Chapter Thirteen
You followed WHAT?!
A certain sense of surrealism.
That nagging in the back of your head of change, of events transpiring beyond your normal expectations.
And the great-great-grand-daddy of all hang-over induced migraines.
Lina disliked waking up to any single one of the three above conditions. Waking up to all three simultaneously qualified for something considerably stronger than mere dislike.
The first thing she dealt with was the head-ache. While not quite the lush that Naga was, she'd had her fair share of bouts with drunkenness. Not many; they bespoke a fragile mind, and a fragile mind does not a sorceress supreme make. Still, she had some idea of what should and should not be done during this kind of thing. As such, she raised herself up from her bed, as slowly as possible.
Granted, she's not exactly known for doing things slowly and patiently, but any kind of speed right now would undoubtedly result in that lovely sensation somewhat akin to a horde of deranged dwarves playing twinkle- twinkle-little-star on the inside of her skull.
As she continued to rise, she began to address the other two concerns as she noticed a far rarer sensation than a headache.
Several months before she'd met Xellos but after she'd met Gourry, she'd been hired to help a young nobleman get out of a marriage to the daughter of a rather notoriously bitchy (if powerful) sorceress. In doing so, she'd somehow ended up playing the part of his blushing bride-to-be.
The wedding had been nice right up until the fireballs had started flying, ironically not originating from her. Until that moment however, everything had been wonderful; the temple, the furnishings, the food - oh god, the food - but also, her dress.
That had been the only other time she'd experienced this particular sensation. Namely that odd, cool, slither of silk on bare skin.
She was currently lying in between silk sheets and silk coverlet, and underneath them was totally stark naked.
Groaning muzzily as she sat up, she frowned as her headache faded. Not that she minded, but that generally shouldn't have happened with a hangover. was her only conclusion. She paused again at the thought. Someone had drugged her, abducted her, and stripped her nude. That only being what she KNEW.
Oh, someone was going to burn.
Temporarily shelving her prospects for violence, she dragged one of the sheets around her as a make-shift robe and started in on her breakfast. Unfortunately consisting of just flatbread, fruits, and some kind of tea. Not bad, but she preferred her food to be more filling.
As she continued eating, she started to take her first real look around. She'd obviously been abducted; the only other possibility being an overnight renovation of her inn into the Taj Mahal.
Her compact if comfortable room at the inn was replaced by what looked like a three-room suite (bedroom, communal room, and personal bath house) covering at a guess three thousand square feet. The architecture was in a somewhat middle-eastern style. The construction was all of pale, cream- colored marble and alabaster; the walls housing alcoves and nooks to provide space for the various pottery and statuary on their pedestals.
The floors had been covered in huge, elaborately woven rugs of such detail that elsewhere they could have been considered tapestries. While she was able to tell from the pillars and brief gaps along the walls that most of her rooms were made of marble, very little actually showed. Most of the walls were plastered and covered in frescoes of highly stylized dragons in various locales; undersea, in canyons, even a few in spectactularly erupting volcanoes.
The final piece was the ceiling. It was huge, a vaulting expanse over twenty five feet above her head. In the center of the biggest room however, it had been domed, the interior curves showing a gorgeously rendered picture of dragons ascending into some kind of glowing, pastel city in the sky. Pausing, she started to take a closer look at some of the other decorations.
Statues of dragons.
Pottery with images of dragons on them.
Her current over-sized canopy bed made to resemble thousands of dragons woven together to support the mattress.
She was beginning to detect a pattern here.
She'd only finished about two thirds of the large meal (light as the food was, she saw little point in arbitrarily inhaling it) when two...women arrived. They were polite and deferent, so she could assume them to be maids or something, but something was off. In her experience, maids were prim, demure young women in full bodices and skirts who were careful to never seem to be too large a part of the world around them. These two were dressed in something that made them look more like they were from "I dream of Jeannie."
She was fairly certain they were sisters; they didn't look similar enough to be twins, but it was close. Both stood about five foot six, with trim and curvy figures. Not that Lina would have noticed such a thing, but they were also...less than stacked. Not that she cared. Not that she paid attention to women who may or may not have the attribute she was fairly sensitive about.
RIGHT?
Their hair couldn't quite decide if it wanted to be somewhat coppery in color or a somewhat darker auburn brown; one of the two had noticeably lighter hair than the other. The only other big difference was their eye color; the one with the redder hair had green eyes, while the other had blue.
Kia, the one with the coppery hair and green eyes, bowed formayes, bowed formaing. Did you sleep well? No ill effects from those sleep drugs?" Lina quirked an eyebrow at the girl's blig referral to the use of narcotics to get her kidnapped. Said eyebrow quirk turned to narrow eyes as the second one produced a dress for her. "Please, would you mind coming with us? Lord Tios wishes to see you as soon as possible."
"Lord Tios, huh?" Never heard of the guy, but she didn't really pay all THAT much attention to the nobles around the world. Particularly ones from places she'd never visisted before. "Tell me, precisely who is lord Tios? And while we're talking about him, WHY did I wake up naked?"
Kia's sister Liara frowned at her. "Lord Tios is our lord and emplyer," she said simply. "As to your clothing, we simply thought it ws too rough to be proper for an audience. And what has that to do with Lord..." her voice trailed off at the implication. "Oh. Oh dear, no, nothing like that. Kia and I were the ones to undress you and prepare you for bed last night." She tried a somewhat weak smile of reassurance. "You needn't worry for your virtue; I can assure you that Lord Tios is a consumate gentleman."
Lina couldn't quite decide if she should be mollified by the apparent lack of perversion or dissapointed that no one seemd all that interested in her at the moment.
Shrugging on the strange dress, she settled for just being annoyed on general principle.
--------
Tios turned to regard his guest at the sound of the doors to his study opening. Catching sight of Lina, he allowed a slow smile to spread across his face. She was wearing the dress he'd had sent along with Kia and Liara, and in his opinion it suited her.
He'd seen pictures of what she looked like in her normal scarlet tunic and tights and that black cape, and he personally felt that while it suited her, it didn't properly display her. She was not a sexy girl, but she was an attractive one, and she should have displayed that. Hence his current choice; a toga-like garment of draped and wrapped pale golden-yellow silk, unadorned by embroidery or garish colors. With her hair and eyes, anything of that nature would have made her look too contrived, too gauche entirely.
More than the simple dress, he'd left explicit instructions with Kia and Liara to help her with ornamentation and such. Her normal unruly mane of glorious red hair had been constrained somewhat in a high, topknot style ponytail, though enough of her bangs had been left untouched for her to retain that rather free look she normally sported. She was bare-footed, but had put on golden anklets engraved with the images of hunting tigers. Her bracelet was similarly made to resemble prowling tigers. In the ponytail in her head, she'd put in a comb bearing the images of cranes and herons in a reedy marsh.
He rose to his feet to bow formally as she approached. "Hello. My name is Tios. It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Miss Inverse."
"Yeah, yeah. What's the deal?"
Kia and Liara both looked scandalized, but he for one appreciated her lack of polish. So unlike his own home. He took his seat, gesturing expansively for her to join him. "I hope you'll join me for my breakfast before we talk; I'm quite aware of your rather spectacular appetite." He smiled charmingly. "Trust me when I say that everything here is completely safe to eat. After all, it would make little sense to go through all this trouble to bring you here unharmed just to undo it now."
Lina gave the large table a sparing look, but hunger quickly won over any caution she might have had; fruits were not her preferred way to start the day off.
Tios chose to merely sip at his tea as Lina tore apart the spread of seafood he'd had. He could have gone for something overwhelmingly meaty, but this seemed more appropriate somehow.
Lina paused in her piranha-like behavior to give Tios a strange glance. "Okay, spill. What's going on here? Why did you bring me here?" Tios shrugged noncomitally. "I was merely curious. As I'm sure you've surmised by now, I'm also from the Overworld you may know Sirius from. Coming to this world, I was struck by the large amount of...shall we say attention that you attract. I simply wanted to meet you for myself."
"RIIIIGHT," Lina quipped as she started eating again, though this time in a way that bore a vague resemblence to having manners. "You set this place up, you drug me, have me kidnapped, and then have me 'presented before you' like this just out of curiousity? You actually expect me to believe that?"
"I'm not-so-minor nobility. Do you honestly have such difficulty in seeing the idle rich behaving somewhat...eccentrically?"
Lina nodded slowly; most of the rich people she knew WERE insane. "Flare arrow."
Her grin took on several cat-like qualities of satisfaction as the spell shimmered off a screen of defensive energies. "Of course, normal nobility usually doesn't have the same abilities as the monster race. Or dragons, for that matter. And I don't see dragons acting like this out of sheer curiosity."
Tios laughed in undisguised delight. "Clever! You are as clever as the rumors say." Lina snorted. "Yeah, the room's decorations were kind of a dead give-away. So, now that we've established that you're not just doing this out of idle boredom or curiosity, WHY am I here?"
Tios's smile warmed, startling the daylights out of her. "You really are rather attractive, you know." Ignoring the spluttering that brought about, he continued. "So much of what people say about you has to do with your being short," (wince) "flat-chested," (growl) " and generally childish, but it doesn't seem to do you justice." He sipped at his tea, ignoring his now- fuming guest. "It just always seemed odd that someone as beautiful as you would get such a...what's the phrase? 'A bum rap,' I think it is."
Lina flushed abruptly at the 'beautiful,' but brushed it aside. "HEY! I get enough of that from Xellos!"
Tios's eyes narrowed as distaste showed for the first time on his face. "Ah yes, the trickstr-priest. I trust that you aren't comparing us; that would be just plain rude."
Lina thought. "Okay," she said aloud, "you think I'm cute." She preened briefly. "Can't say I misunderstand that. Still, you haven't really answered my question."
"Haven't I?" Tios asked. "I find you attractive. I'm interested in you?" He sighed at the still-slightly-blank look on her face. "I feel something of a fool for saying this, but if you want me to be outright, so be it. Lina...I think I'm in love with you."
Said sorceress goggled.
--------
Sirius glared at Eris. "Will you stop that already?"
"Stop what?"
"GET OFF OF ME!"
Gourry frowned in confusion at the two. He wasn't quite sure why, but Eris had decided to start latching onto the overworlder. Quite literally, as she was currently dangling from her perch on his back.
They had found that ninja guy with little trouble. Actually, Sirius had found him with little trouble; he'd just teleported next to the mousey would-be kidnapper and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. By virtue of shaking him up and down repeatedly followed by Eris' threats, he'd managed to extract some fairly useful information. Tios was in the bottom of the fortress, Lina was near there, both were somewhere near the center of fortress (at least so far as the floorplans went).
Eris had decided that he wasn't being completely above-board with them, and had attempted to 'persuade' further information in a manner that while not permanently damaging is still best left unsaid (I'm trying to keep this fic somewhere between R and PG-13). As a result, the ninja had been left tied up somewhere unconscious, his face frozen in a temporary rictus of fear.
Which left them in their current straits. Namely, walking into the middle of a fortress ruled by a guy confident enough in his power to kidnap Lina Inverse, with all the traps and minions to try and slow them down/kill them that such a guy was likely to have.
"I SAID GET OFF ALREADY!"
"But you're so cuddly."
Gourry sweat-dropped as he watched them. "Uh, Eris? Aren't you supposed to be trying to chase after Xellos?"
"Uh-huh."
"Well then how come you're climbing all over Sirius? Aren't you supposed to be faithful to him or something?"
Eris shrugged, grinning. "Sure. But what Xellos-sama doesn't know he can't try to use against me. And who's going to tell him what's happening?" Her grin turned evil. "You? That would make me unhappy, after all. You've all seen what happens when I get unhappy."
Sirius finally managed to grab her by the scruff of the neck and throw her off of him. "For the love of Volfied woman, get yourself under control."
Eris landed on her feet with a hurt look. "That wasn't nice."
Gourry froze, recalling that exact tone in the tavern just before she'd broken out the torment of nasty, sharp, pointy things. Scrabbling desperately for an excuse, he happened across a tried and true (and thus highly cliched) plot device for just this situation. Not wanting to be within a thousand miles of the mazoku when she finally snapped, he pounced on it. "Uhyouknowifwe'regoingtogolookingforLinamaybeweshouldsplitup."
Eris blink-blinked at the rushed explanation. "Huh?"
Gourry forced himself to seperate his words. "You know, if we're going to go looking for Lina maybe we should split up. You and Sirius can go that way, I'll go this way."
Sirius teleported next to the swordsman, grabbing him by the neck of his armor. "An EXCELLENT idea, save one detail. I don't think you should be left alone out here after all. So I'LL go with you, and Eris can go the other way." "But..." Eris began, but by the time she was ready for the next syllable, Sirius had already shot away like some kind of hummingbird on PCP. Letting her aura darken, she squated on the ground, tracing circles in the dirt as little pseudo-wraiths floated around her head.
Everybody was mean to her. Humans didn't like her because she was a mazoku, and other mazoku didn't like her because she was a little bit eccentric. If she'd been totally honest with herself, she would have admitted that people didn't like her because of her penchant for mindless violence and shaving people wherever they still had hair (ANYplace they had hair). Oh, and that Mazoku disliked her because she had this problem with glomping them randomly. That was considered to be in extremely poor taste.
Then she brightened considerably. After all, she was currently in some kind of dark and kind of smelly dungeon (well, actually it was kept meticulously clean) to face off against some kind of villain. This villain had kidnapped Lina, who was remarkably powerful and even more PMS-y to boot. Any guy who'd do that had to be either crazy, stupid, or really powerful. And any guy who was all of those would have lots and lots of henchmen and henchwenches. No one terribly powerful, but people just tough enough to provide a really good excuse for the REAL main characters to unleash loads of really cool spells or special attacks.
It was like a cross between a smorgasbord and shooting gallery. Where the food shot back just enough to make it even more fun.
Grinning maniacally, she allowed her orange and violet aura to start flaring as she hauled out her weapons of choice; a seven-foot long pair of scissors, and a five-foot long butcher's knife. Scraping them against each other, she carefully checked to make sure that they were in discord, smiling blissfully at the hideous scratching.
It was good to be a mazoku.
--------
Dragons are a surprisingly common species. While in some worlds (such as Null) they are regarded as either little more than figments of deluded imaginations from the past, for the most part they are a respected part of legend, as well as a respected part of the contemporary world. While humans are actually the most common sentient creatures in most worlds, dragons are still quite prolific.
Generally, they can be divided into two categories; the smart ones and the feral ones. Feral ones are the things of legends like Beowulf or the Quest of Sigurd. You know the ones I'm talking about; ravening beasties of unparalelled hunger and thirst for destruction, little more than uncontrollable animals. They bare a striking resemblence in basic physical characteristics to the smart ones, as well as the 'breath weapon' they've become famed for, but that's about it.
Intelligent dragons are by and large civilized creatures. Their cultures usually exist longer than human ones for several reasons; an innate degree of sophistication lacking in most homo sapiens, their measure of generations in centuries if not millenia as opposed to decades, or perhaps just the fact that it takes a hell of a lot more to stop one of these guys.
Such civilizations tend to ingrain a strong sense of superiority in dragons, usually a well-founded one. Accompanying this sense of superiority is a certain degree of dignity. Whereas a human would face- fault or pass out with a nose-bleed in stressful situations, dragons by and large did not allow this to happen.
The whole point of this is to make it clear that despite a strong desire to do so, Lord Tios was not allowing his dignity to escape him. It was quite a fight, incidentally.
"GAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!"
Tios coughed into his hands, visibly irked. "It's not quite that funny, you know."
Lina stared at him from her current location on the floor as she wheezed in agony. Unable to fight off this assault, she succumbed and continued her spastic writhing, otherwise known as laughter.
"BWAHAHAHAHAHA...!"
Tios sighed, massaging his temples as he continued to battle the situation for possession of his dignity. This was crass. It was boorish, and completely beneath him. And not to be too blunt about it, he liked it.
His home in Volfied's overworld had been slowly driving him insane. It was a place of the absolute strictest caste and ritual; a stifling environment for anyone. You weren't even allowed to talk with people except with strictly enforced rules. Relationships were even worse. Were his grip two PSI to strong when greeting a lady, he could be considered overly dominant and be seen as a control freak and a sadist. Too light by the same degree and he would be scoffed at as a pansy, a fop to be ridiculed as subtly as possible. If he were in a situation where he could consider it not to forward to kiss a lady's hand, the difference of five degrees in the angel his pinky made to his metacarpal could mean the difference between marriage and a challenge to the death from a brother or father.
The problem with being almost immortal was that after a while, you started going to ridiculous lengths trying to fill that time.
As such, he'd quite literally jumped at the chance when Valred had approached him with the proposition of leaving his home. He'd been surreptitiously acting out behind the scenes; he was still considered anal here, but home would have been shocked.
That was probably the real reason why he was pursuing Lina. He wasn't sure whether or not he was actually attracted to her. Rather, she seemed to symbolize everything he wanted from life; freedom, disregard for the rules, disregard for what other people tried to make you into.
Lina had finally by this time managed to get herself under control, hauling her still wheezing and giggling frame back into her chair. "Oh my god...'Lina I love you'...I haven't laughed that hard since I was a little girl." She gave Tios a frank and appraising look. "Um, I'm flattered, but come one. You don't just tell a random girl out of the blue that you're in love with her."
"Who's a random girl?" Tios countered. "Lina Inverse, age seventeen. Born in the Zefelia region; only known relative is one Luna Inverse, waitress and Knight of Cephied. Began learning magic when nine years old, left Zefelia at age fourteen to escape punishment from your sister for selling naked pictures of her to make ends meet." Ignoring the winces and shudders, Tios continued ruthlessly. "Continued to learn magic, including the Dragon Slave and even the Giga Slave under unknown circumstances. By age fifteen had already made a reputation for herself as the infamous dragon spooker, bandit-killer, and enemy of all that lived. Still at age fifteen, came across Naga the White Serpent, the lost heiress of Seyruun. Over the next year or so Naga dogged your steps and tried to prove herself your superior, usually failing. Killed the mazoku Joyrock on Mipross Island by traveling through time; later was responsible through various adventures or misadventures for the deaths of roughly nine mazoku of varying power, not counting Hellmaster Phibrizzo, Shabranigdo, and even a shard of Darkstar."
Lina cut him off. "Does this trip down memory lane have a point?"
Tios smiled again. "The point is that you're hardly a random girl off the street. I know all about you Miss Inverse, and find you positively fascinating." He steepled his hands in front of his face as he leaned forward slightly. "Let me be frank. Valred is going to try and kill you if you continue to oppose him like this. I don't want that to happen. As such, I'm offering you a chance to give up this silly quest and join with him and me."
Lina groaned, slumping to the ground as she started banging her head on the ground. "I knew it. I can't get hit on even once without the guy being some kind of career criminal or evil mastermind. Did I do something that bad in a past life?"
Tios's smile faded, though he tried to cover it. "Considering who you are, maybe you should think more about a current life than a previous one?" Lina winced. Tios sighed as a mercenary whispered in his ears that they were under attack by a pink man, some nut with a pair of giant scissors, and a man using Gorenova. Nodding quietly (he'd been kind of expecting it), he rose to leave. At the end of the table, he turned back to regard Lina once more. "I really do hope you'll reconsider. Just imagine what you could do with the power Lord Valred could give you." Something strange came over him as he raised a hand, clenching it into a fist. "If only you knew the power of the Dark Side."
--------
Anubis glared at Falaris across the scrying pool. "Come now, that's a bit much, isn't it?"
Falaris shrugged. "Don't look at me; I was never that big a fan of Star Wars. At least not enough of one to make a cliche from it THAT painful.
--------
Lina stared at Tios, blink-blinking for several seconds. As he finally lowered his hand (realizing how silly it was), she replied, "I'm the only person on the planet who has successfully drawn power from the Lord of Nightmares. I'm a sorceress notorious for the powerful BLACK magic spell the Dragon Slave. What precisely makes you think I DON'T know the power of this dark side?"
Tios's dignity slipped enough for him to sweatdrop. "Oh. Yeah. Sorry, forgot about that." Gathering his dignity around himself once more, he turned to leave, calling back a single command. "Kia, Liara, keep her amused."
--------
The fortress' center was probably the single most heavily guarded spot in the entire region. The defenses were arranged in self-sufficient sectors of tiers, four in total. Each tier was further divided into a series of areas, each roughly ten yards apart. There were no convenient air ducts for sneak attacks, no hidden attics or crawlways in either the ceiling or the floor. It had been designed such that the only ways to approach the central shaft were through direct, straight passages that made perfect shooting galleries. Any intruders would be caught in a withering crossfire of arrows and magic spells combined. And even if you suceeded in getting through the crossfire, you had only taken out a very small part of the defenses, and had three more tiers you had to deal with.
The defense had one huge flaw though (don't they all). This place had been designed to defend against armies. The main strength of an army is usually numbers; they overwhelm from sheer force of bodies. This design forced them to come at you in a long, narrow column. The end result being that your opponent was charging into a shooting gallery, the very bodies of the dead serving to slow you down further.
This arrangement wasn't particularly useful against an opponent who was immune to arrows and spells of this low level, didn't need to bother with taking out multiple tiers, and more importantly, could teleport to avoid the whole mess.
Not that she was. After all, Eris WANTED a long, drawn-out fight.
She cackled in glee as she sliced apart the hapless defenders; mostly human or beastmen, but occasionally she struck on a transformed dragon. Weak ones, but still dragons.
That was fun. She actually got to cut completely loose. And while dragons can be as powerful as some monsters, they generally lose in a fight.
Sighing in bliss as the waves of negative emotions continued to flare around her, Eris looked around, surprised to see a decided lack of further opponents. She hadn't actually killed them all; most had run away and hidden. Shrugging nonchalantly, she hopped down the shaft, preparing for a huge assault.
The final row of fighters waited below, throats and mouths dry in anticipation. They'd been hearing the screams and cackling above, and most were smart enough to imagine the worst.
The worst arrived shortly, though they couldn't see anything at first. All they knew was that in front of them, this slithery, continuous rasp was sounding from something metallic. Had they known that it was a five-foot bladed weapon weighing a good sixty pounds, they probably would have wet themselves.
Then a voice joined the rasp, and some actually did.
"Have you seen the ghost of John? Long white Bones with the skin all goooone OoooooooooOOOOoooooooooooooooh Wouldn't it be chilly with, no, skin, on?"
They were spared further indignities as fists and the flat of a sword exploded into action behind them, knocking them unconscious before they could suffer something more...permanent.
Eris blink-blinked in surprise as she found Gourry and Sirius waiting for her. "Hey, they were mine!"
Gourry just pointed further. "Sorry, we didn't know. Anyway, we think the main guy is this way. Wanna have him?"
What had begun as a pout turned into a sudden brightening of face. "Hey, tha's right! The guy powerful and crazy enough to kidnap Lina! Wai wai!"
Sirius shook his head as she scampered down the caverns. "I never thought I'd ever say this, but I'm actually looking forward to finding Xellos again."
Gourry just nodded sagely. Few people knew better than him the bliss of having someone else deal with crazed females.
--------
When he'd been meeting with Lina, Tios had been wearing a simple robe of scarlet silk with paler blue sash to hold it in place. He'd currently exchanged it for a more abreviated version of the same robe, replacing it with pants and shirt for greater ease of movement. The only other immediate difference was his current weapon; namely Boregarz, the Hammer of Light.
He smiled faintly as Sirius and co. arrived. "Greetings. I am Lord Tios. May I assume that you're here to try - " Further speech stopped as Eris leapt forward, scissors poised as she lunged for his neck. Tios simply stood there, then bent backwards at the waist at the last minute. He pivoted around as the scissors 'snikted' above him, turning smoothly with the motion to bring Boregarz around in a crushing blow against the mazoku.
He turned to quietly regard the female currently embedded in the wall. "I was trying to say, 'try to kill me,' but it seems you've answered that well enough." Turning back to Gourry and Sirius, he used the hammer for a kind of 'come hither' gesture. "Shall we?"
Sirius held a hand up to forestall Gourry. "Let me try first. You haven't forgotten what happened the last time two weapons of Light struck each other, have you?"
Gourry nodded, but brought out his set of allen wrenches to remove the sword blade.
Tios smiled as Sirius disappeared. He similarly blurred from sight, entering into the high-speed interdimensional combat that so conveniently defies description.
It ended about twenty seconds later with Sirius slamming into another wall. Tios faded back into sight, tapping the reverse end of Boregarz against his other palm. "Lovely weapon, you know," he said conversationally. "As you may or may not know, the preferred weapon for a priest or dragon has traditionally been a mace." He regarded the light hammer fondly. "Of course, it has the disadvantage that it's actually harder to kill someone with; the business end just doesn't have the same...finality of a blade of some kind."
He pivoted swiftly to meet Eris's next attack, blocking the thrust of Great Knife with the hammer end of Boregarz. he thought as he noticed how little power had been behind the attack. Shifting one hand closer to the head of his weapon, he pivoted it to catch the next slash of Scissors with the handle. He spun the weapon quickly, twisting the mazoku's arms as he caught her weapons, then finished with a quick, powerful kick to the stomach slamming her into another wall.
Eris groaned as she fell down. Physical impact couldn't hurt her, but impacts with the force of draconic magic behind it were another story completely. "That's no way to treat a lady."
Tios rolled his eyes in disgust. "Women. First all the bitching about how you're not treated as equals. Then we start treating you as equals, and you decide that you actually preferred to be pampered and treated like china or something." He shook his head. "I've come to wonder if what you actually like is just getting men to shift into any mode you want." He turned to check his opponents briefly. Sirius: badly injured, slammed against the wall. Eris; similarly injured, and likely out of commission. Sighing, he turned to Gourry. "It seems that you're all that's left, human. Shall we get this over with?"
Gourry's answer was to heft Gorenova's hilt. "Light come forth!"
Tios shook his head ruefully. "This should be quick." He took a firm grip on his own weapon, facing off the swordsman.
Gourry charged him, his first attack a diagnol slash coming from right hip to left shoulder. Tios countered with a similar diagnol strike, smashing the blade with his hammer, and triggering a massive flare of light energy as the two darkstar weapons clashed. Tios smiled tightly; he would concede if nothing else that his opponent knew how to use that sword. "Not bad, human. But do you think you can last long against me?"
Gourry didn't bother talking; shifting his weight, he abruptly lashed out with his foward leg, catching Tios in the stomach. Not expecting the assault, Tios was actually winded by the blow, and completely unprepared as Gourry finished off by slamming an elbow across Tios's jaw.
Gourry grinned as Tios went down. Ever since he'd discovered what happened when two weapons of darkstar clashed, he'd been meaning to try something out; something he'd learned back in Sairaag. "So I'm human; let's see you handle this HUMAN tactic."
Tios shook his head, turning to glare at the swordsman, when he felt his eyes widen and his face pale.
When the two weapons had clashed, they'd unleashed a bonfire of energy, easily twenty feet across and over fifty feet tall. When he'd knocked Tios from their impasse, Gourry had managed to keep that flare of energy flowing from Boregarz. In other words, he was currently manifesting more energy than he'd used against Zanifer with Zelgadis and Amelia hitting the sword with a double Ra Tilt. "EAT IT TIOS!"
The dragon watched in shock as Gourry brought the gigantic blade of energy down, unleashing it as a single blast of raw energy. He managed to teleport out of the way at the last instant. Fortunately for him too; the blast could have stopped a dragon slave.
He panted in shock from the side-lines as he stared at the gigantic cavern gouged in the walls of his home. Narrowing his eyes, he prepared himself, drawing his mana together. Gourry couldn't use that attack unless Tios first used Boregarz. Making sure not to do so would be child's play, and thus would end the one threat to him.
"DRAGON'S...LANCE!"
Tios froze at Lina's yell. It proved fatal as a glowing shaft of red light impacted his side, exploding into a slipstream of raw magic, eating away at his very essence. He fell forward, turning to stare at the sorceress.
Lina glared at him. "First you drug me, then you kidnap me, then you start bringing up everything I'm sensitive about, and finally you start calling me all the names I hate. What, you thought your little confession would be enough to calm me down; I HATE getting hit on by the bad guys." Not bothering with any more words, she stalked over to where Boregarz lay, picking it up to gaze at the weapon. Abruptly, she threw her head back and started cackling madly. "FINALLY! IT'S MINE ALL MINE! BWAHAHAHAHA!"
Gourry sighed in disgust. "And here we were worried about her."
Sirius groaned as he dragged himself back to his feet. "Well, you don't look so bad off. How'd you find us?"
Behind her, Kia and Liara were huddled behind an alcove. "We're sorry Lord Tios. But she was just so..."
What ever Lina was didn't last as the cavern started rumbling. Lina grumbled under her breath, something about never getting any peace. Sighing, she raised her hands over her head.
"Darkness beyond Twilight, Crimson Beyond blood that flows, In thy great name I pledge myself to darkness! Let the fools who oppose us be destroyed by the power you and I possess! DRAGON...SLAVE!"
The ruby-red beam of light drilled through the ceiling easily enough, cutting a hole to the surface a good twenty feet wide. Ignoring the looks she was getting, she jerked Boregarz in a gesture. "Well, you coming or not?" She quickly charged up a Raywing, ignoring Gourry's shouts of "hey, wait for me!" as he leapt up to grab onto her ankles. Sirius and Eris just shook their heads. She seemed to be getting worse lately. Sighing, they each grabbed one of the maids and teleported outside.
As they set down on the ground outside, they were surprised to find Trent, Zelas, Delphine, Kashura, Valgaav, Filia, Amelia, Zelgadis, and Xellos waiting for them. Well, them and two they didn't immediately recognize (Dynast and Scherra).
Xellos waved cheerfully. "Oh, hello Miss Lina. Did you have a good time?"
Lina stared at him. "What the...how...you..." she spluttered.
Zelas allowed herself a small grin as Lina continued spluttering. The grin widened as Eris attempted a GLOMP! (TM) attack on Xellos. Xellos responded by dragging Zelgadis into the line of fire, but somehow the chimera had anticipated this and dragged Filia there instead. Followed by Eris getting maced into the distance, and Zelgadis and Xellos both being chased by her as she tried to hit them on general principle. "We've been trying to track you all down for a day or so. We found Zelgadis, Xellos, Kashura, Valgaav, Dynast (she nodded towards the blue-haired mazoku lord, ignoring Lina's squawk of protest), and his lieutenant Scherra (again a squawk, though a less expressive one) near Ralteague. Amelia and Filia both found us while we were coming here."
Gourry blinked in confusion. "Hey, how DID you guys find us?"
Xellos gave Dynast a side-long glance (he'd already been maced, and Filia was concerning herself with Zelgadis) then replied, "Trent was given some information about your probable location. Er, someone said you'd probably be near Elmekia. Anyway, we just came into the right general country and waited; it was really only a matter of time before we found the four of you."
Sirius frowned. "Elmekia is the largest country in the region; it's even larger than Seyruun from what I understand. How on earth did you know where we'd be?"
Trent, Xellos, and Zelas' faces immediately lit up with identical smiles; the same smile that they all knew and despised from its frequent appearances on Xellos' face just before a quite well-known line. Though it was a different line this time, no less annoying. "We followed the explosions."
--------
Valred sighed as the last essence appeared in the crystal matrix. It was a shame, losing Lord Tios like that, really. Tios had been competent, loyal, and hadn't even attempted to argue about the shade worms.
Well, he HAD made some negotiations about how they would effect him, but it hadn't been much, and in his opinion it was safe enough.
Oh well. He'd intended to find someone else as a sacrifice for this third essence; maybe that blonde priestess who was tagging along with Inverse and the more competently dangerous dragons and mazoku. Still, he'd deal with what he got.
He set the three gems containing the death energies of his three generals around a larger central altar, and kneeling in the center, he began to pray.
The beginning of the end.
To be continued...
A certain sense of surrealism.
That nagging in the back of your head of change, of events transpiring beyond your normal expectations.
And the great-great-grand-daddy of all hang-over induced migraines.
Lina disliked waking up to any single one of the three above conditions. Waking up to all three simultaneously qualified for something considerably stronger than mere dislike.
The first thing she dealt with was the head-ache. While not quite the lush that Naga was, she'd had her fair share of bouts with drunkenness. Not many; they bespoke a fragile mind, and a fragile mind does not a sorceress supreme make. Still, she had some idea of what should and should not be done during this kind of thing. As such, she raised herself up from her bed, as slowly as possible.
Granted, she's not exactly known for doing things slowly and patiently, but any kind of speed right now would undoubtedly result in that lovely sensation somewhat akin to a horde of deranged dwarves playing twinkle- twinkle-little-star on the inside of her skull.
As she continued to rise, she began to address the other two concerns as she noticed a far rarer sensation than a headache.
Several months before she'd met Xellos but after she'd met Gourry, she'd been hired to help a young nobleman get out of a marriage to the daughter of a rather notoriously bitchy (if powerful) sorceress. In doing so, she'd somehow ended up playing the part of his blushing bride-to-be.
The wedding had been nice right up until the fireballs had started flying, ironically not originating from her. Until that moment however, everything had been wonderful; the temple, the furnishings, the food - oh god, the food - but also, her dress.
That had been the only other time she'd experienced this particular sensation. Namely that odd, cool, slither of silk on bare skin.
She was currently lying in between silk sheets and silk coverlet, and underneath them was totally stark naked.
Groaning muzzily as she sat up, she frowned as her headache faded. Not that she minded, but that generally shouldn't have happened with a hangover. was her only conclusion. She paused again at the thought. Someone had drugged her, abducted her, and stripped her nude. That only being what she KNEW.
Oh, someone was going to burn.
Temporarily shelving her prospects for violence, she dragged one of the sheets around her as a make-shift robe and started in on her breakfast. Unfortunately consisting of just flatbread, fruits, and some kind of tea. Not bad, but she preferred her food to be more filling.
As she continued eating, she started to take her first real look around. She'd obviously been abducted; the only other possibility being an overnight renovation of her inn into the Taj Mahal.
Her compact if comfortable room at the inn was replaced by what looked like a three-room suite (bedroom, communal room, and personal bath house) covering at a guess three thousand square feet. The architecture was in a somewhat middle-eastern style. The construction was all of pale, cream- colored marble and alabaster; the walls housing alcoves and nooks to provide space for the various pottery and statuary on their pedestals.
The floors had been covered in huge, elaborately woven rugs of such detail that elsewhere they could have been considered tapestries. While she was able to tell from the pillars and brief gaps along the walls that most of her rooms were made of marble, very little actually showed. Most of the walls were plastered and covered in frescoes of highly stylized dragons in various locales; undersea, in canyons, even a few in spectactularly erupting volcanoes.
The final piece was the ceiling. It was huge, a vaulting expanse over twenty five feet above her head. In the center of the biggest room however, it had been domed, the interior curves showing a gorgeously rendered picture of dragons ascending into some kind of glowing, pastel city in the sky. Pausing, she started to take a closer look at some of the other decorations.
Statues of dragons.
Pottery with images of dragons on them.
Her current over-sized canopy bed made to resemble thousands of dragons woven together to support the mattress.
She was beginning to detect a pattern here.
She'd only finished about two thirds of the large meal (light as the food was, she saw little point in arbitrarily inhaling it) when two...women arrived. They were polite and deferent, so she could assume them to be maids or something, but something was off. In her experience, maids were prim, demure young women in full bodices and skirts who were careful to never seem to be too large a part of the world around them. These two were dressed in something that made them look more like they were from "I dream of Jeannie."
She was fairly certain they were sisters; they didn't look similar enough to be twins, but it was close. Both stood about five foot six, with trim and curvy figures. Not that Lina would have noticed such a thing, but they were also...less than stacked. Not that she cared. Not that she paid attention to women who may or may not have the attribute she was fairly sensitive about.
RIGHT?
Their hair couldn't quite decide if it wanted to be somewhat coppery in color or a somewhat darker auburn brown; one of the two had noticeably lighter hair than the other. The only other big difference was their eye color; the one with the redder hair had green eyes, while the other had blue.
Kia, the one with the coppery hair and green eyes, bowed formayes, bowed formaing. Did you sleep well? No ill effects from those sleep drugs?" Lina quirked an eyebrow at the girl's blig referral to the use of narcotics to get her kidnapped. Said eyebrow quirk turned to narrow eyes as the second one produced a dress for her. "Please, would you mind coming with us? Lord Tios wishes to see you as soon as possible."
"Lord Tios, huh?" Never heard of the guy, but she didn't really pay all THAT much attention to the nobles around the world. Particularly ones from places she'd never visisted before. "Tell me, precisely who is lord Tios? And while we're talking about him, WHY did I wake up naked?"
Kia's sister Liara frowned at her. "Lord Tios is our lord and emplyer," she said simply. "As to your clothing, we simply thought it ws too rough to be proper for an audience. And what has that to do with Lord..." her voice trailed off at the implication. "Oh. Oh dear, no, nothing like that. Kia and I were the ones to undress you and prepare you for bed last night." She tried a somewhat weak smile of reassurance. "You needn't worry for your virtue; I can assure you that Lord Tios is a consumate gentleman."
Lina couldn't quite decide if she should be mollified by the apparent lack of perversion or dissapointed that no one seemd all that interested in her at the moment.
Shrugging on the strange dress, she settled for just being annoyed on general principle.
--------
Tios turned to regard his guest at the sound of the doors to his study opening. Catching sight of Lina, he allowed a slow smile to spread across his face. She was wearing the dress he'd had sent along with Kia and Liara, and in his opinion it suited her.
He'd seen pictures of what she looked like in her normal scarlet tunic and tights and that black cape, and he personally felt that while it suited her, it didn't properly display her. She was not a sexy girl, but she was an attractive one, and she should have displayed that. Hence his current choice; a toga-like garment of draped and wrapped pale golden-yellow silk, unadorned by embroidery or garish colors. With her hair and eyes, anything of that nature would have made her look too contrived, too gauche entirely.
More than the simple dress, he'd left explicit instructions with Kia and Liara to help her with ornamentation and such. Her normal unruly mane of glorious red hair had been constrained somewhat in a high, topknot style ponytail, though enough of her bangs had been left untouched for her to retain that rather free look she normally sported. She was bare-footed, but had put on golden anklets engraved with the images of hunting tigers. Her bracelet was similarly made to resemble prowling tigers. In the ponytail in her head, she'd put in a comb bearing the images of cranes and herons in a reedy marsh.
He rose to his feet to bow formally as she approached. "Hello. My name is Tios. It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Miss Inverse."
"Yeah, yeah. What's the deal?"
Kia and Liara both looked scandalized, but he for one appreciated her lack of polish. So unlike his own home. He took his seat, gesturing expansively for her to join him. "I hope you'll join me for my breakfast before we talk; I'm quite aware of your rather spectacular appetite." He smiled charmingly. "Trust me when I say that everything here is completely safe to eat. After all, it would make little sense to go through all this trouble to bring you here unharmed just to undo it now."
Lina gave the large table a sparing look, but hunger quickly won over any caution she might have had; fruits were not her preferred way to start the day off.
Tios chose to merely sip at his tea as Lina tore apart the spread of seafood he'd had. He could have gone for something overwhelmingly meaty, but this seemed more appropriate somehow.
Lina paused in her piranha-like behavior to give Tios a strange glance. "Okay, spill. What's going on here? Why did you bring me here?" Tios shrugged noncomitally. "I was merely curious. As I'm sure you've surmised by now, I'm also from the Overworld you may know Sirius from. Coming to this world, I was struck by the large amount of...shall we say attention that you attract. I simply wanted to meet you for myself."
"RIIIIGHT," Lina quipped as she started eating again, though this time in a way that bore a vague resemblence to having manners. "You set this place up, you drug me, have me kidnapped, and then have me 'presented before you' like this just out of curiousity? You actually expect me to believe that?"
"I'm not-so-minor nobility. Do you honestly have such difficulty in seeing the idle rich behaving somewhat...eccentrically?"
Lina nodded slowly; most of the rich people she knew WERE insane. "Flare arrow."
Her grin took on several cat-like qualities of satisfaction as the spell shimmered off a screen of defensive energies. "Of course, normal nobility usually doesn't have the same abilities as the monster race. Or dragons, for that matter. And I don't see dragons acting like this out of sheer curiosity."
Tios laughed in undisguised delight. "Clever! You are as clever as the rumors say." Lina snorted. "Yeah, the room's decorations were kind of a dead give-away. So, now that we've established that you're not just doing this out of idle boredom or curiosity, WHY am I here?"
Tios's smile warmed, startling the daylights out of her. "You really are rather attractive, you know." Ignoring the spluttering that brought about, he continued. "So much of what people say about you has to do with your being short," (wince) "flat-chested," (growl) " and generally childish, but it doesn't seem to do you justice." He sipped at his tea, ignoring his now- fuming guest. "It just always seemed odd that someone as beautiful as you would get such a...what's the phrase? 'A bum rap,' I think it is."
Lina flushed abruptly at the 'beautiful,' but brushed it aside. "HEY! I get enough of that from Xellos!"
Tios's eyes narrowed as distaste showed for the first time on his face. "Ah yes, the trickstr-priest. I trust that you aren't comparing us; that would be just plain rude."
Lina thought. "Okay," she said aloud, "you think I'm cute." She preened briefly. "Can't say I misunderstand that. Still, you haven't really answered my question."
"Haven't I?" Tios asked. "I find you attractive. I'm interested in you?" He sighed at the still-slightly-blank look on her face. "I feel something of a fool for saying this, but if you want me to be outright, so be it. Lina...I think I'm in love with you."
Said sorceress goggled.
--------
Sirius glared at Eris. "Will you stop that already?"
"Stop what?"
"GET OFF OF ME!"
Gourry frowned in confusion at the two. He wasn't quite sure why, but Eris had decided to start latching onto the overworlder. Quite literally, as she was currently dangling from her perch on his back.
They had found that ninja guy with little trouble. Actually, Sirius had found him with little trouble; he'd just teleported next to the mousey would-be kidnapper and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. By virtue of shaking him up and down repeatedly followed by Eris' threats, he'd managed to extract some fairly useful information. Tios was in the bottom of the fortress, Lina was near there, both were somewhere near the center of fortress (at least so far as the floorplans went).
Eris had decided that he wasn't being completely above-board with them, and had attempted to 'persuade' further information in a manner that while not permanently damaging is still best left unsaid (I'm trying to keep this fic somewhere between R and PG-13). As a result, the ninja had been left tied up somewhere unconscious, his face frozen in a temporary rictus of fear.
Which left them in their current straits. Namely, walking into the middle of a fortress ruled by a guy confident enough in his power to kidnap Lina Inverse, with all the traps and minions to try and slow them down/kill them that such a guy was likely to have.
"I SAID GET OFF ALREADY!"
"But you're so cuddly."
Gourry sweat-dropped as he watched them. "Uh, Eris? Aren't you supposed to be trying to chase after Xellos?"
"Uh-huh."
"Well then how come you're climbing all over Sirius? Aren't you supposed to be faithful to him or something?"
Eris shrugged, grinning. "Sure. But what Xellos-sama doesn't know he can't try to use against me. And who's going to tell him what's happening?" Her grin turned evil. "You? That would make me unhappy, after all. You've all seen what happens when I get unhappy."
Sirius finally managed to grab her by the scruff of the neck and throw her off of him. "For the love of Volfied woman, get yourself under control."
Eris landed on her feet with a hurt look. "That wasn't nice."
Gourry froze, recalling that exact tone in the tavern just before she'd broken out the torment of nasty, sharp, pointy things. Scrabbling desperately for an excuse, he happened across a tried and true (and thus highly cliched) plot device for just this situation. Not wanting to be within a thousand miles of the mazoku when she finally snapped, he pounced on it. "Uhyouknowifwe'regoingtogolookingforLinamaybeweshouldsplitup."
Eris blink-blinked at the rushed explanation. "Huh?"
Gourry forced himself to seperate his words. "You know, if we're going to go looking for Lina maybe we should split up. You and Sirius can go that way, I'll go this way."
Sirius teleported next to the swordsman, grabbing him by the neck of his armor. "An EXCELLENT idea, save one detail. I don't think you should be left alone out here after all. So I'LL go with you, and Eris can go the other way." "But..." Eris began, but by the time she was ready for the next syllable, Sirius had already shot away like some kind of hummingbird on PCP. Letting her aura darken, she squated on the ground, tracing circles in the dirt as little pseudo-wraiths floated around her head.
Everybody was mean to her. Humans didn't like her because she was a mazoku, and other mazoku didn't like her because she was a little bit eccentric. If she'd been totally honest with herself, she would have admitted that people didn't like her because of her penchant for mindless violence and shaving people wherever they still had hair (ANYplace they had hair). Oh, and that Mazoku disliked her because she had this problem with glomping them randomly. That was considered to be in extremely poor taste.
Then she brightened considerably. After all, she was currently in some kind of dark and kind of smelly dungeon (well, actually it was kept meticulously clean) to face off against some kind of villain. This villain had kidnapped Lina, who was remarkably powerful and even more PMS-y to boot. Any guy who'd do that had to be either crazy, stupid, or really powerful. And any guy who was all of those would have lots and lots of henchmen and henchwenches. No one terribly powerful, but people just tough enough to provide a really good excuse for the REAL main characters to unleash loads of really cool spells or special attacks.
It was like a cross between a smorgasbord and shooting gallery. Where the food shot back just enough to make it even more fun.
Grinning maniacally, she allowed her orange and violet aura to start flaring as she hauled out her weapons of choice; a seven-foot long pair of scissors, and a five-foot long butcher's knife. Scraping them against each other, she carefully checked to make sure that they were in discord, smiling blissfully at the hideous scratching.
It was good to be a mazoku.
--------
Dragons are a surprisingly common species. While in some worlds (such as Null) they are regarded as either little more than figments of deluded imaginations from the past, for the most part they are a respected part of legend, as well as a respected part of the contemporary world. While humans are actually the most common sentient creatures in most worlds, dragons are still quite prolific.
Generally, they can be divided into two categories; the smart ones and the feral ones. Feral ones are the things of legends like Beowulf or the Quest of Sigurd. You know the ones I'm talking about; ravening beasties of unparalelled hunger and thirst for destruction, little more than uncontrollable animals. They bare a striking resemblence in basic physical characteristics to the smart ones, as well as the 'breath weapon' they've become famed for, but that's about it.
Intelligent dragons are by and large civilized creatures. Their cultures usually exist longer than human ones for several reasons; an innate degree of sophistication lacking in most homo sapiens, their measure of generations in centuries if not millenia as opposed to decades, or perhaps just the fact that it takes a hell of a lot more to stop one of these guys.
Such civilizations tend to ingrain a strong sense of superiority in dragons, usually a well-founded one. Accompanying this sense of superiority is a certain degree of dignity. Whereas a human would face- fault or pass out with a nose-bleed in stressful situations, dragons by and large did not allow this to happen.
The whole point of this is to make it clear that despite a strong desire to do so, Lord Tios was not allowing his dignity to escape him. It was quite a fight, incidentally.
"GAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!"
Tios coughed into his hands, visibly irked. "It's not quite that funny, you know."
Lina stared at him from her current location on the floor as she wheezed in agony. Unable to fight off this assault, she succumbed and continued her spastic writhing, otherwise known as laughter.
"BWAHAHAHAHAHA...!"
Tios sighed, massaging his temples as he continued to battle the situation for possession of his dignity. This was crass. It was boorish, and completely beneath him. And not to be too blunt about it, he liked it.
His home in Volfied's overworld had been slowly driving him insane. It was a place of the absolute strictest caste and ritual; a stifling environment for anyone. You weren't even allowed to talk with people except with strictly enforced rules. Relationships were even worse. Were his grip two PSI to strong when greeting a lady, he could be considered overly dominant and be seen as a control freak and a sadist. Too light by the same degree and he would be scoffed at as a pansy, a fop to be ridiculed as subtly as possible. If he were in a situation where he could consider it not to forward to kiss a lady's hand, the difference of five degrees in the angel his pinky made to his metacarpal could mean the difference between marriage and a challenge to the death from a brother or father.
The problem with being almost immortal was that after a while, you started going to ridiculous lengths trying to fill that time.
As such, he'd quite literally jumped at the chance when Valred had approached him with the proposition of leaving his home. He'd been surreptitiously acting out behind the scenes; he was still considered anal here, but home would have been shocked.
That was probably the real reason why he was pursuing Lina. He wasn't sure whether or not he was actually attracted to her. Rather, she seemed to symbolize everything he wanted from life; freedom, disregard for the rules, disregard for what other people tried to make you into.
Lina had finally by this time managed to get herself under control, hauling her still wheezing and giggling frame back into her chair. "Oh my god...'Lina I love you'...I haven't laughed that hard since I was a little girl." She gave Tios a frank and appraising look. "Um, I'm flattered, but come one. You don't just tell a random girl out of the blue that you're in love with her."
"Who's a random girl?" Tios countered. "Lina Inverse, age seventeen. Born in the Zefelia region; only known relative is one Luna Inverse, waitress and Knight of Cephied. Began learning magic when nine years old, left Zefelia at age fourteen to escape punishment from your sister for selling naked pictures of her to make ends meet." Ignoring the winces and shudders, Tios continued ruthlessly. "Continued to learn magic, including the Dragon Slave and even the Giga Slave under unknown circumstances. By age fifteen had already made a reputation for herself as the infamous dragon spooker, bandit-killer, and enemy of all that lived. Still at age fifteen, came across Naga the White Serpent, the lost heiress of Seyruun. Over the next year or so Naga dogged your steps and tried to prove herself your superior, usually failing. Killed the mazoku Joyrock on Mipross Island by traveling through time; later was responsible through various adventures or misadventures for the deaths of roughly nine mazoku of varying power, not counting Hellmaster Phibrizzo, Shabranigdo, and even a shard of Darkstar."
Lina cut him off. "Does this trip down memory lane have a point?"
Tios smiled again. "The point is that you're hardly a random girl off the street. I know all about you Miss Inverse, and find you positively fascinating." He steepled his hands in front of his face as he leaned forward slightly. "Let me be frank. Valred is going to try and kill you if you continue to oppose him like this. I don't want that to happen. As such, I'm offering you a chance to give up this silly quest and join with him and me."
Lina groaned, slumping to the ground as she started banging her head on the ground. "I knew it. I can't get hit on even once without the guy being some kind of career criminal or evil mastermind. Did I do something that bad in a past life?"
Tios's smile faded, though he tried to cover it. "Considering who you are, maybe you should think more about a current life than a previous one?" Lina winced. Tios sighed as a mercenary whispered in his ears that they were under attack by a pink man, some nut with a pair of giant scissors, and a man using Gorenova. Nodding quietly (he'd been kind of expecting it), he rose to leave. At the end of the table, he turned back to regard Lina once more. "I really do hope you'll reconsider. Just imagine what you could do with the power Lord Valred could give you." Something strange came over him as he raised a hand, clenching it into a fist. "If only you knew the power of the Dark Side."
--------
Anubis glared at Falaris across the scrying pool. "Come now, that's a bit much, isn't it?"
Falaris shrugged. "Don't look at me; I was never that big a fan of Star Wars. At least not enough of one to make a cliche from it THAT painful.
--------
Lina stared at Tios, blink-blinking for several seconds. As he finally lowered his hand (realizing how silly it was), she replied, "I'm the only person on the planet who has successfully drawn power from the Lord of Nightmares. I'm a sorceress notorious for the powerful BLACK magic spell the Dragon Slave. What precisely makes you think I DON'T know the power of this dark side?"
Tios's dignity slipped enough for him to sweatdrop. "Oh. Yeah. Sorry, forgot about that." Gathering his dignity around himself once more, he turned to leave, calling back a single command. "Kia, Liara, keep her amused."
--------
The fortress' center was probably the single most heavily guarded spot in the entire region. The defenses were arranged in self-sufficient sectors of tiers, four in total. Each tier was further divided into a series of areas, each roughly ten yards apart. There were no convenient air ducts for sneak attacks, no hidden attics or crawlways in either the ceiling or the floor. It had been designed such that the only ways to approach the central shaft were through direct, straight passages that made perfect shooting galleries. Any intruders would be caught in a withering crossfire of arrows and magic spells combined. And even if you suceeded in getting through the crossfire, you had only taken out a very small part of the defenses, and had three more tiers you had to deal with.
The defense had one huge flaw though (don't they all). This place had been designed to defend against armies. The main strength of an army is usually numbers; they overwhelm from sheer force of bodies. This design forced them to come at you in a long, narrow column. The end result being that your opponent was charging into a shooting gallery, the very bodies of the dead serving to slow you down further.
This arrangement wasn't particularly useful against an opponent who was immune to arrows and spells of this low level, didn't need to bother with taking out multiple tiers, and more importantly, could teleport to avoid the whole mess.
Not that she was. After all, Eris WANTED a long, drawn-out fight.
She cackled in glee as she sliced apart the hapless defenders; mostly human or beastmen, but occasionally she struck on a transformed dragon. Weak ones, but still dragons.
That was fun. She actually got to cut completely loose. And while dragons can be as powerful as some monsters, they generally lose in a fight.
Sighing in bliss as the waves of negative emotions continued to flare around her, Eris looked around, surprised to see a decided lack of further opponents. She hadn't actually killed them all; most had run away and hidden. Shrugging nonchalantly, she hopped down the shaft, preparing for a huge assault.
The final row of fighters waited below, throats and mouths dry in anticipation. They'd been hearing the screams and cackling above, and most were smart enough to imagine the worst.
The worst arrived shortly, though they couldn't see anything at first. All they knew was that in front of them, this slithery, continuous rasp was sounding from something metallic. Had they known that it was a five-foot bladed weapon weighing a good sixty pounds, they probably would have wet themselves.
Then a voice joined the rasp, and some actually did.
"Have you seen the ghost of John? Long white Bones with the skin all goooone OoooooooooOOOOoooooooooooooooh Wouldn't it be chilly with, no, skin, on?"
They were spared further indignities as fists and the flat of a sword exploded into action behind them, knocking them unconscious before they could suffer something more...permanent.
Eris blink-blinked in surprise as she found Gourry and Sirius waiting for her. "Hey, they were mine!"
Gourry just pointed further. "Sorry, we didn't know. Anyway, we think the main guy is this way. Wanna have him?"
What had begun as a pout turned into a sudden brightening of face. "Hey, tha's right! The guy powerful and crazy enough to kidnap Lina! Wai wai!"
Sirius shook his head as she scampered down the caverns. "I never thought I'd ever say this, but I'm actually looking forward to finding Xellos again."
Gourry just nodded sagely. Few people knew better than him the bliss of having someone else deal with crazed females.
--------
When he'd been meeting with Lina, Tios had been wearing a simple robe of scarlet silk with paler blue sash to hold it in place. He'd currently exchanged it for a more abreviated version of the same robe, replacing it with pants and shirt for greater ease of movement. The only other immediate difference was his current weapon; namely Boregarz, the Hammer of Light.
He smiled faintly as Sirius and co. arrived. "Greetings. I am Lord Tios. May I assume that you're here to try - " Further speech stopped as Eris leapt forward, scissors poised as she lunged for his neck. Tios simply stood there, then bent backwards at the waist at the last minute. He pivoted around as the scissors 'snikted' above him, turning smoothly with the motion to bring Boregarz around in a crushing blow against the mazoku.
He turned to quietly regard the female currently embedded in the wall. "I was trying to say, 'try to kill me,' but it seems you've answered that well enough." Turning back to Gourry and Sirius, he used the hammer for a kind of 'come hither' gesture. "Shall we?"
Sirius held a hand up to forestall Gourry. "Let me try first. You haven't forgotten what happened the last time two weapons of Light struck each other, have you?"
Gourry nodded, but brought out his set of allen wrenches to remove the sword blade.
Tios smiled as Sirius disappeared. He similarly blurred from sight, entering into the high-speed interdimensional combat that so conveniently defies description.
It ended about twenty seconds later with Sirius slamming into another wall. Tios faded back into sight, tapping the reverse end of Boregarz against his other palm. "Lovely weapon, you know," he said conversationally. "As you may or may not know, the preferred weapon for a priest or dragon has traditionally been a mace." He regarded the light hammer fondly. "Of course, it has the disadvantage that it's actually harder to kill someone with; the business end just doesn't have the same...finality of a blade of some kind."
He pivoted swiftly to meet Eris's next attack, blocking the thrust of Great Knife with the hammer end of Boregarz. he thought as he noticed how little power had been behind the attack. Shifting one hand closer to the head of his weapon, he pivoted it to catch the next slash of Scissors with the handle. He spun the weapon quickly, twisting the mazoku's arms as he caught her weapons, then finished with a quick, powerful kick to the stomach slamming her into another wall.
Eris groaned as she fell down. Physical impact couldn't hurt her, but impacts with the force of draconic magic behind it were another story completely. "That's no way to treat a lady."
Tios rolled his eyes in disgust. "Women. First all the bitching about how you're not treated as equals. Then we start treating you as equals, and you decide that you actually preferred to be pampered and treated like china or something." He shook his head. "I've come to wonder if what you actually like is just getting men to shift into any mode you want." He turned to check his opponents briefly. Sirius: badly injured, slammed against the wall. Eris; similarly injured, and likely out of commission. Sighing, he turned to Gourry. "It seems that you're all that's left, human. Shall we get this over with?"
Gourry's answer was to heft Gorenova's hilt. "Light come forth!"
Tios shook his head ruefully. "This should be quick." He took a firm grip on his own weapon, facing off the swordsman.
Gourry charged him, his first attack a diagnol slash coming from right hip to left shoulder. Tios countered with a similar diagnol strike, smashing the blade with his hammer, and triggering a massive flare of light energy as the two darkstar weapons clashed. Tios smiled tightly; he would concede if nothing else that his opponent knew how to use that sword. "Not bad, human. But do you think you can last long against me?"
Gourry didn't bother talking; shifting his weight, he abruptly lashed out with his foward leg, catching Tios in the stomach. Not expecting the assault, Tios was actually winded by the blow, and completely unprepared as Gourry finished off by slamming an elbow across Tios's jaw.
Gourry grinned as Tios went down. Ever since he'd discovered what happened when two weapons of darkstar clashed, he'd been meaning to try something out; something he'd learned back in Sairaag. "So I'm human; let's see you handle this HUMAN tactic."
Tios shook his head, turning to glare at the swordsman, when he felt his eyes widen and his face pale.
When the two weapons had clashed, they'd unleashed a bonfire of energy, easily twenty feet across and over fifty feet tall. When he'd knocked Tios from their impasse, Gourry had managed to keep that flare of energy flowing from Boregarz. In other words, he was currently manifesting more energy than he'd used against Zanifer with Zelgadis and Amelia hitting the sword with a double Ra Tilt. "EAT IT TIOS!"
The dragon watched in shock as Gourry brought the gigantic blade of energy down, unleashing it as a single blast of raw energy. He managed to teleport out of the way at the last instant. Fortunately for him too; the blast could have stopped a dragon slave.
He panted in shock from the side-lines as he stared at the gigantic cavern gouged in the walls of his home. Narrowing his eyes, he prepared himself, drawing his mana together. Gourry couldn't use that attack unless Tios first used Boregarz. Making sure not to do so would be child's play, and thus would end the one threat to him.
"DRAGON'S...LANCE!"
Tios froze at Lina's yell. It proved fatal as a glowing shaft of red light impacted his side, exploding into a slipstream of raw magic, eating away at his very essence. He fell forward, turning to stare at the sorceress.
Lina glared at him. "First you drug me, then you kidnap me, then you start bringing up everything I'm sensitive about, and finally you start calling me all the names I hate. What, you thought your little confession would be enough to calm me down; I HATE getting hit on by the bad guys." Not bothering with any more words, she stalked over to where Boregarz lay, picking it up to gaze at the weapon. Abruptly, she threw her head back and started cackling madly. "FINALLY! IT'S MINE ALL MINE! BWAHAHAHAHA!"
Gourry sighed in disgust. "And here we were worried about her."
Sirius groaned as he dragged himself back to his feet. "Well, you don't look so bad off. How'd you find us?"
Behind her, Kia and Liara were huddled behind an alcove. "We're sorry Lord Tios. But she was just so..."
What ever Lina was didn't last as the cavern started rumbling. Lina grumbled under her breath, something about never getting any peace. Sighing, she raised her hands over her head.
"Darkness beyond Twilight, Crimson Beyond blood that flows, In thy great name I pledge myself to darkness! Let the fools who oppose us be destroyed by the power you and I possess! DRAGON...SLAVE!"
The ruby-red beam of light drilled through the ceiling easily enough, cutting a hole to the surface a good twenty feet wide. Ignoring the looks she was getting, she jerked Boregarz in a gesture. "Well, you coming or not?" She quickly charged up a Raywing, ignoring Gourry's shouts of "hey, wait for me!" as he leapt up to grab onto her ankles. Sirius and Eris just shook their heads. She seemed to be getting worse lately. Sighing, they each grabbed one of the maids and teleported outside.
As they set down on the ground outside, they were surprised to find Trent, Zelas, Delphine, Kashura, Valgaav, Filia, Amelia, Zelgadis, and Xellos waiting for them. Well, them and two they didn't immediately recognize (Dynast and Scherra).
Xellos waved cheerfully. "Oh, hello Miss Lina. Did you have a good time?"
Lina stared at him. "What the...how...you..." she spluttered.
Zelas allowed herself a small grin as Lina continued spluttering. The grin widened as Eris attempted a GLOMP! (TM) attack on Xellos. Xellos responded by dragging Zelgadis into the line of fire, but somehow the chimera had anticipated this and dragged Filia there instead. Followed by Eris getting maced into the distance, and Zelgadis and Xellos both being chased by her as she tried to hit them on general principle. "We've been trying to track you all down for a day or so. We found Zelgadis, Xellos, Kashura, Valgaav, Dynast (she nodded towards the blue-haired mazoku lord, ignoring Lina's squawk of protest), and his lieutenant Scherra (again a squawk, though a less expressive one) near Ralteague. Amelia and Filia both found us while we were coming here."
Gourry blinked in confusion. "Hey, how DID you guys find us?"
Xellos gave Dynast a side-long glance (he'd already been maced, and Filia was concerning herself with Zelgadis) then replied, "Trent was given some information about your probable location. Er, someone said you'd probably be near Elmekia. Anyway, we just came into the right general country and waited; it was really only a matter of time before we found the four of you."
Sirius frowned. "Elmekia is the largest country in the region; it's even larger than Seyruun from what I understand. How on earth did you know where we'd be?"
Trent, Xellos, and Zelas' faces immediately lit up with identical smiles; the same smile that they all knew and despised from its frequent appearances on Xellos' face just before a quite well-known line. Though it was a different line this time, no less annoying. "We followed the explosions."
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Valred sighed as the last essence appeared in the crystal matrix. It was a shame, losing Lord Tios like that, really. Tios had been competent, loyal, and hadn't even attempted to argue about the shade worms.
Well, he HAD made some negotiations about how they would effect him, but it hadn't been much, and in his opinion it was safe enough.
Oh well. He'd intended to find someone else as a sacrifice for this third essence; maybe that blonde priestess who was tagging along with Inverse and the more competently dangerous dragons and mazoku. Still, he'd deal with what he got.
He set the three gems containing the death energies of his three generals around a larger central altar, and kneeling in the center, he began to pray.
The beginning of the end.
To be continued...
