xOxOxO
The Alliance of Coastal States and the surrounding territories had begun arriving at Ruvinagald. All throughout the diplomatic quarter, trumpets sounded and banners unfurled to herald the arrival of nearby kingdoms. Zelgadis watched the proceedings with distaste from one of the castle's inner walls overlooking a main street. The pomp and pageantry of royal traditions had always repelled him, and it seemed even more contemptible now. An entire island had been ruined; surely it didn't matter how many gold spurs someone's knights were wearing.
"Say, is that who I think it is?"
Zelgadis flinched. He hated openers like that, the kinds of neutral phrases that were already meaningless among normal humans but were truly, uniquely worthless when addressed to him. No, it's some other chimera who's been wearing the exact same outfit for the better half of the last decade, he thought bitterly.
But he knew he was being uncharitable, that it wasn't fair to judge humans for their human quirks like small talk. Over the years this part of him had grown beyond meager thoughts that he could slap aside, and taken on a distinctly feminine tone and self-assurance. Sometimes he could even feel it pointing at him.
Fine, Zelgadis thought, and tried to soften his stabbier instincts as he turned around to see one of the few people who might also be inclined to ditch a crowd for a higher vantage point. It was a striking gentleman in a crisp layered tunic and high boots with long blue-black curls tied back over his shoulders. His clothing was refined, but his bearing gave him away as someone not of noble birth. He had the confident walk of a brigand, someone who would rather be stealing your wallet than remembering how much your family was worth.
"Been a while, eh, Zelgadis?" he said. The two shook hands as though they were something closer to old friends and not extremely distant acquaintances who both preferred to be alone anyways. Time did strange things to relationships.
"King Zangulus of Zoana," Zelgadis replied archly. "The restoration must be going well. Zoana is appearing on more maps these days."
"Nice of you to notice. As a matter of fact, we've grown enough that you can't throw a rock from one border to the other anymore." Zangulus looked down at the busy crowds below, where royals and nobles in colorful gowns congregated with their toiling retinues, and glared. "How about a drink somewhere? I'd rather not spend any more time with this lot than I have to. Bunch of haughty pricks," he muttered under his breath.
Zelgadis hadn't felt an inclination to continue the conversation before, but he found himself warming to the idea. "I know a place."
"Thank the dragon gods. Let me get my hat."
They wound up drinking heinous corn whiskey at the shabby pub with the hay-covered floor, which delighted Zangulus. "Oh, man. I haven't set foot in a place like this since Darius was born. Not that I blame Martina, of course." He sighed contentedly, taking in the smell of stale meat. "This place looks familiar. If there's a stable outside behind the kitchen I killed some guys here way back in the day. Say, have you seen Lina and Gourry lately? Are they still…?"
"They're here, in fact."
"Really," he said, and his eyes took on a hungry gleam. "I'll have to find some time to spare between meetings. I don't know if Gourry's been keeping up too, but the more work I do, the more I wish I could just duel my way out of things. Nowadays fencing is the only stress relief I have."
"How is being a king, anyway?" Zelgadis asked, with a little more evident curiosity than he'd meant. A few years in Seyruun had convinced him that mercenaries and politicians were more alike than different, except the former was a more honorable profession. He'd seen budget bill processes that were dirtier than actual murders.
"A lot of paperwork. Talking. And listening." Zangulus pulled the brim of his old, worn hat over his eyes as if he could shield himself from the task. "How do you set commodity prices? Where do you build a school? What's an acceptable debt limit? It's a thousand high-stakes decisions every day, and no matter what you do you get blasted by every jackass with a printing press. And Zoana's barely the size of a city. Needless to say I don't recommend it."
"But Martina…"
"Well, of course she's worth it," he said, finishing the question that didn't have to be asked. "Truth be told, if you can shake down punks, you can handle politicians. And I tell you what, as a father-"
But Zelgadis never got to hear what 'as a father', because they were interrupted by an unmistakable shrill voice from the front of the pub. "You gotta be kidding me! You?!"
Oh no. Zelgadis prayed it was an unpleasant delusion brought on by corn whiskey that could probably double as engine fuel. Unfortunately, Zangulus's wide-eyed bafflement was proof enough that it was all too real, as was the familiar approaching thwoip thwoip thwoip sound like a coiled spring moving through jelly.
"Get out of here," Zelgadis said without looking. "Children aren't allowed in bars."
"Eat my ass! I'm basically your age."
"Well, they shouldn't serve stuffed animals," Zelgadis retorted, thinking about how much he loathed Pokota's particular brand of crude abuse. He glanced up hopefully at the weary bartender, whose shrug suggested that he'd serve a literal newborn so long as they paid their tab, and sighed. "What are you doing here, anyway?"
"This event is Taforashia's re-entry to world politics," Pokota announced. He vaulted up onto the bar beside them and used one of his long fingered ear-hands to snap for a drink. He still wore his little red cape, bright from a fresh laundering and now embroidered with the royal seal of Taforashia. "I only came by here because I heard there was a chimera around. I wouldn't have bothered if I knew it was you."
Zelgadis resigned himself to an evening that was already extremely stupid and only guaranteed to get worse. "Anyway, this is King Zangulus of Zoana. Zangulus, meet Prince Posel, crown prince of Taforashia, or Pokota if you don't care. I suggest not caring."
"Pr-Prince Posel? The engineering genius and sorcerer Prince Posel?" Zangulus repeated disbelievingly. "I heard he was transformed into an animal...but I thought he was a real animal, like a beastman. Th-this is, uh..."
"King Zangulus, of new Zoana?" Pokota pushed past Zelgadis to greet his fellow royal. "How do you know Sea Urchin Ye-Angst-A-Lot over here? Or did he capture and try to kill you, too?"
Zangulus gave Zelgadis a hearty clap on the back, then shook his hand with the pain. Stone muscles yield for no one. "Ow, well, we go way back."
We go way back seemed like an odd simplification, but it was hard to think of better words. Zelgadis considered that the act of dying together at the hands of the Hellmaster had forged its own bond, a shared soul-rending nightmare that confounded more basic notions like "comrade" or "weird guy that I recognize". They would always have that connection regardless of whether they ever crossed paths again. Maybe something like that merited a handshake after all.
He felt strangely ashamed by how he'd engaged his traveling companions-or, rather, how he hadn't. Not that Zelgadis had any desire to sit around talking. Most people were boring and narrow-minded, with nothing original to say. But Sylphiel had inadvertently reminded him that it could be useful to be the sort of person that others wanted to talk to. He wondered what else he might've learned had he seemed approachable.
It's not all my fault, said his more defensive self, which was still quite muscular. He wasn't good at conversations without a defined point or end goal. The only person with whom he'd ever felt comfortable making small talk was Amelia, and that was because she had worn him down with a million don't you think, Zelgadis-san?s that were somehow always sincerely interested in his perspective, whether it was about peppermint tea or pretty butterflies. But he would never be able to replicate that brute force approach. And everyone he'd traveled with had always been so-well, silly. He hadn't had anything in common with any of them. He didn't know how to relate to them or whatever bizarre things they cared about.
Zelgadis reeled himself out of his reverie and back into the bar, where Zangulus and Pokota had no such inner torments. They had already bonded over their shared woes of restoring kingdoms and were now swapping abbreviated life stories.
"Lone wolf mercenary swordsman, fell in love with a princess, here I am."
"Yeah, man. Rezo wrecked my body and ruined everything I love."
Nothing in common at all, Zelgadis thought, and went back to brooding.
xOxOxO
The Alliance of Coastal States' Audit Commission Subcommittee (ACSACS) produced their first report in record time, working around the clock to deliver the first copy directly to Amelia, who read each page with a hand clasped over her mouth. To see every allegation complete with sources, numbers, and witnesses was somehow even more dreadful than hearing it aloud. It was worse than anything she'd ever read in the most lurid dramatic stories. Written in the factual language of professional analysis, it became even more astonishing.
"This is so awful," she kept repeating, and held the pages closer so she could see them better. Ruvinagald Castle was a stately sight from the outside, but its interior was damp and humid, and prone to mold and mossy patches in its darker corners. Amelia could have sworn there was some kind of fog occurring inside the castle, and so she had a small Lighting spell glowing at the edge of her desk. "This is so awful...so shocking! This is-"
"-the apex of my career," said the report's commissioner, giving a satisfied tug on the ends of his candy pink cravat. "Shocking, yes, but think of how much work went into creating the most shocking report in modern history, in just a few days. Truly an incredible feat of scholarship... and project management," he added.
"You did an excellent job, Wizer-san," Amelia acknowledged, and made a mental note to offer royal commendations to his whole team. "But now that we have proof of these vile deeds, we have to tell more than the Alliance. We've got to tell the whole world!"
"No need to concern yourself with that. Demons and murders, a poisoned princess, a corrupt king, all in an idyllic island paradise, uncovered by a team of crack investigators and their fearless leader! Why, I wouldn't be surprised if it was adapted into an opera by the end of the year. I do hope they cast me as a bass..."
Amelia decided against objecting to this version of events. She had noticed some portions of the report, particularly about the brass demon, had been heavily redacted. But that was to be expected. After all, no nation would feel safer knowing Lina Inverse was getting mixed up in politics again. And Zelgadis-san would be so embarrassed to be a character in an opera, she thought. She tried to imagine what sort of arias his character would have. Probably very sad ones.
Beyond the stage, thinking of Zelgadis reminded her of the way he asked questions in situations like this. He was always skeptical, always concerned with loose ends. If Zelgadis-san were here now, he'd say… "So what's missing here?" Amelia asked. "What do we still not know?"
Wizer narrowed his eyes, but he looked pleased by the question. "We don't know who devised the setup with the brass demon, or how it even worked. One of the few remaining guild sorcerers claims an outsider from beyond the Desert of Destruction came to the king with a gem that turned bezoars into gold. The whole thing sounds much more akin to biological research than basic magic. The procedure itself sounds like nothing we've encountered, and our sorcerers are quite keen to understand it better."
Amelia shifted a bit, trying to avoid what she was sure was a probing look, but eased up when he didn't push it. Political connections, even good ones, were complicated.
"And…" Wizer examined his fingernails with a faraway look that implied he would rather think about his opera casting. "They're not sure why, but they found dozens of dead rats at your estate in Calliope."
"Rats?" Amelia repeated, confused.
"At any rate, my dear princess, I must be going. I haven't the time to rest on my laurels for even a day. A new investigation awaits the kingdom's leading inspector general!"
"What, already?"
"I'm afraid so. Unless you have an explanation for why the coasts have been mobbed with beasts and monsters as of late. We've even had mazoku sightings, or so I'm told." He rose and offered an ostentatious bow before he left.
She turned back to the report and shuddered despite the heat. Now that she had proof, she could finally deliver the dramatic speech of her dreams. Exposing truly wicked deeds, to an audience of fellow kings and queens and nobles? That was even better than an opera. Where to start? Her opening line had to be exactly right. These were words that could be transcribed by historians and passed down over generations. The Princess' Declaration of the Calamity in Calliope...no, never mind. Her job was not to worry about a title, but the best opening lines that would get everyone behind with helping Calliope in their hour of need.
As she debated whether to open with Leaders of the great Coastal States or My fellow lovers of justice and righteousness, she was jolted by loud, piercing screams from some distant place in the castle, and some ominous thuds. Amelia jumped up. "Don't be afraid, the crown of Seyruun is here!" she cried and took off, feeling only slightly guilty about procrastinating on her speech. Surely she could do a little punching and get back to work.
The first sign of something unusually wrong was the thickening mist as she ran down stairs and across wet halls, towards the screams. Mist, she knew, was not supposed to appear indoors, and certainly not during summers on the coast. Worst of all, the mist had a specific astral funk to it, like waking up with a bitter taste in your mouth.
She found the fog's thickest point in the castle barracks, where several knights panted behind a heavy, hazy cloud. One man, half-nude and splattered in blood, lay wheezing against a wall.
"What's happening here?!" Amelia asked. "Do you need healing?"
The bloodied knight shook his head and wiped away tears, the kind produced by sheer terrified instinct. "This is...I know it sounds crazy," the man said, shaking his head, "but I took off my chestplate and it just...came out!"
"What did?"
He pointed, and Amelia barely saw it: something writhing in the air, no bigger than a strand of bucatini and luminous white, curving as it moved like an earthworm. It darted away with startling speed and Amelia gave chase, down a long, dark corridor towards the castle's keep. Her footsteps were dull and muffled against wet stone.
"Elmekia Lance!" she shouted, hurling the spell like a throwing dagger that sliced through the fog. The worm creature effortlessly slithered out of the way. It seized around and flung a sharp, scythe-like arc of cold astral light at her. Amelia ducked out of the way but she felt a profound pain in her chest, as sudden and crushing as heartbreak, and fell to her knees. That wasn't a spell! Is this a mazoku?
Fighting a powerful urge to sit and sob it out, Amelia leapt back up and kept running after the monster as it wriggled away. "You can't dodge justice! Elmekia Flame!"
She rounded a corner and found herself in a great foyer, full of armored statues and red carpets. Amelia narrowly avoided crashing into a company of uniformed musicians playing the mighty brass fanfare that signified the presence of Seyruun's royalty. Through the mist, she could see the outlines of an immense figure, as rough and steadfast a mountain-
"Daddy!"
"A-MEL-IA!" came her father's booming voice, loud enough to shake the dragon gods from their slumber. He gave her name three syllables, like Zelgadis and Gourry most often did, whereas Lina usually said it with four. Seyruun's royalty used ancient texts in dead languages to find exotic names like Amelia and Christopher, but after thousands of years no one really knew how they were pronounced.
Amelia vaulted directly into his waiting arms, each as wide around as her torso and bristling with coarse hair beneath the sleeves of his blinding white thawb. For a blissful fraction of a second she felt his incredible radiating warmth, the incomparable strength and courage she grew up adoring, but they both forcefully broke the embrace as quickly as it happened. Hugs had to wait when there was villainy afoot.
Prince Phil held Amelia in his outstretched arms as easily as an infant. She rested in her father's grip, her hands on his forearms, feet dangling high above the ground.
"Amelia! They said there were beasts here!"
"Yes! Be careful," and she nodded her head to the light creature, now wending its way in the air towards a staircase leading down from the foyer, "I think it's a mazoku!"
"A mazoku? That tiny thing?" He lowered her down with as much care and delicacy as he had strength. "Well, all right then! Let's go!"
Some soldiers had assembled for combat, but even Ruvinagald's best trained fighters seemed at a loss when it came to battle against a demonic floating noodle. Phil and Amelia had no such qualms and charged ahead and down the stairs.
"It's still too hard to see...Burst Rondo!" Amelia leapt atop the stairs' steep railing and broke into a run. The flame balls dissipated only a few stray fog patches, leaving wide streaks of pearly vapor. "It's no use! Wind Brid!"
Phil stomped ahead of her with the force of a loose boulder. Amelia cast a strong Dimilar Wind that could've knocked down a house, but it only gave her dangerously massive father more momentum as he ran. They rushed down countless stairs until they stumbled into the castle's laundry facilities, steaming hot and reeking of lye. The chambermaids, accustomed to all kinds of mysterious fumes, perverts, and (most intimidating of all) turmeric stains, didn't miss a beat. They screamed at the intruder and whipped at it with towels.
Now facing a hostile crowd, the monster almost seemed frightened, and quivered in midair. Amelia saw her opportunity and began chanting. "Bram Blazer!" Her spell just glanced the monster, but it was enough for Phil to take over.
"Delicate Touch of Nuanced Understanding!" Phil bellowed, grasping the mazoku between his fingertips and flinging it into the floor with earth-shattering force. The beast shrieked in fury on both the astral plane and the physical one, and let out more swaths of light. Amelia felt her bones shake and the same urge to cry again. Around her, many of the maids gasped and fell to their knees, totally powerless.
Phil stood strong, apparently unfazed. He just glowered down at the little flickering band of light. "You fiend! How dare you attack the pure and just working women who form the backbone of all strong societies? Do you admit your wrongdoing?!"
The mazoku howled, perhaps disputing the characterization of the fearless washerwomen and their colorful expletives as "pure".
"Very well, you've consigned yourself to your doom! Affirmative Consent Open Palm Strike!"
He slapped it down hard in a flash of kaleidoscoping light. When he raised his gloved hand again, it had disappeared, leaving only faint traces of ozone in its wake. The magical mist around them began to ebb.
Amelia looked around at the maids, variously wiping their eyes and embracing. They looked physically unharmed, but the fear and helplessness in their eyes was obvious. No more laundry was getting done until everyone had had a good cry. What kind of mazoku was that? she wondered. She had the unpleasant and unbidden idea of asking Xellos, and an even less pleasant idea of him seeking her out. Goodbye for now, he'd said…had he been planning to seek her out later? Well, it would have to wait until after she presented the report to the Alliance. Not even a mazoku would get between her and justice for the people of Calliope.
xOxOxO
"...and that, " Pokota finished proudly, "is what I'd do if I had a human body again!"
Some scarred thugs in close listening distance looked on in disgust. Zelgadis, horrified, took a few moments to compose himself. Maybe he shouldn't have expected any better from someone whose biological development had stopped as a teenage boy. "No, you wouldn't," he said at last.
"No, you couldn't," Zangulus corrected. "Trust me, it's not possible unless she's right around your height. Anybody got a quill? I'll draw a diagram."
"Please don't."
Pokota jeered, gesturing angry thumbs down with both sets of hands. He dunked his entire face in his glass of whiskey and enthusiastically shook his fuzzy head back and forth. It wasn't clear whether his unusual form could metabolize alcohol, but he was apparently prepared to die trying. "Barkeep, another round! And a quill if you've got one!"
"Ignore him," Zelgadis said, striking the table with a would-be commanding gesture he'd learned from Prince Phil. "We'll be having a lot of water."
xOxOxO
"I know you know better!"
Father and daughter sat in Amelia's fusty suite, where they had finished going over Wizer's report. They'd established an outline, a base list of requirements, and expectations for future engagements that could restore Calliope. Phil was unsparing in his demands; Amelia assumed a lot of her father's creative recommendations for punishing the people who had tried to harm her would be edited out by the foreign minister. Human arms couldn't even bend that way, after all.
He was just as unsparing in his scolding, and now that their work was done, Amelia had to sit through a harsh lecture on the importance of personal responsibility.
"...and you have to be more mindful of yourself!"
"I am mindful!" Amelia insisted. "It just...slipped," and as she said it she realized how ridiculous it sounded, like she'd forgotten to pick up onions at the market. Most people, even very oblivious people, would not ignore mysteriously numb legs and aching muscles for so long. "I was thinking of other things," she added bashfully.
"What foolishness! Every true hero must be their own hero first! Don't you remember?" He picked up the hairbrush on her dresser. After her mother's murder, Phil had taken upon as many maternal duties as he could, although he wasn't sure what all those were (Amelia had never heard of moisturizer until she met Lina). But he did know that children's hair needed to be brushed, and so he had dutifully taken to brushing the tangles and sticky messes out of her hair every night before bed. Phil had invented a little rhyme to accompany this ritual, using words simple enough for a four-year-old, and they'd recited it every night until Amelia had grown old enough to do it herself.
"Of course I do," Amelia replied, shocked and slightly hurt at the mere suggestion that she might not. Even as an adult, she still said it to herself every time she brushed her hair. Phil lightly touched the hairbrush to the top of her head, and they repeated it in unison.
"In everything I do and say,
I am just and brave and strong,
I work harder every day
Doing good and righting wrong.
With every kick and punch I give
Justice, love, and harmony:
Blessings meant for all that live-
For Seyruun, for the world, and me."
Amelia beamed up at him. He was right, because her father was always right: she was deserving of love and justice like everyone else. He gave her a light but approving pat on the back on the shoulder and left, wisdom thus imparted.
The Lighting spell winked out, and Amelia didn't bother to cast a new one. Instead she let out a little sigh and started to brush her hair, thinking of the rhyme. She found herself fixating on the phrase all that live and the strangeness of being a living thing, the way life itself was so different for things like mazoku, and that invisible and maybe-not-so-impermeable boundary between life and death.
Amelia had died once. She had been fighting, struggling, desperate to hold on, only to...not be anymore. All the pain and suffering ended. She had ceased to exist. It hadn't been bad. It hadn't been anything.
And then she came back, eyes wide open, with the indescribable thrill of new and amazing life within her, and two words that reverberated through her entire soul, in a voice that was-her mother's? Yes, her mother's voice, but infinitely deeper and richer, the sound of her mother's voice layered with the manifold of the universe: keep believing.
Keep believing, commanded the almighty voice that was both her mother and The Mother Of All Things, and so she did. Keep believing was why Amelia couldn't doubt that justice would always prevail, that someday her sister would come home and they'd all be united again as a family. The sound of keep believing in her heart was why she was certain that her best friends had to return from the sea of chaos, because she knew the source of darkness itself could not consume Lina Inverse and Gourry Gabriev. More privately, keep believing was also her mantra for a special secret story, unfolding bit by precious bit, that she kept even closer to her heart.
Keep believing led her to ask if Zelgadis would come to Seyruun, and it encouraged her when he turned her down. She kept believing right up til the first time she'd received a miserable self-pitying letter detailing twenty-two failed cure attempts. Her belief was rewarded again when he had shown up in Seyruun not even six months later, bashfully holding her bracelet in both hands and muttering about a jailbreak in Bezeld.
Keep believing was not the same as wait around, of course. A royal of Seyruun was nobody's wallflower. Besides, what was faith without works? Amelia never gave up. She pushed ahead in everything part of her life, doing her best to take every disappointment in stride however much they hurt. Progress, she knew, happened in fits and starts. For every setback there was a new beginning; for every bad temper, a teeny kindness just for her. And no matter how many times he set out in search of his cure, he always came back.
Sometimes it felt so ridiculously slow that she wondered whether it was all in her head, but then she thought about what had happened in six years (six years in which they'd become closer in age, thanks to a strange quirk of chimera biology). Zelgadis had become her closest friend, someone who offered his arm to cling to in spooky dungeons, a companion who lightly rested his hand on her shoulder in a gesture that meant it's fine, I'm here. Zelgadis, the man who'd loudly eschewed loyalty to anything except himself, had knelt before her father on her behalf. It was amazing, really, even if he did call her a job. So what if it was slow and awkward? Glaciers were slow and awkward too, but who would deny their majesty?
Keep believing, she reminded herself. She had to keep believing that she could help the people who needed her, that she could have a happy family again, that everyone deserved justice, love, and harmony, and she had a role to play in bringing those things to others. And if she wanted to care for others, she had to care for herself, too.
xOxOxO