On certain lonely evenings, when the sunsets took on the rich shades of spendthrift irises, Amelia remembered a particular similar sky along the road from Vezendi. It had been a gorgeous backdrop to the toughest battle of her life, when she and Zelgadis went toe to toe against Gduza and Dugld.
Amelia was no stranger to bitter defeat, but that night was the first time she'd ever truly feared it. Flat on her back, helpless in the suffocating grip of Gduza's monstrous hair, Amelia had never been more petrified. The mazoku loomed over her, void-eyes gleaming as they drank in her terror. Its coiled hair tightened and squeezed her limbs until they bruised.
Something had snapped, and then Amelia's excruciating pain became nothing at all. It reminded her of Phibrizzo crushing that little golden marble, down to her same desperate ferocity to live, live, to force air through her lungs and scream defiantly, to cling to her place on this earth as long as she could.
I guess I'll start by cutting you into slices, girl!
And then they disappeared, sucked into a void, and Gduza's long tendrils disappeared from around Amelia's broken body. She was left to stare at the sunset above, bold and spectacular and demanding she marvel at the red-orange-purple hues that was almost been the setting of her violent death, one last brilliant symphony of light before the sun set on Vezendi and Amelia, too. She didn't want to look anymore, but its glowing streaks followed her when she closed her eyes.
From a distance she heard Amelia! and her heart swelled.
Zelgadis-san! Relief coursed through her, incompletely. When she tried to sit up to see him her body did not obey. Her arms wobbled and burned as though they'd been frozen in snow. Amelia collapsed again, hitting her head into the hard ground. The sky seemed to reproach her for spurning its splendor.
She heard a blunt thunk and another thunk, one after another, as Zelgadis crawled over on his elbows. At last he was looking down at Amelia from the edge of her sight, like all those night watches on warm nights when she drifted off and awakened to Zelgadis prodding her with a branch.
Amelia, he said again, in a low, husky voice that she imagined in any other context but this one. He was still sideways over her, and she could only see part of his face and the dirt that creased along his perfect cheekbones. Are you okay?
Amelia guessed Gduza's last viselike hold had severed her spinal cord. Her arms and upper body hardly moved, while nothing from her sternum down moved at all. She was paralyzed.
I'm fine. How are you?
Fine. He coughed, raspy and pitiful; she smelled the blood trickling out of his mouth. Amelia looked back at the sunset, already softer on her eyes as it melted into lavender. She tried to extend her spirit, weak as it was, to feel the life in the untroubled grass and its universe of bugs and all the creatures in the soil below.
Magic was not about conjuring forces out of thin air, but rearranging powers that already existed. Just as a Recovery spell took strength from the target it was recovering, white magic could only borrow life that was present. It was all one cosmic balance, a tilting seesaw on a fulcrum with infinite life on one end and silence on the other. No matter what sort of healing spell you cast, however small it seemed, the balance would shift.
I can cast Resurrection soon. I just need to rest some more first.
Don't rush.
Zelgadis-san...don't be surprised...but I'm not going anywhere.
He sputtered and wheezed. With considerable effort Amelia rolled her head to the left to see him better. Zelgadis still held himself up by the elbows, arms folded atop each other. One side of his mouth edged up just a bit; it was the same side of his mouth where blood trickled in a steady red line. Amelia beamed and held the moment like she could caress it in her palms, then turned away again. When her eyelids fluttered closed she was surprised by his sharp bark of Hey! Stay up!
Unable to move, unable to heal themselves, and forced to resist the seductive touch of sleep lest they never return, they settled on talking. It was not a conversation, not really, just words in service of staying alive. Over hours, as sunset yielded to black and magnificent night, they traded spells, descriptions of paintings, and negotiated Amelia's ranked list of all the best ways to prepare octopus. Zelgadis walked her through tedious swordfighting exercises and how to detect surveillance. Eventually he resorted to reciting religious songs, some of which Amelia thought were beautiful. The one about having hope in sadness captivated her so much she protested when he stopped.
What's the next line, Zelgadis-san? What's after 'suspir lacrime m'avanza'?
He did not answer. He breathed in short, shallow gasps. Amelia frantically shifted towards him, ignoring the stabbing pain that jolted her neck. Zelgadis lay with his head on the ground.
Zelgadis-san?
His astral presence was withering, a lonely ember huddled against the wind, no stronger than a caterpillar's but bluer than sapphires. Only Zelgadis's spirit was that shade of blue. It was a blue that pushed you away from it. It was the color of crankiness.
Zelgadis-san!
Amelia squeezed every muscle she could move and began the spell. But she had used every last drop of magic energy in fighting Gduza and had nothing left for Resurrection. She appealed to the vast earth that had peacefully borne them and would just as peacefully take their lifeless bodies again when it was time.
Desperate and without remorse, Amelia seized every bit of energy she could reach, draining the grass and stopping the hearts of the voles in their burrows. It was not enough, so she harvested the whole field. She took the dappled red skin of spitzenburg apples and the hearty trees that bore them. She saw the generations of farmers that had first planted there, good men that had supported families on the trees she transmuted into cold and blackened husks.
A pale glow blossomed around her clumsy hands. Amelia's mind provided the control her body could not as she manipulated, compressed, and focused that life force into a stream. Finally Resurrection dawned and burst forth in glorious shining circles. Power arced up the part of her back that could still move, and ebbed away in tingling sparks.
Then there was soft movement, rustling and shuffling. A sharp inhale, a disbelieving gasp (had he seen what she'd done?). More rustling.
You… Zelgadis murmured. She felt him shaking. This one was going to be good.
...idiot!
Now Zelgadis knelt next to her. His breaths were short again but they were strong and furious. You idiot! You were supposed to cast Resurrection on yourself first!
Amelia basked in his anger, always brash and showy yet harmless underneath. She wanted to wrap it around her and roll in it. It was the only emotion he allowed himself to show, maybe the only emotion he allowed himself to feel. Stop smiling! he demanded, and of course she could not. Stop laughing! You idiot!
I was worried, she said, smiling up into the darkness. Nothing else mattered anymore because this would not be the place where Zelgadis-san died. She thought about telling him that, but worried he'd kill himself anyway just to spite her. That was the sort of thing he would do when he was mad.
You idiot! He slammed the ground beside her ear over and over. For a while Zelgadis was quiet but for his panting breaths. When he finally spoke it was strangled with anguish:
I can't save you!
Who said you had to, Amelia thought. She could have looked at him, but knew he wouldn't want her to, and so she relished in the night sky and its billions of twinkling stars. There was a long cloudy pink streak amidst the blackness. Some astronomers called it ethereal miasma, while others thought it was part of the Lord of Nightmares, the infinite sea containing them all. Amelia liked to imagine that all the worlds were just a wrinkle in Chaos's pretty pink dress.
I'll be fine, Zelgadis-san. Just let me rest a while.
Amelia woke up to the sky obscured behind crowded leaves on soaring trees. A familiar smell of warm petrichor hung right under her nose. Birds chirped in the soft light of a new day.
Where...?
Just a little ways over, to the forest. We weren't safe out there.
She wondered how he had moved her. A Raywing bubble, most likely, to best protect her snapped and shattered bones. But it would have been fitting-and annoying-had he carried her all that way and she hadn't been able to appreciate it.
Recovery? he asked, which was how he phrased are you still about to die?
Amelia looked away because she did not want to say I think so.
Can you cast Resurrection again?
Amelia was skeptical, because Resurrection was not like a Fireball, but she understood the urgency. It wasn't safe for her to be immobile while they were surrounded by lesser demon hordes and Ceiphied only knew what else. At least there were far more living things in the forest for drawing energy. She reminded herself to keep believing and tried to take a deep breath. Yes, she could. As she tried to move her arms she discovered they were under a thick, itchy cloak that left red marks on her skin.
The second Resurrection was easier than the first. This time, she could take power from so many creatures, stopping before she destroyed them, and concentrate on her healing. Vertebrae and nerves snapped and fused together as divine wisdom had designed. She guided vessels back in their proper place, like stringing a violin. New feeling lit up her toes. Only people who have reconstructed their own blood and bones can understand the sheer awe, the mind-body-spirit trinity of recreating yourself out of living souls. Amelia was awash in giddiness as she shifted the balance towards beautiful bursting life again-
-and stumbled too far in the other direction.
While Resurrection called upon the power of surrounding life, it still required a caster with significant skill and magical capacity, and her capacity had run out. She had cast one of the most demanding spells in white magic, twice, with no food or water, after nearly a full day when she had begun at the brink of death. Her body came at the price of her spirit. It was subtracting past zero, a debt she couldn't pay. When Amelia felt a fast-spreading warmth in her chest she knew it would not heal her, but consume her. That which decays all things was coming for her just as it had the trees in the apple orchard. And it was fair.
She slumped over to one side, fell onto the ground, and lay there. With any luck Zelgadis-san wouldn't let her die with dirt up her nose.
Daddy, she mumbled.
What?
...Daddy's going to be mad...
Her sight blurred just as she felt Zelgadis yank her into his arms. Annoying, Amelia thought, nestling into a familiar spot where she knew her cheek would fit against him without hitting any sharp rocks. She was grateful for the chance to do it one last time.
Something faint thudded around her, so muffled and distant she felt more than heard it. Amelia could sense it quickening out of control. Lina-san would have to tell him to drink less coffee.
Stay with me, Amelia. His voice rose at the end, an anxiety nothing like his typical confidence.
Even as she was gently led to that great dark well of all memories, where timeless loves and mighty empires alike coalesce into drops, Amelia waited behind. With me, he said. Never mind that she knew he didn't mean it like that, it was still nice to hear. Yes, she decided, she could hang on a little while longer. She wanted Zelgadis to know she'd stayed with him.
The next time Amelia woke up she was in a clearing somewhere, propped up against a log with her cloak folded under her head. Pokota sat on the ground beside her, pushing blackberries into her mouth with a skewer. He shoved a berry at her and she greedily sucked it down.
Amelia took in every part of the sunlight, the emerald-green grass, the tart blackberry juice. There was a commotion from a little ways away that was too elaborate for her to understand at first. Based on the way Pokota flailed and jumped around, she guessed he didn't want her to. She pushed him aside with a gentle poke to his belly.
Further off Lina and Zelgadis stood at odds, radiating rage. Gourry had interposed himself between them, to no use; Lina hollered over his shoulder into Zelgadis's sneering face. That was how they talked when they cared.
What the hell were you thinking? she yelled.
Gourry held Lina back with his forearm. Come on, we've had a real rough night, we're all tired-
But Lina wasn't done. You let her starve! She bared her fangs and snarled in the way she sometimes did when she danced on the edge of a bad impulse. Did you forget real humans need to eat and drink?
The scuffle erupted as Zelgadis stepped forward; Lina jutted her chin out, daring him to hit her. If Gourry hadn't shoved them apart and yelled something about digging graves it might really have come to blows. Instead they stalked off in their respective directions to cool down before they got back to the business of death, the work that never ended for her and her friends.
Amelia was not surprised when later Zelgadis stiffly informed her that he would see her to Seyruun's border and then part ways. He needed to search for his cure, he said, and she understood. She didn't feel ready to think about everything that had happened between the field and the forest. She had only hoped that the skies would always be as kind to him as they were that day, when they spent so long at the edge of not-being. It was a little hope she held in her heart whenever he left.
xOxOxO
Yalain's image as an idyllic winter wonderland didn't quite hold up at close range. There were gaps in the cobblestone streets, angry leaflets with violent language plastered all over bridges and walls, and the duke's castle cast a sinister shadow over it all. But looking outward at the serene crater lake or straight up where the snow fell in fat flakes, it was easy to forget anything might be wrong.
Lina and Gourry could find information in the usual way, going to pubs and chatting with locals. Zelgadis didn't want to remove the winter gear that hid his face and hair, so he stayed outside and let the island speak for itself. It spoke through the posters (Reject Blasphemy and Smash The Grief Machine! were two popular slogans) as well as the clubs and knives visible through windows. It spoke through vacant stalls at the market where fishermen showed off empty baskets and the burning barrels where vagrants kept warm.
They decamped to a narrow alley to compare notes and thaw their frozen fingers over the flames of a barrel. Pokota, tired of staying unconscious, poked his head out from the thick burlap satchel hanging over Lina's shoulder.
"So whaddya think the 'grief machine' is?" Lina asked, looking at a flyer she'd received from a young man with a loud voice and a lot of complaints. "It sounds like a nickname for something everybody hates. An industry, maybe?"
Zelgadis shook his head. "It's most likely a metaphor for an arm of the state. Police or tax collectors."
"I think it's a band," Pokota said.
"Or it's an actual machine," said Gourry. Lina squinted at him so hard her eyebrow slid up into her forehead, but she had a hint of a grin, as though she were annoyed in an affectionate way. Gourry's worst traits were literal-mindedness and being a bit slow on the uptake, which was about as close to flawless as anyone could be. It wasn't surprising that Lina found it endearing in some way. On the other hand, Gourry's ability to endure Lina at her worst was a miracle of the universe. There were more intact Claire Bibles than there were people who could put up with Lina in one of her moods.
"I guess we have to figure it out. We'll keep asking around town. Zel, you take Pokota and do your sneaky thing or whatever. We'll meet up back at the inn later tonight."
"Why do I-" Zelgadis started, but Lina and Gourry were already headed towards a pub. He was left holding the bag, and the bag had his least favorite living thing in it. He sighed and slung it hard over his shoulder, letting Pokota slam hard into his back.
"Hey, ow!" Pokota clawed at him through the satchel. "Why does everyone act like I'm a burden?"
"Be quiet unless you want us to get in trouble." Upon second thought, Zelgadis figured he should have rephrased it. If anybody wanted him to get in trouble, it was Pokota. He tied the satchel's straps around his belt and leapt onto an awning.
For a tolerable interval Zelgadis could focus on his footing as he dashed along the icy rooftops, crawling and sprinting in turns. The buildings were so close together he could cover most of the town without coming down once. It would have been almost as easy as walking if not for the castle, the only place where anyone could spot someone scaling roofs as nimble as a hunting spider. Well, he was glad it wasn't so easy. Where was the challenge in that?
He took in his bird's-eye view of Yalain, its quaint beauties and ugly truths alike adorned with delicate white.
"Can't we get some food?" Pokota whisper-whined. "I'm starving."
"Too bad. You should have asked Lina to save you something."
"You wanted me to ask Lina to spare food?"
Zelgadis grunted; this was a fair point. "I'm not stopping."
"You're too proud to get some fried meat somewhere? I'm gonna starve!"
"It's not pride." On the infinite list of things that were unbearable about Pokota, near the top would have to be his assumption that Zelgadis was the one with the problem, and that he could start living a normal life if he just wanted to. Maybe it was wrong to expect a loathsome arrogant princeling to know any better, but the least a loathsome arrogant princeling could do was keep his mouth shut. "These people aren't used to chimeras, and I don't want to cause an incident. Don't you remember what happened when we got off the boat?"
"Only that it was funny." Zelgadis could imagine Pokota's smug expression and felt his blood pressure rising. He took cover behind a tall steeple, sitting down along the ridge. "So what if some people freak out about how you look? Just punch 'em in the face with your rock fist. That's what I'd do!"
Punch them in the face, as though all his problems would be solved if he became the beast Rezo had made him. "You don't understand."
"You're right, I don't! Oh boo hoo, my big red priest daddy made me super-strong and super-fast like I wanted, guess I'll spend the rest of my life bitching about it, even though it's the only reason I'm good for anything and I have any friends. Boo hoo."
His last vestige of self-control snapped and he snatched Pokota out of the satchel, seizing both sets of arms together so that the goddamned pest was pinned. It was tempting, so tempting, to just yank as hard as he could and let cotton filling go everywhere.
"It wasn't a gift!" Zelgadis was too enraged to care about hiding. He gripped and shook Pokota, who glared back with his glass button eyes. "I'm part demon!"
"I'm a stuffed bunny with no dick!" Pokota yelled back. The sound disappeared into the falling snow. Zelgadis, either despite or because of his blind wrath, couldn't think of a reply. They stared at each other, breathless and incensed.
"I didn't cry about it because I had to look after Taforashia. But...I don't get to look human, mask or not," Pokota mumbled, looking away. "The only person who's ever treated me like a human was Phil. And nobody's ever called me handsome."
Handsome pierced something in Zelgadis's mind and lodged there, pulsing harder than a migraine. He dropped Pokota hard and sat with his arms crossed over his knees, turning the word over in his mind. What was it other than a word he heard sometimes from Amelia?
Although Zelgadis had convinced himself he remembered everything, he was aware some of his memories had taken on a curious void. A layer of experience was absent, some sensation or awareness replaced by an obscuring fog. He could sense the fog when he thought of Rezo, Zolf and Rodimus in their last moments, nights alone on the road, Amelia and Seyruun. Yet he was beginning to think he didn't need whatever the fog had taken. He had been wholly in thrall to Rezo, once. A blank space had to be better than anything Rezo would have evoked in him.
"This is pointless," Zelgadis said. "We'd better find something or else Lina will get on us for wasting time."
For once Pokota did not say anything else and tucked himself back in the sack. Together they took off along the rooftops before a few assembled townspeople went to find the source of the strangest argument they'd ever heard.
Zelgadis followed the roofs to the outskirts of town, into a crumbling slum with old cottages huddled together along the lake. Scarce chimneys belched pungent smoke that ran so thick Zelgadis went back down to the streets. There were more angry flyers on the walls, with more extreme suggestions about what to do with heretics who dared to use the power of the gods. MAGIC IS DEVILRY, proclaimed scraggly letters carved over a stone arch.
The anti-sorcerer sentiment was so intense that Zelgadis would have turned around had he not seen a familiar hulking figure in a gritty bar. He did a double-take, but sure enough, it was the fishmonger Eogre, taking up at least three people's worth of space near the door. The other knights Hans and Franz sat to his left.
Aren't they supposed to be undercover with the delegation? It occurred to Zelgadis that he should tell them what he'd overheard in the outfitter's shop, but had no discreet way of doing so, and they weren't supposed to be in direct contact. The best solution was a play of sorts, the kind of mock encounters that spies used to trade information and meet up in public. A fake pickpocketing seemed like a good way to draw them out of the bar and they could chase him someplace more isolated.
He went into the bar, which stunk of tobacco and the dill-garlic paste that was popular anywhere people stretched a single pot of soup over a week, and sat down beside Eogre. No one in such a miserable old watering hole batted an eye at a masked man with a sword and a bag over his shoulder. Now it was just a matter of a conspicuous bump and sprinting outside.
Or it would have been, had Eogre not retaliated to the bump by slamming his face down into the bar.
A murmur rippled across the room. The vilest rogues in the Outer World jumped up from their seats. Then, finally, a throaty cry from a barfly who lived for this moment:
"Bar fight!"
Metal clanked and clattered, stools scraped against the ground, utensils flew. All at once every patron went from snarling over whiskey to swinging their callused fists and upending tables. Zelgadis heard more niche obscenities in two seconds than in the past five years. He ducked as a spitoon sailed past him.
"That was the pickpocket protocol, not the bar fight!" Zelgadis hissed to Eogre, who waved off a plate smashed over his head.
"Sure, but it's cold out there, and I just ordered more beer. Besides, as long as we keep scrappin', we can actually talk and nobody'll notice."
With irritation and a bit of humility Zelgadis remembered that spies were good at following orders, not rules. They were improvisers by nature. "Surprised you recognized me so fast," he said, dropping his satchel and trying to nudge it under a stool. He hoped Pokota had the self-control to resist a brawl where his presence could get them all killed. On the other hand, Pokota was an awful lot like Lina.
"Sure, it's that…" Franz used a fork to parry an eager drunkard with a pocketknife. "That haughty, stick-up-your-ass thing you've always got going on. Like you're a dramatic actor who doesn't know it's a comedy. I could spot that from anywhere."
This appraisal assuaged any guilt Zelgadis might have felt about hurling a tankard back at him. "You're in trouble. We heard something about people planning to attack the delegation, and soon."
"We know. Heard it from a weird greaseball who came skulking around trying to buy our crests."
Guess the "antiquities dealer" isn't just trafficking in relics. As he considered this, towards the door he saw the only two people who could find mayhem and monsters as easily as a meal. Lina and Gourry took in the scene, which had now expanded to passionate grappling matches and someone attempting to load a crossbow, and exchanged questioning looks.
"Seems rude not to, right?" Lina said.
"Yeah…"
They shrugged and leapt into the fray. While Lina seemed happy to knock around ne'er-do-wells around for no reason, Gourry fought like a gentleman, throwing and repelling punches on his strong forearms with a genial courtesy. "Oops, was that too hard?" he called after two men he tossed halfway across the bar. The barkeep shook a knife at him."Sorry! This is all in good fun, right?"
Zelgadis had been trying to figure that out for himself. He noticed a number of people in the bar wore red and white armbands, and he had a suspicion it wasn't support for an athletic club. "Say, Gourry," he asked, trying to edge his way in the swordsman's direction, "did you guys find out anything about that grief machine?"
"As a matter of fact," and Gourry's delight was apparent, "they're setting it up now at some shrine!"
"What…? It's a real machine?"
Gourry frowned. "I'm allowed to be right sometimes," he muttered.
Yes, Gourry could be right, and Zelgadis could at times tolerate being wrong, but it was another thing altogether for both conditions to be true simultaneously. That would mean Gourry might be smarter than him in some ways, and that couldn't be right. Gourry could be stronger, more capable, a better swordsman, and of course better-looking, but smarter?
Zelgadis turned around right as Hans clocked him in the face with a stool. It shattered into pieces that stuck in spiky fragments on his hood. "Wow!" Hans said, whistling. "Always wanted to do that. You really are stone, huh?"
"Did you hear about the machine?"
"The grief thing? Yeah, we're supposed to go see it soon. They say it's based on a white magic that cures sadness. You know, I was born and raised in Seyruun, and I've never heard of anything like that."
Neither had Zelgadis, who had researched every white magic spell known to man. If there was a white magic that could stop sadness, no one in the world would be unhappy. Moreover, magic just didn't work that way. But isn't that what they say about creating gold?
"Too bad Amelia's not here," Gourry observed as he tucked an unconscious man into an empty keg. "She cleans up with this hand-to-hand stuff."
He was right, nobody went for a scrap like Amelia. Amelia's love of fighting, like her talent for martial arts and so many other things about her, made no sense. She had always been tiny. Now an adult, she was at most two inches taller than Lina, who was by all standards pocket-sized. Range weapons would have been a far more logical choice. But "logic" had never been a high priority for the Seyruun royal family. Phil didn't see his daughter's size as an obstacle to her success, and neither did Amelia.
For whatever reason, justice- and order-loving Amelia relished a good brawl. She didn't always win her fights, but she always tried. And she refused to be helpless. (Zelgadis recalled a night when bandits had attacked their camp, and Amelia had sprinted out of the tent in her underwear and a hair wrap. He remembered Lina yelling "put on some clothes!" and Amelia yelling back "true justice can't be covered up!". The gray fog in his mind got quite thick after that.)
Glass broke and men screamed curses amidst a new, more frightening commotion. Whoever possessed the crossbow had gotten it working, and now they wielded a violent potential that far outstripped the boundaries of a good-natured bar fight. As people stampeded for the exit, arrows went with deadly force into the walls, the floor, the ceiling. One arrow impaled Zelgadis's satchel, abandoned under the bar. Zelgadis remembered the cheap jab about how he had no friends or talent before becoming a chimera and decided not to worry. Not like Pokota has nerve endings anyway...or organs...
By the time the crossbow owner had been wrested to the ground, there were less than a dozen conscious people left inside. Hans, Franz, and Eogre had left, perhaps sensing a threat to their undercover status. Gourry nibbled at an abandoned chicken wing. Lina had both legs hooked around a rafter and hung upside-down, her bright auburn hair waving like a cape. Other men looked around in bewilderment, unsure what had happened to their melee.
A handsome young man with black curls and a powerful jaw jumped onto the bar. His red armband had faded but stood out against his jacket. "You!" he said in a voice that longed to lead ragtag armies from behind barricades. Zelgadis had possessed that voice once, years ago, when he fantasized how Rezo's gospel might sweep the world. "Everyone who's still standing should be at the ice temple two days from now. We'll tell you why when you get there."
Zelgadis looked at the man, his armband, the dingy bar in a poor little neighborhood so neglected that the authorities didn't care about stopping a fight, and the mysterious magic on top of it all. It was all too complicated, just the way he liked it. He decided he wanted to be there regardless.