FicWad

Co-Written with Lionheart.

Warning: This story contains language.

Timeline: AU branching off in Season Two, between 'Lie To Me' and 'The Dark Page'.

Disclaimer: I'm broke. If I owned BtVS, I wouldn't be (and I'd treat them better).

Entering the Harris residence was depressingly easy. You would think that a man with Ripper Giles' power would put some effort into protecting his charges, but there were no wards at all, just a lock, that opened to a simple opening charm. The mage set some of his own, but they were only temporary, and would fade after a week, at most. He felt some guilt for what he was about to do, but he could not remain on the Hellmouth, knew that he would not be able to convince the young warrior to leave his friends, and yet could not leave him unprepared for what was to come. True, the lad had already bypassed one prophecy, but that was no reason not to hedge his bets.

He stepped around the drunken and unconscious forms of Mr. and Mrs. Harris, casting Gentle Sleep spells upon them, to prevent them from interrupting his work, and entered the bedroom of the son, who was sleeping restlessly. The first spell that he cast on Xander did not so much rouse the young man from sleep, as waken him just enough to put him in a hypnotic trance, while the second would help in memorization.

Right, first thing's first.

"Xander Harris, you are not your father," said the mage. "You will not become your father, because you have chosen not to be, and your will is far greater than his could ever be. Do you understand?"

"Yes," said Xander.

"You are a very intelligent young man, when you choose to think. You will do so as part of your regular routine from this point onward, and stop second guessing yourself without cause," said the mage. "Do you understand?"

"Yes," said Xander, again.

"Good," replied the mage. "I am going to do several things that you may find odd or distressing, but they will help you to keep your friends alive. You do want to protect them, don't you?"

"Yes," said Xander, with conviction.

"Excellent," said the mage, pulling a thick scroll from under his jacket. "You will start off by mastering this." He handed him the scroll, entitled 'Ars Memoriae', a definitive work on memory and the techniques of more efficient use of the human mind, oddly enough written by a long lived but not particularly strong telepathic demon who had found humans fascinating and studied them the way an entomologist studied insects.

It was, despite that, a very informative text, and one could never know the unusual origin of the author from the contents. This being the mage's own copy, he'd long ago had a friendly summon with an entirely different mental structure remove the traps that would have tried to entice a human reader to become an experimental subject of the now long-dead author.

In a trance, and with the memory spell helping, Xander was able to memorize the scroll in about a minute. He lowered it with a simple, "Done."

"Very good," the mage nodded, retrieving and rerolling his scroll. "Have you selected a memory palace?"

"Yes," the mesmerized teen stated blandly.

"Build it," the mage commanded, "Then order your mind."

The teen blinked once, a long, slow process while his pupils flitted about madly as if in high speed REM sleep. Then his eyes snapped open, filled with a clarity that has not been present before. "Done."

"Very good." The mage took a sheet of parchment from his pocket. "Now, I need you to memorize this chart of the major and minor chakras of the human body."

It took about a second for the young man to memorize and parse through all of the complex and exacting material, which was fortunate, given how many books they needed to go through.

Muttering a Latin incantation, the mage pulled a book from a pocket to small to hold it. "You should know that you are capable of casting spells, and you will learn that you are quite powerful. Some of the documents I will have you read and memorize will help with that," he said, and handed Xander the first book, Throckmorton's 'Annotated Codex of Magical Thought', a rather dry and pompous book, but otherwise an excellent introduction to magical theory, with sixty-four simple spells to serve as examples.

While Xander was reading that book, the mage set up the laptop computer his niece had given him for his birthday. He wasn't sure of this 'Techno-Pagan' thing she was into, but but it might help, and the worst it could do is waste a few minutes. As the laptop slowly booted up, Xander finish the 'Codex', and the next two books, which were mainly compilations of spells, with little theory, one of 'light' magic, the other of 'dark'.

Interestingly enough, it was the book of so-called 'dark' magic which contained healing spells, as in recent centuries, most Western magic-users had labeled anything that 'disturbed the natural order' as dark, regardless of intent.

By the time Xander had finished the third book, the laptop had booted up, and the mage had brought up the first of the Techno-Pagan files that his niece had downloaded to the computer.

These files were shorter and more concise than the books, but took about as long to read, as some of them contained animated pictures that took several seconds to cycle through their sequence. One of the oddest documents, from the old mage's point of view, detailed the idea of 'Technomancy', combining enchantment and technology, to create the effects of fictional inventions.

When Xander finished reading those files, he was presented with more books, starting with 'The Dao of Jeet Kune Do', by Bruce Lee, and then a treatise by a mahoutsukai (Japanese sorcerer) on combining magic and martial arts, and enchanting weapons and armour. These were followed by 'The Thirty-Six Strategies', Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War', and Musashi's 'A Book of Five Rings'. A few more books followed, mostly on the martial arts, two on demonology (Van Hellsing's 'Journal on Practical Demonology', with an appendix of known errors, and the well respected but distressingly thin and incomplete 'Hunter's Encyclopedia of The Night'), and a sheet of paper listing the addresses of nearby magic shops.

These were followed by Giacomo Casanova's 'Magic of Life, Magic of Love', one of the greatest books on Sex Magic ever written (For on the Hellmouth, virginity was something best gotten rid of, before one became a meal, or worse!). This book, written in Casanova's youth, detailed all of the then-common rituals young lovers could use to gain powers, bond to each other, etc, a near encyclopedia from the 'here is the art, have fun with it' perspective. That book was still quite common in some circles, having been reprinted and imitated many times.

The next book, also on Sex Magic, was 'The Diary of Versailles', a far darker work, containing a great selection of what the nobles of Casanova's time liked sex magic for. There were some rituals using sex as a source of power, even some abilities that Casanova's first handbook skipped over or he didn't know about to record. However, the majority of the content was about how to take advantage of lovers, use people's affections, warp and take control of them through the very sex rituals they had performed, and all of the dark and nasty stuff that turns a person into a possession of the sexual predator using the dark side of the sex arts, compiled by the practitioners of this seedy side, in the court that was the very capital for sex magic among the aristocracy that perfected it. Sadly, this book was also somewhat common, though not nearly so much as Casanova's book.

He would have preferred to give Xander Casanova's second book on Sex magic, written late in his life, which taught the reader to defend against the sort of people who wrote and used the Diary, but copies of this work were vanishingly rare, to the point that the mage wasn't even sure what the title was, or even if it was real, or a myth!

The mage had personally translated both books from the original French, and annotated them, in what he thought was sufficient detail, with the help of his wife and some of their lovers. The translation of the Diary even included an appendix, detailing the counters the mage and his friends had developed, and the notes on how they had done so, with the suggestion that Xander should work on coming up with new counters, as he has the tools to do so.

The last in this long series was the fairly plebeian 'U.S. Army Survival Manual', which was basically the Boy Scout's Handbook on steroids, including everything one might need from hunting walrus to setting effective traps using only naturally occurring materials.

Then it was time to put away the books and the computer, and get to the less tedious, but more dangerous, acts.

"Xander, I want you to focus on your brow chakra, your Third Eye. When you feel it, open it. You know that you can," ordered the mage.

"Its open," said Xander, after a moment.

"Good," replied the mage, "Now close it, and open it again."

"Done," said Xander, a few seconds later.

"Look around ," said the mage, "What do you see?"

"Everything is glowing, almost... alive, but there are trails of black smoke, everywhere," Xander said. "Your aura is hidden, though, by... an aura cloaking spell?"

"That's correct," the mage replied, pleased that his student was already using the knowledge he had been given. "The 'black smoke' is the energy of the Hellmouth, which shrouds the entire town, and can bee seen or felt as far away as Los Angeles. The wards I've placed should reduce its influence, somewhat, but they'll wear out in about a week. You will need to replace them."

"Its... sickening," said Xander.

"Yes, it is," the mage agreed, "but the Third Eye can also look inward. Do that, now. There is a forest in your mind. Do you see it?"

"Yes," said Xander. "Someone's fighting. A guy in uniform, and a half-man-half-beast thing."

"As you should recall from the Codex, all spells leave a residue behind in the subject, possession spells especially," the mage explained. "The Soldier and the Hyena are fighting for dominance.

It is possible that they will destroy each-other, eventually, but more likely, one will win, and be able to influence your personality. If you join with one of them, though, you will defeat the other, and consume his power, without his personality. It is your mind, after all, and in that place, your will reigns supreme. Do you understand?"

"Yes," said Xander.

"Who will you join?" asked the mage, already knowing the answer.

"The Soldier," replied Xander, and suddenly he was in the Forest, fighting the Hyena, which had lost its man-like form, becoming just a beast. As the Hyena struck, Xander rolled away, found the M-16 that he/the Soldier had lost with the first attack, brought it up, and made a perfect shot, right between the beast's eyes.

He skinned the corpse, set the hide to tan, cooked the meat, and burned everything else. When he had eaten the meat, he took the hide, and put it on, as a cloak, and then he was back in his room, only a minute later.

"I feel... different," he said.

"You have the skill and discipline of the Soldier, the power of the Hyena, and the new knowledge that I have given you," said the mage. "I would be surprised if you did not feel different. When you awaken, you will not remember me, but you will remember all the rest of it. Now, sleep."

Xander returned to sleep, and the mage left, locking the front door behind him. He walked to his car, and drove toward LA. He had a plane to catch.



"... and then I woke up this morning, and I could remember all this stuff, and felt stronger, had the whole Hyena senses and all that," said Xander. "I tried the Third-Eye opening thing a couple times, and it worked, but I almost threw up when I tried it here at school. Anyway, Giles, I need to know if I'm still me, or if I'm gonna go all Hyena again."

"Well," Giles replied, "the fact that you are worried about this would seem to indicate that you are, indeed, yourself." He opened the door to his office, allowing Buffy and Willow, who had been leaning on it in order to eavesdrop better, to spill onto the floor.