The Abyssal Plains


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.