Disclaimer: The Slayers characters don't belong to me. I don't even have permission to borrow them, but I mean no harm so please don't hurt me. I don't even mean harm to Zelgadis. I torture him only because I know he prefers suffering angst to being laughed at.
Zelgadis leaned against the wall of the narrow hallway and luxuriated in the silence. Ever since his friends had caught him nearly two weeks ago, his life had been filled with far too much noise and frenetic activity. Had his friends always been like this? Yes, he decided. He had just forgotten. The passage of time wears the edges off memories. He had been thinking of them as people to come home to instead of as the reckless, wildly energetic lunatics they truly were.
And he had become a bit too used to silence in the last few months. The lands to the South were vast beyond anything he could have imagined in the years before the Barrier went down. They seemed truly boundless, and he had covered a significant fraction of that boundless grandeur on foot in the last few months. Since the things he was looking for were most likely to be found in the remotest regions, he had spent the majority of that time among deserts, cliffs and frozen wastelands. He would go for weeks without hearing anything but the sigh of the wind and the scuff of his own boots against the ground, noises less like sound than the erasure of sound. There was a vast stillness there. His brisk stride could carry him quickly from city to city here in the continent of his birth, but out there in the New World he often felt like he wasn't moving at all. He would wake at dawn and walk over the changeless landscape with no company other than his own thoughts until the sun set. Then he would make camp for the night and wake to another dawn, another day, indistinguishable from the first. He had become very tired of his own thoughts. Still, it had been a sort of peace.
Then his crazy friends had hit him like an avalanche just outside Seyruun. Ever since then his life had been an endless stream of crowds, restaurants, explosions, and all three combined.
Zelgadis shook off his pensive mood. Visiting this old laboratory was mostly just an excuse to get away from his friends for a few precious hours of peace, but he did want to search it thoroughly before he had to head back. He estimated he had about four hours before the all-you-can-eat restaurant in the town just north of here would run out of food. He recast a light spell on the dagger he was using as a torch and continued further into the laboratory.
This was one of his great-grandfather's smallest laboratories. It didn't even show up on most of the maps he'd scrounged from the larger laboratories. That was why he hadn't bothered to visit it before. It apparently consisted of a concealed door (locked, magically sealed and heavily reinforced with steel, but these days there were few doors Zelgadis could not open, in one way or another), a long, downward sloping hallway, and - finally - a single room. It was not even a very large room. It resembled a private study in both size and furnishings. Zelgadis analyzed the setup quickly: bookcases covering one wall, a comfortable armchair, a writing desk and stool, a cupboard and a cot. There were no lamps. Yes, Rezo had definitely designed this room.
Zelgadis extinguished his knife and sent a brighter lighting spell to float near the ceiling. He walked over to the bookcase. Knowing Rezo, the chances were about two out of three that there was a secret passage behind it, but Zelgadis decided to look at the books before trying to find the latch.
He selected one at random and flipped it open. It appeared to be a journal. Rezo's handwriting was quite distinctive. It resembled runes more than normal letterforms but it was extremely legible once you got used to it. The page he was looking at seemed to be a description of how to cure some sort of rare liver disease. Zelgadis put the book back and tried another book near the bottom of the bookcase. Ah, the gun powder experiments. Zelgadis patted the gun hanging from his left hip fondly. It generally wasn't as useful as his sword since it could only shoot six bullets before needing to be reloaded, but if there was one thing being a chimera had taught him, it was that strangeness could be more intimidating than actual power. He flipped nostalgically through a few pages of the journal before putting it back on the shelf.
Then he smiled a slow, calculating smile. There must be well over a hundred journals in here, maybe even over two hundred. There was a good chance that at least one of them contained some hint of the spell Rezo had used to turn him into a hideous chimera.
Let's see. If they're in chronological order, it would be around here.
Amelia was worried. Zelgadis had suddenly started spending all his time frowning thoughtfully into space. He wouldn't eat or rest unless reminded and his attention kept drifting inward, even when she was talking to him. He had barely winced when Lina had blown up that restaurant this morning. Amelia had no idea what had caused the change but it must have been very recent. He had seemed so happy to see them at first.
"Hey, Amelia!"
The princess lowered her eyes from the puffy, sunlit clouds to the road up ahead. It took her only a moment to spot the source of the shout.
"Lina, Gourry!" she exclaimed. An enthusiastic kick of her heels sent her horse dashing ahead of her honor guard. She pulled up sharply right in front of the signpost her friends were leaning against. "What are you doing here?" Amelia asked, breathless with delight.
Lina grinned. "We heard that the princess of Seyruun would be passing along this road so we decided to wait for you."
"We've been here since yesterday," Gourry added helpfully.
"I'm so glad to see you! Would you like to come to Seyruun with me?"
"Nah, we just came from there. We're still looking for a new sword for Gourry."
"Then I'll come with you," Amelia decided without hesitation. It had taken her much less time than expected to conclude a treaty with the kingdom of Enol. She had earned a vacation, and she couldn't think of anyone she would rather spend it with than Lina and Gourry.
It took Amelia only a few minutes to change out of her frilly princess dress and dismiss her honor guard. In no time at all, the three friends were walking down the road ready for anything the world could throw at them.
"Do you think Zelgadis is still in the New World?" Amelia asked.
"Probably," Lina replied. "We haven't heard from him."
"Neither have I. I know he has to look for his cure, but I wish he could be here with us. It isn't the same without him."
"I'm sure he'll come back sooner or later," Zelgadis said.
The other three spun to stare at the cloaked figure walking beside them. None of them had noticed his arrival. He pushed back his hood to reveal a face made of blue stone and half-hidden by masses of thick, wire hair. There was a faint smirk floating around the corners of his mouth despite an attempt at expressionlessness.
Amelia nodded appreciatively. She knew just how hard it was to pull off a cool entrance like that. Then she flung her arms around her long-gone friend. Instead of stiffening or pulling away, he gingerly patted her on the back in return. For him, it was a reasonable attempt at returning her hug. Lina and Gourry crowded around to slap him on the back and join in welcoming him home. When Amelia looked up, the expression on Zelgadis' face was almost a smile.
In the days since then, he had taken to making snide comments on their eating habits and occasionally muttering to himself in corners, but that was normal for him. They hadn't paid any attention to it. His decision to go off on his own yesterday hadn't worried them either. As Gourry had said, "He just needs some space." His current distraction, however, was worrying.
"Lina," Amelia tapped the older girl's shoulder to get her attention. "Zelgadis is acting depressed. As his friends, we should cheer him up!"
"Yeah, I know what you mean," Lina said thoughtfully. "Don't worry. I'm sure I can think of something that will get his mind off his problems!"
If it had been on anyone else's face, Amelia would have called Lina's grin evil.
Zelgadis fished a chicken feather out of his shirt. He had no idea what had possessed Lina to suddenly take up chicken poaching when she could have bought as many chicken dinners as she wanted in any restaurant in the area, but what really puzzled him was how she had talked Amelia "Law and Order" Seyruun into going along with it. The sight of Amelia dashing for the hills with a chicken tucked under each arm was one he would not soon forget. He wouldn't forget the dogs breaking their teeth on his ankles either. At least it hadn't involved deep water, like the mess Lina had gotten them into yesterday. Or boiling oil and rotten eggs like the day before that. He could swear that his friends were becoming more insane with each passing day.
He put that train of thought aside in order to focus on the more important one of finding his cure. He pulled a book out of his pocket and opened it at the place he had bookmarked. His eyes traced the familiar letters of the first sentence, "I have finally found a use for experiment X-L." Like every time before, his gaze stopped there and turned inward. Without any conscious decision, his hand reached into his pocket again and pulled out a second book. This one had "Project X" written in gold on the cover. It did not have a bookmark. He had hoped that keeping the right page hard to find might prevent him from obsessively returning to it over and over. So far it hadn't worked. He flipped quickly past experiments X-A to X-K. His hands fell still as his eyes fastened on the description of experiment X-L. He had read it so many times now that he almost had it memorized but he couldn't stop himself from reading it again.
His eyes traced the words, barely seeing them and yet knowing their meaning all too well. After obsessively scanning the two, brief pages once again, he let the book fall from his fingers and buried his face in his knees.
Amelia waited a full minute to see whether Zelgadis was really asleep before she crawled out from behind a bush and over to where the young man was sitting at the foot of a tree. She carefully lifted the book from where it had fallen beside him and scuttled very quietly back to where Lina and Gourry were waiting.
"I got it!" she declared proudly.
"Good work!" Lina congratulated her. "Now, let's see what he's been getting so depressed about."
Amelia openned the book at the front and started paging through it. "I don't get it," she said after awhile. "It's just talking about experiments. I can't even figure out which one he was looking at."
"Allow me," Lina ordered, grabbing the book from Amelia. She placed it between her hands and tilted her hands outwards. The book fell open to Experiment X-L. "This is the page he's been looking at," Lina said smugly.
"Wow, neat trick!" Gourry applauded.
"Thank you, thank you. Now, let's see what it says." Lina began reading aloud.
Experiment X-L will be another attempt to combine my genetic material with that of someone who can see. We are using Eris' blood again. She believes that she has finally found a solution to the problem that was causing deformities in the earlier clones. If she is right, we will start using the more valuable genetic material I have collected in the next experiment.
"Rezo must have written this," Lina commented. "Do you think this kopii experiment has something to do with Zel's chimeric form?"
"It must," Amelia agreed.
"What's a kopii?" Gourry asked.
Lina slapped her forehead. "It's an artificial duplicate of a person made by magic, you idiot. Remember Sairaag? Kopii Rezo? The machine we put your hair in that made all the little Gourrys?"
"Yeah," Gourry said as if he didn't but was humoring Lina.
Lina growled. "Listen. A kopii looks just like the real person and may even have some of the memories and powers of the original, but it's just a fake. New kopiis usually don't have any personality and are very stupid. I've heard that they can become almost like real people after a few years, but Kopii Rezo is the only kopii I know that survived that long, and he was totally deranged. Kopiis are made in the same way as chimeras except that they're based on only one person instead of patched together out of a lot of different creatures. Do you understand now ?"
Gourry smiled cheerfully. "Not at all!"
"But, Lina," Amelia pointed out, "the book said that these kopiis would be based on two people, Rezo and Eris."
"So maybe they're 100% human chimeras or something. Whatever. Now shut up and let me read."
We used the same proceedure to create the clones as in experiments X-F to X-K. There are five in this batch. There were no problems during process of creation, but there were no problems in the early stages of X-J either.
Halfway through their development, all five clones continue to appear healthy.
X-L4 has developed deformities. We flushed it. Eris claims that she knows what went wrong with it and that the others should be fine. I have not asked for further explination. What is the point in training a kopii maker if I can't leave the details of the kopii-making process to her?
We tried speeding up the growth of X-L5 and X-L3. They reached full maturity within a week but X-L5 developed health problems so severe that it died as soon as we took it out of the tank. X-L3 is slightly more healthy but it appears to be a complete idiot. It is not likely to survive much longer, especially if it keeps annoying me. We will let the remaining clones develop at a slower pace.
X-L1 and X-L2 have now reached a stage of development similar to that of newborn infants. We have removed them from the tank. Both are small and weak-looking but otherwise healthy. Tomorrow, I will begin testing them to discover if they have inherited my power.
The testing injured X-L1 and it died before sunset. Eris stopped me before I could finish testing X-L2 but I doubt it has much more power than its brother. I am inclined to get rid of it, but Eris wants to keep it. She says that he may prove useful someday. I suspect that she doesn't believe I can accurately measure the powers of clones while they are still so small. She is sentimental about this last X-L because it is the first of her kopiis that has survived, and perhaps because it shares her blood. She is, after all, still a child.
This experiment has not been a complete failure...
Zelgadis stormed up to the threesome. "What are you doing?" he demanded angrily.
"Uh, Zel..." Lina laughed nervously, putting her hands (and the book) behind her back. "We thought you were asleep."
"I was just thinking about...stuff." The shadow of crippling depression fell over his face for a moment before anger knocked it aside again. "And that's no excuse for prying into my business! Give me that book."
"No." Lina backed away. "What's so special about this book anyway? It's just a journal of a bunch of kopii making experiments. Who cares? I mean, sure, it's nasty, but it's not exactly news. We already knew Eris and Rezo were making messed-up kopiis."
That had not been the right thing to say. Zelgadis collapsed in on himself like a fire when the core log burns through. As with the fire, the decrease in size just meant an increase in intensity. "Just give me the book," he said in a level tone of overwhelming rage.
"We're your friends. We want to help you," Amelia protested.
"Just leave me alone. It's none of your business," Zelgadis growled.
"Our friendship for you makes it our business! When you suffer, we suffer with you. You owe us an explination at least! How can we cheer you up if we don't know what's wrong?"
"I'll tell you what's wrong," Zelgadis hissed. "Stealing my personal property is wrong. Prying into..."
Lina gasped. "Oh, I get it. Oh, Zel." Her voice as she spoke his name was gentle with true pity and sorrow. She had levitated up into a tree while Zelgadis was momentarily distracted by Amelia.
Zelgadis looked around wildly until he spotted her sitting on a tree branch just out of reach with the book open on her lap. He tried to launch himself into the air after her but Gourry and Amelia grabbed his arms, trapping him on the ground.
"What does it say, Lina?" Gourry called out.
Lina started reading out loud again while Zelgadis struggled frantically against his captors.
This experiment has not been a complete failure. It showed that Eris has mastered kopii making sufficiently to create living clones. I will start gathering materials for experiment X-M immediately.
I have found a wet nurse for X-L2. She is a peasant woman who has no understanding of sorcery at all. We told her that the baby's name is Zel...
"That's you, isn't it?" Lina said softly.
Zelgadis went limp in defeat. "It must be." His head drooped until he was staring at the ground in front of his feet. "Keep reading."
...We told her that the baby's name is Zel and that he is my grandson. Eris was going to call him my son but I refuse to be a father at my age. I wouldn't claim that powerless creature as my kin at all but his resemblence to me is undeniable. I prefer a grandson to whatever relationship village gossip would assign us. I have sent the woman back to her village with the baby. Now I can return to my work in peace.
The boy is two years old and surprisingly sturdy. I found him drawing in the dirt when I visited the village. He spent most of my visit hiding behind his foster-mother's skirts. He seems intelligent but has still shown no sign of magic.
"You must have been so cute!" Amelia exclaimed, hugging the arm she held captive affectionately.
Zelgadis' only response was a slight twich of that shoulder. It might have been a shrug or a twitch of annoyance.
The boy is five years old. I invited him to visit my lab. I have never met a child who asked so many questions. To give him credit, he appeared to listen carefully to the answers. I hope he gets over this stage before I see him again.
"I remember that," Zelgadis said. "His lab smelled like...sulphur, bleach, dust, stone. I don't know what. Rotten meat, forgotten decades. The oddest smells remind me of it. He told me not to touch anything. Repeatedly. And he caught me every time I tried to wander off, even when he had his back to me. I used to walk around with my eyes closed for years after that because I thought blind people could sense more than ordinary people."
"Did it work?" Gourry asked.
"No. I just walked into a lot of walls."
The boy is eight years old. I have taken him from his foster-mother and assigned him to a band of mercenaries in my employ for training. Perhaps, if he can't be a sorcerer, he will prove useful as a swordsman.
"Poor Zelgadis!" Amelia exclaimed. "Did he really take you away from your mother just like that?"
"Foster mother," Zelgadis corrected cooly, freeing his arms from his friends and starting to rub life back into them. "I haven't thought of her in years."
He made his voice sound indifferent, but his true feeling was regret. He couldn't even remember her face. He remembered her hugs though. He remembered his screams and tears as Rezo dragged him away from her. He remembered how he had cried himself to sleep every night his first month in the camp.
"What was the mercenary camp like?" Amelia persisted.
"Like a mercenary camp," Zelgadis shrugged. "It's hard to explain unless you've ever lived in one. Gourry, have you?"
The golden-haired man thought hard. At last, he said, "I don't remember!"
The other three groaned.
Zelgadis tried to recollect just what the mercenary camp had been like. It had not been an inviting place for a small child, but the men there had treated him well. They had called him "Little Boots" and made him their mascot. That was where he had met Rodimus. They had not been close then, but they had respected each other. It had been a strange world, a world of men and swords and honor where weakness was not tolerated and girls existed only to be protected or lusted after.
"A mercenary camp is..." Zelgadis tried to put it into words. "A mercenary camp is a good place to learn how to be a warrior. It made me the man I am today. The good parts, not the freakish, cursed parts. I have only my own stupidity to blame for my curse."
"I'm not so sure about that," Lina commented skeptically. "A mercenary camp is a good place to pick up a 'strength at all costs' mentality. Isn't that what got you into trouble?"
Zelgadis turned rather red but didn't answer.
Lina shrugged and started reading again.
The boy is ten years old. It turns out he has magical potential after all. There is a sorcerer in the mercenary band who has taught the boy basic shamanism and healing. The boy still has nowhere near my power but he may have as much as Eris.
Lina turned the page.
Experiment X-M...
She flipped back, and then forward again. "Hey, is that all there is of it? What about the rest of your life?"
"Rezo ran out of room on the page," Zelgadis said dryly.
The implications of that slowly sank in.
"That is the coldest, most heartless, most...despicable thing I have ever heard!" Amelia spluttered in indignation. "How could he create you and then treat you like that? Bringing a child into the world is a sacred responsibility! It should be an act of love! How could anyone be so...so evil as to abandon and exploit his own child like that?"
"Don't forget that he also turned me into a chimera," Zelgadis pointed out vindictively. Then he sagged wearily. "But, don't you see, I'm not his child, or anyone's. I'm just a kopii, no different than that thing we buried in Sairaag, except that I'm far less powerful. I'm not a real person at all."
He started to walk away, but Amelia grabbed his arm again. "Yes, you are! You're as real as anyone I ever met! It doesn't matter how you came into this world. The only thing that matters is what you do with your time in it!"
Zelgadis shook himself free. "I'm not in the mood to be preached at, Amelia," he snarled. She backed away, her eyes filled with tears. He relented slightly. "Just leave me alone," he said more gently.
Lina jumped out of her tree and landed in Zel's path. "Amelia's right. You shouldn't get upset just because it turns out you came from a bottle instead of a womb. You're here now and that's what matters."
"Yes, but...a kopii. Of Rezo."
Lina shrugged. "We can't pick our families. Look at Amelia. Her uncle tried to kill her."
Amelia winced. "Lina..." she protested.
Lina continued as if the younger girl hadn't spoken. "And I ran away from home when I was twelve because I couldn't stand my family. Huh, Gourry?" The last query was in response to the swordsman taking the Project X book out of her hand.
"I ran away from home too," Gourry replied absently, scanning the book with his finger. "Say, Zel, it says here that your name is Zel so why do you call yourself Zelgadis?"
The girls rushed to look over his shoulder. "I can't believe I didn't notice that!" Lina exclaimed.
Zelgadis leaned against a tree. "That's simple. Zel is my human part. My demon part is named Dis. The golem is very stupid. When we told it that it was a golem it kept saying, 'Ga-ga-ga,' so that's what we called it."
"We?" Lina repeated as if she didn't really want to know.
"The demon and I," Zel clarified with a half smile.
"Then you're the human part?"
"Yes, the human part is in control - mostly - but the other two are definitely in here too." He tapped his forehead.
"That's creepy," Lina said frankly. Amelia had already hidden behind Gourry.
"I'm the same person I was a minute ago," Zelgadis scowled. "You knew I was one third demon and one third golem. Did you really think that had no effect on my mind?"
"Yes, but...even your name?" Lina protested helplessly.
"Yes, I'm a freak." Zelgadis' eyes burned with such rage that even Lina looked intimidated. "I'm a 'messed-up', 'artificial' kopii, as well as a hideous chimera. I'm barely one third human and even that human minority isn't a real person but only the flawed clone of a madman. I'm damaged; I'm dangerous; you should all stay away from me."
He grabbed the journal out of Lina's hands and stormed off into the woods. No one stopped him. Only their eyes followed him.
Zelgadis intended to keep walking for hours until he was safely out of reach of his erstwhile friends. If he used a touch of his demonic speed they'd never be able to catch up with him. Somehow though, he couldn't seem to summon up enough energy. Besides, his vision had gone all wavery so he'd probably walk straight into a tree or something stupid like that. He ended up collapsing at the foot of a tree not a hundred paces from the campsite. The embrace of its roots was somehow oddly comforting. He wrapped his arms around his legs and rested his forehead on his knees. The fabric of his pants was unpleasantly damp where it pressed against his eyes but he didn't bother to move his face.
He tried not to think about anything, but the more he tried to still the memories dancing madly around the inside of his skull, the faster they spun. His foster mother giving him cookies. Mercenaries telling each other dirty jokes that he couldn't understand while he watched them from his hiding place under a table. Lina's saucy, fearless grin and the hearty backslaps he could feel even through stone skin. Zolf ranting about the 'little runt' who had given him third-degree burns. Dilgear mutinous. The king of Xoana and other villains he'd worked for over the years gloating over their evil plots. Rezo.
Well, he'd finally found out the reason why Rezo could never make up his mind whether Zel was his grandson or great-grandson.
"How are you related to me?" Zel asked the tall man walking beside him.
The man considered the question for a long moment before answering, "I am your grandfather."
The little boy nodded. When the man had first shown up that morning, he had told Zel's foster mother, "I would like to see my great-grandson." The boy did not mention this. Instead, he smiled up at the man with eyes that were not half as trusting as they appeared.
"Is your lab really big?" Zel asked.
"I believe you will find it so," the sage answered.
"What do you do there?" the boy asked.
"I study many things."
"Like what?"
"Currently, I'm studying impure mazoku and how to create part-demon chimeras."
"What are those?"
"Do you always ask this many questions?"
"Yes. What are chimeras?"
The priest sighed. "I'll show you when we get there."
"Are we almost there yet?"
"Oh, it's you." The boy shoved his overgrown hair out of his eyes and looked up at the red-robed sage with disinterest.
"Show a little more respect for your grandfather," Rezo scolded him.
"Great-grandfather," Zel corrected.
"Right. Great-grandfather."
The boy's gaze had already returned to the book in his hands.
"What's that you're reading?" The red priest unsuccessfully tried to hide his annoyance. As one of the fivegreat wise men of his era, he rarely got ignored like this.
"Mage lore. I'm reading about this really cool thing called a 'Shadow Reflector'. Have you ever heard of it?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact I have. If you'll come walking with me, I'll tell you anything you want to know about it."
The boy looked doubtful, but he had been raised to be polite. He closed the book and followed his ancestor back towards the camp. The first person they encountered was Zel's magic teacher.
"Teacher," the ten-year-old said, "this is my grandfather, Rezo the Red Priest."
"Y-your grandfather?," the shamanist repeated, all but speechless. He bowed deeply. "I am
honored to meet you, sir."The red-robed priest nodded benevolently, pleased by the lesser sorcerer's awe. "I was not aware that the boy had any talent for magic. Does he show much potential?"
It had almost been a game seeing how many times he could get Rezo to switch between 'grandfather' and 'great-grandfather'. He had been suspicious even then but he had assumed that Rezo just hadn't bothered to keep track of his children or grandchildren. He had sometimes wondered whether the Red Priest was related to him at all but hadn't been able to think of any reason why Rezo would provide for him if he wasn't. He had never suspected that he might be Rezo's copy. It was just not something that any normal person even considered.
Rezo's copy.
Kopii Rezo.
He was nothing more than a pathetic copy of a madman, just like that deranged creature they had buried among the roots of the great tree Flagoon. No, not quite. He had a mother.
Zel gathered together his memories of the scantily clad, melodramatic witch he had met in Sairaag. Eris. He had seen her dying in a pool of her own blood and felt nothing but disgust and pity. His mother. Blood of his blood, his creator. Who had abandoned him as soon as he was...born? (What word described the entry of a kopii into the world?) Who had killed his twins without remorse and would have done the same to him without a second thought. Who had saved his life when Rezo wanted to destroy him. He owed his life to her in every sense of that phrase. He wasn't sure whether or not to be grateful. Eris. His mother. How old had she been when she created him? Ten? Eleven? Younger? She had been a child studying biology, not a woman trying to bring new life into the world. And yet, she was all the mother he had. Why was that suddenly so important to him when he had never cared about his lack of parents before? He had her small stature and dark hair. Or he used to, before Rezo turned him into a chimera.
Rezo. If Eris was his mother, that made Rezo his father. Disgusting thought. He preferred to continue thinking of Rezo as his grandfather, or great-grandfather, as he always had. He did not want to think of Rezo as a father or as the original Zel was copied from. He couldn't decide which was worse.
Zel curled in tighter on himself. The forest around him was full of sunlight and gentle breezes but he felt like he was in his own private hell.
"Hey, Zel?"
Lina was the first one to approach the brooding chimera. He was sitting at the foot of the same tree as before in the same forehead-to-knees position. He did not even twitch at the sound of his name.
"Uh," Lina scratched her head uncertainly. "I just wanted to say that I'm sorry we stole your book. Except I'm not. I'm glad we know now. It's really not all that bad. I mean, you already knew you were related to Rezo. It just turns out you're a little more closely related than you thought. Um. None of us cares that you're a kopii. We never minded that you're a chimera so why should this be any different? Um, Zel? Would you show some sign of life? Anyway, if you need anything - a big dinner, someone to talk to, company in spitting on Rezo's grave - I'm here for you. Just say the word."
She waited expectantly. The white-clad shoulders moved barely enough to show he was still breathing. After a minute, Lina got discouraged and left again.
Gourry was the next one to try to talk to Zelgadis. He sat down beside the apparently catatonic stone lump and leaned back against the tree as if the term 'waiting' had no meaning. The sun shone down warmly, speckling the ground below with complicated leaf shadows. A gentle breeze rustled through the trees and briefly lifted a few strands of Gourry's blonde hair. Birds chirped.
When Gourry spoke at last, his voice seemed almost a part of the woodland silence. "I don't know anything about kopiis or demons or this 'Rezo' person, but I do know that I'd rather travel with you than with just about anyone else except Lina. I can tell that you want to be alone right now, so I'll leave you alone, but come back as soon as you feel better. We're all just sitting around not looking each other in the eye over there."
He briefly placed a hand on Zel's shoulder before he left.
Finally, as the afternoon shadows began to stretch long fingers across the ground and the light turned golden, Amelia hesitantly walked up to the still figure. She knelt on the ground in front of him with her head hanging.
"I guess you're still mad at us. I'm sorry for stealing your book. It was wrong, like you said. It was an unjust thing to do to you, and not very nice either. We thought we could help you if we knew what was bothering you, but I guess we just made you more mad. Or sad. You look more sad than mad."
Zelgadis did not respond.
"When I'm sad," Amelia continued, drawing courage from his silence, "my Daddy always gives me a big bear hug. It always cheers me up. It's hard to be depressed when you can't breathe. I doubt I'm strong enough to give you a proper bear hug, but I can try."
Zelgadis gave no sign of protest so she wrapped her arms around him as best she could and squeezed hard. He might as well have been a statue. After she'd given him a good, long hug, she sat back on her heels again and stared thoughtfully at the top of his spiky head.
"I don't care what you are," she said, half to herself. "Everything I've seen of you just convinced me more that you are brave, and noble, and heroic. You're nothing like Kopii Rezo. I never met Rezo, but I bet you're nothing like him either. I don't know what you see when you look in the mirror, but you ought to have a lot more faith in yourself! When Lina, Gourry and I look at you, we see someone we're proud to call our ally, and our friend."
She leapt to her feet to pose dramatically. "If you were created by a heartless madman, if you were turned into a patchwork monster against your will, that doesn't make me want to stay away from you! It just makes me want to help you more. I've sworn my life to helping the victims of injustice and you've suffered more injustice anyone else I've ever met!"
She sat down beside him and wrapped an arm around his stiff back. "I'm going to stay here and hold on to you until you decide to talk to us again. That way you won't be able to forget you have friends who love you. Don't even think about trying to leave without us."
Zelgadis still stubbornly refused to acknowledge her presence. Before long, Amelia fell asleep with her head on his shoulder. As night fell, Lina took up a position on Zel's other side and Gourry stretched out on the ground by the chimera's feet.
In the morning, they found themselves lying in an empty circle. Zelgadis was gone.
Zelgadis reached the gate of Sairaag a week and a half later. The gate was only a broken archway leading into moss-covered rubble, but it still felt like a gate. He stepped through it into the memory of a city. He wandered up and down, matching patterns of foundation stones and gaping holes left by cellars to the streets in his memory. Once he thought he had it straight, he made his way through the obstacle course of tall weeds and broken stones to the place where Rezo's house had stood.
The house had not been completely flattened. The west and south walls were still partially standing and there were even a few complete rooms sheltered somewhat from the ravages of weather. One of them held a table and set of chairs that were still unbroken although leprously splotched with patches of moss. Back in the main section, he found the remains of a staircase up against one wall. The stairs ended abruptly at the fourth step although one of the railings trailed up a few steps further. This was probably his birthplace. It was where Eris had made her chimeras. However, his only memories of it were from his adult life, and even those were few in number. These sad remnants held nothing for him now, not even much emotion.
He continued onward into a region of much older ruins. Rezo's lab was recognizable by the seemingly bottomless depth of the pit. Some vines had grown across the hole in places and small bushes littered the edges of former floors as far down as the sunlight would reach, but Zelgadis would still not want to stumble into it on a dark night. He seated himself in a patch of small wildflowers at the edge of the pit and stared down into it thoughtfully.
This had been Rezo's largest lab. It had plunged down in a complicated maze of magical passages and traps through ten centuries worth of strata to a graveyard of ancient evil. Only Rezo had known his way through it. Rezo, and the one almost-true kopii that shared his memories.
Zel wrapped his arms around his knees and rested his chin on them.
Rezo had brought him here when he was five years old. It must have been this lab. He remembered the ruins surrounding it even then and the strange door that opened at a wave of his grandfather's - great-grandfather's - whatever's - hands. It had looked and smelled much the same when he had followed Lina into it two years ago as it had in Rezo's time. Now it was just a hole in the ground.
What a waste. Even now, while occupied with more personal problems, Zel could have wept at all the mage lore that had been lost that night, all the magical artifacts, all the knowledge gathered over the course of decades by the greatest sorcerer of the past century. Whatever else Rezo had been, he had been a magnificent scholar. The contents of this vast laboratory had probably been worth more than the total wealth of some small kingdoms. No, make that the combined wealth of several small kingdoms. Or even some large kingdoms. The loss was immeasurable for the simple reason that no one alive today had seen more than a small fraction of the contents of the lab. It was almost unimaginable.
Zel could have stayed there for hours staring into the abyss that echoed the fathomless darkness of his own heart, but there was one more stop on his itinerary and it tugged at him impatiently. He tossed a stone into the pit as a parting gift. He waited for it to hit the bottom but, if it ever hit anything, the sound got lost somewhere on the way back up to him.
He got stiffly to his feet, stretched until his joints cracked, and walked onward toward where the center of the city had been. This area was a mess. It looked like someone had ripped a building the size of a castle out of the ground, torn it stone from stone, and dropped the pieces from above the clouds without any care for what lay below. That was pretty much what had happened. More than a year after Hellmaster Phibrizzo and the Lord of Nightmares had left the world from this spot, an aura of chaos and evil still hung over the land like heavy fog. Perhaps that explained the feeling of Death breathing on the back of Zel's neck. He shivered. He had almost forgotten that Phibrizzo's temple had stood here. It was not what he had come to visit.
He picked his way around the edge of the rubble, trying not to remember the sight of Gourry entombed in crystal, or the feeling of Amelia's body limp in his arms, or the sound of Lina's anguished screams. He had never been so glad of anything as he had been to wake up alive after that adventure. He hadn't tried to commit suicide since.
Suicide. Zel gratefully seized on a less terrible topic to think about than the memories called up by these blasted and chaos-blackened stones. He had attempted suicide frequently in the first year after Rezo had turned him into a chimera. All his attempts had been completely frustrated by the fact that he was nearly invulnerable. Swords and spears just bounced off him. Bombs didn't even crack his skin. His attempt to throw himself off a cliff had only proved that levitation was as much of a gut instinct for him as breathing. The one time he tried swallowing poison, he had simply vomited it up again and then had a wretched stomachache for the next week. He had eventually been forced to give up. Then he had met the owner of the Sword of Light, one of the very few weapons that could slice through his stone skin. Unfortunately - no, fortunately; he meant fortunately - none of his fits of truly suicidal depression had ever occurred at a time when he was with Gourry and Lina.
It should be around here. Zel checked his position relative to the former city and the angle of the sun. Yes, this seemed about right. This would have been just beyond the outer edge of the great tree Flagoon. He shoved a huge block of stone off to one side. The ground underneath looked just like the ground anywhere else, but then it would. Graves left no marks. They hadn't even given him a real tombstone, just an uncarved chunk of rock. There hadn't been so many other rocks littering the ground then.
Zel sat down and pressed his hands flat against the soil. "Hello," he said self-consciously to the dirt. "Do you remember me? I helped kill you." He grimaced. That was not the best way to start.
He tried again. "I came here because I just found out that I'm a copy of Rezo, like you. I'm experiment X-L2. I think you must be X-R. That makes us brothers of a sort, or at least fellow victims. I was your prototype but you were mine too. Rezo turned me into a one-third demon chimera based on the demon's blood experiment that produced you.
"I think I can understand some of what drove you mad. I know what it's like to have a demon in your blood. To have Rezo's memories as well...no wonder it drove you insane. I didn't know him well and I never wanted to know him any better. Eris was no picnic either. I carry her blood but at least she didn't raise me. What kind of twisted relationship did you have with her? No, I don't think I want to know.
"I don't stand much chance do I? Mix an evil sorcerer and a deranged chimera maker. Throw in a petty demon and a clay-for-brains golem. Stir well, and what do you get? A crazy chimera who talks to dead men. This probably isn't even the spot where you're buried. There's no way I can find your grave in this mess and it wouldn't matter if I did. You're dead so you're not going to hear me anyway. This is as good a place for talking to myself as anywhere else, I guess.
"You were so obsessed with proving that you were not Rezo, that you were better than him. I thought that was just stupid at the time. It was stupid. Face it, my brother, you were one messed up, senseless individual. But I can almost understand it now. Kopiis are real people, aren't they? They - we - have our own thoughts, feelings and desires. We see the world through our own eyes. We only look like our progenitors on the surface. If new kopiis seem stupid, it's only because they're babies. Babies with the bodies and knowledge of adults sometimes, but babies none the less. It takes time to learn how to be yourself. You had - what? - three years? No wonder you were such a fool. Three-year-olds are not noted for their common sense.
"Well, if it's any comfort to you, I believe you were more powerful than Rezo. It must have been your demon's blood that did it. Of course, he was still older, wiser, more cunning and more charismatic than you had any hope of being. Still, take comfort in small things. You were far, far more powerful than me even after I became a chimera and before you added that demon beast's power to your own. Without the help of my inner demon, I have just enough magical ability to be a mercenary sorcerer. I couldn't even make it into the Sorcerer's Guild. Obviously, I take after Eris rather than Rezo. I'm generally glad about that, but you would think that any kopii of the most powerful sorcerer of the last century would at least be able to cast the Dragon Slave!
"No, I shouldn't be greedy. That's what got me turned into a chimera. If only I had been satisfied with the amount of power I had! Between my sword and my basic attack spells, I had everything I needed to succeed as a mercenary. But I was in love with power. I loved the feeling of magic. I loved shaping power into words and making my will into reality. Can you understand that? Yes, I bet you can. That look on your face when you destroyed Sairaag wasn't just joy in destruction. It was joy in magic, wasn't it? Rezo was the same. Lina's like that too. Most great mages and hopeless wannabes love magic for the sake of magic. Mediocre mages tend to have other motivations.
"I also loved the feeling of wielding a sword with skill and ease. Unfortunately, I was a scrawny little weakling. Most sixteen-year-olds are, but I didn't realize that at the time. Well, I got all the power I wanted, and it's still far less than you had. I don't want your power though. I just want to be normal. I never will be, will I? I am Zelgadis Greywords, one third demon, one third golem, one sixth Rezo, one sixth Eris, one hundred percent freakish experiment gone wrong, one hundred percent Rezo's pawn."
He leaned back against a broken pillar, eyes closed in pain and brooded on that for a while. At length he spoke again. "Unlike you, I can rise above that. I have twenty-one years of my own memories and none of anyone else's. I look nothing like Rezo. I may have come into this world as a failed kopii but I'm my own person now. Rezo's dead, Eris is dead, you're dead. I'm the only one still standing. He who laughs last laughs longest. There's no one left for me to resemble. I'm free."
Zelgadis stood up. "I don't know what I came here looking for. Maybe I just came to remember, and to acknowledge the closest thing to family that I have. You're not much of a family. You're all dead and you all tortured and tried to kill me while you were alive, but you're what I've got. If there's any higher power that shapes our fates, it must hate me.
"Anyway, these are for you." He placed a fistful of wild flowers he had picked by the old lab on top of the patch of ground he had been talking to. "I think you liked flowers. You were thinking about them at the end anyway. I don't know what kind of flowers these are, but they're yours.
"I'm going to go continue my freakish life now. Wish me luck because I'm going to need it."
Heading back toward the outskirts of Sairaag, Zelgadis noticed for the first time that it was a beautiful day. The sun was warm and bright. There were flowers of all colors, shapes and sizes growing among the ruins. Some of them were purely weeds but others looked like the remains of gardens now gone wild. It was still obviously the broken wreckage of a recently living city but it felt peaceful. It had the same kind of feeling as a graveyard with no one left to tend it. It was a place of the dead, but of the quiet, peaceful dead. It was strangely beautiful once you got used to it. Still, he did not intend to linger.
As he walked between the broken pillars that had once been the gateposts of the wall marking Sairaag's boundary, three fierce bodies pounced on him.
"Don't let him get away this time!" Lina's voice shouted.
"Right!" Amelia agreed, pulling out a coil of rope.
"I was going to come back to you on my own," Zelgadis protested. "You don't need to tie me up."
"Were you really?" Lina asked dangerously.
"Well, probably. Sooner or later."
"Tie him up," was Lina's verdict.
Zelgadis easily evaded Amelia's clumsy attempts to obey. "Is there any reason why you hunted me down other than to torture me?"
"Actually, yes," Lina replied. "You forgot this." She held up the second of the books he had found in Rezo's lab. "Did you ever actually read it ? It gives some very detailed descriptions of the theory behind your chimeric form. They reminded me of a legendary artifact that's rumored to be located in the Brekenarm Mountains."
"There's supposed to be a legendary sword around there too," Gourry added helpfully.
"And the best venison in the world, if what that guy told Lina is true," Amelia put in.
"Shush! Don't tell him things like that!" Lina shushed urgently. "He'll think we care more about swords and food than about his cure."
Zelgadis rolled his eyes. With friends like this, who needed enemies? But as he followed Lina along the road out of Sairaag, with Amelia and Gourry tagging along watchfully at his heels, his heart felt lighter than it had since he first openned the Project X book. He might not have parents, but his friends could be just as irritating, insensitive, and caring as any siblings. Maybe he had a family after all.
Author's Note: I wrote this partly to prove to myself that I can write angst and partly to try out some new and different theories about Zelgadis' past. I don't really think that this is Zel's true backstory but it fits surprisingly well, doesn't it? At least, I think it does. I'd love to know what you think about my weird theories or any other aspect of the story.
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