Chapter 7: The Paradox of Survival

"Lina, are you awake?"

She didn't answer at first. She wasn't sure why. She should have fallen asleep a while ago, but couldn't because of all the thoughts that now kept her mind frantically busy. Neither her tiredness or her aching body were enough to overcome the weight of her thoughts as they focused upon the coming journey, upon her situation with both Sylphiel and Natalia, and most importantly, upon Sylphiel's cryptic remarks about Zelgadis being a murderer.

"Yeah, I'm awake," she finally said as she got up from her sleeping bag and looked around. Most everyone in the settlement was either going to or already asleep, the only significant activity noticeable being the warriors and volunteers standing guard along the edges of the settlement. Already, she could hear the light snoring of the people closest to them. She couldn't remember if she'd ever slept out in the open like this with so many people.

She decided that talking to Zangulus now might be preferable to the torment of her sleeplessness. "Have you seen Natalia?"

"She didn't come here?" he frowned.

"No. I've been waiting for her all evening, but she never showed up."

"Great. She must be moping around along the outskirts again. Found her along the eastern ravine this evening and she was..." He stopped himself.

"She was what?" Lina asked, intrigued at his sudden silence.

"Did you two have a problem today or something?"

Lina sighed. "You might say that. I need to talk to her."

"She can't be too far."

She shook her head softly to herself. Now she'd definitely need to postpone sleep for a while. She looked back at him, her face becoming serious again.

"We need to talk," Zangulus said as he read her expression.

"I agree," Lina replied as she rested her elbow on her knee. "I'd like to know just what you said to Sylphiel that convinced her to head towards Lagrimas."

Zangulus shook his head. "That's not important. We need to talk about Zelgadis."

"Why? Do you know something about him?"

"The people I spoke to last night," he took his hat off and sat next to her, "told me stories about a blue-skinned man in the Lagrimas Province. After a bit of inquiry, I realized they were talking about him."

"You're telling me these people have been in contact with him?"

"Certainly looks that way."

"I wasn't sure," Lina said as she looked away and tried to piece the puzzle together. "Sylphiel really didn't elaborate or anything. I wasn't sure what she meant when she said she knew Zel was in Lagrimas. What did they tell you?"

"About six months ago," he began, "this settlement stayed within ten kilometers of the Lagrimas Province. According to my sources, there were some usable water holes and some vegetation there, so they set up daily trips there to gather the necessary provisions without actually setting up camp closer to the city. You know how settlements tend to avoid cities, right? Anyway, they were mindful of Monster attacks, to be sure. I was told that they repelled a group of Leeches during their stay there, and that it was that which prompted their next move. But there was something else.

"Apparently, they discovered a dead settlement even before reaching Lagrimas. Everyone there was dead, most of them either sucked dry of their blood by Leeches or simply torn apart. Pretty much the way any settlement is left after a Monster attack, right? Well, they decided to move past the remains quickly, but something caught their attention. According to the stories told to me, they found several corpses that, while mutilated, also had a very strange coloration to them. Not the usual color a corpse becomes, but something darker, almost gray."

"Gray?" Lina asked in disbelief.

"Yes, a gray coloration they described as unnatural. Some of the New Sairaag folk took it upon themselves to look about more thoroughly and found six such corpses, all with the same gray coloration."

"Six out of how many?"

"They didn't take a count, but there were over one hundred dead people there. They figured it was the Miranda Settlement."

Lina closed her eyes. "Another one wiped out, then?"

"Yes," he nodded.

"There are not that many of us left as it is."

Before either one could brood too much about that grim reality, Zangulus continued. "They resumed their journey and reached Lagrimas about a week later. Once they set themselves up there, and once they began to regularize their trips into the actual province to gather food and water, they apparently ran into Zelgadis."

Lina's eyes widened. "I can't believe it. That means he didn't even move from there after Lagrimas was destroyed. What the hell has he been doing there?"

"That's the next part," Zangulus answered. "That's where the stories get a bit stranger because no one really saw what happened. I don't know whether Sylphiel had any contact with him or not, but it's clear that some of her people did. And, by the sounds of it, a few of them actually had regular contact with him."

"What do you mean by regular contact?"

"As they told me, there were about five or six people who would go to Lagrimas not to gather supplies but to go speak with Zelgadis. When they were asked about it, they told their companions that he claimed to be close to finding the solution to humanity's survival."

"Sylphiel mentioned something about that," Lina nodded her head to herself, "but I didn't know what she meant by it."

"I don't know either," he shook his head. "Neither do the people that told me the story. The only ones who had any idea what this mystery solution was were those people that spoke to him regularly."

"This doesn't make sense," Lina interrupted. "Why would Zelgadis claim he had a plan for survival, but share it with only a few people? He could have told Sylphiel about it."

"That's the other thing. He never once came to the settlement. He refused to, despite rumors that Sylphiel actually asked him to come. It's like he was reluctant to share his plan with anyone other than his immediate followers, for lack of a better term."

"Followers," Lina repeated absently. "Strange indeed. What happened to them, anyway?"

Now Zangulus' expression betrayed his own disbelief. "They were found dead four days after that Leech attack."

"Dead?"

"That's what they told me. Shortly before the settlement was to move out, they were talking about how Zelgadis needed their help, and how they would stay behind in order to do so. Despite their companions' objections, they left the settlement and went to Lagrimas. But when two more days passed and no one heard anything from them, Sylphiel sent a group of warriors in to find them and bring them back."

"And they found them all dead?"

"Not just dead. They had the same gray coloration as the Miranda corpses."

"What?!"

"All five of them looked similar in coloration to the Miranda corpses found earlier. The other strange thing was that their skin seemed different. Like it was decomposing, only it wasn't. Very strange. No one really knew what to make of it. The warriors tried to look for Zelgadis, but they never found him. Two days later, the settlement moved, and still no one had seen him."

Lina's mouth dropped open but couldn't utter a sound. If the stories Zangulus was told were in any way true, then Sylphiel's remark now made sense. If, indeed, he were the one responsible for the deaths of those five people, then he may well be a murderer. But why?

"I'm imagining several possibilities," Zangulus finally said after noticing Lina's shock. "This is all hearsay, to be sure, but it seems that these are the basic facts. Given that, it could be that those people were killed by some form of Monster we haven't seen yet. Maybe the same Monsters gave the Miranda corpses that strange coloration."

Lina stared emptily across the settlement before answering him. "I think it's inconceivable that the Monsters have some new breed of creature that we're only starting to see now."

"I agree," he nodded. "Another possibility is that they might have been exposed to some form of ambient poison or something. Although I've never heard of anything that could do that, the apocalypse might very well have physically affected our world and made certain environments harmful to humans."

She shook her head. "There isn't enough plant or insect life left to make that even remotely feasible. Besides, you're more bound to find stuff like that in swamp areas, and the Lagrimas Province is grassland."

"Again, I agree with you. Which leads me to my final explanation."

Lina held up her hand and closed her eyes. There was no need for Zangulus to even say it.

"It was Zelgadis. He's gone insane," she said quietly as she lifted herself from the ground, taking the backpack lying next to her as well. She stood still and tried to regain her balance: that dark thought was making her almost nauseous with despair.

Despite all her efforts at meditation, Natalia could not refocus her mind nor place herself at ease. Not being able to cast any spells was unnerving on its own, but having been unable to keep her emotions from bursting out as they had all day long was something she simply could not handle anymore. She hadn't lost as much control over her emotions as she had that day in over two years, and she's certainly never lost it in front of anyone. While she appreciated Zangulus' efforts at making her feel better, she also found herself resenting the fact that he had been there to witness her in her weakest state. As it was, her outburst in front of Lina had been humiliation enough for one day.

She closed her eyes again and tried one more time. Again, her thoughts wavered between her dead mother, between her past life and mistakes, and between the mistakes she was committing now. She couldn't get the incident out of her mind, no matter how much she tried to focus upon her mother and draw strength from her as she'd done countless times before. The fact was that she was too ashamed, too angry at herself, and too hurt to be able to think clearly anymore. The worst part was that she was bringing it all upon herself. She should have known better than to do what she did to Lina that morning, and in a way, she was glad that Lina had put her in her place: indeed, she felt she deserved no better now. When the sting of Lina's words hit her as hard as they did, she'd felt angry at her would-be enemy only to instantly redirect that anger at herself for refusing to learn from her past mistakes. It was that cold, distant attitude of hers that had, in the end, made her life in Soledad so miserable. And now, it threatened to do the same with the remainder of her life.

Natalia opened her eyes when she heard footsteps approaching her quietly from behind. She froze in place: as much as she wanted to talk to Lina, she also didn't want to talk to her for fear that she wouldn't know how to handle the situation.

"No need for you to come out here, you know?" she said calmly without looking back. She bit her lip. Great way to start.

"I think there is," Lina's voice spoke back as she stopped right behind Natalia.

"Why is that? Thinking that maybe you'll finish the job now?" She cursed silently to herself: she was blowing it again.

"You know," Lina said casually as she sat next to her and put the backpack on the ground in front of them, "I don't even know what to make of you anymore. I thought you were the one wanting to kill me. Why are you making it sound now like it were the other way around?"

"You should know that better than anyone, Lina," she answered quietly. "You dreamt it. So now you know. I've had that dream so many times. I consider it a foregone conclusion: you'll end up killing me someday. Probably sooner than later."

"They're just dreams, Natalia," Lina tried to sound understanding, but found herself wishing her companion weren't so eccentric.

"I guess. And so were the dreams of meeting you. And of seeing Sylphiel. And of the start of the apocalypse. All those were just dreams. Right."

Lina rolled her eyes and took a deep breath. "What I mean is that I would never do that to you. I'm no murderer."

Natalia turned and looked at her seriously. "That's right. You keep telling yourself that."

"For crying out loud, Natalia," Lina said as she felt herself growing impatient again. "I didn't come here to fight with you."

"Then what did you come here for?" Probably to do what I'm not mature enough to do myself.

"I wanted to say that I was sorry for what happened this morning." Lina looked at the backpack and recalled the shame she'd felt that afternoon. Natalia's attitude, however, was quickly making her rethink that position.

Natalia said nothing. Her brown eyes simply stared straight ahead into the crimson darkness of the western ravine. Ironic that the two had almost killed each other that morning in that same spot, and here they were trying to re-conciliate despite her own cynicism. At least one of them was, she thought to herself. If she herself kept this nonsense up, the tension between them would remain for a good while longer. And for some reason, Natalia didn't want that. Even she could appreciate that Lina could use one less enemy in this world.

"And I wanted to say thank you for the backpack, even though I have to tell you that I can't accept your gift," Lina said with some trepidation after a few moments, her left hand patting Natalia's backpack. She looked and noticed that she had startled her companion with her sudden remark. She had caught her in mid-thought, no doubt.

"I see," she replied calmly. Natalia did her best to hide the fact that she was both upset and hurt at Lina's statement, her efforts aided in part by her own realization that everything now had come to pass because of her own behavior. If there was anyone to be upset at now, it was with herself and no one else.

Lina wasn't sure what to say. She hadn't expected Natalia to simply shut off like that. In fact, she was wondering if Natalia hadn't done it for the exclusive purpose of making her feel guilty about what she had just said. If that were the case, it was definitely working.

"It's just that..."

"No, don't explain," Natalia shook her head. "I know. We made ourselves quite clear on the matter this morning."

Lina could hardly believe what she was seeing: Natalia had been genuinely hurt by their brief exchange in the morning, and not exactly by that headlock she had grabbed her in. Something in that remark of hers-don't you dare put yourself in their company-had struck a nerve. Lina had suspected it in the morning judging by the way the woman's face tensed up when she spoke that thought, and now she was convinced of it. Admittedly, she had wanted it to hurt her: she had been so enraged that morning about everything, not the least of which was Natalia's sudden blow to her forehead, and had spoken with every intention of stinging her companion any way she could.

"I didn't mean what I said," Lina said as she looked down. She wanted to swear to herself. Despite her maturity, she realized now that she still had a gift for thinking of just the right combination of maliciousness and scorn and hurting people with it. She had done so with Sylphiel two years ago, and now that morning with Natalia. At this rate, she'd have no friends left in the world.

"Listen, Lina," Natalia interrupted. "I'm sorry too. I'm sorry for hitting you like that and for provoking you. I know you've got a lot of worries on your mind, and I'm sorry that I added to them. Okay? End of story."

"No, not end of story," Lina said more aggressively, "because I think it's time we put our cards on the table."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning that I'm calling your bluff again," Lina said as she shifted her body so as to face Natalia directly.

Natalia's eyes locked onto hers. "That I won't kill you?"

"Right," Lina stared back defiantly. Somehow, she knew that morning's incident wouldn't repeat itself. "Your behavior contradicts everything you say. I'm sorry for reading you better than you think I'm reading you."

"You're assuming an awful lot, Lina Inverse."

"Uh-huh," Lina nodded quickly, "Time to see who it is you're trying to convince."

She suddenly reached for Natalia's sword and unsheathed it before the other could move to stop her. Just as suddenly, she took hold of Natalia's right hand, placed the hilt of the sword in it, and then brought the tip of the blade into her own chest.

"Let's go," Lina announced calmly. "I agree with you. I'm the cause of the apocalypse. Killing me would close the rift between planes and end it." She waited a few moments but Natalia didn't even move. "Cmon, Natalia. What are you waiting for? I place myself in your able hands."

Natalia looked at her angrily, her breath coming heavier and quicker, her mouth flinching with unvoiced curses. She tightened her grip around the hilt and seemed to struggle with the weight of the sword. For that one moment, it looked as if she were re-examining her ideas, her suspicions, her every motivation, and reminding herself that whatever she did now would decide the outcome of not just her soul but of humanity's as well. And it wasn't more than a few seconds before she tore her eyes away from Lina and tossed the sword onto the ground.

"The Maker damn you, Lina," she whispered as she rested her forehead on her palm.

"I'm sorry I had to do that," Lina began as she touched Natalia's forearm, "but I needed to make it clear to both of us that you're not a murderer. It's not in your nature to just kill me in cold blood because of a simple suspicion. If it were, you would have done it right after you killed that Leech off."

Natalia didn't say anything for a few moments as she closed her eyes and again tried to desperately refocus her mind before it slipped. She hadn't expected Lina to be so aggressive in her determination to find out, once and for all, if her threats had been legitimate. She had expected that, sooner or later, she would muster up the courage to either confess the truth to Lina or force herself to kill her as she originally planned. But Lina's sudden confrontation had caught her emotionally unprepared: she didn't have all the answers, not even for herself. Now, Lina had seen right through her. One more humiliation to add to an already humiliating day.

As she saw Natalia seemingly struggling with her own thoughts and emotions, Lina thought it best to simply remain still and wait for her companion to pull herself together. She knew that this time, she had broken through to her. What would follow would, no doubt, be the real Natalia Stillrage. Her performance had come to an end.

"I'm sorry, Lina," Natalia finally whispered softly. "I had no right do be that way with you."

"There's no need to apologize," Lina said gently. "As you so jokingly said this morning to me, it's not the first time someone's wanted to kill me. At least you thought you had a good reason for doing it. Most people have just wanted to kill me because they didn't like me."

"For almost two years," Natalia opened her eyes and ignored Lina's facetious remarks, "I've had it in my mind to kill you. For two years, I had to try and come to terms with the fact that I would need to kill you in order to save humanity. After every dream, every vision, every image of you destroying people and cities, I'd try to direct all my hatred at you. I tried so hard to make myself hate you above all things, to convince myself that you were a real monster, so that I could morally accept the responsibility of killing you. But I never did. I knew that, in every way, what I was planning was your murder. I would visit my mother's grave every now and then and feel so ashamed that such was my plan. She had always taught me to respect life, to respect others, above all, even those that didn't deserve it. Even as I contemplated your death, I knew that she'd be so disappointed in me for even thinking it. She would have told me that another solution had to be found, that I was simply acting on impulse without thinking things through. I know those would have been her feelings."

Again, Lina didn't even know what to say, as Natalia's behavior had taken a turn for the surreal. She found herself wanting to know more about her mother, especially in light of the events of the day before. But she wouldn't pry: she knew that whatever was to come would have to come out of Natalia's own accord.

"When we first met," she continued, "I thought I could do it. I really did. When I had you on the ground like that, I thought it wouldn't really be that hard simply killing you and dealing with the guilt if, in fact, I had been wrong. I kept telling myself, 'just do it quickly and you won't even have time to feel guilty.' I can't tell you how relieved I felt when I heard Zangulus running towards us. It was like I had an excuse to stop myself. Later in the cave, I figured I could kill you because I wasn't murdering you, but merely beating you at a fair fight. Even then, though, I couldn't. I knew that it would all come down to the same thing: I had picked a fight with you for the sole purpose of murdering you. Again, I found myself thinking of my mother, of what she'd think of me if I consummated the act right then and there. Thinking of her calmed my thoughts, enough for me to realize that I had to lose that fight before I made the single biggest mistake in my life. I don't mean any disrespect, Lina, but the truth is I let you beat me."

"Why the big charade, then?" Lina finally jumped in. "I mean, why all this talk of killing me and stuff? Why the big cold-hearted performance?"

"Because I still saw it as my duty, and I still had to at least try to convince myself that I should, and could, do it. But it's not my duty; it never was. I know that now. And I am sorry."

Natalia picked up her sword and sheathed it. She did so slowly, her eyes staring emptily ahead and her face finally becoming calm again. It was as if, in that one brief moment, she had found the peace of mind she hadn't had in years.

Lina noticed it. She found it comforting, on one level, that her would-be enemy had been exposed simply as an ally with misplaced priorities and sentiments, that the woman who had come so close to killing her had, in the end, revealed herself to be a woman no more sure of herself and her motivations than Lina herself ever was at any given point in her own life. But the way in which Natalia had come clean for once, the way she had dropped her mask, her performance, her cynical alter-ego, and displayed a genuine set of human emotions unblemished by ulterior motives, had spoken volumes to Lina. She had, through the act of observing her companion and of reading the ambivalence manifesting itself on her anguished face, understood what it was that her own anger, confusion, and caution had kept her from seeing since she'd first seen Natalia in the Sentry woods. Taking Natalia out of her own context, out of her own sense of duty, and out of the turmoil of her own self-restrained sense of self, would be to see her for what she was: a woman whose desperate attempts at self-erasure and performance could never undo the caring and nobility that intertwined themselves with everything she was.

Caught up in these thoughts, it was a while before Lina spoke again. "Natalia, I didn't mean what I said this morning."

"You've already said that," Natalia responded with a semblance of calm.

"But I mean it. I wish I had known you longer."

"Why?"

Lina couldn't help but to take a deep breath. "Because then it wouldn't be so damn awkward thinking of you as a friend. As it is, this kind of spontaneous friendship is the type of thing you only read about in really bad novels or something. But now that everything is out in the open, now that I know for sure that you're not my enemy, I'd very much want to consider you a friend."

Now it was Natalia's turn to be at a loss for words. Her thoughts returned to Soledad and the countless times she'd spurned would-be friends because of her spiteful attitude towards everything and everyone. She also thought of how the ghosts of her own embittered past had resurfaced that afternoon to remind her that, in her actions of that morning, she was repeating every mistake she'd committed in the past all over again. She had hoped that she'd be able to recant and make Lina understand that she too hadn't meant what she said. But she hadn't expected the chance to come so quickly or so suddenly. "I don't know what to say. I've never really had any friends. At least, I never allowed myself to have any."

"Why is that?"

She shook her head gently in self-reproach. "It's a long sob story, to be sure, one I'm not particularly eager to relate. Suffice it to say, I never learned how to forgive, and as a consequence, I've spent the last twelve years making sure that I befriended no one."

"I'm not sure I follow what you're..."

Natalia held up her hand. "It's of no consequence."

"I see," Lina lowered her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she began anew, "It's not that I don't want to talk about it to you. If I ever talk to anyone about my past, it'll be with you because I can tell you've had your own share of emotional scars to have to carry around. The truth is, Lina, that I'd be honored to be your friend. I'm honored and grateful that you should want to be my friend despite everything I've done and said to you. I can't guarantee I'll be much of one, because I've never had any real friends other than my mother. But I will stand beside you in this campaign of yours. We'll fight together, and we'll die together if need be."

"I think we can do without that," Lina smiled as she patted Natalia's shoulder. "But I'm glad you feel that way."

Natalia forced out a smile of her own and motioned to the backpack Lina brought with her. "I take it, then, that you'll accept the backpack now?"

"Oh that," Lina looked at it and wasn't sure what to say. "The thing is, Natalia, that I don't feel comfortable accepting it."

"Why not?"

"Well," she fumbled. She hadn't thought of a real reason. "It's just that, you know, these things aren't easy to come by anymore and..."

"Listen Lina," Natalia interrupted. "I wouldn't have offered you the outfit if I hadn't wanted to give it to you. Speaking in practical terms, you need it far more than I do. But in non-practical terms, let's just say that I really want to give you something to cheer you up, even if only a little."

"If that's your intention, there was something that caught my attention," Lina said as she opened up the backpack and started to take its contents out. "If it's okay with you, I was wondering if you'd let me read your journal?"

"Sweet Maker," Natalia blushed suddenly as she quickly went into the backpack herself and took out the book Lina was referring to. "I'd forgotten about that thing."

"What?" Lina looked up and frowned. "What's wrong? What's in it?"

Natalia pressed her forehead into her palm again and shook her head. "It's just that...it's just nothing I'm comfortable having you read. You or anyone, so please don't take this personally."

"Okay," Lina said slowly as she eyed the book in her companion's hands. "I thought it was just a journal."

"It's that, and a bit more," she responded cautiously as she put the book to her side. Away from Lina. "In any case, please take the outfit. If you really think we can be friends, then accept it as a gift."

Lina nodded solemnly and put out her right hand. "I accept the gift and the gesture. Thank you, Natalia."

Natalia hesitated for a second before grasping Lina's hand and shaking it. "No. Thank you, Lina, for allowing me to see things clearly for the first time in years."

"Not sure I can take credit for that."

"I think you can," Natalia smiled warmly.

Lina looked back at the backpack and couldn't wait to change outfits in the morning. "I can't tell you how good it will feel to finally wear an outfit that doesn't feel like it's two jumps away from crumbling apart."

"If it makes you feel any better, we can share the sewing kit to mend our clothes, and the rope to play jump rope. Oh, but you get to carry the backpack now."

Lina smiled and almost laughed despite her tiredness. "It amazes me how you can pull these little quips out in spite of everything."

"Hey, if you want to be friends, you have to get used to it."

"Lucky me," Lina rolled her eyes as she closed the backpack.

"Sorry I couldn't salvage anything more decorous," Natalia shrugged sarcastically. "And I also apologize for the fact that we'll end up looking alike."

"Don't worry. I didn't have it in mind to braid my hair into pigtails."

"Are you saying there's something wrong with what I do with my hair?"

Lina shook her head and smiled sarcastically herself. "Of course not. Of course not."

"Stupid girl."

"Stop calling me that," Lina said as she reached into her pocket and took out the necklace she had found in the backpack. "I wanted to ask you about this."

Natalia's expression softened as she took it into her hand. She seemed to have forgotten the necklace was in the backpack as well. "It was my mother's."

"Her name was Lucia?"

"Yes," she nodded softly as she looked at it and the many memories it was evidently calling back.

"Why don't you wear it, then? It's a beautiful pendant."

"No. I can't wear it. Not yet."

Lina cocked her head. "Why not?"

Natalia looked away and spoke in a low voice. "Let's just say there are some things you have to earn before you can wear them. I haven't earned this yet."

"I see," Lina said as she realized that it was probably too personal a matter to inquire into. "Your mother must have been a very special woman."

"Yes she was," Natalia whispered as she placed the necklace into a small pouch she had attached on the sheath of her sword. "The single most special person I'll ever know."

"You mentioned her yesterday," Lina said, deciding to take a gamble. "I wasn't sure what you meant when you said 'thank you mama' before you launched your Ra-Tilts."

"I wasn't aware I had spoken out loud."

"I barely heard you," she explained. "I've been wondering what it meant. If it's not too personal a matter, that is."

Natalia was silent for a few seconds, her thoughts seemingly troubled by the weight of recollection and the dilemma of the present situation. As much as she was grateful for the chance to have a friend now, she wasn't entirely convinced that it was appropriate for her to speak of something that she had held so close to herself for so long. She felt somewhat ashamed that such were her thoughts, but she couldn't bring herself to reveal any more than she needed to. At least not now.

"It's rather personal, Lina," she began apologetically. "My mother and I were very close. As much as she meant to me, I don't like talking about her with anyone. I imagine that if I had other family, I wouldn't be like this. But I don't."

"I understand," Lina nodded slowly. "And I'm sorry for prying."

"Don't be. I'm sorry I can't be more open."

"We all have our stories. I know for a fact that some stories just can't be shared."

"But some can, I imagine," Natalia offered. She looked at Lina and tried to smile, doing her best to fight back the memories brought back by the pendant. "What about you? Who was close to you in your life?"

Lina looked down. "Like you, it's something I don't like talking about with anyone."

"I'm just curious," Natalia said cautiously. "I can tell that you've had people very close to you and for whom you feel. It radiates around your person. This almost overwhelming sense of loss, sadness, yet also this great sense of affection and caring. It's like you have someone in mind every moment of your life. I don't mean to pry as well, but I thought you could talk about it."

Lina hesitated. She didn't like talking about Gourry, despite the fact that he had been the single most important person in her life. She thought it strange that she should feel this way, now that if what Natalia was saying were in any way true, she should feel strengthened, not weakened, when remembering him. But she couldn't help it. She'd never come to terms with his death and the way he was virtually yanked from her. She had been unconscious during their last, brief moment together, and had therefore never been afforded the chance to say goodbye. Before she left for what was to be the Dragon Army's annihilation, she had quarreled with him because of Sylphiel. Five years of friendship, two of marriage, had not been enough; she'd never brought herself to really tell him what he had meant to her. Had she known that those moments in New Sairaag before she left for battle would be their last real moments together, she would have told him so much. So much. But she hadn't. And now, it was too late. Gourry had been taken from her, leaving her alone, miserable, and with a heart full of bottled up emotions and feelings for him. She closed her eyes and tried to keep herself from tearing; thinking of Gourry's death always made her want to cry.

Natalia noticed it and wasn't sure of what to say. She could tell what it was bothering Lina-that husband she had mentioned to her before-but she didn't dare probe the matter until Lina herself volunteered the story.

"Most of the people I've cared for are already dead," Lina finally said after a while. "I lost them all so quickly, I never had a chance to even mourn fully. All I did was fall into a depression."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Natalia offered cautiously. "Friends? Family?"

"A little of both," Lina said quietly. "And those that are still around either hate me or have become my enemies."

"You're referring to Sylphiel, I suppose."

And probably Zelgadis. "Yeah, Sylphiel."

"I can't imagine you two will stay mad at each other much longer. Our situation really doesn't leave us any room for personal arguments like that."

"I hope you're right."

"Surely not everyone hates you, though?" Natalia pressed on. "I mean, sure, Sylphiel hates your guts and I wanted to kill you, but it can't all be that bad, right?"

Lina smiled, amused at her companion's bizarre attempts to cheer her up. She was right; not everyone hated her. "There's this little girl I met in the Jenna Settlement. She came to me my first morning there and bombarded me with all these questions about my life and my magic. I ended up giving her my Dragon Army ribbon in exchange for a letter of hers. You should have seen the way her eyes lit up when I did. I saw her play later, and as strange as this may sound, it was the sight of her and her friends playing as they were, so carefree and happy, that helped me to snap out of my depression. In that one moment of watching her, everything became clear again. That's what started it all. That's what got me on this journey searching for Sylphiel and Zelgadis, although you and Zangulus were unexpected surprises, to be sure."

Natalia listened to the story, herself amused that Lina's own eyes had lit up as they did in when talking about this girl. She wanted to mention that to her, but decided to let Lina continue and not ruin her moment for her.

"Don't know why," Lina continued, "but I became very attached to her. I find myself thinking about her constantly. That's probably part of what you see when you notice me thinking of someone. What is Myra doing at this moment, I always ask myself..."

"Myra?" Natalia suddenly interrupted nervously.

Lina froze as well. She had allowed herself to forget her dream, but now that Natalia spoke that name too, she realized why it was that her companion had been as alarmed as she was. "Yeah, Myra. You know her, I take it."

"No, I don't," she shook her head, "but I know that that's what you were calling that thing in our dream. That shadow form standing next to you."

"Shadow?" Lina's eyes narrowed. "What are you talking about? Didn't you see the little girl in an oversized sorceress outfit? That was Myra."

"I didn't see any little girl there," Natalia retorted in confusion. "I was wondering why you were calling that thing by that name. All I saw was a formless shadow that spoke with a harsh voice."

"But I thought we dreamt the same thing. I mean, we both dreamt when I...when Myra made me.."

"We don't seem to dream down to every little detail," Natalia stopped her before she could finish her thought. "Strange. Why does it assume a familiar form in your dream, and no form in mine?"

"This doesn't make sense," Lina buried her face in her hands and sighed. "It makes no sense whatsoever."

"You know what makes even less sense?" Natalia began anew. "The fact that you're even sharing these dreams. I don't remember my mother and I dreaming the same things, even though we slept in the same bed. But you and I have slept in close proximity to each other and we've shared dreams. It's almost as if..."

"We're linking up somehow?"

"Yes!" Natalia's eyes suddenly widened enthusiastically. It was almost bizarre to see her like that. "Don't you remember our first dream?"

"That whole thing," Lina shook her head, "now seems all blurry and distant. When I woke up in your cave, I knew exactly what had to be done. The New Sairaag Settlement was under attack, and we needed to help them. But only moments later, I couldn't even remember clearly what had happened in our dream."

"We were in the Astral Plane, Lina," Natalia said seriously. "You were in there with me, somehow. And I'm guessing that our dream last night might also have been directed through the Astral Plane, because I've had that dream before and I've crossed planes when I have dreamt it."

"What are you trying to say here?"

"I don't know. I do remember our dream, and I remember you thinking you had been there before."

Lina tried to remember but couldn't, for the life of her, even begin to remember what it was Natalia was alluding to.

"Try and remember," Natalia continued. "Your thoughts spoke of you being there in the Astral Plane before. I remember you thinking that you had lost your face before, and that you didn't know when or how."

"Natalia, I don't even..."

"Lina, this is important. You've got to remember. What did you mean by that? When did you feel that way?"

It was too much to ask, and Lina almost felt like letting Natalia know how ridiculous this whole thing was. She couldn't remember it, period. There was no such thing as concentrating hard and remembering something she didn't even understand or conceptualize as an experience, much less a memory.

"Have you ever had premonitions?" Natalia asked impatiently when she saw Lina stumbling mentally. "Have you ever visualized places or things you'd never seen?"

"Natalia, I'm not an Astral Wanderer, if that's what you're getting at."

"Probably not," she agreed, "but I thought it so strange that you had already been familiar with the experience of Astral wandering. It surprised me, even in our dream, to think that you had been there before, now that it's pretty much impossible for anyone to be there without the power to shift voluntarily into the Astral Plane."

"I can't remember, Natalia," Lina shook her head. "It's easy for you because you've done it all your life. But if I was, in fact, in the Astral Plane with you, you have to understand that I simply can't even visualize what it was that happened in there."

"Then do us both a favor. I want you to keep at it. Something, I imagine, will trigger the memory. Something will allow you to remember when you've felt like that before. I don't know. It may be a random memory, the memory of someone, the memory of a place, an event that stands out in your mind, anything."

"Why are you so anxious about this anyway," Lina asked, a hint of annoyance evident in her voice. "What good will it do anyone if I can shift into the Astral Plane?"

Natalia looked up at the sky and thought for a moment. "I'm not sure. I'm not even sure what good my own Astral powers do me other than allowing me to hide from Monsters. But if you were, in fact, in the Astral Plane before, then there's a chance you possess some of the same powers, even if you're not an Astral Wanderer per se."

"I didn't know such a thing was possible."

"Neither did I. I don't know. Maybe you developed the skills at some point. Maybe something in your life gave them to you. A traumatic near death experience or something."

"Near death?" Lina asked as her mind went back to the two moments in her life where she had been one step away from being no more. "I was dead, for all intensive purposes, after the fall of New Sairaag. And five years before that, Sylphiel says that she had to bring me back from the dead when I took a spell attack in the chest."

"I see," Natalia tapped her finger on her knee and frowned. "Not sure what to make of it. At least not now."

"Let me ask you this, then. If I did have some of these powers, would that mean I'd also be able to travel to other places through the Astral Plane the way you do?"

"I don't know," Natalia shrugged. "Why do you ask?"

"Because ever since you told us about your abilities," Lina explained, "I've been wondering if you couldn't visit the Jenna Settlement and see how they were doing."

She nodded and smiled gently to herself. Clearly, Lina was attached to that Myra girl. "I can't exactly direct my travels. I've never been able to. It's like I'm taken more than I'm going, so I'm not sure if I'd have any success if I actually tried again to locate a specific point on Earth. But, if you're willing to try, we might be able to enter deep meditation and attempt a trip together. That, of course, is assuming you do have some Astral powers."

Lina's eyes lit up enthusiastically. "You really think such a thing is possible?"

"I can't make guarantees, obviously. But it's worth a shot. Might bring us closer to finding out if you actually have them and when you developed them."

Lina fell silent for a moment, her mind racing with the new possibilities. She'd wanted to see how Jenna was doing for far too long now, and now contemplated the notion that, if they were close enough, they could actually rendezvous with New Sairaag and meet up in Lagrimas. Of course, that would mean sending out runners across whole areas potentially crawling with Monsters, but it would also mean that New Sairaag's own numbers would be increased, as would be their ability to fight back. And if it meant giving Myra and her friends a safer existence, then Lina would volunteer to do the run herself.

"I think we should go get some sleep," Lina finally said after a few seconds of silent contemplation in which Natalia also hadn't spoken a word. "We're moving towards Lagrimas tomorrow. It'll be a long trip."

"Especially considering we're probably going to run into more than a few stragglers on the way. I take it you've already heard the settlement is coming with us?"

"I just wish I knew how Zangulus managed. In any case, the company probably won't hurt. I'm also thinking that, if we run into other settlements on the way, we should definitely stick together. It's funny, really. I was picturing this whole thing to be just the five of us going after the Monsters. Now, it's like we're raising a whole new Dragon Army or something."

"Hmph," Natalia smirked, "only this time I think it'll work. Are you sure we're going to find that Zelgadis friend of yours, though?"

Lina felt a chill down her spine for the second time that day. That wording seemed so odd now, considering that it was now a definite possibility that Zelgadis was no longer the man she once knew. He would, no doubt, no longer be a friend.

He would, no doubt, see her as an enemy.

Moving a settlement was no random process. Required of its inhabitants was the ability to move swiftly but carefully, heavily-loaded but quietly, always alert, always ready to make a run for it should the situation warrant it. Moving meant that every man, woman, and child had to assume a load to carry, the load they carried determined by their size and strength and not so much on their age or gender. It meant that the whole group, nearly two hundred people, had to travel in a long, narrow line in order to keep footprints to a minimum. It meant that the settlement carpenters, or their best approximation to such, had to be quick and efficient whenever one of the several makeshift wagons cracked a wheel or an axle. Nothing could be left behind: not only were supplies scarce, but all traces of their having passed through a given area had to be hidden. For this reason, several people would trail behind the main group, picking up anything that might have been dropped and doing their best to mask the footprints left behind.

Moving also meant that patrols had to be set up in every direction. While most of the warriors remained around the main group, four separate groups of about three warriors each walked about a kilometer or so away from the group in each direction, stealthily keeping an eye out for their comrades and ready to, at moment's notice, make the desperate run back to the main group to warn of an imminent attack. In this fashion, this settlement, as well as others, had been warned to the presence of Monsters in certain areas. In some instances, they had gotten word back in time for everyone to quiet down and carefully move away from the sighted enemies. In other instances, the runners had not made it in time. Four settlements had been destroyed already in mid-move because the lookouts had not been able to get the word in. Not that it would have made much of a difference once the Monsters found the settlement if the only resistance to meet them were conventional swordsmen and archers.

The New Sairaag Settlement had so far survived, despite their patrols occasionally running into stragglers, mostly Leeches. On one occasion about a year back, the patrol was killed but the people had enough time to deploy their defense as about ten or so Leeches rushed them. Sylphiel's magic had saved that day. Situations like that had left everyone in the settlement, especially Sylphiel, a bit more unnerved by the fact that New Sairaag's magic users were all killed during the attack on their once-great city. More than once during her people's desperate trek, she had wished that she'd at least have three more magic users to spread out. Even if magic users were killed by Monsters before they got back to the settlement, they'd cause enough of a ruckus to warn everyone anyway.

The situation at hand had answered Sylphiel's wishes, to a certain extent. Lina, Natalia, and Zangulus all willingly volunteered to assume patrols around the settlement as it moved across the barren landscape, so for once she had enough magic users to set up a much better early-warning system. But when the settlement ran across its first group of stragglers six days after they moved from the Oscuras, everyone realized the problem with spreading their magic-using capabilities so thin. As it was, the seven Leeches encountered appeared close to Lina's patrol, and though she was able to hold them off while the two warriors with her ran back to the settlement for help, it was doubtful she would have managed against all of them had not Sylphiel and Natalia appeared when they did to help her out. Seven Leeches fell that day only because of the combined efforts of the three sorceresses.

That experience made Sylphiel realize that, while risky in that she'd leave two sides without magic users, it would be in the settlement's best interests if they had two magic users on two sides, regular warriors on the other two. With any luck, the Monsters would appear on one of the two sides being watched by magic-users, and they'd be taken care of effectively. At least that much was hoped for.

It was decided, moreover, to keep the groups' positions and personnel cycling so as to keep everyone sharp and on their toes. Sylphiel had found this to be the most effective way of keeping her patrols fresh, of keeping them sharp and not dulled mentally with the monotony of the same patrol, same partners, and same routine day in and day out. She figured magic-users were no different. And so, as the four groups cycled positions daily, so too did they cycle members within groups, magic-users still staying in pairs but comprising different pairs each day. In this fashion, Sylphiel, herself assuming part of the patrols, got the chance to spend more time with Zangulus, and converse, however sparsely, with him about her recent past as settlement Matriarch. She got the chance to spend a patrol with Natalia, and if the two exchanged more than two words with each other that day, it would have been considered an exaggeration.

Lina's turn to patrol with Sylphiel came the next day. Zangulus joked to Natalia as they walked off towards their patrol area that if even two words were spoken between the two women, it would be a miracle superseding even the sudden disappearance of all Monsters.

True to their speculation, the first few hours Lina and Sylphiel spent that day were in complete silence, the only exchange of words being that between the two warriors stationed with them. But as the long, hot walk continued, Lina's nerves had become more and more attuned to the heat of the environment. It didn't help that every time she looked towards Sylphiel, her former friend would just continue to look ahead, as if completely oblivious to Lina's very presence. Lina gave her the benefit of the doubt at first. She'd look over at Sylphiel, clear her throat, and wait. Sylphiel never looked back. She'd look over at Sylphiel, sigh loudly, and wait. Sylphiel never looked back. She'd look over at Sylphiel, mutter something, and wait. Sylphiel never looked back. By about the fiftieth time Lina did this and had come to the point where she was ready to burp or sneeze in Sylphiel's direction so long as to illicit any kind of reaction, she figured that enough was enough. She wouldn't allow Sylphiel to ignore her any longer.

"We've got a talk long overdue, don't you think?" her voice cut through the dry air and seemed almost out of place in the near silence surrounding them.

"As a matter of fact, I don't" was Sylphiel's cold answer.

Lina clicked her tongue, resisting the urge to stick it out at Sylphiel, and tried again. "So you intend to keep ignoring me for the rest of your life, is that it?"

"No, Lina," she shook her head nonchalantly. "You don't even exist for me. I can't ignore something that doesn't even exist."

"That's original," Lina mumbled loud enough for Sylphiel to hear her.

"We're here to do a job," she responded indifferently. "Try and remember that."

"Yeah, right," Lina said as she stretched her arms back. She'd do jumping jacks right now if not for the fact that an overly serious Sylphiel and the two nameless warriors would probably notice all that nervous energy she had stored in her and comment accordingly.

Several minutes passed before Lina's arms were as loose as they were ever going to be. She thought about doing the same with her mouth; maybe loosening it up the same way might allow her to just say anything without worrying about striking yet another nerve in Sylphiel's eccentric mind. And then, just as that thought had finished speaking itself in her mind, she understood why she had made no progress thus far. She realized that this whole cautious approach had gotten her nowhere, that Sylphiel had placed herself well beyond the range of any such polite and systematic approach, and that perhaps it was time to meet her on her own spiteful grounds. Lina felt her mouth go dry. If she'd only taken the canteen offered to her by that woman back in the settlement. She shook her head to herself: no excuses, no putting this off. It had to come now.

"Why not drop that whole bullshit attitude of yours and behave like the adult you supposedly are?" She surprised herself. She couldn't remember the last time she'd spoken so harshly to anyone.

"Like you know anything about being an adult," Sylphiel answered without missing a beat.

You're a damn Shrine Priestess! You were supposed to have looked at me all wide-eyed and stuff and reprimand me for using such obscene language!

"I know enough to know when I've committed a mistake," Lina answered back, her nervous energy now making her clench her fists as if readying them for a pummeling.

Sylphiel cocked an eyebrow. "Is that so?"

"Yes. I'll be the first to admit that I made many mistakes with regards to you. I'll be the first to admit that you have every reason to hate me. But we can't just be living off past mistakes, can we? Aren't we, as rational adults that we are, supposed to discuss these things and put them behind us at some point?"

"Rational adults do that, yes. Unfortunately, there's only one rational adult between the two of us."

"Oh, that's sweet," Lina growled. "So what am I supposed to do then? Grovel at your feet and beg for forgiveness? You're wasting your time if you think I'd do that. Not when you too had a good part to play in what happened between us."

"I really don't care what you do with yourself, to be honest with you."

Lina closed her eyes, breathed deeply, made a mental note to ask Natalia to teach her how to meditate and block things like this out of her mind, and tried again. "Listen, Sylphiel, we can't go on like this."

"Why not?"

"Because there are more important things to worry about right now than our own petty squabble."

"I see," Sylphiel nodded mockingly. "Like the fate of my people and of humanity depends on our reconciliation?"

"Cripes, Sylphiel, how the hell did someone like you ever learn to hold a grudge like this?"

Sylphiel sneered but kept her eyes fixed ahead. "Do yourself a favor, Lina. Shut up already and leave me alone. You're talking nothing but melodramatic garbage now."

Lina ground her teeth and closed her eyes again. Now it was requiring a conscious effort to keep herself from physically attacking Sylphiel.

"I can't believe that even someone as stubborn as Natalia was less boneheaded than you, damn it," she said loudly enough to stir the attention of the two warriors with them.

Sylphiel turned to her for the first time. "First you called me an old maid. Now you're comparing me to that arrogant pigtailed bitch?"

Ah. So that's what bothers you, huh?

"Ever hear the one about people living in glass houses, Sylphiel?"

"I don't know what Gourry ever saw in you," she said harshly as she looked away from her again. "Arrogant, self-important, braggart little..."

"Yeah, yeah, I've heard that all before," Lina said as she tried to keep her voice steady. "You know what? I don't care what you think of me. I've realized that you stopped thinking with your brain at about the same time I married Gourry. I don't know what you're thinking with now, or if you're even thinking."

"Matriarch," one of the two warriors in front called out as Lina's voice rose to just slightly below a yell, "is everything okay?"

"Everything is fine," Sylphiel answered assertively. "Keep your attention where it should be."

Lina, noticing the exchange, couldn't help but to smile cynically. "Oh, I get it. I get it now. How could Gourry have fallen for me, a small town girl who wandered for a living, when he could have had a big-shot Shrine Priestess from one of the world's most important cities."

Sylphiel sighed indifferently. "If thinking that I were that petty makes you feel better about yourself, then be my guest."

Lina knew Sylphiel was right. She herself was now resorting to stupid little remarks that were doing nothing but exacerbating the situation. That was the same kind of mind frame that would, sooner or later, start producing some rather colorful comments on Sylphiel's marital status. Just as it had two years ago. Hadn't she learned from the last time when she dropped that childish 'old maid' insult on her? She cursed to herself: obviously, she hadn't. Here she was, ready to do it all over again. And only a few days before reaching the outskirts of the Lagrimas Province.

"Sylphiel," she tried anew, "we need to talk. Like rational adults for once."

"And I tell you again, Lina, that I really don't care to."

Lina glared at her angrily. To hell with rational conversation. "Because you're too afraid of what we'll uncover? Too afraid to come to terms with everything that's kept us apart all this time now?"

"No," she shook her head. "Because ever since you took Gourry from me, I've not wanted to have anything to do with you. Insulting enough that he had me save your worthless life after you let us all down at New Sairaag."

The thread by which Lina's patience was hanging snapped violently.

"How dare you!" she yelled out, unable to stop herself from shoving Sylphiel. The two warriors noticed it and immediately rushed towards them.

"Don't you ever lay hands on the Matriarch in that manner," one of them yelled as his hand rested on his sword.

But Lina didn't even notice them. She stood there, looking at Sylphiel, furious that she should make light of Gourry's sacrifice. Gourry had died so that she could live: that much she knew. If she were here now, surviving and trying to organize a definitive stand against the Monsters, it was because Gourry had exchanged his life for it. And if Lina's life were as worthless as Sylphiel was suggesting, then she was disparaging the nobility of his final act. Reconciliation or not, Lina wouldn't allow it.

"As always," Sylphiel said casually, resuming her pace as if nothing had happened, "you can't handle the truth about yourself. And you two: didn't I tell you to mind your patrol?"

"But Matriarch, we..."

"You have your orders," she said again. "No matter what this woman says or does, you are not to be distracted. Is that clear?"

As both of them reluctantly bowed their heads and returned to their position in front, Sylphiel turned to Lina again, seemingly for the last time.

"Like I said, I want nothing to do with you. Keep away from me, and I won't have to be saying all those things that bother you so much."

"You pathetic.." Lina snarled through gritted teeth before a single, distant sound brought all four of them to a halt.

At first, it was muffled against the sounds of their own footsteps and voices, but when it came again, there was no mistaking what it was: the sound of someone screaming.

"The settlement!" one of the warriors said in alarm as he drew his sword.

"No," Sylphiel held up her hand and motioned towards the sloping grounds to their left. "It's coming from down there."

Lina caught the faded echo of the last scream and nodded. "Someone's in trouble. Another settlement, perhaps."

"You two," Sylphiel motioned to her warriors. "Have the settlement stand ready to deploy, and have twenty warriors follow us down there as soon as possible. Have the other magic users keep close to the settlement in case something comes at us from another direction. We'll go take a look ourselves."

"Yes, Matriarch!" both of them said in near unison as they broke into a run back towards the main body.

"Hurry up," Lina said as she began sliding down the steep hill leading towards the apparent source of the screams.

Sylphiel ignored her as she followed her down.

Twenty minutes later, they found the source of the screams. Or what had been the source.

Deeper into the nearby valley, in an area that had comparatively good vegetation growing on it, Lina and Sylphiel found four corpses. Fresh corpses. Their pale coloration and the large entry wounds on their necks and bodies indicated that they had been killed by Leeches only moments ago. Lina knelt down to examine one of them while Sylphiel cautiously moved around the immediate perimeter to see if the Leeches were still nearby.

Lina noticed her. "Keep still and get ready. They'll be here before you know it."

"You think they'll come back?" Sylphiel asked as she eyed the surrounding area nervously. "Why would they..."

"Because they'll linger around for a while waiting for more of us, and because there's no way they didn't notice us, not with all the noise we made just getting here."

"These people," Sylphiel looked at the three men and one woman lying dead, "they were probably here gathering up some of these plants."

"Yes," Lina nodded as she got up and scanned the nearby rock formations. "That means there's a settlement nearby. Hopefully, there were runners nearby to go warn them."

"But are we dealing with stragglers or a full-scale attack?"

"That I don't know," she answered, "but we can't assume they're stragglers. And we can't assume we'll be able to take on an all-out attack by ourselves."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that we need to bring your people closer here and consolidate our defenses with those of the other settlement. Otherwise, we'll lose them."

"You want me to bring my people into a dangerous area and risk bringing them under attack?" Sylphiel retorted angrily.

"We're in danger one way or another," Lina said as her eyes moved towards a spot nearby where she thought she heard something scurrying. "I can assure you: if it's an attack, both settlements will be found out."

"Lina," Sylphiel whispered as she noticed scurrying noises along a different rock formation. "I think..."

"I told you they'd be here," Lina smirked as she began generating a fireball in her right hand. "Just hope your warriors get here sooner than later."

Those last words came out in a yell as Lina let the fireball fly towards her front. The ensuing explosion not only drew out the three Leeches trying to make their way towards the two women, but were loud enough to echo a significant distance away. Certainly far enough to warn the New Sairaag settlement and its warriors en route.

No sooner had the fireball exploded when the Leeches, eighteen all told, sprung from their positions and raced towards Lina and Sylphiel.

"I can't see anything. Are you sure?"

"Hurry up!" Natalia yelled after Zangulus as he continued to try and get a clear look at where the explosion had come from.

"Let's hope we don't regret this," Zangulus muttered as he motioned to the two warriors running alongside them. "Think you guys can hold the fort?"

"We'll move in closer to the settlement and consolidate there," one of them responded as she unsheathed her sword. "Either way, don't take too long. We may have more moving in on us from the west."

"Just yell out real loud if they do," Natalia called back as she raced far ahead of the three of them. "The echo just might carry it through."

"That's comforting," the woman warrior complained to her companion. "She might as well ask us to make our dying screams as loud as we can make them!"

"That would work too!" Natalia yelled as she and Zangulus ran as fast as they could towards the sounds of a now full-fledged battle.

"I would have imagined you would know how to at least do Flare Arrows by now," Lina complained as her Elmekia Lance struck a Leech head on and sent it reeling backwards. Not dead. Not quite. But at least knocked out. For all of five seconds.

"We won't be able to hold them," Sylphiel said as she ignored Lina's remark and backed into her. The Leeches had moved around so as to encircle the two. And because Lina was the only one of them that was capable of attacking them, it meant that, before too long, all eighteen Leeches would get to them.

Lina fired another Elmekia Lance and drew her sword, but she knew that in this battle, she had none of the tactical advantages she had held in her previous two encounters with Leeches. This time, there was no way she'd be able to attack one without falling to the rear attack of one of its buddies. Not to mention, Sylphiel was more of a hindrance than an asset in this battle: if she took her eyes off her once, that would be it.

"For once I agree," Lina yelled as she swung at one Leech that tried to get too close. "Now would be a good time for one of your spells, you know."

But Sylphiel had already thought of it. Before Lina's words had left her mouth, Sylphiel had finished casting a Wind Shield, and thus engulfed the two women in the spell's barrier. The Leeches, after a few unsuccessful attempts to breech the barrier, moved back a few meters. And waited.

"I don't suppose you're able to cast another spell, huh?" Lina asked as she found herself staring directly into the red eyes of a Leech staring back at her. She couldn't help but to shudder: it's doubtful anyone had ever had the chance to just sit back and look directly at one of this hideous things.

"No," Sylphiel answered. "Can we do what we did last time?"

Lina recalled the incident Sylphiel was alluding to. Seven years ago. Down in that trap deep inside Rezo's laboratory. The two had been surrounded by golems, so Sylphiel cast this same spell to keep them all safe. Only Lina knew that what worked then wouldn't work now.

"A Burst Rondo will be too weak a spell against Leeches," she explained. "I don't even think they'll flinch. They'll charge the moment you drop that barrier."

"My people," Sylphiel suddenly gasped out loud. "Twenty warriors are on their way! They won't be a match for those things without the Vas Inverse."

"Damn," Lina bit her lip. "That means we have to think of something fast."

The Leeches began to slither around the barrier, as if knowing that Lina and Sylphiel were ready to try something. The manner in which they did so in a group, slithering around and appearing as a grotesque ocean of brown and red, was almost nauseating, especially considering several of them seemed to be smeared with the blood of their recent victims. There was no doubting the fact that the second the two women were exposed, they'd have eighteen Leeches upon them half a second later. There wouldn't be any time to do anything other than scream.

"Long shot," Lina finally said, "but it depends on how well you can control that barrier of yours. I take it you've learned to expand it?"

"To some degree. What do you have in mind?"

"I can't cast a Dragon Slave out in the open because I'll fry your warriors en route and possibly the settlements as well. But because it's the only spell that might get us out of this, we can try containing it within the barrier, if you can expand the barrier outwards enough to engulf the Leeches but also keeping its radius no larger than fifty meters."

"Are you out of your mind?" Sylphiel retorted as she too made eye contact with a Leech. "We'll be fried alongside with them!"

"Not necessarily," Lina explained. "Usually the spell expands outwards while keeping the caster in a vacuum of sorts in the center. Assuming you stick to me like glue, assuming that the effect won't be reversed by the fact that we're trying to contain the spell inside a magic barrier, and assuming the spell won't just blast through the barrier and make all our efforts pointless anyway, we just might pull it off."

"What are our other options?" she sounded skeptical about Lina's deductions.

"Lowering the barrier and being jumped instantly. Or waiting around for your warriors to get here and lowering the barrier once the Leeches are making a feast out of them. It's your choice."

Sylphiel knew Lina was right. There was no room for caution. And there was no room for error if, in fact, they went with a safer plan such as her previous suggestion of casting a Burst Rondo while simultaneously dropping the barrier. She cursed loud enough for Lina to hear: while she wasn't afraid of death itself, she was scared of dying and leaving her people unprotected for the little amount of time they had left to live. Dying alongside Lina, moreover, would be an insult to injury. But there was no time for that. Her warriors would be there any second now.

"Fine," she finally said. "Let's do it."

"Right," Lina nodded as she pressed her back against Sylphiel's in order to minimize the chance that the latter would be caught outside the center. "The moment the spell goes, you expand that barrier as fast as you can. No looking back, okay? We've got zero margin for error here."

Lina could feel Sylphiel nod. She closed her eyes, grateful that she no longer had to look at the Leeches just waiting for them outside the barrier, and lifted her hands.

"Darkness from twilight, crimson from blood that flows," she began, "buried in the flow of time."

She needed to keep up her concentration, but something didn't quite feel right. A little nagging voice began going off in her mind.

"In Thy great name, I pledge myself to darkness! Those who oppose us shall be destroyed by the power you and I possess!"

She felt Sylphiel tensing up as she too readied herself for her part in the attack. But something was wrong. Very wrong. Lina had cast this spell dozens of times in her life, and every time, every step of the incantation brought with it something that affected her and her surrounding physically. There was no avoiding the strange bodily sensations she'd feel when the dark powers of a budding Dragon Slave channeled through her body. There was no avoiding the way these same energies would radiate and expand around her body and make her feel as if she were flying uncontrollably through dense, warm air. And there was no way of avoiding the peculiar feel the energy ball emanated when it formed in her two hands moments before the final discharge.

So the fact that none of this was happening now sent a surge of horror down her spine. Her eyes opened and widened in instant realization when she noticed the empty silence accompanying the incantation.

There was no Dragon Slave.

"Hold on!" Natalia said as she took hold of Zangulus' hand and cast a Ray Wing.

As the two lifted from the ground and began flying past the rough terrain that was otherwise slowing them down significantly, Zangulus couldn't help but to yell out. He'd never experienced the sensation of flying, let alone the experience not of flying but of being carried by a woman who, at any moment, could either falter in her spell or just drop him by accident. Or otherwise. It was too much for him to take at once.

"Don't let go!" he yelled out as he clasped both his hands around Natalia's.

"Be ready for anything," she said, ignoring the almost comical sight of Zangulus clinging to her like that. "Unless there were only one or two Monsters nearby when the explosion went off, I'm thinking Lina and Sylphiel ran into some problems."

"Just don't let go!"

"Oh for crying out loud, what kind of man are you?"

"The kind that doesn't fancy the idea of being dropped to his death!" he yelled out nervously.

"Would I do that to you?" she smirked before frowning again.

The situation at hand didn't leave room for little jokes like that.

"SYLPHIEL, DON'T" Lina screamed out.

"What?!" her companion yelled out a microsecond away from her dropping the barrier.

"Something's wrong! My Dragon Slave! It's not..."

Lina's voice was cut off by the sound of about twenty or so armored men and women appearing over the cliff from which they themselves had come earlier. It was the detachment of warriors Sylphiel had called in to reinforce them. And all of them continued to rush towards them and the Monsters, seemingly unaware or unconcerned that, with Sylphiel keeping the wind barrier up, she'd be unable to cast the Vas Inverse. Without it, they'd drop like flies.

The Leeches had definitely noticed them. And before either Lina or Sylphiel could even react, most of them broke into a frantic rush towards the newly arrived humans. They'd be upon them within seconds.

"Shit!" Lina cried out as she raised the Sword of Light. "Let's go!"

There was no time for argument, Sylphiel knew. If they hesitated to save their own hides, her twenty warriors would be dead within a minute. Besides, of the eighteen Leeches hovering over them, only five remained behind to keep an eye on them. Five would be more manageable than eighteen.

Sylphiel dropped the barrier.

All five Leeches pounced.

"There!" Natalia cried out as she saw where the battle was now forming. With Zangulus still clinging to her, she descended quickly towards them, hoping that they could get there in time to help the twenty warriors about to be overrun by Leeches, and Lina and Sylphiel, whom were madly dodging for their lives.

"Stay close, stay close!" Lina yelled as she slashed away at one Leech and managed to kill it. "Cast that damn spell of yours as soon as you can!"

But even she knew that it was impossible, not with the surviving four Leeches attacking them relentlessly. They weren't even giving Sylphiel the chance to cast a Ray Wing or a Levitation: if, for any single moment, she stood still and concentrated upon an incantation, she'd be dead before the first line were spoken.

Lina slashed at another one but missed. The corner of her eye caught sight of the warriors, all of them scrambling madly as the Leeches went unharmed by arrows and swords. They were holding up, it seemed. But they wouldn't for long.

Before she could tell Sylphiel to hurry up, she had to turn quickly and strike at another attacking Leech. Again, she missed, and realized that the creatures were again displaying some rather creative tactical thinking. They were advancing upon her, then retreating slightly, apparently trying to get Lina to over-commit in her counter-strikes and leave herself open. Even if she didn't leave herself completely vulnerable, she'd doom Sylphiel with any counter-attack that involved anything more than a swipe.

"Bastards are getting pretty smart," Lina said as she pressed against Sylphiel's back again. "I think they know what we're up to."

"I need to cast the spell," Sylphiel said nervously. "We won't last long at this rate."

"No kidding!" Lina yelled as she slashed at another Leech, again missing it as it retreated. They almost seemed to be toying with her.

But she could tell that it was only a matter of seconds before they decided to attack all at once. Already, she could see them moving as if one, and not four, as if coordinating their next strike through a series of unvoiced commands. She grasped the hilt of her sword tighter: once again, their survival depended on just how well they'd be able to use the Leeches' own tactics against them.

And then it showed in their eyes: they were ready to strike, and they weren't even going to be subtle about it. But just as the four Leeches seemed ready to pounce in unison, the unmistakable sound of one of Zangulus' Howling blasts ripped through the battlefield. Everyone, even the Leeches, seemed to notice the sudden entrance of Natalia and Zangulus, standing at a short distance and preparing another combined attack. Almost immediately, they did so, as Natalia merged an Elmekia Flame into Zangulus' Howling attack that disintegrated two of the Leeches tangling with the warriors.

And just like that, all eleven Leeches from that group charged at them.

The four Leeches attacking Lina and Sylphiel themselves seemed to hesitate long enough for the two women to move closer towards the main body of warriors. A split second after that, the Leeches pounced, forcing both women to hit the ground and hope they'd be able to get up back in time.

"We're not going to get another one off!" Zangulus said in alarm as the sight of eleven maddened Leeches rushing towards them made him instinctively step back.

"No kidding!" Natalia responded as she raised her hands. "Hold up your sword. We're taking them on hand to hand."

"Brilliant," he cursed. He did what she asked and watched her Astral Vine spell enchant his sword as it had in their last major engagement.

Natalia didn't answer as she took out her own sword and focused her Astral powers. She certainly had not expected to be able to get more than two Howling blasts off, given the short distance between them and the Leeches. But she knew that, with both her sword and Zangulus' able to kill Leeches, they could hold their own long enough for Sylphiel to cast her spell and turn the tables on the Monsters.

But as she saw that only one group of Leeches responded to their threat, she found herself wishing she'd planned this more carefully. If Sylphiel, too busy dodging the Leeches that didn't respond, couldn't get her spell off, they'd all be in trouble, enchanted swords or not.

"Let's see which one of us can bag the most Leeches," Natalia tried to joke, her voice shaking slightly as the first of the eleven Leeches hurtled itself towards her.

Lina and Sylphiel quickly got to their feet as the Leeches attacking them regrouped for another run. Lina had enough time to size up the situation. Natalia and Zangulus had a slight, but finite, advantage, now that the Leeches were coming at them from a single direction and weren't spread out as they had been when they attacked Sylphiel and her. Moreover, the warriors, though apparently three had fallen, could still very much make a difference now that they were being ignored by the Monsters. Quickly and desperately, she waved her sword in the air, motioning to the warriors to rush the four Leeches encircling them again.

"Sylphiel," she said as the Leeches faked an attack again, "get ready. I doubt these things are going to be paying much attention to you once your warriors attack them."

Sylphiel nodded as she raised her hands slightly. Even as she nervously pressed her back against Lina's as the Leech nearest her eyed her menacingly, she began the incantation.

And just as the Leech recognized the motion and was about to pounce on her, the charging warriors, though unable to inflict any damage on the Astral creatures, were simply too much for the four Leeches to ignore. Almost instantly, the Leeches turned their attack on them, the warriors doing their best to evade them and draw them away from their Matriarch.

It was all the time Sylphiel needed.

"Son of a..." Natalia cursed aloud as one Leech tore into her cape and held onto it. Quickly unbuckling the blue jewel holding her shoulder guards and cape in place and letting them all drop onto the ground, she furiously turned about and just managed to impale the Leech before it could recover. She turned around violently and dodged another one.

"What the hell are they waiting for," Zangulus yelled as he took out another Leech and swung around in anticipation of another strike.

Eleven days ago, they had found themselves in a fire fight with dozens of Monsters, and at the time, they had thought that a more brutal engagement could not have been possible. But now, the close quarters, the almost hand-to-hand fighting, and the fact that their opponents, still nine strong, were swirling madly around them like overgrown spider-snakes, made them think otherwise. Even in their last battle, they had been able to stand together and consolidate a tight defense: now, to stand still and even try to think of a plan was to take one second too many. Here, if they stopped moving and reacting for that much time, they'd be dead.

Zangulus slashed away in quick succession, twirling and shifting repeatedly in order to guard his every angle. His quick reflexes and meticulous vision allowed him to see and react to threats from the sides; his warrior instincts allowed him to react from attacks from the rear.

But even he was not quick enough when two Leeches attacked him simultaneously from different sides. They sprung towards him in the confusion of the violent human-Leech melee, and as he met the attack of one, he would not have time to counter the other.

"Zangulus!" Natalia screamed as she noticed the situation. Forgoing logic and her own situation, she threw her sword at the one about to get him from behind. While the strike wasn't strong enough to kill the Leech, it threw it off enough for it to land about a meter away from its intended target. Zangulus noticed it a split second after he had destroyed his first attacker, and immediately brought his sword down upon it.

Two more Leeches were upon him instantly, and even as he tried to fight them off, he had enough presence of mind to realize that Natalia was now, for all intensive purposes, defenseless. The Monsters, however, made it impossible for him to help her recover her sword.

Natalia, likewise, realized her predicament and knew that, in such close quarters, her sword would be more useful to her than her magic. She quickly fired an Elmekia Lance into the Leech directly in front of her, but Zangulus' presence within the immediate field of fire would make it very difficult for her to attack the other Leeches without hitting him in the process. If even part of an Elmekia or a Ra-Tilt hit him, he would not have time to recover before a Leech got to him. She looked towards where her sword fell and decided that, if she were to survive this, she'd have to risk her life trying to recover it. Before she could take one step, however, two Leeches jumped towards her.

"You owe me so big, Zangulus," she muttered quietly as she realized she wouldn't have much time to do anything. She raised her hands to cast an Elmekia Flame, but couldn't finish the mental incantation in time.

"Natalia!" Zangulus yelled as he caught the sight of Natalia about to be killed.

There was no room left in their minds to notice the sound of a new, deafening roar blasting through the battlefield. Both were too caught up in the frenzy of their own little fight and in the certainty of their own demise to realize that, only seconds before, the surviving warriors had baited the Leeches attacking their Matriarch long enough for her to cast that one spell that could save them all.

But both definitely noticed it the moment the blue wave slammed through them and the Leeches in a torrent of silent, weightless fury.

Natalia never felt the Leeches as they jumped on her. They passed right through her as if she herself were thin air.

And Zangulus, realizing that the spell had been cast and that Natalia was out of immediate danger, couldn't help but to let a sinister smile break out on his face as he effortlessly struck the Leech closest to him.

Everything had happened within a minute, just as Lina had thought it would. Only instead of human corpses, the disintegrating corpses of all eighteen Leeches lay scattered across the battlefield.

"Thanks," Zangulus said to Natalia as she took a knee to catch her breath.

"What for?" she asked without looking at him. Only in retrospect did she come to see the insanity, and the melodrama, of her actions. The last thing she needed was for Zangulus to start getting all mushy on her just because of something she did without even thinking.

"For saving my life. Guess I owe you one now."

"Oh no you don't," she smiled that cynical smile of hers. "I don't go for that macho 'you saved my life, I'm in your debt' cliché. Besides, if I didn't save you, I would have had to tangle with them all by myself."

"Yeah, that would be bad," he said, tipping his hat. Natalia was as predictable as ever, her in-battle heroics notwithstanding. And for some odd reason, it was starting to annoy him less and less. He smiled as she looked back at him. "Oh, and I win our little wager. I counted seven kills to your four."

"I thought I had six."

"Four," he said, holding up that many fingers for her.

"I want a recount."

He laughed to himself as he turned around. The sight that greeted him, however, quickly dispelled that all-too-brief mirthful moment. Sylphiel and Lina were heading towards them, but the New Sairaag warriors were tending to their dead. He did his own recount, but not of fallen Leeches. Of fallen humans. When he was done, he frowned: all told, six of Sylphiel's warriors hadn't made it. The figures were good, comparatively speaking: fourteen of them actually managed to survive that frenzy. That, however, didn't make it any easier to accept the losses or the knowledge that, even with Sylphiel's magic, her warriors still had close to a fifty percent casualty rate. Considering there were only so many humans left alive, those figures weren't encouraging.

Natalia looked past him and at Lina and Sylphiel, both of whom were now close enough for them to speak to each other. Natalia frowned: she could tell by Sylphiel's expression that she wasn't exactly coming over to exchange war stories.

"What are you two doing here?" Sylphiel yelled as she pointed towards the direction of her settlement. "You were supposed to have stayed with my people in case we were attacked!"

"You're welcome, I'm sure," Natalia said, annoyed but not surprised by Sylphiel's behavior.

"Don't give me your nonsense now," Sylphiel said spitefully. "All it takes is one Leech to kill off half my people before we can even make it back there!"

"Sylphiel," Lina interrupted aggressively. "If this were a major attack, we would have had more than just a handful of Leeches attacking us. I think you can calm down a bit."

"I didn't ask for your opinion," she turned to Lina. "Because of your incompetence, six of my people are now dead!"

Three sets of eyes widened, three mouths seemed to fall in unison. Natalia and Zangulus looked at each other in disbelief only to look back at Sylphiel as if she had gone completely out of her mind.

"I don't believe this!" Lina let her arms fall onto her sides. "How the hell do you get off saying this was my fault?!"

"If you had gotten that spell of yours off, we could have taken those Leeches out before my warriors got there!"

Lina looked towards Natalia, then Zangulus. She just had to take her eyes off Sylphiel. To continue to look at her sneering green eyes would be to succumb to the impulses of her willing fists.

But her own confusion over her Dragon Slave's failure seemed to be the more pertinent issue. The frantic fight with the Leeches hadn't allowed her the time to think about what went wrong. Now, however, even with the time and peace to think the events through, she was no closer to unraveling the mystery of its misfire.

"Something went wrong," she finally tried to explain as the three of them continued to look at her. "I don't know what it was. But my Dragon Slave wasn't working. I know that spell too well to have miscast it."

"You said you hadn't used it in years," Natalia suggested. "Maybe you did get rusty with it as you feared."

"No way," Lina said as she shook her head emphatically. "I knew that spell better than I knew the back of my hand. It came to the point that I would be able to cast it without a full incantation. Even if I didn't use it for almost two years, something that engraved in my experience can't have just left me like that. Something is wrong."

"Great," Sylphiel muttered as she turned away and, accompanied by her warriors and the fallen soldiers they were carrying, headed back towards the settlement. "You're trying to figure out your own stupidity while my people are defenseless to an attack."

"Sylphiel!" Zangulus called after her. She didn't so much as acknowledge him.

"Let her go," Natalia said as she cast an angry look at her. "Her Worshipfullness is in one of her high-and-mighty bitch moods right now. In any case, I agree with Lina. These were definitely stragglers. They were too wild, too disorganized, to have been part of a larger attack force."

"Could they have been hunter-killers?" he asked, not entirely convinced of her assertions.

"Too erratic to be hunters," Lina offered. "You remember how precise, how stealthy those things are. They're information gatherers more than anything else. These just attacked us for the sake of attacking us. If there had been higher level Monsters running around, they'd have been here already."

"I hope you two are right," he finally muttered. He pointed towards the four corpses Lina and Sylphiel found first. "But who were these people?"

"I'll bet good money it's another settlement," Lina said enthusiastically. "If so, we need to find them quickly and bring them into the fight. They'll last much longer with us than on their own."

"But we shouldn't all go," Natalia said as she scanned the territories to the west for any signs of activity. "If by some disaster there is another group of stragglers running around, Sylphiel will probably need some help fighting them off."

"Right," Lina nodded. "Who stays, who goes?"

Zangulus could tell that Lina had phrased her question so as to indirectly ask him to stay behind. Natalia was certainly in no hurry to volunteer to return to New Sairaag; she just stood there, arms crossed and pretending to be staring off somewhere else. She too, in her own indirect manner, was voicelessly asking him to take the brunt of Sylphiel's spite.

"Being that I'm the only one on relatively good terms with her, I'll stay." Zangulus was obviously torn by his own decision: he seemed more inclined to go with Lina. Instead, he realized that sticking it out with New Sairaag's ever-volatile Matriarch might be the best way to help out his companions. It was probably a good deal more dangerous staying with Sylphiel anyway, so he didn't need to feel he was taking the easier assignment.

"Thanks, Zangulus," Natalia said in relief before she could stop herself. Realizing her silliness, she shrugged. "What can I say? I sure as hell don't want to be near her."

"All right then," Lina said as she and Natalia headed off towards their best approximation of the settlement's whereabouts. "We'll try to hurry up. You might want to use that smooth-talking talent of yours to get Sylphiel to come here."

"Oh, why not ask me to do something dangerous instead?" he called out sarcastically as the two women disappeared beneath the sloping grounds.

Less than an hour later, Lina and Natalia found the settlement. It was, in actuality, two settlements joined together for the sake of mutual defense. Apparently, the two had run into each other around six months ago near the Midas Province, and had decided to link up and continue on as a single settlement. Though they were originally the Claire and Barrette Settlements, they had renamed their little makeshift alliance in order to denote their cooperation and their spirit of survival. Hence, they referred to their little wandering settlement of about three hundred and twenty people simply as Solidarity. While both Lina and Natalia found the gesture bordering on the melodramatic, they could appreciate the fact that, indeed, it was their solidarity that had kept them in one piece for those entire six months and counting.

As there was no real time for pleasantries, they got right down to business. Lina informed the four men and women comprising the settlement's council of her plan to make a stand against the Monsters, and of Sylphiel's own settlement and their so-far successful methods of surviving attacks. As was expected, her suggestion that their own people unite with them and their fight was immediately rejected. She bit her tongue and kept it from retorting the way she now wanted to retort whenever someone made a derogatory remark about her plan and the logic, or lack thereof, behind it. Just as Sylphiel had over a week ago, the council thought that the idea of a handful of sorcerers and a small army of vulnerable warriors taking on the rampant armies of Monsters wiping out settlement after settlement was nothing short of insane. Asinine. Downright stupid. Forget it.

But even the most insane plans will seem like viable alternatives when placed within already-insane contexts. The council had evidently been unaware that four of their people had been killed by a group of stragglers; when Lina informed them of this, their attitude had eased up somewhat. She figured it was the best card she could play. She explained in more detail how it was that Sylphiel's spell had allowed her warriors, Zangulus, and Natalia to kill off creatures otherwise impermeable to melee weapons. They listened more attentively. She emphasized how they had run into significant numbers of Monsters in almost every step of their journey towards Lagrimas, as if the Monsters themselves were all either heading for or massing near the neighboring areas. That wouldn't bode well for settlements defended by mere swordsmen. The council nodded more noticeably.

By the time she was detailing the odds and how they figured that anyone sticking close to Sylphiel and her defensive magic would double their chances of overall survival, even if it meant bunching themselves up and making themselves very conspicuous targets, the Solidarity council was convinced. Lina and Natalia did their best to keep their elation unnoticeable, though it was probably too much to hope for that the four leaders didn't hear the two women sigh in relief and in near unison when the decision was made. Within twenty minutes of the hour long conversation between the two parties, three runners were dispatched and sent towards the New Sairaag settlement with a simple message addressed to Sylphiel: "Solidarity will stand with you. Please bring your people here. We will move within two days towards Lagrimas."

With what was perhaps Lina's most critical piece of diplomacy in her life completed, she and Natalia walked around the larger-than-average settlement and spoke to some of its inhabitants. For the most part, they didn't hear anything out of the ordinary as they exchanged pleasantries with the populace. Mostly the kind of talk one normally found among the traumatized populations of the world's remaining settlements. Details of how they found new sources of food by roasting bark and roots. Details of how they had improved the efficiency of their firelogs and the strength of their crude arrows. Details of how they traveled in odd formations and patterns in order to avoid detection, especially when their lookouts sighted Monsters. It was not until Natalia actually thought of asking that several people informed the two women of certain oddities encountered nearby and only about two weeks ago.

Within minutes of their last conversation, Lina and Natalia were heading west again.

According to their informants, about six more strangely colored corpses were lying no more than three kilometers from their position.

"So I might be able to do it, then?"

Natalia shrugged. "Like I've said countless times, Lina, I'm not sure. But the next time we have a moment, we can try. Just remember. The key to meditation and Astral traveling is to close your mind to everything but a single, repeating thought. It helps me sometimes to concentrate on a single word. I repeat it over and over again in my mind, stressing the pronunciation and blocking out any contextual meaning it may have. Have you been doing those mental exercises I suggested?"

"Well," Lina blushed, "with all that's been going on..."

"See?" Natalia frowned. "You're already starting on the wrong foot. No mental discipline whatsoever."

"I just think it's a waste of time," she complained as she surveyed the area ahead. "Even if I can do these things, what good will they do me? It's not like I can shift my spirit the way you do."

"No, but you never know when such an ability might come in handy. I believe gifts like these are given for a reason."

"I can't tell you how hokey that sounds, Natalia."

"I thought you wanted to see Jenna again," Natalia snapped at her. "I thought that was motivation enough for you."

Lina rolled her eyes and said nothing. Walking in the afternoon heat across the barren remains of a once healthy grassland was bad enough without Natalia reprimanding her like some little upstart brat. Maybe she had taken this whole thing too seriously; maybe she was starting to think of herself as Lina's mentor or something. She almost laughed at the thought. No. Natalia was a nutcase, but she probably wouldn't reach those extremes. At least, Lina hoped so.

She looked up at the red sky and figured that they'd been walking for over an hour now. And yet, they hadn't found so much as a trace of what the Solidarity folks had told them about.

"Do you think we took a wrong turn somewhere?" she finally said after a few moments of silence.

"No, we're on the right path," Natalia answered. "We're getting closer to Lagrimas. It's conceivable that friend of yours ventured out this far."

"Yeah, my friend," she repeated emptily. She swallowed hard as the fear of her upcoming meeting with Zelgadis resurfaced. She was nervous because she simply didn't know what to expect. Then again, when had she ever?

"Funny thing is," she thought out loud, "he was always something of an enigma."

"What do you mean?"

"Zelgadis," she began, "well, he was the kind of friend that you didn't know whether to hug lovingly or run in terror from. He could be the strongest ally, or he could turn on you for some reason or other. When we first met, something about him gave me very bad vibes. I remember telling him how I'd sooner die than join forces with someone like him. I think it offended him deeply, and later I understood why. He and his henchmen captured me a few days later, but it was he who ended up getting me out of there. Too long a story to relate. Suffice it to say, one moment he was after me, the next moment, both of us were fighting against his former master. It's like, you never know just what he's going to do."

"Hmm," Natalia wrapped her arms around herself. "Sounds like a real madman."

"See, that's the other thing. Zelgadis was overly serious, somber, moody, and over-rational. But he was anything but mad. I've never known a more rational, calculating, or intelligent person in my life. I doubt he even got out of his bed every morning without rationalizing as to why he had to do so. Even when he goes against you, it's not because he's petty, ideologically opposed to you, or just hating you: it's because, in his mind, there is a very logical reason for what he's doing, and he'll do it regardless of the consequences. In a way, it was refreshing to know someone like that, given the way everyone else I knew was just making things up as they went along. Truth be told, I considered him a very good and close friend, strange somber behavior and all."

"You said a lot had to do with the fact he's a chimera, right?"

Lina sighed as she recalled the way Zelgadis' inability to come to terms with his stone body had, more often than not, been the driving force behind all of his eccentricity. "Yeah, you could say that. I suppose you're the one who could most relate to that. You said you were always the outcast in your village right?"

Natalia opened her mouth to answer, but the words never came out. Before she could utter a single syllable, she stopped dead in her tracks and grabbed Lina's arm. With her other hand, she pointed towards a spot no more than thirty meters to the left from where they were standing. There was nothing unusual about the place-its only difference from the surrounding desolation was the fact that it had a number of scrawny plants growing there-except for the fact that, right next to those plants, lay the six corpses they had been told about.

"I take it that's them," Lina said nervously.

They ran towards their find, but once they were standing next to them, they were reluctant to get any closer. For the sight was even more hideous than either one of them had imagined. Being told about strange gray colorations on the corpses was one thing: actually having to look upon the horrid sight only so superficially describable as 'gray coloration' was another thing altogether. The corpses were gray, yes. But no one had bothered to describe the way virtually every vein in the dead bodies seemed to jut outwards and appear as a mass of worms directly beneath the decaying layer of skin. No one had bothered to describe the way the skin area around the face, especially around the eye sockets, had pulled backwards, leaving huge, gruesome gaps that exposed putrefied inner tissue. No one had bothered to mention the blackened gangrene that seemed to be falling off in chunks around specific areas while other parts of the bodies seemed perfectly intact. Given all those abnormalities, the entry wounds from the Monster attacks that killed these people seemed normal in comparison.

"I think I'm going to be sick," Lina mumbled as she turned away from them for a moment. "What the hell happened to these people?"

"Well," Natalia said as she knelt down beside one of them, doing her best to keep herself from gagging. "They were killed by Monsters, there's no doubt about that. But I'd guess that whatever did this to them happened after they were dead."

Lina turned around again and forced herself to kneel beside Natalia. She wouldn't forgive herself if she wimped out now and relieved that morning's breakfast in one of the nearby ditches. Besides, she'd seen scores of corpses in her life, most of them within the span of the last two years.

Of course, none of them looked quite like this.

"There's something very odd about their skin, though," she finally forced out.

"Oh, you mean other than the hideous color and chunks of gangrene falling off?"

"The texture," she mumbled as she contemplated touching the corpse next to them before drawing her hand back. "It looks strange. It seems to be decaying, but I've never seen anything like it before."

This was no time to be chicken. Lina closed her eyes and touched the arm of the corpse with her two fingers. She was expecting her fingers to break through the decaying skin and become drenched in the gore of rotting innards. The thought alone was nauseating. She thought to herself that, after this, she'd burn the glove she was wearing. But there was something different about this particular form of decay, and the only way to find out what it was was to go ahead and touch it.

When her fingers met the hard consistency of stone instead of putrefied flesh, however, she opened her eyes in shock.

Natalia noticed it too as she ventured to touch the corpse's torso. She too had expected her fingers to break through and expose the corpses' insides. Instead, she found her fingers tapping the torso gently as they would along a slab of brittle stone.

"Sweet Maker," she gasped in horror.

Lina was too shocked herself to even say anything. Now she understood why there was no stench, and why it was that the stories about these and the Miranda corpses mentioned something about their skin appearing decomposed but at the same time intact. Now she understood why there was so much confusion among the different accounts she had heard.

There was nothing in human experience that could even begin to catalogue what had happened to these six victims and the other ones among the Miranda dead.

"Lina," Natalia said nervously, "no Monster did this. I'm sure of it."

Lina's thoughts returned to two different conversations, oddly enough. One was her conversation of nearly two weeks ago with Zangulus, in which they both had discussed the very strong possibility that Zelgadis was the one responsible for the strange coloration among the Miranda corpses. The other conversation she thought of was the one having taken place only minutes ago with Natalia. She hadn't figured that her discussion of Zelgadis' over-rational nature would, in fact, be a harbinger of sorts to what they would find now. For Lina had, reluctantly, forced herself to put the gruesome facts and speculations together and come to an almost unfathomable conclusion.

"This is his final solution," she said in a scared whisper.

"What do you mean?" Natalia looked at her, a trace of fear in her eyes.

"This is Zelgadis' idea of survival."

"You're not making any sense," her voice rose suddenly.

"Zelgadis is a golem-demon-human chimera," Lina tried to explain despite the sick feeling she had in her stomach. "It not only makes him physically stronger than an average human, it also makes him impermeable to many physical and even magic attacks. He somehow survived the attack on Lagrimas, despite the rumors that he had taken a blast head on."

"Are you saying his stone skin has allowed him to survive?"

"Not just that," Lina's eyes widened as her mind continued to work with the variables. "Because he's part demon, there's a good chance the Monsters thought of him as another one of them and didn't even consider him a real threat!"

"But what does that..." Natalia stopped herself. She knew where this was going.

"He's been trying to figure out Rezo's original spell! The one that turned him into a chimera in the first place! He's trying to change humans into chimeras just like him!"

"And these corpses," Natalia looked down at them, "are his failed experiments, so to speak?"

"Yes!"

"And this is the man we're looking for?!"

"He can't possibly believe he can figure out the spell," Lina said as she lifted herself from the ground. "But if he does, he's probably been experimenting, as you say. Those corpses in Miranda, and these here, were probably his test subjects. But the experiment obviously failed. Judging by the way these corpses are falling apart and the way they're far weaker than his own stone body, I'd say he hasn't hit upon the technique yet."

"I suppose he'll use up every corpse on Earth before he does," Natalia mumbled as she got up as well.

"No," Lina said anxiously. "He won't. He may have concluded that his technique wasn't working because he was using corpses instead of live humans. That's why he got those five people from the New Sairaag settlement. He wanted to test his technique on live subjects. Only he ended up killing them instead."

"A brilliant deduction, as always, Lina."

Both Lina and Natalia froze in place as the sound of a voice all too familiar to Lina cut across the tense air. Slowly, they both turned towards its source.

Standing there was Zelgadis, wearing the same beige Shamanist outfit as always, now as tattered as Lina's outfit had been before she changed it. He stood there motionless, arms crossed in front of him, eyes quietly examining his former companion and the strange woman beside her. His face remained expressionless, even as Lina and Natalia tensed up with the shock of his sudden appearance. He had, apparently, been standing among a nearby rock formation and listening to their entire exchange all this time.

"Zelgadis," Lina managed to sputter out as she fumbled with her thoughts. She felt scared of him. If he had just confirmed the validity of her speculation, what exactly would be his intentions for those who figured out the monstrosity of his master plan?

"Long time no see, Lina," he replied in that same somber tone as always. "I never once expected to see you again."

"Neither did I," she answered slowly. She felt more frightened of him because, despite the fact that his demeanor now was no different than it had ever been for as long as she'd know him, there was something different. He wasn't insane, that much was certain. But that rational mind of his seemed to be sizing up the situation even as he stood there observing her. Lina wasn't eager to know what he was deducing.

"So who's your friend?" his asked, his voice ominously tranquil.

Natalia felt another sharp pang in her stomach. Seeing a golem-demon-chimera for the first time in her life was disconcerting enough: hearing him speak to her like that made him seem downright monstrous.

"She's Natalia," Lina replied absently.

"I see," he closed his eyes and nodded. Two seconds later, he opened them again and looked at them with what seemed like controlled anger. "Well, Lina, Natalia, if you've seen all you've come to see, I suggest you return to wherever it is you came from."

Neither Lina or Natalia knew what to say. Had he growled out that statement and begun flailing his sword around madly at them, they would have known how to respond. But the way he just stood there without making a single threatening motion or gesture towards them simply left them dumbfounded and uncertain as to the proper course of action.

"Why is that?" Natalia finally forced out.

"Because if you stay, you'll interfere with my work."

His expression remained stoic even as he uttered the next words.

"And if you do that, I'll have no choice but to kill you both."

Chapter 8   |   Fanfiction