Lina was bored. And so was the creator of this strange alternate world she's stuck in. There was nothing for miles around but rocks, not very interesting ones, either. A deep growl rumbled across the range. Our heroine brightened. Time for lunch!
The fare was simple, but no one was complaining. It's fairly well known that Lina has a palette of a racoon; anything as long as it's edible. Noon was warmer than she was used to, so the shade a newly blown cliff provided proved a great relief. Not for long, though.
"How long do you intend to dwindle! We haven't got all the time in the world, you know!" Lina looked up at the stunted figure against the light of Cephiro's blazing twin suns.
"Zel?!" The unmistakable features of a chimera peered out of a tan hood as he dropped beside her, leaning against a weird staff. Somehow, the mage managed to look down on her from his ridiculous height of half her own. There was a childish cast to the distinctive face that was last seen belonging to a serious entity at least twice his current height.
"Who the hell's that? Never mind him, what about you? I can't believe the Princess Sent for a wet kid like you! What's your name, little girl?" Lina was baffled, not to mention stung by his references to herself.
"Now you look here, fella, I'm the Genius Bishojo Sorceress Lina Inverse and watch who you're calling 'little', kid !" She was rewarded with a peck on the head from the staff.
"A little more respect, girl ! I am Clef the Royal Mage, over three hundred years old your senior and far more advanced in the practise of magic!"
Of course this behaviour was wildly NOT Zelgadis, but, Lina decided, since she wasn't home anyway, it can't be Zel at all. That sorted out, the runt boiled her blood. A devious glint appeared in her eyes. "Wanna bet?"
As usual, people who'd challenged the Bandit-bane learn never to do it again. Clef learnt how it felt to be robbed.
There wasn't really anything of value on the elaborately dressed novice, Lina noted with a frown. Most of the loot turned out to be fakes. Except the staff, which didn't seem to be of much use, either. Sure, it looks powerfully mystical, but was really some kind of storage space or something. So far, what it yielded included a gigantic flying fish, three tacky suits of body armour and a tawny griffin; not to mention the handful of loose change, dust bunnies and little black book.
A lone figure crawled out of the sunset, his once fancy robes in a terrible state of disrepair. Pulling himself along with a makeshift cane twice his dwarfish size, Clef aknowledged for the first time just how much he needed his sprites. They would have gotten him here in much less time than the hours he took.
Well , He reasoned. At least he made it on his own two feet. Now to get to Presia and find that redheaded brat. There were certain items in that staff that he just had to get back.
It was more of a holographic slate than a book and browsing through the rows of alien inscriptions and holograms of strange looking creatures, all tall, curvy females; Lina realised the book for its true value. It wasn't the secret name list of accomplished sorceresses in the district, but something better for her purposes: the little address book where every desperate bachelor keeps the contact numbers of his potential dates. And judging from its condition, Clef was ve-ry desperate indeed.
But blackmail could wait. She was getting hungry.
It was high noon by the time Cephiro's Royal Mage caught up with his conqueror's tracks. Of course by then Lina was long gone, leaving a day-old cold camp where Clef found it at the edge of the Forest of Silence.
The first thing that caught his eye was a gigantic set of fish-bones which left him in a state of shock. He'd never known a single person who've managed to polish off a creatures of such great proportions in two meals, much less a tiny girl like that redhead!
It took a while for the implications to set in, but when it finally did, the chimera dwarf screamed and fainted.