Episode 21
"The Holy Grail?! Fillia's Future Sure Looks Bright!"
Elmash Vale was easy enough that anybody could find it, there were guided tours here in the spring. The falls roared as the river Luotok crashed down the vale one step at a time for a thousand meters.
Lina occasionally would draw stick figure faces on the "See Elmash Vale!" signs, just to annoy the Emperor of Lyzeille in the past, but this time she just walked by it.
Naga looked at the sign then at Lina, "Are you sure you're feeling alright?"
"Oh," she waved it off, "Ever since I found out that old coot got extra revenue for that stupid sign, I decided to leave it alone." Looking up at Naga knowingly, "It pisses him off MORE knowing that I no longer do it!"
"So where's this special fountain we're supposed to be looking for?" Lina looked up and down the vale where rainbows played with the mist and made looking in very difficult.
"Its down in there some place Sylphiel replied, "But only a few people know exactly where it is."
"In other words," Lina said, "We have to go down in this wet mess and find it, huh?"
"It would seem that way," Sylphiel's soft voice barely heard over the rush of the falls.
"Well, we better get to it, time's a wasting. Ray Wing!" and the young sorceress leapt up and then settled down into the mists, soon vanishing from sight.
"I suppose I should be down there too." Fillia offered and flew down into the mists as well.
The two of them were drenched in seconds as the cold wet air soaked them thoroughly.
Climbing up and down over slippery tumbled stone was difficult and they often slipped and fell, repeatedly casting healing spells on each other's bruises.
"WE COULD SURE USE SOME HELP DOWN HERE!" Lina shouted.
"I don't think they can hear you!" Fillia shouted back over the din.
Lina frowned, "I should have thought of that before I came down here." she said to herself.
After much searching, they found an overhang where a spring burst forth from the rock about chest height and about as large as a person's wrist.
"This is fountain number one," Lina noted to her self, then motioned for Fillia to come near and shouted to her, "This is the first one! We need number three!"
Fillia merely nodded understanding and they went along the wall looking.
About thirty paces further, a larger fountain was bubbling up out of a crack in the rock under foot, and it was barely strong enough to be called a fountain, only rising about knee high on Lina.
"Not very impressive," she noted to her self then raised her fingers to indicate the number 2.
Fillia nodded and followed.
Amongst some tightly bunched bushes one could just barely make out a very small head of water rising up and down above the tops of the waist high plants.
The fountain didn't look particularly special, but it was the one shown to Lina by the bible, so that was all that mattered.
There in the middle of a circle of plants with very threatening thorns, was a small fountain about the diameter of a person's finger. A normal human could not reach the middle without impaling themselves on the immense spines, so this was not an easy feat for anybody so far as Lina could tell.
Lina pointed to the fountain with one squinted eye and then made a thumbs up signal to Fillia.
Fillia motioned for Lina to step back so she could transform, then transformed into her true form. In her full size, she easily reached over the vicious looking thorns with ease having gained enough size to reach the middle of the circle with ease while standing clear of the thorns to the side.
Humming a beautifully haunting tune, Fillia closed her eyes and the water from the fountain stopped tumbling back to earth, but instead began forming a small ball of liquid between her dragon sized hands, shimmering and emitting a pale blue light.
Eventually the ball of water engulfed the hands of the dragoness and continued to grow until it went to her elbows.
Suddenly the golden rose on her tail emitted rainbow colored sparkles which flew upward over her back and wings, around her shoulders and into the water.
The pale blue shimmering light was replaced with a pure white light of dazzling intensity and for a moment, it seemed that all sound was stopped and in fact as if time its self stopped.
Lina saw small droplets suddenly slow to almost motionless in the air. They were crystal clear prisms which displayed every color of the rainbow as they slowly crossed the light from above.
Just as fast as it happened, it was over. It was impossible to determine just how long it had been, but it seemed like it was a very long time.
There was a sudden large splash as the ball of water collapsed to the ground and ran out from beneath the spiked bushes.
Fillia's skin literally glowed. All over. Her hands were absolutely impossible to look upon, but her entire body shone quite brightly.
Swinging her tail to touch Lina before Lina had time to react, Fillia teleported them both to the top of the vale.
Ep 21, Chapter 2
Fillia materialized in her human avatar, dry as if nothing ever happened, while Lina reappeared still cold and wet. The major difference for Fillia however, is that even in her avatar form, she was still glowing.
"Brrrrrrr!" she shivered, "That was cold!"
"That was one impressive consecration!" Luna admired.
Fillia just blushed...which in this case made her face glow pink.
"Well now that we have made her glow," Gourry asked, "What next?"
"Guess we have to make this huge gemstone into dust somehow." Lina offered, "And not have it all blow away on us."
"What can turn the gem stone into dust?" Sylphiel asked.
"It didn't say that part." Lina grumbled.
"Perhaps she can just smash it with her strength?" Luna suggested.
"Where did it say to put the dust to hold it?" Naga asked.
"Some holy relic called 'The Holy Grail.'" Lina shrugged.
"That's at the shrine!" Sylphiel's soft voice chimed.
"Well then," Lina smiled, "Next destination Sairaag!"
The party collectively flew the short distance to town from the vale in a few minutes.
From there they flew directly on to the shrine of Flarelord Ceiphied, where Sylphiel's family had for many generations comprised the priesthood of the shrine.
Once inside the shrine, Sylphiel led them through some chambers and finally to a heavy metal door that opened up out of the floor when used.
"More underground chambers." Lina rolled her eyes and glanced at Naga who nodded knowingly.
"Its not that far down," Sylphiel's soft voice promised.
As the priestess produced a thick shiny metal key from her sleeve, she turned it with a heavy metallic clack.
Pulling a ring handle up out of the door, another mechanism sounded and the door slowly opened with the sounds of mechanical motions. On side of the door, immense iron gears were mounted, driven by other large gears which rotated on a common axle.
As one looked into the dark hole, they saw an iron mechanism drive a stairway upwards out of the gloom of darkness until it reached the top and stopped with a solid, heavy and precise click.
"Very impressive craftsmanship!" Luna marveled.
"Ceiphied himself forged every part and had only golden dragons install them."
Luna whistled in appreciation and Fillia's eyes went wide with wonder.
A light from below suddenly was there without warning, and down the single long flight of stairs was another metallic doorway.
The light emitted from forty small points near the ceiling of the staircase, clearly magical in use, yet how they could magically turn on and off without a spell being cast was a complete mystery.
Upon turning the key in the amazingly smooth second door, many mechanical sounds from some place began and the door slowly split down a previously invisible seam to slide away to each side.
They walked down another metallic hallway to yet another metallic door.
"How many doors are we going to have to go through?" Lina asked impatiently.
"This is the last one." Sylphiel's beaming smile shone forth.
This time the door split horizontally, half rising and half lowering. Lina made note that these doors were almost like mirrors and the seams where they met could not be seen by the naked eye.
"Boy Ceiphied sure is one helluva craftsman..." Lina marveled.
"A-hem!" Fillia said looking at her. Her presence being amplified by the fact she was glowing too brightly to stare at.
"Heh-heh," Lina chuckled nervously, "Crafts...GOD?"
Fillia smiled graciously.
There a large octagonal metallic room lit up as the door receded flush with the floor and upper door way.
The room was lit from the high ceiling, but Fillia's glow flooded the room with much more light.
There in the middle stood an octagonal metallic pillar and atop that a beautifully ornate iridium chalice the size that the gem would easily sit right into. Being iridium, it seemed to shift colors as one walked around it, as if the color was not reflected, but more like it was emitted by the metal its self.
"You would think these two were created for each other." Fillia marveled as she approached the chalice with the glowing black stone. The light emitting from her hands made eerie radiating streaks of blackness as it reflected from her hands.
These seemed to re-reflect off the walls, however they got lost in the positive normal light which was much stronger.
She gently lowered the massive gem into the even larger chalice. At this point, all of the black radiance seemed to be trapped within the chalice as if some force kept redirecting it back inwards.
"What is that thing made out of?" Lina asked.
"Pure Iridium." Sylphiel replied.
Expressions of awe came from everyone who heard the reply.
Ep 21, Chapter 3
"I will need the entire room to my self," Fillia softly announced, "I must resume my true form to perform this next part of the task."
"Ok," Lina responded, "Got ya." and she ushered everybody out the door so Fillia would have enough room to fit.
As her body glowed even brighter, she transformed to her full size once again, having to coil around the room somewhat to fit.
Placing her massive, blazing white hands over the chalice, she began humming yet another melody, and the glow was so bright nobody else could look and they all turned away.
"I think I can see the back of my eyeballs!" Gourry complained.
"That's because your HEAD is empty!" Lina stepped into the verbal opening he had left her.
Fillia continued to hum for a brief while longer, then she chanted, "Ceiphied Ceiphied, maker of light, Flarelord of day, destroyer of night, taker of darkness, maker of stars, smashing pure blackness to the smallest of shards! Give me the breath of Holy Light!"
Releasing a wailing scream that made everyone's head ring even with their hands over their ears, Fillia emitted a burst of laser light from her mouth which went between her hands into the chalice.
The force of the light alone made the chalice dance and tremble as if it were trying desperately to escape her grasp and the overwhelming source of light which was being poured forth into it.
The light within the chalice could not escape in any direction, which made the thibix orthinux gem resonate at its harmonic frequency.
The scale grew higher and higher and higher and the party had to race up the stairs and outside the chambers to find relief from the mind splitting ringing.
Even then it seemed the ground was ringing.
The city around the shrine began to tremble lightly, making dishes rattle, chairs and tables dance, and animals cry in pain.
Just when it seemed there would be a full scale earthquake however, there was a deep heavy lurch to the ground that knocked everybody off their feet with a strong concussive 'thump.'
A ring of dust seemed to leap off the ground in a ring which rapidly radiated from the temple all the way to the horizon, sending birds in the distant forest into harried flight.
This was followed by a short crackling rumble like a distant rock slide, but it soon faded. And then, calm. That suddenly it was silent.
The group scrambled to their feet and hurried back through the temple, down the metallic stairway and to the end of the metallic hallway to find everything lit at a normal light except for Fillia's still glowing arms and a flat level inky blackness existing just short of the top of the immense chalice.
Ep 21, Chapter 4
"It looks like we're on our way back to Zephilia at this point," Lina said, then looking to Luna,
"Sound good to you?
"Sounds good with me." Luna conceded.
"By the way," Lina asked Sylphiel, "Why is that Holy Grail not guarded any better than it is?"
"Because its pure Iridium." came Sylphiel's simple reply.
"What?" Lina reached out for the large chalice. "Thi-whoa!" Lina's eyes bugged out as the chalice failed to budge, yanking herself off her own feet.
"I'll have to carry it." Fillia said in a soothing tone as she picked it up as if it were made of wood.
"Iridium is quite heavy," Sylphiel's tone becoming rather matter-of-fact, "Its said to be the second heaviest material in the universe."
"There's something heavier than this?!" Lina's eyes bulged.
"Yes." Sylphiel replied, "There's a metal called Osmium," she spoke in a calm, lecturing manner, "Which is found in the land of Os."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yes," she continued, "It was said to be the secret power behind the great magic of the Wizard of Os."
"Wow!" Lina marveled, "Well Naga," she decreed with a sparkle in her eye, "When this job is done, WE'RE off to see the Wizard of Os!"
"When this mission is over," Gourry said, "I'm going to settle down!"
"Why would you do something like that Gourry?"Lina asked in surprise.
"Because," he sighed deeply with a look of sadness, " After all these years of adventuring, I've finally learned that there's no place like home."