A Fairytale
"You want more power?! Then let it be!" and the red aura of the Priest stretches forward like an octopus, entwines the young swordsman and stings like a jellyfish, yet stronger and deeper, until he feels like being torn into molecules, and he doesn't understand why he's still able to hear the mocking voice of the Red Priest:
"You have reached the limit of human capabilities. The only way to gain yet more power is to cease being human. You asked for it, chimera!" and his laugh split into many echoing voices, his face multiplied into a crowd, all chanting, "Chimera! Monster! Get lost! You're not human!.."
Amelia was sitting by a fire in the woods yawning and glancing back to her quilt, so warm and cosy... if one pays no attention to the chimera who was twisting and turning beside, pushing his neighbours with his stone knees and elbows. "How am I supposed to sleep?" she thought lazily. "On the other side, to sit quietly through the night is better than watch nightmares". She realised now why Zelgadis-san liked coffee so much - just you try to have a good rest with such dreams.
On the other side of the fire Gaurri, and Lina even drooled in her sleep - she must have seen food and treasures.
The next day Zelgadis and Amelia were dragging in the tail-end yawning. And when the vanguard halted on a hill top, the rearguard crashed into them... The offended cries did not follow, though, so much the travellers were engrossed in the opening sight. Down in a small valley was a town as if woven of tulle, as if cooked of parfait. Soft pink, cream and beige houses sprouted golden steeples, turrets and lace weather-vanes, filigree towers were even not standing, or so much towering - they kind of hung in the air, and water glittered in canals between the buildings.
Lina sighed, "Cool, ne? Always like that - it looks like a wedding cake from afar, and at close turns all garbage, paupers and overpricing. Why do people choose to live in cities?" she winked and answered to herself, "'Cause we cannot live without other people! And there's more food! Let's go!"
"Well, people can live without chimeras"? Zelgadis turned aside and rushed into the bush.
"Hey, where you go?" Gaurri wondered.
"As usually, one more idea about returning to human form", Zel glanced back at the shining spears of the town and disappeared in the thickset. Amelia could only gape and wave her hands. She turned to her companions for support... Lina and Gaurri were marching to the town.
"Ano... What are you doing? How can we leave him like that?!" the champion of justice shouted and looked around for a cliff or tree.
"Indeed", Gaurri got pensive for a moment, then turned to the bush and cried, "Good luck to ya!" Then he thought for one more second, "But... If he succeeds, how do we recognise him next time?"
"Let him be" answered Lina, from afar already. "If he doesn't understand that his looks doesn't matter to us then what can we do? Anyway we'll meet again!"
And the two Slayers vanished from sight before Amelia climbed to the top of a shield-post. The princess glided down. Admired the roofs and spears of not-so-far town, then turned back and... didn't go anywhere. The bush thickset stretched along all the road and further, and to find there a chimera, when he could recollect 'Ray Wing' spell any time, seemed next to impossible. Amelia raised her hand to scratch the nape and hit the post with the elbow, right on the nerve spot!
In irritation she punched the offending object with fist and got a splinter.
She kicked the post and bruised her toe.
She mono-bolted it and got almost smashed with the fallen shield. But before she did something disastrous she read the inscription on the shield.
"Onto the right - not a damn to find, onto the left - just one damn left, straight ahead - you'll be found instead".
Seiruun princess pondered a bit and decided to understand 'you'll be found' in more favourable way, so she rushed ahead into the bush. When she thought how the others would soon find out that she carried the whole their budget her mood soared high. But soon numerous thorns and spikes brought her down to earth. The only consolation was that the aggressive flora wouldn't be a bother to the stone-skinned chimera, so he could possibly choose this way.
The thickset ended suddenly. Forth to the limits of sight (i.e. to the second dune) a desert was stretching. And on the narrow patch of mud between sand and soil the girl saw the long-awaited sign - Zel's footprints leading to the desert. Soon another line of traces was left next to the first one, this time smaller, but in the same direction.
Over the 47th dune Zelgadis cheered up. He was fed up with viscous sand and necessity to watch his steps in order not to trip over some thornheaded gluttodon. Alas, the way to Cape Anderssen led through that nasty landscape. But every way leads to its end, and he could guess the sea ahead - by the fresh breeze, by inaudible rustle of water on pebbles, by more audible cries of seagulls... However, the scream from behind was heard much better, and it was oh-so-familiar! Zel spat, glanced in anguish at the next dune - maybe it was the last... - and whirled back.
Amelia stopped screaming only in the air, clutching at the chimera. She hadn't even thought of the words 'Levitation' or 'Ray Wing', all her attention was grabbed by a knot of snakes raving below in fury of loosing the dinner. She had no kind feelings towards serpents in general, and these ones could easily swallow an average Seiruun princess. And they had sprung from the sand so suddenly...
As a result, Amelia was clinging to Zel ten minutes more after he had landed at the seaside.
"How so!?" she whimpered at last. "Zelgadis-san, I was tracking you step to step! Why you passed, and I was attacked?! It's unfair!!"
The reflexes of champion of justice dominated, and she finished her speech trying to shake the chimera by the collar and climb the highest object in vicinity, that is, the same chimera. Zelgadis knew the usual outcome of her acrobatic exercises and therefore just waited for the end of her bout. When the princess fell down he replied, "That's simple. Those beasts find their victims by heat radiation. The property not immanent to my body. They don't see me, while you are a hot-blooded creature. I'd rather say, hot-headed".
In proof he dragged his fingerless glove off and brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. Amelia had got warmed from all the previous terror and screaming, so the stone hand seemed ice-cold to her.
The Zelgadis turned away and headed toward the sea. Demonstratively not looking back. Demonstratively ignoring the footsteps and hurt puffing behind. His endurance, though, lasted only for a hundred of meters, and he halted. In a second a squeak ringed - Amelia did run into his back and now was rubbing her aching nose. That back was stone-hard, after all!
"Why have you followed me?"
"But there are snakes! I won't get far alone! See you, sometimes a human can't do without a chimera", she smiled tentatively, but Zel didn't pay attention to her attempt at joke.
"The question was why did you go after me at all? This place is too dangerous!"
"But you've chosen this way"-
"I'm not a human being!" he barked at her and continued his way to the end of the cape. The girl just gaped, thought for a moment and hurried behind him. Yet she was unable to keep silent, and over a dozen of paces she asked, "Where are we going?"
"As for me, I am in search of a possibility to become human, and I do not know what you are doing here".
Silence befell behind his back.
"And still..." she squeaked so pitifully that neither mazoku's nor golem's nor even human heart would have no pity.
"All right. I heard from vague sources that at the end of this cape lives one sorceress specialising in interspecies transformation. For example, she turned one mermaid into a human girl. Well, mermaids are half human, not one third as me. And who knows what the price will be- Here we come!"
Amelia looked ahead. Blinked, looked harder and from the third attempt she discerned a dwelling which had been successfully disguising as a pile of sandstone tablets before. The gaps in masonry were obviously windows, and the biggest hole on the ground level had to be a door. The princess and the chimera exchanged glances, made 'lights' and entered the black portal.
Inside in the reception there was a cod-liver-oil lamp, but 'lights' gave clearer picture, though rather standard one: rows of pottery, bunches of dried bats on the ceiling, rugs with ethnic patterns. At the bureau there was an old woman, also typical of such institutions: with unkempt grey hair, hunchback, motley dress, crooked nose and a single but huge and yellow tooth.
That tooth was seen clearly as its owner was screeching, to put it mildly, from the very moment when the guests appeared. In five minutes the visitors began suspecting that they were unexpected, and the granny snapped out of dumbfounded mode and hid under her table shouting, "Help! Monster!"
If Zel weren't blue-skinned he'd turn green. If there were a door in the porthole he'd slammed it behind himself. But all he could do was to walk out quietly.
Amelia looked back and forth. Then she kneeled at the table to be on one level with the hostess.
"Mistress sorceress... he's gone, there are no monster around".
"Wha?.. Yuck, true", the old woman left her refuge, smoothed her dress (as if it could make her clothes look better) and sat at her place with dignity.
"Whaddja want, lassie?"
"Mistress sorceress, how did you transform a mermaid into a woman if you overreact at chimeras like this?"
"Me? When?! A, see, dear, you must mean that story... Schit, it was half a century ago, people got it all wrong since then, what morons. Lisn, I'm just a farm witch, I didn't to to universies, I dunno such long words. My biz is small - to bleach moles out, t treat chicken, to par bulls and cows. Once that gal came and stuck to me like a mite asking to turn her into a fish-gal. That pighead heard that fish-guys are most hot bucks. And silly me agreed. Ever seen a fish-man? Just your common fish, but with hands and feet, and lives in water and at land all the same. And I mixed somethin and got her with fish tail down from her waist. Neither way good. So folks started talking..."
"Yet... even such sorcery takes some powers!"
"Not mine, dearie, it's Water-of-Stone! Ar-ti-fact!" and the witch waved with the lamp to the corner, to a large stone cube. Atop of it Amelia saw a deep dent with water.
"Quite a lot!" she exclaimed.
"Yeah, for ages no one dropped in", the old woman sighed. "Guess they're afraid some schit comes out of it again. And I don't need a deem for myself".
Her senile memory concealed the fact that the roof leaked, and the miraculous water might contain some commonplace admixtures. Meanwhile the Seiruun princess scratched her head and decided to take a chance.
"Would you... fulfil my wish? Please..."
"A hundred of doublons and.. how is it said... No warranty!" the old hag said hastily.
The girl took her pouch off.
The 'sorceress' counted her fee, fished out a mug for water under the table, dipped it into the dent on the stone and handed to Amelia. The latter shut her eyes and gulped it down, since the smell of rust, dust, and seasalt foreboded nothing good as to the taste. The princess tried to ignore the protest of her stomach an focused on her wish.
'Let Zelgadis-san be a human... No, what if it comes true only partially? How to put it more safe and round?.. Let him not be alone anymore!'
As soon as she thought it the taste overcome her, ousted all her senses, and with a hard thump Amelia crashed to the floor.
She returned to her offended senses when a bucket of no less smelly water was doused on her.
"That's no cider, sure", the old woman sighed compassionately. "Poor thing, you don't look well. Go out, to the fresh air. The reception hours are over, too". With these words she dragged the girl by the leg to the porch and left her lying outside. Amelia shook off the taste shock, sprang to her feet and ran to find Zel and share joyous news with him...
Zelgadis was sitting on a boulder by the sea and throwing pebbles into the waves. The stones were sinking regularly, and even if some flat pieces managed to bounce from the surface and make a couple of splashes the sound always faded in the soothing rustle of the waves. "Hush, hushhh", the sea kept whispering.
"All right", the chimera thought. "Indeed, why am I depressed? I should get used to being a monster by now. It is phantom pain. It will pass off. Like that", and he threw one more pebble. It splashed five times, more and more quietly, and sank... But the sound remained and even grew louder. From behind a dune Amelia appeared, waved her hand and in the same motion patted Zelgadis on his shoulder and plopped beside.
Rubbing the hurt shoulder Zel stared mutely at her greenish scaly face.
"Now Lina-san will regret if she hits me again!" Amelia giggled and almost rolled off the stone, but the chimera grabbed her just in time and drew her closer. She squeaked mentally but forgot to pronounce it, drowned in a new sensation of comfort. Zelgadis looked at the sea, so that the girl didn't see moist gleam in his eyes.
The sea was rustling by itself and didn't mean at all the people at the shore.
"You want more power?! Then let it be!" and the red aura of the Priest stretches forward like an octopus, entwines the young swordsman and stings like a jellyfish, yet stronger and deeper, until he feels like being torn into molecules, and he doesn't understand why he's still able to hear the mocking voice of the Red Priest:
"You have reached the limit of human capabilities. The only way to gain yet more power is to cease being human. You asked for it, chimera!" and his laugh split into many echoing voices, his face multiplied into a crowd, all chanting, "Chimera! Monster! Get lost! You're not human!.."
Amelia was sitting by a fire in the woods yawning and glancing back to her quilt, so warm and cosy... if one pays no attention to the chimera who was twisting and turning beside, pushing his neighbours with his stone knees and elbows. "How am I supposed to sleep?" she thought lazily. "On the other side, to sit quietly through the night is better than watch nightmares". She realised now why Zelgadis-san liked coffee so much - just you try to have a good rest with such dreams.
On the other side of the fire Gaurri, and Lina even drooled in her sleep - she must have seen food and treasures.
The next day Zelgadis and Amelia were dragging in the tail-end yawning. And when the vanguard halted on a hill top, the rearguard crashed into them... The offended cries did not follow, though, so much the travellers were engrossed in the opening sight. Down in a small valley was a town as if woven of tulle, as if cooked of parfait. Soft pink, cream and beige houses sprouted golden steeples, turrets and lace weather-vanes, filigree towers were even not standing, or so much towering - they kind of hung in the air, and water glittered in canals between the buildings.
Lina sighed, "Cool, ne? Always like that - it looks like a wedding cake from afar, and at close turns all garbage, paupers and overpricing. Why do people choose to live in cities?" she winked and answered to herself, "'Cause we cannot live without other people! And there's more food! Let's go!"
"Well, people can live without chimeras"? Zelgadis turned aside and rushed into the bush.
"Hey, where you go?" Gaurri wondered.
"As usually, one more idea about returning to human form", Zel glanced back at the shining spears of the town and disappeared in the thickset. Amelia could only gape and wave her hands. She turned to her companions for support... Lina and Gaurri were marching to the town.
"Ano... What are you doing? How can we leave him like that?!" the champion of justice shouted and looked around for a cliff or tree.
"Indeed", Gaurri got pensive for a moment, then turned to the bush and cried, "Good luck to ya!" Then he thought for one more second, "But... If he succeeds, how do we recognise him next time?"
"Let him be" answered Lina, from afar already. "If he doesn't understand that his looks doesn't matter to us then what can we do? Anyway we'll meet again!"
And the two Slayers vanished from sight before Amelia climbed to the top of a shield-post. The princess glided down. Admired the roofs and spears of not-so-far town, then turned back and... didn't go anywhere. The bush thickset stretched along all the road and further, and to find there a chimera, when he could recollect 'Ray Wing' spell any time, seemed next to impossible. Amelia raised her hand to scratch the nape and hit the post with the elbow, right on the nerve spot!
In irritation she punched the offending object with fist and got a splinter.
She kicked the post and bruised her toe.
She mono-bolted it and got almost smashed with the fallen shield. But before she did something disastrous she read the inscription on the shield.
"Onto the right - not a damn to find, onto the left - just one damn left, straight ahead - you'll be found instead".
Seiruun princess pondered a bit and decided to understand 'you'll be found' in more favourable way, so she rushed ahead into the bush. When she thought how the others would soon find out that she carried the whole their budget her mood soared high. But soon numerous thorns and spikes brought her down to earth. The only consolation was that the aggressive flora wouldn't be a bother to the stone-skinned chimera, so he could possibly choose this way.
The thickset ended suddenly. Forth to the limits of sight (i.e. to the second dune) a desert was stretching. And on the narrow patch of mud between sand and soil the girl saw the long-awaited sign - Zel's footprints leading to the desert. Soon another line of traces was left next to the first one, this time smaller, but in the same direction.
Over the 47th dune Zelgadis cheered up. He was fed up with viscous sand and necessity to watch his steps in order not to trip over some thornheaded gluttodon. Alas, the way to Cape Anderssen led through that nasty landscape. But every way leads to its end, and he could guess the sea ahead - by the fresh breeze, by inaudible rustle of water on pebbles, by more audible cries of seagulls... However, the scream from behind was heard much better, and it was oh-so-familiar! Zel spat, glanced in anguish at the next dune - maybe it was the last... - and whirled back.
Amelia stopped screaming only in the air, clutching at the chimera. She hadn't even thought of the words 'Levitation' or 'Ray Wing', all her attention was grabbed by a knot of snakes raving below in fury of loosing the dinner. She had no kind feelings towards serpents in general, and these ones could easily swallow an average Seiruun princess. And they had sprung from the sand so suddenly...
As a result, Amelia was clinging to Zel ten minutes more after he had landed at the seaside.
"How so!?" she whimpered at last. "Zelgadis-san, I was tracking you step to step! Why you passed, and I was attacked?! It's unfair!!"
The reflexes of champion of justice dominated, and she finished her speech trying to shake the chimera by the collar and climb the highest object in vicinity, that is, the same chimera. Zelgadis knew the usual outcome of her acrobatic exercises and therefore just waited for the end of her bout. When the princess fell down he replied, "That's simple. Those beasts find their victims by heat radiation. The property not immanent to my body. They don't see me, while you are a hot-blooded creature. I'd rather say, hot-headed".
In proof he dragged his fingerless glove off and brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. Amelia had got warmed from all the previous terror and screaming, so the stone hand seemed ice-cold to her.
The Zelgadis turned away and headed toward the sea. Demonstratively not looking back. Demonstratively ignoring the footsteps and hurt puffing behind. His endurance, though, lasted only for a hundred of meters, and he halted. In a second a squeak ringed - Amelia did run into his back and now was rubbing her aching nose. That back was stone-hard, after all!
"Why have you followed me?"
"But there are snakes! I won't get far alone! See you, sometimes a human can't do without a chimera", she smiled tentatively, but Zel didn't pay attention to her attempt at joke.
"The question was why did you go after me at all? This place is too dangerous!"
"But you've chosen this way"-
"I'm not a human being!" he barked at her and continued his way to the end of the cape. The girl just gaped, thought for a moment and hurried behind him. Yet she was unable to keep silent, and over a dozen of paces she asked, "Where are we going?"
"As for me, I am in search of a possibility to become human, and I do not know what you are doing here".
Silence befell behind his back.
"And still..." she squeaked so pitifully that neither mazoku's nor golem's nor even human heart would have no pity.
"All right. I heard from vague sources that at the end of this cape lives one sorceress specialising in interspecies transformation. For example, she turned one mermaid into a human girl. Well, mermaids are half human, not one third as me. And who knows what the price will be- Here we come!"
Amelia looked ahead. Blinked, looked harder and from the third attempt she discerned a dwelling which had been successfully disguising as a pile of sandstone tablets before. The gaps in masonry were obviously windows, and the biggest hole on the ground level had to be a door. The princess and the chimera exchanged glances, made 'lights' and entered the black portal.
Inside in the reception there was a cod-liver-oil lamp, but 'lights' gave clearer picture, though rather standard one: rows of pottery, bunches of dried bats on the ceiling, rugs with ethnic patterns. At the bureau there was an old woman, also typical of such institutions: with unkempt grey hair, hunchback, motley dress, crooked nose and a single but huge and yellow tooth.
That tooth was seen clearly as its owner was screeching, to put it mildly, from the very moment when the guests appeared. In five minutes the visitors began suspecting that they were unexpected, and the granny snapped out of dumbfounded mode and hid under her table shouting, "Help! Monster!"
If Zel weren't blue-skinned he'd turn green. If there were a door in the porthole he'd slammed it behind himself. But all he could do was to walk out quietly.
Amelia looked back and forth. Then she kneeled at the table to be on one level with the hostess.
"Mistress sorceress... he's gone, there are no monster around".
"Wha?.. Yuck, true", the old woman left her refuge, smoothed her dress (as if it could make her clothes look better) and sat at her place with dignity.
"Whaddja want, lassie?"
"Mistress sorceress, how did you transform a mermaid into a woman if you overreact at chimeras like this?"
"Me? When?! A, see, dear, you must mean that story... Schit, it was half a century ago, people got it all wrong since then, what morons. Lisn, I'm just a farm witch, I didn't to to universies, I dunno such long words. My biz is small - to bleach moles out, t treat chicken, to par bulls and cows. Once that gal came and stuck to me like a mite asking to turn her into a fish-gal. That pighead heard that fish-guys are most hot bucks. And silly me agreed. Ever seen a fish-man? Just your common fish, but with hands and feet, and lives in water and at land all the same. And I mixed somethin and got her with fish tail down from her waist. Neither way good. So folks started talking..."
"Yet... even such sorcery takes some powers!"
"Not mine, dearie, it's Water-of-Stone! Ar-ti-fact!" and the witch waved with the lamp to the corner, to a large stone cube. Atop of it Amelia saw a deep dent with water.
"Quite a lot!" she exclaimed.
"Yeah, for ages no one dropped in", the old woman sighed. "Guess they're afraid some schit comes out of it again. And I don't need a deem for myself".
Her senile memory concealed the fact that the roof leaked, and the miraculous water might contain some commonplace admixtures. Meanwhile the Seiruun princess scratched her head and decided to take a chance.
"Would you... fulfil my wish? Please..."
"A hundred of doublons and.. how is it said... No warranty!" the old hag said hastily.
The girl took her pouch off.
The 'sorceress' counted her fee, fished out a mug for water under the table, dipped it into the dent on the stone and handed to Amelia. The latter shut her eyes and gulped it down, since the smell of rust, dust, and seasalt foreboded nothing good as to the taste. The princess tried to ignore the protest of her stomach an focused on her wish.
'Let Zelgadis-san be a human... No, what if it comes true only partially? How to put it more safe and round?.. Let him not be alone anymore!'
As soon as she thought it the taste overcome her, ousted all her senses, and with a hard thump Amelia crashed to the floor.
She returned to her offended senses when a bucket of no less smelly water was doused on her.
"That's no cider, sure", the old woman sighed compassionately. "Poor thing, you don't look well. Go out, to the fresh air. The reception hours are over, too". With these words she dragged the girl by the leg to the porch and left her lying outside. Amelia shook off the taste shock, sprang to her feet and ran to find Zel and share joyous news with him...
Zelgadis was sitting on a boulder by the sea and throwing pebbles into the waves. The stones were sinking regularly, and even if some flat pieces managed to bounce from the surface and make a couple of splashes the sound always faded in the soothing rustle of the waves. "Hush, hushhh", the sea kept whispering.
"All right", the chimera thought. "Indeed, why am I depressed? I should get used to being a monster by now. It is phantom pain. It will pass off. Like that", and he threw one more pebble. It splashed five times, more and more quietly, and sank... But the sound remained and even grew louder. From behind a dune Amelia appeared, waved her hand and in the same motion patted Zelgadis on his shoulder and plopped beside.
Rubbing the hurt shoulder Zel stared mutely at her greenish scaly face.
"Now Lina-san will regret if she hits me again!" Amelia giggled and almost rolled off the stone, but the chimera grabbed her just in time and drew her closer. She squeaked mentally but forgot to pronounce it, drowned in a new sensation of comfort. Zelgadis looked at the sea, so that the girl didn't see moist gleam in his eyes.
The sea was rustling by itself and didn't mean at all the people at the shore.