Slayers Ressurection
Part II
Chapter Six
The steeply changing landscape of the desert, dyed yellow with sun burnt grass and spotted with the deep green of pinion trees, stretched out before him till it met the mountains and disappeared into the sky. Here and there, birds danced through the air, now swooping low to the ground, now soaring until they were lost in blue. Some perched on fence posts and sat, twittering, cocking their heads in confusion as they stared at the giant red man next to them. The intruder was sitting on one of the jutting, old pieces of wood that served to hold the barbed wire together, his hands clasped around one knee, his eyes drawn together, considering. The birds, jays, mostly, watched him beadily, moving their heads jerkily, as if to see him better. Some particularly daring specimens moved closer and fluttered around his head, but he paid them no heed. They were of no consequence to him or to his mission.
Gaav snorted. His mission. How archaic of him! This was not a mission, nor was it a fight, nor a cause for which to fight. It was a power struggle, and it was dirty. He could feel it's contamination in his . . . soul? Did he have such a thing as a soul? Could he be contaminated by this war that he and his race were engaged in? Was he worrying for nothing?
"If I can't be polluted by it, why does it bother me so?" he asked the air, vehemence in his voice. The birds nearest him scattered, screeching anxiously.
The answer was there, of course, waiting for him even as he spoke his query. It bothered him because he was always the one to be bothered by these things. Of all the five mazoku lords, he was the one who cared about such trivial stuff as these human feelings. He was the one to hire mistresses for his own pleasure, and to keep them. He was the one who attached importance to those who served him. He was the one who mourned.
Now there was nothing to mourn. Everything he ever remembered happening had been erased, in one foul movement, and he couldn't even recall most of it now. Some of it came back to him, fragmented pieces of the past, memories from dreams that stayed in his conscious mind. It was almost as if his human body could not contemplate something that was so much greater than itself. He sighed, and leaned back onto his uncomfortable post.
Ah, yes, his body. That brought him back to the heart of the problem. This body was undermining him. He could see the past, could feel again the rush of power as he transferred his mind and re-created his physical manifestation. He could again see the energy flowing from his hands and pouring into the mortals, mortals that immediately ceased their meaningless lives at a taste of his might. All that was gone, and so, it seemed, was his chance of survival.
He smiled at the irony of it. But an age ago, he could have taken on this Inverse bitch and defeated her as easily as he moved between the plain of physical reality and spiritual reality. Now, he was not only worried, but frightened of the outcome of their upcoming battle. She had, in her time of regaining her memory, recalled more spells, more of her former power than any of his fellow mazoku had in three years. She was by far one of the most potent beings in the time. The plan that Dynast and Phibrizo had come up with was clever, certainly, but it lacked the surety that Gaav would have liked when dealing with such a dangerous sorceress.
Had she not already proven that she had a clear grasp of spells that called on the Ruby Eyed Lord? Who was to say that she could not remember spells that used power from the Sea of Nightmares? Who was to say that she would not destroy him in a single, devastating blow? He still had some of his power, true, but with his mind so wrapped up in this body, how could anyone be sure of what would happen to him if it ceased to be? His mind, he felt sure, would survive, but, similar to the problem with phazing, how could anyone be positive that it would not be reduced to floating, thinking matter in the sea of the supernatural? He, Gaav, would be taken entirely out of this power struggle, and that did not please him at all.
Angry at the depressing turn his thoughts were taking, he leaped off his fence post. Holding his hands in front of him, he screamed "FIRE BALL!!" and sent a twisting mass of flame to engulf a nearby tree. A small smirk crossed his face as the tree exploded into a blaze that spread on the dry grass quickly. He was soon surrounded by a raging inferno.
Thick smoke started to rise, high into the air. Gaav's smirk widened.
"Yes" he said, to himself, satisfied. "She will see that and be drawn to it. Come to me, spell-daughter. We have a hell to raise!"
The first thing that she had felt, the overwhelming, emotion dulling, thought dulling thing she had felt first had been relief. Seeing her grandmother had brought it into focus, clear as day, in her mind. This was out of her hands. Completely. This matter of running and hiding from the terrible, oppressive burden she had been carrying for the past three days, it wasn't hers anymore. From the moment that she had seen her Grandmother standing there, smiling at her, she had known, with every particle of her being, that she didn't have worry about Zel's and Amelia's safety anymore. She didn't have to worry about anything, ever again.
This sense of whole unconnected-ness, this giddy lack of responsibility lasted her through the car ride to her grandmother's house. Through the journey, she and Grandma Rivers were the only ones talking, Zel and Ami seemed to be in shock. Once or twice, she tried to draw them into the conversation, but they just sat there and stared at her. So, giving them up for a lost cause, she and her grandmother had discussed what their lives had been like for the past thirteen years.
Mel was at once overjoyed and flattered at the attention she was receiving. She couldn't remember anyone other than her parents asking her questions like this, and even with them it was the basic 'how was school?' when she got off the bus, and 'oh, good' when she had summarized her day in a sentence. Never before had anyone poured so much attention into her, seemed so genuinely interested in the answers that she gave. And then, when she got to a few months ago, and the questioning intensified, Mel almost wanted to laugh with triumph. Finally, someone asking her about it! Someone who wanted to know how she felt when her world was upside down!
It was amazing to her, after sitting in the car for five minutes, that no one had wondered about this before. Wasn't it just a bit amazing that Zel, who called himself her best friend, had barely even noticed when she had disappeared for three weeks? And then when she appeared again on the beach and used powerful magic that he couldn't even control back when he had magic, shouldn't he have asked about it? He had had more than enough time to do so in the weeks that they had been walking together in the desert. He just had never put in enough effort.
Now, that's not true, the reasonable part of her said, quietly. It's not like you gave him much incentive to ask. And even if he had asked, another, even more reasonable part said, you probably wouldn't have answered him. Mel stopped listening to her inner reason and listened again to the soothing, old voice of her grandmother.
"You've grown up so much, dear, since I saw you last! How old were you then? Seven?"
She smiled at the memory. At the time, she had seen her grandma as a snob, who couldn't be troubled to look into her life. How wrong she had been! This woman was one of the most caring, loving people she had ever met. "I was seven. And yes, I remember."
"Good. That was so much fun, and you and your sister were so cute! I remember how you used to play with that little rouge, Zelgadis." She smiled into the rearview mirror, a clear invitation for Zel to say something. When he remained passive and silent, she continued. "And that beautiful princess, Fiona. You three were so cute together. It would have been so much cuter if little Ami was older, then the four of you could have had such adventures!" She beamed fondly and wiped at a tear.
Mel, however, had tensed next to her. This innocent speech of her grandmother's was the first chink in her perfect armor of relief. She felt her muscles tighten and her body go rigid, and worked her jaw silently. She longed to reply, longed to say something that would make this untruth go away. Finally, she got her mouth back under control. "Grandma" she said, hoping against hope that the old woman's reply would be able to explain everything away, "I didn't play with Zelgadis when I was seven. I didn't even know him. I met him when I was in sixth grade."
The lady sitting next to her looked startled for a moment, then a very unpleasant expression crossed her face. It was there and gone in a second, but it made Mel nervous. People, especial her wonderful grandmother shouldn't try to hide expressions like that. It made her think that they were concealing something. But then the older woman was speaking again, and she felt her doubt wash away. Well, most of it.
"Oh, I'm so sorry! The ramblings of an old woman" Mel forced a grin, hoping that the other would stop here and giver her no more reason to mistrust. "I must have mistaken him for that other little boy you used to play with! What was his name, Gordon?"
If Mel had tensed before, now she froze. She did not even bother to correct her grandmother, but stared blankly out the window, her teeth clenched. The desert whirred past. She stared for a long time at a large dark blob on the horizon without realizing what it was, working her teeth and feeling her relief slip away.
"Hey, isn't that smoke?"
Zel's quietly persistent voice broke her completely from her reverie. Blinking the boredom from her eyes, she looked out the window and gaped. A thick, heavy black splotch of smoke was hanging against the mountains, steadily growing and shifting, even as she watched it became rose till it was a clear beacon against the day.
She turned to Zel, her eyes wide, and nodded. He stared at her, hard, with an unreadable mask on, for a moment, and Ami felt her nerve tighten. She was sick of being the whimpering, whining, trouble causer. She was sick of people looking her with expressions of mixed pity and frustration. She was sick of it!
"That's fire." Lina's voice, this time, sounded harshly in her ears. Ami stared at the back of the seat in front of her. The old woman surely would have heard Lina and Zel, she should stop, or at least look!
Ami cleared her throat, delicately. "Um, excuse me, Miss Aqua, but I don't think you heard right. There's a fire right over there." She fighting to stay calm, fighting to keep a hold over that ladylike composure that she so prided herself on. "You did hear, didn't you?"
Silence. It shocked Ami at first, she had seemed like such a nice lady. Then, as the minutes dragged by, she started to fidget. She could feel Zel watching her, but did not feel like turning around to face him. She finally cleared her throat, a little more loudly this time, to try and speak to her again. Maybe the poor thing was a little deaf.
"I heard" came a gruff voice, just as Ami was about to embark. She stopped, startled. The head in front of her turned to the right to look out the window. "It's nothing big. Just a brush fire."
Ami felt the air in the room raise itself to a fever pitch. An intense tightness was rolling out from Lina, and it seemed to confuse Ami as much as it confused Auntie Aqua. Ami almost wanted to cover her ears and hide her head, but there was nothing to be done but to watch. So she was shocked when the red-head's voice sounded collected, not at all as over-emotional as she had thought it would be. "It's nothing, is it?"
The car stopped, and the two sitting in the front seat turned toward each other. Lina spoke again. "Nothing? That's a fire burning out there, and it's not a brush fire! I can tell fire when I see it!!" her voice was rising in volume, she was evidently pissed about something much more important than the fire.
Ami tried to put in a word to still things a little before they got to hot to handle. "Miss Lina."
"Shut up Ami!" Lina turned toward her Grandmother again. "Look, I'm getting out!"
The door opened and slamed again quickly, almost before Ami had time to react. The next second, Zel was out of the car. "I'm dreadfully sorry ab--" she began, trying to smoothing things over for the old lady, but was rudely interrupted.
"Keep Lina away from that!"
"Wha-"
"You heard me! Go!" And in the next moment, Ami was standing out side the car as it rolled away, then running as fast as she could toward the retreating backs of the only people for miles.
He was running. He knew that immediately, also knew how long he could keep running in this heavy body: 17 minutes at this pace, before he would start to tire. The knowledge surprised him, but he did not focus on it. Lina was a ways ahead of him, streaking toward the smokey blackness that indicated a roaring blaze in front of them. Zel was following her, and his entire mind was set on that; following her, defending her.
'Why do I follow her?' came a soft voice in the very back of his head. Most of him, the intense part, didn't notice. What was left of him answered, and this thought took precedence over everything else he was thinking. He said it aloud, his speech broken by gasps and the odd rhythm of his running feet.
"Because she Lina and I am me. I will follow her as long as I need to. And I will shield her as long as I follow her. This is the way it is; this is the way it should be; this is the way it is forever."
Zel liked the sound of it. It was, he mused, rather poetic.
Ahead of him, Lina had cast a flight spell, and he felt his body rise as well. Now his concentration was split; half keeping tabs of Lina, part maintaining the spell, a spell for which he had little talent, and the third flying free. Immediately, that unoccupied section realized he didn't know where Amelia was. Unable to look back to check, he would loose the spell and fall (which he was sure would hurt) he shouted her name down to the earth, hoping she would hear.
A rushing figure appeared behind him; Ami, her hair forced back by the wind. He glanced back at her, and was struck with, like this, how much she looked like Amelia, the Amelia he remembered. It was impossible to forget that she was Ami, of course, her hair was still too long, and she moved with more grace, and the spell was better maintained, but still, she looked just like-
He didn't need to think about this now, he needed to keep going. Lina was almost there.
She fell into a dive, no finesse, he noted, but it served the purpose. He, of course, followed, his descent much more controlled than hers had been. The rushing wind in his ears was like music, as the ground lept toward at him. He pulled up too soon, and his spell dissolved; he fell the remaining three feet to earth.
He landed hard, and immediately sat up to asses the situation. A tall man was standing about two yards in front of him, his blazing red hair waving in the wind, his features barely visible through the smoke. Lina was ahead of him, slightly, and despite her rough dive she was fine, and standing. Zel breathed a sigh of relief.
Ami landed behind him. He turned, and she also seemed unhurt. 'You are all unhurt' said a cynical voice in the back of his head 'at the moment.'
"Lina!" Ami's voice sounded from behind him. The girl ahead of them turned, her short red hair standing up about her head, and she motioned them forward.
They came, Zel took position at Lina's shoulder, Ami behind them both. The man became focused as they moved up, and he could now see handsome features, scarlet eyebrows, and eyes that burned into their figures.
"Ah" the man said, his voice deep and amused and frightening, "how quaint. The troops move into position for the battle." He turned, and looked exclusively at Lina. "Do you know me?"
Zel could not see her face, but he could hear her anger. "Gaav" she spat the name, like a curse.
"I am flattered."
"Who?" That was Ami, sounding confused and scared. Lina turned toward them, and she suddenly seemed lit up from within; the goddess of war before a battle.
"Gaav the Demon Dragon King."
A.N. ACK!!! Major Filler Chapter!!!!!!! Sorry about the supreme boredom of this thing, but I needed to set up the Gaav fight and the chapters after it. I was actually going to continue and have this be a really long chapter but I thought it was starting to drag out too much. I'd have to do this character switch and I don't really want to view the Big Fight of Gaav (BFG) from her point of view this early on. Though, now that I think about it, I could have done that, although it would have made a) too much Amelia, not that I don't like her, and b) the whole Zelgadis section kinda pointless. So next time I promise I will start off w/ Ami and move into Zel and Lina and then maybe we'll revisit Val!!!! (forgotten character). Maybe we could do some recon w/ Sabrina, too. Fillia will have to come into it as well!! Gack!!! Okay. Big long chapter next time!!! (Is this happy news????)
On another note, how did everyone like the Gaav section?? Give you some insight onto the life of a Ressurected Monster?? It's important that they can't use such big magic right now, so hang onto the point. Or, at least, I think it will be important. There some things that I have ditched in this fic, but yeah. Wow, these notes are long. Maybe I should start wrapping it up.
Really fast: the interaction between Mel/Lina and Grandma Aqua/ Auntie Aqua is important for a chapter down the line. I think it will come after the next one. And then we're done w/ part two!!!!!!!! (is this a happy thing????)
Oh, and really fast for those that want to know: There is rhyme and reason to the way that I switch names. It may seem confusing to you, but it makes perfect sense to me. Or at least semi-perfect sense. Whatever. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the chapter.
REVIEWS, PLEASE!!!! GIVE ME REVIEW!!!! I WANT THEM SOOOOOOOO BAD!!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!!
Love all you guys!!!!
Divine Firefly
Part II
Chapter Six
The steeply changing landscape of the desert, dyed yellow with sun burnt grass and spotted with the deep green of pinion trees, stretched out before him till it met the mountains and disappeared into the sky. Here and there, birds danced through the air, now swooping low to the ground, now soaring until they were lost in blue. Some perched on fence posts and sat, twittering, cocking their heads in confusion as they stared at the giant red man next to them. The intruder was sitting on one of the jutting, old pieces of wood that served to hold the barbed wire together, his hands clasped around one knee, his eyes drawn together, considering. The birds, jays, mostly, watched him beadily, moving their heads jerkily, as if to see him better. Some particularly daring specimens moved closer and fluttered around his head, but he paid them no heed. They were of no consequence to him or to his mission.
Gaav snorted. His mission. How archaic of him! This was not a mission, nor was it a fight, nor a cause for which to fight. It was a power struggle, and it was dirty. He could feel it's contamination in his . . . soul? Did he have such a thing as a soul? Could he be contaminated by this war that he and his race were engaged in? Was he worrying for nothing?
"If I can't be polluted by it, why does it bother me so?" he asked the air, vehemence in his voice. The birds nearest him scattered, screeching anxiously.
The answer was there, of course, waiting for him even as he spoke his query. It bothered him because he was always the one to be bothered by these things. Of all the five mazoku lords, he was the one who cared about such trivial stuff as these human feelings. He was the one to hire mistresses for his own pleasure, and to keep them. He was the one who attached importance to those who served him. He was the one who mourned.
Now there was nothing to mourn. Everything he ever remembered happening had been erased, in one foul movement, and he couldn't even recall most of it now. Some of it came back to him, fragmented pieces of the past, memories from dreams that stayed in his conscious mind. It was almost as if his human body could not contemplate something that was so much greater than itself. He sighed, and leaned back onto his uncomfortable post.
Ah, yes, his body. That brought him back to the heart of the problem. This body was undermining him. He could see the past, could feel again the rush of power as he transferred his mind and re-created his physical manifestation. He could again see the energy flowing from his hands and pouring into the mortals, mortals that immediately ceased their meaningless lives at a taste of his might. All that was gone, and so, it seemed, was his chance of survival.
He smiled at the irony of it. But an age ago, he could have taken on this Inverse bitch and defeated her as easily as he moved between the plain of physical reality and spiritual reality. Now, he was not only worried, but frightened of the outcome of their upcoming battle. She had, in her time of regaining her memory, recalled more spells, more of her former power than any of his fellow mazoku had in three years. She was by far one of the most potent beings in the time. The plan that Dynast and Phibrizo had come up with was clever, certainly, but it lacked the surety that Gaav would have liked when dealing with such a dangerous sorceress.
Had she not already proven that she had a clear grasp of spells that called on the Ruby Eyed Lord? Who was to say that she could not remember spells that used power from the Sea of Nightmares? Who was to say that she would not destroy him in a single, devastating blow? He still had some of his power, true, but with his mind so wrapped up in this body, how could anyone be sure of what would happen to him if it ceased to be? His mind, he felt sure, would survive, but, similar to the problem with phazing, how could anyone be positive that it would not be reduced to floating, thinking matter in the sea of the supernatural? He, Gaav, would be taken entirely out of this power struggle, and that did not please him at all.
Angry at the depressing turn his thoughts were taking, he leaped off his fence post. Holding his hands in front of him, he screamed "FIRE BALL!!" and sent a twisting mass of flame to engulf a nearby tree. A small smirk crossed his face as the tree exploded into a blaze that spread on the dry grass quickly. He was soon surrounded by a raging inferno.
Thick smoke started to rise, high into the air. Gaav's smirk widened.
"Yes" he said, to himself, satisfied. "She will see that and be drawn to it. Come to me, spell-daughter. We have a hell to raise!"
The first thing that she had felt, the overwhelming, emotion dulling, thought dulling thing she had felt first had been relief. Seeing her grandmother had brought it into focus, clear as day, in her mind. This was out of her hands. Completely. This matter of running and hiding from the terrible, oppressive burden she had been carrying for the past three days, it wasn't hers anymore. From the moment that she had seen her Grandmother standing there, smiling at her, she had known, with every particle of her being, that she didn't have worry about Zel's and Amelia's safety anymore. She didn't have to worry about anything, ever again.
This sense of whole unconnected-ness, this giddy lack of responsibility lasted her through the car ride to her grandmother's house. Through the journey, she and Grandma Rivers were the only ones talking, Zel and Ami seemed to be in shock. Once or twice, she tried to draw them into the conversation, but they just sat there and stared at her. So, giving them up for a lost cause, she and her grandmother had discussed what their lives had been like for the past thirteen years.
Mel was at once overjoyed and flattered at the attention she was receiving. She couldn't remember anyone other than her parents asking her questions like this, and even with them it was the basic 'how was school?' when she got off the bus, and 'oh, good' when she had summarized her day in a sentence. Never before had anyone poured so much attention into her, seemed so genuinely interested in the answers that she gave. And then, when she got to a few months ago, and the questioning intensified, Mel almost wanted to laugh with triumph. Finally, someone asking her about it! Someone who wanted to know how she felt when her world was upside down!
It was amazing to her, after sitting in the car for five minutes, that no one had wondered about this before. Wasn't it just a bit amazing that Zel, who called himself her best friend, had barely even noticed when she had disappeared for three weeks? And then when she appeared again on the beach and used powerful magic that he couldn't even control back when he had magic, shouldn't he have asked about it? He had had more than enough time to do so in the weeks that they had been walking together in the desert. He just had never put in enough effort.
Now, that's not true, the reasonable part of her said, quietly. It's not like you gave him much incentive to ask. And even if he had asked, another, even more reasonable part said, you probably wouldn't have answered him. Mel stopped listening to her inner reason and listened again to the soothing, old voice of her grandmother.
"You've grown up so much, dear, since I saw you last! How old were you then? Seven?"
She smiled at the memory. At the time, she had seen her grandma as a snob, who couldn't be troubled to look into her life. How wrong she had been! This woman was one of the most caring, loving people she had ever met. "I was seven. And yes, I remember."
"Good. That was so much fun, and you and your sister were so cute! I remember how you used to play with that little rouge, Zelgadis." She smiled into the rearview mirror, a clear invitation for Zel to say something. When he remained passive and silent, she continued. "And that beautiful princess, Fiona. You three were so cute together. It would have been so much cuter if little Ami was older, then the four of you could have had such adventures!" She beamed fondly and wiped at a tear.
Mel, however, had tensed next to her. This innocent speech of her grandmother's was the first chink in her perfect armor of relief. She felt her muscles tighten and her body go rigid, and worked her jaw silently. She longed to reply, longed to say something that would make this untruth go away. Finally, she got her mouth back under control. "Grandma" she said, hoping against hope that the old woman's reply would be able to explain everything away, "I didn't play with Zelgadis when I was seven. I didn't even know him. I met him when I was in sixth grade."
The lady sitting next to her looked startled for a moment, then a very unpleasant expression crossed her face. It was there and gone in a second, but it made Mel nervous. People, especial her wonderful grandmother shouldn't try to hide expressions like that. It made her think that they were concealing something. But then the older woman was speaking again, and she felt her doubt wash away. Well, most of it.
"Oh, I'm so sorry! The ramblings of an old woman" Mel forced a grin, hoping that the other would stop here and giver her no more reason to mistrust. "I must have mistaken him for that other little boy you used to play with! What was his name, Gordon?"
If Mel had tensed before, now she froze. She did not even bother to correct her grandmother, but stared blankly out the window, her teeth clenched. The desert whirred past. She stared for a long time at a large dark blob on the horizon without realizing what it was, working her teeth and feeling her relief slip away.
"Hey, isn't that smoke?"
Zel's quietly persistent voice broke her completely from her reverie. Blinking the boredom from her eyes, she looked out the window and gaped. A thick, heavy black splotch of smoke was hanging against the mountains, steadily growing and shifting, even as she watched it became rose till it was a clear beacon against the day.
She turned to Zel, her eyes wide, and nodded. He stared at her, hard, with an unreadable mask on, for a moment, and Ami felt her nerve tighten. She was sick of being the whimpering, whining, trouble causer. She was sick of people looking her with expressions of mixed pity and frustration. She was sick of it!
"That's fire." Lina's voice, this time, sounded harshly in her ears. Ami stared at the back of the seat in front of her. The old woman surely would have heard Lina and Zel, she should stop, or at least look!
Ami cleared her throat, delicately. "Um, excuse me, Miss Aqua, but I don't think you heard right. There's a fire right over there." She fighting to stay calm, fighting to keep a hold over that ladylike composure that she so prided herself on. "You did hear, didn't you?"
Silence. It shocked Ami at first, she had seemed like such a nice lady. Then, as the minutes dragged by, she started to fidget. She could feel Zel watching her, but did not feel like turning around to face him. She finally cleared her throat, a little more loudly this time, to try and speak to her again. Maybe the poor thing was a little deaf.
"I heard" came a gruff voice, just as Ami was about to embark. She stopped, startled. The head in front of her turned to the right to look out the window. "It's nothing big. Just a brush fire."
Ami felt the air in the room raise itself to a fever pitch. An intense tightness was rolling out from Lina, and it seemed to confuse Ami as much as it confused Auntie Aqua. Ami almost wanted to cover her ears and hide her head, but there was nothing to be done but to watch. So she was shocked when the red-head's voice sounded collected, not at all as over-emotional as she had thought it would be. "It's nothing, is it?"
The car stopped, and the two sitting in the front seat turned toward each other. Lina spoke again. "Nothing? That's a fire burning out there, and it's not a brush fire! I can tell fire when I see it!!" her voice was rising in volume, she was evidently pissed about something much more important than the fire.
Ami tried to put in a word to still things a little before they got to hot to handle. "Miss Lina."
"Shut up Ami!" Lina turned toward her Grandmother again. "Look, I'm getting out!"
The door opened and slamed again quickly, almost before Ami had time to react. The next second, Zel was out of the car. "I'm dreadfully sorry ab--" she began, trying to smoothing things over for the old lady, but was rudely interrupted.
"Keep Lina away from that!"
"Wha-"
"You heard me! Go!" And in the next moment, Ami was standing out side the car as it rolled away, then running as fast as she could toward the retreating backs of the only people for miles.
He was running. He knew that immediately, also knew how long he could keep running in this heavy body: 17 minutes at this pace, before he would start to tire. The knowledge surprised him, but he did not focus on it. Lina was a ways ahead of him, streaking toward the smokey blackness that indicated a roaring blaze in front of them. Zel was following her, and his entire mind was set on that; following her, defending her.
'Why do I follow her?' came a soft voice in the very back of his head. Most of him, the intense part, didn't notice. What was left of him answered, and this thought took precedence over everything else he was thinking. He said it aloud, his speech broken by gasps and the odd rhythm of his running feet.
"Because she Lina and I am me. I will follow her as long as I need to. And I will shield her as long as I follow her. This is the way it is; this is the way it should be; this is the way it is forever."
Zel liked the sound of it. It was, he mused, rather poetic.
Ahead of him, Lina had cast a flight spell, and he felt his body rise as well. Now his concentration was split; half keeping tabs of Lina, part maintaining the spell, a spell for which he had little talent, and the third flying free. Immediately, that unoccupied section realized he didn't know where Amelia was. Unable to look back to check, he would loose the spell and fall (which he was sure would hurt) he shouted her name down to the earth, hoping she would hear.
A rushing figure appeared behind him; Ami, her hair forced back by the wind. He glanced back at her, and was struck with, like this, how much she looked like Amelia, the Amelia he remembered. It was impossible to forget that she was Ami, of course, her hair was still too long, and she moved with more grace, and the spell was better maintained, but still, she looked just like-
He didn't need to think about this now, he needed to keep going. Lina was almost there.
She fell into a dive, no finesse, he noted, but it served the purpose. He, of course, followed, his descent much more controlled than hers had been. The rushing wind in his ears was like music, as the ground lept toward at him. He pulled up too soon, and his spell dissolved; he fell the remaining three feet to earth.
He landed hard, and immediately sat up to asses the situation. A tall man was standing about two yards in front of him, his blazing red hair waving in the wind, his features barely visible through the smoke. Lina was ahead of him, slightly, and despite her rough dive she was fine, and standing. Zel breathed a sigh of relief.
Ami landed behind him. He turned, and she also seemed unhurt. 'You are all unhurt' said a cynical voice in the back of his head 'at the moment.'
"Lina!" Ami's voice sounded from behind him. The girl ahead of them turned, her short red hair standing up about her head, and she motioned them forward.
They came, Zel took position at Lina's shoulder, Ami behind them both. The man became focused as they moved up, and he could now see handsome features, scarlet eyebrows, and eyes that burned into their figures.
"Ah" the man said, his voice deep and amused and frightening, "how quaint. The troops move into position for the battle." He turned, and looked exclusively at Lina. "Do you know me?"
Zel could not see her face, but he could hear her anger. "Gaav" she spat the name, like a curse.
"I am flattered."
"Who?" That was Ami, sounding confused and scared. Lina turned toward them, and she suddenly seemed lit up from within; the goddess of war before a battle.
"Gaav the Demon Dragon King."
A.N. ACK!!! Major Filler Chapter!!!!!!! Sorry about the supreme boredom of this thing, but I needed to set up the Gaav fight and the chapters after it. I was actually going to continue and have this be a really long chapter but I thought it was starting to drag out too much. I'd have to do this character switch and I don't really want to view the Big Fight of Gaav (BFG) from her point of view this early on. Though, now that I think about it, I could have done that, although it would have made a) too much Amelia, not that I don't like her, and b) the whole Zelgadis section kinda pointless. So next time I promise I will start off w/ Ami and move into Zel and Lina and then maybe we'll revisit Val!!!! (forgotten character). Maybe we could do some recon w/ Sabrina, too. Fillia will have to come into it as well!! Gack!!! Okay. Big long chapter next time!!! (Is this happy news????)
On another note, how did everyone like the Gaav section?? Give you some insight onto the life of a Ressurected Monster?? It's important that they can't use such big magic right now, so hang onto the point. Or, at least, I think it will be important. There some things that I have ditched in this fic, but yeah. Wow, these notes are long. Maybe I should start wrapping it up.
Really fast: the interaction between Mel/Lina and Grandma Aqua/ Auntie Aqua is important for a chapter down the line. I think it will come after the next one. And then we're done w/ part two!!!!!!!! (is this a happy thing????)
Oh, and really fast for those that want to know: There is rhyme and reason to the way that I switch names. It may seem confusing to you, but it makes perfect sense to me. Or at least semi-perfect sense. Whatever. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the chapter.
REVIEWS, PLEASE!!!! GIVE ME REVIEW!!!! I WANT THEM SOOOOOOOO BAD!!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!!
Love all you guys!!!!
Divine Firefly