Xellos Metallium was the most evil man in all the world. However, define man by arms and legs and that's true, but call him Mazoku and you'd be more on target.
Xellos sat under the moon, now, watching. The moon of many faces, he thought, dramatically. He sighed. No sleep, tonight. Not that he needed sleep, but having your eyes closed all day long can make you just a tad on the dreamer's side of the fence. His mistress, the Greater Beastmaster Zelas Metallium, ruler of Wolf-Pack Island and Mazoku Lord, had sent him out that night.
It was winter, and the winds were bitter to breathe. His eyes open, he ran over the instructions, just once more. "Go to the well in the middle of the hidden woods, and take out what you find in the bottom."
"Why, mistress, would you want that?"
"Xellos..." she had answered, the smoke a billowing cloud around her face, "why would you want to know? You'll figure it out."
He had smiled, then bowed. However, now, as he neared the place where the hidden woods were, he was uncertain. Not only had he not found out what it was that was at the bottom of that well, no one had been able to tell him what it could even have been used for. Indeed, the only thing they did seem to know was that that ol' magic well was abandoned long ago, and good riddance. The mystery thrilled him as much as it made him stare thoughtfully at the moon, deep in thought.
Just as a breeze coaxed the leafless branches around him to shiver, he stood up in a smooth motion, and disappeared right there.
Far from that spot, in a place that has a most secret location, Xellos appeared, his eyes opened, alert, questioning. Before him, under trees that were gnarled and truly ugly was a well, broken on this side and that side, but glistened with black waters in its depth. He regarded the well for a moment, but he felt nothing odd about this place. Nothing that should have sent up the hairs on the back of his neck as it did.
He shook his head and set off to work. For a little while he stood there, chanting a few magic spells, mostly opening spells and release spells, which all amounted to "open saysame" . In the end, he leaned upon his ruby staff, tired. He peered at the waters jostling in the winter's wind, thinking.
Then, since he could not think of one other spell that might help, he stepped forward, closer to the well, even though everything in him was calling him and idiot.
Perhaps he was.
He didn't see that the waters were drifting from their mouth, and pooling around his feet. He was thinking about the bottom of the lake, what, he thought could be at the bottom of those cold, blind depths that his mistress would want. A bauble? A Claire Bible? The sock she lost in the laundry? This place, this was a place of death. He could smell old blood here. He could even hear the screams that were delicious to him, though they did cause him to shiver. He didn't look down as the waters at his feet wrapped around his ankles. When he was swept off his feet, he finally realized his mistake, but before he could finish his thought, defend himself in any way, he was dragged into the lake.
Cold. He was cold.
His eyes were opened, he knew, they were wide and violet, and searching, but there was nothing. He was floating in cold, somewhere between light and dark, a grey, fuzzy, miserable cold.
Then, he saw something, heard a voice say, "So that is what you are." And another say, "Xelloooooossssssss....." then nothing, nothing forever.
When he woke, he was in a bed. He shook his head slowly, and was amazed when he found he could barely move. "Weak as a kitten." Someone said.
He looked up. There was a man there, an old man with silver hair. He put a cloth on Xellos' head, smiling at him when he saw his eyes open. "Welcome back to the land of the living." He said. "We thought you were dead, you know. Cold as ice, you were, and so pale."
Xellos watched him work, putting wood on the fire, dusting off some rickety pieces of furniture, pulling blankets out of a closet and stacking them on top of the already towering stack on him. Then the man left and Xellos whispered in a tiny voice whose weakness surprised him, "Zelas...?"
But no one answered. Soon, he dozed off, the word a frozen time on his lips.
The morning light woke him up. A boy was sitting in his room. Leaning forward in a chair that he had dragged across the room, his eyes wide and searching as Xellos opened his eyes and look at him. "Hi." The boy said.
Xellos said nothing, but sat up in the bed, smiling a very fake smile at the boy who brightly returned it. "Hello."
"Grandfather said to come to him when you woke up."
"Did he?"
"Uh-huh. He said he needed to speak to you."
"Then shall we keep him waiting?"
"No! But are you still hurt? You talked a lot in your sleep like you were..."
Xellos' face never slipped as he thought about that. In his sleep he had spoken, but about what, that was the question.
Before he could ponder that for too long, the boy took his frozen grin to mean he was peachy and pulled on his hand, leading him out.
He lead him to a room in which an old man sat. The same old man from last night. He didn't turn to them, but the boy, in his high voice, announced them in a formal, childlike way that made Xellos feel he was a dignitary to a king.
Only when the boy left did the old man turn towards Xellos. Xellos recognized the silver hair, the kind face from the night before and in his lilting voice, he said, "Thank you for all you have done. I don't think I'll forget it. But I do have to go."
"Do you?" the old man said as though he knew something. "Why don't you stay."
Xellos simply replied, "I have no reason to stay here."
"Yes you do. You will save this city."
"Old man." Xellos finally answered after a long silence in which his face fell, his smile like a giant piece of cheese in his face. "I believe you've mixed me up with someone else. L-Sama knows that is not my line of work."
"L-Sama knows very well. She is the one who sent you."
For a moment, Xellos stared at the old man, his eyes opening as he heard what could only be taken as complete truth or lunacy. At the moment, he wasn't certain. "Sent me? As I recall..." but he stopped. Who was this old man anyway?
"Yes...you fell? Yes? Into a well?"
Slowly, his eyes burrowing deep into the old man's, Xellos replied, "Yes..."
The old man threw his arms up, smiling, then as Xellos watched in amazement, and a little sick, the old man wrapped his arms are him, hugging him and exclaiming, "Exactly right! Exactly as it should have happened!"
"P..leas...e" Xellos choked, all the happiness that the old man radiated did not sit well with his delicate stomach. He was even worst than that Amelia.
The old man pulled back as Xellos slid against a wall and onto the floor, pale. "Are you alright?" he asked.
Xellos waved him off. "Fine, fine. But what does L-Sama have to do with this?"
"Long ago, she told me that the Mazoku would destroy our city, but because my great great grandfather was once in her favor, she made a deal with him. The city would rest at the bottom of a well for a thousand years until one would come and save it."
"Me?"
"Yes."
Then, to the old man's surprise, the purple haired man on the floor, paler than snow and weaker than anything, started to laugh. "What's so funny?" he asked, offended that all those hopes were such play things and trinkets to this one.
Shaking his head, Xellos explained, "Do you know who I am, old man?"
"Yes, you are the one who will..."
"Let me start again... Xellos stood quickly, straight and more deadly, and the old man suddenly felt afraid. Xellos stayed where he was, but his eyes were cold and for the first time, not human. "Have you heard of my master? Greater Beastmaster Zelas? Yes? O, stop shivering. She is my master, and I am Xellos, her priest and general. Now do you understand?"
"No..." the old man said, clearly trying to control himself, "I do not believe you."
"Should I try to convince you?" Xellos questioned, the darkness of the room pressing in from all sides.
"No." he hung his head. "You are a Mazoku."
"Yes. And, if you'd show me the way out, I'll be on my way..."
"No." In mid motion, Xellos stopped brushing off his cloak and stared at the man, furious. The old man swallowed. "You are the one. You shall not leave here until we do."
With that, Xellos glared at him, then willed himself to the well and vanished before the old man's amazed eyes.
The well was the same as the one he had seen, except around this one lay sweet flowers around the snow. "How will I go back?" he whispered to himself. He could have laughed, here he was, one of the most powerful of the Mazoku, and he couldn't even win over a big pot of water.
For a long time, until night came again, he whispered spells and drew pentagons. He even tried to call to his master again, but no matter what, the old man's words seemed true. He couldn't budge one inch from this place. He was stuck.
That night, he appeared in the old man's room. He expected him to be in bed, but found him reading by moonlight. He turned to him almost immediately and asked, "Are you ready, then?"
Xellos nodded, his eyes were glaring, wide open, and his annoyance rang out like a bell. The old man, however, seemed oblivious as he moved to the other side of the room and pulled a vile from a cabinet. He presented it to Xellos, saying, "Here. L-Sama told my great great grandfather that you must first drink this before you will be able to help."
"What is it?" Xellos asked, suspicious.
The old man shrugged like his shoulders were heavy as rocks, then he said, "We shall find out together."
Xellos took the vile in hand, thinking he really didn't want to drink the gold mixture, and he didn't want to be here and he didn't want to face Zelas with this news...but even as he drank the mixture, he realized that it had been Zelas who had sent him there, without a reason and...
...pain...there was pain...The drink that had been in his hand crashed to the floor. He fell to the ground and a pain spread from his mouth to his feet and filled his chest where his heart would have been were he human with screaming. He didn't scream, couldn't...but he felt the old man there, kneeling and seeming worried as he rolled into a ball and shook...
After what seemed an eternity, he fell asleep.
When he woke, the old man was there. He looked tired, but smiled at him. Xellos felt strange. There was something...missing...he looked at his hands, they were the same, but they weren't. He sat up slowly, touching his head and shaking it. "What happened?" he asked
"You lost consciousness for two days." The old man answered.
"Two days?"
"Yes."
"I feel strange."
The old man's smile faltered, then and Xellos searched his face before the old man turned away from him. He told him to get up and helped him. Together, they moved across the floor to a mirror.
The old man pointed to the mirror and Xellos after a moment, Xellos came face to face with himself. But it wasn't him. But it was.
"I noticed your eyes the night it happened. They changed immediately. Your hair. And something else, something different altogether changed..." Xellos was staring. His eyes had indeed changed. They were brown. Deep, deep brown and his hair was black.
The Trickster Priest was gone.
Here, alone, was Xellos.
"Old man." He said after a moment. He felt weak immediately, as though mortal flesh weighs more or something and a panic rose in him immediately, but he squashed it. "Take me where you need to. I'm going to finish this."
The old man nodded.
They left in the night, only a few people saw them off, mostly the kitchen help who gave them food and praised them even as their lips shook from cold. Xellos didn't return their wishes. He didn't look at any of them, but look at the moon, high in a sky he knew to be the jostling fill of a well. He had forgotten this human stuff. He was freezing, and finally had allowed a servant to drape a fur-line coat over his shoulders and eaten some of the offered food. The old man was watching him through the corner of his eye, as though he would go murderous without that sight on him. Xellos ignored him.
The road was long, and they didn't rest one night. Xellos felt exhausted as he had forgotten he had ever felt. The old man talked about the prophecy, he said and Xellos glared at the path ahead of them, "L-Sama told my grandfather that the city must be swept away from the earth, but made a deal with him that it need not be destroyed. The Mazoku were everywhere then, and grandfather saw the deal as wonderful. His people would be saved, and given a place of total freedom from that threat. So it came that on the day that we were to be attacked, L-Sama gave grandfather a spell. The moment he chanted the words, he died, you know, but then...here we are, very alive. The people were happy at first, but soon found that they couldn't go past the well, they couldn't leave this place. In the beginning that drove quite a few of us mad. But then, L-Sama informed a priestess of the prophecy of one who would come and save us all."
Xellos, bitterly digested all that, then said, in a manner most human in its bite, "And I'm to be your hero?" he shook his head. "If I knew Zelas would not blow this place up with me in it were I late to come back, I wouldn't help you." Xellos knew every word was a lie, but it didn't matter. "I despise your little city. I wish something would kill me so you were stuck here forever..."
And just as he said that, something did come. It was huge and black. Xellos recognized it at once. "Devonum" he whispered as he jumped off his horse. The old man came beside him. "Don't kill yourself. It's a Devonum, deadly. Kills with a single attack."
Then it came at them, Xellos immediately tried to set up a shield, but nothing happened. The Devonum came at him. But the old man got in the way. He was swung like a doll across the path. "No..." Xellos whispered. Then he glared at the Devonum and took his staff in one hand and ran to where the old man was and put him over his shoulder with the other...
...then ran as fast as his legs would carry him, right under the Devonum. Lina Inverse, he thought, you are quite a wonderful teacher in the escape classes. The Devonum came after them, and Xellos ran as the mortal blood in his veins grew tired and slow. Just when he thought he had to stop, to fall, the old man said in his ear, "To the cave...the cave!" and indeed, there was a cave, cut out the landscape like a mountain.
Xellos ran into it and set the old man down, listening to the night as the Devonum roared and shattered the world outside, then finally, bored, or having forgotten them, it left.
The old man was pale, like paper is pale, and he breathed faster than a hummingbird, in short, shallow breaths. "Old man!" Xellos shouted to him. "Wake up! What do I do to go home!?"
"Is that...al..ll...you...car..e...about?" The old man shuddered.
"Yes!" Xellos immediately answered. "Why not? What have I gotten from coming here? I've lost my powers and my ability to travel a hundred miles in either direction. I've been attacked twice...."
However, when the old man fell asleep and didn't asnwer, Xellos shook him until he woke up. "Save...them..." he said.
Xellos looked down at him. "how?" he asked deperatley.
"Want...to....?"
"Yes! Tell me how to!" he demanded, not sure it he meant it or not.
"In the middle...of the...cave...there lies a....from...Sama...." But then, he fell asleep, and no shaking on Xellos' part could wake him.
And so, alone, and cold, and unsure of anything, his motives and himself, Xellos moved into the cave, blind if not for windows in the rock, carved out for moonlight. So the old man was dead, he thought, so what...better he than himself. He laughed. It didn't work. So they'll all die if I can't find it, so what...but his pace was faster and his eyes darted around everywhere, missing nothing.
"There..." he whispered after a long while.
There it was. It had to be right. It was a little waterfall, and in the center of the falls was a sword, long and gleaming.
Xellos approached it slowly, uncertain whether any of the old Mazoku traps might still be working on the blade. However, after going on every side of it, he could see nothing, and the foreign rumblings in his stomach made him stand, stare at the sword, then put a single hand in the falls and pull the blade out.
He expected something as he stood there with one arm stretched out and grasping the sword under the waterfall with the other hand covering his closed eyes. But nothing happened. After a moment, he pulled the sword completely from the falls.
"Is that all?" he pondered, a little smile on his mouth. But he knew it was too simple, too easy, not enough to satisfy one of L-Sama's workings. "Then what do I do?" Then he stared at the blade.
He looked around him, exspecting a change in the world now that the sword was drawn, but nothing happened. He tried chopping parts off suspious rocks that seemed like doorways. Then he sat down on the floor.
He wondered about everything for a long time until he fell asleep. He dreamed of Zelas then, and saw her with a blade she meant for him. Then he wasn't there any more, just like the mirror had shown. He stood tall in the darkness, and Zelas presented him proudly with her sharp teeth shining as her new general emerged from the womb of humanity and stretched his new arms that now bore the strength of the Mazoku.
He woke up then. He heard the waterfalls, saw the cave around him. For a moment he felt his body, tingling from the dream. He stared at the blade then. "You're like the one in my dream." He mused. Then he rolled his eyes and sat down heavily. "Stupid prophecy. If the old man's damn grandfather hadn't killed himself, L-Sama never would have...." Then he stopped and stared at the blade. "Killed himself?" His eyes widened.
Lifting the blade, he studied it as it studied him, reflecting him in a distorted mirror on its shaft. He felt his chest, where in the dream Zelas had killed him. It felt warm and he could feel his human heart. Suddenly, he nodded. "Alright, L-Sama. If that's the way it has to be."
He stood, lifting the sword high above his head, then he brought it down with all his strength as the cave and the waterfall watched on. Blood splattered on their eyes and Xellos, the very human, very mortal Xellos fell to the ground with the sword in his chest, gasping, "I never...remembered it hurting...gods..."
Then Xellos died.
Warm. He was warm when someone called his name. He opened his eyes. "Xellos."
"Zelas..." whispered Xellos hoarsely. "I'm alive."
"Yes." Zelas laughed. "That would be my doing."
"And I feel..."
"Like your old self..?"
Xellos was silent. Then finally he said, "The city of the well..."
"It's back. But you will never return. I was ordered by L-Sama herself to send you there, for some ridiculous prophecy or something, then I find you dying in a field." Her eyes flashed hot and bitter. Xellos turned his head away. She put a gently hand on his cheek then. "She needed you to die, Xellos. 'One who had died already must be killed'. She needed your blood, Xellos. Nothing more. Did you figure it out before?"
"No." he confessed. And said nothing for a long while Zelas stroked his cheek and hummed something. She stayed with him for hours. Finally, when it was nearly morning, she kissed him on his forehead and said, "I confess, part of me was happy to find you dying with your blood around you in that field, Xellos. What joy it is to be a mother, what bliss it is to have rebirth." Then she was gone.
When Xellos finally moved, he found he wasn't weak, found he wasn't cold nor tired nor hungry. He didn't think he really miss it at all.
That morning, he went to where the well was, standing high in a tree. He saw the people gathering around the edges of the city, watching the world outside as if they suspected it might chase them away. He saw that a new mound had been risen on a hill near a cave in the city.
He turned away, then, Zelas never waited for no man, L-Sama no one, and the day was running away without him. He spared one look at the city as a girl ventured onto the new land, then he smiled and left that place forever.