Jessica popped into the room a few minutes later and wasn’t in the least surprised to find everyone in the room arguing with each other. All but Zelgadis, who was sitting on the windowsill with a happy little smile on his face. If she’d been able to find something really heavy, she would’ve smacked him with it, but lacking that she could only glare at him. He enjoyed that, too. Well, this was just her day to make Zelgadis happy, wasn’t it? She waited until the rest of the crew noticed her, then took a deep breath and told them about her conversation with the Lord of Nightmares.
        "So Zelgadis’ cure is actually in several parts?" Lina asked thoughtfully. "And the clues are in the painting of Shabranigdo and Seifeid?"
        Jessica nodded. "That’s what L-Sama said, so I guess we should go study the fresco, unpleasant as that might— Whoooaaaahhh!" Something blue and really fast whooshed past, spinning her around like a top. "What in the hell was that?!"
        Lina, Gourry and Amelia replied at the same time: "Zelgadis."
        Jessica blinked at them, then looked around the room for the chimera and discovered he was, indeed, absent. "He’s really fast… Blue Demon?"
        "Yup," Lina chirped. "I guess we should head back to the mausoleum, eh?"
        Gourry nodded. "I’m right behind you."
        "Me, too!" Amelia chimed in and fell into line behind Gourry and Lina, who were already walking out the door. Prince Phil and Lara followed her.
        Urlich and Jessica exchanged looks, then shrugged. "Weird bunch, aren’t they?" Jessica joked, then disappeared. Url chuckled and followed her.

        Zelgadis wasn’t too happy to find Jessica and Urlich already at the tomb when he arrived. He’d rushed over there so he could study the fresco by himself for a while before the others got there but he forgot about Jessica’s and Urlich’s ability to teleport. The pair stood in the middle of the mausoleum with their heads craned back, intently studying the picture. Zelgadis joined them, and for a few minutes the they said nothing.
        "This made Princess Amelia faint, did it?" Urlich muttered under his breath. "It’s not that bad."
        Jessica frowned. "I think it was its realism that overcame the Princess and Lita—Lara. Whoever she really is. L-Sama said she used a very talented trance painter, which Lita Sorez claimed to be. I wonder if the Lara personality has the same ability."
        Zelgadis pointed at something near Shabranigdo’s left foot and asked: "What do you guys make of that white thing by Shabranigdo’s foot? It looks like it might be a person, but it’s kind of hard to tell through the fire."
        The others squinted up at it, then Jessica got tired of that and levitated herself closer for a better view. Zelgadis thumped himself on the forehead for not thinking of that himself, then hovered up to join her. Urlich stayed on the ground.
        "I still can’t tell," Zelgadis declared, after all but mooshing his nose into the fresco. Actually, it was harder to see what was going on in the painting from up close than from down below, so he and Jessica floated back down to the floor. "I guess it was designed for this point of view," Zel mused aloud and went back to staring upwards.
        Jessica and Urlich nodded absently. After a while, Jessica asked: "I’m not getting any inspiration, how about you guys?"
        Urlich shook his head and walked over to lean against the sarcophagus and rub the back of his neck. "What are we supposed to see? Didn’t L-Sama give you any hints at all?"
        "No," Jessica sighed as she went to join him, rubbing her own sore neck. "Zelgadis? Do you see anything that’s meaningful to you? Some hint?"
        He bit his lip thoughtfully and shook his head. "No. Nothing," he growled in disgust. "But there’s something here, right? Something that’s supposed to tell me where the pieces of my cure are!" He turned to Jessica and sighed in exasperation: "Are you sure she didn’t give you any other hints?"
        "Positive," the kitsune replied, "she just said the clues were in that fresco and that’s all."
        "Didn’t say anything like ‘look in this part or that part’…?" Zelgadis persisted.
        "NO!"
        He plopped down onto the floor, then stretched out on his back to look up at the painting more comfortably. Dodgy woman… "Can I talk to her?"
        "Take your best shot," Jessica retorted, "but I don’t think she’ll talk back. She seemed pretty adamant about not giving out anymore hints—"
        "To you, maybe," Zelgadis growled, "but I’m the guy who’s supposed to be the only one who can find this cure of hers."
        "Yeah, but I don’t recall her saying she’d hand it to you on a silver platter," Urlich snorted.
        Zelgadis clenched his fists but let it go. Url was right: L-Sama probably wouldn’t just hand over the cure since tormenting him by playing the mysterious god was much more fun. She probably just wanted to watch him get all bent out of shape trying to figure out her stupid puzzle. He sighed and rubbed his eyes. The slower members of his party had entered the cemetery. He could hear their voices and running footsteps. Studying would be a bit tougher with all those people discussing the problem at once. Zel could feel the bile rising into his throat, then all of a sudden he remembered how Lita had reacted to the fresco. What if Lara had the same reaction? Would she turn back into Lita, or become someone else entirely? Was this really Lara, or was she Lita…or just a copy of Lara that thought it was its maker? What a bother if she kept switching personalities every time she got scared. Oh well, at least Lara didn’t seem to be the type to scare as easily as Lita had. Lita had been a wimp, as far as Zelgadis was concerned, a delicate flower. At least Lara had some backbone to her.
        What was so creepy about that fresco that it caused fainting spells and visions? He stared at Shabranigdo for a while, comparing the monster in the painting to the one he’d helped Lina destroy a few years ago. Bigger, he decided, a much bigger version of the one he’d fought, which had only been a piece of the creature in the fresco. And yes, he was terrifying, even as his enemy triumphed over him, and his body split apart. Zel had been to the scene of that battle, when aliens had come to open a gate to let Dark Star in and seal him in this world to keep him from destroying theirs. They’d failed of course, because the Gold Dragons had brought in Lina Inverse to stop them.
        The battlefield…
        Zel sat up with a jolt of realization just as the rest of his companions crashed into the mausoleum, and Lina demanded a status report. "THE BATTLEFIELD! That’s it!" He jumped up and ran to shake Lina by her shoulders and shout in her face: "The place where Seifeid and Shabranigdo fought! One of the pieces is there! I’m sure of it!"
        Lina looked beyond him and up at the fresco, then back into her friend’s excited face. "That makes sense." She thought about it a little more and realized it made a lot of sense. "But there are supposed to be several pieces—wait a sec." She wriggled out of Zel’s grasp to turn around a look at Jessica. "How many pieces are we looking for?"
        "Seven," Zelgadis said firmly. "That has to be it. Shabranigdo broke into seven pieces—it’s in the painting! He’s breaking up in the painting, and there are seven pieces of him!"
        Everybody looked up and did a count. "Seven it is," Urlich declared. "Ok, so we’re looking for seven pieces of Zelgadis’ cure—"
        "And this tomb holds one of them," Jessica interrupted, "as well as the clues to point us to the other pieces." She pointed at the fresco. "Somewhere in that."
        "But what’s the piece in this tomb?" Amelia asked and looked around at the hieroglyphs, then the sarcophagus. No way was she looking at that horrible fresco again. Last time she’d done that, the visions she got were… She shuddered at the memories of the two vision she’d had after looking at the fresco for the first time. In one of them, Zelgadis had been cut in two by a white knight as he stood in the flames and caught a piece of Shabranigdo. The other vision had given her the meaning of the first glyph of L-Sama’s creation spell that was painted on the walls. Were there clues hidden in her other vision, as well? She gulped and forced herself to look up at the fresco, into the flames at Shabranigdo’s feet. She half expected to find Zelgadis in there somewhere, but he wasn’t there. What about the knight, she wondered and tried to remember where she’d seen him in the vision. By the Dark Lord’s left foot—There! "The white knight!" She exclaimed, just as Jessica replied to her original question.
        "I’d say the hieroglyphs," the kitsune said, then blinked. "What white knight? The one in your vision?"
        Amelia nodded vigorously and pointed to the white patch in the fresco that Zelgadis, Urlich and Jessica hadn’t been able to make out before. "There! That’s where he was in my vision, right before he…" she trailed off, then marshaled her resolve and finished the sentence: "Right before he cut Zelgadis in half. I mean, he was going to do it, but I couldn’t watch, so I didn’t actually see him do it. I just assumed he did because he was bringing his sword down to do it. You know?"
        Everybody looked from her to Zelgadis, then up at the painting. "Cut him in half?" Phil mused. "I wonder what that could mean?"
        Lina had a few ideas about that. "It could mean that a part of him will be cut away, like the Lord of Nightmares did when she removed the Dark Lord part of Zel last week."
        "She killed me," Zelgadis interrupted her tersely. "I’d rather not have to go through that again." He paused for a moment and appeared to consider, then he looked up at the fresco again and added: "I see your point, though. It could mean that the parts of me that aren’t human will be removed, leaving just the human behind."
        Lina nodded soberly. "That’s what I’m thinking. Of course, it could just mean you have to die first…"
        Zelgadis growled at her and said nothing. Although his death hadn’t been unpleasant, coming as it had in the middle of sex with L-Sama, he’d still died, and he’d been lucky to convince her to let him come back to life. However, Xellos’ usual precociousness had ruined his hope that version two of his chimera body would be a little easier to live with. As if Rezo’s spell hadn’t been bad enough, now he had to deal with that little touch of Xellos, too. Peachy. "Maybe I should’ve asked her to fix my luck instead of my body," he thought sardonically. Even when he was human he’d been plagued by bad luck and he had no illusions about the luck he was born with changing one whit just because he found the way to undo the harm done to him by Rezo and Xellos. So if his luck held true, even though this was supposedly a sure thing, a cure that was absolutely there, waiting just for him, he’d never be able to take advantage of it. The reason might be small or great, blindingly stupid or earth shatteringly important but it would keep him from reaping the benefits of L-Sama’s cure, then there’d be nothing. No hope, no cure, nothing. The only way he’d get out of being a chimera was by dying (and since he’d go down cursing L-Sama’s name, he’d suffer eternal punishment, and it was highly unlikely she’d resurrect him again).
        "Mr. Greywers," Lara began.
        "Zelgadis."
        "Zelgadis. What are you thinking about?"
        A tiny, unpleasant smile lifted one corner of his mouth. "Luck, or in my case, a lack thereof."
        She folded her arms and frowned at him. "The universe is entirely too well-ordered to be governed by anything as chaotic as luck, Zelgadis. Whatever you’re interpreting as bad luck is more likely the product of your own failure or persecution by others."
        That didn’t make him feel better. "Ok, I’m thinking about my own failure and the persecution of others, past, present and future. ‘Luck’ just takes less time to say."
        "Aw, c’mon, Zel," Gourry chirped and slapped a companionable arm about Zelgadis’ shoulders, "just because some things went wrong for you in the past doesn’t mean this’ll screw up, too! This is the best chance you’ve had! If you believe you’ll fail, you will. That’s what my grandmother always said."
        "That’s right!" Amelia and Phil agreed in unison, and the very good possibility of at least one, possibly two, really bang-up speeches echoed through the mausoleum.
        Urlich acted fast to shut them down before the Seyruun Royals could do more than strike dramatic poses. "Hey, hey, hey! Whoa!" He cried, waving his hands between himself and the Royal speechmakers. "Remember what that did to Zelgadis last time, Princess. You don’t want him to pass out again, do you?"
        Amelia drooped and shook her head with an embarrassed blush.
        Urlich wasn’t the only one who breathed a sigh of relief. "So we’re agreed? No feel-good speeches while Zelgadis is around?"
        Phil and Amelia nodded humbly.
        "Or while I’m around, either?"
        Amelia glared. "Don’t push it."
        "You guys," Lina reminded them impatiently, "we have better things to do than make speeches and argue! We have to find those clues!" She turned to Lara with a cunning smirk. "Lara, you seem to know a bit about these paintings, why don’t you have a good, long look at that one and see if you can find some clues for Zel?" She pointed at the fresco.
        Lara saw straight through her. "You’re hoping the painting will scare me, so you can find out if I’ll change personalities again."
        Lina let her arm drop and gave Lara a keen look. "So what if I am? Up until a couple hours ago, you were Lita Sorez, then you got creeped out and suddenly you’re Lara Sorez. Who will you be next time you get a really good scare? The Lord of Nightmares?"
        She chuckled under her breath and smirked. "Maybe I’ll be Lina Inverse…"
        Gourry and Amelia paled. "NO! Don’t even say it!" Gourry begged.
        Lina boiled. "You guys…"
        Gourry and Amelia clasped hands and wept. "The horror! The horror!"
        "Aren’t you overreacting a little?" Lina snarled as a fireball formed in her palm.
        Urlich grabbed her wrist from behind and growled in her ear: "Look who’s talking. We’re not getting anything done like this."
        "That’s what I was saying," Lina retorted sweetly, "before certain people developed a death wish!"
        "He’s right!" Phil chimed in with a severe look for everyone in the mausoleum, whether they were behaving themselves or not. "We must focus our energies on finding the clues to Zelgadis’ cure, not arguing with each other!" He decided to set a good example by marching over to stand by Zelgadis and look intently up at the fresco and make thoughtful noises.
        Zelgadis couldn’t keep from laughing at him, standing there like a giant statue and going "Hmmm…" while rubbing his chin and nodding to himself. Still, the big guy was right. They’d never find the clues if they didn’t knuckle down and look for them. "I wonder how many clues I should be looking for?" Zel asked the room in general. "Seven? Or do we just need the one clue about the battlefield, and the clue to the next piece will be there, and so on? What do you think, Lina?"
        Lina joined him and Phil in the middle of the room and contemplated the painting. "Could be. What did L-Sama say?"
        "She said the clues are in the fresco," Jessica told her. "So we should look here, not where the other pieces are."
        Sigh. "Should’ve brought snacks…"

        Four and half hours, two orders of carryout and eight arguments later, the researchers in the tomb found six clues in the fresco. At least, they were pretty sure those were the clues the Lord of Nightmares had put there. Anyway, they were sure of at least two of the clues, which pointed to the place where Seifeid and Shabranigdo fought and the mausoleum, itself. One thing nagged at Zel’s mind: The sarcophagus. He wanted to know what was inside, despite L-Sama’s admonition to leave it alone.
        "Couldn’t she at least have told you why it’s sealed?" He asked Jessica as he walked around the thing, hoping to find a hint somewhere on its surface.
        Jessica rolled her eyes. "No. Just leave it alone."
        "Why?" Zel asked mischievously. "What’ll happen if I try to open it?"
        She gave him a wicked grin. "Maybe she’ll punish you by taking away the cure!"
        "Doubtful," Zel shot back, though he wasn’t as confident as he sounded that L-Sama wouldn’t be horribly petty and do just what Jessica suggested.
        "Bet there’s a spell on it to protect it," Lina suggested in a tone that invited Zelgadis to test her theory.
        "That would make sense," Jessica agreed as she grabbed Zelgadis’ arms just as he raised them to strike the lid. "Don’t."
        Zelgadis winked at her. "Jessica, I had no idea you cared!"
        She let go of his arms with a disgusted snarl and stomped over to where Urlich leaned against the door, looking out into the twilit cemetery. "Fine! Blow your damn arms off, asshole!"
        "Tsk! Such language!" Zelgadis giggled. He lifted up his fists, brought them down as hard as he could on the sarcophagus lid and…froze. His eyes got wider and wider as he stood stock still with his fists resting where they’d struck. Nothing happened for a few seconds, then some of the vines nearest him slithered onto his fists and wrapped themselves around his arms. Zel couldn’t move, or even cry out. Only his panic stricken eyes were able to roll around in his head, begging his companions to do something to free him.
        Amelia was the first to jump in and try to beat back the vines, only to find her own arms imprisoned. That taught the others a lesson, so they kept their distance while they considered how to free the pair. All but Gourry, who did the first thing that came to mind: He drew his sword and with a mighty battle roar, brought it down in a blaze of magical fire onto the vines. They stopped crawling up their victims’ arms, so Gourry hit them again and again, each blow driving them back a few more inches until finally Zel and Amelia were free.
        The two former prisoners collapsed onto the floor, well away from the sarcophagus, and leaned against each other, panting with relief. Amelia threw her arms around Zelgadis and wept into his shoulder. "Oh, Zelgadis! I was so scared!"
        He rolled his eyes and pushed her away. "Why didn’t it do that the last time I touched it?" He demanded of Jessica angrily. "Why now?!"
        "Probably because you were trying to break the lid," she suggested, matching his angry tone.
        "Well how the hell else do you recommend I find out what’s inside?!"
        Glare. "Find the other pieces of the puzzle, dumbshit," she grumbled impatiently, "I’m sure it’ll be happy to open up for you then."
        Mutter-mutter-mutter.
        Lara crouched down in front of Zelgadis and looked into his face with a self-satisfied grin. "That was scary, Zelgadis, and look! I’m still me!"
        "I can fix that…"
        Amelia threw herself across his lap, and Gourry pointed Firedrake in his face. "Stop it, Zel," he warned. "I don’t know what’s going on with her but I won’t let you scare her to find out."
        Zelgadis considered testing the swordsman’s resolve but one look into Gourry’s eyes changed his mind. He meant it. "So you’d cut me, Gourry?"
        "Whatever it takes."
        Breathless silence filled the mausoleum as they waited to see how Zelgadis would answer that. One heartbeat, two…then Zel relaxed and lay his hand on Amelia’s hair. "I could get used to this."
        "Gack!" Amelia blushed and hastened to wriggle from under Zelgadis’ touch and off of his lap. "Zelgadis!"
        He shrugged. "You’re the one who jumped into my lap..."
        She scrambled over to hide behind her father and blush furiously.
        Zel giggled. "Fresh."
        Jessica resisted the urge to kick him in the head. "Well, at least we’ve answered the question of what happens if someone tries to break into the sarcophagus."
        "And we have what we believe to be all of the clues," Lara added.
        "So there’s nothing left to do," Lina finished with a sparkle in her eyes, "except—EAT!" She grabbed Gourry by the arm and charged out the door. "Come on, guys! Dinner won’t eat itself!"
        This time Urlich had the good sense to get out of her way.

        Much later, as they cuddled up in their bed, Lina and Gourry discussed Lara Sorez. More accurately, Lina talked about the issue, while Gourry fought to stay away and nod in what seemed like appropriate places.
        "We’re gonna have to work harder if we want to jolt her into another personality. That is, if she has another one. She’ll probably just go back to being Lita. I wonder if L-Sama knows who she really is. Hm. Might have to get Jessica to ask her about it, since she forgot to do it last time. Maybe Xellos knows." She rolled over and snuggled her back against Gourry’s side, inviting him to spoon around her, which he did with a contented sigh. "Nah. Even if he knew, he wouldn’t tell us. That leaves Jessica—or scaring Lara, which I’m pretty sure we can count on Zel to do if we ask him."
        "That wouldn’t be nice," Gourry murmured into her hair.
        "What’s nice got to do with it?" She snapped back. "We need to know who she really is if we have to deal with her anymore—which I’m pretty sure we will. If she’s Lara, that means she’s not dead, and what she told us about setting up one of her clones to be murdered in her place is the truth. I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust somebody who’s cold enough to let somebody else get killed in their place."
        Gourry nodded. "Good point."
        "But, if she’s Lita and just thinks she’s Lara, then what she said about the clones could be a lie. Or! Or, she really is Lita and she knew that she was created to take the hit for Lara, so she pretended to be Lara to save her own life, and Lara really is dead! No wait, that’s not right. If she knew she was supposed to get murdered instead of Lara, she wouldn’t pretend to be Lara, she’d make sure everybody knew she wasn’t Lara! Ah! Gourry!" Lina rolled over so she could shake him. "I got it! This really is Lara, who pretended to be somebody else so hard to fool the murderers, she really believed she was Lita! In fact, she believed it so hard, she was even able to do trance painting with the same skill! Unless she was also a trance painter… Or Lita wasn’t, but Lara was, and Lita just said she was…"
        "Lina?"
        "Hm?"
        "You’re giving me a headache."
        Lina sighed her irritation, but before she could scold him for interrupting her train of thought, he kissed her, and they forgot all about the Lara-Lita problem for a while.
        Xellos shuddered in disgust at the happy scene in Lina’s bedroom and flitted away to the rooftop to savor his depression. What did she see in that idiot? Sure, he was cute in a bubble-headed blonde sort of way…and he was tall, muscular, a skillful swordsman and had great hair. Big deal. All the good looks and brawn in the world couldn’t make up for intelligence, and the Trickster Priest/General of Beast Master had brains in spades! "And I’m pretty good in bed, if I do say so, myself. No complaints. Not even from Zelgadis." He giggled at that, feeling a wave of pride at the way Zelgadis had begun to use that unhappy episode in his life to torment others. "He’s really coming along nicely," Xellos sniffled and wiped away an imaginary tear, "a chip off the old block! I’m so proud! I wonder if he found any clues today. Hope not. He’ll be so angry if he found nothing but more puzzles."
        Feeling much better, Xellos decided to pay his pet chimera a visit and see what information he could pry out of him and maybe feel him out on the idea of working for Beast Master. Not ask him directly, of course, just drop a few subtle hints and gage his reaction. Despite L-Sama’s assertion that he and Beast Master had nothing to offer Zelgadis since they couldn’t make him human again, Xellos figured it was worth a shot. The question was, how to either convince Zelgadis to abandon his new quest, or destroy some or all of the puzzle pieces. Hm. It seemed to Xellos that destroying one of the pieces would be enough to ruin the whole thing. If only he could see what was inside that damn tomb, his job would be a whole lot easier!
        He appeared outside of Zelgadis’ window to find he wasn’t alone. A shapeless cloud of darkness hovered a few feet from where Xellos had appeared, outside and a little above Zel’s window. Inside the room, Zelgadis was talking to Lita Sorez—Ah, she was Lara now, Xellos reminded himself. That little tidbit of information had come to him via Seyruun’s overactive rumor mill. Word of Dr. Sorez’s miraculous return from the dead was all over the streets. All Xellos had to do was buy a cup of coffee and listen to the conversations around him. Whatever she and Zel were talking about, it wasn’t making her very happy. "Good lad," Xellos thought proudly, all the while keeping one eye on the black mass floating nearby. He could sense an intelligence within it, though he couldn’t tell if it had noticed him or not. Probably had but it apparently didn’t perceive him as a threat, since it didn’t come at him. It felt Mazoku but not like anyone he knew.
        After a few moments of futile observation, he decided to ask. "Who are you?"
        It wavered a bit, then an icy voice replied: "That is none of your concern, servant of the Great Beast."
        "On the contrary," Xellos argued conversationally, "it concerns me very much. You see, that blue chap is my protégé—"
        "I have no interest in him," the thing replied in its emotionless, hiss of a voice, "Only the woman."
        "I see," Xellos turned his staff in his hand and tried again to figure out who the creature was, or at least who it might serve. "Who is she, anyway? There seems to be some confusion as to her true identity. Perhaps you know?"
        It was silent for a few moments, then replied: "Her name is meaningless. She has the blood of the one I seek."
        When it didn’t add anything enlightening to that comment, Xellos pressed it for more information. "But whose blood do you seek? And for what purpose? I must ask, you see, since I have a personal interest in that woman, as well." Was that just a random shimmer, or was it curious?
        "What interest?"
        Xellos grinned. "You first."
        It considered that, then: "No." With that, it disappeared.
        Xellos tried to sense where it had gone, but the thing left no psychic trail. Whoever it was, it was good, not some minor lackey of a minor Lord. But who did it serve? He cast a reluctant glance into Zelgadis’ room, then disappeared to see what his master might know of the creature.

        "I want to know who you really are, right now!" Zelgadis demanded, jabbing his finger in Lara’s angry face. "And what you are! Or you can’t come with me."
        She turned her back on him and paced to the other side of the room. "I can help you! I’m a part of this, Zelgadis! Why else would the clues be in my tomb?"
        "Because L-Sama knew I’d go there," Zelgadis growled back. "That’s what she told Jessica! So I don’t need your help."
        She paused and turned on him with a sly look. "But you want me along, don’t you? Because of what happened between you and Xellos when he was pretending to be me."
        Zelgadis’ cheeks colored, and he turned away, choosing to stare out the window at the clear night, instead. "I wonder if he portrayed you accurately," he mused. "You weren’t this much of a bitch when he was you."
        "So go sleep with him," she shot back.
        Zelgadis spun on her with a fire spell ready in his hand, then let it dissipate. No, he wouldn’t let her get to him. If anybody was going to be feeding anybody’s monstrous nature, she’d be feeding his, not the other way around! "He’s not cute enough."
        That got a chuckle out of her. "Oh, I don’t know. I’ve heard he’s not bad for a monster. Not nearly the cutie that Valgarv was, or as precociously adorable as Phibrizio, but not bad."
        How did she know what all of those monsters looked like? "What? You met them?"
        She gave him a coy look. "No, but I’ve studied their kind, and the books I’ve read include pictures. Valgarv was an Ancient Dragon, who was saved from death by Garv, who turned him into a Mazoku. Phibrizio sealed off this part of the world at the time of Shabranigdo’s resurrection. Lina Inverse broke the seal when she destroyed Hellmaster. I know all the stories," she came close enough to reach out and touch his face. "Even your part in it all, Zelgadis."
        She had to have pretty good sources to know his part in Lina’s stories. Most people didn’t even know three Mazoku Lords had been destroyed, much less who had destroyed them or how the battles had gone down. "Where do you hear these things?"
        Lara smiled a devilish smile, and her eyes sparkled with a cold light. "I traded for the information, of course. If you want a monster to give you something, you have to give it something of value in return."
        "And what did you have of value to them?" Zelgadis’ stomach was churning itself into icy knots as his brain conjured the possibilities. A monster definitely wouldn’t want therapy, but it might be interested in her angst-ridden patients. Had she offered them the pain and misery of the people who came to her for counseling? And if the monsters ate those emotions, did the patients feel better afterwards, or just drained of a part of their life force? He thought back to his battles with Mazoku. No, he definitely hadn’t felt better when they were eating his angst. It might have been the circumstances, though: They had been in the midst of life or death battles at the time. No time to think about feelings.
        "I gave them my patients’ emotions, of course," she told him with the casualness only a clear conscience could bring. "It helped my patients, and fed the monsters, so I could get the information I wanted from them." She started to pace again, and her tone became darker. "After a while, it wasn’t enough. They wanted more…they wanted me and my talents, which until then I thought I’d kept hidden from them. At first, it was just little demands, like some of my emotions, but soon their demands became unreasonable. They wanted my life, my vow to serve them. When I wouldn’t give it, they refused to give me any further assistance. I should have been suspicious when there was no strings attached to their disappearance from my life. Of course they weren’t gone! I knew too much about them, so I had to die!" She sat on the bed and stared at the floor, unable to meet his eyes. "I tried to hide, but it was no good. Everywhere I turned, I was forced to fight them. Fortunately, they only sent minor powers against me at first, so I had time to come up with a plan. That’s when I made the copies—three of them—to act as decoys until I could find a more permanent solution. They killed all three—"
        "So you pretended to be one of the copies," Zelgadis accused, "thinking they wouldn’t kill you."
        She nodded.
        "Then why don’t you remember being Lita this morning? Or remember me, or Gourry, or any of the other people Lita talked to, except for Phil and Amelia—who Lara knew?" As he talked, he came closer until he was standing toe to toe with her.
        She looked up with a hard expression and said: "I don’t know."
        Zelgadis took hold of her head and squeezed until tears leapt into her eyes. "Wrong answer. I want the truth, and I’m going to get it if it kills you!" He squeezed harder. "Try again. Who are you?"
        "Stop it!" She gasped. "I haven’t shown you my power but I will if you don’t back—AH!"
        "If I crush your skull, you can’t cast spells."
        "If you crush my skull," she wept, "you won’t get the answers you want!"
        "And if you’re dead, it won’t matter."
        At that moment, a number of very painful things happened to Zelgadis: Lara screamed, a blast of light burst from her hands into his face, and some invisible force shoved him across the floor and slammed him into the wall on the other side of the room. He hit his head hard enough to make him see sparks, then he shook it out and jumped up, ready to give back what Lara gave. "Huh? Where’d she go?" The open door and the sound of running feet gave him his answer. With a grim snarl, he gave pursuit.
        He didn’t get very far. Standing in his path was Princess Amelia, with Prince Phil towering behind her and a half dozen Royal Guards, who hustled to surround the chimera. Too late, Zelgadis realized Amelia was casting a sleep spell, then everything went dark.