Heart of Darkness

Chapter 58

What happened next was beyond anything that either Jedah or Zelgadis could have ever anticipated. Naga, boisterous, bossy, over-posing Naga, stalked back into the room, marched across the proverbial line in the carpet and grabbed both Mazoku by the ears.

Left hand snagged Jedah, right hand snagged Zelgadis, and Naga yanked them both so hard that they had no chance to do anything but to bend to her, startled. “Listen up, you two,” she hissed, fangs showing and eyes brilliant with anger. “I don’t care who or what you are: Hellmaster, Avatar, two spoiled brats fighting over a toy, or just two Mazoku who have it out for each other, you take it somewhere else than my city!”

It was absolutely and completely absurd.

And for about thirty seconds, it worked.

Zelgadis shifted first, phasing out of Naga’s grasp, moving backwards so fast that she lost sight of him and reflexively released Jedah in her attempt to find Zelgadis again. That gave Jedah the chance to move, to get out of her reach and move opposite Zelgadis once more. He chose to ignore the angry objection of the older princess of Saillune, instead looking to Zelgadis with a mocking smile.

“Perhaps we should do as the lady says, Zelgadis. If you want to fight me, you’ll have to call me out, have to force me to draw my full power to command. Would you dare, do that, knowing that it would destroy Saillune? Knowing that it would shatter the lives of everyone here? Naga, Gourry, Amelia, Sylphiel…” he couldn’t name Lina. As far as he knew, she was dead; he’d seen her chest fall still with his own eyes. No mortal could live without breath in their lungs.

“You taunt me as if I cared, Jedah Metallium. I am Mazoku: I have no heart, nothing with which I could to try to care. They called me the heartless mystical swordsman, did you know that? In all of those years that you watched me, it didn’t ever occur that they might be right, did it?” Zelgadis retorted, his voice as flat as it had been once upon a memory, magic deepening, darkening like a pool of water when the murky bottom was stirred up by a hand reaching down into the black depths. He knew precisely what to do now; he could sense the magic running through his blood, as if it were more than simply a part of him. He didn’t need to rely on the bound magic like Shamanism any longer. He was magic. All he had to do was think it and it would be done.

Jedah suddenly felt very old. “Zelgadis, will you listen to reason for once?” He lifted his hand to his forehead, sighing. “Mazoku aren’t what you think they are. We care, we love… we have wants and needs, longings and desires.” He looked at Zelgadis and then he moved. It took only moments, but before Naga could blink, Jedah had placed both hands on Zelgadis’ cheeks. He could feel the other stiffen under his grasp, but he had to do this, had to take this one momentary chance. Hear me, Zelgadis. He bent his head, closing his eyes, resting his forehead on Zelgadis’.

It was as if a different darkness opened from within/underneath/behind him. Zelgadis was locked in place, he couldn’t move, couldn’t pull away from Jedah. Thoughts, feelings, images flowed into him, taking him away from his physical, sweeping over him and turning him over and over, tumbling him into a darkness that felt so oddly… brilliant.

Hear me, Zelgadis. Jedah’s thought lanced through that brilliant darkness, leaving behind itself a path that glittered with the same ice blue as Jedah’s eyes. And in that brilliant path, Zelgadis could see it all. He saw Jedah as a youth, laughing and playing just as if he had been a normal child. He saw the boy learning who and what he was, learning the path he was to take. He saw the young man out in the early days of the world, entranced by another with such promise and potential. He saw the smiles, the love, saw Jedah presenting the other to his mother for her approval; saw the kiss that sealed the Mazoku Pact. He saw the creation of the Mazoku that Xellos would become; saw the fire and the passion shared by the two of them. Fire. Passion. Love. It started to glimmer, the fragment of understanding, and the barest glimpse of Truth.

Naga froze, her stomach flipping. For a moment, she’d thought that Jedah was going to kiss Zelgadis, and she really didn’t think that she could handle that. Not that she had anything against guys kissing guys, mind… hey, if they liked it, no problem. It was just that on top of that whole ‘little brother’ image that Jedah had been projecting, it just creeped her out.

She stood and watched as they stood like two statues locked in a bizarre embrace. Jedah’s hands on Zelgadis’ cheeks, Zelgadis’ hands up and together as if to throw a spell into Jedah’s heart at close range. If Zelgadis did cast something… would Jedah survive it at that close?

It was a moot worry, though she didn’t quite know it yet.

The door that Naga had locked was suddenly blown off of its hinges, a cloud of dust and smoke swirling darkly for a moment before it began to dissipate, revealing a shadowy figure in the heart of the explosion. It was a force of power that Naga had given up for gone, a force that broke the concentration of both Mazoku in the room and brought silence crashing down along with the last bits of the door.

Lina Inverse Greywords lifted her head to look across the room. She didn’t look at Naga. She didn’t look at Jedah. She looked, instead, to Zelgadis, to those dark sapphire blue eyes, and she squared her shoulders. She was pale, drawn, she looked as if she might collapse at any moment, but she was living, breathing, and very, very pissed off.