It happened suddenly.
"I'm tired," Lina announced after finishing lunch. She, Gourry, Sheifyl, Zelgadiss, and Amelia had stopped in a pleasant little glen to eat.
"Tired? It's barely past noon, Lina-san!"
"I know that, Amelia!" Lina snapped. "I'm tired just the same. We're going to stop here a while so I can rest."
The others all meekly murmered their assent.
Grumbling something about everyone picking on her, Lina spead out her bedroll and laid down. She was asleep in a matter of seconds.
Everyone was silent until Lina started snoring, at which time they began speaking, figuring if her own snoring didn't wake her, they certainly wouldn't.
"Gosh, Lina-san is awfully grumpy today," Amelia commented somewhat timidly.
"Perhaps she...isn't feeling well?" Sheifyl suggested more than somewhat timidly.
Amelia nodded sagely right away. Zelgadiss took a few moments to figure it out, at which time he ducked his head, pointedly not looking at the female members of the group. Gourry scratched his head, then asked brightly, "Y'mean she has a cold?"
"Something like that..." Amelia replied vaguely, deciding it wouldn't be worth the effort to try to explain things to Gourry (again).
Sheifyl then tactfully steered the conversation to other things, and the quartet talked about various trivial things for several hours.
The conversation was interuppted by Gourry's stomach, which grumbled so loudly that at first the others feared an ogre or such was nearby.
"I suppose we ought to prepare supper before Gourry's stomach attracts the attention of an amourous bear."
Amelia and Sheifyl giggled at Zel's joke (after getting over their surprise at Zel actually cracking a joke), and Gourry looked blank as per usual.
"Why don't you wake Lina?" Zel suggested to Gourry.
"'kay," Gourry agreed amiably, trotting over to where Lina lay. He shook her shoulder and said, "Hey, Lina! Wake up, we're gonna eat."
Everyone got a bad feeling when Lina did not wake at the mention of food. The others joined Gourry, gathering around Lina in a semi-circle.
"Lina! Wake up!" Gourry called again, shaking her shoulder with more force.
"Mmm," Lina mumbled, finally rousing. "What?" she asked, not bothering to open her eyes.
"We're gonna have dinner," Gourry repeated.
"Oh." She was quiet a moment, before replying, "I'm not hungry."
"What?!" four voices exclaimed in unison.
"Gods, which word didn't you understand?" Lina opened one eye, glaring without energy at her friends.
"Lina-san, your eye is bloodshot!" Sheifyl observed worriedly.
Lina grunted in reply, closing her eye again. "Whatever. Just let me go back to sleep."
Sheifyl tenatively rached out a hand and felt Lina's forehead. "You have a fever!"
Lina made a noncommital sound, still not bothering to open her eyes. Her friends looked at her with not a little concern; Lina never got sick. It was too mundane a thing to bother the great Lina Inverse.
"May I cast a healing spell?" Sheifyl requested.
"Have at," Lina mumbled, half-asleep.
Sheifyl proceeded to cast a powerful healing spell, figuring that anything affecting Lina Inverse would have to be something rather serious.
The spell completed, Sheifyl smiled slightly. The smile gave way to a horrified expression when Sheifyl again checked Lina for fever and found the sorceress still burning hot to the touch.
Seeing the shrine maiden's expression, Amelia asked, "What's wrong, Sheifyl-san?"
"She's still burning up with fever!" Sheifyl said dispairingly.
"But you just cast a healing spell on her," Gourry, Master of the Obvious, protested.
"I know!" Sheifyl wailed. "There was no effect!"
While the other three had exclaimed over the ineffectiveness of Sheifyl's spell, Zelgadiss had regarded Lina. He placed a gentle hand on her forehead, disturbed by the intensity of the fever. "We'll build strectcher, and carry Lina tomorrow," he annoucned over the din.
"Hai, good idea," Amelia agreed.
"In the meantime, I'll get some water to cool her," Sheifyl added.
"I'll go with you," Amelia volunteered, grabbing what containers were at hand.
"What's a stretcher?" Gourry asked, and was promptly ignored.
The girls left for the nearby lake. Gourry, ever the practical one, went about fixing dinner, as he was still hungry. Zel seated himself next to Lina; what little appetite he'd had was gone now.
"Lina?" he ventured softly. When he got no reply, he tried again, more loudly, "Lina?"
"Wha?" she slurred. "Wha izzit?"
"You're sick," he informed her.
"Fancy that," she mumbled, waking a bit. "Must be why I feel like I've gone ten rounds with Shaburanigdu and lost."
"Do you have any idea why a healing spell had no effect?" he asked, hoping to find some clue as to how to help her.
"No."
"Damn," Zel breathed, then said more loudly, "Are you certain you aren't hungry? You ought to eat, to bolster your strength."
"Sorry t'dissapoint you, but I couldn't eat a thing."
That, more than the fever, disturbed Zel.
Amelia and Sheifyl soon returned, bearing cold lake water in various and sundry containers. Amelia aided a not-entirely-lucid Lina in sitting up, and Sheifyl held a cup while Lina drank.
After only a few cups, Lina announced she could drink no more. She soon fell into an exausted sleep.
Gourry was the first one to speak after Lina lost conciousness. "She's really sick, isn't she?"
"Yes, Gourry, she's very sick," Zel confirmed, a worried expression on his face.
"This isn't good," Gourry concluded, and the others couldn't help but agree.
Sheifyl tore a few strips of cloth from her cape and soaked them in the cold water. She placed the wet cloths on Lina's forehead, wincing when she noticed that Lina's fever seemed worse.
The night seemed to fall suddenly, and with the dark, the group realised just how tired they were from worrying and such. Amelia valiantly volunteered for the first watch, and the others bedded down, attempting to sleep.
Around midnight, everyone was alerted by Lina's cries. En masse, they surrounded her.
Her cries were mostly nonverbal, and what did have discernable words made no sense. She was thrashing about more violently with each passing moment.
"She'll hurt herself!" Amelia fretted.
Wordlessly, Zelgadiss knelt down next to Lina and, as gently as possible, restrained her. It wasn't terribly difficult; under the best of conditions he was stronger than she, and these were hardly the best of conditions. He winced slightly upon realising just how hot her fever was.
It was several hours before Lina stopped convulsing. By that time, Amelia had fallen into an exausted slumber, and Sheifyl was drifting in and out of conciousness.
Zel released Lina with some reluctance, and took up a seat next to Gourry, who was watching the feverish girl with something akin to fear.
Just before sunrise, Zelgadiss noticed that Lina had stopped breathing.
Zel cried out without really being aware of it, rousing the girls. Sheifyl was the first to realise the cause of Zel's outburst, and she frantically attempted to force air back into Lina's lungs. She stopped only when, at Zel's urging, Gourry gently pulled her away.
Amelia timidly reached out and felt Lina's throat, gasping at how quickly the tiny sorceress' skin had become chill.
Comprehension set in all at once. Amelia and Sheifyl burst into noisy hysterics. Gourry started screaming like a beansidhe, cursing the gods and Fate and anything else he could think of. Zelgadiss was himself as still as a corpse, unable to weep or scream, unable to do anything more than stare at the doused flame that was Lina's corpse.
Nothing is real
Nothing
Nothing is
There is no fire
There is no flame
There is nothing
Nothing is right
Nothing
Nothing is
I do not weep, as they do
I long to weep and mourn, as they do
I need more than tears
Nothing is right
Nothing
Nothing is