It was dark red. Everything was dark red until he opened his eyes. The first experience was complete grogginess. For a moment his mind was blank. His eyes were wet, and he was sure the salt water coated his cheeks as well, even if he could not feel it. He moved his arm slightly, surprised to find that there was resistance. Someone had laid a blanket over him as he slept. He wondered what the material felt like for a moment, but was too tired to really try to figure it out. Then he realized that his neck was not stiff. Indeed, there was something under his head, some sort of soft material.
Zelgadis looked up and found himself looking up into the sad blue eyes of Amelia. His head rested on a blanket on her thighs as she gazed at him with that knowing expression, albeit upside down. "You're awake," she whispered quietly.
"How long was I out?"
She smiled genuinely, which made him feel uneasy. "You really were exhausted. About twelve hours."
Hesitantly, he asked, "We're you here the whole time?"
Amelia shook her head. "No. I got worried and started checking on you after a while. I haven't been here all that long." She placed her hand on his neck and began gently stroking the line of his jaw.
He could hardly feel it, but he imagined how nice it would be if he could. The chimera then realized that she had not mentioned anything about what had happened, nor had she asked how he was. The side of his lip betrayed him as it revealed a half smile. He liked that she was trying her best to make him feel better. When their eyes met again it was strange to see her smiling back. There was a sudden shot of cold on the back of his neck telling him to sit up, so he did to avoid shivering.
The sudden movement made Amelia gasp. Then she calmly breathed a small laugh.
He turned back to her, his eyes still unconsciously leaking all over his face. The smile was gone. "What?"
Her expression melted into a sort of confusion. "What?"
"What are you laughing for?" he questioned defensively.
A sudden pang of guilt hit her, though she knew she was innocent. "Oh. No. I was just thinking how nice it is to see you smile. I... I didn't think I'd see you do that for a long time."
Zelgadis stared at the floor, barely aware of himself or what she was saying. I certainly don't feel like smiling, he thought to himself. He looked at his exposed fingers, blue with darker stone fingernails that were, along with the rocks on his body, harder and more durable than the rest of him, if that was at all possible. The morning ritual of loathing had begun.
Amelia did not want to see him degrade. "If you would like to talk, we can," she offered, and her eyes lit up with that incorrigible hope.
"I'm all right," he assured her from force of habit.
And she shattered his illusion. "No, you're not."
Why did she have to say that? he wondered, and suddenly he did want to cry. All he wanted was his morning routine, anything so he didn't have to think about yesterday. His eyes were indeed still wet, and he rubbed his hand against the stones on his face to try to feel for moisture.
"It will be all right though." And as she said this she moved towards him and wrapped her arms around him from the side, leaning her head against his shoulder. "Everything will be all right." Her voice was soft, muted and angelic.
He wanted to believe her, but more importantly in his mind... "I can barely feel that," he mumbled.
Amelia tightened her grip, squeezing in a way that she felt would be too harsh, closing her eyes as well. It was not comfortable for her, and, had he been human, neither him as well. It made her think of him in a cage, a metal cage, and she had to bend the bars to make her presence known.
For his part, he only placed a hand right above her elbow, wanting to touch her but fearful that he might hurt her again. His eyes weren't drying out. "I'm crying, aren't I?" he finally asked aloud.
Amelia let go and straightened herself out. As horrible as his chimeric state was, she could not hide her curiosity. "Can't you tell?"
The way she asked made it seem so basic that he felt even less human. "I just can't tell if I've got tears on my face." He paused, wanting to explain. Wanting to share. "Once they get past my eyelids I can't feel them anymore."
The princess sniffled, then gave a weak smile as a tithe for the confidence. "Of course you're crying," she giggled in her soft sort of way, but the disheartened undertone weighed down her optimism as she used her glove to dry his face. It upset her to find out that most of the tears had spread in such a way they seemed to have soaked into his stone cheeks, and that trying to dry his face was really a pointless effort. Not that he couldn't have told her that.
So she cupped the rocks on the side of his eye, gently resting her thumb underneath his lower eyelid, where her glove could do some good. Their eyes met, locked on to one another, and his mouth fell into a loose frown. His blue green eyes compressed into tiny slits, but instead of looking enraged like they usually did, it made him look needy as the tears on the other side of his face spilled over that much quicker.
She sighed a sort of light "aww..." then removed her hand, took off her glove, and gently wiped his other eye.
As she did so, he never took his other eye off her. He desperately wanted to keep contact with the soft navy pools that felt so much for him, saw so much in him. His hand began to shake while he debated touching her, anywhere. Her arm, her face, he wanted to touch her, but his hand was shaking so badly, and he knew full well how upset he was. He was afraid he would hurt her.
He abruptly stood up, sniffled twice and started to walk towards the door.
Still surprised, Amelia called after him, "Where are you going?" She had not even had time to think to lower her arm.
"I just need to move," he revealed quite honestly. "I have to get up and do something, otherwise this is really going to start to get to me."
Xelloss was not watching the couple, but, like an IV that had run dry, he knew when his meal was done.
The goblins had long been interspersed throughout the area. Their war with the villagers had taught them a lesson they would never forget, and they had given up trying to chase the humans from their homeland. That was, until today. Until some sick wave of destruction took over their hearts, became their new pulse. Then all they wanted to do was destroy, so they took up their primitive weapons, their clubs and staffs and a few stolen swords, and they entered the town. The people of Privius were completely unprepared. There had not even seen a goblin in over thirty years, now they were arriving in groups of ten and twenty. The slaughter began quickly.
The screams of the townspeople barely carried themselves up the cliff side, but they had managed to reach Gourry's ears as he burst into the dining hall where his friends were conversing over their next destination. "Lina! We've got to get down to the village, quick! There's some kind of fight going on down there, and it doesn't seem pretty!" he frantically relayed.
Lina was more worried about Gourry's reaction than his actual words. For something to spook the experienced swordsman, it had to be bad. Or cruel. She stood up and pushed out her chair as she eyed her companions, focusing mainly on the blue one. "Are you going to...?"
The chimera remained still for a moment, contemplating the situation. He certainly was not in a mood to dispense any kind of justice or get entangled in a new quarrel. All the same, there was something inside him waiting to be let out since he let his tears dry, a heavy feeling in his chest that he wanted to get out. Finally concluding that doing anything was better than doing nothing, he nodded, and the four heroes ran to the cliff side and peered down.
"What are those goblins doing?" Lina wondered with an acute sense of shock. Even from hundreds of feet above the battleground, she could see the fires engulfing the homes of the innocent.
Amelia felt a similar fire burning in her justice-loving heart. "Let's get down there, Lina!" Both girls grabbed hold of Gourry's arms as Zelgadis jumped into action.
Literally jumped without reciting a spell.
"Zelgadis!!" In that instant, as Amelia scrambled to the edge to peer down, her knees shook so badly that she had to get on her hands and knees for fear of falling off herself. She was fully aware of Zelgadis' stunts, but something about the past two days made this time seem different.
The wind whipping up into his face had no effect on him, it was just the inertia, the force and movement that he felt, more inside of him than on the exterior. He always wondered what would happen to his body if he just let himself go from such a height. Would he be fine? Would his bones break? Could his skin buckle or shatter? As the ground rushed up to meet him, he realized that he still did not know the limits of his inhuman form. He wanted to know. He wanted knowledge like he had wanted power, and it burned in him. Yet as the ground got closer, the more dignified side of him turned his self-consciousness and good sense back on. I weigh too much. I'll probably end up waist deep in dirt and trying to pull myself out. How undignified. Softly compared to the loud gusts of the wind that made even his wiry hair flail in a mad rush, he chanted "Levitation." His descent slowed until he was safely on the ground. A dark-skinned goblin snarled and charged at him. Zelgadis could not hold back a devious smirk as he unsheathed his sword and ran the goblin through. Dark blood splattered onto his face and onto the ground as Zelgadis withdrew his sword from its target and moved on to the next.
Amelia heaved a gasp of relief before standing up. Her once shaking legs felt cold beneath her as she replaced her weight on them. She grabbed hold of Gourry's arm and the three levitated into the chaos. The townspeople flocked to them, if they could move at all. Women and men alike were being cornered by five goblins at a time. Bodies soiled the ground, too few of them goblins. It was too horrific to be any kind of stress relief, and even Zelgadis had resorted to trying to kill as many goblins in as short a time as possible.
Gourry picked right up on the contest, and he clenched his sword tightly in his hands as he went on his own massacre, more swift than bloody. Lina stood her ground, picking off goblins with well placed freeze arrows, so as not to start a new fire nor hurt any villagers. All the while Amelia was holding an ever expanding barrier over herself and any villager who could manage to reach her. She became the base in a bloody game of tag.
Zelgadis was carving a path back to his friends when he started to feel it again. A pull at the back of his neck, some sort of voice talking to him that he could not hear. "This is too easy, isn't it? You were made for grander tasks, were you not?" it asked him. The voice was so familiar it ached. The familiar chime of rings on a staff reverberated in his ears, and his vision went as dark and red as the blood that was sprayed on his face. "Impossible," Zelgadis stuttered to himself as the red quickly cleared into the battlefield. With an absent curiosity he rubbed his eyes and looked toward the sound.
He saw the rabid eyes of a possessed goblin and felt the burning pierce of a blade as it entered his stomach. "Wha?" he choked as he instinctively placed both hands over the short sword. Blood, his own blood, rushed over his hands, bubbled out around the blade and ran down his shirt. His eyes sharpened into their own slits as he realized he was in a play. Someone had staged this farce to get to him, the same someone who kept him from his cure. He snapped the wrists of the goblin which had managed to hurt him, then killed it with its own sword after he yanked it from his own wound.
By this point, Lina had noticed the chimera's momentum halting and was making her way to him. It did not matter. He only saw the outrageous destruction that someone was causing on his behalf. He looked upon the bloodied skirts of women, the soiled hair of children who would lay forever in the dirt. It reminded him of all the death he himself had caused for another's behalf. And the goblins still rampaged.
"That's it!" he barked. "I know you're out there!" He clutched one hand over his wound and raised the other hand stiffly. ""Infinite earth, mother who nurtures all life..."
"Zel! Are you nuts!?" Lina lunged at Zelgadis in an attempt to tackle him, or at least stop him. Her best attempt turned into an ineffective attempt to grapple his arm. He shook her off in one swift movement.
"...let thy power gather in my hand!"
"We're in a dead forest! Everything will burn!"
He stared down at her with a look that said he did not care. Then his eyes focused on a more important goal, some unknown figure in the distance. "Vlave..."
Lina bolted back up, tried to push his arm down. "I can't let you do this! Not here!" She felt it when she looked at his eyes, the need to get back at whatever caused him such pain. She was not even sure if he had a real victim, she just knew that casting a highly destructive spell would give his soul some relief. It was not a good enough reason to sacrifice lives, however.
"How -- "
"Sleeping!" It was a simple spell, but she had to pour all her concentration into it for it to have any effect on someone as resistant as Zelgadis.
At first his eyes widened when he felt the spell literally try to close them. Then he struggled to keep them only half open. "Lina?" he mumbled through betrayal, the last syllable turning into a yawn against his will.
"I know you're hurting, Zel. You're just gonna have to sleep it off." She tried to sound comforting as he unconsciously began to lean on her.
"not now," the chimera argued as he unconsciously leaned towards her. "please, not now. i have to know who..." He interrupted himself with another yawn.
Her eyes watered up as she smiled at him. She was giving herself a headache as her mind focused past friendship in an attempt to bring him down. She steadied him as best she could until his knees sank to the ground, followed by his hands. "Don't fight it, Zel. Just relax," she reassured him, placing her hands on his shoulders.
"you don't understand, lina. please..." he fought on, pushing himself up with his mind while everything physical about him was heading down. "i don't..."
Her eyes could not keep contact with his. The redhead wanted to drown out his voice. He had never pleaded before, and she hated the fact that he seemed so pathetic because of her. So she looked at his hands instead, his blood-soaked hands. She gasped when she realized that one hand was drenched in blood too light to belong to a goblin. "Zel..?" she whispered, though it felt more like a scream in her throat. "Zel, you're bleeding?"
The verbalization of his pain had no bearing on his concern. "no, lina. not that. i don't care... just don't make me sleep, lina.... i don't want to dream... not now..."
Guilt washed over Lina Inverse like a sea of ice. She shuddered as Zelgadis' head fell into her lap, and she hugged him despite the sharp wire hairs that scraped her arms. "I'm sorry, Zel. I really am."
"The next time you run into the middle of a group of goblins, warn me." Gourry had actually admonished her. She looked up to see the swordsman relaxed and covered with the blood of the enemy. Lina looked around curiously to a noted absence of goblins. Amelia was still standing in the same spot, albeit with thirty people crowded around her. She seemed too tired to walk as she stumbled over to her friends with the aid of one of the men she had saved.
"Is he all right?"
"He needs a healing spell," Lina replied. "One of the goblins must have had an enchanted knife... What happened to all the goblins?"
Amelia hurriedly chanted the words to a Recovery spell, not even attempting to see the wound. It was easy enough to target the wound from all the blood that poured out from his midsection underneath him. She knew the wound was not fatal from Lina's tone of voice, but all the same, seeing him bleed scared her white.
As Gourry turned the sleeping chimera onto his back for the girl with the now glowing hands, he explained, "They all just started to run away once you started talking to Zelgadis."
Lina picked up the short sword that laid on the ground near them. It was finely crafted with a golden, jewel-encrusted hilt, a far cry from any other weapon the defeated goblins clutched in their rigamorose hands. The sorceress's logic went into full gear, and her eyes narrowed with sharp illumination. "Someone gave this sword to the goblins," she nearly hissed.
Amelia looked up from her recovery spell. "What do you mean? Who would do that?"
Suddenly they all heard it, the unmistakable chime that heralded the appearance of a former enemy.
"Rezo?!" Amelia cried, beside herself with fear.
"No," Lina affirmed as she peered hatefully into the forest. "Someone just wants Zelgadis to think so. We're being watched."
The raven tressed princess looked down at her resting love. Worry made her fingers tremble as she took a moment to run them over his relaxed features. She realized that she knew nothing of the chimera's past, and what dangers could be following him. She made a mental note to ask him before she resumed his healing. Justice had been violated, but, worse than that, someone had taken away Zelgadis' happiness. They would not be forgiven.
Xelloss laughed to himself, slightly. He did not like to show his amusement to the extent that he felt it, but he was nearly hysterical with it. He held the red priest's staff before his face, merely metal and wood to one so powerful as he. Best souvenir I ever picked up, he thought, tapping the staff on the ground one more time. The chiming actually sounded pleasant to him, and the birds, who had no concept of its fearsome portent, blissfully sang along with it.
Well, as you can all guess by this ending, this story has just finished the first part of the One Third Trilogy. On the other hand, it only gets weirder after this folks. The next part of the story will be deeply psychological and introspective, particularly due to a certain mysterious priest. I hope you all enjoyed the story so far and will join me again in One Third Demon.