Okay, my first Slayers fic. All comments/criticisms welcome as long as they're constructive. I love constructive criticism, makes my day. Please forgive me my (probably) many typos. Oh, and this takes place after Try, but seeing as how I haven't seen said series yet (not to mention most of Next) I might have some of my facts messed up. Please forgive that too. ^^ I'm babbling. I'll shut up now.
Warning: You all know my biases (Lina/Zel) and though it may not seem like it right now, that's probably where this is headed, but I've been known to surprise myself on occasion. But this is mostly dealing with them, and Amelia is nowhere in this bit. Couldn't find a plausable excuse to bring her in.
The first set of footfalls in probably a hundred years to find the dark hallways were in no hurry to stick around. It wasn't fear of the morbid rumors or the many blessings and/or curses thrown their way upon their inquiries that fueled their pace; it was impatience and a fear of being beaten for asking to slow down.
"Linnnnnaaaaaaa!"
"I told you, Gourry, it should be right up here!"
"You could have at least helped me out with all those booby traps back there!"
"What're you talking about? I helped you with the first batch, remember?"
"You opened the door!"
"Right, I did my part. Now shut up, we're getting close and I wanna be able to hear anything we may have to deal with inside."
Ever mindful of his partner's instincts, Gourry closed his mouth and opened his ears, hands tightening on the hilt of his sword. Waiting a suitable amount of time to both check for traps and satisfy the dramatic streak she would forcibly deny she had, Lina carefully nudged into the room. All was still. Satisfied that there wasn't any immediate threat, the sorceress's waiting Fireball dissipated, though she was sure to have the spell ready in case something should come up.
"All those booby traps outside and nothing here?" Gourry asked from where he had been flanking his partner in crime. "That seems kind of strange."
Inwardly Lina agreed. It didn't make any sense, and she doubted the people who built this place were stupid enough to think that the periphery defenses would be enough to stop anyone truly determined. Especially since the Scrolls of Remeed were known about only in advanced magical circles, and then only taken for truth by the truly brilliant or insane. Lina, being the former if not the latter, had heard of them and immediately decided they must be hers. It had been a painstaking and time-consuming ordeal to track down all the mages in the land who knew even a little about the obscure myth. Being the canny young woman she was, Lina had carefully and with much forethought beaten the information out of them (and in the process gotten more insight into their personal lives than she ever cared to know).
After months of fruitless searches, she and Gourry had run across run across a hot lead purely on chance and had now finally hit the jackpot. Only it seemed fate had one more obstacle for them to hurdle before they would claim the prize.
"EYYYYYAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!" Lina's shriek echoed painfully off the close bare walls. "Where is it??? It has to be here!!!" Her wiry body lept around the tiny room with almost inhuman energy seemingly powered by her mouth.
"Oi, Lina," Gourry ventured when she paused to catch her breath, "could someone else have gotten here first?"
After thoroughly beating him for stating the painfully obvious, she grumpily marched back to their inn, Gourry still rubbing his sore head. All the way through her seven course meal she turned the situation over in her head, trying from every possible angle. Even in the huge building there had only been the one room. It had been designed specifically to hold the scrolls, there was no staff to house nor patrons to cater to. And in that room there was only the pedestal in the very center. No shelves, no doorways, no tables, simply stone, and she had checked the walls for secret compartments or passageways. Judging from the amount of dust she'd seen accumulated around the edge of the top of the pedestal and almost complete lack thereof in the center where the scrolls should have been, she would guess that whoever had reached them first had been there very recently, perhaps only a day or so before her. Perfect. No one looks for the damned things for eons, then as soon as she gets there someone else beats her to it. Even managed to get to them without setting off all the traps set all through the fortress. Whoever they had been were most likely long gone, her prize with them.
"Lina?" Gourry blinked quizzically at her from across the table. She realized she had been chewing at the same chicken bone for several minutes, too lost in thought to notice.
"Sorry, Gourry, I was just thinking." She tossed the bone aside and attacked a plate of pasta with renewed gusto. >
"Oh. What about?"
"About what I'll do to the jerk that got the scrolls before us if I ever get my hands on hi - " A carefully wrapped and tied bit of cloth clattered noisily to the table before her, narrowly missing what remained of her meal. A figure stood not too far off, concealed in the shadows of the dimly lit room. As he advanced on them, Gourry shifted slightly, hands on the hilt of his sword, and Lina already had a Flare Arrow ready to go, needing only to be cast. So far their mysterious visitor hadn't made any threatening moves, but one didn't survive in the mercenary business as long as those two had by trusting too easily.
The stranger stopped at the edge of their table, looking at them expectantly in the torchlight. Lina squinted slightly at him, his hood revealing nothing of his features and yet striking a familiar chord in her memory. A synapse fired and she mentally berated herself for being such an idiot, letting her spell disperse. Before she could react further, however, he drew his hood back, wire hair clinking slightly and catching the light unnaturally.
"Zel!" Gourry's surprise soon matched Lina's delight and his sword slid back to rest in its scabbard. The solemn young man nodded back, the hint of a smile lurking around the corners of his mouth, and accepted their invitation to sit. They exchanged pleasantries and brought each other up to speed on what they had been doing for the past year. Neither Lina nor Zelgadis had changed physically, and Gourry's only difference was his hair getting a bit longer and his looking a bit closer to twenty-five than twenty-three.
At the young sorceress's question, Zel revealed that he had learned they were in town when he overheard gossip of a young flame-haired girl and her bodyguard asking about the Scrolls of Remeed and threatening to blow up half the town if the food service had been any slower. Her memory jogged, Lina looked down at her present and practically tore the cloth from it. What she found didn't really surprise her, but it did bring a smile to her face.
"Huh? The scrolls!" Gourry, on the other hand, was not as quick on the uptake.
Zel nodded sagely and gestured towards Lina, who was busy cooing over the ancient artifacts. "Keep them. They're of no use to me."
A frown crossed her youthful face and she scanned the carefully penned runes a bit more closely.
"But if you don't need them," Gourry asked, "why did you take them?"
Zel sighed wearily, collecting his thoughts, Lina still frowning over scripture. "I thought they might contain a possible cure. From legend, these scrolls were supposed to hold the key to altering reality. This is why virtually no one knows about them. Back when they were first penned, there was such a fear of their power and the potential for disaster that they were sealed away, never to meet human eyes again. Soon the knowledge of it was lost but to a few well-read souls, passing into obscurity and myth." The chimera paused to take a sip from his ever present coffee mug. "But it appears that something was lost in the translation over the decades. The scrolls say nothing of altering reality, but instead have instructions on casting spells to see across dimensional barriers."
"So you can see alternate realities?" Lina piped up, the dim light dancing in her eyes. Zel simply nodded, disappointment hidden beneath stone and shadow. Lina crowed and clutched the parchment to her slim frame, eyes a-sparkle.
"But Lina," Gourry looked confused again, "they don't do what you thought they did. You still want them?" A plate bounced off his head.
"Of course I do! They're still the legendary Scrolls of Remeed, who cares if the legend was a little garbled? This is way better anyway! Not to mention a lot less dangerous." She cast a glance in Zel's direction, neverminding that she had been looking for them earlier herself.
His own stare was just as accusatory. "You're actually going to use them?"
"Of course I am, you think I'm just going to let an opportunity like this pass me by? A chance to see how my life turned out if something was just a little different? Ne, Zel, I'd think you of all people would want to see that."
"Why would I?" His tone was icy and unnecessarily harsh. "To see myself with everything I never had? All my dreams made reality to some other me, close enough for me to see but never to touch, to have? Or to see myself with less than I have now, burning in my own private hell? I don't know which would be worse." His eyes fixed hers with an intense gaze, ice and fire at a standoff. "There are some things one is better off not knowing, Lina. Especially about themselves."
Silence reigned at their dark little table, no one having anything to add to that grim statement. Finally, Lina pushed her chair back, and gathering the scrolls in her arms and tossing a bit of change on the table, declared she was going to bed. Looking a bit relieved, Gourry bid a more cheerful goodnight, wandering off to his own room, leaving the chimera to sit in his shadows.
Only when he had heard both of their doors close did Zel allow himself to look to where they had gone, a crease of concern marring his forehead. He truly hoped Lina wouldn't be foolhardy enough to use them, but he knew it was in vain. Lina would do what she wanted, and nothing anyone could say would change that.
Setting the scrolls on her bedside table, Lina scoffed at her friend's cryptic remarks. What was so wrong with seeing how things would have turned out in a different life? If another you had it better, then you could be happy in that somewhere you were mind-blowingly happy, and maybe even pick up a few pointers on how to improve your own life along the way. If another you had it worse off, you could rejoice in the fact that your life didn't suck that badly after all. Whiney ol' Zel just had to go and see the worst in everything, as usual. He'd been a "glass is half empty" type of guy the entire time she'd known him. Amelia and Gourry were "glass half full" types if she'd ever seen them. Lina just wanted to know who the hell had been drinking out of her glass how to get a free refill.
Half undressed and sitting in front of an old vanity, a brush absently running through her hair, Lina became more and more annoyed at her stony associate. Since she had met him years ago he had made amazing progress in his people skills, though you wouldn't know it to look at him now. But four years ago, instead of hand-delivering the scrolls and sticking around to converse over coffee, he would have left the items at the front counter for her and been gone before she got back. If he'd have given them to her at all, that is.
A smile touched the corner of her mouth as she remembered the old days, before Trickter Priests and Dragon Maidens. It had been less than half a decade and yet a lifetime had passed since then. They had all come such a long way, looking back she saw people she could not believe she knew. They were still the same, yet different in so many smaller ways, like the people she had met were echoes of the people they were to become, more charicatures of their truer selves. Bonds had been forged, friendships made, loves kindled and lost, responsibilities discovered, and courage revealed. It had been fantastic, a wonderland journey with good times, bad times, more bad times, weird times, and frusterating times. But she wouldn't trade them for a thing, and she doubted any of the others would either.
And yet...
The reflection of the scrolls found her eye, temptation knawing at her. They sat so innocently at the table, so harmless looking. And what harm could really come of it? She couldn't change the past, nor would she want to. But maybe something in there could help her have a better future, and what harm could possibly come of that? She could have a brighter tomorrow and get the last laugh on Zel for once. Serve him right for being so serious all the time, the stuffy bastard.
Setting the hairbrush down, she marched over to the table and grabbed the scrolls, leafing through for the instructions. Maybe if she was lucky she'd get some really juicy dirt on Zel she could loard over him at breakfast.
Part 2 | Fanfiction