When Lina opened her eyes, she was in a stone cavern, laying on a simple grass matress.
"Oh, so you're awake." Xellos Metallium's voice echoed with exhaustion. "I didn't know if you were going to make it. I should have known better, ne?" Smiling weakly, Xellos appeared before her.
"Wha - ?" Her hand went to her throat, and her eyes closed as she felt the scar from Kuroi's dagger.
"Funny, really, how Amelia used her life-force to heal you." He sighed. "What a shame that she died so anti-climatically."
"Amelia? Dead?" She whispered.
"Uh-huh." He nodded.
"What about Gourry?" Dread filled her voice.
"He's asleep at the moment." He replied. "Fortunately, his arm was cauterized by the spell that removed it."
"Did you fight Kuroi?" She asked quietly. "Green eyes, dressed in gray, absrobs magic?"
"I saw him, but I didn't fight him." Xellos sat down next to her. "It would have been a waste of energy; energy that I needed to save you and Gourry."
"Oh."
"Shall I assume that by the absence of Zelgadis, Rockhead either doesn't know or has already fallen?"
"Xellos." Ruby eyes caught amythyst shards. "Zel was the first to fall, but not in the way you think." And she relayed the story L-sama had told her.
Kuroi's green eyes danced with mirth as he hovered silently outside the cave that shealtered Lina and the remander of her crew. A blade created of pure spirit energy formed in his grip, and he smiled as thunder and lighting crashed around him.
"Time to die, Lina Inverse." His voice was lost amidst the howling winds, and a bolt of electricity illuminated the starry amulet at his collar.
"Well now," Xellos sighed, "this will simply not do."
"What are we going to do about Kuroi?" Lina asked. "He can absorb Shamanist, Black, White, and Nightmare majik. No weapoen, enchanted or otherwise, can scratch him. Not even Hikari no Ken."
"For L-sama's power to be threatened so... Nobody has ever captured all three types of masters... What to do..."
"Xellos!" She whapped him.
"He is manipulating souls, correct." He waited till he got a nod from her to continue. "Well then, he muist have some kind of talisman that is connected to the souls, otherwise they would have departed to the next world."
"Talisman?" Lina thought back to the gory fight that had already cost her the life of a dear friend. She tried to focus on the image of the laughing devil woul had beaten them.
"Net necessarily a large or gaudy item, it could be as small as my fist."
"But it would be gemstone, right?"
"Most definately."
"And if we shatter the stone, the souls can escape, right?"
"That's correct."
"Xellos... You haven't said 'That is a secret'."
"Lina. When all of creation, including the creator, is in danger of being destroyed, there are no secrets."
A slash of Kuroi's aura-blade silenced Xellos. Had the Mazoku not been so absorbed in his thoughts, he could have avoided the blow all together. His preternatural speed was all that kept the wound from being fatal.
"Prepare to die!" Emerald eyes sparked as elemental energy gathered in his hand. Lina darted foreward, her eyes locked on the glowing amulet at his thraot. Kuroi caught her by the wrist and sent a double Monobolt through her body.
"L-Lina!" Gourry, having been awakened by her screams, gasped in horror.
"Hello, blondie." Ikari grinned. "Remember me?"
"You..." Blue eyes narrowed maliciously, and with a savage war cry, he charged.
"Simpleton." A triple strength Diem Wind knocked him out of combat as well.
"Who to kill first, the man, Mazoku, or woman..." he pondered. "Hmmm... Ah! Ladies first..."
Power gathered in a golden sphere between his curved palms, and black sparks flickered off of it's surface. A preditory grin spread across his face as he drew his arms back in preparation for the strike.
Three pairs of eyes looked on him in paralyzed fear as his hands parted, and the globe began it's deadly course. And as it blazed to her, a duo of light notes cracked the heavens and the stone at Kuroi's collar.
Gaea shealters her own, whispered the first.
I fight for my friends. Declared the other.
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