Episode Six: Triumph and Tragedy. Blood Shed For The Buried.

The Kingdom of Panifess has a unique quality about it.

It lingers in the air, touching the forms and spirits of those within its boundaries. It represents itself in many forms; the taste of the air inhaled, the sparkle of the sun off the water, the gentle creaking sound the shutters make when they sway in the breeze. All of it suggested it wished to be the epitome of quaintness.

Lina, however, just thought it was really damn small.

"How can a Kingdom consist of one city?" she snapped at no one in particular, gazing about its orderly and decaying crop of buildings from the archway that served grandiosely as the town's entrance. "And why doesn't anybody live here?"

Amelia felt she might be the one from whom input was expected. "Ano, I don't know. We didn't keep very close tabs on this area. It used to belong to Zoana, but there was some confusing goings-on." She swallowed, feeling Lina's dark eyed glare. "We just didn't think it was all that important!"

"It's pretty, though," Raleic observed. She rubbed her chin as she did so; she thought it made her look speculative.

"Pretty and dead." Zelgadiss was gazing about with solemn indifference. "You didn't even know this place was abandoned?"

Amelia felt very, very red. "Well..."

"Nevermind," Lina cut in. "Amelia's got nothing to do with this place, and if we really need to figure it out, we'll have plenty of time for that later. Unless - " she turned, slowly, " - you want to tell us anything?"

All eyes fell to Xelloss. He'd joined the traveling team somewhere in their few days' trek from Biatz, but for all the help he'd given he might as well have stayed in subspace.

"Um." He gave a nervous smile. "What would I know about a bunch of ruins in the middle of nowhere?"

"More than we do," Zel responded flatly.

"Which isn't saying much," Xelloss pointed out, then raised a finger to point. "Oh, look at that pretty butterfly."

No one fell for it, but he teleported off anyway.

"Che." The chimera turned his head away, gazing over the ruined city. "Well, at least we don't have to put up with that smile of his anymore." He leapt down from the arch to where Gourry, being not-so-magically-gifted, and Selena, being not-so-crazy-about-standing-on-highly-placed-crumbling-edifices, were waiting. Also safely on the ground was their giant bag of supplies.

Lina looked to Raleic, arms folded. "You are going to be in charge of watching that thing when we get into the city." It wasn't really a question, nor a statement. More of a Lina Inverse style assurance.

"Hmph," she sniffed in response, but hopped down to look after it obediently enough. That left Lina and Amelia, surveying a city whose time had come and gone, and apparently more than once.

"There's an awful lot of grave markers on the western side," Lina observed morosely. "Why is it whenever a Mazoku lures us to a city, there's always a bunch of dead people or ghosts or both?"

Amelia didn't have an answer for that. Her brow knit, she began wondering aloud. "Do you think we'll find Princess Sara here? Or Fairn, or whatever her names is?"

"I'm sure," the sorceress responded. "Fairn, and Ralov, and maybe even Halgon. And the Mazoku who tried to kill your father."

The Princess left with that to ponder on, leaping to the ground to join the others. Lina watched her a moment before following, her thoughts on homicidal chefs and the elven henchmen who work for them. And the goofy little axbearing men the elven henchmen like to kidnap.

"So," Raleic asked, arms folded primly. "We're here. What now?"

"We'll need to search," Lina mused. "The best place to start would be the castle up there."

"You think?" the postal worker grunted. The sorceress kicked her in the stomach.

"You're the one who asked!" she shouted, watching her opponent crumple.

"I meant whether or not we're going to wait until morning," Raleic sputtered from the ground. "It's almost night."

"I opt to wait," Zel murmured speculatively. "Our friends might find the night a good time to pay us a visit."

"Bad guys like the dark," Gourry agreed. "They like anything that makes them look more intimidating."

Lina thought that one over before picking out a nice little worn-out building on the outskirts of the town that would serve as shelter well enough for the night, at the least. One hour later they were moved in, cozied up, and their traveling bag was a lot lighter.

"I told you this stuff would come in handy," Raleic sniffed primly, stirring the golden kettle full of stew with her gilded spatula.

"As long as I don't have to deal with it, there's no problem here." Lina worked on a porcelain cup of tea, gilded with little ivory roses. "I'd have to say this is pretty extreme for adventuring, though."

"Adventuring is no excuse to resort to decivilization." The postal worker tasted the soup, paused, continued stirring. "I didn't want to say anything back at that country town, but they could really have called in better maid service."

"Maid service?" Selena echoed blankly.

"Not everywhere's as well-off as Seiruun," Lina sighed. "You really don't get out much, do you?"

"I travel constantly," Raleic put in defensively. "My job demands it."

"Then you must be really thick," the sorceress responded, a gleam in her eye. Gourry, watching from a fluffy unfoldable chair, was suddenly afraid they were going to lose their makeshift little hovel.

"Why don't we go over everything again?" he said quickly. "Zelgadiss and Amelia weren't here from the beginning, and Selena just joined us, so..."

"I have informed the Princess of all our exploits," Raleic snapped.

"Might as well, though." Lina cricked her neck, thought back to the beginning...

"I guess things started when we met Halgon in the inn," she said, neglecting to mention the part where she and Gourry killed the stocky man's god-daughter. "Raleic showed up with Amelia's letter, and then Xelloss and a giant Mazoku attacked us."

"That's a very opportune time to show up," Zelgadiss said, apparently to the air above Lina's head.

"They were lucky," Xelloss agreed. Apparently he'd reappeared; Our Heroine was no longer surprised by this behavioral pattern of his. "That most likely would have been the death of all of them."

"I had the situation well in hand," Raleic returned.

"Yeah, you were a big help." Lina glowered over her teacup.

"Keep explaining!" Gourry shouted, waving his hands and knocking over a vase of orange daisies the postal worker claimed gave her good luck. "We killed the Mazoku and then what?"

Lina sighed, ticked the events off on her fingers. "We met the new head of Atlas City's magic guild, helped an elderly couple by searching for the Legend of Twilight, searched the insides of the Kouwara Mountains, fought a shepherd who turned out to be Xelloss, wound up in Seiruun where Prince Phil was attacked, watched Zel and Xel dance together, fought off the chef Mazoku and her elven cronies, searched the two elven sanctuaries in Seiruun, and ended up in Biatz." She paused, thinking a moment. "Did I leave anything out?"

"Sort of," Zelgadiss said. "Selena, how much do you know of Shaburanigdo and his five Generals?"

The girl mulled on that for a moment. "The Mazoku legends, you mean? Only what I've heard as stories. Galef-san liked to tell his daughter about them around the campfire - "

"That explains a bit," the chimera agreed drily, reluctantly recalling his initial reception by that particular little girl. "Do you want to handle this, Lina?"

"What, not in the mood to hear yourself talk?" The sorceress grinned wryly. "That's a new one for you, Zel-chan."

"What's - er - stop calling me that!" The chimera set his jaw firm.

"Oh, calm down. No one likes a spoil sport."

"Che," was all Zel had to say to that.

"I could field this explanation, if you'd like," Xelloss chimed in from the nether shadows. "I know the most on the subject, after all."

"I think we'd like to keep this brief," Lina cut in, and turned to Selena. "Basically, they're really bad evil monsters."

"Then the stories are true!" The budding warrior turned a narrow gaze to Xel.

The really bad evil monster in attendance beamed. "Well, we don't like to brag..."

"Let's get back to the subject," Zelgadiss interjected. "I want to try and get some rest before we head out tomorrow. Whatever it is we're going to be doing, it's going to be big."

"I thought you weren't sleeping well lately," Gourry pointed out. "Why don't you just try to stay up for a while?"

The chimera's eyes narrowed into catty little slits. "I've been having nightmares lately. That doesn't mean I can't - "

"Whoah!" Lina broke in. "You must be tired, Zel. You should be the last one to take offense in something this idiot says."

"I've been having nightmares too," Amelia agreed quietly. "Let's just try to stay focused, ne?"

"I agree." This from Selena. "We need to figure out what we're going to be up against."

Another "che" and the subject was dropped. The group turned back to face each other, in a more or less nonviolent fashion. A few moments passed before Lina opened the conversation up again. These things take exquisite timing, after all.

"One thing's for sure," she said, slowly as to properly convey the magnitude of it all. "Zel's right. Whatever's going to happen here, it's going to be a hell of a thing."

"Hopefully it'll all return to normal," Gourry agreed. "I kind of wanted to get back to the carefree bandit-chasing life."

"I feel tense enough for a climactic battle, anyway," Zel said, flexing his sword hand. "I'd give a lot for a good night's sleep again."

"Then we should lay it all out on the table," Xelloss told them. "Perhaps you can figure out some of these mysteries here, and be prepared for whatever the lowly souls waiting for you have been planning."

"Sure," Lina agreed readily enough. "So the first one of these would be - "

"Why do you keep disappearing all the time?" the entire room shouted at him. (With the exception of Selena. Selena, as a rule, does not shout. She just sort of asked... very intensely.)

A sweatdrop appeared. "Wh-what do you mean?"

"You showed up right with that first skeleton Mazoku." Lina.

"You pretended to be Branhof to lead us to that mountain." Gourry.

"You didn't help at all when my father was attacked." Amelia.

"You made sure we didn't leave for the techno club without you." Raleic.

"You left me right in the middle of my fight with those elves." Zelgadiss.

"And you didn't help at all in Biatz." Selena.

A light breeze rushed in through the window with its new satin pink curtains, ruffling Xelloss's hair and filling a very long, uncomfortable silence. For a second Lina was sure he was going to teleport off once again, but to her surprise, he did not.

"I had things to do," he finally explained.

"Our enemies said they're out for revenge on one of the people we've met," Zel said, patient with anger. "With the way you've been acting, I wouldn't be surprised to find out it's you."

"What would I ever do to cause such hatred in another?" Xelloss asked innocently. Before they could answer, he raised a hand. "Besides, I was with you in the techno club. They would have recognized me."

"That's true," Zel conceded bitterly. "And that chef woman wasn't weak enough to fall for your masking spells, either."

"They could be after anyone, anyway," Xelloss pointed out. "You've met hundreds of people on your adventures."

Gourry smacked a fist into his palm. "I always knew that Rossburg guy was up to no good."

Raleic shrieked as Lina smashed the vase into her sidekick's forehead.

"Look." The sorceress straightened up. "If we can't figure out who it is, maybe we're going about it the wrong way. What do we know about our enemies?"

"I'd assume Fairn and Ralov come from here," Zel opined after a second's thought. "And Gregory, too. Although it doesn't look like it's been lived in recently."

"This used to be an elven community," Xelloss informed.

It took them a moment to sort this one out.

"Why are you all looking at me like that?" His smile began to waver.

"You sounded totally different," Amelia breathed.

"Really?" The Mazoku beamed.

"Really," Lina agreed, nodding solemnly. "We barely recognized you, seeing as that's the first time you've given us any useful information."

Xel sulked. "That's mean, Lina-san. If that's how you treat valuable members of your group, maybe I won't tell you about this place's history."

"Alright, alright, we're sorry." The sorceress rolled her eyes. "Please continue."

"Well then." The Mazoku stood up, donned a professor's cap and a pair of spectacles. "As I said, this was once an elven community, the last known to exist on the mainland. Within the Barrier, of course."

"Of course," Lina agreed sourly.

"Long after the elves in different cities had isolated themselves, like the ones in Seiruun, this city continued to live until around two hundred years ago." Xelloss produced an apple and took a large bite out of it.

"I knew that much," the sorceress-student sighed. "And then something happened, and they all died out. Right?"

"Close," Xel conceded. "In fact, two elves survived whatever it was that had caused their own personal cataclysm. I have no idea how they came to know Gregory or Halgon, but - "

"Fairn and Ralov," Zel muttered. "The two lone survivors of a lost city."

Xelloss nodded. "Sometime after that, Lyle de Panifess arrived and claimed the empty city for him and his people. I'm afraid my knowledge of the area ends there."

"Wait," Selena mumbled, trying to grasp all of this. Crises on a civilization scale are generally difficult for sweet country girls to grasp on the first try. "What happened to Lyle and his subjects?"

"I don't know, as I said. Perhaps the same thing that befell the elves."

"And the same thing that took the elven priests in Seiruun." Lina shifted uncomfortably. "This is starting to make sense, I think."

"So we've got a sort of hold on the elves," Zel said, "except for why they kidnapped your companion."

"I guess that's a mystery that will have to wait," Lina agreed, with a shrug. "Now. What do we know about the chef?"

"Cairi?" Amelia asked, startled. "He was just a nice man who made dinners for Daddy and I..."

"Not him," Lina snapped, "the Mazoku that took his form. What do we know about her?"

"Nothing, as far as I can tell," Zelgadiss mused. From the sound of his voice, he was getting tired. The sorceress couldn't blame him, they'd been traveling a lot lately... and he hadn't exactly been sleeping like a rock. "Except that she's in charge of the elves, and wants to kill us because we know someone she doesn't like."

"Hmph. I guess there's nothing to pursue there, then, and I'm too sleepy to try and solve anything else." Lina got to her feet, searching out a comfortable place to take tonight's snooze. "Gourry, get out of that chair."

"Nani? But - "

"Lina," Amelia spoke up glumly. "I... I might know something about her."

The redheaded spellcaster turned to face her, all wide-eyed and blinking.

"It's nothing, really, but..." Her voice trailed, and her fatigue was obvious.

"But what?" Lina prompted as gently as she knew how. This didn't save her from a scolding by Raleic, but at least she'd tried.

"Her Highness is getting to it! Be patient, she's been getting almost no sleep this entire trip! Why don't you - " It went on, but Lina had shoved her palms against her ears to keep from Fireballing her back to Seiruun. When she saw Amelia's mouth form the words, "Raleic, please don't," she dropped her arms back to her sides and waited.

The Princess raised her eyes slightly. "Remember, in Biatz? The sword she used instead of an arm?" Lina nodded; so did Zel, Selena, and even Gourry, which was a feat all in itself. Amelia continued. "It's just that... that style of sword, the real kind, I mean..."

"Keep going," she meant to say, but almost jumped when she heard Zel say it first. This was not all that surprising, but the fact that he'd managed to say it in a much more considerate tone than she made her feel a little guilty.

Amelia's eyes wavered, then at the sound of Zel's voice, focused. "That style of sword was used in Lyle's time," she said. "The same time Philionel was assassinated by Gregory."

"Which the Mazoku tried to recreate." The group's eyes left the Princess, with the exception of Zel's.

"I don't think that's a very big deal," she said. "I just remember it from training, and history classes."

The chimera's eyes sought out Lina's, and she smiled.

"Thanks, Amelia. Let's go to sleep. We've got a big day coming up."

Awe-inspiring. Overwhelming. Grandiose.

None of these words described the castle of Panifess, sitting at the northern end of town among a forgotten row of wealthy homes. "Moss covered" would fit, though, as well as "bland," "dark," and, for the more vocabular amongst us, "decrepit." But certainly not anything that invoked any sense of respect.

At all.

Luckily, it is not the focus of this portion of our story to detail this castle. What's happening of interest is happening inside it, and when things are afoot in shadowy corridors and twisting hallways, who really cares about the decor?

Quiet now, and we can hear two voices bantering...

"They're here, then."

"Hai. They're sleeping in an old house, on the north side of town. Our enemy is not with them."

"Feh. That coward would never show himself unless all the chips were completely in his favor."

"As you say." A pause, and then a breath of a rustle, as of cloth on cloth. "I will go, then?"

"I suppose. But don't kill them yet. Our Lord would have it done with, but trusts us to do so in our own time. The two he's already reached... just make sure they don't get much rest tonight."

"Of course."

Footsteps, then...

...And somewhere else, beyond the myriad portals and whatnot of this old fortress, a long-lost laboratory glowed with sullen life.

For Zel, sleep was like a long forgotten goal. As soon as he'd make a go for it, half of it would dance away, and the other half would only serve to tease. He eventually stopped trying, resting his head on his arms from beneath the empty traveling bag which he'd turned into a makeshift blanket. The thing carried completely useless good luck charms and exquisite dinnerware, but he was the only one to get stuck without a mattress.

The wooden hovel was lit by the rosy glow of the fire in the fireplace, but even without that, Zel would have been able to make out the shapes of his comrades individually. One of the perks to being a magically mutated freak.

Selena was curled up in one corner, a hand on the sheath of her sword. Lina and Gourry were sleeping against the far wall, enough distance between them in case anyone called them on it. Xelloss was propped up in the folding chair, snoring loudly, but obviously that was a fake out. And next to him...

Raleic was sitting up, her back to the fireplace, having fallen asleep while attempting guard duty over her Princess. Amelia was huddled up against herself girlishly, one hand balled into a fist and tucked up under her mouth. She's still a child, Zel thought to himself, but just then she flopped onto her back and the covers gave way enough to allow him a good view of her youthful curves.

The chimera at changed his mind at once. Without realizing it, of course.

At least she doesn't seem to be having any nightmares, he thought, but knew that they'd come for her, given time. They always came for him.

"Hsst."

Zel blinked, his eyes racing back to Xelloss. The Mazoku was holding a finger to his lips, and somewhere beyond that closed-eyed, blank mouthed facade, Zel sensed his alertness.

"What is it?" he hissed, crawling out from under his sack. He had just enough time to look towards the door as it blasted inward, flames crackling along its edges, a slim elfin figure standing the space it had vacated.

"That," Xelloss said, amiably enough.

"The hell?" Not surprisingly, Lina was already to her feet. "Who is it?"

Gourry attempted to sound threatening, despite being half asleep. "Mmrgh!"

Moments later the entire house was gone in shrapnels of flaming wood. The flicker of fire had an almost beautiful effect over Fairn's face. Amelia heaved a sigh as her protection spell wove around them, fending off the blast.

"Her again," Lina growled, stalking forward even as the rubble continued to fall. "Why don't we lower our enemy roster by one?"

"Stop!" Amelia cried, grabbing her by the arm. The redhead seemed a moment away from giving her a good throttling, but the Princess managed to divert it with a very alarming cry of, "Look!"

She did, but reluctantly; Lina was really been in the mood to throttle someone. But surprise took the lead position in the race of her emotions as she watched Fairn stalk forward, one hand raised in a spell-caster's position... and the other wielding a sword.

Selena gasped. "Her arm..."

"That's some pretty impressive power of regeneration there," Lina called out, as the elf grew near. "Not even a Resurrection spell can do that."

Fairn slashed her sword through the air, heated ash darting every which way. "Only a human would use such base White Magic," she snarled, but it seemed to be a very half-hearted snarl. Her attention went quickly to Selena, as did the point of her sword. "You're the one who wounded me," she told her, in case she'd forgotten.

"You seem to have healed well enough," Selena managed.

"So I guess this means you're really in with the Mazoku," Lina observed, and from the flinch of her slanted eye she knew she'd hit that one dead-on. "Not just one of their henchmen now, are you?"

"I'm only half-Mazoku," Fairn confirmed. "Once I've taken care of all this..."

"You'll become a true devil, through and through." Zelgadiss's was deadpan. "That's just what the world needs."

Xelloss didn't react to this jape. He stood, placidly, hand on staff, face nice and emotionless. Zel's eyes found Lina's for the briefest of seconds, and Lina returned her attention to the adversary at hand.

"So this is it, ne? Tomorrow you three will face off against us, and we'll end this for good." Lina raised a brow, and then requested, "Just tell me one thing." Fairn's almond eyes faltered, but she nodded nonetheless.

"Why did you kidnap Halgon?" she asked, simply.

There are times when silence speaks eras of information, and this was one of them. When the silence was broken, it wasn't by the sound of a voice, but rather the swirl of cloth as she spun about.

"That's not a concern of yours," she answered. "On my mistress's orders, I'm letting you live until tomorrow. Come to the castle and, as you say, we'll end this once and for all. But you two - " and she spun, pointing her sword at Zel, and then Amelia, " - had best keep your dreams fresh in your minds. You're going to be needing them."

Zel's hand drew up against his chest, the words of Bomb Di Wind forming in his spirit... before he realized Lina was way ahead of him.

"We'll be sure," the sorceress said pleasantly, "to give your master your regards."

"What," was all Fairn had the time for.

"DRAGU SLAVE!"

Bright shades of black covered the town, sonic blasts echoing as buildings collapsed, magic ran wild, and elves, presumably, met their demise.

"Did you get her?" Gourry asked, wide-eyed, once everything was quiet.

"That was amazing!" Amelia cheered. "I didn't even see that one coming!"

"Nice," Raleic admitted grumpily.

Lina's arms were tight across her chest. "Save your accolades. I missed her."

Gourry blinked, looked out over the destroyed city. "Then she's the only thing you missed."

"She teleported," the redhead grumbled. "Damn. I forgot about that."

"Well." Zel had to smile, regardless. "You succeeded in blowing away half of this useless bundle of ruins, at least."

Lina brightened. "You're right! I bet I can collect demolition fees from Zoana!" She patted Zel on the back. "Never let it be said that you're a spoil sport."

"Er," Zel replied, took a look at her face, and wisely shut up.

"That went well," Ralov sighed, chin in palm. "Fairn, you're going to get yourself killed one of these days."

The elven woman glowered at him, but gave no response. Maybe there was too much on her mind to think up a proper one. More likely, she was simply employing the age-old power held by women of every race, time, and universe: the cold shoulder.

A minute passed. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop.

Two.

Three.

"Fairn," he began again.

"Shut up," she hissed through her teeth. He jerked in wonder, reclaimed his cool, and reached a hand out for her. She turned away from it, but he placed it on her shoulder anyway.

"Fairn," he said, one more time. "Listen to me. Back then, we - "

She was on her feet in a flash, and the room temperature dropped five degrees from her glare. "I know you don't like this, Ralov. Leave me be."

"I can't," he said, and it was such a simple and honest statement that she felt all the strength leave her and fell weeping into his arms.

They stood there like that for awhile. However long it was neither could say, but as anyone who has ever been in that sort of position will tell you, it didn't matter.

"We can leave," Ralov whispered, long slender fingers stroking her hair. "You can retract your Pledge from the Mazoku and we can run off. We'll finally leave this place..."

She felt a tingling sensation along her arm, the fake one, restored with the shape-binding magic of their mistress. Gregory had already died, and what would happen to Halgon? She could take him, and most importantly, be with Ralov. She could do without the arm, she knew... she could do without Frosteffa, she could do without revenge, she could do without any of it...

"I only pushed you cuz I like you," a voice whispered in her ear.

"Daddy!" came an echo, her own voice, long past, a whisper in time...

"Mother! Father!" Terror filled, Ralov's voice, squeaky with youth...

"Might as well leave with a bang," was the final echo, spoken dry and matter-of-fact, and then came the searing heat of flames and the splashed mud on her dress and the faces of Tild and her father and her uncle and Danin and Wylla, and Jinne, burning alive, dozens others, ancient facades, all dead...

"I can't," she told him quietly, and the tears ran all over again.

Creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee -

"This is what I hate about old castles," Lina said, between winces.

- -eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee -

"They're certainly noisy enough," Amelia agreed, hands over ears.

- eeeeEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeee -

"Didn't these guys ever discover the great functions of oil?"

- eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEAAAAK.

"Finally," Lina chirped as Gourry, Zelgadiss, Xelloss, and Selena slumped to the ground, perspiration-moist and breathless. "I thought you guys were going to be pushing at those doors all day."

"You could try helping next time," Zel grunted.

"Yeah," came Gourry's agreement. "I mean, I understand making the three guys do the work, but why Selena?"

"Hey, she nominated herself, remember?" They turned to regard her, and the poor girl shifted uncomfortably under their scrutiny. Lina waved it all off. "Whatever. Let's not sweat the small stuff."

"Easy for you to say," Xelloss said. "You're not sweating at all."

The Mazoku watched a tiny flame get really, really close to his face. "Complaining?" Lina asked.

"Not at all," Xel responded appropriately. "Is there anything else I can help out with?"

"For one," Zelgadiss replied dourly, "don't run out on us this time."

"Yeah," Amelia jumped in, waving a finger at their evil little team member, point-blank. "Because you didn't help last time, Cairi was killed and an elven sanctuary was destroyed. It might be fatal if you flake out on us again."

"I got it, I got it." Xel beamed, holding up his open palms. "Promise."

"Swear," Lina prompted, and the little flame in her hand was back. "Swear on your being as a Mazoku. You won't be able to back out of that one."

"A...ano... Why don't you just trust me...?"

"You'd better just do it. Her adrenaline count gets really high when we're near the big climax."

"What does that mean?!"

Zel sighed, staring into the main hall of the castle as Lina and Gourry exchanged some mood-detensifying insults. Stone floor, ceiling, walls, with tattered and dust-laden carpets and drapes all about. Two doorways opened to the left, one to the right, and straight ahead, beyond two twisting staircases, was an archway with crimson sheets cutting it off from view. Dull spotted sconces, a chandelier, and small gardenpots made up the rest of the interior designs, along with a number of soldiers' weapons strewn along the floor; swords of all shapes and sizes, pikes, halberds, staves, and even a morningstar or three. But it was the plants in their pots that drew his eyes back again, and he'd just realized why when Gourry bounced off his head and into a bizarre tapestry of a black-haired rogue battling a giant snake with the words "oppressive Zoana" written along its coils.

"I swear he gets dumber everyday," Lina snorted, and then apparently remembered the life-or-death crisis that had called them here. She stepped up behind Zel, glancing around. "What's up in here?"

"Two things I've noticed so far," the chimera replied, dry as sand. "Care to guess what they are?"

"The plants in here are still alive and flourishing after all these years, and the decorations are distinctly Seiruun in origin?" Lina guessed, and Zel was flat on his face.

"Okay, my bad," he said as he hoisted himself back up. "I need to stop underestimating you."

"Damn right," she agreed, and he gave her a grudging smile. "But I've got to admit I don't have any ideas about the first little oddity. You?"

Zel was gently tugging the leaf of a small potted tree, gazing at it with that oh so sexy chimerical earnestness. The others piled up behind him, a few of them stepping on Gourry to do so.

"My guess would be something about this city," he said at last, straightening up. "Probably a magical property left over from the elves. Most likely nothing that would help us, unless Mazoku have taken an interest in gardening."

"That's pretty unlikely," Xelloss agreed. "I prefer a good seafood dinner to a salad any day."

"Urgh," Gourry mumbled. This is the best he could with a mouthful of Lina boot.

Amelia had made her way to the tapestry which had rebounded a flying blond, looking it over with a few confused blinks. "Anything on your end?" Lina called, hopping off her sidekick's face.

The Princess studied it a few more moments before giving her diagnosis. "Ano... I think it's one Lyle de Seiruun's political manga."

"His what?" Lina was the only one not too wowed to speak.

Amelia nodded. "I've seen a few of them before, and they're drawn exactly the same way. The man, especially... that's how Lyle always drew himself."

Lina tilted her head, screwed up her eyes a little bit. "And just why was a Prince of Seiruun drawing manga?"

"I've heard of this, I think," Raleic joined in. "I remember seeing a few of these and reading about Prince Lyle's little side hobby."

"You have the most messed up family I have ever met," Zel groaned through his fingers.

"And that coming from a guy twice related to a piece of Shaburanigdo." Lina jerked her head to another angle, squinting at the picture, and changed the subject. "Look, I can understand having a hobby, but this looks like Araizumi meets Amano. It's a mess!"

"It's not that strange," Amelia protested.

"Is that a horse or a crumbling turret?" Gourry asked, rubbing his chin.

"It's the sun!"

Lina waved her arms about, signaling the gag's end. "Oi," she said, "as interesting as this is, we're losing focus. We need to start searching for clues before we get ambushed again."

"Yeah, but which way?" Gourry asked, his eyes darting from door to door to staircase. "It's not big for a castle, but it's still a lot of ground to cover, ne?"

"Good point," Lina admitted. "You guys think we can handle splitting up?"

"Depends on who the groups are," Zel said. "I'm not going anywhere with Xelloss, and I don't have time to babysit a magical swordsman without a magical sword."

"Hey," whimpered the incomplete archetype.

"Well, I don't blame you there," Lina said. "I'll take Xelloss, but who says I want Gourry's helpless ass weighing me down?"

"Hey..."

"Why don't you send him back to guard our supplies?" Raleic suggested. "He can't do much good there, but these guys don't have enough taste to go after our fine furnishings anyway."

"..." was all Gourry said this time, drawing little shapes on the floor in a small aura of dejection.

"Uh, hey now," Amelia attempted, patting his shoulder. "I don't think you're totally useless... uh, sometimes..."

"Nmph," the blond sniffed, curling up into a ball.

"Oh, come on." Lina jerked him to his feet, and when his legs refused to kick in, hauled him over her shoulder. "I'll take him and Xelloss and search the east wing. You guys poke around the west and then whatever's beyond that curtain." She pointed Gourry's foot in the direction of the archway. "If we don't find anything, we'll regroup here and check up these stairs."

"What if we run into trouble?" Zel asked.

Lina shrugged. "Blow something up. We're sure to notice."

Elsewhere in the castle, light flickered, magic shimmered...

And...

"They're here," a voice could have been heard to say, had anyone been around to hear it. "They're finally here."

It fell into silence then, as discovery would have been an awfully inopportune thing just then.

Selena Dyne, Zelgadiss Greywers, and Crown Princess Amelia Wil Tesla Seiruun; not the three you want to be exploring an empty castle with, Raleic Deontri decided. The tension was thick enough to wound.

The only one who seemed remotely oblivious to it was the cause himself. Zel strode along predatorily, hand on sword hilt, sharp eyes darting back and forth even when there was nothing about them but stone and dust. She disliked his blaiseness toward the Princess's obvious if uncomfortable affection, but had to admit his approach to the whole caution thing was awfully effective. They hadn't been attacked by any beings of concentrated evil lately, anyway.

"Do you feel anything?" he asked at one point. The hallway had been curving gradually (and doorlessly) for a good ten minutes now. His instincts told him, rightly so, that in another ten they'd be at the castle's back.

"Nothing," Amelia answered after discerning that the question was aimed at her.

"The Mazoku must be masking their presence," the chimera mused. "Either that, or there's a natural disturbance in the castle's aura."

"Maybe there's just nothing to feel?" Selena asked hopefully.

"No," Zel said promptly. Amelia felt a twinge of triumph, and felt immediately guilty about it. "There's something here, but it was stronger back the other way. I think we should check out whatever was behind that archway."

"What about down here?" Raleic said, disapproving. "We're supposed to cover this wing, remember?"

"And since when do you take orders from Lina?" Zel asked slyly, and found a letter opener in front of his face.

"What was that, again?"

"Erk. I was kidding."

She gave him a moment to memorize the length of the small knife's blade before flipping it back into her cloak pocket. "Alright, then. But you still didn't answer my question."

He gave her a mild look. "If we keep going this way, we'll just end up where we started. Unless the architects were spending too much time in the herbalist room, this hall goes in a complete circle."

"Ah. So Lina would probably be coming back this way anyhow." She gave the surrounding aura a quick search-through, neverminding that she once had been unable to differentiate a sorcerer and an ostrich farmer. "There doesn't seem to be anything too productive up ahead," she agreed thoughtfully.

"You're really getting into this, Raleic-san," Amelia grinned. "Pretty soon you'll be able to help Lina-san out on all her adventures."

"Erghm," she responded.

"Back to the archway, then," the ever-decisive chimera announced, turning and leading them thusly. Amelia had a few seconds to admire how capable a leader he can make before a small army of vicious looking dogs decided to blockade the hall a few feet in front of them.

"Lesser Demons?" Zelgadiss grunted, light flashing on steel as his sword took to the air. The rest huddled around him, Raleic with a look of wide-eyed surprise, Selena with open-mouthed wonder. The Princess's mind snapped into the swing of things, her hands taking the proper position despite her shock.

"Lesser Demons?" she asked, eyes nice and round. "But they're so... doggy-ish! Don't they usually look like generic skull beasts?"

"Che," he responded, as the first one leapt. He raised his sword to stab, but the beast went directly through the blade and knocked him to the ground, jaws slavering as it made for his throat. That's fine, Amelia thought, his stone's skin, it can't do anything, but his shriek of pain and the ease with which its phantom fangs slipped into that impenetrable flesh proved otherwise. Thoughts, attacks, and spells all jumbled in her mind at once, and before she could pick out the proper one -

"Wind Brid!" Selena shouted, hands thrusting at the monster. It howled in pain as it flew through the air on the wind of its death, through the castle wall, and into oblivion.

"Thanks," Zel breathed, catching the girl's offered hand and jumping to his feet. "But don't get relaxed. They're going to be out for blood now."

One look back at the pack of devilish canines streaming down the hall quickly proved that theory. Amelia hurriedly clutched hold of a Ra Tilt, but there wasn't enough time for the spell to form itself before the first of the hounds were on them, biting and snarling.

Indeed, Lesser Demons in canine form have a very strong bond.

Zel fought at the beast with his hands, but it felt as though it had planted suckers inside his body to draw out his soul. Amelia and Selena had both prepared to use a Flare Arrow before the beasts were on top of them, too. They can't last as long as I can, he thought, and a spell was forming between his palms when he heard the shout...

"Raza Klouva!"

...and the Lesser Demons were no more.

Blinking, he looked around. Amelia and Selena were as surprised as he was, and so his gaze turned to Raleic. "That was you?" he asked skeptically.

"Don't waste your time thanking me," she responded lightly. "It was for Her Highness. And there are more coming, anyway."

Low growls and glowing eyes filled the hall behind them, and quickly to the front as well. The four of them scooted together in a tight square, spells forming on everyone's minds.

The opposing sides stared each other down.

In the moment before one leapt forth, Zel felt Amelia's hand clutch his. He understood.

The beasts attacked.

"Ra Tilt!"

Magic flew, blowing into the ranks of Demonic dogs and ripping them to shreds upon shreds of semi-sapient unlife. Selena and Raleic covered their eyes to ward off the light, promptly finding that it did no good. This was spiritual magic, and the light of the spirit isn't about to let itself by hindered behind the arm of a human.

Things finally settled at some point, and the group beheld an empty hallway.

"That was amazing," Selena cried, shining eyes turned to Zel. "You didn't even damage the castle!"

Amelia butted in quickly. "It's spiritual Shamanism. It only works against enemies with strong Astral forces."

"Last I heard, rocks aren't very deep thinkers." Zel grinned at Amelia. Selena turned a shade whiter.

"Of, of course. I should have known." Her eyes hit the floor and stayed there. Zel sensed a need to somehow respond.

"You do pretty well on your own," the chimera assured with a falsely jovial face. "The whole thing with Fairn and the arm..."

Selena turned an even paler color. Raleic rolled her eyes to show just how much she thought of this little emotionally disabled conversation.

"Did I say something wrong?" Zel wondered aloud.

"No. I just, uh..." Selena straightened, tried to make herself look strong. "I wasn't expecting to get a compliment from you, Zelgadiss-san, after you and Amelia-san..."

The Princess turned her back on this scene in its entirety. And she realized as she did so that it had been a damn good idea.

"There's more!" she shouted, following immediately with a "Freeze Arrow!" and hurtling it straight into a pack of the wild beasts.

"From behind us, too," Zel cried, hauling Selena off her feet and making for the opening Amelia had just created. "How many of these damn things are there?"

"These Demons are sure as hell annoying," Raleic agreed, zapping a few ahead with an Icicle Lance, "Lesser or not."

The four of them fled into the heart of the battle, back the way they'd come. Amelia, Selena, and Raleic punched their way directly through the moving horde, although all Selena was able to produce was a Flare Arrow or two. Zel snapped a couple quick spells to keep the beasts off their backs, and he finally saw an end to the monsters ahead of them...

Until a hundred more appeared to take the place of salvation.

Amelia screamed as a canine tackled her to the floor. Raleic Fireballed it off, but then she was overwhelmed, too, and Selena, and just before Zel could complete the Astral Vine's chant, he was drawn under the writhing flow of bodies.

Pain enveloped him, breaking through his body's natural magical aura and draining him like a wineskin. His hand clenched his sword tighter in reflex, teeth clenched, the sound of his comrades' screams filling his ears as they died off one by one. His thoughts went from death, to Rezo, to a swirling vortex of colors and shapes he couldn't quite comprehend.

He was the last one to lose consciousness. As he did, he saw Rezo, standing and smiling, waiting to continue their war.

As Zel was the last to hold out against the Lesser Demons, Amelia was the first.

She'd fought, surely, but fighting with the sheer resolve of one's inner strength is a lot different than fighting with the might of spiritual magic. Or at least it seemed to her, as she grit her teeth and bit her tongue and clenched her muscles in myriad attempts to find that wellspring of spirit she was usually able to call on in even her most terrifying moments.

Perhaps some other day she would have been able to hold out, to chant a Visafrank, and destroy their demonic devourers. Some other day when her body wasn't exhausted from lack of sleep, her soul wasn't locked in a civil war, her mind subconsciously betraying her, opening up old wounds that had never quite healed.

This was not that day.

"Father," she cried, hopping from one foot to the next, "toss me the ball..."

"Hum," Gourry said to himself, gazing about the hallway. "Hum, hum, hum."

"What are you doing?" Lina asked peevishly.

"Humming," he explained. "To take my mind of the stress."

Lina smacked her forehead. "I guess I should have gone easier on him with all that swordless talk. There's nothing more annoying than Gourry with an inferiority complex."

"You have only yourself to blame," Xelloss agreed, teleporting out of the way of a Flare Arrow. "Oi... do you hear that?"

Lina paused a moment. "Hear what?"

"Nothing," Xel said with a shrug. "I thought I heard something from the path Zelgadiss took. Not loud enough to be an explosion, though."

"I think we're going to meet up with them soon enough anyway," Lina said. "This corridor seems like it just loops the castle and goes right back to where it started."

"There haven't been any doors, either," Xel mused. "Maybe there's something really important at the very back?"

"There'd better be," Lina agreed, "or we're going to blow the outer wall open and Ray Wing back to the entrance. I'm not wasting my time with another twenty league hike."

Gourry gave her a look then, his eyes confused. "You mean you don't feel it?"

"Eh? Feel what?"

"It," he insisted. "This!" He pointed a few different directions in the air, hoping to clarify things.

"I feel a rising sense of anger," Xelloss pondered aloud, "but I think that's just Lina's personality."

"Hmph," was her response to that, folding her arms. "What are you talking about, Gourry? Try to use complete sentences."

"I can't, really," he muttered dejectedly. "I just feel something. I figured you could, too, because you always feel magical properties."

Her feet halted of their own accord. "Say what?"

"Uh, hum, hum, hum?" he repeated.

Lina instantly had him in a headlock. "Not that! The magical properties part!"

"Ergh. Because you always feel magical properties?"

"Yeah," she agreed, tightening her hold. "Are you saying you sense some sort of magic that I don't?"

"No! I'm saying I thought you did because I feel something and I think I'm going to pass out now..."

She let go, addressing Xel with a withering look. "Do you feel anything?"

"Nothing you don't," he answered sweetly.

"Like I'd get anything out of you, anyway. How strongly do you feel this... feel, Gourry?"

The swordsman was tottering on his feet, trying to see through a lack of oxygen to the brain. "Huh? Um, pretty strongly, I guess. Sorta."

"How close does the thing feel?" she persisted, eying him. "Concentrate if you have to."

He tried. Honestly, he did.

"I could really go for some venison pork," he finally answered. Lina whapped him with the hilt of her sword. "Sorry," he said, snapping back into it. "I really can't tell. I'm not trained for this kind of stuff like you are."

She sighed, patted him on the back. "Okay. Just tell us when you notice it getting stronger, alright?"

"Alright," he agreed, and they began their stroll again.

Minutes passed in silence before Xelloss broke them. "Figuring out anything important?" he asked innocently.

"What's there to figure out?" she asked. "Just more dealings with the Lord of Nightmares on a personal level. What could go wrong with that?"

"Oh, surely this is nothing to the bright eyed Lina Inverse?" Xel tilted his head, watching her from behind closed eyelids. "You're the sorceress warrior who defeated a seventh of Lord Ruby-Eye, the army of Chaos-Dragon Gaav, Hellmaster Phibrizzo, and the one who called in the final blow against the invader Dark Star. What could there possibly be to pose a threat to you?"

"Different situations are suited for different people," she responded. "I never know if this is going to be the situation for me. It might be one in which I don't fare all so great. Especially when you're involved."

"That's always a possibility," Xelloss admitted. She didn't think he sounded all too reluctant about the admission, either.

"Do you have any input?" she asked, half sarcastically, but then the feeling was on her.

They'd walked in front of a huge, framed doorway, which began gliding open on silent hinges. The aura around them was thick with magic, flowing from whatever room lay beyond that portal in an unending tide. It wasn't the pure, raw flow of Mazoku or Shinzoku magic, either; this was the sort wielded by humans, crafted by ancient magicians long dead. For it to be confined for so long and so well as to shield itself from her...

"Lina," came a hushed voice. She looked at Gourry, busily peering into the room. When he turned back, his face was full of simple, childlike wonder.

"It's gotten stronger," he said.

"What are we waiting for?" Ralov grumbled, toying with a dagger. "Can't we just get this over with?"

"She'll tell us when," Fairn replied. Her hands were cupped in her lap, and from the way she was looking at them, they were really damn interesting.

"They're right downstairs!" he snapped, tossing the dagger aside. "I don't especially relish the idea of killing people anyway, you know. She could at least hurry it up."

"She knows what she's doing."

"We don't know what she's doing." Ralov frowned, walked over to pick the dagger up. "If we're going to get revenge for our village, I want to know how we're doing it!"

"We're doing it by killing them," she answered automatically.

"They didn't do it. He did."

Fairn shifted, shook her head. She wanted to say something, wanted to turn aside the whole plot, but they'd already gone so far...

"She has her reasons," Fairn replied. "The sorceress is now the Legend of Dusk. Even if she wasn't, she has a history of getting in the way of Mazoku plans. We don't have any malice towards her," she added, "it's just her own ill luck that she had to cross his path."

"But we haven't even seen him with her," Ralov said, close to exasperated at the lack of common sense in all of this. "How do we know he'll even try to contact her? How do we know - "

We're almost ready, their Mistress interrupted, moments before appearing at their table. Ralov clammed up, looking shamefacedly in the other direction. Having taken her physical form, the words shifted from telepathic to the standard form of verbal. "Three of them are in the laboratory. The other four are being attacked by the castle's old guardians."

Ralov looked surprised. "The guardians? Are you going to let them die before we have a chance to avenge our kin?"

"They won't," Fairn said. "The guardians were trained to take prisoners, not to kill. But why let them into the laboratory? That's where the Legend of Twilight - "

The womanly Mazoku held up her hand. "There's nothing in there anymore except discarded materials and outdated magic devices. The time is nigh. The Master will tell me when to act. Be ready, the both of you."

She was gone then, and the elves exchanged a glance. Their time was about to come.

"Damn," Lina cooed, staring wide-eyed into the room. "This is like a vaultful of magical goodies!"

"An ancient elven laboratory," Xelloss agreed, admiring a large sphere with little zigzags connected through thin metal tubes. "No wonder there weren't any doors on the way here. This place takes up the entire floor, with the exception of the throne room."

"This is amazing!" Lina weaved in and out of piles of discarded weaponry, journals on how to operate them, tomes on how to create them, stone tablets on how to dismantle them while destroying an enemy stronghold at the same time. "No wonder this place is so thick with magic! And the shielding spells to hold it all in - "

"Except for those two we've been fighting," Xelloss said, lifting a small talisman with the picture of a weeping lizard for better inspection, "this place hasn't seen any elves for who knows how long? The mages who kept this place running must have been immensely powerful."

"And wealthy!" Lina cried, gold coins leaking through her fingers. "And look at these! They're worth more than sapphires!"

Xelloss set down the talisman, turning his head. "Hmm. Not to be a killjoy, but do you know where Gourry went?"

The sorceress popped out of the pile of artifacts and looked around. "Probably checking around for something shiny," she guessed. "Forget that, do you know what I can buy for just three of those gems?"

The Mazoku pretended not to hear her, striding deeper into the room. Lina watched him go and then turned back to her treasury, nearly drooling.

The swordsman was tossing around some Orihalcon statues when he noticed Xelloss behind him. "Oh, hello, I didn't see you."

"What are you looking for?" the Mazoku asked. "I don't suppose you've found what had been calling to you yet?"

"Calling to me?" Gourry blinked. "I didn't hear anything."

"When you were walking with us, and you felt the magic of this place." Xelloss reached out with his staff, and upended a sundial. The thing toppled over, taking a pile of antiques along with it. "Remember?"

"What did you do that for?" Gourry asked. "That porcelain doll was really pretty."

Sighing, the priest tossed subtlety aside and pointed into the clearing he'd just made. "Do you think, perhaps, it was that that lured you here?"

Gourry looked. Blue light was swirling about, casting delicate form upon three pedestals. These were made of pure marble, and two of them were empty. In one rested a sword, glowing gentle periwinkle from its blade, as the hilt cast shades of gold across its resting place. The steel was sharp, that was obvious; the blade seemed to slice the very breeze as it drift about it. Beneath the crosspiece, an oceany colored orb sat, little flashes of things zipping about under its surface. Watching it reverently, the swordsman found that his voice was no longer in a fully functional state.

"What fell over?" Lina asked, shambling up. "It better not have been anything valuable or I'll whoah!"

"You see, Gourry?" Xelloss prodded, ignoring the starstruck sorceress at his side. "This is what was calling you. Answer it."

"Bu ah," he started, licked his lips, and tried again. "But I... it seems so... serene..."

"Don't be difficult," Lina stepped in. "You felt something way before I did, remember? If it was this sword - "

"It was," came a voice.

The two humans looked around, both wearing that silly expression everyone adopts when being addressed by a bodyless speaker.

"Oh, my apologies," came the voice again. "It's been so long. Here, let me greet you as you living sorts are more accustomed to."

The air shivered a bit before giving way to the shape of a lanky elven man, silvery haired and a bit stooped to give the impression of old age. His clothes were bright red, blue, green, and gold, however, and he bore the weight of his crown with something stronger than dignity. He bore it with majesty.

"Who are you?" Gourry asked, visibly wowed.

"I am the King of Frosteffa," came the answer, thick and youthful. Apparently the man's voice had decided the whole elderly appearance thing just wasn't for it.

"Frosteffa?" the swordsman repeated. "Aren't we in Panifess?"

"That is the name the humans gave it, after we elves we wiped out." The King sighed, looking a trifle a weary... but it was sure as hell a very majestic weary. "Originally, this was the Kingdom of Frosteffa. The Capital of the Elven Race. In this part of the world, at least."

"And you were really calling to him, right?" Lina asked, impatient. "You wanted him to show up, right? That's why he could feel this place before I could. Right?"

The King paused, looking a bit startled. Perhaps he hadn't taken notice of Lina until now, or perhaps he was surprised a human girl could figure out his undoubtedly ingenius master plans.

"I did," he admitted finally. "I was calling you, Gourry Gabriev."

Gourry's mouth dropped. "But why?"

"Who cares?" Lina piped in, but both of them ignored her.

"I have been living here for one hundred and fifty years," the elder said. "Ever since my kingdom was destroyed. I was killed, and so was everyone else..."

"Except Fairn and Ralov?" Gourry asked, almost stumbling over the words in his surprise that he was able to figure that out. "They're the only two still alive, right?"

"That makes sense," Lina agreed, but was ignored again.

"Fairn is my niece," the King sighed... and briefly looked like no King should ever look, especially not the apparition of a King. His face was drawn, his eyes full of sorrow, his expression that of helplessness. "I don't know how she survived the great slaughter, nor the boy. It came so unexpectedly. And she was such a sweet girl..."

"So why does she want to kill us?" Lina asked, sparkling red around her hands suggesting she was more than ready to lob a big flaming hunk of death at them if they brushed her off again.

"She has become determined to avenge the deaths of the people of Frosteffa," the King replied, apparently not wanting anything to get blown apart just yet. "Those Mazoku she's fallen in with, they've twisted her soul, and now she thinks you are to blame. I do not know why. It's been all I've dared to peek out of my shell when she is alone. If her new masters knew I was here..."

"That still doesn't explain why that Mazoku wants us dead." Lina rubbed her scalp, an agitated habit she'd picked up somewhere and does not at all indicate a dandruff problem.

"It doesn't explain why you called to me, either," Gourry put in simply enough.

"Of course." The King nodded. "Where are my manners? I apologize, but being dead makes everything seem out of whack."

Gourry smiled politely, waiting as the apparition cleared this up for itself.

"I called you," the King continued, "because you are the former wielder of the Sword of Light."

Blink blink. "Uh, that's right. How did you know?"

The King nodded again. "It shines on you, even though it's gone. It leaves its presence on all who wield it. A weapon that powerful cannot help but do so."

"Hey, I wielded it once or twice," Lina said.

"Er, but how do you know about the Sword of Light?" Gourry asked, perplexed. "It's been in my family for..."

"About five hundred years?" the elven King asked. "We elves live much longer than you humans, my boy. Do you know where the Sword was before your ancestor fell upon it?"

Time ticked away on a distant timepiece.

"Umm... no?"

The King waved an arm over the left-most pedestal, glowing and blue and pretty and empty.

"I was one of the mages who worked on it," he said solemnly, his hands brushing at the marble sheath. His fingers passed through it, came out the other side, but that seemed okay to him; the nostalgia of it sent a smile over his wrinkled cheeks. "We elves came upon it, you know. The Dragons had it first, after the Dark Lord had created it and lost it to this plane, but they gave it to us, same as they gave us the Legends a thousand years ago."

"The Legends?" Lina repeated. "They gave you the Legends?"

Nodding, the elf indicated the right-most pedestal. "Indeed. One was housed there, brought from Seiruun by a human after Frosteffa's demise. It remained here until the night of the carnival when their King revealed his intention to activate it to the public and thusly finished the humans off. The Mazoku came for it after that. The other was left in Seiruun, having claimed the lives of the elven priests who lived to protect it." He closed his eyes, bowed his head in reverence. "Only tragedy has come from the damned things."

A thousand questions swirled in Lina's head. She didn't have time to ask them.

"Gourry Gabriev." The King stood tall and still, the picture of regality. "We worked for centuries to make this monstrous weapon work in the hands of humans. The day your ancestor proved worthy of it, we handed it over to him. In your hands, it has saved the world more than once."

"Well - " the swordsman hedged, embarrassed.

"But now it is back where it belongs, and there is a new crisis you must face. As King, I do my final duty. I bestow upon you the Sword of Frosteffa."

Behind him, the blade shone into brilliant life. The oceanic orb wavered and sparkled, turning the air about it into a beatific psuedo-sea. Gourry stood, stunned... and then shocked, as he realized his hand had closed around its hilt, raising it into the air. The King had disappeared for a moment, but in the next he was standing to their side, watching with bright eyes.

"Nice," Lina breathed. "How does it feel?"

"Perfectly balanced," the swordsman said. "Light... but powerful."

"Not as powerful as the Sword of Light," the King informed remorsefully, "and it's power supply is limited. It will only last as long as the magic in this room."

"You mean, you're going to channel the entire laboratory's power into this thing?" Lina stared, utterly shocked. "That's as good as having an unlimited magic source. That should keep this thing going for a millennia at least!"

"Were that that were true," the King sighed. "The magic of this laboratory has kept well because no one as disturbed it, but once it is put to strenuous use..."

"Even so," Lina cut him off, "we're talking years, if we're lucky. That's nothing to scoff at."

The King smiled. "You know quite a bit, young lady. I can feel safe with this Sword in.. ...ds."

"What was that?" she asked, leaning in. "You kind of faded out there."

"Hey," Gourry said slowly, light dawning. "If you're letting the lab's power channel into this... how are you going to survive?"

"I sto...ed surviving a c...ury and ... half ago," the elf replied, his form fluctuating in the air. With a surge of effort, he turned himself opaque, long enough to deliver his final words. "I told you. This is my last duty as the final King of Frosteffa."

"But..."

"Now all I can do is ask that you prevent another cata...rophe in the name of re...nge from te...ing the v...y wo...ld apart."

Gourry looked at the Sword. Long, gleaming, sharp, balanced. Nearly perfect in all respects. But... to be worth a person's life? Or even unlife?

"No," he said firmly, and held the Blade out. "It's not worth it."

A moment slipped by, and Lina's arm was on his elbow. "It's too late," she said softly. "He's gone."

"We don't have much time now," Xelloss said suddenly, causing ina to leap onto a pile of magical weathervanes.

"Jeez, you were quiet for a long time," she growled.

"Sorry. I didn't want to interfere with such a dangerously complex human moment." The priest smiled briefly, turned to Gourry. "You ready to get back to the others? It's about time to wrap all this up, I should think."

The swordsman returned the gaze a bit dully. "Oh. Right." A small smile tugged at his lips. "I don't think that King would be very happy if I just stood around being sad."

"You know," Lina said, "you can be awfully perceptive sometimes..."

"Thanks!"

"...for an idiot."

"Thanks!" he repeated, not seeing the difference.

Tugging him along by his free hand, she beat a path for the exit. "Come on. Who knows kind of trouble the others have gotten into?"

The door closed behind them, the Sword of Frosteffa shining like a lone beacon of hope in a worldful of despair.

"Oh, and Gourry?"

"Huh?"

"When we get all this done with, make sure we come back and raid this place. We could be royalty!"

The only thing that shines brighter than hope is the gleam of passion in the eyes of Lina Inverse.

The elves stood over the victims of the pseudo-canine attack, expressions masked.

Ralov had remained silent with his discomfort since their Mistress had shown up to give instructions, but even so Fairn could see it. She could see it in the way he moved, in the way he spoke, in the way he was watching the unconscious bodies right now. You didn't depend on someone for one hundred fifty years and not learn some of their personality quirks.

And she had to admit the inaction had gotten to her, too. Long past, all she'd done was lie around and wait. These days it was all about getting it over with.

"Father," one of the prone figures mumbled. This one would flail about every moment or so and bop one of the guardians in the nose, fighting off some inner demon that hit a bit too close to home for Fairn to be comfortable with it.

"The dreams, huh?" Ralov asked. "They're pretty effective."

"Of course," Fairn agreed. "Our Master wouldn't have insisted on them otherwise."

"I have to admit, though, I'm not so keen on them. He hasn't even gotten around to the other two - "

"He will, in due time. The other two are more difficult." Fairn shook her head. "Don't question any more, Ralov. We're not in a position to be questioning."

"But if we're going to kill her today, what's the point in bothering with that?" The elf looked glumly down the hallway at the rows of Lesser Demons, sitting patiently at attention. "It doesn't add up."

"Maybe they miscalculated," Fairn sighed. Her Mazoku arm flared with pain at what she knew was a lie, but she stifled it by clamping her teeth into her bottom lip until the pain settled to a bearable level.

"We have to get things set up," she said. "Our Mistress says the throne room will be the fitting place for the battle. It's where he killed my uncle and father, after all." Her eyes swept over him. "You can get the guardians to follow us, correct?"

"They were created to obey elves," Ralov mumbled. "It's been a while, but I'm sure they haven't forgotten how to heel."

"R..." said another one of the bodies. A foot lashed out, kicking a Lesser Demon across the face. The guardian yelped in surprise, rearing back to counter.

"Halt!" Fairn snapped, and the otherworldly hound fell into an obedient sitting position. She turned to give Ralov a withering glance. "You sure you can handle them?" she asked...

"REZO!" the body shouted, leaping onto her back and slamming her into the ground.

Startled growls came from every direction, as the guardians leapt to their feet. A few even snarled, but they were awfully confused snarls.

"Get this thing off me!" Fairn shouted, struggling beneath the weight of dead rock.

Before Ralov could recover from his laughing fit, the unconscious figure had hopped to his feet, pointed his hands in a random direction, and shouted "Bomb Di Wind!"

The explosion carried well.

"What are these?" Lina grimaced, coming to a halt. An assortment of freakishly demonic wolves was blocking their path, ears perked and intent on something that was happening far ahead of them.

"There's an awful lot of them," Gourry noted. "Are they dangerous?"

"I should say so," Xelloss commented wryly. "They appear to be an elven version of Lesser Demons."

"I was thinking the same thing." Lina was sizing up their ranks.

"Eh?" Gourry scratched his head. "Then why do they look so funny?"

"Well," the Mazoku began. "You do know how Lesser Demons are made, don't you?"

"Oh, of course," Gourry said.

Xelloss nodded. "Basically, one takes black magic and fuses it with wildlife. It can take any sort of form in theory, but that depends on the power of the user. As we of the Evil Race are spiritual beings, we tend to create Lesser Demons as rather simple skeletal contraptions. They serve our needs."

"And humans usually make them in the forms of weird fire breathing goat things," Lina agreed. "I never did figure that out. Selena and I had to fight a few, though, back when we met."

"Ah," Gourry said, enlightened. "So elves make Lesser Demons like this?"

"Apparently so," Lina agreed. "Probably because of their connection with their pets, or something. But now that the lesson's over, what are we supposed to do to get through these?"

"We could fight!" the swordsman proposed, beaming. "It would be a good chance to test this bad boy out!"

"Normally I'd agree, but they don't seem to care that we're here. Something up ahead has their attention." The sorceress pondered. "Maybe we should just go back the other way?"

The hounds suddenly leapt to their feet, a few growling. Not far off came the sounds of a struggle, and then a very Zellish cry of "BOMB DI WIND!"

This was followed by an explosion. The dogs went crazy, running towards the source of the sound. Lina exchanged a look with her companions, and that look said it all.

"Dill Brand!" she chanted, jumping into the fray. Dogs went up in a flashy explosion of rock.

"Oya oya," Xelloss sighed, grabbing Gourry by the waist and zipping along the corridor. A few of the Lesser Demons attempted to attack him in their low intellectual state of uncertainty, but he dealt with these without breaking a sweat. So to speak.

"Put me down! You don't have to treat me like a kid anymore!" Gourry shouted.

"Because you have a new sword?" Xelloss asked pleasantly. "This isn't the time for fighting. We have to reach the others before..."

"Before what?" he asked, stabbing at a few of the hounds anyway. They went down immediately, the orb flashing as the steel connected with the muscle and grit of the monsters. He nearly began to salivate.

"Fireball!" Lina shouted, roasting a group of the Lesser Demons in front of them. She'd cast a Raywing on herself, somewhere between an Icicle Lance and a Diem Wing. "These things won't be in such pandemonium for long," she shouted at the other two. "Be ready to do some serious fighting if they regroup."

Xelloss nodded grimly. Gourry's response sounded an awful lot like "Whahahaha!"

"Er. Are you listening to me?"

"Lina, check out this sword!" he called, hacking a Lesser Demon in two. "This is great!"

"Maybe I was too hard on him," she sighed, ending the slavering existence of two especially mean looking dogs with an Elmekia Lance, and prepared for another when Xelloss gripped her by the shoulder.

They were in a sort of clearing, she saw; their canine oppressors were either in front or behind them, and actually trying to band together in some evil doggy sort of way. She recognized this as being bad; but she recognized the unmoving bodies of Amelia, Raleic, Selena, and a freshly singed Zelgadiss as being worse. The fact that they were being watched over by Fairn and Ralov didn't make things any better.

"He was a pain," the male said with a half grin. "Took an Flare Arrow just to take him down, and he wasn't even awake."

Zel, sizzling and twitching and asleep, grunted to confirm this.

Fairn sighed, meeting Lina's gaze. "You wish to end this?"

"I wish to get my friends back," she answered crisply. "And then I want to be left alone. Do I have to kill you to do that?"

"I think you do," the elf answered. "We will be in the throne room. I believe you know where it is?"

"Off the main hall?" she asked. "I think I can find it. But you won't, if you think you're taking these four anywhere."

A petulant little smirk worked the elf's lip. "Put more effort into your fighting than your threats," she warned. "When we kill you, these four will be next."

Lina cocked her head. "Oh, right. But there's one more thing I need to tell you."

"And that is?" Fairn cocked her brow curiously.

Her hands thrust forth, her mouth opened, the power of the Dragu Slave was fresh and ready... but suddenly there was no one to use it against. Elves and companions alike had vanished, leaving only her, Gourry, and Xelloss in a hall full of pissed Lesser Demons. She cursed.

"Guess we have to go up on her offer after all," Xelloss said. "Goodness, what a wicked little woman."

"At least she left all these guys to play with," Gourry observed, sword at the ready. "Ne, Lina, want to make a bet who can kill the most?"

"Only if you treat me to dinner when I win," Lina agreed, and cast the Dragu Slave anyway. She was never one to waste a perfectly good spell.

When the throne room doors burst open, they burst open hard.

For a moment, no one was visible in the doorway. Dust and wisps of magic filled the transparency of the air on the other side, along with the scuffing sound of the movement of booted feet and one or two grunts of exertion. There were a couple sighs, as of a blade passing briefly through the air, and the mumbling death cries of guardian Lesser Demons. The two elves stood, waiting with their captives at spell point, tied together in the massive throne of Panifess.

Finally a little of the air debris cleared, and Lina Inverse was there, hands on hips, a small grin on her face. She cast her eyes into the room as her sidekick slipped up beside her, some shiny blade held at a meaningful height. Behind them stood another man, an unimportant one, not worthy of consideration.

"They sure didn't make very sturdy doors back when this place was built," Lina said, looking down at the bent steel that had once kept the throne room separate from the rest of the castle. "These almost blew apart on their own. All I did was throw a Flare Lance at some of those dogs standing nearby." There was a pause as she noticed her companions, bound and gagged. "Oh, there they are. Hope you guys're ready to go home, because this shouldn't take long."

"I take it you're ready, then," Fairn called. She drew her own slim sword, smiling bleakly. "I trust, by your confident tone, you won't mind if we make this fight a bit more level-sided?"

"Depends," Lina answered. "But then, I probably don't have that much choice anyhow, ne?"

"Well, at least you're sharp." Ralov turned his head, gesturing to a figure stepping out from the shadows. "I trust you know our friend here?"

"Hello," Halgon greeted them blankly. His eyes were hollow, spotless orbs of white, his face slack and devoid of anything at all.

"Oi!" Gourry called, waving his arms. "What's up? It's been awhile. Oof."

"Brainwashing one of your hobbies now?" Lina asked, extracting her fist from Gourry's stomach. "Or does the credit for this one go to that Mazoku you like to keep around?"

"I'd speak of her with more respect than that, if I were you," Xelloss said from behind her, stepping forward. "Although I believe you are right. This is definitely her work."

Fairn grimaced. "Silence, you! Do not interfere!"

"Interfere?" Xelloss asked innocently. "Pardon. But I think it's you who has interfered."

"What do you mean? Begone, peasant, we have no - "

She blinked. Her vision wavered. Ralov was at her side, asking what was wrong, but as his voice tapered off she knew he knew, too.

Lina didn't know what was going on, but did know an opportunity when she saw it. Drawing her hands to her chest, she gave Gourry a nod in the direction of their unconscious companions, and latched hold of the spell she needed. The swordsman dashed along the outskirts of the throne, keeping as far away from the elves as he could, and sliced downward to break apart the rope holding the four together.

The sword stopped in midair. Soon, a hand morphed into view, holding it by the blade. The rest of the Mazoku woman's body appeared with it.

"Ah, ah," she hissed... and then shrieked in pain. Her hand jerked away from the sword, and despite being confused, Gourry did what he'd set out to do. The rope severed easily.

The Mazoku stared. "Those binds were reinforced with magic. And you hurt me. I thought you lose your magic sword!"

"Got a new one," Gourry said cheerfully. "You'll probably want to back off now." Then he was flying head over heels into the far wall.

"What is that sword?" ex-Cairi wailed, gripping Fairn by the shoulder. The elves turned to look up at her, eyes wide with shock while Halgon just kept looking on, mute and stationary. A quick dark blast to their mind set her straight. "I asked you, what is it?"

"Just something we found lying around," Lina smiled. "Pretty, isn't it? Look, I hate to cut things short - "

The Dragu Slave fizzled out of existence before it even came into being. The Mazoku sent a spiral of waves winging across her shoulders and sides, breaking concentration and dropping her to the ground.

"The Sword of Frosteffa," Fairn said. "I thought its power was gone..."

"Forget that," Ralov said, his voice haunted. "Mistress, this man..."

"Is Xelloss." He bowed lightly, his eyes opening into demonic slits. "Servant of Greater Beast Zellas Metallium. A pleasure to meet you."

Lina and Gourry made it to their feet together, reforming instinctively. Any further movements were canceled out by the sudden surge of blackness around them, an intense feeling of pure and simple hate. The Mazoku was seething with it.

"You tricked us, vile thing," she sputtered. "You masked yourself well enough to hide from my Master. How?"

"Let's not worry about things like that," Xelloss said, soothing. "Although I admit, I couldn't do much else while I was keeping the shield up. I guess this means you've found the Legacy of Twilight?"

"That would be her," came the response, a hand outstretched to indicate Fairn Fellowdew. "She and you are equal now, I believe, Miss Inverse. Sadly, she will soon become the Legacy of Dusk as well, and you will not be around to enjoy the benefits."

"You haven't changed," Xelloss said, with feigned exasperation. "I'd hoped, perhaps, you'd have developed some tact since our dealings in Seiruun."

"Whoah!" Lina shouted, waving her arms. "Seiruun? What? Who are you?"

"Me?" The Mazoku woman grinned slightly, tilting her head. "You haven't figured it out yet? The clues have been there the entire time."

"I know." A cracked voice from behind them, drifting through all the energy and tension and hate.

"Mmn?" she asked, not bothering to look back at the awakening girl. "Speak up, child."

"You," Amelia croaked, "are the Queen Varena."

Lina's mind twisted. Memories spilled over her. She was right, the clues had been there since the attempted assassination...

"The Queen Varena," Amelia continued, her voice growing strength. She struggled to her feet, wary but functional. "The shame of Seiruun. A reign that lasted five years in chronology, but forever in infamy."

The Mazoku smiled. "How your hatred feeds me, young one. I wish all of your kin were as right-minded as you."

"The same Varena who married and killed Gregory, the man who had assassinated the first Prince Philionel? The same who had torn down the temples the Water Dragon King?" Lina's head was spinning, but it was slowing. Pieces were coming together.

"The same," Xelloss answered. "However, you'll find that the history texts are missing the data about her allegiance of servitude to her Lord, the Greater-Beast." His mouth twitched up into a horrible cousin of a smirk. "Apparently, she did as well."

"But I thought Mazoku couldn't shift allegiance?" Gourry wondered aloud. "Um, unless one's dead or something. I think you told me that once, Lina?"

"Did I?" she asked. "Well, it's true. So what gives? And why did you feel the need to reenact the assassination? Just feel like sharing the pain?"

Varena scowled, motioning to her elven henchmen. "I have nothing to say to people who are about to die," she spat. "Xelloss, you will die. Have at you!"

"Hmph," Xelloss replied, and the two disappeared to a plane best left untouched by mortal hands.

Lina cast her eyes at the remaining three. Behind them, Amelia was casting a few spells to awaken the others. If they could buy her enough time...

"Gourry," was all she had to say. He ran left, and she ran right.

Ralov caught the slash with his own slender blade, his elven litheness serving him well. He shoved his opponent back, hoping to catch him off balance long enough for Halgon to get in the fatal blow. No such luck.

Gourry caught himself, switched sword hands in time to deflect a hefty blow from the stocky man's ax, and again to turn aside the elf's blade. Another stab, a thrust, a parry, a sidestep, they fought two-on-one, blood heated and spirits enflamed.

"Soon you will know the superiority of our race," Ralov growled, slashing. "And then you will know the price of stealing our sacred sword of this nation!"

Gourry grunted, dodging and hacking. "I didn't steal it," he said between raged breaths, and jumping aside as Halgon's ax crashed through the marble of the floor. "And even if I had, I could still take the both of you."

Ralov sneered. Halgon busily yanked on the ax until it loosened enough to get back into working order. "You talk big for a human," the elf said, with an upthrust that jabbed the air right next to Gourry's temple. The swordsman smiled, attacking relentlessly.

"You talk big for anything," he replied, not missing a beat.

As frenzied and, even he had to admit, well rounded a fight this was (despite the uneven odds on his part), there was a moment where he was able to spare a glance Lina's direction. She seemed to be doing about as well as he was.

"I hate people who don't know when to back down," Lina was saying, squaring off with her elven adversary. "You know what I mean?"

"No more talking," she responded simply, sword in the hand she shouldn't have anymore and raw black magic forming in the other. "No more anything. This is the final bout. We settle everything here."

Sighing, Lina drew up her own defensive stance. "As much as I hate to, can I at least ask what's up between you guys and Xelloss? If you're going to kill me, you know, it wouldn't hurt to tell me a thing or two first."

"He is the one who destroyed this nation," she said. Flecks of tears spilt on her cheeks, but her concentration was dead-on. "He is the one who killed all of my friends and family. We will have revenge on him."

"At the cost of your humanity?" Lina said, not quite knowing if "elvanity" was a word. "Varena doesn't care about you! Mazoku don't care about anybody!"

"Our Mistress never pretended to care. She offered us a way to get revenge, and we took it."

"But you didn't take the Pledge until Selena lobbed off your arm." Lina's eyes darted, looking for the emotions her face tried to hide. "And I don't think your friend ever did, has he? So you obviously didn't want to completely lose yourself to this cause, not at first."

"You dare to look inside my mind, Lina Inverse?" Fairn's voice was flat now; she suddenly looked so much like Halgon that everything fit into place.

"She's brainwashed you. Like your childhood friend! Slowly, subtly, but she still did it..."

"Silence!" Fairn slashed at the air, closing the gap between them. "You know nothing about me, Lina Inverse! Nothing!"

The first blow was physical, and Lina was able to avoid it. The second was a blast of unformed magical energy, catching her even as she twisted out of the way of the first. It caught her squarely and she went down, but managed to catch herself in a roll and spring back to her feet.

Unfortunately, Fairn had apparently thought this through, wild outbursts or no. A Blast Ash knocked her back, followed in rapid succession by another. Flying back head first into a wall, she hit the ground and lay silent.

"So much for your talk," the elf snorted, turning her back.

"Bad move," Lina called smugly. "Elmekia Flame!"

Fairn's eyes widened, but there was no dodging this time; the spell took her straight on, blasting through her and into the wall at her back. A short explosion followed, rattling the sword fighters off their feet for one crucial moment. Gourry was the first to recover, but Ralov was quickly upon him; he had just enough time to knock aside Halgon's hold on his ax before swinging around and blocking the elf's own swing -

A cling! followed by the sound of a sword floating in a wide arc of air -

And a clatter as it hit the ground.

Gourry stood above Ralov, swordpoint to throat.

"Guess that takes care of that," he said with a smile.

"Don't be so sure," the elf grinned, and too late he remember Halgon.

He turned to see the ax descending...

And Selena's small body crash into its wielder, knocking weapon and man to the ground with a loud oof.

Gourry blinked a couple times, processing what happened. "Wow. Thanks, Selena!"

"No problem," she said woozily, attempting to smile.

"Well then," Lina beamed. "Nice to see you guys back!"

"A shared sentiment," Zelgadiss assured. "I'm sorry we missed out on the fun."

"You'd be dead if it weren't for the Princess," Raleic scoffed. "Such bravery, I've never seen anything like it!"

"I just untied you," Amelia protested with a smile. "What do you want to do with these two?"

"Take 'em back to Seiruun, I guess. Put the elf in jail and get the Priestesses to take care of Halgon." Lina smiled perkily. "Not a bad way to end things, I think."

"Uh, not to ruin your fun..." Gourry was looking a little distracted.

"Yes," she asked peevishly.

"Well, it's just that, isn't there supposed to be a body or something left when you kill somebody?"

"Don't be sil - " she began, before Fairn's sword pressed into the small of her back. The others backed off, Zel and Gourry in a tight formation around Ralov and Halgon, as the elven woman came into view with an arm locked around Lina's neck.

"That was cute," Fairn hissed, the blade biting through fabric, "but sadly, not cute enough."

"Erk," Lina replied.

"Let them go," she addressed the others. "If you want this girl alive."

The group tensed, eyes looking towards Zelgadiss and Gourry now that Lina was indisposed.

"I think," Zel said, "that you've got it backwards."

Sneering, Fairn tossed Lina to the floor, winked out of view, and then right back into it as she scooped up her friends in some invisible magic grip. All three disappeared, and reappearing by the throne. "Die," she requested of them, and before anyone could react, a vortex of darkness was filling the room and heading in their direction. If someone with a stop watch had been present, he could have shared that all of it had taken two-point-three seconds, total. Including the "Die."

"Protection Barrier," Amelia cried, warding off the magic at the last instant. Selena joined in to reinforce it, and it was a helpful addition, despite her very amateur status on white magic. Raleic, Zel, and Gourry formed on their own... and then realized someone was missing.

"Where's Lina?!" Gourry cried, searching through the swirling black magic around them. Nothing anywhere, nothing to see except a small sphere...

Lina landed at the group's side, protected by a purely instinctive Windy Shield.

"Worried?" she asked chummily, poking him in ribs.

"Umm..."

"Well, that can wait. Zel, help me put up a reinforced Windy Shield around this one."

"Huh? But Fairn..."

"Trust me," she said immediately. "Raleic, I don't suppose you can help, too?"

"Of course. I am the Great - "

"Shut up and do it!" She turned to regard the zero visibility of the room, the mass of evil that was taking up all the space. "Fairn hasn't been a Mazoku long. She doesn't know what she's doing. It's like she's trying to kill a cockroach, using as much pressure as possible."

"But doesn't that usually make the cockroach crack open?" Gourry asked.

"If something else doesn't crack first. Now concentrate!"

The next moments were filled with the sound of spells, breathing, and a few yawns from the unoccupied swordsman. Then came a low rumbling, the foundation of the room shaking, the wild energy chafing the roof and walls hard enough to...

A large wedge of rock toppled down, burst apart on the two magical barriers, and made a nice pile of debris about them. It was soon followed by others. Seeing what was happening, and remembering Halgon's defenselessness, Fairn halted the power surge, making herself a very easy target for the incoming stones. Too late she realized they would have been perfectly fine if she'd kept the energy up, but now there were chunks of two ton marble heading for her and her two companions, and that was hardly the time to try and restart it again.

"Damn her!" she yowled, her dragging er comrades with her as she leapt through the dwindling magic, careening around falling rocks with one purpose in mind. "Damn her! She will die!"

"Not today," Lina said, popping out of the rubble and diminishing darkness. "You, however..."

The swordsman leapt out from behind her. She had already started to dodge, but that had sent her directly into this man's path. There was no time to move again. She had no time. She would die, her cause unrevenged...

Blood sprayed. She waited for the void to overcome her. But there was no pain.

"Fairn..." A voice croaked.

She looked down at Ralov, and realized the blood had not been hers. She screamed, white magic spells gathering, the mere presence of them in her mind lancing pain through her arm.

"Ralov!" she cried, sinking to her knees. "Ralov! I'll heal you! I'll..."

"I can heal myself," he said, blinking back the agony. "Don't worry. I'm not going to die yet."

A boulder of marble the size of a small bakery buried him then, wisping him forever off this mortal plane.

Time had stopped for Fairn. She stared, hearing nothing, feeling nothing, despite the collapsing room about her and the small shards of rock that clipped her skin. Then, slowly, it started back up again.

Gourry's eyes were wide, his mouth as well. He looked down at his sword, covered in blood.

"I didn't mean to..." he said, stunned.

"It wasn't your fault," Lina assured him quickly. "He died on his own. He was out to kill us too, you know. Now come on, before we get crushed..."

"You'll be going nowhere."

It was like a voice from the grave. Fairn stood, silent and burning with pure, insane hatred. Halgon, expression blank as ever, took a step away from her, ax raised defensively.

This time, it was truly fierce. Fairn blasted outward with dark matter, catching Lina hard. She followed with an uppercut, sending her sprawling, and took care of Gourry with a single column of black venom. The others were running up to fight too, abandoning their spell of protection, and she was ready to take care of them... all of them... all of everything. Her powers, like her sanity, simply had run too crazy to keep track of, and soon all of the others were down for the count as well. No one dead yet, and that's how she wanted it. She wanted them all to watch the girl die first.

She strode through the debris, engulfed in a swirling black orb of destruction. As she reached Lina, who had managed to regain her feet, she realized she shouldn't give her the satisfaction of finishing her off so grandly. The black powers about her tapered off, and her sword flew into her hand.

Lina's body took over while her mind reasserted itself. Her own sword was up and at the ready in time to fend off that first attack, and the second and third, but the fourth clipped her shoulder, and the fifth deep enough to bounce off her ribs. Spells swam like dreams in her subconscious, but she was attacking too fast for her to spare any time to use them.

Another gash along her side. Another against her leg. Her weight hit it poorly, and she fell. The next swipe sent the sword spinning through the air.

Fairn raised her arm for the final strike. Satisfaction was ready to take her over; she could feel it tingling at her sides, waiting for this last blow so she could feel an emotion other than sadness for once in her life...

The blade descends...

Halgon's ax intercepts it, the clang ringing throughout the hall. Time stops again.

He looked into her eyes. His were expressionless, but there were tears at the corners. There was a lot of fighting in his soul, for this. "You'll kill yourself if you keep going like this," he told her sadly. "Don't. Remember, when we were kids, and you were so lonely when Ralov wasn't there? Remember how we played?"

"No," she sneered, withdrawing her sword from his weapon's hold and running him through. His knees buckled, and he fell.

"And you," Fairn cried, slashing wildly. "You, Lina Inverse! Y - ?"

Lina, face grim, stepped up behind her. "No," she said sadly. "You."

Fairn turned as the Sword of Frosteffa pierced her chest. Her mind bubbled with glee at the knowledge that she could survive such a mortal attack, how pathetic of a girl of such renown, how could she underestimate her like that?

Then the Elmekia Lance hit her through the curves of the blade, and her tears, hatred, and rage all melded together. In the time it took her body to hit the floor, she recalled a thousand voices, a thousand faces, a thousand happy moments, all stolen. At the same time she recalled all the horror inflicted upon her, but in place of the old, unformed anger, there was now only uncertainty. She saw her own actions, her own deeds, all the pain she had been the cause of. For herself, and for others. Unfortunately, she didn't have time to regret it.

A sharp pain enveloped her mind. Her body hit the ground. She heard the request, urgent and undeniable. Her Mistress had appeared to watch over her before she died. Behind her, she saw her Master. Both were looking at her in expectancy.

"It's yours," she whispered, the final words she would ever say. Then her hold on the Legacy of Twilight was dispelled, the Lord of Nightmares consumed her, and the sense of the world was gone.

As was she.

A tingling. Lina's senses were attuned to it; she watched the elf as she lay dying, saw her lips move, and some part of her soul was moved. It was like one half of a magnet calling to another. And an awfully damn powerful magnet at that.

Lina realized the answer then, but there was no response to affirm it. The roiling, unstable miasma of the Mother of All continued shifting about Fairn's body, bringing its very existence into question. The physical presence of the lithe elf shivered, twisted, distorted, like a reflection in a very ripply pond... until all that was left was the Sea of Chaos itself, and even as she watched, that dwindled away as well. Lina had once been inside that volatile ocean, and although her mind had lost those memories, her soul had not. And as the last of The Lord of Nightmares disappeared, She finally acknowledged Lina with a brief, sharp understanding of the elven girl that was no longer. She saw her past, a painful, lonely past, all at once, and she had to turn it aside for later inspection or risk a breakdown under the pressure of over a century and a half worth of angst and solitude.

Silence.

Then;

"Damn fickle God," she breathed, looking around to where Zel and the gang were hauling themselves to their feet. The room's ceiling and a portion of its walls had caved in totally, but after a quick inspection, she decided the damage had gone as far as the laboratory. The Sword of Frosteffa had proven pretty useful; she'd hate for it to lose its power while there were still, by the sound of things, two mad Mazoku after her ass.

"Is it over?" Gourry asked, the first by her side. His eyes found his sword, blood-stained steel on the ruined marble floor, and he bent over to pick it up.

"This part of it," Lina answered, voice grave. "Not all of it. But I guess this is a start."

She looked at the others. They looked back.

"You did it, Lina-san," Amelia said, smiling gently.

"Incredible," Selena whispered.

"It was nothing," she assured. "Certainly nothing I feel proud of."

Raleic sighed, rolling her eyes. "Don't insult us by acting humble, at least. Even I have to admit, that was very impressive."

"Yeah," Gourry agreed. "Although I do sorta feel sorry for... you know, these guys."

"I have a feeling," Lina said, "that Xelloss isn't going to show up again for a while. Because when he does, he's going to have a hell of a lot of explaining to do."

"Not that I want to be a spoilsport, but can we take this victory party somewhere else?" Gourry glanced about. "This place gives off some depressing vibes."

"I hear you," she responded. Her eyes wandered back to the floor where Fairn had last lain. Even the blood she'd spilled was gone.

Lina turned, and led the others out.

The last Our Heroes saw of the lost kingdom named Panifess built on the foundations of another lost kingdom named Frosteffa, was its dreary, impartial facade as they climbed the hill and hiked down the other side.

"I couldn't have wanted to get out of there any quicker if an army of Fishmen were on my ass," Lina sighed, leading the march. Zel was right behind her, pondering over the map of the area he kept stored in his head. She could tell by the funny way his eyes were cocked. "So, which way to the nearest little burg? All I need right now is a hot meal and a soft bed."

"I think there's a town ahead that might prove to be a worthwhile stop. I was there once." Zel pointed to a dot on the map, neatly situated behind some mountains. "They've got a few interesting artifacts that date back aways, and a library with a good amount of tomes dated pre-Kouma War. Or we could head back to Seiruun, and do some research at theirs."

Lina peered over his shoulder, studied intently. "Mmn. Looks like this place is closer. What's it called?" She squinted at the smeared ink. "Masculine?"

"Malcune," Zel corrected with a dry smile. "Although it might as well be."

"Why's that?" she asked, conversational enough.

"Umm..." Zel's eyes went intently to the clouds overhead.

"I hate it when people keep things from me," she growled, a hand tightening around swordhilt. "You know that, right?"

The chimera's reaction was to shuffle off a distance and nonchalantly swap topics. "What I'm wondering is what the state of things is for us, right now. How much did we really accomplish back there?"

Lina allowed her temper to settle in the presence of this rather serious question. Pondering, she said, "I don't know. I think we're on the way... but we've still got a lot to go. Varena and her Master are still out there, and we don't know what the hell Xelloss has done to piss them off. And there's still the Legacies," she added. "Even if we emerge victorious, those things are too dangerous to leave alone."

Zel's eyes flickered over the scenery distractedly, as if he were deciding whether or not to speak up on something. At length, he only gave a sigh. "Perhaps this is the halfway point of this particular journey?"

"Perhaps," Lina said, "or near enough." She, too, heaved a small sigh, arms crossed under her breasts. "I have to tell ya, all these epic crusades of ours get tiring after a while. There's only so much a girl can take. And how far away is this Malcune?" She peered back at the map, gritting her teeth. "I swear, if I don't get a soft bed soon..."

She paused at a perky humming sound, looked behind her to see Gourry busy polishing his new sword. A glance back at Amelia and Raleic, struggling under the weight of their baggage. They'd been through a lot today, she reflected.

A soft smile, letting her worries wait for another day.

"To tell you the truth," she said, "a hard bed would do just as well."

They had plenty of time.

Darkness.

Voices.

Human voices? Pochie? Fairn?

Painful memories.

Pochie is dead. Fairn tried to kill you.

Sinking, away into the darkness, away from painful memories...

A hand, shaking, hard. A voice. Stern.

Sharp pain.

Halgon opened his eyes.

"At least you're still alive," Varena said, sounding very much dispassionate either way. She turned, scanned the aftermath, and sneered. "What a pathetic waste, those two."

Halgon mumbled something, tried to go back to sleep. Maybe the darkness would still be beckoning him...

Rending pain. He yelped, scrambling to his feet.

"First Gregory," Varena told him, casual enough. "Then these two. You will not follow them yet. You, at least, can serve."

"Ah," he managed.

"And you will not disappoint," she told him evenly. "Fairn turned out to be weak. I was able to keep her in line, raping her mind with her past, but she screws us over at the most important part. At least she managed to transfer us the power of the Legacy, though. I guess even failures have their uses."

She turned to him, giving a loveless smile. "Xelloss may have escaped us this time, but he will not be able to for long. Not once we harness The Mother's powers and bring our reckoning onto him."

She held out her hand. He realized after a moment he was expected to take it, and did so.

"Him," she repeated, as they left the dismal city behind, "and his Mistress."

Addendum of Fairn Fellowdew. Loneliness Along a Lifeline.

A tingling. Lina was attuned to it; she watched the elf as she lay dying, saw her lips move, and some part of her soul was moved. It was like one half of a magnet calling to another. And an awfully damn powerful magnet at that.

Lina realized the answer then, but there was no response to affirm it. The roiling, unstable miasma of the Mother of All continued shifting about Fairn's body, bringing its very existence into question. The physical presence of the lithe elf shivered, twisted, distorted, like a reflection in a very ripply pond... until all that was left was the Sea of Chaos itself, and even as she watched, that dwindled away as well. Lina had once been inside that volatile ocean, and although her mind had lost those memories, her soul had not. And as the last of The Lord of Nightmares disappeared, She finally acknowledged Lina with a brief, sharp understanding of the elven girl that was no longer. She saw her past, a painful, lonely past, all at once, and she had to turn it aside for later inspection or risk a breakdown under the pressure of over a century and a half worth of angst and solitude.

In that brief time, this is what she saw:

Most of it was flooding emotions, without rhyme or reason, logic or explanation. These swept past Lina, threatened to drag her under. Wisps of visions flew past her, jumbled and out of order, jagged and skewed as if seen through a bloodstained filter. This lasted for a second, or perhaps two at the most, but spirits and emotions live on a time frame far outside the normal spectrum as we know it, and slowly these feelings and images began to slide together, began to make sense...

..."My name?" the boy asked, looking as if she'd just asked him to steal the antennae from a sleeping berserker and hide it in his mouth.

"Yeah." She put on a smile, aiming to disarm. "I'm Fairn. Well, that's what you can call me, anyway."

"Uh..." The boy shuffled his feet, looked close to blushing. "Nice to meet you..."

"I'm the Princess here," she continued, hoping to lure him into a more talkative mood. Instead he looked even more shocked and anxious than before.

"Princess?" He looked around wildly, gave her a suspicious glance. "I don't see anyone else here."

"There's Gregory, back at the castle." She smiled sweetly. "And My Queen, and my King. There's Ralov, too, but..." She noticed a waver in her voice, forced it out, "...but I'm not sure where he is."

"That doesn't seem like much of a Kingdom," he answered, rubbing at the back of his neck while he sorted this out. "I guess it's okay, though. You seem nice."

"So do you," she responded, and this time he seemed to calm quite a bit under the glow of her smile. "And you are?"

"Halgon," he mumbled, with a small, stumbling bow, "as it please my lady."

Chaos flows as time.
One hundred thirty years past...

The creak of wagon wheels and the chatter of impressionable youth marked the late evening activities in Frosteffa. The sun hovered lazily against the horizon, doing little against the winter cold from which the city gained its name. There is elven lore which tells of a battle centuries past, in which elven mages disputed over which Shamanist archetype should be held above the rest and settled the argument with blood. According to the singers, each of the five elven towns belonging to the kingdom of Karis became strongholds for each type of magic wielder, and the predominant magic of this township, that of Fire, was stamped out so effectively that it held a year-round chill. While the story's validity may be called to question, it is very true that once one leaves the legal grounds of Frosteffa, the regular seasonal weather of the rest of the land is there to greet them.

Fairn Fellowdew recited this information in her head. If there was one teacher she hated, it was the man in charge of what they called her "social awareness." He always had her recite her local history, and the reasons for it, and the reasons for the people's reasons, and the reasons for those, too. Jinne had once told her the man was way over his head. "No one can ever know what happens in the minds of another man, let alone the entire community of them," was the advice he'd given her once. It sounded right to her. Still, she was scheduled for an exam tomorrow, and wanted to make her family proud.

But as little girls' minds tend to do, hers began to wander after a few more minutes of concentration. She would have been at home by now studying from tombs, not dwelling on the stupid subject in her head if her father hadn't been in such a hurry to answer her uncle's summons, leaving her stuck in the crowds at the marketplace. She'd had to make her way home on her own, and as the day wound its close and the shops and stalls closed up for the night, as the children's parents called them in to bed, as the elderly made for home, leaving First Street barren and deserted, one could very well believe no other elves lived here at all.

She felt a swell of pride on the matter, though. She was almost a woman, at least in her father's eyes, and could take care of herself in the throngs of the bazaar. Summons or no, if he'd been worried he would have fought his way back to her, swept her up in his arms, and carried her all the way back to the castle on his shoulders. He trusts me, she'd thought happily, boasting to herself. This feeling had died when Tild popped out of nowhere to shove her into a patch of mud, very nearly ruining the pretty pink dress her daddy had just bought for her. She'd run off in tears.

Now, as she made her way timidly home after a good cry in the back alleys behind the bakery, Fairn could not help but sense a bit of instability in the balance of the city. Elves are, as a general rule, a more magically inclined race than humans. Fairn herself was quite gifted in the Arcane Arts, as well as a few tricks in physical fighting, thanks to Jinne. Thusly it wasn't unusual that she should detect the bizarre aura which permeated her home town, and when she heard the first screams for help, she was more intrigued than surprise. Had she but known, she told herself in years to come, but was by then powerless to change anything.

She dashed down the street, modesty abandoned as the cries became louder and more fervent. Her dress billowed up above her knees; Daddy would cringe at such indecent exposure. He was a veteran fighter, she reminded herself. He wouldn't have cared about his ankles showing when someone was in danger!

She had time to affirm that much, and no more. It happened quickly from that point, her life turning upside down in less time than it would have taken her to finish her social awareness exam. As she neared the house ahead from where the were situated, now teeming with a crowd of gaping bystanders, it suddenly exploded from the inside out and back again, the roof falling inward in two halves and the walls crumbling into a mass of rubble. The screams died abruptly, and as Fairn slowed to a halt, the buildings directly to her left and right all down the street exploding in a gush of pyronetics.

Before she knew it, she was sprawled on the ground beneath a layer of splintery debris. A jagged piece of steel pressing into the small of her back, it was all she could do to keep still and silent as a figure stepped out of the flames. She couldn't discern much from her field of limited vision, but whatever this was, it did not look elven at all. It seemed to be more of a beast, a monster of some terrifying sort that seemed to render her immobile with fear. Then its outline wavered and the fire died at once, and it was simply elven, like everyone else she knew. Or maybe it was human. She'd just been dazed from the fall, apparently... but she held still.

The newcomer didn't seem to notice her, but she reflected later that she must have; she just hadn't considered her of any practical use one way or the other, a little girl covered in mud, stricken with shock. But Fairn took her in as the flames wavered; briefly, but as thoroughly as she could.

The woman was rather young, looking to be in her hundreds, and between average height and tall (at least by elven standards; she had no way to judge by those of humans), swathed in what looked like very immodest lion skin. Long blonde hair and crimson eyes, one hand resting on a curvy hip and the other raised to hold a slim pipe near her mouth, she glazed over the burning street with a small grin. Then there was another explosion and she was gone, a streaky black residue left in the air a brief second after the rest of her.

That sight had been strange enough, and she most likely would have laid there trying to convince herself it hadn't happened were it not for a sudden sequel of rumbling blasts, falling timber houses, and the screams that accompanied them. She forced herself to action, crawling out of the shattered wood and dashing down the road toward the castle in the center of town. Daddy was there serving the King, and he'd know what to do.

She didn't make it. Blocking her way on the main road was a flood of carnage and overturned carriages. So briefly ago it had been a normal street, undisturbed, and now the blood of townsfolk lay splattered about the cobbles, a few corpses burning with horrible vividness. She needled her way around them, cursing herself for not being as fast as she needed to be, and beyond the last wagon and horse carcass was a large crowd of terrified elves huddling together or attempting to run and one man in the center of it all.

There was something terrible about him, she knew at once. He looked normal enough, but was unscathed by the flames. The wealthy who lived near the castle cringed away from him in such fright they were certainly in fear for their very lives... and as she watched, the colors of her uncle's royal guard ran along the road towards him, lead by Jinne.

She stumbled to a halt as she watched the confrontation. Jinne, who had always fed her strawberry cakes even when her father said she'd had enough, shouted a warning for the newcomer to leave. He instantly burst to flame. The horrible man watched as he danced about in his armor, the rest of the guard backing off in surprise and confusion. Fairn's body was paralyzed, unable to move, helpless as she watched the man raise the staff in his right hand. A gout of black nothing ripped through the party of knights and mages, and they were gone.

Returning his attention to some of the wealthier denizens of Frosteffa who had the misfortune to live so near the castle, which had once been considered the safest of venues, the man shook his head as if in remorse. Amongst them, all huddled up on the porch of the largest house in the city, she could make out Tild, weeping like a baby, and Ralov, whose family owned the house. She was able to catch his eye with a small wave, but Tild was too much of an idiot; he just cowered and wept as the man addressed them in his low, evil voice. Fairn tried attempted to listen in as she scrambled behind a water barrel, but no sooner had she secured her hiding place then the street behind her shook in its death throes. She looked back and saw the entire route ablaze, blocking any escape route she might have hoped for. And there, milling along in the midst of what seemed thousands of screams of agony -

Lesser Demons? she asked herself. She could only see the faintest of outlines, but what else could they be?

"Elves, such a strange race," he was saying. "We were called on to see to your King's declaration of war, expecting to find a formidable challenge. Especially after you obtained the Gorun Nova and built that other blade yourselves." He lifted his head, and Fairn saw his face for the first time, a face she would revisit in her dreams and briefly before her death. His hair was purple and his clothes were an ensemble of priest's wear, but his eyes remained closed and his mouth held the expressionless of a noble at his wife's tea party. He sighed. "We Mazoku have really been neglecting your race. Otherwise we surely would have had Dolphin send a crony or two in place of wasting our valuable time."

A beat passed, and then two, as she sorted through her memories, past lectures in her classes on folklore.

Mazoku. She sat, stunned, and wasn't sure how long it took for her to realize how stupid that was. Mazoku were things for little girls' bedtime tales, she knew that. But what about the other thing he said? A war? She thought frantically. Had she heard anything about a war? No, and you can't keep something that big a secret. The man must be mad, she decided. She'd read a lot of books where the villains were mad.

"Fiend!" shouted someone distant, followed by the heavy footfalls of a host of men-at-arms. She peered out from behind the barrel and watched as the madmen snorted and burned another wave of royal guards to ash with one hand while picking up one of the elderly nobles by the neck with the other. He was certainly a powerful madman...

"Fire magics aren't working as well as they should," he seemed to be telling the elder. Then came a gurgling cry for help, and the thump of a body hitting solid ground. "You silly elves and your ancient wars. As long as I'm here, though, I might as well try for sport..."

Her head was spinning. She had to get to her father, but she couldn't leave all these people to die at this madman's hands. Options spiraled through her brain, but common sense won out in the end. She had no way to save them on her own, and maybe her father would be able to help. Besides, the first fleet of castle mages would be along at any time now. She was about to try her luck by darting around the building when she heard someone cry, "No! Let me go, please, no!" and knew it was Tild.

Whatever possessed her to reveal herself she couldn't say, especially since she hated that little bully. But she ran out into the open anyway, seeing Tild dangling, the madman's hand wrapped around his skinny neck. Summoning her knowledge of the Arcane, she recited and let loose a Fireball as she ran, scorching the air with searing heat until it reached its target, where it peppered out into a few sprinkly motes.

"Mmm?" the man murmured, turning. Tild managed a squeak.

"I," Fairn managed before the words clogged in her throat. She licked her lips, felt nearly sick. "I'm Fairn Fellowdew. My uncle's the King here. My father is his counselor. I demand that you leave!"

"My Lady Fairn!" cried one of the nobles, but she couldn't see who it was before the unidentified attacker extinguished his life and the lives of a few luckless neighbors in a smoldering wave of heat. The rest cringed even more deeply away at that, and Tild wriggled in his captor's hold.

"Ah." The Madman turned to face her, and a slow, wicked grin spread over his lips. His eyes opened, revealing the same deadly crimson of the woman she had seen wreathed in flames. "Maybe there's something of interest in you elves after all."

"Let him go," Fairn said slowly. She tried to think up a good Ice spell, but doubted it would work against him. The Madman looked dispassionately at the child he was holding by the throat. Tild was almost completely blue, scraping at that gloved hand for a chance to draw breath. "Let him go, or else my father will call down all of his men, and - "

Tild's high-pitched squealing pierced through her words. She watched, terrified, as he fell to the ground enveloped in a misty cloud of living death. He clawed at his own throat as he fell, released from the man's grasp, falling on his side to face her in writhing agony. She ran to him, all sorts of white magic running through the mind and none presenting themselves for use.

"Fairn," he wheezed, and she was afraid he was going to ask for help she couldn't give. His eyes sought hers, and he bit his lip as the last tremor caught hold of him. "I only pushed you cuz I like you," he managed, and the darkness took him.

His mother shrieked from her husband's restraining arms, and Fairn's eyes lifted hazily to the evil man before her. She grit her teeth and fought back tears; she wouldn't cry in front of this one, she promised herself. Never.

"I suppose I should finish up here," he was murmuring. "Might as well leave with a bang."

She watched him coldly, completely at a loss for what to do. One of the nobles had taken advantage of the short distraction of Tild's death to open the door to the manor, and all of them were scrambling inside with the exception of the grief-stricken mother who simply sat and wept and the husband trying to coax her in.

Idiots, Fairn thought, trying not to notice Tild's mom in such a disgraceful state. That house is wood, and there's fire all over. The only place around here that would be safe is the castle.

At least they're trying something, was her next thought. But what could she try to accomplish? She couldn't do anything here, she hardly knew any of the Arcane Arts at all! Her eyes swept back to the Madman...

...and he wasn't there.

A knot grew in her stomach.

"Hey!" She looked up, saw Ralov waving at her from the window at the corner of the house. "Fairn, come up! There's a cellar here. The only one in city besides the castle, remember? We'll be safe there unless they follow us!"

She hesitated. She couldn't flee. She had to find her dad, and save the city. She couldn't do that by herself, but she definitely couldn't do it from inside a wine cellar. She opened her mouth to tell him that, when the horrible, palpable energy that had permeated the air all evening began to grow so heavy she felt almost sluggish against it.

She cast a Levitation spell on herself then, met Ralov in the window, and the two had fled beyond the confused and stunned adults to the basement door and beyond, down the cellar steps and as far back against the wall as possible. Ralov ran back to the door after a stricken moment of collecting his senses, calling for his parents, but Fairn knew the deadly energy about them was reaching a head. She jumped forward and caught Ralov by the ankle. He was a noble's son, not the type meant for battle. She was able to hold him down quite easily, but he continued to cry for them regardless. She didn't know how much time passed as they waited down there, but it was enough that she had time to think Maybe I was wrong, nothing's happening. And then finally his parents appeared in the doorway, and his younger brother behind her.

"What are you doing with the wine at this time of crisis?" his mother demanded, and then a blaring, unending fire swept her and the rest of Frosteffa into oblivion.

The flames roared overhead, licking a few stone steps and making a fierce impression on their fair skin, but otherwise leaving them alone. She thought Ralov was screaming, but maybe that was the fire or the people dying within it.

Or maybe it was her.

The humans' arrival; Ralov's departure.
One hundred years past...

The river flowed, the tide came and went, and eventually came the day when Frosteffa was no longer uninhabited.

The years had been slow and uneventful, punctuated mostly by the increasing ease at which Fairn found herself able to start the day. The first years had been hellish; the empty streets, the creaking of hinges, the bodies of the dead strewn about, burned alive or crushed by debris. The remains of wooden houses and mansions had made decent enough coffers, and after a week or two sitting around and moping, Ralov had managed to gather his strength and begin building graves for the dead. It took her another full day to find the courage to join him, but when she did the time seemed to move a bit less painfully; they had a task now, the final task they would ever have for their family and friends.

The stench worsened as the years went on, and sometimes they spent a day or even two trying to uncover a single body from beneath the rubble, but as time wound on there were less corpses, and less, buried first in the old graveyard until it ran out of room, expanding to the fields which would never produce crops or bugs or crows again. They were able to dig up the soil with shovels that had been left in the basement of Ralov's house, and used planks to mark where the bodies were laid. Every night, before they went to sleep, Ralov would visit his parents and family for an hour or two.

Those were the times Fairn, in young womanhood, wanted to hold him most. They were also the times when she felt the most helpless.

Tirelessly they had toiled, and eventually their kin were properly buried. When the final body, unrecognizable, had been deposited into the ground and the ground redeposited atop it with the help of a shovel or two, Ralov and Fairn bathed and went to sleep without a word to one another. It was nice, in a way, for their task to be done... but to her it had also been scary. Now what point could their lives possibly have?

But finally they'd been resting in the grass, watching clouds pass overhead as they had for years already, when there was a new sound. It sounded, almost, like the whinny of horses, the beating of hooves... and under it, the sound of voices?

They sat up, eyes wide, hands reflexively clasping together. Heart leaping, Fairn blinked back tears... could these be their elven cousins from the Island, finally arriving to search for survivors, to take revenge on those who had wrecked their lives?

"Elves don't ride horses," she heard Ralov whisper to himself, and her heart sank. Blinking back tears of a different kind, she stood, reclaiming her hand.

"Of course they don't," she scoffed. "What, did you think we were going to be rescued?"

"I hoped," he replied with a small sigh. "I guess that's a stupid thought, though."

"It is," she asserted. "We'll never be saved. We're going to die here, and you know it, so don't waste your energy... Are you listening to me or what?"

His eyes turned to her, teeth gnawing on his lower lip. "The horses seem to be getting closer."

"Maybe we should go check this out," she said after a moment. He nodded, following her back to what had been Frosteffa's main street, and pressed up against the side of the remains of the old bakery. Fairn put a finger to her lips and peered out around the side.

Over one of the hills that borders the town came a giant plume of dust, the sounds of horses and riders, the clamor of an army riding beneath a banner of crimson and gold. But with all the wagons teetering about and the women and children struggling along atop donkeys, it sure didn't look to be a fighting force of any sort Fairn had ever seen.

"Who are they?" Ralov whispered. "It looks like a whole village on the move. Why would they be on their way here?"

Fairn didn't answer. She focused her eyes on the men in the front of the caravan, knights in dented armor surrounding a man with dark hair, wearing a cloak and a crown and riding atop a white horse. His smile was genuine and infectious, but at the moment smiling was the last thing Fairn's lips wanted to do. Snarling was more like it. Using a Levitation spell, she took perch atop the edifice that made up the archway of the city's entrance, coiled there like a cat, ready to strike.

Ralov's touch restrained any notions of home defense she might have had. "Don't. We've survived too long here. Don't make me watch you die before we even know what's going on."

She looked at him, startled. He'd grown over the years, and not just in age. His face was less boyish, wiser; his voice was soft and warm but sharp as need be. Had she grown like him? More importantly, had he noticed? Snuffing a sudden urge she didn't understand, she jerked away from his hand and closed her eyes.

"Fine," she mumbled. "We'll wait and see what they do."

They did enough. Halting before the city, the man surrounded by second-rate knights turned to the assortment of people behind him and raised his hands for silence. Obediently, the crowd hushed. The man might have smiled before launching into his speech, but Fairn couldn't tell much about his facial interactions from the back of his head.

"My fellows," he began. "I have saved you from the oppressive rule of Zoana and given you freedom. Those of you who would move on may do so." Here he swept back his cloak, extended a hand to the ramshackle remnants of Frosteffa. "But! We have been granted these lands by the King, and it is here I plan to center mine own country, a country of liberty!"

There were cheers, pikes and swords banging against shields, and then the hand went back up.

"From now on, I am no longer Lyle de Seiruun. I am Lyle de Panifess, ruler of the city-state of Panifess, home to all who wish to live free."

The cheering again; this time, their leader didn't try to put an end to it. Looking down upon his people, he turned and led a march into the abandoned city, the knights closing in tight formation around him. He was seemed decent enough... but that was awfully tight security for a King with such loyal following, it seemed to Fairn. As he rode beneath them, his guards looking as valiant as they could in their beat-up tin cans, she watched as this Lyle's hand stole briefly to a small bag tied at his waist and it seemed to her that it glowed for the briefest of moments. A quick blink and the illusion was gone... but the anxious clench in her stomach was a pretty dramatic reaction to a trick of the eyes.

"Humans," Ralov sighed, watching as they passed beneath him on their wagons, horses, asses, and giant insect-driven sleighs. Now that they were closer, Fairn made out a few carpenter stalls on wheels, their tenders already getting out their supplies to fix up what they thought was a worthless town up for grabs.

"I told you it was stupid to hope for anything else," she answered. "There aren't any other elves on the mainland."

"But what about off the mainland?" He sat up, thought about it a tick. "Our cousins on the Island, they..."

"Don't care about us, obviously." She hoped she didn't sound too pouty, but was too tired to screw around with more fitting tones.

"So what now?" he asked. "Sit around and watch humans repopulate our home? Don't you ever want to leave?"

"How can we leave?" She looked at him, her jaw a bit too low. "This is our home!"

"It's dead!" he returned. "And it's not even our anymore! Look at them, they're already setting up camps!"

She turned her head, closed her eyes, wished life wasn't so damn cruel. "It will always be ours. Our kin will always be buried in the graveyard where we put them."

It took him a moment to recover from that.

"Do you think," he began, hesitating, "do you think any of them would want us to be like this?"

"What other choice do we have?" she snapped. "There's no way we could make it to Mipross without more humans coming across us and broiling us alive like everyone else."

"We can try. We can't just sit around here, waiting to die. Where are we going to live now that all these humans are here?"

"We'll go into hiding! I'm not going to leave! I won't end up like them!"

"You're disgracing them, Fairn!"

And it was her turn to be silent.

"You're afraid, aren't you?" Ralov asked, not condescending her in the slightest. His voice was all open warmth and sympathy "You're afraid of the man who did this to us."

"Yeah," she sniffed, curling up and closing her eyes, shutting herself off from the world. "Yeah, so what? He destroyed our entire lives in one blast, why shouldn't I be afraid?"

The sound of movement forced her eyes open. Ralov stood, his face wary but determined.

"So I'm going to leave and find out who he is. I'll find out why he did that, and if he's still alive. Then when I know I can beat him, I'll kill him and return to you. I promise."

The ability of speech slipped out of her for a moment. "You're... what?"

"Leaving. For a little while." He tried on a smile. It looked strained. "I'll be back when I've made it safe for you, so we can leave this place together and head for Mipross."

She tried to change his mind, but knew he'd resigned himself before she even began. He stayed the night with her, their first time together intimately, and left at dawn of the next day, just as the city began to teem with human activity. The only life it had seen since that fire. They held one another a while, before he turned and left. There were no words said that day. There weren't any really needed.

Watching his figure slink through the vegetation, Fairn wiped tears from her eyes and closed herself off even more.

Reunited recently.
Three years past or so...

"What is that?" Halgon asked, clinging to her in fright. Fairn squinted, put a hand above her eyes to block the sun.

"Looks like a sea dragon," she answered slowly, "or a river snake, maybe. Not exactly like either, though."

They watched as the animal swam along the banks of the lake, heading for them with maw agape. They watched it loom nearer, nearer, and it wasn't so much the animal itself as the dimly outlined figure on its back that began twisting Fairn's stomach in knots.

"Maybe we should get back to the castle?" she suggested, not quite thinking.

"I don't live there," he protested, "you do. I live here, remember?" He pointed to the ground at his feet, somewhat sulkily.

"Right," she agreed hurriedly, "but wouldn't you like to live in the castle with me instead of sleeping out here every night?"

"I'm on my own," he said, folding his arm haughtily. "I can take care of myself!"

"Grmnf," she responded glumly, watching the beast and its rider grow ever closer. "Well, how about we go hunt for food?"

"Not hungry. I want to see what that thing is." He stood tall, watching. All fear had gone out of him. She smiled.

"All right. We'll wait here for it." She set her feet, watched and waited.

And soon she could make the rider out perfectly.

Tall, slender, handsome, roguish, eyes that had once made her dizzy with their light. Ralov smiled down at her from atop the monster's head.

"Hello!" he shouted through cupped hands, giving her a wave. "Miss me?"

Her lips stayed shut, her gaze fixed. She found it slightly difficult to move, but somehow managed to raise a hand in greeting.

He shouted some more to her, but she couldn't help feeling utterly wretched. She'd loved him before he'd left, but now.. her eyes strayed to Halgon, a young man much her junior...

When his hand fell to her shoulder, she almost screamed. She looked at him goggly-eyed, all of the sudden right in front of her, not recalling seeing the snake come to shore. She hadn't even seen him dismount the thing.

"I've missed you," he said gently, "however you may feel."

Her mouth worked a while, but her vocal cords did not, which kind of ruined the effect.

Ralov didn't seem to notice. He leaned forward, placed a kiss on her lips.

Warmth washed her. Warmth and memories. The first time she'd been kissed since he'd left her alone...

"You''ll have time to adjust," he told her, voice soothing and sweet. "I'm back."

Dazedly, she fought the tilting earth beneath her, found her balance. "Um... and it's about damn time."

He responded with a smile, sweet and sad. "I see the humans are gone. I trust you've got interesting stories for me."

"Uh-huh." She wet her lips, feeling completely air headed. "What about... you? Did you find him?"

He gave a sad little smile, lost eye contact with her for only a moment. "I hope you can forgive me for returning empty handed."

The world swirling in front of her, she gave her head a brisk shake and locked gazes with him. "You didn't find him? Then why did you come back? You were so set on - "

He held up his hand and responded so gently that she knew she'd never fall out of love with him. "I wanted to be with you again."

In the background, she heard Halgon giggling and water splashing.

"Fairn!" he cried, beaming, "Lookit my new friend!"

"You like her?" Ralov turned, gave the young man a grin. "Tell you what. You can be her godfather. Her name's Pochie."

"Pochie?" Halgon regarded the monster with a beaming grin. "Wow. Hi, Pochie, I'm Halgon!"

Fairn felt ready to collapse, all nerves and tension while these two were playing around with some sort of freaky hybrid. She nearly toppled as Ralov patted her side, headed for the new steadfast buddies, but only ended up wobbling a little. She caught her balance with a few solid arm pinwheels.

"She sure looks funny," she could hear Halgon muse.

"You think that's something?" came her lover's distant voice. "Let me tell you about her parents..."

Reliving the Nightmare.
Fifty years past or so...

A bang sounded through the forest, the slight smells of fire wafting in the distance. Fairn gathered her lounging wits, hopped to her feet, stolen dagger drawn and ready for a little throat slitting. Had they followed her? Finally grown tired of her small crimes of theft, however trifle they were. She only stole what she needed to survive, and maybe a tiny bit extra... but of course they wouldn't understand that. Did they know where she'd been hiding?

Another bang, and brilliant blue flooded through the trees. Some sort of sorcery, she told herself, bracing up. They've come prepared.

The next puncture of sound brought a vibrant, bloodish red with it, the next a glaring yellow. Each one fizzled out, leaving the light of the stars behind, and hinting at no tracking parties come to kill her.

She relaxed as sleep flooded out of, a small bubble of reasoning nudging its way in. "The carnival," she hissed aloud. "Right. Forgot about that."

More fireworks answered her assumption, reflected from the blade as she slid it home. Curling back into her makeshift tent, she closed her eyes, willing the night to take her. But there was still something, something odd...

The fire.

Her eyes popped open, brow furrowed, once again on her feet. Silver shined iridescent in the festivity's light.

"The smell of fire doesn't travel as fast as the light of fireworks," she whispered to herself. She talked to herself a lot lately; made her feel like she had someone else to talk to. "Someone's out here, after all."

Skirting the brush to avoid making any unnecessary noise, she slunk along the earth, nose guiding her along the vegetation towards what turned up to be a small campfire in a small clearing, warming the bodies of two humans. One was male, one female, arms around each other, faces turned up to take in the night's unique rainbow. Once or twice the two kissed, and a few minutes of watching the two confirmed they were no threat. Feeling pretty stupid for the second time that night, she began the trek back to the swiped blankets and rotting leaves that comprised her current dwelling.

Gotten jumpy being all by yourself, she thought. Gotta calm down. No one's out to get you, hardly anyone's seen you... And the fireworks are rather pretty, even if they of human make. Maybe I can enjoy them, if I just learn to -

There was a brief lull between the explosions, the only sounds for that brief moment were her own footfall... and the sound of a stick snapping.

"Shhh!" came a voice in the darkness, and then an orange flash of light revealed five cloaked figures, all covered in hoods and holding an impressive collection of small swords between them. One of them had enough sense to glance in her direction before the light fizzled out, but she was well hidden by then. There were some other words, but an exaggerated whirling noise cut them off to her ears. Then they were gone, scampering off deeper into the woods.

Bandits? she wondered, listening as their footfalls faded. Why are they out tonight? There's only one couple, what would they want with them?

Then, right on the heels of that one:

Maybe I should help them?

That was a ridiculous thought. Help the kind that killed her people, desecrated her homeland, stole her entire life from her. That was such a ridiculously Ralov idea that she felt sick as soon as it passed through her head. I'd rather kill myself, she thought venomously. But she was already halfway to the campfire when she thought it.

She caught sight of the small blaze, the two lovers, and no trace of the five brigands during a bright blaze of purple. Catching her breath, she slipped behind a tree, waiting for the humans to betray themselves, if indeed they were to come this way, and after a final burst of red, there was an unusually long silence.

"This is it," the man told his woman. Fairn peeked around the tree trunk, saw them snuggling closer together, ignored the pain in her heart.

"The grand finale," she agreed.

There was a rustle of brush. A muffled foot fall. The fire caught a shadow moving along a tree trunk, moving fast, a sliver of light reflecting off a raised blade. Fairn was frozen a moment, her dagger unsheathed, briefly unable to move.

What was it that kept her still as the man prepared to commit murder before her eyes? Didn't she care? Was she afraid? Or was it that she knew that as soon as she began moving, there would be no stop until five men were dead by her hand, or her by theirs.

These were thoughts in form, if not words; they lasted less than seconds, when the light flared up in a sudden yellow, then red, then green, then a thousand other colors, knocking her out of her paralysis. Rushing forward amidst the pops and bangs, she slid her small weapon between the man's ribs, disemboweling him with the suddenness of a snake. The couple didn't even hear his death grunt.

"The hell?" another asked, the other four revealed in the blaring light. "What are you doing?"

"I'm not sure," she answered, flicking the knife into his stomach and rushing past, knocking another man down with her weight. As he fell, hands found the sides of his head, a knee found the back of his neck, and a gorgeous blend of blue and yellow shot through the treetops to bear witness as she snapped his neck. The belated crash reached them too late; the last thing he heard was the sound of Fairn's heavy breathing, caused by something completely different than physical exertion.

"You..." the man with the dagger in his stomach groaned, writhing on the ground. Fairn leapt back to him, out of the reach of a clumsy swipe of a blade, and dislodged her weapon. "Why are you doing this? What is this couple to you?"

"Nothing really," she said, swiping the knife across his throat and dancing away as one of the other two advanced on her. "It's only the two of you now," she taunted over the crackle of festivity above her. The calmness she felt was frightening, and the realization that she had killed three men in less than forty seconds shot through her like an arrow, but in the heat of the moment, there was no going back.

One of the men left advanced on her. The other stayed to the shadows, looked ready to flee. She took up the stance she'd been taught so many years ago by Jinne in undisclosed lessons they'd never tried to tell her father of. As the man rushed her, she plunged and ducked just as he's shown her, and the man's blade swept past her cheek and into nothing. Hers found its home deep in his breast, skidding off the breastplate and into his heart as the last of the fireworks raged, a splash of red across the forest floor. He was dead almost instantly.

She regarded the final man as the night grew silent again. His body shook beneath his cloak and hood, his fingers held his blade awkwardly, his feet backpedaling to get him away. She had nothing to fear from him, she knew immediately, but she couldn't take chances. Or maybe the bloodlust had simply taken too strong a hold.

Dashing forward, she caught him by the arm as he attempted to run, yanked him back. He gave a short yelp as the dagger plunged into his back, bloodying the ground and her worn breeches as he tumbled. "We were just trying to escape," he gasped, a puddle of blood forming in the dirt beneath his mouth. His head tilted, trying to catch her in his gaze, trying to make her understand and perhaps give him back his life. "The King..." he mumbled, shook, and died.

The breeze blew across her face as she regarded the man. Reaching down to pull the hood from his face, she recalled seeing him once before, from when she'd slunk around the city looking for something to eat. He'd been coming from the palace, hadn't he? Sitting next to the King, astride a white horse.

"The king's advisor, perhaps?" she whispered, eyes straying to the man's unused weapon. "That would explain why he wasn't able to defend himself."

She glanced back at the four prone bodies behind her, lit in the distant glow of the campfire. His guards, perhaps? All trying to escape the city?

"Humans are so puzzling," she sighed, making her way back to the couple in hopes of finding them asleep and undisturbed. Ducking behind trees, she gained enough ground to see the man peering into the foliage

"Anything there?" the woman's voice called, huddled near the campfire.

"No," came the answer as he went to rejoin her beneath their sheets. "Could have sworn I heard something."

There was a long pause of silence, then, and Fairn began to move away. These two had no idea how close they'd come to death... but they were safe now. She'd done her job. If there were any others about, they'd have to deal with them themselves.

"What do you want to call the baby?" she heard as she stalked off.

"Samwell," he answered. "That has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"

Cursing, Fairn made a spot for herself beneath the tree for the night and fell asleep on the look-out for more violent passerby.

Her dreams that night were strange. Much of it was the usual darkness and subconscious mulling never remembered in the waking hours of the next day, but some of it was vibrant, silent death in the aura of her own mind. Black light was devouring souls, enveloping everything, and when she woke she seemed to recall stirring awake in the middle of the night to hear words on the breeze. Just escaped, they had been. Lucky little elf. As she crawled to her feet and looked about, the couple were gone, their campfire out, easily seen tracks leading back toward the city. Fairn shook off the grogginess... and her eyes fell to the five dead humans and the blood covering the breeches.

A quick flash of dread filled her, pushed her legs into movement. She didn't know what propelled her, only a strange tingling sense that she'd been visited in her dreams by someone or something she should never have met... and that something very bad had happened back in city. "The King..." came the echo of the dying man, vomiting blood at her feet. "We were just trying to escape."

A scream sounded far ahead of her. It was the woman who's life she had saved the night before.

Her feet pumped quicker, and she leapt into the arms of a tree as she reached the edge of the forest. Jumping from the branch to branch, she spotted the city walls, Levitated stealthily atop them, and peered down into the city proper.

There to greet her eyes were not charred corpses, not decimated bodies writhing in pain. There was simply no one.

"They're gone," the woman cried again, running out of a shop at the front of the city. "Everybody!"

Her husband emerged from the house opposite, shaky but able to keep control. "There has to be a reason for this," he told her soothingly, but Fairn could hear his voice crack. The woman broke into tears, sobbing uncontrollably, her husband consoling her in silence.

She'd seen enough. Dashing along the wall, she leapt into the shadows of a small hut, made her way through the air. There was something calling to her, beckoning... and it had the same sort of feeling that lingered from her dream last night.

At first, she kept to the shadows. Soon she made her way down the streets in the open, as there was not a soul around to spot her. Nothing was alive within the city limits of Frosteffa, or Panifess, or whatever you wanted to call it. It was a dead zone, now, as it had been a century before. Running, running, breathing heavily, she passed buildings and bridges and stalls and abandoned items, the marks of a civilization deserted.

Then she stopped, and stopped cold.

A scattering of party festivities were scattered in the town square. Liquor, party favors for children, balloons, ridiculous hats, and even a half eaten buffet was left on the ground, left by people who didn't see their deaths upon them.

This hadn't been what had halted her feet, however. What had done that had been sitting on the pedestal atop the podium, where all eyes would have been upon it. An orb, seemingly alive with an essence mortals should never have messed with, swirling with a golden sea of pitch black. She looked at it in awe, and although she didn't know what it was, she had no more questions as to what had happened to the humans.

Very lucky, elf girl, the voice cooed inside of her, and she ran far, far away without looking back.

Finale.
Accepting fate.
Two years past.

It wasn't a day for pleasantries.

Fairn sat on the grass, watching the clouds scuttle by, hugging her legs to her chest and trying hard not to think. She felt like a little girl again and hated it, but to fight it off would incur effort and with effort would come thought. Thought, at this juncture, was not something she needed. With thought would come despair.

The time was unbroken only when a soft "Psst?" slipped through the air, fell upon her like a lead anchor. Fairn had a sensation of vertigo as worldly concerns overcame her as she swiveled about to confront this new threat on her sanity.

"I'm off," Halgon announced, his hands balled into fists on his waist, chest puffed out. For all that, though, his tone was soft, as if on some level detecting that loudness would be a bit too much for now. "I'm going to explore."

"Oh." She smiled delicately, rose to her feet. "So this is our last moments together, is it?"

"I guess." He shifted his weight, looking uncomfortable. "It's not very dramatic, is it?"

Her heart sunk. "For me it is," she replied, reaching a hand out and ruffling his hair. "But you're growing. You've got a lot to look forward to, out there."

His cheeks flushed. "Well, uh, I mean, it's dramatic for me, too... I'll miss you... I just... umm."

"I know," she agreed, taking his hand. "Let me walk you to the river."

"'Kay," he said, surely anxious to find a way off the topic.

She kept pace with him, trying to will herself back into that emotionless state where hurt doesn't exist. The feel of his hand in hers prevented it, though, and she supposed (a bit reproachfully) that it was just as well. She owed it to the both of them to at least wait until he was gone before severing his connection to her heart.

Wanderlust had finally stricken him. He was young, she knew, and she'd heard the stories of humans and their desires, how their short lives are filled with craving to get everything possible crammed in. Hope had held out that perhaps her (and recently, Ralov's) influence would rub off, keep his feet rooted. Apparently there'd been no such luck.

The first signs had been a couple months ago, when he began asking questions about Zoana and then Seiruun. It had been harmless at first; "Where are they?" "How big?" "How many people?" Soon came inquiries of the "How far?" and "What kind of races live there?" sort, and then the big ones; "How long would it take to get there? By foot? How about on Pochie?" At that point she knew she'd have to be resigned to letting him leave. It wasn't her choice, anyway. And it wasn't like this was the first time it had happened to her.

First her mother, dead giving birth, then her father and uncle and friends, killed by a madman, and then Ralov to top it off. She'd gotten pretty used to it in her life span. So why did it still hurt so bad?

"So, um, are you going to let go of me or what?"

Startled, she drew her hand away. The fresh breeze off the river and the weird fish smell of Pochie's scales knocked her to her senses. "Sorry. Lost in thought."

"Mm-hmm," he agreed, eyes on the ground. "Well, I guess I'm off then."

Pochie rumbled a low agreement, lowering her head so the boy could scramble on. Fairn watched, feeling less alive with every passing second. When he had secure footing, Halgon turned about, smiling at her from atop the hybrid's cranium. She smiled back, through her emptiness, willing herself to see him off before a complete breakdown.

"I'll be back," he promised solemnly, "you know I will be. We'll meet again, maybe in a castle somewhere, and I'll whisk you away from danger like your knight in shining armor."

She gave him a light shove, patted Pochie's nose. "Get out of here. You're wasting time. You've got to get to Seiruun."

"I think I'll go to Zoana first," he mused, "and make a trek out of it. I'll hit Seiruun last, on the way back." He beamed. "And after that, I'll stop by here again."

"I can hardly wait," she answered, and waved him off. Pochie pushed herself away from shore, careful not to knock her unharnessed passenger into the water, and besides a few more waves tossed at her from flailing little arms, that was the last she saw of him.

I can cry now, she thought to herself as the two disappeared along the current. It wasn't long before she realized she couldn't cry after all; there was no urge to weep inside of her, nothing except for a throbbing despair, created by that madman and left to fester and spread.

An arm slipped around her waist. She looked up to see Ralov, her solace, just in the instant before he kissed her in such a way she was able to hope the despair might be livable. Then she cried against his shoulder for what could have been hours, and when she was done she looked back up at him and he kissed her again. Desire surged up through her, and she let go of the chastity taught by her father and uncle and the castle's handmaids. She needed to feel love.

"What are you thinking?" he whispered, his eyes holding hers. "Right now, what is the question you want me to answer?"

She didn't have to think about it. Pulling him down atop her into the grass, she closed her eyes, taking one of his hands and placing it atop her breast. "Will it always hurt this bad?" she whispered as she let him explore her.

In the hours afterward, much time was spent relinquishing grief through desperate love. She wept a little towards the beginning, but by the end, when they were exhausted and weak, she was dull to the pain. Ralov was asleep long before she was that night, staring hard at the sky with a sense of internal calm she hadn't known since she'd been a child. It was strange, but it seemed like a time for introspection, now that things were patched together somewhat. The youth was off, growing up on his own, and Ralov was there in her arms. It seemed almost right. Perhaps she'd just needed one last painful farewell before her soul was ready to move on. Sleep crept around her.

"You've managed, have you?" asked the gentle voice of her conscience.

"I think so. I think... maybe," she whispered back.

"You're ready to leave the past behind, move on with the life you've let fester?"

"I am," she sighed, curling up next to her lover. "Ralov was right."

"Was he?" it asked again, but this time it wasn't her conscience. A feeling of deep, welling venom surged up into her mind, and she sprung to her feet to behold the figure of a woman cloaked in black.

"Who are you?" she hissed, drawing back, ready to strike.

"You say you're done with dwelling on events more than a century old," the woman prodded. "If that's true, I'll leave the both of you alone.. I, however, hold the key to your revenge."

"What?" she asked. "How is that?"

"Well, at least you believe me." The woman smiled. She was pretty in a ghastly sort of way. "Now all you need to do is decide. Do you want to shun the pain that has tormented you for so long? Or do you wish to finally be able to avenge your kin's death?"

There wasn't any way to answer that question. This was something on which the point of her existence was based. One might mean redemption, the other death.

But this woman had power. She could feel it. And even a sliver of that would allow her to extract the revenge she'd so lusted for all these years. Perhaps, she reflected as her mouth began to move, she would have chosen differently if she'd had more time.

"I accept," she said, and sealed her fate.

Epilogue.

"So this is what killed them," she said, looking over the Legend with a close eye. "And this is what you want me to tap into?"

Lady Varena nodded, folding her arms against her. "This is what will give us the power to kill the Mazoku. It will allow us to reach our goals."

"To think that it was a Mazoku, after all." Fairn sighed. "Things are funny, aren't they?"

"Not anymore," Ralov returned. "I still say this is too dangerous for you. I don't like any of it."

She answered with silence, studying the orb. Varena had told her that she needed only to place her hands upon it and concentrate, and the Lord of Nightmares would answer. She had also told her that failure meant worse than death. But she believed in her, and that was something she hadn't experienced in quite some time.

"Fairn, don't ignore me!" Ralov started, but Varena cut him off.

"Quiet!" she ordered, falling briskly to one knee. Fairn, startled, followed suit. Ralov hesitated a moment before doing the same. Even he knew what this meant.

A figure, grand and foreboding, appeared before them. Swathed in black as his subordinate, he looked down on them with a face as impassive as the stone buildings about them. Then a man appeared at his side, middle-aged with intense eyes and a weak lower jaw. They watched in silence until their Lord spoke. His voice, although low and gentle, sounded not so much as if it were breaking the silence as pounding through it with a war hammer.

"I see you're getting ready to speak to the Lord of Mazoku. I trust She'll find our cause worthy of her time."

Fairn nodded, a tad shaken. Varena took the attention away from her, eying the nondescript man with suspicion. "And who is this?"

"You said you needed a human before you went to Seiruun."

"I still don't see why you don't use your transformation magic on Ralov, like you are on me." Fairn frowned, kept her arms cross. "You don't trust him, do you?"

"Ralov has been very loyal," their Lord informed, "in the menial tasks of study we've designated him thus far. This particular mission will be very taxing on the spirit. Ralov will stay here and assist me with the other four. I admit, I'm out of practice when it comes to dealing with mortal emotions. I will, of course, send him if need be."

"Basically, you don't trust me." The elf smiled wryly, gave a what-the-hell shrug. "So who's the man who's taking my place?"

The human stood aright, speaking for himself. "My parents were killed by roving bandits. My mother and father were the last people to leave in Panifess. I lived in the countryside until now... I guess I've done okay." The man nodded, as if reassuring himself that he had, in fact, done okay. He continued, "My name is Samwell. Well, that's the first part of it. I've forgotten the second half."

Fairn blinked, regarding the man, and turned away after a second's scrutiny.

"Agreed, Samwell." Varena rose and walked to him. Her tone was sharp. "But henceforth your name is Gregory, and you will be under my control."

"I'll do anything for revenge on my parents," he grunted, and Varena went over their plan. Fairn almost felt sick.

"Something the matter?" Her Lord's voice was at her shoulder, whispering.

"Revenge on his parents?" she asked, hugging herself.

"I told him that Mazoku such as Xelloss are the ones that give bandits and other ruffians their power to take lives. Not too big a fib, the way I see it." He smirked. "And anyhow, humans work better with proper motivation."

Fairn was quiet after that. Their Lord placed a hand on her shoulder, and this time spoke directly to her mind.

Today you access the Legend of Nightmares. If you succeed, you've won us our cause.

Then the weight of his hand was gone, like it had never been there. She checked to make sure the rest of him had departed along with it before she turned her attention to Varena, who was watching her steadily.

"Are your thoughts in order?" she asked simply.

"I think so," she mumbled. "How can I tell? I don't know how to speak to the Mother of All Things."

"You don't need to speak to her. At least, I wouldn't think so." Varena raised her hand to point at the Legend. "She is fickle, but I doubt any preparation we do tonight will alter her decision. Are you prepared?"

Her tongue was lead. Her lips didn't move. But she managed to nod her head and twist her body until she faced that dark orb, swirling with pitch black and brilliant gold.

"We will be waiting from a safe distance, then." Varena's voice was fading, wasting no time to teleport her and the other two away from that powerful ball of chaos.

"I don't know," Ralov whispered, before the teleportation took hold of him.

"Don't know what?" she whispered back, her eyes closed.

"When the hurting will stop," he answered, a breath on the wind.

She felt their presence dissolve, felt the spell dwindle, and they were gone. Just as well. She felt it was only fair that she be alone in this.

Her hands moved to seize the Legend, her eyes staring straight into its depths. Her head drummed. The silence around her was palpable. Had the world stopped entirely, holding its breath to see how this would end?

She closed her eyes, felt the smoothness of the orb, something indescribably perfect to her sense. Beneath the surface there was a feeling of not warmth, but liveliness, creating, condemning, loving, and destroying. As she let herself feel it, it began to jump up about her body, enclose her, wash her over, a wave of the darkest black and brightest gold flooded in front of her eyes. It was a contradiction of the greatest sort, not comparable even to the smattering she'd witnessed in the Legend itself, from behind the clear, smooth surface, safely tucked away where it couldn't reach her. She panicked momentarily, tried to let go and couldn't. She tried to scream for help but her mouth wouldn't open, and the force living around her began to eat into her flesh, needling inside until it pierced her soul...

Then a voice, powerful and undeniable;

Well. We meet again, elf girl.

The terror subsided. Fairn's world was spinning in her head, but it was no longer filled with certainly of failure. This was Chaos, she remembered, and there were no certainties here.

Greetings, Mother. I suppose you were the one that spoke to me the last night of the humans' reign.

We were. And here We are again. Have you request?

She did. But how was she to term it? All her wits left her. Struggling, she kept quiet, trying to think of how to approach the subject to the very one who created Existence...

But she didn't need to. The Lord of Nightmares understood; just as she understood the consequence of such a request.

And this is your solution?

It is, Fairn answered, feeling her resolve shake. I understand now.

And what is it you understand?

She hesitated.

Well? The voice was languid, unhurried.

I understand, she resumed, that it is my responsibility to forget my personal troubles and take revenge on Xelloss and his Mistress. I understand that this is the best way I can live my life.

There was no more to said. She felt something that could be a sort of cosmic expression of amusement, travel through her. She sensed a mocking smile from amid the Chaos that swam in her vision, or the closest thing to it that her mind could comprehend. She was briefly aware of a vision introduced in brightly splattered red, a feeling of brinkside insanity, but before she could grasp its meaning, the Lord of Nightmares had snatched it away. Then came silence, until her answer came with the most deadly of acquiescence.

Interesting, elf girl. We grant you Our power.

These memories left Lina as quickly as they'd come, reverting first back into the Chaos on which all things were formed, and then dwindling off, disappearing from her grasp and leaving only the crumbling castle and bodies of the dead. Through the dust, she made out a few stirring shadows, dimly realized through the vision dampening fog and swirl of emotions that inevitable follows peering into souls.

Amid the silence she gathered herself. Lina Inverse did not mind losing her cool if the situation was extreme enough, but this time was different. The Lord of Nightmares had seen fit to reveal these images to her; it was she who would have to deal with them.

And so she bowed her head in reverence to three courageous members of two separate races, kept the wealth of sadness at bay, and once her final respects were paid, lifted her head to the freshly shown sky and sighed.

"Damn fickle God," she breathed, and looked out to where her companions were regaining themselves.

Episode 7   |   Fanfiction