Benjamin Goldberg wrote:

Disruptor wrote:

 The auburn haired sorceress known as Lina Inverse looked out over the
bay she had chosen, raised her arms and started reciting, "Darkness
beyond blackest pitch.  Deeper than the deepest night...."

 Suddenly the fourteen year old girl stopped and slumped to her knees,
"What good is a more powerful spell if the being I cast it at
teleports out of the way?"

What made her so thoughtful?

Comming up with excuses not to cast the Giga-Slave.

 She lay on her back and looked up at the sky.  'I need some way of
holding a Monster in place and a direct attack that doesn't create a
big explosion.  I also don't want to kill myself with a spell.  Not to
mention....'

Why use the word Monster, instead of Mazoku?

Why not?
Faerie and Fairy are the pronouced the same, but one is the entire group and
the other is a race.

Daemon and Demon are pronounced the same, but they are two different races.

Mazoku, Skinzoku, Ryuzoku are Japanese words, so I'm going to stick with the
dubbing convention.

 Lina smirked a bit as she went through the spells in her mind. 'The
Giga-Slave would be nice, but I think a Lord of Nightmare powered
versions of Rune Breaker and Bram Blazer will be a lot more useful.
At least I won't run the risk of being consumed by darkness.'

Right.  Instead, you run the risk of destroying the entire world.  Much
safer.

Well, that's the Giga-slave.

 Lina stood up and looked at the bay with renewed vigor, as she
mentally went through the chaos words for her two new spells.

 "If these work, maybe I'll see if I can recast some of the other
spells with the Lord of Nightmares as their source.  Maybe a defensive
barrier or something."

Or better yet, an L-sama powered healing spell.  Maybe something like
that would cure Zelgadis?  True, she hasn't met him yet, but an uber
healing spell would be deadly against mazoku.  The only question is,
would it be faster than Resurrection, and what side-effects would there
be?

I think Lina only knows the Recovery spell.

 As she cast her first reworked spell, she felt satisfied at how it
worked.  Pulling a tome out of her cloak, she looked through it.

s/at how it worked/at the results/

 "Even though I can't cast it unassisted, I'll learn the Ragna Blade."

 Lina closed the book and turned it over in her hands.  She smiled as
she looked at it.

 "The Powers of the Dark and the Light.  A book detailing the greater
powers of the four worlds and the spells that can be called from each
of them.  It's hopelessly out of date and mostly useless but still fun
to read."

If it contains the Giga-slave, how "mostly useless" is it?

1 section holds the Lord of Nightmares,  The other sections:
The Red World(Ruby Eye and the Flare Dragon)
The Blue World(Chaotic Blue and The Blue Dragon)
The White World(Death Fog and the The White Dragon)
The Black World(Darkstar and the Black Dragon)

And written before the death of the Water Dragon King.  Lina also knows
most, if not all, Black magic spells.  With the barrier up, Holy Spells are
worthless.  I'd say about 90% of that book is of no real use.

 Setting the book aside, she recalled everything she read about the
Lord of Nightmares.  Lina happily went to work on her new spells and
by the time she was done, had reduced the flora and rocks in the bay
to a fine gray powder.

 Picking up her tome, Lina went back over the Giga-Slave and shook her
head.  "I will never cast this.  It's too dangerous."

In the original, it was casting the Giga-Slave that killed everything in
the bay.  In your version, everything there is still dead, but from
smaller uses of chaos magic.

Not exactly.  Lina cast the smaller spells BEFORE the time change at
Mipross.  Later she'll find out that in the changed timeline, she did cast
the Giga-slave.

 Lina revisited the bay where two years earlier, she had practiced her
Nightmare spells.  Instead of the fine gray powder she had expected,
the bay had blackish water that no fish would approach and the flora
and rocks were replaced by a dark gray crater.

Why hasn't the blackish water spread into the ocean?

I wasn't aware of that.

Previously, the rocks were merely destroyed -- why are there now
craters, holes in the ground?  Did something (that gray dust?) etch away
at the earth where the rocks had sat?

Nope.  I answered that question already.

 Staring in shock at the devastation, Lina fingered a long dagger with
an eel shaped pommel.  "What happened here?  It wasn't like this when
I left."

This is never answered.  So, why did it happen?

It will be brought up later.

 To try to take her mind off of the horror she was witnessing, she
held up her dagger and stared into the eyes of the eel pommel. As she
stared, she could hear the words from when she recieved it.

 'Lina!! Take this!! The staff holds the last of my power!!'

 Breaking out of her reverie, she shook her head and thought, 'All
that was left of the staff was that eel shaped talisman that I made
into a pommel.  The Astral Dagger might not be the Sword of Light, but

If she knows of the Sword of Light, then she's met Gourry, right?

No, she met Rowdy Gabriev, the previous owner of the Sword of Light.  The
pommel(talisman) was his also.  Lina got this talisman that ups white,
healing, and holy magic and by extension of holy, her nightmare spells.  She
did try and get the Sword of Light from Rowdy but failed.

So, why hasn't he commented on how everything in the bay and surrounding
area is dead?

He's not there.

 In shock, Shabranigdo asked, "What's this?"

 He didn't have long to wait as gold and black lightning leapt upwards
and struck his body.  Instead of shocking him, the bolts of energy
started pulling down on Ruby-Eye's body.  The Dark Lord struggled to
stay standing.

 "So what do you think of a spell that calls upon a Dark Lord greater
than you?  The power of the Lord of Nightmares!"  Lina called out, as
she thought.  'Didn't expect it to work like that.'

 "This pitiful spell is interesting, but futile.  Soon you and the
entire world will be destroyed." Ruby-Eye replied, but a nervous
twitter crept through his voice.

Heh, maybe true -- though if it does, it won't be him that destroys the
world, but L-sama... *if* Lina loses control of the spell.

Why do you think she went with smaller spells.  The Ragna Blade going out of
control won't destroy the world.  Only the Giga-Slave

 Delirious from pain, Zelgadis called out, "Rezo, will you destroy the
world you so long to see?  REZO!!"

 Shabranigdo shuddered as Zelgadis' words reached him.  The momentary
lack of concentration cost him as the lightning pulled him to the
ground face first and held him prone.

 Lina took a shaky breath and quickly thought out the reason for the
lapse.  'Rezo's soul hasn't been completely destroyed.'

 With that in mind, Lina jumped towards the prone Dark Lord and
chanted another spell.

How many spells can she keep going at once?  Won't the Breaker spell
dissapate when she starts on this one?

IIRC Rune Breaker is like Lighting.  It slowly fades away.  So basically,
Nightmare Breakker is fired off and keeps going, freeing Lina up to cast
spells.

 "Let the dreams of terror be awakened."
 "With the power to shatter a soul."
  "SOUL CLEAVER!!"

 As the now golden blade of the energy sword hit Ruby-Eye, a small
piece was cut away from him and became a glowing ball of light. Not
bothering with the ball of light, Lina dropped one hand off the Sword
of Light and gripped her dagger.

 'I'm going to need as much power as I possibly can,' Lina thought and
whispered her spell.

This, spell, too is happening while the Breaker spell is active.

She's activating a talisman.

 "Dagger formed from a temporal splinter."
 "Let thine energies flow into my body."
 "And add thy mystic strength to my own."

 Feeling the Astral Dagger boost her powers,

And it's not so ephemeral a spell as soul-clever, as the Astral Dagger
remains in effect for some time.  So she's maintaining *two* spells
simultaneously; Nightmare Breaker and Astral Dagger.

The Astral Dagger is a boost talisman

Oh, and casting a spell *uses* magical power; presumably, Astral Dagger
increases her spiritual strength, giving her greater control over the
sword of light (it's controlled by one's will, after all), and making it
more difficult for spirits (like mazoku) to hurt her by "physical"
contact, but it doesn't give her more magic.

If it *did* give the caster more magic -- what would keep someone from
casting it again and again and again?

I would suggest that you have Zelgadis cast this on her.

The Demon Blood Talismans can't be cast over and over.  They have only boost
a person so far.

Lina mentally nodded and grasped the Sword of Light with both hands.
'With that boost and the Sword of Light, my power should be more than
doubled.  We stand a chance.'

Now she's casting *another* spell, while she has *two* spells active.

How much magical strength does she have?

 "Lord of the dreams that terrify."
 "Sword of cold and darkness,
      "Free yourself from the heavens' bonds."
 "Become one with my body.  One with my power."
 "And, let us walk the path of destruction together."
 "Power than can smash even the souls of the gods."
 "RAGNA BLADE!!!"

 Shabranigdo raised his head and looked up at the now black energy
blade that Lina was carrying.

 "That spell...  How?"

 Lina looked down at the prone Dark Lord.  "Your power is weakened
without Rezo and now die Dark Lord of Terror.  Black sword slice
through all."

Only villians explain themselves and what they're about to do.

The heros just do it, and explain to the audience afterwards why what
they did worked.

 Lina brought the Ragna Blade down upon the body of Ruby-Eye and kept
applying pressure to cut the Dark Lord in half.  Another hand soon
joined hers.  The sudden influx of another will increased the Sword of
Light's power and helped push the blade of nightmares through the Dark
Lord.  With a sudden flash of light and shadow, Ruby-Eye collapsed
into a pile of grey ash that was quickly blown away by the wind.

 Lina slumped to her knees exhausted.  "I can't believe that we
actually did it."

 Gourry and Zelgadis quickly ran over to Lina with a mixture of shock
and awe on their faces.  Zelgadis stopped as he saw what was behind
Lina.

 Rezo the Red Priest looked down at the young sorceress and said,
"Thank you and please forgive me for what I have done."

 Shaking her head, Lina replied, "I have the feeling that it wasn't
really you who did all those horrible things, but Shabranidgo himself.
You were just a prisoner in your own body."

s/have/had/.

And *why* did she have that feeling?

A much more reasonable explanation was that Shabranidgo's evil was
slowly, gradually, corrupting Rezo.  In short, it *was* Rezo's own
actions, and he wasn't a prisoner in his body -- it just wasn't the way
he would normally have acted.  (If a person does something under the
influence of drugs, is it "someone else" in control, or themselves in
control but in an altered state of mind?)

 "That does not excuse my actions.  An interesting way of freeing
someone from possession, slicing the souls apart and having a body be
created for the exorcised spirit."

When/where did she create a body?

That ball of light that was cut from Ruby Eye was Rezo being freed.

 Lina shrugged and went back to reading her book.  "That's up to your
father and the Wizard's Guild of this city."

 Amelia stood up and stated, "I'll talk to Daddy about this."

 As Amelia left, Gourry asked, "Why didn't you object to that?"

 "Learning spells cost money.

Why?  Is parchment all that expensive that she can't just hire a
scivener to copy a book containing it?  Or do magic spells need to be
taught by another mage?  In which case, owning the book "The Powers of
the Dark and the Light" is fairly useless without someone to teach the
spells.

That's how the Wizards Guild makes money.  They charge people for teaching
spells and charge for the usin a library for research purposes.

And, spells of that power require lots of money.  This way, we get
money to eat and something valuable," Lina replied, as she turned a
page.  "You wouldn't believe the hassle I had to go through to get
Rune Breaker, and that's not that great a spell."

Hassle isn't the same thing as cost.  If the owner of a book doesn't
*allow* you to copy it, that's hassle.  Hiring a scrivener to copy a
book is cost; hiring a mage to teach you is cost; paying the owner of
the book to allow you to copy it is cost.

Hiring a scrivener shouldn't be too costly -- or if you're really
cheap... well, if you can read, you can write, so just copy the book
yourself (binding it can be a problem, but you could just keep the pages
loose in a book-shaped box).

But paying a daily fee to research the spell and trying to figure out which
books have the information you need is a hassle

If you have the goodwill of the ruler of the city, you can certainly
avoid paying the book's owner to allow you to copy it.

Only if you *must* be taught by a knowledgeble mage, is there an
especially high cost for learning spells.  Political influence might get
you a discount, but not likely free teaching time.

Not taught by a mage, just the research headaches.

 Phil asked, "By the way Miss Lina, where are you going?"

  Lina shrugged and replied, "I have no idea.  I just go in whatever
direction I feel like going for the day until I hear something that
catches my intrest."

In her shoes, I would reply that I would stop by the merchant's guild,
and ask which roads/towns had bandits, and head that direction.

She doesn't always go hunting bandits.   When she was with Naga, she seemed
to go from city to city with no specific goal in mind.  If there were
bandits nearby, she took them out.  She just goes out to see the world

 "Don't you worry about getting lost?"

Only if she decides to hike cross-country, instead of following roads.

 "Nope.  I'll wind up someplace sooner or later."

Unless you end up going in circles.

She wouldn't care



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