Faith led us cautiously away from the wargs and eventually found us a door that she was pretty sure led down to the basement. The door was locked, but Faith simply grabbed the doorknob and yanked the doorknob and the locking mechanism out of the door with one loud, wrenching pull.
Having a slayer or two around is always helpful. They're very strong.
The three of us stood in the doorway and I looked down the stairs into the basement. The stairs were made of concrete and painted grey. I looked down those stairs and noticed some shadows moving across the floor. Then I heard a male voice call out, "Nathan! Hey, is that you? Don't you know how to knock? It's not all that..."
Then, I saw the shadows become sharper and more organized, and suddenly a naked man walked into my line of sight.
During my years in high school, I had dreamed about catching glimpses of some naked guy (mostly Xander), but this guy was no eye candy. He looked to be at least thirty-five years old, and he had far too much body hair. And in stark contrast to the hairiness of his chest, abdomen and groin area, his head suffered from a serious receding hairline.
The hair around his groin was so severe, it almost looked as if he didn't have a penis. This guy was in desperate need of some shaving, or maybe some laser hair removal.
"Holy crap," the unpleasantly hairy man exclaimed, "You're not Nathan. You're the ones the oracle warned me about."
I was so focused on the naked guy's physical appearance and poor grooming habits that I totaled failed to consider that he might be a threat.
Oh God! It was almost as if I was turning into Cordelia!
And when he whipped up a spell that could have killed me if I just stood there with my mouth gaping open.
Massive icicles of different sizes suddenly streaked through the air and I was slammed into the floor as Faith tackled both Buffy and me. Being knocked to the floor hurt, but it also saved my life.
For a few seconds, Buffy, Faith and I lay there on the floor and I used that time to assess the damage of the flying ice-missiles.
Quite a few of them were the size of javelins or spears. Several of them hit the basement door and somehow ripped it off its hinges. One of them had hit a large chandelier and ripped the lower half of it away. Several others had embedded themselves into the far wall of the lobby. Another one had struck a warg in the throat and killed it. The warg just lay on the floor with a massive icicle jutting out of its neck and a massive pool of blood formed underneath it's still twitching corpse.
"Thanks," I said to Faith. Her reflexes and quick thinking had saved my life, probably Buffy's too. She'd come a long way from her days as the mayor's evil henchman.
Or henchwoman.
Henchperson?
Whatever. It was good to see her back on the side of the good guys.
"Anytime," Faith replied as she slowly crawled off Buffy and me. And is it wrong and disturbing that I noticed how shapely Faith's ass is when she crawled off of me and across the floor?
The two remaining wargs padded over to the body of the warg that had gotten punctured by a giant icicle. They sniffed at the dead quadruped briefly and then let out a long, mournful howl.
"I don't think they're happy that their friend got killed," Buffy commented as she helped me up off the floor."
"They sound pissed," Faith said.
After twenty seconds or so of ear-splitting, mournful howling, the two remaining wargs took off in a gallop and hurtled themselves down into the basement. I had visions of the wargs attacking the naked guy who had cast the icicle-spell and ripping his throat out, however, shortly after the wargs launched themselves down into the basement, everything went quiet.
The growling stopped, the howling stopped, and even the sounds of the large warg toenails clicking against the hard floors stopped.
"What the hell?" Faith asked softly, almost whispering.
"It doesn't sound like the wargs tore that guy to pieces," I whispered back.
Faith, Buffy and I cautiously crept back over to the basement door and risked a glance downstairs. It didn't take more than a second to see that the bloodthirsty wargs that had rushed down into the basement were now helplessly frozen in a large, oddly-shaped, thick coating of ice.
The naked guy saw us and gestured with his hands. A thick cloud of fog sprung up around him and I could see snowflakes floating in that fog. I immediately guessed that he was in the midst of casting some sort of spell, and then he pointed a finger directly at us.
This time, Buffy and Faith
both
grabbed me and pushed me out of the line of fire. When his spell hit the top of the stairs, there was nobody there to be a target.
Instead, the spell hit the top stairs and the floor where we had been standing. Those top stairs and a section of the ground-level floor were now covered in a coating of ice about six inches thick.
"Your plan isn't going to work,"
I heard the naked guy shout at us from down in the basement, "The Oracle told me that you'd come to try and steal my greatest prize from me! But I'll kill you if you try!"
Faith got a look of angry determination on her face and she yelled back, "You kidnapped a guy! He's a decent, trustworthy kinda guy, and I'm gonna break him outta this place! You try and get in my way, and I'm gonna kick your ass!"
After Faith made this announcement, I could hear the naked guy's mocking laughter in response.
The look on Faith's face went from angry determination to seething outrage in a split-second. She sprinted towards the door and hurled her battle-axe down into the basement, screaming, "
Laugh this off, asshole
," and then sprinted back away from the door.
"Oh, I'm afraid that didn't work," the naked wizard called back a few seconds later, "I'm still alive and now you've got no weapons!"
Faith looked mad enough to spit nails, and then suddenly, I got an idea.
"I think I've got a plan," I whispered to Buffy and Faith, "I think I can defeat him."
I huddled together with Buffy and Faith and quietly whispered my plan to them. My plan would require split-second timing and a spell I'd never used before out in the field, but I was pretty confident it would work.
Buffy and Faith were both pretty dubious, but I held my ground and said, "Hey, I brought down the barrier spell they had put up around this house, didn't I?"
That seemed to win them both over, and I began the process of putting my plan into motion.
Magic is tricky business. Even if you know what you're doing, there's always somebody out there with stronger magic or a smarter way of working their mojo. Sometimes there's a hidden weakness to your spellcraft that you didn't realize and another witch, warlock, wizard or some other type of practitioner will be able to take advantage of that weakness.
Anyway, I gathered up my courage and marched over to the doorway and stood close enough that I could see my opponent. The naked wizard looked up the stairs at me and his mouth set into a grim line of determination. He gestured with his hands and another thick cloud of fog appeared with snowflakes floating in the cloud.
"You girls are persistent" the naked man announced in his loud, booming voice, "But persistence won't gain you anything if..."
And before he could finished that sentence I worked my own magic.
I pointed my finger at a spot just above the naked wizard's head and I spoke the words, "
Transfundo ternas Oceanum."
The naked mage glanced up suspiciously to the spot where I was pointing. A hole opened up in the fabric of reality and the wizard reflexively attempted to aim his own spell into the hole I had created.
