Title: Cross My Heart

Author: Yugure

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: Me no own. You no sue.

Notes: Read. Review. Eat lots of chocolate cake because we all die eventually. You might as well enjoy life while you have it.

Chapter 4

            The Obsidian Rune took up nearly the entire room, in spite of the vast size of the area. Towering over the heads of all who looked upon it, the Obsidian Rune was a behemoth. Silver writing, in ancient tongues, wound around and across the inky black surface.

            Zelgadis had never seen anything like it in his life. True, he had only been traveling a few months since his… transformation… but he had seen some pretty strange things already. Nothing quite matched up to this.

            "The Rune is basically a repository for all magic knowledge. It's not nearly as great at the legendary Claire Bible," Juliana explained, leading Zelgadis to a podium near the center of what little open space there was. "Nobody knows where the other Runes are, so the information given here is only a portion of what there once was."

            "Wait… you mean there are more of these things?!" Zelgadis exclaimed, gawking.

            "Uh huh. But they're basically lost to history. Some people think the other Runes are just myths, some people think the Lord of Nightmares removed them many, many years ago, and some think they reside on worlds beside our own." Juliana touched a floating orb of gold hovering above the podium and a hologram appeared before them.

            "And this thing will tell me how to cure myself?"

            "Well… I can't guarantee that. I can only say that it might." Juliana frowned in deep thought as she quickly tapped her fingers over the gold orb in different patterns. The hologram screen in front of them changed to give different readouts with every tap. "To make things even more difficult, the Obsidian Rune isn't just written in one language. It has about 3 archaic languages that we actually understand. Everything else is gibberish, meaning lost thousands of years ago."

            "Just my luck, my cure is in one of those," Zelgadis grumbled.

            "Okay, the section mapped out for transformations is… there!" Juliana hopped down from the podium and scampered over to the Rune. She cast a quick Raywing and flew up about one-fourth of the way up. Zelgadis hastily cast his own spell and flew up beside her.

            "Where is it? I've never seen any of these languages before. What does it say?" Zelgadis demanded. Juliana cast him a haughty look.

            "Only learned scholars such as myself ever study this. Actually, the knowledge is almost completely exclusive to this shrine, because these languages are nowhere to be found anywhere else in the world." Zelgadis cast the shrine maiden a dirty look. He hated it when people implied they were better than him.

            "So what does it say, o erudite one?" he replied scathingly. Juliana turned back to look at the Rune. She squinted and leaned in closer to it.

            "It says… ah… it says… well, this word here…" She placed her finger on a strange looking symbol. "… it means 'magic'. Or 'spiny water flea'. I'm not sure which."

            "What?!"

            "Well, they LOOK the same, okay?!" Juliana defended, her face tinting pink. She scratched her head and sighed. "Or it might be 'dog-faced scum bucket'." She grinned sheepishly at Zelgadis.

            "Don't you know the difference?" Zelgadis asked, incredulous. Juliana blushed a deep scarlet. She turned back to stare at the Rune, avoiding eye contact.

            "Umm… well… I haven't ACTUALLY studied this particular language…"

            "You're kidding me."

            "Er… hah hah… I'm a novice shrine maiden right now. They don't teach this stuff until I move up in rank."

            "You said you could help translate it for me!!"

            "I did?"

            "Yes! Last night!"

            "… well, if I can get a translation book out of the library, I can probably do it…"

            "Is there anyone else in the shrine who could help me with this? Anyone who actually KNOWS the language?" Zelgadis couldn't help but snap at the poor girl. All that time she lead him on, thinking she could help him, she couldn't read a single damn thing. Juliana floated back down to the floor and Zelgadis followed.

            "Yes and no. Yes, there are other people in the shrine who can read that, but no, I can't take you to them."

            "Why NOT?!"

            "Because you weren't technically supposed to see the Rune up close like that."