Chapter 10: Trust

"This is why I always wonder

I'm a pond full of regrets

I always try to not remember rather than forget

This is why I always whisper

When vagabonds are passing by

I tend to keep myself away from their goodbyes

Tide will rise and fall along the bay

and I'm not going anywhere

I'm not going anywhere

People come and go and walk away

but I'm not going anywhere

I'm not going anywhere

This is why I always whisper

I'm a river with a spell

I like to hear but not to listen,

I like to say but not to tell

This is why I always wonder

There's nothing new under the sun

I won't go anywhere so give my love to everyone

Tide will rise and fall along the bay

and I'm not going anywhere

I'm not going anywhere

People come and go and walk away

but I'm not going anywhere

I'm not going anywhere"

~Keren Ann

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In that awful moment, Rezo considered only two things:

One, the Zanaffar had emerged in Seyruun.

Two, Zelgadiss was also in Seyruun.

No.

He acted without thinking. "HOY, YOU…VERY UGLY THING!" he screamed. He staggered to his feet and flailed his arms wildly, spraying sand and lake water everywhere. His staff jingled a sickly sweet song.

His frenzied behavior did its job: The Zanaffar turned from the shocked pair of young lovers, and from all the collateral it would have done to the city. Lashing its tail, still missing one leg, it hissed delightedly…

…and charged the group on the beach.

"Thanks so much, Mister Greywers," Xelloss trilled through his teeth. He grabbed Fibrizo around the waist. The Hellmaster yelped in protest, but Xelloss, far past niceties, acted of his own volition. The air shimmered with black waves and magenta sparkles as he teleported out of range of the enormous beast's bulldozing path.

Rezo scrambled around in the sand, wracking his mental library for three lifetimes of knowledge of defensive spells that could dent an impenetrable Zanaffar skin. Spells from other worlds, perhaps? From Chaotic Blue or Deathfog? Or something to distract it while he fled? Damn! He couldn't think of anything that didn't require an immensely lengthy chant. And the thing was almost on top of him already. He tripped and fell on his side.

Oh, horsefeathers, what a way to die. Squashed by a shiny lion/lizard/wolf hybrid.

But something—someone--else bore down on him with superhuman speed. That someone hoisted him bodily and flung him out of the way.

"You DON'T get to go down in some sacrificial blaze of glory, you old goat! RUN!"

"OOF!" Rezo winced upon impact. "Zelgadiss?!" He shoved himself upright.

"RUN, I said!" The chimera drew away the Zanaffar's attention with his pulsing red broadsword.

Rezo puffed up in his soggy red robes, incensed. Priggishly he retorted, "Boy, I am a Mage and I am certainly not going to let you fight that monstrosity on your—"

"SHUT UP and stay OUT of this!"

Rezo bristled more. But a battle of stubborn will with Zelgadiss boded instant failure, so the Red Priest retreated. He used his soft-shoed feet to sense vibrations in the earth and calculate distance from the Zanaffar.

But he was hardly going to refrain from meddling.

He squeezed his staff and implored his pool capacity to a maximum. "Come on," he grumbled impatiently, as incredible magical potency gathered humming in his body.

Zelgadiss continued to lure the Zanaffar's glowing head by the light of his Astral Vine. The beast lashed like a cobra. Zelgadiss jerked his other arm along the hem of his cloak, and pulled an enchanted dagger.

He plunged it right into the beast's eye.

The Zanaffar shrieked.

"Nothing like a Ragna Blade infused dagger," Zelgadiss growled. "Thanks for that tip, Lina…" He crouched in the sand, awaiting the next attack.

The Zanaffar's tail whipped out and slashed blindly, on a collision course for the two Greywers.

"Look out!" came a bell-like new voice. The sound of suction filled the air and an enormous barrier of some kind erected, momentarily disorienting the silver beast.

Amelia stood in front of Zelgadiss and Rezo, hands extended firmly, palms out.

"Good one, Amelia!" Zelgadiss barrel rolled in front of her. "MOVE, I'll enforce it!"

"Right!" The curvy raven-haired monarch dodged, giving the chimera more leeway to let loose some serious shamanism. Zelgadiss flung up a Wind Barrier but the jowls of the Zanaffar easily ripped through it. The chimera cursed passionately and ducked. He fired a Ra Tilt at the thing; no dice.

"Amelia, together!" he barked.

"Baum Diem Wind!" they chanted in perfect unison, baritone and soprano lacing.

The Zanaffar snorted at the draft into its nostrils.

Rezo took advantage of the many little distractions to conjure something ferocious. He rushed backward until he felt lake water rising around his ankles, his knees. Hastily he incanted a Laser Breath, a golden draconic spell that drew on the same power as the Zanaffar and Gorun Nova, the weapon that had legendarily defeated the beast in Sairaag. He formed a circle with his two joined hands from which the spell would discharge, in place of a dragon's mouth. Almost done, almost done

But the Zanaffar spotted Rezo's threatening spell and struck far too fast. Its gaping maw closed in.

Zelgadiss caught sight of his disobedient kinsman. "Dammit, Rezo!" he roared. He flung another dagger at the Zanaffar; the aim was lethally apt, but the dagger just plinked off the armor on its enormous ribcage.

That was when Zelgadiss's past met his future.

"Visfrank!" Amelia splashed in front of Rezo and swung her magically charged fist at the Zanaffar's cheek. The impact was explosive. Uninjured but quite dazed, the beast snapped back its head and twisted its neck. It uttered an incredulous "RURRRG?" sound.

Rezo's jaw dropped at the fortuitous timing. "Ah! Thank you, miss…?"

"By the GODS!" the girl shrieked.

"What is it?!"

"You're a REAL Wise Man of the Age!" Amelia clasped Rezo's nearest hand, apparently enrapt.

Good job?

"Er, yes…"

"And Zelgadiss's great-grandpa!"

"Yes, I am, and…?"

"Could I have your autograph? And could my daddy have a statue of you commissioned for the palace foyer? Verily the forces of Justice would sing your praises!"

Rezo's brain short-circuited. "What?" he squawked.

"AMELIA!" Zelgadiss bellowed, streaking past. "Get him out of range! And if he HAS to stick around, make him try and think up something USEFUL!"

Owch.

Amelia transformed from otaku to efficient warrior. "Ray Wing!" she hollered, lifting Rezo high into the air in a graceful backward arc.

"W-wait!" Rezo wriggled in her grasp. "I know this spell too, let ME--"

"Hello there, neighbor!" A disturbingly dark presence congested near his head. Xelloss. Still carrying Fibrizo, who was moaning about airsickness.

Eureka! "You!" Rezo implored.

"Me!" Xelloss cheerfully confirmed.

"You're a mazoku priest and general! Can't you get rid of that thing?!"

"When the time is right," the demon calmly intoned.

Cold fury welled up in Rezo's chest. Fury, and determination. Maybe he couldn't rely on Xelloss, but… "Fine," he growled. "I understand. Your Highness—Amelia, isn't it?—take me lower. Land me on a building."

Amelia hesitated. "What are you…?"

"Do it now!"

"A-alright." Meekly the princess lit on the top of the Seyruun Sorcerer's Guild Library, shaped like a pentacle. Rezo landed with her.

The Red Priest struck the mosaic-tile ground of the roof with his staff. The metallic rod sang like a coloratura soprano, as staggering volumes of white magic encircled it. Rezo's very essence.

"Goooood," he mumbled, as in a trance, his face ashen and almost mystically transported. "Mmyesss."

And then he banked everything, everything that mattered to him and more…on the most powerful individual present—on a demon lord whom he had promised escape from Nothingness.

"FIBRIZO!" he boomed. "I'm going to trust you now—to help me!"

In the air nearby, in Xelloss's arms, the tiny lord of hell froze. Then something dawned on his face. Something nascent. New, and fresh. And…pure. "Trust…me?" he squeaked.

The Zanaffar turned from its brawl with Zelgadiss. It drooled and jeered at the ripples in the astral plane caused by Rezo's frantic on-the-spot problem solving.

"Please—give me some of your power! Only fusion magic can defeat this thing!" Rezo aimed his staff at Fibrizo without waiting for a response. Like a vacuum, like white silk submerged in inky dye, the air in a radius around Rezo's staff turned milky, and then it sucked vast quantities of magic from Fibrizo's body, and turned black. And then it became a colorless sphere.

Zelgadiss too landed with a thud on the roof, battered and sweaty. "What's he doing?" he snapped. Amelia seized his hand and pulled him aside. "W-whoa, wha—"

"Let him," the girl breathed. "Just do it….it feels right. He needs to. You need him to, Mister Zelgadiss." She clung to his arm, insistently.

"But…" Zelgadiss's voice trailed off, with youthful uncertainty, all his tough-guy bluffs called in one instant. He gazed at the back of his great-grandfather's vibrant red robes, and all those intense and confusing feelings rushed back at him unbidden once more.

Xelloss and Fibrizo landed on the other side of Rezo. The Lesser Beast gave a low, appreciative whistle at the ad-hoc magic unfurling. "I guess this rather botches your plans," he murmured at his boss.

The Hellmaster just watched, astounded. "Trust me…?" he mumbled.

Rezo chanted something in a guttural tongue and flung out his arms, sparing no theatrics. A gargantuan, transluscent red sphere materialized between his spread limbs. The sphere reshaped into something like a silversmith's forge, with Fibrizo's and his own magics fusing into a blade on it. "Boy!" he crowed—with inconceivable merriment given their dire straits. "I haven't tried this in over a century! I sure hope I translated this spell correctly! HA!" A rather silly smile cracked his perfect ivory face, which he turned in his kinsman's direction.

Zelgadiss, poor rational creature that he was, sacrificed a blood vessel or two to his great-grandfather's cavalierly experimental disposition. A wordless sound faintly like "GRARARGH!" escaped him.

This only extracted greater gusto—peppered, perhaps, with a touch of (harmless?) insanity—from Rezo. "AH HAH HAAAAH, It's alright, my friends, I have it ALL under control!"

"—said Don Quixote," Zelgadiss grunted.

"This guy's a riot!" Xelloss hooted. "Mister Zelgadiss, how come all your relatives are so much more fun than you?"

"Kiss my ass, mazoku," the chimera snarled.

Rezo was busy fashioning a blade out of Fibrizo's black energies, and his own holy energies, fused as black-gold. The result was something like a Ragna Blade from the Claire Bible, straight from the Lord of Nightmares Herself, only more raw, less refined, and less predictable. Rezo's hair was already bleaching from rich maroon to dull white from the sheer energy potency; his pool capacity was swiftly dipping to zero. "Damn," he hissed. He gripped the blade in his hands. "Alright, then, let's make a quick job of this! Everyone get back!"

The Zanaffar barreled toward its most threatening new opponent. It reared up, at eye level with the building, drawing back its remaining front limb.

"LOOK OUT!" Zelgadiss bawled. He dashed forward to seize Rezo.

But another body got in his way—Ash's.

The spirit of Flagoon stepped up serenely behind Rezo, who was struggling to stand. He put his arms around Rezo's waist. "You can do this," he said. "You must. I'm sorry…it will hurt."

"So be it," Rezo gritted, and with a mighty swing, he impaled the Zanaffar through the heart…

…at the same time that it impaled him through the belly.

Amelia covered her mouth. A strangled sound escaped it.

Zelgadiss, both shocked at galvanized at once, squared his jaw and reached a hand stiffly for Rezo, without really moving. Through his fingers as he watched, across a somehow impenetrable five-foot distance, his great-grandfather was dying again.

Rezo gurgled in mind-mangling pain. The Zanaffar let out a noise somewhere between misery and amusement, a series of congested, almost human, chortles. It retracted its tentacle from the Red Priest's gut. "Kill me, will you?" it gargled.

Xelloss put Fibrizo down…smiling twistedly. "Why, sure," he murmured. He hunched forward like a predator, eyes open and fixed on the silver beast. Then he slid off into the invisible.

"Xelloss, don't leave me!" Fibrizo shrieked.

"It's okay," Ash murmured in Rezo's ear, over and over. "It's okay. It's okay. You're succeeding. You've weakened it. Reach down… The way out of this is there."

Rezo's eyes leaked in a torrent of agony. He bit down on his tongue and tasted blood. His belly was on fire, and he reached down and felt …the hilt of a dagger…where there should be a hole in him. "…it's the…"

"The Blessed Blade," Ash whispered warmly. "Yes. It killed your copy, but you are not your copy, Sir Rezo. You are you. Now, use it."

"But…"

Ash explained gently, like a kindly schoolteacher with a confused and frightened child. "Stab the Zanaffar with it, and you will unlock its seal from the astral side. You will open it to attacks from the astral plane. One of your traveling companions is already waiting for that opportunity, so he can finish it off. Now, strike, Sir Rezo."

"But it's…in me…"

"You have to pull it out."

Rezo's weeping crescendoed. "It…hurts…"

"Growing does," Ash crooned. "If you need me, I will help you. Draw on my reserves, friend. Against my trunk. Under my branches. You can do this."

Rezo didn't fully understand, but he knew he had to concede to this spirit of healing and greenness and growth. Slowly, every inch shredding at muscle and tissue and flesh, he extracted the Blessed Blade from his belly. There was a disgusting squelch, as his own blood followed in a small stream of red.

Ash put his hands over the wound. "Throw it."

"Rezo!" There was that voice again. "Rezo! REZO!"

Zelgadiss. Was Zelgadiss calling him now, or was that his memory again…? He couldn't tell…but…

Yes. If his boy could call him back from the dead….if Zelgadiss could believe there was a shred of decency left in Rezo…

…then Rezo could kill a Zanaffar.

With every ounce of energy he had left, Rezo hurled the Blessed Blade upward.

It struck the silver beast in the same place that his earlier fusion magic had hit. With a wild and feral screech, a death-roar, the Zanaffar's whole body trembled and unstably sizzled, fading….

And into that moment of perfect opportunity, a swirling black cone, the length of a human's body, impaled the Zanaffar…from within. The monster twitched and gagged, reared up impotently, squirmed like a skewered pig.

The cone dissolved and became Xelloss, his hands pried through a hole in the Zanaffar's gelatinous chest, his torso emerging from what looked like a black hole, into Nothingness and the black tide of Chaos and Night. He cocked his head and peeked open his cold amethyst eyes. He looked…almost casual. Placidly he declared, "Now, Red Priest. Now is the time." And then the very sky thickened and darkened to pitch around him.

Rezo nearly retched at the overwhelming aura of bloodlust, inhuman bloodlust, that roiled from Xelloss's astral core. He nodded, going limp in Ash's arms, recognizing with gratitude that his task was complete.

The Lesser Beast smiled, smiled with dimples, as he elaborated, like singing a lullaby, "Come away, come away now, dear Zanaffar. Come away…"

And then his face became wholly different. Perverse. Hungry. Tight with malice.

"…and DIE!"

"Don't look--!" Zelgadiss grabbed Amelia and forced a hand over her eyes.

It happened so quickly that Amelia or any other innocent wouldn't have registered it anyhow.

Xelloss struck out his arms and effortlessly crushed the Zanaffar's skull. The beast teetered and wailed one last time, before Xelloss whipped backward and inward, and caused the beast's entire carcass, guts and all, to invert. In the same savagely graceful gesture, Xelloss pulled the Zanaffar entirely into the black hole from which he'd emerged. A grating, screeching sound, and the stray giggles of the Lesser Beast, lingered on the silent, grave-like stillness for several moments after they'd vanished.

Gone.

"…Rezo!" Zelgadiss relearned how to use his legs. He released his grasp of Amelia—and his tendency to ponder before acting—and ran to the unlikely hero's side.

"I'm alright…I'm alright I'm alright," Rezo chanted, doubled over and spilling blood. He tried to smile but then he shuddered and heaved, and whimpered. "Ah gods…! I'm alright…alright…!"

"Amelia…" Zelgadiss sounded so lost.

"I've got him." The hyperbolic princess was so composed now, so professional, as she rushed over and pressed her small soft hands over the wound. She cast a Resurrection on Rezo's torso. The blood clotted, but the Red Priest looked paler than spring thaw.

Zelgadiss's own composure returned. "Just…take it easy." He braced Rezo.

Ash stepped back, smiling.

Fibrizo stood alone, behind them all, hugging himself. "Don't go," he said, and no one heard.

Xelloss reappeared out of the shred in the fabric of space, with little radiating chunks of Zanaffar-guts pulsing on his tidy black robes. He tsked impassively and shook off like an alpha wolf satisfied by bringing down a hefty kill. And then, with an incongruous daintiness, he combed his silky purple hair straight. "Done," he chirped. "Our bastardized Zanaffar is ancient history."

"Holy shit," Rezo exclaimed, rather impiously. And then he clapped a hand over his mouth, scandalized at himself—despite having a barely-stitched hole in his belly which was a much more pressing matter than the filth of his language.

"Well," Zelgadiss muttered, holding his kinsman up by one arm, "you've got the noun right."

Ash laughed affably, like always, and Amelia, once she got it, mewled in protest.

"My, my!" Xelloss trilled, with that cheer that was so acridly annoying that it could dissolve lead paint. "I heard that! Anyway, Mister Rezo, I thought you were a priest!"

Rezo hemmed and hawed a bit, pale cheeks flushing.

But Zelgadiss was the man armed with pithy rebuttals today. "So are you," he snapped, and slanted the Lesser Beast a sardonic gaze. "Doesn't seem to help your conduct much."

"Awww. Did you just defend your papaw?" Xelloss's smile went lupine, mocking, his cute dimples somehow sinister.

The temperature of Zelgadiss's gaze dropped fifty degrees below zero. "Hardly. You son of a bitch. Don't prod at me."

Rezo cringed. "You must be hungry this afternoon," he murmured, of Xelloss's particularly nasty passive-aggression and the negative juices he was surely squeezing out from both gentlemen Greywers. Sipping it up with relish.

"Never around you lot." The demon shrugged with artificial innocence, confirming the suspicion.

"Oh, fuck off, Xelloss," Zelgadiss growled. "I'm having a bad enough day as it is. You served your purpose, now get out."

Xelloss gave a breezy, indifferent laugh. "I'm awaiting orders from my current employer."

"Meaning Fibrizo?"

"Yes, meaning Fibrizo. Good boy, Mister Zelgadiss. Have a golden star."

The younger Greywers snarled, whirling on his heel to face any direction but Xelloss's.

Somewhere in this interval, Ash had taken Rezo into his arms. "That was really incredible, Sir Rezo," he said.

Amelia approached the revered healer with a little white orb of light in her hands. "Here. Let me help you some more. Thank you for keeping that thing out of my city…and protecting Mister Zelgadiss."

Zelgadiss stiffened, and didn't turn.

"I'm uh…here," Fibrizo, the employer in question, bleated behind them.

Zelgadiss's eyes darkened with vindictive pleasure; at last, someone on whom to righteously project his rage. "I somehow suspect this is all your fault, you little…" He fished for a word strong enough to convey his loathing, towering over the demon lord.

Fibrizo wasn't looking at him, but rather, at Rezo. Pigeon-toed. Like a real child worried about his…

"But Mister Zelgadiss," Amelia cooed in protest, "without Hellmaster Fibrizo, Mister Rezo would still be dead."

Rezo could hear it now: And your point is? Or perhaps: That's another reason to be angry with the little bugger.

But Zelgadiss kept his eyes averted to the Seyruun skyline, quiet for a long, long moment. "Let's get back to the palace," he finally grunted. "Rezo…I lost the bear."

The Red Priest wasn't sure whether or not to believe what felt like some kind of tenuous pardon from his kinsman. But he chose to honor the détente while he could. "That's alright, my boy," he breathed.

"It'll turn up when the right time comes," Ash added, with confidence. "For now, let's get Sir Rezo to a bed. Right, Master Zelgadiss?"

"Whatever." Zelgadiss dismissed them with a wave of his hand. He pulled up his white hood and scarf to conceal the face he mistakenly thought repulsive, and skulked the direction of Prince Philionel's palace.

Amelia sighed. "A part of him is happy," she whispered to Rezo. "It's just all so…well…complicated. But…he tells me so little of his past…maybe you, Mister Rezo, could…well sometime….for tea, you and I…?"

"That's alright," Rezo repeated, with a mournful smile. "I'd be honored. Whenever you like, Miss Amelia. It would be delightful."

Amelia hastily curtsied, and trotted off to catch up with Zelgadiss.

"Orders, Lord Hellmaster?" Xelloss probed into the silence.

Fibrizo turned his more familiar scowl of peevish malice on Xelloss. "Nothing. Go away. I'll call you back later."

Xelloss blinked. "Alright then." With a fizzling sound he vanished.

Give THAT poor fellow a raise, Rezo thought.

Ash carried the Red Priest in pursuit of the two additions to their caravan, and Rezo felt the strangest adrenaline let-down, as though the moment he'd been awaiting—reunion with Zelgadiss—had been neither as dramatic nor as mundane as he had pictured. Some sour, anticlimactic thing in the middle, and his boy was already out of reach again. He felt so…heavy.

But that was when he felt something tugging on his robe sleeve.

Fibrizo. His tiny hand gripping that sleeve like a lifeline. "I like red. Can I…stay with you?"

Like an imprinted duckling.

Rezo was floored. "Er uh. I…"

"You said you trust me. So can I stay?"

Rezo's blood ran cold. Did he really say that to the Hellmaster? And could he rescind those words now…? No. He couldn't. Somehow, he felt, the damage would be irrevocable if he did. "…I…"

"Sure he does!" Ash happily boomed. "And sure you can! I'll carry you, too!"

"No." Fibrizo's fist tightened even more on Rezo's sleeve. "I'm sticking with him. He said he trusts me."

No going back now. Rezo nodded tiredly, absently, and dozed off in Ash's arms, for just a moment of respite.