Diary of a Dragon (Slayers - Xellos/Filia)

[Skiyomi]

Chapter 21. Fitting In.

Tenor Inn. 5:32 pm.

Oh, thank goodness. Mister Zelgadis and Miss Amelia apparently met up with Miss Lina and Mister Gourry after they arranged for passage on a ship back to the mainland. So not only are we finally getting out of Baritone, but now I don’t have to worry about Miss Lina and Mister Gourry eating up the entire kingdom while they were out.

The one odd thing is that I can’t get any of them to tell me what port city we’ll be sailing to. It shouldn’t be that complicated of a question, but, when I asked, Mister Zelgadis just said: “You don’t want to know.”

Hmmmmm.

5:49 pm.

Ocea City?! But that’s back where we started!

Monday, May 7th.

The Cast Away. Bunk. 9:02 pm.

Alright. I am trying to focus on the good things. Like the fact that we were able to get passage back to the mainland at all—which was really all that we were looking for in the first place; like the fact that we were able to secure a relatively cheap fare because, what with all the nonsense of things exploding and randomly appearing bridges, the fishing around Alto and Baritone has been so bad that the fishermen in the area are seeking out friendlier harbors and trying to pick up a little extra cash in the process by ferrying the stranded; like the fact that this is a relatively large fishing boat with enough bunks so that all of us and the relatively small crew can sleep comfortably if we take shifts; like the fact that the captain is already under the impression that Mister Gourry is somehow a good luck charm; like the fact that Xellos is nowhere in sight.

…I am trying not to focus on the fact that going all the way back to Ocea City, the port in the outer world where I first got Miss Lina and the others to agree to go with me to the Temple of the Fire Dragon King, makes it feel like we’ve just moved in a giant circle. I mean… what have we accomplished since we were last there? I suppose we know a bit more about what we’re up against: about the Dark Star weapons and about Valgaav and Almayce. But in terms of what we’ve actually done… we can’t brag about too much.

And it’s not like we can say we’re hot on the trail of some amazing new lead either. I have no idea what we’re going to do once we get back on dry land.

…Well, I guess we’ll figure that out when we get to Ocea City. It’s like we drew the “back to start” card on a board game…

Tuesday, May 8th.

Deck. 3:32 pm.

When Lina Inverse comes up to you and says: “Hey, I’ve got a question for you, but I wanted to wait until we were in international waters to ask it,” you know for sure an interesting conversation is going to follow.

I responded with an extremely wary: “What is it?”

She affected a very casual air that only convinced me she was about to drop a verbal bomb. “So, I’ve been thinking about fusion magic…” she began.

“Absolutely not!” I screeched, not even willing to let her finish that sentence. “I don’t care what you say! I’ll never fuse my magic with that heap of garbage!”

I was ready for her to make all sorts of counterarguments, to remind me what an ace in the hole it would be for us in the fight against Valgaav if we had fusion magic in our arsenal; to tell me that the fate of the world was at stake at that this was bigger than me or Xellos; to make a claim that fusing magic in this way could mean giant step forward in the understanding of magical theory; to try to convince me that Xellos wasn’t all bad. I was ready to flawlessly refute every one of those arguments (by yelling “No!” at the very tippity-top of my lungs), but she didn’t give me the chance to.

“Nah, I wasn’t going to ask that,” Miss Lina said, lounging against the railing and looking over the edge of the boat into the sky-reflecting water. “I mean, it would really help us and all,” she admitted, “But Amelia already told me about that whole ‘not if he was the last monster on the planet’ diatribe you went on, so I’m not even gonna bother.”

I barely stopped myself from launching into a counterargument I no longer had to give. It just caught me off-guard! I thought I’d have to endure “Why won’t you and Xellos just fuse magic already?” at every Dark Star weapon-related turn.

“…Then what were you going to ask about fusion magic?” I asked, suspicion heightening.

Miss Lina shrugged. “I thought maybe you and me could try fusing magic.”

I took a step back. That wasn’t a proposal I’d ever thought to expect and I didn’t have the already established and organized opposition to it that I’d had for Xellos so I couldn’t even think of what to say at first.

“I mean, we might not even be able to do it,” Miss Lina acknowledged. “It’d be a different story if Zel and Amelia hadn’t broken the magical vessels,” she went on in a tone that suggested she still held a grudge, “but on our own… well…” She shook her head. “If it’s anything like combination Shamanist magic, I bet it’s really tricky to get just right. Xellos probably would have more of a clue about how to get it to work, but he’s ruled himself out. I figure it’s at least worth a try, though. If we pull it off we’ll have a really strong hand against Valgaav’s gang, and if we can’t then we’re no worse off than we started.”

“I…” I began, in complete, but at that point, inarticulate opposition. “No,” I finally said, feeling at least slightly apologetic for having to shoot this idea out of the sky. “It doesn’t matter that it’s not Xellos. I can’t let my people’s holy magic be fused with black magic. It’s just… no,” I said, squirming slightly. “It’s just not at all alright.”

Plus it would be… just weird. I mean, fusing magic with Xellos would be horrible, but with Miss Lina it would just be too strange. Humans are way too casual about how they use their magic, I tell you!

She let out a little exasperated breath. It wasn’t like she was surprised or anything, just a little disappointed. “You’re no fun,” she said.

It wasn’t even like there was extra spite to the line or anything. It was more resigned than anything. But for some reason it struck a nerve—probably it just reminded me of that whole “Why don’t you just go back to your temple!” thing from before. I don’t want it to always be me vs. them, but it seems to go that way far too often.

“That’s all I seem to be hearing lately,” I responded, not exactly in the even, cool tone I’d meant it to come out in.

Her brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?” she asked.

“It’s just… sometimes I get the feeling you all think I’m holding you back,” I confessed in a mumble. “Like you don’t think I belong in the group.”

“Where’d you get a dumb idea like that?” Miss Lina asked, eyebrows raised. “Just because I get mad at you sometimes?” She swept her bangs confidently out of her eyes. “Can you think of a single member of our group that I don’t yell at? That’s how you can tell you really are part of the group!”

Admittedly she blows up at Mister Gourry significantly more than she does at me and those two are practically joined at the hip. She lashes out at Mister Zelgadis and Miss Amelia a fair amount too, and of course she yells at Xellos which is nice because it gives me a chance to relax my vocal chords a bit.

…Though, honestly, she yells at people who are definitely not part of the group too, but I get the point that just because she snaps at me I shouldn’t take that as a sign that she doesn’t want me around.

“I guess so,” I said quietly.

“Hey, c’mon,” Miss Lina said, perhaps realizing that I wasn’t thoroughly convinced, “we all know from painful experience that you’re good in a fight and on hand to help with healing after the fight is over. You helped out a bunch protecting those bratty Alto and Baritone kids and the magical vessels back there without anyone having to tell you what to do. You know how suspicious Zel can get and he’ll raise a stink over anyone who joins our group if he doesn’t think they’re pulling their weight, but he’s not complaining about you, ‘cause he knows what I know: you’ve got our backs when it counts,” she finished with a wink.

“And besides that,” she said, lowering her voice to an excited whisper, “don’t tell Gourry, but I’ve been thinking that if me and him ever wind up against each other in a tag-team eating battle that he’d have no chance against the two of us. I saw you down that stew back in Explaina—you could eat with the best of them if you wanted. Who’s Gourry gonna team up with to go against us? Amelia? Zel? They both make the rookie mistake of stopping to chew their food! There’s no way the two of us could lose!”

“Umm… I suppose so,” I said, not as enthused about this “undiscovered competitive eating champion” idea as she was.

Still, it’s really really good to know that they don’t see me as a hanger-on. It’s hard when traveling to cement any sense of “home” and I’m glad that they seem okay with me being part of their nomadic family. I just didn’t want to find out that all this time I’ve been an unavoidable nuisance that they’re all just gritting their teeth and accepting (like Xellos).

…But now that I think of it… there is something a little sad about that. Because I think that the more I fit in with Miss Lina’s group, the less I fit in back at the temple.

Thursday, May 10th.

Deck. 9:00 am.

Thankfully we should be making landfall in Ocea City soon, though we won’t be staying there for too long. At first Miss Lina wanted us to stop for a meal there and stay until we figure out what to do next. I think a lot of this was fueled by the fact that she thought she could squeeze a few more free meals out of the townsfolk. I reminded her that, yes, while the people of Ocea were originally very grateful to her for driving off Gravos, Jillas and their gang, their most recent memory of our group had more to do with Mister Zelgadis blowing up their temples and beating up the city guard. So… not the best place for us to spend much time in.

Luckily she saw my point and even more luckily we won’t have to travel too far to find another city that probably hasn’t heard of the property damage that follows my group around like a yipping dog. There are a lot of cities along the coastline and I was able to find a resort town not too far from Ocea City. So we can stop there, fill our bellies and discuss where we should be heading next (hopefully not over the desert again).

Coral City Resort. Beach. 2:22 pm.

Flesh! FLESH! Wall upon wall of bare flesh as far as the eye can see!

Have we meandered down the wrong street and into a hollow of sin and debauchery? Have we fallen in with a colony of nudists? Has this area been set upon by a swarm of giant, ravenous, textile-devouring moths?

No! We are on a perfectly ordinary public beach and there is not a single mutant moth in sight! Children are playing and building sandcastles! Everyone is acting like it’s perfectly normal to be running around in what looks like their underwear!

Of course, it’s not actually they’re underwear. I’ve been informed by Miss Lina that these are the types of things humans wear to swim. And I don’t know how they keep from dying of embarrassment doing so! I might die from embarrassment and I’m wearing my normal clothes!

Mister Zelgadis is the only other hold-out besides me. Everyone else is frolicking, all scantily-clad, on the beach and we’re left to sit at a table under the shade of an umbrella and look sullen. At least… he’s looking sullen. I hope I don’t look that sullen… and I certainly hope I’m not blushing that hard.

Mister Gourry commented that we wouldn’t go swimming with the rest of them because we’re afraid we’d sink. Ha!

We shouldn’t even be out here, lazing about in the sun. I don’t care if this is a tropical resort! Our plan for coming here was to feed ourselves and find a lead on the location of the Dark Star weapons. We haven’t gotten any closer to that by burying Mister Gourry in the sand (someone should really dig him out soon).

But really, that’s just… I can’t even focus on that in the face of this swimsuit thing. I mean, I’m trying. Obviously this is completely normal for humans. But… they wouldn’t just walk around in their underwear in public, would they? This is practically the same thing! And yet it’s okay because we’re on a beach? I can’t wrap my head around this.

It’s so embarrassing and nobody (aside from maybe slightly Mister Zelgadis, but he’s just being antisocial) can appreciate this. I’m trying not to gawk, really I am! I don’t want to see people like this! But the eye is drawn naturally to such things!

Sun, Sand and Sky: Outdoors Shop. 3:54 pm.

This errand is doomed from the start.

Miss Lina found out I didn’t have a swimsuit and told me I should go buy one. “What if you need one?” she asked. “Why would I need one?” I returned. “What if the Dark Star weapon is in an undersea cave and we have to swim there?”

I am not persuaded by that scenario, but coming here and browsing swimsuits seemed like a better option than staying on the beach with nothing better to do than try not to stare at people. I didn’t even have Mister Zelgadis for company after he found a seaside bar.

So here I am and… I don’t know. Even for the sake of fitting in amongst humans, I don’t think I could possibly wear any of these things. They’re just so… tight… and ungenerous in the amount of fabric used…

4:11 pm.

The only thing more outrageous (and they are outrageous) than the girls’ swimsuits is some of the ones for men. I am very, very, very glad that Xellos didn’t join us for this little beach excursion because I don’t even want to begin to imagine Xel

4:13 pm.

Why do I do these horrible things to my mind?

4:17 pm.

Oh, speak of the devil and he’ll appear.

Coral City Resort. Hotel. 7:41 pm.

From the beach to the mountains. That’s where we’re going next, at least according to Xellos who was evidently talking to the shop owner while I was trying on a swimsuit. Yes, I bought a swimsuit! I’m 97% sure I’ll never wear it in public and it was mostly to appease Miss Lina and her ridiculous underwater cave scenario, but I do own one now. It is a white, slightly ruffly, one-piece that I judged to be comparatively modest. The only way I could’ve gotten something more conservative was if I picked up a scuba suit instead, but Xellos just laughed at me when I floated the possibility.

So yes, we’re apparently going to some place called Mt. Coronay. The outdoors shop owner was saying that it’s under new management after being abandoned for quite some time. The person who bought the place has apparently been really pushing it with the local hiking supply shops. According to him, at least, (and I’m sure he has reason to advertise) there’s some sort of “mysterious power” at the top of the mountain. Considering we have nothing else to go on, I suppose it’s not too terrible a place to check out especially since it’s pretty close by. I’m just surprised that Xellos was actually proactive enough to arrange a lead for us. It’s more than a little bit suspicious, if you ask me.

Then again, I suppose I could just read it as him wanting us to be more efficient little tools to use in his quest to deal with Valgaav. That would explain why he showed up in the middle of the ladies swimwear section asking why I was shopping instead of looking for the Dark Star weapon.

Or he’s a jerk.

…Or he’s in to some really weird things that I don’t want to know about.

…Or all of the above, really.

I responded by informing him that none of this was my idea in the first place and that I wouldn’t be caught dead or alive wearing the appalling scraps of polyester on display in that aisle.

“Why?” he asked, taking an alarmingly small two-piece speckled with canary-colored spots off of the rack. It’s honestly worth a shudder or two that he touched the thing. “From what I discovered in our last talk about modesty, I assume you’d be fine wearing this as long as you purchased a set of earmuffs to go along with it.”

He purposefully tries to misunderstand everything I say.

“I said it was fine to show my hair, not my,” I stopped, struggling for what to say, “everything else!”

“I don’t see why not,” Xellos said, placing the skimpy thing back on the rack. “After all, you’re naked all the time.”

I nearly brought the entire contents of that clothing rack to the ground in one horrified erratic movement. “I. Am. Not!” I got out in several heaving gasps.

“Sure you are,” he said, undeterred by the exasperation he’d caused (probably enjoying it too). “Flying over towns, breathing lasers at people… all while not wearing a stitch of clothing. Well,” he amended, opening one eye and waving a my-but-you’ve-been-a-naughty-girl finger at me, “almost nothing. There is the previously discussed bow and hat, but, with nothing else there, one could make the argument that those enhance the erotic effect.” He gave me a very unkind smile and added: “If there were any erotic effect to enhance, that is.”

“That’s when I’m in my dragon form!” I screeched back, not just angry and disgusted by his comments, but genuinely unable to believe he’d try such an astoundingly stupid argument just to make me look bad.

“I don’t see what difference that makes,” he commented loftily.

“It makes all the difference!” I declared. “Clothes are a humanoid thing! Dragons in their full forms are supposed to go uncovered.”

Try to imagine a dragon wearing clothes. Is that not the dumbest thing you’ve ever thought of?!

“If you think certain parts are too unseemly or private for the general public to view, I’d assume those social mores wouldn’t change just because you get bigger and scalier,” he maintained.

“Then you assume a lot of really stupid things,” I shot back.

He twitched slightly, but his smile stayed on.

“The fact of the matter is that you have no idea why it’s okay not to cover yourself as a dragon, but a source of unremitting shame if you were to do the same thing in human form,” Xellos decided nastily. “All you know is that you’ve been told that’s the way it is by people who had authority over you and, like a good golden dragon, you don’t question the orders you’re given, you just follow them.”

I was trying to think of a really strong comeback (though “you’re stupid” seemed to work well enough, so perhaps simple is best after all), but suddenly his eyebrows knocked together and he frowned as though I’d already done it! I think he may have told himself off.

“I don’t know why you think you have any right to lecture me about modesty or about etiquette!” I tried, bringing him back to reality.

“You’ll notice I don’t fly around naked,” he replied scathingly as though this was all the credibility he needed.

A second later he winced and I got the feeling some imaginary version of myself in his mind got a verbal punch in. I wasn’t about to be outdone by Xellos’s imagination so I came back with an (admittedly obvious): “Well, thank goodness for that!”

I turned with flourish back to the bathing suits I’d been browsing through and he “hmmph!”ed and turned aside to shun me in favor of the shop owner. He only intruded on me to laugh over the diving suit thing and to try to see what bathing suit I bought (I wouldn’t let him).

He’s insufferable when traveling; he’s insufferable on shopping trips; I don’t want to imagine dealing with him out on the beach (though unfortunately I already have); and tomorrow I’m going to have to climb a mountain with him. Why can’t he just go away until Valgaav shows up? We’d all appreciate that!

 

[Skiyomi]

Chapter 22. Incompatible.

Friday, May 11th.

Mt. Coronay. Temple of Marriage. Courtyard. 9:05 am.

Me and Xellos?! There must be some kind of colossal mistake here! This is not some minor error that can be sloughed off. This is the kind of thing that disgraces people, shatters sanity and destroys lives. I WANT IT CORRECTED IMMEDIATELY.

But there is no one here to correct it. Just that creepy golden statue with the elongated mouth that the orbs slid out of. I have half a mind to take it apart and see how it works. To prove it’s faulty and that its pronouncement is null!

This is a temple, though. That’s probably sacrilegious.

Still…

I wouldn’t even have to consider dismantling a sacred artifact if only the others had bothered to stay and help me work this out. We could’ve gotten the guide to explain how the device worked and take everything back if we’d just kept on him and managed to prove him wrong! But nooooo! Suddenly they’re all too gung-ho to find the Dark Star weapon to bother questioning the utterly questionable! Where was this can-do spirit yesterday when they were lazing on the beach? And to have Miss Lina lecturing me about following the prophecy… I’ve had to be on them about this every waking minute since we got together; I know how important the prophecy is. But fixing the allegation that I’m somehow destined to marry that arrogant, rude (not to mention dragon-murdering!) demon… well, I’m sorry, but that’s just way more important than the prophecy right now!

But nobody understands that! Not even Xellos who is just as enchanted with this little pronouncement as I am (which is to say: not enchanted at all). They all just left me like this with no recourse to correct this horrendous wrong!

I… I’m crying again. Once you start it’s just too easy to keep doing it again. My hands haven’t stopped shaking either. I had hoped a cup of tea would calm me down, but I guess being doomed to matrimony with a monster is just too substantial a terror for a mere cup of tea to sooth.

9:28 pm.

You’re probably wondering: how, Filia? How?! Under what circumstances could you, while minding your own business and not doing anything to offend anyone, have received the awful and needlessly cruel prediction that you and Xellos of all people are supposedly destined to wed? Well, I’ll tell you, and I’m sure this won’t surprise you one little bit: it was all Xellos’s fault.

After all, he was the one that lined us up to go to this stupid temple and check out whatever mysterious power (which cannot possibly be worth all the emotional agony I’ve already gone through) it’s supposed to have. If he hadn’t reacted so incredibly negatively to everything that happened, I’d be tempted to believe he set things up with malice and forethought just to torment me.

But no, he had us all out mountain climbing following some local guide to a temple without apparently having any knowledge of the terrible fate that awaited us. It would be gratifying to show that he doesn’t know everything after all if the result wasn’t so unbearable.

The mountain I’m on right now, we didn’t climb it. We climbed the smaller neighboring mountain of Mt. Bradal. All the while the guide was jabbering on about how Mt. Coronay is supposedly a great natural wonder. Well, if it’s the site of a shrine that endorses and encourages dragon-demon marriages, then I’d be more inclined to say that it’s an UN-natural wonder!

We crossed to Mt. Coronay (which Miss Lina kept getting upset about whenever Miss Amelia and I tried to talk about for some reason) via rope bridge, and when I say rope bring I mean a bridge that was 100% rope. Both hand rails? Rope. Foot path? Rope. Admittedly the one we had to walk across was a thicker cord, but nevertheless it was extremely treacherous crossing! Mister Gourry fell off and nearly pulled me down with us to both our deaths!

And you might be thinking I could’ve just transformed and flown us across, but no! We wouldn’t have even bothered with that bridge at all if we could’ve used magic. Apparently there’s some sort of sealing spell done on this place so magic doesn’t work. That seems mighty inconvenient to me for a temple. What, do they have to climb down the mountain any time they want to perform magical rites? It doesn’t make sense.

Oh, but, in the ultimate act of unfairness, apparently the sealing spell doesn’t work on demonic powers. So, while we were shuffling across the barely-qualifies-as-a-bridge and hanging on for dear life, Mister The-Rules-Don’t-Apply-To-Me just teleported to the other side like it was no big deal.

I hate him. I hate him and I will never ever marry him—no matter what some stupid yellow ball says!

Anyway, we all, one way or another, eventually got here all in one piece. This isn’t the temple proper, just sort of a patio area to prepare people for the rest of the journey to the temple higher up atop the mountain. The man at that outdoors shop said this place had been abandoned for quite some time and I believe it. The columns that surround the platform are all dirty and chipped and the stone floor is buckled and broken in many places—particularly on the stairs leading up to it. All over there’s piles of rocky rubble.

But, (unfortunately) relatively unscathed by the ravages of time, there stands a four-sided mahogany monument, decorated with gold and a crowned face whose lips stretch out toward a circular slot in the middle of a device with a spinning crank.

The guide told us that we all had to spin the crank because, according to him, in order to enter the temple we all had to be in boy-girl couplings and the device would divide us into pairs.

Now, you CANNOT hold anything I’m about to say against me because I did not know at that point the full extent of what the guide meant. I didn’t think he meant like… coupling couplings! I thought he meant just… you know, regular, platonic pairs.

…And so I thought at that moment that I was going to end up with Xellos.

Just… you know, understand for a minute! It made logical sense! And it wasn’t like “Oh boy! I guess I’ll end up with Xellos!” it was more of a numb “Oh no… I’m going to get stuck with Xellos, aren’t I?” And he thought so too, I’m sure! He was giving me this semi-expectant look after what the guide said.

It was just because that seemed like the way it was going to shake out. When we’ve split up, Mister Gourry and Miss Lina are always together and Miss Amelia and Mister Zelgadis make up the other team. Last time we split up, what with the Alto and Baritone thing, I wound up tagging along with Miss Lina and Mister Gourry and Xellos ended up with the other two. But since we’d be separate into boy-girl duos… well, just by process of elimination, it stood to reason we’d end up getting paired together.

Of course, after the guide elaborated that Mt. Coronay is, in fact, the shrine to the god of marriage and that we’d be divided into “happy, loving” couples by matching colored balls that the device rolled out, I immediately readjusted my mindset and knew that it stood to absolutely no reason that we’d get paired together. As of then I fully expected to get paired up with…

Umm… Alright, I don’t really know who I expected to get paired up with. Neither Mister Gourry nor Mister Zelgadis seem particularly sensible options. But I just know it shouldn’t have been Xellos!

Which brings up the question of what exactly would happen if the person you’re destined to end up with isn’t among your group. Does it just give you a color that matches no one? Or does it just pair you up with whoever’s left?

If it’s the latter… Oh, that’s such an appalling thing to do! Reputations could be ruined by such shortcuts of clairvoyance!

Without any real choice in the matter if we wanted to move forward, we all lined up to turn the crank and pick up the little glass balls that rolled out of the mouth of the relief statue as a result. When we were done, we circled around to see who everyone had gotten. A yellow ball in my hand, a twin in his. I couldn’t even be angry yet, just struck dumb with horror. He, on the other hand, gave me this sour look, like he was somehow the one who had been wronged.

Miss Lina and Mister Zelgadis (who ended up paired together) were disgustingly blasé about this whole thing and not taking the prediction of the device the least bit seriously. Miss Amelia (who ended up with Mister Gourry) on the other hand, was more appropriately upset by it. But she was just ranting something about how she thought Miss Lina should’ve ended up with Mister Gourry. This was the last thing anyone should’ve been complaining about! I mean, alright, if I were making guesses I would’ve probably said the two would’ve been together, but if you’re going to pitch a fit about something it should be about a priestess of the Fire Dragon King ending up with some loathsome, genocidal demon! That is wrong on every level ever in the history of levels!

While Miss Amelia was trying to argue against this mess and Mister Gourry was being completely oblivious to the fact that this is a huge deal, I was coming out of shock enough to register my umbrage. And register, I most certainly did!

“Just a minute here! I object!” I interjected furiously, pointing at the horrible creature that some glorified gumball machine had just told me would be my future groom. “I refuse to accept this coupling!”

“As do I,” I heard Xellos say from behind me, his tone of voice oozing with nasally indignation. “This is completely absurd!”

Miss Amelia seemed to take heart in this, though not for the very legitimate reason that “if this method of spousal prediction places a monster and a dragon together then it must be very, very flawed” but because it gave her more cause to continue with her campaign to get Miss Lina with Mister Gourry. Honestly, I don’t know why someone would be so concerned with someone else’s pairing instead of their own troubles. Perhaps that was her way of saying she didn’t want to be paired up with Mister Gourry? Well, you know what? She thinks she’s got problems? I’m the only one that has a legitimate right to complain here!

In any case, she started grilling our guide about how these pairs are chosen in the first place, but he seemed completely unmoved by her skepticism. “All is according to the will o’ the great heavens,” he explained, pulling at the brim of his hat. He pointed accusingly at us. “If the chosen combination are broken, you can’t get into Mt. Coronay!

“Well, this chosen combination is incompatible!” I cried out. It might’ve been treated as a viable argument if it hadn’t been completely undercut by Xellos saying the exact same thing as me at the exact same time!

I turned to look at him, surprised. The look he was giving me mirrored mine. As our eyes locked, we both immediately turned away from each other, annoyed at being parroted.

“Well, you look pretty… compatible to me,” Miss Lina said, uttering words so venomous and harsh that it is a wonder she delivered them in such an unthinkingly casual tone!

I don’t know how she can say that when we’re so totally different! We’re water and oil! WE DO NOT MIX. Just because we might’ve umm… been thinking on the exact same wave length just at that moment should not be taken as any sort of sign of common ground! It’s just that the idea being pushed on us is universally repulsive!

I could only reel in horror at her implication. I certainly hope that’s not what she or anyone else really thinks of us! Xellos, on the other hand, decided he wasn’t going to stand for it. “Well, in that case, I’ll be leaving,” he announced, his eyebrows twitching and slamming together like a pair of furious purple caterpillars, butting heads. “You don’t need me.” With that he disappeared in a noisy black blur, letting his yellow ball drop to the floor and bounce down the stone steps.

Wish I could teleport out of here, but the only way I could’ve gotten away would’ve been if he took me with him and I most certainly don’t want that.

“Hey! What’s the big idea, Xellos?!” Lina called after the empty space where he’d once stood.

“If getting into the temple means pairing up with Filia,” his disembodied voice said, pronouncing my name as though it was a dread, communicable disease, “then I’d rather sit this one out. You all do a good job in there,” he finished in a light, but still obviously fuming, sing-song voice.

I let Miss Lina and the others argue amongst themselves and whine about Xellos cutting and running. I had more important needs: tea-based needs. You try holding onto your sanity when the universe pitches the idea of you being romantically linked to a monster! I needed all the help I could get just to keep it together, so I knelt down on the ground and went about preparing a pot of tea—which was more annoying than usual without the use of magic.

I tried to view the situation as ludicrous in order to not get myself more upset about it, but it didn’t help. I let out a laugh as I poured tea into my cup. It was meant to sound confidently dismissively, but it probably just sounded borderline insane. “Xellos and I, compatible?” I scoffed, trying to keep my cup from jittering noisily against the saucer as I lifted it to my lips. “Me with that demon?” I tried again, hoping to sound more self-assured. “Never!”

“You too, Filia?” Lina asked, leaning toward me. “You mean you don’t want us to get the Dark Star weapon? That’s pretty irresponsible for a priestess of the Fire Dragon King.”

I want to know who she thinks she is, guilting me like that! I have devoted so much time and energy to following the prophecy while she and the others have gotten distracted by every passing restaurant! I have a much more legitimate reason to sit this one out then they ever had for their time-wasting!

“The ones who have to follow the prophecy are you people,” I reminded her, almost in tears by this point. “I can think of myself once and awhile, can’t I?”

“Wha?” Miss Lina replied, taken aback that I’d actually asserted myself instead of letting her push me to do whatever she wanted. “Oh really?” she asked in a voice that was gearing up to deliver a bruiser of a comment. “Well, if that’s all you have to say for yourself then you’re no different than Xellos.”

Can you believe she’d say something like that to me?! Asking me to consign myself to Xellos and then when I won’t do it saying such a hurtful, hurtful thing?! WE ARE NOT AT ALL ALIKE. It’s because we’re not alike that we can’t do this! I will not enter into a relationship with someone who is the very pinnacle of wickedness! I would never ask such a thing of her, so I don’t see why it should be expected that I do it!

What’s more, what could she even have expected me to do at that point? Xellos had already abandoned me! Even if I was willing to grit my teeth and accept it (which I was not), I couldn’t have done anything without him. If she wants to blame someone: blame him!

Of course, I wasn’t in any fit state to respond to her in such a well-thought out manner, so instead I just let my face fall, sobbing, into my hands and managed to get out through my tears: “With the tiny salary I have to live on, how can you say that?!”

After which, Miss Lina, with no viable argument to make me come with them, resorted to threatening to give me “something to cry about.” What was worse than that was Mister Gourry coming in with the blissfully ignorant: “What’s wrong with everyone? Peace is best, right?”

We all, every last one of us, threw our stupid coupling-choice balls at him. He deserved it.

And so my supposed comrades decided to strike out for the temple without me. “Sit there and cry all day if you want!” was Miss Lina’s completely unsympathetic advice to me before they all went skipping off, arm-in-arm, for the temple on the summit (alright, they weren’t skipping, but they were arm-in-arm. Can you imagine me and Xellos walking arm-in-arm up the mountain top? Us just… trotting along with me hugging his arm for support as he leads us through the fog. …And then I’d trip over a rock and stumble and kind of… fall into his chest. Ugh… just… “ugh” does not even begin to convey the depths of my revulsion!).

It just goes to show that apparently people who call themselves your friends will up and leave you crying in the middle of nowhere all for the dubious “crime” of not wanting to be the bride of a devil!

Some friends!

9:53 am.

I’ll show them. I’ll make my own friends!

11:41 am.

I’m not crazy.

I have every right to be crazy right now, but I’m not. I understand that it may seem that way, but piling a bunch of a bunch of rocks up into figures and drawing faces on them is not crazy; propping up sticks and putting my spare gloves on them so it looks like they have hands is not crazy; putting my extra hat on one is not crazy; wrapping one of my mace-cleaning cloths around one of them like it’s a scarf is not crazy; and serving them tea and addressing them by name is definitely not crazy.

It is a perfectly sane response to how I’ve been treated.

11:55 am.

Okay… now I’m starting to actually think I might have been driven crazy.

It wasn’t the tea party with the rock people. I still stand by that. It’s the Xellos-rock that’s the problem.

I found, amongst the debris scattered all over the place, a rock that kind of looked a little like Xellos. Like, it has his hair and everything (I’m aware that rocks don’t have hair, thank you very much. I’m just saying it’s shaped like his). I had my marker out from drawing on the other rocks so, out of spite, I drew a crying face on it.

The likeness is uncanny.

The problem is: now I keep feeling like it’s looking at me.

I’m just… gonna turn it away from me now. Maybe graffiti it a little more first for good measure, but then just… turn it away… so it can’t look at me anymore…

12:10 pm.

I feel the need to make a confession.

I… picked up the yellow balls. Or, you know, what’s left of them. One of them split into three pieces, but I think with a little glue I could manage to put it back together. They’re sitting in my bag right now.

I found them when I was looking for more rocks for my tea party. They were both right over where we tossed them at Mister Gourry, weirdly enough. I thought that Xellos dropped his down the stairs after he ran off? Could he have possibly stuck around after he disappeared from sight and then threw his ball at Mister Gourry with the rest of us?

Now… that’s a creepy thought. He did say things to the rest of us after he’d vanished, so I guess he can maintain some presence through the astral side. He just better not be watching right now—that’s all I have to say about that!

But about the balls… I know it probably seems a little odd that I picked them up. After all, it’s not like I’d want a souvenir of some crazy shrine prediction that me and Xellos will get married someday. That’s the last thing I want!

I just thought, you know, they’re nice little ornaments. I could probably make something out of them.

And the yellow ones are much prettier than the red and blue ones. That’s all.

12:20 pm.

…What if it really is true? What the guide said about the god’s chosen couplings?

I mean, I know it can’t be. There’s no way anyone should be able to buy something like that. But this is a pronouncement from an artifact at a temple.

…Should I be treating this like a prophecy?

12:26 pm.

No… there’s no way it could possibly be true. I mean, I would just… I would never. And he… just no.

Do monsters even… can they even…?

No, I just… I don’t want to even finish that thought. It doesn’t matter because regardless, the idea of the two of us being together is simply unimaginable.

12:29 pm.

…The fact that I can actually imagine it should not be taken as evidence to the contrary. I have a very overactive imagination! All the priestesses at the temple said it when I was little! I’d love to turn off my imagination, I really would, but I just can’t!

You don’t want to know what it’s like to be in my head right now. Really, you don’t.

Because… well, I wouldn’t say I’ve devoted a lot of thought to my soul-mate, but I guess I had a vague idea of… you know, being sweet and sweeping me off my feet and general romantic overtures: rescuing, dancing, hand-kissing and whatnot. Perhaps not quite as detailed as the plot-lines of those books Miss Amelia likes to read, but I do have some idea of it. Pasting Xellos on top of it all is… very, very wrong.

Not to mention embarrassing.

…I need to stop thinking like this. Right now. I mean, for heaven’s sake! He’s not even really a man! He’s just a man-shaped amalgamation of cosmic EVIL!

He’s an it.

…Yes! It! I should’ve been calling him an it all along! Then I wouldn’t even be considering him in that kind of role. All these strange thoughts about him are just the result of a simple misuse of pronouns!

12:38 pm.

…I don’t think the “it” plan is going to work. I mean, I slipped three times just in that last paragraph alone.

But I need to do something. This line of thinking is just… not good and will not lead to good things.

I keep hearing rumbles in the distance, like thunder. One of my teachers at the temple from back when I was younger used to say thunder was the sound the gods make when they’re angry.

A priestess of the Fire Dragon King considering a monster (and not just any monster—that monster) in a romantic role in even the most unserious and uncomfortable of ways is something that could no doubt give the gods cause to get upset.

…On the other hand, I wouldn’t have even thought about any of this if it weren’t for a pronouncement supposedly from the gods in the first place! Now it’s out there and suddenly I’m giving some thought to wedding dresses and what the children would look like (Bad. That bowl-cut should never be reproduced. Thankfully I am 97% sure that Xellos could not actually have children. What’s more, I’m 100% sure I’ll never personally be proven wrong on that count). I do not want to think these things! They do not give me any joy! But they’re coming up in my mind because it’s been suggested!

This reminds me of that old story… Something about a man who received a prophecy that he’d be his country’s next king; so he killed the current king. But he wouldn’t have killed the current king and become king himself if he hadn’t heard the prediction in the first place.

Well, I’m certainly not going to let this prophecy become self-fulfilling. I won’t wind up with Xellos just because some colorful ball says I will. Gods’ chosen couple or not, this will never happen.

Prophecy? No, this is more like a curse. But I won’t succumb to it!

1:12 pm.

The thunder keeps getting louder… It makes me feel like I’m about to be on the receiving end of some sort of divine punishment. But for thinking about Xellos in a way I really shouldn’t or for acting against a holy prophecy?

…I seem to be stuck in a catch-22.

 

[Skiyomi]

Chapter 23. Reluctant Record.

Saturday, May 12th?

???. ???.

I don’t know where I am. I don’t even know when I am. My pocket watch got waterlogged and stopped at 10:39 last night. …I’m even really only making an educated guess about what day it is, when it comes down to that.

But I don’t care about any of that.

…I can’t find them. I’ve combed every last inch of this beach and there’s no sign of anyone washing ashore here besides me. I’ve flown out to sea as far as I dare to without losing sight of this island and there’s no one out there in the water.

The blast… I don’t know what happened after that. They could’ve been carried away out into the open ocean like I was and drifted off to some other place, but I don’t…

???. ???.

…They’re alright.

They’re alright!

I don’t know where they are or what’s happened, but I at least know they’re alive. I used a variation on the floating matchstick technique to ask the Fire Dragon King if everyone was okay. It’s lucky my matches didn’t get soaked or I wouldn’t have been able to do it. I’d say one of their names and light the match, then set it in still water (I had to dig out a hole in the sand and fill it with sea water for that). The way it works is, if the match stays lit and floats, the person who you’ve named is alright. If the fire goes out, but the match still floats, the person’s fate is uncertain. If it goes out and sinks…

Well, all the matches stayed lit so everyone’s okay! Miss Lina, Mister Gourry, Miss Amelia, Mister Zelgadis… and Xellos.

I had to hold by breath before letting Xellos’s match fall into the water for… a lot of reasons. I couldn’t even be sure if the Fire Dragon King would respond to a question about the well-being of a demon, but I had to ask. He could barely move around on his own when I last left him…

He was severely injured and I was supposed to be taking care of him. I left to try to fix things with Valgaav and I failed. I failed completely. I couldn’t… nothing I said or did made any difference. I couldn’t stop it; I could only become a part of it. And if I left him to fend for himself and something happened then I…

…I suppose this seems like an abrupt switch after my previous entries. But so much has happened since then. That was only earlier yesterday, but if feels like years ago.

I have to promise myself, right here and now, that I’m going to record what happened. I have to promise because I don’t want to. I really, really don’t want to. It would be easy to say that things are too raw right now, and that I can revisit it all later, all the while using that as an excuse to never do it at all. It would be even easier to say that right now my first priority is to find everyone else, and explaining can wait… and that’s not untrue, either.

But I have to say it. I have to say it all instead of letting it fall away and not daring to deal with it because it’s too complicated or strange or upsetting. Because it’s all important. Because it matters.

...Or it would matter, provided that the gateway is really closed and Dark Star has been stopped from coming into this world. If it hasn’t and this is only a brief moment of quiet before Dark Star breaks free and destroys this world, then I suppose nothing I could do matters.

…But I think that… if that really was the case, then all the flames on the matches would’ve flicked out, because everyone’s fate would be in flux.

Assuming I’m right about that, then my top priority needs to be to find Miss Lina and the others, so we can find out what happened together and deal with it. Because this is far from over. I can still see the pillar of light on the horizon, casting its wavering reflection on the choppy sea. We need each other for this.

But in order to find anyone, I need to figure out where I am first. It’s so late, though, that even if I managed to find a village on this island, everything would be closed up and no one would be able to help me. I don’t even know if I could find a town before I collapse. I want to push forward, but I’ve used up so much energy searching for the others, that I don’t think I could make it. And, in any case, there’s nothing to say that this island isn’t unsettled.

I know, deep down, that right now the most productive thing I could possibly do is sleep—wake up in the morning with renewed energy and do what I need to do to get back with the others so that things will finally make sense again and I’ll be able to see with my own eyes that everything’s alright. But I just can’t. I’ve been running on adrenaline so long that I just… I’m so tired. I know. I’m probably not even making much sense, but I woke up like this, you know? Water in my lungs, beaten by the waves, exhausted, but with my heart still pounding. It hasn’t stopped.

I can’t sleep, so I might as well at least start trying to explain what happened since I last wrote. Maybe when I wake up again, it won’t make any sense and I’ll have to do it all over, but this seems like all I can do to… well, I guess not go forward. This is going back. But it’s all I can do to keep moving now.

So… where to begin? What can I even manage to explain in the time I can still be upright and writing before I can’t do it anymore and fall asleep? I guess the shortest version, the absolute bare-minimum I could say just to explain how we ended up in the situation, is like this: We lost the Sword of Light. Valgaav summoned Dark Star. Something happened before the gateway could fully open that seemed to shut it down, but it caused an explosion that sent us all flying to goodness knows where. And that’s why things are the way they are.

But if I were to just say that, then that leaves out so much. It doesn’t even mention what happened with Xellos, and I’m shocked that I could leave that out of the thumbnail summary of it all because it feels so, so significant.

I’ll get there soon enough, though. Probably sooner than I want to.

When I last wrote here I was—well, “consumed” might be the right way to put it—with the temple’s prediction that Xellos and I were meant for each other. I don’t even want to begin to grapple with that statement in context with what happened later… so let’s just put a moratorium on that whole subject for now. I can only deal with so much at once and, as much as the me of yesterday morning would scoff at this notion, there are actually more important things to turn over in my mind right now.

Back then I was worried that the gods would punish me for… pretty much anything I could think. I’d say the events of the rest of the day proved that this was true, but this wasn’t all about me—about my personal punishment. He wanted to punish everyone, even himself I think…

Sorry. Getting ahead of myself.

Anyway, I was waiting for Miss Lina and the others to be done at the temple and kept thinking I heard thunder. What I heard was not, as it turned out, thunder at all. Instead it was a massive barrage of debris hurtling down from the top of the mountain right on to me. What with all the questionable topics I’d been turning over in my head, I thought it was heaven’s punishment and quickly prayed for forgiveness, assuming that I was about to meet my death under a pile of divinely generated rubble.

I obviously didn’t die there—just wound up getting buried. When I came to my senses and started digging my way out, I saw Miss Lina, Mister Gourry, Mister Zelgadis and Miss Amelia amidst the demolished building material. I can only guess that they fell down from the mountain top with it? I never really got the whole story on that, but they were going on about the Sword of Light being missing.

I looked around and saw a hilt at my feet. Thinking I’d found it, I picked it up only to find as I pulled it out of its sheath that there was a pink-flowered stem where you’d normally expect a blade. …Which was weird. But then I saw the others searching around on the ground and there were a bunch of other “swords” scattered all over the place. Miss Lina even picked one that was bent at a ninety-degree angle and Mister Gourry got one that was a red mallet (I’m not sure how that even fit in the sheath he had with it).

Before I could ask them what had happened, who should burst out from under a pile of rocks but Jillas, shouting: “I’ve got it!” and holding the Sword of Light.

I suppose he must’ve ambushed them at some point while they were at the temple and managed to steal the Sword of Light in the confusion. It makes me wonder what happened to that tour guide in the tussle. He seemed like a nice enough person, and I’d hate to think there are more casualties in this series of events. Enough people have been hurt already.

Jillas turned back and growled, realizing that we’d seen him, and immediately made a run for it. The chase was on from there. We tromped down the mountain side after him, across rivers and over bridges (which exploded). He ended up jumping in a boat and heading down river. There was another boat waiting at the dock by the river, but… Miss Lina really should’ve been suspicious of it after the exploding bridge. Jillas obviously left booby-traps along the pathway to ensure he could lose us and, surprise of surprises, the boat exploded in a shower of water and timber the minute Miss Lina jumped onto it.

Since magic still wasn’t working on holy ground, we had to find some other way of following Jillas. So Gourry used his mallet to detach a piece of the pier we were standing on and we were able to use it like a raft.

The resistance wasn’t over just because we’d managed to get a ride on the water. Oh no. Far from it. We had to face torpedoes, rockets, near decapitation (that actually wasn’t Jillas’s fault. Miss Lina seemed to have forgotten that boomerangs come back around the other way), and a waterfall.

…I am still not sure how we survived the waterfall, to be honest. Jillas was obviously prepared for it as he jumped into a barrel to make his way down. We, in our makeshift raft, were perilously unprotected and had very few handholds. I actually remember, as we were tumbling off the cliff, losing my grip on the raft and floating midair for a moment before gravity slammed me back into the boards. By all normal rules we probably should’ve been dashed against rocks or drowned or both, but we made it through. The current pushed us onto the other side of the waterfall, where apparently there was a system of caves.

When we emerged from the water the first thing we saw was a very surprised Jillas and the first thing we heard from him was a screech. He had good reason to think we couldn’t have survived that.

He raced off into a bigger cavern. I think it was at this point that Miss Lina realized we were far enough away from the temple grounds that she could use her powers again? Yes, I think it must’ve been then because she lit a lighting spell.

…Also because shortly after that I blacked out for a moment and…

Well, okay, what happened was that Jillas set off a bunch of charges in there… in that very, very stalactite-festooned chamber. Which meant that we wound up with a bunch of projectiles raining down on us from the ceiling. It was around then that I sort of… lost it. Apparently. I’d already been buried under rocks one day and was lucky to have avoided dying. I think the prospect of it happening again nudged me into fight or flight mode.

…I wonder how things would’ve turned out if that had happened to me later when I nearly got crushed yet again? I can’t see it making the situation any less impossibly awful, but… it would’ve made things less complicated. It would’ve taken away an opportunity for Xellos to complicate things at least.

When I came back to myself after my… little moment, I found that my throat burned with the aftereffects of laser breath, I’d hitched my skirt up, was holding my mace in one hand, Miss Lina had me in a headlock, and the room in front of me was full of smoking debris and the decimated remains of the stalactites.

At the time, I was… well, obviously embarrassed. I’d clearly snapped and gone a little… berserk. Back then I was just grateful that Xellos wasn’t around to see me in that state. I figured he’d make fun of me. Say something to make me look… barbaric or something. Thinking about it now, maybe he wouldn’t have. Maybe he’d be too focused on his orders to do something as lighthearted as crack wise at my expense. Too serious.

…No. Even when he’s serious that seems to be something he makes time for.

It wouldn’t be long, though, before Xellos was back with us. We had to deal with Miss Lina and Mister Gourry freaking out after Jillas gave us the slip (I thought they were just going to curl up in the fetal position and stay in that cave forever. We just couldn’t get them to move, they were so disappointed about losing the sword). But we were able to get back on his trail soon enough when Mister Zelgadis found a secret passage leading to the way out Jillas had taken. That knowledge perked the two of them right back up again and we resumed following him—up and out of the cave and over to the strange facility we saw sitting on a cliff once we got back out into the open air… to Valgaav’s base.

I find it very difficult to describe what the interior of the base was like. I suppose it was cavernous, and parts of it were very much like the inside of a regular cave but it was… strange. The walls were blackened and slightly shiny and I couldn’t shake the unsettling suspicion that there was something… organic about them. Not that they actually felt like they were… you know, alive and breathing or anything. I didn’t feel like we were in the belly of a whale. Rather, the material felt… perhaps the nearest thing I can liken it to would be the interior of a sea shell—only the type of sea shell you’d find on the shores of the river of death.

The reddish orbs at various intervals and strange designs slotted into the walls heightened the alien sensation of our surroundings and made it feel like there was meaning there that we were in no position to decipher. At one end of the base there was an enormous glass window with the shape of a many pointed star in the middle of it. Some sort of device reflected a massive stream of light through it and down the middle of the entire base, illuminating the dark material that made up the structure and casting weird reflections all over the place.

“What is all this?” Miss Lina quite reasonably asked after we’d had a minute to soak in our bizarre new environment.

Mister Zelgadis knelt down to examine the interior more closely. “It doesn’t seem that old,” he remarked.

Amelia was paying more attention to the light than the building material. “…I can feel a strong energy flowing from that strange pillar of light up ahead,” she said, shielding her eyes from the light.

I felt it too. And the phrase “pillar of light” shook me a little. We were getting close.

I might’ve thought more of that if I hadn’t been distracted in short order.

“Oh, I see,” Miss Lina said thoughtfully. “Then this must be…”

And yes, he showed up right then and there—looking deceptively cheerful and carefree as usual—to finish her thought for her.

“That’s right, Lina,” Xellos confirmed as he materialized next to her. “It’s Valgaav’s main base.”

I was going to yell at him. This was an absolute certainty. But just at that moment I wasn’t sure which of my many, many complaints I was going to lash out at him with. Which was why Miss Lina managed to ask him what he was doing back with us and where he’d been before I did.

He looked mildly dismayed, as though dealing with an inconvenience. “Oh dear,” he said. “I had some… tedious work to do and I couldn’t get away from it.”

Perhaps the meeting he obviously must’ve had with his superiors was tedious, but knowing what I know now about Xellos’s agenda that day… this is a criminal level of under-telling. Particularly since Miss Lina was the one who asked him. I still don’t know how she managed to let that go but… more on that later.

Anyway, I didn’t have even an inkling of what he’d been up to then, but I had reason enough to be angry at him even without knowing. “For heaven’s sake!” I exclaimed, storming up to him. “You appear when we don’t want you and vanish when you can be useful!”

I swear, it’s like he’s got some… well, aren’t there kinds of fighting styles where you use an opponent’s attack against them? Just wiggle out of a stranglehold and make it your own? Xellos is like that when it comes to pretty much anything you could say to him. So he came back with a casual, but pointed: “Someone who prays to the Fire Dragon King shouldn’t depend on a monster like me, now should they?”

“Who says we depend on you?!” I shot back, unnerved and annoyed that this was somehow the message he’d managed to extract from my complaint.

I mean… I suppose if you wanted to purposefully misunderstand my message then it could look like that. But just because I feel like if he insists on being around he should at least take enough responsibility to be consistent and not ditch us whenever he feels like… that doesn’t mean I actually count on him or anything.

…Except that… looking back on this conversation, knowing how everything went later I… Well, these earlier moments—these exchanges—just feels so… easy now. I suppose you could say this was what I expected from the way we communicate. To think now that he had this whole plan in mind to betray us right there and then, and the… the truly terrible way he was all too happy to carry things out… Maybe I did depend on things being like they were before. And Xellos was right. I can’t depend on him to be like that.

He went out of his way to demonstrate that.

…And knowing that… I can’t look back at this moment without wanting to both sigh and cringe. Because I acted so… unknowing. I’ve been like that all along. And he held a lot more cards than I did. But even he couldn’t have known everything that was going to happen. He probably thought he did, though.

“Anyway,” Xellos said, pivoting away from our little side-swipes at each other to matters that actually advanced his agenda, “if this really is Valgaav’s base, we better hurry.”

So our disagreement was cut off for the admittedly more important task of searching for Jillas and the Sword of Light. We moved forward with Xellos back and our party full, but don’t think that state of affairs lasted very long. We soon reached a split in the path into three tunnels.

Miss Lina split us up into pairs: her and Mister Gourry, Miss Amelia and Mister Zelgadis—seemingly intent on spitting in the face of the Temple of Marriage’s pronouncement to get the status quo back. Well, nearly. I’m sure you can guess that, whichever set of pairs she went with, it would’ve ended the same for me.

But it seemed particularly mean to me back then. After all, I’d just gone through a major upset about being lumped in with Xellos and I’m sure she knew I wasn’t exactly keen on this partnering being repeated. In fact, I think this might’ve been revenge for giving her grief back and the temple and not going along with things.

I tried to protest, but Miss Lina wouldn’t hear any of it. And apparently Xellos didn’t think being paired up with me was worth teleporting off in a huff this time because it was at least a platonic pairing. With a mild, “Come on,” he grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me, still fuming, along down the corridor Miss Lina’d assigned us.

…I’m honestly not sure how long he led my down the hallway like that. I was a little lost in being annoyed at Miss Lina for making the situation more annoying for me than she had to. Suddenly there was a moment where it hit me that he was clasping my wrist in his hand and that that was weird and probably not something I should be tolerating.

I twisted my arm away from him. “Get your hands off me!” I snapped, shaking him off.

He withdrew his hand. “It was only one,” he pointed out, as though that mattered. He shrugged as though to indicate that he thought that I was overreacting, but it wasn’t worth his time to take offense. “Anyway, it seemed like you needed some direction.”

“I can direct myself,” I returned, proving it by taking a few quick steps to get in front of him—asserting myself as the leader. I crossed my arms and threw a look at him over my shoulder. “Don’t think you have the right to get all touchy with me just because of some fortune telling at a likely unaccredited temple!”

Alright, so it was probably not necessary to jump right back to the topic of the marriage prediction from that point, but you’ve gotta understand my logic. A wrist-clasp might not be at all romantic, but it is (quite literally) an inch away from being hand-holding which is.

His response to this was to give me a highly theatrical “I don’t know what you’re talking about” look, follow it up with a mimed scratch of his chin, and then an “…Ohhh,” of realization. “The ‘chosen combination’ thing,” he said, as though just figuring out what I was even talking about. “I’d nearly forgotten about that.”

I stared at him in disbelief. I recorded how obviously annoyed he was when that whole thing happened, right? That’s not something you just let slip your mind. “That was only this morning,” I pointed out to him incredulously.

He shook his index finger at me. “I do have more important things to think about than you,” he informed me, all condescension.

More important things… like the impending confrontation with Valgaav? Like the betrayal he was even then readying to make? I couldn’t guess these things then, but now I can’t help it.

Then I was just incredibly irritated. I didn’t buy for a minute that he’d actually forgotten about the nonsense that went on at the temple of marriage. He’d been too obviously aggravating by the mere suggestion of it. It just seemed to me like he was trying to casually shrug it off—now that he’d regained the composure he’d lost earlier on—in order to make me look like I was fixated on it (and by extension, him) when I really wasn’t at all.

I don’t think I really formed an actual comeback. I just scoffed, turned away from him, and quickened my pace, muttering something involving the basic concept that he was the one that wasn’t important. “Garbage” might’ve been involved. I was a little incoherent at this point and I’d come to the overall decision that, after all I’d had to deal with at the temple of marriage, I wasn’t going to bother to deal with him anymore. Just because he and I were partnered up together, I decided that that didn’t mean I had to interact with him.

…And I held fast to that realization for all of a few minutes. Then we reached a split in the path.

I slowed. “Oh no, the path splits again,” I observed—not to him, but to myself.

He, assuming he was being spoken to and that we were still part of some collaborative process, despite my giving him the cold shoulder for the last few minutes, asked: “Which way do you think we should go?”

I winced at the sound of his voice, since I still had my heart set on ignoring his existence. I tried to continue with that despite his obnoxiously chipper tone cutting across the solitude of my mind—whipping out my mace and planting it firmly in the ground without saying a word to him.

I was going to just ask the Fire Dragon King which way to go to find the Sword of Light, but then I got an idea. It was kind of a spur of the moment thing, but I realized that perhaps there was a way I could use the situation so that I wouldn’t have to go to the effort of ignoring Xellos, since he wouldn’t be there. There was a way I could get him to go down the wrong path and still keep searching for the sword myself.

Yes. I was at the point where I was willing to run all by myself around an enemy base of operations that I knew little about instead of enduring Xellos’s company. He tends to put me in these desperate, not very logical frames of mind.

So instead of asking the Fire Dragon King to show us the way to the Sword of Light, I knelt on the ground, held my hands over the spikes of my mace, and instead prayed that the Fire Dragon King would show us the way that the Sword of Light wasn’t. I hummed to myself as I went on, trying to tap into the holy rhythms to communicate my plea.

Apparently this didn’t strike Xellos as a terribly legitimate way of going about things. “Uh… do priestesses usually make decisions this way?” he asked me doubtfully.

I opened my eyes to glare at him. “Just shut up,” I snapped brusquely, wanting to get the task at hand over and done with. I didn’t need the peanut gallery commenting on my divination ability.

Having finished making my request, I let out a final cry and thrust my mental energy toward my weapon. In a perfect world, it would’ve toppled over in the direction that answered my question.

This is a far from perfect world.

I let out a groan as it didn’t so much as move. “Well, maybe you should just try… knocking it over or something?” Xellos supplied (un)helpfully from over my shoulder.

Admittedly not having a better idea myself, I got up and kicked it over. The battle cry probably wasn’t necessary, but it felt right. Anyway, my mace fell over and clearly pointed to the path on the right.

“The prophecy has been made!” I declared, feeling a little better after having kicked something. “The Sword of Light is that way!” I said, pointing down the path I knew full well was wrong.

“That’s amazing!” Xellos replied, exuding insincerity.

“Well, anyway,” I said, hoping to get him to take the bait and go the wrong way by actually being civil, “let’s get moving, Mister Xellos!”

And at first it looked like he actually had fallen for it. “Okay!” he said, and dashed off down the path I’d indicated, leaving me to sneak off down the path that I knew was more likely to lead to the Sword of Light.

It didn’t make any difference, though. He ended up at the other end of the path before me, so he must’ve seen through it.

I guess it’s pointless to try subterfuge on someone like him. Even if it is perfectly justifiable to lie to a monster (they don’t deserve the courtesy of honesty), it’s not much use considering they’re probably more experienced in deception and can see through that kind of thing.

So I guess we’ve come to… the scene I witnessed when I got to the other end of the tunnel. Where Xellos was confronting Valgaav.

I’m… I don’t think I have the strength to deal with all that comes next right now. I didn’t expect to falter so soon—to basically not get to anything of any real importance that happened, but this is where I have to stop. I made this whole thing longer than I should’ve. I’m probably just… trying to avoid talking about everything that comes after and that’s manifesting through dwelling in the pointless details. But it’s just so much… safer talking about these little disagreements. It feels much more normal than everything that followed.

I promised, though, that I’d tell everything and I will. Tomorrow I’ll have to find out where I am, and try to find the others… but I’ll still tell it. The whole thing. I promise.

Even though it only gets harder from this point on.

 

[Skiyomi]

Chapter 24. Won’t Get Fooled Again.

Saturday, May 12th (This time for sure).

Latent Island. Town Hall. 9:18 am.

It’s surprising what a relief it is just to know where in this wide world I am and what time it is. Luckily this is a fairly small island so it didn’t take too long to find a little town in the clear light of day. …In fact, if I’d realized it was so close I wouldn’t have slept against a palm tree last night.

But I’ve had a quick meal (it only occurred to me once I started smelling food how famished I was), reassembled and reset my now dried out pocket watch, and gotten a look at a map—so all in all I’m in much better shape than I was last night.

I asked around, but it seems like nobody has seen Miss Lina and the others around here. A nice woman who works here is seeing about getting me a boat schedule, though, and then I plan on searching out the nearby islands for them. I’m operating under the assumption that they’re most likely not too far away from where I ended up. We’ll see how correct that turns out to be, but nearby is best for now. I can fan out more if I have to.

The Ocean Breeze. 10:05 am.

Well, I’m off to search the nearest island. I don’t know if I’m sailing towards Miss Lina and the others or precisely in the opposite direction, but I have to start looking somewhere. For now, I’ve just got to be patient and wait to arrive in the harbor. Since I’m both off my feet and still moving forward, this is pretty much the best time in the world to finish (at least as much as I can get to before we arrive) writing about what happened before.

…Then again, I barely got any sleep last night and I’m still pretty exhausted. Perhaps I’d be better off taking a nap. Or, you know, maybe I should just pour over the maps I’ve picked up so I’ll be familiar with the best places to look once we do get to land. I mean… that’s more important, right?

…I guess what I’m saying is… do I have to?

10:11 am.

…I have to. I made a promise. I have to get this down, no matter how much I don’t want to return to it. Maybe if I write it all down I can… concretize it, I suppose. Make sense of it. Make it work in my mind.

…I don’t want it to work in my mind. Most of it, anyway.

I left off at the end of that tunnel. The me of yesterday left the worst of it to the me of today.

I’d been looking behind me as I ran through the tunnel, expecting Xellos to catch on to my trick and start trailing from behind at any moment. If I was looking for him, I was looking in the wrong direction. I turned to see him standing just ahead of me—in the mouth of a large, cave-like chamber—facing away from me and toward the figure of Valgaav, who was sitting, panting and exhausted, on the other side of the chamber. He—Valgaav that is—looked stuck, painfully, between transformations, with one of his arms a blackened dragon’s talon.

I hid as quietly as I could behind a stalagmite, hoping that I hadn’t been seen. I didn’t know what to make of this meeting or what the two of them could’ve been up to.

“I came here for an entirely different reason this time,” Xellos was saying.

“What do you mean?” Valgaav asked, heaving out every word.

“Let me get straight to the point,” Xellos answered, all business, “I am here because I was ordered to find you. I am to bring you to the monster race’s side, Valgaav.”

That’s where it starts. Monsters. They were out to kill him before that. That’s why we’d been able to not take Xellos’s involvement with are group so, so seriously. Not as seriously as we should’ve. Valgaav was our enemy. He was Xellos’s too. But that state of affairs had changed. Xellos was all too ready to move to the opposite side of the street from us—to throw in his lot wholeheartedly with those who wanted to kill us—without even letting a peep of his intentions out to us before he moved.

“You see, the sad truth is that the monster race has a shortage of talented people like yourself,” Xellos expounded, making his offer sound more like a career opportunity than a backstabbing power grab. “So the focus of this battle, the summoning of the Overworld dark lord Dark Star, has become a very important matter to us. While the higher ups were originally in favor of the summoning, our current difficulties with the gods make it impossible. Therefore, I’m prepared to grant a full pardon if you will join us as a member of the monster race.”

I was too horrified by the offer he was making to really wonder what he meant by “current difficulties with the gods” back then, but I suppose I’ll have to go on wondering. That’s not the important thing anyway. He was going behind everyone’s backs to recruit Valgaav—to exploit the mayhem and destruction and power he had in order to serve the demonic goals of his own kind.

With a rising sense of nausea, I thought I’d heard the worst. I hadn’t.

“Of course, we are prepared to compensate you for this,” Xellos added, still, for all the world, sounding like this was an everyday deal. Like an innkeeper negotiating over the price of rice—not like someone trying to team up with the enemy of his current allies without their knowing.

“Compensate me?” Valgaav spat in disbelief.

“If you agree to join us, then the person responsible for Lord Gaav’s death will be dealt with once and for all,” Xellos said. The message—the horrible message—was there, but the language was still vague—civil. Like he hadn’t quite taken off his mask to say what he had to say, but was fiddling with the string that held it in place.

“Hm?” Valgaav looked for clarification.

“In other words, Valgaav,” Xellos said, lifting up his head as he gleefully let all pretense drop, “I shall personally see to it that Lina Inverse is destroyed.”

I couldn’t believe it. Even from Xellos, I just… couldn’t. This wasn’t just going behind our backs and joining up with Valgaav. This was using Miss Lina’s life as bait to do so! Miss Lina who had let him into our group—involved him in our plans. They were… they were friendly to each other and then he…

I crept out of my hiding place. I couldn’t stay hidden after that.

“Oh my. It’s Filia,” he said, not even bothering to turn around. And don’t try to read that as an “Oh my, I’ve been caught doing something disgraceful and I’m ashamed or at least not happy that I’ve been caught.” No. There wasn’t a trace of embarrassment to his words. No indication that he’d been discovered doing something terribly, horribly wrong.

“Xellos!” I cried out, voice nearly breaking with fury as I advanced upon him. “I can’t believe you would trade Miss Lina’s life just to get Valgaav on your side!”

He looked over his shoulder at me. “Oh? Are the priestesses of the Fire Dragon King normally given to eavesdropping?”

Not only did nothing in his words or tone convey the tremendous wrong he was committing, he actually behaved like I was the one who had something to apologize for!

“That’s beside the point!” I answered, knocking down this obvious and feeble distraction he’d put up. “Were you serious about what you just said?” I asked, holding up my hands and demanding that he tell me…

What? That this was just a lie to influence Valgaav? That I’d misunderstood? That this wasn’t what it looked like?

“Well, of course I was, Filia,” he answered with a shrug, dismissing my frail, would-be denials that this was really happening. He closed his hand into a fist and looked directly at me. “I’d gladly kill Lina Inverse with my own hands.”

A chill crawled down my spine. It didn’t run—this wasn’t a quick sense of discomfort—this was something slow and lingering. I gasped and stared at him, wide-eyed. For the first time they were both there—the two of them. The Xellos who I’d personally encountered—the creepy, impolite and arrogant nuisance; and “The Detested Xellos” I’d heard about all my life—the murderous creature who’d brought to a violent end thousands of my people’s lives without a second thought—without a trace of mercy.

And I couldn’t. I couldn’t make them connect. I couldn’t make them one.

“But… aren’t you…” I tried weakly, “supposed to be Miss Lina’s friend?”

“No,” he said—coolly, without hesitation. “I simply travel with Miss Lina’s party because their objectives often overlap with my own.”

My mouth went dry and my fists twitched as he explained it. Nothing. We were nothing to him. Nothing but a means to an end.

“Please, don’t forget,” he said, drawing his index finger up to a nasty smile on his face with a sense of slow triumph, “I’m a monster, remember?”

…I’ve been so stupid. So, so stupid…

10:38 am.

I’m sorry. I’m back. It’s just… I’m so… I guess frustrated without myself? That’s a part of it at least. Because I’m the one among all of us that should’ve known better. My people have experienced his unforgiving cruelty firsthand and yet I… I was surprised! I was disappointed. Miss Lina barely bat an eye about it later on and I… All those times I thought they weren’t taking him seriously enough as a threat, and now it turns out that I was the one who was the least prepared for this.

…I don’t know how he managed to sucker me. I’ve always had an awful opinion of him. But he… I got so used to treating him like an annoying gnat that somehow, deep inside, I did forget. And he reminded me. Oh, did he ever remind me… he’s a monster.

He turned away from me, eager to move on to the business he’d come to deal with. My discovery of him didn’t seem to make any difference in that whatsoever. “Now then,” he said to Valgaav, “do you have an answer for my proposal yet? Will you join the monster race, Valgaav?”

“Don’t do it!” I cried, looking the prone ancient dragon pleadingly in the eye as I tried to stop this unholy alliance from happening. “Valgaav, joining the monster race would be a big mistake!”

“Oh? Are you asking him to join your people, Filia?” Xellos jabbed. There was such a nastier edge to his voice and it was growing in effect with every sentence he pronounced.

I let my hands, formerly fists, drop to my sides—having been left rather deflated by this bluntly impossible question. “I… I don’t… I…” I shakily tried.

“I wouldn’t talk if I were you, Filia,” he cut over me, a harsh laugh somewhere behind his words, “considering how you golden dragons murdered his tribe the ancient dragons. Or have you forgotten?”

And there were those words. That… revelation that he’d threatened to make. The knowledge that he’d asked me if I wanted to know. The words I said I couldn’t trust from him.

But to hear it… from him and from Valgaav…

“Oh yes,” Xellos went on, indulging in his dark accusation—relishing the notion of such a sin on the souls of my people and the pain it would cause me, “the golden dragons feared the ancient dragons’ power so much that they gathered a huge army and wiped them out.”

His lips twisted into a smile. Whether it was hypocrisy or the image of mass murder that appealed to him most, I can’t say.

“Silence!” Valgaav broke through the spell of Xellos’s words with an incensed yell. “Silence! SILENCE!” He was clutching his dragon-form arm and laboriously got to his feet. “You monsters are no different,” he answered Xellos in a low, disgusted tone. “Didn’t your race try to kill Lord Gaav because they feared his power once he turned against them?”

Xellos didn’t even attempt to hide from the ugly implications of this rebuttal. You’d think since he was trying to get Valgaav on his side he would’ve tried. Instead he just shrugged and said, “Well, that is true.”

Valgaav raised a shaky fist. “Then a monster like you has no right to smugly lecture her on the reasons my people were killed,” he rasped angrily.

I put my hands over my mouth in horror as I watched the two of them. Valgaav was furious—moreso than when Xellos had made his original offer. The situation was escalating.

“The only one who ever helped me was Lord Gaav,” Valgaav intoned, as though taking refuge in a rare truth. He pointed at Xellos. “…And I will never forgive the monster race for destroying him!”

“Well then,” Xellos answered, the cool counterpart to Valgaav’s blistering ire, “can I assume you have no intention of joining us?”

He said it like… like it was a requirement. Like he needed that spelled out just to cut loose and do what he wanted.

“Take this as my answer,” Valgaav threatened, gathering a glowing ball of energy in his hand and sending it straight toward Xellos.

I fell backwards as the energy rushed past me—heating the air to hair-singing temperatures as flew by. But it hit only wall. Valgaav’s target had vanished before he could make a hit.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Xellos’s unflappable voice came from the smoke and debris-clouded room. His hand appeared through the dusty air as he swept it aside, becoming visible floating in midair. “I knew from the start this was a waste,” he said, a slight shrugging gesture from the hand that wasn’t holding his staff, “but I was ordered to make the proposal to you. However,” he went on, as though getting to what was, to him, much better news, “I have another order to carry out now. If you will not join the monster race, I am to use any means necessary to kill you. I’m afraid I’m your enemy now.”

Valgaav stepped over, picking up his Dark Star weapon. “You were my enemy from the start!” he insisted, drawing the magical blade from his weapon with a roar.

…And you’re not prepared even now for what happened and how it went, because even though I felt the… the dejection of Xellos callously tossing us aside like the nothings he felt us to be for the expedience of using Valgaav’s power and of his cruel insistence that my people had committed unspeakable crimes, there was still farther to go. You’d have thought that I couldn’t possibly have been stupid enough to have any faith in him left to lose. But even looking back on the horrible things he was saying he was so… business-like. He was efficient, clear and focused on completing his task.

He wasn’t like that in the battle. Not really. Not like how you might think. Not quick. Not so he could just wash his hands of the whole matter. It would’ve still been terrible but it wouldn’t have been… what I saw. And as he advanced on Valgaav with a persistent and malicious chuckle it was clear that this was no nagging chore he felt forced to complete. No he was… simply delighted.

The fight… I… can only do so much to describe it. For me it was all vigorous missed strikes from Valgaav; and explosions as the energy he was lobbing in every direction smashed pointlessly into the walls of the cavern; and always, always that damned laughter. That unsettling sound that echoed across the room, getting louder and softer as Xellos teleported closer and farther away, letting Valgaav pointlessly chase him for a time until the ancient dragon broke in frustration.

“Stop running and FIGHT!” he shouted.

He did stop running then. I wish he hadn’t. He appeared just in front of Valgaav to say, “You shouldn’t underestimate me, my friend. Despite appearances, I killed thousands of your kind in the War of the Monster’s Fall. So killing you will be no trouble at all.”

He disappeared and then…

They slid out of the walls. I’d seen one like them in the battle before, but not in this number. Black drills that reflected no light. An attack from the astral side…

…Or perhaps even Xellos himself from the astral side, as frightening as it may be to think. What I’ve thought of as Xellos is not really…

Valgaav wasn’t intimidated—then. “No, you underestimate the power I have,” he came back with, letting the blade on his sword grow.

The black cones slammed toward him, drilling through the air with deadly force. He slashed many of them aside. “I possess the power of the Demon Dragon King!” he declared, lobbing a spell at Xellos who seemed to have reappeared just to give him something to shoot at.

Of course, Xellos teleported away and left the spell to discharge with a meaningless boom.

“So is this all the power Gaav gave you?!” Xellos mocked, his voice heightening maliciously and devolving into laughter that I can only describe as… insane. Just… sadistically, brutally insane.

“Damn you!” Valgaav roared, lunging at his laughing foe with his weapon. But Xellos blocked it. He blocked the Dark Star weapons blade with his staff alone.

It seemed like there was no way Valgaav could win. He couldn’t hit Xellos—even when presented with an opportunity to do so. Instead, Xellos sniped at him from the sides with those awful spikes—stabbing into Valgaav’s arms and legs and side from every which way. Valgaav tried to match the number of spikes with the number of green energy balls he was tossing around, but…

“It doesn’t matter what you fire if you can’t hit me, Valgaav,” Xellos taunted, teleporting insultingly close to Valgaav. So close, but yet beyond his ability to hurt—then. “Conversely,” he added, disappearing only to rain another quiver of spikes down on the ancient dragon as only his voice remained to gleefully point out that: “small wounds cause great damage if you make enough of them.”

He was trying to bleed him out. Trickle by trickle. Slow and inevitable and excruciating.

Valgaav coughed up blood. He didn’t have enough strength to keep up his levitation and crashed to the ground. He tried to right himself, but only managed to lift his head slightly. “Damn you, Xellos…” he barely managed to get out, working to gather power, once again, into the hand of an arm he couldn’t even lift.

“You still don’t understand, do you?” Xellos asked, no pity for the clearly and utterly beaten as he appeared, standing just behind him. He lifted his staff deliberately over Valgaav’s arm and…

I looked away. I couldn’t watch. But I heard… I wish I hadn’t, but I did. The slam as he stabbed the staff repeatedly into Valgaav’s arm, the crunch of blood vessels collapsing and bones breaking as he twisted the end into his flesh. Valgaav’s terrible screams of pain and Xellos’s somehow more terrible burbling of amusement. This was no continuation of the fight. Valgaav was down and this dark act wasn’t targeted in a way to put him to death. This was meant specifically to cause Valgaav pain. To show him that he never could’ve fought back. For Xellos to revel in the agony. This was torture. And it went on and on.

And if it had all somehow stopped then and there then I… I wouldn’t even want to think of him anymore. I’d force myself to write it all down here so that I’d never forget but then not so much as look him in the eyes or speak the name “Xellos” ever again. Because I can’t. I just can’t. This sounds strange to say, but, in that moment, I stopped hating him. Because hate was far too… personal? I guess you could say. Hate is still something you can reach out with and I felt I could never reach out to him, even in that negative way, again. I knew then something that… well, I don’t think I ever properly understood, but the little I got of it had been degraded in all my experiences traveling along with him up until what happened in that cave: “monster” isn’t just some put-down. It’s not a name for some abstract source of disagreeableness. It’s not just “the bad.” A monster is something… unspeakable, unthinkable, incomprehensible…

But… how do I square that with what happened next?

The energy Valgaav had been trying to gather… even in the midst of Xellos’s ceaseless torment, he managed to fire it off—blindly. I didn’t really process it until it had collided with the ceiling and by then it was too late. It was right over me. And it shattered the rock formations above me into huge slabs, which gravity tossed directly at me.

I was too shaken by everything that had happened to move. All I could do was look up at the man-sized rocks sliding through the air down toward where I was standing.

It all happened so fast that it’s hard to perfectly make sense of it. Suddenly I felt myself being pushed away. An arm curled around my shoulder and suddenly the cave blinked away. There was a dark backdrop, strange lights and I felt a disorienting sense of movement for the few seconds I was gone, but then the cave reappeared. Or… I guess I reappeared in the cave.

I was far off the ground, but I didn’t realize that at the time. I was being held and my heart was beating out of control against my hand, which was clasped against my chest. I saw the staff first, grasped by the person whose arms I was being carried in. I cast my gaze to the side… Xellos.

And I can’t honestly say what my beleaguered brain managed to process in that moment. It was all too much: the terror brought about at Xellos’s hands, and now those same hands had pulled me away from certain death—had interrupted his grim task for the very purpose of saving me? I can’t even make sense of it now. Then, in that brief window of calm, all I could process was a flash of confused emotions.

So I screamed.

He in turn, now get this, dropped me.

Dropped me.

DROPPED ME.

I want to make clear that this was not some sort of… spooked reaction. It’s not like he scooped me up from certain death and then was, you know, startled or something when I screeched at him. I was quite close enough to see his expression (a carefully neutral one) and he didn’t so much as flinch when I screamed.

Is that any way for a person to respond to the fact that he saved someone? Just… letting them fall?

It’s almost as though, in the midst of unspeakable evil, he caught himself doing a good deed and had to correct things by being a jerk about it.

And so I fell! Screaming towards the earth. Valgaav, injured or not, knew that you get out of the way when a golden dragon is falling directly toward you, and scuttled away. I smacked into the ground face first and what should make contact with the ground just a second before I did? One of those same black cones.

Xellos must’ve popped up again somewhere behind me (not coincidentally right after the cone had disappeared) because I heard him saying, in a rather sheepish tone I might add, “Oh well. I was trying to surprise you, Valgaav. But I guess it didn’t work, now did it?”

Now let’s just… pause. There’s more to get to, but please just stop and indulge me for a while after all I’ve been through by helping me figure out WHAT ON EARTH HAPPENED IN THOSE LAST FEW MINUTES?!

This was… a very emotionally confusing set of circumstances: I’m brought to the lowest of the low concerning Xellos. I don’t even want to think of him anymore and then… he does a complete change of direction and actually saves my life. I am still reeling, trying to adjust my world-view to figure out how he can possibly have made two such morally opposite actions in the span of a few seconds or so and THEN he throws another wrench into it by dropping me. Now that looks and FEELS like a mean-spirited and childish prank.

So… we have Xellos, the complete monster; Xellos, my… hero? And Xellos the total jerk.

Honestly… amidst all of this, the last one is the one that makes the most sense to me. The other two are a source of intense discomfort even if it’s for very different reasons. But it’s no wonder I can’t keep track of things if he’s going to go around acting like three entirely different people.

…Of course, if we take Xellos’s explanation into account, that dissolves a lot of the conflict. He only picked me up to use me as a distraction against Valgaav. It wasn’t that he wanted to save my life. He only wanted to throw Valgaav off and then make one final stab at him while I had his attention.

In many ways it’s simpler to take that explanation. It’s at least consistent even if it’s consistently monstrous. If I could just… take that. Accept that… then it wouldn’t be complicated. I could just… file him away as something irredeemably and indescribably evil.

But… and please, feel free to tell me if I’m being a delusional idiot because, goodness knows, I have apparently been very delusional and idiotic about Xellos-related matters as of late, but… does that explanation make NO SENSE WHATSOEVER to anyone else?!

I mean… where to even begin? Maybe I’m not fully grasping his nefarious scheme, but how could his actions possibly work out to do what he wanted them to do? If he wanted to use that… drill attack against Valgaav, then tossing me at him along with it shouldn’t have helped at all. A distraction is meant to keep you from noticing the main attack, sure, but it’s also meant to corral your opponent to your real attack, right? As it was, it seemed like both his drill attack and me were going in the same direction and towards the same place. Even if Valgaav was more focused on me falling at him and didn’t see the drill, he still knew enough to get out of the way. No one is going to just lay there and let a dragon priestess fall on them, right? And in the act of dodging me, he also dodged Xellos’s strike. Basically, it ended up so that Xellos wasn’t so much using me as a distraction, but as a waving red flag to get out of the way.

And… what’s more… why would he even need to make a surprise attack? Valgaav was down and quite literally at his mercy (of which he has none). There’s no logical reason why he’d need to make a desperate change like that. He had the upper hand.

With this in mind… I suppose that leaves us with a few options for interpreting this event: 1. Xellos is a moron; 2. Xellos has achieved such a chess master level of brilliance that I can’t even begin to comprehend his plans; 3. Xellos had some sort of reason to save my life that he didn’t want to reveal and therefore felt the need to cover for.

I do not, admittedly, actually think that option one is true. Option two is doubtful, but there’s little I can do to unravel it if that’s the case. Option three…

He did seem rather… you know… embarrassed when he was explaining himself. I guess that’s a reasonable emotional response since his actions were so weird, but it’s kind of bizarre that, of all things, that got to him. Betray your comrades? No shame. Get caught doing so? Nothing. Save someone’s life? Now we’re getting a little self-conscious.

But I guess… well, he’s a monster. Doing something legitimately nice might be cause for him to worry.

…If he was embarrassed because he did something nice, though, does that mean he saved me because… well… he didn’t want me to die?

…

It sounds painfully obvious when I put it that way, but you know what I mean. Like he… had some level of regard for my life. Some feeling of…

…You know, when I swore to myself that I’d never be as stupid about him again after being let down, I didn’t mean I wanted to be even stupider about him. How can it be possible that I’ve learned so little?! How is he managing to do this to me again? After all I’ve seen?

No. I know better now. He showed in his total willingness to kill Miss Lina that he doesn’t care for any of us. Not her. Not me. I can’t trick myself into thinking that he does.

He probably just has some selfish motive for wanting me alive. Maybe something to do with the prophecy or even fusion magic. Yes… his reasoning is most likely thoroughly pragmatic. He only did the dropping ploy to cover for that fact.

…Though I don’t know why he’d bother with a cover-up at all. He shielded me from a blast on the island between Alto and Baritone and didn’t feel the need to explain himself there. He just acted all smug. I don’t know why he couldn’t have done that again if he really just wanted me alive for… later.

But… never mind that. Even if I can’t make complete sense of him saving me just because he has a purpose in mind for me later, it still makes more sense than the idea of Xellos saving me because he has some sort of… genuine attachment to me.

Because that’s just laughable. The thing I saw brutalizing Valgaav in that cave back there couldn’t even manage an emotional response as positive as… that. And certainly not for me of all people. Xellos may be full of contradictions, but that’s a big one even for him.

I… can’t fall into the trap of even considering that as a possibility. No. I’ve come so far in understanding where I went wrong—in disillusioning myself about what he is. I’m not going to undo that by being even more of a fool than I was from the start.

11:42 am.

There is still a moratorium on discussing any of the implications of the shrine of marriage’s predictions in the context of what happened with Xellos in that cave. What’s more, especially after what I’ve seen, there’s no way I could even comprehend a set of circumstances that would make that “chosen pairing” thing come to pass.

However, I feel the need to note something down here only in order to shake it out of my head so I can focus on real, important things instead of being distracted by it. So here it goes: Remember when I was talking about what I thought my soul-mate should really be like? One of the things I think I mentioned was… you know, that whole idea about someone who could “sweep you off your feet.”

…And I suppose I couldn’t help but notice that technically, back there at the cave, Xellos did

You know what? I’m sorry. I’ll just… stop now. Apparently I can’t trust my own brain anymore. Maybe I never could. This journal was supposed to be about how I saw Xellos revealed as the true monster that he is. But, in the course of trying to figure out some of the oddities of what happened, it just… went in completely the wrong direction.

I think I need to take a breather before I explain the rest. And when I come back hopefully I can stop being so… silly about everything.

 

[Skiyomi]

Chapter 25. The Gateway.

Celebration Island. Enchanted Empire Hotel. 9:32 pm.

I’ve been lucky in my search that so many of the islands nearby have been relatively small and easy to search. This one was no exception. Unfortunately, I’ve not been lucky in actually finding Miss Lina and the others. But I think… I have some hope now.

You see, this island is basically nothing more than a stopover area for people sailing out to the island I intend to search tomorrow… Wonder Island. Wonder Island is, as far as I understand, totally given over to a giant theme park. It has thrilling rides, the latest in effects to take you on a magical journey, world class dining and entertainment, and relaxing resort amenities. At least, that’s what the brochure I got in the hotel lobby said.

I’m very excited about looking there tomorrow. I just feel like… yes. I’m going to find them there. I just know it. It must be my priestess’s intuition kicking in.

…Of course, I’m excited about the prospect of finding them, not because, you know, I want to have an excuse to go to a theme park or anything.

…You know what? So what if I did want to let loose and have a good time for once? You can’t say that I don’t deserve a vacation with everything that’s happened! And you don’t even know the half of it. Goodness knows that hell with Xellos would’ve been reason enough, but then there’s everything that happened after that and, what with all this searching, it’s a real surprise that I haven’t cracked under the pressure yet. In fact, looking back at my entries from earlier today, it is very possible that I already have cracked. There’s really no other explanation for the completely ludicrous ideas I’ve been entertaining about Xellos. It’s madness, I tell you! And if I don’t take this opportunity to restore my sanity through a little relaxation and fun, then I’m sure I won’t be in any fit state to find the others. It is for everyone’s benefit that I go to Wonder Island and have a great time! You could say that our entire quest depends on it.

…And now I realize with the “you don’t even know the half of it” thing that I still haven’t finished explaining everything that happened before we all got split up. I am starting to think that I will never be through with it all. I’ll be old and grey and still trying to get it all down. Hopefully by then I’ll have at least found Miss Lina and the others and figured out what the whole thing with Xellos was all about.

Who am I kidding? I’ll never figure Xellos out.

But speaking of Xellos, he’s where I left off—what with that whole unexpected-life-saving-and-then-casually-dropping-me-with-an-explanation-so-unsatisfying-that-the-idea-that-he’s-covering-for-some-sort-of-unacknowledged-fondness-for-me-makes-way-more-sense-than-it-should… thing. That.

I couldn’t really put together much of what had happened in the little reaction time I had after that. All I knew was that I was mad at him for nearly giving me a heart-attack when he swooped in and carried me away and for then dropping me—so I yelled. But even if I’d had the presence of mind to ask him what on earth he was trying to pull or poke any holes in his excuse, it wouldn’t have done any good. He just ignored me.

“Now then,” he addressed Valgaav, cutting my diatribe off before it even began, “why don’t we put an end to all this?”

Valgaav got up. “That’s supposed to be my line,” he said, sounding as though he didn’t much understand what had happened in the past few minutes, but didn’t want to bother with it either.

And if you somehow needed more evidence that Xellos’s “plan” of “distracting” Valgaav by dropping me on him was too stupid to be real (other than the fact that it doesn’t make any sense at all if you think about it for more than two seconds, of course), consider this: up until then, the fight had been going in Xellos favor. Valgaav was unable to hit him, was down and grievously injured. But that kerfuffle between me and Xellos was the tipping point in the battle. Sure, Valgaav didn’t immediately take the upper hand after it, but, for Xellos, it was all downhill from there.

Valgaav called out the light blade from his weapon and began using it much more heavily instead of wasting his energy by lobbing magic all over the place. Xellos could still dodge, and did for a while, but it wasn’t too long before he messed up. I guess he didn’t disappear fast enough—played it too close to the vest—because a strike from Valgaav’s blade was able to reach him even as he tried to retreat into the astral side.

And you have no idea how… unsettling it was to see him hit. Just hearing him cry out in pain seemed so wrong. It’s like… Xellos is not supposed to get hurt. He’s supposed to be above all that—to be able to just flit away from danger at a whim. He seemed like the baddest thing in the room and then suddenly there was this realization that he was vulnerable. And if he’s vulnerable, then what hope do the rest of us have?

The force of Valgaav’s blow knocked him against the wall, causing him to lose his grip on his staff which fell as he sunk painfully to the floor. I ran up to him—worried. That’s what you do when people are hurt, regardless of how… confusing things are.

I’ve studied many kinds of wounds in learning the art of healing, but I will never forget his. Valgaav slashed him from foot to shoulder. There was no blood just… a tear. A rip from top to bottom. Like he was a rag doll or something. I put my hand over his chest as though there was some bleeding there that I was supposed to be able to stop. He was growing cold, as though the effort of trying to blend in with the warm-blooded mortals was rendered pointless by the bloodless gash and, anyway, with a wound that big he didn’t have energy to waste.

I don’t know what I could’ve possibly done with a wound like that… as strange as it was. I don’t think I would’ve been able to do Xellos any good if I’d tried. Maybe any help I could’ve rendered would’ve come out as harm.

“Looks like I’ve really botched this job, haven’t I?” he was saying. It seemed like he was talking to himself, not to me. “…How very unfortunate,” he added in this weakened, sour tone.

Botched this job… yes he did. I wonder if he was simply referring to letting himself get hit. To perhaps being too… distracted to get away in time. By… something. Or maybe that the entire thing was a mistake: trying to persuade Valgaav, failing to persuade Valgaav, offering up Miss Lina, and… whatever happened with me. I want to know… how much of all that does he really regret?

I know it couldn’t have lasted very long… that moment where I was just looking at him, leaned in close with my hand over his wound, and he just… looked back, uncharacteristically beaten. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Valgaav float down over to us just… watching. And I felt like that was it. Valgaav wanted Xellos dead and Xellos was in no shape to fight back. I was in the way and I wasn’t moving. We were going to die. That’s what I thought.

“I warned you,” Valgaav growled. “I warned you not to underestimate me. I with the power of a dragon and Lord Gaav.” A green, magical glow began to rise around him. “Now, tell me how it feels, Xellos!” he yelled, all vindictive rage and readiness to strike.

And we probably would’ve died then and there, if it weren’t for the interruption.

Miss Lina to the rescue!

“Come on, this way!” I heard her shouting as she ran through a connecting tunnel, followed by Mister Gourry and Almayce.

I didn’t even question the Almayce thing at that point. Xellos’s example had left the idea of shifting between sides open, and we needed all the allies we could get. Plus, I was too happy to see Lina to worry about it.

“Miss Lina!” I shouted, relieved as I pulled a bit away from Xellos to catch her eye.

She took in the scene, and what a strange one it must’ve been. Valgaav, partially transformed, looming over us with a Dark Star weapon, Xellos bifurcated, and me leaning over him. She skidded to a halt and bobbed her head at each of us in turn in utter befuddlement. “HUH? What the—?! What’s going on here?!” She demanded. She clenched her fists and turned angrily to the likeliest (and most correct) person to blame for anything going haywire. “Xellos!”

“You mean you were fighting with Valgaav?” Almayce asked, looking searchingly at Xellos.

Lina ran over to us and took a knee to observe the damage. “How’d this happen?”

I really thought that Xellos would beat around the bush. I don’t know if I expected him to outright lie, but I thought he’d at least edge away from the nastier parts of our encounter. The main thing Miss Lina was asking about was his injury, and all he had to say to really explain that would be that he was ordered to fight Valgaav and got hurt that way. It would completely omit the incriminating things that had happened, but it would technically be a truthful answer.

If he was going to actually confess to everything, you’d think he’d at least have tried to build up a case for himself first. Say: I was ordered to do this, you know. It’s not my choice, or some sort of excuse.

But no. He just went straight for it! “Well, it’s a little embarrassing,” he said, holding his wound, “but it all started when I offered your life in exchange for him joining the monster race.”

The expression of curiosity on her face dropped immediately. Her reaction wasn’t horrified shock, like mine was. Rather I might say it was… unimpressed? Maybe disapproving? But very flat in its way. Not a wild fluctuation as though this was earth-shattering news.

Xellos, seemingly oblivious to this, went on: “He got mad at me and thought I was trying to trick him.” Incapacitated though he was, he still managed to pull off his familiar raised-index-finger pose with the hand on his non-injured side. “Of course, you see how things went after that.”

Miss Lina subjected him to a long, slow stare.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

You know… forget what I said about not thinking Xellos was a moron if he can’t figure out why Miss Lina had a problem with what he did.

After that Miss Lina punched him… about four times. Right in the head. You’d think seeing Xellos punched would’ve been satisfying, but it wasn’t remotely. In fact, Mister Gourry and I had two very opposite reactions to this.

“Hey! Stop it; he’s hurt!” Miss Gourry said, thinking she’d gone too far.

“What?! I can’t believe that’s all you’re going to do to him!” I cried out, knowing that she hadn’t gone nearly far enough. When someone threatens to kill you for their own profit, I think you’re allowed to respond in a way that’s a little more than mildly annoyed. I’ve seen Miss Lina threaten to blow up whole towns because a waiter forgot to bring steak sauce to the table along with her porterhouse. And she’d have done it too if Mister Gourry and Miss Amelia hadn’t pinned her arms behind her back until she calmed down!

“Miss Lina,” I continued, feeling like she had to be in some kind of shock and only feeling the most limited effect of Xellos’s nonchalantly stated betrayal, “that monster, Xellos, tried to sell you out to Valgaav!”

It was as though I hoped explaining it to her would change her response—would validate how upset the whole thing had left me. It was like: No. No. You have permission to be really really mad about this! You don’t have to just smack him a few times and act like things are cool again!

Miss Lina was resting her fingertips on her forehead as though she had a headache. “Yeah, well, Xellos is a monster, so I expect him to do that. We stay together with that understanding. It’s no biggie.”

Her matter-of-fact acceptance of it threw me for a loop. “What are you saying?!”

She turned to me, in a brighter mood. “In exchange, I get to use Xellos as a convenience item when I need to. Right?” she said, throwing Xellos a wink.

Xellos looked like he wasn’t quite so sure it was exactly like that. “Well… I suppose…” he said, scratching his cheek.

And I just… deflated a little. I mean, to see them just get over it and move on so quickly... because this was how they expected things to be. How did I end up putting more trust in Xellos than Miss Lina did? I don’t know… and this is ground I’ve already tread. But another question occurred to me as I was sitting there trying to make sense of it all:

What was I even doing? First I’d run over to Xellos’s side, worried that he was hurt. And then I was yelling at Miss Lina for only punching him. What did I want? What do I want?

There wasn’t much time for soul searching. It was honestly surprising that we’d gotten through all that with Valgaav just patiently waiting for us to decide to fight him.

“Anyway,” Miss Lina said, turning her attention to Valgaav, “our friend here looks like he’s gone through some changes.”

“So it seems,” Xellos answered. “If you intend to fight him, please be careful.”

Telling Miss Lina to be careful after he only just got through explaining how he’d offered to kill her? I don’t think I’m the only one around here who can’t figure out what they want.

It’s probably precisely because I didn’t know what I wanted that I reached out to him again—trying to somehow hold his sliced up form together with a hand on either side of him.

Mister Gourry strode forward seriously, blessedly absent of any of my incredibly mixed feelings. “You’re going to pay for hurting Xellos,” he threatened, drawing his sword… or, rather, his mallet-sword. “Oh no, I forgot!” he cried out upon seeing that it wasn’t his Sword of Light. It took some of the… weight out of his declaration.

This wasn’t the end of our reinforcements. Mister Zelgadis and Miss Amelia popped up at the opening of another tunnel, dragging a rope that connected to a bound Jillas. But that wasn’t all they’d brought along. Miss Amelia was carrying the Sword of Light which they’d evidently managed to take back.

“Lina!” Mister Zelgadis shouted, seeing us.

“Mister Gourry!” Miss Amelia yelled, following suit.

“It’s about time you got here!” Miss Lina called out, glad to see them.

“Looks like we made it in time,” Mister Zelgadis said, taking in the scene.

“Made it in time? Time for what?!” Jillas squawked from the ground.

“Here, Mister Gourry!” Miss Amelia shouted, tossing the sword to him.

He caught it easily and drew it in a single stroke. “Alright!” he cheered. “This is my sword!” He held it out in one hand while still raising the mallet above his head with the other. “This’ll do just fine!” he said, evidently pleased with this state of affairs.

Lina, who was not, impatiently called out: “So lose the other one already!”

Valgaav finally made a move more interactive than just following the newcomers to the cavern with his eyes. He began with a quiet chuckle that rolled into a full laugh—but not a joyful one. So, so bitter.

“…Well, well, it looks like the gang’s all here,” he said, his voice raspy and harsh. “So, Almayce, you really have turned against me, haven’t you?”

“That is not true,” Almayce disagreed, “but I cannot let you do this, Valgaav.” It was enough to convince me that he really was on our side… at least enough on our side.

“Heh. Don’t assume you will win simply because I am outnumbered,” Valgaav said in a low, far too untroubled voice.

“Be careful, Lina!” Zelgadis warned, obviously reading the tea leaves on this one.

Miss Lina watched Valgaav carefully for a moment. Then, without turning around, she said: “…Filia, get Xellos out of here now.”

“Huh?” I began, because I was thrown off guard, not because I was going to pick a fight or anything. “Right!” I said, taking Xellos and putting his arm over my shoulder, so I could more easily carry him. He was giving me a look too—curious, dubious… tentative? I knew it boded a question—the obvious question. Or at least… the obvious family of questions. The “What are you doing?” “What are you thinking?” “What do you want?” ones. That batch. You know: the ones I can’t manage to answer. I kept moving as though I couldn’t bother myself with any such searchings. I had a task to carry out and that was that. I looked away from him, reaching down to pick up his staff. After all, he’s always carrying it. I wasn’t about to leave it behind.

I shuffled away with him as quickly as I could, which was not very quick.

“Don’t even bother,” I heard Valgaav say. “Either way, you’re going to die.”

I forced myself not to pay attention to it—not to let fear of whatever death was being sent our way overpower me. I just kept levering myself forward with Xellos’s staff.

“I never imagined you’d be helping me, Filia,” Xellos breathed as I stumbled along with him leaning on me—completely dependent on my strength to move forward. It wasn’t a mocking tone. It wasn’t a: “Oh, so what kind of golden dragon are you? I thought you hated me,” kind of thing. It wasn’t smug. I’d have to say it was downright sincere. And it wasn’t just a statement. It begged a question—the aforementioned questions.

His timing was bad. I knew something was heading for us. I could feel it in the change in the air currents. “This is no time to be discussing that!” I returned with effort.

I heard Miss Lina call out a spell and whatever it was seemed to counter Valgaav’s attack. We were safe as we continued to retreat and able to get out of the way as the spectacle really started.

We were still turned away when Mister Gourry tried to use the Sword of Light and Miss Lina told him not to, but we’d reached the far wall of the cave and gotten enough away that we could turn around and see what was happening by the time Almayce joined the fight.

“I will stop you, Valgaav,” he declared, summoning up a purple shield around himself as he hurtled toward the ancient dragon.

That shield held up pretty well… at first. It resisted Valgaav’s magical energy attacks and even allowed Almayce to get close enough to try to take the Dark Star weapon back from Valgaav. Unfortunately, I think reaching through the shield to do that weakened its defense, because Valgaav was able to have much more effect with his next energy blast—breaking the shield and sending Almayce rocketing backwards and onto the ground.

My hand may have gripped Xellos’s shoulder of his own accord when Almayce hit the floor, but I can’t be blamed for that. It was a frightening moment and I didn’t have any other shoulders to choose from.

Valgaav seemed as though he was winding up—he hadn’t been amenable to anything we’d said or done before, but he’d at least seemed to be in some level of control of himself. But as he roared to all of us: “My power is already… BEYOND ANYTHING YOU CAN FIGHT!” it was clear that he was beyond even that. He lobbed out more spells—so many that the cave seemed brightly lit for a moment—and we all had to hit the deck. I’m not sure, because it happened so quickly, but I could swear before I ducked I saw an aura of multiple dragon heads around him. Is that a manifestation of his power in his ancient dragon form? …Or is it the power of the Demon Dragon King?

It was hard to know what to do against that kind of power. Miss Lina at least wanted to try a Dragon Slave, saying: “It may be useless, but it’s worth a try.” But trying to cast it just made her a target… and her becoming a target made…

Mister Gourry tried to stop it. That’s where it all went wrong. Valgaav tried to blast Miss Lina and Mister Gourry wasn’t going to let that happen. So he summoned the blade on his sword and blocked the energy with it, but the force was so great that it sent the sword flying… and Valgaav caught it. Easily. As though that was his plan all along.

“Gorun Nova!” Almayce cried, having recovered himself at least enough for that.

Valgaav let out a soft, triumphant laugh. “There’s something you should know,” he said in a low, pleased voice. “You only need two of these weapons to open the gateway.”

“What did he say?” Miss Lina asked, concerned.

“Now that I have this, waiting until all five weapons are gathered is no longer necessary. Now stay here and watch as Dark Star consumes everything in this world!” he declared, making it all too clear to me what he meant by opening a gateway. With that said he held out the blades in front of him, charged up, and vanished.

My eyes were drawn away from the spot where Valgaav had been to Almayce as he let out a gasp of pain and clutched his wound. Xellos was not the only one among our injured. “We must stop him at any cost,” Almayce said. “You must go after him before it’s too late.”

Miss Lina got to her feet and I followed suit, lifting Xellos along with me as gently as I could. “What are we supposed to do?” she asked.

“I know where Valgaav is going,” Almayce went on, still obviously fighting against the pain. He took a few ragged breaths, trying to get it under control. “Before the gateway goes out of control—you must kill him!”

“What do you mean out of control?” Miss Amelia asked, as in the dark on the details as I was.

“Gorun Nova and Ragudo Mezigis…” Almayce said, referring to Mister Gourry’s sword and the weapon Valgaav had been using. “He’s going to use the weapons as the key to the gateway, but he won’t be able to control it! …The Dark Star energy he will release will soon begin to go out of control. If we’re to break up Dark Star’s power, we must wait for the other three weapons to be gathered.”

So there it was… the grim explanation. We’d thought Almayce wanted to use Dark Star’s power to destroy the world and all we’d been able to guess that Valgaav was after was revenge. But now… Almayce seems to want Dark Star destroyed and Valgaav…

Valgaav is in a dark place… he wanted it to come and it did…

Without a moment to lose, we ran off to find Valgaav, even dragging Jillas along with us. Led by Almayce, we did eventually find Valgaav. He was in the center of the room and seemed to be using the energy from the Dark Star blades to activate some sort of golden clockwork device.

“What is that energy?” Miss Lina asked.

“Is it magic from the Overworld?” Mister Zelgadis asked, shielding his eyes against the glare.

I suppose it’s hard to say. We didn’t learn more about what the energy was, but Valgaav turned to us. There was something awful about the way he just slung his neck back, as though his body was propelled by something more than its earthly components—some shock of energy, some drug, some possessing spirit. “The world of the gods, the monsters and the humans is about to come to an end,” he predicted. “And where would the fun be without an audience to witness it?”

“Valgaav! NOOO!” Almayce shouted, probably much clearer on what he was doing than the rest of us.

Valgaav didn’t listen, but he didn’t vanish without us this time. No… he wanted his “audience.” And so when he disappeared, so did we. Light surrounded us, and when we could see again, we were on some sort of structure surrounded by a glowing green light and with many floating platforms all about. Valgaav was above us.

“W-where are we?” Miss Amelia asked, visibly shaken as she looked around.

“This is the where the door will open upon this world’s destruction,” Valgaav intoned as an answer. “In other words: where all of you will DIE!”

…Or in even other words: the Pillar of Light. That’s what Almayce explained after Valgaav vanished yet again. But more than that, he explained that it was a gateway that he built to summon Dark Star.

Xellos lifted up his head from beside me. He’d been quiet—conserving his strength from a wound that was obviously very serious to him. But when he spoke it was in that familiar Xellos-tone: curious, but knowing and above it all. “Oh my,” he said. “I never would’ve imagined that such a gateway could’ve existed out here.”

“Why not?” Miss Lina asked.

“Because this area is forbidden to both the gods and the monsters,” Xellos explained.

…This may sound weird to say, but I kind of regret not being able to see his face during that conversation. I mean, I was holding him and he was turning away, so I could only see the back of his head. It’s just… a communication thing. I like to look people in the face when they’re talking, that’s all.

“A forbidden area?” Mister Zelgadis asked.

“This was where a war more ancient than the War of the Monster’s Fall was fought,” Xellos answered, dropping some significantly worrying information.

Miss Lina’s eyes widened as she figured it out. “You mean…?”

“Exactly, Lina,” Xellos confirmed. “Here was where Lord Shabranigdo and the red dragon god Cepheid fought each other.”

We were standing on sacred ground. A place where no one should be…

“…The ancient battleground of Cepheid and Shabranigdo…” Miss Lina murmured, taking it all in.

“But why did you choose this place?” Amelia asked Almayce.

“It was necessary for our plan,” was Almayce’s simple response.

“You mean for killing Dark Star?” Miss Lina prompted.

“Exactly,” said Almayce. “It’s true that a gateway can be opened with just the power of Gorun Nova and Ragudo Mezigis. However, the gateway will only be a small one. The area of space where the mighty powers of Cepheid and Shabranigdo has been left permanently destabilized. We intend to utilize this instability to create a gateway for summoning Dark Star.”

“I see you’ve planned this well,” Xellos appraised.

I’d loosened my grip on Xellos by this point. He seemed to be carrying his own weight then, to be, in fact, in his element despite the terrible slash he’d taken. I felt a pang of guilt about letting go of him like that when he could’ve used the support, and there was some measure of comfort in having him rely on my strength but…

I had to go. The prophecy was coming true and I had to do something—anything to stop it. And the reasons Valgaav felt driven to all of this… revenge. It didn’t matter if his reason for revenge was real or imagined… I had a responsibility to answer for it. To stop him from doing such a terrible thing.

…I’m wrong, of course, to say that it doesn’t matter if the reason was real or imagined. It matters a lot. It matters so, so much. But I mean to say it wasn’t productive to think of then… it may not be productive to think of now… but I had to move forward. So I walked away from the group.

Miss Lina called after me as I walked down the steps so that I could get a good look at the area above and spy out where Valgaav had gone, but I ignored her. I had to do this.

All around this place it was just sizzling with electric energy. You could feel it in the air and see it as lightning arced between the floating cylinders above us. I gathered my own energy to find Valgaav, and thought about what I’d say once I confronted him. In my mind… I was determined not to fail. In my mind… my words reached him. But it was wishful thinking to have hoped it could’ve gone as I envisioned it.

Once I’d gathered enough energy and had a destination, I teleported to a central platform. On the floor of it there were glowing carvings that seemed to make up a pattern, but from where I was standing I couldn’t make out the shape. Likely it was meant to have been seen from above.

Valgaav was there. He even saw me. He was still holding the weapon called Ragudo Mezigis, but the Sword of Light had been plunged into an orb-like piece of the structure. He seemed to have just done something because the whole area was agitated. Lightning danced toward the platform, which turned out to be the stage upon which the summoning was meant to be done. Slots and pumps seemed to activate all along the structure, sending towers rising out of the area we were standing on. The place was changing… transforming for the summoning.

“Isn’t it wonderfully ironic?” Valgaav asked me.

I was thrown by this. He’d been alternating between power-mad rage and hushed doomsaying, but that comment… he addressed it to me as though I was a confidant of his.

“The power from Shabranigdo and Cepheid’s battle to control the world will be used to open the gateway to summon Dark Star here,” Valgaav went on. “A fitting end for this miserable excuse for a world.”

I didn’t share his sense of irony or of justice. I recovered my poise and resolved to say just what I’d planned to.

“My name is Filia Ul Copt, daughter of High Priest Bazaard Ul Copt, and priestess of the first holy order,” I said, trying to jam in as much authority as I could muster.

“How impressive!” Valgaav scoffed, proving that Xellos does not have the market cornered on sarcastically belittling praise.

I didn’t let that stop me. I pointed at him. “In the name of Vrabazard, I pass down judgment upon you! Abandon your mad desires and repent! If you don’t—”

“If I don’t?” Valgaav cut me off, lurching forward and again coming off in that horrible, slightly detached way from before. Like a marionette with the true source of power pulling the strings from above. Out of it and… strange. “Go on, say it, you naïve little girl,” he dared, making his way toward me.

I’d made my judgment and I was prepared to strike then. And what a poor, pitiful strike it was. Against him my most powerful holy spell… Chaotic Disintegrate did nothing. It surrounded him in a white column of explosive energy but he came out completely unharmed. I wasn’t even remotely able to stand against him. It should’ve been no wonder after what he managed to do to Xellos, but the shock of my helplessness nearly sent me stumbling.

“I will not be defeated by you,” Valgaav said with certainty and with a sense of… righteous purpose. Yes, I think I must call it that. “Not by the bloodstained hands of a golden dragon.”

I passed judgment on him. But he passed judgment on me. And I… I weakened first.

“Wait!” I tried, dropping any authority I might’ve grasped at inexpertly before. I’d confronted Valgaav and my reason and my force had both failed. All that was left that I could possibly hope for, in a dreadful kind of way, was the truth. “Please tell me! What you… what you said to us before… did my people really massacre your race?” I asked, voice quavering with desperation. “Please tell me.”

I was disregarded. Or perhaps he thought he was sparing me, though he had no reason to. “Just go home, little girl,” he said.

I felt tears welling up in my eyes. “Oh, please tell me!” I cried. “Tell me!”

…But that conversation couldn’t continue. I’m not sure how it would’ve if it had. But the others showed up, riding a floating cylinder and showering ultimately ineffectual attacks on Valgaav. But it was enough for them to get the chance to drag me away and on to the cylinder which lowered again. Right then I wished… I wished that they hadn’t rescued me. Because I had to hear it from Valgaav… between him and me or else I couldn’t…

Valgaav let our little platform float away. “Not yet,” he promised. “I won’t kill you yet. I’ll let you live long enough to see Dark Star summoned to this miserable world.”

…It all seemed so impossible then. I barely heard anything that Miss Lina and the others were saying. My mind was spinning with it… Valgaav was going to bring destruction, just as the prophecy predicted… and the fierce anger that caused him to want something so terrible was… because of me. Because of my people. It was my fault. And it was my fault that I hadn’t been able to stop him. I was sent for that purpose and I could be of no use.

There were mutterings from the others—hopelessness and the eventual forming of a strategy. I didn’t hear it. I merely stayed with Miss Lina and Mister Gourry as the group split up, hoping that if I could somehow get to Valgaav again I could convince him that what he was doing would only hurt him. That tearing the whole world down out of revenge wouldn’t make anything better for anyone.

When we came back to the summoning stage, Valgaav was about to slot Ragudo Mezigis into a green orb that shimmered with energy. He turned as he felt our approach.

Miss Lina led the charge. “We’re not gonna let you open the gateway that easily,” she said, hands on her hips. I envied her bravado. I don’t know where it came from.

“You just don’t know when to quit,” Valgaav observed.

“Unfortunately, if I ran home now, my big sister would kill me,” Miss Lina explained with a shrug.

“This is no joke!” Valgaav shot back, the threat rising in his voice. “Now stand aside.”

“Nope. Can’t do that,” Mister Gourry said easily.

Neither one was relenting. I knew this would come to fighting in just a moment. “Move,” Valgaav ordered.

“Please stop this!” I cried out, trying to lock eyes with Valgaav and somehow locate whatever reasonable shreds of him remained beyond the maddened, all too powerful and vengeful exterior. “No matter what may have happened, destroying the world because of it—would be a mistake!”

“A mistake?” Valgaav repeated dubiously. “This entire world was a mistake from the start! The gods, the monsters, and everything else,” he listed in an angry ramble. And then those reasonable shreds of him I’d tried so hard to find betrayed me by wanting revenge just as much as the rest of him: “Mistakes should be corrected. Shouldn’t they?”

I couldn’t take it… to be so far gone, to be so hurt and angry and dejected that life itself seems so cruel that it’s a mercy to snuff it out? How can a person think that way… and what true hell must someone have gone through to make that feel right?

“It was Lord Gaav who first tried to correct the mistake,” Valgaav recalled, brows furrowing angrily. “I’m merely finishing what he started.”

Miss Lina and Mister Gourry readied themselves for the fight to begin. “I guess you have no intention of stopping this, do you?” Miss Lina asked.

“In a word: no,” Valgaav answered with taunting simplicity.

“Well then, you leave me no choice,” Miss Lina said.

That appeared to be some kind of signal. Miss Amelia and Mister Zelgadis jumped out from hiding spots behind the columns that had risen out of our platform. “BEHFIS BRING!” they shouted, shooting energy that broke along the floor of the platform and in a line headed directly toward Valgaav.

Valgaav dodged it, but Miss Lina seemed to be expecting that. “You can’t run!” she shouted, having levitated so she was behind Valgaav. “DIMIL ARWIN!” she casted, sending a powerful blast of wind at him.

Valgaav tried to block it, but the wind spell knocked him back into the platform which, likely aided by the structural weakening from the earth spell, punched a hole straight through the cylinder and knocked him into its hollowed interior.

“We sure put one over on you, huh? Now let’s settle the score.” Miss Lina was saying.

We gathered around the hole at the top of the cylinder and looked down on Valgaav. But he didn’t look like he’d been cornered. In fact, he was smiling.

What followed was chaos. We all descended into interior of the platform—which felt very similar to the cave-like parts of Valgaav’s base. The others tried to hit him with their spells, but it was no easy feat. Valgaav was shooting in every direction—easily holding his own against all of us put together.

Maybe that’s why Mister Gourry snatched my mace away. He didn’t have his Sword of Light to use, so he wanted something that packed more of a punch. It didn’t do him any good and resulted in him lifting up my skirt for the second time since I’ve known him! That is just ridiculous! One time could be a mistake, but any more than that is just more than I am willing to accept!

…But you know what’s the crazy part? It was actually a relief to be angry at him—to conk him over the head with my mace once I took it back. After everything I’d been feeling and going through, pure, automatic anger was just so wonderfully uncomplicated. It didn’t last, though.

Valgaav was so confident he could win. In fact, it started to get to the point where we hardly even seemed to be people to him, his power was so great. “You creatures don’t stand a chance!” he’d said. Creatures… and what was worse, it seemed like he was right. He was so overpowered that it didn’t seem like there was anything we could’ve done.

Miss Lina tried something… and it seemed like it would work for a time. She started to cast an amplification spell, but fell to the ground before she could add on a spell to be amplified by it—it was as if she’d fainted.

Valgaav bought her act. He floated over to her with a harsh: “Ha. I don’t know what spell that was supposed to be, but too bad it misfired.” He landed on the ground in front of her and made to pull her up by her cloak.

“Don’t worry. The spell fired off just fine,” I heard Miss Lina say, not at all in the weakened voice you might expect from someone who’d just collapsed. She looked up at him. “Perfectly, in fact.”

Valgaav hadn’t counted on that. Nor had he counted on Lina then pulling out a dagger, stabbing him, and pushing him off a cliff and further down into the hollow of the cylinder.

We heard the grunt of surprised pain from Valgaav as they descended… and then we heard the chant of the Dragon Slave. She was going to fire a powered-up Dragon Slave directly into Valgaav’s body… and she did it. Technically she succeeded. I mean, the spell went off and she managed to protect herself with a barrier.

There was a moment when I thought he had to be dead. Any other opponent would’ve been reduced to ash by such a direct and devastating blow. And… there was no way I could feel triumph in it. I mourned for his loss and his grief which was never answered for—though he’d tried in all the wrong ways.

But Valgaav wasn’t dead. Even a point-blank Dragon Slave couldn’t finish him.

It was clear that the attack had hurt him—terribly. He was screaming in full-throated agony, though there were no clear marks on him that I could see. Black wings sprouted out of his back. It was almost as though the source of his pain was not Miss Lina’s attack, but the accelerated transformation that it catalyzed.

“I don’t believe it,” Miss Lina said, her seemingly endless reserve of last ditch plans running dry. “That wasn’t enough to kill him?!”

He kept screaming and I… I moved toward him. I know. I know. It sounds stupid. It sounded stupid then and in hindsight, even more so. But he just… he was in so much pain. And in a strange way it felt like a child’s pain—sharp and sudden and so incomprehensible to its target that it’s almost blinding. It’s impossible to hear something like that and not want to somehow make it all go away.

He was not in so much pain, though, that he could not act. With a fresh cry he flew at me—carrying me off before anyone could do anything to try to stop it. Beating those black, feathered wings, he spirited both of us back up the chasm and on to the only partially destroyed summoning stage at the top of the platform.

…And…

I do not want to go on. I’ve pushed through and written about losing the others; about Xellos’s violence and betrayal; about the drumbeat of accusations against my people; about the prospect of the world ending. And none of it—not one piece—was easy. But asking myself to relive this… I don’t think I can.

Sunday, May 13th.

2:39 am.

I can’t sleep. I tried to, after I gave up on writing, but it’s no use. So I have decided this: I will write what happened, no matter how it feels for me. I will write it now. And then I will never revisit it ever again. I will exorcise it from my heart and trap it between these pages. That’s the only way.

…When Valgaav and I landed, he touched down in front of the same green orb he’d by trying to put Ragudo Mezigis in—the place where the weapon could be used as the key to open up the gateway. His arm pressed against my neck, making it impossible to move and sending a black haze across my vision as I tried to keep breathing. I knew it was the end for me there, and all I could hope was to somehow make it a productive end.

“If killing me will appease your anger,” I choked out with a great deal of effort, “then kill me now.”

When Valgaav spoke it was in a voice so much gruffer than I’d heard from him before—almost feral. “…No. I won’t kill you,” he breathed. He grabbed my hand which barely shook with the opposite effort as I tried to pull back. “You’re going to end the world with your own hand,” he said, placing my hand on Ragudo Mezigis’s handle. “If you do that,” he promised fervently, madly, “you will wipe away the greatest sin of all.”

It is impossible to explain to you how I felt in that moment. It was as though I was holding that blade against someone’s throat and Valgaav’s inevitable power would push me to slash it. But that blade was against everyone’s throat and I had no strength to stop him. All of creation… the world, families, friends, children… everything that he called sin would be wiped out. And I was a part of it. I was the blame. I was the source. I was the hand holding the weapon. I couldn’t stop it. There wasn’t any last effort in the world that could’ve stopped that strike from landing. I cried. I begged him with all my might. But none of that mattered. It was happening. There was no way to stop it.

His hand over mine slid the weapon into its place. The carved runes glowed manically and rods on towers buzzed as lightning speared through them. The electricity was redirected, so that it flowed from each source and into a floating platform directly above us—splitting the thing into six parts. Black energy swarmed around it—steaming and crackling.

It was done. There was no turning back. Valgaav threw me aside. Done with me.

The others ran up to me, but there was no comfort in their presence. All I could do was stare in horror at the shadow world tearing into ours from above. That black cloud seeped downward, surrounding all of us in its shroud. The part of the platform Valgaav was standing on rose, as though wanting to greet the darkness firsthand. As he rose I heard his laughter—growing smaller and smaller as he moved further away.

“The gateway of destruction is opening! Let this world be flooded by darkness!” he shouted, in the sway of some cathartic but dreadful joy.

The darkness above us began to take form. I don’t think I will ever stop seeing it in my nightmares. The terrible teeth and the glowing white eyes… the scorched skull that protruded out of the mouth with its red eyes… and its shambling black limbs.

“Dobradigdo! That’s Dark Star?!” I heard Miss Lina cry out.

It killed Valgaav. It killed him first and foremost—the person who summoned him there. And yet Valgaav seemed to dare this end—to taunt Dark Star into devouring him first. It was the end he asked for. …And yet so horrible. I can still see him being wiped away bit by bit by that horrible darkness—negated. Why? Why does anyone have to go like that? Why would anyone want to?

As I cried out his name, I heard weeping much louder than my own grief and saw that Jillas had managed to untie himself and saw the whole thing—his master consumed by something not of this world and unspeakably evil.

…And then Almayce was there. And Xellos too had managed to limp over. We were all together again for what felt like the end of days.

“Oh great! A berserk demon of destruction!” I heard Mister Zelgadis shout as the frightening thing descended closer and closer to us—its aura alone nearly pushing us back with the force of a gale.

“There’s no way to stop it now,” Almayce said, staring at it in hopelessness.

I looked down, unable to face up to it. I’d been sent to stop this destruction—entrusted with saving this world we live in. And I was helpless. Out of options.

…But Miss Lina didn’t give up. “Well, there’s one last thing we can try,” she said after a breath, pushing her way through the wind.

“Miss Lina?” I heard Miss Amelia try, unsure what was going on.

“No!” Mister Zelgadis shouted, instantly getting it. “Lina’s going to try to cast the Giga Slave!”

We were that much against the wall… so much that such a terrible spell was the lesser of two great evils. Miss Amelia raced after Miss Lina, trying to stop her, but was blown back by the wind. Then she begged Almayce to stop her, but he did nothing.

Mister Zelgadis put the plan more succinctly than I could: “Lina wants to save the world by casting a spell that may destroy it anyway?” It was a nightmare scenario. But as much as I wanted to pull Miss Lina away from that mouth of darkness same as the others did… I almost felt like it didn’t make a difference anymore. We were choosing the way we would die. That’s all it came down to.

But I was wrong. There was hope, and it came in a way none of us could’ve expected. Miss Lina didn’t even get to fire off her spell before it happened. She was ready to, but she was interrupted. The blackness around us seemed to suddenly shatter and two white silhouettes appeared from nowhere. They were each carrying items.

The strangers floated past the understandably stunned Lina and to the main platform where they each drove their items into two green orbs of the kind that Valgaav had thrust the Sword of Light and Ragudo Mezigis in.

In those seconds before everything went crazy again, I heard Almayce exclaim: “Look! It’s the other two weapons: Nezard and Bodugard. …Is there still time?”

Then with a jolt of electricity those six slabs that made up the gateway began to fold back into one column—all over the impossible mass of Dark Star’s forming body. It looked like it could never have closed back up again, but it must’ve… if only because we’re here.

That was when a white light suffused the entire area… and that is the last thing I remember before I woke up on the beach, all alone.

I don’t know who those people were that showed up at the very last second with the other Dark Star weapons and managed to close the gateway. Perhaps we do have guardian angels after all. I can only hope that the gateway is really shut… it seemed like Dark Star was already flowing so much out of it that I worry that it was only trapped momentarily as the door shut… and that with time it’ll work its way through. It’s lasted these last couple of days… it’s got to hold up. It’s got to hold up so that I can find Miss Lina and the others and so that we can put a stop to this once and for all… so that no one has to go through this ever again.

…There. I’ve said it all. I’ve finally gotten through the mass of heartache that happened between the temple of marriage and everyone getting separated. I still don’t know what to make of a lot of it… but something I can say now with weary certainty is…

…I really, really need a vacation…

 

[Skiyomi]

Chapter 26. It’s a Small Outer World After All.

Curiosity Ferry. 4:05 pm.

I heard it so many times today—“Have a wonderful day!”—with the emphasis on “wonder.” I heard it from uniformed ride attendants, gift shop workers, people in animal mascot get-ups, and costumed princesses. Have a wonderful day. It seemed to be Wonder Island’s motto—its bit of cheerfulness to keep with you all day and take with you even after you leave. Well, you know what? I did. I did have a wonderful day. And it’s been so long since I could say that and be sincere about it that I’m just so relieved and grateful.

I went on rides, I saw amazing performances, I got to try some delicious food which I’m sure is very bad for me but I don’t care, I got to spend the day surrounded by the laughter of children, and I found Miss Lina and Mister Zelgadis! So, you know, even if I overshot the normal daily budget by a very significant margin, it was all completely worth it. Could I ask for a more wonderful day?

Well… I suppose I could’ve asked for it to be a little bit longer. I mean, there’s plenty of daylight out and we could’ve stayed at the park until nightfall—had a nice dinner, maybe stayed in one of the hotels in the area (one of which is designed like a fairy-tale castle, if I may point that out). It wouldn’t have made that much of a difference in our ability to get back on the trail tomorrow. But Miss Lina just wanted to get off the island as soon as possible, and Mister Zelgadis hasn’t been much better about it. He’s just standing by the rails of the ferry looking out at the water now. I think he’s sulking because he had to wear tights or something?

I guess maybe I could’ve talked them into staying if I’d been more quick thinking and persuasive about it. Just showing Miss Lina the list of world-class restaurants there would’ve peeked her interest. I’m sure that if she’d hunkered down for her usual three-hour meal she’d have had time to forget about who changed her clothes and whatever else she’s mad about and realize what a magical place Wonder Island is and let us spend the rest of the day there. We’d have gone on the Pirates of the Demon Sea ride, maybe the Haunted Castle, had some funnel cake and been able to call it a day with happy hearts.

…Though… now that I think about it, it might be better that Miss Lina was in such a rush to get off the island that she couldn’t be sold on its good points. If she found out what great food they have and how much fun the park is, we might’ve never gotten back on track. She’d run up our food bill like crazy and make up some excuse about what a hard time she’s had and how we should extend our vacation on Wonder Island for like… a week. Maybe more.

…Of course, I only wanted to stay a day and mine wasn’t an excuse, if you’re thinking of pointing the finger back at me on that one. It was a completely reasonable request from a weary and frazzled traveler who just needed a little joy in their life for once! Just one day—just one bright, if frivolous, light to hold in my heart and keep me sane!

Anyway, it was quasi-quest related and it worked out since I found Miss Lina and Mister Zelgadis, so the way I spent my day was completely productive and not “goofing off” at all—no matter what Xellos thinks.

…Don’t get me started on Xellos again.

So, anyway, now we have to get going on finding Miss Amelia and Mister Gourry. I’m hopeful that they’ll find each other before we do so that the whole thing will be less work. And, I mean, I found Miss Lina and Mister Zelgadis together, so I’m going to just say the chances aren’t bad that the other two got sent off to the same place as each other.

But I’m not going to worry about that task right now. That’s something to start on tomorrow. For now, I’m just going to sit back and bask in the accomplishment of finding Miss Lina and Mister Gourry and the glow of my brief but rejuvenating vacation.

From the moment I got through the (admittedly, very long) lines to get in and passed through the large gates and into the park itself I could already feel my spirits lifting. I was greeted by the tinkling music of a band playing from a raised platform—piano, bass, trumpet—all belting out with this lively and upbeat tune. The musicians were all wearing mouse costumes with cheery expressions painted onto their faces.

I read about the founding of the place in a book I found at the gift shop (before you ask, yes, I did pick up a souvenir mug. I shouldn’t have to answer to anyone for this decision) and the goal apparently was to “create a place for the young and young at heart where dreams come to life.” That’s a quote from Dalton Wonder, who founded the island some forty years ago.

Bringing dreams to life is certainly something they’ve managed to pull of very well from what I saw in the short time while I was there. And the really amazing thing is that they’ve done it without magic! The world tours in the dimensional labyrinth ports achieve their effects through mostly puppetry and wirework with a veritable army of gifted performers and behind-the-scenes experts. The “worlds,” which feel so broad and fleshed-out, are really just well-crafted sets populated by marionettes and costumed actors.

All this effort is enough to completely get most young kids to believe that they’ve traveled to a different world—one where things they never believed could happen are everyday occurrences. Of course, adults and older kids are likely to see through to the (very literal) strings attached or the elaborate clockwork mechanisms or the seams in a costume betraying the ordinary human inside. But that doesn’t mean it’s not still fun—it just means you have to suspend your disbelief a little bit and you’ll still have a good time. I know I did.

…Though… now that I think of it… Miss Lina and Mister Zelgadis were completely taken in without having to suspend their disbelief at all. That’s probably why they’re so annoyed. Well… one of the reasons.

But I’m not going to dwell on their discontent! I had a great time during my time in the dimensional labyrinth. I’m not totally sure what their experience consisted of—though judging by their outfits it was probably very different from mine. I have no doubt the show the Wonder Island staff put on was excellent and they were only soured for it because they were in the wrong state of mind. I, however… I went into space.

Yeah!

They had me dress up in this bizarre-looking, bulky suit with a bowl over my head that mission control-Pig (Pig is the pig man that runs all the dimensional labyrinth rides and shows up in many different costumes) told me would protect me from the thin air. …I suppose I could’ve questioned the logic of that, but, then again, I was being given instructions by a pig in a space suit, so it probably wasn’t worth arguing about.

The suit had wires attached to it that made it seem like me (and the half dozen other people on the same tour as me) could float. The space backgrounds were really gorgeous too—they almost could make a person believe they were really there. It must be an even more special experience for those non-magic-using humans who can’t fly for real but… well, I think I took something special from it too. I can fly, but nobody can fly as high as the scene they were replicating—you’d pass out from lack of oxygen long before you’d make it. Or… well, maybe not “nobody.” No mortal, certainly. Maybe Xellos can see a nebula anytime he wants.

…Xellos needs to stop insinuating himself into these journals when he’s not even really the main topic.

Anyway… the kids along for the ride enjoyed their little play-fight against Evil Space Lord Pig with their “laser swords” (really some sort of harmless fake with sparkles on it). I wasn’t really up for that since it’s for the younger bunch (and the “laser swords” reminded me of a very, very poor man’s Sword of Light which brought my mind momentarily back to my problems), but I did really enjoy the scenery and all the work that went into making the space-like world feel real.

So… was it a bit cheesy? Yes. Particularly when the penguins came in on jet packs and chided the kids for “interrupting their space exploration” and fired on them with their blasters (which shot harmless foam projectiles). But it was just the kind of forget-the-real-world escapism that I needed.

But the dimensional labyrinth world exploration thing wasn’t the only bit of fun I had. I went on Crash Mountain and was very, very glad that I brought a change of clothes because mine were soaked afterward, but it was still great. I’d never been on a rollercoaster before and I guess the idea of it is a little ridiculous—replicating a life-or-death experience for the fun of it. Everyone was screaming on the ride, but no one was really scared. I guess it’s just a bit of a safe, controlled adrenaline rush.

I also went to Princess Clarabella’s castle (which was beautiful, by the way) and saw the royal quartet play. I even got Princess Clarabella’s autograph (you can see it on the inside cover)! …I know she’s not a real princess, no need to infantilize me, but the performer playing her was just so graceful that I had to get in line with all the other little girls. Incidentally, a lot of the little girls were wearing diminutive versions of Princess Clarabella’s gown. I searched through the gift shops, but I was only ever able to find it in children’s sizes. …That just doesn’t seem fair.

…And, okay, I know it would not be a practical thing to own right now, but still.

Oh! Speaking of autographs, I got Pig’s too. Or… at least, one of the versions of him roaming around the park (I swear, there had to be more than two dozen). It’s a bit hard to read because I guess it’s difficult to write with that hoof.

And then there was the row of carnival games where I…

Oh, of course. It all comes back to him one way or another.

After lunch I noticed a little game set up in a lone line of booths. It was a simple game. There were three stacked jugs at the far end of the stand and the contestant would have three chances to knock them down with a ball. If all of the jugs get knocked over, the person gets a prize.

It looked like an easy enough feat to accomplish, so I plunked down some money to take my shot. Figuring it would be easy and not wanting to give myself too much of an advantage, I tried to throw gently—to approximately the strength I thought a human would be able to throw. My aim was true—the ball hit the jugs, but it just bounced harmlessly off of them.

With some distance from the situation, I’m starting to suspect there might have been some hijinks going on to ensure that no one was able to get a prize out of the game—like, maybe the bottles were glued together and to the mat or something. But at that moment I just assumed that I’d estimated wrong and thrown way too gently.

With that in mind, for the second try… of course… I amped it up.

I did not get a third try. I did not get a third try because I missed the bottles and instead shot the ball straight out the wooden back of the stand. I’m not sure where it landed.

So… I guess I put a little too much oomph into it.

The man running the game gave me a dirty look as he raced out to retrieve the ball. He really should’ve had a spare on hand.

But actually, just a few moments after that while I was still looking after the man’s retreating figure and feeling a little guilty about my excessive show of force, I heard the sound of the jugs being knocked over and falling to the ground. But it wasn’t from the stand I was at—it was from the one next to mine.

“Um… I guess you did it,” the man running that stall said in some surprise (which supports my theory that these games are rigged so the player isn’t supposed to win). “Go ahead and pick a prize then.”

“Hmmm,” came the nasally contemplation. “I’ll take… that one.”

I whipped around. Sure enough, he’d done it. My vacation had been successfully invaded by Xellos.

The first thing I noticed, as I turned around to see him accepting his prize, was that he was recovered. Or… rather, he looked recovered. I suppose he might’ve still been weakened and just not have shown it, but considering he showed up so out in the open like that, I think it’s safe to say he was on the mend.

“Y-you…” I began, barely managing to conjure up the necessary rage. It was confusing to see him again! What is the feeling I’m supposed to be focusing on? Anger because of his betrayal? Disgust or terror because of his violent behavior? Concern because the last time I saw him he was nearly split in two? Happiness at seeing one of the group-members I was separated from again?

“Oh. Filia,” he said, as though he’d only just noticed me. He reached over to hand me the prize he’d received—one the Pig dolls, this time in a red swimsuit-like top and wearing bunny ears. “You’ll probably appreciate this more than me.”

I drew my hand back and let the doll fall to the ground. I wasn’t in the mood to be toyed with and particularly not with an actual toy.

“Do you really think you can just show up again and pretend like you didn’t backstab anyone at all?” I demanded.

He frowned. “We’re still on this?” he asked in disbelief. He wagged his finger at me and shook his head. “You know, Miss Lina was the one who actually got the raw end of that deal—not you. Since she managed to get past it, one would think you could too.”

“Well, I’m not Miss Lina!” I reminded him, perhaps a little shrilly.

He gave me a thoughtful look. “That’s true,” he agreed after a moment. “You’re not.” It didn’t seem like he was saying that like it was a bad thing… just… you know… a regular thing.

I took a deep breath and tried to get it together. “What are you doing here anyway?” I asked him.

He sighed. “After the developments at the pillar of light, I find myself with innumerable tasks that require my attention. And yet I have to take time away from that because you’re goofing off while you’re supposed to be finding Miss Lina and the others.”

I flinched on several levels at this. The first was… alright, maybe the slight amount of guilt I was feeling for the good time I was having while not being at all sure what was happening to the others. But the rest was just annoyance!

“I’m not ‘goofing-off!’” I insisted. “I’m searching the islands in order and this just happened to be the next one. And, anyway, I’ve got a good feeling I’ll find the others here.”

He arched an eyebrow at me. “And… to search you needed to ride the Ferris wheel?”

I bit my lip—probably betraying uncertainty—but I was quick to rally. “It’s the best way to see the whole park! Obviously!”

“Obviously,” he returned snarkily.

I’d had about enough. “Anyway, where do you get the right to start overseeing my search?!” I asked. “If you want the others to be found then you should chip in and help me find them! I’m not just some subordinate that you can order around!” I was really working myself up. I think I missed having someone to yell at the past few days. “And I wouldn’t take orders from you anyway, you scuzzy, disloyal piece of trash!”

His expression changed and for a minute there was a sense of… dread. I felt like I’d gone too far and I remembered… I remembered his unrestrained, joyful torture of Valgaav. And I actually felt… afraid.

…But he smoothed away the edges of his expression and the moment passed. “You were a lot nicer to me when I was grievously wounded,” he noted.

I couldn’t respond immediately. I was still so… How could I have forgotten about that aura of menace that Xellos is all too capable of achieving?

“Well, except for the part where you expressed disappointment that Miss Lina didn’t burn me alive for my misdeeds,” he allowed, giving the matter careful consideration. “But, by and large, nicer.”

I was mentally scrambled. Now he was reminding me of what it had been like in those moments where he’d been wounded. It was too sharp an emotional turn to take.

“That’s just…” I began, laboring to explain myself, “an automatic reaction to someone being hurt. I’m a priestess, so… you know… it’s a training thing.”

He bent over to retrieve the bunny-girl Pig doll from the ground. “So you’re saying I shouldn’t take your attention to heart?” he asked.

“You have no heart,” I grumbled, more or less automatically.

“Exactly,” he said, sounding rather upbeat in contrast to what he was agreeing to. He placed the doll once again into my hands. “Try to remember that the next time we meet,” he advised.

And then he was gone again, leaving only the scantily-clad figurine of a pig behind.

Now, I ask you: what was that about?

I didn’t have too much time to think about it then because the man whose ball I’d possibly thrown out of the park entirely was racing back and he looked mad, so I made myself scarce but… seriously…?

I suppose that wasn’t the worst encounter with Xellos that I could’ve had after everything that happened. It left me more confused than any other emotion—and I think “confusion” is the best you can hope for after dealing with Xellos. I got that he wants me to find the others. I suppose that’s not so unexpected. He probably wants them around for whatever (likely awful) thing he’s cooking up next.

But what about the heartless thing? Was that just a would-be cute comeback? Or was it a legitimate warning? What about the next time we meet? Or is it just a warning about him in general?

It sounds like a “you’d be wise to realize that I don’t care about you” statement, but why say it at all? If he doesn’t care then why would he care enough to warn me that he doesn’t care?

After wrestling with that for a while, I decided to just let it go and enjoy the rest of my day. I took in some more shows and sampled some more food and tried not to think of Xellos.

I didn’t really succeed on the tea-cup ride, but can you blame me? It was a little dizzying, but I enjoyed it, you know, I enjoyed it on the basis that I’ve often been in such a bad mood that I would’ve wanted a cup of tea big enough that I could ride around in it. Xellos likes tea too, so I couldn’t help but feel like he’d appreciate the ride.

Not that I wanted him in my tea cup. Just… you know. I thought of him. That’s all.

But, you know, even if he did cross my mind throughout the day, I can at least say something with triumph: I did not let Xellos ruin my day. …And that is much more than I can usually say.

…In fact, in a weird way, this whole thing might have made things a little… better.

Hear me out: I hadn’t found Miss Lina and Mister Zelgadis at that point, so I was happy to see any familiar face wondering about. And… I don’t know, after that topsy-turvy encounter back in Valgaav’s base—hating him, then not even wanting to think of him ever again, being confused about his intentions, and then worrying over him—I guess it was just a relief to have things feel… normal with him again. Even if it was just for those brief moments. Like, he’s back to flitting around, being vague and condescending and kind of annoying. The Xellos I’d come to expect.

…But even if it is a bit of a relief, maybe it shouldn’t be normal again. We can’t just reset to before it all happened. And… what will “next time” bring? More of the same from him? Is that what he’s saying?

I can’t get too comfortable with the idea of things going back to normal. Things being normal again would mean buying into his routine… setting myself up for disappointment again.

Anyway, finding Miss Lina and Mister Zelgadis at least brings back some normalcy that I don’t have to agonize over being happy about. Even if they’re a bit… annoyed right now, I’m sure they’ll be over it soon. I’m just glad they’re both okay.

Remember a long while back, when I was just starting this journey and trying to find Miss Lina for the first time? The advice I got as to how to go about it was: “Follow the explosions.” Apparently this is still a very applicable piece of advice.

I was pretty close to the building—one of the dimensional labyrinth hubs—when it blew up, but not close enough to be showered by debris. I pushed my way through the crowd and, sure enough, there was Miss Lina and Mister Zelgadis in the midst of the rubble. Miss Lina was wearing the cutest blue dress with puffed sleeves and a little apron and Mister Zelgadis was dressed up like a prince with a feathered cap and a ruffled collar.

I didn’t bother to wonder why they’d blown the place up (it’s just sort of Miss Lina’s thing after all) or how they’d gotten there in the first place, I just called out to them to make sure they knew I was there too. They seemed very… disoriented by the whole thing.

“I knew it!” I cheered, waving at them. I was happy to be reunited with them and to know that my priestess’s intuition was still top notch. “I knew you two were on this island!”

The two of them just responded with a: “Huh?”

I heard a voice in the midst of the debris saying, “I… thought you were guests who knew what was going on…” Out of the debris came one of the Pig mascots. “So then, you really were lost,” he said, fussing with the neck line of his costume to take the pig head off. He breathed as the fresh air hit him (I’ve thought a couple of times today that those costumes must be really hot). “Oh well… I guess this attraction’s closed,” he said with some disappointment.

“This attraction?!” Miss Lina and Mister Zelgadis repeated to each other in utter befuddlement.

I stepped in to provide some context since it seemed like they had no idea they were even in an amusement park. “This island is the latest and most popular theme park,” I explained. “A fantasy island where they take you on wonderful journeys to other worlds.”

At that point, one of the park attendants came over to return their regular clothes to them. They seemed too shocked to make much of a response to either him or to me. I was too pleased about finding them to be too undone by the lack of response.

“I’m so glad!” I said, happy that I wouldn’t have to travel alone anymore. “I was starting to think I was the only one who made it.” I looked over at them and couldn’t help but let out a little squeal as I clasped my hands together. “Oh! And those costumes look great on you! Miss Lina looks adorable in that outfit! And Mister Zelgadis looks like a gallant prince who’s come to save her! How special!”

You know… seeing them like that makes me think… and I don’t really know what went on during their tour of the dimensional labyrinth, but just that set up between the two of them… Well, it’s almost like maybe they’re falling into the pairs set out by the Temple of Marriage. Like… maybe they’ve accepted it.

It almost seems easier that way… Easier for them, I mean. They have the luxury of making peace with something like that. Unfortunately, Xellos and I don’t have that luxury.

Of course, perhaps I’m letting the fairy-tale set-up of the labyrinth get to me and absolutely no acceptance happened. Maybe I’m just thinking about it that way because of… you know… my problems. My insurmountable problems.

“Still,” I went on, plunging through the dead quiet, “the fact that I was able to find you so quickly proves that you should trust me when I make predictions!”

I thought that maybe a: “Good job, Filia! Thanks for tracking us down!” was in order, but Miss Lina disagreed.

“Filia,” she said in her dangerous tone, “what are those tickets you’re holding there?”

Just like Xellos. Nobody has any respect for how hard I work.

“Umm… well, you see,” I tried to explain, unable to keep a little nervousness out of my voice at first, “I said to myself: ‘Filia, you deserve a break.’ I figured I could have a good time looking for you all. After all the stress I’ve been under, I almost forgot to have fun.”

Her twitching eyebrow said she didn’t buy my line of reasoning at all, so I had to go for a last ditch plan to win her good graces. “Oh yes! I have a souvenir for you!”

“A souvenir? For me?!” Miss Lina barely got out through painfully gritted teeth.

“Oh yes!” I confirmed, trying to sound like this had been the plan all along. I reached into my cloak and pulled out the “ig doll that Xellos had won at the arcade booth, handing it to her. “One of those popular little Pig dolls,” I said, trying to sell her on how great and not-at-all-last-minute this gift was. “Did you meet him inside? There’s the bunny girl one, the tuxedo one, the casino dealer one, the cleaning lady one, the bikini one, and all the others too!” I couldn’t help but giggle a little. “Isn’t it just the cutest thing? Isn’t it?” I asked. I giggled some more—though at least part of it was out of uneasiness since Miss Lina had already blown something up and wasn’t looking happy.

But Miss Lina didn’t blow anything up. She just threw my re-gifted gift up into the air, screeching: “NO! It is not cute at all!”

She wouldn’t even let me go back to retrieve it. You know, just because she turned out not to want it, that doesn’t mean that someone else wouldn’t.

“And by the way,” Miss Lina went on to the square at large, unforgiving rage in her eyes, “who took off my clothes?!”

Nobody would admit to it because they’d already seen what Miss Lina did to their facility. I really thought Miss Lina was going to demand a sacrifice from the park staff (and who knows what she would have done to them), but Mister Zelgadis ended up talking her into just leaving. And so, here we are, on the ferry to another island.

…So, that was my short-lived vacation. And, even though it contained some typical elements like Miss Lina raging and Mister Zelgadis being bitter and non-communicative and Xellos making a surprise appearance… I have to say, it wasn’t the worse for it. I’m really glad to be back in a group again. I missed this.

 

[Midnightmoon6o2]

I'm reviewing chapter one of this story for the fan fiction review game. Now forgive me but I've never watched Slayers but hey, I don't mind. I like the story.

Now I wish I could write in my diary in such detail but my hand just dies when I even write two pages anyway...I love the start of it. Normally I wouldn't read diary-styled stories because their really bad, there are probably one or two since I started to write fanfiction that I read some that are really good. I think this will be my third even though I'm not very well known in Slayers, but I've seen some screenshots on tumblr so I'll base everything off that. xD

The dialogue is nice, it is nicely paced that even though for somebody that hasn't seen the show I can get what is happening. There is a few things obviously referenced from the show but I wasn't too bothered by it.

The ending was cute. Simple and cute. I love that in the second last scene Filia is all confident to ask Luna to save the world and then she is like "Yeah...maybe." It shows the type of person she is from what I read, she is totally in character.

Now there really isn't any shippiness since it is the first chapter so can't comment on that yet.

I really liked your writing style, I always did but I never really had the time to post a review to tell you that. I guess maybe because I don't read as much stories here as I should. xD It just seems to have enough detail and yet remain simple to be understood. Like, you don't have to go in and describe every single thing in the room to get a good glimpse of what is happening.

Anyway I enjoyed your story. It's nice and lovely and I'm sure once I get into watching Slayers I would enjoy this more because of having some more knowledge about the show. Anyway awesome work Skiyomi on this.

 

[Skiyomi]

I'm late getting back to you, but thanks so much for reviewing!

Now I wish I could write in my diary in such detail but my hand just dies when I even write two pages anyway...I love the start of it. Normally I wouldn't read diary-styled stories because their really bad, there are probably one or two since I started to write fanfiction that I read some that are really good. I think this will be my third even though I'm not very well known in Slayers, but I've seen some screenshots on tumblr so I'll base everything off that. xD

Ha! Yeah, for me to be able to write this I have to assume that Filia has a very good memory XD

The dialogue is nice, it is nicely paced that even though for somebody that hasn't seen the show I can get what is happening. There is a few things obviously referenced from the show but I wasn't too bothered by it.

Yeah, this is hopefully not a minefield for someone who doesn't know the show since it's an account of the events of the third season from the perspective of someone who is only in the third season. So she's encountering a lot of it for the first time.

Now there really isn't any shippiness since it is the first chapter so can't comment on that yet.

Yeah, unfortunately my hands are tied by the way events unfold in the third season, so the second half of this pair doesn't show up until *checks* chapter 6. Late, I know. But once Xellos does show up he commands a great deal of Filia's attention.

I really liked your writing style, I always did but I never really had the time to post a review to tell you that. I guess maybe because I don't read as much stories here as I should. xD It just seems to have enough detail and yet remain simple to be understood. Like, you don't have to go in and describe every single thing in the room to get a good glimpse of what is happening.

Anyway I enjoyed your story. It's nice and lovely and I'm sure once I get into watching Slayers I would enjoy this more because of having some more knowledge about the show. Anyway awesome work Skiyomi on this.

Thanks so much! I'm glad you were able to enjoy the chapter even though you haven't watched the show Thanks again for your feedback!