Amy and Mitsukai explained
it to them all. The creature that had defeated Lina and Gourry in battle
was Dynast himself. Xellos had been caught unprepared, and wouldn’t truly
tell them what had happened. He didn’t even say it was a secret. Instead,
the Mazoku sat quietly and watched the Priestess of Cepheid and the Lost
Fragment.
Mitsukai had offered to
help Lina forget, but the sorceress had pulled away from the fragment of
Cepheid. To everyone’s dismay, she had left the room. Zelgadis had been
the only one to half-rise to follow, but Amy had rested her hand on his
arm and stayed him.
And so he had stayed and
listened to the rest of the story, how Lina had agreed to become Amy, how
the spell had been cast and she’d lived as the merchant’s daughter. Indeed,
Ian had known of the deal that was made, knew the girl was truly the powerful
Lina Inverse.
Zelgadis was a little irritated
that they hadn’t told him right off the bat. “So this whole thing was an
elaborate plot?” He scowled at the priestess sitting on the sofa across
the coffee table from him. “You set everything up and it worked for a year,
didn’t it? It worked until I showed up and knew who she was. And
then the memories came back faster than you could control them in the spell.
Lina broke it too soon, didn’t she?”
“Well, now that you mention
it… we had not expected you to arrive.” Amy replied quietly.
Zelgadis sat his coffee
cup down with a snarl and glared across the room. “I don’t care if you
are a fragment of Cepheid and you are a holy priestess. What gives you
the right to use people like your toys? You didn’t see the pain that she
was in. You didn’t wake up in the middle of the night and hear her crying.
You didn’t have to look her in the eyes.”
Amelia looked at Zelgadis,
blinking. He’s so angry with them…
Sylphiel followed Amelia’s
line of sight to Zelgadis, seeing the anger in his eyes and sighed to herself.
He is in love with Miss Lina…
Gourry was sound asleep.
It had been a long walk today…
Amy lowered her head. “While
we agree that you should have been told, the desired result was achieved.
All went well.”
“The ends justify the means,
in other words,” Zelgadis snarled, standing. He walked towards the door,
his overwhelming anger evident in every move. “If that is how the gods
operate, then I am glad that I take no permanent stands with either side.
If Cepheid doesn’t care who gets hurt along the way, what makes him any
better than Shabranigdo?”
Amelia half expected a bolt
of lightning to come down from the heavens and fry him.
But no lightning came.
Instead, the cursed youth
opened the door and stalked out, closing the door behind him.
He found Lina outside of
the house, sitting on the porch. For a moment, he wasn’t sure if Lina was
herself as she sat there looking out over the grassy field. Her eyes looked
so sad, and he paused before awkwardly sitting beside her and looking out
in the same direction that she was.
“I heard you in there…”
her voice was soft.
Anger faltered, replaced
itself with an uncertain embarrassment. “I’m sorry if I upset you.” Cerulean
eyes changed focus from the present day to a memory of her tears falling
on his stone skin. Focus, Zelgadis! You’ve lost your center. He came out
of the memory to hear her talking, and realized that she’d missed part
of what she’d said.
“And so, it wasn’t entirely
them. I had to give Gourry time to be healed. He’s part elf, you see… so
normal healing spells don’t work on him. Amy’s plan… had merit.”
His voice was gruff when
he managed to formulate a reply. “It hurt you.”
Lina shrugged. “I’ve been
hurt before, Zel. And I’ll be hurt again. It’s part of life, Zel. You can’t
live without the risk of being hurt.”
“So that fact makes everything
all right?” He asked. “Everything that you’ve been through, you shrug off?
Because you’ve been hurt before?”
She glanced at him with
a strange little smile. “You do care, don’t you, Zelgadis?”
The question was completely
unexpected, and caught the blue-skinned youth unprepared. As a scarlet
hue spread across his normally blue cheeks, he looked off at the night
sky. “You have Gourry…” He managed to reply.
Lina looked at him. “Not
really, Zel. You saw how Sylphiel ran to him earlier. How could I possibly
compete with that? That is,” she hastily amended, “if I even wanted to.”
He looked to her in surprise.
“Then you don’t…?”
She wrinkled her nose and
slipped off of the porch. “Nope. He’s just a bodyguard. And if I slip out
of here now… I don’t have to explain it all to him. Coming with me?”
He blinked. She’s asking
me to go with her? He looked over to see her standing there with her
hands on her hips. With a smile, he nodded and stepped off of the porch.
“First things first,” Lina
began. “We have to find me some new clothes. I can’t just run around in
this… and then… who knows where the wind will take us?”
Zelgadis shook his head.
He’d get looped up into something unusual, he was sure of it.
And he was actually looking
forward to it.