Chapter Nine
...Ellisia was all decked out in gold again. Literally, for her skin was once again sheathed in fine, glittering golden scales, sparkling gold claws emerging from her fingertips, her latest pair of boots torn asunder again by clawed feet. The sinuous golden tail lashed lazily along the grass behind where she kneeled, great wings unfurled like golden sails on an eccentric emperor's royal flagship, shadowing her beneath them. Her hair fell forward like a curtain as her head hung, shadowing her face, and the talons on her fingers gouged the earth as they curled reflexively, in her efforts to push herself back up. Inexplicably, the armor was gone, leaving her garbed only in the tattered remains of her clothing once again. Aric could begin to see why she used that form so seldom even in crisis, considering her expensive taste in clothing. He could also begin to get a glimmer why even with expensive appetites like hers, she didn't wear earrings; odds were that when her ears changed form from round to pointed, it would probably play painful havoc with such jewelry.
Off to one side, he heard Selaena gasp sharply. Uh-oh...she doesn't know...
Spot decision time: play it through as a side-effect and have the need to spill the truth in the future hanging over his head, or try to balance explaining now with figuring out just what had happened to their hard-earned Artifact...and what it had done to Ell.
He decided he already had enough to worry about with the Galamoth-Ellisia situation. Hastily, he reached to take careful hold of Selaena's sleeve. "I'll explain later, but don't be afraid. She's done this before."
Ignoring the White Sorceress' wide blue eyes, he pushed himself up and rushed to the kneeling half-Dragon. "Ell!" Stopping before her, he dropped to his own knees, to examine more carefully. Though this close he could hear her breath rasping in and out of her lungs, she nevertheless seemed in good health, outwardly unharmed. In fact, now that he could see this closely, better than "unharmed"; before, so much had been going on that he hadn't had much chance to examine this form; she had been moving so quickly, and he had been so unsettled by the abrupt change...
Ellisia's half-Dragon form was the same general build and dimensions as her human state, but even beyond the skin and appendages there were unmistakable differences. He could see corded muscle rippling beneath the scaled skin in her still slender arm, all the way up to her shoulder. In an odd sense, even this form seemed to convey Ell's aura of regal beauty, in spite of the scales and other alien aspects; the scales shone in the light of the new-risen moon, and even the enhanced musculature in her arms and back managed to look lithe and athletic, rather than the kind of unnerving bulk he had seen in some of the sword-swinging valkyrie women from back home.
Sharply, he shook his head, resisting the urge to smack himself. He wasn't sure which was worse, the timing or the very fact that he was eyeing a...
"...Ell?" he asked quietly, to cut off his own train of thought. Slowly, ever-so-slightly, her head shifted toward the sound of his voice. "Ell...hey, you okay? Why did you...change?"
"...wha...what...happ..." she tried to pant out, her shoulders still heaving. Lifting a clawed hand beneath the sheet of golden hair, she broke off the attempt, gulped for air a few moments more as she peered at it. She slowly turned it this way and that, flexing the claws so that they glinted in the light. Then she curled them completely, her whole body seeming to tense, and...nothing happened. She tried again, a few more times, as Aric watched in silence...and then lifted her head just enough that he could see a dark eye peering through the curtain of gold strands fallen over her face. "...Aric?" she croaked, a hoarse whisper. "...I can't change back."
That took a moment to sink in, but when it did it was like a blow to the cranium from Ell's hammer: sudden, unexpected and rather dizzying. He hesitated a moment, then lifted one hand to her bare shoulder, finding the surface surprisingly smooth and warm in spite of the scales, like the hide of a snake. She eased back away from his hand, but at least she was sitting up. After handing her cape to her, to drape over her folded-up wings and wrap around to preserve her modesty, he turned back toward where he'd left Selaena.
She was still sitting in the same place, at least, her eyes wide and head tilted curiously. He reached to beckon her closer, and she came reluctantly, keeping her staff positioned protectively between her and them. The closer she came, however, the lower her guard became, and finally she came to kneel directly beside the two of them with her staff across her knees.
"...how?" was the only thing she asked, but the single word covered a whole spectrum of unspoken questions.
Aric let Ell do the explaining, since he wasn't sure if his over-exhausted and sleep-deprived mind was up to it. He still wasn't even sure if he really was still awake or not, though this seemed unusually vivid even for one of his dreams. Selaena took it in impressive stride for someone who seemed so meek and rabbitlike half the time...but then, in spite of her word confusion she also gave the impression of an intellectual so he supposed he shouldn't be surprised.
When they finally seemed to have trailed off their question-and-answer session, Aric cleared his throat. "Okay, now how about we focus on the important matters? Where's the Armor and why'd it do this to Ell?"
Ell didn't even have to use her hammer, now; a simple bonk on the head with her fist produced a similar effect, sending him crashing face-first into the grass. "Haven't you got your priorities backward?" she asked dangerously.
"Fine, fine," he mumbled, spitting out a mouthful of grass. "Questions are still the same whatever order you ask them in."
During the exchange, Selaena had sat with her finger to her chin in thought, pondering silently. Suddenly, her head lifted slightly, and she brought both her hands to grip the shaft of her staff. Lifting it slightly, she started to bring it toward Ell, then paused, causing the bells to chime with the sudden lack of motion. "...may I?"
Bemused, Ellisia nodded.
Selaena lifted the staff a bit more, easing it slowly toward the golden-haired woman...and, to both Aric and Ell's shock when the staff drew almost close enough to touch, runes of light flared up again, both along its length...and running over Ell's arms, and shining through the remnants of her shirt and the cloak wrapped around her, in the same patterns as the filigree on the armor.
"As I subjected," Selaena said with a hint of satisfaction, drawing the staff away so that the effect faded to nothing again.
"I think you mean 'suspected'," Ell murmured absently, examining her golden-scaled arm with trepidation.
"That's what I said. Anyway...I think both questions may have the same answer. The specimens--"
"--specifics?" Aric interjected without much hope.
"--are as yet unclear to me," she continued as though uninterrupted. "But I believe somehow this may be part of the inherent enhancement."
"Enchantment."
"That's what I said."
"Right." Aric sighed, wearily, and motioned for her to continue.
"At any rate...transfiguration," (Aric and Ell didn't even bother to correct her slip-ups this time, eager to get the explanation over with), "spells are rare, and generally require a Magic Circle at both the origin point and destination point to function properly. A random teleport spell on an artifact could very well end up depositing it anywhere, from the Desert of Deconstruction to the Astral Plane itself, and magical artifacts require entirely too much time and effort to waste on such a random mishap." She cleared her throat softly, pausing significantly in the manner of a Sorcerer's Guild professor, and even retrieved a small water flask from her belt and downed a bit to wet the tongue before continuing. "Miss Ellisia obviously donned the armor, and by those linguistics it stood to reason that it was still on her person. Apparently, the Armor's inherent curse to hinder its use is to unite with the wearer and alter his or her form in some way."
"And since it's gotten so 'attached' to her," Aric couldn't resist quipping, "just taking it off so she can change back will be no simple matter."
"Decisively." Selaena replied with closed eyes and a scholarly nod...though a small bead of sweat rolled down her temple when she opened them and saw that her audience was lying face-first on the ground again, and Ell was massaging the bottom of her fist and muttering about hard heads.
"So what are we going to do?" Ell blurted at last, hands on her hips, threatening to inadvertently expose herself as her wings tried to open as well. Hastily she checked their movement, which only seemed to redouble her frustration. "I can't go into town like this..."
"You'll have to, Ell," Aric said, frustrated as well for different reasons. "If we're going to get you changed back, there's no choice. Unless..." He turned to Selaena. "I don't suppose you know how to remove a curse?"
Hastily, the lavender-haired sorceress lifted her hands in a gesture of placating and shook her head, her braid continuing to sway gently after the motion. "I-I'm nowhere near that far along in my studies," she said with a small, nervous laugh. "I'm still studying 'Insurrection'."
"I think you mean 'Resurrection'," Aric said with a sinking feeling, silently resolving never to put himself in a situation that would require this particular White Sorceress to cast that particular spell upon him.
"That's what I said. Anyway...the best I know how to cast is Flow Break, and we embellished that that spell is likely lacking in power. You would probably need a High Priest to break a curse like this, or at least someone far better trained than I. I-I taught myself much of what I know, from books and scrolls, and the rest I learned secondhand."
"Drat." He sighed, turning back to Ellisia. "Look, Ell, we're just going to have to disguise you somehow."
Ellisia looked down at her clawed hands and feet, at the twitching tip of her tail that had curled half-way around her in a crescent shape, and at the leathery golden surface of one wing. Then she looked back up at him with a lifted brow, a sardonic smirk on her golden lips. "I think we'll need more than a hooded cloak this time."
It took some doing, including some sneaking back into town in the dead of night and "lightening" of laundry-lines, but Aric returned to camp with just as the moon was past its zenith and beginning to descend, dragging himself back to the site with the needed supplies. He then promptly crashed to the ground, not bothering to hand over the things he had retrieved or even curl up in his cloak, and instead fallen right asleep face-down in the grass.
The next morning he awoke reluctantly, dragged from his rest on penalty of Mono Volt. Then, they got to work making Ell presentable for travel.
A new shirt was in order, this one specifically altered to permit her wings while still keeping her covered properly--getting it on had been a chore, from the sound of the two women working that he had heard over his shoulder, back turned on pain of hammer strike. He had also procured larger gloves and boots, and of heavier and sturdier brown leather as not to be shredded by her claws. A thick black scarf, bundled heavily around her neck and shoulders and, most importantly, lower face, was accompanied by a voluminous white cloak with a hood, to hide her wings and cover her pointed ears and cast the golden-scaled skin around her eyes into shadow.
The effect was hardly a fashion-statement when it was completed, and she complained terribly even as she stuffed the remnants of her old shirt and her favorite cape into her pack, but it was serviceable. It made her look decidedly suspicious, and made her gender hard to guess at if one didn't already know, but at least she wouldn't be walking about town with her wings, claws, and golden scales plain to see. Her tail had been tricky, too--they'd finally had to actually bind it around her waist like a belt, tying it firmly in place so it wouldn't accidentally lash free. After much ado and substantial complication, they were ready to go.
Save for one thing.
"...does anybody have any money?" Aric asked the inevitable, dreaded question. "I mean, these priestly types always ask for a 'donation to their church' in exchange for their services, right? Besides, I don't know about you two, but I'm starving." Three money-purses were turned inside-out. Two came up empty; Aric's coughed up a little moth but no coins.
"Crap." He frowned in consternation for a moment, then brightened and clapped Ellisia on the shoulder. "We could always sell Ell's favors for money. I'm sure in these backwater farming villages there's bound to be someone with a taste for scales and whoommphh!" He finished his sentence with half his face pressed into the indentation he had made into the tree against which Ell had thrown him. He slowly peeled off, even as she dusted off her hands, and crashed into the ground with a thud.
"Hmph," was all she had to say to that suggestion.
After Aric's wood-chip breakfast, it was unanimously decided that they would not be selling Ellisia's favors.
"I always found treasure-hunting to be a worthwhile source of ingénue," Selaena put in thoughtfully.
"I think you mean revenue," Ell replied.
"That's what I said."
"We don't have time to look into mystic ruin rumors and whatnot," the half-Dragon mused, crossing her arms, her voice slightly muffled behind the scarf. "Nor a place to sell treasures if we found them, since Atlass City is not very friendly to us at the moment. Same applies to collecting bounties."
Aric groaned wearily, after he had dragged himself back to his feet, raking gloved fingers through his deep azure hair. "This sucks. I bet this kind of thing never happens to Lina In...verse..." Suddenly he blinked, as inspiration slowly dawned on him, as it had so many times upon references to That Name.
He saw the other two hastily looking around, as though half-fearing he had summoned the most feared sorceress on the continent simply by uttering her name and suspecting that was why he had trailed off. They both looked distinctly surprised when they saw the slow grin creeping over his face. "Ell, did you mention bounties?"
"...er, yes. There were posters all over town, and people were talking about a place somewhere in the northeastern woods..."
"...that'll do." Aric smirked. Ellisia blinked. Selaena gulped.
Bandit encampments were not built with style or originality in mind. They were built with the intention to contain and defend a stash of ill-gained loot, with minimalist facilities for the defenders in question to live by until they had amassed enough to make each man independently wealthy and could thus move on to the next site, squander it all and start over again.
Thus, the particular encampment in the northeastern part of the forest near Atlass City was fairly typical and not particularly awe-inspiring. A simple wooden palisade forming an almost-complete circle around the mouth of a cave, sturdy logs lashed vertically together with both ends sharpened, one point planted into the ground and the other poking quite discouragingly up at the very top to prevent climbing.
Inside the palisade, guard-post towers at the corners, with lookout/archers ready to yell "intruder!" at the top of their lungs while peppering said intruder with arrows, and beyond these were the facilities. Part of a nearby stream had been diverted into several narrow gaps in the palisade, each just wide enough to allow the water to trickle into wooden barrels set into holes in the ground, and supply a nice, ample supply of drinking water. Some camps even kept their own personal sorcerer on hand, just in case of magical difficulties...especially in this day and age, with the Bandit Killer on the randomly-roaming rampage.
"Don't like how quiet it is out here, tonight," Bandit Lookout Number One said to Bandit Lookout Number Two, spitting off one side of the south guard tower onto the head of a man below. "S' a bad sign."
"You say that every night," Bandit Lookout Number Two replied offhandedly, dismissing his partner's doomsaying offhandedly as he pulled the string of his bow, testing the strength yet again. "It's always quiet in these woods. Nobody ever comes up here, that's why we set this place up."
"Won't stop Her," Number One mumbled, scratching the stubble along his cheek with a soft rasping sound, fingers twitching nervously more than moving consciously. "Never stops Her. Nothin' never stops Her..."
"Awh, not that tripe again," the younger man scoffed, rolling his eyes in the universal gesture of Generation Gap communication. "Look, pops, you ain't scarin' nobody with that old story. Who'd ever be afraid of some scrawny little girl?"
Number One smote Number Two with the shaft of his bow. "Fool boy! 'At's what I thought at your age, too! But then She burst into camp one night...blew away hundreds o' men with a wave of 'er hand! With those burnin' red eyes...that high, squeaky voice...a-and that damned laugh...!" Lookout Number One got right in Number Two's face, jabbing the bridge of the younger man's nose with a finger. "Mark you my words, boy...'at's no mere girl, 'at's Shabranigdo Himself in disguise!"
"Yeah, whatever, pops."
Conversation stopped around this point as each man froze...literally, standing congealed exactly where they were in jagged blocks of ice. There was a snap of wings unfurling, as Ellisia glided with Aric toward the tower, the guards at the other two already disabled in similar manner. With no small amount of self-satisfaction, Aric lightly rapped the forehead of the younger frozen man. "All too easy. And here I thought this might be a challenge."
"I can't believe I'm taking part in this. Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Ell glanced at him from the corner of one dark eye, frowning. Her disguise had been temporarily shed for now, permitting full use of wings and claws, though not exactly rendering her appropriate for stealth. But then, stealth had only been necessary to get in, as Aric demonstrated posthaste.
Moving to the edge of the tower, ignoring Ellisia's question, Aric slowly let his hands lift. Gloved fingers half-curled, making claw-like gestures, as he let his voice rise in echoing tones of incantation.
"You who goes through both Air and Earth;
Gentle flow, floating Water;
Gather to my hands and make a glacier!"
Pouring the full force of his power into the spell, incantation and gestures and all, he drew his hands back by his side, cupping the sparkling blue light between them and feeding it more and more. His hands slowly spread apart, forced open as the globe grew, and finally when it was in danger of exploding right in his grasp, he cast his hands forward and released it. "Vice Freeze!"
The sphere continued to grow in magnitude as it tumbled down toward the center of the encampment, heads turning at the sound of his voice or the sudden glow of light...entirely too late to see the flash of magic energy coming. The spell struck the ground unchecked, exploding in a flash of blue light, and when it cleared...
Most of the ground inside the encampment was iced over, save for a few jagged stopping points around the furthest corners. Flash-frozen bandits stood, sat, belched, or counted flash-frozen coins in various positions in absolute stillness and silence, a light fog just beginning to rise from the ice, all over the camp. Dusting his hands off with a smirk, Aric began to descend the ladder.
"Okay..." Ell murmured, sounding grudgingly impressed. "Not too bad. But now what? You froze most of the money, too."
"Not what's in the cave," he countered proudly. "And as for what's out here, that's where you come in. You can chip the money free after we loot what we need out of the cave. Right?"
She glared down at him, which he presumed for lack of a more satisfactory answer to mean "yes".
"You know, it really makes me wonder why more people don't do this," he went on as they reached the ground, almost slipping on his own ice and throwing his hands out to steady himself. "I mean, you know? If it's really this easy, then why are there any two-bit hoods like this anymore? You'd think sorcerers could have put them out of business years ago."
"Ah, but you see...bandits make a habit of seldom hiring on underlings as intelligent as they are. Makes them easier to lead, you know."
"Good point," Aric conceded...then blinked. Ellisia had not been the one to say that. Neither had he, though the voice had indeed been male. He frowned, that familiar gut instinct that something was not right settling into his stomach again, and slowly turned toward the mouth of the cave.
Two figures were emerging, slowly. For a moment, upon seeing that one was slender and male and the other was quite distinctly swaying curves in the feminine manner, he half-suspected Emilio and Lhynn. But this man was too slender to be Emilio, and the girl far too short to be the treasure hunter's new companion.
Once they stepped out into the moonlight, Aric and Ellisia caught themselves in identical doubletakes. The girl, at least, was familiar: Kaia stood with indignant hands on her hips and a pout that was entirely too cute to be a real glare on her features, as she stared them down.
The man, however, was new: he stood half a head taller than Aric, his hands tucked into the pockets of a long but form-fitting black coat. The coat itself was open-front and buttonless, revealing more featureless black clothing beneath (and, of more significance, two crisscrossing bandoliers of very sharp-looking throwing blades), and its divided tails fell down to his mid-calves. His hair was a darker shade of blue than Aric's own, almost navy in color, and his eyes matched it perfectly. He smirked, arching a dark blue eyebrow. "I'll admit, you're certainly not the one I had expected to see. Odds are, you don't have what I'm looking for, either. But maybe at least you'll provide some entertainment."
"Who are you, anyway?" Aric asked, only half-interested, as he crossed his arms. The question was more to buy time, keep the other man talking as he tried to figure his next step. "You're pretty chatty for a bandit. And you actually look like you shave regularly."
The other man barked a laugh, lifting a hand from his pocket to reveal the fingers sheathed by a skin-tight black gloved. He raised a single finger, wagging it disparagingly. "I'm afraid my name is a secret. There's power in names, you know. They have a great deal of signifi--"
"Kyle!" Kaia interrupted his speech, her fists balled at her sides as she exuded overtures of "cute tantrum". "These are the nasty people who stole my Armor!"
Kyle fell over--and not because he had slipped on the ice, which he still stood well clear of. Upon rising, he glared at the young sorceress from the corner of his eye. "Kaia, do you mind? I was trying to make an entrance!" Wearily, he sighed, turning his back and waving an indolent hand. "Just summon something to dispatch them and let's be off. I think we've wasted enough time with these Oh sweet Lord of Nightmares it burns like unholy fire from the lowest bowels of Shabranigdo's cursed digestive system!!"
For Kyle had just quite abruptly been set aflame, right before Aric and Ell's very unsettled eyes. For a moment, Kaia flailed in cute dismay, at a loss--much like her companion, save that he had the excuse that his coat and hair were burning. Then, with a hasty stuttered spell, the young sorceress doused him, and as he lay on the ground smoking lightly all three remaining sets of conscious eyes turned toward the guard from which Aric had entered.
The roof and of the tower and its four support-beams were gone, blackened and smoldering stumps the only evidence they had ever existed--obviously taken out in the same blast. And upon the platform stood a single silhouette, cape fluttering in the night breeze, massive shoulder-guards jutting out and adding an illusion of bulk to an otherwise slight figure. A single hand was extended, smoke gently wafting from the fingertips.
"I don't know who you guys are, but it's obvious you're not very good at this. In about five minutes you would have had the rest of these bandits breathing down the backs of your necks." The person--a young girl, from the sound of her voice--turned to call over her shoulder, long scarlet hair billowing the in the same breeze as her cape. "Gourry, you almost done with those guys?"
An affirmation was called back, muffled by the wall...though, now that he was listening for it, Aric could hear the sound of clashing blades and occasional screams. He frowned slightly, looking back over his shoulder to where Kaia was still fretting over a lightly crisped Kyle, poking hesitantly and flinching every time he twitched and yelped in response.
Suddenly, something clicked in his head. Gourry...Gourry...the name was vaguely familiar. No one he'd ever met personally, nor even heard any spectacular stories about specifically. But he knew at least that it was associated with...with...
His eyes went wide, and he reflexively snatched a grip at Ellisia's arm as his gaze trailed up along the tower. It was at that moment the clouds decided to shift, funneling a shaft of moonlight just so and casting the figure atop the watchtower from deep shadow into full moonlight. His jaw dropped, and even Ellisia couldn't pull her arm away from his grip.
The person standing atop the tower, who had just fried this unorthodox bandit-chief and probably saved their hides from a new summoning spell...was none other than Lina Inverse.