The sunset reached its peak and then began to fade. "I don't think we're going to make it there tonight," Amelia said.
Zelgadis poked in frustration at the spot on the map clearly labeled 'Transformation Spring of Kuska.' "According to this map, we should almost be there."
Amelia dragged his arm towards her so she could read the map. "'Trackless wilderness,'" she read. "All we know is that we're in there somewhere."
They had been semi-lost all day. They were pretty sure they were still headed in the right direction, more or less, but distances were hard to judge and there was no guarantee that the map was accurate in any case.
Zel sighed, "Let's set up camp."
Amelia started gathering firewood with a promptness that suggested she had already been thinking about how to turn this clearing into a campsite. Zelgadis went to refill his water flask and look for fish in the nearby creek.
Amelia had a fire crackling merrily by the time Zelgadis returned. She handed him a slightly stale roll that they had bought that morning in the last town they passed through and started nibbling on a second one herself.
"Tell me about this spring again," she requested.
"You're the one who looked it up."
"Tell me about it anyway."
Zelgadis obliged. "According to legend, it turns people into animals and animals into people. The best known story about it tells of a man who married his beloved cat after a sip from the spring turned her human. Another well known story tells how a clever man tricked an evil money lender into drinking some water from the spring. The money lender instantly became a jackal."
Zelgadis wet his throat with some water from his flask. "I hope there is some truth behind the legends."
An odd expression crossed his face. He clutched at his stomach and collapsed into an empty pile of clothes.
It took Amelia's brain a few seconds to register what just happened. Then she stared in disbelief for several more seconds. Finally, she went over to the clothes and poked at them. They twitched. There was something inside them after all. Amelia reached down the neck hole and pulled out...a turtle.
It was quite a lovely turtle. It was blue with the occasional thicker, darker blue scale mixed in to give it character. It was not a particularly large turtle but it was surprisingly heavy for its size, probably because it was made of stone. Amelia needed both hands to lift it up so that she could look at it more closely. It had the most bewildered expression she had ever seen on a turtle's face.
"Zelgadis-san?" Amelia asked uncertainly.
The turtle glared at her. It somehow managed to look exactly like Zelgadis despite the beak.
"Okay..." Amelia tried to think what to do next. "It looks like we found the transformation spring after all, and it really does work. Now how am I going to turn you back?"
The turtle opened its mouth and gave a faint hiss, but Amelia couldn't understand it.
"Well, I guess you could drink more of that water. Hopefully now that you're a turtle it will turn you back into a person."
Amelia poured some water from Zelgadis' water flask into the cap and offered it to the turtle. The turtle lapped at the water eagerly. After a few seconds it collapsed with a pained expression and expanded into...a bird. What kind was hard to identify because of the metal feathers.
The bird turned its head backwards so it could examine itself. It rattled its wings in disgust.
"Oh dear," Amelia said. "That didn't work."
The bird poked imperiously at the flask.
"You want to try again?"
The bird nodded.
Again Amelia filled the cap with water. Again Zelgadis bent his head to drink. Again his form changed.
"What a cute bunny!"
The expression on the rabbit's face changed from inquiry to pure horror.
It was a cute bunny, despite apparently having been carved from two-toned blue stone. It even had a cute little wire-covered tail.
Amelia picked it up and cuddled it in her arms. "Don't worry, Zelga-bunny. I'll figure out some way to restore you to your almost-human self. Eventually." The rabbit tried to kick her.
"I don't think you should drink any more of that water," Amelia responded to what she perceived to be the reason for the kick. "Who knows what you'll turn into next."
She knew him well enough to guess his answer. It would be, "Any shape is better than this one."
Amelia resisted for the amount of time it took her to finish her dinner and feed Zelgadis a handful of grass. Then the alternately furious and pleading looks he was sending out got the better of her.
"Oh, alright!" She poured him one last capful of water. This time when his shape settled he was a snake. He made just as handsome a snake as he had a turtle.
Amelia sighed. She didn't hate snakes but she wasn't very fond of them either. She did like bunnies.
The snake lifted its head off the ground and looked at her.
"You're a snake. You won't bite me, will you?"
Snakes have no sense of hearing. Zelgadis just stared at her for another long moment and then slithered over to his abandoned clothes. Amelia went to bed too. For the moment, there was nothing else to do. She wrapped her cloak around herself tightly because it was a chilly night.
Amelia awoke to find a snake curled up under her chin. Fortunately, she was the sort of person who wakes up alert without any memory lapses and, also fortunately, she decided not to get upset about Zelgadis sleeping with her uninvited again.
After brushing the leaves out of her hair and clothes and breakfasting on the second-to-last stale roll and a few sips of water from her half-empty flask, she prepared to strike camp. She wrapped all Zelgadis' clothes into a bundle and tied them onto his sword, which she slung over her shoulder. Then she picked up the snake.
"Do you promise not to bite me?"
The snake moved its head in a way she chose to interpret as agreement. Amelia warily draped it around her neck. It slithered around until it was comfortable. Amelia froze at the strange sensation of powerful, scale-covered muscles flexing against her skin. She gritted her teeth (although the sensation was not really unpleasant, just strange) and set out downstream along the bank of the creek. Hopefully the villagers of Kuska would know how to undo the transformation.
They didn't.
"The way we deal with the spring is to not drink the water. Travelers? We don't get many travelers here, not as such. Of course, if a strange animal walks into town, we don't ask questions. If it's dangerous we kill it; if it's edible we eat it; and otherwise we just shoo it away. It's mostly just transformed wildlife."
"Don't any of you ever drink the spring water by accident? What do you do if that happens?"
Most of the villagers laughed at her and said things like, "Depends on how much the family liked him."
One woman pointed vindictively at another woman. "Her brute of a son pushed my poor, little Denis into the spring. I had to travel for three weeks before I found a sorcerer who could transform him back!"
"Will you get over it? That was five years ago!" the other woman protested.
"Well I still haven't forgiven you or your son."
They both stuck their noses in the air and turned their backs on each other.
Of course! Now Amelia knew what to do, but she would need somewhere more private.
The villagers took delight in being unhelpful again. No, they didn't have an inn. Why would they need one when they didn't get any travelers? No, they didn't have any other place for her and her snake to stay. Food? Well... They looked at each other, trying to think of some reason to refuse. Amelia had had enough.
"You who refuse to help a traveler in trouble and mock her when she asks perfectly reasonable questions, you are the kind of people I call evil! Now, will you apologize or will you force me to punish you for your unfriendly ways?" The air around her started to crackle with blue energy fed by her rage.
"We're sorry! We're sorry!" the villagers chorused. They quickly offered her food, which she conscientiously paid for, and lodging in each other's houses, which she refused.
"I don't want to stay any longer in such a poisonous place." Amelia walked quickly out of the town, but detoured into a barn just before she left the settlement entirely.
She unwrapped the snake from where it was basking on her shoulders and set it down on the straw-covered floor. "Stay there, Zelgadis-san. I'm going to try something."
Amelia pulled out her spellbook. The snake looked somewhat apprehensive. Amelia flipped through the book until she found the spell she wanted. She had written it there the day after Zelgadis had last reentered her life. It was the general anti-transformation spell.
She had never cast it before, but hopefully she could figure it out quickly now. She read the spell over several times until she thought she had it memorized.
With her palms stretched out toward the snake, she began the incantation.
"Ruler of shape and nature..."
She could feel the transformation spells wrapped around him like cords. She started to tug on them.
"...power of patterns, mold of kind..."
The spells were definitely coming loose in places now.
"...break the bonds of this false form! Zeran Morph!"
A cloud formed around Zelgadis. When it cleared...
"Oops."
The snake now had tiny metal wings and exactly one bunny ear. In addition, it had thickened noticeably in the middle. It wiggled its parts experimentally, trying to figure out what shape it was now. It gave Amelia a reproachful look.
"I'll try that again."
This time she just pulled on the outermost layer. It came away, leaving Zelgadis a rabbit again, although he still had vestigial wings. Amelia paused to rest. Casting unfamiliar spells was hard work. She absently stroked the rabbit's ears, annoying him considerably.
As soon as she felt ready, she cast Zeran Morph again. This time when the smoke cleared he was a bird. Once more and he was a turtle. She had to rest again and eat a mango for energy, but the spell was definitely getting easier with practice. The turtle pawed impatiently at her foot.
Amelia licked the juice off her fingers and cast the spell one more time. She easily brushed away the last layer of transformation and even tried tugging on the chimera spell, but it was too tight and much too strong to budge.
The smoke cleared.
Amelia spun around, blushing furiously. An equally blushing Zelgadis reached around her for his clothes.
They emptied out Zelgadis' water flask beside the stream as they left town. They never found out about the wave of transformations that followed.
"That was an interesting spell you used back there," Zelgadis remarked. "Is it one of the ones you copied out in Seyruun?"
"Yes, the first one."
"Would it work on a transformation like this?" Zelgadis picked a handful of the little yellow wildflowers that grew beside the path. "Transformation," he muttered. Under his stare, the plants reshaped themselves into a rose. He handed it to Amelia.
"How lovely!" She inhaled its perfume. "You must teach me that spell."
"Later. First try your anti-transformation spell."
It was a pity to unmake such a beautiful rose, but Amelia did as he requested. The spell on the rose was much tighter than the spells on Zelgadis had been, but Amelia still succeeded in stripping it away.
"Now teach me Transformation."
Zelgadis glanced around: wilderness and more wilderness. He might as well teach Amelia the spell. There was nothing better to do.
"Alright. It's easier to start with a model to work from." He picked a blue flower and handed it to Amelia. "Concentrate on the essence of the two flowers and reshape one to match the essence of the other."
"Essence?"
"I'm not sure how to describe it. It's the core nature of a thing, the part that knows what shape it's supposed to be."
That sounded a lot like the instructions Amelia had been given when she was learning healing spells. She tried looking at the flowers as if she was going to heal them. "What's the incantation?"
Zelgadis told her.
Amelia chanted it, slowly building up power. "Transformation!"
She shoved the yellow flowers into a new shape. "Oh." The results were misshapen, to say the least. They also looked nothing like the blue flower.
"Keep practicing," Zelgadis advised.
"I know. They first time I tried to cast Fireball, I only got smoke."
Amelia did keep practicing. By the time they were free of the wilderness, she was on her tenth set of flowers because the previous ones had wilted or been deformed beyond recovery, but her transformed flowers looked pretty much like their models and she could cast the spell without the full incantation.
"Where are we going next?" Zelgadis asked over dinner that night.
"There's rumored to be a chimera maker to the west of here. You thought he might know chimera making and unmaking techniques that aren't in the books. His name is Diol, I think."
A man leaned over from the table behind Zelgadis. "Don't go there!"
"Huh?" Amelia and Zelgadis stared at him. "Don't go where?" Amelia added.
"The Chimera Forest! I heard you talking about going there."
Amelia started to correct him, "No, we're going to..."
"Tell us more about this chimera forest," Zel interrupted.
"I used to live in a town to the west of here. It was a good town too. It was right on the edge of the loveliest little forest you ever saw, and the people were friendly and the soil was rich and...well, you get the idea. Then, about eight years back, the forest started to become infested with monsters - beastmen, chimeras, trolls, dragons, you name it. The infestation got worse with every passing year until it was more than your life was worth to go in there. The monsters didn't stay in the forest either. I used to get the weirdest things wandering by my house, and some of them were meat-eaters. I had to give up and leave my home before the monsters killed one of my kids. My advice is stay away from there. It isn't safe for anyone human."
"How scary!" Amelia shivered. She was clinging to Zelgadis. He endured it because he preferred clinging to her other reaction to fear: beating up everything in sight.
Zelgadis thanked the man for the warning. "We hadn't heard about the chimera forest before."
"Then what were you talking about earlier?"
"We're going to talk to a chimera maker named Diol," Amelia told him.
The man frowned. "I've heard of him. He's a nasty one. He's always making something or other, and it's never anything that does any good to anyone. Usually his creations terrorize the surrounding towns until they manage to get themselves killed or lost. I'd advise staying away from him too. He has a nasty habit of turning his guests into chimeras."
Zelgadis turned to face him fully. "We can take care of ourselves."
The man's eyes bulged out. "You're," he gulped, "you're one of them...monster."
"I'm looking for a cure."
The man slid away, eyes wide with fear.
Zelgadis stared morosely down at his plate.
Amelia lay on her back, staring up at the stars. She couldn't seem to fall asleep. On the other side of the almost burned out campfire, Zelgadis sighed in his sleep. Amelia rolled over on her side and stared at him instead. His wire hair glowed faintly in the moonlight but his face was completely lost in shadow. She idly traced the curve of a white clad shoulder with her eyes, and then sorted out which knee belonged to which leg.
Her eyes wandered back up his arm to his face. The darkness hid all signs of his chimeraness. In her imagination, she made his shining hair soft and his hidden face human. His nose would be straight and narrow and his jaw would be firm but pointed. His eyes, now closed in sleep, would have dark eyelashes and eyebrows. His skin would be smooth and pale. She amused herself for quite awhile making fine adjustments to his imaginary features.
Then a new thought occurred to her. Why just imagine him with human looks? With the transformation spell Zelgadis had taught her, she could make him look human. Wasting no more time on idle speculation, Amelia got to work. Her first attempt at transformation turned his skin a rather garish shade of pink, as a subsequent light spell revealed. Her second fixed the color and smoothed out some of the rocks. In the end, her transformation ended at the neckline and he still looked more like a statue than a man, but hopefully he would consider it an improvement. Finally sleepy, she lay down beside the campfire again. She soon fell asleep, delighted by her good deed.
The sleeping Zelgadis had no idea of his recent transformation. In his dream, he was walking through a desert that he somehow knew to be inside a temple. Huge stone tablets in ordered rows stretched to every horizon as far as the eye could see. Each one contained some fragment of rare or forgotten lore. Together, they contained the entire mind of a god. He could hear Lina and Xellos' footsteps behind him and see Gourry's bright hair out of the corner of his eye. Amelia was walking in front of him.
A crimson-haired giant in an orange trench coat, the dark lord Gaav, appeared and started threatening them. Zelgadis watched sadly as he and his friends fled, leaving Gaav to blast apart the stone tablets around him. The human party tumbled onto the ground in front of the temple just in time to see it explode in a blaze of light.
The dream skipped ahead several weeks to a cliff inhabited by dragons. Zelgadis flinched in his sleep. This scene meant the recurring nightmare in which he had to either watch Amelia bleeding to death or else leap to save her and end up mortally wounded himself. To his surprise, that nightmare didn't materialize. Instead, he found himself sitting against the rock. Lina, who was collapsed beside him, was describing her journey into the cave of the true Clair Bible. Gaav had showed up again and destroyed it as he had the earlier temple. Zelgadis groaned both in his sleep and in his dream. Again the information he needed to find his cure had been almost within his reach. Again it had been destroyed before he could see it. Had some god or monster decreed that he could never find his cure?
Amelia yawned and looked around in excitement. What would her handiwork look like in daylight? To her great disappointment, Zelgadis was as blue and rocky as usual. What had happened? "Did I just dream it?" she muttered to herself. The restlessly dreaming chimera gave no answer.
"Oh well, I can try again tomorrow night," Amelia promised herself.
Author's Note: Transformation magic definitely exists in the Slayers' world There are natural shape changers like werewolves as well as the more magical mazoku and sentient dragons. We even get to see our heroes turned into dolls in one of the silly episodes of Slayers NEXT. Nevertheless, transformation magic doesn't fit neatly into the black/white/shamanist magic scheme of the Slayers world. I suppose you could classify it as a kind of curse, which would make it black magic, but that doesn't seem right to me. Transformation is not necessarily an evil/insane/destructive sort of act, so why should it be black magic? Chimera making is the same. It involves creating and nurturing life, but it definitely isn't (pure) white magic. I guess the answer is that both techniques are useful to plot and/or silliness. We should just use them if they're convenient, make up technical-sounding details when necessary, and try not to ask too many questions. That is the long version of why I never classify the transformation magic in this story and why Amelia, who doesn't use black magic, and Zelgadis, who rarely uses white magic, can both use it.