Yay! More story! -grins- Many apologies for being a bad updater, but there are... things over on this end of the interweb that are quite annoying. This story has consumed Olympians At Heart's attention. Read it...

San

Amelia could not sleep. No matter how much she tossed and turned on her little sofa, she could not stop thinking about the palace and the freighting future that she was in. Everything was just such a shock to her that it was amazing that she had not fainted earlier that day. The future was way too sad. It was very, very saddening indeed.

Sighing sadly, Amelia took in the sounds of the night. The could hear cicadas outside in the wet garden, the familiar stride of Zelgadis walking in the hall as he made his nightly watch guard rounds out of pure paranoia, Lina's snores, the distant thunderstorm that had passed over and brought along more rain that had by that time passed. Everything made Amelia shudder. It was just so bleak around her that she did not know what to do.

Princess...

"Who's there?" Amelia asked, sitting upright on the sofa. There was no one, though she could have sworn that she had heard a strange voice.

Amelia...

"This is not very funny Lina-san," Amelia squeaked. Then she realized that it could not possibly be Lina, for Lina was there in front of her, sleeping loudly on an oversized chair. Bianca was immediately ruled out as well, being sprawled out on the large bed by herself. Gathering all the courage she could muster, Amelia got up and went to go into the corridor to investigate the origin of the mystery sound.

Carefully, Amelia walked out into the hallway and looked around. No sign of Zelgadis or Gourry in the area. Not even Albert or Cullen.

Our Highness...

As quickly as she could, Amelia spun around and looked behind her. Empty hallway greeted her. If she did not realize all of the crumbling architecture around her, Amelia would have surely thought of this as a dream.

A dream, or a nightmare at the very least.

Our Princess

Sprinting down the corridor, Amelia followed the source of the voice. It was thin and raspy, as if it never even was there or did not belong to a human being. As she ran down the network of halls, the hoarse whispering became louder and more abundant until Amelia could hear many different voices at the same time, just repeating her name and who she was. It was everything she had to keep on going.

Then, coming to an abrupt stop, Amelia suddenly realized what she had heard.

Amelia walked into the dark ballroom and shuddered. It was the bones of her countrymen that were calling out to her, crying out from every which way that she could think of. Stepping into the maze of skeletons, armor and weapons, she shivered in the cold night air that the earlier rainstorms had left behind.

It was disturbing for Amelia, walking through the gauntlet of her fallen subjects. Cullen's words from earlier still rung in her mind.

'If we succeed, then this is not what shall happen with these men. Your tears are wasted.'

My tears are not wasted, she thought. Someone needs to mourn these mens' souls. They died for Seiryuun and that was one of the most noble sacrifices any could make.

Tears ran down Amelia's face as she continued on. Thoughts raced through her mind about the soldiers' families, how they never met with each other again. Every skeleton had a life to live and the mazoku Koronus took it away. The most heart-wrenching part was that not all of the men who lost their lives were soldiers. Amelia knew that there was never nearly enough soldiers to create such a battlefield, so it must have meant that normal citizens took up their family crests and swords to fight. Cullen was at least right that elderly men and older teens could have been no exception. The entire male population of Seiryuun was probably strewn across the floor. The very idea was so horrid that she almost did not see her absolute worst nightmare.

"Daddy?"

Over in the corner, there was the familiar crest of her father's family on a breastplate filled with ivory bones and devilish air. Amelia ran over to it, discovering Prince Phil's knife, sword and other battle accessories with the corpse. It was hard not to cry. It was like when she had thought an assassin killed her father that one time, when it was really Prince Phil protecting his people and Amelia from harm and he was actually quite fine.

Amelia did not know how long she sat there and cried over her father's empty suit of armor. She did know that she had cried so much that she could barely see when she finally stood up to leave, deciding that it was too painful to stay any longer. When she turned, she ran into something that turned her face even paler than before.

There, in front of her, was Zelgadis.

No, not Zelgadis standing there, waiting for her to be done crying over Prince Phil's body, but Zelgadis truly as a statue. He was down on one knee, hands out as if casting a Ratill spell. Seiryuun battle armor covered the majority his stony grey body and stayed even though the cloth on his exposed forearms and shoulders had rotted away long ago. Upon closer inspection, Amelia found that the weather took away his eyes, leaving him hollow on the inside. His granite brow left behind an impression of severe concentration and pain. Stepping back a pace, Amelia saw that the hollow Zelgadis appeared to have been protecting her father in his final moments. The scene, when all taken in, was just overwhelming beyond belief.

"Oh, Zelgadis-san," Amelia sobbed. She went up to the stone shell's neck and put her arms around the cold stone remains and cried.

"You should not be here," a familiar voice said. Amelia turned her head and saw though blurry eyes...

"Zelgadis-san?"

"No. It is Cullen."

"Cullen-san? What are you doing here?"

"What are you doing here?" he retorted. "You were the one that said to leave these remains alone. Why are you not doing so?"

"I just wanted to see what had happened. These were my people," Amelia replied. She wiped the tears from her eyes and saw that Cullen's half-stone face shone brilliantly in the wan moonlight.

"This is not to be their fate," Cullen said with a grim air to his voice. "This is just a reality that is to be erased with your help. These skeletons will have lives and families and their futures once again restored when we destroy Koronus."

"Here thought, they do not have their life," Amelia said, regaining her composure. "What in the world caused you to be so cynical?"

"Life, that is what," Cullen answered. "I have had to take care of my sister and Albert for six years already. Becoming an adult at the age of twelve does things to the mind."

"That does not mean that you have to be so rude!" Amelia said. "These men fought with everything they had! Can't you at least recognize that they were willing to make such a sacrifice?"

"No. They will not have to, I told you that."

"Yes, they did!"

"Leave it alone Princess," Cullen said with a sneer.

"You are so mean!" Amelia yelled. Reacting without a thought, Cullen grabbed her arm and stared Amelia down with a very mean look upon his face.

"Shut up," he hissed. "I do not want you to cry any longer over that which will never become. You should know better."

Amelia's reaction, of course, was quite the forceful slap across the face.

"I think you should know better than to take a champion of justice such as myself and tell them what to do and what not to do!" she retorted. Amelia shoved Cullen away forcefully, running off as soon as she was free.

Cullen-san, she thought. Why do you act like an enemy of justice when you are supposed to be on the side of the good? Amelia began to walk once she got to the cold garden terrace. The various plants and shrubs were all overgrown, yet still beautiful.

"Oh, Daddy... Zelgadis-san," Amelia cried as she walked through the ghostly garden. Shadows flickered on the ground from the moonlight, creating an eerie effect for what was once a wonderful and romantic place.

"What is wrong Amelia?"

Amelia turned around to see Zelgadis standing there in the garden, his face covered in a shadow. She turned around with dread and cried, kneeling down so that she was resting her arms on a stone bench.

"Why won't my mind stop playing tricks on me?" she cried, burying her face in her arms.

"What are you talking about Amelia?" Zelgadis asked as he walked over to her.

"It... It is Cullen-san..." she said softly as the chimera carefully approached.

"What did he do?" Zelgadis asked, a hint of protective rage in his voice.

"It was just like earlier, when he said that my tears were wasted on those men in the ballroom," Amelia cried. "Well, I couldn't sleep and ended up following some voices to the piles of bones in the ballroom and when I walked around..."

"Amelia, you shouldn't have..."

"They wanted me to see!" Amelia interjected. "I could hear the voices calling to me! Daddy was there and so were you!"

"Me? In that pile of bones? How would you know?"

"It was what was left of your chimera body," she whispered through her tears. She stood up and went over to Zelgadis so that she was within an arm's length. "Daddy's armor was behind you, as if you were trying to protect him from harm."

"Why would I ever have to protect your father?" Zelgadis asked in a comforting manner. "The man is too headstrong and driven to ever need protection, for he is the one who does the guardian duties most of the time."

"You don't believe me, do you?"

"Yes, but..."

"Then come and see for yourself!"

Amelia took Zelgadis by the hand and led him through the corridors to the ballroom. Once there, she showed Zelgadis the scene where Cullen had just chased her away from. When Zelgadis first saw the hollowed version of himself protecting Prince Phil's battle armor, he was speechless.

"See?" Amelia said. "Now do you believe me?"

Holy crap, Zelgadis thought. Amelia was right. What in the nine hells made me do this? Prince Phil is an alright guy and all... but why am I here protecting him? Even better, protecting him dressed in Seiryuun battle armor? I simply cannot imagine what could have made me ever come to this. It must have been something very important...

Zelgadis looked over at Amelia. She was looking at her father's empty armor, wrought with sorrow. Poor Amelia should never have had to see anything like this in her life. For being a beautiful and harmless girl, her life was just filled with horrible things. Her mother died, her only sister ran away, one of her favorite cousins died and she nearly thought her father was dead. Yet the only positive thing about all of this dreadful stuff in the future was that once they defeated Koronus, none of this horror would ever come true and hurt Amelia.

"What do you two think you are doing?" Lina's voice called faintly. Amelia and Zelgadis looked behind them to see Lina and Gourry running over towards them.

"Lina-san, what are you and Gourry-san doing over here?" Amelia asked.

"Both of us... woke up... panicked when you both... were not there..." Gourry answered between gasps of air. "What's... going on?"

Without warning, Gourry, who was still very much asleep from when Lina woke him up to form the search party, fell over into the future-dead-Zelgadis-shell-thing and toppled it over. The impact of granite with the cold marble floor caused a horrible crash. It was a very good thing that Gourry had fallen asleep, for the shell broke into many tiny pieces and scattered all over the floor.

Amelia screamed in freight.

Zelgadis cringed at the sight of himself bursting upon the floor.

Lina... just got annoyed.

"Baka jellyfish-brained man..." she muttered under her breath. "Doesn't even know how to stay awake. What a moron..." With that, Lina grumped off, wanting to catch a few hours more sleep.

"Amelia," Zelgadis said, eyeing his busted remains on the floor in front of him. "I think we both should go back to bed as well."

"...but what about Gourry-san?"

"We'll leave him be. If he wakes up to look my dead face in the eye, then that is his own fault," Zelgadis said as he stepped away from the slumbering swordsman. Amelia followed and neither of them did not stop running until each was back in their respective rooms, Amelia greeted with Lina's snores and with an empty room.

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Gerao-A: You think you know my story line, huh? Well... odds are that you guys are right. The characters, however, are dense until further notice. Remind you of someone? Hmm... Maybe he is supposed to... you never know what the Nehszriah is up to. -grins devilishly-

Things To Know

The horror aspect: I have been studying the horror genre in Creative Writing. What does everyone think? Is it good? Please inform me whether you think either way. Danke. Arigato. Obrigado. Gracias. All that junk.