THE SIEGE OF ALESIA: FIGURES IN SAND

Author's Note:

If you haven't read To Paint the Silence and O, Brave New World, none of this will make any sense. It's very complicated and very involved and ridiculously detailed and I won't discourage you from reading it, but let's just say that if you go on and do so without the prequels (I'd actually also recommend Cold Comforts, if you want to know who the hell the Phillipses are), you do so at your own peril and hell, I salute you. With a confused face, but still.

Additionally, the Paxverse, where the Guardians and the Delegates and the Global Union live, into which I have hijacked the Buffy and So Weird characters to make the pretty, pretty story, is even more complicated and involved, and has a billion characters in it and, um, I don't think I can explain it for a third time in one series. It's a lot of explaining.

Uh... Just go read the prequels. Seriously.

Disclaimer:

Oh. Um, Joss owns Buffy, So Weird's soul belongs to the Disney Phalanx; I don't own them. But take my Paxverse (it is MINE), and I will hunt you down and do unspeakable things to you. Bad things. Things that hurt. And cost you money. Or something.

Um. Enjoy:D

It was really rather sudden, he thought later - the progression of one extreme improbability to another, more improbable improbability. They were standing in one place, and then they stepped forward, and he was sure it had looked like solid rock, but then they were stepping through it, and it felt very much like warm water, and something pulling at them, and then--

--and then they were standing, still, stopped, on the grey marble floor of a great, round, tall room, with tall windows, and lined all around but for the wall behind them with many-tiered rows of seats.

He did the only reasonable thing. He stared.

After thirty or forty seconds, he had more or less convinced himself that he had adjusted - to the room, to the passage - he was fairly sure of himself, of the fact that none of this was likely to cause him to lose consciousness or say anything foolish.

Finally, he turned, saw a small group of people gathered next to the Gate - though the rest of the room was noticably empty. At first, he merely passed them over with his eyes, acknowledging their presence.

And then he looked again.

There were - to be precise - five people standing near the Gate. The first he recognized - though he had never seen her before, and his senses told him only that she was a Guardian. A young woman standing nearly a head shorter than himself, with softly-curling blonde hair that reached just below her shoulders, and eyes of a muddied blue that danced from behind oval-shaped glasses. She stood with great confidence and self-assurance, with the aura of comfort Giles had only known in Healers.

Which meant, he realized absently, and with mild annoyance, that she was probably a doctor. He noted, an instant later, the bracelet around her left wrist bearing the emblem of twined serpents, and nodded to himself.

Another young man, older than the others by a few years, whose appearance, for a moment, confused Giles. He was tall, lean, and his skin was of an olive tint that, with his dark, almost-black eyes, made Giles think he was probably descended, at some point, from a family with Native American ancestry. Except, irrationally, and impossibly, the young man's hair was an altogether improbable shade of red-blond. He also exuded an air of total self-assurance. He knew this place, his body said. This was normal. At the moment, it annoyed Giles to no end.

One of the remaining three was a teenage girl, the same age, he thought, as Fiona, but slightly shorter and with straight, blonde hair. She had gone immediately to the Phillipses and was now in conversation with both of them.

It was the last two that had shocked him, at least surprised him. The first, a young woman who looked as young as his charges - her early twenties at the oldest - stood with the same ease as the improbably-coloured young man. She wore all grey, short skirt and worn blazer, except for the worn, flat, scuffed boots that reached her knees. Her hair, dark blonde of the shade that teenagers lightened to gold because of its commonness, was cut to her nape in the back and left to brush her shoulders in front - these pieces were much lighter than the rest. She was tanned and wind-burned, with freckles dashed across her nose and cheeks. Her eyes were of an indeterminate blue. She was, Giles could see merely by looking, a fighter. She stood with the same easy readiness as Slayers he had known. This girl had lived fighting, at least knowing how. She was leaning comfortably into the last member of the group, a second young man who had his arm around her waist in a manner that made the nature of their relationship clear to anyone watching. It was the young man who had caused Giles' shock - presently he detached himself from his companion and advanced slowly toward them, displaying uncertainty that Giles was able to see only by having had practice.

The young man approached first Matt Hamilton, and the taller man leaned down to quietly conference with him. Improbable, Giles reflected, seemed to be the word of the day. The last young man's hair was short and spiked, and shone unmistakably red in the light from the windows. Brown eyes and narrow, quiet face gave him an overall impression of wolfishness, despite his small stature.

Finally, he stepped back from Matt Hamilton, and his eyes roved for the first time over the Sunnydale trio. And slowly, a smile appeared on the quiet face. He looked directly at Giles, but with the impression of holding the other two in his attention without trying. He extended the Watcher a hand, which Giles slowly took.

"Hey," said Oz.

When Giles looked a moment later, he saw that Willow and Xander were staring.

"So," asked Giles later, after his group had been sectioned off and set down along a long, rectangular table, apparently under the pretence of serving them supper but actually for the purpose of splitting them up for a gentle debriefing, "How did you come to be involved with them, if I might ask?"

The young man next to him did not look up immediately from his plate - for his part he seemed genuinely hungry, which followed, if what he'd been told were true: that the other Hellmouths had been under guard, yesterday, by Delegates. When he did look up, he scratched his head thoughtfully, fingers threading through his hair, before answering.

"It's sort of... a story of the longer variety," Oz told him, almost smiling, but not quite. The young man's face was leaner than Giles remembered it being, as his body was leaner, more muscled, more vigorous. A few thin scars criss-crossed his forearms - shallow pink things that rippled as he moved his hands.

"Has it anything to do with Miss Bico?"

As one, Giles and Oz looked down the table to where Tilia Bico sat with Fiona and Xander, blonde forelocks tucked behind her ears and blazer draped over the back of her chair. She was chatting animatedly with both of them, Xander paying her the rapt attention common to all young men in the presence of beautiful young women. Giles suspected that Xander had been seated with Tilia for just that reason.

Giles turned his gaze from the girl to his seatmate before Oz looked back - saw the expression of warm fondness that swelled up readily in his eyes. "With Ti? Yeah. A lot, actually. Pretty much all of it."

Giles waited, displaying more patience than he felt, for Oz to turn back.

"Remember I said I'd been in Tibet?"

"Training with monks, you said - to control your lycanthropy."

Oz nodded, though he flinched briefly at the mention of the last word. "Yeah. Studying hard. Had to." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Most of what they teach is focus, meditation. I went straight back there, pretty much, after I left Sunnydale. I was the only one there who wasn't a local. They take people from all over, though."

"And then?"

Oz gestured down the table. "Ti and her mom - that's Marya; she died a few weeks ago - came. On retreat. Delegates do that sometimes, for higher levels of training. Variety's pretty much the basic philosophy around here, especially for martial training."

"I take it that Marya Bico was of a higher level?"

"Oh, yeah." Oz nodded. "One of two or three chief trainers. Kids, in the Circle, start training around nine, ten. Sometimes younger, like Tilia. Man. If I thought I was passable as a fighter, did I ever learn my lesson."

Giles smiled wryly, glancing towards Tilia. "I take it she was the one who taught you differently."

"Kicked my ass." Oz grinned, eyes distant, clearly enjoying the memory. "I kind of picked a fight, I guess. Hadn't had a lot of contact with regular humans for a while, except the monks. She walked up to me one day and decided to make friends. I wasn't in the mood. She... uh... convinced me."

He turned back to the table, took a sip from his glass of water. "Eventually, she asked me why I was there. She said I didn't strike her as the spiritual type. I told her she was right, and I told her why."

"Did she... take it well?"

Oz blinked, eyes flickering briefly elsewhere. In anyone else, it would have been a blush. "She. Uh. Jumped my bones."

Giles chuckled.

"That was sort of... that," Oz continued. "We almost never talked about it, but she seemed fine with it. I worried, really, that she was, like, keeping something back - not telling me something. I asked her, a couple of times, but she told me not to. Then, one night, she actually pulled me out of bed and all but dragged me, outside, through the woods, and through a - uh - rock. And there's this feeling, the first time you go through an Earth-Gate, where you kinda think you're gonna die. Kinda."

Giles made a face. "I'm familiar with the sensation."

Oz laughed. "I guess you are. Anyway, I go from falling headfirst through nothing to standing in the Great Hall, and Tilia, all cheerful, tells me 'now, we're even'." He held out his arms, indicating everything around them. "First night I got here, I sat through an Assembly. I was adopted a few months later. Been a Delegate almost three years, now."

"'Adopted'?"

"That's what they call it. Unofficially." He sat back in his chair, smiling faintly. "Their creed's 'Fidelitas Domus'."

"'Fidelity, Family'," Giles translated softly. Oz, watching him, nodded.

"It's all about family, 'round here. Kinda nice." His eyes wandered down the table again, set on Tilia. Then he sat forward, starting again on his food. "Plus I can kick ass a lot more efficiently than I used to. Even got some students - little ones, I mean. But still."

Giles watched him eat for a few minutes before asking: "What about their magic?"

Oz stopped, looked at him. "It's not - exactly - magic. At least, not what we used to do. What Willow used to do. It's sort of..." He shook his head. "I don't know if I can explain it."

"Try, please," encouraged Giles.

Oz sat back, looking upward. "Magic, the way I learned it first - what Wil used to do - is... taking, or borrowing, or buying, from something that just... has it. Naturally. But it's not your power, and it can't be a part of the worker. What the Circle does... is use what they already have. I mean, I never had any power, or anything, before. Haven't got a trace of a mutation and the closest I got to witchcraft was reading Latin - badly - while Willow did the mojo. But... how did Marya explain it..." He looked at Giles again. "They call it 'natural magic'. People already have it in them. It uses what comes naturally, instead of going someplace else to get it, and use it."

"Life magic," Giles murmured.

Oz nodded. "Sure different from chanting over chicken feet."

"It would be. Manipulating the very life-force of the Earth. And dangerous."

Oz shrugged, returning to his meal again. "The way I figure it, it's no more dangerous than making bets with demons. I think I prefer it, overall. Haven't had a change in almost two years." Oz waggled the fingers of his right hand, which was lacking the beaded charm he'd been wearing, the last time Giles had seen him. Instead, he wore around his wrist a chain, bearing a medallion identical to the one Fiona Phillips had shown them.

Blinking with surprise, Giles returned to his own meal, but only picked at it, lost in thought. This kind of magic - he'd thought, he had always been taught, that it had been lost, long ago. That it was a dead art, available only to creatures naturally imbued with magic. Demons. Immortals.

Then again, the Circle itself was supposed to be the stuff of legend - and human beings were still, fundamentally, magical creatures. It was just that, along with most of their other natural capacities, the ability to access it had been lost, over time, through neglect and ignorance.

This wasn't quite magic, Giles thought. This wasn't mutation or fluke or ritual. This was instinct, developed to its highest peak.

Given his current surroundings, he found that rather fitting.