AN: Currently re-watching Slayers with my kiddos. Started playing Heroes and Treasure, a D&D type game aimed for young kids, with my family. And the kids are now running around the house throwing fireballs at each other. Getting some translations of the new novels and Slayers fandom is picking up a bit right now. So much Slayers in my life right now, and I'm still greedy for more! So, have some fanfic.
Gourry watched as a kaleidoscope of images swirled around him, and he tried to slow them down and focus. Hadn't Sylphiel said that controlling his dreams was something he should be able to learn how to do? He had to focus! Midas. The person whose name began with an M. The Demon King of the North. Dils. He had to learn about what would happen! And somehow avoid the rigmarole of learning he'd lost his memories again. But the images raced by him too quickly for him to focus on, and the frustration started to overwhelm him.
He wanted to close his eyes. But how do you close your eyes in a dream? But then, he remembered, he didn't need to close his eyes. He had been trained to keep his eyes open to spot danger as he simultaneously filtered out the harmless background noise to zero in on the sounds of enemies who may want to harm him. Could those techniques he had learned when he was training to be a swordsman help him now?
He thought back to his training and his meditations. He'd been doing it for so long now that it was second nature to him. He'd not had to consciously think through it for years. But now he reflected back. He focused on his hearing for any trace of a conversation pertaining to what he needed to learn about.
Gradually one conversation took precedence over the others. At first the voices were quiet enough that he could only pick up bits and snatches of it. But then the images started to slow down as the voices became more distinct, and he suddenly found himself in Lina's room, sitting on the edge of the bed with his arms folded as he stared at the floor and felt anger radiate through him.
"You are as dense and as dumb as always!" Lina yelled as she paced up in down, cigarette in hand and covered in burn scars. Gourry reminded himself that he had saved her from that fate at least, and then he braced himself with the knowledge that this future was no longer ordained. "Why is it so hard for you to believe that this is my decision?"
Without thinking about it, the words fell out of his mouth as though he was replaying a memory. "Because you're not right in the head!"
"Don't patronize me!" she interrupted him as she took a drag, "I'm not right in the head. Midas isn't right in the head. Hell, Dad and the Eternal Queen aren't right in the head and Zel hasn't been right either since losing Amelia. Only you are right in the head but the rest of us are crazy. Convenient."
"You never would have agreed to this before the accident! Never!"
"Well maybe that naïve little innocent died!" Lina said, "Along with Maeve and Amelia and everyone else on that battlefield. Just because I changed doesn't mean that I'm wrong about what the Eternal Queen did! Uniting with her is the best chance we have of defeating the Demon King of the North. This is my decision, and Midas's. You need to respect that."
"Assassinating rulers of other kingdoms when they won't do what she wants?" Gourry yelled.
"How many times do I have to explain this to you? If she'd assassinated Moros and let her operatives take control of Xoana then the reinforcements would have been there when they'd attacked Dils!" Lina shouted, "After watching Maeve die I can't blame her for not wanting to make the same mistake again! Humanity needs to be united, no matter the costs. We can't win against the Mazoku if we let our petty squabbles break us up. So no, I don't care about how many leaders she's killed in the past seventeen years! What's best for humanity is putting people in power who will unite with us. We're fighting Shabrangidu here. The ends justify the means!"
"We can't win with these methods!" Gourry said, "We can't win by becoming monstrous. We started losing when we lost our moral high ground."
"You'd think that because you keep losing your memories. And you say I'm only doing this because I'm crazy! You're undeniably brain damaged and the only thing you know about these last seventeen years is what we tell you. How can you be so sure we're wrong and you're right?"
"Lia agrees with me, and Sylphiel and your mom…"
"Naïve idealists, the lot of them. All of you would rather die for your ideals than win." Lina said with a wave of her hand, "We were losing before we got our hands dirty. Playing by the rules did not keep us safe. Battling Shabranigdu, a fully resurrected Shabranigdu, is hard. We need more than a moral backbone. I'm doing every damn thing I can to preserve this world for our children and I will kill whoever I need to so long as they have a world to inherit."
"At what cost Lina?" he said as he stood up and moved towards her. She backed away and he felt his heart break. "This is tearing our family apart."
"It's already split." Lina said with a wry laugh, "Everyone is split on this issue. This put a wedge in even my parents' marriage. And I can see that I'm not going to convince you, and you're not going to convince me. So you can sleep in your own room again tonight."
Stung and hurt, Gourry let go of the dream, grateful to sprint away from such a desolate future, and he opened his eyes to see that the room was glowing with the warmth of the rising sun as Lina tiptoed to the crib.
"Morning," he said, relieved to see her alive and whole as she startled.
"Sorry," she said as she grabbed Aurelia. "I wanted to get her before she woke up, so she wouldn't interrupt your dream. I didn't mean to wake you."
He smiled at her as he sat up and felt the anger and despair he'd felt while watching the dream melt away, "The dream was wrapping up, I got some good information."
"You did!" Lina exclaimed as she clutched Aurelia more tightly. "What? What did you learn?"
"I need to write it down first, don't I?" Gourry asked as he leaned over and grabbed the parchment and a quill that he'd put on the nightstand.
"You can't talk and write?" Lina said as she walked over to sit beside him on the bed. Gourry started writing as she started to nurse Aurelia while she kept her neck craned to read over his shoulder. "Wow, your handwriting is actually rather good. But your spelling needs work."
"Being a good swordsman is all about focus and control. Spelling isn't important though." He said as he paused a moment.
"Keep writing!"
"Then stop talking."
"Hmph." She said as she continued to read over his shoulder. "Whoa."
"Yeah." Gourry muttered as he kept writing. She put her free arm around him as the details of their future fight appeared on the page as she stiffened in alarm. For awhile the only sound in the room was that of his quill scratching against the parchment as they soaked in the information they were somehow receiving. And then Gourry set the quill down.
"So," Lina mused, "It sounds as though King Moros of Xoana will withhold troops that were needed to liberate Dils, leading to the deaths of Maeve and Amelia as well as a string of defeats for humanity. And this led to the Eternal Queen deciding to assassinate future rulers who would not support her in the fight against the Demon Lord of the North. Which lead to all of us being split into camps of those who support the Eternal Queen and those who don't."
"Yeah," Gourry said quietly as he stared at what he'd written, afraid to ask the question that was bothering him.
"It's just," Lina said as she shook her head and then looked at Aurelia, "It's just, I guess my head got a bit big. With these two being as powerful as they are, channeling power from the Lord of Nightmares, taking on Xellos on the day they were born and winning, I mean, I guess I just thought that even if Shabranigdu were reborn, then we wouldn't have to worry. Because we have the twins. But it's never that easy, is it?"
That was something he'd not thought about. He was quiet for a moment as he thought through what he'd learned and then his mind latched upon a familiar fear, that Midas would become an enemy. If the Demon Lord of the North recruited Midas, then it could explain why having the twins wasn't enough. But then, what if the truth was more mundane but powerful nonetheless? What if Lina and Midas simply left, thus preventing the twins from uniting to fight the Demon Lord of the North? And what if that was the reason that they started to lose? Because their family had been torn apart?
"It's because they split us up." Gourry said as he read through what he'd written with new insight. He wasn't sure how, but he knew he was right. "Individually we couldn't have beaten Shabranigdu. But because we were together, we did it. And that's what this warning is about. We're going to have disagreements in the future, but we can't let it tear us apart. Because that's how they win."
Lina put a hand on his knee, and then turned her hand palm up as she smiled slightly. "Is that your way of saying you want to know if I would stand with you if you got moralistic here?"
Gourry felt his stomach tighten as he grabbed her hand and held it tight. "Would you?" he asked.
"So, there's no chance that you would abandon your morals for me?" she asked cloyingly.
"Lina," he said as he closed his eyes as his fears peaked, "I fell in love with you because you have so much power and you did the right thing. And perhaps it would be wrong of me to stick to my morals given what we're fighting. But I never could envision a future where we would be on opposite sides until now."
He couldn't even begin to explain to her how much it had rattled him to see it. She squeezed his hand as she stared at Aurelia, "I cast a Giga Slave because Hellmaster was going to kill you. The idea of living without you scared me so much that I cast a spell that could have destroyed the world, and it was because of Hellmaster's hubris that things ended up okay. So I can't rule out the possibility that a future exists where things are so bad that I wouldn't believe that the ends wouldn't justify some horrible means."
Gourry looked at her in alarm as she smiled softly and gathered her thoughts for a moment before she continued, "But what I can't see is embracing those means at the cost of losing you and Lia."
He gasped in relief as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him as he buried his face on her shoulder. She awkwardly wrapped her free arm around him as she continued, "I don't know what happened to me in that future, if that fire spell had some affect on my mind, or if I merely assumed that once the Demon King of the North was destroyed our family could be healed. And hell, you're such a goody it can be a pain in the ass sometimes. But I can't exactly deny that I don't love you for it, either."
"I love you." He said.
"Bottom line, going forward, any decision that ruptures our family isn't worth it." Lina said.
"Agreed." He said as he lifted his head to kiss her, being careful not to crush Aurelia between them.
As soon as she felt his breath on her face, she pushed him away as she said, "Morning breath! Go brush your teeth first!"
"Ah, right, sorry." He said as he stood up and walked over to the bathroom, feeling lighter than he had in days.
Gourry hummed to himself as he grabbed his toothbrush when Lina called from the bedroom, "So, that warning not to trust someone, do you think it was about King Moros?"
Gourry frowned. He wanted it to be Moros. His name began with an M and it would clear Midas. But something in his gut told him that it was not Moros. "No," he said, "I can't say why either, but I think that the warning is about someone else. I have no idea who though."
"Hm." Lina said as Gourry started brushing his teeth. "Well, I guess we'll have to call Maeve in to have breakfast with us and break the news to her. And then when the Eternal Queen or someone in the planning committee deigns to check in with us we'll have to break it to them and figure out what to do there."
Gourry spit into the basin and asked, "Can't we contact them?"
"We don't know their location." Lina stated, "Everything is so top secret there that we have to wait for them to contact us with a vision spell."
"Oh," he said as he walked back out and over to Lina and kissed her. "Better?"
"Thank you, honey." She said as she returned the kiss as she patted him on the chest.
Gourry smiled at her and then walked over to his dresser. "Well, it's a good thing we found this out before Maeve left then."
"Yeah. I still want to know why you are having these dreams, but if they give us the warnings we need to change one possible disastrous future, then I won't complain too much."
"What do you mean Maeve left last night?" Lina snapped at Honor.
"Well, after all of you asked not to be disturbed for any reason she received a vision spell from the Eternal Queen calling her to the front and asking that she leave immediately." Honor replied, keeping her composure despite Lina's ire. "She told us you would understand and she packed her bags and left."
"Damn," Lina said as she exchanged a worried glance with Gourry as Zelgadis looked at them curiously as he came down the stairs, "Any idea where she went?"
"No. It was all very secret."
"Indeed." Lina said, "Go on to breakfast."
"Lina," Gourry said as Zelgadis came up to them as Honor walked away, "What are we going to do?"
"We can't contact any of them." Lina said, "There's so much secrecy, we don't know where they're at or where they're gathering."
"What's going on?" Zelgadis asked.
Lina's shoulders felt heavy as she looked at him. Amelia was in danger, and right now there was little they could do aside from break the news as gently as they could. "Come on, let's get into the teacher's dining room."
"Do you think we can send someone to scout likely areas in Dils where they could group to find them?" Gourry asked as they walked into the dining room.
"Find who?" Zelgadis asked.
Sylphiel and Rick looked up from their pancakes, and to Lina's relief she found that her parents were already there. She didn't have to repeat what they'd learned every time a newcomer came down to breakfast. "Everyone sit down. Maeve was called to the front last night while we were conferring."
Sylphiel gasped as Han said, "But the dreams…"
"I know. And Gourry got more information about that last night." Lina said, and then she launched into the details of his dream. Everyone listened with rapt attention as she talked, but when she finished, the room erupted as everyone started talking at once until Lina yelled, "Quiet!"
Everyone looked at her expectedly as Lina turned to Zelgadis, "When is the next time you are expected to hear from Amelia?"
"I can contact her right now." Zelgadis said.
"Huh?"
"She told me where they were meeting." Zelgadis explained. "If anything happened to Justina she wanted to be notified immediately."
Lina relaxed a little, "Perfect. Let's do a vision spell and warn them."
"I can't understand how she would be killed." Sylphiel said, "It's not as though they would send her to the front right now."
"She decided to be heroic." Zelgadis said matter-of-factly before he started chanting. The others watched quietly, but since they weren't part of the spell and since Zel was being projected into Amelia's space, they couldn't see or hear anything on her end.
"No, no, Jus is fine. She's doing great. It's you we're worried about." Zelgadis said, "Listen, since you left Gourry started having visions of the future, and we recently learned that they're accurate. I don't want to waste too much time explaining how we know, but the attack on Dils won't work."
He stopped for a moment, and then pressed on, "Just listen! King Moros isn't going to send the troops you need to win." He was quiet for another moment, and then he said, "I know that because Gourry dreamt it. Look, you can't rely on those troops for victory. The attack on Dils will fail and you and Maeve will be killed. You have to draw up another plan…what do you mean Maeve isn't there?"
Lina and Gourry exchanged a look and then watched tensely as Zel said, "Then someone had better send a messenger out to warn her!" Zelgadis paused for another second. "Right. Be careful my love. Right. I'll kiss Jus for you. Just come home to us safe."
He sighed and discontinued the spell and turned to the group, "Maeve was sent directly to the location where the troops are gathering, which is a different place from where Amelia is."
"Does she know where it is?" Lina asked.
"She has a few ideas but she doesn't know for sure." Zelgadis said, "She'll send some messengers out. The Eternal Queen left to join the troops. Amelia was preparing to go home."
"We need to know where they're gathering." Lina said.
"Why?" Zel replied.
"Because we're sending back up." Lina stated as everyone looked at her in expectation, "This is what the students at our school are training for, slaying Mazoku. Right now, Dils is awash in Mazoku. King Moros may abandon us, but they will not."
Everyone was silent for a moment, and then Zelgadis said, "I'll reconnect and let her know to pass that information on to me when she gets it."
"Good." Lina said.
"So, are we going too?" Gourry asked.
Lina smiled sadly, "I want to. But this needs to be their victory."
"Dame Lina…" Sylphiel said.
"I can't be everywhere." Lina stated simply, "The point of founding this school was because I can't be everywhere. I don't like it, but I've nearly spent two years training them. They're already taken down Deep Sea Dolphin. They are as ready as they will ever be for this."
"Right." Sylphiel said quietly.
Lina didn't add that right now, it would be too risky to put Gourry on the battlefield. He was receiving critical information and if anything happened to him, then they could give up on cracking the identity of the person who would resurrect the Demon Lord of the North. Gourry needed to be kept safe so they could exploit his visions. And there was no way in hell Gourry would let her go to the battlefield without him.
"I'll go and get them ready." Lina said. And then she gave a small smile. "And then I'm going to task Naga and Moe with tracking them from the shadows. Just in case."
AN: Ya'll…I'm almost at the 100th chapter. Um, if you're still reading, thanks for journeying with me on this! BTW, I don't have any grand plans for the 100th chapter. This chapter ended up being twice as long as planned hence why I ended up posting this a bit late, so I had to cut some of the events into the next one, so no big climatic battles for chapter 100 unfortunately. It will be a milestone nonetheless!