The carriage was deathly silent after Amelia explained her train of thought. She knew that Zelgadis and her daughter understood. But while she knew how Gourry had gotten there, she wasn’t sure that he understood what she had told them.
        “So you think that it isn’t Lina in there at all?” Gourry queried.
        Amelia nodded. “Right. I’m afraid that it may be the Demon King. He may have killed her before he started to control her. Which would mean that I resurrected the Demon King and not Lina before I locked the body in the Dynast Breath spell.”
        The body. She had to force herself to stop referring to the physical representation as Lina. It might not be the spirited sorceress at all.
        Amelia sighed. “And if that’s what I’ve done… I have to fix it. I can’t just leave the Dynast Breath spell intact. I either have to dispel it… or destroy it.”
        Gourry thought this over. “So one way you just let the spell fade and Lina walks away, and the other…?”
        “The other way she allows the spell to complete… which shatters the crystal and everything within it,” Zelgadis finished.
        There was silence again as they pulled into Vezendy.

        The swapout was quick, and they were on their way to the city of Gyria.

        Amelia was silent, eyes closed as she contemplated what she had done. She’d made possibly the biggest mistake of her life. But she’d felt Lina push back the Demon King when he’d used her hands to stab Gourry. Didn’t that mean something? Anything at all?
        She opened her eyes to scan the occupants of the carriage. They were all asleep, and she decided that she too should sleep. There was much to do when they got there.

        A water droplet fell.

        Amelia opened her eyes the instant they arrived in Gyria. There was a driving need to be in that cave, and she felt its incessant tug as much as she felt the hand of her daughter in hers.
        The Cleric was pleased to meet young Lina, and the girl managed to enchant everyone she smiled at. Sweet, good mannered, extremely polite… she was everything that Amelia wanted her to be… and Amelia hadn’t said a thing to her.
        But all too soon, preparations were complete. It was time to go to the cave.

        She was coming. Lina Inverse could feel it. There was time enough. And the strange aura was coming as well. But that didn’t concern her as much as the presence of the Demon King. She knew that it would be a mad dash to reclaim the physical form within that crystal… and she had to win. She’d have to.

        Amelia stood just outside the cave entrance, feeling the raw conflicting energies. The wards were broken, the stones drained cold of all magic. As she stood there looking at the dead ward-stone in her hand, she felt her daughter tug at her arm. Zelgadis and Gourry had gone in ahead, and there wasn’t any time to dally. With a faint smile to her daughter, Amelia took her staff from her belt and the two walked into the cave.

        “Amelia, there’s a puddle under here,” Zelgadis’ voice held concern.
        Amelia nodded, holding up the dead stone. “The Grey Buster spell has been broken. And the ward-stones too.”
        Gourry was standing silently by the slender form encased in ice, and Amelia walked up to him, looking down at the figure frozen in time and ice.
        Young Lina put her hands on the ice and looked at the woman that she was named for. “She seems so… empty. If you resurrected her, Mother, wouldn’t there be a life-aura?”
        Amelia blinked. She hadn’t thought to check for that. She hadn’t done the most basic of magic senses. She’d been too upset ten years ago, and it hadn’t occurred in the years that came after. But her daughter was right. There was no life-aura, no magical indication that a living soul was in any way attached to the body before them.
        But even as Amelia reached out her hand to the crystalline structure, young Lina shrieked and pointed upwards to the wall.
        Reflexively, all the adults looked up.
        Hanging in the air, just above their heads, was a faint aura.
        Amelia said it first. “Lina!”

        Gourry frowned in confusion. The others were looking at this blank spot in the ice wall, and Amelia had called out Lina’s name. But he didn’t see anything there at all. In fact, what he felt was something behind him. And it was big, bad, and really ugly.
        Drawing his sword, he turned to see a black shape hovering, and knew that it was what was left of the Demon King. “Zelgadis! Behind you!”
        The chimera spun, blade automatically drawn.
        Amelia didn’t look. The aura that felt so very much like Lina came closer, touching both herself and her daughter. Amelia suddenly knew what had to be done, as did young Lina.
        Young Lina turned, looking to the Demon King of the North’s remaining fragment, the fragment that had been in control of Lina and therefore not destroyed by Amelia, as Zelgadis and Gourry engaged it in a decidedly off-balance battle. Physical swords had no effect, and only Zelgadis could enchant his sword. She closed her eyes, focusing her will. She knew the words, but knew the actions of the heart could often speak louder.

        Suddenly, Lina Inverse understood with that simple touch. The child. That girl was the source of the unknown aura from before. The girl standing right there beside Amelia. She was a powerful and wild force that was concentrating on her mother. What on earth was she doing? How had the child come to be, and what would happen after this sequence of events?
        Lina Inverse couldn’t know.
        But the child beside Amelia knew what had to be done.

        Amelia opened her hand, and the crystal prison of ice began to crack.

        Lina Wil Gracia Saillune opened her eyes.

        The aura that was Lina Inverse moved.

        Gourry shouted a warning.

        Zelgadis fired off a Ra-Tilt.

        Suddenly, the cave lit with a brilliant light.

        Time froze.
 

        Amelia opened her eyes with a jolt, standing and looking around the room in a panic.
        She was the only one standing, the others lay collapsed on the floor of the cave. The ice crystal was gone, and so was the still form of Lina Inverse.
        As Amelia turned to walk to her daughter, she saw movement out of the corner of her eye.
        Two distinct figures stood there on the Astral Plane, locked in battle. Lina Inverse and the Demon King of the North. As Amelia watched, Lina took the brunt of an attack, flying backwards. Without thinking of the consequences, Amelia darted into the Astral between them, hands drawn together. If Lina lost, everyone would die, and Amelia had to protect her daughter.
        “Lord of the Darkness and Four Worlds, I beseech thy fragments; by all of the power thou possesseth, grant the heavens' wrath to my hand!” Amelia began.
        “Unleash the sword of dark, freezing nothingness; by our power, our combined might, let us walk as one along the path of destruction!” Lina continued, together with Amelia.
        Both Lina and Amelia cast off the Laguna Blade without blinking. The blades shaped, formed, and cut through the fragment of the Demon King.
        Darkness fell.

        She was floating.
        There was a voice in the distance, a voice that she knew calling out to her. She knew that voice, didn’t she?
        “Mother!”
        Her daughter. Lina. She was calling her.
        “Mother, open your eyes!”
        She was so tired.
        Four figures huddled around the fallen figure in black, and the girl called out again. “Mother! Please!” Her voice took on an edge of fear, sharpening the child’s focus. With powers she didn’t know she had, she began to reach out for her mother.
        So very tired…
        “Amelia!” Zelgadis tried, casting a healing spell. He wasn’t the one to use resurrection, and he knew better than to try a recovery spell.
        She’d failed…
        Gourry sat dumbfounded, looking at Amelia’s closed eyes and drawn face. One minute she’d been standing there, then in the next, she’d fallen over and the thing that he and Zelgadis had been battling was gone. And then the girl, Amelia’s daughter, had screamed.
        Rest now…
        “Amelia, you have a hell of a lot of explaining to do, so you’d better open your eyes and start talking.”
        …