A/N: Insert usual disclaimer stuff here. This is the sequel to Penance and Pursuit of Merit.

Again, I went back and chopped this fic up into chapters. If you want to read the thing straight through, with no chapter divisions, just head on over to my site, Because I chopped it up, some of the chapter transitions may be strange. Sorry about that.

Reviews are always welcome and encouraged!

Reckoning
by the Prime Minister

He materialized on the shore of the island, listening to the waves lap the bleached sand behind him. The wind stirred his heavy dark hair and his eyes traveled to the mouth of the cave set in the rock. The sounds and smells of the island were much sharper than they had been earlier in the day, but there was a strange hollowness in his chest, and he recognized it as absence of feeling. No, that wasn't true- the feelings were still there, and they shouldn't have been. From when he was originally created until the moment his mistress turned him into a human, he had felt nothing, really. There had been moments of annoyance and discomfort, sometimes even physical or astral pain, or perhaps even contentment or mild pleasure at times. All of those emotions, however, had been lukewarm and transitional. Most of the time he had felt nothing at all.

That absence of emotion was far different than what he experienced as a human. He had felt so much so intently. He had experienced true fear, despair, joy, and perhaps even love. Love. The term "making love" actually meant something now. Before, when he had experimented with his physical body, it had meant nothing, and felt mildly pleasurable, nothing more, nothing less. As a Monster he was innately asexual and while was capable of becoming aroused, could really have cared less about joining his body with another. His few trysts were nothing when juxtaposed with what he had experienced with Lina. The awe he had felt when joining with her, their bodies becoming one as they traveled the winds of ecstasy together, had blown his mind. As a Monster he had derived the greatest of pleasure from the pain and suffering of human emotions, but such pleasure paled in comparison to what he had felt with Lina. It wasn't just their lovemaking, either. Just being around her, seeing her smile, or watching her sleep was enough to send his heart soaring. Looking down, he fingered the ring on the chain around his neck, watching the metal glint dully in the setting sun. It was gone, all of it, and he wasn't sure what to feel. That he felt at all alarmed him, but he was not particularly surprised. His mistress had wired him a bit differently from typical Monsters to begin with, most likely so he could better blend in with the human world and serve her purposes. Of all the Dark Lords, Greater Beast Xellas Metallium had always had the most interest in the lives of the humans that dotted the planet.

He had to go into the cave and see her. She had summoned him and was waiting. Something akin to anger slowly began to burn in the pit of his stomach as he glared at the opening of the cave. He hooked his collar with a finger and pulled it aside, dropping the ring down the front of his shirt. It wasn't that he minded serving Beastmaster, that wasn't it at all. He was always loyal to her and always would be. She was his creator, after all, and he was programmed to serve. However, as a human he had had choices and free will, and he found he was missing them. It was almost worth losing his immortality and nearly all of his power for the ability to choose his own life and fate. Xellas afforded him a certain amount of freedom and allowed him to carry out her orders in a method of his choosing, but he was still forced to follow orders. He found the prospect chafed him and he did not want to go into that cave. To return to his mistress would show that he accepted all that had happened and was ready to continue along his own path, and neither was actually the case. What he wanted was to return to Lina and try desperately to explain to her what had happened.

When it came right down to it, the whole thing must have been a plan by Beastmaster. Once he had made the mistake of unwittingly helping Lina destroy Orkalym and Anemony, his mistress must have devised her plan. His entire penance had been a farce, and that made him angry. She had caused him such pain by turning him into a human, and then had betrayed him a second time by turning him back into a Monster. Now he had the sneaking suspicion that he would never be a pure Monster again. He had felt too deeply as a person, and imagined that a bit of a human soul had mingled with his original one. Curse his mistress, curse her straight to hell.

Not that Lina had been wonderful to him, either. She was always yelling and was awfully sloppy, nor had she told him the truth. Her betrayals were lies of omission, and it hurt him that she had not deemed him worthy to know what was going on. She had intentionally kept the purpose of her research from him, as if that did any good. He was too sharp for her to be able to hide it for long, and he was absolutely certain he had divined her motives. He supposed he could accept that she wouldn't tell him the whole truth about that subject. He probably wouldn't have told her, if the situation was reversed. Still, they both had been sleeping with the enemy, so to speak. Their races were enemies of sorts, and they had most likely bent many rules by becoming lovers, wether he was human or not. There was also that business with his illness. She had lied to him outright on that one, telling him it was the flu when it was actually a parasite. Tiny organisms had infected him, something the ancient texts described as "worms". Of course, the parasites didn't actually look like worms until the final stages, when they burrowed out of the host's corpse and spawned a plethora of cysts, which were easily mistaken for pollen or spores. Once the cysts were breathed it, the tiny things must have traveled through the capillaries of his lungs, finally coming to rest in his somach and beginning their maturation there. He had nearly died from the episode. Flu, indeed.

Xellos, the voice sounded inside his head, and he clenched his jaw. It seemed as if there was no one he could truly trust. Then again, both Xellas and Lina probably had their reasons for lying to him. He just needed to figure out what they were. Well, he could do something about that right now, he realized, and teleported to his mistress' throne room.

The strange darkness of the throne room surrounded him as he materialized, wondering why he, as a Monster, was even concerned with trust. As a Monster, he couldn't be trusted for anything other than destroying the world. He stepped forward, face cold and hard, aware of the lesser Monsters cowering in the shadows at he perimeter of the room. Normally it would have made him smile. Before the whole human debacle, he had always enjoying picking one or two of them from the crowd and torturing them for a while. Oh yes, Xellas' General Priest had immensely relished being cruel to his underlings. His cruelty was legendary, even for a Monster. He could hear whispers among the lesser Monsters, however, and was certain they had enjoyed seeing him so punished. Well, he would ferret those underlings out later and teach them new respect. After his stint as a human he felt he was a master of pain.

His cold amethyst eyes rested upon the figure seated on the throne and he knelt, bowing his head. "Mistress," he murmured, voice silky as it wound through the hollow expanse of the room.

"Rise, Xellos," the Greater Beast said, gesturing with a hand. "Welcome back. I trust your mission was successful?"

Something inside him tensed at her use of the word "mission". Damn her, she had no conception at all of what she had put him through. Funny, such thoughts had never entered his head before. Previous to being a human, he had never thought twice about her using him as a mere tool. It seemed he was different now than both human and Monster, some twisted creature caught between the two. He rose slowly and smoothly, meeting her golden eyes as she steepled her fingers. "Well?" she urged, raising a fine, blonde eyebrow.

Xellos nodded. "Which mission would that be, Mistress?" he asked, and there was a soft rustling in the cavernous hall behind him. With a curt bow to his mistress, he turned and summoned power, turning them all to stone. The lesser Monster's cries of agony filled the room for several long moments, and the ones that tried to crawl away he destroyed entirely. He faced his mistress again and bowed. "Pardon me," he said humbly.

"You really must try to refrain from killing the underlings, Xellos," she said with a sigh. "We Monsters are weak enough as it is."

"They are little more than beasts, my lady, and I felt our discussion should be held in private. I will release the ones who did not try to flee after our conversation."

Xellas tapped a tanned cheek with her finger, nodding slowly. "Very well. About your mission. . ."

"And what mission are you talking about in particular, Mistress?" Xellos asked pointedly, irrational anger building up inside him. "The one where I was condemned as a human, and just as I was becoming used to it was torn away once again? The one where I lived in pain or humiliation?"

Xellas raised her eyebrows and leaned back onto her stone throne. "This is very uncharacteristic of you," she said slowly. "In fact, it is very un-Monsterly. You were always the picture of what a perfect Monster should be."

Xellos quivered with anger and indignation, all his feelings edged with fear. He didn't understand how he was still able to feel such things, and so violently. As a Monster he should feel nothing. "I beg your pardon," he replied, clenching his fists to keep them from shaking. "The transitions were difficult, to say the least."

"Very well. I suppose you are ready to continue in a rational manner, then?"

"Yes, my lady."

"I shall answer your question. Of course you were supposed to be punished for your actions. The remaining Dark Lords were clamoring for your head. Although I did not want to, my hand was forced. Luckily, they settled for turning you into a human instead of having you destroyed. I argued that with your loss, our race would suffer a serious blow."

"I understand."

Xellas' face softened for a moment, and he thought she looked at him with something very close to sadness. She really didn't want to have done such a thing to him. Odd. . .perhaps his mistress really was slightly different than the other monsters. That would explain her success. She, after all, had lost the least number of minions during the War of the Monster's fall. "And," she continued, "as long as you were being temporarily turned into a human, I figured it wouldn't hurt to do a little reconaissance. The mother of all things smiled upon us the day Lina Inverse happened upon you."

"You didn't plan on that, then."

Xellas inclined her head. "I had intended to find a way to have you seek her out. I knew she was up to something, but couldn't tell what. She already trusted you, to a certain degree, and I thought she would be completely taken in by a human version of you."

"I see."

"But then you were lost to us for quite some time. All through the winter we searched for you, but you were nowhere to be found. Then we saw you on the move, and it was unclear whether or not you had learned anything from the Inverse girl. Dolphin came to me and asked where you were. I assumed one of Anemony's underlings would be after your head, and unless you and the girl were attacked, we would never learn what she was up to. I told Dolphin where you could be found. You obviously survived the attack, but then we lost track of you again. After the attack, when Dolphin learned that her minion had failed, the Dark Lords decided to rescind your punishment. I found you and restored the power I had taken away. I am pleased that you have been returned to me."

Xellos looked at his mistress for long moments, attempting to wade through the swirling of his emotions. Anger at Xellas was mixed with relief that she had not intended to hurt him. "What would you know?" he asked calmly, expression cool.

"What is Lina Inverse up to?"

"Lina," he murmured, her name conjuring up a million images of her. The mortal had permeated him somehow. He could still feel her body moving beneath his, or the smooth skin of her hand resting on his bare shoulder, her laugh echoing through his skull and her flashing eyes fixing him with a burning stare. Why did he still feel these things? He shouldn't have been able to feel anything of the sort, especially not the burning ache that sat in the center of his chest whenever the thought of her. What was worse was he had only been separated from her for an hour or so, and yet it felt as if it had been an eternity. It was sort of strange that it should feel that way to him, for he actually understood what eternity was. "When I joined company with Miss Lina she was on a journey for some ancient texts. Later I discovered that the texts contained spells to confine and split astral forms, which is how she managed to defeat Dolphin's minion."

"Human spells?"

"Yes. They were recorded at Lorander."

"Those particular humans were always thorns in our sides."

"They were all wiped out a long time ago by a deadly parasite," Xellos said, supressing a shudder. "At any rate, Miss Lina was only able to master a few of the spells. She is capable of restraining astral forms quite well, but is less proficient at dividing them into more easily-destroyed pieces. She attemped and failed to actually disintegrate the astral form, falling back onto the Ragna Blade to defeat her enemy."

"What sort of threat does she pose? Will she be able to complete the third part of the spell?"

Xellos remembered Lina's pale, frightened face as he swept her from collapsing ruins. "No. She was after the third text when the ruins caved in. She was saved, but the book is lost forever."

Xellas nodded slowly. "Very well. Send some underlings to that location and be certain that the texts are no more."

Xellos bowed slightly. "Of course, my lady."

"Now, about the girl," Xellas continued, shifting slightly in her chair.

"Yes?"

"Should she be destroyed?"

Xellos was unable to keep an expression of alarm from his face. Would his mistress actually ask him to kill Lina? Before he had become a human he would have had no problem doing so, no matter how much she amused him. Killing her wasn't personal. Now, however, tainted as he was with humanity, he wasn't sure he could look into her face and calmly end her life. "Why would you need to destroy her, Mistress?" Xellos countered quickly. "She cannot perfect the spell, and hunting down Monsters to destroy is not her motivation. Don't you think we can learn far more from keeping her alive?"

Xellas narrowed her eyes at him and was slient for several minutes. He began to feel a chill standing in her gaze, and he wondered how much she knew. That was the game with his mistress- who knew more, he or she? "Are you well, Xellos?" she asked slowly.

"Yes, Mistress," he replied haltingly.

"I would have thought that potential threats to us should be destroyed immediately."

A sudden hope appeared in front of him and he grasped it. "In this case I would disagree. She might lead us to information that could assist our kind in our battle. I believe she should be monitored very closely, by someone she trusts."

Xellas sighed. "You are, of course, suggesting yourself."

"If that's what you think is best," he said slyly, lowering his head to hide his eyes in the shadows of his bangs.

"I do not," she answered abruptly. "I believe that mortal has influenced you and the results disturb me. You are to stay away from her completely and indefinitely. Dolphin or Dynast can watch her."

"But their generals and priests are all gone," he began to protest.

Xellas scowled, her delicate features marred by the expression. "Xellos, you have never before dared to defy me outright," she said coldly.

"This is the sort of influence I don't approve of. If Lina Inverse merits observation and nothing more, we only need to set an underling upon her. There is no point in assigning someone of your rank and power to a mere mortal."

"But, Mistress-"

"Silence," Xellas snapped, but her expression was not angry. No, she seemed saddened, or the closest to it that a Monster was capable of. "You will do as I say."

"I want the choice!" Xellos shouted, bringing his staff down on the stone floor, the sharp noise ringing through the room.

Xellas stared at him in silence, the shook her head. "I don't understand what has happened to you, Xellos. We must find a way to repair it, however. From this day forth you are never to have contact with Lina Inverse again."

"Mistress," he began angrily, but shut his mouth when she raised a hand.

"Xellos, you are my creation and my servant. You will do as I say and not one thing more or less. Do you understand me?"

Xellos ground his teeth and glared at her. "I understand," he grated, eyes burning with frustration.

Xellas sighed and her expression softened. "Xellos, she's a mortal. She will grow old and die. I don't understand your fascination with her, and I deeply regret letting Phibrizzo set you on her trail. She's a strong mortal, however, and she will be fine without you. In fact, I imagine she has moved on already from her time with you."

"It has only been a few hours," he muttered.

"Hours mean more to her than to us. Now, I'm certain readjusting to being a Monster is taking a toll on you. You spent nearly a year as a human. Most likely what you're experiencing now is just residue. It will fade in time, and all will be as it was."

Xellos wondered if she was even aware that she had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. Then again, he knew his mistress would never understand him again. Nothing would ever be like it was before. "Yes, Mistress," he forced himself to say.

"Take some time to yourself. See to your quarters and business here on the island. After you have had some time to collect yourself I will summon you here again with new orders. Perhaps a new assignment will take your mind off of the Inverse girl."

He nodded and knelt again, head bowed. It was too late for him, and he knew it. He was finding that once he was given a heart, it was not so easily taken away.