Zelgadis had never been so hungry in his entire life. Not before he was turned into a chimera, when he would work for Rezo. Not right after, when the transformation had taken so much of his energy. Not even after he had overexerted himself, or nearly died. But now he was verging on rivaling Lina's appetite, plates building higher and higher as he tried to fill that gaping void in his belly. People were looking at him curiously, seeing the shaman robes but not his face, the hood still up as he ate, using the pillar of plates to shield himself.
Good thing he didn't use a lot of his money, Zelgadis thought as he sat back, still hungry but unable to stomach another bite. If he had needed to purchase more for himself, he wouldn't have been able to pay for this. He dropped a few coins on the table and started for his room. Maybe if he rested he'd feel better in the morning.
As Zelgadis pushed his hood back, he looked over at his pack. He had eventually left behind the old sorcerer's writings, but the strange blank book with the magical protection on it had to come with him. The protection, he kept trying to undo or see what he could do to reveal what it said. He fished it out of his bag, sitting down on the bed as he opened it.
Still blank. He pressed a finger on the page, feeling the spell pulse. It was almost… warm. Alive. The spark shivered across his skin, making it feel like it hadn't since he transformed. The spark almost traveled across his entire body, lighting it up. It made his stomach growl louder, needy.
Was it taking his energy as he touched it? But no matter what he thought, he couldn't put the book down. He kept trying to figure out was the spell was, trying to unravel it so he could see what it was hiding.
The book… just drew him in. He had to-
Zelgadis paused, tilting his eyes away from the book to look at the floor. It drew him in, like how meeting Rezo had pulled him in. Why? Why did it-
Suddenly, the book burst into red and black flames, disintegrating in a breath. Zelgadis stood, his hands already shifting to cast a spell.
Before he knew it, he had a hand on his throat, and a body behind him. He swallowed, feeling the way the stone skin flexed under the hand. His skin wasn't completely rigid, allowing for him to breathe and move. While he knew he couldn't be choked, not by normal people… he knew who held him as a staff pressed into his cheek. "Xellos," he managed.
"And what were you doing with a book of Lei Magnus's writings?" Xellos whispered against his ear, making him shudder.
"It- it was blank," Zelgadis managed, feeling the shift and press of Xellos's true form beating against his skin, unable to do anything as it overwhelmed him, ran through him, paralysed him. "I thought-"
"It would give you your cure, Zelgadis-san? That the writings of a Shard of Shabranigdo would include something to change you back to human?"
"I didn't know it was-" L-sama, why did feeling Xellos against him almost feel good? His eyes started to roll backwards as shouting started under them. A fight, he noticed dimly. The sound itself joined Xellos's touch, keeping him still. And he could almost feel the press of emotion around him, spiraling higher and higher- He moaned softly, unable to keep the sound behind his lips.
Xellos's hand shifted slightly. "Oh, Zelgadis-san… you should have mentioned earlier you were interested in this," he purred against the pointed ear.
"Stop-" Zelgadis trembled, feeling something fill inside him as the shouting turned into crashes, the fight turning brutal under their feet. He couldn't handle it. Not the feeling of Xellos against him, the fake physical body and the too powerful true form hidden underneath pulsing around him, and the emotion in the air, the way it filled him, made him-
Suddenly, Xellos's hand turned lax, not trying to keep him pinned any longer. Instead, it lowered, drifting across his chest, the touch almost painful through his clothing. It was too much.
The fight suddenly quieted, as if the perpetrators had been kicked out, and the air cleared around Zelgadis. He took a deep breath, his hands shifting to cast a spell behind him.
Xellos let him go, and when Zelgadis turned, in the brief moment before the Mazoku priest disappeared, he almost could see… worry. But that couldn't be. Xellos didn't worry-
With a helpless breath, Zelgadis dropped to his knees, legs unable to keep his weight any longer. He was so aroused that he could barely breathe. And from Xellos holding him threateningly? He didn't want anything to do with him. Why would he find himself aroused by that? It wasn't that he was completely unable to understand the sexual beauty of men - though he did prefer women, his first kiss had been with a boy they had helped and it had lit his world up as much as the first kiss with a girl he had a crush on before they had moved on to another town to help. But to have his body react to Xellos, when it hadn't ever before, and on top of that, the way the air shivered with the emotion of the fight beneath them…
Zelgadis barely noticed that he finally felt full as he curled slightly, one hand on the floor, trying to ignore the pulse of need inside him before finally lifting his shirt and sliding his hand below the top of his pants to grip himself firmly, stroking in rapid pulls until the knot in his stomach uncurled and pleasure burst across his senses.
That wasn't normal. That was not normal, the way Zelgadis reacted.
It was not normal how Xellos started to react to Zelgadis's voice, feeling drawn closer to helping him, to listening to exactly what he had to say-
Zelgadis hadn't cast a spell, and there hadn't been one in the air when he entered the room. Only the horrible pulse of Mazoku magic in the chimera's hands. For a moment, while he watched, mostly in the Astral plane, he had thought that Zelgadis had been searching in black magic tomes now, almost amused that perhaps he was researching how the Mazoku could help him. They couldn't, not the way he thought. If he had tried to bargain with one, he would have had a rude awakening as to what would happen to him.
But instead, when he looked closer, reading over his shoulder, he had seen writing that apparently Zelgadis couldn't see. Lei Magnus's writings, from when he had almost awakened Shabranigdo. And the way the magical energy had entered Zelgadis-
He didn't know what it had done to Zelgadis, but it had done something.
Something… that perhaps he needed to tell the Greater Beast about.
But when he set foot on Wolf Pack Island, he felt his voice paralysed. He couldn't-
He almost felt a geas keeping him from speaking the truth to his Mistress.