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Slayers - Volume 3 - Chapter 3




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3: Don’t Jump Into Obvious Traps

The first person to speak was the cleric who’d appeared with Zelgadis.

“Rezo!” she cried out.

“Mistress Sylphiel, you’ve been very rash...” the Red Priest said gently, the metal rings at the end of his staff clinking as he passed it from his left hand to his right. Just like we’d seen in the Vision spell before, this Rezo had a red hood pulled low over his closed eyes. “If you’d remained a peaceable shrine maiden in Sairaag, I’d have had no reason to come after you.”

“How dare you! You poisoned my father!” she shouted forcefully.

“A preposterous accusation,” he replied with impressive calm.

“You’re not...” I whispered.

“Not what?” the Red Priest asked, turning his porcelain features my way.

“You’re not Rezo!” I proclaimed, pointing straight at him.

I couldn’t deny he had the same aura as the Rezo we’d met before. Something about it seemed off, though.

“Oh?” he asked, arching one eyebrow. He wasn’t shaken in the slightest. Rather, he appeared almost amused by my declaration.

“You can’t be!” I shouted.

“What an interesting thing to say. However,” he began, now pointing his clinking staff at me, “should you wish to challenge my identity, there is another challenge you’ll need to overcome first... You’ll have to defeat me.”

“Not a problem,” I replied without hesitation. “Since you’re not the real Red Priest, I know I can beat you.”

“I see. In that case...” His voice was calm before it surged with sudden hostility, “Why don’t you try?!”

Music to my ears! I immediately started chanting a spell. No one else moved. Not even the man calling himself Rezo, who simply watched me placidly.

“Fireball!”

One Fireball from me would finish most opponents, but even if this man wasn’t the real Rezo, he still aspired to the name. There was no way he’d go down so easy. The idea here was just to size him up.

And yet, as I was chanting, he just stood there silently. He didn’t even bother with a spell of his own. Of course, that was no reason for me to back off.

The ball of light I fired streaked straight toward him!

The Red Priest spoke in an inhuman tongue as he drew a circle in the air with the tip of his staff.

“ !”

I gasped when I saw it. The ball of light vanished without a trace as it touched the circle he’d outlined.

“Now what?” the Red Priest asked without so much as a hair out of place.

For a moment, I was at a loss for words. Then I heard a chant on the wind—Zelgadis!

“Take this! Goz Vu Row!”

Black shadows raced along the ground from Zelgadis to Rezo. But...

Tunk.

The Red Priest touched the ground with his staff and, with a sound like hot steel plunged into water, the shadows evaporated.

“Now, if I may be so bold...” Rezo said in a somber tone, his staff jangling as he talked. “I would like to unveil a spell: a simple enhanced version of a Mega Brand.”

The spell he was describing would rupture the earth beneath our feet. Even a dead-on hit was unlikely to be lethal, but I wasn’t about to just sit back and take it.

“Over here, everyone! Zel, make with the wind!” I shouted.

“Right!” Zelgadis replied, catching my meaning and immediately setting to a spell.

Eris looked like she was about to flee in terror, but Gourry grabbed her by the neck and pulled her over to the group. Sylphiel set to a spell of her own, and the chanting of four casters, including Rezo, harmonized discordantly in the tense atmosphere.

I finished first, surrounding us with a barrier of wind. Sylphiel’s defensive barrier went up next around mine, followed by Zelgadis’s which further enhanced its strength.

Still, we weren’t done yet. The Mega Brand would come from below, and no matter how powerful our barrier might be, it wouldn’t mean jack if the earth swallowed us whole. My plan was to maintain my wind barrier while I cast Levitation on the whole shebang to get us off the ground. If you’ll excuse the basic metaphor, it would be like floating in a soap bubble made of wind...

But Rezo’s voice suddenly stopped. He’d finished his chant.

Dammit! I’m not ready yet. What a miscalculation! If only I’d left the wind barrier to Zelgadis and gone for Levitation first...

Yet for some reason, the Red Priest wasn’t attacking. It was like he was waiting for us to get our defenses in order.

At last, I finished my spell. Timidly, unsteadily, the wind barrier encasing our group lifted off the ground. We slowly ascended into the air... and just as this so-called Rezo was far enough away that I could have blocked him from sight with my index finger, he tapped the ground with his staff.

Not a second later, the earth let out a howl. The ground below us shattered and blasted upward in fragments. Brush was shredded, large trees were torn asunder, and small ones were sent flying, roots and all. The wave of force along with all its debris slammed into our hovering barrier.

Vizea and Rahannim had disappeared at some point—probably while we were talking to “Rezo.”

Our bubble began shaking like a rough ride in an old carriage.

“Ow!” Lantz cried out.

“What is it?!” Gourry asked.

“Ah, ’snothing,” Lantz replied, clutching a hand to his forehead. “Just got whacked by a pebble.”

Wait a minute... Is he serious?!

I couldn’t read Zelgadis by his face, but Sylphiel was clearly panicking. It would’ve taken one hell of an attack to break through a barrier like this. This was far more than the “simple enhanced version of Mega Brand” that our so-called Rezo had advertised. It was almost enough to take down a wyvern in flight...

In time, the rumbling stopped and the dust storm slowly settled. The ground in the forest had been upended, revealing a crater of red earth below. At its very center stood a crimson shadow. With a placid expression, “Rezo” looked up at us silently.

“It might be best to withdraw for now...” Sylphiel suggested.

“Yeah...” I agreed with a nod.

There was no way we could handle this guy with three non-spellcasters in tow. Gourry could probably avoid spells on his own, or use the Sword of Light to deflect them, but Lantz and Eris were a problem.

“Where should we go, though? Is there someplace we can hide?” I asked.

“Don’t worry,” Sylphiel said with a smile. “I know the perfect place.”

“The real question’s whether or not he’ll let us make it there...” Zelgadis cut in, glaring down at the Red Priest far below.

Watching him, I could tell how shaken he was inside, likely reliving the terror of our last fight with Rezo. That incredible show of spellcraft just now probably had him wondering if this guy was the real deal.

“Welp... we’ll just have to try it and see,” I said, steering our barrier around.

Contrary to all expectation, “Rezo” didn’t pursue, but rather stood there and simply watched us go. I didn’t understand why, but nevertheless, I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to escape. I summoned every bit of power I had to hasten our retreat.

The wind rustled the Red Priest’s hood. Beneath it, for just a second... I thought I caught a glimpse of something crimson in the center of his forehead.

“Huh...” I hummed with interest as I looked around.

We were in a cave the size of a reasonably spacious meeting hall. It was filled with the kind of chill, damp air you’d expect. In fact, it was a typical cave in every way... except between the thick coating of luminescent moss all over the place and the fairy souls flying all around us, it was as bright as day inside. Okay, maybe not quite, but it was still pretty bright!

You might not have heard the term “fairy souls” before—they’re more commonly called mock fireflies and stuff like that. They’re little balls of light about the size of your fingertip that live in caves year-round and come out in autumn. When I was a kid, me and my big sister would go around chasing them every fall. If you try to catch one in a net, it’ll just slip right through the weaving. If you catch one with your hands, you won’t feel a thing—and when you open ’em, it’ll be gone without a trace.

I’ll admit I don’t know if they’re actually the souls of fairies like the name implies. I don’t think even the sorcerers’ council has worked out what they technically are. But if you ask me, what does it matter? They’re harmless and, more importantly, they’re atmospheric.

And here in the hiding place Sylphiel had led us, they were everywhere.

Once we’d left “Rezo” in the dust, we’d entered a cave some distance outside of Sairaag. We’d walked and walked, going this way and that at a dizzying number of forks in the path before finally making it here.

We stopped to catch our breath, then got to chatting. Zelgadis, of all people, opened the conversation.

“Why are you still here?” he asked, turning to Eris, the self-proclaimed bounty hunter extraordinaire, with an annoyed look.

“Shut up. It’s not like I wanted to come along. That man,” she said, pointing at Gourry, “stopped me when I was trying to escape.”

“Well... there was no way you were gonna make it to safety in time,” Gourry said, scratching his head.

“He’s right. You couldn’t have gotten out of there alive by yourself,” Sylphiel added, abruptly taking Gourry’s side.

Eris just pouted grumpily.

When Sylphiel’s eyes met Gourry’s, she bowed to him deeply.

“It has been quite some time, Sir Gourry. Pardon me for not greeting you properly sooner...”

“Hey, it’s no big deal,” Gourry said, scratching his head uncertainly.

“Huh? You two know each other?” I asked.

“Sort of,” Gourry replied in brief before continuing his conversation with Sylphiel without so much as a glance back at me. “Based on your exchange with Rezo, it sounds like you’ve come on some hard times. How’s your dad?”

“Not well, I’m afraid.”

“Her dad? Wait, you mean...” I tried cutting in again.

“You said something about poison?” Gourry asked Sylphiel, completely ignoring me this time.

Grr...

“I believe it was the dried bark of a vidis tree...”

“Hellooo, Gourry!”

“But why would he target your dad?”

Grrrrr! I didn’t like this one bit. But... there was someone who liked it even less than me.

“How does everyone here know each other already?!” Lantz asked so loudly that he silenced the rest of the group. “I’m sittin’ over here all clueless about what the heck’s happenin’, and you guys are chummin’ it up over old times! Who are you people and what’s going on?! Don’t you think you oughta get the rest of us up to speed first?!”

“He’s probably right,” I conceded, agreeing with Lantz for once.

It turned out that Gourry had gotten to know Sylphiel’s father, the high priest of Sairaag, when he’d visited the city before. He’d apparently sorted out a rather difficult incident for him, but since it was unrelated to the current goings-on, Sylphiel didn’t share the juicy details. I’d have to ask Gourry about it later.

Now, as far as “Rezo” was concerned, that nonsense started a month ago when he showed up in town with the sorcerer Vrumugun.

The high priest—Sylphiel’s father—only knew Rezo by his reputation as a wandering saint. As such, he’d taken him in warmly. “Borrowing” the names of famous figures whose faces weren’t widely known in order to score a night of free food and other hospitality before vanishing into the night was a pretty common con these days. But the high priest was confident that this guy was indeed the real Rezo and claimed to recognize his greatness on sight.

Gee, buddy, if your judgment is that good, how about using it to tell bad apples from good ones, huh? Then we might not be in this mess in the first place!

Not that I could say that in front of Sylphiel... Maybe “Rezo” was just a first-rate actor.

Anyway, sometime after he arrived in the city and made an impression on the locals, he asked to issue the bounty on our heads. The high priest and Sylphiel were surprised, naturally, as they recognized one of the people on the poster—Gourry Gabriev, the city’s former savior. The high priest expressed his concerns and explained how they knew Gourry, which warranted a glance between “Rezo” and Vrumugun.

“He said, ‘He’s under the control of an evil spell cast by this person here,’” Sylphiel recounted as she pointed at my portrait. (The nerve of this guy!) She then paused her story and turned to me. “He said that you had the appearance of a young girl, but that you’re actually close to ninety years old... is that true?”

“Hell no! I’m sixteen, dammit!” I shouted.

“Huh? Didn’t you say you were fifteen?” Gourry butted in.

“Yeah, and then I had a birthday! Am I not allowed to have those?!”

“Huh...” he mused, seemingly chewing it over.

Why did this so-called Rezo have to go and lie about such pointless things? I hated him even more now! Mark my words, Red Priest! You’ll pay for this!

“I see... Pardon me. I didn’t think it was really true,” Sylphiel said soothingly, perhaps attempting to abate my fury. “It’s just that I’d heard certain rumors about you. People calling you the Bandit Killer and the Black Witch, saying you’ve destroyed a castle and even committed regicide... It gave me pause at the time. That’s all.”

Yeah, thanks. That’s very comforting...

Anyway, Gourry’s predicament was the reason, Rezo alleged, that he wanted us brought in alive.

It was Zelgadis who’d run into trouble first. He’d happened to be close to Sairaag, and his striking appearance combined with the sheer size of the reward made him an ideal target for bounty hunters... Like Eris, for example. But Zelgadis was unwilling to go all-out against an apparent novice, and ended up leading her on a wild goose chase instead. When he heard it was Rezo who’d levied the bounty, however, he made a beeline for Sairaag with Eris hot on his heels.

Me and Gourry would remain blissfully unaware of the whole bounty situation for a while yet, but in the meantime, things were unfolding in the city. First, the high priest started behaving strangely. He turned gaunt and began muttering incomprehensibly to himself. He’d go to see Rezo from time to time and would return seeming satisfied, but his condition would only worsen. Sylphiel, the lead shrine maiden, came to the conclusion that Rezo was poisoning her father somehow. She brought the issue to the other priests for investigation...

But by that time, they were already fully under Rezo’s sway. It seemed he’d used his nebulous dark charisma to convert over half of the city into his rabid disciples. Perhaps he’d cast some kind of spell on them. The Red Priest then began summoning strange figures to his side. First humanoid creatures, then demons. Yet nobody objected to his actions.

Sylphiel was left feeling completely isolated and powerless... until the day Zelgadis showed up. They plotted to assassinate “Rezo,” but the demon Vizea thwarted them and they were driven out of Sairaag before they could even reach him. Eris gave chase, but they knocked her out and fled deeper into the forest. That was when they heard an explosion from an attack spell and wondered if, just maybe...

Yup, as expected, that was us.

“I know you guys. There’s no way you’d just sit idly by when someone’s put a bounty out on you. I figured you’d show up here eventually,” Zelgadis explained.

“I’m the biggest victim here,” Eris said sulkily. “Why do I have to hang out in this stupid place with you guys?! Even if I catch you and turn you over the Red Priest, he probably wouldn’t give me the bounty anyway, given how he was acting back there and what you’re saying now. I just want to go home. Where’s the way out?”

She stood up, but Zelgadis fixed her with a cold stare.

“Sorry, but you’re staying.”

“Wh-What?” Eris gawked, taking an intimidated step back.

“You’re going to tell them where we are.”

“I... I wasn’t...”

“No? This place is surrounded by Rezo’s henchmen and the townspeople in his thrall. They’re all looking for us. If they see you, they’ll arrest you, question you... and if you don’t talk, they’ll torture you. You have no obligation to protect us, and even if you did, they’d break you in minutes.”

Eris didn’t have a comeback for that one. She just sat back down again, grumbling to herself.

“Where exactly are we, anyway? I got turned around so many times on the way...” I asked.

Sylphiel replied with a bright smile, “We’re in the heart of Sairaag, inside Flagoon.”

“Inside the tree?” I echoed.

“Yes. The original Warrior of Light—Sir Gourry’s ancestor from several generations back—fought valiantly against the demon-beast and slew it. After its death, however, its corpse continued to emit a terrible miasma. And so the warrior planted the seed of a sacred tree gifted to him by the dragons. It purified the miasma, which then nourished it as it grew. The tree is now so large that it stands as a proud symbol of our city.”

I knew all of this already, but I figured it was Lantz and Eris’s first time hearing the story.

“Huh... I didn’t know that,” said Gourry, sounding impressed.

I fell silent... The whole group did, in fact.

“You... You...” I was careful to control my voice, even as my face twitched and a protruding vein throbbed in my forehead. “You don’t even know your own ancestor’s story?”

“Now that you mention it, I think my dad talked about it a lot when I was a kid...” he said, looking troubled. “I guess I never really listened.”

So he was like this even as a child...

“A-Anyway...” Sylphiel said, regaining her composure. “The tree’s roots run deep under Sairaag, and they formed caves like this one over time. The passageways we followed to get here were also created by the roots of Flagoon.”

“And the townspeople, like, don’t know we’re here?”

“I don’t think so,” she said with a confident smile. “The townspeople view this tree as sacred. They may know of the caves that run among its roots, but they never enter them. There are no maps of the system either, so even if they searched here, it would take extraordinary luck to stumble upon us. You see, I’ve enjoyed exploring these caves since I was a child, so I know my way around this tree very, very well.”

Sounded like she was quite the tomboy back in the day.

“But... this place is a little big, isn’t it?” I said, staring out at the giant open cavern. “Even a tree that’s been around for thousands of years shouldn’t make caves of this size with its roots. It would’ve had to have been planted long before the Warrior of Light legend went down...”

“Mistress Lina, you saw the city as we were entering the cave, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I did, but...”

The glimpse I’d gotten of Sairaag made it look like a dense forest surrounded by a large plaza, which was then surrounded by houses. Kind of a donut layout. Wait...

“As I said, Flagoon is the heart of the city... though many mistake it for a forest at first sight.”

“Whaaaat?!” Lantz and I exclaimed simultaneously.

“Then... Then... Just how old is...”

“This tree thrives on miasma and negative emotions. The greater the miasma that surrounds it, the faster it grows.”

“So it’d die if we cleaned up all the lingering poison from the beast that the warrior slayed?” Lantz asked.

“No. Not as long as people live here,” I answered in Sylphiel’s stead.

She nodded in somber agreement, and Lantz cocked his head.

As long as humans—or, more precisely, as long as creatures with incompatible priorities lived here together—the conflicts between them would sow sorrow and hostility. Such was the fate of all living things. Even the fish I ate for dinner last night had felt fear and despair in the moment it was killed. Those negative emotions were what fed the tree.

“Still, there is one thing that concerns me,” Sylphiel said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Hush now... Listen closely, would you?”

At her urging, we all fell quiet.

...

It was soft, but I could hear it—a slow, heavy creaking.

“Flagoon is growing. And quite quickly, at that...” She looked to me, then to Gourry, then to Zelgadis. “It’s because Rezo is here. Please tell me... What is he?”

For a time, silence reigned.

I couldn’t possibly tell her the whole truth. She probably wouldn’t believe me, for one thing... and even if she did, it would do nothing but alarm her. We didn’t even know if this Rezo guy was the real deal yet. In fact, my running theory was that he wasn’t.

“No mere human could emit such hatred and hostility. The human spirit is not a sufficient vessel for the emotions needed to cause Flagoon to grow this rapidly...”

“Well, to be honest, we don’t know that answer yet ourselves,” Gourry said suddenly in a lighthearted tone.

That was true enough... Was “Rezo” the real thing or an impostor? And if the latter, who was he really and what was he after?

“But whatever he is,” Gourry continued, “our only option is to fight him and win.”

“Well... that much is true,” Sylphiel conceded.

“Okay! So now that we know we have a fight ahead of us, it’s time... for food!” I declared, getting an awkward smile out of both Gourry and Zelgadis.

“Hey... doesn’t it feel like we’ve been left out of the conversation?”

“Yeah...”

Behind me, Lantz complained to an unhappy-looking Eris, who was quick to agree with him.

“Food should be readily available,” Sylphiel interjected. “There are mushrooms growing a little further ahead. I believe they’re edible.”

“Lucky break!” I declared, jumping to my feet when I heard that. “Okay, I’m gonna go pick me some mushrooms!”

“Don’t you think we should work out a plan first?” asked Zelgadis, professional party pooper.

“Yeah. We need to figure out what to do, and quick,” Gourry replied unhelpfully.

“I agree. The mushrooms aren’t going anywhere, and Rezo’s minions might still attack at any time,” Sylphiel added.

“She’s right. Get your mind off of food for once,” Lantz jeered.

“Yeah, what’s with the lack of urgency here?” Eris followed suit.

I went bright red when the whole party turned on me.

“F-Fine! Jeez, everyone’s on the same page all of a sudden... Okay, in that case, let’s have a strategy meeting. We don’t know what Rezo really is. Everyone in the city is against us. We can’t send anyone to scout things out since they’re more likely to be found than to find anything. And running away just puts us back at square one. So what exactly should we do, then? What plan is available to us besides ‘wait for the bad guys to come to us’? Any ideas? Anyone? Zelgadis?”

“Huh? Well, when you put it that way...”

“Coming up dry, huh? What about you, Sylphiel?”

“Er, well... um...”

“Okay, then what about—”

Before I could nominate either of them, Lantz and Eris both shook their heads rapidly. Darn it... That just left Gourry.

“Welp... Any bright ideas, big man?”

“Yes, actually,” he declared with great confidence.

Oho! The whole group turned to look at him.

“What’ve you got for us?!” I asked.

Gourry held up a finger and replied, “Let’s all go pick mushrooms.”

I kicked him square in the face.

“Darn it... Why do I have to go along with this?” Eris groaned.

“This is what I get for bein’ nice. I never shoulda gotten involved...” Lantz moaned.

“My mistake was being too persistent. If I’d known that pursuing him would get me dragged into this nonsense...”

“It’s always demons, man. Can’t believe they went and picked a fight with a guy who can control over a dozen lesser demons at once...”

“Ugghhh...”

“Ahhh! Shut up!” I screamed and stopped in the middle of what I was doing. “Lantz! Eris! Enough with the pity party already! Just shut your mouths and pick your mushrooms!”

“You can boss us around all you want, but...”

“Yeah...”

They shared a knowing glance and a nod of agreement.

You... You little...

We’d settled on picking mushrooms as a group, and Sylphiel led the way. The area was bigger than your standard cave, but there was less of the luminescent moss around, so it actually felt darker than before.

“This still feels pathetic,” Zelgadis said, voicing a rare complaint.


“Truly, swordsmen and spellcasters digging for mushrooms... It hardly feels dignified,” Sylphiel agreed.

“Quit your bitching. Oh, hey, Zelgadis...” I said, snagging a mushroom. “I meant to ask earlier, but it slipped my mind. You know Vrumugun—”

“What’s wrong, Eris?”

“Uh, I thought I saw a bug...”

“Hey, Lantz, Eris... Could you kids shut up a while? The grown-ups are talking.”

At my words, they exchanged another look, shrugged, and went back to picking mushrooms. Darn it... I shook my head to clear it, then tried again.

“There’s a sorcerer named Vrumugun with that Rezo wannabe. You heard of him?”

Like I mentioned before, Zelgadis had once worked for the real Rezo, so I thought he might know a thing or two about the sorcerer.

“Oh, that guy,” he said with a groan.

“You know him?”

“Sort of... Have you beaten him a bunch too?”

“So I’m not the only one having that problem?”

“It’s the same pattern every time. This totally unremarkable-looking guy—except for a ruby embedded in his forehead—shows up and claims he’s Vrumugun. You figure it can’t really be because you beat him already, but he just keeps coming...”

“So you’ve killed him a bunch too, huh?”

“Five... No, six times, I think. Once, after making sure he was dead, I burned him to ashes with a Fireball. I then separated his ashes into multiple urns, sealed them, then threw some in the river and buried the rest...”

“Wow... overkill, much?”

“When someone proves that hard to kill permanently, it’s not out of the question that he could be undead.”

Fair point. Lower-class undead like zombies were one thing, but powerful creatures like vampires demanded extraordinary measures. What Zelgadis was describing was the only way to make sure they wouldn’t climb right back out of their graves... and even then, if someone managed to gather up the ashes and perform the right ritual, you could still end up with vampire redux. The only way to be rid of them forever was to use purification magic to get them to ascend, or to uproot them from the astral plane like you did with demons.

“So he still came back after all that, did he?” I asked.

“Yeah. But to answer your original question, in my time with Rezo... Vrumugun did come up once.”

“Yeah?”

“I was running my mouth about something or other and Rezo said to me, ‘Don’t get cocky. I have two others working for me who are more skilled with magic than you.’”

“One of them being Vrumugun?”

“Yeah. The way he said it really riled me. I asked how powerful the guy was, but Rezo wouldn’t tell me... Thinking back now, I bet that’s when he realized I was gonna try to kill him someday.”

“And who was the other person?”

“He wouldn’t say.”

“Hmm, okay.” I filed that info away and adjusted my theory. “So, before this all happened, you’d never met Vrumugun in person?”

“Nope.”

“Which means the guy we’ve been fighting all this time might not necessarily be the real one,” I speculated, at last starting to get a picture of the sorcerer in my mind.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, think about Vrumugun’s description: a sorcerer of average height and build who wears the kind of black cape you could pull out of a bargain bin in any podunk town. He’s so lacking in distinguishing characteristics otherwise that you gotta wonder if it’s intentional... except for the ruby in his forehead.”

“Aha, I see.” Zelgadis quickly seemed to grasp what I was getting at. “The rubies...”

“Yeah, the rubies.”

“You wanna clue the rest of us in?” a disgruntled Lantz suddenly piped up.

I looked over and realized that everyone in the group had started listening in at some point.

“Okay, here’s the deal.” I cleared my throat. “I’m thinking the Vrumuguns we’ve been beating are all fakes. The real one is somewhere else, controlling them through the rubies in their foreheads.”

“What, you can do that?” Lantz asked.

“Sure can,” I answered confidently.

There’s a spell called Marionette; it’s a little black magic number where you stick something on a person’s body and hold a days-long ritual to make them obey your every command. If you can break the caster’s concentration long enough, the puppet should return to normal... but if a skilled caster stored up their magic power in something like a ruby on their own forehead, you might get a more permanent situation. Rezo had apparently told Zelgadis once that Vrumugun was skilled with magic, but that didn’t necessarily mean offensive magic.

“When I fought the first sorcerer who called himself Vrumugun... to be honest, he struck me as a total hack. Even when controlled by a sorcerer as powerful as the real Vrumugun, the puppets are likely limited by their individual capacity. He probably also intentionally made the ‘fakes’ nondescript so that we’d think all the Vrumuguns he sent after us were the same person.”

“But then where’s the real Vrumugun?” Eris asked.

“This is still just a guess, but... the real Vrumugun might have a ruby embedded in his own body to control all the fakes. And what do you know? I just so happened to see in our little tussle that there was something red stuck on the forehead of everyone’s favorite Rezo impersonator. So we have a man calling himself Rezo—who we know is dead—and we have a sorcerer named Vrumugun who none of us have ever seen before. The most simple hypothesis is...”

“That he’s the real Vrumugun?” asked the simple Gourry.

The smell of cooked mushrooms hung in the cave filled with pale light.

“But this doesn’t solve the main problem,” said Lantz, biting into one I’d roasted with a fire spell. “How do we beat ’im?”

It was a good question. All we’d done so far was speculate about Vrumugun’s true identity and pick mushrooms. Basically, we’d accomplished nothing.

“The real issue,” Zelgadis said while eyeing Lantz and Eris, “is how we’re going to get any use out of these two.”

“Hey...” Lantz glared at Zel angrily. “Are you sayin’ we’re useless?”

“It’s not like I came along to make myself useful...” Eris, for her part, owned it.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying, yeah. Up against demons, you’re going to be useless. Are you really going to argue otherwise after your contributions in the last battle?”

Lantz fell silent in the face of harsh truth, served courtesy of Zel. See, he, Sylphiel, and I could all use magic, and Gourry had the Sword of Light. The main thing holding Lantz back in the last fight was the fact that he didn’t have either.

“Don’t worry! You can make up for it with sheer guts!” I said to cheer him up.

“Yeah, right. Liar,” he said, still slumped over.

“No, I’m serious. Didn’t you know?” I said simply.

“Are you yankin’ my chain?” he asked, looking up to eye me suspiciously.

“Of course not. Demons exist primarily on the astral plane, see? That’s why cutting or burning them here on the material plane doesn’t do much. You know how you can’t kill a person by insulting them hard enough? Conversely, if you want to kill a demon, it’s their spirit you have to strike at.

“So the second you hit a demon with your sword, you gotta think really hard, like, ‘Die, die, die!’ If the power of your will, channeled through your sword, is superior to the demon’s spiritual power, you can hurt them that way. That’s why silver weapons are effective against ghosts and stuff—silver is a better conduit for willpower than steel. And Gourry’s Sword of Light over there creates its blade by amplifying all kinds of power, including human will.”

“Oh, really?” Gourry said in wonderment as he gazed down at the sword on his belt. Knowing him, he probably just thought of it as “a pretty cool sword that works somehow.”

“Which means he just needs something to amplify his will!” Sylphiel interjected, clapping her hands together.

“Yeah... If you wanna break it down, I guess so,” I admitted.

“Then I have just the trick!” she declared.

“You do?!” Lantz shouted, suddenly all fired up.

“Yes. Long ago, a sword was discovered inside Flagoon. It was said to be a sacred weapon, an extension of the tree that was always resonating with it, giving it the ability to purify and amplify the spirit of its wielder. It was stored in the city’s temple, but...”

“Don’t tell me it’s gone missing!”

“Well... when I was very little, I sneaked it out and hid it in these caves as a prank.”

Come on...

“Didn’t that cause a huge panic or something?”

“It certainly did,” she said evenly. “But at the time, I couldn’t understand why the adults were all in such a tizzy, and in the end, it’s worked out in our favor. It was just a child’s mischief, after all.”

Wow, she’s got a personality on her, huh? She almost had me fooled with that whole good-girl facade...

“Okay, then let’s all go fetch that puppy!”

“Absolutely not,” Sylphiel declared, rising to her feet as she flatly quashed my forceful pitch. Talk about a wet blanket. “The way is narrow with many forked paths and very little of the luminescent moss to guide us. If we go in a large group, we might get separated. It would be best if I went alone with a single companion... Hmm, Sir Gourry, would you accompany me? The rest of you can remain here, of course.”

“Me?” Gourry asked, glancing in my direction for some reason.

Was it just me, or did Sylphiel have a crush on this guy? Well, there’s no accounting for taste...

“We really should be going, then. And as quickly as possible,” Sylphiel urged.

Gourry hefted himself up sluggishly, then patted me on the shoulder where I sat next to him.

“Don’t do anything crazy while I’m gone, okay?”

“I’ll be fine. Trust me.”

“I can’t remember the last time that worked out well for me, but sure.”

...

“Anyway, we’re heading out now. We’ll be back as soon as we can, okay?” Gourry said, shooting me an awkward wink before following after Sylphiel.

Once they were gone, the rest of us polished off the mushrooms and suddenly found ourselves with nothing to do.

“So, what now?” Eris asked, yawning.

“G-Good question...” Lantz sank deep into thought, with the occasional surreptitious glance at her legs.

“What else? We wait. Taking reckless action now would only get us killed,” Zelgadis said bluntly.

“But we should at least think up some kind of plan...”

“Lina was right before. Our only course of action now is to wait for the enemy to come to us. The reason Rezo put that ‘captured alive’ provision on our bounty is probably because he wants to kill us himself. He’ll come for us, sooner or later... likely with as few subordinates as possible so that the townspeople don’t get in his way. Doing anything other than sitting tight would just be wasted effort.”

“If you’re tired of waiting, there’s one thing we can do,” I suggested.

“Whazzat?” Lantz asked.

I raised an emphatic finger and declared, “Pick more mushrooms!”

“She got our hopes up there...” Eris whined.

“Go figure it’s more mushrooms...” Lantz snarked.

The three of us had gone to gather a second helping.

“Oh, shut up. You know we need as much food as we can get, right? And if you don’t wanna pick mushrooms, you could’ve said no like Zelgadis did!”

“Well...”

“I figured it’d be better than just sitting around...”

“But it’s still pretty boring...”

“So we’re gonna ditch!”

“Have fun!”

The two of them split on me, running back in the direction we’d come from.

...

“After I was nice enough to invite you guys along with me? Hmph! Fine, whatever! See if you get any of my mushrooms!” I grumbled, gathering all the while.

Don’t call me a glutton, okay? I’m a growing girl here. I need my calories!

“Kids these days, I tell you! Wait, I’m a kid these days... Huh?”

My grumbling was cut short when I felt a presence behind me and quickly turned around to see who it was.

“Lantz!” I cried out, standing up as the mushrooms I’d been holding in my cape spilled to the ground.

He was standing with his right hand against the wall, as if unsteady on his feet. Had he been injured? He was covering his left eye and his forehead with his other hand, his expression one of pain.

“What happened?!” I called, running over to him in a panic. A foreboding chill ran up my spine.

“It’s them...” he hissed.

“Where?!”

I leaned forward—but another chill ran up my spine and I instinctively drew away. Not a second later, I felt a burning pain in my abdomen just to the left of my navel.

Wh... What?!

I quickly pulled away, leaning my back against the wall as I felt a scream wither in my throat. Lantz was holding a bloody knife in one hand. There was a slight smile on his face... and a shining red ruby embedded in his forehead.

“That’s right. It’s me...” said a voice from the opposite direction. Eris had gotten behind me at some point. She was smiling just like Lantz, and had an identical ruby embedded just below her bandanna. She was also holding a large knife.

“Me, Vrumugun!” Lantz declared, cackling.

The wound he’d put in my stomach throbbed with searing pain. This much bleeding wasn’t going to stop on its own...

“Yeek!”

Lantz took another slash at me and I dodged with a light step... at least, that was the plan, but I immediately staggered and lost my footing. I still managed to dodge the attack, but the initial stab wound had taken a greater toll on me than I’d realized. It was starting to show in my reaction time.

If I didn’t take these two out quickly, things were gonna get ugly for me. Still, I couldn’t just kill people who were being controlled...

I kept a careful eye on them as they crept closer, and simultaneously began chanting a quiet Sleeping spell.

“Not gonna happen!” Lantz cried as he lunged.

I managed to dodge again, but it forced me to cut off my chant. I tried to pick it back up, but—

Blugh!

I felt a hot lump of something welling deep in my throat.

Okay... super not good...

“Looks like it’s the end for you,” Eris said with a thin smile. “That got you right in the gut. You won’t be chanting any spells while you’re spitting up blood.”

Sh-Shut up! I screamed internally. If I lost consciousness now, it really would be the end for me.

I reached behind me with my left hand and drew my shortsword. As Lantz approached confidently, I swung it as hard as I could.

“...Guh!”

Pain shot through my arm. My hand trembled for a moment, and my sword slipped from my grasp. It grazed Lantz’s side and echoed loudly as it clattered deeper into the cave.

“You’re a determined little thing, Lina Inverse. Just give it up and let Vrumugun kill you!”

Eris, who’d nailed my sword arm with a small rock, leisurely readied her knife and moved in on me too. I took a trembling step back. My knees buckled. I lost my balance and tumbled over.

I can’t get back up! That was my last thought before everything went black.

The next thing I knew, I was surrounded by light. There were yammering shadows all around me.

Shut up already... I tried to whisper, but all that came out was a cough.

One of the shadows peered into my face and said something. I think I understood. It seemed to be telling me not to try to talk.

It was then that I realized I could barely see anything. I kept my unfocused eyes closed for a while, then, after a time, slowly opened them again. When I did, the silhouettes around me gradually took their proper shapes.

Sylphiel?

Her eyes were closed and she was fervently chanting a spell—Resurrection. The name wasn’t quite accurate as it didn’t actually bring anyone back to life. Dead is dead, after all.

You might be familiar with an inferior version of the spell, Recovery, that all priests and most traveling sorcerers knew. That included me. There were some warriors, bards, and even peddlers who had it in their repertoire too. Anyone could learn it from their local church in exchange for a little donation.

But Recovery simply sped up natural healing, which meant the injured person’s stamina still played a vital role in the process. What Sylphiel was doing, however, was pulling power from the surrounding area and channeling it into my body using herself as a medium. Thus with Resurrection, you could heal someone beyond what they could ever heal on their own. If used by a high-level caster in tandem with other spells, it could even regenerate lost arms and legs.

The fact that she was casting it made it crystal clear what a close call I’d just had.

“You awake, Lina? You okay? It doesn’t hurt too much, does it?” called my self-styled guardian, Gourry, in a worried voice.

I gave him a firm nod.

Behind me, Zelgadis was watching on silently. Lantz and Eris were further behind him, the rubies now gone from their foreheads. Lantz looked like he wanted to cry, and even Eris looked despondent.

I didn’t know exactly what had happened, but one way or another, it seemed I was safe.

“A little while after you guys left, I heard the sound of clashing steel,” Zelgadis explained as he continued to watch over me. “At first I thought it was just my imagination, but my stomach wouldn’t stop churning... So I came to have a look, and found those two with rubies in their foreheads and you on the ground. I quickly knocked them both out and tied them up so they couldn’t move... but you were already grievously injured. I didn’t know what to do. Fortunately, Gourry and Sylphiel returned sooner than I expected.”

Apparently the racket my sword made when I dropped it had brought Zel running.

Huh? But in that case... Wait a minute...

“Lantz and Eris both remember getting really sleepy... and then nothing until Sylphiel removed the rubies from their foreheads.”

“I was worried about you,” Gourry said gently.

“Mm...” I gave him a small smile.

“Sorry...” Lantz said from the back of the group in a truly tortured voice.

Still smiling, I waved him off. This wasn’t his fault. The real villain here was Vrumugun, putting that ruby in his forehead and controlling him like a puppet!

After that, the room was silent, save Sylphiel’s chanting, which continued to echo throughout the cave. With nothing better to do, I just let my gaze wander until my eyes landed on a sword Gourry was holding.

“Is that...?” I started to ask, the words slipping from my lips.

“It seems you’ve recovered enough to talk now,” Sylphiel said with a sigh as she temporarily paused her chant. “But try not to do too much of it. As for the sword... Indeed, that is the sacred weapon birthed from Flagoon. We call it the Bless Blade, and—”

“Explanations later,” Zelgadis said, his tone as businesslike as ever. “Our first priority is Lina’s recovery. If Vrumugun knows we’re here, it’s only a matter of time before his buddies come running. So once she’s mobile, we get out of here ASAP.”

“Now, I can’t have that,” called a voice from far away. It was muffled from the cave’s echo, but it was unmistakably him—Rezo! “Can you hear me? I hear your voices, but the echo makes it so hard to trace them... I don’t feel much like searching you out, so I’m going to forge a path to you. Do be careful, as this might be dangerous.”

A moment of silence followed.

“Get down!” Gourry then shouted, sensing whatever was incoming.

Everyone hit the dirt, and in that same instant, a light far brighter than the luminescent moss pierced through the dome-shaped cavern where we were huddled.

I knew it. This confirmed all of my suspicions.

I looked up and saw a hole big enough for a human—no, one big enough even for a cyclops to pass through without ducking—had formed right nearby. Gourry stood up to look at it.

“Lantz!” he then called, tossing our red-headed friend the Bless Blade.

Lantz looked back at him questioningly.

“We’re going up. Keep Lina safe.”

Lantz stared at him for a while, but finally gave him a firm nod and replied, “I will.”

“Let’s go, Gourry,” Zelgadis called like he was inviting him on a fishing trip.

With his naked broadsword in hand, he turned around and unceremoniously walked through the freshly opened hole.

“Later,” he said, waving back with his free hand without turning around.

“All right. Let’s give it our best shot,” Gourry said as he took his place next to Zel.

A troll that suddenly appeared ahead of them took a slash from Gourry’s sword, while yet another was smashed to pieces by Zel’s attack magic. Both boys then disappeared deeper into the hole. The sounds of swords clashing gradually moved farther and farther away.

“Mistress Sylphiel,” Lantz said. “Keep healin’ Lina. Once she can move again, we’ll head out and join them.”

“It will take a bit more time. Please be patient,” she said with an agreeable nod.

“Oh, I know,” said Eris next. “Sorry, but I think I’m gonna take this chance to make tracks. I’d just hold you guys back anyway, so...”

“Eris!” She was about to rise, but my forceful call stopped her. “Don’t go yet. There’s a chance they’ll kill you anyway.”

“B-But...”

“Don’t go,” I insisted.

“Yeah, I’m with Lina on this one,” Lantz agreed.

And with that, Eris finally relented and slumped over again. I let out a sigh, then gazed toward the hole that Gourry and Zelgadis had just departed through.

“I hope those two... are all right...”

“You should reserve such concern for yourself.”

We all turned at the sound of the new voice to see the likeness of a man in black standing there—it was Vizea.

“Pardon the intrusion, but this seems a prime opportunity to finish you off.”

“Not... happening...” I groaned.

I tried to sit up, but I was suddenly awash with a powerful lethargy. My body failed to respond, even though the pain had finally subsided...

“You’re not ready yet,” Sylphiel warned me.

“Lantz... sorry, but can you buy me some time? Please. At least until I’m recovered...”

“Sure thing,” he responded.

He then stood up with the Bless Blade in hand. The light of determination was shining in his eyes.

“I won’t let him lay one finger on you. I owe you big time... and I promised Bro. This guy,” he said firmly, leveling his sword at the demon, “is going down!”



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