"But Juu-ou-sama!"
"No buts. You are to follow the girl and that’s that."
"I don’t understand! Why not send someone else in my place? I’d be of better use out in the front line…"
"That’s only what you believe. No one else is able to sway the opinion of Lina Inverse as you have, so you are the one most suited for this position. Don’t disappoint me."
"Linaaaaa! Where are you? Linaaaaaaaaaa!"
Gourry had only just discovered she was missing a few minutes earlier when she hadn’t come out of her tent to switch watch with Gourry. It was unlike her to sleep in, even when she was on her period, so he went to check on her. The sleeping bag was set convincingly enough, but a person like Lina would never sleep so soundly and neatly. He knew she was gone without ever lifting the blanket.
He rubbed his goosebump-laden arms and shivered. The weather was getting colder, oddly since they were in a valley, and they hadn’t brought spare clothing in case the situation would arise. And the horse had gotten ill on the first night; it was a troublesome burden.
He could hear a stream running nearby and decided to stop by it to refresh himself. He wasn’t going to get anywhere by worrying, and the worst thing he could do to Lina was to die from not caring for his health. Besides, she’d probably return on her own before the end of the day. She wouldn’t be able to get far by herself during this time.
Or at least, he hoped she would return.
"Is that the sound of running water?" wondered Lina as they were slowly making their way around the forest. The dragons were keeping a tight watch over the area due to Xelloss’s actions yesterday, so escape would prove to be hazardous and might lead to an early declaration of warfare. With the mazoku still in the process of strengthening their defenses, an attack now from the ryuuzoku might lead to a premature defeat. Also, if Lina Inverse was caught now, the mazoku would lose a vital factor to their victory in this upcoming war (or sensou* to be specific). Xelloss’s role in this matter right now was crucial to the outcome, and no matter how much he abhorred the job, he acknowledged its importance. He’d have to lay low with her for the time being, at least until she got her powers back.
"Are you hungry?" Xelloss asked. He was carrying her on his back since she couldn’t walk with her broken leg, even though she protested against his aid at the beginning, pretending that she would be fine on her own. He wasn’t too sure of their destination, but they had to keep on the move or they would be spotted easily.
Lina shook her head no. She wasn’t in the mood for eating, though her stomach disagreed with her decision. "But I’d like a bath," she muttered, still covered from head to toe in dirt and grime.
Xelloss stopped walking. "If it’s a bath you want, there’s a stream nearby," he said. "But it might be risky, so if you’re going to do it then make it quick."
She grumbled as she jumped off his back. "Just make sure you don’t peek," she said as she limped off in the direction of the river, leaving Xelloss feeling a bit subdued.
"As if I’d want to," he muttered, but followed her anyway, justifying his impertinence with the excuse that he simply needed to watch over her in case something happened.
Lina scanned the edges of the river, making sure that no living thing was around to watch her undress. She began by taking off her gloves and boots, then undid her cape, or what was left of it. Setting that all aside, she went to test the temperature of the water—cold. But whining wouldn’t make her powers come back faster, so she stripped the rest of her clothes off and, shivering from the sharp wind, ran quickly into the water, trying to hide from the numbing cold breeze. The cold water soothed her wounds but did nothing for her heavily aching body. But at least, the soft reflection of the moon above in the gentle ripples of the flowing water placated her soul and ameliorated her mood.
Xelloss watched from a distance, concealed behind leaves and shadows, making sure that his clandestine presence would remain undetected by his captivator. He watched in fascination, bewitched by the beauty of the vision as moonlight stroked the voluptuous curves of her female body. He was constantly in denial, repeating words of conceitedness in his mind yet being unable to remove his eyes from her. There was something mystical about the water flowing from the transient mountains, and it possessed the ability to calm even the soul of a mazoku—his soul.
So Lina continued bathing, Xelloss continued watching, and as tension built up in the areas surrounding the forest, the moon cast its spell to break down the iron walls forged around a bitter, unfeeling heart.
Gourry reached the river and leaned down to take a sip of the clean, naturally-filtered water. He licked the remaining droplets from his chapped lips as he pulled out a canteen to fill. But as he let the water run into the canteen, he noticed the water gradually got murkier, as though someone had just disturbed the riverbed upstream, accompanied by a faint smell of blood. And for some reason, he could just feel that it might be Lina…
Dropping all the camping equipment there on the spot, Gourry began making his way upstream, hoping and praying for it to be Lina, then following that prayer with another for her safety.
Xelloss hadn’t been at all prepared for what happened next. Because he had been unconsciously blinded to the kinds of things he would usually sense naturally, he was startled to find a few golden dragons hovering over that gap in the forest. Add the approaching swordsman in the distance, and you get quite the recipe for trouble.
He had barely gotten down from his branch when Lina noticed Gourry’s presence. Her body was immobilized at the sight of him, and he stood in place, breath caught in his throat as his eyes traveled up her bare back to meet her eyes. For the first time in his life, he saw her not as a little girl but as a woman.
But he felt disgusted at himself for it and threw those perverted thoughts out the window. Slowly, one step at a time, he began to approach her. He wanted to know why she had run off, but silence would suffice for now.
Lina shrank back as he got nearer. She wasn’t sure what to do—what to say—and could hardly utter his name, though it was quickly swallowed up by the wind. But before she could react, Xelloss had taken hold of one of her arms and was urging her to flee with him. She was resisting uncontrollably, and he tried persuasion when a sharp object fell from the skies above and embedded itself deep within his shoulder.
Cursing the Gods (literally), Xelloss wrapped an arm around the girl’s waist and took off into the forest, opposite the side from which they had come. Gourry was purely shocked to have found Xelloss with her, and presumed the worst. Had she truly formed a pact with Xelloss – an alliance with the mazoku? Would this mean that in the near future he and Lina would cross blades, one fighting for the preservation of mankind and the other pressing for its obliteration?
He fell and sat down in the water, wondering what it was he needed to do next. He’d hit a block in the road, and the mud swallowed up his feet, keeping him from going forward.
So he rested.
Lina thrashed about in Xelloss’s arms, screaming at the top of her lungs for Gourry, Gourry, Gourry! She seemed to forget for the moment that she was stark naked, thinking of nothing but the person of her desires who she was growing increasingly farther and farther away from.
Xelloss was getting fed up with her antics and raised his voice at her. "Would you please shut up before some golden dragons find us?!"
She bit back at the sudden outburst, but her anger quickly overflowed and the weak dam broke as she retorted with, "I don’t see why you’re so concerned Mr. I’ve-slayed-thousands-of-dragons-with-the-simple-flick-of-my-finger."
She hit him with that statement, right on his wound and hard. He winced and returned them to the ground, driving them towards the cliff they had been flying towards. Lina roughly crashed into the rocky surface, cringing from the pain in her leg as well as the newly formed bruise on her shoulder blade, but she was stunned into silence when he slammed his fist into the cliff wall and cracked it, causing small rubble to fall down onto her head. But she dared not blink, for his menacing eyes, merely a couple inches from her own, bore into her. She had never felt so vulnerable before, so helpless and so indecently exposed.
The deep rumbling of thunder pierced through the skies and lightning cracked nearby, illuminating his deadly serious expression and adding to the already ominous atmosphere. His eyes ran over the features of her face, and what she took as a silence used to fill her with dread was in actuality a search for where and how to begin.
But his face suddenly went from threatening to troubled. "Am I really that insignificant?" – is what he had intended on saying…what he had wanted to say…but he had not the strength to. Instead, he began coldly, "Didn’t you say you were going to forget about him?"
She became angry again. "Was that all? Was that the reason you had to drag me away against my will? It’s not as if you care what happens to me. You’re just trying to keep me from him and use me for your race. This is another one of your ploys, isn’t it?"
He would have been glad if it was, but it wasn’t. He had honestly been trying to protect her from the dragons, and, even though he didn’t acknowledge it himself, he had felt a little jealous and possessive over his newly acquired "treasure". The object embedded in his arm, whatever it was, was draining his energy away, and it burned furiously from inside him. He staggered backward and fell upon the ground just as the first droplets of rain began to fall.
Lina ignored him and picked up her clothes he had remembered to grab as they fled, making motion to leave. As she walked past him, Xelloss reached out and took hold of her arm, but he had used the injured arm without thinking and retracted it quickly. The searing pain was becoming worse and worse, and he was afraid it could be…That.
Lina studied his uncanny reaction, not quite sure what to make of it at first, then put two and two together and concluded with the question: "You’re hurt?"
He didn’t respond, but she assumed that meant he was. She quickly slid into her shirt and reached out to check his shoulder, but he withdrew before she could. Keeping his gaze averted, he muttered, "It wouldn’t help if you inspected it anyway."
Even if he successfully hid his worried face from her, Lina could sense it in his words. There was something amiss…and the more she thought about it, the closer she came to the truth. Mazoku were only gravely troubled if their life was in peril, and the only thing that could inflict that kind of thing upon him out in the wilderness like his was…
A golden dragon.
Then she understood. No matter how much higher the probability of it all being a scheme was, somehow she felt that he had sincerely been worried about her safety—her life—though that was behavior that was unheard of among the mazoku race. Not only did they care for nothing other than themselves or their masters, depending on their rank, but they also held humans of little to no value. So what was she to him that would cause him to risk his life—his existence—for her?
"Well…" he began. "If this really is what I think it is, then our agreement will soon be rendered null and void and you will be free to roam as you wish…following that Gourry-san of yours to the ends of the world as he leads you off a cliff to your death," he spat in contempt for that feeling of love she had for him. But instead of leaving, she walked over, leaving fresh footprints in the now loose mud, and crouched down in front of him. It was his turn to feel a pervasive stare digging down into his soul, and he stared back at her in languid stupor.
Without her needing to ask, he explained that the object was most likely made with pure, chastised Dragon’s blood. Normal dragon’s blood had no profound effects on mazoku, but ritualized blood was a deadly poison. "And it’s incurable."
So basically what she concluded from this information was that Xelloss had been the intended target from the beginning and she had been used as a precaution. "Are you sure that there’s no cure?"
He paused briefly. "…I’d be lying if I said it was incurable, but it is impossible. Unless you can magically resurrect Shabranigdu-sama."
His allusions left her confused. "Why couldn’t he just be blunt about things?" she wondered.
He caught her confused expression and further explained, "The only way to cancel the effect is to negate its powers…in other words, to drown it out with the essence of the strongest mazoku existence, Shabranigdu-sama."
The situation certainly seemed grim. After all, fragments of the mazoku king didn’t exactly appear every day…
But Lina was the kind of person who could make the impossible possible, and she realized there might be a solution nearby. "Say, Xelloss. Would it work if the powers resided in a dormant fragment?"
He didn’t understand why she asked that, but he responded anyway. "I don’t see why it wouldn’t, but what are you…"
Lina stood up, careful not to put any strain on her right leg. She pulled back wet strands of hair that stuck to her face and said, "We’re near the Katart Mountains aren’t we? Isn’t Lei Magnus still sleeping dormant there?"
It was an absurd idea for just two people—both injured at that—to walk into that valley alone. Also, the numbers of dragons would have multiplied in that region due to the upcoming war.
"That’s crazy," Xelloss answered. "We’d both be killed."
"Then are you telling me to sit around and enjoy my life as you slowly die here in front of me?" she snapped, rendering him speechless. "Don’t get me wrong; it’s just that I’m not a person low enough to leave my friend alone to die. That and I already feel indebted to you for earlier."
Xelloss cocked an eyebrow. Friend? Had he heard her correctly? No one had ever declared that Xelloss had been a comrade ever before…much less a friend. It filled him with an uncertainty and discomfort, but at the same time he was relieved that his doubts from earlier were inaccurate. He mattered to her, at least a little bit if nothing else. So his efforts hadn’t been in vain, after all.
Efforts? Was it true that he desired some acceptance outside of his secluded bubble consisting of only him and the Beastmaster? But if it was, then why did he confide in Lina Inverse of all people? Was it because she had been the only person to ever treat him as an equal, not revering and fearing him as the priest-serving-general mazoku that he was?
But she utterly shocked him with her next statement. "I’ll go and bring back some of his crystallized essence for you. You’re in no condition to fight."
It was odd of her to do charity work for someone, especially him. "You’re in no condition to fight, either," he pointed out, eyeing that limp of hers.
"It’ll be as good as new once I get my powers back," she said.
"Then let me be your crutch in the meantime. I may not be able to use my powers (or it would speed up the poison), but I can at least help you walk."
Lina hated relying on others for help. She was so used to being depended upon to save the day that she rarely thought she could be in need of assistance every now and then, too. But here she had no choice, and hesitantly accepted his offer.
*Sensou - This one's hard to describe since there's no english equivalent. It's the most accurate way to explain this war, though...as a war between godlike races.
<--Back one Chapter Table of Contents Go on to Prelude Four-->
View My Guestbook
Sign My Guestbook