Warning: The main characters spend most of this chapter more-or-less naked. If you are underage or offended by nudity, please set your imagination to appropriate camera angles.
"I can hear splashing and laughter up ahead," Zelgadis said, breaking nearly an hour of silence.
"Finally!" Amelia did not say. She was determined not to complain, even if Zelgadis had kept them walking from dawn to past sunset the last four days straight, even if she hadn't had a bath or slept in a bed in over a week. She understood his impatience to reach their destination. She was tough. She was willing to suffer for a just cause. Still, this hot spring would feel so good! She walked a little faster.
Half an hour later Amelia was starting to wonder if Zelgadis had only imagined the sounds of the hot spring. (She refused to believe that he had deliberately lied to her.) Then they rounded a bend in the road and there it was: Miracle Bob's Hot Spring Resort, complete with a tacky fake palm tree beside the gaudy, green and gold sign.
"I hadn't expected it to be quite this...commercial," Amelia admitted, rubbing the back of her neck uncertainly.
"I hadn't expected this many people." Zelgadis pulled up his hood.
Indeed, a couple was shepherding their two small children through the entrance even as Zelgadis spoke. The noise from inside the resort, now audible to Amelia too, indicated that there were many more people having fun inside.
Zelgadis braced himself and walked briskly toward the gate. Amelia glanced up at the palm tree again, shrugged and followed him.
"I'm Miracle Bob. Welcome to my Hot Spring Resort! Welcome! Welcome!" the skinny man at the door called out. He looked like he had been hard-boiled in his own hot spring. He was wearing swim trunks and an unbuttoned shirt just as tacky as the rest of the resort decor. "The admission fee is twelve bronze for the day," he continued, "but for such a lovely lady, I'll make it ten." He gazed at Amelia with a flirtatious leer worn to insincerity by overuse.
Amelia stared back at him, unsure whether to be flattered or appalled.
Zelgadis sighed and counted out twenty-two bronze coins. "This is the legendary healing spring, right?" he asked as he handed them over.
"Oh yes, sir! These waters have miraculous healing powers! They're guaranteed to improve the health of any invalid and brighten the day of anyone..." He took a good look at Zelgadis for the first time. Instantly, his demeanor changed from jovial sleaziness to serious business. "You can't go in there looking like that! You'll frighten the customers."
Zelgadis sighed and reached for his money pouch again.
Miracle Bob waved it away. "No, I really can't let you in."
Zelgadis' hand moved from his money pouch to his sword.
Amelia clenched her fists. "You're going to turn him away just because he's strange looking?" ("Hey," Zelgadis protested weakly) "That is completely unjust! You should not discriminate against people just because of the way they look!"
The businessman glanced nervously from the stone man's hand clenched around his sword hilt to the girl's surprisingly dangerous-looking fists. "No, no, I won't turn you away. I'll just...would you mind using the older part of the resort instead? It's much smaller and doesn't have any decorative palm trees or lounge chairs, but you would have lots of privacy. And, um, the water up there actually has stronger healing properties. Closer to the source, you know."
"No," Amelia declared firmly. "I demand that you treat Zelgadis-sama just like everybody else."
"Let it go, Amelia. The older part of the resort will be fine." Zelgadis told the resort owner.
Bob sent a silent prayer of thanks to his favorite deity. "Jake!" he called, "Come here."
Several uneasy seconds later, a boy ambled out of the shadows. "Yeah, what do you want?" he asked with proper deference for his employer.
"Would you show these customers to the old hot pool?"
"Yeah, sure," the boy replied indifferently. "Follow me."
The travelers followed him through the central corridor of the resort, Miracle Bob having vanished to deal with less troublesome customers. Jake grabbed a pair of towels off a rack before leading them out a door at the far end of the corridor. Amelia and Zel found themselves on an overgrown footpath winding up the side of the hill.
"The 'old part of the resort' is all the way up there?" Amelia asked suspiciously.
"Yeah," the boy replied. "The real hot spring is up there. The stuff down here is so diluted that we have to heat it artificially, but people don't like climbing."
Amelia frowned. "Fake hot springs are a crime. That's what my sister used to say."
"Your sister?" Zelgadis repeated, startled.
"Gracia loved hot springs," Amelia said wistfully. "I wish she was here."
As they climbed higher, the vegetation got more and more lush. There were ferns growing under bushes growing under short trees growing under tall trees. The sheer bulk of leaves turned the midmorning sun into green twilight. The plants should have been choking each other out, but instead they were all in perfect health. Amelia had never seen greener plants. The path survived only because it was paved with stone so solid that the plants hadn't managed to crack it yet. Even so, the threesome had to push branches out of their way with each step.
The 'hot pool' turned out to be two wooden shacks set into a stone wall. It looked like a very plain outdoor bathhouse.
"You can change in there." Jake pointed to the left shack, "Men's," and the right, "Women's. Or switch if you want. No one will care." He handed each of his customers a towel. "For an extra five bronze each, I'll take your clothes back to the resort to be cleaned," he added in a bored tone.
Amelia and Zelgadis stepped through their respective doors. The wooden structures were as simple on the inside as they had looked from the outside. They had two doors, one leading to the outside and the other to the pool. Other than that, they were just wooden boxes with some clothes hooks stuck into the walls.
The dusty travelers handed their clothing out to the boy along with the requested five bronze coins each.
Zelgadis heard a splash and a shriek of delight from the far side of the wall. He cautiously opened the door and stepped into the pool area. It was entirely paved with tiles and moss. The floor sloped down gradually into semi-circular basin filled with invitingly clear water. The other half of the circle was hidden behind a high stone wall. The ridiculously verdant local wildlife served as a wall on the other two sides.
"Does the water seem safe?" Zelgadis asked, dipping in a cautious toe.
Amelia's voice floated back from the other side of the wall. "It's wonderful! It's just the perfect temperature."
She had already waded out knee-deep. Now she slowly sat down, letting her skin adjust to the hot water a piece at a time. She groaned faintly in pleasure as the water melted away aches and pains she hadn't even noticed. She slid further in until only her face was above water. Completely limp, and already half-asleep, she let the water work its magic.
Zelgadis stepped cautiously into the water. He knew that it would not cure his curse. He had been disappointed often enough to recognize when he was about to hit a dead-end. Still, he couldn't stop that traitorous upsurge of hope that rose in his heart every time. Despite the tacky resort at the bottom of the hill, this was a genuine legendary healing spring. It had worked miracles before. Why not for him?
Zelgadis tried to squash that thought. Hope only made disappointment more bitter.
He trembled as he sank into the water (its near-scalding temperature meaningless to his stone skin). He closed his eyes and tried to relax and tried to relax and opened them and held his hand up in front of his face. No change. Maybe it took time to work. He closed his eyes again and tried to be patient.
He waited an eternity, and then another. They probably added up to three minutes.
"Amelia?"
"Hmm?"
"Tell me about your sister."
Amelia sat up in surprise. None of her friends had ever asked about her sister before. "Why do you ask?"
"I need something to take my mind off this waiting."
"Oh. Um." Amelia rolled over so that she could prop herself up comfortably on her elbows. "Gracia was very tall -- even taller than you -- and every inch a princess. She was always more powerful, more confident and more beautiful than me. I wish she would come back. She would make a much better queen than I would."
"Don't you want to be queen?"
"I want whatever is best for Seyruun. If that means giving up the throne to Gracia, I'll do it. If it means becoming queen, I'll do it."
"How ironic. Your uncle and cousin were willing to kill to get the throne. You have it but would happily give it up."
The long silence on the other side of the wall told him that he had just put his foot in his mouth. "Uh, Amelia?" He tried to think what to say.
"Family is more important than power. How could they not realize that?" she said at last. The righteous anger in her voice put his mind at ease.
Amelia fought down the emotions his careless words had roused up and began again in a conversational tone, "When Gracia and I were little we always planned to go out into the world and right wrongs once we grew up. She would go back and be queen when she was needed, but I could devote my life completely to Justice. I would spend my whole life travelling from place to place deposing evil warlords and saving damsels in distress, just like the heroes in fairytales, just like my Daddy." Zelgadis could picture her posing heroically as she spoke.
"Then Mommy...died," Amelia's voice turned sad. "Gracia couldn't bear being inside the palace anymore -- she said that she saw blood everywhere -- so she left. I haven't seen her since then but my heart - my heart which burns with Justice - tells me that she is still alive. She is out there somewhere fighting evil."
Privately, Zelgadis doubted it, but he had enough tact not to put his foot in his mouth a second time by saying so. He turned the conversation toward a less dangerous topic.
Zelgadis' sleepy mind drifted onto an unusual topic, romance. It was a subject he had rarely thought about since he had become a chimera. Since he was a freak that no sane girl would want to associate with, there was no point in thinking about it. Besides, the few girls he had met (most of them insane) had all been unsuitable in one way or another.
He had almost fallen for Miwan, a princess who longed to escape the life her mother was forcing her into. Then he found out just what Miwan meant when she said she was living a lie. Let's just say it crushed any romantic ideas he might have had about her.
Sylphiel, a shrine maiden of Sairaag, was sweet but between her obvious crush on Gourry and her tragic loss of her homeland, it would have been utterly tasteless for Zelgadis to even think about forming a romantic attachment to her, even if he hadn't been a chimera.
Martina he never even considered.
Filia was pretty but she was also a dragon. She looked and acted about fifteen but she was probably centuries old. She was also fantastically strong and amazingly destructive when she lost her temper. As a mere mortal, Zelgadis saw her a dragon, not a girl.
Lina...he really might have fallen in love with Lina if it wasn't for Gourry but, as it was, he didn't want to come between them. That was partially because he didn't want to hurt Gourry, but it was more because their bond was so tight that anyone who tried to come between them would probably get crushed. The first time that he had met them, back when he was still working for Rezo, he would never have guessed that they had met less than a day earlier. They already worked together like partners. When he had parted ways with them on the outskirts of Atlas City a few days later, their excuses for staying together had been so flimsy that Zelgadis had been sure that they would either break up or become lovers within a month. The next time he met them, during the fight with Kopii Rezo, he was puzzled to discover that they had done neither despite fighting constantly and at the same time showing every sign of deep mutual affection. It was one of the strangest relationships he had ever seen.
During his later travels with them, Zelgadis had often shared a room with Gourry at night and they had sometimes talked. Gourry had always had words of comfort for Zelgadis when he woke from screaming nightmares, and in return Zelgadis had often offered words of advice when Gourry was suffering from Lina problems. Zel was sure that Lina returned Gourry's feelings. She tended to glance guiltily at him whenever she was asked about her love life or the reason why she cast the Giga Slave. That girl couldn't hide anything. Some day Lina would grow up enough to realize that love was not a prince on a shining white horse sweeping her off her feet, and Gourry would get the courage not to mess up all potentially romantic moments, and then things would get truly interesting.
No, Zelgadis did not want to fall in love with Lina. She was smart, funny, warm and really quite cute, but Zel would not want a girlfriend who regularly beat up her partner as a form of stress relief. Leave that for Gourry; he was better at dodging.
Then there was Amelia. Zelgadis wasn't sure what to think about her any more. Up until very recently Zelgadis had dismissed all amorous thoughts about her because she was a child (no matter how womanly her figure) and Zel was not a pedophile. Her face was cute and her justice obsession was cute and her little crush on him was cute, but Zelgadis was not particularly drawn to cuteness. Now, though...Amelia was no longer the klutzy, naive child he had first met. She hadn't fallen on her face during a battle since...he couldn't remember when the last time had been. She was still frighteningly naive but not because of ignorance. She simply had an overly optimistic and trusting nature and probably always would. The tragedy in her past would have already broken her spirit if it was breakable.
She was still pretty cute, but the prettiness was gaining dominance over the cuteness.
There was something in her voice sometimes, or her eyes, that hinted at the woman she would soon become. These glimpses of maturity were all the more tantalizing because most of the time and in most ways Amelia was still the excessively cute little girl he knew. It was disconcerting. Were all teenage girls like this?
It was also getting increasingly hard to deny that Amelia really did love him. He had always dismissed her feelings as a silly adolescent crush, but crushes usually did not last for nearly two years, nor were they usually combined with honest friendship. People say that love is blind, but the truth is that love knows the object of its affections. Otherwise it is just the love of an illusion. Amelia had seen Zelgadis at his worst. She had put up with his fits of irritability and depression and seen his worst moments of humiliation. She had endured his indifference. Through it all she had continued to look at him with the same admiration. It was all the harder to deny because she was so discrete about it. She never clung to him or called him by pet names or flirted with him. She just gave him admiring glances and leapt between him and attackers (even though he had stone skin and she didn't) and occasionally told him that he looked fine just the way he was. He couldn't deny her feelings and, with recent events, it was getting harder and harder to ignore them.
Of course, even if Amelia grew into a dazzlingly beautiful woman who was passionately in love with him (Zelgadis snorted at that mental image), he still couldn't allow himself to get romantically involved with her. He was a chimera, a freak, a monster. He couldn't kiss a woman without his hair impaling her tender skin. He couldn't embrace her without leaving bruises. Even if Amelia liked the way he looked, that was just a sign of her poor taste. He was hideous. He refused to impose himself on any woman, much less on someone he cared about. If he ever did fall in love with someone, he would best show that love by staying as far away from her as possible. The situation was hopeless.
Why was he thinking about something so foolish anyway? Zelgadis shoved the pointless musings out of his head and stood up.
Amelia dreamed of a book that held all the knowledge in the world. She flipped quickly past the true story of creation, past secret lores from other worlds, past poetry so beautiful that it would have etched itself on her heart if she had paused long enough to read it. She knew that she only had enough time to learn one thing out of all this vast body of knowledge. She had to make it count. She had to find something truly valuable and just.
This page was titled, "The Life of Gracia Ul Naga Seyruun". Amelia forced herself to turn the page. Here was a white magic spell so powerful that it could erase Mazoku or bring the freshly dead back to life. Amelia kept looking.
Here was the secret of unmaking chimeras. At once Amelia knew that this was what she came here to find. She looked longingly at the rest of the book -- There were so many pages that she hadn't even flipped through yet! -- but she bent her head to study Zelgadis' cure.
She finished the last page. Now she knew exactly how to make Zelgadis human again. She raised her hands and started chanting. As the spell progressed, his stone skin melted and ran down his body. It dripped from his fingers, leaving behind soft, pink skin. As the last drop slid away, he lifted his bowed head...
A splashing sound from the far side of the wall woke Amelia and she immediately forgot the dream.
"Zelgadis-san?" Amelia called out, yawning. "Is that you?"
"Yes."
"What are you doing?"
"I'm leaving. This 'healing spring' is a fake. I've been sitting in it for two hours and still look exactly the way I did when I got in."
Amelia glanced down at her hands. They had changed. They were significantly cleaner and more wrinkly than they had been two hours ago. "But that boy hasn't come back with our clothes yet!"
Zelgadis checked the change room just in case she was wrong. She was right. "Then I'll just sit here and wait for him."
Zel wrapped his towel around his waist and stepped out of the bathhouse. He sat down on a log placed beside the path to help keep the undergrowth at bay.
A minute later, Amelia emerged from her change room, covered from armpits to thighs by her fluffy, white towel. She pretended not to stare curiously at Zelgadis' bumpy chest, arms and legs as she sat down on the other end of the log. She rarely got to see anything more than his face and fingertips. He really was very attractive despite his stone skin.
Zel covered himself up as best he could by wrapping his arms around his chest. He shot Amelia a 'do-you-mind?' glare. She was innocently looking at a patch of ferns on the other side of the path.
"It's a wonderful pool, but it does get boring after awhile, doesn't it?" Amelia commented for the sake of conversation.
"Yes," Zelgadis grudgingly replied.
There was a rather uncomfortable silence.
"Where are we going next?" Amelia asked.
"There's a city a day's walk north of here where we can get supplies. After that, I don't know."
"Oh."
There was more silence. Zelgadis brooded on dead ends. Amelia stared thoughtfully at her knees.
"That's odd."
"What is?" Zelgadis asked, annoyed at being distracted from his gloom.
"My knees are smooth. I used to scrape them a lot as a child." Actually, the last time had been only a few months ago, but he didn't need to know that. "They should be covered in scars, but they aren't. The scar is gone from my leg too." She stretched said leg out in front of her so that she could get a better look at it. "And the finger I burnt while cooking last night feels fine."
Zelgadis glanced over at the leg and immediately wished he hadn't. He wasn't comfortable seeing that much of her flesh. Instead, he stared at his own, freakish body. Wait, now that she mentioned it...
"The scratches are gone from my body too," he realized. "There should be scratches on my arms here and here and three here." He indicated the spots. "And one across my abdomen here. The chip in my shoulder is gone too." He squinted down at it. Yes, it was definitely missing.
Amelia was impressed. "That healing spring is even more powerful than the legend said."
"Maybe, but I'm still a chimera."
"Be fair, Zelgadis-sama. Nobody ever claimed that the spring cures curses or transformations."
"Mmm."
Silence descended again, but somehow it felt more comfortable this time. Birds chirped. A breeze rustled through the leaves. A stream burbled somewhere just out of sight. The sun shone warmly.
"My, my, I certainly didn't expect it to be you."
Zelgadis and Amelia spun around at the familiar voice.
"What are you doing here?" Zelgadis growled.
"Xellos-san!" Amelia exclaimed, clutching her towel more tightly.
Sure enough, the mazoku priest was standing behind them, leaning against a tree.
Zelgadis wrapped his arms around himself again. Of all the times Xellos could have picked to show up...
"My master sent me to investigate a wedding ceremony conducted a few weeks ago in her name. She is not often invoked at weddings so she was curious about this one. I believe it was in that forest a colony of beastmen and chimeras recently colonized. Do you know anything about it?"
Their guilty faces answered in the affirmative. "No," Zelgadis said coldly.
"Congratulations, dear friends!" Xellos beamed, ignoring the denial. "I'm sure you will be happy together. You should have told me you were getting married! I would have come to the wedding."
"We are not married," Zelgadis growled. "That farce in the Chimera Forest meant nothing."
"It was an unjust act done to us against our wills," Amelia agreed.
Xellos' mouth formed a cute little 'o' of mock-surprise, which changed to a chin-in-hand, thoughtful expression. "You don't want to be married?"
"No!" Zelgadis replied a little too forcefully.
"No," Amelia echoed, not quite forcefully enough.
"What a pity," Xellos sighed. "My master told me to give you her blessing in person. The mazoku race is very much in favor of this match."
Amelia looked stricken.
"Too bad," Zelgadis growled.
"Yes, it is," Xellos agreed. "From what I heard, that ceremony was missing only one thing necessary to make it complete."
Amelia's face lit up with relief. "It was missing something?"
"What was it missing?" Zelgadis asked warily.
"The blessing of a priest, of course. Fortunately, I am the Beastmaster's one priest, so I can remedy that."
"But we don't want..."
Xellos' hands slammed down on their shoulders. "Consider this my wedding present," he smiled.
Then wave upon wave of black energy poured into their bodies. Amelia and Zelgadis screamed as hatred, rage and madness shocked through their veins. It poured down their arms and concentrated in their left hands, which convulsed. Then it oozed out their skin and congealed into a thin, gold band around the base of each one's ring finger.
While they were still gasping for breath and staring in horror at their hands, Xellos straightened up. "Well, I must be going -- other business to take care of, you know. Bye bye." Xellos started to fade away. He paused. "Amelia-san, you might want to pull that towel back up." He opened one eye in a wink and then vanished.
Amelia quickly rewrapped the towel around herself, blushing angrily (and facing away from Zelgadis). That...that perverted, sadistic mazoku garbage. "I'm going to wait by the pool," she said, matching actions to words.
Zelgadis nodded without looking up. He was tugging on his new ring. "This ring won't come off."
Amelia paused in the act of opening the changing room door. She yanked on her ring. "Mine won't come off either. I think it's attached to my skin." She flexed her hand. Her hand felt perfectly normal now except for the unaccustomed hard ridge of the ring, but the memory of pain remained.
Zelgadis tugged on his ring again. It didn't even budge. It might as well have been welded onto his finger.
What was Xellos up to? It had been more than mere teasing. The black magic rings showed that. And what had he meant by, "The mazoku race is very much in favor of this match"? Zelgadis was afraid he could guess. The blood of Rezo and Lei Magnus flowed in his veins. If that blood got into the Seyruun royal family, protectors of the most powerful white magic city in the world... Yes, the mazoku would be "very much in favor" of that. Was that all, or did Xellos have some deeper plot? As always, it was impossible to tell. Zelgadis would have to keep his eyes open.
Amelia soaked her hands and feet in the pool. She felt shaken. Why had their old friend Xellos shown up so briefly just to hurt them? She knew that he was a mazoku, and therefore evil by definition, but he was usually nicer than that. And had he been telling the truth about marrying them? Xellos almost never lied, but he rarely told the truth either.
Amelia wasn't sure how she felt about being married to Zelgadis. She used to daydream about it sometimes, but the reality was proving very different from her daydreams. She didn't want to be married to him if that made him unhappy, or if it made the mazoku race happy. Anything that the mazoku race was "very much in favor of" was probably bad for the human race, but Amelia couldn't think why the mazoku would care whom she married. She hugged her knees to her chest. The whole situation made her feel very vulnerable.
When Jake finally returned with their clothes, Amelia and Zelgadis silently left the resort. This had been their last lead. They were too dispirited even to buy a vial of healing water from the gift shop on the way out.
Author's Note: Gratuitous nudity, Zel in a romantic frame of mind, Xellos showing up...can we say 'fan-service'? Well, author-service actually. You know I enjoy it at least as much as you do.