There are three ways this story may turn out depending on how long my inspiration lasts: two connected short stories, a full adventure (starting in the third chapter) or a multi-decade epic. For now, though, the first chapter makes a pretty good stand-alone story and I'll probably leave it that way for some time.
Disclaimer: I am merely a fanfiction writer with no rights to these characters, but you knew that already.
The Path of Justice
Chapter 1 - Amelia Loves Justice
"The path of justice leads to a brighter tomorrow!" Amelia spread her arms dramatically.
"The path of justice is strict but the rewards are immeasurable!" Prince Justice thrust out his chest heroically.
"If I follow the path of justice I can overcome any obstacle!" Amelia brandished her fists.
"My heart is pure and my commitment to justice is unwavering!" Prince Justice threw his head back. Light shone down from heaven to illuminate his upturned face.
"I, Amelia Wil Tesla Seyruun, dedicate my life to the unending pursuit of love, truth and justice!" Amelia thrust a fist at the sky, foot planted firmly on the tip of the flagpole on top of the tallest tower of Seyruun's palace.
"I will..." Prince Justice paused to pant as he scrambled up the roof after her. "How are you balancing like that? And how did you get up there so fast?" He hooked an arm around the flagpole and pulled himself to his feet. "I will never give up as long as I have justice on my side!" The mid-day sun blazed behind him.
Amelia stretched out her hand to the heavens. Angels seemed to dance at her fingertips. "All Seyruun hear my cry for Justice! Yeah!"
Prince Justice looked up at her admiringly. "You're amazing! I've never met a girl like you before. In fact, I've never met anyone outside my family who shared my dedication to justice as you do."
"I can't believe I've only known you a few days," Amelia sighed happily. "Clearly we are destined to be eternal friends!"
"I'm so glad Mother brought me with her for the Council of Kingdoms United for World Peace," Prince Justice agreed. "Otherwise, who knows how many years it would have been before we met? But I know two such kindred souls as we are were destined to meet sooner or later!"
They grinned at each other, flushed with the pleasure of declaiming the glories of justice.
Amelia looked down at the castle below their feet. "Speaking of the Council, I think I see the delegates coming out for lunch. Shall we join them?"
She leapt lightly off the tower into the air and began floating down toward the ground. Prince Justice, not being a magic user, started to climb down more laboriously. Seeing this, Amelia flew over to give him a helping hand. They landed in the courtyard and walked toward the banquet hall, still holding hands.
Before they reached it, a man in a hooded, dust-coloured cloak stepped forward to meet them. "Hello, Amelia," he said warmly, pushing his hood back to reveal hair like wire and skin like stone.
"Mr. Zelgadis," she greeted him, forcing a smile while inwardly cursing his timing. "When did you get back from the outer world?"
"A few days ago. I came straight here. I...There's something I need to talk to you about." He looked at the boy holding her hand and added, "...when you're not busy."
"We were just going to have lunch." She nodded toward the open archway leading to the banquet hall, which the delegates were currently drifting through in small conversational clusters. "Why don't you come too? As Miss Lina always says, 'Never pass up a free meal.'"
Zelgadis nodded and strode off toward the food.
"Princess Amelia, who was that?" Prince Justice asked. "He's so creepy and suspicious looking!"
Amelia winced as she saw Zelgadis' pointed ear twitch and his back stiffen, but he gave no other sign that he'd heard the comment.
"I know," she told Prince Justice, "but that's just his style. Underneath, he's a true ally of justice. We've fought side-by-side to save the world on more than one occasion."
"You've been in a real fight for the fate of the world, Princess Amelia?"
"Well, yes. A few of them."
"You're amazing!"
Amelia basked in the warmth of his smile.
Zelgadis forced himself to put aside his dark thoughts when he saw Amelia and her boy coming toward him. The boy was striding purposefully while Amelia lagged behind reluctantly, saying, "When he's brooding like this I've found it's usually best to leave him alone until he gets over it on his own."
Zelgadis put his nearly-untouched plate down on the window ledge beside him and tried to look alert and welcoming. There had been times in the past when he suspected Amelia of having a crush on him. If she was now taking an interest in someone else, someone fully human, he wanted to be as encouraging as possible.
The boy bowed very correctly to Zelgadis and said, "I'm afraid we weren't properly introduced outside."
Amelia summoned her manners. "Mr. Zelgadis, may I present Prince Justice of Florentinia. Prince Justice, this is my good friend Mr. Zelgadis."
"Prince...Justice?" Zelgadis repeated disbelievingly.
"Guardian of Justice Van Florentinia, but my friends call me Justice," the prince clarified.
Zelgadis considered offering his condolences but the boy didn't act like he wanted them. Zelgadis looked him over. The boy looked like a prince - or rather what Zel had imagined a prince would look like before he ever met one. He was about Amelia's age with short, smooth, blond hair, guileless blue eyes and a face that was so handsome it was pretty. His clothes were white trimmed in gold and looked, well, fit for a prince. He had a sword strapped to his hip. It was hard to say whether it was decorative or real, but he wore it with the ease of familiarity.
"I don't think I've ever heard of Florentinia," Zelgadis said when it became clear some kind of smalltalk was expected of him.
"I'm not surprised," Prince Justice said. "It's very small and not noted for any great treasures or historical events, but we pride ourselves on our long tradition of peace and good government."
"So it's the complete opposite of Seyruun?" Zelgadis joked, earning himself a look of reproach from Amelia.
Prince Justice answered carefully, "Seyruun is certainly a great and magnificent city, much bigger than any in Florentinia. I've very much enjoyed this chance to see it."
He was rewarded with one of Amelia's sunniest smiles. "Yes, there's so much to see and do in Seyruun!" she said. "I'll have to show you all the sights."
"I'd love that!" the prince exclaimed, his stiffly proper facade cracking in the face of Amelia's enthusiasm. Then, remembering his manners, he reluctantly asked, "Would you like to join us, Mr. Zelgadis?"
"No, I prefer to spend as little time in public places as possible," the chimera replied, scowling with self-consciousness.
"Then I'll just look forward to seeing you around the palace," Prince Justice said with a farewell bow, turning to go.
"I'll catch up with you in a minute, Prince Justice," Amelia said.
After a long moment of hesitation, the prince left without her.
"You wanted to talk to me?" Amelia asked Zelgadis.
He looked around. "Not here. It's not the sort of thing I want anyone else to overhear."
She nodded understanding. "How long are you planning to stay in Seyruun?" She hoped this visit wouldn't be as short as some in the past. It had been months since she'd last seen any of her friends from her adventuring days and she missed them.
"Perhaps a few weeks? I don't want to go back to the outer world right away but I don't have any other promising leads at the moment so I'll need to do some research. There are still temples in Seyruun I haven't visited yet and there's always the Sorcerer's Guild library."
"Please stay as long as you like. You know you're always welcome here. In fact, you know you have a home here if you ever want to claim it." Zelgadis had been made a knight of Seyruun during his last visit to the city.
He shook his head. "Maybe after I find my cure."
At the thought of the search for his cure he started to sink back into depression so Amelia quickly made her exit. "Let me know if there's anything you need. As your friend, I'm here for you."
He nodded an acknowledgement and she left him alone.
Looking out a window, Amelia saw Zelgadis sitting on the roof of another wing of the castle. Despite the spectacular view, he was staring blankly at the roof tiles in front of him, motionless except for his cape flapping in the breeze.
Amelia cast Ray Wing and flew over to sit beside him. "What did you want to talk to me about?" she asked.
He was silent so long that she was about to try shaking him to get his attention when he finally answered, "I almost did something terrible." Only his mouth moved. His eyes stayed glued to the roof.
"What happened?"
He started the story at the beginning as if he had already rehearsed it many times in his head. "I had heard a rumour that there was a dragon god who could grant wishes so I went to see if there was any truth to it. The 'dragon god' turned out to be a mazoku who took the form of a purple dragon. He lived at the bottom of a deep cave in the hills outside a small town. The locals were terrified of him. Naturally, I ignored their warnings and went to talk to him. I asked him if he could cure my chimeric condition and he said that he could, but he had a price. If I wanted him to help me I had to bring him a dozen virgins to eat."
Amelia gasped. "How monstrous! You immediately denounced and killed him, right?"
"Well, no. For one thing he was too powerful for me to hope to defeat by myself."
"For another, you got carried away by the thought of your cure," Amelia filled in with a suspicious glare.
"...Yes. I didn't agree, but when I didn't instantly refuse he told me to go away and think about it. He said to come back with my victims if I decided to accept his offer. So I left."
"Mr. Zelgadis, I am disappointed in you!" Amelia said, preparing for a tirade.
"Let me finish the story first!" he demanded, finally showing some animation as he grabbed her wrist to prevent her from leaping to her feet. As soon as she sat down again he let her go and went back to not meeting her eyes.
He regathered his thoughts. "When I left the cave I meant to walk away in disgust and never come back. After all, he was probably lying about being able to help me. But I couldn't get his offer out of my head. I bought a cup of coffee at the restaurant in town and sat down at one of the outside tables to drink it. I didn't care if people looked at me like I was a monster. I felt like a monster. I looked at all the happy, peaceful people around me and wondered if they would fit the mazoku's definition of a virgin. You see, he'd explained to me that what he meant was somebody who had never learned that life can be cruel, somebody innocent who still believed in happy endings."
Amelia sat on her hands and bit her lip to keep from interrupting but her eyes burned with righteous fury.
Zelgadis continued. "What I didn't know was that I had arrived on some kind of festival day and that a play was about to be performed just across the town square from where I was sitting. Have you ever heard of a 'morality play'?"
Amelia shook her head mutely, curiosity starting to displace the fury in her eyes.
"They're very different from the kind of plays we have around here - less explosions for one thing. This one had three main characters: an ordinary-looking man representing every man, a pretty girl in a white dress representing conscience, and a diabolical-looking man in black representing temptation. Other characters would appear briefly to set up a situation where Everyman had to make a moral choice. Then Temptation and Conscience would give him conflicting orders on what to do. It was very strange and not very entertaining...except that the girl who played Conscience sounded and looked a lot like you." He glanced at Amelia's chest and added, "Her hair was similar anyway. I felt like you were there telling me off for even considering sacrificing people to a mazoku. So I came home. It scares me that I came that close to doing something so inhuman."
"I'm sure you wouldn't have gone through with it," Amelia reassured him. "The good in your heart would have brought you to your senses before you actually hurt someone. If the play hadn't done it, something else would have."
"I'm...not so sure," Zelgadis said. "There was an annoyingly cheerful guy who sat down at my table right before the play started and tried to talk to me. I had already come up with a plan for how to trick him into coming to the cave with me before Conscience overwhelmed me. Amelia, can you help me find my moral compass again?" He finally looked her straight in the eye as he made the plea.
Amelia was floored. None of her friends had ever asked for her moral guidance before. Easy platitudes sprang to her mind but seemed inadequate so she said simply, "I'll try. 'Don't hurt people' is a good starting point."
"'It's okay to do a little evil in order to do a great good,'" he quoted ruefully. "That's what I used to tell myself when I worked for Rezo."
Amelia shook her head. "The true path of good doesn't require you to do any evil. It's a harder path and sometimes it looks like it leads away from your goals but in the end it always leads to a better place than the path of 'a little evil'."
"That was certainly true in my case," Zelgadis agreed, looking at his stone fingers. "Rezo...now there's an example of what not to do."
"What did he do that was so bad?" Amelia asked. When Zelgadis almost leapt to his feet in hurt anger, she quickly clarified, "I'm not defending him. I'm asking you to put it in words."
"Oh." He rubbed his head, trying to regain his calm. "Well, he sacrificed people in order to try to find the cure for his eyes. Me, for one, but I wasn't the only one. I could tell you some stories that would break your heart. And you saw how he treated the people of Taforashia. They put their very lives in his hands and he could barely be bothered to cure them even after Pakota sacrificed so much to help him and even though he was the only one who could help them. People were nothing but guinea pigs to him. He didn't care whether he helped them or hurt them. All he cared about was finding his cure."
"Then it's clear what you need to do."
"It is?"
"Don't sacrifice people in order to find your cure, and do help people who need your help, whether that gets you closer to finding your cure or not."
"You make it sound so simple."
"It's hardly a complete moral code, but it's a start."
"Don't sacrifice people for my cure and help them whether that gets me closer to finding a cure or not," Zelgadis repeated thoughtfully as if those simple guidelines were a revelation.
"As long as you keep those principles in your heart and constantly renew your dedication to justice you won't stray from the path of good!" Amelia declared, waves crashing dramatically behind her despite their elevated and land-locked location.
"Constantly renew my dedication to justice, huh?" Zelgadis smiled, amused.
"You're going to mess up," Amelia translated bluntly, catching him completely by surprise. "And when that happens you're going to be tempted to say, 'I am a heartless sorcerer and swordsman. I was never meant to follow to path of righteousness.'" She delivered the last lines in a surprisingly good parody of Zelgadis' style. Then she switched back to Amelia and held up a scolding finger. "But you're not going to say that. Instead you're going to say, 'I messed up this time but I know I can do better the next time.' Doing the right thing is sometimes hard but if you make a habit of it, it gets easier with practice."
"The heart needs to be strengthened through training just like any other muscle?" Zelgadis had never thought of it that way before.
"Exactly!"
"You've given me a lot to think about," he said, and then grudgingly added, "Thank you."
"You're welcome!"
Zelgadis returned to staring blankly into space, lost in thought, but his aura of gloom was gone. Amelia returned to the castle, giddy with delight that her friend has asked her for help and she had been able to give it to him.
When she reached the window she found Prince Justice watching her from the other side. "I'll never get used to your casual approach to heights," he said ruefully. "What were you and Mr. Zelgadis talking about? It looked...intense."
"Yes. He was telling me about his travels and he asked me for some advice."
"About what?"
Amelia shook her head, refusing to violate her friend's privacy.
"He's very important to you, isn't he?" Prince Justice asked, trying not to sound jealous.
"Yes. After all the time we've spent travelling together and all the life-or-death battles we've fought, we've forged an unbreakable bond of friendship! Do you have friends like that?"
He shook his head. "Not to that extent. I have to admit I'm envious. I wish I could be that close to you."
"You can."
"I can?"
"Of course you can! If we fight side by side for justice, our hearts will surely grow closer! Come on, let's ask my Daddy if he knows of anyone in need of help!" Before he could protest, she dragged him along with her to find her father.
After she'd explained her idea, her father nodded. "Once again, heaven provides for those in need! I just got a report of beastmen attacking one of our outlying villages. I was about to send a squad of the Royal Guard to deal with the problem but if you want to go instead that would be even better."
"Of course we will!" Amelia volunteered instantly.
Prince Justice nodded. "We can't allow beastmen to terrorize your innocent subjects!"
Prince Phil nodded approvingly. "That is how a young man should act: brave and quick to defend those in need." After a moment's thought he suggested, "Why don't you take Mr. Zelgadis with you too?"
Prince Justice heard that as, 'take a chaperone'. Amelia heard it as, 'a distraction might cheer him up'. They both agreed.
As they left Prince Phil's office, Amelia said, "Change into some travelling clothes. I'll go get Mr. Zelgadis. I'll meet you in the courtyard in half an hour."
"We're leaving immediately?" Prince Justice asked in shock. "I mean, of course we need to ride to the defence of those poor people right away! Not a minute to lose!"
Amelia leapt out the nearest window and headed for the rooftop where Zelgadis was still sitting. "Mr. Zelgadis! Prince Justice and I are going to defend some outlying villages from marauding beastmen. Will you come with us?"
Zelgadis tilted his head up to look at her floating in front of him. There was a light in his eyes that hadn't been there earlier. "Help the people who need my help, huh? Why not get started right away?" He said softly. He joined Amelia in the air.
Zelgadis was already wearing everything he needed for travelling but Amelia still needed to change. As she put on her sorceress costume behind a screen in her bedroom, she chattered excitedly to Zelgadis. "This is going to be so much fun! I haven't been on the road since we got back from the Taforashia kingdom. I wonder if Prince Justice has ever had fish roasted over a campfire before? It looks like it will be a clear night so we should be able to sleep under the stars." She gave a little twirl of excitement as she bounced out from behind the screen, cape swirling around her.
They only had to wait in the courtyard for a few minutes before Prince Justice arrived promptly on time, leading a squad of Florentinian guardsmen. He had changed from white clothes trimmed in gold to green clothes trimmed in brown but that was his only concession to the wear and tear of travel. "These were all the men I could round up on such short notice," he said apologetically. "Well, I wouldn't want to leave my mother unguarded anyway. Wait, where are your men?"
"I'm not bringing any," Amelia said.
The two of them stared at each other in mutual confusion. Zelgadis hid a smile behind his hand.
"But, the danger..." Prince Justice began.
"It's just a pack of beastmen," Amelia said blankly. "Uh, but the more the stronger, right? Welcome to the team, pride of Florentinia! Let's go save some villages!"
The guardsmen cheered and fell into rank behind her as she marched toward the front gate of the palace. At that moment, stable boys entered the courtyard leading enough horses for the whole group. Amelia stopped in surprise.
"I asked the stables to have the horses brought around in order to save us time," Prince Justice said proudly.
"You want to ride there?" Another piece of Amelia's vision for the trip cracked.
"How else would we get there? After all, time is of the essence, right?" Prince Justice was worried by her unexpected reaction.
"Er, right. Of course! How organized of you!" Amelia said. "Mr. Zelgadis, can you ride?"
"I weigh about as much as a knight in plate armour so a horse that can carry one should be able to carry me," the chimera replied, eyeing the largest horse of the group.
The group mounted up and headed out. Prince Justice and Amelia rode at the head of the column. The guardsmen rode in a double column behind them. Zelgadis chose to ride at the rear, muffled in his cloak. The group rode out of the city with an air of grand pageantry but once they were on the road the trip gradually took on the quality of a pleasant ride on a sunny afternoon. Soon Prince Justice was telling Amelia all about his trip from Florentinia to Seyruun while Amelia listened with interest and occasionally made comparisons to things she'd seen in her own travels.
The afternoon passed uneventfully and soon the time came to decide where to find supper. Prince Justice and Amelia spread out a map to pick a good place.
"This river has plenty of fish," Amelia said, pointing it out on the map. She figured if it could feed Lina and Gourry then it should be able to feed a troop of guardsmen.
"Yes, Seyruun seems to be very rich in food of all kinds. It's such a fertile land!" Prince Justice responded politely, completely missing the point. He pointed to a town a few hours further up the road from the river Amelia had pointed out. "This town looks big enough that it might have suitable accommodations."
"Yes, it has several inns including one with a 'royal suite' and some good restaurants although nothing out of the ordinary," Amelia confirmed, suppressing a sigh as more of her vision for the trip crumbled. She made one last attempt to save it, "But I thought we could live off the land and sleep under the stars tonight."
Prince Justice looked very disapproving although hesitant to shoot down her desires point blank.
"What do you think, Mr. Zelgadis?" Amelia asked desperately.
"It's been a long time since I stayed in a really fancy inn," Zelgadis mused.
Finding herself completely outnumbered, Amelia gave up. Prince Justice sent one of the guardsmen ahead to make reservations.
When Zelgadis came down for breakfast he found a pot of tea, a basket of bread rolls, a jar of jam and two fresh-faced members of royalty already at one of the tables. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, Prince Justice folded up the map he'd been looking at, pushed away his plate of crumbs and headed outside. Zelgadis sat down and helped himself to some tea.
Amelia watched Prince Justice until he was out of sight and then turned to Zelgadis. "What do you think of him?" she asked with a nervous but happy blush.
"He seems like a nice boy, definitely your type," Zelgadis said encouragingly.
Amelia took offence at his avuncular tone. "'A nice boy'? You're how many years older?"
"Enough to make a difference. Besides, when I was his age I was a lot older than he is."
Amelia clutched her head and shook it violently. "That makes no sense!"
"He's - what - sixteen? seventeen? At that age I was already a cold-blooded killer in Rezo's service."
Amelia shivered. Zelgadis had relaxed a lot since she first met him but there were moments when he still triggered her villain radar.
"Have you killed a lot of people?" she found herself asking shakily and was annoyed at herself for her weakness.
He sipped his tea. "Not nearly as many as Lina, I suspect, but enough. And I doubt Lina ever assassinated anybody."
Amelia stared at him in horror. If there was one thing she hated beyond all others it was assassins. "You assassinated somebody?" she breathed.
"Didn't you wonder how I recognized Assassin Zuuma? He only tells his name to his employers and his targets and Lina was the first of his targets to survive."
"I thought you had talked to someone who talked to someone who once hired him, or something like that," Amelia replied uncomfortably.
Zelgadis shook his head. "I never even really knew who the victim was, only that Rezo needed him dead."
"But, you've renounced your evil ways now, right?" Amelia begged for reassurance.
"Of course," Zelgadis replied. "Mostly."
"Mostly?" Amelia growled.
"I'm still a mercenary. I have to follow my contracts. But I don't murder people if I can avoid it."
Amelia leapt onto the table in front of him and stabbed a finger into his face. "Mr. Zelgadis! If you ever murder an innocent person again, our long friendship will not protect you from the full fury of my righteous wrath!"
Her justice speeches often had a playful quality. This one was deadly serious.
Prince Justice stood frozen in the doorway, staring at them.
"Hand over all your food or the kid gets it!" the goat-man threatened, holding a knife to a little boy's neck. The boy's parents hurried to obey. Meanwhile, in the next house a wolf-man held a family at sword point while a raccoon-man raided their cupboards and drawers for valuables. In another house the muggers were a bull-man and a bear-man, and in another the culprit was a boar man. There were about a dozen beastmen in total, all different.
When the first few beastmen stepped out into the street with their arms full of loot they found themselves confronted by a richly-dressed, golden-haired youth. He struck a pose and declared, "Foul creatures, prepare to pay for your misdeeds!" He leapt up to the edge of a fountain to continue his justice speech but slipped on the wet tile and barely managed to regain his footing in time to avoid falling in the water.
The raccoon-man laughed, "Check out the kid who wants to be a hero."
The wolf-man joined in the laughter then suddenly stopped. "No, wait, look over there." He had spotted two archers hidden in an alley with their arrows nocked and pointed straight at the beastmen. The beastmen drew their swords. "We could use some help out here, guys!" the wolf shouted.
The other beastmen emerged from the houses they had been raiding and advanced menacingly on the boy and his archers.
At that moment lightning flashed out of a clear sky accompanied by a loud crackle of thunder. The beastmen looked up to see a girl dressed in white standing on a rooftop above them. She pointed a finger straight at the center of the pack of beastmen. "You who steal from innocent people, since you have no mercy in your hearts, heaven will have none for you! Prepare to face justice!" She raised her arm and archers stepped out from all around the village square.
Realizing that they were completely surrounded, the beastmen held up their hands in surrender.
Amelia jumped lightly down from the rooftop and landed next to the fountain. "You really need to work on your timing," she muttered to Prince Justice and then said at a louder, more dramatic volume, "Now, what shall we do with these scoundrels?"
"Please spare us," the goat-man begged pathetically. He looked around desperately for some way out. His eye fell on a surprisingly familiar figure leaning against a wall behind the line of archers. "Zel, old buddy, is that you?" he asked in astonishment.
The chimera straightened and reluctantly walked forward. He had been planning to just observe from the sidelines while the allies of justice dealt with the situation, but clearly that had just ceased to be an option. "You have a lot of nerve calling me that given that the last time I saw you, you tried to kill me."
"You're the one who turned against us! You even killed Noonsa!" He realized he was chewing out his one hope at salvation. "Er, but all that's water under the bridge. You wouldn't let your old buddies get shot like animals, right?"
"You...know these creatures?" Prince Justice asked Zelgadis disdainfully.
"They were under my command in the days when I worked for Rezo the Red Priest."
"You worked for Rezo the Red Priest?" Clearly Zelgadis had just gone up several notches in the prince's esteem.
"Yes." Zelgadis chose not to elaborate. He continued to walk forward until he was a conversational distance away from the goat-man. "You used to be honest mercenaries. Why did you turn to banditry?"
The beastman hung his head in shame. "We got desperate. After Lord Rezo and Miss Eris died we went freelance. We managed to find just enough jobs to scrape by for a few years but then we made the mistake of wandering into Seyruun. We haven't found any paying work in weeks! We're out of money and starving so we did what we had to to survive." The beastmen did have the gaunt, desperate look of creatures truly down on their luck.
Zelgadis sighed. Watching as former employees got slaughtered would be a poor way to start his attempt to be a more moral person. He handed the goat-man a small bag of gold. "This should be enough to get you to Zephilia. The people up there are a bit more quarrelsome and unconventional than the ones in Seyruun so you stand a better chance of finding work there. Repay me when you can. Send the money care of Amelia Wil Tesla Seyruun - that's her over there - and she'll pass it on to me."
The goat-man's eyes teared up with emotion. "Thank you! You're a life-saver!"
"Are you bribing them to go away?" Prince Justice asked disgustedly. He was standing far enough away not to have been able to overhear all of the conversation but close enough to see money changing hands.
An over-excited archer let loose his arrow. Zelgadis took a step sideways just in time that the arrow embedded itself in his hair instead of the beastman he was talking to. With a look at the archer that spoke louder than words, Zelgadis pulled the arrow out of his hair and snapped it in half.
"No," Zelgadis said coldly. "I'm loaning them enough money to get out of Seyruun without resorting to further banditry."
"We can't just let them go!" Amelia scolded him. "They must pay for their crimes against innocent villagers!"
"You heard the lady. Return everything you stole," Zelgadis ordered.
"And you'll have to do community service to make up for the damage and fear you caused," Amelia said sternly.
"Community service!" Prince Justice protested. "You don't ask monsters to do community service!"
"They're not monsters. They're beastmen," Amelia corrected, very disappointed in him for not knowing the difference.
"They're quite capable of behaving honourably, aren't you guys?" Zelgadis looked over the sorry lot with the grim eye of a commanding officer.
They took the hint. "Yes! Just give us a chance!" they chorused.
Amelia nodded decisively. "You get one chance to redeem yourselves." She waved at the archers to stand down. "Be glad that it was us who found you and not Lina Inverse. She never gives bandits a second chance."
This group of beastmen had met Lina Inverse. They looked properly intimidated.
At first the villagers weren't too thrilled about the idea of the monsters sticking around to work in the community but when they realized their princess and her troops were planning to supervise until the work was done they quickly warmed up to the idea. Soon the beastmen were repairing roofs, weeding gardens, chopping wood, and doing any other tasks their erstwhile victims assigned them. The heroes did a patrol from work site to work site making sure the beastmen were staying on task and not causing trouble.
When they came to the ones digging out weeds from a flowerbed, the fox-man looked up at Amelia shyly and said, "I just wanted to tell you that I thought you gave an amazing performance in that play. You were really inspiring. I'm sorry we had to interrupt when the boss ordered us to attack."
Amelia's eyes turned huge and shiny. "Thank you!" she exclaimed. "It fills my heart with joy to know that my words were able to inspire you even though we were enemies!"
"You were in a play?" Prince Justice asked, shocked. Actress was not a proper profession for a princess.
"It was while we were hiding from bounty hunters," Amelia explained.
"Bounty hunters?" Prince Justice was now even more shocked.
"Because of all the wanted posters for Miss Lina and Mr. Gourry."
"You travelled with wanted criminals?"
"No, no! They convinced me that they'd been framed and the real villains were the ones who posted the wanted posters."
"Yes," Zelgadis said. "They just wanted vengeance on us because we killed Rezo."
"You...you...you killed Rezo the Red Priest?" Prince Justice stuttered in disbelief. "Princess Amelia, I thought you were an ally of justice but now I see that you have allied yourself with the forces of evil!"
"You're wrong!" Amelia proclaimed. "Miss Lina and the others are true heroes who have saved the world over and over again!"
Zelgadis explained, deeply annoyed. "We killed Rezo because that was the only way to destroy Shabranigdo."
"Shabranigdo?" Prince Justice looked sceptical but nonetheless impressed by the claim to have fought the lord of all evil in the world. "Is that really the truth?"
"I wasn't there for that fight but I was there for the rematch a few months ago," Amelia confirmed. "That was a tough fight!"
Zelgadis said, "You need to learn that not all villains announce themselves by dressing in black and cackling maniacally, and not all heroes go around making speeches about justice and rescuing kittens from trees."
"Yeah!" Amelia cheered. "Heroes are defined not by the colour of their clothes or whether they profess a commitment to justice during times of peace, but by whether they stand strong in the face of evil when their lives and fate of the world are on the line!"
"It took us forever to drill that through Amelia's thick skull," Zelgadis added. Amelia suddenly looked a lot less pleased with him.
"What a rude thing to say," Prince Justice said disapprovingly. "Doesn't Amelia's royal blood mean anything to you?"
"No. Not really."
Amelia put a hand on the prince's arm. "It's okay, Prince Justice, but thank you for sticking up for me."
Zelgadis looked embarrassed, but instead of apologizing he headed toward the next group of beastmen.
When word got out that the beastmen had been defeated, people from other nearby towns and villages the beastmen had terrorized showed up demanding their share of the recompense. Unfortunately, it turned out that the beastmen had alternated between stealing money and valuables and using those stolen money and valuables to buy supplies in the next town. It took hours to track down all the stolen goods and sort out the quarrels between the original owners and the ones who had accepted payment in good faith, but between Zelgadis' instinct for finding hidden treasure and Amelia's diplomatic skills and deep pockets, they eventually got it all sorted out.
That night they had to backtrack nearly an hour to find a town with an inn Prince Justice considered acceptable to house royalty. When they got back in the morning the beastmen were gone.
"Oh no!" Prince Justice rushed into the room and started untying the guardsmen who had been left to guard the captives. "What happened?"
"I'm sorry, Your Highness. I've failed you," the first man to be untied said thickly as soon as his gag was removed. He worked his jaw and swallowed until he could speak clearly again. "They caught us by surprise with a mass ambush. One second I was watching them quietly eating their supper and the next I was lying on the ground with at least two of the furry bastards - pardon my language - sitting on me while another one tied my hands and feet."
"Yeah. They must have had a secret signal or something," the next guardsman confirmed, chaffing feeling back into his hands.
Zelgadis shook his head in disgust. "What did you expect? They're trained and highly experienced mercenaries."
"Don't worry. We'll catch them and drag them back," Prince Justice said grimly.
"If it's for our sake, don't bother," a voice behind him said. It belonged to one of the villagers. A group of them had gathered around to stare curiously. "They may be good mercenaries, as you say, but they're lousy gardeners. They pulled up more flowers than weeds!"
"And they bent up half my nails without managing to fix the leak in my roof!" another villager agreed.
"They're useless! Good riddance!" a third chimed in.
"Well, if that's how you feel about it..." Amelia said uncertainly.
A matronly village woman came up and patted her on the shoulder. "You're a good princess. Thank you for protecting us and getting our stuff back, but we'll be fine now."
Amelia made up her mind. "I'm glad we could be of service to you. Any day we can protect the innocent and drive away the wicked is a good day for us allies of justice!" She posed heroically.
From the look on Prince Justice's face, it might be a good day for 'allies of justice' but it was definitely not a good day for Justice. Still he managed to say graciously, "All in the line of duty."
As soon as the guardsmen who had been tied up got the circulation to their arms and legs working properly again, they all mounted up and rode back to Seyruun City. Thanks to their early start, they reached the palace gates just as the sun was setting. The party that had ridden out in such high spirits a few days ago returned weary and silent. They groomed and stabled their horses and then dispersed to their rooms in various wings of the palace.
A few days later, Amelia leaned her elbows on one of the crenellations of Seyruun's outer wall as she watched the delegation from Florentinia ride away. She sighed.
Zelgadis, who was standing beside her, said, "You must be sad at parting from your true love." He had the vague feeling that was the kind of thing a supportive friend was supposed to say at a moment like this.
Amelia gave him a funny look for his choice of words but recognized that he was making an effort to be nice. "Prince Justice isn't my true love. At one point I thought he might be, but after the trip we stopped growing closer. We even stopped holding hands. I don't know what went wrong." She sighed again.
Zelgadis gave her an, 'Oh really? You don't know?' look. He somehow managed to drip with sarcasm without saying a word.
"Yes, he's a bit inexperienced," Amelia admitted, "but so was I when I started out. Maybe he'll turn out to be my true love after all if I wait for him to grow up a bit more. We promised to keep in touch by letters and to stay eternal friends."
"Don't sound so desperate. You'll have plenty of other chances at love."
"You think so?"
"With your looks and warm heart, you'd have no trouble attracting men even if you weren't the heir to one of the largest, richest, most powerful kingdoms in the Demon Peninsula. As it is, give it some time and you'll have more suitors than you know what to do with."
"You think I'm good looking?"
Zelgadis hesitated. There was no safe way to answer that question. "Sure," he said in a tone of indifference. "You're a cute kid with a nice figure. What's not to like?" He cleared his throat and quickly changed the subject. "I'm sorry your first love didn't work out. I know that hurts, but you'll get over it."
Amelia looked up at Zelgadis with an oddly intense half-smile. "I'm sorry it didn't work out too." She looked away again, blushing slightly as she said, "You're wrong about me getting over it though. The pain faded with time but when I love, I love forever. That's okay though. I've learned to live with it."
Zelgadis chose to misunderstand her. "That was fast. The guy only just left."
"Prince Justice isn't my first love."
Zelgadis looked away uncomfortably. Amelia smiled at him fondly and turned back to watch the riders.
"Do you think those beastmen will be okay?" Amelia asked.
Zelgadis breathed a silent sigh of relief at the change of topic. "I think so. They're not very bright but they're hard working and resourceful. They should be fine as soon as they get out of this peaceful region of law and order. I doubt they'll trouble you again."
"Good. Even though they were acting like villains I couldn't help feeling kind of sorry for them."
"After Rezo turned me into a chimera they still treated me the same way they had when I was human. They weren't friends exactly but I felt a kinship with them. I'm glad you spared them."
"I'm glad too."
They stood in comfortable silence for a long minute. Then Zelgadis, getting bored, pulled up his hood and left with a backward wave.
Canon check:
As a public service, because it's the kind of thing I like to know when I read fanfiction, here are some notes on what parts of the story follow canon and which I made up.
- Prince Justice and his kingdom, Florentinia, are completely my invention
- Everything in Zel's story is also my invention. It's actually from a story I tried to write once but couldn't get to gel. It works much better in synopsis form with Amelia there to provide reactions.
- The Council of Kingdoms United for World Peace is based on the meeting at the beginning of Slayers Try where Prince Phil and Amelia explain the upcoming expedition to the Outer World and the meeting shortly before the start of Slayers Revolution where the Ruvinagald Kingdom requested Amelia's help in finding Lina Inverse. I don't know if this is actually a permanent organization or, if so, what it is called.
- The beastmen are from the first season of Slayers. I have no idea what really happened to them after our heroes defeated them, but this seems plausible enough.