Whether they had been abandoned for a thousand years or not, Sairaag's ruins were unquestionably ancient. They were, in fact, time-softened rubble; Zelgadis could only tell where the old streets had been because fewer trees had sprung up between the scattered, mossy cobblestones. The old buildings were so overgrown that they looked as though they had come naturally out of the ground, and not one of them looked even as whole as Sylphiel's cottage had been. It was very still and quiet, except for the birds and the lazy scurry of small animals in the undergrowth.
Sylphiel kept staring about with an awed and blissful expression. Gourry just kept staring about. Every now and then, Amelia would pounce on a small animal, which she would cuddle and talk to it until it escaped and ran away. How her arms didn't get all scratched up was a mystery, especially since her bracers were about two inches wide. Zelgadis just walked on as usual, alert and at the ready.
Lina, however, was getting progressively more annoyed. She fell back to hiss at Zelgadis, "Where's this great evil Sylphiel keeps talking about? For that matter, where's anything? It looks like no one has been here for a thousand years!"
"Then we're the first," Zelgadis offered.
She glowered. "First only fills stomachs when there's a chicken on the other end, Zel. There's nothing here but moss and rabbits. And you're not allowed to kill the rabbits. *"
Zelgadis looked around for something to mollify her with. He had low expectations, and they were met. "There's a lot of tricksterhair." She rolled her eyes at him, and he shrugged. "Do you want to turn back?"
Lina looked around again, and sighed. Just then, Sylphiel floated up, wearing her cape as an enormous apron. It was filled with ripe grasses, herbs, ferns, and flowers, all carefully uprooted and bundled together neatly by type. "I'm so glad we came, Lina-san," she said happily. "Maybe with these we can make Sairaag green again. It will take a long time, I know, but do you think we can do it?"
Zelgadis actually saw Lina's face soften for a second before she turned gruff again. "Maybe," she grudged.
"Lina," he suggested, hiding a smile, "why don't you go help Sylphiel pick plants? I promise that if we find a Claire Bible manuscript I'll let you know just as soon as I'm cured."
She stared at him. "Zel... was that a joke?"
"Was what a joke?" he asked, poker-faced.
She kept staring a little longer, deeply suspicious, before shrugging. "Whatever. But you have to help."
His eyes widened, and he shook his hands defensively. "Oh, no. Get Amelia to help you."
He followed their gazes to Amelia, who was engaged in earnest conversation with a baby skunk.
Four big eyes, burgundy and forest-green, looked at him hopefully.
Half an hour later, his hood was half full of herbs and seeds, nearly a quarter of his empty cape pockets had grass in them, and he was well into a plaintive monologue. "...fact, why was I even born? Surely the point of my life isn't to pick flowers in a dead city. I'm a swordsman! I have to remember that. I'm a heartless, magic-using swordsman." He broke off his rant, which was quickly turning into a mantra anyway, when a glint of blue caught his eye.
"Lina," he called, loosening his sword in its scabbard, "I'm going that way." She was involved in a discussion with Sylphiel, and waved him on distractedly.
The blue thing was in a clearing which must have been over bedrock, and had a circle of hoary trees around it. It was siting in the middle of a jagged patch of scorched earth, red with clay and grey with dust and looking as though grass hadn't dared to touch it in at least a thousand years.
The object itself was an open coffin, made out of a deep blue glass that turned nearly violet in the shadow, its panes welded together with seams of bright, smooth copper that seemed never to have oxidized. It would have had to have housed a small man; Gourry would never have fit and even Zelgadis might have had some difficulties; but it was empty. It would have been a majestic, pathetic thing, if not for the sign behind it.
The sign was bigger than the coffin, and much taller. It was painted off-white with black borders, and set up at eye level by a cut and varnished log. It read:
PLEASE KEEP THE SECRET!
Pretty please? For your own sake! |
Despite the best intentions of the second writer, the addition of this earnest and concerned warning didn't do much for the menacing effect, especially since it seemed to have been painted with an old toothbrush.
Zelgadis's eyes opened wide, and he stood blank and frozen for several long moments. When he came back to himself, he bellowed, "Lina!" and waited for someone to come find him and make the nasty hallucination go away.
When they did come, most of them promptly proceeded to imitate him. Gourry, however, ambled over to poke around in the coffin. "Hey, Lina," he complained, "there's nothing in here but dust."
"Xellos," Lina muttered, snapping out of it. Then, indignantly, "You mean, Xellos is this big evil everyone's so afraid of? I was wishing he were here to help us fight it!"
"You mean you were wishing he were here to let himself take a beating while we all ran away," Zelgadis corrected. Pride was a vanished memory, traveling with these clowns, but he still believed in precision.
"Exactly," she agreed, undisturbed, and went over to where Gourry was still poking at the coffin. Peering in, she said, in a very different voice, "Guys? I think someone stole something from Xellos. Recently. There's a big clean spot in the middle of the dust."
They all looked at each other. Casually, Zelgadis suggested, "Let's be somewhere else." Lina nodded very quickly, grabbed Gourry's belt, and Ray Winged away with the rest of them close behind.
When they were nearing the edge of the ruins, they heard a man scream, in raw and desperate tones, "Dragon Spooker!"
Lina halted suddenly, and only Zelgadis was able to avoid crashing into her. She snarled, "Who--said--that?"
The voice, a little higher and more desperate now and almost familiar, tried again. "Bandit Killer!"
As they shot towards it, a blazingly furious Lina leading the way, they began to hear scufflings and rumblings. As they drew near, the noises resolved into the incoherent malice of an angry mob.
It was indeed a mob, as they saw when they finally came in sight. It was a very poorly dressed mob, and it was mauling, clubbing, and generally kicking the tar out of some scrawny guy in a filthy yellow cloak. The best dressed of the lot was laughing, and saying, "You can't frighten us by pretending that the Bandit Killer is coming to get us." Something about this statement seemed to strike the rest of them as being very funny.
Under cover of the laughter, Sylphiel whispered, "Lina-san! You don't think this is the great evil, do you?"
Lina put a comforting hand on her arm. "No, I think this is a group of bandits who've taken advantage of Old Sairaag's reputation to set up a base camp. In other words," she went on, with the big, adorable grin that showed off her pointed incisors to best effect, "it's playtime."
Meanwhile, Zelgadis's oversized ears just barely caught the victim's despair as he coughed out a final, "Lina-san..."
Whatever else you could say about Lina, Zelgadis thought, you had to admit that she had a great sense of melodrama. Anyone else would have just dived in to save the day, but Lina was under the impression that she had style. She had to wait until the bandit chief said, "Everyone knows Lina Inverse is just a myth."
Then she blasted him from behind and blinked cutely at the rest of the bandits. They gaped at her. When they recovered enough to draw their swords, Amelia sprang into action.
"Miserable bandits who bully helpless travelers are cruel and unjust!" she declared with all the fire in her bouncy little soul, teetering precariously on her treetop.
The figure in the yellow cloak looked up, and up, and around, then slumped into unconsciousness with an air of relief. His face was an indistinguishable medley of mud, blood, and deathly pale skin, his eyes swollen nearly shut.
"You who defile the ancient peace of Sairaag's ruins are not only criminals, you are ignorant and wrongheaded not to believe in Lina-san!"
Lina twitched, and chuckled sheepishly.
Unheeding, Amelia surged on. "Now I, Amelia Wil Tesla Sailoon, shall punish you with the Fists Of Justice! Visafrank!" She brandished both glowing fists in the air and jumped down lightly from her treetop. Lina leaped backwards in time, fortunately, so Amelia only landed on her own face. She jumped up at once and fiercely, magical boxing gloves at the ready. Her recovery time was almost nonexistent by now, which was really just as well.
Some of the bandits wiped nervous sweat from their faces, but most just smirked.
This was usually Zelgadis and Gourry's cue to go out and be the nightmare and the muscle. Since there was an innocent-until-proven-otherwise to take care of this time, though, Zelgadis let Gourry have the honor all to himself. The big blond went out and posed, grinning almost as dangerously as Amelia, although nowhere in Lina's league. He wasn't bothering with the Sword of Light for this bunch, so the setting sun gleamed red over his steel blade.
The bandits lost their smirks, and most of them turned to him.
Now Zelgadis came out. His hood was down, his sword was sheathed, and the sunlight played on his shock of hair. He could see it out of the corner of his eye, having much the same effect that it had on Gourry's sword. He walked calmly into the middle of the cluster of bandits, who nervously made way for him.
Paying them no mind, he bent down to scoop up the unconscious figure from the ground. Straightening, he turned to Lina and said, "Sylphiel and I will take care of him. Have fun. Save me any books of magic you find."
"Okay," she winked.
He levitated out as the massacre began, and Sylphiel followed him.
