Looking back, it seemed as though his family had never been able to recover from the deprivations that the drought had brought. As a child Gourry could not understand why his father, who was typically jovial and boisterous, would get so angry if a drop of water was spilt. While family evenings were typically happy times filled with food and laughter, Gourry knew all too well how it could change in an instant if a cup of water was dropped. And as children are prone to being clumsy, it was unavoidable that Gourry and each of his siblings found themselves at the mercy of their father as he raged. One time when Gunther had dropped a mug and broke it his father had punched him clear across the room before grabbing the rod he kept and beating him with it. Gunther wasn't able to walk for a week after that.
Making sure his family never had to go to bed thirsty again was the driving force of Petry's life. Having and securing water became his obsession. While things had been easier since they liberated the aquifer, there was no easy way to redirect it back to their village. So every morning while it was still cool women from the village would have to walk for miles carrying a huge vase, and then back to get their needs for the day met. Petry was quick to suggest the idea of building an aqueduct. His father had had a natural talent for building that he seemed to have passed on to him.
But building it had been a tremendous undertaking. The Elemekian Empire was infamous for its lack of building material. No trees grew in the desert and there were few rock quarries. The houses were made of dried mud brick. Most people didn't even have a door on their huts, just a hole for an entrance. Fortunately they never ran out of sand. Water to turn it to mud was a different story. But once baked, dried and covered with stucco it made a sturdy building material.
It took seven years to build the aqueduct. Everyone in town helped. Boys who were eight and older went out every day to help with its construction while their sisters mixed and dried out the bricks. Gourry would wave goodbye to his father, Gunther and Pollock every morning while they went to work on building it and every evening they would come home, covered in sweat and grime but proud of the work they were doing.
Gourry had admired the three of them so much. Pollock was ten years older, Gunther seven, and Gourry idolized them. He wished he could go and help them build the aqueduct, but he was too young, and even if he weren't, his path lay in a different direction. So he trained with Nes, helped around the house with chores, and played with his close in age cousins, sisters and Mills.
The whole town joined together in celebration once it was finished. Gourry felt proud of his town and of his family, and especially of his father, for initiating and overseeing the project. But at the age of seven he could not foresee the tragedy its completion would bestow upon his family. It was inconceivable something so good as having a secure water supply would pave the road to tragedy.
Because Petry worried that the water would run out. Having enough water became an obsession, and in his mind, he could never have enough. Petry started to see the aqueduct as his, while the people of Biar disagreed and saw it as theirs. Combined, they greatly outnumbered him. But if he had the Sword of Light, then their numbers wouldn't matter.
The only problem was that Lucia had the Sword of Light. And she had agreed with the people of Biar.
Gourry watched as his father turned from being respected to hated. While before they had gotten along with the other citizens well and Gourry had had a lot of friends, suddenly the people became resentful and his friends stopped wanting to play with him. Worse, a rift started to form between his father and grandmother. He was used to relations between his mother and grandmother being icy. Eica was worried about Lucia wanting to claim Gourry for herself, while Lucia thought Eica was too hard on him. But before Petry had always managed to keep things smooth enough between the two of them with a well-timed joke that would send both women into fits of laughter and cause them to forget the source of their disagreement. But then Petry and Lucia started fighting. And then Gourry started to feel a lot of pressure to choose between his parents and his grandmother.
The problem was he loved all three of them deeply.
Which was why it was a relief whenever Nes would come down. Nes had been a family friend for generations. He had helped Gourry's great-grandmother establish the Gungnir Knights, and still trained the youngest of them. Once a month he would visit Biar and train Gourry to focus and hone his senses and tell him stories. And, as he was friends with the family, he was close enough to care but not enough to get tangled in sides.
Right now, more than anyone, Gourry wished he could talk to Nes. He wondered if he should try to track Nes down on the off chance that he still was alive, but he quickly discarded the idea. In the time it would take him to track down Nes, Gunther would have found him three times over. Plus, it would entail going back to the Elemekian Empire. Gourry was lucky to escape it once.
And besides all that, he didn't think he could face Nes after the disappointment he must have brought him. That Nes had never attempted to contact him in all these years must have meant that he did not approve of how he had handled the situation Gourry had discovered when he came home after being trained at Gungnir Hall. And Gourry could not blame him.
I need to stop rehashing the past, Gourry thought as he closed his eyes and focused his senses on his surroundings. In the room next to his Lina was lying in bed, but something about the way the bed creaked subtly as though she was shifting positions often and the way she breathed told him she was not asleep. Granted, after the confused warning he had given her it would be tough to fall asleep. On his other side another patron was snoring loudly in his bed. And from below he could hear the innkeepers shutting down the kitchen and getting ready to turn in for the night. And around the inn he could detect no sign of Mills, who had left shortly after Gourry went to his room, or any other hostile presence.
But once he no longer has the anchor of the present to hold his thoughts in place he started thinking of the stories Nes would tell. Not that Gourry remembered any of the stories, but that wasn't the point of their being told. Gourry would have to think of a way of telling the story that was sympathetic to each character's point of view. And then he would have to determine the most moral way to act in the story. Nes would never tell Gourry if he thought he was right or wrong, he would simply ask more questions, forcing Gourry to think about the situation more deeply.
It was when Gourry was seven that he posed his own dilemma to his mentor. "Father and Mother have been fighting with Grandma and Aunt Ynezza a lot lately." He reported in answer to Nes' question on how things were going.
If Nes was surprised, it did not register in his pale brown eyes, "Have they now?"
Gourry nodded, "Well, now that the aqueduct is complete, Grandma and Aunt Ynezza feel it belongs to the town. But Father feels that he was the one who planned the construction of it and he's worried about people wasting too much water, so he wants to trade goods and services for the use of it."
"And what do you think?"
Gourry squirmed under Nes' gaze as he shifted through his conflicting feelings. There was the instinctive drive to defend his parents, who he loved, as being all good and all righteous. This warred with the exercises Nes had put him through, as well as the resentment he was feeling from the rest of the townspeople, who collectively had put in much backbreaking work into the aqueduct. "Well, it's not as if my father, or anyone in my family really owns the aquifer, is it? It belongs to the whole town."
Gourry eyes darted to the entrance of the hut and he quickly focused on his senses, assuring himself that both of his parents were out of earshot and unable to hear his spoken betrayal. Nes stared at him contemplatively, his expression as always unreadable. There was something strange about Nes, something that Gourry could never quite pin down. Such as the fact that, though he was one of his great-grandmother, Hikara's, dearest friends he looked to be in his early twenties and younger than his grey and wrinkled grandmother, even though he had watched Lucia grow up.
Finally Nes spoke, his voice as smooth as water, "It sounds as though you have found a solid, defensible position. Even if it is unpopular with your parents, it is yours to hold on to."
Gourry stared at the dirt floor of the hut. "You're not going to tell them?" he asked quietly.
"No." Nes said, "You are still a child. But before the year is out you shall turn eight, and then you will be old enough for me to bring you to Gungnir Hall, where your next phase of training will begin."
A thrill of excitement ran through Gourry, though he would be sad to leave his family. "Will I learn to use the sword?"
The corners of Nes' mouth turned upward slightly, "I thought your father had already gotten you started on that."
"He has." Gourry said, "I like it a lot, but Father doesn't have a lot of time to teach it to me. I want to get better at it."
"And you shall."
Gourry left the mud house in the center of town that night full of excitement over the fact that he would soon be going to Gungnir Hall. Though the sun was setting and he knew he risked incurring his mother's wrath if he stopped by his grandmother's house first before going home, he did so anyway. Aunt Ynezza lived with his grandmother, and he liked playing with his baby cousin, Nona. Besides, his grandmother was an amazing cook, but he would never admit that to his mother who saw everything between them as a contest.
As he got closer he heard the sounds of shouting from her house. Eventually he could distinguish the voices of seven people: his grandmother, father, mother, Aunt Ynezza, Aunt Larsa and both of their husbands, as well as the whiny contralto of the village priest, Trebo. Gourry slowed down and focused his attention on the voices as he crept to his grandmother's house.
"Knock off the family tradition spiel!" his father yelled, "You've never mentioned such a thing my whole life until we disagreed! The Sword of Light is passed to the first born!"
"First born daughter!" Lucia intoned, her voice as firm as steel, "The Sword of Light has been passed down from mother to daughter for generations. As such, Ynezza will be the rightful owner of the sword."
"You're just doing this because you disagree about the aqueduct!" Eica started.
"Well, it's shown me a side of your character that I find rather distasteful." Lucia snapped. "And tradition stands. My mother gave me the sword, as did her mother before her, and as I shall give it to Ynezza."
"Do you honestly think this will make me change my mind about the aqueduct?" Petry hollered.
"You'll have to bring that up with our fellow townspeople." Lucia countered.
"Yeah," Larsa agreed, "They won't be too happy begging for water while you build your wife a two room house!"
"How dare you!" Eica screeched, "I've not seen any of you birth a Gungnir Knight! It's not proper to bring him up so."
"It's no worse than it is for the rest of us." Larsa pointed out. "Birthing a Gungnir Knight doesn't make you empress! And while we're at it, I've had it with you and your big head shoving your one accomplishment under our noses…"
"Don't you dare talk to my wife like that!" Petry yelled, and suddenly everyone in the room started yelling at once.
Gourry reached the tiny mud house and stood by the wall and just away from the entrance so that none of them would notice him. Finally Lucia's voice rose above them all, "Quiet! Shut up! All of you! Yes, you too Ynezza!" she yelled, "It's not up for debate. Father Trebo, please note, that I, Lucia Gungnir Gabriev, do declare in front of these witnesses that upon the occasion of my death the Sword of Light will be bestowed to my oldest surviving daughter, Ynezza Gabriev Robsol."
"So, if Ynezza dies, do I get it, then?" Larsa asked.
"It would go to Jula." Ynezza said coldly, naming her own firstborn daughter.
"Oh, I see how it is." Larsa said, her voice like ice, "Mind, I don't agree about the aqueduct, but nice way of favoring Ynezza!"
And, before Gourry could run from the wall, she stormed out of the hut. For a brief moment Gourry hoped that in her anger she would overlook him, but she did not. She stopped when she noticed him and stared at him blankly. Then she smiled cruelly as she noticed him stiffen. He shook his head pleadingly but she yelled all the same, "Well, Gourry, what are you doing lurking about like a spider under the table? Oughtn't you be at home?"
In a flash his parents had spilled out of the house after Larsa, who stood back against the wall to watch. His mother grabbed him harshly by the arm as she demanded, "Didn't we tell you to head straight home after your training with Nes?"
"I-I…" Gourry stammered as his grandmother and Aunt Ynezza filtered out of the house. He never understood why it made his mother so angry that he wanted to spend time with his grandmother. "I forgot."
Eica lifted her hand. Lucia caught it, "There's no need for that." she admonished.
Gourry's stomach sank as Petry ordered Lucia to let go of Eica's hand while Eica's face reddened, "Don't you dare tell me what to do with my son, not after you go and pull this!"
"It's not Gourry's fault that you're not getting the Sword of Light." Lucia argued as she let go of Eica's hand. Eica wasted no time in grabbing Gourry and slapping him across the head. "Let him stay with me the night until tempers cool."
"Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you?" Eica yelled as she pulled Gourry beside her. He felt his father put a hand on his shoulder, gripping it painfully, confirming Gourry's suspicion that the raging monster that lurked within his father had been awoken, "You've been looking for any opportunity to raise him for yourself since I birthed him! It tears you to pieces knowing I managed what you never could! And now you want to ruin him by spoiling him!"
"Eica, I would never dream of taking your glory from you. But Gourry is a sensitive child…"
"And he'll never make a warrior with the way that you coddle him!" Petry yelled and Gourry felt the warmth leave his body. When his mother got mad she would give him a good swat and it would be over. But when his father got mad it was much worse. Sometimes Gourry could defuse his anger by making him laugh, but he could not see that happening tonight. Around them other townspeople started to gather to watch the fight. Having an audience only made it worse. "Life is hard, and the sooner he accepts that the better."
Gourry bit his lip to suppress the tears he felt that were building as the fear and humiliation became unbearable, especially as Ynezza's children came up to the house after playing to watch. For a moment he feared that his father would beat him in front of the whole town just to prove that he could to his grandmother. It was only with the slightest of relief that his mother grabbed him by the ear and hauled him off to their house, followed by his father, while Lucia watched helplessly.
As she had liberated the aquifer from Hoarden, and as her own mother had been so revered Lucia had been given a certain amount of liberties with the townspeople. But no Elemekian would tolerate anyone interfering with the way that parents chose to handle their own children. Lucia's meager intervention of holding his mother back from smacking him was more than enough to draw the ire of the desert people.
And while his father had saved the beating for when they were ensconced within the four walls of their own small mud house with only his mother and siblings as witnesses, he had made sure to continue the beating until Gourry's screams could be heard throughout the town so that there was no doubt as to who was in charge.
Gourry lay on his mat that night, aching with pain and seething with anger and humiliation. His mother tended to him. It was not bad enough to send for his Aunt Anga, who was the closest thing the town of Biar had to a healer, but it was bad enough for her to stay up into the night to keep an eye on him as his father, brothers and sisters snored beside him. Confusion coursed through him as he wondered how his father, who could be so fun and loving, could also be so full of rage and hurt him so much. Sometimes he felt as though he had two fathers, the good one who tossed him into the air playfully, told him stories and taught him swordplay and the bad one who would emerge every now and then and beat him. The older he got, the more of the bad father he saw, and the more terrified he became that the bad father would kill him.
The only person Petry's rage never seemed to touch was Eica. No matter how mad he was with her he never raised a hand to her. Even after she had forsworn him, he never touched her harshly. Gourry wondered why, if he could keep the monstrous rage within him under control with Eica, he couldn't with his children. And Gourry feared that if he had children one day he would understand and find that same monstrous rage emerge from within himself.
Because Eica could stoke his anger. The morning after Gourry had been beaten Eica started to lament the small size of their tiny mud hut. She talked about how the families of other Gungnir Knights had much bigger houses and they were the only ones who lived like paupers. Petry asked her how many houses of Gungnir Knights she had seen and she dodged the topic, reminding him of the imminent arrival of another mouth to feed. Nine people crammed into a one room hut was simply too much.
But though she pushed and prodded, she had never expected Petry to do what he did next. The desert people had stringent rules about combat and killing one's kin, and Eica's Elemekian roots went deep. After it happened Eica had recoiled from her husband in horror and disgust, and she never recovered from the feelings of shame that had been birthed when she discovered what the man she had married was capable of.
Gourry stood up to prevent himself from remembering any further, and looked out of the window and into the woods. He had to tell Lina. If keeping secrets and acting behind the other's back was what had destroyed his parents' relationship, then he would have to do the opposite. Even if telling her was one of the last things he wanted to do. He closed his eyes again and focused on the sounds coming from her room. Fairly certain that she was still awake he stood up.
From the woods, he heard the sound of a scream, following by a shrill whine and the thunderous crash of a powerful spell. In an instant he had left his room and had emerged into the hallway just as Lina opened her door. It looked as though she had changed back into her traveling clothes after his warning. "Let's go." She said.
He nodded as she ran to the window. Was this his brother's doing? Or something unrelated? Neither of his brothers could use magic, after all, but that didn't mean that they hadn't found someone who could. She unlatched the window and opened it and then reached out to grab his hand. When she missed it she looked at him. Irritation marred her features, "Get with it, Gourry!"
He had to tell her something about who she might be dealing with. But he hadn't wanted to tell her in this hurried manner. "Lina." He said quietly, "Be careful. I think that they're wanting revenge."
She raised an eyebrow, "Revenge? What makes you, dammit! We don't have time." She said, grabbing his hand and chanting a levitation spell.
As soon as they landed she ran off in the direction that the sound had come from, and he was hot on her heels. He naturally fell into a rhythm, allowing him to focus on his senses. But he could not detect any enemy. And he was concerned that he heard no more screams or explosions. Either the fight was over and decided or something fishy was going on.
It hit him as soon as he noticed the strange electric feeling in the air. What if they were being lured from the inn and into a trap? "Lina!" he called.
"Balus Wall!" she yelled, and the fire spell that was aimed at them was diverted instead to either side of them. Heat singed him on his right and left side, and his vison was compromised by the spell, but he was safe behind Lina, and she appeared to be unharmed.
The fire spell waned, but rather than regaining his vision, he noticed alarmingly that it was getting darker! "Lina!" he cried as darkness enveloped him and he reached a hand out to find her as his panic started to mount. He couldn't detect her presence. He couldn't see, hear, or smell! He couldn't detect anything!
"Lina!" he cried again as he started to paw at the darkness for her. But he was alone.
As the darkness descended upon her, someone grabbed her hand. Reassured by the familiar presence Lina followed as she tried to identify the spell that had darkened the night. It seemed like one hell of a twist on the Dark Mist spell. "Gourry?" she asked, but he was silent. But then, even her own voice was like a dim whisper. Had the spell not only impeded her vision, but her sense of hearing?
She kept walking, and gradually her vision improved as the spell faded away. But something was wrong. Somehow, the hand she was holding felt wrong! She focused on the man before her, his long blond hair falling down his back. A strange feeling grew in the pit of her stomach. From the back it looked like Gourry, but something wasn't right. She pulled her hand away.
"You okay, Lina?" he asked, and she shuddered. His voice was familiar, but different. There was an underlay of malice within it that set her hair on end.
"Who are you?" she asked as she chanted a light spell and stopped walking.
The man turned around, a cruel smirk on his face. Lina stared at him, stunned. The face was familiar but wrong somehow. The nose was slightly too long. The eyes were a bit too small and the face was too wide. But the face was also extremely familiar. He looked like Gourry, but at the same time he wasn't.
"Look at who tore the wool from her eyes." He said. "Game's up I guess."
Lina glared at him, "Who are you?" she repeated.
"So my dear brother never told you about me, did he? He just saw me earlier this evening." Mills said calculatingly.
"Brother?" Lina repeated.
"Guess he didn't find you important enough to introduce to the family." He said.
"Where's Gourry?" Lina asked, her ire rising.
"Hate to tell you, but he's going home. He's got to pay for what he's done."
Lina considered the man before her and sized him up. And while she was fairly certain she could easily take him down, she was also fairly certain that he absolutely meant to cause her harm. "Answer my question." She barked, "Where is he?"
"I told you, he's on his way home. There's laws in place for what he did."
"So he took the Sword of Light to stop you all from killing each other for it. Get over it and move on!"
The man laughed, "Is that the line he fed you? You silly little love struck fool."
Lina reddened as he continued, "He killed his own brother, Pollock, for it, and then he ran away before he could ever face up to it."
Lina took a step closer to him to close the distance. Then she grabbed his hair and pulled him down to her level. "Take me to him and have him tell me himself!"
He said something in a strange language, and the air started to vibrate menacingly. Lina let go of his hair and assumed a defensive posture as she found herself surrounded by a circle of trolls. Lina felt her patience flare. She didn't have time for this. She had to find Gourry!
She started chanting a spell. But even as she battled, her mind was distracted. Had Gourry killed one of his brothers? Gourry had been acting strange that evening, as though he was hiding something. Had he really met Mills earlier that evening? And why hadn't he told her?
AN: Thanks for reading so far. I had some questions about what is cannon and speculation on my part, so I decided to address that. First, officially we don't know much about Gourry's past. In the novels he mentions both a grandmother and his father once and briefly. Someone asked if his father was evil, and from the source material it's hard to say either way. We also know from interviews that Gourry had a brother who he was not fond of who died, and that it played a part in Gourry's decision to leave Elemekia with the Sword of Light. In an interview, Mr. Kanzaka says that Gourry's brother was like Raoh from "Fist of the North Star." I've not seen it, so I read a bit on the character and built my own interpretation based on what I've read. And since I don't have any interest in actually watching it myself, I'm probably going to get Raoh all wrong, but that's fine because I don't want this to be a rip off of something else :-)
The other thing we know is that the Elemekian Empire is a desert where it rarely rains. People in Elemekia live in mud brick huts. The descriptions make it sound very bleak and impoverished. I'm adding a lot of what is known anthropologically about desert cultures and the effect that not having secure sources of food and water does to cultures and running with it.
The other thing based on the books is the concept of the Gungnir Knight. They are mentioned one time in the novels and there's not a lot of information about them, other than that they are in the Elemekian Empire and they are fighting demon uprisings. So I'm fleshing the concept out a lot.
Everything else is speculation on my part, well, we the exception that the swordsman of light who slew Zanaffar was a woman. People who've read a lot of my stuff might have noticed I use the name "Gunther" a lot in reference to Gourry's brother, but there's nothing in cannon to base that off of. The Gunther thing is an inside joke between me and some people I knew in college, and because I hold onto the stupidest things, if I mention Gourry's brother his default name is Gunther. Let's just say it amuses me.
Lucia is what I named Lina and Gourry's daughter in "Slayers Expecting" and I made a brief comment that she was named after Gourry's grandmother. Nothing supports it in cannon, but I decided to stick with the name, because it's a good name and it means light.
Anyway, I hope this continues to entertain!