Heart of Darkness

Chapter 32

In the still silence of solitude, Lina Inverse Greywords closed her eyes. He took shape in her mind, standing tall before her, shrouded in a black ensemble that was trimmed in impossibly darker black. In that quick moment that she had seen him, Zelgadis had seemed a startling study in shades of black, even his hair gone darker than Xellos’, a deep violet-black… if there were such a color.

His eyes, however, had been crystalline, brilliant blue diamonds that touched on sapphire and yet held more fire and power than she could have imagined. The hardness of them had been terrifying and directly counter to everything that she had known of him. It was hard to get them out of her mind.

And yet, even with that darkness, even with the sheer Mazoku of his appearance and action… he’d been beyond breathtaking. Zelgadis had gone from handsome to heartbreakingly stunning.

She felt as if she couldn’t breathe. She opened her eyes and walked to a wall, purring her hand out to touch it first, as if to reassure herself that it was a wall before moving to lean her shoulder onto the wall and try to catch her breath. Her heart was tearing and her mind spun. What could she do? She wasn’t powerful enough to fight him. She’d been lucky in all her other battles with Mazoku… the thought of having to fight Zelgadis brought her heart to her teeth. She’d fought so hard for him, was it all gone? What could she do? What could she possibly do?

She’d told Jedah that she’d be fine. She’d lied, and they had both known it, but something had grabbed his attention and he’d vanished on the spot, Xellos’ name hanging in the air behind him. Lina had wasted no time after that, closing her mind, closing off her Astral presence as best she could, calling her magic to bid her and be still, then she’d turned and run through the caves, choosing paths that she hadn’t known existed, but seemed to open up just for her.

She’d run, and run, like she used to, in the days before she and Naga had bumped into each other. It had been a long time since she could just run flat-out, letting her feet carry her as her emotions worked themselves out through her motion. Every cavern she’d turned into had proven to have another beyond it, and even this one had a depth beyond that promised to have another place for her to hide within.

Hide. Was that what she was doing? Running away from her problems and hiding in the dark of… wait, it wasn’t that dark. She realized that she could see… and she didn’t have a torch or a lighting spell at hand. Lina wasn’t alone.

She spun to see who was with her, eyes falling on the white-haired woman that Xellos had called Kessary. Those onyx eyes blinked twice, and then the woman offered a smile that Lina could only call artificial. “You really ought to keep closer to your companions. There are all sorts of dangers lurking in these caves.” Her voice was honey-sweet, and every alarm within Lina’s head went off.

Magic swelled back with Lina’s next heartbeat, and silently the redheaded sorceress sent the talismans to life. “I wanted to be alone, and I’m not some scaredey-cat little girl that shrieks at things that come out of the shadows.” Yeah, running had helped, but there was nothing like a good fight with a know-it-all minor Mazoku like this one appeared to be. “So if you’ve got something to say to me, I suggest you say it and be done with it before I send you back to whatever forsaken hole you crawled out of.”

“You’d make a good Mazoku, you know,” Kessary retorted, still smiling at Lina. “What do you think? After all, you could be with Zelgadis then, and…”

That had been the wrong thing to say. Crimson eyes narrowed, and Lina’s talismans flared brilliantly. Almost before Kessary could react, Lina was halfway through her spell.

“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.” Lina wasn’t stepping back, but advancing on Kessary, the sheer aura of her fury making the lesser Mazoku back up in surprise.

And still Lina continued advancing. “Unleash the sword of dark, freezing nothingness; by our power, our combined might, let us walk as one along the path of destruction: LAGUNA BLADE!"

It sucked darkness into itself, crackling with furious energy. Kessary shifted, calling forth her own weapon, black eyes glittering at the chance for an all-out battle with Lina. She could still leave before things became truly problematic. “You can’t hold that for long, Lina. The Blade will drain you, and then what will you have left to fight me with?”

Lina’s answer was lost to Kessary on two accounts. The first was because Lina snarled her reply. The second, was because suddenly, Kessary’s power was gone. She had only seconds to spot the glitter of light blue eyes in the shadows some distance behind Lina, and then the Laguna Blade came down on her in its raging fury.

Kessary was gone. Lina drew herself up, the Blade vanishing from her hands, and she looked around to see if Kessary had simply vanished. But with Kessary had gone the light, and Lina found herself suddenly standing in the deepest darkness she’d encountered. She couldn’t even see her hand in front of her face. With a sigh, she cast a ball of light, sending it to drift slightly above her head. By the looks of it, her Blade had impacted something. Kessary? There wasn’t any way of knowing, so Lina squared her shoulders and turned to head back out of the cavern and try to find her way out so that she could regroup, hopefully with everyone else and try to decide what was to be done about Zelgadis.