A Meeting of Forces
"The caravan was...destroyed," Sylphiel repeated quietly. "All those people, and...Kyrie!!" The priestess turned to her husband and buried her head in his shoulders to cry.
"I'm sure she's fine," Gourry said, looking somewhat doubtful himself, but not wanting to show it.
"He said he had Tinuviel," Jolrael noted. "Maybe he took Kyrie hostage as well?" His voice had lost its normal bored tone and he sounded as desperate as the rest of his family.
"Yes, he probably would do that," Gourry narrowed his eyes.
"We're not going to get anywhere like this," Xina said. "Does anybody know what he was talking about?"
"Martina and Zangulus were married in New Sairagg," Sylphiel said after a moment to take hold of herself and take the chance to find her daughter alive and well. "Past Kitsune Forest and...an ocean..." Sylphiel gestured towards where the elf army was camped.
"I know where it is," Amethyst said. "It is quite far, but considering our resources it should be easy to reach." Everybody looked at Val, who sighed as he realized that he again was the chosen mode of transportation.
"We can't fly past the army," Xalan reminded them. "They'll notice that."
"It should be pretty easy to sneak past them again," Jolrael added. Everybody took a moment to look at Amethyst. "However..."
"Why is everyone staring at me?" she asked.
"Hey, I can get her..." Gourry started to offer his services.
"No, Gourry-sama, Sylphiel-sama," Amethyst said, interuppting the older hero. "You're needed here, we can handle Zangulus....again."
"She's right, we're the only ones who could fight any truly powerful fighters that might show up here," Sylphiel agreed, very reluctantly. "They'll have to go alone."
"Which still leaves the problem of getting past the army without letting them know we're there," Xalan said.
"Why is everybody looking at me again?" Amethyst glanced around blinking.
"You're all forgetting something here," Xina said, smiling. Xalan nodded toward her and shrugged.
"What's that?" Val asked nervous, Xina smirked. In the next moment they were all swallowed in a globe of darkness. Gourry, Sylphiel and the elves were then treated to the sight of the globe rocketting out towards Kitsune Forest.
Sherra's eyes blinked open and she moved to sit up. Last thing she remembered they had just destroyed the elves that were daring to infringe on the home of her...most recent...beloved. Looking around she found that she was back in the abandoned village.
"How are you feeling?" Duofolger asked. There was some odd quality about his voice, but she couldn't figure out what it was yet. As usual she didn't bother to turn to the direction of the sword's voice, knowing it only existed in her mind anyway.
"Hungry," she said simply, she tried to stand up and found herself suddenly dizzy and faint. Before she could fall, Sherra found herself being lifted off the ground. She was prepared to haul off and hit the offender before she saw who it was. "But...he sealed you in the sword form."
"The seal was broken," Duofolger said simply as she carried Sherra into the tavern. "Lina broke it when she saved your life." Sherra glanced at the collection of faces that stared at the two of them as Duofolger sat her at the table, and then sat down himself.
"But the seal is my..." Sherra reached for that growing spark of mazoku power that she'd had even after absorbing that spell. She found nothing, no mazoku power, not even the mana for human magic. As Sherra tried to understand this, Duofolger reached with his own powers to grab a plate of food and whisk over to them.
Sherra glanced at her arm and noticed the bandage for the first time, she hadn't remmebered being injured at all. Sherra unwrapped the bandage and revealed the slash underneath, it was healing quickly, but there was still some blood flow. Red, completely human blood. As the plate of food, mostly meat, landed in front of her, she paused before tearing into it.
Duofolger watched the display in confusion. He had spent almost six hundred years bound to this girl, as he repeatedly reminded her. Dynast had punished him by sealing the bulk of his power away and given him to the new recruit. Now he couldn't feel a link to anything, he was a rogue mazoku. Maybe a few hundred years ago he would have been celebrating at this fact. Now, however, he had been dealing with this girl for so long he couldn't really figure out what he else he was supposed to do.
Sherra finished her meal and then stood up, a little wearily. The blue-haired girl growled and walked toward Lina. The werefox sighed and paused in her own feast to face Sherra.
"What did you do to me?"
"I mixxed my blood into yours," Lina said simply.
"Okay, so what?" Sherra snapped. "What does that mean?"
"Sherra-san," Filia said slowly. "What is Lina?"
"A werefox, so, I'm mazoku, I don't catch lycanthropy."
"This little girl is a mazoku?" Naga blinked. "You must be joking, she is hardly an adult."
"I am six hundred years old," Sherra growled at the aging sorceress. "What are you, forty? I am the general of Dynast Grausherra." She held herself proudly.
"Listen you multi-centinnial brat," Lina growled. "You were human, your body was trying to make you mazoku without going through the proper methods. All that was going to happen was that you were going to starve to death and never complete the transformation. So I initiated a different transformation that only required you to be human." Sherra took a moment to consider this and then turned about to leave the tavern, growlling. Duofolger followed behind her quietly.
Sherra paced about the clearing, trying to come to terms with her loss of power. She couldn't fly, she couldn't summon fire, couldn't teleport. She was weak, Lina Inverse had given her the final insult, and taken away her power.
"I'm a werefox," Sherra sighed. "She made me a werefox." The former mazoku walked to the edge of a river and stared into a small pool that was forming along the edge of the bank. "I wonder what I'll look like." Her reflection was shattered as something flew past Sherra's face burning a line across her cheek.
"AAHHHHH!!!" She lifted her hand to her face and rolled around to face her attacker.
"Don't worry about it," somebody said. "You won't be a were much longer."
"Where are you?" Sherra demanded, she felt slow and heavy, but she did manage to avoid the next thrown dagger. She stood up gripping a thick piece of wood looking for an assailant. A stream of arrows first took the makeshift weapon away, and then nailed her to the tree behind her. Sherra had a brief glimpse of a flash of oncoming silver when the double image of a teleport obsucred the view. Then she was across the clearing, again in Duofolger's human form arms.
"My business isn't with you," the assailant's voice called out. A dark-haired human stepped out, flanked by three elves with bows. "I just want to get rid of the were."
"I'm afraid not," Duofolger growled.
The elves released a spray of arrows then, and looked on shocked as they grew heavy with ice and fell short of their mark. Kalus narrowed his eyes and released a wave of knives. They fared similarly, Duofolger smirked as they dropped to the ground, and the noticed the flask hidden in the wave of sharp weapons. It connected with a rock and shattered in a loud bright flash.
Sherra and Duofolger were thrown backwards by the blast of seeking light. Sherra sat up almost immedatiely, but pain and a still strong hunger kept her down on the ground.
"Alchemy," Duofolger coughed standing up. He tried to search his memory for any other tricks he hadn't used in six centuries. "Can't hack being a full mage?"
"You're working for the elves, aren't you," Sherra demanded.
"In a manner of speaking," Kalus smiled, producing another flask. "I hate weres, and you weres are in their way...its a mutual benefit." Duofolger braced himself to deal with the new flask as Kalus reared back his hand.
"Its the knife psycho again!!" Kalus and the elves whirled as a sudden wind lifted the four of them off the ground. Duofolger lashed out as well, added the power of a winter storm to the magical wind. At some point, at least one of Kalus's flasks exploded in mid-air resulting in a brilliant flash of light.
As the light cleared three bodies dropped to the ground, along with a scattering of silver knives and steel arrows. Xina shook the drifting snow out of her purple hair as she stepped forward and then noticed the other two people in the clearing.
"You," Sherra jumped back a shimmer of light appearing at her side. She hesitated, however, remembering that the mazoku girl had saved Xalan in the tomb. She glanced at the bodies and shouted back. "The psycho got away somehow, and that mazoku girl is here." The remaining four slayers edged forward into view then.
"She doesn't smell the same," Xalan noted, before fading out of view again as he left to hunt Kalus.
"You're right," Xina blinked in confusion. "She smells like a werefox."
"That's because I AM one," Sherra growled. "Your mother did it to me."
"We don't have time for a reunion," Jolrael reminded them tightly. Xalan appeared again, fading in from the woods.
"He's gone, the smell was scattered by the winds," he explained. "Let's get this over with I agree with Jol. Tinuviel is not someone to be left in Zangulus's hands."
"That elf-girl has been kidnapped?" Sherra gasped. She remembered giving Tinuviel a brief interview, the girl had been likeable enough, which as a mazoku at the time had made her rather ill.
"They are obviously allies," Amethyst said, then continued the voice that uncomfortably reminded Lina of the chimera's father. "Let's continue moving. We need to talk to Lina-sama and be gone. Or are we going to have to prod you all?" Xalan and Jol nodded in support of the statement. Duofolger took a brief mental accounting of their power relative to his and decided to agree as well, especially if they weren't a threat this time.
"You're certain they're here?" Xina asked nervously. She could smell the traces herself well enough, but she wanted to hear it from someone else.
"Yes I'm sure there here," Sherra snapped. Duofolger sighed and shook his head in exasperation, and then pondered the action, considering this was probably the first time he'd done it right around six hundred years.
"Have you lost your sense of smell?" Xalan asked.
"No...I just wasn't..." The red blur landing in the middle of their circle went unnoticed for only as long as it took her to open her mouth.
"XINA METALLIUM!!!"
"uh...oh..." Xina swallowed nervously and turned to face her mother's rather angry face. "Hi Mom, I'm...uh...back." Val standing next to her also turned around and met Lina's frosty glare.
"Mom," Xalan nodded to his bother and swallowed nervously. "I tried to protect her."
"She's fine, Lina-san...we..." Lina turned to glare at him fully. Val flinched back in time to feel some snag his ear.
"Val, dear," he looked up to his mother. "We have to have a talk."
"Lina-sama, we need to tell..." Amethyst tried to press the issue of Zangulus and the elves. She could appreciate Lina's need to speak to her children, but they had some one to rescue.
"Not now Amethyst," Lina growled, quite literally growled. Amethyst narrowed her eyes and started to move. What she had been plannin on saying was interrupted.
"WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS!!!" Jolrael's shout was punctuated by a wave of force out from him. Everybody had to dig themselves into the ground and hold against it. Amethyst reached out and struggled to release a simple weave of mana, distracted as he was Jolrael didn't feel the concentrated spell putting him to sleep.
"Jolrael-san is under a lot of stress right now," Amethyst explained sheepishly.
"That's a way to put it," Xina agreed.
"Is there something going on that we don't know about," Lina asked, as the force of the young man's will subsided.
"Jolrael-san's sister is missing," Amethyst explained. "We are hoping that she's being held hostage..."
"You're HOPING that she's being held hostage?" Lina blinked.
"The alternative is....not good," Amethyst said as everyone else nodded in agreement. Well Val tried to nod in agreement, but it was hard with his mother still gripping his ear. Lina turned to face her daughter and son past Amethyst and growled wordlessly for several seconds before swallowing and releasing a long breath.
"We're STILL going to talk," Lina growled. "Spill the news and we'll see what to do about it..."
"So, what you're telling me," Lina said blinking at her children. "Is that there is a true Elf Lord working with Zangulus, who's now a mazoku, and they have a huge army about to just walk through me. Not too mention the were-hunter that's now loose in MY forest."
"Sylphiel-sama and Gourry-sama have a decent sized force of wood elves waiting for a chance to ambush the high elves," Amethyst added helpfully.
"Yeah, that's the only good news you've given me," Lina admitted. "Okay, you kids...need..." she growled as she fought her parental instincts to continue the rest of the sentence. "To go after that Zangulus creep. We're going to prepare to defend or retreat to Sailloon."
"Hai, Mom!" Xina called out standing up and turning to leave.
"Take Sherra with you."
"What?!?" several voices demanded.
"I can't take care of her right now, and she's too new a were to take care of herself well," Lina explained. "And between the lot of you, you can handle her fourth aspect, even if this DOES take the three weeks for the full moon to rise."
"What if I don't want to go?" Sherra asked. Lina turned to glare at her and Duofolger.
Sherra found herself flying through the air, in Duofolger's arms and watching Val carry the slayers beside her. She tried to figure out just when she and Duofolger had given in, but couldn't quite figure it out.
"How did she do that?" Sherra wondered. She turned her attention to Xalan speaking to the chimera princess and daydreamed for a moment in an effort to get over the events of the day.
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