Episode 2

The Ruins of Kuroryu

A History Lesson?

Let the Tests Begin!

It was dark when the little group finally made it to the doors of the Ancient Ruin and straggled to a halt just outside. The huge iron doors looked terribly imposing and Lina frowned, folding her arms and eying the overly large gates.

“Those look heavy. I doubt that your average person could open them. Tell me, Zel… who do you think those doors were meant to be opened by?”

Zelgadis considered for a moment before offering a reply. “Obviously they were meant to be opened by someone strong and large. I would say…”

“A dragon,” finished an annoyingly familiar voice.

Lina turned, glowering. “Xellos! Where the hell have you been? And how do you know about this place?”

Xellos settled his staff beside him and shrugged. “I know of the place, shall we say.”

Lina’s eyes narrowed. “You’d better explain. How do you know of this place?”

“Ah…” Xellos murmured. “That… is a secret.”

Lina reached out and almost absently beat Xellos into the ground that he stood upon. “Idiot.”

Xellos picked himself up out of the hole that Lina had put him in and scratched the back of his head. “So I’m often told…”

“Then tell me now how you know this place. Tell me what this place is, and who lived here.”

Xellos shook his head. “I can’t. I’m not allowed, Lina. All that I may do is open this door and allow you to enter Kuroryu. From there, you must make your own decisions.”

“What do you mean, Xellos?” Lina said dangerously.

Xellos sighed. “I mean that you’ll find your missing Princess inside. However, they won’t let her go so easily.”

“They?” Zelgadis asked.

“They.”

The doors swung open and all of a sudden, Lina Knew. Knew as much as if she had been in the know the entire time. Them. Those who had lived long ago and now still lived within the ancient halls, walked the ancient floors and waited for someone to come and learn the story that they had to tell. It chilled her to the core, but she walked calmly into the large chamber.

“Let’s go guys. If what I think is the case, we’ll be allowed the night to sleep, but after that… there’s no telling what will happen.”

Xellos simply faded into the shadows, sighing softly. This was one instance where he wouldn’t have any fun… and he wasn’t allowed to help her. Her. That was something that he would have to figure out one day, why he always wanted to pick on her…

He’d figure it out later.

Morning dawned brightly on the sleeping figure of the missing princess, and she sat up, yawning. While she had slept, the spell had continued its job, and the writing on the wall was as familiar to her as her own native tongue. This was indeed an ancient ruin, but it had also been a temple for the ancient race known as Kuroryu.

“Kuroryu… but who were they? That’s what I don’t understand. What happened to them? Where did they go?”

“The Kuroryu were a proud race of dragons who had the misfortune to be powerful,” a female voice answered.

Zhiya turned and looked at the group of people who stood in the doorway. “How do you know? What do you know about them?”

The redheaded woman put her hands on her hips. “Enough to know that little girls shouldn’t tangle with them on her own. So why are you here?”

Zhiya looked away. “You don’t look like an adult, but you certainly talk like one.”

Lina glowered, but Zelgadis put a hand on her shoulder. “Lina… now is not the time to be sensitive about that.”

“Yeah, what do you know, Zel?” Lina muttered before looking to the princess again. “Look, I know a lot about this because I knew one of them. You’re the Princess Zhiya, right?”

Zhiya narrowed her eyes and nodded. “Who are you?”

“I’m Lina Inverse. Your brother sent me to bring you home safely.”

The princess wrinkled her nose. “My brother? Are you sure that it wasn’t Old Man Augerty and not my wimpy big brother Ellmu?”

Lina’s eyes grew round and she stepped back a moment as the thought ran through her head. “Ellmu? Hell, if /my/ name were Ellmu, I’d be a wimp too!”

Quickly, Lina righted herself and looked at the princess. “It was Augerty’s idea, but your brother offered five hundred gold.”

Zhiya stomped her foot. “That little twerp! He knows good and well that I’m worth more than five hundred gold! How much was Augerty offering?”

Lina, disbelieving, muttered the answer. “Two hundred gold.”

“TWO HUNDRED?” Zhiya hollered. “Why, I ought to go back and fry them!” A red aura began to form around her, and Lina stepped sideways towards Gourry.

“Gosh, Lina. She’s even more frightening than you are!” Gourry whispered.

Lina put her elbow into Gourry’s side. “Watch it.”

Amelia stepped forwards and looked at Zhiya. “As the Princess of Sailune, I have to agree. Us Princesses are worth much more than that!”

Lina hung her head. “Amelia… now is not the time to be going off on how much you’re worth. It just isn’t.”

Amelia stopped, the blue aura fading from around her. “You’re right, Miss Lina. We need to get Miss Zhiya out of here.”

Zhiya planted her feet firmly on the ground. “I’m not going anywhere. If I’m not worth it to them, I’m staying here where I’m appreciated.”

“Appreciated? Look around you, princess. All I see are old walls and crumbling ceilings.” Lina countered.

Zhiya folded her arms. “You look around. Can’t you see them? The Old Ones who are here, waiting to tell their story? You said you knew one of them. Is that one here?”

Lina sighed, and looked around, casting about with her eyes and her mind. There. Yes, Ancient Black Dragons. At least a dozen of them. And they were all aware of her.

“Zel…? Do you sense them?” Lina whispered.

Almost imperceptibly, Zelgadis nodded. This could get nasty if the Ancient Dragons chose to make it so.

“No… he isn’t here,” Lina answered calmly. She knew full well that Valgarv was safely in Filia’s home, the last living representative of the Black Dragon race being raised by the last living representative of the Golden Dragon race. It was something that Lina herself had never seen coming. She recalled the promise that Filia had made: to raise Valgarv right, to teach him not to hate and to love both dragon and Human alike. “And that brings me to something else. Something that I need to tell the Old Ones, should they care to listen.”

Zhiya looked at Lina with questions in her eyes. All posing and haughtiness aside, this woman might very well be capable of teaching her. And she wanted teaching far more than she wanted to admit. Magic was forbidden in her town, cursed to be the reason of Kuroryu’s fall. But Zhiya’s mother had whispered differently to her daughter, and Zhiya herself didn’t believe that magic was terrible and a destructive force. Magic could also be used for good, couldn’t it? Used to perhaps save people and heal them when they were hurt… magic such as that could have saved her mother’s life…

Lina watched the girl for a moment, and then turned to address the Old Ones that she knew were in the room. “Ancients of the Black Dragon race, I have seen the power that you possess, and I have heard the story of the wars from the Golden Dragons. I have also heard them from the last survivor of your race, poor proud Valgarv. I don’t know by what name you called him, but I am glad that I knew him as he was. Even now, he has been granted another chance, along with the survivor of the Golden Dragons. Lost to you by the actions of the Golden Dragons and the Demon God King Garv, the last child of Kuroryu has been reborn again as the son of Kuroryu, and is even now being raised by the last of the Golden Dragons.”

She paused, feeling the weight of the Old Ones bearing down upon her in displeasure. “No… truly. Filia was raised unaware of her own bloody past, and wishes to do her best in raising Valgarv as any child should be: with love and kindness. She has herself learned humility and shame over what her ancestors did to you, and seeks some semblance of penance in loving Valgarv.”

/She loved him even when he was trying to kill her. She saw something more in him than any one of us ever did. Was it that they were dragons…? Each calling to the other unconsciously?/ Lina mused to herself.

A single voice answered within her head. “You are wise, Lina Inverse. But you still do not know all that there is to know about our pasts. We will give you time to read the texts and the history upon our walls. Then we shall test you. And we will see if you are worthy of knowing the whole truth that there is to know.”

“The whole truth?” Lina asked the air, turning to look at the walls with wide eyes. None of the words made any sense to her… it was that ancient Gold Dragon ruin all over again. “But I can’t read any of this. How am I supposed to learn?”

“It’s all part of the test. They made me learn it too. Only I managed to translate it with magic.” The princess looked smugly at Lina. “Shall I read it to you?”

Lina looked at the girl. “Kid, you’ve got a lot to learn, but maybe so do I.”

Zhiya turned, looking at the wall. Slowly she began to read, not in the standard language of the area, but a soft and flowing language that at first made no sense, but after a few moments was as clear as if Lina had grown up speaking it.

“The days were long and our people numerous in the high days of our kind. We lived as proud, fierce lovers of life and nature. We were well-loved by the humans who lived primitively within our shadows, and took great care to enrich their lives and fill them with everything they needed. Not a life was wasted, not a soul was shed needlessly, for all understood the roles and positions in life.

“Our Temple, our home, was a glorious place, rich in magics and thought. Such that it was, it allowed us to reach higher levels of existence and we saw things as they were and as they should have been. Given this information, we saw that we would only further destroy the harmony held within this world if our actions continued. One or two of our Elders at the time believed us, but the majority of the Council of Elders disavowed us and claimed that we wanted to take the whole of the power we had found for ourselves.”

Lina frowned. “So… this was before the war…?”

Zelgadis looked at the words on the walls, musing heavily upon the words offered by Zhiya as she read the walls. “It would seem so.”

Amelia settled in to listen, for once silent about the injustice of the whole situation between the Golden Dragons and the Black Dragons. She glanced over to Gourry, and sighed. “Miss Lina…?”

Lina turned to Amelia, then followed the direction in which Amelia was pointing.

Gourry was sound asleep. Lina watched him for a moment, then shook her head and sighed. “Amelia, I’ve given up on keeping him awake in this sort of situation. It’s just not worth it. If he were awake, we’d spend more time trying to explain it to him. Just… let him sleep. Maybe he’ll absorb some of the story easier.”

Amelia blinked big blue eyes at Lina, then nodded.

Lina turned back to Zhiya. “Go on… I want to hear more.”

Zhiya nodded, turning back to the words on the wall and continuing. “It wasn’t enough that we all believed in this prophecy, but the Elders who didn’t believe in the prophecy threatened us that we were disrupting the natural flow of life, and that if we continued hoarding the secret of power from the others, it would give us an unfair advantage.

“And still, we turned away, unwilling to turn over the secret to such a dangerous and unsavory power. Eventually, it came to us that we could no longer stay within that Temple, and it was with heavy hearts that we all decided to move away from the lovely Temple, and to go up into the chilled northern territories and force ourselves to become used to the cold. Perhaps we thought that the cold would help chill the fire in our hearts that was caused by the knowledge of the power that we had discovered.

“At first, we were lethargic, cold beyond our ability to move and to think. Several of us died, the Elders among the first to die, for they were too old to adapt easily. But seasons passed, and we began to cope, unknowing that our skin was darkening to take in all the warmth from the sun that we could. Within a short period of time, we were no longer recognizable as the former members of the Dragon race we had left in the Temple. We were Black Dragons.”

Lina gasped, staring at the images carved into the walls. “Then… the Golden Dragons and the Black Dragons were once the same? And they knew this as they killed each other in the Wars? The Elder knew this as he stood there inside the Temple and tried to keep us from claiming the last weapon of Light in order to stop DarkStar?”

“It is as you say, Lina Inverse.”

A slight female stood in the center of the room, long black hair spilling down her back, over her shoulders, and pooling at her feet. “We of the Black Dragons knew that it was a fate that we would have to accept and act out in order to keep the safety of the world. And so we died to keep the secret, to keep the power safe from those who would misuse it and destroy our world. But even now, the secret is known to a select few people… those who have pursued the same certain tomes that we did so long ago. But now is the time to discover if you are truly worthy of the rest of our tale.”

“Prepare yourselves for the tests to begin. You will be tested individually and without aid from others. At the completion of the tests, you will learn what you need to know.”