The memory faded as Sylphiel hiccupped, and Lina shook her head slowly. By now, Sylphiel was too drunk to even notice that Lina wasn’t. “Look, Sylphiel… healers lose their patients sometimes. It happens… and… and I don’t think that he’d want you to do this to yourself…” Oh, what the Hell am I saying? I’m no good at this, and it’s Zelgadis I’m talking about! It’s not like he was some stranger that we were trying to help… She could feel the uncertainty hitting, that feeling of impending despair right before one bursts into tears.
        Sylphiel half-focused on Lina’s face, tears spilling from liquid blue eyes. “But Lina… you have… you have to unner…” She hiccupped. “Understand.” She took a breath and focused on getting the words out correctly. “He wasn’t there… he was… blank.” She hiccupped the last word pathetically.
        The words echoed in Lina’s mind, and quite suddenly, she saw it as clear as if it had been written in the air before her. For all she knew, it may well have been. All pretense of drunkenness aside, Lina exploded from her perch on the barstool, knocking it over with a clatter, and looked at Sylphiel with realization burning a new light in her eyes. “Shabranigdo’s balls, Sylphiel! That’s it! That’s precisely it!! By Cepheid’s blood, WE’VE BURIED THE COPY!!!!!”
        Sylphiel was too drunk to understand, and she only peered at Lina, uttering a less than intelligent “Huh?”
        Lina grabbed Sylphiel by the collar. “Don’t you see? If he wasn’t there, he was somewhere else! And somewhere else means he’s still alive!!!”
        All of the shaking and the drinking was making one ill Sylphiel. “I’m… not… sure…” She hiccupped dangerously, and Lina scowled.
        “Oh no, you don’t. I need you in one piece, Sylphiel.” A recovery spell was unceremoniously cast on Sylphiel, and the result was the standard acceleration of regeneration. Which brought the mother of all hangover headaches suddenly crashing into Sylphiel’s awareness.
        The sensation of going from drunk to hung over in less than a minute was more than Sylphiel could handle, and Lina almost didn’t get the cleric out the door in towards a bush in time.
        As Sylphiel pulled herself together, Lina paced back and forth. “Eris should still be in the library… though I don’t know anything about the Legacy that she was talking about… and I think I know where Amelia will be. Gourry’s easy to find… come on, Sylphiel… we don’t have the time for this!!”
        The still nauseated cleric was grabbed by the arm and dragged off towards the Royal Palace of Saillune.

        Eris was walking through the hallway with a notebook in her hand, calmly eating an apple as if nothing had happened and they hadn’t buried her brother just that morning.  She looked up to see Lina dragging Sylphiel into the hallway, and walked over as the two screeched to a halt.
        “Eris! He’s not dead!” Lina started.
        Eris swallowed her bite of apple and held up the notebook. “I know. It’s the Legacy. But we have to get back there soon, or we’ll run out of time.”
        Lina dropped Sylphiel, the cleric collapsing with a groan on the carpet. The sorceress wasted a moment in glaring at Sylphiel. “This is why I don’t get drunk. Something almost always happens when you’re drunk.” She looked up to Eris. “You take care of her, I have to get Amelia.” Taking off down the hall, she called over her shoulder. “Get ready to leave as fast as you can!”

        Lina wasn’t at all surprised to find Amelia sitting beside the fresh grave. It didn’t even surprise her to see the Princess crying. When she walked up, Amelia looked over to her and sniffled. “Come on, Amelia. We have to go. We buried the copy, not Zel.”
        Amelia blinked in confusion, and Lina, running out of patience with almost everyone, grabbed her arm and started dragging her into the Palace. Amelia, however, managed to find her feet and was soon running along with Lina.

        As Lina had said, finding Gourry was easy, and they were gathered in the foyer, ready to depart. Lina had a vague idea where to go, but a voice caught them all off-guard.
        “Well, well. Look what I found just lying around…”
        Xellos stood there with a smug grin on his face, a very human and very unconscious Zelgadis on the floor beside him.
        Eris wasted no time in running to him, calling the words of an ancient spell that sent shivers down Lina’s spine. Something about the spell…
        “Come now and claim your Legacy!” The next words Lina didn’t understand, but it had an incredible effect on both Zelgadis and Xellos.
        Zelgadis sat up, and Xellos took about six steps backwards, looking at Eris in shock. “That… that phrase… It’s not possible!”
        As Zelgadis brought his hand to his face, Eris looked over at Xellos and smiled faintly. “You just never saw the resemblance. Do you understand now? Rezo’s power? The dark legacy that binds us all together?”
        Lina was completely lost. “What legacy???”
        Eris’ voice was calm. “Rezo was the son of Juuou and Lei Magnus a very long time ago. That which gave him near immortality is our legacy, dark though it may be.”