Lina grabbed Gourry's arm and smiled as they walked away from the nursery as she started to look forward to their first night in what could be their new home. They rounded the corner as he put his hand over hers and asked, "So, any plans for…?"
But before he could finish speaking the hallway started to expand as they started to move forward impossibly fast. Lina knew in a flash what was happening. You don't forget what it is like to be pulled into a different space. The bottom fell from Lina's stomach as she said, "No, no!"
But how to stop it? The last time this happened they were with Milgasea and Memphis. And neither of them could stop Deep Sea Dolphin from moving them to a different space! If it was impossible for a golden dragon and an elf to stop the process, how were they supposed to do it? But there had to be a way!
Before Lina could even so much as formulate a plan she and Gourry landed in a barren wasteland. "T-this looks like the place where we fought Luke!" Gourry said as his voice raised in pitch.
Lina felt an icy hand grip her heart as she started chanting. She was here with Gourry. And the twins were at the cottage!
"That won't work." Naga said as she approached them from behind, "I've tried it, over and over again."
Lina ignored her and finished her spell. But Naga was right. The dove was summoned, but it flew to the sky and off to the horizon. It did not return them to normal space. "There has to be a way out of here!" Lina said as she turned and saw that in addition to Naga, Rick, Connie, Wanda and the cook were also there. Which, hopefully, meant that Sylphiel, Marlena and Moe were at the cottage.
"If there is, I haven't found one." Naga replied, but a lot of her swagger was gone. Lina didn't have too much time to think about it. She needed to know that her babies were safe and would stay safe!
"Where's the Mazoku who brought us here?" Lina demanded to know as she looked around. The surest way to get back to the cottage would be to defeat the Mazuko who had created the strange space, "Come out! I'm ready to fight!"
"No one has come out to fight." Naga said as her voice trembled. "Not once. Whoever brought us here does not want to fight."
There was a whoosh, followed by a popping sound as Marlena materialized ahead of them. Lina ran up to her, "Have you seen my babies? Are they okay?" she asked.
But Marlena was panicking. "What happened? Where am I?"
"Answer my question first!" Lina demanded as the rest of the group caught up with her, "Have you seen my babies?"
But Marlena shook her head, "No, I was with Sylphiel and we were trying to get to the nursery. But then…wait, they tried to take Sylphiel but she's still there, I think."
"Okay," Gourry said, though his voice lacked the quiet strength it usually possessed, "Okay, Sylphiel is there. So is Moe. Two strong people are there with them."
People who aren't me! Lina thought in anguish as she gritted her teeth. Gourry suddenly looked at her, as though expecting her to come up with a plan. But she had nothing! She couldn't even attempt to summon the Mazoku who had pulled them here as she had no idea which one she would need to summon. Her enemies had devised a subtle trap and she'd walked right into it! She'd been careless, and in that moment it was hard to not feel as though she'd failed them all.
But Moe and Sylphiel are there! They will protect my babies! Lina reminded herself as she worked to build up her confidence. There had to be a way out of this. She had to stop thinking of what she could lose and think of how to get it back. Lina squared her shoulders and rose to her full height as she put her hands on her hips, "So, while Sylphiel and Moe will take care of things at the cottage, we still need to come up with a plan on our end. Now…"
But a loud popping sound interrupted her, and then Moe appeared ahead of them, in mid spring as though he had just been about to attack an enemy.
"Shadow Snap!" Sylphiel cast, and the Mazoku was pinned to their plane as she charged forward. Sylphiel hoped that they didn't want a fight, that they just wanted a clear path to the twins and would retreat if there was a fight…
The Mazoku jerked her hand back from the crib as though scalded as she cast a light spell and then retreated to the astral plane as Sylphiel reached the crib and picked up one of the babies. For a moment she worried about whether the Mazoku would risk returning. How much did they know about her abilities? Would they assume that she was unskilled and worth the risk? But then Sylphiel looked behind her to hand the baby to Moe and found that he was gone.
"Moe?" Sylphiel asked as time seemed to slow and the house suddenly felt too big and quiet. The silence echoed ominously through the halls as she clutched the baby to her chest and waited for some sign of life, be it human or Mazoku. But the minutes ticked by and neither friend nor foe appeared. She was alone.
The baby in her arms cried out, and Sylphiel reflected that she wasn't quite alone as she looked at him. "Don't worry, Midas." She whispered, and she hoped she sounded more confident than she felt. Babies didn't understand human, but they could sense feelings. She needed to reign in her fear! "We'll find them."
She did her best to take confidence from her words as Midas quieted. But it was hard to keep the desolation at bay. She was alone in a strange place with three infants and a toddler. And Mazoku were desperate to steal two of the infants away. And while Sylphiel was used to standing alone and fighting, first when Copy Rezo infiltrated Sairaag and second when she left Lina and the other to fight Hellmaster, she never liked it. And it never got any easier.
But she knew how to do it.
Panicking wouldn't help. It wouldn't get them out of the strange space. It wouldn't get her back to her babies and it wouldn't save her babies. But the moment Moe materialized it was almost impossible for Lina not to panic.
"What's happening?" Lina demanded to know.
"Sylphiel was running, looking for help. Then we turned and saw a Mazoku in the nursery and suddenly I found myself here." Moe said, "How did I get here? Where is here?"
"There was a Mazoku in the nursery?" Lina said as Gourry collapsed beside her, "Did they get the babies?"
"No." Moe said.
"Are you lying to me to make this better? Because nothing makes this better!" Lina said as her voice started to falter under the crushing weight of impending tears.
Moe put his hands on her shoulders, "The Mazoku was right beside the crib but had not touched them. Sylphiel was chanting a spell. If they went to the trouble to put us in this, well, I can only assume that this is some sort of cage, then we can assume that they don't want a fight."
Lina took a deep breath as tears spilled out of her eyes. "No, they don't want a fight. That's why they did this!"
Lina kept waiting for Gourry to ask a question as Marlena came up and wrapped an arm around her and handed her a handkerchief. But Gourry was strangely silent as she took a moment to compose herself. His silence unnerved her. Though she often pretended to be annoyed by his questions, she liked how it helped her to think and brainstorm.
"I'm confused, though, why are we here?" Marlena asked.
"Damned if I know." Naga said, and Lina wanted to tell her that if she couldn't get her shaking hands under control she should cut them off.
"Let's see what patterns emerge." Moe said, and Lina felt her umbrage rise that none of them were expecting answers from her. Had they lost confidence in her abilities to lead successfully? "They took Naga first, obviously one of the most powerful of us."
"If not the most powerful!" Naga said, but her voice didn't have the same rush of bravado to it.
"But then why take me next?" Connie asked. "I-I mean I can hold my own in a fight, but I've never taken down a Mazoku before."
"Because you wouldn't be missed." Lina snapped. "I could think of a million reasons Naga would leave suddenly. It's what she does. And Connie, no offense, but we thought you'd gotten lost on your way to the bathroom or something. As for everyone else, they waited until after dinner when I said I would drop Aurelia off at the nursery. They wanted me to be away from both of the twins. And then they grabbed us."
But providing an explanation was not the ego boost it usually was. Because Lina should have suspected something. She should have realized that the Mazoku would try a different approach and she should have been on her guard. But she'd become complacent, and now she might never see the twins again!
She kept thinking of the sweetness of the twins' faces as they nestled against her chest after a feeding. She remember walking into the bedroom to see Midas cuddled against Gourry, his head lolled to the side as her little man napped with her big one. The wonders of a love unmarked by jealousy and other distasteful emotions. Of how Aurelia had curled up to her as they walked to the nursery and she lifted her up to pass her on to Moe, as if asking for a little bit more time. But Lina had left her with Moe, secure in the knowledge that they would see each other in the morning.
But what if they didn't?
"But why take us at all?" Marlena asked.
"Because they know they can't use a direct approach to kidnap the twins." Lina said. "Since an all out assault didn't work and ended up taking some of their strongest players down, my guess is they wanted to put us in a place where we can't reach the twins, leaving them free to take them as the twins sleep. At Maninstit, there are too many people there to take all of them before someone realized something was up. But not here."
"Where is here?" Connie asked.
Lina was glad when Naga answered, "This is a different space. An artificial world created by a Mazoku."
"But why didn't they take Sylphiel?" Rick asked as he sat beside Gourry. And Lina had to admit, she was just as puzzled by that as anyone.
"They tried to take her when they took me, but they couldn't." Marlena explained, "I don't know why."
"Thank goodness for small favors." Lina said. Sylphiel was the only thing standing between the Mazoku and her babies.
"But why not fight us?" Rick asked, and it was obvious he wanted someone to blame and some means of getting back to the real world. Lina felt exactly the same.
"Because it's not about us! Or not about killing us." Lina said, "The Mazoku know by now, attack me or mine directly and they will pay. So they take me to a place where I can't get to mine, and then they don't even bother to fight me, give me a chance to get back to them, because they know if they fight me I will win and get back to normal space!"
Lina's hands clenched into fists as the emotion she'd been struggling to contain could no longer be held, "Hey! Hey you cowards! Come out and fight me! Shouldn't this destroy your fragile Mazoku pride!? You can't even attack a human from the astral plane without it shattering your psyche! Come out and fight!"
Helplessness fell upon Lina. How could she fight if the enemy never showed themselves? The Mazoku who created this world could well be in the normal world and out of her reach! She turned to look at the group and saw that they were looking at her with concern etched on their features as opposed to confidence. With the exception of Gourry. He was staring at the ground, lost.
She started to wonder if he felt as though she'd let them down, that she hadn't protected their children well. Even during the worst of times she'd had a plan. But now she couldn't think of one. She couldn't think of any way out of this. The horrible fear that she was their mother and that she couldn't save them rose through her and once more it was a struggle not to panic and cry.
Suddenly Marlena was beside her. She wrapped an arm around her and said, "There now. Take a moment, take five minutes and cry. And then you take me through this step by step until we find a way to break out of this space. Because we will find a way."
Sylphiel removed the talisman from her neck and let it dangle over the crib where the twins lay. Midas cooed as he opened and closed his hand while Aurelia tracked it with her eyes. "My father gave this to me for my thirteenth birthday." She explained to them, "It was a family heirloom. He said it supposedly had the power to tether me to this plane should anyone try to pull me into strange space or another world entirely. I don't think either of us took it too seriously and at the time I figured I would never have an opportunity to see if the legends about it were true or not. Looks like I was wrong, though. It's funny in a way, isn't it? But considering it works, in this case I am happy to be wrong."
Sylphiel put the talisman back around her neck, "I was wearing it when Sairaag was destroyed. It was something I took with me when I ran away to fight Copy Rezo. Though I didn't think it would really work I always thought it was a beautiful talisman and I liked the connection I felt to my family when I wore it. So it is one of the few things I have from home that survived when Sairaag was destroyed. So that's why I wear it on most days."
Sylphiel reached into the crib and pulled out Midas. She was fairly confident that so long as she was holding one of the twins no one would attack. And she was also fairly confident that if she so much as walked to the doorway without them someone would materialize in the room to take them. She walked over with Midas to the dresser and opened it and finally found what she was looking for. She brought back the wraps to the crib and set Midas back down and then tried to work out her next problem: how to wrap a pair of twins around her when she herself was about six months in. And there wasn't anyone around who could help her! Putting infants in a wrap was much easier when you had someone to hold them in place or tie the wrap for you.
It took some awkward fumbling and quite a bit of time, especially as Sylphiel's range of mobility was limited, but she eventually got both babies wrapped to her back, leaving her hands free. Though as Sylphiel took a step forward and one twin tilted a bit more to her right than she would have liked, Sylphiel worried that she'd not done it correctly and that they would fall out if she moved too quickly. Yet as hard as getting them on was, getting them off safely would also be hard. It would involve sliding them to her front and holding them as she untangled them from the mass of cloth. And considering the hard bulge currently taking up space at her front, and considering that it was much easier and safer to do with help, something she did not have at the moment, she decided it would be better to continue rather than risk dropping them to redo the wrap.
Sylphiel walked over to where Marlena and Connie's children were and gazed at them. All three of them were sound asleep. Sylphiel hated to leave them, but they likely weren't in danger, and hopefully they would stay asleep until she returned.
Sylphiel took a deep breath and put one foot in front of the other. Fortunately the twins did not slide down her back and the wrap held. Occasionally one would gurgle and let her know they were okay. Soon she was at the front door, and she unlocked it and stepped into the night and shivered. Now that the sun was down it was cold, and she'd left her cloak in her room. She was not going back for it.
She took a few steps forward until she got to a place where she was sure that there was nothing but trees for miles ahead with the cottage securely behind her, and then she found a stick and drew a summoning circle. When she was done she grabbed her pendant and started to chant. Because the Mazoku had attempted to pull her into the other space twice, she could use the pendant to trace and summon the one who had created the different space. In theory. In practice she had never done something like this before. Summoning demons was not exactly something that Shrine Maidens specialized in. But then, neither was the Dragon Slave.
Sylphiel finished chanting, and looked before her to see a Mazoku she had never met before. "Return the people you have taken!" Sylphiel demanded.
"Or what?" he asked.
"Or I will destroy you!"
"You?" the Mazoku said as he stared at Syphiel dubiously. She took a deep breath as she felt one of the twins slide down her back, and she twisted awkwardly to bring him back up as she pulled against the wrap to tighten it.
The Mazoku laughed, "Oh, but this is amusing!"
"The game is up, Compa." A black tornado said as he materialized. "She may not look intimidating, but she can cast a Dragon Slave. I saw her use it on Lord Hellmaster Phibrizo."
"Her?" Compa said incredulously.
Xellos materialized, though it was obvious he was weak and wounded. "We can't risk a fight and any harm coming to those babies. We came close. But I'm afraid if we wait much longer one of them will slide out of that wrap and hit their head."
"Fine." Compa spat.
Could it be that easy? Sylphiel wondered. But before she could give more thought to it a gust of wind hit her from the front, and though there had been no trees behind her, she connected with something solid that grabbed her wrap as it tore the twins off her back and cackled in victory.
Sylphiel spun around just in time to see the Mazoku with four arms as she held the twins triumphantly and then disappeared with them into the astral plane.
AN: Sorry to leave off on a cliffhanger, sometimes I have to be careful with these scenes to make sure I don't paint myself into any corners.
And as someone who loves to take walks and go hiking, I loved baby carriers, though getting my kids in and out of them was something that was never smooth and I found the wraps impossible to figure out. I know some people are incredible with those wraps and make it look easy, but for the sake of my pride, I have to think most people are like me and intimidated by yards of fabric that don't make sense.