It was dark. Darker than dark, save for the stars. Nothing in the world seemed to be a source of light, as though civilisation had not yet cast its hand upon the Earth. The glow of the moon, which had served to lead them from the stone corridors of before, had gone now, and the moon itself was no more than a tiny sliver; the faint curved stripe of white of the old awaiting renewal in the nights to come. It was hard to see the ground beneath their feet; hard to see anything at all save the stars. The many, many thousands upon thousands of stars, that filled the heavens with the bright clean flicker of candlelight. Giles saw all the constellations he had learnt over the years; the ancient ones named millennia ago; the newer ones given more recent names. North and south, east and west; constellations that had never been seen together before, as though the whole of the sky had been opened up and stretched out above his head.
"Look at it," he breathed, sharing the marvel with a man he could now barely see. He reached out to touch his companion, before remembering that he couldn't, and letting his arm fall back to his side.
"It feels... strange." Wesley's voice sounded more faint than before. "I feel less real here, as though the starlight is shining straight through me."
"Everything feels less real. Everything probably isn't real." Giles winced at that sentence, thinking ill thoughts of young Americans who couldn't speak the language properly, and of the years he had spent amongst them. "But just look at those stars."
"Yes." It seemed to Wesley that they were clearer than they had been before; that the many things which dimmed the heavenly lights had no effect here. The constellations themselves seemed different too; Cassiopeia looked less like a zigzagged line, and more like a reclining queen. Perseus seemed to have a real fist that gripped his sword; and were those wings sprouting from Pegasus's powerful white back? But that was absurd, of course.
"Where do you suppose we are?" Giles's voice came from up ahead, but Wesley found that he couldn't catch up with him. The ground no longer felt solid beneath his feet, and when he tried to walk, instead of striking solidity, his feet passed straight through into nothingness. He floundered briefly, and floated confusingly in the air. Only after a moment did the emptiness seem to make sense to him. He was a ghost, after all. A thing of air now, no longer of the Earth. Walking in space should be nothing strange.
"Er... Wesley?" It was Giles's voice, and as Wesley floated up into the ether, he realised that Giles was there too. That didn't make sense. Giles wasn't a ghost. He couldn't float about in space amongst the stars. Neither could ghosts, come to that, rationalised some part of Wesley's brain. Not in this kind of space, anyway, where Auriga was visible in the distance as a vast man in a war chariot, and Pegasus pawed the ground with a hoof and flexed his impossible wings. There was laughter now; Cassiopeia, her mirth like merry music, sipping from a goblet filled with wine that swished gently as it moved. Andromeda, laughing at anything and everything. The hounds of Orion barked together, and the twins of Gemini giggled and pointed and whispered.
"I think I preferred the two headed dog," muttered Giles. He was floating helplessly, trying and failing to snatch at Wesley for an anchor. The ghost was doing only mildly better, trying to convince himself that this should be natural to a man who was no longer a man. Something thundered past him, feeling much more real than it had any right to be; a horse, but not pulling a chariot this time. Centaurus, he thought, to judge by the shape of the creature. There wasn't time to see much detail in the half-human figure as it raced past, but he saw gleaming muscle, and heard the four sharp hooves striking ground that wasn't there.
"There has to be a way through all of this." He concentrated on the emptiness, and made himself pass through it, walking past the myriad stars, all of which stood apart from the living constellations now. They were scattered about at his feet like stones; as tiny as they appeared to be from the Earth, and shining brightly all the while. His passage through them disturbed them, and they skittered away like pebbles. Around him others fell like hailstones, but he didn't feel them. He could see their light though, glowing all around him like fireflies, and granting him greater vision than before. Everything was brighter now; each living constellation shining with ethereal beauty.
"A path, you mean." Giles was nodding, still fighting to find his own balance. Unlike the dead man beside him, he still clung to solidity; to reality. He was still of the Earth, and needed to feel it beneath his feet. "Leading us onwards to the vault."
"Exactly. There has to be one here somewhere. Can you see anything?"
"Gods playing games. Demigods being heroic. A bloody great horse with wings, prancing about like a ballerina."
"But no path."
"I wouldn't know what to look for. Everything is just... white and floaty." He frowned at that. "Are we dead?"
"No. Well, I am, obviously. You're not."
"How can you be so sure?" Struggling for balance, Giles managed to take a step, and watched the stars fall around him like rain as he moved. Cassiopeia laughed, but he didn't take it personally. She had been doing little else since he had arrived. He considered speaking to her, but she seemed to be caught up in a world of her own; some great party of the mythical and the mystical, where all the beings set out in the stars laughed and drank together. Orion was loosing off arrows, and they fell as comets.
"I don't know." Wesley was moving around him, beginning to find it easier to navigate. "Perhaps because you still seem so clumsy here. Or perhaps because Cordelia hasn't appeared."
"No reason why she should, to me. I'd expect to be greeted at the gates of hell by a lot of old friends long before Cordelia got a look in." Death wouldn't come gently to Rupert Giles; of that he was sure. There would be no bright white lights and trips into happy floaty land, and dead friends converted into angels to help him continue his work. It was far more likely that he would be met by Eyghon, and the souls of the other dead Sleepwalkers. Which was perhaps reason enough to assume that Wesley was right, and that he wasn't dead. Just very, very confused. "What sort of path should we be looking for? Which direction were we heading in before everything went weird?"
"I doubt direction has much relevance." Wesley was beginning to float about like one of the constellations, his body no longer nearly as tangible as it had seemed before. Giles could see the stars shining through him, and the gleam of the tiny moon like a curved sword through his side. "At least in its usual sense."
"Then how do we know where we're supposed to be going?" In contrast to Wesley, Giles felt heavy. Leaden. The call of the Earth, perhaps, or of the ties his body felt for it. The call of life, but in a way that served to hamper and disorientate. Living men were not meant to dance with stars. Wesley, almost entirely transparent now, his outline one of shining white starlight, drifted past.
"Ask the stars," he suggested. Giles rolled his eyes.
"Thankyou for that pearl of wisdom. How the bloody hell can we ask the stars?"
"I didn't mean in the literal sense." Another chariot thundered past them, and the tiny stars flew up behind its mighty wheels, raining down again like leaves billowing in a wind. There was the sound of music as they fell back down; like the perfect notes of glass wind-chimes striking against one another. "The answer has to be hidden here somewhere."
"Why?! Corbio didn't design this place to guide people through. He built it to keep them out. The puzzles we've seen so far were to help him find his way, and you're not telling me that he needed help to remember the way through a place like this? You're not likely to forget it in a hurry!"
"All his pathways are guarded by beasts designed to attack all but himself, or by puzzles and conundrums that prevent possible intruders from finding the way onward. He didn't leave anything to chance. There's always something hidden. So either there's some monster out here somewhere that hasn't come to eat us yet--"
"Eat me." Giles felt it was only fair to strike that point home. "You wouldn't make much of a meal."
"To eat you then," conceded Wesley, without losing rhythm or thread, "or there's a puzzle that we have to solve that will tell us which way to go next." Cassiopeia laughed and clapped her hands, and Giles glared at her. She might be the queen of the skies, but that didn't make her any less annoying.
"Maybe we should start walking," he suggested, without feeling much enthusiasm for the idea. Every movement was a hardship. He felt as if he weighed several tonnes.
"You wouldn't get very far. And I can't go on without you, remember?" Cassiopeia laughed again at that, and raised her goblet in salute. Giles scowled.
"I don't care how far I can go. I'm sick of being giggled at by Miss Intangible, 2004. Let's find some less annoying constellations."
"There's enough of them to choose from." The view was still astounding, even though, now that they were up amongst them all, it was harder to see the great spread of stars. Giles wondered how Corbio had come to know of so many, in order to create this place, since he came from a world without telescopes; but Corbio's knowledge and abilities had far outstripped those of any normal man, of his own time or any other. He had learnt from demons, and they knew the universe as only creatures countless aeons older than humankind could. The thought made him wonder at what could be in Philarbus's secret box, if such a man wanted it so dearly. "But what if walking in the wrong direction is a part of some trap? Remember the four doors? If you had opened the wrong one, you'd have been killed almost certainly. It's bound to be the same here." This time it was Orion's turn to laugh; a great booming shout of merriment, accompanied by another shower of his flaming, comet arrows. Giles wondered how dangerous those arrows might become if they took a wrong path. Sagittarius was out here somewhere too, with a bow of his own to add to the potential damage - and that was without taking the animals into account. Ursa Major, Leo, Draco - it didn't require much imagination to think of the dangers that they could all pose to him. How did it feel to be scorched to death by an ethereal star dragon? Or ripped to shreds by a mythical lion hanging in space? He didn't want to know - but even the thought of it had seemed to make the strange characters come closer. Aries bent its huge head towards him, to display its vast, curling horns; Serpens slid back and forth; bigger than any true snake, its hissing the only sound that could drown out Cassiopeia's laughs. He felt tempted to kick out at the creature, but his feet were too heavy to move so quickly, and he knew that it wouldn't do any good. You couldn't kick snakes that didn't exist, even when you could see them as clearly as starlight. The snake would not care; but it could doubtless bite, even if he could do no damage to it in return.
"There has to be somewhere we can go. There has to be a path."
"I'm not disputing that. I just want to careful. We can't just choose a direction at random."
"Fair enough." Giles tried to shut out the growing cacophony around him, of celebrating people, noisy animals, and burning arrows falling through space. It made it hard to think. "Well they're stars, aren't they. You use stars for navigation."
"Only usually if you already know where you're going, or where you're coming from, or have some set course to follow. We could find north easily enough, but what good would that do us?"
"True. And usually the stars in question aren't moving around all over the sky, and stealing each others places." He gave in to temptation and aimed a hearty kick at Serpens, but the great snake slid out of reach long before his foot had a hope of connecting with it. Its tiny, glowing white eyes glared back at him, and its bright white tongue flickered back and forth. "I wouldn't fancy being a sailor tonight, with this lot to guide me home."
"Astrophysics," mused Wesley, who had had cause to brush up on his physics extensively in recent years. Giles shook his head.
"Too modern. Corbio might have been way ahead of his time, but astrophysics isn't something that a man would have turned to twelve centuries ago. He seems to have known something about stars that his contemporaries never knew existed, but he probably still thought of them primarily as heavenly bodies rotating about the Earth. The stuff of legend."
"9th century science." Wesley cast his mind back to the long ago lessons in his father's study, all of far greater clarity in his mind than the school books of his youth. "Aristotle. The Earth at the centre of the universe, with the planets in revolution about it, and the stars in a spherical canopy beyond."
"In popular opinion, yes." He was finding it hard to think, the heaviness of his existence dragging at his mind now, as well as at his body. The dangers of this place were intense, for anybody who was not supposed to be here; or for anybody who was not dead. "But what... what does that mean? For us? Where is the pathway?"
"Perhaps we're on it." Wesley floated away a short distance, his easy manoeuvring making Giles feel jealous. The older Watcher could now barely hold up his head; at any moment he felt he must go crashing back to the Earth, however far away it lay. Either that or he would simply implode under his own mass, until he became nothing more tangible than the drifting mists that lay between the stars, and made up the substance of the living, breathing constellations. "If the Earth lies at the centre of the universe, and we're in the fixed canopy of stars that lies beyond the planets, then according to Corbio's contemporaries we're in a vast rotating sphere at the edge of the universe. Our destination has to be the Earth."
"Which is down," suggested Giles, wondering if perhaps he shouldn't just given in to the desire of his heavy, heavy body, and let himself sink. Wesley nodded.
"Probably. But not by any direct route. That would be too easy."
"Yes. Nothing must ever be too easy." Giles fought with his tiring mind and body. He couldn't think. Not in this place. The ball had to be in Wesley's court now. Part of him fought against that, for a part of him still thought of the other Watcher as the useless pain in the neck he had always been in the past. The kid sent by Headquarters to be a thorn in his predecessor's side. The rest of his mind floated between new opinion of his colleague, and a complete inability to care. He was just too tired. Too heavy, and too tired, and beginning to sink, inevitably now, into the tiny stars that lay like pebbles at his feet.
"Fight it, Giles." That was easy enough for Wesley to say. He was the weightless one, floating without effort amongst the stars. This all looked like fun to him; as though at any moment he could begin to swoop and dive and fly through the glowing mists and stars, to become one of them without earthly cares. He wasn't the one who felt as if he weighed ten thousand tonnes, and was being slowly crushed by his own body. Far above came the screams of flying beasts; Aquilus and Draco, circling in their own sky; and he knew that they were waiting for him to die. As soon as it all became too much for him they would dive down upon him, and devour whatever was left. He knew that as clearly and as certainly as if he had already seen it come about. Perhaps he had. He had no concept of time anymore, and if it was at all linear here, he wasn't aware of it.
"Just find me a way out of here," he managed to say, his tongue fighting with the words. He had to spit them out; force himself to create them from the air. His vision was blurring. Every instinct was telling him to give in, and let his body sink - and if he did indeed want to go to the Earth then perhaps he should allow himself to do just that? That would be a part of the trap, he knew, but it was so hard to fight, and the Earth was calling to him like a psiren demanding attention. Above him birds screamed and wheeled in their private heavens, and he fancied that he felt the heat of Draco's breath against his face. They wanted him. They needed his flesh and his substance to feed them. If he sank they would catch him before he could fall to Earth. That fact struggled through his mind, the speed of thought no longer something fast and wonderful.
"I don't know the way out of here!" Wesley cast a look up at the swooping, waiting creatures of the air. "Down, certainly. But here? Over there? Two hundred yards to the left?"
"I don't care..." Giles didn't even know if he was speaking aloud. He couldn't be sure that his lips were even capable of forming words anymore. "Doesn't matter." It felt as if the whole of the universe was pressing in upon him now, ready to crush him, or drag him into infinity alongside it. Draco breathed white star fire; the hounds of Orion snapped nearby. Somewhere a powerful roar set the stars vibrating. Leo? Or one of the bears? It could be any of the animals of the heavens, ready to join in the feast and devour the foolish mortal man who had struggled into their midst. His body began to ache, to hurt, to throb with the pains of too much weight, too much effort, too much clinging onto a life that no longer felt capable of sustaining itself. He could hear the buzz of Wesley's voice that marked the process of the other man thinking aloud, but he couldn't distinguish the words. His ears were no longer capable. He couldn't hear the screeches of the birds anymore either. Perhaps he wouldn't know it when they eventually descended upon him. Would Cassiopeia laugh on as he was torn to pieces? He wouldn't know it if she did. Perhaps she would toast his demise with her fine goblet, and Orion would fire extra comets in celebration. Or perhaps none of them would see, or care.
"Where would the path be?" Floating back and forth, not truly aware of Giles's myriad discomforts, Wesley turned his own bright mind to the puzzle at hand. Where would a 9th century magician and scientist secrete a path that led from the stars to the Earth? Which constellation would guard the entrance to the path? Or would none of them do so? Should they follow the sequence of the planets, each residing, as was the way of 9th century astronomy, in its own crystal sphere? And if they should indeed step from sphere to sphere, like some giant staircase of the imagination, then where did the first such step lie? Did Cassiopeia hide it beneath her couch? Was that why she laughed at her own secret joke? Or did it lie beneath one of the other stars, lying out around him in a sweep of such magnificence? The lessons of his youth, the memorising of the constellations and their various significances and places in myth and history, filled his mind. He had always been a walking library; it was what his father had taught him to be, what the Watchers had taught him to be; what destiny had first created him to be. Giles was the same - but Giles was sinking, and spoke no more. Wesley would have caught him if he could, but he could no more touch the other man than he could touch anything else that mattered. He was no more real than this place of illusion in which he now hung like a wraith. Would Corbio have been as heavy as Giles in this place, he wondered? Or would his own powers have sustained him? He would still have been a creature of the Earth, not free to roam in the heavens unless he abandoned his body... at least in theory. Whatever the truth he would have wanted to get to the end of the pathway as soon as possible. He would have wanted some quick method of leaving this place. Would he have ridden some celestial chariot? Was that the way back to the Earth? But no. He was Corbio; not a man of chariots and racing horses. He was a man of grandiose imagery; of great ego and self-importance. And Wesley smiled, and turned his head to look past Orion and Cassiopeia, and all the other prancing heroes, distracting him with their antics and their merriment. It had to be here somewhere; it couldn't not be. It was one of the oldest of the named constellations, at least as far as recorded history knew. Somewhere it would be here, amongst the preening and the posturing and the star-filled arrogance of these many imaginings of Corbio. Billowing white sails; a proud prow, lifting up out of foaming, misty waves. The Argo, ship of legend, vessel of heroes. The great ship created by master craftsmen to convey Jason and his fellows to find the golden fleece. He could see it now, the better for his thinking more clearly of it. It seemed to drift closer, summoned by the realisation of its purpose here. The figurehead gazed down upon him with bright star eyes, and he could almost imagine that he could feel the spray from the waves, and the cool breath of the wind that filled the great sails.
"Giles?" The other Watcher was looking up, not truly seeing the ship, but feeling something now. Feeling himself lifted up and taken onboard, as the pressures and the heaviness eased a little. There was a sensation of speed; of vast, immeasurable, wonderful speed that made even his heavy body that little bit lighter. Some power of thought returned to him; some sense of vision. He saw Draco then, diving straight for him with a roar of rage, but incapable of striking the magnificent ship. White sails shut the dragon out; then the great crystal sphere of the stars was closed, and the world of white lights was gone. There were only planets then; each one a different colour; each one a great, perfect sphere caught in its theoretical harmony as decreed by the ancient beliefs of long dead scientists and philosophers. They raced past on their perfect, circular orbits, aloof and strange, the flawless inventions of a flawless Creator. Wesley was shouting instructions to the ship, or possibly just yelling aloud in glee. Giles didn't think that seemed like a Wesley Thing to do, but since the words were in a language he couldn't place off hand, and since he was still too heavy and tired to pay much attention to anything save the spectacular view, he let it all float by his head unstudied. Let Wesley shout his unintelligible words at the starry mists that carried them if he wanted to. So long as he knew how to stop the thing when they finally reached Earth. Or the next part of the journey. Whatever.
Clouds met them when they finally began to slow down. There was daylight rather than moonlight; real wind rather than the imagined winds of space. The ship seemed less solid; less real - if it could ever have been called that in the first place. Giles found that his body seemed almost to belong to him again; that the calling of the Earth was no longer a dragging chain, but a welcoming embrace. He lifted himself up, cast one final glance back at the shining darkness from which they had come, then looked forward instead, towards the clouds. They billowed about, racing the ship, joining with it and becoming a part of its sails, then twisting away when the ship broke through and at last made its final dive towards the ground. It seemed to be happening rather fast, thought Giles, and wondered about shouting a warning to somebody; but whoever the helmsman was in this craft, he took his instructions from none save the ghost standing out on the bowsprit, untouched by the wind that dragged at his colleague. Giles recognised the language that had guided them through space then; Ancient Greek, of course, the language of so many of the characters behind the constellations. He had been speaking it all of his life, but he hadn't understood it during that time of heaviness and encumbrance. The Powers, whoever or whatever they were, had known what they were doing when they had sent him a ghost as a companion - that much was sure; although he was beginning to wish that they had sent him a ghost with a better understanding of piloting a vessel. The ground was rushing up to meet them now; green and blue and brown and very, very hard. He shouted a warning, but the wind whipped his words away before he could hear them himself, and still the ship raced on. On and on until suddenly it no longer existed anymore - and he was merely lying, surprised, upon the ground. Confused, disorientated, mind still filled with spectacular visions of stars come to life - but alive and uninjured by an impact that had never occurred. He frowned. That was unexpected. Pleasant, definitely; but unexpected. Not that he should be surprised by that, given from where he had just come.
"Hello." It was a woman's voice, which was also unexpected. His muscles leapt into life, and his hand went for the stake he hoped was still in his belt. Whoever she was, she had to be a foe; that was what this place was about, after all. As he moved he caught a glimpse of a red shoe - an expensive looking red shoe - then he was on his feet, his stake raised, and frozen in his hand when he recognised the woman he was facing. Lilah. Wesley's... girlfriend? She was smiling at him, looking very, very attractive, and very, very amused. Gentle mockeries made her eyes glow warmly, and her mouth carried the notion that he was being teased. Teased or threatened, he didn't know which. He got the impression that nobody ever knew, with Lilah's smile.
"Look out!" That was Wesley's voice, wasn't it? Giles jerked his head around, unwilling to take his eyes off Lilah for fear of whatever trap she might be about to spring, seeing Wesley, running for him or for somebody else, drawing his twin revolvers as he came. Giles turned to watch him move, still searching for the cause of the alarm, seeing it as a distant blur in the corner of his eye. A man. Tall, stocky, middle-aged. Handsome, with an air of debauched excess that faded the power of his looks to all eyes save his own. Arrogant, aristocratic, and smug as hell. Anthony Forsythe. With a gun. Now at last Giles moved. The stake fell from his hand as he turned to go for cover, and he heard the first gunshot and saw the splinters fly as the stake took a glancing shot. He saw little else then, for all he could think about was the rocks that seemed to lie about him, and the refuge that must lie amongst them. Furious at having to run from Forsythe, and angry that he had long since ceased to carry a gun himself, he rolled behind the rocks and lay low. Gunfire still echoed, Forsythe's and Wesley's, and he heard it ring loud in what seemed to be a great cavern of jagged stone. There really was no rest for the wicked, he thought ruefully. Really no rest at all.
The sound of gunfire filled Wesley's ears as he walked through the centre of the cavern. He had no need to fear it of course, for to him it was nothing more than wind; less than wind. To Forsythe, though, it would be much more. He headed towards the former Watcher, face set hard, imagining that it would be easy for him to walk through the other man's rocky cover, and shoot him where he stood. His bullets were as real as he himself failed to be; he apparently never had to reload his guns. He could walk through the hail of lead; through rock; through Forsythe himself, if it took his fancy. And he could shoot the annoying sod right then, if he could find it within himself to be so heartless. A shot in the leg, perhaps, or the arm, if something more vicious was not within him.
But something was wrong. He had a clear aim at his enemy now, but the bullets were having no effect. For a moment he wondered if he had lost the ability to fire effectively, but he could still see his shots scarring the walls, and hear the force of their impact. It was Forsythe. Confound him, he had come up with some enchantment to protect him from gunfire. Now that was just not playing fair. Some part of Wesley's mind conceded that that was probably a bit rich coming from a ghost who could walk straight through bullets without being affected by them - but he was one of the good guys. That was different. Forsythe was evil, and he ought to have the good grace to be shot when somebody fired at him. Cursing under his breath, Wesley lowered the guns. He thought about shooting at Lilah just for the hell of it, but she had disappeared from her last vantage point, and he couldn't see her anymore.
"You should probably do something." She was beside him, having presumably stepped out of thin air without him noticing it. "He could go over there and shoot Giles without you being able to stop him."
"Does he want to shoot Giles?"
"More than you want to shoot him."
"Great." Wesley saw the tall, broad form of the renegade rise up out of the rocks, and swore softly. Lilah laughed.
"I always did like you when you were cross."
"Shut up, Lilah." He left her behind, running for Giles, trying to snatch up a stone to use as a weapon against Forsythe. His hand passed straight through it, and he swore again. Damn it, it was a pain in the backside being dead. How the hell was he supposed to accomplish anything when he couldn't - his fingers grazed stone - touch anything? Focus. It was something that Spike had said. How many times had Wesley watched him struggle to affect the world around him, when he had been restored to the Earth in a ghost-like form? That had been in the days when Wesley had still been solid, and alive, and not really expecting ever to be the one with no body himself, and he had watched and listened only for research's sake. It all came back now though. Focus. Or, in this case, merely lose all focus and give in to rage. His fingers caught hold of the stone, and even though he couldn't feel it; couldn't detect its roughness or its coldness against his skin; his hand managed to close around it, lift it, and let it fly. It struck Forsythe squarely on the forehead, and he fell back. Wesley grinned in triumph. Maybe he could try something a little more complex - try to actually make contact with the man himself, and attempt a very satisfying punch - but somebody else, with infinitely more chance of success, had beaten him to it. Launching himself out of the rocks, taking full advantage of Forsythe's momentary distraction, was Giles. And it was a Giles filled with attitude. A Giles angry at the need to rely on Wesley for so long; at his own inability to do anything decisive on his own. A Giles who knew without a shadow of a doubt that there was one thing he would always be good at, beyond puzzles, knowledge, magic or ancient astronomy. A Giles who was ready with his fists. Like a black shadow he flew at Forsythe, hitting him low, knocking the gun from his grasp with a sideways chop of one hand. He made no attempt to catch it up himself; he didn't want a gun. Why bother when he could do it all so well with his fists? For a moment Wesley watched, fascinated to see the transformation of Rupert Giles into a wild, furious creature of pure passion - then Lilah was beside him again, smiling appreciatively.
"I think I see why they used to call him Ripper. He's quite the brute when he wants to be."
"Forsythe doesn't seem to be doing too badly."
"Forsythe is all magic and ego. Your friend better be on his toes if he's going to stop the little slimeball from just casting a spell and sliding on out of all that. He may be on my side, but I'm happy to admit that I'd love to see him get his jaw broken." She punched her companion lightly on the arm. "And congratulations, you dark horse. Bullets that really hit things, and you managed to throw a stone. Few more months and we'll have you acting like a real poltergeist. You might even be able to read books again."
"I'd like that." He had spent his entire life with a book never very far away. Now he couldn't even take them off their shelves, let alone flick through their pages. His books still awaited him in the Hyperion Hotel, where the Powers or Cordelia had seen fit to stockpile them, but they were as useless to him as if he had never been able to read. He longed to feel the pages beneath his fingers, smell the musty old papers, parchments and leathers, and read the printed or hand-written words in their myriad different languages. He needed books, the way that Lorne needed music and Angel had once needed blood. The way that Giles, it seemed, needed the occasional burst of furious violence to feed the heart of the Ripper.
"I know." For a moment; for the tiniest of tiny moments; she was looking at him with real gentility; real empathy and regret. Then the moment had passed and she merely smiled in her usual gentle mockery, and ruffled his hair. "Let them fight. Your friend can take care of himself, and he's more use at that sort of thing that you ever were, alive or dead. You should be thinking about what to do next."
"I can't. Not without Giles. This place doesn't open up before me." He couldn't take his eyes off the fight; off the sheer animal brutality of the man he knew as a gentleman and a scholar. Giles the tweed-jacketed librarian; the middle-aged has-been he had been sent to replace all those years ago, and had dismissed as an outdated relic. Wesley well knew how badly he himself had behaved in Sunnydale, and he couldn't help wondering now how close he had come to awakening this kind of response. Lilah waved a hand in front of his face in a light-hearted attempt to redirect his attention back onto her.
"You don't have to go ahead of him. Just open the next door."
"Which you're telling me about because...?"
"Because your boyfriend over there is giving me the best entertainment I've had in years." Her fabulously lascivious smile lightened up her face. "Well - not counting all that entertainment I used to get from you before I managed to get myself killed. I'm stuck with Forsythe, but that doesn't mean that I like him. Giles is doing me a favour. Why shouldn't I reciprocate?"
"Because you're evil, two-faced, and you can't be trusted." He said it without animosity, and she fluttered her eyelashes in response.
"I love it when you pay me a compliment."
"Act up all you like; I still don't trust you."
"Wesley, what can I possibly do? It's not like I can race ahead and get the box, even if it's just a stone's throw away from where we stand. It takes Watcher blood to open the vault, remember. Real, living Watcher blood. Not something I could have hidden in a bottle in my pocket. And I'm definitely not a Watcher myself. So how's it going to hurt if you open the door?"
"I don't know. I'm just sure that you've thought of something." He frowned at her. "You can't open it yourself?"
"It's another trick. You wouldn't believe the things we've had to decipher to get this far. There was a choice of doors earlier, and to find the right one there was a riddle written in Egyptian hieroglyphics. And Forsythe only figured that out thanks to a picture of the Sphinx that hid the riddle itself. This has not been an easy ride."
"Tell me about it." He gave no mention of navigating in Ancient Greek through bizarre representations of the solar system, or of fighting demonic, two-headed dogs and suits of armour. Lilah smiled at him, and choosing to take him literally, straightened his clothing with a proprietary air.
"I'll tell you later, lover," she said softly, managing to make it sound conspiratorial. "In the meantime, that fight isn't going to go on forever."
"Looks to me like it's going to go on for as long as Giles wants it to." He walked past them, tearing his eyes away from the battling duo, and the impressive work of Giles's lightening fists. The cavern, like the room in which he had found himself upon first entering this weird place, had a natural gradient to it, which directed the traveller towards one end. Here the cavern ended, in a narrow, high wall of almost smooth stone, covered in the paintings of long dead cave people, and the carvings of more recent visitors, with stories of their own to tell. He recognised most of the symbols from one language or another; all of them seemed to mean 'door' or 'open'. An interesting puzzle then, and presumably one filled with red herrings. Perhaps something in the languages themselves, rather than in the symbols? Perhaps some more complex mathematical solution, based on the form of the symbols, or of the words that they represented? Something based upon the cultures to which the languages belonged? He could feel his brain humming with delight at a new difficulty to overcome, and he soon shut his mind to the ferocity of the fight going on nearby. Only Lilah refused to be shut out - but he was used to that. She hung about next to him, muttering encouragements that he didn't need, but found that he enjoyed anyway; little comments that made him inexplicably glad that she was there. Damn it but she was annoying. And noisy. And distracting. And evil. But she was also Lilah. And she was also the only person he could touch, and the only person who could touch him. Just as once before, he found that he needed her; and just as before he couldn't adequately describe why.
Nearby Giles was aware of Wesley's new interest; of his attention focused on the wall at the end of the cavern. There was a puzzle there presumably, and Lilah was showing far too great an interest. Giles didn't trust her. He was fairly certain that Wesley didn't either; but it was clear that there was something going on between the two of them, and that was almost sure to interfere in matters of common sense, at least on Wesley's side. Not on Lilah's - that much was certain. Giles could see the way that she worked. Cunning, clever, irresistible. Manipulative, whilst still managing to be trustworthy when it suited her. Enough to keep somebody believing in her, anyway, no matter what she did. He wondered distantly just what had brought her and Wesley together, and what degree of sincerity there was in her smiles and her smirking displays of affection. Whatever the truth in it, she would probably be the only one ever to know.
But that was Wesley's problem. Lilah, her plans and machinations, the puzzle carved onto the cavern wall - all that was for Wesley to figure out, or to screw up, or to do whatever the hell else he wanted to do with it. Giles was having far too much fun to worry. It was a strange sort of thing to realise; even stranger to admit, even just to himself. There was a sense of joyous abandon that came with leaping into the fray though, at least when it was to a fight he knew that he could win. It was less fun against vampires or demons, or enraged two-headed dogs, but when his opponent was a smug sod he had hated for years, it was definitely a thing to be celebrated. Savoured. Even his fists seemed to be enjoying the experience, as he smashed them to-and-fro. Such endeavours were the stuff of his past; of Friday and Saturday nights spent baiting the club-going fashion victims in London, and of other nights fighting pitched battles with his friends against rival gangs. Pub brawls, knife fights, magic-enhanced free-for-alls in the street where he lived. A hundred and one ways to cause damage; a hundred and one different kinds of chaos and carnage. He had loved it, he had lived for it, and every so often it welcomed him back into its waiting arms. Forsythe looked shell-shocked, but Giles knew just how to keep him conscious long enough to keep this interesting. Where and how to hit to cause damage and pain without delivering his victim to the refuge of oblivion. It wasn't the sort of skill that the Watchers taught, but it had been just as useful, upon occasion, as their brand of battle-craft and self defence. Forsythe had been to the same lessons as Giles when it came to Watcher fighting. He had learnt all the old tricks. He could dodge and feint, and he knew to try to stay out of arms' reach when he could. He had even learnt to box in school, many years before. He had no idea how to defend himself against the Ripper though; against a man who played by no rules save his own. And so the blood flowed and the blows fell, and the Ripper dodged and wove like a man for whom the years meant nothing, whilst Forsythe's movements became more sluggish, and his eyes began to swell. He spat broken teeth, his fists swung out with a fraction of their former speed and accuracy, and his feet tripped him faster than he could move. He choked out insults as he tried to fight back, but they were insults only by the tone of his voice. Giles couldn't distinguish the words, and wouldn't have cared anyway. He grinned fiercely, his eyes hot with the old green fires of all those other fights, and cheerfully spat back more insults and curses than Forsythe could have managed even if he had been able to speak. Through his jubilant mercilessness he tried to keep a part of his attention on Wesley, to see what he was doing, and to see what Lilah might be doing standing beside him, but it was hard to lessen the fun by even that small an amount. Wesley seemed to be doing okay - whatever the hell it was that he was doing.
In point of fact Wesley was doing okay, although his attention was also divided. Lilah was still distracting him, and a part of his mind remained upon the fight. He had to be alert in case Forsythe somehow got the upper hand, although there was little enough that could be done about it if he did. It seemed that the renegade was much too far gone to be capable of spellcasting now, but such things were still a possible threat, and something to be considered; just like Lilah, and her sparkling-eyed, warmth-filled smiles with their hidden, decidedly treacherous, depths. He focused as much of his mind as he could upon the carvings on the stone, whispering their words to himself as he did so, and thinking of Corbio and his past, his ways, his previous trickery. Nobody had been expected to get this far; did that mean that this puzzle would not be a puzzle at all? But Corbio, it seemed, left nothing to chance. There was nothing that was straightforward about this tangle of engraved words and pictograms. Nothing that made any sense beyond the meanings of the words themselves. 'Open' and 'door', writ large a hundred times. Not in a hundred languages, but in different dialects, different forms, different ways. He traced the nearest of them with his fingers, listening all the while to the sounds of the fight going on nearby. Brutal sounds; hard fists impacting with flesh and bone; all going on much longer than he could ever have thought possible. Cloth tore; sharp, hard words burst out of the melee; Lilah brushed close against him, and told him to ignore it all. He did as she told him for once, although it was hard to shut out the sound totally. Part of him almost wanted to go to Forsythe's aid now; to rescue him from the unyielding onslaught. Wasn't that his job? Protecting the helpless, fighting the good fight? Not standing by whilst somebody - even somebody evil - was beaten into a wretched pulp? But he was a Watcher, and he knew his duty, and he knew that this door had to be opened. Knew that he could find the secret if he looked hard enough, and long enough, and didn't let thoughts of nearby violence distract his working mind. 'Open' and 'door'. Old languages, newer languages. Demon languages and languages that couldn't be spoken aloud. The paintings of a cave tribe from thousands of years before, showing men chasing their prey across the illustrated rock. The animal they pursued bled red blood, dimmed and darkened by the passing years, that spattered around them like stars. Or flowers. Or pebbles. Tiny dots that moved in his mind, and made their own little patterns. He traced them with his fingers, seeing how they joined up; how they could form, to the eyes of a man who knew of such things, new words on the cavern wall. Words written in a language unknown even to most Watchers, but familiar, assuredly, to a man like Corbio, who had made deals with demons to protect his treasures. It was a trial to fight for a translation, for even a man like Wesley, for whom languages had always come easily, did not carry all of them around in his brain. He closed his eyes, seeing the words resound inside his skull, and slowly found their meaning. Forsythe rolled on the ground at his feet, passing through his insubstantial ankles, and he looked down briefly. Saw bloodied, swollen eyes staring up at him with an expression of wild hatred. Something burst out of the mouth; a rush of words in a spatter of bloody droplets that might have been the beginnings of a spell; but Giles was there in an instant, grabbing the other man, and hurling him up against the wall. He didn't look like Giles anymore - not to Wesley. He bore a darkening black eye, and a streak of blood across his face that managed to look wildly dramatic as well as debased and insane. There was blood on his hands, and spattered upon his clothes, and the grin that made his eyes shine so furiously was something that Wesley didn't recognise at all. He tried to speak, but Giles didn't hear him. Only Lilah did.
"I think I like your friend," she told him. Wesley shook his head.
"He won't like himself. Not once he shakes this off."
"It's not his fault. It's this place. It's bringing the hate out in both of them. It must be."
"That would explain it I suppose." He tried to turn his mind back to the puzzle; he was close, he must be. The violence nearby had spilled over into his part of the cavern now though, and it was harder and harder to ignore it. Giles was going to hate himself for this, once the rage wore off - or so Wesley hoped. He had heard the stories, read the reports - he thought that he knew what the Ripper had been about. But this? Was this really what Giles was still like, beneath his unassuming veneer? Was he really a man who could beat somebody half to death, without apparently showing the slightest bit of remorse? Perhaps it was something to do with the memories of a relentlessly bullying father, but Wesley had never taken kindly to seeing such acts of violence against people who had no means of defence. Lilah moved around in front of him, blocking his vision of the fight.
"There's nothing you can do," she pointed out. "Maybe they'll snap out of it. Maybe it's all a part of the journey, and they'll heal as soon as they're out of the cavern."
"You don't believe that." He had thought that he had fallen far, level by level, after his dismissal from the Watchers. He had heard tales from Willow of her own mad fall into darkness. But this - this was a glimpse into the very depths to which his kind could fall; the depths from which one could only pretend to rise again. Giles was no ordinary Watcher - nor even an ordinary man. He had something dark inside him just as had Angel, in the days before a new level of death had saved him from all of that.
"When did what I believe have any relevance? Just open the door, Wes. See if you can save them both before one of them tears the other to shreds. If your friend Forsythe is pressed too far, the magic might burst out of him even if he's no longer in any state to chant spells."
"Maybe." Wesley took a deep breath, shutting out the battling madmen. The door. He had to think about the door. About the words hidden in the ages old blood spatters, taunting him with their presence. They spoke of a key, but not of its type. Words; all words. It made more sense to him than what was going on between his two colleagues a few yards away, but it was still confused. A key. A key of... words? The translation was ambiguous, and intentionally so. Keys, words. A word key? There was some way in which the patchwork of other languages carved into the rock came together to form a key. Some combination, perhaps, of the words. But the application... He wished that he had books to consult, but even had he had them here, they would have been useless to him. He had managed to throw a rock - it was an accomplishment, but it was not enough; not yet. Pages were too delicate; too hard to grasp.
"Wesley?" Lilah was pestering him again. Giles crashed past him, slamming into the rocks without seeming to be hurt by the blow. He was truly enjoying all of this; truly relishing the chance to let go. Wesley almost envied him. He never let go. Never. He certainly couldn't now. The words were dancing in front of his eyes again, burning themselves into his retinas. 'Key', 'door', 'open'. All those languages, all those scribbles, all those pictograms. Did it really make any sense? Forsythe rolled past him, grunting and groaning as he bumped over the uneven ground, his cracked and bloodied knuckles leaving trails as he fumbled for something to use as a weapon. The words made more sense than the fighting; Forsythe and Giles and their seemingly endless battle. Wesley muttered it all over and over, listening to the words as he spoke them aloud. Ignoring Lilah's increasingly impatient coaxing. Wishing that he could punch the wall without sinking into it.
The key lay in the words hidden in those drops of blood - that was as clear as their meaning. It was an ancient language; more ancient even than the picture that had been so carefully doctored to hide it. More ancient than the languages of the other words scattered around it. The older languages had more power, at least by tradition. Word magic might be scorned by some of the older races, but it was the preferred kind of most human sorcerers. The older races liked to use their blood magic, or their Earth magic, but word magic had been Corbio's speciality. What little remained of his writings and journals showed that. But he had, of course, had his allies; his helpers from other races. The demon sorcerers drawn by his power, and perhaps by whatever lay within the box. Wesley had no blood to offer the rocks to make the blood magic, but the Earth magic he thought he could try, if he put his mind to it. It called for difficult spells that for the most part were beyond him - beyond all but the most powerful of human magicians - but if the key was here, the hardest of the work would already have been done. Calling up a ball of fire from one hand, he held it aloft, and let it light the rocky wall, illuminating all the carefully carved words. It took all of his concentration; all of his skills; to make the fire burn as brightly as it had to; to illuminate every crack in the rock, and chase away every shadow. Lilah was silent now, but he didn't look at her to see what she was doing. He didn't look to check on the progress of Giles. He just cast his mind back, into the very depths of his memory, searching for the oldest of all the languages that he knew. Nothing more recent would suffice. Nothing but a language far older than any human tongue would be enough to allow him to work the Earth magic. The flame in his hand shuddered, and had he still been alive he would have felt the sweat run by now. Instead he merely felt his hand shaking, and forced himself to concentrate all the harder. Old languages. Ancient languages. Languages from the time when demons had held sway over the Earth, and the Earth magicks had been as common as science was amongst the humans of the modern world. He had learnt the languages to pass the time in his room as a child. Practiced strange spells when he had not been big enough to even begin to handle the power. Melted candles and scorched the carpet and fused every light bulb on the top floor of his parents' house, and all without knowing what he was doing, or what he was dealing with. The flames in his hand bent and bowed and nearly went out, but he held onto them, though his body was now almost transparent from the strain. It made his vision blur, as in the days when he had still relied on his glasses, before he had tried his first, tentative new spells to correct his sight. And still he searched his mind, for words that came from long hours locked in his office at Wolfram & Hart, trying to research Illyria. For words learnt under the bedclothes at night when at boarding school; words read in the pages of books his father had kept hidden, and would never have dreamt that his much maligned son would be able to read, let alone understand or one day use. It all came together now, in a single word that made the fire in the shaking, translucent hand burn suddenly blood red, with a fierce, eye destroying flash of bitter intensity. It filled the carved words, and made them glow. It made the rocks shake. It made Wesley's insubstantial form shiver and shake like a projected image shone through a shattered and shifting lens. If he had been alive he would surely have been killed. Only a few humans could perform such magicks as these and live. As it was he felt waves of dreadful exhaustion rush through him, and almost faded away entirely. Only the sight of his success gave him the strength to go on, and he smiled in childish delight to see that some of the carved words now shone bright white. He shouted them aloud, each one in turn, taking the age of each language as his guide. He didn't recall learning when each of the languages had first been spoken, but his mind put them in order automatically; and when he had shouted the last word aloud, forcing his human mouth to speak the demon sounds correctly, he fancied that he saw the wall move. Light glowed above and around him, and he thought that he heard Lilah give a shout of glee. He was exhausted now though, and as the cavern wall began to heave itself open, he collapsed to the ground. His image was juddering, just as the flame in his hand had been, one moment clear and the next almost invisible. He barely noticed when Giles and Forythe rolled through him; but he did notice when Forsythe's hands began to glow. Magic. Somehow, despite the beating, he was beginning to work magic. Giles didn't seem to have noticed. Consumed by the fight he was focused on nothing but struggling, hitting, grappling, trying to maintain the upper hand. Wesley called out to him, but his voice was weak, and his image was as faint as the sound. Giles would barely be able to see him, let alone hear the desperate warning.
"Giles!" He forced himself to his feet; tried to grab at a stone to use as a weapon again. It didn't work. He was too weak now even to attempt contact with a real object; and when he tried to grab at Forsythe his hands passed pointlessly through the battling mage. The renegade was chanting now; the words clearer than his previous attempts to speak through his bloodied lips, his hands now glowing powerfully. Giles had noticed at last, and he was struggling to free himself from the other man, but Forsythe was suddenly too strong. Wesley linked his hands together, and rabbit-punched the thick neck, but again his hands passed straight through. Lilah was laughing delightedly, and he turned on her.
"You tricked me!"
"Yes. You trick so beautifully." She sashayed over, running her hand up the back of his head, gentle and teasing. He jerked away, but he was still so tired that his movements were not nearly as fast as they should have been. At his feet Forsythe's hands snapped tight around Giles's throat, and the murky green eyes opened wide with shock, staring straight up at Wesley.
"We-Wesl--" He was trying to ask for assistance, but what the hell did he expect a ghost to do? Wesley's eyes roamed desperately about the room. There were no likely weapons. His guns would not hurt Forsythe, but if he tried to use them they would certainly hurt Giles. Again and again he tried to catch hold of Forsythe; tried to summon more balls of fire; but he was too tired. Too drained by the effort of opening the door. He could feel himself slipping again from the extra effort in his exhausted state; could see himself vanishing before his very eyes. Giles didn't seem to care for his discomforts, and was still choking out his demands for assistance even as Forsythe did his damnedest to crush his throat. Desperate now, Wesley turned to look for Lilah, trying to think of something he could say to make her intervene. Whatever side she saw herself upon; whatever evil things she did; he knew that some part of her cared for him. Probably. Possibly. He opened his mouth to call her name - or gasp it, more likely, given his current situation - but a blow from behind dropped him to the ground before he could shape the first sound. He didn't even have time to wonder how a ghost could be knocked out before he was lying unconscious on the ground, his form no more than a shadow, and all its colour lost.
"Forsythe!" There was real command in Lilah's tone; she had always known how to lead when the moment called for it, and even a man like Forsythe could respond to such a voice. He stood up, letting go of Giles, the blood and the injuries vanishing from his face as though new skin was growing instantaneously to banish them.
"What?" He hadn't yet finished his work. Giles was unconscious now, or nearly so, his throat bruised by the attack - but he was still alive. Forsythe didn't want that.
"We're leaving." She gestured to the door. "I told you he'd open it."
"Probably some new stuff they didn't teach in my day." He walked through the almost invisible form of the collapsed spirit, showing no interest in him or his condition. "So we just go? We leave Giles alive? I'll kill him, and then we won't have to worry about him any more."
"You really that scared of him?" Her voice was mocking, and he glared pure poison.
"I'm not scared of anything."
"Then leave him. Come on. We're wasting time."
"It won't take a second to--"
"Come on, Forsythe." This time the anger and the steel in her voice was stronger than before; hard like a knife blade that stabbed at his pride. He cast another look at Giles, wanting so much to throw the last blow, or summon the last spell, and end the other man's life as easily as he knew that he could; but something in Lilah's manner stayed him. Something in her bearing made him wonder at what powers she might have, that he might come to understand. He spat the last of the blood from his mouth, thought about following it with the sort of curse that might have made even Lilah look shocked; but changed his mind and scowled heavily instead. Get the box, he told himself. Get the box and then do as you like. Whatever the hell you like. And screw Lilah Morgan, Wolfram & Hart, and pretty much everybody else. Swallowing his pride, he stepped through the door. Lilah remained behind for an instant; just for an instant; until Wesley's image regained a little of its substance. Reassured then, she turned away and followed Forsythe into the next stage of the labyrinth. Wesley would understand, she told herself. She wasn't sure which was worse; that she only half believed that attempt at solace, or that she cared enough in the first place to have made it. Confound it all. Maybe there was something in the box that would make everything easier. Answer the questions. Free her from Wolfram & Hart. Quickening her step, she hurried on. She wasn't sure which part of her it was that deigned to leave the door open, but she didn't cast another look back at it, or even another thought. Just like Forsythe, her mind was with the box now. It was almost as if it was reeling her in.