Sort of Related
Tinuviel was walking in front of Xalan, in clear view, where he could see
everything that she did. There was a very practical reason for this, he
didn't to end up with a hair cut like Xina's. Or worse, considering the ever
curious elf already had a hair sample. In fact his traveling companion was
of greater concern to him than potential enemies. Enemies he could fight,
but Tinu was a sort of natural disaster waiting to happen. She never waited
long.
Xalan had never really taken full advantage of his mazoku-born endurance,
or really appreciated it, until travelling with Tinuviel. Being able to
operate perfectly fine on about an hour of sleep a day was certainly a plus,
though he dread what might eventually happen in that one hour. The one
consolation he had was that Tinuviel's presence seemed to mollify the various
humans they met on the road. Not as well as the obviously royal Amethyst,
but well enough to avoid trouble.
Xalan occupied his mind as they traveled with trying to figure out why
Jol was so taken with the girl. It kept his mind off what might be happening
to remainder of his friends. Right about now Amethyst and Jolrael were
probably facing an army of dead creatures with whatever force they could
muster from Zephilia. As for Xina, she was playing at fighting Zangulus
until whoever Janus had signaled arrived to distract the hunter.
"Are you sure they live around her somewhere," Xalan asked. "I don't
really see how you can be sure this is the region."
"Hmm? What?" Xalan sweatdropped.
"This Celina person, are you sure we're in the right place?"
"I have no idea." Xalan facefaulted.
"What do you mean by that?" he asked, climbing back up on his staff.
"What do I mean by what?"
"What do you mean that you have no idea if we're in the right place."
Xalan prefered to have a plan for things, this random hopping around was too
unprepared for his tastes.
"Well, they're in some little town called Zenla, which they said was the
far eastern part of Zephilia," Tinuviel thought about it some more as she set
an odd looking rock into one of her pouches.
"So you have no idea where we are, or where we are heading." Xalan knew
how to find his way back to where they'd split from Amethyst and Jol, but
that would be admitting defeat. Not mention it was probably a battle zone by
now.
"That's not true."
"Okay where are we then?"
"About a mile from that place," she pointed. Xalan looked and saw the
top of the building peaking out over a hill.
"Let go of my tail," he said without turning around.
"But..."
"Just let go of my tail, please." Tinuviel let go of his tail and sighed
frustratedly. It was only a few minutes later that they were at the
building, which turned out to be an inn on the edge of a small town. Xalan
let Tinuviel go in first, less chance of starting a ruckus that way. Once
inside he found an empty table and sat down, he considered deepening the
shadows about him a little, but nobody really batted an eye at his entrance,
so he didn't bother.
"Welcome to the Happy Candle, can I take your order?" Xalan looked up to
the waitress.
"Mom!?!" he gasped in surprise before he noticed several differences
between this woman and his mother's human form. There was no streak of
silver in her hair, for one thing, and she seemed younger by a few years.
That said a lot, his mother claimed memories that Jol and Amethyst claimed
were sixty years old, but looked she only about twenty-five. Finally, there
was an innate quietness and passivity in the woman that was completely unlike
his volatile mother.
"Gomen," the waitress said nervously. "What did you say?"
"I'm sorry, you look like...." Xalan started.
"Celina-san, its you!" Tinuviel said suddenly.
"Hmm," the red-head examined the pair and tried to figure out where she
knew the girl from. Then it hit her. "Oh, you're that girl from a few years
ago. You disappeared in the middle of dinner, what happened."
"I don't know," Tinuviel sounded confused. "One moment I was studying
this odd tree behind your inn, the next thing I know the tree was in
Beleriand along with me." Xalan sweatdropped.
"But I didn't feel any magic," Celina said. "Are you..."
"Excuse me, but if you're this Celina person," Xalan suggested. "She
says you know where to find a weapon of light."
"Why would you be interested in that? What good is it?"
"We need it to fight this undead thing that wants to rule the world,"
Tinuviel piped up. "He's of somewhere probably recuperating from the
transformation, it was a really interesting spel. What little I caught of it
at the end anyway..."
"Have you tried talking to this monster and settling your affairs that
way?" Hearinng such sentiments come from such a close copy of his mother was
thoroughly freaking Xalan out.
"I don't think that would work," Xalan said nervously. Then a customer
called out and Celina blushed furiously as she looked towards the call.
"Gomen, but I have to go," she bowed formally. "I guess we can talk
about this when the common room closes." She hurried away, arms swinging in
a demure fashion that further seperated her from Xalan's mother.
"She's...nice," Xalan said. Then thought to himself, "Almost freakishly
so."
"She's a really powerful sorceress," Tinuviel explained then. "That's
why she looks so young."
"Celina asked me to get your order, since she forgot," they looked up at
the sound of the shy voice. Before them was a tall woman dressed in a manner
to hide what Xalan suspected was an incredibly shapely body.
"Hello, Gracia-san," Tinuviel waved cheerfully.
"Tea, please," Xalan ordered, silently grieving that nobody made tea as
well as Filia did. "And lamb, as rare as you can make it." Tinuviel
couldn't decide what exactly she wanted and settled for a sample of
everything.
It was an hour or two later that common room was cleared out and Celina
and Gracia came back to sit down with Xalan and Tinuviel.
"Excuse me, but what is your name?" Celina asked the kage-kitsune.
"Xalan Metallium." The women seemed to flinch at the name.
"I thought all the Metallium mazoku were destroyed."
"I'm only half mazoku, my mother is..."
"Lina Inverse?" Celina interrupted nervously. "Gomen, but you said she
looked like me right?"
"Yes....are you related to my mother at all?"
"Well, maybe you should ask her that." She said nervously and quietly.
"Oh, this is Lina-san's son," Gracia declared suddenly. "What does he
want?"
"We're here for that weapon of light you said you had," Tinuviel said
suddenly.
"Isn't that up in our room some where?" Celina asked Gracia.
"Your room, singular?" Xalan asked, and both women blushed. Xalan
blinked and then blushed furiously himself. "Never mind."
"Well, let's go up and look for it," Tinuviel declared, and the other
three were greatful for the subject change. The room in question was quiet
large, in fact it seemed to be a lot bigger than it should have been. There
was no bed though, it seemed more like a study of some sort. Xalan opened
the door to what he thought was a closet to find a hallway. A long hallway
with a row of three doors on either side and one door at the end. Two
magical lights hung along the hallway on either side.
"Umm, what's going on?"
"Oh," Celina seemed embarrassed. "We played with the dimensional
boundaries a little."
"How are we supposed to find anything in this," Xalan asked as he opened
another door to find a vast freezing room full of meats and other such foods.
He couldn't see the far wall. "This could take days."
"Well, we don't have to go in all the rooms," Gracia suggested quietly as
the two women opened the door at the end of the hallway. Xalan noted, but
tried not to, the single double bed in the rather plain bedroom. Tinu didn't
have the same sense of tact or even much common sense.
"You know, I've been wondering why you have just the one..."
"Here it is," a furiously blushing Celina said. She picked up a gauntlet
of some sort with three sockets above the wrist.
"That's the light weapon?"
"Hmm, this?" Celina looked at it a moment. "Wait a minute, you're right.
Light come forth." Three blades of light extended from the sockets, from a
claw gauntlet.
"Oh my," Gracia said. "We've been using it as a torch." Xalan
facefaulted.
Back to Slayers Born