Title: Ancient Grudges Unravelled
Author: Shaded Mazoku.
Email: 1?
Disclaimer: Characters are not mine at all. They belong to… …Someone else. I'm merely borrowing them for my own amusement.
Warnings: Yaoi.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Chasing an artefact lands Lina, Gourry, Zelgadis and Amelia in a town ruled by magic-hating priests. They decide to stop their reign. However, this might me harder than it seems. And a certain trickster priest seems to have an agenda of his own in the town.
Pairing(s): Xelloss x Zelgadis.
Fandom: Slayers.

Zelgadis was starting to think that insanity was a genetic trait. He certainly couldn't think of any other reason why he'd let himself get dragged along on yet another of Lina's crazy quests. Even though he reluctantly admitted to liking Lina and the gang, it seemed to be a rule that any journey he'd join them for would end up getting way out of hand. Usually it ended in the attempted resurrection of some evil power.

This quest was even worse than the ones they usually got themselves into. They were after a stone said to have immense magical powers, a stone that was kept inside a temple fortress by fanatical priests of some invented god, who hated magic, dragons, mazoku and everything else they saw as unnatural, which was pretty much everything that differed from the norm.

Of course, in her eagerness, Lina had forgotten that priests who hated magic would have some way to detect the use of such powers, which meant that the four of them were limited to whatever Zelgadis and Gourry could do using their swords. By now, they'd given up on the stone, and would have just left town and forgotten all about it if it wasn't for the fact that they'd seen what these priests did to the mages they did get their hands on.

A few days ago, they'd been out looking for clues in the crowds of the town, when they'd stumbled upon a public execution scene. The priests had tied their "criminal", a girl Amelia's age, to a pole, used a studded cat o' nine tails to flay the skin of off her back, before burning her alive, while telling the crowd that they were doing it to save her immortal soul.

Lina and Amelia had been sick afterwards, hiding in one of many secluded yards in town to throw up in the bushes. Zelgadis and Gourry had kept watch, Gourry uncharacteristically serious and silent. Even Zelgadis had felt a little nauseated, though he hid it well. Once they were done with their reactions, they'd sworn to put a stop to the priests' reign.

Now, several days later, Lina, Gourry and Amelia, exhausted by a day of subtly trying to gather information and discredit the priests, had gone to bed in their hideout, and were sleeping soundly. Zelgadis, however, required a good deal less sleep than a normal human, and had gone out wandering town, creating a map of hiding places and escape routes. He was good at getting around unseen, and had a quite extensive map by now.

As he turned the corner, walking into yet another of the many yards, a movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention and he stepped behind a nearby pillar to observe without being seen.

A priest walked into the yard, dressed in the black, sombre robes the fanatics wore, his hair in the customary long braid with silver clips. There was a narrow silk sash covering his eyes, marking him as a blind man, and making Zelgadis involuntarily recall another blind priest, in a different time and place. He couldn't suppress the shiver running down his spine as he realised this.

However, the cold shiver was quickly enough traded for hot anger as he realised he actually knew this priest. Knew, and hated as much as he had hated Rezo, though for vastly different reasons. He just hadn't recognized him at once, because his getup was quite unlike the one he was used to seeing him in. Especially since he was no blinder than Zelgadis himself was.

Zelgadis stalked across the yard and grabbed the priest's shoulders, slamming him against the yard wall. "What are you doing here?" He hissed, not wanting to attract the town guards' attention, but still wanting to convey the anger he felt.

Not that it was needed, because if it was one thing the creature he was pinning to the wall could be trusted to know, it was which negative emotions the people around him felt.

The priest gave a deceptively friendly grin. "Zelgadis-san! Imagine running into you here." He deftly removed the chimera's fingers from his shoulder with a strength someone as slender as him shouldn't have. "Most unexpected."

Zelgadis pushed him back again, knocking his head against the wall. "Don't bother, Xelloss," he told the priest sternly. "I know you must have known we were here. Or at least me and Lina."

"Actually," Xelloss said, stepping to the side and smoothing his robes, "I didn't. As you've probably noticed, they monitor the entire town, looking for traces of magic. I can't use my powers properly while in town." He flashed another grin at Zelgadis. "Most inconvenient."

Snorting, Zelgadis stepped back, much preferring to stay out of the mazoku priest's reach. Lina and the others might forget what Xelloss was capable of, but Zelgadis knew more of demonic beings than they did.

"Doesn't answer what you're doing here," he pointed out, eyeing Xelloss intently.

Xelloss kept grinning. "That's a secret."

Zelgadis clenched his hands. "You should be grateful that I can't use magic," he said, glaring balefully at the mazoku. "If I could, I'd have a Rah Tilt with your name on it."

Not surprisingly, Xelloss' only reply was his nearly ever-present smile.

Sighing in defeat, Zelgadis went back to what he was supposed to be doing, ignoring Xelloss' presence, knowing all too well that he wasn't going to get any information out of the priest unless he actually wanted to share it, which wasn't very likely. Unrolling the scroll he was working with, he started drawing in the yard they were in, taking notes of anything that might come in handy to know later on.

After a while, Xelloss came strolling over casually, leaning over Zelgadis' shoulder to see what he was doing. "What are you working on?"

Zelgadis sighed again, and turned his head to give the mazoku an annoyed glare. "You'd know if you took of that ridiculous sash you have around your head," he told him sharply.

Xelloss chuckled. "It's there for a reason," he claimed, running the tips of his fingers, which were covered in gloves as usual, though black instead of the blue he used to wear, over the fabric of the sash. "The one thing about my appearance I can't change is my eyes."

"And you got tired of walking around with your eyes closed?"

With a smirk, Xelloss turned his head just enough that when he spoke again, his lips brushed the tip of Zelgadis' pointed ear. "That, Zelgadis," he said, his voice low, "is also a secret." Smiling calmly, he turned away and walked out of the yard, the silver clips in his braid catching the moonlight and gleaming as he disappeared in the night.

Fighting the urge to throw the nearby statue after him, Zelgadis gritted his teeth and finished drawing in the yard, before heading back to the small house the four of them had "borrowed". He'd tell Lina and the others about Xelloss in the morning. A mazoku in any town was a bad thing. That particular mazoku in the same town as them was not only a bad thing, but almost certainly not a coincidence. Right now, though, he wanted to sleep. Sometimes he was willing to swear that Xelloss sucked the energy out of him.