xOxOxO
Loud and rapid footsteps were never a good sign. Shouting was worse. So when Amelia heard running and shouting from above deck, she decided to investigate before someone came to find her. But the anxious chief of the sorcerer corps was already seeking her out.
Up on deck, with Dark Mist dissipated and the morning sun at full strength, Amelia could barely see the approaching harbor at Ruvinagald obscured behind monstrous shapes. There were dragons, wilderbats, and what looked like a razorfin gargantua-tarantula, all terrorizing the port as though they'd come to town for some kind of chaos convention. Perhaps they had. It would be just my luck if this meeting coincided with the Millenium Mazoku Mayhem Mash, she thought. It wouldn't even be the first time.
Her friends were already assessing the situation and making their own plans. Sylphiel anxiously bit her nails through her gloves.
"I give it a six," Gourry said.
"Five point five," Zelgadis objected. "If these are like that other dragon, this will be more of a nuisance than anything."
"Dunno, they look pretty healthy to me."
Amelia considered her options. A six was right where she liked it, challenging but not too dangerous, more of a brisk workout that made you crave a good hot meal afterwards. It was nothing they couldn't handle by themselves. But failure to prepare is preparing to fail, after all. She ordered the chief of the sorcerer corps to assemble all available combat units and bring them above deck to await her command.
"Let's aim towards the ocean if we can," Zelgadis suggested to one person in particular.
"Of course," Lina said, irked to have four dubious sets of eyes on her. "Geez, you blow up one harbor…"
"One?"
Lina grunted and paused to reflect. "Fine, you blow up like three harbors. Or definitely not more than seven."
They were picking up speed even as they approached land. The boat's captain was steering them towards a distant dock in the farthest corner of the harbor, a short distance away from where the beasts ran amok. Nearby a frightened crowd gasped with every crunch and slurp of a sail.
"Let's go, everybody!"
Amelia led the way, breaking into a sprint. She launched into a roundoff back handspring with a front tuck somersault, and almost nailed the landing too, but the moving boat added too much momentum and she spun out of control. She bounced hard on her rear and landed unsteadily on both feet. The crowd turned to look at her, because a law of the universe dictates people will catch your embarrassing moments even during a monster attack. She took a deep breath.
"People of Ruvinagald!" Amelia began, deploying the faces and gestures she'd been taught for such occasions: authority, trust, confidence, a dignified and regal bearing. A good portion of being accepted as a leader was simply knowing how to look and act like one. In this case she had to look like a leader who hadn't just whiffed her grand entrance. "I am Amelia Wil Tesla Seyruun, princess of Seyruun. You have my word that there's nothing to fear! The kingdom of Seyruun will defend you as long as we reside within your borders. Our mission is to spread peace and justice throughout the world, and protect the innocent. Rest assured that Seyruun will put a stop to this peril!"
She looked back over her shoulder and raised her arm at the soldiers standing in formation on the boat. Beside them, the crews were hurriedly pulling down a gangplank for departure. "20th Artillery, take defensive positions and protect the ship at all costs! 12th Infantry Special Battalion, evacuate the bystanders and protect them with defensive spells. Sylphiel-san, assist the 12th!"
"Yes, princess!" Sylphiel said, saluting.
A marauding dragon roared at the soldiers as they raced off the ship. Its anger attracted some of the other creatures, which paused from their frenzies to charge the Gracia Eternal, bellowing with rage.
Zelgadis jumped down on the end of the bowspirit, one foot after another. "Let's go, Amelia."
Those were three of her favorite words, and only in part because of how nice they sounded in his baritone voice. It was a reassuring reminder that they were a team and that he trusted her to have his back. And if someone who can chop down trees with a single swing thinks you're a good partner to have in a fight, well. "Right!"
As Lina and Gourry went after the beasts closest to the ground, it fell to their auxiliaries to handle the midair combat. Zelgadis and Amelia Levitated to another ship in the harbor and landed atop the spar of its main topsail. It afforded them a clear view of their chosen opponents, namely, four rampaging water dragons and nine wilderbats. She saw no frailty or affliction in their eyes, just raw fury. This could be a six bordering on seven.
They started with the wilderbats, famous for their fierce bites, pale chartreuse skin, and sweeping wingspan that could knock over a carriage. The key was to stay out of their range while dodging their supersonic shrieks. Zelgadis chanted a Bomb Di Wind at a nearby bat, which went sailing; Amelia struck it with a perfectly aimed Flare Arrow, and it dropped into the distant water. Before they could trade a mutually appreciative glance another bat dove straight at them, taking a chunk of rigging with it. The yard came loose and the spar wobbled treacherously. Amelia lost her footing and caught herself hard on the mast, wrapping her arms and legs around it. She looked down at the ground, so far down, where a behemoth sea snake was happily devouring whole casks on various ships.
"You can fly, you know," Zelgadis reminded her, hovering with his own handy Levitation. A dragon snapped at him and he nicked the side of its face with an Astral Vine-enhanced swing.
"Of course I can, but-Air Valm!" She used the spell to repel a bat that nearly swatted her over with its wing. "Anyway, I can, but maybe…" Amelia used a rope from the topgallant mast to pull herself upright. Her knees knocked together on the narrow, shifting spar. "Maybe I don't need to fly!" she announced.
Zelgadis's incredulous look only made Amelia more obstinate. She held her head high, as though she didn't have a regular habit of tripping over her own feet on flat ground. When he continued to stare without breaking eye contact Amelia knew she had unleashed something terrible. He wordlessly dropped his Levitation for a shaky fighting stance on the spar. The cold determination in his face was undermined by the way he pitched forward, struggling to keep his balance. There could be no doubt what he meant: this was war.
Fierce blue eyes met fiercer and bluer ones. Amelia summoned every last bit of skill to stay up, clinging to what was left of the rigging with one hand and casting Icicle Lances with the other, all while the boat dipped and swayed amidst the tumult. It was easiest to stay near to the mast between them, but Amelia and Zelgadis occasionally stumbled past each other as the spar gyrated beneath their feet. The dragons and bats were hypnotized by their colorful and strangely oscillating prey.
Amelia staggered forward only to find herself nose to nose with one of the dragons. It used its long, forked tongue to give her a searching lick, drenching her in saliva that reeked of fatty fish. She shuddered in disgust and gave it a mighty kick in the face to buy some time while she recited an incantation. "Rune Flare!"
A bone-rattling cry from a wilderbat nearly toppled them both and Amelia and Zelgadis met at the mast, colliding hard into each other as the spar swung. "Mono Volt!" Zelgadis shouted, and enchanted his blade to strike at the offending beast.
"Please be more careful! You could have knocked me over." Amelia was irritated, but she still Windy Shield-ed him just in time when a dragon went to slap him with its tail.
"You fell into me."
"He-e-e-y!" Lina yelled, both hands cupped to her mouth. Amelia had been too focused on her footwork to notice what else was happening. Back on the comparatively solid ground Gourry was stacking up bloodied pieces of demon spider into a pile. Small scattered fires and the smell of burning tar was proof enough that Lina had been contributing too. All they had left was the sea snake, which seemed like a slow-motion bottomless pit devouring everything in its path.
"You two sure picked a weird time for dance lessons! Are you gonna hurry it up or what?"
Amelia huffed. "Hmph! Lina-san doesn't understand the art of combat."
"So uncouth," Zelgadis agreed.
But she was right that they could go a little faster. While they had cleared the air of bats, there were still two dragons, which in their wounded state had started lashing out and belching plumes of flame. Forced to a draw, Amelia and Zelgadis glided back down to the rickety marina. But Amelia's competitive spirit was far from extinguished, so she couldn't resist running as close to the dragons as she could get and throwing both hands in the water for an exuberant "Dig Volt!"
Her lightning spell flickered in blinding arcs as it traced a quick path to the dragons. They writhed and convulsed, burning with white-hot energy, until their charred bodies sank in a noisy splash. Two smaller boats in the line of fire went down with them.
"I could've gotten that," Zelgadis said, sounding a bit petulant.
Amelia held up her hand in a V for victory. "Too slow!"
There was still one monster left, and Lina Inverse wasn't about to let anybody else take the last blow, even if all it took was tossing a Fireball at a fat and mostly harmless snake chowing down on a boat. But unfortunately for all involved, the snake had been swallowing whatever loose objects it could find on deck, including whole casks of rare Jillas-grade gunpowder. The blast happened in three phases, lasting just fractions of a second but stretching on for a seeming eternity as Amelia watched: a flash of light, the sound of ignition, and finally the pulsing burst.
The entire back end of the Gracia Eternal, from keel to stern, exploded in a spectacular sizzling Burst Flare that cooked all the fish in a quarter-league radius. Amelia looked on in horror. It was nearly a minute before she had the presence of mind to run through her standard Lina checklist: is anyone dead? Is anyone dead who's not supposed to be dead? How much of it was already flammable? It probably looked worse than it was. Nobody appeared to be crying out and she hadn't seen any bodies. Steam clouds swelled around the ship.
"Maybe not my cleanest work, but the harbor is untouched, eh?" Lina said, with a sweeping and showy gesture behind her. "Mostly, anyway. Ta-daaaa!"
"Lina-san…" The princess was at a loss for other, real words. "L-Lina-san! Lina-san!"
"Oh, relax. I'm sure it's insured."
"Not for this! No one covers Lina Inverse damage!" Amelia felt her eyes stinging with frustrated tears, but she shook them away. "It's specifically excluded from every policy ever written because otherwise the world would go bankrupt! And our premiums will quadruple! Daddy's going to be so angry!" She rounded on Zelgadis. "Zelgadis-san, why did you ever let them come along?!"
"Now hold on…" Zelgadis held up a hand in protest, but clearly saw he didn't have much of an argument. Amelia thought he didn't seem to have the proper righteous fear of a scolding from her father, whose yelling voice could warp hardwood floors. "Lina's got plenty of money now. Have her pay you back."
"Don't count on it," Gourry said. "After all, your room was back there too, right, Lina? Weren't you keeping most of our savings on the boat?"
Amelia felt the scream more than she heard it. She was still too overwhelmed to think about hearing our savings a second time, and at any rate she couldn't focus while her eardrums vibrated with a frequency that could dismember a demon. Years later, the wizened village elders in Mane would swear they heard that unholy screech of agony all the way across the peninsula.
xOxOxO
While Amelia was left to the unpleasant work of smoothing things over with the local authorities, Zelgadis faced the equally unpleasant (in his mind, anyway) prospect of a morning debrief without coffee.
He, Sylphiel, and Phil's other chosen spies were bent over their notes and some half-melted candles in one of Ruvinagald's seediest pubs. The simple truth was that Sylphiel was too pretty, and the rest of them too old or hideous, not to attract unwelcome attention in public. They'd had to find someplace just as shady as they looked, a pub where the floors were strewn with hay and the beer was rancid because everyone drank whiskey. Nobody there would ask why the five people around the corner table spent a couple hours shuffling stacks of parchment and mumbling about teas.
"Thirty pages of summarized interviews in just two days, and on top of all that cooking, too," Franz said with rare admiration. "Are you sure we can't hire you full time, Syphiel?"
"Oh, no! I could never be a spy."
The evidence suggested otherwise. The staff came to speak with her first out of curiosity and, when they discovered she was so compassionate and non-judgmental, they opened up. They complained, cried, lied, and spilled out every manner of gossip without prompting, then came back for more. The basket of fresh pastries she kept out for kitchen visitors hadn't hurt either. Sylphiel, just being Sylphiel, had learned more about what was happening in the household in two days than the rest of them had managed in weeks of observation and eavesdropping. She'd even charmed her way into the heart of the notoriously grumpy Eogre, who had taken to calling her "niece". For Zelgadis it was a humbling reminder that there were some skills he simply would never have.
"So when he noticed she wasn't sleeping well, the cook started giving her the house vermouth…"
"...not knowing that she already drank klamath weed tea."
"And that was enough to make her sick?"
"You're not supposed to combine klamath weed with lots of things. It would explain the headaches for sure."
As theories went, it was incomplete and unsatisfying, which meant it was probably close to correct. The real world wasn't like a mystery story. There were only rarely elaborate plans coordinated by evil masterminds, just regular people making foolish choices. But something about it still didn't sit right with Zelgadis.
"Assuming it's true, that's only one interaction," he said. "The bath salts in Calliope, the tea and vermouth, that still leaves us with one other poison, doesn't it? What are we missing?"
"What makes you think the other one isn't an accident too?" Franz eyed a barmaid armed with a long dagger: it really was a nasty establishment. "We have, or had, more poisons going around than an assassin's apothecary. Phil is gonna lose it when he hears about the laundry staff microdosing wolfsbane."
Zelgadis was now in the discomfiting position of arguing without a solid factual basis. "It's too fitting for Amelia," he said, as if that explained anything. "Poison is slow, subtle. Amelia doesn't do slow or subtle. She trusts everyone she meets and she doesn't complain about herself. This is probably the most effective way to target her, in the way she's least likely to recognize. And right when we discover it we got two other possible explanations. It's too neat."
He waited for the others to laugh it off or call him paranoid. To his surprise no one did, even though they clearly didn't agree. Then again, they'd always respected his authority where Amelia was involved.
"If it's on purpose, somebody's playing a very long game," Hans said. "If not for the bath salts this could've gone on for ages. Maybe it was supposed to."
Eogre was unconvinced. "But who or what benefits from her suffering like that? What's the upside of a sick princess instead of a dead one?"
"I don't believe anybody in this clown show is capable of that," Franz opined.
Capable… Now seemed like a good time to bring up the curse to prove that there was at least one conspiracy going on outside his own head.
"Speaking of," Zelgadis said, opening his notebook and showing off the chart he'd copied. He'd gone over it more than a hundred times but wasn't any closer to understanding what it signified. "Look at this list. I found it in one of the maid's drawers. Ten names-including mine at the very top-with numbers and some kind of shorthand, sigils, and star charts. I think someone may be attempting curses."
Sylphiel peered at the list and furrowed her brow. Hans, Franz, and Eogre exchanged peculiarly inscrutable looks.
"Well, you're right that it's got your name on it," Franz said, "so you can't get involved. We'll take it from here." He moved to rip the page out of the notebook, but Zelgadis swiped it back.
"Do you know what this is?"
"Nope. It sure is suspicious, though."
Zelgadis sat back, suddenly leery. He'd bluffed and bullied his way through plenty of crooked deals with unscrupulous sorts. He knew what happened when someone overplayed their hand, that precarious moment just before swords clanged and spells flew, and he could tell it had just occurred. But why?
"Well," he said, rising, "Sylphiel and I should be going. Amelia said she needed to speak with us."
"She did?" So maybe Sylphiel wasn't destined for a life of espionage after all. "Er, of course! Yes, I'm coming!"
The pub was long and narrow, and there was a moderate crowd of drunkards and louts doing shifty business over their dirty mugs. It was far too loud to hear a conversation at the back corner table from the front unless you had a distinct biological advantage. Already on the alert, Zelgadis was just on his way out when he picked up the fragment of a whispered conversation between Hans and Eogre.
"Did you see Vezendi, six one, really? When did that happen?"
"Sounds optimistic."
Zelgadis could tell the one remark was a response to the other, but the statements made no sense. At the moment it didn't matter. They had lied to him, he was sure of that much. They'd known exactly what they were looking at in his notebook.
What else have they lied to me about? A new theory came together in his mind, so clearly and naturally that it made his stomach twist with revulsion. Of course the whole poison scenario was too neat; the very people investigating were the ones engineering it. Phil's most loyal knights were plotting against his own household, possibly his own daughter, with any number of co-conspirators who had nearly unlimited access and resources. The betrayal in Seyruun ran deeper than even he'd suspected and there was no one he could trust.
xOxOxO
Amelia was up against a truly daunting level of paperwork. Daunting might have seemed like a curious adjective to describe what came down to a lot of reading and writing, but at a certain point documentation is just as intimidating as dark lords. In a moment of idle curiosity Amelia piled all of the day's to-dos into a single stack and had been unsurprised that it was nearly as tall as Gourry.
She swiftly delegated as much as she could, from surveying damage to the Gracia Eternal to investigating the rise in sea monster attacks. When she whittled the pile down to her own eye level she decided she'd earned a meal break. The servants offered to bring her a meal but she insisted on a walk.
As a more reliable ally of Seyruun and the backbone of the Alliance of Coastal States, Ruvinagald posed few overt dangers to a young princess out on her own. Amelia had spent enough time in the kingdom to learn her way around its streets and know which walking paths with their weatherbeaten stones led to the best view of the ocean. Her first stop was the central plaza beside the harbor, an airy pavilion constructed around a colossal golden statue of a flaming sword that both welcomed and frightened travelers to Ruvinagald. Buskers juggled and painted pictures to entertain the crowds coming and going.
At a distance she noticed a noisily weeping woman in a strange rounded hat, clutching her head in her hands. Oh no, that poor lady! I wonder if we damaged her boat. The woman briefly lifted her head and Amelia saw she wasn't wearing a hat, but two large golden ornaments-
"Filia-san?"
"What? Oh, Amelia-san!" Filia dabbed at her eyes with an embroidered purple-trimmed handkerchief. "Oh, I'm so glad to see a friendly face! Forgive me, I'm so frustrated...I had booked a passage to Calliope for that white magic festival, and today they told us there's no more ships going! This was going to be my first vacation in years and they won't refund my money!" She blew her nose, a great moist honking sound that could only have been emitted by a dragon or an industrial foghorn. "How are you doing?"
After such a long week it was hard to know how to answer. "Busy!" she replied, because the last thing Filia needed was to get overstimulated with stories about poisons. "Lina-san and the others are here too, including Sylphiel-san. Perhaps the Holy Ladies Tea and Cake Society can have a special meeting."
"That would be so wonderful! I don't have any other women to talk to at home. It's so discouraging sometimes…"
Amelia felt a surge of empathy and reached out to hug Filia again. If anyone was entitled to melodramatic (Zelgadis, less polite, would say histrionic) tendencies, it was Filia, who had left everything familiar behind and found a new life with only her passions to guide her. It was something Amelia fantasized about on her very worst days, when the work of managing a kingdom seemed unbearable, but then she remembered Filia's example. Freedom had its price. Starting over is so hard.
"How have you been otherwise, Filia-san?" Amelia held out her arm, which Filia gratefully clasped, and together they started on a meandering stroll. They chatted about the sorts of things that interested lonely dragon-women, like an upcoming pottery exhibition in Seyruun and an abrupt decline in quality at the Cosmopolitan Tea Traders. Amelia followed a steady stream of dockworkers taking ice chests full of fish to a little inn built into the cliffside. The innkeeper pointed them up the stairs, to a cozy private room with a single banquet table, where Lina was not so much eating her feelings as chewing and tearing at them. She and Gourry sat locked in intimate, insatiable gobbling-as-mourning, as though each bite might help fill the void of so much lost gold. Three wine bottles in fiascos were placed on the table around piles of clams, pasta, and ample fish stews.
"Hi, Amelia! Hey, and, it's…uh," Gourry said blankly.
"Gourry-san! We saved two worlds together and you don't remember my name?!"
Lina looked up from a hefty bowl of scialatelli just long enough to acknowledge her visitors. "Filia, huh? Good to see you...Gourry, you looked up her skirt once, remember?"
This rang no bells either; the only things Gourry willingly committed to memory involved Lina or food. The two women took their own seats and helped themselves to a bit of lunch. After all, Amelia reminded herself as she took a ladle of stewed octopus, she would end up paying for it anyway.
Chaotic rage snarfing aside, it was still a homey scene, or at least Amelia thought so. They used to stay in places like this all the time, little old inns run by families that had been there for generations, where none of the linens matched and one doorway always had parallel pencil markings that showed how tall the children had grown. Because Lina was too impatient and Gourry too absentminded, it had always fallen to Amelia and Zelgadis to suss out any relevant information from the hosts. Sometimes they got a useful tip about invading armies or strange occurrences, but more often than not they ended up hearing stories about a son who went off to war or a wayward daughter.
"Don't worry," Amelia would promise, squeezing their hands so they knew how serious she was, "she'll come home when she's ready. I know she will! I just know it!" Zelgadis would tell her not to say things like that, but she ignored him. He didn't understand.
She heard a familiar set of footsteps coming up the stairs and saw Zelgadis and Sylphiel, looking grave and anxious, respectively.
"Oh, hello, Sylphiel-san! Zelgadis-san, how are you?"
Sylphiel's expression suggested things had been better, but she managed a polite wave. Zelgadis pulled out the chair beside Amelia and sat down with an irate forcefulness that translated to "disgruntled", but then he shot her an abashed look that meant "not with you". Concerned, she reached out and gave him a sympathetic pat near where his shoulder joined his neck in a particular spot she knew had fewer jagged rocks. He relaxed so markedly that she decided a few more pats were called for and let her hand rest there for a little while longer.
"I ran into Filia-san near the harbor. Isn't that exciting?"
His grunt in response contained no excitement whatsoever.
"How good to see you, Zelgadis-san," Filia said. "Are you still working as an escort?"
Zelgadis exhaled slowly, a tense hiss like air escaping from a balloon, but that was all. One couldn't be too mad at Filia for not getting her words quite right, especially when Xellos was usually to blame for teaching her the wrong ones. And Zelgadis always had patience to spare when it came to tall and beautiful women.
"Filia-san, that's not how that's phrased," Amelia offered gently.
"What? Why not?"
"Are we really going to have a detailed conversation about polysemy?" Zelgadis asked, gritting his teeth.
Filia reddened. "In front of three shrine maidens?!"
"Say, Filia," Lina cut in, as she had tolerated thirty seconds of conversation not relevant to her or her interests, "I don't suppose you know what this is, do you?" She reached into her pocket and held out the glimmering white gem. "I think it's-"
Filia snatched the gem out of Lina's hands. Her cheeks went pink and her tail shot out from beneath her skirt, a sure sign that things were about to escalate out of control in predictably Filia fashion. Amelia emptied a bowl of rolls and handed it to Sylphiel, gesturing that she might do well to use it as a helmet.
"It's impossible!" Filia declared, and rose to her feet. She looked at the stone with a mixture of reverence and fright. "Lina-san, where did you find this?! Did you steal it? I should have you arrested and thrown in front of the dragon tribunal of elders! No! I should hand you over to your sister as an enemy of all order in the universe!"
Even by Filia standards, this was a bit much, although it was arguably reasonable and warranted. Lina had seized up completely at the mention of her sister. Gourry stopped eating for a moment, and Amelia imagined he was questioning whether he could break her out of dragon jail. Outside the room, waves crashed and broke on the rocky shore.
No one responded. It was a truth universally acknowledged that the safest way to handle Filia's outbursts was to react as little as possible; just five seconds could be the difference between deep breaths and laser breaths.
With nothing else to provoke her, Filia sighed and sat down again, tail retreating. She withdrew a pot of chamomile tea from some liminal space in her sleeves. "This is a Transformation Stone," she said. "It's a holy artifact that belongs in the Shrine of Restoration, which the holy orders built to maintain balance between light and darkness. It's full of precious stones that helped prevent mazoku and lesser demons from expanding out of control. The dragons used the shrine for rituals that neutralized powerful black magic and curses."
"So it's a fancy relic," Lina said, recovering somewhat, although her face was slick with nervous sweat. "I dunno if you've noticed, but things haven't been in balance for a good thousand years or so."
"No!" Filia struck her fist into her other open palm. "The holy magic might not have survived, but the shrine itself was an important barrier against all demonic energy! If the shrine has been damaged, that means our world is missing one of its most sacred defenses! We could be vulnerable to another war, or...or an invasion from another world!"
"Another world?" Sylphiel repeated, wide-eyed.
"Well, that would be the worst-case scenario, but it could happen. Whenever the forces of darkness become too powerful, the boundaries between the four worlds start to ebb. Surely you remember that," Filia said, mostly to Gourry, whose sunny and boundlessly vacant smile said it all.
"So the stone's power depends on its circumstances. As part of the shrine, it can stop and reverse dark magic." Lina said thoughtfully. "But if it's attached to something demonic, with sophisticated enough spellcasting and a sufficiently powerful source of magical energy, you could use it to create something unholy...like, say, conjured gold."
Filia, horrified by such a wicked hypothetical, reprimanded her with a mace swing that struck Gourry after the latter's ill-timed lunge for an oyster. Her blow launched him through the table and into the stone floor, now splattered with spareribs and amatriciana sauce. Amelia sighed and mentally added the cost of the table to her tab.
"Lina-san, how dare you! I would rather hear whatever degenerate filth Zelgadis-san was thinking than this type of appalling blasphemy! Who is filling your mind with such heresy? Is it Xellos? It's Xellos, isn't it?!"
Amelia knew Zelgadis wasn't thinking about degenerate filth, not that he was ever the filth-thinking sort (she was sure of this). She could tell exactly what was on his mind just based on his posture and the way he held a hand to his chin. Yet for some reason he didn't say anything at all.
The magic of that shrine, Amelia thought. Can it really reverse curses...?