Lina scowled at the chimera before her. “Zelgadis Greywords, you’d better open your eyes. This is no time to overextend your magic, so cut it out.”
        Crystalline blue eyes opened, unfathomable depths quietly burning within them. For a moment, Lina was startled, but then she nodded. “That’s better. Don’t do that again, okay?”
        He nodded silently, looking at the crystal, and Lina followed his gaze. As if in an answer to an unspoken thought, she nodded. “Yeah, we’d better get going and find him and Vrumugun before anything happens. You got any ideas?” At the shake of the chimera’s head, Lina sighed and turned to the others. “Any of you got a plan?”
        Eris pondered. “There used to be a chamber here where Rezo did all of his work. Vrumugun might go there in search of answers.” She looked around the room. “But I don’t know where this room is in the complex… so getting there could be harder…”
        Lina pointed back towards the hole in the wall that she’d made earlier. “We could go back that way and start from that room.”
        Eris nodded, moving past Sylphiel and Amelia. “I may recognize that room. It’s been a while, though.” As she walked past the rest of the group, she continued. “It’s been what… about five years, you said, Zelgadis?”
        “Mmm,” the chimera replied noncommittally, sheathing his blade and following.
        Lina looked over to Amelia and Gourry and rolled her eyes. “Is it me, or did he just turn into Mister Personality?”
        “Miss Lina! Be nice! Mister Zelgadis has had a very long day. He’s probably a lot more tired than he wants us to know. After all… he didn’t sleep any last night.” Amelia retorted. She grabbed Sylphiel’s hand. “Come on, Miss Sylphiel. Maybe we can help keep him on his feet without him knowing.”
        Lina watched Amelia and Sylphiel, and looked at Gourry. “I dunno. Something doesn’t feel right…” As the blonde swordsman moved past her, she shot a glance up to the Mazoku hovering in the air above. “Come on, fruitcake.”

        He was going to be very, very ill. Somehow he still retained a connection with the chimera body, and knew where they were going. He hadn’t been able to make it talk, just mumble noncommittally. But the sensation of being quite literally in two places at once was playing hell with his stomach.
        And the fact that he was currently trying to hide from the Dimos Dragon that he’d wandered into was only another complication. Unarmed, unwarded, and the human body didn’t seem to have the same touch of Rezo as his chimera body.
        As he fought the nausea and scrambled into another room, he almost – almost wished that he was the chimera. Almost.

        Lina followed the group quietly, scowling at the thin rope tied around her wrist. Behind and above her, the cheerful Mazoku bobbled along on the other end of the string, as if he were a balloon. Lina wanted to kill him. She’d had to turn back and get him going again so many times that she’d given up and tied one end of a ball of twine that she had found to his ankle, and the other end to her wrist. She felt like an idiot, and she couldn’t even take comfort in smacking him into the door archways, because he enjoyed the pain. Instead, she’d told him in no uncertain terms that he was to phase through archways, because she didn’t have time to wait while he got over the thrill of smacking into each and every one.
        As they walked along, Lina watched Zelgadis in concern. He was moving so stiffly, pushing away Amelia and Sylphiel’s offers of aid. She was starting to wonder if Rezo had cast a spell in his lab to incapacitate the chimera when the distinct roar of a dragon sounded ahead in the hallway.
        Leaving Xellos to fend for himself on the ceiling, Lina darted ahead to see that it was a Dimos Dragon, and it had something or someone pinned. Now, dragons were Lina’s specialty, and it had been a while since she’d gotten to play with a Dimos Dragon… “Hey, dragon!” She called out. “How’d you like to be the one to try and beat me?”
        The dragon ignored her, instead roaring at whatever it had pinned against the wall.
        “Teach you to ignore me…” Lina lost her temper almost immediately, and before she thought about it or before anyone could stop her, the Dragon Slave formed and left her hands, discharging on the Dimos Dragon and reducing it and almost everything around it to cinders. “Victory!”
        From the dust and debris emerged a singed figure with a very familiar and very annoyed voice. “Damnit, Lina, how may times do I have to tell you to think before you throw spells like that in a small area?!”
        Lina blinked. She knew that Zelgadis was behind her. So why was his voice coming from the half-singed human that she’d just rescued?