Chapter Eight
They both awoke late the next morning. Lina's nightstand was doing its best to force their sleep cycles into synchronization, and so when Lina stumbled out of her room, she was met with the sight of a very groggy Zelgadis blearily massaging his forehead, presumably in a futile effort to stimulate frontal lobe activity. Lina muttered a good morning, Zelgadis grunted in reply, and they shuffled off in search of breakfast. Lina ate even more than was usual for her, calling back the waitress a third and a fourth and a fifth time, and Zelgadis nursed his coffee, periodically topping it off from the pot he had demanded. They left the restaurant a shambles and the waitress a shivering wreck and returned to Lina's apartment to wait for nightfall.
Back in the living room, Lina paced and would occasionally lob a dart in the general direction of the large portrait of King William and Queen Mary, not because she hated the House of Orange any more than she hated authoritative institutions in general, but rather out of boredom and nerves. Zelgadis sat quietly on the couch, looking at nothing in particular and drumming his fingers in rapid, complex rhythms.
On his private list (entitled Things I Hate About Being a Chimera), not being able to bite his fingernails without breaking a tooth ranked pretty high. As a human, Zelgadis had been an obsessive nail-biter. When he had become a chimera and had discovered that using a whetstone to grind down his nails when they got too long was the only way to go, he had been forced to switch nervous habits. Now he drummed his fingers. He had gotten pretty good at it (he could tap out unerringly the beat of every piece of music he knew), but the clicking sound the pads of his fingertips made against whatever he drummed on sometimes got to him.
"Zel, would you quit that infernal tapping!"
Evidently it got to Lina too.
Maybe he would switch to biting the inside of his cheek instead. In many ways, he felt it to be a superior nervous habit, for not only was it soundless, but accompanied by a properly prepared poker face, it was nearly undetectable.
Zelgadis bit the inside of his cheek and thought dark thoughts about Rezo.
Lina sighed in relief as Zelgadis' fingers slowed to a halt, spun on her heel, and nailed Queen Mary in the nose. She stalked over to pry the darts out of the canvas and grumbled mentally about the wait. She was impatient to fight. Never mind that Rezo had simply absorbed a Dragon Slave, she wanted to mix it up, go toe to toe, break heads, whatever, just fight him. Lina cursed the Lord of Nightmares for having been cruel enough to make a twenty-four hour day.
"Here, Zel. Want to switch? You can commit treason in effigy and I'll brood?"
Zelgadis shrugged, but got up and started throwing darts (more accurately than Lina had, she noticed sourly). Lina sat down on the couch and started drumming her fingers until she realized what she was doing. They spent perhaps a quarter of an hour that way, in complete silence but for the minute pops and tears of the darts biting into good Holland canvas. Lina, however, was not a person naturally given over to brooding and so in short order she gave it up to rag on Zel instead.
"Zel. You still have those cards?"
Zelgadis silently nodded, dug in his pocket, and tossed the grimy deck over to Lina before turning his attention back to mentally replacing the Queen's image with that of his illustrious ancestor.
The slap of cards dancing in one of the many newer, more complex variations on solitaire and the age-old thunk of thrown darts echoed slightly in the apartment's still air and acquired a subtle quality verging on the hypnotic. Some time later, the dart-strikes dropped out of the sonic landscape and the cards' noise acquired a varied pace when Lina grew bored with solitaire and dragged Zelgadis into another game of poker. One round turned into two turned into ten, and they passed the hours until nightfall in tense contemplation of suites and runs and flushes.
When the room turned blue and Lina had to squint to see her cards, Zelgadis laid down his hand with a faint snap of thick paper and gestured to the darkening windows.
"Let's go."
There were still a few hours to go before the earliest time Rathpole had named for the Philosopher's Stone's completion, but Zelgadis wanted to be there as soon as possible, both for the sound strategical reason of wanting to get the jump on Rezo and for the more urgent personal one of wanting the whole ordeal over with. Lina herself had no objections to arriving early. She was wound up as tight as she could go in preparation for the fight. She didn't particularly care about how fast they got it over with – she just wanted it to start. She snapped out a predatory grin, stretched, and headed for the door.
"All right, Zel. Let's go kick ass."
He shot her an incredulous glance that plainly said, "What the hell are you so happy about?" Lina's grin widened in answer, Zelgadis gave an exasperated silent appeal to the heavens with accompanying eye-roll, and they set off into the dusk.
In actual fact, of course, they did not immediately commence with the ass-kicking. What really happened was that they got to the warehouse, scared Rathpole out of his wits (again), and watched over his shoulder as the Philosopher's Stone slowly shaped itself out of the noisome potions he kept mixing together.
Lina stood a little ways in front of the mountain of equipment Rathpole sat entrenched within, watching curiously as the alchemist poured mixture after strangely-smelling mixture into a funnel draining into an enormous flask over a burner. The air felt tight with unfinished magic and she edged a little farther away from the workstation, hoping the Stone itself wouldn't interfere with her spells. Zelgadis crouched in the shadows among the crates to her left, staring fixedly at the warehouse's only entrance. His mind was empty of all but the streamlined determination not to let Rezo win. As soon as Rezo opened that door, he would nudge Lina's attention through the Astral Plane and disappear into the jungle of crates. Lina would take Rezo head-on, and when Rezo was unguarded, he would take him out from a distance in whichever way seemed most expedient and grab the Stone while he was down.
(That was the plan. It was a good plan, nice and simple, with very little room for anything to go wrong.) Zelgadis had faith in the universe's ill will, but tonight it didn't matter. No matter what happened, he would make sure Rezo was sorry it had occurred.
The door opened, the familiar weight of Rezo's presence entered the Astral Plane, Zelgadis gave Lina her signal, disappeared into the crates, and the room convulsed in flickering patterns of light as Lina sent an opening salvo of Flare Arrows Rezo's way. He raised a Balus Wall, and the battle began in earnest.
A fight between two first class mages is not something that happens every day, and a fight between Lina Inverse and a mage of sufficient caliber to match her is something else altogether. Because mages were so rare, it was almost never that a battle was fought purely with magic. Spell duels were the stuff of legend.
Lina cursed and launched a Bram Blazer at Rezo. Before she could complete a follow-up to the spell, she felt him let fly something nasty, and barely dodged a Dam Brass.
Damn. He's fast, fast, FAST.
And after that stunt with the Dragon Slave, she wasn't going to waste energy on hoping he couldn't block other types of Black, so she was stuck with Shamanism. And the sonuvabitch was casting silently. Not only did it make him even faster, but without the incantation, she didn't know what he was casting until he said the keyword. Oh, she could take a guess from the feel of what he was calling up, but having to rely on that and her reflexes to dodge and block some of this stuff was not a situation she wanted to have to put up with for long.
Come on, Zel, get your ass in gear and shoot this bastard before I do something we'll all regret.
Zelgadis perched on a tall stack of crates positioned perhaps thirty feet behind Rezo and a little to his left, taking careful aim with the crossbow. It was a tad outdated (more like anachronistic by a couple of centuries, really), but he had taken it along especially for Rezo. He wanted to make damn sure Rezo couldn't heal himself when he shot him. You could close up a bullet wound or yank out a dagger or a dart, but a foot-long crossbow bolt with a barbed head was another matter.
He stared through the sight again, just to make sure, and slipped his finger over the release. This was the best chance he'd ever have. Rezo was absorbed in blocking one of Lina's Fireballs, and at this range, the bolt would nearly impale him.
Now.
The bolt escaped with a thick shunk and the crossbow threw itself back against his arm. His eyes followed its progress with heavy anticipation. The aim was true, its trajectory straight and fast. It would strike Rezo at a slight angle just a little below the left shoulder blade, sliding between ribs, bursting a lung and rupturing his heart before shattering the sternum. The Mazoku side of him was nearly screaming in insane delight, and he could feel his pupils dilate to gather in the sight.
The point of the quarrel found the straight fall of the Red Priest's robe and tore through it, scarlet fabric billowing inwards.
There was a scream, not human, but metallic, and Zelgadis' bolt halted in its tracks and dropped heavily, thwarted by simple plate mail.
Lina heard Zelgadis give an incoherent shout and immediately snapped her eyes to Rezo's face. The Priest was smirking in that sinister way she had thought peculiar to Zelgadis. Something was very, very wrong. Then she caught sight of the crossbow bolt on the floor behind him.
Shit. Oh shit.
The spell battle doubled in intensity to a chorus of explosions and shrieking elements.
Zelgadis could barely think for rage. Whenever he tried, the only thing his mind came up with was: That isn't fair.
At this range, the bolt from even a small crossbow like his should have pierced even the most sturdily constructed armor. It had to be magicked. It was massively unfair of him to wear that plate. It wasn't fair that he cast his spells silently either.
Zelgadis experienced a minor epiphany.
Rezo is blind.
How is he casting silently?
To cast a spell without using the incantation, the caster usually just gave a mental twist to Magnus' Key and visualized the spell with as much detail and emphasis as possible, shoving it into being through sheer force, rather than the precision and finesse of an incantation-guided spell.
Rezo couldn't visualize anything. What was he using to guide the force he drew?
Zelgadis studied his ancestor for a few moments, trying to glean all the information he could from the battle, and eventually came to the conclusion that Rezo was using his hands to shape the spells. Most spells included hand gestures of some kind, but most casters performed them perfunctorily. Rezo's motions were detailed and sweeping, and correct in every point.
The armor might prevent body shots, and now that Rezo was aware that he had a sniper, a headshot was unlikely to succeed, but his hands were unprotected.
The pistols were too inaccurate. The darts would not cause enough damage. A throwing knife would, but Rezo could conceivably pull it out and heal the damage with only minimal lag. Another shot from the crossbow would be ideal, but difficult to aim. He would have to hit him with a dagger first and follow it up with the crossbow.
Zelgadis let the golem have almost complete control. He needed its precision and its calculation and he was too furious to care about his dubious humanity. He loaded another quarrel into the crossbow and selected a dagger, well balanced, but heavy enough to snap the fragile finger bones, should it enter that way.
Hold the tip delicately between thumb, middle, and forefinger, careful not to dull the precious edge on his skin. Feel its weight; check the balance one last time. Watch Rezo's casting. Hand going up, up…to hit the apex of its arc in just the time needed for a well-executed knife-throw.
Zelgadis drew his hand back, flicked his wrist, and threw.
The knife entered Rezo's hand cleanly, sliding between bones, perhaps snapping a few tendons, but doing no other damage. Rezo grimaced and pulled the dagger out without skipping a beat, but Zelgadis had already shouldered the crossbow. This time the bolt met no unexpected resistance and dove through Rezo's palm, tearing a jagged, mangled hole, the breadth and harsh serration of its point enough to make the hand nearly unrecognizable as such.
White magic is wonderful for healing open wounds, but sorting out a limb that's been mauled like that without doing more damage is something that needs time.
Lina heard Rezo hiss and watched him pull Zel's knife out of his hand only to have it nearly torn apart by the crossbow bolt. What the hell was Zel doing? She took advantage of Rezo's momentary distraction and threw a large Freeze Arrow his way. When she heard him begin a chant to block it she understood Zel's actions and her habitual battle grin became all teeth. Now this was more like it.
Zelgadis had no time for the elation and unreasonable fury he felt at his too-small victory. He could feel the vague cloud of magic over Rathpole's side of the room coalescing into something potent and finely honed. It was only a matter of minutes until the whole thing snapped down into a finished Philosopher's Stone. He jumped from the tower and raced towards the back of the warehouse.
Rathpole was delicately stirring a pot of gleaming emerald-black liquid and glancing intermittently at a half-full flask between awed, gape-mouthed stares at Lina's fight with Rezo. When Zelgadis leaped over a wide portion of some of his most delicate, breakable equipment, he jumped and whimpered in reflexive fear before sharply barking out, "Don't do that!"
"Save it. Do you have water?"
"Water?"
Rathpole stared weakly. Water? The battle of the century was taking place right there in front of them, the Philosopher's Stone was almost completed, and he wanted water?
"Yes, water. Do you or don't you?"
"Yes, I have water. Over there, under the table."
Zelgadis held up the battered canteen for a careful, suspicious inspection.
"This is it?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure this is water?"
"Yes."
"It is potable and non-toxic?"
"As far as I remember."
"Good enough."
Zelgadis unscrewed the canteen's cap and settled down to wait. With no further explanation forthcoming, Rathpole edged nervously away, shrugged, and went back to concentrating on the Philosopher's Stone.
The air over them was heavy and hot, and between the groaning elements twisting together into the Stone and Lina's tumultuous, madcap display of magical versatility and violence, the fabric of the Astral Plane quivered and shook. They wouldn't have long to wait now.
Lina was dripping sweat, but the vicious grin remained firmly in place. Now that Rezo had lost that precious edge of speed she was winning even without access to her most powerful arsenal. Rezo was a formidable caster, and in terms of sheer stamina he outclassed just about every other sorcerer she'd met, but that wasn't going to help him now. There is nothing, nothing that stands for long when Lina Inverse is in charge of knocking it down.
"Wind that blows across eternity, gather in my hands…"
Rezo's hands and mouth worked frantically to weave a protective spell.
"…and become my strength!"
Light flared around Rezo, faceted and bright, but Lina's palms were already tight with contained energy and she could feel the air leaning into her spell.
"BRAM GUSH!"
Air blasted from her hands, glowing white-blue with the edge of her magic, and Rezo's shield pulled and twisted into shape in front of him. As her spell reached the midpoint of its journey, a thunderous crack rang through the room. The immense cloud of brooding magic that had hung over the forming Philosopher's Stone slammed down, compressed into a physical object no bigger than a coin. Lina's Bram Gush shuddered in midair and exploded outwards, bursting crates all around them in a flurry of sharp wooden confetti, and Rezo's shield danced wildly around him like water blooming from a fountain's stone mouths. Rezo took a hesitant step forward, his uninjured hand groping out into the burning air as if to discern by touch a scene he couldn't see, and Lina turned her body sideways and flung her head around in time to see the Philosopher's Stone's short life come to an abrupt and ignominious end.
No sooner had Rathpole plucked the Philosopher's Stone from where it had solidified in his pan to a cobweb-colored tablet, than Zelgadis asked him if it was complete, and, upon receiving an affirmative, snatched it from the grip of his tongs, unmindful of the heat it still radiated. He took a moment to savor its smooth weight in his palm, its willing, heavy roll across his lifeline, its definition and solidity. Then he closed his hand with crushing force, poured its dusty remnants into the canteen, and drank it down.
It hit the bottom of his stomach in an icy shock and surged into his bloodstream. In the corners and borders of his consciousness, he could feel its gentle tug for his attention. What do you want of me, it seemed to ask.
"Cure me," he tried to say only within his mind's confines, but felt his lips muttering the words aloud of their own volition.
Cure you?
"Yes." His throat was closing up, and he gasped for air without realizing it. He had somehow fallen onto his hands and knees, and the only thing he could see was the vague shine of his hair in front of his eyes.
As you wish.
The tugging, probing questioner left his mind and bitter cold seared him from the inside out. His fingers were suddenly numb and his ears were ringing. Over the ringing, Rezo was saying something in that special tone he reserved for all Zelgadis' failures.
"…I said…won't work."
Zelgadis wanted to laugh.
Instead, he blacked out.
Lina saw Zelgadis slam the Philosopher's Stone down his throat with the harsh punctuation of an experienced drinker knocking back a shot and fall abruptly to the floor, hood flying off. Rathpole scuttled nervously away, horrified at the use to which his hard work had been put.
"Fool," said a quiet voice at her side, and she spun and turned scarlet with fury to find that Rezo had somehow crept up beside her without her being aware of it.
"As I said, it won't work."
Rezo turned to face her, and Lina again had the uncanny sensation that he could somehow see her.
"You must be Lina Inverse. It was wise of Zelgadis to hire you. I sometimes don't give the boy enough credit."
"Less talk and more fight, Rezo."
The priest coughed delicately, and she suddenly noticed the blood running down bent and twisted remains of his hand to drip steadily against the dusty floor.
"It's pointless now. Zelgadis won. He got to the Stone first. There is no reason to take revenge on him, as there is more than one way to accomplish my goal. Even if I wanted to take revenge, neither one of us could cast any spells that we could control."
He had a point there. The aftershocks of the Philosopher's Stone's formation still raged through the Astral Plane, and any magic called up would be unpredictable and wild.
Without waiting for an answer, Rezo turned and made his way to the door, leaning heavily on his staff. Lina stared furiously for a moment, then turned her attention to the more urgent problem of what to do with Zelgadis.
He was still passed out on the floor, hands loosely clenched. Lina put her hands under his shoulder and gave a heave, just barely managing to roll him over onto his back. He was far heavier than she had expected. She had forgotten the effect the golem component was likely to have on his weight. There was no way she could get him out of there by herself without using magic. Her eyes lit upon the unlucky Rathpole, who quivered, jelly-like, within a secure niche in his wall of equipment.
"You. Help me drag him outside."
"But…"
"Do it. Or suffer the consequences."
Rathpole shuddered and did as he was told.
The first clue Zelgadis had that something was dreadfully, horribly wrong was that he felt perfectly well.
When he had become a chimera, it had left him too weak to move for nearly a week. For days he hadn't been able to do anything but listen to the occasional crackling noise his bones made as they adjusted to his new weight and muscle strength. His skin had itched and burned constantly, and the brief period of time during which his lungs had not yet adjusted fully enough to completely expand his ribcage when breathing had been torture.
He had expected to suffer something of the sort once again by reversing the enchantment – a spell that complex and thorough wouldn't simply disappear. But instead, he was lying down, relaxed and warm with the characteristic looseness of having rested as much as he needed and more.
Didn't it work?
One eye cracked open to stare at the broad, by now somewhat familiar expanse of Lina's ceiling. The other followed it, and he gazed carefully straight up, not allowing himself to catch any glimpse of what might or might not have changed. If it had worked, he wanted to be able to remember every detail leading to his first experience in longer than he cared to remember as a human being. If it hadn't worked, he wanted to be able to savor these last few seconds of uncertainty.
Slowly, not daring to look until it was directly over his eyes, he brought a hand up to his face and peeled off the glove.
His own hand. Familiar and corpse-blue. Stone armor over the knuckles and nails that would probably need to be ground down again in another month.
He laid the hand back down and closed his eyes in utter exhaustion.
"Zel. You all right?"
He did not need to open his eyes to realize that Lina was seated across from him and had probably watched him wake up.
"Fine."
The word left his mouth more softly than he had intended. He had tried to make it a barrier to further communication, short and sharp enough to warn Lina to keep her distance and leave him alone, but the only thing he could summon up was weariness.
Lina watched him, concerned.
"Don't be an idiot. Of course you're not. You look like your pet cat just presented you with the remains of your pet parrot."
Silence.
"You thought it would make you human?"
For a moment, she thought he would ignore the question completely, but finally he sighed and sat up to face her. Though the gesture was rendered useless by the persistent shadows, she understood the intent and gave him a nod in acknowledgement.
"Yes."
Lina shifted and idly reached out to cup the lamp's flame with one hand.
"You're an intelligent person and you're well-read. Why on earth did you think it would work? The Philosopher's Stone is a curative item, not a magic nullifier."
"It…my body isn't naturally this way. It's not supposed to be this way. I thought it might just return me to my natural state."
"As far as the Stone's concerned, this is your natural state. There's nothing wrong with your body, Zel. You're perfectly healthy. You're just a chimera."
"I know. But this was my last chance. Aren't I allowed to hope, that for once in my life, something won't go wrong?"
His voice had gotten sharper with each word and she could see his hands clenched tight enough to strangle the air. He knew he was losing control, but it didn't matter; there was nothing left to control. The whole situation had been screwed to pieces, and it didn't matter what the hell he did now.
"What do you mean 'last chance?'"
"I tracked down every other lead I found mention of in Rezo's library. Traveled all over England and the Continent. Nothing."
"Just because it's not in Europe, doesn't mean it doesn't exist."
Zelgadis remained silent. What with the booming trade Europe carried out, if it couldn't be found anywhere within the continent, if it existed at all, it must exist in the most remote and unheard-of regions there were. And the likelihood that so specific a spell as a chimeric reversal would be found outside of its region of origin was minuscule. Even more minuscule was the chance that it would have any effect on an original spell of Rezo's.
Lina sighed.
"All right. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe you'll never be human again. But is it really so bad? You're luckier than a lot of people. You're well educated. You can move around and defend yourself. Sure, you have some limitations, but everybody has limitations of some kind, and you also have a lot of benefits that nobody else has to make up for them."
Zelgadis shifted slightly and spoke with feather-soft bitterness.
"I…Lina, do you know, I can't even remember what I looked like when I was human?"
"How old were you?"
"Maybe fourteen or fifteen. I don't know. By that time I had been on the streets long enough to have forgotten my birthday."
"Oh."
Now that the dam had burst, there was no keeping it confined, and Zelgadis babbled on in a slightly drunken manner, drawing absentminded circles on the coffee table.
"You know, when you live out there day after week after month after year, you don't have any dignity left at all. Or maybe the only ones that survive there have no dignity to begin with. I don't know. All I know is, out there you live every second with the humiliation of knowing you'll do anything – anything at all – to prolong an existence that is miserable by any standards by a few hours. I was probably a murderer by the time I was twelve. The point is, in one way or another, I haven't lived as a human being since I was very young. What if I forget how to be human? What if I've already forgotten?"
Lina leaned across the table.
WHACK!
"Ow!"
A moment of quiet as both injured parties attempted to recover their dignity.
"Trust me, lunkhead. You're plenty human. You angst too much to be anything else."
Zelgadis glared.
Lina sighed before getting up and wandering into the kitchen where she began rummaging, more because it would have felt strange to say it just sitting there, staring at him face to face than because she really needed anything.
"Look, Zel…I've got a proposal to make to you. The fact is, we're both going to be around for a long time, thanks to the whole magic-and-aging business. And I've really enjoyed working with you – I mean, you're a grouch, you're stuck-up, and you're occasionally denser than anyone has a right to be, but you're also capable and sensible, and when you're not brooding, you give a really good discussion on magical theory. And in a couple of centuries, say, wouldn't it be kind of nice to be able to talk about the good old days with someone who was also around back then?"
Lina re-emerged from the kitchen with two glasses and a large, dark bottle of unidentifiable contents.
"I guess what I'm saying is, 'Let's be friends.' You could obviously use one, and you never know; it might be kind of fun."
Zelgadis stared up at her uncertainly, expression unreadable. Lina set down the glasses and poured a finger's width of liquid into each.
"Come on, drink up. You know you want to. Think of all the advantages that come with being my friend. You get my help if you need it, my dazzling company, whether you need it or not, and you only get Fireballed when you do something really stupid."
Zelgadis remained silent and picked up his glass, spinning the stem absently between his fingers. The amber liquid inside picked up the lantern light and projected golden fishnet patterns over the walls. Finally, his face cracked into a little-used half-smile.
"Friends, huh?"
Lina clinked her glass against his.
"Yeah. Friends."
The room grew darker and smaller as they drank it down, the glowing reticulations fading from the walls as they swallowed their source. The air hung expectantly, waiting for the telltale chime of glasses setting down.
Instead, the silence was broken by a shared fit of choking, hacking coughing, as the initial sip's numbness wore off.
"Lina…what is this?" gasped out Zelgadis.
"Cough, cough…I don't know. I think it was supposed to be brandy, but… Hold on; let me take a look at that bottle… Oh. No wonder. Luna's Christmas brew. Now I remember why I usually throw it away."
"Is it…supposed to taste like that? And be quite that alcoholic?"
"I think so. She's the only one who can drink the stuff. I think she only gives it out to the relatives she doesn't like."
"…Tough lady."
"You have no idea."
They both stared at the bottle with the respect normally reserved for the Pyramids of Giza or a fully rigged out man-o'-war before Lina reverently took it in hand.
"Here. Wanna see what I usually do with these? Give me a hand and set up a Balus Wall in front of the fireplace, would you?"
Zelgadis suddenly felt very nervous about participating in any activity that involved Lina and required a Balus Wall, but cast it anyway while Lina once more disappeared into the kitchen. When she reappeared, her silhouette's width had increased by a few feet due to the armload of food she carried.
"All right. Let's get outside. I'll Ray Wing us up since you're maintaining the Wall. Hang on tight and watch where you put your hands."
They exited into the cool summer night and flew up onto the rooftop. Lina counted chimneys until she found hers and put down her armload of provender on the roof's flat spine. Taking out Luna's paint-thinner, she encased it in a small Ray Wing and sent it gently down the chimney with all the air of an official cracking a champagne bottle over the bow of a newly commissioned ship. When it had touched bottom, she motioned Zelgadis back and sent the tiniest flicker of flame she could summon after it before scrambling like mad to join him.
For a minute, nothing happened.
Then there was an indrawn whumpf, like the sound a pillow makes when you've just hit someone really hard in the gut with it. A rumbling ensued, and two-foot long blue flames shot out the chimney.
Zelgadis blinked and said, succinctly, distinctly, and very appropriately:
"Holy shit."
"Yeah. Isn't it great?"
And with that, Lina happily selected a fat sausage from the cornucopia at her feet and impaled it on her rapier to roast in the flames.
AN: No, no, this isn't the end! There's still a while to go before this is over. Even I'm not so cruel as to leave it off at a point like that.
Anyway…
Fast update, hmm? Had to make up for all the delays someday. Of course, now I've probably gone and jinxed it and the next few chapters will crawl by… Hopefully not.
Once again, forgive me the liberties I've taken with magic here. I mean, hell, now I've gone and really messed with the Philosopher's Stone. But that's ok. It was fun to write.
Thanks to PKNight for saving me from myself yet again by beta-reading, and as always, thank you for reading. You people are amazing.