Out in the open, Xander turned back to look at the gate he had just exited. It had been an interesting exit, as the aperture through which he had passed had been quite narrow, and though he had not felt squeezed, per se, it had definitely been strange.
The gate was huge, over three times his height, as far as he could tell, though he was not certain he had been able to quite maintain his proper size in his insubstantial state. It was set directly into the side of a cliff; no flying over a battlement or lobbing severed heads over a wall to sow despair here.
The gate led to a narrow pass that wound down through the foothills of the mountain fastness. It had clearly been artificially widened, and the path was well-maintained, free of rocks and sudden dips or rises, though it appeared to steadily trend downward. Xander could easily imagine an army emerging from that gate, passing down the cleared path in proper marching order, though the area was clear of occupants at the moment.
The winding path and the overhanging hills would serve as some protection from above, as would any hidden weapons in the cliff side. He could not see any such armaments, but was pretty sure there were some. There were definite signs of battle here, including discolored patches on the ground where the way had apparently been repaired.
Passing down towards the plains below, the sounds of battle filled his hearing once more, and he was reminded of his earlier view of the plains. Leaving the path, secure in his relative invisibility, especially from a distance, he drifted up to the peak of one of the foothills, and looked down on the flatter land below.
There was a great army encamped near the end of the road, a veritable sea of moving bodies, tents, great beasts, massive machines, and fires, but all well-ordered.
Further out, he could see the rising smoke and dust of actual clashes going on, and looking up, he could again espy the distant, tiny figures of flying demons or demonesses.
Though he watched for several minutes, he never observed these flying figures make an obvious attack run, so he decided that they were probably there as spies and observers, relaying the order of battle and enemy movements to the battle commanders somehow.
He had no idea how that might operate here, but he supposed it could be anything from magic, to a mental link, to the simple expedient of some form of semaphore, whether physical signals or flashing lights in a pattern. Or, for that matter, they might observe for a while and then return to explain what they had seen, or watch for some specific event and then drop from the sky as a signal.
Continuing down, Xander approached the encamped army, and then slowed to examine it. Though he had never studied warfare, he could see that they were at the least an organized group. He could see regular formations among the tents, with what appeared to him to be several ranks of barrack tents, then what might be a mess hall followed by a kitchen, assuming that was the purpose of the fires near this particular tent in the pattern, and then a smaller cluster of smaller yet taller tents, which he took to be officer's territory. This pattern repeated itself throughout the army, though it varied in some areas, differing particularly in the groups that seemed to include exterior stabling for various strange creatures, whose details he could not make out from the distance.
He was about to approach one of the great beasts for a closer look, when a sudden thought occurred to him. They were too distant for him to see clearly, but why should that matter? Had he not been able to see through stone walls? Seeing at a distance should surely not be too much more difficult.
As he considered it, he supposed there were two possibilities. Either he could find a source of liquid near enough, with a good angle for viewing, something he considered unlikely, or he could find a way to use his powers to craft the equivalent of a telescope or binoculars.
This seemed readily doable. He did not know any great details about telescopes and such, but he was pretty sure that the critical piece in them was a simple lens, the same as in the handheld magnifying glass that every young boy plays with at some point. He and Jesse had quite enjoyed the one Jesse got for Christmas when they were both six, though Willow thought they should use it to learn things, and they both just enjoyed starting fires and burning ants.
Forming a lens took a little effort, but not too terribly much. Spaghetti Westerns from his childhood had imparted the fact that water distorts the apparent position of fish below the surface in a way that had stuck in his mind, and his power, it turned out, was more than sufficient to the task of causing a bit of pure water to form a ball in front of him, then flatten that into a swollen disk.
Lining up a pair of these in front of his eyes, and adjusting their relative positions worked just as he had hoped it would, allowing him a closer look at the massive monster. From his new improved view, he could see that it had a large box on its back, sort of the same thing as he had seen depicted on an elephant's back, though he had no clue what it was called.
It was large enough for at least ten of the demons to stand in, from what he could see, and had a massive crossbow-type device mounted to it. "Cool," Xander said aloud, "Must be their version of a tank."
Indeed the creature's skin appeared to be composed of massive scales, and it had fearsome jaws. He likened it to a horned desert lizard, scaled up many times. It was not in quite the same proportions, but it did have the flat, wide head, bulging eyes, and limbs that canted out to the side instead of lining up underneath it. He vaguely remembered reading some science fiction article pointing out that simply scaling up a small animal would not work, in spite of the prevalence of the idea in the horror films he enjoyed, but apparently whatever problems there were with it were not an issue here.
He pondered for a moment what it would be like if this lizard could shoot blood from its eyes in the manner of a desert lizard he had read about.
The ground about him shook, and he heard a distant rumbling. Refocusing his vision without moving, Xander gazed back up the mountain, and after a moment, saw an immense dragon, impossibly large, come turning from behind the mountain's peak. He still had his telescope at the ready, and swinging it around to focus on the dragon, though it took some effort to get the speed of swing right to follow its motions, he got a good long look at it, and shuddered.
The left side of its face was coated in a misshapen mass of metal, and the awkward twisting motion to its flight made it clear that the metal was disturbing its ability to control that flight. The right side, however, was unmistakable, and Xander realized that he had not, in fact, managed to kill a Duke of Hell... instead, he had merely managed to disfigure one, and probably royally piss it off.
Not wanting to wait around to see if the Duke had better senses than his minions, Xander surged forward, rushing over the ground, the ephemeral lenses of his telescope splashing uselessly to the dirt and quickly vanishing. As he pushed his speed higher, he searched desperately, and just before he reached the flatter, cover-less ground of the plain itself, he found what he sought, a deep crack in the ground that he instantly plunged in to.
Now out of sight, at least, even to the probably terribly impressive eyes of a demon-dragon, and hopefully at least somewhat protected by the bulk of the dirt above, Xander worked his way through the ground, returning to a liquid form to take better advantage of gravity, letting it pull him deeper while he focused his own efforts on getting more distance.
Dimly in his rush he realized that he was now experiencing something much more akin to taste than the results of his efforts in the castle, as he seemed to be getting a taste for the dirt and stones he was passing over.
That was not too bad at first. Unfortunately, as he headed outwards, he soon passed under land occupied above by the army he had seen, and of course, no soldier is going to bother digging a latrine when nature provides a ravine.
It was a minor blessing that he encountered and tasted the fumes from the effluent in time to stop himself from actually contacting the fluid, but that was more than enough to shake him out of his sudden fear, and remind him that while there was little cover on the plain in terms of trees or underbrush, there was plenty of cover in the forms of other demons.
Returning to the surface, and returning to invisibility in the form of a mass of air, he slipped unnoticed into the camp, already well past the outer sentries. Moving ever outward, away from the mountain home of the Duke, he examined the camp from up close.
There was more movement of air here, and variations in heat, so that the air pushed and pulled at him incessantly, which he found to be somewhat like walking through a crowded hallway, being jostled by other students. It was mildly annoying, but not enough of an issue to require any action on his part.
Somewhat to his surprise, he soon realized that there was an almost equal distribution of males and females, at least amongst the demons for whom a gender identification was obvious.
What was also copiously present here, though limited, he noticed, to groups that seemed to be off-duty, was considerable consumption of beverages that he assumed, based on the behavior of those partaking, to be the local equivalent of beer.
This provoked a considerable crisis of confidence in Xander. Some of his family's worst excesses had been in pursuit of the money to obtain alcohol, and he feared becoming an alcoholic himself, and now he was faced with the sudden and frightening realization that with his power over fluids, he could literally produce all the alcohol he could ever desire.
While it did mean he would never need to turn to crime to satisfy his need for it, it also meant a swift and inexorable descent into an addiction that if begun, he would probably never escape from. How could he possibly be detoxified if he could produce the 'demon drink' as it were whenever and where-ever he pleased?
Drifting into an unoccupied tent to find a quieter space to think, Xander settled down to puzzle this out and figure out what he could do to protect himself from this most unfavorable of outcomes. Somehow, given his family history, he thought defeating the demon drink might well prove more important to his survival than defeating any actual demons, even if they were armed and mere yards away.
Without fully realizing it, his focus on this problem caused a lapse in concentration elsewhere, and Xander resumed his human form, coalescing once more into solidity. He was lucky, for the moment, that the tent served to limit the spread of his scent.
Of course, the barracks tents were constantly occupied; to make efficient use of space, barracks were occupied in shifts. In finding an unoccupied tent, Xander had regrettably entered officers territory.
This might not have mattered. Had he entered the tent of one of the elite demons, and they had returned, they would have attacked, and with Xander's capabilities, defense or escape would have been readily accomplished. Such was not Xander's luck.
When Naamahalat slipped quietly into her tent, she was only momentarily surprised at the presence of a human soul there. Obviously he was a gift from someone seeking to curry favor with her. It would not gain them much, but he was a comely lad, and mere instants after she entered had been entranced by her pheromones and her allure.
Grinning at having a new toy, she moved quickly across the room on three-toed taloned feet, and flipped open her chest, reaching in and withdrawing a golden collar, of the sort that would lie flat against the chest and over the shoulders. Moving over to the entranced human, she directed him to place it around his neck, which he did, his eyes shining with pleasure at following her commands.
His intended purpose was clear enough, as he had been provided with nothing in the way of clothes, but though she would use him for such soon enough, for now she had another meeting to attend to, so directed him in dressing in a servant's skirt.
She left him then, but though the air soon cleared of pheromones, Xander's mind remained clouded, the effect of the necklace he had himself placed around his neck, willingly binding himself to her service.
With nothing else to do, and desirous of pleasing his Mistress, Xander occupied himself at first by cleaning and arranging her possessions, then, on finding a set of dining utensils, he filled the ewers with the purest water, and then a fine wine. He had never had a truly good wine, but he saw no reason to limit himself to his own experience. He had every intention of providing his Mistress with the best that was available, and he had touched with his powers the vintages available to the Duke, which should surely be fine enough.
Considering that his Mistress was female, he also produced a rich chocolate drink, and then settled in to try and figure out how he could produce food. The collar gave him purpose and kept him from boredom, and so with focused thought, he succeeded in formulating an elixir that would give him the ability to directly conjure well-prepared foods from his own imagination.
Though he was tempted to make his first use of this the production of a Twinkie, he knew that his Mistress's desires must come before his own, and so he began with a variety of delicacies.
It did not take Naamahalat long on her return to realize that she had misunderstood the magnitude of the gift she had been given. This was no mere body-slave, but a magic worker of no small power, to have summoned human foodstuffs without the aid of a chorus. She wondered momentarily if he might have been left as a an assassination attempt rather than a gift, but after having him try some of the food before her, decided it was unlikely enough to take the risk.
Closer examination increased her estimation of his value, for the small treats that he had summoned were exactly the sort that were hardest to get, and easiest to destroy in the summoning, from thin pastries with fillings, to carefully layered confections, and light meringues that would fall with the slightest contamination.
She allowed him the pleasure of feeding them slowly to her, and some she shared with him. Though human souls on these planes did not need sustenance, they could still gain strength and pleasure from it, and she had no need for harsh treatment to get her way, as some of her rougher compatriots might need. Her allure and charisma were all she required.
When she tried the beverages, she was transported in wonder at the purity and coldness of the water, and delighted by the rich flavor of the wine, but when she tried the dark brown drink he offered her last, she discovered a new and life-long object of lust.
She questioned him closely about this 'chocolate,' and when she first sampled a solid piece of dark chocolate, she knew that she would be defending this human against any who would seek to take him from her.
Pleased but still curious, she questioned him further, and when she discovered chocolate syrup, she found her goal. With this, this most entrancing of comestibles could be readily combined with the most pleasurable of activities. Sealing the tent and weaving a ward of silencing about it, she calmly stripped.
She had no need to put on a show to excite Xander, her pheromones were more than sufficient to the purpose, and as he was already nude but for the easily discarded skirt, which would not prevent their activities even had it remained, nothing more was needed than to lie back and have him drizzle her with chocolate and lick it off.
Xander in his right mind might not have objected to the activities and training that ensued, as she had no interest in attempting to use him in war, for in a war between demons, even a human mage would not last long enough to be worthwhile, but rather trained him in serving, and servicing her, and her few friends. He would have been grateful that her friends were all female as well as comely.
Continuing this training for three of his years, however, would not have been in his planning. Indeed, his time with her might have lasted far longer, but for a lucky break. He learned in his time with her that demons on this plane, including the Duke he had given a faceful of molten metal, could not be permanently killed. Their wars were for pleasure and status, and though they could die, they would soon rise again, and any wounds taken would quickly heal.
Luckily for Xander, when Naamahalat died, a bit more than three years after taking him as her body-slave, it caused the temporary failure of the necklace that kept him bound to her when she was absent.
He was even luckier in the absence of her friends, who were all of the same basic form of demoness as she, and would have readily enthralled him themselves. Finally, he was luckiest in that he had been working on shielding himself from becoming physically addicted just before he was taken, and so did not become addicted to her pheromones, though he had not protected himself from their mind-altering qualities.
When he suddenly came to his senses one day in her tent, Xander was quick to discard the necklace, and promptly vanish from the tent entirely. Though he had been enthralled by her, his brain had not shut down. Rather, it was merely as though he were deeply in love, and everything that he did was directed to her happiness. This had not blocked him from studying his situation, or learning what means might exist to return them to his world, it merely removed any desire he might have to act on them.
He had not yet learned of anything that would allow him to return to his own world directly; indeed, he was fairly certain that between his world and the world he had been thrown in to the Powers would have placed a barrier. What would be the point of throwing him out of his reality if at the same time they gave him the key to return?
Turning back to a gaseous form and leaving the tent took merest moments. This ability of his had never been exposed to Naamahalat, as she had focused on exploring the depths of his summoning ability. He had retaken the potion to give him the ability to create small items so often to satisfy her desires that in the end it had stopped fading away. He was not sure when exactly that had happened, as he had gotten in the habit of taking it regularly, but eventually he had noticed that he was absently creating things from his subconscious while alone.
They vanished quickly without his actual will involved in their creation, but the mere fact that he was creating them several hours after his last dose led him to some experiments that confirmed that once more he had inadvertently made what appeared to be a permanent change in himself.
The camp, as he left the tent, was sparsely populated. Naamahalat's death, which had freed him, had effectively told him that the army was at least partially in combat, and as that combat had never previously spilled over into the encampments to the point that he could hear it nearby, he was not surprised to find that the area was only lightly guarded.
Though his first action had been to flee the tent, he was not slow in producing and consuming several substances intended to give him a multi-layered set of defenses against mental attacks, hormonal and chemical attacks, pheromones, anchoring his soul and shielding it from outside influence, and, keeping in mind the possibility of his being a carrier for diseases, spells, or whatever else he might have picked up from the various demonesses he had pleasured and been pleasured by, an ability to produce an antidote to the effects of the demonesses.
That last was presumably already covered by his powers, but he did not want to have to think about what effect might have occurred and what to produce to counter it. So instead, he focused on the idea that his touch, when he willed it, should be able to reverse the effects they caused. He would not know if that had worked, of course, until he found someone so afflicted, but he felt it worth a try.
Having shielded himself against again becoming someone's love slave and pet, Xander proceeded to carefully ransack the officers' tents in his vicinity, searching the unoccupied ones for certain devices of which he had heard tales.
Apparently, while there was no real way from this demonic realm to pass directly into a different world, it was possible for demons to be summoned, much like in the stories of the occult from his own world. His mistress had never been so summoned, but some of the cohort had, and enjoyed it.
To facilitate it, some of them had cartouches, devices inscribed with a name, that acted something like a beacon, such that when a summons was performed that did not explicitly name a demon, and so would merely reach across the planes to summon anything that fulfilled certain criteria, the cartouche would improve their chances of being the one selected.
When Xander fled the encampment, he left behind him the scent of a human in several dozen tents, and carried with him six cartouches, or at least, what he thought filled the bill, and a bag of various treasures. He would have grabbed some weapons, but knew he had no skill in wielding them, while the demons on this plane could literally train to the death and then get up and do it again.
The army had apparently been on the march for a while, though Xander had seen little of the land, being secreted in a small platform tent carried by servants, that held Naamahalat's wealth when they were on the move, and so when he passed beyond the borders of the encampment, he found not the foothills of the mountain fastness of the Duke he had injured, but an endless plain, dotted with crumbled towers of stone, a ridge of mountains looming in the distance.
He was reminded, while looking at it, that he had yet to see a single plant anywhere, and wondered if it was possible that there was no plant equivalent in this plane. Was it possible for only animals to exist? Or was it maybe an indication that the demons were not native here but had come from elsewhere?
Xander shook his head. He had experienced many more of what he termed 'Willow-moments' since he first took the potion to optimize his body. He supposed it was not a bad thing to be smarter, but it was uncomfortable when he realized he was thinking things that he would not have even understood to wonder about before.
Returning to solid form, Xander grinned. One thing, at least, had not changed. He looked down and in his hand a Twinkie formed. He happily crammed it in his mouth. He had not been particularly hungry, his healing factor and his ability to produce food had kept him going without trouble, but while at the time he had not cared, now looking back on it, it had been irritating to constantly produce wonderful food for Naamahalat while consuming simple workmanlike fare for himself. It may have made her happy, but it did little for his own pleasure.
Fading out again, he passed quick as the wind across the face of the near-desert, searching until he found a nice hollow, nestled in beneath a pile of boulders that propped up against one another. Here he again returned to solid form and contemplated his prizes.
He had taken only one thing from Naamahalat herself, in recognition that she had treated him well and fairly, aside from the whole making him a slave thing. He had been helplessly devoted, and she could have walked all over him, but instead, he had many a memory of her hungry eyes looking up at him from between his thighs, many images of her lustful face as she bounced against him, or lay back, breasts swaying as he pressed in to her. She had valued his magic and his stamina both, and treated him like a prized pet, and while he had no desire to return, or to remain there, he did recognize that had he been a cat and she his owner, he would have had no cause to complain.
Nonetheless, the small belt-pouch she had given him, the only item he had to wear most of the time aside from the servant's skirt, he had kept. It was one of a pair, and he was not sure she could not track him through it, so keeping it was a risk, but the advantages were too great to ignore.
Anything he attempted to place in it would fit, at least for as large an item as he had so far dared to try, including an entire chest as large as himself, and yet it weighed but an ounce or two, and whatever one wished to pull from it was the first thing the fingers found, and was easily drawn out, though its size might be much greater than the pouches small opening.
Naamahalat's purpose in giving it to him was not, of course, to hold his belongings, for he had none, but because whatever was put in one could be drawn from the other. It was necessary to know what was in the pouch before it could be drawn forth, so he had felt safe enough using it to purloin his spoils from the other tents. She had given it to him so that he could keep her supplied with her favorite treats in the field. He filled it with the various things she liked the most, and on a regular basis, he attempted to draw from it a note from Naamahalat. If she had placed one within, his attempt would succeed, so it also served as a means of communication.
He was not sure if he would check for that note again, but given the pleasure she had given him, and the memories, he did resolve to keep a supply of her favorite treats well-stocked in the little bag.
Xander had made excellent use of this gift, and now he began to draw out the things he had taken, the cartouches, the chest, and most important to him at the moment, a pile of clothing. He had not had time to sort through and try clothes on, but he had grabbed a fair variety, and now he sat down and went through it.
Finally making his choices, he dressed again. It was a bit odd, using a loincloth instead of proper underwear, and the cloth was both filmier and more billowy than he was used to wearing, but as much time as he had spent basically nude, Xander felt more human when he was finally dressed.
Feeling human because he had put on demonic clothing might be a bit odd, but as far as he could tell, the demons were people, as he understood the term, whereas he had been treated more as a favored pet than a person; assuming the owner was into a little bestiality, of course.
Savoring a chocolate Ding Dong, Xander considered the rest of his supplies. He was a bit leery of the chest, worried that it might be protected against opening in some fashion, and finally decided that the simplest solution would be to remove the contents.
Granted, that was easier said than done, since he meant to remove them without opening the chest, reasoning that any trap or curse would be against those opening or damaging the chest. One of the delightful things he had realized was that he could bring things he carried into an airy form with him. It was only after he had done so in fleeing the tent that he had thought to be worried about the effect on the bag, but it had come through unscathed and had still accepted items larger than itself, so he was not worried about doing it a second time.
As air he surrounded the chest, probing the surface, until he located the tiniest of gaps through which he could slip. Again he felt the strange sensation of squeezing himself down, as he slid in, but soon he encountered another issue.
He could not, even as air, fit all of himself in the chest. As he pushed more of himself in, effectively increasing the pressure, the chest creaked and he stopped, afraid it would explode open, and damage the contents, possibly triggering whatever defenses it might have.
So he backed off, and reconsidered. After thinking about it for a bit, Xander tried again, slipping into the chest with just his arm, holding the bag. Forming a flat plane of water and shifting it around allowed him to see, though dimly. Too dimly to make anything out, in fact, and he needed to see each item before he placed it in the bag, or he would never be able to remove it.
He wondered just how many items might be somewhere in the bag, never to be removed because Naamahalat had forgotten about them, or they had been put in by whoever owned the bag before her, assuming she had not made it herself, or ordered it made.
He could produce flame, but that would not be safe, but a moment's more thought led him to produce a globule of the chemicals that produce a firefly's light. Theoretically, he supposed, the chemicals might be considered solid, as each individual molecule was certainly a solid. But apparently as long as they behaved at some level as a liquid, or could be dissolved in a liquid, they qualified for his power, something he certainly was not going to complain about.
The light was a sort of greenish yellow, and rather dim, but the greater surface area of his ocular water lens made up for it by catching much more of the reflected light.
To Xander's delight, much of the contents appeared to be coins. They looked oddly dark in the weird light, but he suspected they might be gold. It took a moment to shift things around inside the chest, but soon he worked out a way to hold the bag open with his semi-material hand; then all it took to get the coins bagged was to move the open mouth of the bag up to them. As soon as the coin intersected the plane of the bag it was ingested, for lack of a better word.
He was not too worried about recovering them. They were demonic coins, and he did not think they would have serial numbers on them, but even if they did, the bag would cough up anything matching the item you were thinking of. If there were multiple items that matched, it would return an apparently random selection if there was not a best match to be found. So if you knew exactly what you wanted, you could get it, but if he simply wanted a coin and there were any coins in the bag's holding area, he could withdraw them.
He suspected that there might be more to it than that, that there might be some way of putting items in such that only you could remove them, or only someone thinking of what you thought when you put it in, but if so, Naamahalat had kept such a feature to herself.
Occasionally he came across a more particular item, including several metal dishes and cups, and these he had to pay more attention to. There was an extent to which the thought would become too generic. Just wanting to remove say, 'an object,' had not succeeded even when he knew he had placed a snack cake in the bag. 'A sweet,' however, would suffice to extract anything that tasted sweet, so as long as he remembered that there were plates and cups, he figured he should be able to retrieve them.
As the volume of coins dropped, Xander almost missed a small round object falling in with a hole in it. Slowing and looking more carefully, Xander spied several other rings in amongst the coins, and reminded himself to pull them back out and examine them.
When the chest was almost emptied, Xander came across a small cache of smaller objects that glittered strangely in the light, and moving his plane of water and the light closer, he determined that it was a small pile of cut gemstones.
At least, he hoped they were gems and not glass, though of course, he would not be able to tell how valuable they were til he made it back to a human world and found an appraiser. Well, he might be able to identify diamonds if they could cut glass . . . but just because diamonds could, he mused, did not mean that there were no other lesser stones that might also be able to, so even there his identification could not be certain.
With the gems consumed within the bag, the chest appeared fairly empty, and Xander pulled back, satisfied that he had managed to obtain the contents without risking a curse, and fairly well pleased at the amount of control he had managed in such a tight space. Mr. Fantastic, he thought, could hardly have done it better. Considering the tiny crack he had slipped his arm through, he wasn't actually sure Mr. Fantastic could have done it at all.
Now back in solid form, Xander slipped his fingers into the bag and pulled out one of the coins and examined it. In better light, he could see that it did look like gold, though he knew that said little if anything about its purity. He remembered some story about a bathtub and a pure gold crown and some Greeks but did not have a bathtub nor any idea how it could tell him if the gold was pure.
He drew out one of the gemstones, and grinned, both in relief that it had come out when he thought of a gemstone, which hopefully meant it was not glass, and because it was a brilliant little gem, but larger than any ring-set gemstone he could remember seeing. If it was any sort of actual gem it should be worth a fair amount, though as it was a light blue he thought it was probably not a diamond.
Drawing out a plate and then a cup, he confirmed that they both had at least the appearance of being gold. Well, if he was summoned to any sort of human world, he would have some worthwhile currency at any rate.
He had no real hope of being summoned back to his own world. He idly tried again to produce an elixir that would allow him to get there, then a fluid that would act as a portal to his home in Sunnydale, and was unsurprised when both attempts failed. He was hoping, however, that if he was summoned to another world, then after he was released from the summoning, he might be able to try to get home from there before he returned to this demonic plane.
He returned the remaining clothes to the bag, and then drew out the cartouches. He could not comprehend the writing on them, but since from his information they would only be names anyway, there was little point in trying. It would not help him guess which would be best.
Instead, he chose to simply wear them all, hoping that multiple signals would increase his chances of being summoned. In the meanwhile, he would have to deal with being here.
Shifting around to get a couple of annoying rocks out from under him, Xander settled back against the edge of one of the deeper rocks, where it stood straight, supporting one of the leaning rocks above. With sand under him and the rock at his back, he was actually somewhat comfortable.
As long as he was forced to be here, he supposed he might as well practice with his powers, including the abilities he had inadvertently added. He was not certain how much time had passed, but guessed it had been more than a year. He was somewhat surprised that in spite of adding Wolverine-scale healing, his hair growth had not become a problem, but his hair had maintained at its usual length, and he had not had any inklings of a beard yet.
Still, he was curious how much had changed in his appearance, and it was a good test of his power, so he produced a sheet of liquid mercury and stilled the air around it, allowing it to settle into a smooth, highly reflective surface.
"Man, I look old," Xander mused, turning his head from side to side. Apparently bringing himself to his physical optimum had required aging his body, and it occurred to him that his 'Captain America' serum might have been responsible for his retaining a clear-cut appearance. After all, if Captain America had been on his mind at the time, he might have subconsciously included the clean-shaven appearance of that rugged superhero.
He still looked like himself, though, as far as he could tell, just older. His hair had not gained the Wolverine's signature peaks, nor turned blond like Captain America.
Vanishing the mercury, Xander played around with summoning other fluids, before remembering that he had cups now, golden goblets really. Pulling one out, he filled it with chilled Coca-cola and stopped a moment to sniff the rising bubbles before taking a drink.
"Mmmm, that's good," Xander murmured. Producing fluids directly in his mouth was useful and sustaining, but it lacked the feel and pleasure of drinking from a cup, the carbon dioxide bubbles tickling his nose, the scent combining with the taste. He had not really realized before, but now, smelling the Coke, he recognized that it was the lack of smell that had caused the liquids he had been drinking directly in his mouth to seem flat.