Gourry could not stop grinning as the sun peaked over the horizon. Yes, he was exhausted and hungry. He had walked at a break neck speed all night with Lina to put as much distance between them and the village as possible after all. And it would be some time before he felt comfortable resting for a bit. But for the first time in years, his life felt right. It felt right to be with Lina. It felt right being on the road. And, though he was not a traveling swordsman, he felt as though he was being more authentic than he had living life as the village blacksmith.
Yet the hope that grew within him at the sight of the rising sun eventually started to give way to worries as his stomach rumbled. He and Lina had both packed some food. But how long would it last? And then how long would their money last? And was it safe for them to find the first village they came across to settle down? Were they being pursued? Would their families breathe a collective sigh of relief when they woke to find them gone? Or would they be angry and pursue them? And if so, just how far would they have to travel to be safe from those who would bring them back to their old lives?
Gourry tried not to let himself be boggled down by his worries. But he couldn't help wondering if he'd saved Lina from an arranged marriage just to see her starve.
He looked over at Lina, who was mumbling under her breath. He resisted the urge to put his arm around her. "We're being followed." She declared.
Gourry frowned. Was it her paranoia, or was it legitimate? He listened but heard nothing unexpected. He started to turn his head when she grabbed his arm, "Don't. We don't want them to know we know they're there."
"Oh." Gourry said as his anxiety ratcheted up a notch.
But if there was anyone else there, they never made a move to show themselves. And by the time they stopped for a quick lunch under an oak tree, Lina had forgotten about the supposed tail.
It wasn't long after they'd gotten back on the road again that they come upon a village. They headed towards the merchant district to purchase food and camping supplies. Melting down his sword was not even an option yet. That could wait until they had more time and distance from their former home.
It was when he was haggling for a bedroll that Gourry had the distinct feeling he was being watched. He tried to ignore it for as long as possible, but then he noticed that Lina was looking worriedly behind them. Scared that her sister had caught up to them, Gourry turned around.
He did not see Luna, but still the hair on his arms sat up straight as every pore in his body told him that the man he saw by the silversmith shop was dangerous. But what really troubled Gourry was that while the man seemed familiar, Gourry was fairly certain he had never met him before! His long, purple hair shadowed his eyes, and he walked with a strange stick with a red orb on the top. Gourry was sure he would remember such a distinctive looking stick had he ever been by his smithy. A strange feeling of incongruence settled over Gourry. How could someone he was certain he'd never seen before be so familiar? And why was having such a strong, distrustful reaction to a stranger?
Beside him, Lina whispered, "Xellos." For a brief moment an image like a buried, forgotten memory flashed before him, but it was gone before he could make any sense of it.
And then she started walking towards him.
"Lina!" Gourry whispered at a yell as he grabbed her arm.
"He's trouble." Lina said.
"I can see that. Come on, let's get our stuff and go." He said.
Gourry looked at where the strange man had been but saw no one there. He took a deep breath and worked to steady his nerves as he finished his purchase. Once finished, he and Lina hurried out of town, checking behind them to make sure that the man Lina had named Xellos was not following them.
They were quiet for some time. After a while Gourry remembered why the name Xellos was so familiar. Lina had often talked about a Mazoku named Xellos in her adventures. Gourry had thought he was solely a figment of her imagination. But what if there was a man named Xellos who occasionally visited her family that she had taken a dislike to? Someone that he had seen in the village off and on but never been formerly introduced to? It would explain why Gourry found him so familiar but didn't have any firm memories of him. But what truly troubled Gourry was, what if Xellos was now on his way to their village to tell her sister where they were and what road they were on?
And more to the point, how could he get a rational answer from Lina?
"What do you think Xellos wanted?" he finally asked.
"The wedding." Lina said.
Gourry stopped walking, "What?"
"It was today. The wedding. With him." She said.
Gourry resumed walking at a more frantic pace, "He's the merchant you were supposed to marry?"
"No, not marry." Lina said irritably, "To keep me with Kitsune."
Okay, that made a lot of sense, Gourry thought as he shook his head. It was one of those times where he wondered if there was a kernel of truth to what she was saying or not. Often there was, but when you cut through the layers of paranoia and her ability to see connections between random events, it was so twisted and distorted that he had to find the truth from another person. Still, he had to try.
"So who's Kitsune?"
"Kitsune! Why don't you remember? Or Zel, or Amelia, or Sylphiel?" Lina yelled, and then she turned and poked him in the chest, "I AM NOT CRAZY!"
Gourry put his arms on her shoulders, "Shhh. I know. Tell me about Kitsune."
"We were looking for a powerful spell. But she trapped us. And Gaav, he's taken over the village. And no one believes me!"
Gourry nodded, "And they want you to marry Xellos to keep you with Kitsune?"
"No, no, no! To distract me." Lina corrected as she stomped her feet. "From Gaav. Taking over the village."
Lina spun around and did her strange dance, "Flare Arrow!"
Gourry shook his head. He was getting so frustrated! He bit his tongue to keep from yelling at her as he resumed his walking. It would just make her worse. And, maddening as it was, she couldn't help it. But he needed her to be rational for once!
"But why does Gaav want to kill me? I don't understand!" Lina mumbled. "Why can no one tell me why?"
Gourry took a deep breath and tried another approach.
"But Lina, you were supposed to be married today. And we've been traveling since dusk last night. There's no way Xellos could be in the village we just left if he was supposed to be home to marry you today."
Lina tsked and waved her finger at him, "You forget, he can teleport."
"Oh." Gourry said as he decided to give it up as pointless. If they were using teleportation as an explanation, then there was no way he could get to the bottom of what was going on.
"He ran away. Just like that! He teleported away." Lina mumbled as she waved her right arm through the air. "Poof! He was gone. And Gaav was there. And I can't fight, it hurts too much. But I can't let us all die! How do I get out? How did I get out? My sword of darkness, my Ragna Blade! But I'm too injured, but I did it. How did I do it?"
Gourry left her to her delusions as he turned around. To his relief, it didn't seem as if Xellos was following them. In fact, the rest of their trip was uneventful. And as dusk set, despite the fact that Gourry was bone tired, he was surprised to find his legs weren't aching from walking for near on twenty-four hours. He grinned to himself, musing that he was going to feel this in the morning, though!
He and Lina set off the road and walked until they were sure no one would come upon them and set up their bedrolls and broke out their rations. While it took the edge off the hunger, it did not leave him full. But they needed to conserve their supplies. Exhausted, he laid down on his bedroll and stared up at the stars while Lina talked to herself irritably. Gourry was stunned that she wasn't even trying to sleep. But then, Luna had mentioned that it was really hard to get her to sleep.
Gourry took a deep breath, "Hey Lina, look!"
He pointed to a collection of stars in the sky. She looked at where he was pointing. "What?"
"Those pictures that stars form in the sky. What are they called?"
"Constellations?"
"Yeah! What's that one there?"
Lina looked, "The Philosopher's Stone."
"I bet you know some stories about it."
Lina considered him for a moment, and then she went and sat beside him. She pointed at a different constellation, "You get better stories from that one."
"Which is?"
"Ceiphied."
He put a hand on her shoulder and gently eased her down until she was lying beside him, "Tell me."
He was so tired that it wasn't long until her voice had helped him to drift off to sleep. When he woke the next morning, she was soundly asleep in his arms. He smiled as he nuzzled his head into her neck. It felt so right to wake up to her like this. It felt incredible to be in love with the woman he woke up beside. This is the way it should have been.
Her breathing changed as her eyes fluttered open. She looked at him and smiled, "Morning." She said.
"Morning." He replied as he resisted the urge to stroke her cheek. It was so hard! There was a drive within him to have her. But he had to ignore it. He couldn't be Lina's lover for the simple matter that he could not risk her getting pregnant. In her mental condition she couldn't raise a baby. And he couldn't hold down a job and take care of her and a baby. It was an easy decision to make when he was walking beside her. It was harder to keep as he held her in his arms while she looked at him, lips pursed and eyes expectant.
He shifted his arms, but made the mistake of putting them on her hips. She moved her body towards him in response, placing her face closer to his. He wanted to kiss her so badly! But he had to stop before he started down that path. With a tremendous force of will he placed his hands on her shoulders and pushed himself back a bit. "Breakfast?" he asked.
And he was ravenous. She bit her lip. "Yeah."
Then she sat up. Gourry was kicking himself, wondering how he could possibly think it would be easy to sleep next to her without wanting more. Well, he decided as he sat up, now it would be easier because he was aware that it would be an issue. Never having slept beside someone he loved before he was caught off guard by how overpowering his emotions would be. But now he knew. He could control himself.
He and Lina rooted in their bags for breakfast. Once again he was left feeling hungry even after he had eaten, but strangely he was not sore. And while, as a blacksmith, he was used to hard labor, how well his body was adapting to walking long distances amazed him. But then, anything to make this journey easier!
Lina threw random "spells" at things she thought she saw as they walked while Gourry worried about how he was going to support them. Should they take a chance and stay for a while at the next town they came upon while he took enough odd jobs until he had saved enough for them to travel even further? Or should they wait? Gourry thought about the strange man they saw the previous day. Stopping at the next village for a brief time seemed like a foolhardy move. But he wasn't sure how much longer their money would last!
It was getting close to noon when Gourry became aware that there were people in the woods around them. He nervously walked close to Lina. The fact that they were hiding in the woods and not out in the open worried him. And then, before he could fully process it, he and Lina were surrounded by seven men wielding swords.
"Give us your money and run for it, and we'll let you live." Said the biggest and the ugliest man in the group.
Gourry's stomach sank. It wasn't the worst possible position they could find themselves in. But it was rather dire. And it was now certain that he and Lina would starve for a period until he could recoup the loss. As his hand went to his wallet, he started to question the wisdom of ever running away with Lina. Perhaps if he had planned this better…
Lina put her hand on his, "What do you think you are doing?"
Gourry's stomach twisted. "Lina, leave it be." He pleaded.
Lina looked at the leader, "I'm Lina Inverse, otherwise known as the Bandit Slayer. You'd better turn tail and run!"
The bandits laughed as Gourry's panic grew, "Look, she's not right in the head." Gourry said as he pulled his wallet out for them to see, "Please, we don't want any trouble."
Lina glared at him, "What's gotten into you, Gourry? There's no way they're a match for us!"
Stupid! Stupid! Gourry thought to himself, What did I get us into!?
"You're very amusing." The leader said as he moved towards Lina. To Gourry's horror he raised his hand to cup her face. But before he could lay a hand on her, Lina grabbed his hand, yanked his arm forward and somehow managed to flip him onto his back.
Gourry blinked. He couldn't believe what he was seeing! How could Lina, who was tiny and insane, manage to flip a huge, meaty bandit on her own? But then Lina grabbed the bandit's fallen sword and assumed a fighting stance. But where had Lina learned the stance?
It took the other bandits a moment to process that their leader had just been taken down by a woman who barely reached five feet. "Oh you're going to pay!" one of them said, "Get her!"
Gourry's heart rate accelerated, and he couldn't think of any other time in his life when he'd been so scared. Six men with swords were advancing on Lina! And Lina was out of her mind and believed she could take all of them on!
One of the men struck. She parried and managed to kick him in the shin. He yowled in pain as he hopped on one knee while Lina met the next bandits' thrust while she turned and lobbed a "spell" at one approaching from the back.
But there was no spell!
Without thinking, Gourry ran and grabbed the man approaching from behind her by the neck. Following nothing but his instinct he twisted his head. There was a popping sound, and then the man went limp. Gourry looked at Lina to see that she was holding her own in a duel with two of the bandits while a third was approaching from her left. Gourry unsheathed his sword and stopped his advancement before he could get to Lina.
Gourry had been trained in the rudiments of swordplay as a boy. All of the boys in the village had. But it had been years since he'd actually used one! But his body somehow knew what to do. He let the bandit press him back, giving him a false sense of confidence and allowing him to become back to back with Lina.
Then he launched a fierce attack on the bandit, cutting his sword in two effortlessly. The color drained from his face as he considered his fractured sword. He dropped it and turned tail and ran. "Oh, there you go letting them get away!" Lina groaned.
Gourry turned around to see that she appeared unharmed and that she had also managed to subdue the remaining bandits. "Well, what are you going to do with them?" he asked.
"What kind of a question is that?" Lina asked as she started to raid one of the fallen bandit's pockets. "You know we need to supplement our expenses. Hopefully we'll be able to eat at a restaurant for lunch!"
She pulled out a fat coin purse and threw it in her bag. Gourry's world seemed to tilt as a sense of unreality sunk in. How? How had this happened? Neither he nor Lina were trained in swordplay, but somehow they had taken down seven bandits!
"You really let me put in the heavy work there, Gourry." Lina said as she finished looting the first bandit and moved on to the next, "You'd better not make a habit of slacking off!"
He stared at her, a thousand words stuck in his throat. She sighed in exasperation, "In other words, see what that one you took down had on him! We're sitting ducks here!"
That roused him! She had a point. If the one who ran away brought back reinforcements, they could wind up in another tight situation. Gourry looked at the bandit he had killed. Killed. He had taken his life without a thought, without even realizing that was what he had set out to do. It had been so easy. Just like that, he had snuffed out a life. He wondered if the bandit had a family.
He felt sick as he started to search the dead man's pockets. His hands clenched around a full coin purse. Gourry tried to ignore how morally wrong it felt to pull it from the bandit's pocket and throw it in his bag. But Lina was right. They needed the money. Hadn't he been obsessing over covering their expenses since they set out on this trip? This would last them for some time!
And besides, it wasn't as if he and Lina had tracked the bandits down. The bandits had cornered and outnumbered them and had every intention of taking every coin they so desperately needed. And there was no telling how many other innocent travelers they had robbed and left in a tight spot. When he thought of it that way, it seemed like the perfect retribution.
He started to see the dead body as more of a thing as he shook out the clothing and pulled the rings from its fingers. Then he moved to the next body. This man was alive, but knocked out. Gourry swiftly relieved him of his coins and valuables and moved onto the next, until finally they were out of bodies to raid.
"That bandit ran off to the west." Lina said.
Gourry looked ahead to where the road forked. "Then I guess we'll head east."
Lina nodded. And side by side they walked. Gourry bit back his inquiries on where she'd learned to use the sword. It would likely irritate her, as it would bring into focus the reality that she wasn't a bad ass sorceress and sword fighter. But it troubled him. There was no way Lina should have been able to do that!
And there was no way he should have, either. But somehow his body had reacted instinctively. It was like when he was striking the metal he was working on into a sword. He didn't have to think too much about what he was doing. Through years of work his body had adapted to a rhythm when he was working. The color and the heat and the smell of the metal all talked to him and told him what he needed to do, and he could react so instinctively he didn't need to think about it like he had when he was training. It was like that when he had taken the bandits down. But unlike with smithing, he had never trained for years in combat!
Just like his body seemed to be adapted to walking long distances, his body was also adapted to swordfighting. But how?
Fear rose within him. What if he had imagined the whole situation? What if Lina was somehow bringing him into her delusions? Was insanity contagious? He'd heard from several people that Lina had been rather lucid until she turned thirteen. She had been headstrong and free spirited, but sane. What if whatever happened to her when she was thirteen was happening to him now?
Gourry opened his bags and found the coin purses and other items he had looted from the bandits within. It comforted him for a moment. But what if he was still hallucinating? What if they were still just a figment of his imagination? How could he ever know for sure?
Lina suddenly stopped in her tracks, "Damn, I can't believe I forgot to check."
"What?"
"One of those bandits nicked me." She said as she looked at her arm, which was bleeding, "Nothing too bad, though. Recovery!"
But nothing happened. Gourry looked at Lina's arm. It still continued to bleed. With a sigh he got out his handkerchief and wrapped it around the wound. As he did, he wondered why, if he was going insane, did he not see a working Recovery spell? Lina seemed to see the spells she lobbed. Did that mean he was still lucid? Had they really taken down a group of bandits? Or was he just not as crazy as Lina yet?
But then, if they really had taken down seven bandits together, then wouldn't that mean something larger was at play?
Now you're really being ridiculous! He thought.
Lina sighed, "I keep forgetting that Mazenda sealed my powers. It's so frustrating! I've just been so useless without them!"
"But Lina, we took down Mazenda together with that feint with the Sword of Light…" Gourry's voice trailed off as a vivid memory arose of fighting a monstrous looking purple woman on a strange, floating island. The memory was so vivid that it encompassed his field of vision, completely suppressing the reality of the world they were actually living in. "We didn't have to talk about it. I just knew what you wanted to do. We're connected, whether we like it or not. And now here's Kanzeil."
Lina looked at him, a desperate hope in her eyes, "You remember! You really remember!"
Suddenly the vision vanished. Gourry was thoroughly rattled now. He sat down by the side of the road as he shook uncontrollably, "What just happened?"
"Don't let it go!" she said, "Hang onto it!"
"No," he said yelled, "Lina, it's crazy. It feels horrible!"
"It's not, we did it! We defeated Mazenda! And then we faced down Kanzeil. We're facing Kanzeil. Or did we take him down? How did we take him down?"
He shook his head and started wondering if he had doomed the two of them to go wandering from village to village, spouting crazy stories about monsters as they begged for food. Was he crazy to think that he could have saved Lina? He looked at Lina as she suddenly held her temples and then looked over at a tree and started to yell at it. He thought about how much he loved her. He thought about his promise to follow her to the ends of the earth. But was he truly willing to flee from the banks of sanity for her?