"I had forgotten how bad the damage was," Zelgadis said ruefully.
The doors of the temple of the Clair Bible hung partially off their hinges. One of them had cracked. Instead of opening onto an otherworldly desert, the gap between them showed nothing but a dirty and badly weathered little room. Dead leaves, insect exoskeletons and bird droppings covered the floor. Sunlight showed between the warped boards that made up the walls.
Amelia slipped through the gap between the doors so that she could look around the room. "There's nothing useful here," she reported. She rejoined Zelgadis outside the building.
His fists clenched in frustration. "I was so sure we would find something here," he snarled. He pulled the illegible Clair Bible out of his pocket and flipped through the pages, searching for anything that would give him some clue of what to do next.
"Zelgadis-san, look!"
He turned to see where she was pointing. A glow had appeared in the broken doorway. As he stepped closer, it intensified. The startled young people saw a transparent desert overlaying the view of the abandoned room. By the time Zelgadis reached the doorframe, the desert and the room seemed equally real.
Without warning, Amelia slipped between the doors again.
"Amelia, wait!" Zelgadis ran after her.
As soon as they were inside, the desert seemed completely solid. It stretched away as far as the eye could see in all directions. The sun overhead beat down with all the heat of a real sun.
"Come on." Amelia set out in a leftwards direction.
"Why that way?"
"Why not?"
Zelgadis shrugged and followed her.
An hour or two later, just when their water bottles were starting to run low, Amelia pointed to a smudge on the horizon. "Look!"
"I see it."
It turned out to be a region of fallen stone slabs. At first there were just a few nearly-vertical slabs leaning outward, but as they walked further into the region more and more of the slabs had been knocked over completely. Many of them were broken.
"This must be where we fought Gaav," Amelia commented.
Zelgadis nodded.
"Yes, the Demon Dragon King Gaav did this," a voice behind them said sadly.
The travelers spun around to find a tiny, shriveled old woman with long, pointed ears standing on one of the stone slabs. "Auntie Aqua!" they exclaimed together.
"Oh my, I recognize you! You came here before with that nice orange-haired girl and her swordsman, didn't you?"
"Yes, we did."
"Ah. And what are you looking for this time?"
"We're trying to find Zelgadis-san's cure."
Auntie Aqua focused piercing black eyes on the chimera's face. "Hmm."
"Can you help me?" Zelgadis asked tensely.
"Yes, I think so."
The young man's face lit up in an ecstasy of fearful hope.
Auntie Aqua looked him over slowly from hair to boots. "Yes, I think I can help you," she repeated. "You seem to be fully human, as well as fully demonic and fully golemic. Whoever did this to you managed to combine three complete beings into one, an impressive piece of work."
Zelgadis scowled. He was tired of hearing the curse that had destroyed his life called 'impressive.'
Auntie Aqua continued. "All you need to do is separate the three parts again."
"How do we do that?" Zelgadis asked intently.
"The same way we removed the extra body parts from Diol's chimeras, of course!" Amelia answered.
Auntie Aqua looked puzzled. "How?"
With Amelia's prodding, Zelgadis described his spell to the old woman.
"I see. Yes, that should work as well as any of the other methods I was going to suggest."
Zelgadis wasn't sure whether to feel flattered or cheated. "I already tried it. It didn't work."
"Maybe you just didn't have enough power," Auntie Aqua smiled her warm but enigmatic smile. "Come with me."
"How did you manage to survive, Auntie?" Amelia asked as the threesome walked further into the area of destruction. "I thought Gaav killed you."
"Oh, he did, a long time ago."
"I meant that I thought he had destroyed you, Auntie, your ghost-self."
Auntie Aqua laughed. "I knew what you meant. I was just teasing you." She turned serious. "He almost did. I was only saved by the infinite nature of this place. This temple was intended to be an absolutely complete copy of the Clair Bible. It ended up holding an infinite number of copies of the same information written at increasing levels of detail. Even though this patch of destruction stretches further than you could walk in two days, I still have all my memories. As long as this temple remains, so will I."
"Yet another proof that justice always triumphs in the end!" Amelia proclaimed, shooting a meaningful glance at Zelgadis, which he ignored.
"Oh, I didn't triumph completely. I lost a lot of power in that fight. That is why I have been trying to collect Clair Bible manuscripts. They hold all that is left of my power.
"Ah, this is a good place!" Auntie Aqua pointed to an unbroken stone slab lying nearly horizontal on top of the remains of other slabs. "Lie down there, young man."
Zelgadis obeyed.
The old woman studied him shrewdly. "Are you sure this is what you want? You will be much weaker as a human."
"I won't lie to you. There have been times when I was very glad of my invulnerable skin. Chimeric speed and strength have been useful too. However, I would much rather have merely human speed and strength earned honestly by my own effort, and human vulnerability is a price I'm willing to pay for human normality."
"What about your enhanced senses?" Amelia asked.
"Superhuman hearing has never been very useful. Mostly I just hear things I would rather not, like the people in the inn room next to mine or the sheer volume of a dragonslave. My sense of touch is much weaker than a human's. My other senses are the same as they always were."
"Your eyesight isn't magically enhanced?" Amelia asked incredulously.
Zelgadis allowed himself a faint, proud smile. "No."
Suddenly Amelia's expression changed. She stared at Zelgadis with an intensity that made him uncomfortable. "Why are you looking at me like that?" Zel snapped.
"I'm memorizing your face. If this works, I may never see it again."
"You'll see my true face." He looked into her eyes with an expression that matched hers in intensity. "Amelia, you see me as a chimera, don't you? A chimera you like, perhaps -- an ally and friend -- but still someone fundamentally non-human. That is not who I am. I used to be as human and as normal as you. I would give anything to be that person again. I don't care how much power I lose as long as it means that I will no longer be a freak."
Moved to tears, Amelia hugged him.
Auntie Aqua looked them over with raised eyebrows. "Oh my," she chuckled to herself. She waited for them to release each other before she said, "Very well. Shall we begin?"
"Yes." Zelgadis and Amelia waited expectantly.
"Why are you looking at me? You are the one who's going to perform the spell, girl. I'm just an old ghost without much power left."
"Me?" Amelia looked scared for a moment, but she rose to the challenge. "Okay!"
Zelgadis eyed her warily as he lay back on the stone slab. She was frowning cutely in concentration. As his eyes slid shut, he prayed with every shred of his tormented soul that her face was the last image he would see with chimeric eyes.
"Sleep," Amelia cast more intensely than she had ever before cast a sleep spell on a single person. She made sure the spell spread though every pore of his body so that all his component parts would be unconscious. She knelt down beside her victim and stroked his stone cheek. "Alright, what now?"
"Seek out the essences of his three parts," Auntie Aqua reminded her.
Amelia nodded and probed the still body with her magical senses. "The parts are too well blended. I can't find an edge anywhere! He just feels like Zelgadis-san."
"Calm down. Now seek out the human essence in him. You know what humanity feels like. Don't think of him as Zelgadis-san. Just seek out the humanity."
Amelia studied the prone body again. What felt human? It all felt like one essence. She narrowed her gaze to one patch of skin. That was easier for her mind to encompass. She tasted the essence. What felt human? That warmth was human, that softness, that temper. That slippery flicker was not human, nor was that inert weight. She gathered all the characteristics that felt human into her grasp.
"Is this right?"
"It's a good start," Auntie Aqua told her kindly. "Why don't we start with the golem instead? It's simpler and it doesn't matter if you damage it. A golem's essence feels like this." She sent the feeling straight into Amelia's mind.
Amelia shook off her discouragement and started again. This time she sought out the dried-clay feeling of golem. She tried to pull it out of the body but it resisted her. Then Auntie Aqua put a hand on Amelia's arm and suddenly she had ten times as much power. The golem essence came free in a small shower of dust, leaving behind a patch of soft blue skin. Amelia repeated the process on another, larger patch of skin. It was easier now that she knew what she was doing. Then she did it again, and again. Gradually a pile of dust and increasingly large fragments of clay built up around Zelgadis.
"You care about him a lot, don't you?" Auntie Aqua said when the two women stopped for a short rest.
Amelia smiled down at the stony face. "I love him."
Auntie Aqua blinked. That confession had certainly been easier to get than she expected.
"At least, I think I love him," Amelia continued, looking up at Auntie Aqua. "I always believed that love is a pure and noble emotion, like philanthropy. Love is seeing someone and knowing that you belong together forever! Love is being willing to sacrifice anything for the sake of your beloved!" Her poses collapsed. "What I feel for Zelgadis-san isn't like that at all."
"What is it like?"
"Fear. Embarrassment. Sometimes even jealousy. He's nothing like the kind of hero I expected to fall in love with either. When I was young, I was in love with Roderick the Bold, Sir Robin the Brave and, briefly, King Peter the Good. They were true allies of justice! But falling in love with a real person is very different from falling in love with a character in a history book. Zelgadis-san isn't always noble and kind. In fact, sometimes he's really annoying! But I like him...a lot. Just being near him makes me happy, even if we're in an awful situation. My heart aches when I see him suffering. That is why I would do anything -- well, anything that isn't unjust -- to cure him. I don't know if that's love, but I can't think of what else it could be."
"Love is a lot messier than storytellers make it out to be. It hurts, but it's usually worth it in the end."
Amelia smiled uncertainly, torn between an enthusiastic declamation on the glory of Love and her own feelings of doubt.
"What kind of a person is he?" Auntie Aqua asked.
"He's the most honorable person I know," Amelia said simply. "He puts too much value on loyalty to employers and not enough on justice and friendship, but I admire his dedication to his ideals. He can act selfish sometimes, but he has always been willing to sacrifice his search for a cure and even his life in order to defeat dangerous villains. He doesn't help people with smaller problems unless I remind him but, once something forces him to pay attention to people in need, he works hard to help them. He really does care about other people. And he's saved my life more than once. He's a good person. He doesn't like it when I call him an ally of justice, but he really is one. He's a hero!"
Auntie Aqua smiled knowingly. "I'm glad to hear that he's worth all this effort."
"Everyone deserves a chance at happiness, especially people who have been unjustly treated like Zelgadis-san."
Amelia returned to pulling golem pieces out of her friend. Before long, Zelgadis was half-human, half-demonic and no part golem. Amelia paused to admire her handiwork.
Zelgadis still had blue skin, pointy ears and a thick lock of purplish hair falling over his right eye, but the skin was smooth and rubbery, the inset stones were gone and the hair had lost its metallic sheen and hardness. He had also grown short talons and fangs. He gave off an indefinable air of evil.
"You'd better get back to work before that demon wakes up. They don't sleep naturally so your sleep spell won't hold it much longer," Auntie Aqua warned.
Amelia got back to work. It was easier to separate demon from human now that there were only two natures to think about. Amelia gathered all the demon essence in the left arm and yanked it out of Zel's body. Zel's hand turned pink but the demon arm remained attached to the body. It just stretched and, as soon as Amelia loosened her grip on it, rejoined the human arm. The arm convulsed briefly and regained its blue color.
"What happened?" Amelia asked in bewilderment.
"Hmm. You'll have to take the demon out in one piece, I think," Auntie Aqua replied.
Amelia's eyes widened. She couldn't do that much at once! Well, she could try.
On her second try, she got both arms and most of the chest. On the next try, she got slightly more than that. She did finally manage to get the demon out with the help of Auntie Aqua and an exorcism spell.
The demon floated in the air over its former body, glaring at Amelia with slanted yellow eyes. It was thoroughly enraged by being repeatedly yanked on and finally evicted from its cozy home.
"How dare you?" the demon hissed. "How dare you separate us? He is mine as long as he lives. Rezo promised him to me. How dare you destroy Rezo's masterpiece?"
Amelia sprang to her feet, pointing dramatically at the demon. "Zelgadis-san wants to be human so, in the name of Love and Friendship, I will do everything in my power to make him human again! You will not stop me." She began chanting, enjoying the feeling of a much more familiar spell than the ones she had been casting recently.
The demon tried to dive back into Zelgadis' body but Auntie Aqua threw a protective barrier over it and the demon bounced off.
"...Let the power in my soul be called forth from the infinite. Ra Tilt!"
The demon shrieked and dissolved like a shadow caught in a bright light.
"Victory!" Amelia shouted.
Then she cast her most powerful healing spell on the fragile-looking body nestled amidst the heaps of broken clay. There was no telling what damage ripping away two-thirds of his body might have done.
"My, he's a handsome one, isn't he?" Auntie Aqua remarked. "Who would have known that he had such a sweet face under all that stone?"
Amelia nodded, wide-eyed. She had often tried to picture what Zelgadis would look like without his curse. She had even tried to transform him to fit that image. She had occasionally managed to get the eyes almost right, or the line of his jaw, or his hair, but she had never been able to put all the pieces together well enough to see what sort of an impression he would give. Now she knew.
He looked a little bit like Rezo, especially with his eyes shut. His hair and general cast of features were similar, although no one would mistake him for the Red Priest. His features were recognizably the same ones he had had as a chimera, but the absence of rocks imbedded in his skin and the presence of eyebrows made a huge difference.
"Shall we wake him up?" Auntie Aqua prompted.
Amelia nodded again and removed the sleep spell without once taking her eyes off the strange-familiar face of her friend. She gently brushed a thick lock of soft, dark hair out of his eyes and he awoke.
Zelgadis savored the sweetest sensation he had experienced in years: something soft was brushing against his face and he could feel it. He opened his eyes. Amelia's face loomed above him with an odd expression. Was that fear, or wonderment?
"Did it...did it work?" Zelgadis asked apprehensively.
Amelia broke into a grin. "Yes," she confirmed.
Zel lifted his hands in front of his face. They were pink and smooth and human. He sat up, feeling strangely heavy and light at the same time. He touched his hair. It was soft. He stroked his cheek and it was soft too.
"I'm human!" he exclaimed in amazement and delight, still hardly daring to believe it.
Amelia impulsively hugged him. Zelgadis returned her embrace, gingerly at first, then -- when he realized that he was in no danger of crushing her -- with all the force of his joy.
Sensation overwhelmed him. A day ago this embrace would have felt to him like a faint pressure. Now he could feel her hair against his cheek and her breath on his neck. He could feel the individual threads in his clothing where she pressed it against his skin. He could feel the shape of her body against his chest. He blushed and pulled back slightly, noticing as his hands slid off her back that there was a small tear in her cape.
"Do you...have a mirror?" he asked tentatively, his voice sounding faint and dull in his human ears.
"I think so," she replied indistinctly, searching her cape. She produced a mirror fragment from a concealed pocket and handed it to him.
The mirror was tiny and none too clean, but it was enough to show Zelgadis that his face was just as he remembered it. He smiled and then grinned and then laughed with joy. After a moment of surprise -- Zelgadis never laughed -- Amelia smiled back at him. A moment of perfect happiness stretched out between them.
Zel's stomach growled. He put a hand to it in surprise. "I feel hungry," he said with amazement. "I haven't felt hungry since the night I became a chimera."
"Would you like to go back to the village and get something to eat then?" Amelia suggested. She was almost as hungry as he was. After all, she had been the one doing all the work.
Zelgadis stumbled to his feet, sending clay dust flying. This body moved nearly the same way as his chimeric one. He handed the mirror back to Amelia with a grave, "Thank you."
Auntie Aqua cleared her throat. The young people jumped. The old dragon god's eyes twinkled with laughter. "I have a favor to ask of you."
"Yes?"
"Would you leave that Clair Bible you brought with you in the outside temple when you leave? If it is there, I will be able to open the door again."
Zelgadis pulled the ornately bound book out of his pocket and looked at it regretfully. He badly wanted to keep it, but he could deny nothing to the person who had just given him back his humanity. He nodded.
"Please protect it and hide it well. If someone like that priest you used to travel with finds it, he will surely destroy it."
"We'll do that."
"Thank you." Auntie Aqua looked thoughtfully back and forth between the transformed young man and the girl who had so recently declared her love for him. She faded away with a satisfied smile.
The two humans started back toward the temple door and their own world. After a minute, Zelgadis paused to empty the gravel out of his boots. Under the desert sun, his hair shone a rich, dark purple.
They paused outside the temple long enough to wrap their Clair Bible in layers of preservation and protection spells and slide it deep into a crack between two foundation stones before they dashed down the mountain to find lunch.
After consuming more food than any two people in that town had eaten at sitting since the last time Lina and Gourry had passed through the region, they went shopping. Usually Zelgadis would have had little patience for all the shops Amelia dragged him through and all the clothes she made him try on, but right now he was too happy to object to anything. He just savored the textures of the fabrics and stared adoringly at his own reflection in every mirror.
Zelgadis had chosen his old clothes for their ability to survive his abrasive skin. They had all the warmth and softness of sailcloth. By the end of the day, Amelia had him outfitted with a soft purple shirt a few shades lighter than his hair, a pair of dust-coloured pants that looked a lot like his old ones but felt much nicer, and a new pair of fingerless gloves. He also got a haircut that left his hair much less ragged, although only slightly shorter. Wire hair had not been easy to keep trimmed. They had ordered boots and armor for him too, but those wouldn't be ready for a day or two because they had to be made to fit. The only piece of his old clothing he was keeping was his cape, which was currently at the laundry being thoroughly cleaned and mended.
Amelia got a new outfit too. While the shoemaker's apprentice had been measuring Zelgadis' feet for new boots, the shoemaker had offered Amelia a pair of boots for only an extra five silver pieces. A wandering adventurer had ordered the boots from him many months ago but never came back to claim them. Right now they were just taking up space in his storeroom. Would Amelia like to try them on? Amelia would.
The boots were made of soft, light-blue leather cut in a dashing style fit for a true heroine, and they fit. Amelia gave her once beautiful but now scuffed and leaky green boots one last, fond glance. Then she bought the blue boots without a second thought. The only problem was that trying on the boots had made her realize just how shabby the rest of her costume was. The ragged cuffs of her pants ended well above her ankles, as they had since the beginning of the quest. Her tunic and pants were both covered with snags, minor scorch marks and ingrained dirt. Even her socks were mud-stained. As much as she loved her costume (and she had been wearing variations of it since she was a tiny child), she had to admit that it was worn out.
Amelia managed to find white pants in her size without too much trouble, but she could not find an exact match for her old tunic. She had to settle for one that was much less poofy and completely lacking in pink ribbons. It felt wrong, but the protection spells woven into it were of good quality and Zelgadis liked it. His exact words, when she demanded his opinion, had been, "You look older somehow." Amelia kept her cape, her magic amplifying jewelry and the gloves that Zelgadis had given her.
They returned to their inn that night looking and feeling like new people. Zelgadis spent the evening in the bathhouse soaking that last of the stone dust out of his skin.
The next day they celebrated the end of the quest by just relaxing and having fun. After picking up Zel's new boots, they spent the morning seeing what few sights there were to see in the town. They sampled the local cuisine. They saw a play. They walked along the riverbank, talking.
Zelgadis had never been happier. The voice in his mind that constantly whispered, "You are a freak. No one could possibly like you. You deserve to suffer," was gone. The heavy, unyielding stone that had made him feel physically and emotionally numb was gone. He felt more alive than he had in years.
Amelia was also very happy. She rejoiced at seeing Zelgadis so happy and she was proud of successfully completing the quest. However, she was not quite at ease with her companion. He didn't look or act like the Zelgadis she knew -- he smiled too much and hadn't been more than mildly sarcastic all day -- but his voice was still the same soft, deep voice she loved, and his expressions, except for the grins, were exactly the way she remembered them. The mixture of strangeness and familiarity was disconcerting. Still, she had to admit that she was enjoying the company of this warm, courteous, startlingly familiar stranger.
That night, to Amelia's utter astonishment, they went dancing. It had been Zelgadis' idea. It turned out that "I don't dance" had not meant "I can't." They crawled into their beds well after sunset, exhausted by an absolutely wonderful day.
Over breakfast the next morning Zelgadis said, "It's time to get serious."
"What do you mean?"
"We've found my cure. What do we do now?"
"I could go home to Seyruun," Amelia suggested without any enthusiasm. "You could come with me," she added with much more.
"No, I think I'll travel awhile longer. There's not much work for freelance mercenaries in Seyruun."
"Then I'll come with you!" Amelia struck a dramatic pose. "Together we will continue to fight the forces of evil and protect innocent people from injustice!"
Zel gave her a long, steady look.
"But where shall we go? What shall we seek?" Amelia asked, pose abandoned.
"Let's head south, since most things are south of here, and I'm sure something will turn up. Something always does."
"What a great idea!"
"If my armor's ready we can leave this morning."
Amelia sighed. She had enjoyed the last two days very much. She would have like the fun to last a little longer. Still, they had seen and done everything there was to see and do in this town. Zelgadis was right; it was time to move on.
The armor was ready. It consisted of a lightweight breastplate, wrist guards and shin guards, all black. Amelia had protested that black was a bad-guy color but Zelgadis liked black armor. He had considered getting a metal headband as well, but the sight of his reflection wearing it had called up disturbing memories of Kopii Rezo.
By the time the armor had been adjusted to fit Zelgadis perfectly it was almost noon. Amelia and Zel ate lunch in town and then hit the road.
Author's Note: Yay! Zel finally got his cure! How many of you thought that I would actually go through with it?
There are people (and not a few of them) who think that a human Zelgadis just wouldn't be Zelgadis, or at least wouldn't be nearly as attractive/cool. I disagree. What makes him attractive/cool is mostly his personality and sense of style. His personality is selfish, antisocial, moody and pessimistic - not the most attractive personality for someone you have to live with but one that tends to make anime characters very popular. Personally, I like him because his personality is the closest to mine of all the Slayers characters. His style is just as melodramatic as Amelia's but more villainous, and he can do the leaping-from-high-places thing right. Take a look at the first episode of NEXT if you don't understand what I mean. I think that if he was human he would bear an uncanny resemblance to Van of Escaflone, and Van certainly doesn't loose any coolness by being human. A human Zelgadis would still be welcome in the Slayers group (although he might not be able to fight in quite such a high league) and he would still make a valuable contribution to the group dynamic. The silliness is so much more fun when it's offending his dignity! He is also often a voice of reason to balance out the extreme irrationality of some of the party members. Of course, he can be just as irrational and silly as any of the others, especially when in hot pursuit of his cure. He just regrets it more afterward.
That brings me back to the subject of his cure. I prefer to believe that he's telling the truth when he says how much he hates being a chimera. We've all seen times when he gets a major kick out of being invulnerable, but I think he really would be willing to give it up for the sake of humanity (acquiring it for himself, I mean, not in the sense of 'sacrifice for the greater good'). Finding his cure would make him deliriously happy, at least for awhile. You'll have to wait and see whether or not his happiness continues once he and Amelia are forced to deal with harsh reality again in the chapters to come.