The Shadow of the Slayer

Chapter Two

"So the idea," Giles retorted petulantly, "is to turn Buffy into a shadow? And just how, precisely, is that going to help matters?"

Willow looked up from her thick tome, "According to this we will just sort of split off a piece of Buffy – a itsy bitsy teeny tiny little piece. This little piece of her spirit will go into the shadow, thus, inspiriting it. But there won't be any confusion because during the day Buffy's regular self will be ascendant. Only after nightfall will her shadow-self awaken. Now the cool part is that at night Buffy just goes to sleep, then she will be able to travel the night in shadow spirit. During the day, her Inspirited Shade will simply be with her, wherever she goes, in her shadow. I'm not clear what happens when there is no natural shadow, but apparently, it doesn't matter."

"Well," said Buffy, "it sure sounds good. But somehow these things never seem to work out in practice what seems so cool in theory. I mean, what happens to me if my Shadow Spirit is killed?"

"There are two possibilities: nothing, a slight tingling sensation, or death," Willow said. "er, three possibilities," she added quickly.

"I choose one!"

"Buffy, it's not a matter of choosing, it's a matter of I don't know which will happen, yet. The meaning of this text is awfully obscure, and the definition of words through the ages can be real slippery. Sometimes words reverse their meaning from one century to the next, or even within the same century. And sometimes words mean different things just because they're British instead of real English." Willow noticed that Giles was turning purple. She hurried on before he could launch a rebuttal, "We'll continue our research and we won't risk splitting off a piece of your spirit until we know the which from the what."

"But Willow, I still don't see how this will solve the problem at hand, even assuming Buffy survives unharmed in an English Speaking state!"

"Look Giles," said Anya, "in the shadow state Buffy will still be a warrior. She will be able to fight the other shadow demons."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes! Maybe."

Buffy looked unhappy as she said, "I don't know about this guys. Get more information, and really, how dangerous are these shadow thingies anyway? Can we attribute any death and mayhem to the dark shadows? I mean, so far, it's just been practical jokes."

Giles frowned. "But what about the dead body in the alley Buffy?"

"Willow, have you hacked into the coroner's office to get the autopsy report yet?"

"Yeah, but they don't have it ready yet. It seems there was an overflow from that insane eighty-six-car pileup on the Interstate yesterday. Morgues of three counties are backed up with dead and mangled bodies, it may be a few more days before they get around to cutting up a back alley bum."

"You know," Buffy mused thoughtfully, "I just thought of something, something that's less than good. It's that strangely mobile gun – I wonder if that dead guy might have been shot by a shadow."

"You think the Shadow Monster was able to manipulate a gun?" Xander asked, a little incredulous, "I think you might be stretching there Buffy."

"Worse than that, what if the Shadow Monster caused that pile-up?"

Giles spoke up, "Let's not borrow trouble before we know what we're up against. Let's do more research, then we can make a reasoned decision."

"So we don't actually know if these guys are dangerous or not?"

"That's about the size of it Buffy," said Willow, "I guess we sit and wait for more info.

-- --

The next afternoon, Giles, Willow, Buffy, Dawn, and Anya sat on the floor in the basement of Buffy's house. Various arcane symbols had been painted or poured on the floor: a large circle in pure carbon, six obtuse triangles in vermilion paint, a single golden rectangle, a number of impossible to describe magical symbols in blood, and an unbroken line of the purest white sand around the whole. In the center was a small pile of solid black sand with a thread made from ligaments of a sheep leading from the center to Buffy's right hand. From her left hand, a thread made from finely beaten gold led to the golden rectangle. From the rectangle a thin line of red sand wandered in various arcs back towards the black sand pile. Finally, carefully selected and placed twigs, stones, and leaves made a pattern of some kind, a pattern that radiated outward from the center.

"Ommm, mannnni, padme, hummmmmm," intoned Dawn, sitting crosslegged with her hand on her knees, palms up.

Willow glared angrily and said, "Dawn, hush up. Stop fooling around."

Dawn didn't look very chastened, but she hushed up.

"Now," Willow continued," everybody get to your places behind the triangles. Be certain that you are completely with the circles, not even a toe can be outside."

Willow sat still with her hands palms-up on her knees and visibly quieted herself. She centered her energy and started to chant in an unknown language, unknown to the others anyway. Her chant came out as a low, unintelligible whisper. After a few minutes an other-worldly flame appeared above the black sand pile, along with strange looking sparks and a breeze where no breeze should be possible. Willows eye's went black, her hair started swirling around wildly and became violently red.

CRACK!

The noise was so loud everybody jumped, at least a little. Willow relaxed, her eyes and hair returned to normal, and she said, "OK, that went well."

The others looked around, a bit puzzled.

"There," Willow said, pointing at an occupied triangle, "Buffy's inspirited shadow."

And sure enough, Buffy's shadow was over where it shouldn't be. Giles quickly checked to see if Buffy still had a regular shadow, and she did. While Giles watched, the detached shadow slowly drifted towards Buffy's regular shadow, and then it merged and was gone. A moment later a different shadow, one with a bizarre shape, detached itself from Buffy's shadow and disappeared into the shadows in the back of the basement. Buffy's eyes widened a little.

"Ahhh," asked Buffy, "so my physical shadow is now occupied by my inspirited phantom shadow? Which apparently displaced a freeloading shadow spirit. How come I don't feel any different?"

Willow shook her head a little, "Why would you feel any different? There is no real change. It'll be fascinating to know whether or not you remember your night-time activities tomorrow morning though."

"Yeah, fascinating," said a morose Buffy, "then why do I feel so much like a laboratory rat?"

"Well Buff, you do have experience at being a rat after all," said Xander helpfully.

"But not a laboratory rat, Xander, just an ordinary run naked around the basement kind of rat." Buffy looked a little put out as she explained this.

Xander grinned at Buffy.

"Xander," Buffy said dangerously, "I am suddenly telepathic and I know what you are thinking, you had better stop thinking that."

Xander wiped his grin off his face as Giles asked Willow, "Can we break the circle now?"

"It's already broken Giles," Willow pointed at wind-swept gaps, "remember the breeze? That's the cool thing about magic, when it goes right it runs on automatic. I think it's time for the next step, are you feeling ready for bed Buffy?"

-- --

Buffy-the-Slayer-of-Darkness suddenly woke up. She felt restless and energetic and decided to go for a walk, or hang, or something. So she drifted off the bed, across the floor and up a wall to a window and slithered through the narrow slit. Cool! she thought, as she drifted down the outside wall. She looked around the night and started to assess her new senses. She could feel a surprising amount of activity around her, small mammals hiding in bushes, a dog trotting by on important canine business, insects buzzing about, a hungry vampire searching for a victim, a house cat out hunting field mice, and finally, lots of rustling in the shadows cast by the streetlights. Her mind stopped on a dime as she suddenly cast her senses back to the vampire. She took off at a – not exactly a run – a rapid slither she supposed.

As she motivated up the street, she couldn't help but play with her new-found abilities. She started sashaying back and forth, spiraled herself around lightpoles and other objects, slithering up and down vertical walls, and in general had fun exploring the night. Every once in a while she would remember that she was following a vampire and would look around, locate it, and go in a straight line for a short distance.

But finally, she noticed that the vamp had spotted prey of his own: a young man who was weaving his way down the sidewalk after an obvious night of carousal. This so focused her on her vampire prey, that she didn't give any thought as to how she would defeat her primordial enemy while being so insubstantial. When Slayer-of-Darkness reached the vampire, she immediately and thoughtlessly attacked and slashed though him. But nothing happened. In fact, the vampire wasn't even aware of the Slayer's existence, much less felt threatened by her. Buffy was thoroughly frustrated, so she stopped to analyze the situation. She thought about what Anya had said the other day about pinching blood vessels, suffocating, cutting nerves, etc. Unfortunately, none of those things would kill a vampire. Still, it was worth trying.

From a large moon-shadow under a tree, a short distance from where Slayer-of-Darkness was circling her unwary enemy, Eater-of-Darkness and Lord-of-Darkness watched. Eater said to Lord, "Is that the Shadow of the Slayer? She doesn't look all that dangerous, she's quite small, and her darkness isn't really all that dark."

Lord answered, "That's her all right. Don't be fooled, looks can be deceiving."

"Perhaps, instead of attacking and killing her, we should persuade her to join us."

"Yeah right, we could start by offering her suggestions on how to kill her enemies, we just have to make sure that she doesn't know that we are her enemies." Lord retorted.

They were quiet as shadows while they watched Shadow Slayer run through her repertoire of death-to-vampires. They were faintly amused by her increasing frustration at her inability to dust the vampire, especially as the vampire got closer and closer to the lone drunk, but less so when she finally managed to get his attention. And when she suddenly realized how to manipulate objects they became worried. And when shortly after that the vampire took a small wooden stick to the heart, and burst into dust, they became agitated. Worse, Slayer-of-Darkness noticed them under the tree and came over.

"Hiya guys," Buffy intoned breezily, "My name's Buffy, Buffy-the-Slayer-of-Darkness, I think. Who're you?"

"Hi, umm, my name is Blue-Shadow-of-Darkness," said Lord-of-Darkness, "and this is my brother Eat-, Ethereal-Darkness. We were just out for a walk when we noticed you slaying that vampire. That was a pretty good trick."

"Hi Blue and Ethereal. Yeah, I'm kinda new at this shadow stuff. But I'm starting to get the hang of it.

"Be careful there," said 'Ethereal', "your edges are dragging in the dew."

"Oh," exclaimed Buffy, "that is – why should I, or you, care if my edges get damp?"

"I don't care, and if you're some kind of slob, maybe you don't care either. But among my family, it's considered unseemly at best, lazy and sloppy at worst."

"Oh, I see," replied Buffy without really seeing, "then I'll be more elevated. Does that suit you?"

"Absolutely! You'll be one of us in no time at all!" said Eater-of-Darkness, completely forgetting his purpose for being there.

Buffy looked at him with suspicion, "I'm pretty sure that joining you is the last thing I should do, in fact, I have this sudden urge to kick your ass! Why is that do you suppose?"

"Hey," said 'Ethereal', "I get that urge all the time too! But I usually can't," he added downcast.

Buffy looked surprised when a part of her insubstantial self started to elongate towards home and said, "What the heck is this?"

"Oh, you're beginning to de-spiritize, this occurs when your solid master starts to wake up. When your corporeal self becomes self-aware you will snap back to her cast shadow and lose consciousness. Don't worry about it, when the bag of blood and solid bits that you call your body goes back to sleep, you'll be free again. And eventually, when you kill off your solidity you will be permanently free," explained Lord-of-Darkness, the last sentence being hurried because Shadow Buffy was perilously extended, then gone.

"Well," said Eater-of-Darkness, "that could have gone better, and it could have gone worse."

"Do you think she bought my bullshit about killing her solid self?" wondered Lord aloud.

"Don't know brother. But we need to strategize for our next encounter. Come, we'll go to the ballet and inhabit the ballerina's shadows while they practice, I could use the exercise from high flying leaps. Then a short snooze in the coal bin, then to work."

-- --