widened as the image of the universe of the Ancient Ones unfolded before her. She beheld vistas of blasted cities, structures that once towered in unfamiliar shapes and forms, arches that leaped across space at insane angles, now all smashed to wreckage across the blighted landscape. All through the vision was darkness, while an inky poisonous vapor billowed in the sky and, across the foreground, rivers ran blood red.
It was then, as Buffy stared into the Shining Trapezohedron, that she realized she, too, was being watched . . . by something from within. It pulled at her, clawed at her mind and soul seeking to bleed the very life energy out of her. She wanted to scream but no sound would leave her lips. Summoning all her strength, she snatched her gaze away from the vision emanating from the Shining Trapezohedron. Shaking, she placed the Crystal back in its box and staggered back into Giles' arms. Giles held her tightly as she struggled to recover from the nightmare visions now burned into her mind.
MacDuffie soothingly placed his open palm on top of Buffy's head, and her shivering quickly subsided. Not moving from Giles' arms, she turned her head to look up at the Guardian.
"You are strong," he answered her unspoken question, "Few have gazed into the Shining Trapezohedron and returned with their sanity intact to tell the tale."
Unbeknownst to the others, Faith, now fully conscious, stared up at the shop ceiling from her vantage point on the cot.
"So," she muttered almost silently to herself, "That's where those fuckers come from! This is more than you can handle, 'B!'"
Faith was about to stir and sit up when she remembered MacDuffie's admonition.
"Be patient!" his voice whispered to her, "You will know . . . when the moment arrives . . . then strike with all the power you have. That way, you will catch Nyarlethotep unawares!"
Faith heard the movement of Buffy, supported by Giles, and MacDuffie leaving the storage room. She quickly closed her eyes, lay back and pretended to be unconscious once more. Giles led Buffy over to a folding chair. Slowly, the Slayer slid out of Giles' supportive arms and settled on the seat.
"Are you going to be all right?" he asked gently.
"Yeah," she replied but gasped for breath at the same time, ". . . just gimme a sec."
Buffy slowly regained her composure. Finally she looked up at the two men hovering by her side.
"Guys . . . how am I going to do this?" she asked fearfully.
Neither of the two men replied. Giles, his face bathed in concern, returned Buffy's pleading stare while MacDuffie gazed off at Faith's cot.
"You guys are supposed to be the 'Answer Boys!'" Buffy cried out desperately, "How the hell am I gonna do this?!"
Buffy's agonized expression begged for a response from MacDuffie and Giles. None was forthcoming.
* * * * * * *
Wind whipped the brush on the hillside where the North Exit tunnel of the Initiative emerged into the night. The billowing red clouds overhead loomed so low they almost scraped the tips of the trees in the neighboring cemetery.
Riley, fully clothed in camouflage and holding an electronic rifle attached to an alpha particle pack on his back, stood by the exit as dozens of Initiative soldiers, each toting the same small pack connected by heavy cables to a sleek rifle, quickly emerged in pairs. As they burst out into the stormy night air, Riley slapped each on the back and sent them off into the dark.
"Move it! . . . Now! . . . Keep moving! . . . Go! . . . Go! . . ." he kept shouting.
Finally Graham, Forrest and Joel, a younger Initiative squad leader, emerged last and waited by Riley's side.
"Okay! You've got your assignments!" Riley said, his voice barely containing his anxiety, "This is not a capture! It's not even a take down unless we discover a significant weakness! This thing'll fry us if we get caught in the open! The mission is harassment, guerrilla tactics pure and simple! Hit and run! Understood?"
All three squad leaders nodded.
"All right," he continued firmly, "Graham and Forrest, you move your squads to the assigned downtown blocks. Joel, I need you to make a detour by the Campus Library and disrupt whatever it's up to over there, then take your position as well. Keep in constant communication! And no heroics! You got it?
"Got it, sir," Joel replied and Riley didn't like the younger squad leader's reckless grin.
"That goes especially for you, Joel!" Riley snapped.
"Understood, sir!" Joel answered, straightening up to his full slender six foot frame and grinning again with just enough subtle sarcasm to annoy Riley. Riley had reprimanded him before for his "attitude" but there wasn't time now.
"All of you, move!" Riley commanded.
Instantly, Graham, Forrest and Joel dashed off into the night in the direction of their squads. Riley activated his communicator headset and spoke into the microphone strapped to his shirt collar.
"Alpha to Base, Hunter, do you read me?"
"Loud and clear, sir!" Hunter replied from the Main Command Center of the Initiative Complex.
The young technician stood behind the array of monitors and control panels. He wore a wireless headset that nestled in his short curly red hair. Other technicians were seated at various monitors and, across the main floor, a hoard of initiative soldiers stood at attention.
"Batten her down!" Riley ordered into his headset, "I want that place sealed up tighter than a bull's ass in fly time! Can you handle it?"
"Just a sec, sir," Hunter answered as he turned his attention to the soldiers scattered across the Command Center's main floor. "Listen up!" he shouted to the leaderless group of men, "All remaining squads are to take up assigned positions along the perimeter just inside the force fields."
None of the soldiers moved. A few cast snickering glances at one another since Hunter was the youngest and one of the shorter recruits for the Initiative. Hunter's face turned red but not with embarrassment.
"NOW, YOU SHITHEADS!" he suddenly screamed.
Surprised, the ranks of soldiers scattered in all directions headed for their assigned posts. Hunter spoke coolly into the headset to Riley.
"How was that, sir?"
Outside at the north side entrance to the Initiative, Riley grinned.
"I think you got the hang of it," he replied with admiration into the headset, "Alpha Squad moving out. Keep communications open at all times!"
Riley ran down the hillside to join the rest of the Initiative troops.
* * * * * * *
Willow and Xander burst in through the main doorway to the campus library. The library was a long towering room its outer walls lined with stacks of books and study tables grouped together around the center. The library would normally be almost deserted since it was a Friday night, but now the rumbling from the clouds and an occasional shivering of the ground, which caused the high narrow windows to rattle in their frames, had sent all but one lone student scurrying to the imagined safety of the dorms.
That student, a freshman with short cut dirty blond hair and a pair of thick lens glasses halfway down her nose, sat hunched at a table over a book with a half dozen others open by her side. An open Sprite can was within easy grasp and three empties lay scattered across the table amidst reams of loose sheets of paper. Looking up every now and then as if she were racing against time and checking that the building wasn't quite ready to collapse, she scribbled feverishly in her spiral binder and flipped the pages in the reference book beside her.
Xander stared at her for a moment.
"What the hell . . .?" he muttered.
"History term paper," Willow answered curtly.
"Oh . . . evil!"
"Come on!" Willow shouted, indicating the far end of the main library reference area.
Outside the windows, the night and rising storm cast a ghastly crimson hue down into the library. The building rumbled with another jolt of thunder. Willow and Xander raced across the main floor of the library towards the entrance to the Rare Book Room. They flew by rows and rows of reference volumes, finally halting at the entrance to the stairwell leading down to the Rare Book Room. The old Curator was seated in a chair behind a desk as if standing guard. He didn't move but only stared straight ahead.
"Excuse me, sir," Willow panted as she reached the desk, "Have you seen a student with long blond hair. She was coming here to look at a book in storage and I haven't heard . . ."
"Uh . . . Willow . . ." Xander interrupted as he stared at the unmoving form of the Curator.
Xander reached out and poked the Curator in the shoulder. The old man's body toppled forward on his desk. Several books slid away from his lifeless outstretched hands and dropped to the floor.
"You never believed me, Will, when I told you studying was bad for your health!" Xander quipped nervously indicating the books, "I mean, there are no warning labels on these things and . . ."
"TARA!" Willow yelled.
She jumped forward towards the doorway that opened onto the staircase down to the Rare Book Room but suddenly stopped and stared at the floor. Xander halted right behind her. He followed her gaze downwards at his own feet.
"What the hell . . . is that?!" he exclaimed.
Slithering across the floor of the library, like a fast moving stream of hell spawned liquid, a small trickle of red vapor, no more than an inch deep and two inches wide, silently flowed by their feet, into the open doorway leading to the Rare Book Room and disappeared spilling down the steel staircase.
"Oh my God! TARA!" Willow screamed.
Willow and Xander almost leaped in unison for the open doorway and plunged headlong down the stairway, their feet clanking on the steel steps and splashing the red vapor as they descended.
Behind the locked cage door of the Rare Book Room, Tara was backed up in terror against the wall. All around her, the crimson tide of vapor was now almost knee deep. Swirling before the cage door in the center of the room, the lethal cloud at her feet surged upwards and took the form of the serpent's neck and three lobed eye of Nyarlethotep. Tara clutched the Res Profana to her chest. She heard the clanking of Xander and Willow's feet on the stairs and Willow's cry.
"Help! Willow!" she screamed.
Willow and Xander emerged at the entrance of the Rare Book Room.
"Holy shit!" Xander exclaimed.
The three lobed eye of the Haunter of the Dark spun to confront them.
"I'm locked in! Get the key from the Curator!" Tara yelled.
Instantly, Xander turned and dashed back upstairs. The vaporous form of the Haunter slid towards Willow.
"A second Wiccan!" it laughed in a deep, hollow, echoing voice, "Are you all this pathetic universe can rally against the power of the Ancient Ones!?"
"Tara! Giles' spell! The light! Concentrate the light!" Willow yelled.
Xander leaped out of the doorway from the staircase onto the main floor of the library. Nervously he stepped up to the dead body of the Curator. He began to fumble through the old man's pockets. As he lifted the limp head and shoulders up, Xander crinkled his face.
"Uh, . . . ya gotta excuse me for this," he babbled as he rifled through the corpse's pockets, "No really, I mean, nothing personal or anything! . . . Don't take it the wrong way. I got a girlfriend and all . . ."
Xander discovered the keys, pulled them out and exclaimed out loud.
" . . YES! . . ."
He barreled back down the stairs as he let the body of the Curator drop forward across the desk with a loud thunk.
Below, Willow and Tara focused their attention on the single bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Both muttered to themselves as they recited an incantation. Xander burst into the room but stopped behind Willow as if she were a shield protecting him from the powers of the Ancient One. The three lobed burning eye, now confused by the presence of two chanting Wiccans and not knowing which one to attack, turned back and forth as it struggled to take on a material form. Sensing that Nyarlethotep was nearing its physical manifestation at which point they would all be overwhelmed, Willow and Tara concentrated harder and stared hypnotically at the single incandescent bulb.
Suddenly, the light from the bulb, which was randomly spreading illumination across the room, narrowed down into one sharp laser like beam leaving the rest of the chamber in darkness. The shaft of light suddenly flew like a flaming bolt from a crossbow at the glowing red cloud of vapor that was coalescing into the Ancient One. The neck of Nyarlethotep attempted to dodge the missile but it struck home nonetheless. There was a sizzling and snapping sound, like electrical switches being slammed shut, and a loud pop. Nyarlethotep dissolved away and the crimson vapor swamping the floor disappeared.
In an instant, the room was illuminated once more by the single light bulb. Exhausted, Willow leaned against the wall, and Tara, still clutching the Res Profana, supported herself on the desk in the cage.
Xander ran across the room and unlocked the cage door. Tara dropped the book on the table and staggered out into Willow's arms. The two held each other tightly for a moment.
"Uh . . . Ladies!" Xander reminded the two Wiccans as he moved nervously towards the stairway exit, "Remember, Willow? Huggies? No time?"
"You're right!" she exclaimed, dragging Tara with her, "Let's get outta here!"
"Wait! That Book," Tara said with a cold intensity as she turned towards the Res Profana ". . . It's fulfilled its purpose. It must not survive. It has to be burned!"
"Well, who the hell except fire face up there's got any matches?!" Xander quipped.
Ignoring him, Willow and Tara turned and glared at the Res Profana. They slowly chanted together.
"Veni nobis, Ignis Caelorum! Veni nobis, Ignis Caelorum! Veni nobis, Ignis Caelorum! (Come hence to us, Fire of the Heavens!)"
Smoke began to billow out from under the closed cover of the Res Profana. In a moment more, as if it were sitting under the concentrated rays of a magnifying glass, the cursed volume from before time burst into flames. Willow and Tara hesitated only a few seconds to ensure that the black leather book was fully engulfed. They then turned and raced past Xander for the staircase.
"Cool!" Xander grinned as he joined them, "You guys wanna go camping in my backyard with me sometime?"
"Come on!" Willow yelled at Xander as she and Tara ascended the stairs, "That's only going to stop it for a few minutes!"
Xander quickly followed.
Willow, with Tara and Xander right behind her, charged from the staircase door to the Rare Book Room out onto the main floor of the library. Their shoes snapped loudly on the hardwood floors as all three raced across the library towards the exit. Black acrid smoke began billowing from the doorway to the Rare Book Room. The thunder outside rumbled again while the windows rattled even more loudly in their casements. The red glow in the sky grew more intense with each passing second.
As Willow, Tara and Xander tore past the lone freshman, the building fire alarm suddenly blared wildly. The freshman looked up in desperation from her unfinished term paper.
"Aw, Shit!" she moaned.
Clutching the spiral binder, the student leaped to her feet and followed the others out the main entrance. In a moment, however, she was back, scurrying with her head down to the study desk. She quickly snatched the remaining half full can of Sprite and scampered wildly, bumping into tables and chairs, back out the main entrance.
The electricity suddenly failed in the library, leaving the vast main floor bathed in the red glow from outside. The fire alarm still blared. The massive overhead fluorescent fixtures swayed and fragments of plaster broke loose from the ceiling to fall to the floor. The ground shook and books began sliding one by one and then in whole groups off the shelves. Only the corpse of the Curator remained behind, unmoving, surveying the mounting devastation, like a lone sentinel at the Gates of Hell, as the building shuddered and the Rare Book Room was engulfed in the flames below.
* * * * * * * *
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