Zelgadis woke, squinting and disoriented in the pre-dawn grey. Where were they again..?? Oh yes, a forest just inside the barrier that seperated the rest of the world from Demon's Island. Against all odds, they'd made it. There was a flush of aqua along the thin wedge of sky that showed through the trees, the stars beginning to retreat along with the thick black of night, turning tail in the bold face of the rising sun. Zel rose and shook his cloak out, turning an eye to where Ameria and Gourry slept. Neither had moved or stirred and he swung his eyes around to where Xelas had bedded down. He was greeted by an empty space and one of his eyebrows lifted. Resignedly, he pulled his cloak around his shoulders and went to look for her, half fearing where he would find her. If they didn't need her to find Lina...well, at least she seemed to be more loopy then annoying, unlike a certain subordinate of hers. Then again, said subordinate had apparently tried to doublecross them twice, and since Mazoku reportedly never did anything without the consent of their masters.....Zelgadis's lips tightened unconciously as he walked, his frown deepening at the thought of Xelloss.
Filia had claimed Xelloss was willing to trade on Lina's life in exchange for Valgarv rejoining the Mazoku. Hellmaster Phibrizo had thanked Xelloss for bringing Lina Inverse to him unharmed. Zelgadis snorted, the thought of what he would like to do to Xelloss rising pleasently to the murky surface of Xelloss's true intentions. What bothered him most however, was not what Xelloss held in store for Lina, but that Lina didn't seem to care...!!!
Instead of fireballing his ass whenever the priest appeared she let him walk alongside them. Filia's recounting of Xelloss's pitch to Valgarv had merely gotten Xelloss a thump on the head. "He can use me any way he wants," she had plainly said. Zel brushed away a skeletal branch as he walked, snapping it without knowing.
Was the girl out of her mind?? Granted Lina seemed to distrust Xelloss, her eyes going hard and wary whenever he approached, but she ignored the threat the priest posed, seeming to either not notice or care that Xelloss was far more powerful then any of them, no matter how much of a play he made at hiding it. Zelgadis's hands tightened into fists at his side, his teeth set in a grimace as the rapid drumbeat of his thoughts pulsed wildly in time with his racing heart.
They were alone.
Lina was alone with that two timing, double crossing freak of a Mazoku who could easily......
His foot collided with something thick and soft. Zelgadis cursed. He'd lost himself thinking and now he could be in the middle of L-sama-knows-where. He looked down, preparing to extracate his foot from the rotten log it had hit.
Except it wasn't a rotten log. It was an enormous black wolf, charcoal as the night that had just passed, busily devoring the bloody strips of a torn rabbit carcass held between the massive paws.
Zel screamed and the wolf looked at him impassively, licking the last crimsom drops off its paws.
What's the matter, Zel-kun?? the thought cunningly inserted into his head asked. Don't you recognise me?
Zel screamed again for lack of anything better to do, and then promptly passed out. The wolf lumbered up and shook itself, then daintily grasped Zel's collar between strong silver fangs that winked in the gloom, and began to drag him back in the direction of camp.
Filia sighed as she moved about, settling things in preparation for the store's opening. At her side, Val was diligently trying to clear the stoop of dust with a broom twice his size. She watched him for a moment, hiding a smile in the corner of her mouth as he tried to perform his task well. A child was never too young to learn skills and responsibility and Val was doing quite well for a child of his age. The smile drifted for a moment as she silently gauged his size and apparent age for the hundreth time. To any other eyes, Val was a sturdy, if somewhat sullen child of about two. In Filia's eyes he was a child who shouldn't even be able to take human form, who should still be a nestling huddled in his basket, unable to fly or forage for food on his own.
As a general rule, dragon chicks were not even supposed to hatch from their eggs before six months had passed since their mother's laying.
Dark Star had been defeated eight months ago. Val had hatched within a month, taken human form within three. Her heart hurt, a small and creeping fear biting at it from the inside. But to dwell on these things lead to other, more biting thoughts, foremost why Val had been reincarnated at all. What had taken pity on him - or her, and brought him back? Perhaps it wasn't pity that brought him back. A thousand ideas, each crueler then the last swarmed her head and made her dizzy.
Far away through the pain, she was aware of Val patting her back. "Are you okay mama? Filia? Ok??" His small voice sounded plaintive and thin, as if it echoed from the inside of a tin bell.
She hugged him back. "I'm okay Val-chan. Really."
"Yes, I know it's a pain," General Sherra remarked as she pushed her way through the dense underfoliage of the forest, "but Incognito is the way we're supposed to go." She shook her head. "No, I'm not really sure what it means either."
A comforting thrum near her hip. She smiled and patted Duofolger, curving her hand around it to shield it from the many grasping branches and twigs. Several adorned her braid and sleeves, pointy decorations. "Just a little further."
Green twigs snapped in her path, and she exhaled loudly, a joyful snort. "Made it!!" Duofolger thrummed in response and Sherra flopped down in the welcoming shade of a well leafed tree. The sun was getting high, and the shining streaks of light it cast down on the forest floor were beginning to make her eyes hurt. Mazoku tended to have photosensitive eyes and therefore rarely traveled in broad daylight. Or at least that's what Dynast-sama had told her. She was a bit confused on what exactly "photosensitive" meant, but she accepted that it had something to do with why her eyes hurt after being out in the sun for only a few minutes and why she had to stay in a dark room with a band of black cloth over her eyes after that prolonged daylight campaign. She shut her eyes for a few moments to rest them, idly stroking Duofolger with her right hand.
"We're going to the town of Aeilia," she told the sword. "Why? Dynast-sama's orders of course. There's supposed to be some ancient magic device sealed up in some ruins there and he wants us to retrieve it. Oh yeah, I also felt the Beastmaster heading that way." Sherra grimaced, the thought of facing down Xelas Metallium both pleasent and frightning in a good, Mazoku sort of way. She doubted she would be able to defeat Beastmaster in a straight fight, being only a General. Generals were not known for their magical prowess, and Beastmaster was quite powerful in a sneaky, now you see me, now you (1)
Of course, no one was really sure exactly how powerful Xelas Metallium was, since she had Xelloss do most of her fighting for her.
Sherra rolled over on her stomach and munched the apple she had brought along, continuing to ponder in that disjointed way so common to teenage girls, even if they happen to be Mazoku teenage girls.
Anyways, the goal wasn't to defeat her, but to merely be a thorn, an impediment in her path, a...a stumbling block! in the way of her progress until Dynast-sama finished whatever he was doing. She wasn't afraid to die of course. If she died, Dynast-sama would resurrect her, same as he had before, when Lina Inverse had killed her that first time. Being dead had been strangly unpleasent; as a Mazoku she had been taught that death was the great end all creatures sought, and to die was not only fulfilling, but necessary and right. She thought it had been more like dank and cold, bone-chilling in a bad way, not pleasent in the least.
Oh well. She sighed and threw her apple core at some passing rabbits. If she had to die in order to give Dynast-sama the time he needed to pinpoint and retrieve Lina Inverse from the Astral Plane, so be it. Retrieve Lina and Xelloss as well, she supposed. She squinched up her eyes in displeasure at the thought of Xelloss being in her home. Fruitcake. As nutty as the creature that bore him. Xelloss was an anomaly, created to fulfill a need and a desire, Dynast had told her, a truly warped need. Beastmaster had actually raised him like a human child. There was dire talk of love being involved. Sherra rolled back over and tucked her hands behind her head, grimacing at the trees above.
All this of course, had made her crush on him that much more embarassing.
"We are not wasting time," she informed Duofolger haughtily. "My eyes hurt and I want to wait until the sun goes down a little more. Besides, Beastmaster isn't anywhere near Aeilia yet. We have time."
Duofolger made a rude noise. "Yeah, well, same to you," Sherra told it, then settled into a more comfortable position and continued to think.
Xelloss had had a relationship a few hundred years back with Riss, Deep Sea Dolphin's Priest. Or should that be "Priestess"? Sherra unconciously chewed a strand of hair as she puzzled it out. Oh well, it didn't really matter. Riss was a tiny thing, with long hair the deep navy of night and pale, bluish skin the color of skim milk. She and her "sister" Neria, Dolphin's General were practically twins-small, quiet, and blue-toned, thick hair cascading down their backs to fall in a small pool at their feet. Neither of them had ever been seen in a combat situation.
Riss had intrigued Xelloss with her owl-like personality-silent, watchful, mysterious - as well as the tantalising promise of secrets hidden somewhere within that birdlike body. The two had dallied with each other for a while, then appparently parted amiably since Riss was still alive after their break-up. Sherra bit her lip meditively, hands continuing to stroke Duofolger, who was silently happy at all the attention it was receiving today.
Once Xelloss had a "thing" going with a human girl who displeased him in some matter - cheated on him was the the common theory hold by most of the gossips. She had died a rather spectacular death.
After her, Xelloss had brief flings now and then, flitting from one partner to the next in an aimless way, never staying long enough to even leave the side of a bed warm.
And then Lina Inverse came along.
"Bah!!" Sherra spat. "Lousy little ningen. Why's she so special? Why her? Why?"
Of course in her heart she knew, knowing why Garv had tried so desparately to kill her, why Phibrizo had valued her, why Dynast-sama was twisting himself into knots to make her theirs. Great power had always turned Xelloss on to a degree.
Hidden somewhere in that frail body was the power that had slept for centuries, through death and rebirth, spinning itself a filment in the web of life, vexing long nights of sleep into nightmare by the murmur of a rocking cradle...