Zelgadis ran at top speed across the countryside, leaping rocks and dodging trees while Sylph cowered in abject terror in his hood, lost in denial. She imagined Zelgadis was sitting quite still on a balmy beach somewhere, rather than doing that really dangerous thing that almost got her killed last week. The wind in her fur was due to an approaching storm front, not the mad headlong rush toward Rratsnek of a chimera who couldn’t seem to lose his hero reflex, despite an infusion of Mazoku DNA. Not that she wanted Zelgadis to ignore the plight of one of his best friends, or anything. She was convinced Urlich had the situation under control. No worries…much. Anyway, there was no reason for Zelgadis to go charging off like this. He should be making his way to the battleground of Seified and Shabranigdo to find one of the clues to his cure, which had been put there by L-Sama, herself. Hey, when God goes to a lot of trouble for you, the least you can do is stay the course. You certainly shouldn’t endanger one friend in the interest of saving another. After all, Zelgadis had already showed that he couldn’t responsibly handle this kind of speed while carrying a passenger.
        Leap!
        "Yip!"
        "Sorry—huff-huff—rock."
        Whimper.
        "It’s under control," Zelgadis sighed loudly, "just relax!"
        "EYES FORWARD!"
        *mutter-mutter-mutter* Zelgadis put his eyes back on the terrain ahead. "Your claws are digging into my back, Sylph."
        "Deal with it," she growled.
        "It hurts!"
        "Poor baby! Slow down, and I won’t have to hang on so hard!"
        Zelgadis cursed. "Oh for crying out loud, Sylph! Those were special circumstances! My mind is perfectly clear—"
        "EYES FORWARD!!"
        *grumble* "My mind is perfectly clear. So’s the day, as a matter of fact, so I can see everything in my path. So just relax."
        "You can’t be concentrating on where you’re going when you’re talking to me! Either talk or run, not both!"
        "Sylph, you’re overreacting!"
        "No, I’m not! You’re reckless!"
        "You didn’t have to come along…"
        Whimper. "That was mean."
        "Put up or shut up, Sylph. I’m not stopping till I get to Rratsnek." Zelgadis jumped over another rock, eliciting another frightened yip out of the fox hanging onto his back for dear life. His tunic would be ruined by the time they got to their destination, Zel thought disgustedly.
        Unfortunately for Sylph, that one thought provided the split second of distraction needed to keep Zelgadis from noticing the well-coifed, yellow-clad obstacle that quite literally appeared in his path. Beast Master had just struck a pose and opened her mouth to say something sarcastic, when Zelgadis ploughed into her at his topmost speed, mowing the Dark Lord into the turf and sending himself tumbling and Sylph flying out of his hood.
        "Different circumstances, my ass!" Sylph screamed at him as she tumbled end over furry end in the air.
        Zelgadis rolled into a tree trunk, feet in the air, head wedged between a pair of exposed roots. As he tried to extricate himself, he sighed a world weary sigh. "I don’t believe this…"
        Meanwhile, the mighty Zellas Metallium sat up in the two foot deep furrow dug by her impact and shook the dirt out of her hair, looking for all the world like a dog coming in from the rain. "You moron! Watch where you’re—"
        "INCOMING!" Sylph shrieked, making Zellas look up just in time to get a fox in her face that latched onto her head with all of her very sharp claws.
        Zellas screamed and threw Sylph off of her face, then threw a fireball at the fox for good measure. Sylph jumped out of the way of the fireball, assuming her human form in mid-leap. "It’s not my fault!" She growled at Beast Master, who just growled back. Then both women turned their attention to Zelgadis, who had just managed to free his head from between the tree roots.
        With a groan of relief, Zel turned around and slid down onto the ground, rubbing his sore skull, only to find two very angry, dirty, disheveled females stomping in his direction. Gulp. "Hey, whoa, wait a minute, Ladies! This is all Beast Master’s fault! If she hadn’t appeared in front of me!" The sentence ended in a squeak as Zelgadis scrambled out of the way of a pair of fireballs that roasted the tree to ashes. "IT’S NOT MY FAULT!" He insisted at the top of his lungs when two more fireballs appeared in the women’s palms. "She appeared in front of me!"
        "And if you hadn’t been going so fast…" Sylph growled.
        "It’s not my fault!" Zel pointed at Zellas. "It’s her fault! She’s the enemy, remember? Xellos’ boss? If you’re gonna fireball any—YEEK! SYLPH!" He dove aside but still got a little singed. "Fine! I’m outta here! You stay and talk to Beast Master, I’m going to save Lina!"
        "Hold it!" Zellas commanded, and Zelgadis just froze with a most displeased scowl on his face. Beast Master smirked her satisfaction. "Well, what do you know. I can control you. How fun!"
        "For you, maybe…" Zelgadis grumbled to himself. He couldn’t actually voice his opinion, since Zellas had also seized up his vocal chords.
        She sauntered into view, brushing dirt off of her nice, yellow suit as she spoke. "You don’t have time to go to Rratsnek, Zelgadis," she told him tersely as she began patting her hair back into place. "I’ve just discovered your little cure has a time limit on it."
        "Sure it does," Zelgadis thought dubiously.
        Sylph voiced his skepticism for him. "Sure it does. And just how did you discover this time limit?"
        Zellas smirked. "I learned it from the Lord of Nightmares."
        "Sure you did," Sylph said and Zel thought at the same time. "As if she’d tell you instead of Zelgadis!"
        Zellas tossed her head, dislodging a lock of hair. She hastily tucked it back into place, then resumed her aloof pose. "Well, she did tell me, whether you care to believe that or not. He has until the next full moon to get his act together and cast the spell. Let’s see…" she made a big show of doing calculations in her head, "that’s only…"
        "Twenty days from now," Sylph filled in for her impatiently. "We don’t believe you, do we, Zel?" She glanced over at Zelgadis, then remembered he couldn’t move because of Beast Master’s control spell. She glared at Zellas. "You could at least free his mouth to speak."
        Beast Master looked bored. "I’m sure he has nothing intelligent to say."
        Actually, he did. Zelgadis was the only one who remembered that the Lord of Nightmares had said she wouldn’t interfere with his cure-finding after putting the cure in the world for him—neither to help nor hinder him. If she had, in fact, talked to Zellas about it, that could be construed as interfering by proxy. Zel wasn’t sure whether or not that counted but he was sure L-Sama was making the rules and could, therefore, break them, since there really wasn’t anybody who could punish her for it.
        Sylph wagged a scolding finger in Beast Master’s face. "Let him go!"
        "Maybe…"
        "ARGH!" Sylph clawed at Zellas’ face, but the Dark Lord just disappeared and reappeared out of reach, grinning smugly all the while. Sylph glared. She huffed and puffed at the other woman with her hands on her hips. "Well, he can’t very well get to finding any clues if he’s stuck in a control spell, now can he?!"
        Zellas’ cigarette holder appeared in her hand, complete with a smoldering cigarette, and she took a lazy drag off of it before responding. "I don’t want him to find his cure, silly fox. What good is a human Zelgadis to me? He’ll just be a pathetic, powerless mortal. I should just crush him now and put him out of his misery."
        "Don’t even think about it, bitch!" Zelgadis silently fumed and desperately worked to loosen her grip on him, though he wasn’t holding out much hope of breaking it. She was, after all, Xellos’ master and much more powerful than he was. Still, Zelgadis was nothing if not stubborn and continued to try.
        "Look at him," Zellas snorted over a puff of smoke. "He’s trying to break my spell—MY spell! Who does he think he is? Shabranigdo? The Lord of Nightmares?" She cackled in a disturbingly Naga-like way, then blew smoke in Zel’s face, knowing he couldn’t sneeze in his condition and very much enjoying the way his face turned red and his eyes watered. "I think I’ll take him home with me and keep him like this until after the next moon—"
        "And you think L-Sama will just let you?" Sylph snorted with a smug little head toss of her own and pert fluff of her russet tail. "She’ll take him away from you, just like last time, that’s what she’ll do!"
        Zellas bit her lip, knowing Sylph had a valid point but still trying to look unruffled by the knowledge that she was only temporarily in control of the situation. "Well, no matter. He’s still part Xellos, and as long as he is, we can interfere. I should just leave him like this, right where he’s standing. Let him get rained on, or something equally uncomfortable, while his precious Lina Inverse gets hung in Rratsnek!"
        "She will not!" Sylph snarled. "Urlich is defending her, and—"
        "And Xellos is prosecuting her," Beast Master interrupted, matching the kitsune snit for snit. "She’s hung," Zellas illustrated by dangling her arm at the elbow and letting her hand swing, "twisting in the breeze! Not a prayer in the world of escaping! She is, after all, Lina Inverse, bandit killer, dragon spooker…" she narrowed her eyes and lowered voice dramatically as she added: "Dark Lord slayer! For that, alone, she should swing!"
        Zelgadis cursed a thousand horrible curses in the hope that at least one or two of the worst ones would fall upon Beast Master and/or Xellos as soon as possible. In fact, that instant sounded good to him, but the Universe wasn’t feeling cooperative, so Zellas just merrily carried on arguing his fate with Sylph.
        "Xellos is--?" Sylph sputtered. "What does he know about the law?!"
        Beast Master made a face. "As if law matters in Rratsnek."
        Sylph smacked her forehead with a sigh. "Oh right. Forgot." She looked into Zelgadis’ angry eyes and shook her head. "She’s right, Zel: Lina’s in big trouble."
        All the more reason to blast that bitch where she stood and get going to Rratsnek! Was what Zelgadis wanted to say but couldn’t. Instead, he made his eyes bulge and hoped Sylph was thinking the same thing he was.
        Sylph knew better than to try and take on one of the five Generals of Shabranigdo all by herself and just balled her fists, flattened her ears and fumed.
        Zellas lapped it up. "It was a doomed quest, anyway, Zelgadis. Why would you want to be a feeble mortal, when you could be a powerful Mazoku and serve me, the beautiful Zellas Metallium?" She flipped her golden (and at the moment, somewhat dirty) hair in what Zelgadis imagined she thought was a sexy fashion.
        "Who told you you were beautiful?" Zelgadis seethed. Gods, what was Sylph doing just talking to that woman?! Why wasn’t she trying to free him, or something constructive like that?! "Oh no. Now what?"
        Zellas trailed a finger down Zelgadis’ cheek and giggled when the cheek turned red. Then she closed her eyes and gave him a cute, little kiss on the lips. Now it was Sylph’s eyes that bugged right along with Zel’s. Tossing good sense to the wind, Sylph decked Beast Master.
        "Don’t touch him!"
        Zellas’s head turned very slowly until she was glaring cold blooded murder at Sylph. "You…struck me…"
        Sylph gulped and took a step back, bringing up her fists defiantly. "And I’ll do it again if you don’t…oh shit."
        Beast Master’s eyes turned feral and with a terrifying growl, she started to morph into her beast form—which was a lot scarier and certainly more powerful than Sylph’s could ever hope to get. "How dare you?!" Zellas roared, her mighty voice shaking the very earth. She was immense, easily twice Zelgadis’ height at the shoulder, with a hideous head covered in wiry fur, and a mouthful of fangs, each the length of Zel’s arm. Every move of her gigantic paws shook the ground, and her low growl chilled even Zelgadis’ part Mazoku blood in his veins. Birds screeched and flew away. Even the bugs in the grass hurried to be elsewhere, fast. Dark, menacing storm clouds gathered overhead, casting terrible shadows over the land. Lighting flashed! Thunder rolled!
        "Nice touch," Zel thought, admiring her dramatic display of power in spite of himself.
        Sylph stood her ground, longing to run away but unwilling to abandon Zelgadis. Her golden eyes darted frantically between Beast Master and her prisoner, desperate for a way out of their predicament that didn’t involve dying. It didn’t look good.
        "Insignificant," Zellas rumbled, "irrelevant, unimportant, overrated--little slut!" She finished with a roar and snapped her jaws shut where Sylph should have been.
        Sylph reappeared in fox form, wrapped around Zelgadis’ neck and shivered with terror. She’d really done it this time. Pissed off a General of Shabranigdo without any backup handy. No Urlich, no Jessica, no Zhara, no Lina—nobody. The only thing Zelgadis was good for at the moment was insurance: If Zellas wanted him in her service, she couldn’t kill him, so if Sylph was attached to his throat, she might not risk—
        Before Sylph could even finish that thought, Beast Master’s open maw loomed overhead and started to come down. Sylph didn’t think, she just acted. There was only one way she could see to keep Zelgadis from getting eaten and that was to jump down Zellas’ throat and hope the Dark Lord choked on her. So she dove into the mouth of the beast and grabbed onto the back of Zellas’ tongue with every claw and fang she had. Much to her astonishment, not only did Zelgadis not become a snack, Beast Master’s restraining spell on him broke as she tried to force Sylph to go into her belly or back out of her mouth.
        Zelgadis spun about with a triumphant shout and was just about to blast Beast Master with a really enraged Ra Tilt when his intended victim hawked a loogie on him, stopping the spell before it ever really got started. Sylph’s soggy form plopped, coughing and gagging onto the grass in front of his boots. He pulled off his cloak and began rubbing her down with it. "Sylph, are you ok?! Sylph, talk to me!"
        "That—cough-sputter-gag—was the most disgusting—cough-cough—" the fox puked, then fainted.
        Zelgadis glared up at Beast Master, still in her animal form and gagging and choking just as hard as Sylph had been. He was just barely able to scoop up Sylph and start running before Zellas threw up. He knew it was hopeless to run, since she could catch up to him again at any time—and now that she was really angry with him and Sylph, there was no way she’d just let them go. But running away was the first option that came to Zelgadis’ mind. Much to his astonishment, it actually turned out to be a good idea, especially the part that involved falling into a hole that landed them in a weird pocket dimension, decorated with velveteen furniture in the most appalling colors Zelgadis had ever seen.
        "What the--?" He went over to a chartreuse colored couch and lay Sylph down on it while he investigated their tiny prison. It’s walls wobbled and bulged as if made of jelly, though the floor remained stable enough to walk on and support the ugly furniture. "Where are we?" Zel wondered aloud. He turned in the center of the "room", hoping an exit would appear in one of the walls. None did. A sudden memory made him ball his fists with an angry growl: Gourry had spent time in just such a pocket. A pocket created by… "Xellos! This has to be one of his little hidey-holes! Damn him! Alright, Xellos! Joke’s over! I know you’re here somewhere, so just come out and face me!"
        A pretentious fanfare blared through the room, waking Sylph with a yelp and startling Zelgadis into a defensive posture, ready to cast a spell as soon as the Trickster showed himself. The fanfare ended with a bang (literally), and a brightly-colored sign appeared in mid-air, right at Zelgadis’ eye level. Zel read it. Then he read it again. Sylph changed forms and came around next to him to read the sign, herself…and gaped. "I don’t believe this…it’s one of his stupid, random promotional gimicks."
        "Huh?" Zelgadis looked from Sylph to the sign and back. "Whose promotional gimick?"
        "Melfinius, of course," Sylph sighed. "He puts these things out in the middle of nowhere, hoping someone will come along and get an unexpected free sample."
        Zelgadis’ jaw dropped. "You must be joking…"
        "He used to put them in high-traffic areas, but people complained, and Zhara threatened to revoke his business license. This is how he does it now. If Zellas doesn’t figure out where we are, we could be in luck."
        "And if she does, we’re trapped," Zelgadis added with an angry snort. "This is just great. When I get back to Marrigan, I’m gonna kill him!"
        "Not so hasty," Sylph cautioned with a gentle hand on his shoulder. "If I recall correctly, Mel designed these things so they only trapped one set of potential customers at a time. Once they’re inside, the thing seals itself off from the outside world and moves to another location. This little bit of serendipity might just have saved our lives. We should thank the nice weirdo as soon as we get back to Marrigan."

        Meanwhile, in Marrigan, the nice weirdo was rubbing his greedy hands together and firing up the automated sales pitch for his newly-ensnared potential customers.

        "’…the perfect gag,’" Sylph read, over a bemused chuckle a few moments later. "’Amaze your friends! Imprison your enemies! Be the talk of the town! With the Incredible Instant Dimension™! Fits in your pocket to be pulled out when your friends least expect it! A million laughs!’ See, told you it was Mel! Ooh! Hang on, it’s changing again…Um…’If you enjoyed this free trial of the Incredible Instant Dimension™, just touch the purple wizard’s hat to register this very model as your own!’ I hope we don’t have to actually buy this thing to get out of it."
        Zelgadis excitedly slapped his hand against the purple hat, causing the sign to produce a form that asked for certain items of personal information. "Maybe not, but I’ll bet it’s the fastest way out."
        "Don’t buy it, you idiot!" Sylph cried, when Zelgadis started writing his name on the sign with his finger. "It’ll probably give you a chance to decline—you already touched the hat. You moron. I'll bet we would’ve been given the chance to decline the offer, then it would have let us go."
        He batted her hand away and kept writing. "Think about it, Sylph! If we own it, we can use it later! This is great!"
        "You’re insane," Sylph muttered. "You don’t even know how much it costs!"
        "How much do you have on you?"
        "What?!" Sylph gasped. "You don’t think I’m paying for this?!"
        "I have twenty gold pieces," he babbled, "and ten silvers. If it’s more than that, spot me."
        Sylph sputtered. "No I won’t spot you! Not for this—we don’t even know if it’s stable! It’s a gag, Zel! What if I’m totally wrong, and it’s really one of Xellos’ traps?!"
        "Melfinius probably put it here, just like you said," Zel was gushing happily. "Ah ha!" Zelgadis crowed. "It’s only ten silver pieces! Waitaminit. How do I pay?" He waited for some kind of magical drawer or something to pop out of the sign to receive his money, but nothing of the sort appeared. The sign continued to demand his money, however, in the form of something called a credit voucher. "I don’t have one of those!" He screamed at it.
        "Dumbshit," Sylph sighed. "You’ve been had."
        "No I haven’t!" Zel insisted. "I didn’t give it any money!’
        "And it probably won’t let us out until you do," she fired back in exasperation. "Congratulations, Genius, we’re now the proud prisoners of an obnoxious gag gift. Why didn’t I let Beast Master swallow me?"
        "But—but—but—" Zel sputtered in a rage, then slugged the sign. It wavered a bit, then disappeared. "Oh no…no wait! Come back! I have money!"
        Just then a life-sized, transparent effigy of Melfinius appeared before him and held out its hand. "Cash, please."
        Zel snatched his money bag from his belt and hurried to count out ten silver pieces into Melfinius’ transparent palm. Amazingly, the silver simply vanished, putting a great, big, happy smile on Melfinius’ face.
        "Thank you for your business. Enjoy your—" the image wavered and Melfinius said in a different, stiff-sounding version of his voice: "Incredible Instant Dimension™. Your owners manual will arrive at your place of residence in seven to ten days!"
        "I don’t have seven to ten days!" Zelgadis yelled at the illusion. "I have to get out of here now!"
        "—thank you again for your business! Tell all your friends about Tudrac Magic Emporium!" With that, Melfinius’ image disappeared.
        Zelgadis screamed impotent rage, then collapsed onto the floor with a sob.
        "Sucker," Sylph muttered under her breath. "Now what?"
        "Got a crystal ball?" Zel asked, not really expecting she could hide one anywhere in that filmy outfit of hers. He was right, she didn’t have one.
        "Where’s yours?"
        "In my bag."
        "Where’s your—oh no." Sylph lay back with a tiny sob. "You dropped it when Beast Master showed up, didn’t you?"
       "Gods, I hate my life!"
        They lay side-by-side, feeling utterly helpless and destitute, then Zelgadis realized something really important. "Melfinius will get my money and registration, right?"
        Sylph’s ears perked up. "Hey, that’s right! He’ll know we’re in here without an owners manual—"
        "—and let us out! YES!" They sat up and exuberantly high-fived, then waited impatiently for Melfinius to come free them.
        Sometime later…
        "…or maybe not." Zelgadis wept in frustration.
        "I am never buying another thing from that man ever again!"

Chapter 29