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It all began, like her adventures often did, at lunchtime. She and Gourry had taken up a job to clear a nearby mine of orcs, which ended well enough—sure, there was the inconsequential matter of causing a minor cave collapse, but the important part was that everybody was alive (save for the orcs, of course) and that they got paid. With reward money burning in her pockets, Lina beelined straight from the Mayor’s office to the local inn to take the innkeeper up on her pot roast special.
The wait for said meal was interminable, so she and Gourry filled the time by ordering a few beers and grousing about the job they’d just finished. Nearly a half hour of nothing passed, and then two things happened at once: the innkeeper laid out Lina’s long-awaited and well-deserved meal, and trouble walked through the door. He was some scrawny boy, barely a teen, probably working as a courier to help keep the family farm afloat or whatever. She hadn’t noticed him enter the inn or sidle up to her table because she was busy salivating over the freshly carved and perfectly juicy roast laid out before her.
“Finally! Lina Inverse, right?” the boy panted and placed his hands on his knees. “Red hair, small breasts, big appeti—”
It wasn’t her fault she snapped, after all she got interrupted right before she could start eating her meal, and on top of that, he was rude about it. To her! The beautiful genius sorceress, Lina Inverse! Famed gourmand, Lina Inverse! Gourry restrained her before she could clock him with her fist, but he didn’t stop her mouth.
“Come closer and say that again, creep!” she shouted, straining against Gourry’s considerable strength.
“I’m just repeating what it says on the notice!” The boy flinched away from Lina’s flailing arms and dropped a folded piece of paper to the table.
Gourry clenched Lina to him with one arm so tightly that Lina’s chair tipped toward him. With his free hand he reached into his pocket and tossed a copper piece at the boy.
“You’re TIPPING HIM?!” Lina shouted.
“Yeah. But it’s more like hazard pay, right, kid?”
“Y-yeah,” the boy sputtered, pocketing his take, and ran for the door. Wordlessly, Gourry righted Lina and her chair, and piled food onto his plate. Lina held her fork and knife in clenched fists and swore under her breath about what she was going to do to that kid once she caught him.
“C’mon, Lina. Just eat. You’ll feel better,” Gourry said, shoveling a fork ponderously laden with beef and mashed potatoes into his mouth.
“You’re right, and I hate that,” Lina sighed, and tucked into her meal. Only when she finished a second course did she bother to unfold the notice and read it. Food really did make a difference, she didn’t even think of tearing it into tiny shreds and setting it on fire.
“So what is it?” Gourry asked.
“Not sure, aside from the obvious slander about me that it fed to that kid, it just says that there’s a message waiting for me at the local Sorcerer’s Guild. Which is strange, because I just submitted my latest research the day before we took the orc job. You’d think it would take longer to get a response.”
“’S not slander if it’s written,” Gourry insisted between draughts of beer.
“Oh really,” Lina raised an eyebrow in doubt. Gourry swallowed.
“If it’s written, it’s label,” he said proudly, one finger pointed to the ceiling.
Lina groaned and slid down her chair and to the floor beneath the table.
***
The local sorcerer’s guild office was practically empty, save for the gray-haired sorceress acting as the clerk. She pinched a pair of reading glasses to her nose, adjusted her oversized hat, and told them to wait while she thumbed through a box of small parcels, letters, and scrolls.
“Inverse,” she said, and produced a small envelope with a thin wax seal that denoted the Guild’s messenger service. Lina flicked it open with her index finger and unfolded the letter inside.
Lina,
My travels and research into reversing my condition continue. As you know, I would prefer to do this alone. However, circumstances are such that I must unavoidably request your help for reasons that I hope will be apparent once you arrive here, if not sooner. Meet me at Mipross Island.
Yes, I will pay for dinner.
—Zelgadis Greywords
Lina blinked and refolded the letter. She hadn’t thought about Mipross Island in years. What could Zelgadis possibly find there? She couldn’t think of anything on Mipross that would help Zel with his chimera problem. Even if the place still had lingering time weirdness, it wouldn’t be useful to him—all it could do is send him back so far into the past that it would be impossible to warn his past self about Rezo. Lina knit her bows and tapped the letter against her cheek, trying to dredge up what Zel could have possibly meant by telling her that it would be apparent to her.
“So, uh, what’s it say?” Gourry asked, breaking her reverie.
“It’s Zel. He wants us to meet him at Mipross Island. He thinks there’s something there that can help him.”
“Cool. When do we head out?”
“Right now, I guess,” Lina said. They didn’t have any business in town, anyway.
“Will you be sending a reply?” asked the clerk. “We offer mail-by-scry.”
Mail-by-scry explained how Zel’s message got to her so quickly. Basically, during dedicated scrying hours, the clerk would post up and dictate outgoing messages to other Sorcerer’s Guilds equipped with a scrying mirror. The clerk on the other end transcribes and seals it—although that’s kind of a formality because there isn’t really any privacy for letters that are read by two other people before they even get to the recipient. Probably more, in this case—Zelgadis had no idea where she was, after all, so it probably wasn’t forwarded to her until she checked in with the Guild the other day. For that reason it never took off as a popular way to send messages—basically only mages who needed to get in touch with another mage quickly actually bothered with it.
“Sure,” said Lina, reaching for her coin purse to pay the fee. “Tell him we’ll meet him on the docks in a couple of weeks.”
***
Two weeks later, they stepped off a ship and onto the docks of Mipross Island. It hadn’t changed much since Lina was there last—most of the same faces were manning the storefronts of the same tacky tourist trap businesses. The familiarity of it all almost made her pass over Zelgadis’ silhouette completely when she first spotted his white cloak in the crowd. Lina elbowed Gourry and pointed toward Zelgadis.
“Zel! Hey Zel! We’re here!” Lina ran to him and gripped him by his forearms. She stopped herself short of giving him a full-on hug. He wasn’t a hugger, but she did notice him grin beneath the mask he had pulled up over his face.
Yeah, missed you too, you gloomy old Gus, Lina thought.
“I see you two made it here in one piece,” he said.
“And just in time for lunch!” Gourry added.
“Typical.” Zelgadis turned and waved for them to follow him. He took them to the inn he’d been boarding at and treated them to a tacky three star tourist trap lunch. The poultry had been overcooked to the point of blandness, then doused in a cloying sauce that was, in Lina’s opinion, a waste of honey. Gourry, at least, did not mind.
“So what brings you to Mipross,” Lina asked. “This place is mostly tourist junk. Not really a hotbed of magical research or anything.”
“Elves.” Zelgadis replied. “I’ve been looking into elven magic. I asked Amelia about it and she told me that one time her sister wrote home about an island with elven ruins, so I decided to check it out.”
“I don’t get why you need me for this,” said Lina.
“You’ll see.”
Once their bellies were full, Zelgadis took them for a hike inland to show them the one thing he needed Lina Inverse for.
“You’ve been here before,” Zelgadis said as they crested a hill.
“Yeah, a long time ago,” said Lina. “Way before I met you or Gourry.”
“Define ‘way before’,” Zelgadis said, skeptically.
“Okay so maybe like a year before. It feels longer because everything got way more dramatic after I ran into you,” said Lina.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yeah Zel, I think fighting Shabranigdo counts as ‘way more dramatic.’”
“A fair point,” Zelgadis conceded, and was silent as they made their way closer to the elven ruins. It was once the stone edifice of what had once been the place she met Rowdy Gabriev that Lina had an inkling as to what this was all about. They continued their hike until they came across a very handsome statue of Lina and a young Rowdy wielding the Sword of Light.
“Whoa! That looks just like Lina!” Said Gourry. He stepped toward the monument and peered at Rowdy’s visage thoughtfully. “And … a little me?”
“That is me,” Lina said with no small measure of pride. “The other guy is probably your Great-Great Grandfather. Actually I don’t know how many ‘Greats’ it is, the whole thing is … a long story.”
“I’ve been waiting weeks for answers. I think I can handle a long story,” Zelgadis said, crossing his arms.
So Lina recounted it all—or at least the really good parts anyway—about Rowdy and Melliroon, about Joyrock, about traveling to the past and saving an entire village of elves, which was really really cool and heroic of her. Among other things, she left out Naga, the hypnotist, and the stupid spring of growth that Rowdy had almost tricked her into. Zel and Gourry didn’t need to know about that.
“You’re telling me you actually went back in time to change the past,” Zelgadis’ clenched fingers dug deeper into the fabric of his sleeves.
“It’s not like I was the one who did the spell,” Lina waved her arms in the direction of the stone visage of Rowdy Gabriev.
“But you changed the past,” Zel continued. “Do you have any idea what kind of consequences that had?”
“I know exactly what consequences it had! I didn’t get paid!”
“Of course, all you can think about is the money,” Zelgadis scowled.
“No Zel, I’m just not gonna take the blame for the crap Rezo did to you! I don’t know everything that changed because I saved the elf village. I can’t know. And neither can you!”
“Fine. It’s not why I called you here anyway,” Zel growled, refusing to meet her eyes. “I really just needed to know about the elves.”
“Why elves?” Gourry asked. “Aren’t they super rare?”
“Probably because of Zanaffar,” said Lina. “It’s a chimera originally developed by the elves, based on knowledge from the Claire Bible. If there’s anyone who knows chimera-making magic more than anyone else, it’s the them.”
“Right,” agreed Zelgadis. “But the elves retreated from the world. Humans seldom make contact with them anymore. When I saw this statue of Lina in the ruins … I hoped she had a way to do that.”
“I see,” said Gourry, rubbing his chin in thought. “There’s just one thing I don’t understand, though. What’s a Zaniffer?”
“How can you not remember?!” Lina shouted, grabbing Gourry’s collar and shaking him with both hands. “It’s a big ugly monster that nearly killed me!”
“Yeah Lina, that doesn’t exactly narrow it down, you know,” Gourry replied, unmoved by Lina’s tantrum.
“You two are never going to change,” Zelgadis chuckled, despite himself.
“Probably not,” said Lina. She let go of Gourry and turned her attention back to Zel. “So what do you want me to do here, anyway?”
“Like I said, I hoped you would know how to contact the elves,” Zel shrugged.
“Well, I don’t,” Lina said. “Unless you think that—” she cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted: “—HEY, IT’S ME, LINA INVERSE, YOUR SAVIOR! I’M BACK! AND I BROUGHT ROWDY’S GREAT GREAT GRANDSON OR WHATEVER’ is gonna work.”
The three of them stood for a moment with held breath, humoring the possibility that Lina had in all improbability simply contacted the elves by shouting. Something rustled in the underbrush of the nearby wood and it filled their minds with the anticipation of a miracle. Movement continued, but it was hard to make out with the sun sinking toward the horizon and pushing the woods deeper into shadow.
Then three slimes spilled their way out from the tree line, and dashed all their hopes.
“Of course it couldn’t be that easy,” Zelgadis sighed.
“C’mon, let’s head back to the inn,” said Lina. “If we go now we can turn in before nightfall. We’ll brainstorm about it in the morning.”
With that they turned on their heels and retreated the way they came, and after a disappointing meal and a hot bath, Lina sat on the corner of her bed, brushing her hair. Going out of her way to contact elves was something she’d never considered doing—it sounded like too much effort. They didn’t want to be found, after all, and what was she going to do? Leave a note under a saucer of milk at the crossroads that says “Hey! I’m a super powerful sorceress but don’t worry I don’t want to do weird experiments with your lifespans?” Yeah, not happening. If the elves were still on Mipross Island, that means they’d hid themselves well. Probably with some sort of magic. Maybe dowsing for a strong node of magical power would work? But that seemed too obvious, someone would have done it by now, right?
Something slammed into the wall beside her with an audible “thunk” loud enough to pull Lina out of her wandering thoughts. She turned to see an arrow embedded at a low angle next to the uninspired flower print framed on the wall. A piece of paper was tied to the shaft. Well, shit. They’d certainly contacted somebody today. Lina stood, crossed the room, and pried the arrow out of the wall to retrieve the note attached to it. She brought it to the lit candle next to the vanity and read:
Return to the memorial at midnight. Bring the son of Gabriev and the elves will reveal themselves to you.
—M.
She’d done it. She’d contacted the elves, after all. Sure, it sounded like they only cared about Gourry because he’s a dead ringer for his great-great-great whatever but that didn’t matter. She’d still done it.
“I am a genius!” she said, tugging her boots over her feet. She had to go give the boys the good news.
***
Cloaked in the thin light of the waxing moon, the trio approached the memorial statue again.
“What if Gourry’s the only one they’ll talk to?” asked Zelgadis.
“Then we let him talk. And he can tell them to talk to us.”
“Uhh, do I get a say in this?” Gourry asked.
“Nope,” came the reply from Lina and Zelgadis both.
They saw nobody waiting for them at the memorial statue of Lina and Rowdy. Lina cast a Lighting spell and searched the premises, but turned up no sign of the elves.
“Are we early?” Zelgadis asked.
“Maybe elf time is just weird,” Gourry offered. “You know, because their lifetimes are different. So to them an hour is like four hours.”
“That’s almost smart,” said Zelgadis. “But unlikely. Elven lifetimes don’t affect when the sun rises and sets. When it comes to measuring time, those are the most important parameters.”
“Hmm. I see.” Gourry nodded, rested his chin in his hand for a moment, and then said: “It doesn’t make sense at all.”
Zelgadis then launched into a thorough explanation of time, the importance of the solstices, sun dials, and the degrees of a circle—all things that Gourry Gabriev would not on any level understand or particularly care about, but Lina didn’t stop him. After all, it filled the time and more importantly she didn’t want to admit that she hadn’t thought about the circle thing before. It was pretty interesting, though.
Zel was in the middle of marking out three hundred and sixty hashes inside a circle drawn in the dirt when three people emerged from the woods: a blonde woman in white, flanked by two archers at her sides.
“Oh my,” said the elf woman, her tiny voice barely a whisper in the night. “He really does look just like him.”
“Uh hello? I’m here too, you know,” Lina waved her arms.
“Yes of course,” the blonde woman replied. “It’s been a long time, Lina Inverse.”
The woman stepped into the illumination cast by Lina’s Lighting spell. She was a few inches shy of Lina’s height, with soft creases at her laugh lines that gave her the appearance of a woman who was approaching middle age, which meant she had to be much older than that.
“Melliroon?”
“Mm. Yes, it’s me,” Melliroon nodded, grinned, and gestured at Gourry and Zelgadis. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
“Right, of course.” Lina repositioned her Lighting spell so it hovered between Gourry and Zel. “The broody guy in the white cloak is my friend, Zelgadis. And as I’m sure you can guess, the tall blond guy is Gourry Gabriev, Randy’s descendant.”
Melliroon dabbed at the corners of her eyes with the back of her hand, then stepped forward and pulled Gourry into a tight hug, then pulled away abruptly.
“Sorry. It’s just, well,” she wiped her eyes again. “Anyway, come along. The elves don’t often welcome visitors, but Gabriev and Inverse are always welcome with us.”
Melliroon turned around and started toward the forest. Gourry, Lina, and Zelgadis fell in stride behind her, and the unnamed archers closed rank behind them. They followed a game trail through the forest until Melliroon reached a large moss-covered log.
“Through here,” she said, and crouched to crawl through it and the party filed in behind her. Melliroon traced a series of glowing runes into the wall of the log as she crawled through, and when she finished her spell, Lina felt the strangest sense of vertigo. Even though her vision remained the same, it felt like the entire world had tipped on its side for a moment, then swiftly righted itself.
“Did you feel that?” Zel whispered.
“Sure did,” Lina replied. “The etheric resonance is crazy! It’s like the astral plane is folded up like a set of bed sheets in a linen closet.”
“That’s more or less correct,” Melliroon called from the front of the line. She finished crawling out of the log, stood up, and brushed the dirt from her knees. “Come, the village is just ahead.”
The trio and the two archers made their way out of the log to find what appeared to be the outskirts of a totally normal farming village, albeit sleepy and subdued in the moonlight. From where they stood only a few homes had their windows lit up.
“What happened to the forest?” Asked Gourry.
“Oh it’s still there, don’t worry,” replied Melliroon. “Just think of that log as … taking a short cut.”
Lina threw Zelgadis a look that he wouldn’t be able to read in the dark. The elves must have done something absolutely wild to the astral plane here, and if anyone could understand that it would be Zel. Zelgadis remained silent, however, for the rest of the walk.
Once they reached the first row of huts, the archers broke off, probably to retake positions on the watch. Melliroon guided them to a house that was a bit larger than the others and ushered them inside.
“It seems like a real nice village, Miss Mellybloom,” Gourry said.
There was a notable pause before Melliroon replied. “Thank you, but please, there’s no need to be formal; you can just call me Melliroon.”
“Got it.” Gourry said.
“She’s a very tactful woman,” Zelgadis leaned toward Lina’s ear and whispered. They followed Melliroon down a hall and through a door into a large bedroom.
Melliroon made a series of gestures, and three crystal lamps lit up beside three beds. “You’ll be staying here tonight. In the morning we can breakfast, and you can tell me all about your adventures.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Gourry before he let himself fall back-first into one of the beds.
“Agreed,” said Zelgadis.
“Don’t hesitate to let me know if you need anything,” Melliroon said, pausing at the threshold of the door.
“We will,” said Lina.
Melliroon gave them a delicate wave, and disappeared into the hall. Lina shoved all the questions swarming her mind aside and concentrated on shucking off her heaviest gear before crawling into the bed and drifting off to sleep.
***
Breakfast was a strange affair of whipped eggs over toast with fresh vegetables and carrot juice. Not exactly what Lina would call a hearty meal—the egg in particular was pretentious, which was a crazy thing to even think about food, but she couldn’t think of any other word for it. But she bit her lip and said nothing about it because she still had to convince Melliroon to let her and Zelgadis poke around to see if any elven magic could restore him to his former self. No sense in pissing her off now.
“How’d you make this?” Gourry asked, inspecting the cloud-like incarnation of egg on his toast.
“You like it? Isn’t it cute?” Melliroon clasped her hands and smiled.
“It isn’t like anything I’ve eaten before, that’s for sure,” Gourry laughed. Melliroon laughed as well.
Oh hell. Are they flirting?! Lina thought, and stabbed her fork into her vegetables so forcefully it audibly dinged the plate.
Zelgadis caught her eye, cocked an eyebrow, and spoke.
“My compliments to the chef. But if I may discuss the reason we’re here?”
“Oh yes, of course,” Melliroon dabbed the corner of her mouth with a delicately woven napkin and turned her attention to Zelgadis. Zel went on to explain his relation to Rezo, the nature of his condition, and a loose account of their adventures.
“So, seeing as the Claire Bible is out of my grasp, I had hoped that the elves might have some insight. If this village has any old grimoires or records around, I would be grateful to have a look at them.”
“I don’t know how much help we could really be, Mr. Greywords,” Melliroon rubbed her chin. “This has always been just a remote farming village. Even during the War of the Monster’s Fall, very few people left to fight.”
A childhood memory tugged at the back of Lina’s mind—although she didn’t grow up on a proper farm or anything, she did grow up in wine country. Hearing old men gab about their prize-winning grape strains was almost unavoidable in Zephilia, especially if your parents were grocers. They got unsolicited sales pitches all the time.
“Who knows, maybe there’s something there that’s mundane to you but would be really helpful to us,” Lina insisted. “Grafting plants together is a big thing in agriculture. Maybe you guys are using chimera magic all the time but don’t think of it that way because it’s just so normal for you.”
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Zelgadis smile. Lina smiled, too. Being a beautiful sorcery genius really was worth it for these little moments when she brought hope into people’s lives. Maybe she’d put that in her memoirs when she got around to writing them.
“Very well. I don’t know how much it will help, but I can open the village’s records to you.”
“That’s great!” Lina pumped her fist in the air and returned her attention to finishing off her breakfast.
“Wait,” said Gourry, with the kind of gravitas that accompanies a profound realization. “I was just thinking about that story Lina told us about why she’s in that statue. Is this lady … the same Millie Broom?”
Melliroon’s jaw fell, casting her tiny mouth into a perfect “o” shape.
“Yes?” she said.
“Whoa…” Gourry furrowed his brow, thinking. “So if you’re the Millie that knew my Great Grandpa … and they were, you know—” he dropped his voice to a loud whisper, “—in love … does that make her my Grandma?”
Lina dropped her knife and fork and began to rub her temples. It was too early in the morning for Gourry to give her a headache. Zelgadis stifled a laugh.
“Sorry,” said Melliroon. “But I am not. I wanted Rowdy to stay with us forever, but because he was human, he aged so much faster than me. I was still a child and he was nearly a man when he left us for good.”
What followed was a terrible and awkward silence that only got more awkward when it was broken by Melliroon’s delicate elven sobs. Gourry scrambled out of his chair and knelt beside where Melliroon sat, his own eyes shiny and welling with tears.
“I’m so sorry!” he cried.
“It’s okay, you didn’t know,” Melliroon sniffed. “But I do wish you were my grandson.”
They both cried.
Lina had the sudden and overwhelming compulsion to bus her and Zelgadis' plates, you know generally do anything but look at Gourry and Melliroon and the weird whatever that was happening.
After the not-actually-a-family-reunion, Melliroon took Lina and Zelgadis to a vine-covered shed on the far side of the village.
“The records room,” she explained, and pulled a large keyring from the belt loop on her apron. After several tries with various keys, she found one that fit the door and unlocked it. The door opened with a pained creak and the sunlight that poured into the building hung in shafts of dust.
“Good luck,” she said. “I’ll find something for Gourry to keep busy with while you two work,” she added, and left Lina and Zelgadis to their likely fruitless search.
They split the job by dividing the room in half and taking a side. Going into more detail would have been more of a pain, given that it didn’t seem like it was particularly well organized, anyway. So it was that Lina and Zelgadis spent hours in a darkened shack, collecting dust on their cloaks as they poured over endless mundane lists of crops, births, deaths, festivals, and other boring facts of village life like the digging of new wells.
“What you said about grafting was quick thinking,” Zelgadis said, thumbing through a ledger. “Any evidence that it might be true?”
“Nope,” Lina sighed. “Everything I’ve read so far is about parsnips. Five consecutive years of parsnip crops, parsnip crop prices, and parsnip crop pests. I don’t know if I never want to see a parsnip on my plate again, or if I want to roast them and eat them for their crimes.”
“I know you. You’ll want to eat them.”
“Heh, yeah … you got me there,” Lina said. “But they have to compliment a good roast.”
Zel chuckled softly.
They continued in relative silence until breaking for lunch at Melliroon’s place. It was another vegetarian meal, which made Lina wonder how in the world these farmers even had the stamina to get all their work done. Gourry wandered in shortly before they finished, his hair unkempt and tied back, clothes stained with sweat.
“Whoa,” said Lina. “What does ‘Granny’ have you doing out there?”
Gourry shot her a look.
“Rearranging a barn,” he said. “I feel like I’m building a fortress out of hay bales.” He wiped his brow with the back of his forearm, then took a good long look at the table before reaching for the pitcher of juice resting at the center. He picked it up, tipped it to his mouth, and drank the remainder of its contents in one long gulp.
“Geez Gourry! What if I wanted some of that?”
“Okay. We can switch jobs and then when you’re this thirsty you can have it,” he said. Guess honeymoon with Grandma wasn't going so well.
“You two can bicker if you want, but I’m going to get back to my research,” said Zelgadis. He got to his feet and gave Gourry’s shoulder a pat as he passed out of the kitchen. “Don’t let ‘Granny’ work you too hard out there.”
The three of them shared an uneasy laugh, and then they each pitched themselves back into their work.
Lina decided to abandon her crop theory and move onto literally anything else. She paged through some sort of record that noted village births, deaths, festival dates, and even notable departures. It was as Melliroon said—not many villagers departed to take part in the War. Lina thumbed ahead to see if any of the names reappeared later in time. Only one seemed to have made it.
Spring planting.
Wren Lacewood has returned to us, but not as she was. We send for the healers of the Kataart Mountains, if they yet live, once our work is done.
“Hey Zel? Forget the crop stuff. Look for any records about someone named ‘Wren Lacewood.’ They were looking to heal her of … something. Don’t know what.”
“Got it,” said Zelgadis, who proceeded to flick open and then subsequently toss aside many, many crop ledgers. This work went long past sundown, the two of them huddled around flickering Lighting spells as they poured over old records, guessed over illegible handwriting, and hoped that there was anything worthwhile at the end of the road.
Sleep tugged at Lina’s eyelids, and she thought about arranging the nicer leather bound ledgers into some sort of makeshift pillow when Zelgadis sat up straight, slammed the ledger he was reading shut, and grabbed her by the shoulder. Hard.
“I found it.” He said with a voice filled with emotion that Lina couldn’t quite place. Excitement? Fear? Even … sorrow?
“Show me,” she said, and re-lit her Lighting spell to be sure she could clearly read whatever he passed her. Zelgadis reopened the book and pointed to an entry. Right off the bat, Lina recognized “Wren.”
“It says she returned to them separated from ‘the Other’. Lina, she was a chimera! And she was cured of it!”
Lina pursed her lips and read the entry, dated years later, to herself.
Winter Solstice
Wren has come home once again. The astral surgeon separated her from the Other within her! She remembers nothing of the war, or what happened to her. Only that she is happy to have come home.
The pit of Lina’s stomach turned to ice as she turned it over in her head again and again. First, there’s no guarantee that Wren had been a chimera, only that there was an ‘Other’ joined to her. It could just as easily been a possession. Secondly…
“Did you read past the second sentence, Zel? About the part where she had amnesia?”
“So? You don’t know that’s a side effect of the cure. Maybe the healer put a spell on her so as not to share their secrets. Maybe she hit her head on the return trip, there’s no way to know,” Zelgadis shrugged.
“Think about it!” Lina slammed a fist on the floor. “Your body has been joined to a lesser brow demon and a golem for years. If someone were to take you apart on a physical and spiritual level, then put you back together again, who gets whose memories? Look at this, Zelgadis,” Lina picked up the ledger that noted when Wren departed with a handful of other villagers to participate in the War. “She lost decades of time!”
“But she got her life back,” Zelgadis roared, getting to his feet. “You can’t talk me out of this now, Lina, not when I’m the closest I have ever been to a cure!”
“And how many friends did she lose?”
“Not so many that it wasn’t worth the price,” Zel said, coldly, and held out his hand for the ledger.
“No,” Lina hid the ledger behind her back petulantly, angry at him, angry at the tears stinging the corners of her eyes.
“Please, Lina, don’t make me fight you,” Zelgadis said and took a step toward her.
“You’re just gonna forget about all of us? All the adventures we’ve had? Just like that? What would Amelia think?”
“That’s not fair Lina, she’s not here,” Zel said through gritted teeth.
“Yeah, I noticed that,” Lina wracked her mind for what she could possibly do in this moment that wasn’t destroying the entire shed with a fireball. She hadn’t properly fought Zelgadis again since they met. It didn’t occur to her that now, after everything they’d been through, she’d have to do it again.
“I’m sorry Lina,” he said, and lunged for her arm and gripped it so hard that she worried that he was trying to snap bone. She felt a surge of magic as subtle as a draft coming from beneath an old cellar door and then had only a moment of fading consciousness to realize that the bastard had cast Sleeping on her.
***
She awoke with the sun blazing through one of the shed’s cobwebbed windows. Clammy morning dew clung to her clothes and she felt as though the cold itself were weighing her down. All the books that had been strewn around the floor the day prior were now all neatly stacked or shelved, save of course for the ones that mentioned one Wren Lacewood. The cold-hearted bastard really had left her lying there while he cleaned up the scene of the crime, as it were.
“Jerk,” Lina muttered, and got to her feet.
To her surprise, Melliroon was awake and puttering around the house when she made her way inside.
“Miss Inverse!” She squeaked in that tiny voice of hers. “You really slept out in the shed?”
“Not by choice,” Lina growled. “Did Zelgadis come through here?”
“He did, in fact. He said he found a lead and needed to depart immediately, so I had the night watch escort him back to the forest.” Melliroon frowned. “Did you two fight?”
“Yeah,” Lina said, rubbing her bruised arm. “That’s why I gotta go after him. How long ago did he leave?”
“About an hour ago, I’d say. As soon as the sun met the horizon. But please Lina, you look a mess. Let me at least make you some tea.”
“No.” Lina gripped the doorway as hard as she could. There was no time to get cozy when she had to catch up to her friend to give him a good thrashing. If not for vengeance, she owed it to him to prevent him from doing something like foolishly running headlong into everything he ever thought he wanted.
Melliroon pursed her lips and gave Lina the hardest look she’d seen an elf give a person. Not that she was the world’s greatest expert on elves, but it was notable. She opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the sound of a creaking door and the appearance of Gourry soon after. He had not worn a shirt to bed.
“Lina! There you are, I didn’t hear you turn in last night.”
“Yeah well I have Zel to thank for that,” she said bitterly. “He ran off on us.”
“He does that,” Gourry shrugged. “C’mon, you can tell me about it while Grandma Millie makes breakfast?” He raised an eyebrow.
“Of course,” said Melliroon, and the three of them ambled to the kitchen.
Lina sat at the table while Melliroon worked and told them all of it—the research, finding out about Wren Lacewood, what her cure cost her, and the fight that ensued after. Gourry simply kept one hand on Lina’s shoulder and didn’t say a word. Melliroon spooned out bowls of porridge and set them on the table.
“Do you remember Wren Lacewood, Melliroon?” Lina asked.
“I’m sorry. I don’t. I was a child at the time. I didn’t think much about what was happening with the adults of the village until … well until Joyrock appeared, really.”
Lina nodded dumbly and ate her porridge. It was filling.
“Don’t worry about Zelgadis,” Gourry said, giving Lina’s shoulder a squeeze. “Yeah, he can be jerk, but this is also something he has to take on himself. He’ll do the right thing in the end, but he’s gotta confront it first or he'll wonder about it forever.”
“You don’t think he’ll decide that losing his memory of all of us is worth it?”
“Naw. Besides, it’s pretty hard to forget a girl like you, Lina,” Gourry laughed.
Lina let herself smile, and hoped that he was right.