Just in case this arrived mangled for some people...
     Once again: spoilers for the first TV series of Slayers & Slayers NEXT;
story set within the TV continuity after NEXT; no spoilers for TRY, the
movies, the OAVs, the mangas, or the novels though those have influenced
characterization and have been refered to for clarification when needed.
     If this comes through mangled...  Try
http://www.ainself.net/rosecastle/01.txt
and, if *that* doesn't work, you really need help.


          -- Ryo Hoshi
Websites @ http://www.ainself.net/

--- [Insert Monty Python quote of reader's choice here] ---


..and here's the opening block of nonsensical scribbles...
     The Slayers & the characters from it were created by Hajime Kanzaka
 and Rui Araizumi.  I'm unsure of the full list of who owns parts of the
 rights to it.
     But I'm not on that list.
     This is not being written for profit (not that I even think I could
 sell it) and you folks already got my money.  I'm broke, y'hear?

     The usual C&C welcome, encouragement wanted, flames C&C'd, ect and
so forth my am I used to saying this stuff goes here.

     This is dark.  This shall get repeated on a regular basis just in
case anybody even suspects that I am kidding.

   ~~~ ~~~ ~~~   *** *** ***   ___ ___ ___

     Lina and Gourry walked towards the gates of the Palace.
     "Do you think Amelia'll recognize us?" Gourry asked.
     "Of course she will," Lina said.  "It's not like we've changed that
 much in the last year."
     Gourry's forehead wrinkled as his mind ground through the most
basic of calculations.  A few minutes later, the telephone-and-finger-
counting system delivered an answer.  "It's been over a year since we
last saw Amelia," Gourry said.
     Lina hit him.  "It's close enough."  Lina was starting to get
slightly annoyed with Gourry; she had lately started wondering if Gourry
 had just been playing stupid before.  (Unknown to Lina, the rather
disturbing shard of something she had removed from Gourry's head while
healing a comparatively less disturbing-looking dent in Gourry's head
-- courtesy of a rather obvious booby-trap set by some bandits which
Lina had triggered -- had been greatly contributing to Gourry's mental
deficiencies.  But that's another story.)
     The time since they had last seen the others had been quiet for the
 pair.  It had been yet another round of the usual bandit-killing and
generalized, random, and specialized destruction that Lina Inverse
specialized in.  There had been no misplaced Dark Lords, no powerful
magical objects, no mazoku (aside from a few possible Xelloss
sightings), and Lina was starting to feel slightly paranoid.
     So, she decided, she'd see if she could find the others and get it
over with.

     Lina's eye twitched.  The palace guard to whom she had been talking
 to started sweating.  "I'm telling you the truth!  Princess Amelia
isn't here!  Ask the Crown Prince!"
     "Okay," Lina said with a sweet smile that only made the guard more
nervous, "Where is Phil?"
     "He's in his study!"  The guard quickly moved to the side and
pointed in the general direction of Prince Phil's study.  "Don't hurt
me!" he added.
     Lina grinned and started walking towards the study, Gourry on her
heels; she hadn't needed the rough direction the guard had provided, as
she remembered the way to the study from the last time she had been
there.

     Lina and Gourry stood at the doors to Prince Philionel's study.
As they stood there, wondering what had caused the muffled yell only a
few minutes ago, the door swung open and a harassed-looking messenger
quickly left.  Lina looked at Gourry, shrugged, and they went in, Gourry
 swinging shut the door left open by the departing messenger.
     Prince Phil was sitting behind his desk, his head in his hands.
Lina cleared her throat, sensing that this was a time not to be loud and
 cheerful.  "Phil?  Where's Amelia?  We asked the guards about her, but
they didn't say much..."
     He said, simply, "My daughter's vanished."
     "What?" Lina said, disbelieving.  This was just too surreal for
her.
     Prince Philionel took a deep breath.  "Amelia, my daughter, has
vanished."  He looked at Lina, trying to read her face.  "She and
Zelgadiss-san vanished last week from Rose Castle."
     Lina blinked.  Castle?  What castle...oh, she thought, he must mean
 the castle in that legend Amelia told us about before she and Zel left.
  "So, they did investigate that castle."
     "Zelgadiss-san asked permission to investigate the abandoned castle
 near the village of Rose.  Amelia went to represent the Saillune royal
family."  Prince Phil lifted his head from his hands.  "The messenger
who just left was from Rose.  A week ago, one of the people from
Clearwater Farm went there to deliver supplies and found the place
deserted..."
     "Oh no..."  Lina could only guess how this was affecting the
prince.  Lina herself found this hard to believe.  She had known Zel and
 Amelia.  They had been good -- not as good as her own self, of course,
but good enough that they wouldn't just vanish.  Whatever -- whomever --
 had caused their disappearance was powerful.
     But now...
     Lina stood up.  "Gourry and I will investigate."  The prince looked
 at her, surprised.  "And don't even think of offering to pay us
(besides covering our basic expenses, of course).  Zel and Amelia were
friends.  This is personal."  Besides, Lina thought, there's bound to be
 treasure involved -- why else would something powerful enough to make
those two just vanish be hanging around there?  It didn't hurt, of
course, that she remember Amelia having said something about the castle
and its lands having been clearly declared a century ago to be the
rightful reward for whomever solved the mystery.

     Lina and Gourry set out early the next morning.  The messenger, a
young mercenary named Miles Forrest, was on a fresh horse from the royal
 stables, riding with them.  Prince Philionel had requested that Miles
guide Lina and Gourry to Clearwater Farm, and provide directions on to
Rose Castle itself.
     Prince Philionel watched as the three rode off, hoping that Lina
and Gourry would find his daughter alive...

     Lina and Gourry looked at the castle.  It was a tall foreboding
building.  It reeked of forebodings.  It made a distinct effort to set
the record on exuding forebodings .
     Aside from its problem with forebodings, it had incredible
stonework and, even outside of the castle proper, the glass windows were
 incredibly beautiful; this was not a castle that was designed to be a
drafty old fortress.  This castle had been constructed to be a beautiful
 yet functional work of art and comfortable place to live.  If it hadn't
 the air of general unniceness, this would be the waking world's example
 of the palace of her fondest fantasies.

+===+ +===+ +===+
Once Upon A Time In Saillune
+===+ By Ryo Hoshi +===+
Part 1:
Set Adrift on a Nightmare Sea
+===+ +===+ +===+
Cut loose in a nightmare, cast off in my dreams
     -- _Poison Moon_, Elvis Costello
+===+ +===+ +===+

     The castle's grounds were well-kept.  There were archers' targets
along one wall, which were in good repair and even had a few arrows
sticking in them.  Lina glanced at where the arrows were, and hoped that
 she never had to rely on the archer whom had put them there.  Along the
 opposite wall hung, in a theoretical sort of way, several
sword-practice dummies.  Against the wall itself was a sizable pile of
relatively fresh ex-dummies.  Unless Amelia had taken up swordwork...
But Zelgadiss wasn't somebody Lina could easily see _demolishing_
practice dummies.  The few times Lina saw Zelgadiss attacking practice
dummies, he had 'killed' them with a minimum of strokes, all of them
graceful, and with a minimum of mess to clean up.  A small voice noted,
at the back of Lina's mind, that Gourry in action against practice
dummies was even more of a treat to watch...
     Aside from that, though, the grounds were unusually neat.  It
looked rather like one castle Lina had once visited in early in her
travels, when she had her first direct encounter with a mazoku.  The
captain of the castle guards's favorite punishment was to instruct the
offending parties to clean up the grounds.  It was not something she
quite wanted to be reminded of, given how much trouble the entire
incident had been.

     Lina Inverse and Gourry Gabriev looked around the great hall of the
 castle.  It was two stories high, and by Lina's estimates it was
perhaps slightly larger than the main ballroom of the palace in the
capital...  The ceiling was vaulted stone, and Lina could barely believe
 that there could be a floor above it, though she knew that there had to
 be at least one.
     Heavy curtains had once covered the lower halves of the walls near
the doors of the great hall.  But the curtains were gone now, and all
that remained was the hardware that had held them to the wall.  There
was, to the left, a door.  To the right was an open archway.  Each, had
 the curtains still been there, would have been hidden from public
view.
     Lina looked towards the open archway, and then towards the door.
The door looked more interesting.  It was clear to Lina that it led to
much less public rooms, while the section that was accessed by the open
 archway was merely not made obvious to the public most of the time.
     This, of course, meant that of the two it would be the most
interesting to explore.  "Gourry, why don't we split up?  It'll take
less time to search the castle for any clues, and from what Amelia said
 I doubt the castle's dangerous during the day."
     Gourry, possibly purely out of self preservation, nodded.
"Alright, Lina!"
     "I'll take the left!"

     Lina turned the knob and carefully pushed the door inwards.  It
swung open silently, as if it was freshly and regularly oiled.
     The door opened onto a hall.  On the long wall directly across from
 this door were two evenly spaced doors, and also at each end was a
single door.  Aside from these doors and the lamps, the hall was empty.
 Lina walked into the hall, and started towards the nearest of the
doors.  She stopped with her hand on its knob, however, as she noticed
something unusual about the lamp fixtures.
     They had been designed to be normally lit by the ball of light
created by a light spell, and, though they could hold candles in an
emergency, it'd be unwise to frequently use candles in them...  _The
prince for whom this place was built for and his wife must have been
sorcerers,_ Lina realized.  There was no other reason for such lamps
otherwise...
     Lina felt a chill in her bones; she knew that Amelia and Zelgadiss
couldn't have failed to notice that, too.
     Lina had known when she'd decided to investigate that her friends
hadn't been the first sorcerers to vanish from there, and it was very
unlikely that no sorcerers would have tried to solve the mystery of Rose
 Castle before Amelia and Zelgadiss.  But there was a difference between
 knowing and _knowing_ something in such a deep-down way that you can't
ignore it.
     The door Lina first tried was one of the two doors at the ends of
the hallway.  It swung towards her, and she found herself looking into a
 bedroom.  She walked around the room, giving it a cursory inspection.
It was rounded, a reflection of its location inside the corner tower.
The room was around four stories tall, with four rose windows.  Each of
the windows was positioned carefully to be nearly a quarter of a turn
away from the previous one, or at least have that appearance.
     The largest was nearly a story tall, by Lina's rough estimates, and
 would be located at around the center of the tower's outer wall with
its bottom at least a story above the ground.  A lone winged figure
inhabited it, her gold and black hair filling what sections of the
background that her white wings didn't.  She was wearing a simple
sapphire dress, and in her cupped hands floated a round, clear gem.
     On the other side, just above the center a rail-less cresent-shaped
 loft that was around the same distance from the floor, there was a
smaller rose window filled by a stylized dragon's head in the colors of
flames with single light blue piece of cut glass for its eye.  It was
set into a shallow box, and Lina suspected that there were hidden hinges
 so a light could be placed behind it.
     The final two windows were across from each other, each one having
a stone ledge running beneath them that went up to perhaps a hand's
width beneath the window.  There was a bed against each stone ledge, and
 upon them were a few assorted items that Lina guessed had belonged to
Amelia and Zelgadiss.
     Lina paused, a slight twinge of conscious reminding her that it
would be nosy to go through their things before she gave herself a small
 token excuse.  Lina then went to the less filled one of the shelves.
The stained glass window above it depicted a Healer's Rose blossom in
full bloom.  On one of the deep red-pink petals had been set a piece of
clear faceted crystal, looking like a drop of dew.  Lina touched the
crystal, and a small smile of appreciation twitched over her mouth;
whoever had made the window had taken the time to use rock crystal.
     On the ledge beneath the rose-blossom window was a sword-care kit
and an ornate medium-sized jewel box.  Lina quickly went through the
sword-care kit; she knew from experience what to look for in one,
especially when it came to assessing the quality of its materials.  This
 one -- Lina knew it had to be Zelgadiss's, as she knew Amelia would
never keep one -- was of the highest quality she had seen in a long
time...  Lina's brow wrinkled with a sudden suspicion, and she looked at
 the kit a bit closer.
     _I thought I knew this style of kit,_ Lina thought upon locating
the seller's mark, one that she had known from childhood.  _Dad's
certainly managed to maintain the quality of his goods._
     As she put the kit back together and back on the shelf, she
wondered slightly if Zelgadiss had realized that she was related to
*those* Inverses.
     The jewelry box was quickly looked-through.  It contained, mostly,
the normal items of jewelry of theirs, such Amelia's earrings and
Zelgadiss's brooch.  There were also a few mysterious pieces,
particularly a matching set of jewelry -- earrings, necklace, and a ring
 -- of white gold with deep sky-blue topazes and deep blue sapphires,
which had been carefully wrapped in pale blue silk and tucked into a
black velvet bag.
     The window above the other ledge was split in half by a sword, with
 a clear cut gem in its pommel.  On the left side of the sword was a
young man being knighted, and on the right the same man was riding out,
presumably to perform good deeds, with the same sword at his side as the
 one that divided the window.  The ledge had on it a writing kit, two
books wrapped in protective covers, and Zelgadiss's sword lay at the
very back of the ledge.
     Lina opened up the writing kit and discovered that it was nothing
interesting.  It contained a couple pens and brushes, several carefully
labeled packets of dry ink powder, an ink stick & stone, and a well.  All
 of them were of good quality, but rather standard.  The most
exceptional items were some of the ink powders, and that only because
they would not be often carried by anybody but a sorcerer.
     The two books with protective outer covers turned out to be
diaries.  Well, though Lina was certain that Zel would insist that his
solemn-looking one, completely encased in plain high-quality black
leather, was a journal, Lina was just as certain that it was a diary.
The other one was encased in creamy white leather, and from the feel of
the seams Lina guessed that the cover was made up of perhaps two layers
of good leather, with a middle layer containing some fabric with
protection spells for the book on them.  It was clearly something Amelia
 would carry; it was likely that this would eventually find itself a
home in some archive of royal papers of the Saillunese royal house,
documenting the youthful adventures of Queen Amelia the First for future
 generations of the royal house.  Locks had been attached to the flaps
of both of them, good brass ones which would require effort to break
even if they did lack any spells to prevent somebody from opening them
without the right key.
     Under the two books were the keys; it was obvious that neither
Amelia nor Zelgadiss had been expecting anybody to be coming into there.
  Lina carefully unlocked the black one and unfolded the outer cover.
The journal itself was elegantly cloth-bound with navy blue cloth, and a
 navy ribbon marked the last entry, nearly two-thirds of the way into
the book.  Lina carefully opened it to there, and looked curiously at
the page.  The entry had been written in a strange script that Lina was
completely unfamiliar with.
     Lina then unlocked Amelia's diary.  Her diary had a leather cover
that matched the outer cover, and a cream ribbon near its end.  Lina
opened it up to the ribbon...and found more of the same script that she
had seen in Zel's journal.
     Lina looked at the start of Amelia's dairy: still the same unknown
script.  She then looked at the first page of Zel's journal, and saw it
written in the familiar script that was normally used.  There were
comments in the margins in a different hand.  She leafed through, and to
 her disappointment discovered that the last page in a script she could
read was written while Zelgadiss had been traveling with Amelia, Gourry
and herself and trying to find the Clair Bible.
     Lina put them back as they had been and left the room.

     Lina walked back into the hallway, and noticed a small door on her
left, just beside the door that led to the great hall.  Curious, she
opened the door to find a narrow, tightly spiraling, and dimly lit
staircase made out of wrought iron.
     Lina lifted her palm and cast Lighting.  Sending the resulting ball
 of light on ahead of her, she climbed the stairs.  Eventually, a small
doorway in them opened out to another hallway; the stairs looked like
they went up for another floor or two.  Lina glanced up quickly, and saw
 that a skylight had been installed to provide the stairs with light.
Like all the windows she had seen so far, it was stained glass.
     She shook her head in disbelief.  Why would anybody install a
stained glass skylight over a hidden staircase?  It wasn't like anybody
would get to admire it...
     Lina stepped into the hallway to do a bit of exploring.  Between
the end of the hallway -- Lina estimated far end of this hallway roughly
 corresponded with the far end of the near-identical hallway downstairs
-- were two rooms.  It was a bit shorter the hallway downstairs, though,
 and peeking through the door at the very end she found that this was
how you were supposed to get to the loft in the main bedroom if you
couldn't use flight spells.
     A small table with two chairs stood on the loft's floor, dustless
but nevertheless still looking unused, sat.  Lina ventured further in,
and noticed that there were columns of bookshelves to either side of the
 door, as tight as possible against the wall.  They were only broken by
the door she had come through and the rose window depicting Ceified, the
 polished metal lining the inside of the box behind it gleaming through
the glass.
     She stepped to the table to take a closer look at the small wooden
box on it, and noticed that, inlaid in the table's top was a marble
chessboard.  Carefully opening the box, she discovered that inside was
an exquisitely carved stone chess set.  The black pieces, to her
experienced judgment, were marble; on some pieces, small red gems,
perhaps rubies, had been set into the pieces as eyes.  The white set
looked to have been carved from alabaster, and set into some of its
pieces were small blue gems -- given the quality of the pieces, she
guessed they were sapphires.  No two pieces looked the same, either; as
Lina went through the set, she found that even the pawns were each
unique.  One of the black bishops caught her eye; she laughed slightly
after realizing why.  The chess set was a Ceified versus Shabraningdo
style set, and from its looks Lina decided that it must have been carved
 very soon after the War of the Demon's Fall...  That meant it was as
old as the castle -- and worth the price of a small kingdom.
     Lina put the chess pieces back into the box gently, and closed it.
 She wondered, idly, if she could teach Gourry chess, and left the room.
  As she went back to the stairs, she glanced into the two rooms on the
floor.
     The one closer to the bedroom had been, once upon a time, a
nursery.  Its large rectangular window, a stained glass window as
always, was a pastel riot of color depicting a white wolf sitting and
looking _incredibly_ doggish in a surreal forest with a wreath of
flowers around his neck.  Beneath the window was a window seat and an
old-fashioned cradle, which, if any of its clothes had been on it, would
 have completely hidden any evidence of there being a baby inside.
     The other room had been set up as a study, with three narrow
stained glass windows, all on hinges.  The left one, Lina noticed,
depicted a large Healer's Rose, and the one to the far right was an
abstract version of the Saillune royal house's crest.  The center window
 showed a gold and clear burst of light.  Taking up most of the room was
 a massive desk, with an old-looking chair behind it.
     Lina went back to the stares and up to the next floor, this one
closed off from the stairs by a door.  This floor, she discovered, was
one a long room that was as wide as both the hall and the two rooms off
of it on the floor below, and about as long as those two rooms, too.
There were several stained glass windows on one of its walls, all of
them depicting some heroic act from one or another fairy tale.  The room
 itself was painted blue, and was unfurnished.  There was an aura
of...waiting.  Like the room was still waiting for the young princes for
 whom it had been intended...
     The next floor was hardly better; it looked almost exactly the same
 as the one below, except that its walls were pink and its windows
depicted, instead of heroic acts, romantic scenes from fairy tales.
This room, too, was waiting, this time for princesses who had yet to
arrive.
     Lina stepped out and carefully swung the door shut.  Glancing up,
she looked at the skylight.  There were seven rounds of pastel colors
surrounding a large piece of clear crystal that had been cut to increase
 the light coming through the window.  From there, at the top of the
stairs, it was surprisingly light and airy.  She went back down the
stairs, intending to finish exploring the hall on the first floor.

     Meanwhile, Gourry wandered through the maze of the servant's
quarters and guest rooms that lay beyond the archway.  He very quickly
quit trying to figure out the building's layout; it had been designed
so that one would need a guide if they were not used to traveling the
halls.  Instead, he was simply looking for a single normal window.  The
closest he had come, so far, was one badly done piece of stained glass.
     He also looked for one sign of dirt or ill repair.  Aside from the
aura of disuse and lack of habitation, though, each room looked
amazingly clean, lacking even any furniture aside from the occasional
piece made of a material more durable than wood, leather, or cloth.

     The first room on the first floor was depressingly plain.  It was,
like almost every single other room Lina had explored, incredibly clean
and very empty.  The window was the most interesting thing in the room.
 It was a long, rectangular window mostly made of pale blue rippled
glass, with a pale pink lotus in the lower left corner and a light green
 leaf beside it with a bit of cut glass or rock crystal for a droplet of
 water.  Lina supposed it had been intended to be eventually turned into
 a parlor, or a spare bedroom.
     The next room was a very plain sitting room.  There were two
cushions on the floor, clearly brought to the castle recently, in front
of a fireplace on the right-hand wall.  This room, like the loft, had
bookshelves along almost all of the wall, except for the fireplace &
hearth and a pair of French doors directly across from the hallway's
door.
     Lina looked at the double French doors.  It was a small work of
art; the panels of stained glass in it -- Lina wondered if there was a
single pane of normal glass in the entire building -- showing a tangle
of pink-red roses.  She recognized the kind of rose, too, as Healer's
Roses.  Lina thought this was appropriate for a castle that had been
built for a prince of Saillune.
     She opened the door -- noticing as she did so that the doors' knobs
 had been cast in the shape of a bloom from a Healer's Rose -- and
looked into what was beyond them.  She gasped.  Amelia and Zelgadiss
must have been busy, for the garden in the walled courtyard that the
doors opened up on showed few signs of having ever lost its gardeners.
     Well, with the exception of the water garden, which was badly
overgrown.  Lina smiled to herself.  She wouldn't have expected that the
 chimera would be so devoted a gardener as to _almost_ completely
restore a formal garden.
     Lina wandered among the plantings.  She occasionally stopped to
admire an usually rare specimen; the garden was planted completely with
plants used in magic, and only a few of the plants were particularly
common.  A few were even ones that she'd never seen before, even in the
gardens kept by magicians' guilds.  This garden, Lina knew, was the kind
 that people sometimes fought over now -- she doubted that some of the
plants inside it could be easily found elsewhere.
     This wasn't as comforting a thought as it would have been
elsewhere.  Elsewhere, Lina would have been free to gloat over her luck
and think about how she was going to get her new plants to market.
     Here, though, she had to wonder why nobody else had dared take
rootings from these plants.
     Lina settled on a stone bench hidden inside a dense group of thick
rosebushes -- whomever had originally planted this garden must have been
 very fond of roses, she thought idly -- and let her mind drift.

     Gourry looked around the small stone sitting room.  Straight across
 from him were a pair of French doors, standing wide open and leading to
 a garden.  Behind him was the door to the hallway, and to his left was
a wooden door that, from his previous investigations, he knew led to the
 kitchen.  He paused, and decided that Lina was most likely to be in the
 garden.
     Once in the garden, he stopped every so often to sniff at a flower
or plant.  Lina, looking out through a gap in the roses, watched as
Gourry came closer.  She grinned, and waited until Gourry was walking
past her hiding place.
     Gourry stiffened when he felt Lina's arms wrap around his waist.
"Lina!" he yelled as she giggled, somewhat insanely.  "Don't *do* that!"
     Lina just looked up at him, her grin wide enough that her eyes were
 closed.  He sighed, and ruffled her hair.
     "I found the kitchen, Lina.  Want to search it for some lunch?"

     Lina followed Gourry into the kitchen.  The room was long, and from
 the way it was set up Lina guessed that it could at least feed as many
as the kitchen of the palace in the capital of Saillune.  These were
kitchens designed for those who enjoyed food.
     Lina could see, at the far end of the kitchen, a pair of wooden
doors.  Lina paused, thinking over the layout of the castle.  If the
greenhouse attached walled garden was to her left and the back wall of
both the castle proper and the kitchen were behind her, and the kitchen
stretched for as long as she thought it did...that'd mean that those
doors opened out into the main courtyard.  She supposed that since the
one single door close to her on the right opened into the small hallway,
 the two pairs of double-doors farther on opened into the great hall.
Not a normal layout for a castle, she knew, but then she'd yet to see
any evidence that this castle was normal.
     She shrugged; the bizarre layout of the castle was probably not
that important.  The kitchen's contents, on the other hand...
     Lina and Gourry had, in the few times that they had stayed in an
abandoned building, developed a search pattern especially designed for
making sure they knew where all the food was in a kitchen.  It had been
perfected over years of experience.  They rarely left any of food found
in edible condition still uneaten after their search.
     The kitchen was well organized, and had been scrubbed cleaner than
any kitchen the pair had seen in their lives, considering how long it
had been since Zelgadiss and Amelia had vanished.  Lina was willing to
swear that, if it had not been so long since that kitchen had been last
cleaned, it would have been significantly cleaner than even the kitchen
at her childhood home which her sister always was making her clean.
     However, while the kitchen was clean, it was also almost completely
 bare of anything that could be eaten without any cooking.  For once,
there was food that could be eaten without cooking left after Lina and
Gourry finished their search...
     The flat, dry crackers were not, in their opinion, edible.
     Lina ended up sitting in front of the stove, a pot of water sitting
 ready on top of it, trying to remember what her sister had told her
about how to cook rice and hoping there was enough of it.  Gourry, she
noticed, was leafing through a book.
     As she was about to give up trying to remember and just light the
stove with a low-powered fireball, she remembered what her sister had
said.
     She sighed, and walked over to Gourry, and realized that he was
reading a recipe book.  He looked up at her and smiled.  "Hey, Lina, I
think I might be able to make this!" he said, and showed her a recipe
for a fried and spiced rice dish.  Lina glanced at the ingredients, and
noted that the kitchen had all of them in stock.
     Lina blinked.  "You can cook...?"
     "No," Gourry said.
     Lina looked at him, and sighed.  She _wanted_ to hurt him for that,
 but...  She was hungry.  And she burned water when she tried to boil
it.  "Just make it...and make a _lot_ of it.  I'm going to go explore
some more..."

     After searching the entire castle, they returned to the room Amelia
 and Zelgadiss had set up as a bedroom. Lina sat down on one of the beds
 and sighed. "You notice anything interesting, Gourry?"
     Gourry sat down on the other bed. A slight frown creased his
features for a few seconds as he thought. "I think Amelia and Zel were
sleeping together."
     Lina blinked in surprise, then yelled at the unfortunate swordsman,
 "What makes you think _that_?!"
     He shrugged. "This bed has been slept in more recently then that
one, and the one you're sitting on's been made."
     Lina could feel the nervous twitch that she knew had to be on her
face. This place was getting to her; the jellyfish was noticing things
sooner than she was. The bed she was sitting on had the general feel and
 look of the one bed at an inn that was rented perhaps only once or
twice a year, and the sheets on the bed he was sitting on were a mess.
     Lina looked closer at the set up of the room.  Zelgadiss's sword
hung on a peg near the bed; from what Gourry had mentioned to her before
 about Zel and that sword, Lina was certain that the only reason he
would have had his sword so far away from the bed would be because he
was sharing it.  It would have been impractical to hang his sword on the
 bedpost, especially considering what Lina knew about Amelia.
     Lina got up and shooed Gourry out, telling him to check the kitchen
 (again) for food, stray monsters, and food in that order.  Once he was
out, she ran her hands over the sheets, feeling for invisible stains
that might tell her just how intimate the last two to sleep in that bed
might have been...
     Hm, she thought.  No rough spots or stains, so they probably hadn't
 been having sex...  So why would they share a bed?  Zel, she knew,
never found his nightmares to be so bad that he would share a bed with
anyone.  Amelia she was less sure about; she had never known Amelia to
have a nightmare, and the very idea of Amelia having a nightmare seemed
somehow strange to Lina.
     She paused.  Yes, she thought, that might be possible.  She quickly
 inspected the floor for stains.
     The only thing she discovered was that the floor had the general
appearance of a floor that had been scrubbed by a very enthusiastic
maid.  This, really, showed nothing aside from the fact that this maid
had struck here, too.
     Lina stood up, and looked at the made and unslept-in bed.  _Well,_
she thought to herself, _I might as well check it too_._  She lifted up
the top sheet and blanket and gave them a shake with a practiced snap of
 her wrist.  She then folded it back, so she could easily feel the
bottom sheet.
     "Lina?  I've checked the kitchen," said a very familiar voice from
the door.  Lina turned to look at Gourry, blushing.  "There's still the
old crackers...Lina, why are you blushing?
     "If you want that bed, I don't mind..."
     Lina sighed in relief.  "Yes, Gourry, I want this bed.  Why don't
you go take a bath and let me set up my stuff?"
     "Okay Lina!" Gourry said with a smile.  As he walked off to the
baths, Lina finished checking her bed, finding it was clean too.  She
then started unpacking her things and setting them up on the ledge,
carefully putting Amelia's and Zelgadiss's possessions away.

     Gourry randomly draped his clothes in the changing room.  Normally,
 he took more care, but there was no reason to here.  The only other
person in the building was Lina, and he knew Lina had seen all of his
clothing before -- both while it was on him and while it was off him.
     He poked his head into the actual bathroom, and grinned.  Lina had
been the one who had inspected the bath-outbuilding, but Lina hadn't
said anything about it having hot water!  Sulfur-smelling steam drifted
lazily up from the surface of the tiled pool.
     There was, somewhat unexpectedly, a separate area for the actual
bathing, separated from the sunken tiled pool by a low wall, which would
 be about knee-high.  On this side of the wall was a raised grate for
washing over, a short stool, and a trough of water in which a hybrid of
bucket and ladle was lazily floating.
     Gourry looked for a little, then mentally shrugged.  He hadn't been
 in this style of bathhouse in years, but he had grown up using one like
 this.  It wasn't something he had forgotten, either.
     Gourry sat down and started lathering up his washcloth.
     It had been a long while since he had last actually dealt with this
 kind of bathhouse.  In most places, the artificial look of the pool for
 soaking -- no less having the pool distinctly separate from the washing
 area -- would be considered at best old-fashioned.  Still, Gourry felt
that there was something better about the old style of bathhouses.  It
didn't seem right, really, the new-style ones.
     He carefully scrubbed himself.  It was a calming activity.  His
hair got a complete washing, also.  It wasn't a hard task, even though
normally after exploring a place like this he could expect to spend
hours washing dust and cobwebs out of his hair.  He used the
bucket-ladle to rinse himself and his hair, and climbed into the soaking
 pool, which from the smell and feel of the water he guessed was piped
from a hot spring.
     _Hm,_ he thought to himself.  _I wonder how the view is from the
curtain walls..._

     Gourry looked out over the curtain wall of the castle.  It was a
good clear day so he could see all the way to the horizon, and, as the
countryside was mostly flat, the horizon was quite far away.  He
remembered when he was young, and his father would take him on up on the
 walls of whichever castle they were at and point out the landscape;
true, most of what his father said was about the strategic advantages
and disadvantages of the landscape, but to Gourry this was normal.
     There weren't many things worth looking at, though.  Much of the
area around the castle and to the north of it was moorland, though
judging from the ruins of buildings that he could see, it was once
farms.  Even with those ruins, it was unlikely that anybody could turn
up unexpected from that direction.
     To the south and close to the castle lay Clearwater Farm -- or, as
the locals called it, The Farm; from what Miles Forrest had told him and
 Lina on the way to the castle, it was also home to the most beautiful
girl in the area, Laraine Moorlands, who just happened to be his
fianc�e.  Gourry guessed that, on foot, it would take only two or three
hours for somebody to walk to the castle from there, and it would be
easy to see anyone from that direction.
     Only an hour away from The Farm, on the same road, lay the small
village of Rose.  Lina had dubbed it Spot on the Road when they had
passed through it on their way to the castle.  Gourry decided that Lina
had been wrong in calling it that; there were some buildings there that
were not visible from the road.  However, there weren't many.
     There was no real concealment in all directions on all approaches
to the castle.  It would be easy to see anybody approaching the castle.
 The castle was safe from any sneak attacks.
     Still, Gourry thought, maybe Lina and I should visit The Farm and
Rose every so often.  It wouldn't be too hard to walk to either place
and back in a day...
     Movement on the road caught Gourry's eyes.  He looked downwards and
 saw a cart on the road.  From the horses harnessed to it, it was clear
that it was from a farm -- from Clearwater.
     Gourry stood up and stretched.  Something floating between what was
 normal thought to most people and pure animal instinct turned Gourry's
feet towards the stairs, and took him down to the main courtyard.  He
looked around a bit, and with what could be called a mental shrug he
snagged a sword off of the rack of dull practice blades that stood just
under the stairs up to the curtain wall.  He moved towards the center of
 the courtyard and started a sword drill.

     A young woman on a cart knocked on their gates in the late
mid-afternoon.  Lina opened the gates, and the woman drove the cart into
 the courtyard and expertly stopped it near the outside door of the
kitchens.  Gourry kept wisely out of the way, going through the
elaborate dance-like steps of a sword drill.  Lina, on the other hand,
was distracted, partially due to the fact that Gourry was currently
shirtless, and was quickly drafted for basket transportation duty.
     By the time Lina's mind returned to the here and now, Lina was
carrying in the last basket.  She felt obliged to protest.  "Hey!  Who
do you...?"
     "I'm Aletta Moorlands, from The Farm.  I guess you and your cute
blond are Lina Inverse and Gourry Gabriev?"
     "You've seen Gourry."  Lina watched as Aletta bustled about the
kitchen, putting up the contents of her baskets in the kitchen, and
thought of hummingbirds.  Aletta, in her bright multicolored dress, and
with her deep teal hair, looked like one.
     "Is that your husband's name?"  Aletta winked one of her sparkling
hazel eyes at Lina's blush; had just a few glances at the jellyfish's
shirtless sword drill said that to the woman?  Aletta's vocal torrent
rushed on, forestalling any protest from Lina, as she continued to
bustle about.  "He's a handsome one.  Oh, dear, it looks like Ame-chan
used up the allspice, it'll be a week before I can restock it..."
     "Why are you in the kitchen?" Lina asked.  She filed her other
question -- "When did Amelia learn to cook?" -- for later.
     "Didn't Prince Philionel tell you?  I'm in charge of making sure
you have food."  Aletta stopped her bustling about, which brought
precious respite to Lina's mind.  "It was my soon-to-be brother-in-law
who rode to the Capital to tell him of his daughter's disappearance."
Aletta sighed.  "Ame-chan was such a nice girl, though I never got to
meet her man-friend..."
     Lina grinned in spite of herself.  That would be like Zelgadiss,
hiding when company came.  Of course, she couldn't quite blame the
antisocial chimera for avoiding Aletta.  Aletta and Amelia at once would
 have been...scary.  Very scary.
     "...and the coffee's almost completely gone again..."  Lina smiled
nervously.  Aletta hadn't noticed Lina's attention drifting off into the
 realm of esoterica and had continued her out-loud inventory of the
kitchen's supplies.
     Just then, Gourry walked into the kitchen, still shirtless.  Lina
didn't notice her slight blush at noticing that the slight sheen of
sweat on his skin gave it a satiny look.  Gourry, who under normal
circumstances (which these were not) would need a room full of clues to
figure out why Lina was blushing at him, eyed Lina warily.  Lina
blushing was not a good sign; the last time he could remember seeing her
 blush like that, it was just before she punished him for defending her
from some bandits who had thought it'd be a good idea to attack a naked
girl while she was soaking in some hot springs.
     (Gourry felt that this had been rather unfair of Lina, and maybe a
bit...unwise.  He was right on the second one: he most definitely would
have seen less of Lina if she hadn't insisted on kicking him while he
was down *while* she was still naked.  The view had been haunting
Gourry's dreams...  He wasn't sure why these dreams also involved black
leather, a whip, and Lina demanding that he call her Queen.)

     The rest of the day went relatively smoothly.  Lina and Gourry
settled into the one bedroom that was prepared for use, carefully
putting away the artifacts left behind by the previous inhabitants of
the room.  The light conversation while they worked might have been
forced and artificial, but they didn't want to be reminded of their
missing comrades more often than they had to be.
     Dinner was early, and a makeshift affair.  Gourry had only a
slightly better idea how to cook than Lina, which meant that dinner had
a high charcoal content.  The fact that the meal was peaceful and quiet
was blamed solely on this, and it certainly was partially responsible.
Neither of them ever did feel particularly inclined to fight over burnt
food.
     After dinner, they went to bed.  It had been a rather long day.

     Lina groaned and sat up.  That, she decided, was one hell of a
nightmare.  It didn't have much staying power, though.  Already, she
could only recall fragments of the dream.
     But they were vivid fragments, of pain and loss and loneliness.
     She shook her head.  Best not to dwell on it, after all.  Gourry's
here, and he's alive, and he's whole.  And, she added, I'm not alone.
     She slipped out of bed, planning on heading off to the kitchen to
get some hardtack to gnaw on.  As she was about to go out the door of
the room, however, she glanced over to Gourry and froze.
     Gourry, too, was having a nightmare, and if the way he was tangling
 up the sheets was any indication it was a bad one.  Lina padded up to
the bedside, and just stood there for a few moments, watching him and
listening to the soft cries, trying to make sense of them.  After one
that sounded suspiciously like her name, Lina reached out and shook his
shoulder.
     His eyes snapped open, and Lina found herself suddenly being held
in a tight embrace.  Gourry was stroking her hair and back, and his nose
 was tickling the side of her neck.  He was murmuring something, and
Lina could sense his relief at finding out that whatever he had been
dreaming had been only dream...
     She rather automatically patted his back.  It just felt like the
right thing to do.

     Eventually, Gourry calmed down.  He sat in silence for several long
 seconds, with one arm gently wrapped around Lina's back just under her
arms and his other hand resting at the small of her back.  Lina's
breathing was smooth, relaxed, her eyes closed, her hands drifting in
his hair and on his back purposelessly.
     Lina wiggled closer to him with a contented hmm, and opened her
eyes.  Soon afterwards, she noticed that her mind was screaming
something about Gourry.  Cuddling him.  _What?_  Lina looked at what her
 eyes were seeing.
     _Oh,_ she thought.  _I'm cuddling the jellyfish.  Warm!_
     Then her mind made a last-ditch attempt to get her attention, and
Lina wiggled out of Gourry's arms.  "Let's go to the kitchen."  A late
night snack will be perfect, Lina thought.  A small now-ignored voice at
 the back of her mind added something about cuddling up some more with a
 certain blond afterwards.

     Lina gnawed on some hardtack and watched Gourry busy himself
warming milk in a pan over the kitchen fire.  She had been rather
surprised that Gourry had been able to find the pan and the milk, and
was even more amazed when Gourry started warming the milk like he done
this a thousand times.
     She was only slightly more surprised when she sipped at the mug
Gourry handed her.  It was perfect.  He had warmed it to just the right
temperature, and hadn't burned it.  He smiled happily at her surprised
expression and held up his own mug.  "I can get a fire going in the
fireplace in the book room, Lina."
     Lina looked at Gourry.  He didn't look like he was trying to pull
anything...  "Alright!  Let's go!"

     Gourry stared blankly at the bottom of his cup.  His nightmare was
only just starting to fade, but he knew he would be not able to go back
to sleep that night...not until he was able to forget seeing and feeling
 the Lina in the dream die in his arms, all because of him...  He
glanced at the real Lina, who was still sipping at her mug, to reassure
himself that she was still alive.
     Lina was on her stomach on the rug in front of the fireplace.  She
held in her hands her own empty mug, thinking and compulsively sipping
at her mug.  Mainly, she was wondering about her companion.  He was
being unusually quiet, almost moody.  This, Lina was finding, was more
disturbing than the dog-ends of her own nightmare.
     Whatever had happened in his nightmare, she thought, it had to have
 been bad.

     When they both were ready to admit that the warm milk was gone,
they wandered out of the small library and back to their bedroom,
stopping in the kitchen to leave the mugs.

     Lina looked across the room at Gourry.  She sighed.  Might as well,
 she thought.  "Hey, Gourry!"
     Gourry turned from his solemn inspection of the bed Lina had
assigned him earlier.  "Yes, Lina?"
     "C'mo'ver here!" she commanded.  Gourry blinked, and with a mental
shrug walked over.  "Get in."
     Gourry looked at the spot where Lina was pointing: the bed that she
 had chosen for herself.  Blink.  Blink.  "Lina?  Are you feeling okay?"
  Gourry felt her forehead.  "You don't seem to have a fever..."
     "Gourry...I'm feeling fine.  Get in."  Lina looked at his
expression and sighed.  "I won't fireball you."
     "Really?"  There was something very puppyish to Gourry's
expression.
     "Yes.  Now," Lina's expression darkened, "get in!"  Gourry quickly
obeyed.
     In the landscape of Lina's psyche, Lina's Id was waving a pair of
victory fans, much to the annoyance of her ego; Lina's superego was in
its usual state of comatoseness.

     The next morning, Lina's mind struggled up from the depths of
sleep.
     Her thoughts went like this:
     _I like my nice bed.  I like my teddy bear.  I like my room...  So
nice, safe, and familiar..._
     _Wait, where's those oh-so-familiar sounds of the city in the
morning?  And why does my teddy bear seem a bit...larger than usual?_
     _Didn't I run away from home?_
     She opened up her eyes and discovered that what she had thought was
 her teddy bear (which, she had to admit, she did miss, but no
self-respecting enemy of all who live would carry a teddy bear around)
was actually Gourry.
     He was already quite awake.
     Lina lazily thought that Gourry looked rather cute early in the
morning, with that classic look she usually saw on bandits about to meet
 one of her fireballs...  Of course, she knew that she should hurt him
for feeling up a sweet innocent girl like herself in her sleep.  But
breakfast first.

     Lina looked at her mug and sighed.
     It was the third night in a row where they had ended up sitting
quietly until dawn and their seventh night in the building.  Sharing a
bed had helped...but not enough; their sleep had still been fitful.
     Time to do something, Lina thought.  I can't keep getting only a
few hours of sleep at night.
     And if Gourry's mood doesn't improve soon...
     "I was alone," she said, more to her cup and the floor than to
Gourry.  "I was alone in a large gloomy forest, and for some reason my
magic wouldn't work.  And the trees were leafless, and the sky dark.
And there was _the_ slug..."
     Lina stopped, not sure if she should go into more detail.
     There was a soft creak from the chair Gourry was in as he got up
and silently left the room.
     Lina looked after him, and then went back to brooding over her
empty mug and obsessing over slugs.  A few minutes passed this way, and
then she sensed Gourry's return.
     Gourry didn't sit back down in his chair, but rather beside her.
In one hand he carried his own mug, in the other he held the pan he had
been using to warm the milk.  He carefully refilled Lina's mug.
     They sat beside each other in silence for a while.
     Lina wondered how much it would take for Gourry to start telling
her about his own nightmares.  She really didn't want to talk too much
about her own nightmare...  She sighed, and started talking again.  "I
wondered where you were..."
     Gourry looked up at her, the look in his eyes impossible for Lina
to read.  "I dreamed I was in the middle of a small war."
     "What?" Lina said, blinking.  That sounded too deep for Gourry...
     "A large group of bandits."
     Lina realized what he meant.  "Oh."
     Gourry hung his head.  He wanted so much to tell Lina about his
nightmare -- of how the two of them had been camping out with Zelgadiss
and Amelia, and of how a large group of bandits had attacked, and...  He
 had been on watch.  He should have been awake so he could have woken up
 the others before the bandits...
     He sipped his warm milk and wished that he could forget the dream
as easily as he seemed to forget everything else...
     Lina sipped at her own mug, and thought about her own nightmare.
     She had, eventually found Gourry and the others.  There was some
mazoku, and they were fighting it.  Lina knew that she could take it out
 and would have to but...  It had looked like a giant slug.
     She had frozen up.  And the mazoku had...
     Lina took a deep breath.  She wasn't going to think about _that_.
Nor was she going to think about the slug mazoku's gloating laugh...
     Lina took a gulp of the warm milk, and concentrated her wandering
thoughts on the swallow's warmth as it went down.  And, possibly, waxing
 poetic about slugs & mazoku again.

     Aletta arrived as usual that morning.  Along for the ride this time
 was also her small daughter, Alida.  Aletta's gossip was welcomed by
Lina, and Lina found Alida's interest in magic to be flattering.
     Gourry joined them, and the gossip dragged on for hours.

     That night, they once again crept into the same bed and fell
asleep.
     Gourry went straight back into his nightmare.
     The dream started on a normal night from when all four of them had
been traveling together.  No inn being nearby, they set up camp a good
distance away from the road and were all settling in for the night.
Gourry was told to take the first watch.
     It was a warm summery night, the full moon was high and the stars
clear.  Not a night that was likely for anybody to attack, in Gourry's
somewhat knowledgeable opinion.  Not a night, too, that was designed to
keep a body awake...
     At some point, his waking self knew, he'd doze off -- and then the
disaster Lina had sown would strike, when he couldn't but should have
been able to protect her.
     Attack enough bandits, and a large number of them might someday
wreak their unrighteous vengeance.
     Gourry's awareness of the dream snapped back as the fight truly
started.  Lina herself was already out of the fight, the bandits having
snuck into camp and made sure she was dead.  Amelia was under a sleep
spell, and being carried off by a trio of ragged dirty men; Gourry knew
what was likely to happen to her next, having seen some of his fellow
mercenaries' ideas of how to celebrate a victory...
     Zelgadiss was trying to fight his own way to Amelia.  He was
felling bandits left and right, but they were making an effort to keep
themselves between him and Amelia.  Gourry could hear fragments of their
 taunts over the sounds of fighting.  Perhaps the only reason Gourry
figured out why the bandits were taunting Zelgadiss was because he was
not very bright; to him, the thought that Zelgadiss could be driven into
 a blind fury was not unthinkable.
     Gourry felt that he should be in the fight himself...doing
something to avenge Lina...but he felt so strangely weak.  He tried to
pick up the Sword of Light, tried to get up and join the small battle...
  His legs, which had been feeling strangely warm and wet suddenly
throbbed with hurt and weakness; his hands found only empty air where
the hilt of the Sword should be and an empty scabbard.  He collapsed
back to the ground and looked at his legs.
     His leggings were a bloody purple, the ground where he had been
sitting was dark red-brown and wet...  His mind, never particularly fast
 at the best of times, was blank; he looked dumbly at the matching pair
of wounds on his thighs, wondering why he could barely feel his legs.
They were still there, that he could see, but...
     There was a rustle, and he glanced up.  A figure in a cape was
sitting beside him.  There was something familiar about the caped man,
Gourry thought.  "Ahhh...you're awake," the man said happily.  Something
 about the tone sent Gourry's hand back to where the Sword had been,
which caused a low laugh from the other man.  Gourry felt his chest
tighten as the man held up an oh-so-familiar sword.  "Looking for this?"
  Gourry lunged towards the sword, ignoring the pain, but the man just
stood up and, opening his slitted eyes, gazed down at his victim in
amusement.  "Did you really think that'd work?" he said.
     Gourry just glared upwards, anger burning in his eyes.  The
oft-ignored bit of intelligence that lived behind his eyes commented
about the fact that his sword's blade had blood on it, and some macabre
impulse caused him to look at it more closely.
     His foe noticed where he was looking.  "So, you've finally
noticed...Lina was right, you are a jellyfish."  The man drove the sword
 into the ground, not so far away from Gourry's hand.  Gourry made a
grab for its hilt, only to feel a weight hit his back and knock the
breath out of him.  Gourry felt the man's short purple hair brushing
against his own.  The man's voice, near his ear, said in patient tone,
"You know whose blood that is, don't you?"  Gourry tensed.  It wasn't...
     "You should have seen Lina's face when I plunged it into her heart.
  It was priceless," the man said with a low laugh.  Gourry grabbed for
the man's throat, but there was a shimmer...and the man was gone.
     A few seconds later, Gourry heard Zelgadiss's voice over the sounds
 of battle, yelling out a name; that was quickly followed by a scream of
 pain that was abruptly cut off in the middle.  A thought floated up
through the fires of anger in Gourry's mind: He had to get up.
     Pain shot through his body as he struggled to stand up...
     He never did find out what happened next; Lina always woke him up.
 He was certain that he was lucky in this.

     Lina was lost, alone, in a forest.  All the trees were tall and
bare of leaves, but Lina could see neither the sun nor starts above her
head.  Cold light, like moonlight but unlike it, lit the open spaces
between the brown-black trees.
     As Lina walked through the eerie silence, she looked up every so
often, trying to see the source of the light.  Even though she could see
the sky through the trees, though, she couldn't see any source for the
light.  The sky was pitch black, the light somehow illuminating only
what was underneath the sky.
     There were other things wrong with the forest.  While the trees
were completely bare, there was no sign of dead leaves anywhere.  The
ground was packed, bare dirt, only broken occasionally by roots from the
trees.
     Lina strained her hearing, praying to hear something other than her
own breathing and her own heartbeat.  In a vague way, she thought she
could sense a constant hum that lurked just below audibility.
     She walked on, looking and listening for something other than the
surreal forest and sounds of herself.  Time stretched and warped itself,
as nothing changed.  The light stayed the same.  The ground stayed the
same.  She _knew_ that her breathing and heartbeat stayed the same, and
she could swear that the trees were not changing either.
     Eventually, she couldn't stand the changelessness, and started
running.  Still, it seemed, nothing changed, but at least it didn't
change faster.
     Then, suddenly, it all changed.  Lina found herself standing at the
edge of what was at best a small clearing and at least a section of less
dense forest and watching...
     Gourry, Zelgadiss, and Amelia were fighting a giant slug.  Its
mottled bulk, the colors of pale dead flesh and rot, stood at least a
foot taller than Gourry, and Lina couldn't see its length...  Its two
horns were as thick as her arm, the ball at each one's tips the size of
her fist and each holding an almost human-looking eye with slit pupils
and a dull grey iris.
     Lina knew instinctively that it was a mazoku.
     She also knew in her bones that it was a giant slug.
     Lina watched the fight, trying hard to make herself join in.  These
were her friends fighting...
     ...Fighting a giant mazoku slug...
     ...And Lina Inverse was _not_ a coward!
     She didn't move, even though she saw that her friends were losing.
     She only looked on in horror as the mazoku got ready to finish them
 off.  Lina could swear that it was grinning as it turned towards
Amelia, having separated her from the others, and moved...something.  A
stream of something that looked like it was flames, moved like water,
and was a dead, textureless black color appeared in the air in front of
it and arced towards the princess.
     Zelgadiss suddenly appeared in front of Amelia as the rain of black
fire fell towards her.  Lina could see from where she stood the
expression of shock on Amelia's face as he used his demon speed to get
in front of her.  Lina wondered if Amelia even knew before now that he
could move so fast.  She could also see the look of determination on
Zel's face as he quickly cast a shield spell and shielded Amelia with
his own body in case his spell didn't hold up.
     Zel's shield spell held up for part of the attack, but before the
attack reached its strongest point the shield flickered and faded,
leaving Zelgadiss and Amelia unprotected.  There was an ear-splitting
masculine scream that cut off abruptly at its loudest point.  In macabre
counterpoint was an almost as harsh shriek that outlasted it, trailing
off as its maker lost the ability to sustain it.  Lina could smell the
scent of burning...
     When the attack faded from view, Lina could see Zelgadiss, lying on
top of Amelia.  The attack must have been incredibly hot.  The center of
the worst-hit spot, right in the middle of his back, was still glowing a
dull but hot-looking red, and much of what Lina could see of Zel's skin
looked glassy now, no longer the slightly-sparkly matte it had been
while he was alive.  His hair, too, had melted in the heat and dripped
downwards.
     Zel's body had mostly protected Amelia from the attack.  However,
because Zel had been so nearly complete in his shielding her with his
own form, Lina could only see Amelia's right arm.  Zel hadn't managed to
pull her right arm completely underneath him, and it had gotten burnt
horribly -- there was no skin left at all, and Lina could see the bones
of Amelia's fingers.  Lina felt slightly sick as she saw Amelia's hand
twitch slightly.
     The giant slug mazoku must have seen this, too, as it sent another
blast of the black fire over the two, this time a much longer one.
There was no scream, no cries of agony, accompanying this blast, only
the sickening scent of roasting human flesh filling Lina's nostrils.
When this blast finally faded, all of Zel's skin glowed that hot dull
red, and what had been left of Amelia's arm was now ash.  Lina knew,
deep down in her stomach, that Amelia hadn't survived that blast.
     The mazoku's horns swung, as if they were scanning...scanning for
something, scanning for someone.  They swung slowly towards Lina...  And
stopped.
     Gourry's head turned slowly to look in the direction that the horns
pointed in, and Lina could see Gourry's body start to get ready for more
fighting, even though it was obvious that he was tired and worn out.
     Then, suddenly, a concentrated burst of black fire came shooting
towards Lina's head.  Lina watched it, trying desperately to force her
body to respond so she could duck, so she could dodge, so she could cast
a shield spell, so she could scream...  It didn't respond, and the blast
kept coming closer.
     When the place was only a few feet away from her, Gourry suddenly
entered her sight, standing between her and the blast.  The Sword of
Light's blade flickered distressingly, and Lina sensed that there was
something very wrong about Gourry's stance.  She felt somehow that he
could barely stand up, but she couldn't say why or how she knew this.
     The blast struck the blade of the Sword of Light.  Lina watched as
Gourry bravely tried to hold the blast back - he was in no shape, it
seemed, to simply deflect it.
     It almost worked.
     Almost.
     The blade flickered wildly, and went out.
     Gourry's sword no longer blocked the blast; the only thing between
it and Lina was Gourry.  The blast had not had any trouble with the
Sword of Light...
     Lina jumped to the side as Gourry collapsed on the leaf-covered
ground, the blast just barely missing her.  As she watched, blood flowed
out of the hole in Gourry's chest.  He smiled slightly, his lips moving.
 Lina thought she could hear him say her name.  Then his body went limp.
     The slug mazoku started to crawl towards her.  Lina threw a random
spell, the first spell that came to her mind, at the mazoku.  It hit
without any effect.  She reached downwards and grabbed the Sword of
Light from Gourry's lifeless hand: she needed it more than he did, now.
 She tried not to think the next natural thought: that he would never
need it again.
     "Light come forth!"
     She thanked every god she had ever heard of that this mazoku moved
as slowly as a slug, instead of at the usual form-blurring speeds of
mazoku.  Lina became aware, though, of a hissing sound as the mazoku
slowly moved towards her.  She looked warily at the mazoku, holding the
Sword's blade in a guard position, as it slid over and off of
Zelgadiss's corpse.
     Lina was unaware of her eyes narrowing.  Zelgadiss's skin, where
the mazoku had touched it, no longer looked glassy.  It looked rough
again, though rougher then it had been before.  It looked like...
     Lina's gaze drifted towards the mazoku's trail.
     The slug-shaped mazoku secreted acid.
     She started moving towards the left carefully, and chanting the
spell that would activate her amulets, then the spell itself.  Even if
it might be overkill...
     "Ragna Blade!"
     She made a running leap at the slug mazoku, holding the blade high
for an unstoppable downwards blow and channeling the Ragna Blade into
the Sword of Light so that it would be even more powerful.
     As the blade hit the mazoku, Lina woke up.
     Gourry was holding her to him, not tightly but not loosely either.
 She could feel his legs twitch, and he was murmuring something in his
sleep that she couldn't make out.  She poked him in the ribs until he
woke up.

   ~~~ ~~~ ~~~   *** *** ***   ___ ___ ___

*Assorted notes:*

     I like the word 'foreboding'.  It turns up in here in some form or
other 5 times: 4 times just before the title blurb, and once right here
in the notes.

     Yes, I know Gourry seems a whole lot brighter than normal.  This is
 due to two things.
     The first is that he's used to this kind of rural area.  There is
just something right to giving him a rural/small village boyhood...
     The second is that, unlike Lina, he's too stupid to be worried.
Yet.  (Ignorance is bliss...)

     I figure Gourry would at least be vaguely aware of some of the bad
habits of bandits and some mercenaries (the ones who were really just
those bandits who happen work for you, but of course you never called
them _bandits_ because that just didn't sound good).  Namely, that of
(ahem) taking advantage of any females who were unlucky enough to be
present.

     No, I don't hate Amelia; she's actually one of my favorite
characters in the series.  Why do you ask?

     Lina has a phobia about slugs.  (Do I really need to say that?)
     There are likely no mazoku who can look like slugs.
     Either that or the entire mazoku race is somewhat stupid.
     The case can be made either way.

     Xelloss might make a few cameos, but he's not actually involved in
this story.  Why, you ask?  That's a secret, I reply.

     Yes, this is dark. I'm well aware of that. Why d'ya think I put
that [Dark] tag in the header of the FFML copy and at the start of the
summary of the copy on FF.net? Because it looked kawaii there?

     Questions that may eventually be answered:
          * What really happened to Zelgadiss and Amelia?
          * Did they *ahem* make love or just sleep together?
          * How badly will Lina hurt Gourry if -- alright, more like
               when -- he feels her up in her sleep?
          * What have I been smoking?
          * Where can you get some of it?

     This kept growing on me.  I had started it sometime in September of
 2000, as far as I can tell -- it�s the earliest I have records of
mentioning any of this �fic's images.  I had planned to have this
chapter done with, about 10 KB or so in size (unwrapped and with tabs
instead of spaces for indentation) and out in time for Halloween.  Over
two years later, and several times when I have found myself unable at
all to work on this...I finally manage to release this chapter -- and
it�s larger and more seriously written than I had originally expected it
 would be.
     Thanks goes to the FFIRC and the Slayers RP group I was a member
of, for putting up with me and my bad moods; my only real prereader for
most of this chapter, Death, I wonder why? ; my prereader after Death,
Jane Clift, who is a very good friend; those friends of mine online who
also took a look at this draft and didn't tell me to drop this, not that
 my accursed muse'd let me get away with that; and the author who wrote
the book that highly influenced this 'fic, I'm sure her ghost wishes it
hadn't.





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