Chapter 1: Make the world
Daylight percolated through the stain glass windows, casting a spectral glow upon Henry Mitchell Junior as he stood at the potions table working his craft. The witch-whitelighter hybrid adroitly reached into one of the many bowls littering the table and scattered a pinch of ground herb onto the bubbling green sludge. A cloud of white smoke erupted from the copper pot: shrouding the disgruntled potioneer in shadow. Henry, who had expected this, casually batted away the smoke as he scanned the open Book of Shadows beside him; surprised to find that he had nearly reached the bottom of the page. Only yew sap, the final ingredient, was left to be added.
This particular page was different from most others as it forwent the careful calligraphy and imaginative artwork which otherwise pervaded the book (though his younger sister, Mandy, had noticed that the book had a habit of gradually improving the artistic quality of its pages with time). Nevertheless, it held a special place in his cousin Chris' heart for it had been his first entry to theBook and the potion described had since become a benchmark for testing potion making skills. And so, it was for two reasons that Henry had undertaken this particular project. Firstly, he wanted to unequivocally prove to Chris and Wyatt that he was a first rate witch like themselves and secondly, he needed a distraction from the numbing boredom he nursed waiting around for their return.
The addition of yew sap was considered the critical step in the whole process as it was only by doing so that you could tell if the previous stages had been completed correctly. "Here goes nothing," he told the empty room, as he was prone to do when working. It had been a constant source of amusement to his half-cupid cousin, Prudence, during their Magic School classes together; though no more so than her compulsion to adulate those people she had deemed to have 'interesting' auras.
He plucked the small vial of sweet-smelling sap from its rack and poured a controlled measure into the pot. His expectations buoyed, Henry was initially disheartened by the lacklustre response and sheepishly stirred. Abruptly, the intermingling ingredients transformed the potion from green sludge into a pellucid purple liquid. Feeling the wave of his uncertainty finally break, Henry punched the air in celebration and fell back onto one of the outmoded armchairs in the room; only slightly charred from years of demon attacks.
His exultant respite was short-lived. A soft unnatural breeze tousled his short brown hair, alerting him to another presence. Sitting up, Henry moved his hands away from the Book of Shadows as the pages began flipping themselves. This was a new experience for Henry; it had never done that before, at least not for him. Of course, he had grown up hearing the stories of the Charmed Ones and knew that his dead relatives had sometimes given them help in their adventures by directing them to the relevant page but, that had been a long time ago and they had since left the living to their own devices.
Thinking a bad prank was at hand the distrustful hybrid looked around the spacious attic for one of his relatives. The room was empty. Still cautious, he leaned over the Book of Shadows and was pleasantly surprised to see that it had landed on one of his favourite entries: "Tips for Future Whitelighters". But, why was the book showing this to him now? Was this some sort of sign? His Uncle Leo, the author of said page and a man for whom he had the utmost respect, was always telling them about signs and how they could help show a person their path. But, Henry thought it equally likely that someone had foolishly cast the "Give Me a Sign" spell again. Surprise quickly turned into indignation. He wasn't some probie who was still tripping over his wings. He knew the Whitelighter hand-book cover to cover!
Slowly this gentle stream of speculation ran dry and a memory bubbled up to the surface of his thoughts. Henry Junior's powers had first surfaced when he was four years old: orbing all the toys in his kindergarten above a particularly insipid childhood rival, restraining the other child beneath a pile of toys. Henry Senior, a mortal, had rushed over only to find the whole kindergarten mind-wiped and his son in the comforting embrace of his mother; who was very proud of her mischievous little whitelighter. During the subsequent years his parents, teachers and extended family had helped to nurture that early potential and yet, it seemed as though the Book (or rather some unseen force) was trying to warn him that he still wasn't ready for what was to come.
The faint jingling of orbs filled the air and Henry watched as two pillars of glittering blue lights filtered down from the ceiling and coalesced to form the familiar sight of his two older cousins mid-argument. Accustomed to being ignored Henry decided to sit on this particular instance of book weirdness until later.
"- trust me do you? You let them get away!" Chris complained, exasperated. Henry inwardly sighed. He had heard this argument before and it always ended the same way; with Wyatt reminding Chris that he wasn't as powerful as himself, that he wasn't Twice Blessed. The Halliwell brothers were the vanguard of their extended family, dealing with any demonic arrivistes that would threaten their normality but, familiarity breeds contempt and their partnership was easily undone by brotherly dispute.
As if on cue, Wyatt replied, "Well I'm sorry if you wanted to get killed. I only saved your life. No big deal. When are you going to get it through your thick skull that you aren't…" Wyatt had more sense than to finish the sentence and instead tried to redirect the conversation onto Henry. "Hey, Junior. We brought some stuff back for you to look at…What're you working on there?"
"Ah…I don't know what you're talking about," Henry equivocated, unprepared for the shifted attention. Wyatt's clumsy diversion was successful and his brother's anger simmered upon descrying the potion. Stepping forward, Chris retrieved some of the liquid from the pot using a turkey baster and held it up to the light. Wyatt teasingly restrained Henry; who in turn tried in vain to squirm out of the iron grip. Nodding with satisfaction, Chris squirted the liquid into an empty vial and corked it.
"Y'know I think I'll need to start watching my back in the potion making department H. 'cause you're getting pretty good at it…" Henry smiled at the small compliment and only lightly shoved Wyatt in retaliation. During the ensuing mock fight, Chris pilfering the vial almost went unnoticed.
Henry was considering calling Chris out on this furtive action when the air next to his cousins became distorted. Fearing an imminent demon attack, Henry didn't wait for the figure to fully materialise and instead looked to the nearby stack of antique dining chairs. "Chair," he called. The topmost chair was immediately surrounded by the same brilliant blue lights which had brought Chris and Wyatt to the manor and with a gesture Henry sent the orb-enveloped object flying at his perceived enemy. Henry realised his mistake almost immediately as the wooden chair found its mark; splintering upon striking the sturdier frame. However, the impact was still enough to knock a newly materialised and wholly un-braced Travis off his feet and across the floor.
"Hey, I'm really sorry about that," Henry apologised as Wyatt helped his best friend up from the floor. Travis rebuffed the apology and only gruffly acknowledged that he should have made himself detectable to their sensing. And, while his words were amicable, his tone was less so. Henry couldn't say this reaction surprised him much since Travis had never given him much notice before then and this little mishap probably wouldn't make him redress that stance.
Travis was the tallest of the four, a raven hair taller than even Wyatt. It had been a source of good-humoured contention between them over the years and the Twice Blessed had only recently conceded his loss. Travis was also half-manticore demon and that would usually be cause for caution but, he was also a long-standing member of the Halliwell social group and this made his reputation beyond reproach. So, Henry had learnt to live with - if not enjoy - his continued attendance.
Unbeknownst to Henry, Travis currently had greater concerns than proper social protocol. His brow furrowed in concentration, he was trying to sense if the demons that had been following him since leaving the underworld were still approaching. Travis had sensed his uninvited entourage the moment they had begun tailing him to the surface. He had tried losing them, shimmering everywhere and using all the tricks he had picked up over his wild teenage years but, all his efforts proved unsuccessful. It didn't matter where he tried (including graveyards) or how quickly he got there, they kept on coming unperturbed. He had thought the manor's reputation as a hotbed of good magic would be a fitting deterrent.
A stern look from Wyatt was all that stopped the others from interrupting Travis' focus and Henry couldn't help feel a little jealous that he was never given nearly as much respect from his eldest cousin. Travis shivered slightly with the arrival of two demonic presences and pointing warningly at a stray wisp of grey smoke he mouthed the word 'demons' to the assembled Warren witches. Chris and Henry looked at one another sceptically. They willed Wyatt to talk to his friend and make him explain but, he either didn't notice or chose to ignore them as he examined the smoke with equal intensity.
"It's grey!" Henry noted in surprise when he finally stopped trying to determine whether or not Travis had suffered a concussion from the fall and took a proper look at the wisp.
"So? What's your point?" Chris asked, not appreciating how that was relevant. He was probably still sore about his on-going argument with Wyatt. Henry suspected that some unsaid article was the main reason for their revived quarrelling. One thing was clear; they were acting out a charade: Chris had overcome these puerile feelings of inadequacy years prior and yet, despite all attempts to mediate, their raillery continued to escalate.
"The potion makes white smoke, not grey. But, even if it is a demon; how do we, you know, make it vanquishable?" A frisson of foreboding made Henry feel uneasy. Non-corporeal demons were notoriously tricky to vanquish. He closed the Book of Shadows and hugged the precious tome to his chest.
"I'll handle it," Wyatt confidently informed the others. Chris rolled his eyes in protest. The expanding smoke seemed visibly concerned by this remark and dropping all pretence of harmlessness, coiled unnaturally towards the group. It began taking discernable form; moulding itself into two human-shaped figures, which hung suspended in the air before them. Wyatt raised his hands and without further delay a wave of magical energy swept through the room, dispelling the spectres into an amorphous cloud once more and upturning everything else in its path. Few demons could withstand the full might of his molecular dispersion power (especially when projection-amplified) and Wyatt presumptuously turned to tell his comrades that their threat was gone. He was wrong.
The reforming smoke surged forward and encircled Travis. Separated from the witches, his early attempts at shimmered and celeritous retreat were thwarted and without any other means of escape he frenetically tossed his emergency cache of potions. These vials sailed harmlessly through the intangible haze; shattering without incident against the attic décor. Wyatt, Chris and Henry were in his firing line and from the safe confines of Wyatt's force field they were powerless to help their friend as he became entirely engulfed by the cloud. The trio were momentarily shocked into inaction.
Wyatt was the first to recover. "I can still sense him," he announced, his voice steely. "He's trapped. The demons are trying to suffocate him but, they're having difficulty… I'm preventing them from smoking away. It should buy us some time." The retrieval of Travis from the miasma was paramount and Wyatt immediately dispelled his shield. Predictably, the trio first tried to extract him using their active powers. This proved increasingly problematic as the smoke inherently repelled all their orbs and successively adapted to resist any other active powers, countering their individual and combined efforts.
Finger-like protuberances snaked out from the billowing centre and lashing out they tried to ensnare the remaining free sources of magic. Henry warily orbed across the room, while his more harum-scarum cousins gambolled away from the probing danger. This rush of divided activity momentarily perplexed the cloud and it failed to press its advantage.
"What are we looking at here, guys?" Wyatt asked; these desultory actions unavailing. It was textbook demon fighting. Step one: know your enemy.
"Well, they look like Woogies or Smoker demons. But, this doesn't fit their M.O." Chris replied, using his cloaking power to throw up some cover; preventing the smoke from pin-pointing their location.
"The way they went straight for Travis makes me think they're some kind of scavenger… But, that doesn't make any sense either because they are obviously upper level," Henry contributed, struggling to recall any demon type matching the criteria.
"And they're definitely not vampires, spirits or the effects of a curse. Okay I get it, we all aced Demonology! Now, if we can't figure out what they are exactly, then we'll just have to wing it. Any ideas?" Wyatt knew they were getting off-topic and that they would need to pull together if they were to save their innocent. Not that he would ever call Travis an innocent to his face.
"We can use the potion I made! Chris formulated it specifically to vanquish demons which have reconstitution capabilities," Henry propounded, looking to his brown-haired cousin for confirmation. It was simply a coincidence that this stratagem would permit him to field test his newly brewed potion.
"True. Though, you've failed to notice their bodies are in a constant state of reconstitution. My potion needs the demon to have physical form for it to work," Chris explained, "A Power of Three spell might be the only thing that can vanquish them and we can't exactly cast one of those without the Charmed Ones."
"You really should add a footnote about that if we survive this," the crestfallen Henry japed back.
"No, I think Henry was onto something. Here's what we are going to do. Chris, tweak the potion. Do whatever you have too, just make it work. Henry, write a spell. Nothing fancy, it just needs to give the potion something to work with. I have faith in you two." Henry thought this sounded more ominous than necessary. He was always over-relying on them to flesh out his skeleton plans.
"What're you going to do, Wy?" Chris inquired softly.
"I'm going to save Travis, of course." He grinned at them knowingly before running headlong into the intangible demons, wearing his shield like a second skin and ignoring all the protests which followed him. The cloud ballooned around the shield, seemingly trying to bypass it. The shield would forefend against the cloud and could be expanded to include Travis. Wyatt was playing for time but, they had experienced first hand how this cloud could adapt to their magics and shield irruption seemed like a valid concern. Regardless, Wyatt could always be relied upon to be a bulwark for those who needed his protection.
"It's unfair, him running in there half-cocked like that. Lemme see the book." Re-balancing the potion was proving difficult, even for a master potioneer.
"Uh-huh. Speaking of which when did demons get so synchronised." These were not your run of the mill demons. Since the removal of the upper hierarchy strange breeds of demons - undocumented in their BOS - had been coming out of the woodwork.
"Tell me about it. I miss the days when half the time they killed each other," Chris reminisced, "Okay I've super-charged the potion, it won't be very stable, but that shouldn't be a problem." He motioned and the pot was magically flung into the darkness, where it exploded on striking Wyatt's shield. The sheer volume of potion would allow for increased instability.
"I hate you," Henry deadpanned, his prize potion vaporised. He had penned the new vanquishing spell but, it seemed like small commiseration. Holding the notepad between them, they began chanting in unison:
"Demons obscure,
That which is pure,
Remove this haze,
Set it ablaze."
The potion acted like accelerant, intensifying the effect of the spell. The hellish smoulder evolved into a true blaze; spontaneous ignitions occurring across its superficies, the disembodied demons writhed about in agony. However, the blaze couldn't spread quickly enough and these nuisance fires were promptly extinguished by cloud infolding, the magic smothered before it could fully accrete. Henry and Chris continued chanting to keep the effect going but, it seemed hopeless, the cloud too strong for them. Wyatt's darkened silhouette stood at the centre of their magical stalemate, untouched by the leaping flames. They could feel his influence extending outwards; magical fields yielding to his will. The raging fire burned more brightly and soon surpassed even the cloud's ability to suffocate the inferno. He was blending together magic by instinct alone with no consideration for the complexity of his actions. It was a feat of unmatched virtuosity.
"That was amazing. How did you do that?" Henry asked when the vanquish subsided. Both Wyatt and Travis seemed unhurt though, Travis had inhaled some of the smoke and his lungs were not fully recovered.
"NBD, I've had plenty of practice. B+ for the assist. Next time, double the dose of yew sap and it should have more firepower," Wyatt explained, his newly acquired potion expertise only slightly souring the brotherly reunion.
"That might be sooner than you think. It sent out some kind of distress call," Travis proclaimed between coughing fits. Seeing his discomfort, Henry orbed a bottle of water up from the kitchen which the half-demon graciously received. He then reassured them that it would take awhile for the signal to propagate between the planes but, that they had likely incurred the wraith of other same-breed demons and should expect retribution.
"Someone should tell the Elders," Wyatt advised.
"They've closed ranks. Something's got them spooked. Did you hear that global alert last week?" Henry and Wyatt nodded. Henry's ears buzzed with the thought of it. His mother still wouldn't tell him what it had been about.
"I'll do it. My monthly report's tonight anyway. I'll mention it then," Henry volunteered, his interest piqued, "Should we tell our Moms too?"
"Nah, they would only worry. Besides our Mom isn't in the country. She's in Rome visiting Robin, the daughter of an old friend."
Henry stumbled sideways, disorientated by a swelling din within his head. He waved off his worried companions telling them it was only a head rush. In truth, his sensing power was going haywire; like a faulty radio cycling through all the available frequencies. Something was amiss. It was undetectable at background levels but, blatantly obvious with these intensity spikes. There was a blip in his sensing stream. Unable to compensate for a power freak-out the blip had instantly flagged up in his mind.
Rubbing his temples the cacophony resolved itself into a farrago of stereophonic voices; the echoes of five disparate psyches reverberating along unilateral psychic ties. Other thinner, stronger threads were also interspersed in the weave and brought him generalities about his family. Henry found his centre - the place deep inside himself that was at peace - and with trained ease he silenced the stream of idle, indistinct chatter converging upon him. Trying to pinpoint the abnormality Henry skimmed through each 'charge-channel' feed but, couldn't discern any irregularities.
It was both empuzzling and infuriating that he couldn't pin down the source of this nagging feeling. Delving deeper into the connections he allowed the sensing stream to wash over his mind. It was like second awakening: suddenly each of his charges was an open book to him; all their secrets at his fingertips. He usually considered this level of prying a breach of trust but, if someone was messing with his sensing they could all be in danger. Begrudgingly he had to follow whitelighter protocol: sensing anomalies trumped privacy. One of the relays was nonsense, a mere facsimile of living thought processes. Admittedly it was a good deception; like looping a pre-recorded video to fool a security guard into viewing false footage. His fears were realised: Holly! Pinging the location of his sister's false signal, Henry hastily made his excuses to the guys and immediately orbed out. He would handle this himself.
Supposedly there is a laboratory in the deepest reaches of the underworld. No living demon has ever corroborated its existence but, legend states that it was here that the source hid his most crazed general. This was a story which the demonic community all told around their fire pits, as much a part of their lore as any conflict with good, but even hatchlings knew it was false: simply an entertaining fable; simply meant to instil the fearsomeness of older demons on their younger brethren. It was only a story, and then suddenly it wasn't. Demons began being snatched by puffs of smoke, only to be dragged into the bowels of their hellish plane. The fantasy which had given them such comfort had become their nightmare.
A typewriter, coated with the tell-tale dust of neglect, creaked into life. The enchanted machine began functioning without an operator, actuated by the distant cloud vanquish. It was like watching one of those old fashioned player pianos: an internal mechanism imitating life. The demon of legend glanced at this contraption with bemused interest. Modelled after a spirit board, he knew how the message would read before the first keystroke had set ink upon paper. The impossible had been accomplished; his scouts had found a subject, one even they couldn't incapacitate.
AN: "We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world." - Buddha
AN2: In this continuity, young Wyatt was capable of siphoning the power of the Nexus and thus, granted him an unconstrained form of projection. With the destruction of the Nexus ("Something Wicca This Way Goes...?") this connection was severed and Wyatt could no longer instigate large feats of magic without the normal wiccan aids (e.g. potion ingredients, spells, etc.). This is the reason he only once used projection during season 8 ("Payback's a Witch"): an occasion facilitated by the significant distress caused by the absence of his father and the relative simplicity of reworking Phoebe's spell. Likewise present-day Wyatt's potential to alter reality is mainly focussed on manipulating pre-existing magic and is greatly curtailed by low-magic environments. On a related note, nexal energies have re-centred beneath the manor but, are now inaccessible to Wyatt.
AN3: Robin is a reference to the eponymous character from the "Witch Hunter Robin" anime series.
Cooler heads prevail? I don't think so. For more unanswered questions and intrigue stay tuned for chapter two.