In the center of where a great fire was raging, two tired people sat on the ground. Once again, they were the only two who survived amidst an inferno but neither tried to dwell on it too much. The gambit had been won and they survived, hopefully resolving some guilt that took root less than two decades before.
"Rain? Where did the rain come from?" Terisa groaned, feeling a two-day headache coming on. Despite her earlier bravado, she actually only had limited experience combating spirits and no experience fighting both the spiritual and physical side of her opponent. Several times as she severed the spirits apart, she almost felt like dropping but stubborn pride kept her going.
"Who knows?" Zel replied absently, focusing on healing the minor cases of frostbite and burns Terisa from her fight with the Dark One. He had been afraid deep inside that he was going to watch her die before him, knowing that sometimes her mouth out distanced her skills. Fortunately, his worries were ill founded. Terisa knew how to take care of herself. "How are you feeling?"
She blinked, not quite trusting her hearing. "What did you say?"
"I said," Zel repeated patiently. "How are you feeling?"
"Why do you care?" she challenged.
Zelgadiss sighed. Reconciliation with Terisa wasn't going to be easy, not if she could help it. "Look, I know you're angry and bitter and you probably have every right to be but I do care about you. You're the only family I have left."
"Funny way of showing it," she snorted but Zel thought he sensed a lack of the usual venom in her tone. "As to how I'm feeling, tired, hurt, and drenched to the bone. I want a long warm bath after this."
"Sounds like someone else I know," he smiled fondly.
"Not a bad job you two," said a dark robed figure walking up to them.
"Okay, this can not be good if Death is talking to us," she groaned.
"What do you want, Death?" Zel asked coldly.
"Awww, why so cold?" Death whimpered, behaving more as Byakko (White Tiger). "We only parted ways about a week ago."
"Who is happy to see Death?"
"Good point. But I just wanted to congratulate you on the way you managed that Dark One. Is it only coincidence that two of them have appeared near you? Just idle speculation. Anyway, thanks to you, it may be possible for us to clear up this glut. That whole group has been messing up the record book for years."
"So they are all of the people who died with our parents?" Terisa asked, looking at all of the spirits milling around as they waited for Death's escort. Vaguely, she could remember several of the clowns and acrobats from that day long ago. She searched for two familiar faces.
"With your parents?" Perplexed, Death pulled out a ledger from inside his robe. He scanned through the pages of names written in there. "Well, they are the people who died on that day and incident, with some more recent ones thrown into the mix but...no, your parents aren't in the list."
"What?! But they were there too and we were the only ones to survive!" Zel demanded. Terisa's look of concentration had to be from searching the spirits that only she could see for their parents. He felt a pang of jealousy that she was able to.
"Sorry, can't help you there. I only do collection service and all I can say is that your parents aren't among the missing spirits. That's a question you'll have to find your own answer too. And speaking of questions..." Death looked up at the dark clouds that brought rain down onto the city, muttering to himself. "Now, why did you come here?"
"Who are you talking to?"
"Eh? Oh, no one, no one," Death laughed sheepishly, waving away the question. There was also a perfect change of subject arriving. "By the way, looks like the boy is coming."
"NII-CHAN!!"
Zelgadiss found Lin's arms wrapped tightly around his neck.
"You're alright?"
Lin nodded, burying his face in Zelgadiss's shoulder. The chimera sighed in relief, wrapping an arm around Lin and giving him a reassuring but gentle squeeze. And then stiffened at the arched looks Terisa and Death were giving him.
"Wh-What...?" he stammered.
"Ne, Nii-chan," Lin yawned, struggling to keep his eyes open. "This red hair man taught me some magic!"
"Magic? Lin, what are you - "
"It had lots of funny words but it worked! It made the rain come! I had to say something like 'grant me diving protection' and 'sooyou' or something and it made the rain come!" His words began to slur as the excitement and worry of the day finally caught up to him, sending him into sleep.
Beneath his hood, Death's eyes narrowed. "SohRyu? By this little boy? Humph. I should have guessed that all of this wasn't by chance," Byakko said softly before speaking in a louder, more cheerful voice. "Anyway, I have a lot of work to do and spirits to escort, so I'll be seeing you." Death waved as he turned away, vanishing.
"Of all my years of seeing, conversing, and dealing with spirits, I've never met and spoken with Death himself."
"Just hope you don't have to see him again until you die," Zelgadiss sighed, getting up and holding Lin who had fallen asleep. "And if you don't want to catch pneumonia and die from that, we'd better find a dry place and some dry clothes to change into. This part of the city won't be providing anything for some time.
"Yo, Tempest!" Death Byakko called out, floating among the storm clouds. It took very little time to actually bring the spirits back to the Land of the Dead and he just dumped the load on the Earl before heading out again, hoping to catch someone before he left. "SohRyu (Blue Dragon) Tempest! I know you're up there!"
From the dark storm clouds, the head and upper body of a sleek sapphire blue serpentine dragon slipped forth, turning a large eye to the being that called it. Though you couldn't see its length, to say that it could easily encircle the wide girth of the new holy tree probably was a reasonable estimate.
"For what do you call me?" it rumbled in a voice not unlike thunder.
Death winced at the volume, especially since he wasn't standing, floating if you insist, too far from the source. "Please change into your other avatar form. I'm going deaf. That and it's much less conspicuous."
The dragon coiled around itself, shrinking into the form of a man wearing a blue and white kimono, his long blue hair flowing like water across one shoulder down his chest. Smiling cheerfully, he fanned himself with a white fan with a red dot.
"Long time no see, Byakko. But that's probably because you're working two jobs instead of one."
"Well, there isn't much I can do as Byakko now that humans don't remember us. By the way, do you know why you're here?" Death asked, pulling back his hood to reveal his white hair and slightly feline features.
"Here?" Tempest fanned himself, looking around at the wet ruins of the city below. From here, the damage didn't look that bad since the fire had somehow been constrained within a certain radius. "Hmmmm. Well, I felt a tug. Haven't felt one of those in ages really. Some human with sufficient power apparently has re-discovered the chants with which to call me."
"It was a little boy."
Tempest dropped his fan. His voice was oddly empty as he repeated, "A little boy?"
"That is correct," said a new voice. The two beings didn't show surprise at the appearance of the third floating man. "I hope you didn't mind, SohRyu Tempest, for my indiscretion in bringing you out like that. After all, I certainly couldn't do it myself."
"So you were the one who gave the boy the summoning chant? And most likely the power to back it up," Tempest noted, somehow recovering his dropped fan and his composure. "Any particular reason?"
"Only time will tell."
"And you were also the one that kept the fire from completely burning the entire place," Byakko accused. "It would make my job a whole lot easier if you restrained it even more."
"Now I can't do that, if the others learned I was meddling in mortal affairs, they'll lock me up outside of the world and throw away the key. Besides, the humans would have been suspicious if the fire only raged in one house. It's unfortunate that a number of people had to die but it was also unavoidable."
"Easy for you to say. You people usually don't care about the mortals," Byakko huffed, ignoring Tempest's signs to drop the subject. "Always high and mighty, always stuck on your private war with the Mazoku. Need I remind you of that particularly nasty incident about a millennia back?"
"Byakko!" Tempest said sharply, shutting his fan and whacking Death over the head with it. "That is quite enough. Vrabazard is very repentant about that and you know as well as I do that the Karyu Ryuzoku clan did that on their own initiative."
"Which is why I'm trying to make up for it now. I am responsible for their actions even though I never condoned them. I owe a large debt to that little one. Though directing events are the only things I can do."
"Who's he talking about?" Byakko whispered to Tempest.
Tempest only whacked Byakko over the head again.
"Two of them. One first tried to capture the Dissenter and another appeared in Sairaag, causing a disturbance that is of interest only because it drew in those humans who have interfered lately in our affairs. From Grau's reports, that Lina Inverse human and some of her companions are still trapped in its power."
Zelas let the smoke rise leisurely toward the ceiling from her lips. She knew Grausherra would sit there for eternity waiting for her reply. That is, he would sit in his place up in the north and his projection before her in her chamber on Wolf Pack Island would sit there forever. Idly, she wondered why he had chosen to take the appearance of a silver hair male human for this discussion.
"Two appearances, appearing not too far apart from each other. And those were only ones that drew attention to themselves. I doubt your little Priest Grau would waste her time scouring every stem of grass on the peninsula to find every incident of them. And you wouldn't waste her on such a task. Well? Have you permanently assigned your General Sherra to the Dissenter? I suppose a Mazoku of her power could be sufficient. Wouldn't want to waste a more powerful one like Norst on such a dead end assignment."
"An assignment that wouldn't be needed if the Dissenter had remained in the Prison," Dynast Grausherra replied coolly, his eyes like the ice that surrounded the physical realm of his abode. "His escape is likely to be partly responsible to the increase of them. The one in Sairaag appears to be a rogue but the other mentioned his master. They may be looking forward to an invasion of the human world soon."
"Something that doesn't concern us unless they attempt to infringe on our territory," Zelas shrugged. "After what has happened recently, it would be prudent to retreat from the memories of certain humans. Little has been accomplished and much more was lost. There are only three of us now."
Something similar to what humans called exasperation passed Dynast's face. "I don't suppose you've heard from Deep Sea lately."
"No. I don't suppose her insanity as abated."
"Quite the opposite unfortunately. She invited me to join her in a pottery class last week."
Zelas raised an eyebrow.
"Come on, Furball!" Lin laughed, running slightly ahead of Zelgadiss on the road cresting the hills that surrounded the valley of Sairaag. The small travel knapsack that his Nii-chan had bought for him hung proudly on his back. "Try and catch me!"
Refraining from admonishing Lin to stop playing around, he only kept an eye on the boy as another part of his mind occupied itself with thinking. The rains that had saved Sairaag, were they really magical in nature? And if they were, were they really from a spell Lin cast? The little boy was too young to have enough power or knowledge to be able to do that. But the words he had said, though garbled, certainly resembled Chaos Words. And who was the man who told Lin the words?
But that matter was secondary to another one, one he carried more closely. The people trapped in the book by that Dark One had not been freed upon its defeat. Perhaps they should have tried to learn more about the book before defeating it but it could hardly have been considered in a conversational mood. He needed to find a way to get them out, the people who were the closest thing to being his friends.
"Nii-chan! Nii-chan!!" Lin yelled at the top of his young lungs, jumping up and down and waving his arms. "There's someone here who wants to see you!!"
"Someone who is rapidly becoming quite deaf, thank you very much." Terisa sat on a rock by the side of the road, a scowl that could rival her brother's in ill temper sitting on her face. "Hey, Zel, don't be so overjoyed to see me. Too much happiness can be bad for your health."
"Terisa, what are you doing here?" During his shopping for supplies among the surprisingly non-hostile merchants, Zel had overheard that the carnival, Terisa's carnival, had pulled up its tent and moved on south. A part of him had been saddened that Terisa hadn't even said good-bye.
"And a nice hello, how do you do to you too. What does it look like I'm doing?" She gestured to the travel bag on the ground next to her. "I'm going to Avalon to pay Kelvan a visit. Haven't seen him in ages after all."
"Wai! Nii-chan says we're going there too!"
"Terisa, you..."
"Hey, don't get this wrong, Zel. We just happen to be going the same way. It isn't as if I'm following you or anything," she huffed, tossing her head.
"Nii-chan's sister is coming too! Isn't this going to be fun, Furball?"
"I said I just happen to be going the same way!" Terisa protested, blushing slightly.
Zelgadiss allowed himself a smile. Matching pace with her, he teasingly pulled on the violet strands. "It'll almost be like a family reunion."
"I'm not traveling with you!"