Chapter 3

An Order to Fulfill

"After the party, someone always ends up cleaning the mess..."

A soft whirl of wind and magic, a rustling of clothes, and than a low bow to show unwavering loyalty...

"My Mistress Beast Master, what is it you need of me?" his smooth voice carried over to her in the silence and gloom.

"Xellos, remember, quite some time ago, the 'messy business' we had to deal with?"

Xellos paused uncertain, "Which messy business?" (1)

"The one dealing with time and the sorcerer Montague?"

"No, my mistress..." he bowed his head low. He had no idea what she was talking about, and he usually had a sharp memory.

Zellas sighed, "I was afraid of this..."

"Of what my mistress?"

"This is going to be a very... difficult thing to explain, you may rise my priest, for this will not be brief." He did as she bid, (2) and she continued, "Imagine you will, a colored thread Xellos, on one end we shall have the past, in the middle the present, and the end will be the future. A sorcerer from the future, on this... 'world' we shall dub it, discovered a time traveling spell and started gaining the attention of monsters. Now this was just a man, some reasoned, send lower level monsters to finish him off, but myself and Dynast both knew that if this man could create a time traveling spell, he most likely could not be beaten easily. But we let them try. Before they could destroy this man whom we had deemed a threat he went to the far end of the string, the past, by this spell. Avoiding our killing him.

The minute he disappeared the higher lords knew things would change, but how we did not know. For there were many possibilities to what would happen. One was that by going in the past he'd create an alternate universe to this world, and we would be left be, or, this world would be changed from the past, and we'd have no control over it. Unfortunately, things did not stay as simple as an alternate universe. What DID happen, and you WERE there for it, was things started changing. Only the higher level Mazoku were able to be left out of the change." She paused to sip some of her wine in a glass beside her.

"Mistress, how is it we... you and the other Monsters were not affected?"

"It seems that what was mostly changing, was the outside world, now the astral plains were also chaotic too with the differences happening, but instead of slowly wiping us out, or transforming and changing the Mazoku Lords, it seemed to mold around the higher Mazoku, in protection. It was the lower monsters that were changed, some even disappeared. We believe we were not affected because of the fact L–Sama would still have created the four highest lords, and Shabranigdo would still have created us, and we still would have created our generals and priests... Even now I'm not sure if that's the correct answer." She sighed and shook her head. "All we have are theories, only L-Sama her self knows the truth. I suppose maybe she WANTED us higher Mazoku to know; only two dragons were powerful enough and deemed 'worthy' I suppose, by this spell. Only two survived the change. One is dead, that was Filia's leader. The other dragon, the remaining one with the truth, is Milgazia." Xellos opened his eyes to start at her, Milgazia-san knew?

"As to why you may have forgotten, the magic must have slowly started wearing away your memories of the occurrence, as it did the other priests and generals. But this is not what is important, that book is dangerous. The spell causes unimaginable damage under certain circumstances... And it's dangerous, unfortunately no human knows this. It was given to the Red Priest by this man, to guard, by the time we had finally caught up with this time bouncer, he was technically in the middle part of the string. We had learned that he was giving it to Rezo, and to a point we could control the red priest, as could Lord Shabranigdo, because of the piece inside him. So we did not worry too much about the safe keeping of the book, unfortunately the problem remaining was that the sorcerer still held the knowledge of the magic, and we still had to kill him. But he saved us the trouble, and that very night he poisoned himself, and died in his sleep." She paused, unused to having to talk so much.

"And what is it you need me to do that connects with this story?"

"Lina Inverse has found that book," Xellos' muscles stiffened and his face went conveniently blank. "Observe her for as long as you need to find out how much she knows, her friends too. If they know, if they can cast that spell, they must be killed... If all they know is the story, bring the book to me, that I may decide whether to hide it within my library, or destroy it myself. I suggest not showing your face to them though... They would get suspicious if you did."

"Yes, my mistress."

"You may go now Xellos, serve me well."

"As I shall always do," he bowed, and then disappeared within a blink of an eye.

1) Too many 'messy' occurances have happened in his time of service. You really expect him to memorize each one?

2) Look it rhymes!