(no subject)
Disclaimer: characters property of Software Sculpters etc.
Series: Blind Glory
Rating: ...T?
Genre: If I missed one, let me know, yeah?
Pairings: Under negotiation. (but if Zel/Xel squicks you out, this is probably not the fic for you.)
Warnings: eventual slashiness, and also, this is set after the series. Spoilers and potentially confusing references were, I'm afraid, inevitable.
Feedback: is enshrined, and concrit is also welcome, when welmannered.
Notes: I apologize if half the upcoming chapter titles are stupid. I used to have some good ones--if for ‘good’ you read ‘drearily punny with barely an iota of mitigating wit’--but I’m afraid the computer got tired of cookies. It crashed and ate my chapter system, and I’d already used up my iota. :^( That’s what I get for forgetting my disclaimer in the last post.
For the record: Zel’s last name is pronounced Gureiwea by the Japanese actors and I spell it Greyweir. All the time. The usual labels are melodramatic and I’m not humoring him. Anyway, he probably made ‘em up to sound more like a mystical lone-wolf heartless merc and should not be encouraged. So there. XP
The Blind Glory arc is archived here.
[Edit:] Illustrated 11/23
Fill the Gutters With Gold
by Nightfall
Chapter 2: A Hard Day’s Night
In which the Slayers are introduced to the notion of 'consequences,' Gourry’s phalangeal integrity is perserved at the cost of his friend’s displeasure, Her Naïvetè makes a vile suggestion, Sylphiel’s adulation is unswerving primarily in its intensity, Sairaag is endangered by Lina’s embarrassment, and Zel assumes that his subconscious is trying to tell him something.
They arrived at Sairaag early the next afternoon. Amelia cheered, and the rest of them immediately grabbed their weapons in case some startled thing jumped out at them. The city was mostly empty, but they heard the bangs, thuds, clangs, and shouts of construction workers drifting in from here and there.
Lina, who had been partially responsible for the city’s destruction in the first place, had the grace to look embarrassed. In deference to this unexpected delicacy of feeling, Zelgadis refrained from striking out purposefully towards the nearest set of building noises. They went straight to Sylphiel’s house instead. It had been caught in the destruction and they hadn’t been back to it since, but they figured that Sylphiel had enough common sense to fix up her own home. In her spare time, at least.
The house was obviously being used, and by Sylphiel, but she had just as obviously not been up to making it livable again. She wasn’t there, either. Everything was scorched black, and ‘everything’ meant two and a half outer walls and about half the roof. Sylphiel had put bright green cloth and clever woven mats everywhere to keep the rain out, separate the rooms, and generally make things look a little better.
They took a long, collective stare at it, and turned as one to Lina. She took a deep breath, and started giving orders. Amelia was sent to find water, and then to scrub the walls with some of the green cloths. Lina even helped. Everyone contributed soap. Zelgadis's burned smoking holes in the wood, so they used that on rags as sandpaper.
Gourry was told to cut down trees with his sword and bring them back. He looked a little doubtful about this until Lina made him look at Sylphiel’s house again. Zelgadis, to his intense disgust, had to hold the trees and keep them from falling on anything other than his own toes. It wasn’t as though he couldn’t bruise anymore; it was just harder to do and didn’t show. He would have mentioned this to Lina, but then she would have tried harder the next time she was annoyed about whatever..
They trimmed and debarked the trunks, carved notches in the ends, and piled them up as Lina directed. The cracks between the logs got plugged with a nice, furry moss, thick and soft with a pleasant, sharp scent. This job, though tedious, was better than letting Gourry drop tree-trunks on his toes.
Zelgadis had been afraid that, under Lina’s direction, Sylphiel’s house would end up being a cartoony horror like the Golden Dragon’s temple they had destroyed once and had to rebuild. The end result was a little strange, but Lina evidently knew a lot more about rough little cottages than huge marble temples. She had even made the inside nicer, before starting on the outer walls, by having Gourry cut down the inner partitions that were beyond help and Zelgadis cart them away.
It was dark out. Lina and Amelia had been using careful fireballs to flash-dry flowers with, and the holes and chinks in the wall were stuffed green with them.As a result, the house was full of the sweet (and naggingly familiar) smell of tricksterhair potpourri when Sylphiel came home.
She stood in the doorway for a full minute before anyone but Zelgadis noticed her. She had her hands clasped up by her heart and her eyes were swimming. When she had her breath back, she flung herself on a very surprised Lina, nearly getting fireballed for her trouble, bubbling over with gratitude.
Lina, as Zelgadis had noticed before, was unaccustomed to having any amount of attention focused on her by people who were neither crispy, furious, nor coming after her with pitchforks. She was blushing and trying to stammer out some sort of reply when her eyes lit up in relief at her own sudden brilliance. "Actually, Sylphiel," she said confidently, "it was all his idea." She pointed at Gourry, who had just burned himself on a hot flower and was sucking on his fingers.
Sylphiel shot Lina a ‘I’ll assume you’re being sweet and don’t really think I’m stupid’ look, but went to fuss over Gourry. Lina flopped down on the floor with a great sigh of relief, and Zelgadis nodded approvingly at her.
Sylphiel hadn’t been expecting visitors. Her stores were limited, but they supplemented her larder with their own supplies and made a good meal that way. Her cooking was not, in Zelgadis’s opinion, anything to get quite as excited about as Gourry did, but it wasn’t bad, either, and she did make a killer cup of coffee.
That night, Zelgadis slept across the floor from Gourry in what was now, since the wall had been beyond repair, both Sylphiel's dining room and kitchen. That irritating flower scent was all around, and he kept dreaming that he felt a strange, cool pressure on his chest. It made him uneasy, but never descended quite into nightmare level. He couldn’t imagine what it might mean.
***
As was to be expected, the girls, who had evidently stayed up most of the night talking, came out looking bleary but cheerful, while Gourry was as bright-eyed and bushy-haired as ever. Zelgadis never felt like talking to anyone until he’d had at least two cups of coffee, but that morning he was feeling mellow, so he only ignored everyone instead of biting their heads off. Amelia was loudly thrilled about this development.
"You should sleep in Sylphiel-san’s house every night, Zelgadis-san!"
Sylphiel looked helplessly at Gourry, who looked puzzled. Lina nearly breathed tea out her nose. Amelia blinked once or twice, then turned bright red and applied herself to her plate.
Zelgadis smirked and sipped. "Did Sylphiel tell you anything interesting last night, Lina?"
"Nchnrnsfsrg," Lina mumbled.
"Pardon?"
"Enc'hnt rns ob Srrg!"
"I wouldn’t have suggested it the first time I met Lina-san," Sylphiel laughed nervously, "but I have more faith in her now. Sairaag’s old ruins are very dangerous, but I know Lina-san can take care of everyone!" Lina made a face.
"I agree that we can all protect ourselves," Zelgadis allowed, "but what’s in the ruins that we should put ourselves in danger to get it? And what kind of danger?"
"No one knows, Zelgadis-san," Amelia piped up, round-eyed. "Daddy’s historians say that no one has been past the borders since the Kouma wars."
Zelgadis was unimpressed. "Except us."
"We only skirted the edges, Zelgadis-san," Sylphiel said.
Zelgadis was still unimpressed. "That’s a long time for no one to even go into somewhere. Not coming out I can understand, but not going?"
"It’s true, Zelgadis-san," Sylphiel said. "Or, at least, if it isn’t, no one has ever told anyone differently. It was burned down by the Golden Dragons before the War of Fallen Evil. They said they had done their best, but they hadn’t been able to burn down all the evil, so everyone should stay out. Legend said that they told our ancestors to be afraid. My mother always told me to stay out of the ruins and away from The Thing That Even Dragons Are Afraid Of."
"And what," Lina asked in icy tones with lava boiling under the surface, "is that?"
"Calm down, Dragon Spooker, she doesn’t mean you," Zelgadis whispered.
At the same time, Sylphiel, unaware of how close she was to a fiery death, opened her green eyes wide and said, "No one knows. But everyone thinks it must be very bad. There's a legend about a white beast living in the old forest, and some people say a Mazoku Lord haunts the ruins."
"Well, that’s all right, we’ve handled those before," Lina declared, less than confidently.
"L-sama has handled those before," Zelgadis corrected. "Those have handled each other before. *We~ have just been extremely lucky."
She made a face at him, but said, "We’ll just try to avoid it, then. So, it’s agreed! We’ll go after breakfast."
"I have one more question," Zelgadis said, lifting a finger and feeling a little like Xellos. "If no one ever thinks of going in there, Sylphiel, why did you think of it?"
She chose to address her teacup instead of him. "The golden dragons are gone, and humans are still here. Whatever killed them didn’t kill us. Maybe we aren’t important enough. Sairaag has fallen, my father is dead, and all of us except Lina-san have been killed by one of the five Great Mazoku Lords. What could be worse than that? And we’re still alive. Or alive again, I guess. Besides, L-Sama killed Lord Hellmaster, and maybe he’s the one who lived there. And we slept at the border before, and nothing happened. Anyway," she added, with a worshipful look at Lina, "Lina-san can do anything!"
Amelia and Gourry nodded--she excitedly, he as though Sylphiel had recited a natural law.
"You can say that, but--" Zelgadis started, but Lina cut him off.
"It’s all decided, Zel," she said cheerfully, after a nervous look at Sylphiel, which Zelgadis didn't blame her for. He'd feel jittery about faith like that, too. "We’re going. After breakfast. So finish up, everybody!"
Zelgadis, just to show his feelings on the matter, reached out and began, very slowly, to cut open and butter an especially large roll. Of course, they way they ate, his delaying tactics didn’t make much difference, but it was the thought that counted.
Sylphiel came with them, despite Gourry’s best efforts to convince her to remain at the cottage. She blushed happily at this evidence of his concern, but insisted that it might be useful for them to have an extra Dragon Slave around, just in case they wanted to split up. Zelgadis suspected this of being a glib excuse for not being left behind, and thought better of her for it.
Zelgadis, to his intense disgust, had to hold the trees and keep them from falling on anything other than his own toes.
[end ch. 2]
Series: Blind Glory
Rating: ...T?
Genre: If I missed one, let me know, yeah?
Pairings: Under negotiation. (but if Zel/Xel squicks you out, this is probably not the fic for you.)
Warnings: eventual slashiness, and also, this is set after the series. Spoilers and potentially confusing references were, I'm afraid, inevitable.
Feedback: is enshrined, and concrit is also welcome, when welmannered.
Notes: I apologize if half the upcoming chapter titles are stupid. I used to have some good ones--if for ‘good’ you read ‘drearily punny with barely an iota of mitigating wit’--but I’m afraid the computer got tired of cookies. It crashed and ate my chapter system, and I’d already used up my iota. :^( That’s what I get for forgetting my disclaimer in the last post.
For the record: Zel’s last name is pronounced Gureiwea by the Japanese actors and I spell it Greyweir. All the time. The usual labels are melodramatic and I’m not humoring him. Anyway, he probably made ‘em up to sound more like a mystical lone-wolf heartless merc and should not be encouraged. So there. XP
The Blind Glory arc is archived here.
[Edit:] Illustrated 11/23
Fill the Gutters With Gold
by Nightfall
Chapter 2: A Hard Day’s Night
In which the Slayers are introduced to the notion of 'consequences,' Gourry’s phalangeal integrity is perserved at the cost of his friend’s displeasure, Her Naïvetè makes a vile suggestion, Sylphiel’s adulation is unswerving primarily in its intensity, Sairaag is endangered by Lina’s embarrassment, and Zel assumes that his subconscious is trying to tell him something.
They arrived at Sairaag early the next afternoon. Amelia cheered, and the rest of them immediately grabbed their weapons in case some startled thing jumped out at them. The city was mostly empty, but they heard the bangs, thuds, clangs, and shouts of construction workers drifting in from here and there.
Lina, who had been partially responsible for the city’s destruction in the first place, had the grace to look embarrassed. In deference to this unexpected delicacy of feeling, Zelgadis refrained from striking out purposefully towards the nearest set of building noises. They went straight to Sylphiel’s house instead. It had been caught in the destruction and they hadn’t been back to it since, but they figured that Sylphiel had enough common sense to fix up her own home. In her spare time, at least.
The house was obviously being used, and by Sylphiel, but she had just as obviously not been up to making it livable again. She wasn’t there, either. Everything was scorched black, and ‘everything’ meant two and a half outer walls and about half the roof. Sylphiel had put bright green cloth and clever woven mats everywhere to keep the rain out, separate the rooms, and generally make things look a little better.
They took a long, collective stare at it, and turned as one to Lina. She took a deep breath, and started giving orders. Amelia was sent to find water, and then to scrub the walls with some of the green cloths. Lina even helped. Everyone contributed soap. Zelgadis's burned smoking holes in the wood, so they used that on rags as sandpaper.
Gourry was told to cut down trees with his sword and bring them back. He looked a little doubtful about this until Lina made him look at Sylphiel’s house again. Zelgadis, to his intense disgust, had to hold the trees and keep them from falling on anything other than his own toes. It wasn’t as though he couldn’t bruise anymore; it was just harder to do and didn’t show. He would have mentioned this to Lina, but then she would have tried harder the next time she was annoyed about whatever..
They trimmed and debarked the trunks, carved notches in the ends, and piled them up as Lina directed. The cracks between the logs got plugged with a nice, furry moss, thick and soft with a pleasant, sharp scent. This job, though tedious, was better than letting Gourry drop tree-trunks on his toes.
Zelgadis had been afraid that, under Lina’s direction, Sylphiel’s house would end up being a cartoony horror like the Golden Dragon’s temple they had destroyed once and had to rebuild. The end result was a little strange, but Lina evidently knew a lot more about rough little cottages than huge marble temples. She had even made the inside nicer, before starting on the outer walls, by having Gourry cut down the inner partitions that were beyond help and Zelgadis cart them away.
It was dark out. Lina and Amelia had been using careful fireballs to flash-dry flowers with, and the holes and chinks in the wall were stuffed green with them.As a result, the house was full of the sweet (and naggingly familiar) smell of tricksterhair potpourri when Sylphiel came home.
She stood in the doorway for a full minute before anyone but Zelgadis noticed her. She had her hands clasped up by her heart and her eyes were swimming. When she had her breath back, she flung herself on a very surprised Lina, nearly getting fireballed for her trouble, bubbling over with gratitude.
Lina, as Zelgadis had noticed before, was unaccustomed to having any amount of attention focused on her by people who were neither crispy, furious, nor coming after her with pitchforks. She was blushing and trying to stammer out some sort of reply when her eyes lit up in relief at her own sudden brilliance. "Actually, Sylphiel," she said confidently, "it was all his idea." She pointed at Gourry, who had just burned himself on a hot flower and was sucking on his fingers.
Sylphiel shot Lina a ‘I’ll assume you’re being sweet and don’t really think I’m stupid’ look, but went to fuss over Gourry. Lina flopped down on the floor with a great sigh of relief, and Zelgadis nodded approvingly at her.
Sylphiel hadn’t been expecting visitors. Her stores were limited, but they supplemented her larder with their own supplies and made a good meal that way. Her cooking was not, in Zelgadis’s opinion, anything to get quite as excited about as Gourry did, but it wasn’t bad, either, and she did make a killer cup of coffee.
That night, Zelgadis slept across the floor from Gourry in what was now, since the wall had been beyond repair, both Sylphiel's dining room and kitchen. That irritating flower scent was all around, and he kept dreaming that he felt a strange, cool pressure on his chest. It made him uneasy, but never descended quite into nightmare level. He couldn’t imagine what it might mean.
***
As was to be expected, the girls, who had evidently stayed up most of the night talking, came out looking bleary but cheerful, while Gourry was as bright-eyed and bushy-haired as ever. Zelgadis never felt like talking to anyone until he’d had at least two cups of coffee, but that morning he was feeling mellow, so he only ignored everyone instead of biting their heads off. Amelia was loudly thrilled about this development.
"You should sleep in Sylphiel-san’s house every night, Zelgadis-san!"
Sylphiel looked helplessly at Gourry, who looked puzzled. Lina nearly breathed tea out her nose. Amelia blinked once or twice, then turned bright red and applied herself to her plate.
Zelgadis smirked and sipped. "Did Sylphiel tell you anything interesting last night, Lina?"
"Nchnrnsfsrg," Lina mumbled.
"Pardon?"
"Enc'hnt rns ob Srrg!"
"I wouldn’t have suggested it the first time I met Lina-san," Sylphiel laughed nervously, "but I have more faith in her now. Sairaag’s old ruins are very dangerous, but I know Lina-san can take care of everyone!" Lina made a face.
"I agree that we can all protect ourselves," Zelgadis allowed, "but what’s in the ruins that we should put ourselves in danger to get it? And what kind of danger?"
"No one knows, Zelgadis-san," Amelia piped up, round-eyed. "Daddy’s historians say that no one has been past the borders since the Kouma wars."
Zelgadis was unimpressed. "Except us."
"We only skirted the edges, Zelgadis-san," Sylphiel said.
Zelgadis was still unimpressed. "That’s a long time for no one to even go into somewhere. Not coming out I can understand, but not going?"
"It’s true, Zelgadis-san," Sylphiel said. "Or, at least, if it isn’t, no one has ever told anyone differently. It was burned down by the Golden Dragons before the War of Fallen Evil. They said they had done their best, but they hadn’t been able to burn down all the evil, so everyone should stay out. Legend said that they told our ancestors to be afraid. My mother always told me to stay out of the ruins and away from The Thing That Even Dragons Are Afraid Of."
"And what," Lina asked in icy tones with lava boiling under the surface, "is that?"
"Calm down, Dragon Spooker, she doesn’t mean you," Zelgadis whispered.
At the same time, Sylphiel, unaware of how close she was to a fiery death, opened her green eyes wide and said, "No one knows. But everyone thinks it must be very bad. There's a legend about a white beast living in the old forest, and some people say a Mazoku Lord haunts the ruins."
"Well, that’s all right, we’ve handled those before," Lina declared, less than confidently.
"L-sama has handled those before," Zelgadis corrected. "Those have handled each other before. *We~ have just been extremely lucky."
She made a face at him, but said, "We’ll just try to avoid it, then. So, it’s agreed! We’ll go after breakfast."
"I have one more question," Zelgadis said, lifting a finger and feeling a little like Xellos. "If no one ever thinks of going in there, Sylphiel, why did you think of it?"
She chose to address her teacup instead of him. "The golden dragons are gone, and humans are still here. Whatever killed them didn’t kill us. Maybe we aren’t important enough. Sairaag has fallen, my father is dead, and all of us except Lina-san have been killed by one of the five Great Mazoku Lords. What could be worse than that? And we’re still alive. Or alive again, I guess. Besides, L-Sama killed Lord Hellmaster, and maybe he’s the one who lived there. And we slept at the border before, and nothing happened. Anyway," she added, with a worshipful look at Lina, "Lina-san can do anything!"
Amelia and Gourry nodded--she excitedly, he as though Sylphiel had recited a natural law.
"You can say that, but--" Zelgadis started, but Lina cut him off.
"It’s all decided, Zel," she said cheerfully, after a nervous look at Sylphiel, which Zelgadis didn't blame her for. He'd feel jittery about faith like that, too. "We’re going. After breakfast. So finish up, everybody!"
Zelgadis, just to show his feelings on the matter, reached out and began, very slowly, to cut open and butter an especially large roll. Of course, they way they ate, his delaying tactics didn’t make much difference, but it was the thought that counted.
Sylphiel came with them, despite Gourry’s best efforts to convince her to remain at the cottage. She blushed happily at this evidence of his concern, but insisted that it might be useful for them to have an extra Dragon Slave around, just in case they wanted to split up. Zelgadis suspected this of being a glib excuse for not being left behind, and thought better of her for it.
Zelgadis, to his intense disgust, had to hold the trees and keep them from falling on anything other than his own toes.
[end ch. 2]