Anya stood outside the door to her shop, The Magic Box. In her arms was a small stack of books and balancing on the books were a few glass jars each containing a different color of what looked like a fine powder. Staring at the entrance to her shop, Anya could see her reflection in the glass. She saw herself standing there in her red sun dress with the load of books and jars in her crossed arms and a puzzled look on her face. Currently, her confusion was focused on the slightly open door in front of her. Trying to recall when she left the night before, Anya was certain she had closed and locked the door. She even remembered dropping the keys when trying the fish them out of her purse while she was carrying a similar load. The event hadn't ended very well, a mess of books on the ground and a small cut on her right palm, but she distinctly remembered locking the door. The thought occurred to her that maybe Xander had come here during the night and forgot to lock the door on his way out. She couldn't imagine why he would have stopped by so late and she didn't recall him getting out of bed at any time. The only other person who has a set of keys was Giles and he had left for England a few weeks ago. If Giles had returned he definitely would have remembered to lock the door on his way out. Unless he was still here, but then the lights would most likely be on. Finally, the idea of an intruder sprung to her mind. She tilted her head, warily trying to peer into the shop through the small opening. If it was an intruder, Anya hoped it was just a normal burglar. The heavens know that they get enough non-human intruders into the Magic Box that the likelihood of it being a normal robbery was remote.
Deciding that she wasn't going to get anywhere standing outside, Anya finally stepped up to the door and nudged it further open with her knee.
More darkness.
With the pile in her arms, Anya knew that she wouldn't be able to reach the light switch until she dropped her items. Pushing the door open even wider, Anya noticed the broken doorframe. This didn't make her feel any better, her hopes that she would find Giles standing behind the counter were dashed with the evidence of a forced entry.
Stepping into the store and past the door, the light from outside dimly illuminated the large front room. Letting her eyes adjust for a moment, Anya made a quick scan about the room and saw nothing that blatantly looked out of place. She stepped farther from the door and made her way slowly over to the table on the other side of the room. After descending the steps past the counter and the register, Anya finally reached the table and quickly set down her books. She then spun around to face the rest of the room, still seeing nothing. She dashed back toward the wall behind the counter and switched on the store lights. The halogen bulbs buzzed and flickered for a moment as the room lit up. She was about to walk into the backroom to check if anything was missing when a glint of steel from the counter caught her eye. Looking at the counter top next to the register, Anya's eyes grew wider and her pulse quickened.
Protruding from the wood of the counter top was the ornate handle and hilt of a weapon. Cautiously stepping closer to the counter, Anya reached out for the dagger's handle. Placing her hand on the scale-textured wood, Anya found it cold as it lightly stung the cut on her palm. Pulling upward, she easily extracted the dagger from the counter top, the weapons jagged blade passing through the wood with no effort. The dagger was nice; Anya certainly thought it would sell for a lot. However, she was more concerned on why she found it in the counter top of her store. Maybe it was some new toy of Buffy's. Thought Anya doubted that Buffy would leave it buried hilt deep in the counter. Anya set the weapon back down on the counter, this time laying it across the top. She then picked up the phone under the counter and proceeded to dial. A female voice answered on the other end and introduced the name of the company for which she worked. Anya didn't pay attention and asked for Xander Harris when the lady finished talking.
"Uh, I believe Mr. Harris is out on site right now. I'll have to transfer you other there and hope someone answers."
"Yes, that's fine. I can wait." Anya was a bit impatient with the lady.
She heard the phone click a few times and then it rang for close to a minute before someone picked up.
"Hello?" A male voice, he sounded a bit annoyed.
Not Xander, Anya thought.
"Is Xander Harris there?" she asked.
"Eh, yeah, hold on."
"Hey, Xander!" Anya heard the male voice scream away from the phone. "Phone for you!"
A few moments later, the phone rustled as someone picked it up.
"Hello?"
It was Xander.
"Hey, honey. It's me." Anya's voice was cheery, even if her news wasn't. "I, uh, just got to the store and I think someone broke in."
"What?" Xander sounded shocked.
"I said that I just got to the store-"
"Yeah, yeah, I heard you." He paused for a moment. "How do you know?"
"Well," she started, "when I got here the door was slightly open and the wood around the door was broken."
"Did you go in?" Xander quickly asked, sounding worried.
"Yeah, I couldn't stand outside."
"Well, did you check the store, was anyone still there?" Xander definitely sounded worried.
"No, I didn't check the whole store, just the front room. Nothing is missing."
"Alright, stay in the front room, I'm coming down there."
"I don't think you have to," Anya stated. "Nothing is missing and I only found this dagger."
"What? What dagger?"
"It's a nice one, actually. Looks kind of medieval but the metal is too pure. And there are symbols on the knife that remind me of some text from early Mesopotamia I once saw, but this is much more angular. Kind of like engineering symbols used on circuit maps, but even more cryptic. And the metal seems real-"
"Sweetie," Xander cut her off, "you can tell me when I get there."
Xander arrived no more than twenty minutes later. His truck pulled up to the front of the store and a moment later he dashed into the door. He then made a quick sweep of the store front. Anya continually pointed out that she had already done a similar search, but he just stated that you can never be too careful. After the front room, Xander checked the back storeroom and then Buffy's training room downstairs also finding no one and nothing out of place. Climbing the stairs from the training room back up to the stores front room, Xander found Anya sitting at the table with a set of open books before her and a jagged dagger sitting next to her. She seemed to be concentrating on the text in one of the books.
"Is this the dagger you found?" Xander asked, walking up to the table.
"Yeah." She answered, still reading.
Xander reached down and picked up the dagger by its handle. The cold stung is fingers.
"Ouch, it's cold."
Anya looked up at him. "Careful, it's really sharp. It seems to cut through things like nothing. It went right through the counter and the register."
"The register?" Xander asked.
"Yeah. The one up on the counter." She turned to point over toward the item.
"Yes, thank you. I know which one you meant. Why did you cut the register?"
She turned back to reading. "Well, it was an accident. I just turned with the dagger in my hand and it went right through it."
Xander scowled and put the dagger back on the table.
"Well, I didn't find anything so I'm not sure why someone would want to break in just the leave a sharp dagger in the counter top." He stated.
"Yeah, I told you."
Xander peered over her shoulder at the text she was currently reading. The book was large and each page held a wealth of words. The text itself was somewhat faded; obviously this was one of the older books they had available in the shop. Currently, however, Anya was looking at a page which had a drawing of what looked like a map. The map was drawn in fragments and had several points drawn as black splotches. There were more than a dozen lines scrawled across the drawn map connecting the points. Anya seemed particularly interested in what looked like a legend in the lower right corner. The text of the legend was cryptic and quite foreign to Xander. He had spent several nights staring into books like this one trying to piece together exactly what type of menace he and his friends might have been facing at the time. However, he had never seen this type of text before. The text looked quite hieroglyphic, each letter or word was represented by a finely drawn symbol. The symbols didn't seem to have any pattern or meaning to the way the lines intersected so there was no way Xander could even guess what they meant. Looking back at the dagger, Xander examined the glyphs drawn on its blade and compared them those in the book. The symbols on the dagger where much more jagged and uniform, each of them taking up only about a half an inch of space on the blade and somewhat hexagon-like in shape.
"They don't look like they match." Xander spoke.
Anya jumped slightly, having forgotten Xander was there and then looked up over her shoulder at him.
"What?"
"The symbols on the dagger," Xander repeated, "they don't match those on the map thingy there." He pointed down at the fragmented map drawn in the book.
"Oh." Any said, looking down at the dagger. "No, they don't match, but the style is close. See."
She picked up the dagger and swung around to face Xander. He quickly stepped back out of her way, wary of the dagger's blade.
She then began pointing at the symbols drawn on the dagger.
"Usually, when a smith marks a dagger, it's with like a bless to some type of god or maybe the name of the family it will belong to or even certain prayer if it's a ceremonial dagger. The way this text is laid out, though, I don't think it was meant to be any of those. You see, there is no one definable path to these symbols, like a sentence or something. There is just several branches of a few symbols up the blade from this one symbol near the hilt so if there is a sentence or statement here, I can't tell where it begins or ends."
Xander looked down at the dagger and its symbols then back up to toward Anya.
"So, what does that have to do with the symbols on that map?" Xander pointed with his chin at the book on the table behind Anya.
"Oh." She spun her legs around in the chair to again face the table. "Well, like I said when I called you, I thought that these symbols might be a derivative of a culture that lived in early Mesopotamia but now I don't think so."
"Well, yeah. They don't look anything alike."
"But the symbols are in the same style. Like they just made them up cause they have nothing else to work from. Except…" Anya's voice trailed off.
Xander waited a moment, hoping she would finish.
"What?" he finally asked.
"Uh, except, now looking at the two, I think that this Mesopotamian text might be a derivative of whatever text these symbols are."
Xander opened his mouth to ask a question when someone walked in the front door. Both Xander and Anya looked up to see Dawn descending the steps toward them. She was dressed in a familiar pink shirt and blue jeans. She had her small purse over her shoulder which she slumped off and set down on the table.
"Hey, guys." She looked down at the books laid open on the table. "What's up?"
"Shouldn't you be in school?" Xander asked sternly.
Dawn gave Xander an exasperated look. "There doing some teacher conference thing going on at school. So, we don't have to go."
Xander clenched his brow in disbelief, "Uh, huh. Why didn't you say anything before I drove you over there this morning?"
Dawn shrugged. "I forgot."
Xander scowled again, still not convinced. Dawn flashed him and innocent smile and he eventually looked back down at Anya who had given her attention back to the books before her.
"Anyhow, how old are these Mesopotamian guys, Anya?"
"What are you guys doing?" Dawn interjected.
"We think someone broke in last night." Xander's voice was a bit tense. It was obvious he was still upset about the break in.
"Is that what happen to the door?" Dawn pointed back over her shoulder toward the entrance.
"Yep, and they left this." Xander pointed down at the dagger.
Dawn looked down, seeing the weapon for the first time. Her eyes grew wide.
"Cool, can I see it?"
Xander rapidly shook his head. "I don't think so. Way too sharp. Buffy would kill me if you returned home missing your right hand or some other limb."
Dawn dropped her shoulders, obviously disappointed.
"I'm not going to cut myself. We have knives at home; I cut stuff in the kitchen all the time."
"Yeah, yeah. Not like this. Just leave it alone."
Xander then bent down and gave Anya a kiss on the cheek.
"I have to get back to work." He said.
Anya mumbled her goodbye as she read. Xander walked past them up the steps toward the door.
"Unless they have some manager conference thing and I can stay home." He spoke on his way out.
Dawn watched Xander leave through the entrance and then heard his truck start and pull off. Looking out the window to her left, she saw him drive by and down the street. Dawn then turned toward Anya.
"Anya, can I see that dagger."
While she continued to read, Anya reached absently to her right and picked up the dagger. She then reached across the table to her left and handed it towards Dawn.
"Okay, if you cut yourself, try not to get the blood on the floor."
Dawn smiled. "Thanks!"
She took the dagger by the handle from Anya. The scale texture on the wooden handle felt nice and warm in her palm. The grip was comfortable and it felt light for having so much metal. She was about to lay the dagger back down on the table when she began hearing this buzzing sound in the back of her head. At first she thought it was the lights overhead, but the sound seemed to be coming from all around her.
"Is there a T.V. in here?" Dawn asked, turning her head to scan around the room.
"No, there's no T.V. in the store." Anya answered, still engrossed in her books.
The sound was barely audible and she felt that she was hearing it in the back of her mind. She wasn't even certain the sound was real and not something her brain was echoing. Dawn looked about for the buzzing's source and absently dropped the dagger on a stack of books on the table. The buzzing stopped. However, it was replaced by a scream from Anya.
"Dawn!"
Dawn reflexively stepped back from the table and quickly looked over at Anya. Anya was staring at the stack of books on which Dawn had dropped the dagger. The dagger's blade was table deep in the stack of books, its hilt resting on the top book.
"Sorry!" Dawn shouted.
Anya half stood from her chair and reached forward. She pulled the dagger out of the books and gently laid it down on the table opposite of Dawn. She then picked up the damaged books and began thumbing through them.
"These books are priceless. You need to be more careful." Anya's voice showed her anger.
"I said I was sorry." Dawn replied, still standing away from the table.
"Well, the dagger was sharp enough to cut the pages cleanly, so no words should have been lost."
Anya finished looking through the book she was holding, set it down and picked up the next damaged one.
"I'm going to walk home." Dawn stated, not feeling comfortable at the shop any longer with Anya angry with her.
"Okay," Anya replied, sounding slightly relieved. "Be careful."
Dawn grabbed her purse and quickly headed up the short stairs and out the door.
Anya watched her leave and wondered briefly if she shouldn't have yelled at the young girl. Quickly dismissing the idea from her head, since Dawn had already left, Anya went back to reading. She spent the next several hours pouring over books and other manuscripts trying to either find an origin of the glyphs on the dagger's blade or, with luck, decipher them. She had little luck however and by the end of her search she was beginning to think that the dagger might not be as valuable as she first thought.
Willow showed up at the Magic Box later that afternoon. She too was wearing a standard pair of blue jeans. She had a nice wool sweater striped with several earth tones. The sleeves on the sweater were a bit too long on her and hung down over the end of her fingers.
Anya was still sitting at the table near the many shelves of books. The pile of books before her had steadily grown over the last few hours and now took up the entire top of the table. She was currently holding the dagger in front of her and before one of the tombs, apparently comparing the dagger to something on the books page.
Willow stepped down to the table and paused for a moment.
"I've got all those books I borrowed last week with me, if you want me to bring them in." She finally asked.
"Oh," Anya spoke, looking up from the page.
"Just put them on the, uh." She pointed down at the table with the dagger in her hand. Noticing that her searching had taken up all the space available, she swung the dagger around and pointed it toward the counter behind her. "Put them on the counter."
Anya then went back to her comparison.
Watching the dagger in Anya's hand, Willow moved around the table to look over her shoulder.
The page Anya was examining was full of lines of scribbled symbols running from the top of the page down. The lines where drawn thin so there were at least two dozen of them compacted across the page.
Looking at the dagger, Willow noticed the engravings on the weapon's blade. She didn't see any resemblance between the glyphs on the blade and those on the page.
"What are you looking up?" she finally asked.
Anya slammed the book closed and roughly placed the dagger on the table.
"I can't find anything on this text on the dagger!" she exclaimed in frustration.
"Where did you get the dagger?" Willow asked.
"What? Oh, I found it in the counter this morning. Someone left it here last night."
"In the counter? You mean someone broke in?" Willow was a bit startled.
"Yeah, last night."
"Did you call the police? Is anything missing?" Willow glanced about the room as if she expected the intruder to be standing behind her.
"No, nothing is missing. Xander came over this morning and we looked around. All I found was this dagger stuck in the counter over there."
Anya presented the dagger to Willow, holding it up toward Willow with her right hand.
"Wow, very spiky." Willow observed.
"Yeah, and it looks almost brand new. I thought it might be something special when I saw these markings on the metal but I can't find a reference to them anywhere."
Willow peered at the dagger and the symbols shown on the base of the blade.
"Maybe its just one of those fantasy dagger things you can buy in magazines."
Anya's brow clenched, confused by Willow's last statement.
"You know." Willow continued, "One of those movie knife thingies."
"Oh," Anya replied, holding the dagger up before her again. "I guess it could be a fake. Which means the writing might not mean anything."
Anya paused a moment, looking the dagger over again. Her eyes popped open again.
"It really sharp, though. You can cut through things really easily. Dawn dropped it on some books and it went right through them."
Willow smiled. "Good, maybe Buffy would like it. She likes the choppy things."
Anya gently set the dagger on the table and stood up.
"I'll help you bring those books in."
Willow and Anya carried all the books in from the pile Willow had made outside. During their work, they ran out of room on the counter, so Anya and Willow worked to clear Anya's earlier mess off the table. When they started on the table, Willow had first taken the dagger and walked downstairs to Buffy's training room. There she placed it on the shelf near Buffy's other weapons.
It wasn't until later that evening that Buffy arrived. She had come for a short work-out before she left to patrol for the night. After saying a brief hello to Anya and Willow upstairs, she descended the stairs in the back of the store to her training room in the basement. The sun had set several hours ago so the room was dark and cool. Buffy switched on the lights as she stepped off the stairs. She was wearing dark blue track pants which had a thin line of white down the outside side of her thighs. On her chest, she was wearing black halter top and she had pulled her dirty blonde hair back into a single tail. She carried with her a bottle of water and a white hand towel. She began her work-out with some cardiovascular work to speed up her heart. Giles had tried to introduce a bit of Tai Chi into her training a few months ago, however the ever-alert slayer had difficulties finding a calm focus. After Giles had decided that it might be best to introduce Tai Chi again in a few years, they had gone back to the normal sparring. With Giles gone, however, Buffy had no one to spar with. She feared to ask her friends as they were unfamiliar with her work-out a she didn't want to hurt them. In Giles's absence, Buffy had come up with a version of "shadow sparing" that seemed to do a decent job of working her heart.
After a few minutes of stretching and getting her blood flowing, Buffy moved over to her weapons cabinet to grab a pair of knives to practice with. She had reached the cabinet and placed her hand on the knives she was looking for when she noticed a new dagger laying on the base of the small cabinet. The dagger looked quite new to her and very well made. However the jagged inside curve of the blade was different from her normal straight edged weapons. She found that she liked the look of the dagger, even if it was different then her standard armament. Lifting the new dagger by its carved wooden handle, she found the weapon was almost weightless in her hands. Beyond that, the handle itself felt warm to the touch, as if it had just been sitting near a fire. The grip was almost perfect for her hands; the wood seemed to form to her fingers as she held it. Swiping the dagger through the air lightly before her, the weapon was lithe in her hand. She turned from the cabinet and walked back to the practicing mat. There she started her normal sparring using the newly found dagger. After a few moments, Buffy found herself gracefully weaving across the mat with the dagger in hand, swiping and jabbing high and low with swift accuracy. She felt almost a connection with the weapon. It was as if each next step and slice with the dagger was a planned dance on which she and the blade had agreed. Without almost any effort, she sprung from position to position on the mat, bringing the dagger down with her in a graceful arc. The speed at which she dove and cut was astonishing to her.
As she continued to dance with the weapon, losing herself more and more to the movements, she began to hear a small buzzing in the back of her head. She had dismissed the sound at first, but it had continued to beckon to her, calling for her attention. Buffy soon began to concentrate on the sound and she found that the more she focused on the buzzing the less it sounded like buzzing. Though first thinking she was mistaken, Buffy began to hear the buzzing more as a melody play within her mind. It was a crystalline chiming in her head and she found the sound soothing. She began to focus upon it deeper and soon the singing was all she felt. Lost to her were the movements of her work-out. Her training room in the basement faded from her thoughts and she saw nothing but a swirling cloud of light in her mind. The cloud continued to grow in definition and depth as the crystalline chiming rang lightly through her head. She felt the cloud of brightness flow through her and penetrate into each of her muscles. She felt its strength and dexterity as it reinforced her own physique. The light began to swirl before her eyes and rushing power of the singing cleansed her of all worry and doubt. She felt free and weightless as if she had left her body behind and now floated through a realm of pure healing light. Then, just as quickly as the light swirled around her, it parted and began to fade from view.
She found herself standing in darkness. Her eyes, which had grown accustomed to the previous light, began adjusting to the thick darkness of her new surroundings. She suddenly felt cold and the surface of her exposed skin shivered. Soon she could make out detail around her and she found that she was in a small empty room. Sounds of electronic equipment buzzed around her an occasional synthesized beep echoed through the room. Then, she began to make out a pale blue glowing shining out before her. As she took a step toward the glow, the light coalesced and took form in front of her. The light shimmered and wavered before her and she quickly realized she was staring into some backlit tank of water. There was a dark shape looming in the water, its form stood tall but blurry and Buffy couldn't find detail in the shape. The more Buffy stared at the dark blur, the tighter the shape became. As the lines and shadows began to converge, Buffy soon realized that the shape was of a man, floating in the bright blue pool of water.
The man's face looked hard and sharply cut, as if chiseled from rock. He didn't seem to be wearing any clothes, and Buffy blushed slightly at his nakedness. As she watched the man, she realized with a slight pang of disappointment that the man was dead. She didn't see his chest moving with breathe and she felt a cold sharpness of old death about him, as if his time had come and gone ages ago. Buffy wondered what the man's name had been. She stood there a few moments, gazing at his face before she motioned to turn and leave. Before she could move, however, a sharp pain grabbed a hold of her spine and she found herself paralyzed. Her arms and legs would not respond to her need to move and her head was locked staring at the man's face. With a blinding glare, a burst of multi-colored light suddenly emerged from the man's forehead. Another then exploded from his chest, just over his heart. Buffy then saw a third light erupt from somewhere below the left of her vision. Still immobile, she could do nothing. The burst of light dimmed slightly and Buffy was able to make out familiar looking systems glowing from the dead man's skin.
Feelings of panic began to well up inside her as she starred forward, helpless to move. The face of the dean man floating before her suddenly clenched in pain and his eyes shot open. A blinding radiance stabbed at her from his eyes and within her mind she heard the eruption a horrid scream. The sound was not her own and came at her form all sides. She felt the wail reverberate through her body and the screeching was deafening and painful. Buffy felt an eons worth of pain and torment in that scream, as if it had been welling up for countless years and only finally released. Fear rushed through Buffy's body and she somehow found strength to close her eyes. She heard her own voice explode from her throat in a scream of panic. Feeling herself and her mind suddenly pull back as if out of a dream, darkness again engulfed her from all sides and her limbs fell slack. The terrible scream echoed into silence. Eyes still held shut, Buffy slumped to the floor. As she hit the floor, she felt the cool canvas of her training mat. Catching her breath for a moment, Buffy finally managed to pry open her eyes lids. Before her, lying on its side on top of the mat was the jagged dagger. To her astonishment, its blade was glowing with an unearthly light, bright and strong in the surrounding darkness. Slowly, though, the light faded until the dagger lay dark before her with only glinting of the dim halogen lights shining in her vision.
The next thing Buffy realized, she was hearing Willow's frantic voice.
"Buffy? What happened? Are you okay? Buffy? Buffy!"
"What if she's dead?" Anya's voice, sounding slightly worried. "Should I call Giles?"
Buffy groaned, a sharp pain began pounding in between her eyes. She opened her eye lids and the glare of the light above the mat stung. Willow was on her knees over Buffy's head. Buffy turned her head down toward the mat and away from the lights above. Her neck ached.
"Buffy? What happened? We heard you scream?" Willow's asked, still quite worried.
"I'm fine." Buffy grumbled. "Something weird happened while I was training."
"Oh, you found the knife." Anya stated, seeing the dagger on the mat in front of Buffy. "Try not to break it. I think will sell for a lot."
"You're not going to sell it." Buffy said as she pushed herself up on her hands and then sat back on her knees.
"Well, I found it." Anya stated, a little indignant. "And it was in my counter."
"Sorry, Anya." Buffy reached down and picked the dagger up by the handle. "There is something strange about this weapon. Where did you say you found it?"
Anya pointed at the stairs behind her.
"It was in the counter top by the register when I got in. Someone broke in a left it there. I think that means the want me to have it."
"Someone broke in?" Buffy was startled. No one had yet mentioned it to her. "Who was it?"
"We don't know." Willow answered. "They didn't leave a business card or anything."
Buffy stood. "Was anything missing?"
"No." Willow replied. "Nothing missing, they just left that."
"They?"
"Oh, well, I guess it could have been a him...or a her. But them is kinda like the standard when you don't know."
"Right"
"Anyhow," Willow started, "what weird thing happened that made you scream?"
"I'm not sure." Buffy answered, looking down at the weapon in her hand. "When I found the dagger, I started practicing with it. It actually feels real nice and I was having fun when I started hearing this buzzing sound. But it wasn't buzzing, it was this music and then everything started getting bright."
As she was speaking and her attention was on the dagger, she realized that she again began hearing the faint buzzing sound in the back of her mind. She jerked her head up and looked back at her two friends. Once her attention was off the dagger, the buzzing faded.
"Uh," she stammered for a second, "then the light was everywhere and I couldn't see anything else. I felt weightless like I was floating around in a pool. The light then vanished and I saw this naked guy floating in a tank of water."
"Naked?" Anya asked. "Was he cute?"
Willow looked back at Anya and Buffy scowled at the ex-demon.
"What?" she stated, defensively. "Just asking."
"Anyhow," Buffy continued, "he was in this tank of glowing blue liquid. He looked dead. He wasn't breathing. Then he had these glowing symbols in his skin. One on his forehead, one over his heart and I think one on his right arm. I couldn't look at the arm because I was frozen and couldn't move."
"Something was holding you?" Willow asked.
"No, my body just wouldn't move when I tried to move it." Buffy answered.
She then continued.
"Then his eyes opened."
"The dead guys?" Willow interrupted.
"Yeah. His eyes burst open and there was this light glowing out of them. Then I heard a scream in my head. It was like someone being tortured...really bad. I think I screamed and then closed my eyes. Next thing I remember I was laying on the mat and I saw the blade glowing."
"It was glowing?" Anya asked. "How was it glowing?"
"I don't know." Buffy responded, "It was just glowing. Then you two were here."
"Yeah," Willow spoke, "we were sorting books and you screamed. I thought you had maybe kicked something and broke you're foot."
"How could it be glowing?" Anya continued, "There is no magic in it, we checked."
"I don't know." Buffy looked back down at the dagger. "You know, these symbols look kind of like the one on his head. None of these are the same symbol, but they are shaped the same."
"I don't think those symbols mean anything." Anya stated, "I was working on translating them all morning and couldn't find anything on them."
"Well, they can't be too old. The dagger looks almost new."
Buffy looked back down at the dagger.
"Did you have a sheath for this thing? I'd like to keep it with me, just in case." She asked.
"No," Anya answered. "I don't think you can put that blade in a sheath, it would probably cut right trough it."
"Is it that sharp?" Buffy asked, having not actually used the weapon on anything yet.
"Yeah, it cut right through my register."
Buffy walked over to a nearby brick wall. The stones were grey and cool to the touch. With a fairly easy move, Buffy sliced at the wall with the dagger's blade. The metal slid right through the stone without a sound, leaving a thin, precise gash. Buffy heard the buzzing swell up in her head for a moment as she swung the weapon.
"Wow." She stated, looking at the cut in the wall.
"Yeah," Willow agreed, walking up behind her. "There's a nice gash in the table upstairs, too."
Buffy stared at the blade for a moment, turning it in her hand and watching the dim light glint off the flawless steel. The buzzing sound whispered into her mind. She felt the need to use it, the need to thrust and cut at an advesary. She wanted to see the blade covered in blood. The blood of vampires.
Shaking her head, Buffy looked back up at her friends. She then noticed the small window to the outside set high in her training room across from them. Outside she saw the night and remembered her duties as a slayer.
"I've got to get on patrol." Buffy said as she crossed the room and retrieved her white hand towel and bottled water.
"Yeah, I guess we should finish upstairs." Willow agreed.
The three women walked to the stairs and started up into the store above. As they climbed, Willow noticed that Buffy still carried the jagged dagger in her hand. She stopped, Anya almost bumping into her back.
"Uh, are you taking that with you?" Willow asked meekly.
Buffy stopped and slowly turned toward her.
"I...I...I want to try it." Buffy stammered. "I think it might make a good weapon and I want to take it with me and see."
"Well, maybe you should leave it here...since it's all spooky and everything."
"I'll be okay." Buffy assured her, nodding her head.
Buffy then turned and clamored up the rest of the stairs and out into the store.
Deciding that she wasn't going to get anywhere standing outside, Anya finally stepped up to the door and nudged it further open with her knee.
More darkness.
With the pile in her arms, Anya knew that she wouldn't be able to reach the light switch until she dropped her items. Pushing the door open even wider, Anya noticed the broken doorframe. This didn't make her feel any better, her hopes that she would find Giles standing behind the counter were dashed with the evidence of a forced entry.
Stepping into the store and past the door, the light from outside dimly illuminated the large front room. Letting her eyes adjust for a moment, Anya made a quick scan about the room and saw nothing that blatantly looked out of place. She stepped farther from the door and made her way slowly over to the table on the other side of the room. After descending the steps past the counter and the register, Anya finally reached the table and quickly set down her books. She then spun around to face the rest of the room, still seeing nothing. She dashed back toward the wall behind the counter and switched on the store lights. The halogen bulbs buzzed and flickered for a moment as the room lit up. She was about to walk into the backroom to check if anything was missing when a glint of steel from the counter caught her eye. Looking at the counter top next to the register, Anya's eyes grew wider and her pulse quickened.
Protruding from the wood of the counter top was the ornate handle and hilt of a weapon. Cautiously stepping closer to the counter, Anya reached out for the dagger's handle. Placing her hand on the scale-textured wood, Anya found it cold as it lightly stung the cut on her palm. Pulling upward, she easily extracted the dagger from the counter top, the weapons jagged blade passing through the wood with no effort. The dagger was nice; Anya certainly thought it would sell for a lot. However, she was more concerned on why she found it in the counter top of her store. Maybe it was some new toy of Buffy's. Thought Anya doubted that Buffy would leave it buried hilt deep in the counter. Anya set the weapon back down on the counter, this time laying it across the top. She then picked up the phone under the counter and proceeded to dial. A female voice answered on the other end and introduced the name of the company for which she worked. Anya didn't pay attention and asked for Xander Harris when the lady finished talking.
"Uh, I believe Mr. Harris is out on site right now. I'll have to transfer you other there and hope someone answers."
"Yes, that's fine. I can wait." Anya was a bit impatient with the lady.
She heard the phone click a few times and then it rang for close to a minute before someone picked up.
"Hello?" A male voice, he sounded a bit annoyed.
Not Xander, Anya thought.
"Is Xander Harris there?" she asked.
"Eh, yeah, hold on."
"Hey, Xander!" Anya heard the male voice scream away from the phone. "Phone for you!"
A few moments later, the phone rustled as someone picked it up.
"Hello?"
It was Xander.
"Hey, honey. It's me." Anya's voice was cheery, even if her news wasn't. "I, uh, just got to the store and I think someone broke in."
"What?" Xander sounded shocked.
"I said that I just got to the store-"
"Yeah, yeah, I heard you." He paused for a moment. "How do you know?"
"Well," she started, "when I got here the door was slightly open and the wood around the door was broken."
"Did you go in?" Xander quickly asked, sounding worried.
"Yeah, I couldn't stand outside."
"Well, did you check the store, was anyone still there?" Xander definitely sounded worried.
"No, I didn't check the whole store, just the front room. Nothing is missing."
"Alright, stay in the front room, I'm coming down there."
"I don't think you have to," Anya stated. "Nothing is missing and I only found this dagger."
"What? What dagger?"
"It's a nice one, actually. Looks kind of medieval but the metal is too pure. And there are symbols on the knife that remind me of some text from early Mesopotamia I once saw, but this is much more angular. Kind of like engineering symbols used on circuit maps, but even more cryptic. And the metal seems real-"
"Sweetie," Xander cut her off, "you can tell me when I get there."
Xander arrived no more than twenty minutes later. His truck pulled up to the front of the store and a moment later he dashed into the door. He then made a quick sweep of the store front. Anya continually pointed out that she had already done a similar search, but he just stated that you can never be too careful. After the front room, Xander checked the back storeroom and then Buffy's training room downstairs also finding no one and nothing out of place. Climbing the stairs from the training room back up to the stores front room, Xander found Anya sitting at the table with a set of open books before her and a jagged dagger sitting next to her. She seemed to be concentrating on the text in one of the books.
"Is this the dagger you found?" Xander asked, walking up to the table.
"Yeah." She answered, still reading.
Xander reached down and picked up the dagger by its handle. The cold stung is fingers.
"Ouch, it's cold."
Anya looked up at him. "Careful, it's really sharp. It seems to cut through things like nothing. It went right through the counter and the register."
"The register?" Xander asked.
"Yeah. The one up on the counter." She turned to point over toward the item.
"Yes, thank you. I know which one you meant. Why did you cut the register?"
She turned back to reading. "Well, it was an accident. I just turned with the dagger in my hand and it went right through it."
Xander scowled and put the dagger back on the table.
"Well, I didn't find anything so I'm not sure why someone would want to break in just the leave a sharp dagger in the counter top." He stated.
"Yeah, I told you."
Xander peered over her shoulder at the text she was currently reading. The book was large and each page held a wealth of words. The text itself was somewhat faded; obviously this was one of the older books they had available in the shop. Currently, however, Anya was looking at a page which had a drawing of what looked like a map. The map was drawn in fragments and had several points drawn as black splotches. There were more than a dozen lines scrawled across the drawn map connecting the points. Anya seemed particularly interested in what looked like a legend in the lower right corner. The text of the legend was cryptic and quite foreign to Xander. He had spent several nights staring into books like this one trying to piece together exactly what type of menace he and his friends might have been facing at the time. However, he had never seen this type of text before. The text looked quite hieroglyphic, each letter or word was represented by a finely drawn symbol. The symbols didn't seem to have any pattern or meaning to the way the lines intersected so there was no way Xander could even guess what they meant. Looking back at the dagger, Xander examined the glyphs drawn on its blade and compared them those in the book. The symbols on the dagger where much more jagged and uniform, each of them taking up only about a half an inch of space on the blade and somewhat hexagon-like in shape.
"They don't look like they match." Xander spoke.
Anya jumped slightly, having forgotten Xander was there and then looked up over her shoulder at him.
"What?"
"The symbols on the dagger," Xander repeated, "they don't match those on the map thingy there." He pointed down at the fragmented map drawn in the book.
"Oh." Any said, looking down at the dagger. "No, they don't match, but the style is close. See."
She picked up the dagger and swung around to face Xander. He quickly stepped back out of her way, wary of the dagger's blade.
She then began pointing at the symbols drawn on the dagger.
"Usually, when a smith marks a dagger, it's with like a bless to some type of god or maybe the name of the family it will belong to or even certain prayer if it's a ceremonial dagger. The way this text is laid out, though, I don't think it was meant to be any of those. You see, there is no one definable path to these symbols, like a sentence or something. There is just several branches of a few symbols up the blade from this one symbol near the hilt so if there is a sentence or statement here, I can't tell where it begins or ends."
Xander looked down at the dagger and its symbols then back up to toward Anya.
"So, what does that have to do with the symbols on that map?" Xander pointed with his chin at the book on the table behind Anya.
"Oh." She spun her legs around in the chair to again face the table. "Well, like I said when I called you, I thought that these symbols might be a derivative of a culture that lived in early Mesopotamia but now I don't think so."
"Well, yeah. They don't look anything alike."
"But the symbols are in the same style. Like they just made them up cause they have nothing else to work from. Except…" Anya's voice trailed off.
Xander waited a moment, hoping she would finish.
"What?" he finally asked.
"Uh, except, now looking at the two, I think that this Mesopotamian text might be a derivative of whatever text these symbols are."
Xander opened his mouth to ask a question when someone walked in the front door. Both Xander and Anya looked up to see Dawn descending the steps toward them. She was dressed in a familiar pink shirt and blue jeans. She had her small purse over her shoulder which she slumped off and set down on the table.
"Hey, guys." She looked down at the books laid open on the table. "What's up?"
"Shouldn't you be in school?" Xander asked sternly.
Dawn gave Xander an exasperated look. "There doing some teacher conference thing going on at school. So, we don't have to go."
Xander clenched his brow in disbelief, "Uh, huh. Why didn't you say anything before I drove you over there this morning?"
Dawn shrugged. "I forgot."
Xander scowled again, still not convinced. Dawn flashed him and innocent smile and he eventually looked back down at Anya who had given her attention back to the books before her.
"Anyhow, how old are these Mesopotamian guys, Anya?"
"What are you guys doing?" Dawn interjected.
"We think someone broke in last night." Xander's voice was a bit tense. It was obvious he was still upset about the break in.
"Is that what happen to the door?" Dawn pointed back over her shoulder toward the entrance.
"Yep, and they left this." Xander pointed down at the dagger.
Dawn looked down, seeing the weapon for the first time. Her eyes grew wide.
"Cool, can I see it?"
Xander rapidly shook his head. "I don't think so. Way too sharp. Buffy would kill me if you returned home missing your right hand or some other limb."
Dawn dropped her shoulders, obviously disappointed.
"I'm not going to cut myself. We have knives at home; I cut stuff in the kitchen all the time."
"Yeah, yeah. Not like this. Just leave it alone."
Xander then bent down and gave Anya a kiss on the cheek.
"I have to get back to work." He said.
Anya mumbled her goodbye as she read. Xander walked past them up the steps toward the door.
"Unless they have some manager conference thing and I can stay home." He spoke on his way out.
Dawn watched Xander leave through the entrance and then heard his truck start and pull off. Looking out the window to her left, she saw him drive by and down the street. Dawn then turned toward Anya.
"Anya, can I see that dagger."
While she continued to read, Anya reached absently to her right and picked up the dagger. She then reached across the table to her left and handed it towards Dawn.
"Okay, if you cut yourself, try not to get the blood on the floor."
Dawn smiled. "Thanks!"
She took the dagger by the handle from Anya. The scale texture on the wooden handle felt nice and warm in her palm. The grip was comfortable and it felt light for having so much metal. She was about to lay the dagger back down on the table when she began hearing this buzzing sound in the back of her head. At first she thought it was the lights overhead, but the sound seemed to be coming from all around her.
"Is there a T.V. in here?" Dawn asked, turning her head to scan around the room.
"No, there's no T.V. in the store." Anya answered, still engrossed in her books.
The sound was barely audible and she felt that she was hearing it in the back of her mind. She wasn't even certain the sound was real and not something her brain was echoing. Dawn looked about for the buzzing's source and absently dropped the dagger on a stack of books on the table. The buzzing stopped. However, it was replaced by a scream from Anya.
"Dawn!"
Dawn reflexively stepped back from the table and quickly looked over at Anya. Anya was staring at the stack of books on which Dawn had dropped the dagger. The dagger's blade was table deep in the stack of books, its hilt resting on the top book.
"Sorry!" Dawn shouted.
Anya half stood from her chair and reached forward. She pulled the dagger out of the books and gently laid it down on the table opposite of Dawn. She then picked up the damaged books and began thumbing through them.
"These books are priceless. You need to be more careful." Anya's voice showed her anger.
"I said I was sorry." Dawn replied, still standing away from the table.
"Well, the dagger was sharp enough to cut the pages cleanly, so no words should have been lost."
Anya finished looking through the book she was holding, set it down and picked up the next damaged one.
"I'm going to walk home." Dawn stated, not feeling comfortable at the shop any longer with Anya angry with her.
"Okay," Anya replied, sounding slightly relieved. "Be careful."
Dawn grabbed her purse and quickly headed up the short stairs and out the door.
Anya watched her leave and wondered briefly if she shouldn't have yelled at the young girl. Quickly dismissing the idea from her head, since Dawn had already left, Anya went back to reading. She spent the next several hours pouring over books and other manuscripts trying to either find an origin of the glyphs on the dagger's blade or, with luck, decipher them. She had little luck however and by the end of her search she was beginning to think that the dagger might not be as valuable as she first thought.
Willow showed up at the Magic Box later that afternoon. She too was wearing a standard pair of blue jeans. She had a nice wool sweater striped with several earth tones. The sleeves on the sweater were a bit too long on her and hung down over the end of her fingers.
Anya was still sitting at the table near the many shelves of books. The pile of books before her had steadily grown over the last few hours and now took up the entire top of the table. She was currently holding the dagger in front of her and before one of the tombs, apparently comparing the dagger to something on the books page.
Willow stepped down to the table and paused for a moment.
"I've got all those books I borrowed last week with me, if you want me to bring them in." She finally asked.
"Oh," Anya spoke, looking up from the page.
"Just put them on the, uh." She pointed down at the table with the dagger in her hand. Noticing that her searching had taken up all the space available, she swung the dagger around and pointed it toward the counter behind her. "Put them on the counter."
Anya then went back to her comparison.
Watching the dagger in Anya's hand, Willow moved around the table to look over her shoulder.
The page Anya was examining was full of lines of scribbled symbols running from the top of the page down. The lines where drawn thin so there were at least two dozen of them compacted across the page.
Looking at the dagger, Willow noticed the engravings on the weapon's blade. She didn't see any resemblance between the glyphs on the blade and those on the page.
"What are you looking up?" she finally asked.
Anya slammed the book closed and roughly placed the dagger on the table.
"I can't find anything on this text on the dagger!" she exclaimed in frustration.
"Where did you get the dagger?" Willow asked.
"What? Oh, I found it in the counter this morning. Someone left it here last night."
"In the counter? You mean someone broke in?" Willow was a bit startled.
"Yeah, last night."
"Did you call the police? Is anything missing?" Willow glanced about the room as if she expected the intruder to be standing behind her.
"No, nothing is missing. Xander came over this morning and we looked around. All I found was this dagger stuck in the counter over there."
Anya presented the dagger to Willow, holding it up toward Willow with her right hand.
"Wow, very spiky." Willow observed.
"Yeah, and it looks almost brand new. I thought it might be something special when I saw these markings on the metal but I can't find a reference to them anywhere."
Willow peered at the dagger and the symbols shown on the base of the blade.
"Maybe its just one of those fantasy dagger things you can buy in magazines."
Anya's brow clenched, confused by Willow's last statement.
"You know." Willow continued, "One of those movie knife thingies."
"Oh," Anya replied, holding the dagger up before her again. "I guess it could be a fake. Which means the writing might not mean anything."
Anya paused a moment, looking the dagger over again. Her eyes popped open again.
"It really sharp, though. You can cut through things really easily. Dawn dropped it on some books and it went right through them."
Willow smiled. "Good, maybe Buffy would like it. She likes the choppy things."
Anya gently set the dagger on the table and stood up.
"I'll help you bring those books in."
Willow and Anya carried all the books in from the pile Willow had made outside. During their work, they ran out of room on the counter, so Anya and Willow worked to clear Anya's earlier mess off the table. When they started on the table, Willow had first taken the dagger and walked downstairs to Buffy's training room. There she placed it on the shelf near Buffy's other weapons.
It wasn't until later that evening that Buffy arrived. She had come for a short work-out before she left to patrol for the night. After saying a brief hello to Anya and Willow upstairs, she descended the stairs in the back of the store to her training room in the basement. The sun had set several hours ago so the room was dark and cool. Buffy switched on the lights as she stepped off the stairs. She was wearing dark blue track pants which had a thin line of white down the outside side of her thighs. On her chest, she was wearing black halter top and she had pulled her dirty blonde hair back into a single tail. She carried with her a bottle of water and a white hand towel. She began her work-out with some cardiovascular work to speed up her heart. Giles had tried to introduce a bit of Tai Chi into her training a few months ago, however the ever-alert slayer had difficulties finding a calm focus. After Giles had decided that it might be best to introduce Tai Chi again in a few years, they had gone back to the normal sparring. With Giles gone, however, Buffy had no one to spar with. She feared to ask her friends as they were unfamiliar with her work-out a she didn't want to hurt them. In Giles's absence, Buffy had come up with a version of "shadow sparing" that seemed to do a decent job of working her heart.
After a few minutes of stretching and getting her blood flowing, Buffy moved over to her weapons cabinet to grab a pair of knives to practice with. She had reached the cabinet and placed her hand on the knives she was looking for when she noticed a new dagger laying on the base of the small cabinet. The dagger looked quite new to her and very well made. However the jagged inside curve of the blade was different from her normal straight edged weapons. She found that she liked the look of the dagger, even if it was different then her standard armament. Lifting the new dagger by its carved wooden handle, she found the weapon was almost weightless in her hands. Beyond that, the handle itself felt warm to the touch, as if it had just been sitting near a fire. The grip was almost perfect for her hands; the wood seemed to form to her fingers as she held it. Swiping the dagger through the air lightly before her, the weapon was lithe in her hand. She turned from the cabinet and walked back to the practicing mat. There she started her normal sparring using the newly found dagger. After a few moments, Buffy found herself gracefully weaving across the mat with the dagger in hand, swiping and jabbing high and low with swift accuracy. She felt almost a connection with the weapon. It was as if each next step and slice with the dagger was a planned dance on which she and the blade had agreed. Without almost any effort, she sprung from position to position on the mat, bringing the dagger down with her in a graceful arc. The speed at which she dove and cut was astonishing to her.
As she continued to dance with the weapon, losing herself more and more to the movements, she began to hear a small buzzing in the back of her head. She had dismissed the sound at first, but it had continued to beckon to her, calling for her attention. Buffy soon began to concentrate on the sound and she found that the more she focused on the buzzing the less it sounded like buzzing. Though first thinking she was mistaken, Buffy began to hear the buzzing more as a melody play within her mind. It was a crystalline chiming in her head and she found the sound soothing. She began to focus upon it deeper and soon the singing was all she felt. Lost to her were the movements of her work-out. Her training room in the basement faded from her thoughts and she saw nothing but a swirling cloud of light in her mind. The cloud continued to grow in definition and depth as the crystalline chiming rang lightly through her head. She felt the cloud of brightness flow through her and penetrate into each of her muscles. She felt its strength and dexterity as it reinforced her own physique. The light began to swirl before her eyes and rushing power of the singing cleansed her of all worry and doubt. She felt free and weightless as if she had left her body behind and now floated through a realm of pure healing light. Then, just as quickly as the light swirled around her, it parted and began to fade from view.
She found herself standing in darkness. Her eyes, which had grown accustomed to the previous light, began adjusting to the thick darkness of her new surroundings. She suddenly felt cold and the surface of her exposed skin shivered. Soon she could make out detail around her and she found that she was in a small empty room. Sounds of electronic equipment buzzed around her an occasional synthesized beep echoed through the room. Then, she began to make out a pale blue glowing shining out before her. As she took a step toward the glow, the light coalesced and took form in front of her. The light shimmered and wavered before her and she quickly realized she was staring into some backlit tank of water. There was a dark shape looming in the water, its form stood tall but blurry and Buffy couldn't find detail in the shape. The more Buffy stared at the dark blur, the tighter the shape became. As the lines and shadows began to converge, Buffy soon realized that the shape was of a man, floating in the bright blue pool of water.
The man's face looked hard and sharply cut, as if chiseled from rock. He didn't seem to be wearing any clothes, and Buffy blushed slightly at his nakedness. As she watched the man, she realized with a slight pang of disappointment that the man was dead. She didn't see his chest moving with breathe and she felt a cold sharpness of old death about him, as if his time had come and gone ages ago. Buffy wondered what the man's name had been. She stood there a few moments, gazing at his face before she motioned to turn and leave. Before she could move, however, a sharp pain grabbed a hold of her spine and she found herself paralyzed. Her arms and legs would not respond to her need to move and her head was locked staring at the man's face. With a blinding glare, a burst of multi-colored light suddenly emerged from the man's forehead. Another then exploded from his chest, just over his heart. Buffy then saw a third light erupt from somewhere below the left of her vision. Still immobile, she could do nothing. The burst of light dimmed slightly and Buffy was able to make out familiar looking systems glowing from the dead man's skin.
Feelings of panic began to well up inside her as she starred forward, helpless to move. The face of the dean man floating before her suddenly clenched in pain and his eyes shot open. A blinding radiance stabbed at her from his eyes and within her mind she heard the eruption a horrid scream. The sound was not her own and came at her form all sides. She felt the wail reverberate through her body and the screeching was deafening and painful. Buffy felt an eons worth of pain and torment in that scream, as if it had been welling up for countless years and only finally released. Fear rushed through Buffy's body and she somehow found strength to close her eyes. She heard her own voice explode from her throat in a scream of panic. Feeling herself and her mind suddenly pull back as if out of a dream, darkness again engulfed her from all sides and her limbs fell slack. The terrible scream echoed into silence. Eyes still held shut, Buffy slumped to the floor. As she hit the floor, she felt the cool canvas of her training mat. Catching her breath for a moment, Buffy finally managed to pry open her eyes lids. Before her, lying on its side on top of the mat was the jagged dagger. To her astonishment, its blade was glowing with an unearthly light, bright and strong in the surrounding darkness. Slowly, though, the light faded until the dagger lay dark before her with only glinting of the dim halogen lights shining in her vision.
The next thing Buffy realized, she was hearing Willow's frantic voice.
"Buffy? What happened? Are you okay? Buffy? Buffy!"
"What if she's dead?" Anya's voice, sounding slightly worried. "Should I call Giles?"
Buffy groaned, a sharp pain began pounding in between her eyes. She opened her eye lids and the glare of the light above the mat stung. Willow was on her knees over Buffy's head. Buffy turned her head down toward the mat and away from the lights above. Her neck ached.
"Buffy? What happened? We heard you scream?" Willow's asked, still quite worried.
"I'm fine." Buffy grumbled. "Something weird happened while I was training."
"Oh, you found the knife." Anya stated, seeing the dagger on the mat in front of Buffy. "Try not to break it. I think will sell for a lot."
"You're not going to sell it." Buffy said as she pushed herself up on her hands and then sat back on her knees.
"Well, I found it." Anya stated, a little indignant. "And it was in my counter."
"Sorry, Anya." Buffy reached down and picked the dagger up by the handle. "There is something strange about this weapon. Where did you say you found it?"
Anya pointed at the stairs behind her.
"It was in the counter top by the register when I got in. Someone broke in a left it there. I think that means the want me to have it."
"Someone broke in?" Buffy was startled. No one had yet mentioned it to her. "Who was it?"
"We don't know." Willow answered. "They didn't leave a business card or anything."
Buffy stood. "Was anything missing?"
"No." Willow replied. "Nothing missing, they just left that."
"They?"
"Oh, well, I guess it could have been a him...or a her. But them is kinda like the standard when you don't know."
"Right"
"Anyhow," Willow started, "what weird thing happened that made you scream?"
"I'm not sure." Buffy answered, looking down at the weapon in her hand. "When I found the dagger, I started practicing with it. It actually feels real nice and I was having fun when I started hearing this buzzing sound. But it wasn't buzzing, it was this music and then everything started getting bright."
As she was speaking and her attention was on the dagger, she realized that she again began hearing the faint buzzing sound in the back of her mind. She jerked her head up and looked back at her two friends. Once her attention was off the dagger, the buzzing faded.
"Uh," she stammered for a second, "then the light was everywhere and I couldn't see anything else. I felt weightless like I was floating around in a pool. The light then vanished and I saw this naked guy floating in a tank of water."
"Naked?" Anya asked. "Was he cute?"
Willow looked back at Anya and Buffy scowled at the ex-demon.
"What?" she stated, defensively. "Just asking."
"Anyhow," Buffy continued, "he was in this tank of glowing blue liquid. He looked dead. He wasn't breathing. Then he had these glowing symbols in his skin. One on his forehead, one over his heart and I think one on his right arm. I couldn't look at the arm because I was frozen and couldn't move."
"Something was holding you?" Willow asked.
"No, my body just wouldn't move when I tried to move it." Buffy answered.
She then continued.
"Then his eyes opened."
"The dead guys?" Willow interrupted.
"Yeah. His eyes burst open and there was this light glowing out of them. Then I heard a scream in my head. It was like someone being tortured...really bad. I think I screamed and then closed my eyes. Next thing I remember I was laying on the mat and I saw the blade glowing."
"It was glowing?" Anya asked. "How was it glowing?"
"I don't know." Buffy responded, "It was just glowing. Then you two were here."
"Yeah," Willow spoke, "we were sorting books and you screamed. I thought you had maybe kicked something and broke you're foot."
"How could it be glowing?" Anya continued, "There is no magic in it, we checked."
"I don't know." Buffy looked back down at the dagger. "You know, these symbols look kind of like the one on his head. None of these are the same symbol, but they are shaped the same."
"I don't think those symbols mean anything." Anya stated, "I was working on translating them all morning and couldn't find anything on them."
"Well, they can't be too old. The dagger looks almost new."
Buffy looked back down at the dagger.
"Did you have a sheath for this thing? I'd like to keep it with me, just in case." She asked.
"No," Anya answered. "I don't think you can put that blade in a sheath, it would probably cut right trough it."
"Is it that sharp?" Buffy asked, having not actually used the weapon on anything yet.
"Yeah, it cut right through my register."
Buffy walked over to a nearby brick wall. The stones were grey and cool to the touch. With a fairly easy move, Buffy sliced at the wall with the dagger's blade. The metal slid right through the stone without a sound, leaving a thin, precise gash. Buffy heard the buzzing swell up in her head for a moment as she swung the weapon.
"Wow." She stated, looking at the cut in the wall.
"Yeah," Willow agreed, walking up behind her. "There's a nice gash in the table upstairs, too."
Buffy stared at the blade for a moment, turning it in her hand and watching the dim light glint off the flawless steel. The buzzing sound whispered into her mind. She felt the need to use it, the need to thrust and cut at an advesary. She wanted to see the blade covered in blood. The blood of vampires.
Shaking her head, Buffy looked back up at her friends. She then noticed the small window to the outside set high in her training room across from them. Outside she saw the night and remembered her duties as a slayer.
"I've got to get on patrol." Buffy said as she crossed the room and retrieved her white hand towel and bottled water.
"Yeah, I guess we should finish upstairs." Willow agreed.
The three women walked to the stairs and started up into the store above. As they climbed, Willow noticed that Buffy still carried the jagged dagger in her hand. She stopped, Anya almost bumping into her back.
"Uh, are you taking that with you?" Willow asked meekly.
Buffy stopped and slowly turned toward her.
"I...I...I want to try it." Buffy stammered. "I think it might make a good weapon and I want to take it with me and see."
"Well, maybe you should leave it here...since it's all spooky and everything."
"I'll be okay." Buffy assured her, nodding her head.
Buffy then turned and clamored up the rest of the stairs and out into the store.