Chapter 1

Combat Magic

Sunnydale - May 10th

            Willow Rosenberg was sure she was about to die.

Pain riddled her small body as she writhed away from the many-tentacled creature advancing on her. The acrid smoke of ozone from a torn power cable mixed with the other scents of her own burnt flesh, blood, sweat and fear. She breathed in ragged gasps, looking about in a panicked plea for rescue. She lay prone on the concrete floor of a warehouse, only vaguely aware of her surroundings. What parts of her mind not focused on escape were attempting to track the movements of the demon she was fighting.

Its body was vaguely humanoid – it walked on two shambling legs, had two long arms and only one head. However, all resemblance ended there. Its skin was gray and deformed, like it had been made badly from modeling clay. The head held two large, black eyes that tracked her unblinkingly. No mouth was apparent, but a wail emitted from the rapidly quivering polyps that hung from its chin like a scraggly beard. It was clothed in a long, ragged robe the same color as its skin. This was all of secondary concern to Willow, though. Her frantic eyes attempted to track its arms.

The arms were what really set this creature apart. Or, more precisely, what at first appeared to be arms. They were, in fact, a collection of tentacles wrapped together and attached to its shoulders. Looking back, Willow would remember how it had at first seemed to have two squids attached to it. "Ooh, calamari," she had said rakishly when she first saw it. But her humor was short-lived.

To begin with, the tentacles could reach nearly twenty feet when fully extended. She had come to realize this when she attempted to close range on the creature. She also came to understand that it could shoot out those tentacles very quickly. The creature moved them like a bullwhip, with a seemingly lazy movement to begin with that was lightning fast at its end. The effect of tentacles at that speed would be as bad, if not worse, than a whip across the flesh. Willow had braced for that after magically deflecting the first attack. She knew it might hurt.

What she hadn't counted on was the poison. It burned her skin like acid and brought up bleeding welts almost immediately. The shock of the strike subsided into the agony of the poison. It had contracted her chest until she was hyperventilating just to stay awake. She knew she was only moments from blacking out, and then she would be dead.

But she couldn't allow herself to fail. Buffy and Giles and Tara – especially Tara – were depending on her. She spared a brief glance over her shoulder at them all standing there, watching and waiting for the outcome. She could see concern, fear even, on every face and knew she had to do better. Every face but one, that is. Madame LaFusce watched smugly, jotting notes on her clipboard.

Madame LaFusce. She had to beat this creature, if for no other reason than to wipe the infuriating, self-important grin off that woman's face.

Looking back at the creature advancing on her, she saw that it had drawn near a loose electrical cable. It slowed its advance and shuffled sideways to avoid it. Willow couldn't quite tell, but it looked afraid of the sparking wire. It wasn't much, but it was the only opportunity that had presented itself so far. She was going to take it.

Still lying prone, the young witch propped herself up on one elbow and pointed at the cable. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she spoke a single word, "Strike!" The cable leapt from its position on the floor and flew through the air like a viper. The tentacled creature attempted to avoid it, but the movement was too sudden. It struck the creature full in the chest. Sparks flew everywhere. The wail being emitted from its chin rose to an unholy pitch, and then suddenly ceased. Behind her, Willow sensed the circuit breakers exploding in the wall panel, cutting off the current.

But what current there had been was enough. The creature was dead. Willow fell back and let out her breath. The pain was still incredible, but the thrill of success flooded her body with endorphins and adrenalin, giving her some focus back. Mustering her strength, she rolled over and got to all fours, gulping air from the effort.

She struggled to one knee and was about to attempt standing when she heard a polyphonic wail approaching. Looking about, she moaned in despair. Three more creatures were approaching, and the power was dead in the building.

They moved on her from three separate directions, and before she could quite digest what was happening, they had moved into striking distance. Her mind whirled through a series of counter spells, selecting and rejecting them as fast as she could think. When their arms began the slow roll leading to the attack, she shouted out her spell.

"Duplicatum obscurus transportio!"

Her voice rang like thunder. To those watching closely, her eyes had gone completely black. If Madame LaFusce noticed, she gave no indication. The effect was immediate – five "Willow"s appeared where there had been only one a moment before. They were all in the same position on one knee, arranged with four equally placed around a fifth, central Willow. In unison, they all stood unsteadily to their feet. Every movement among the five was identical.

In the back of the warehouse, Madame LaFusce made a note on the clipboard. Rupert Giles, standing next to her, looked over at it.

"I don't think you really grasp the complexity of what she just did," he said calmly with his aristocratic British accent. His eyes, though, were filled with anxiety. A single trickle of sweat descended down his temple.

"Hmmph," Madame LaFusce replied dismissively. "Simple trickery. The korlorf demons will make short work of her pitiful illusion."

The korlorf demons were true to her words. In quick, slashing strokes of their whip-like arms they cut through the four illusions, leaving only the center Willow standing. She was clearly panicked, looking about anxiously. But though surrounded by the demons, she continued to mutter a spell under her breath, hoping to get one last shot off. She raised one hand, palm upwards, chest high, and a small bundle of blue lighting began to form.

With her movement, the pitch of the wail from the korlorf demons increased. Then they struck. All three whipped their tentacles at the lone Willow standing in the center of them. The three sets of tentacles struck simultaneously with the force of a thunderclap. Willow, however, disappeared.

Everyone stared dumbstruck as the fifth Willow turned out to be an illusion as well. Everyone but Giles, who had anticipated Willow's ploy as soon as he heard the spell she had cast. Seeing that the tentacles of the three korlorf demons had become tangled, he called out, "Now, Willow!"

He needn't have. At the same moment, Willow stepped out a few paces from the demons, seemingly from thin air. In her hands, a great ball of blue lightning floated just above her palm. In two great strides she reached the tangled mass of demon appendages. With all her strength, she threw the ball of lightning into its center.

The lightning ran back along the limbs in a sudden storm of St. Elmo's Fire. The force of the electricity blew the three backwards in separate directions. One collided with a stack of crates, one with a warehouse wall, and one landed in a heap on the floor thirty feet away. All three were smoking husks and quite dead.

Tears of exhaustion and pain streamed down Willow's face as she fell to her knees. Slowly she teetered and collapsed. The last effort was more than her body, already beaten and poisoned, could handle. Her last thought, as darkness closed upon her, was of Madame LaFusce. "And to think I asked for this," she said softly, and then passed out.

Giles looked over at the stark, critical maven standing next to him. He regarded her carefully, judging how to express his displeasure, when he noticed her scribbling on the clipboard. The duplication spell Willow had cast had been revised. Where the original rating of one had been now stood a five, with a complicated note next to it he couldn't quite make out. The last spell rated a four, but an annotation marked it a seven for power. Giles held his remarks, but Madame LaFusce caught his stare.

"You were right, Mr. Giles," she said. "I am not sure how she was able to shortcut those three spells into a simple incantation, but it was quite complicated." Her voice was fragile, and accented with French in a way that reminded Rupert of his maternal grandmother. But her eyes were cold steel, and they seemed sharpened in his direction for the comments he had made earlier. "And you see," she said coldly, "I am quite capable of making my own judgments about the applicant."

She turned her steel eyes on Tara, standing next to her. "Now then, let's see about you."

Tara swallowed hard and began to stammer. "I don't do combat magic," she managed to choke out, glancing with heartbreak at the collapsed form of her lover on the concrete floor.

"Do you think I do not know this?" Madame LaFusce demanded caustically. "Let's see if you can heal her," she said, gesturing vaguely in Willow's direction, "or at least manage to revive her." She regarded Tara coldly for a long moment. "Now!" she snapped, and Tara broke from the old woman's cold gaze to go run to her beloved.

Kneeling next to Willow's collapsed form, she moved the red-headed witch's head into her lap. Slowly she brushed the hair from Willow's forehead, and then inscribed a symbol on it with ash she took from a pouch at her side. Then she began reciting a spell in a soft crooning voice.

The spell was one that she and Willow had developed together. It took bits and pieces of other healing spells, but was made unique by the bond they shared. The spell used their love for one another to magnify the healing virtues of the other spells. She ran through it once with her hands on Willow's cheeks. The second time she held Willow's hands. The third time, she placed her hands on Willow's heart.

With the third incantation, a fine mist formed around them. Tara continued the chant, moving in a cycle from holding Willow's face, hands, and heart. On the third cycle, the mist dispelled, and Willow opened her eyes.

"How're you doing, baby?" Tara asked softly.

"Huh?" Willow scrunched up her forehead to assess why her lover would ask such an odd question. Then, suddenly, her memories caught up with the present, and she scrambled up to look for her attackers.

"It's all over, Will," Tara, still kneeling, reassured her. "You beat them."

"Oh," Willow said, slowly trying to return to normalcy. She tugged on the sleeve of her sweater self-consciously. "Okay. And hey, you healed me." She brightened at that, and smiled at Tara. "Did you use the spell we made?" she asked.

"Uh-huh," Tara nodded as Willow helped her to her feet. The stood facing each other, holding hands, as Tara demurred. "It was the only thing I could think of. I mean, you were so hurt, and I was so scared, and we were being graded and everything."

Willow reached up and brushed a misbehaving lock of hair out of Tara's eyes. "You did great, baby. I'm so proud of you." Tara smiled shyly. Willow looked deep into her eyes, realizing once again how lucky they both were to have found one another. She leaned in to kiss her love.

"Time enough for that later," Madame LaFusce said, standing so close that both Tara and Willow jumped. "Such inattention," she continued reprovingly, "is exceeded only by your ignorance of demons." She then turned on Rupert. "I can't believe you would have endorsed their application, Mister Giles. I really don't find this kind of waste of time at all to my liking."

Giles took off his glasses and began to clean them as he struggled for words.

"Hey, they kicked butt," Buffy Summers, the Slayer, chimed in for him. "I may not know a lot about witchcraft," she continued, moving in front of Giles to address the petit Frenchwoman, "but I know about killing demons, and that was some A-1 slaying."

Buffy was the latest in the line of Slayers. She was a small, blonde woman of college age. In fact, she attended Sunnydale University – when she wasn't busy killing one of the many foul creatures that made Sunnydale their home. Buffy wasn't like other Slayers, who historically worked alone, having only a watcher for companionship. Buffy had collected a small cadre of friends, each one gifted in their own special way. Willow was her oldest and closest friend, along with Alexander 'Xander' Harris. They were the two people Buffy had met first when she'd moved to Sunnydale. The only person she was closer to was Rupert Giles, her watcher.

Sunnydale wasn't like other towns, either. It was centered on a hellmouth, a mystical convergence of energies and an entryway to demonic dimensions. More evil, and more power, was concentrated in Sunnydale than nearly any other place in the world. Buffy depended on her friends, her so called 'scooby gang', and she would defend them from anyone or anything.

A voice chimed in from the back, "Well I do know about witchcraft, and that was pretty good."  Anya did, indeed, know about witchcraft. Her own spell-casting against her old fiancé Olaf had turned him into a troll. That had earned her a job as a vengeance demon for over 1000 years, until she had been defeated by the Scooby gang. No one qute new how she had earned the job, only that she had been a demon and was now a mortal. Anya had come to find life as a mortal somewhat constraining, but not without rewards. She had a steady boyfriend in Buffy's friend Xander, and it held promise for more. And while she no longer practiced magic herself, she understood it well enough to appreciate its use by others.

Xander was about to add to the defense of his two friends when Giles put up a hand to stop him. "Before this gets out of hand, we might want to listen to what Madame LaFusce has to say. While she can be somewhat critical, I'm sure it is not without reason. Isn't that right, Madame?"

Madame LaFusce looked disdainfully at Buffy, Anya, and Xander, and then dismissed them with a sniff. When she spoke next, she very pointedly addressed only Giles. "The girls are, as you indicated, very powerful. The redheaded one demonstrates some very advanced techniques, as you pointed out. But technique and power are hardly the makings of a good witch. The fact is, in the five simulations I have conjured for her to face, she did not recognize a single enemy." She has a point, Anya interjected, but everyone ignored her. "The korlorf demons, for instance, are fairly well known – as is their weakness. While she eventually figured out how to fight them, it was more luck that led to that revelation than knowledge. If you don't know what you're facing, how can you hope to overcome it? Had they been actual korlorf demons, rather than my conjurings, I should hesitate to think what kind of shape she would be in.

"No, Mr. Giles, these girls are not ready to be tested any further."

Willow swallowed convulsively. It can't end like this, he brain screamed. It just can't. After all the work, all the preparation, everything she'd been through, it simply couldn't end like this. He mind whirled, rushing headlong through a hundred thoughts until it hit upon the one that was really bugging her the most. "When?" she said to herself softly, "When did it all start going wrong?"