The Golden King of Darkness

The Golden King of Darkness

“What do you want?” the Gold Dragon, Milgazia, asked Xelloss flatly. The words ended up sounding more like a threat than a question.

I didn’t blame the guy.

If the legends were true, dragons and Mazoku were serious enemies—they were on opposite sides during the Demon War. And since Milgazia had mentioned that war specifically, there was a good chance those legends had a lot of truth to them.

Especially considering the look on his face, I added silently. Milgazia glared at Xelloss like a barmaid who’d found a rat.

Still, Milgazia hadn’t attacked or anything. Maybe he was putting aside the past for business.

“I have a little business with the Claire Bible,” Xelloss said, basically repeating my thoughts out loud. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“What would a demon want with it?” Milgazia snapped.

“It’s not for me,” Xelloss explained, gesturing to me as he did so. “I’d just like this human woman to use it a bit.” “A human… ?” The elder Gold Dragon stared at me skeptically. He turned back to Xelloss. “What is your scheme here, Priest?”

Xelloss held a hand palm-up in a defeated gesture. “It’s Lord Hellmaster who’s scheming, and I don’t know his objective. My office dictates that I have no choice but to obey.”

“And if I refuse?” Milgazia asked.

“I’ll think of some means other than diplomacy,” Xelloss answered calmly. He didn’t flinch under Milgazia’s glare.

After a long staring contest, Milgazia finally sighed. “So be it,” he said dryly. “We don’t have the means to stop you, so we have to let you do as you please.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Xelloss said politely, which was one of his best bits of bull yet.

“However.” Milgazia’s voice was a sharp warning. “I will accompany you to watch.”

This oughta be fun, I thought sarcastically.

The elder dragon lifted his head and let loose with a piercing cry. His body shuddered, then burst into a gold- colored cloud that trembled as it shrank. A few seconds later, Milgazia had morphed into an entirely new form.

For all intents and purposes, he looked like a human. He was blond, middle-aged, and reasonably attractive, blue clothing wrapped around him.

I was impressed. That cry was a metamorphosis spell, I thought.

“Follow me,” Milgazia said before turning his back to us.

I reminded myself to be on my best behavior.

* * *

Our party of six—four humans and two miscellaneous— headed along a mountain path cut from raw stone. We were silent, and had been since leaving the base of the peak; no matter what questions we had, we knew better than to ask.

I made sure to take in the decidedly unique surroundings as we walked. I could see dragons watching us from distant cliffs and outcroppings and wondered if they were afraid of something.

Milgazia stayed in the lead, adamant about not turning around to grace us with his gaze. His back practically shouted, “P’tooie to any human following that asshole demon!” (I paraphrased that, of course.)

The silence started to get to me after a while. I had a mountain of burning questions and a bunch of legendary creatures to direct them at, but we were all staying clammed up because Milgazia was being pissy.

Where’s the Claire Bible?! was the main thing I wanted to screech at the top of my lungs. But could I ask without getting in trouble? At best, Milgazia would ignore me. At worst… well, I didn’t want to think that far. But since I was on the top of the guy’s suck list, I needed someone else to break the ice.

That moment, Gourry, of all people, opened his mouth. “Xelloss?” he asked as he turned to our fifth party member.

Milgazia twitched at Gourry’s voice. I doubted an elder dragon enjoyed discussions behind his back that involved enemies he couldn’t kill.

“Yes?” Xelloss replied, his tone buoyant to Gourry’s casual.

“You must be, like, one of the oldest farts ever.” Amelia, Zelgadiss, and I froze in our tracks. Even Xelloss halted to stare at Gourry.

“Excuse me?”

Gourry scratched his head. “Um, Mister Dragon mentioned the Demon War, and I think I’ve heard of that before. It was a long time ago, right?”

Xelloss swallowed his surprise. “To be more precise,” he said with a slightly forced smile, “it was around twelve hundred years ago.”

“So that means you’re at least that old. Huh.” Gourry stroked his chin. “I guess I can see why you don’t like talking about it. Don’t worry, though—you don’t look a day over twenty.”

Gourry’s thought processes never ceased to amaze. I dropped my head in my hands.

Thank you for wasting our precious chance to ask a question, Gourry!

By the way—from a demon’s perspective, Xelloss wasn’t old at all. And I doubted that Xelloss’ appearance was his true form, anyway.

“Er… thank you,” Xelloss said, clearly unsure of what to say

Since I couldn’t count on Gourry to pick Milgazia’s brain, I had to find an opening myself. I noticed that the dragon had stopped to turn and stare at Gourry like the rest of us.

Here’s my chance! I cleared my throat and smiled at the dragon.

“Don’t worry, Mister Milgazia,” I assured him. “He’s always like this.” Making fun of Gourry was always a good icebreaker.

“I… see,” was his ambiguous reply. He turned around and kept walking.

He couldn’t get rid of me that easily. “Mister Milgazia,” I ventured casually. “I’ve been meaning to ask you: how do so many dragons live here? Is there a special food supply or something?”

Dragon’s Peak had about the same amount of topsoil and large trees as the side of a volcano. There were small animals that fed on tree seeds and all, but that didn’t seem nearly good enough to feed a flock of dragons.

Milgazia paused. “We neither require nor desire much food,” he said coldly. “Dragons need normal amounts of food while young, but naturally learn how to derive nourishment from wind and sunlight over time.

“Although,” he added, “we do still need to eat, and that must occur at least monthly. Just bear in mind that if we ate more, the world’s resources would have run out long ago.”

That made sense. “All right,” I said. “Interesting.”

“Now I have a question, human girl.” I could hear the ice prickling from his words. “If you know Xelloss is a demon and up to some scheme, why are you cooperating with him?”

I took a breath. “It’s a survival thing,” I explained. “I don’t know what Xelloss and Hellmaster Phibrizzo are planning, but I know that it has something to do with me. Since there’s another Mazoku faction out there that’s just as clueless as I am but still wants to kill me to stop Xelloss, I don’t have much choice but to stay with him for now.

“I know that Hellmaster isn’t a ‘world peace’ kind of guy,” I said as a disclaimer. “And the demons trying to kill me may be more in the right, in this case. But I’m not the kind of girl to sit back and die for no good reason.”

Milgazia was silent for a moment. “Don’t be ashamed of your natural instinct to survive,” he said at last. His tone was even and he didn’t look at me, but for some reason I felt like he kinda understood.

“This is only temporary.” I shook out my mantle. “I don’t like being manipulated, so I’ll only do it to find out the truth. And since those demons who want my hide aren’t giving up anytime soon, and since my death may not stop Hellmaster’s plan, giving up and getting killed now may end up being a spectacularly useless death.”

Milgazia slowly turned his head to me for the first time since our meeting. “Should you be talking about this in front of him?” he asked, glancing at Xelloss.

Xelloss just smiled again. “I don’t mind,” he hummed. “And I expected nothing less from her than a thorough consideration of the circumstances.”

“Mm.” The elder Gold Dragon fell into thought for a while. When he finally spoke again, it was about me. “What concerns me is this: human girl—Lina, was it?— perhaps you are one of the seven dispersed parts of Ruby Eye Shabranigudu.”

I froze. “What?!” I exclaimed, in perfect unison with my teammates. We’d been doing that a lot lately.

Everyone knew the old story. The Demon King Ruby Eye Shabranigudu was split into seven pieces and sealed after his duel with our world’s god, Ceipheed the Red Dragon God. Ceipheed—who was badly injured in the fight—vanished from the world after leaving four offshoots of himself while the Demon King scattered Mazoku across the world. Later, during the Demon War, one of the sealed pieces of Ruby Eye descended onto the Kataart Mountains and destroyed one of Ceipheed’s extensions: the Water Dragon King.

The Demon War was over a thousand years ago. Fast- forward to a little over a year ago, when I saw the second Ruby Eye seal unlocked with my own eyes. That meant there were five sealed pieces still scattered around somewhere. Milgazia thought I was one of those?!

I was shocked stupid for a second. “Wh-what?” I finally managed. “What do you mean by that?!”

Milgazia’s tone didn’t change. “I was under the impression that humans are aware of how Ruby Eye’s seven pieces were sealed.”

“Well… that part of the story’s pretty famous, yeah.”

“Ceipheed sealed Shabranigudu within the ‘souls’ that humans possess. When one of those humans dies, the Demon King fragment is reborn in another.

“A seal within a dragon or an elf would have been stronger, of course. But he deliberately chose humans, likely because the infinite reincarnations of the humans’ much shorter life cycle might little by little purify and annihilate the Demon King through the human soul.”

Milgazia let out a slightly heavier breath. “But the power of humans is weak indeed. If the seal is weak, Hellmaster, through his ability to ‘see’ reincarnations, may become aware of it.

“He would likely move to release that seal; Hellmaster was the one who released the seal at the time of the Demon War, after all. And now he has a new plot.

“You understand my reasoning now,” he said matter- of-factly.

I swallowed hard.

“Then… the Claire Bible is the key to removing the seal?” I asked faintly.

Milgazia shook his head. “No; the Claire Bible is simply knowledge that flows from another world. Even if you are indeed a piece of the Demon King, it will not remove the seal in and of itself.

“It could be part of some process, however. Or Hellmaster’s plan could be something else entirely.”

That little bit at the end didn’t do much for my racing heart. Shouldn’t drop a bomb like “Maybe you’re a seventh of Darkness!” and expect the classic “or not” excuse to bring down the tension in the room.

“E-either way,” I murmured. “We won’t know what the Bible’s for until we know what Hellmaster’s after.”

“Precisely. But fear not—if you believe in yourself, the path you must follow will become traversable… Here.” Milgazia suddenly halted at a completely featureless ascending slope. It was about as wide as a road, had a steep cliff to the right and some shrubs to the left, and led to a downward slope that was pretty much a sheer drop.

It didn’t make sense. “Here?” I asked carefully.

“Here.” The Gold Dragon suddenly slipped half his body into the cliff to our right.

Ah.

“The Claire Bible lies within,” he said. “This may appear to be a cliff, but you can walk through it normally. Come with me, Lina.” He glanced at the others. “I ask that the rest of you stay here.”

“Why just Lina?” Amelia asked.

Milgazia brought his whole body out of the wall once more. “My agreement with the priest is to take this girl to the Claire Bible. I don’t wish to take any more humans. You can follow if you please, but you’ll be alone if you lose your way.”

“Lose our way?” Gourry frowned. “Then it’s like a maze inside there?”

“One could call it that,” Milgazia replied. “There are nearly an infinite number of branches, and even I only remember the way in and out. A demon or dragon could find his way back, but a human would be lost until his final breath.”

It was a pretty good deterrent. Gourry, Zel, and Amelia looked at each other.

“We’ll wait for you here, Lina,” Zelgadiss said quietly.

Gourry nodded. “Be careful and come back soon, okay?”

“Get me a souvenir?” Amelia asked.

I was a little miffed that my party was ready to ditch me so soon, but following along was way too dangerous. I sighed and gave them a shrug.

Milgazia’s gaze darkened at Xelloss. “You remain here,” he said. “See that they do not change their minds.”

Xelloss grinned. “Understood.”

That one threw me a little. I stared at Xelloss incredulously.

“You’re kidding me,” I snapped. “After everything you did to drag me here, now you’re fine having no idea what I do when I get to the Bible?”

Xelloss twirled a finger in the air. “If you must ask,” he said, “my sole duty was to safely bring you to the location of the Claire Bible. This is essentially the same thing, and I have no idea what to do beyond this point, anyway.”

He’s honest—I’ll give him that. But if my boss was Hellmaster Phibrizzo, I’d probably take my jobs more seriously.

Whatever. If he was going to be brush-off, he could do it on his own time.

“Come, Lina.” Milgazia held out a palm.

I nodded. After drawing in a deep breath, I took the dragon’s hand.

* * *

The second we passed through the cliff, I got a very bad feeling. It was like… my body didn’t belong to me or something.

Actually, “bad feeling” really doesn’t do it justice. It’s impossible to describe how I felt just then—it was nothing like anything else I’d ever experienced, and I’d been in some weird situations before this.

“Wh-what’s with this place?” I murmured as Milgazia led me forward. I looked around; the surroundings made about as much sense as my feelings at the time.

The cave should’ve been lined with bare rock, but it seemed to be made of anything but. Stranger still, every time I got distracted or looked away for a moment, everything changed—the passage looked like it was made of crystal, then of flat stone, then of the belly lining of some giant, living creature.

Is this place crazy? I wondered. Or did I hit my head on the way in?

“Do not be concerned,” Milgazia said as he led me through an upside-down passage.

I swallowed. “Now I am worried,” I said. “I wish you hadn’t told me not to worry.”

Milgazia was suddenly right-side-up again. But now he didn’t look like a dragon man—he looked like a giant pea, for some reason, unbothered and off in the distance. This was all while I could still feel him holding my left hand, so the experience was really bizarre.

I was worried. A lot. And now it had nothing to do with what Milgazia said or didn’t say.

“Trust the sensation of my hand, Lina.” His voice came from somewhere. “If you rely on your eyes, they will deceive you.”

His hand?

I looked at my left hand. As I shifted my gaze to the hand he gripped it with—

There he was again, a dragon man, walking normally beside me.

I was going to remember that trick.

“This place,” he explained, “dates back a long time ago to the appearance of the Claire Bible during the Demon War. The power of the shockwave from when Ruby Eye and the Water Dragon King were destroyed is probably what altered the spatial integrity. The nature of this place is closest to that of the Astral Plane.” “Really?”

He nodded. “What you see and hear is not via your eyes and ears, but with your mind. Anxiety will turn a flower garden into hell or a soft wind into the screams of the dead. Hostility, bloodlust, and despair turn into destruction.”

Huh. So you’re only as strong as your will. But if that was the case… why had I seen Milgazia as a giant pea? What part of my psyche was that?

“It’s all a facet of the nature of this place. Even a demon of middle rank would find it difficult to escape if he became lost here.” He paused. “My own circumstances would be similar.”

I cleared my throat. “Then, um, please don’t get us lost.”

“I already have,” he said gravely.

I screamed—a high-pitched, girly little scream. Hey, I earned it.

Milgazia waited until I was finished. “That was a joke, Lina.”

I stared at him with wide eyes. A joke? A joke?! There are some jokes in this world that are never, ever funny!

Ugh, I thought. As if I didn’t have enough to freak out about without an old guy who makes the funnies.

“I apologize for the funnies,” Milgazia responded.

It took me a second to realize I hadn’t said my last line out loud. We could hear each other’s thoughts in that place?

I needed to be careful. I couldn’t think my usual running commentary about how stupid and ugly dragons were.

“Would you like me to leave you behind?”

“Now I’m kidding,” I said. “Are we at the Claire Bible yet?”

“A little farther. And I wanted to ask you, incidentally… why do you desire its otherworldly knowledge at all?”

I shrugged. “I said it earlier, didn’t I? I’m not playing along with Xelloss and Hellmaster forever. But since that means I’ll have to fight them someday, I want to get my hands on a power that I can pull out last-minute on them.”

“That’s not possible,” he practically sighed in response, his voice unusually tired.

I raised an eyebrow. “I do a lot of things that aren’t possible.”

“No matter how much otherworldly knowledge you obtain, Lina, there is only so much a human can control. In a direct battle, you would likely lose to Xelloss, and you would certainly lose to Hellmaster.”

I scratched behind my ear. “I understand that Xelloss is pretty tough, but I—”

“You understand nothing. “ This time Milgazia made a very real and very long sigh. “Why do you think I agreed to Xelloss’ request to bring you here so easily?”

I was a little surprised by the question. “Uh… I know it wasn’t because you guys are friends, but—”

“I’m afraid of him, Lina.”

Huh? I opened my mouth, but then shut it again. Had I just heard him right?

Milgazia was an elder Gold Dragon, a Dragon Lord. I knew that Xelloss was insanely powerful, but no way would a Dragon Lord piss his pants at the sight of him.

“During the Demon War,” Milgazia murmured, “over a millennium ago… he almost sent the race of dragons into extinction. By himself.”

I felt like someone had hit me in the back of the head. “You’re joking,” I choked out.

“No. If I had refused his request, he would have surely killed all the Gold and Black Dragons of this peak and then found a way to bring you to the Bible himself. It would have inconvenienced him, certainly, but it would have been within the realm of his capability. I chose not to resist to protect the lives of my comrades.”

He wasn’t joking. Based on how tight I could see him clenching his jaw, Milgazia was honestly scared of Xelloss.

I’d always thought that the old legend of a single demon crushing all the dragons was the result of snowballing rumors. Not only was it true, apparently, but that legend was talking about Xelloss.

That was WAY more power than I’d ever expected him to have. I was starting to think Xelloss’ abilities were beyond my wildest dreams.

“We couldn’t defeat him in battle,” Milgazia went on. “Not even with all of us united as a single force. But escaping is a possibility, depending on the circumstances.”

I swallowed hard. My life was suddenly looking a whole lot shorter.

“Thanks for the advice,” I murmured. “I’ll, uh, do my best.”

We walked in silence after that. I mean, what was I gonna say? The situation was awkward, and I was feeling a little queasy, so I decided to keep both my mouth shut and my mind unfocused. He could hear me if I started thinking too much, after all.

After a little while, Milgazia stopped in an arbitrary spot. “We’ve arrived at last,” he declared.

I hadn’t noticed anything in the area, but I glanced around again to make sure. All I found was more nonsensical space.

“Here?” I asked him. “I don’t see anything.”

“Here.” He pointed to a spot in mid-air.

An empty spot. So first the whole “expanse of the mind” thing made the giant peas (?) in my subconscious take over, and now we’d found a non-existent Bible?

I can’t take many more of these head trips.

The Gold Dragon seemed to notice my confusion. “Hmm,” he said after a moment. “Perhaps human eyes cannot see it. If that is the case, try to ‘sense’ what is there.”

I frowned. Sense it? How was I supposed to do that? Since I couldn’t see the thing anyway, I closed my eyes to narrow my focus.

And there it was. I saw it the second I closed my eyelids.

My eyes popped back open. The space in front of me was still empty, but now I… it may sound weird, but I knew it was there without seeing it. And I knew it was an orb, big enough to fit perfectly between the palms of my hands.

“The orb?” I asked, reaching into the air and gingerly touching it.

“Not an orb.” An unfamiliar voice hung in the air. “But the origin point at the center of this warped, chaotic space through which otherworldly knowledge flows. You call this the Claire Bible.”

I quickly jerked my hand back. Who said that? I wondered. I hadn’t recognized the voice. I glanced at Milgazia.

“Did you just say something?” I asked him, although I half knew the answer.

He shook his head. “No. That was likely the ‘voice’ of the Claire Bible; I heard nothing at all.”

So the orb can talk. Yeah, it was a weird day.

If Milgazia hadn’t heard anything, then that meant the voice was communicating directly through my head. I took a breath and touched the orb again.

Now I didn’t hear anything, either. I was starting to get frustrated. Why the heck was the orb clamming up now?!

“Because there is nothing you wish to know,” the orb answered calmly.

I jumped. Shaking my head as my heart raced, I decided to try talking to the orb directly.

“You surprised me,” I murmured. “And I’m starting to think you, uh… Claire Bibles give out their information as answers to asked questions, is that right?”

“Correct,” the Bible answered.

Okay—that was easy enough to do. If Milgazia couldn’t hear the Claire Bible’s voice, a question-and-answer session with the orb would probably look really bizarre to him, but whatever. I’d been psyched out repeatedly since we’d entered that weird place, so trying to avoid looking stupid was already a lost cause.

So that cinched it: I’d ask the questions out loud. Thinking them in my head was probably fine, but it was easier to focus if I said them.

“I have a lot to ask,” I began. “But before anything else, can you tell me what Hellmaster Phibrizzo’s planning right now?”

“That is not possible,” the Bible replied.

Figures. And it looked like the Bible was blunt, too.

“It is not possible to convey the thoughts of other beings,” the Bible explained. “Only to convey knowledge.”

I decided to ask the next question, the most important question, in my head. I braced myself.

… I want to know everything possible about the Lord of Nightmares.

It was the main reason I’d let Xelloss bring me to the Claire Bible. Coming here had meant Hellmaster could keep his plan, Xelloss could keep me safe from other Mazoku, and I could get the trump card to use when they came after me.

I knew I couldn’t beat Xelloss or Hellmaster with the repertoire of spells I had. Milgazia had confirmed that, too, with what he’d said about Xelloss and the dragons. But if I could safely use the spell I’d discovered in Galia years before, drawing on the Demon King among Demon Kings, the Lord of Nightmares… then, maybe, I could out-power them.

Beyond the spell itself, I had no way of learning more specific information about the Lord of Nightmares. Those “Oral Legends of Claire Bible Manuscripts” from Galia had brought me an awful lot of trouble. Even though that trouble had given me two useable, reliable spells and had proved the legends true, I still didn’t really know how much trouble I was dealing with.

But now I had the Claire Bible. My information didn’t have to be scattered anymore.

“That being’s so great it’s beyond understanding,” the Bible answered. “Even what you call ‘the Claire Bible’ knows only fragments. However, it shall convey the information that it is able to convey.”

The Claire Bible started citing a long string of fragmented phrases. “The mother of all darkness, the true lord of all demons, a being with the desire to turn all to the days of yore. An existence darker than darkness and blacker than night; a sea of Chaos, molten gold, complete nothingness… that from which all Chaos springs forth. In other words, the Lord of Nightmares.”

The voice stopped. I started getting a bad feeling—it felt like something was nagging at me. It was almost like I was misunderstanding something fundamental, maybe.

One more time, please. I want knowledge on the Lord of Nightmares.

The Bible recited the same sequence of sentence fragments. I listened more carefully, this time hoping to—

Wait. Wait. Was that it? Maybe…

My palms grew sweaty. One more time, I requested.

The Bible delivered the same speech. I could feel my heartbeat racing as it reached the end.

“… In other words, the Lord of Nightmares.”

I sucked in a little gasp.

No, I thought incredulously. No, it can’t be that. One by one, I pieced together the fragmented phrases in my head.

You mean, the Lord of Nightmares is…

“Correct,” the Bible replied in response to the murmur of my thoughts.

My knees started to shake. This was insane. Seriously, seriously, this was insane.

I’d been casually chanting spells drawing on that thing’s power?!

I finally understood why Sylphiel had forbidden me from using the magic. Why Xelloss, despite his power, was afraid of me repeating the Lord’s name.

It was a trump card. But it was a trump card that actually had the potential to—

“Has something happened?” I suddenly heard Milgazia’s voice and felt his hand on my shoulder. I gave a start and turned; he was looking down at me in concern.

“What did you hear?” he asked.

I paused a second, then swallowed hard. “Ah,” I said with a thin, forced smile. “I, uh… hm.”

“Are you well? You don’t look it.”

I gave him a small shrug. “Not really, to be honest. But I’m not quite done.” I reached my hand out to the unseen orb again.

Thanks to the Bible’s information, now I knew what I couldn’t use. I still needed something to fight the Mazoku with, though. And then I had all those other things to ask, like how to make Zel human again. I didn’t have time to freak out over everything the Bible told me.

Okay, I thought. Next question.

“Is there some way to exceed the power of demons?” I asked out loud.

The Claire Bible answered with, “To surpass their power, one must possess greater power.”

Huh? It was a total cop-out answer. I sighed and tried to think of a better way to ask the question.

“Then let me try this,” I offered. “How can the one standing before you defeat a demon with immense power?”

“A spell or object drawing on the power of a god or a demon of even greater rank would suffice. But there are limits. And the power of the gods cannot reach this soil, so you cannot use a spell of divine power.”

That one threw me a little. “Why not?” I asked.

“When, long ago, a piece of Ruby Eye descended here to destroy the Water Dragon King, his minions— Hellmaster, Deep Sea, Greater Beast, and Dynast—created a ward to seal divine power at the Desert of Destruction, the Demon Sea, Wolf Pack Island, and the North Pole. The power of the destroyed Water Dragon King, or that of any other Dragon King, cannot reach this place.”

Huh. So that’s what had happened there.

“Then, um… is there any way to defeat a powerful demon with the Sword of Light? Used by a human, I mean.”

“‘Sword of Light’ is the name you use. If you could draw upon the Goln Nova’s full power, then—”

The voice suddenly broke off. Without even a word of warning, Milgazia yanked my left hand from behind.

I blurted a sound of protest. But the instant he made my body float back, I realized that something invisible had just moved into where I’d been. A familiar voice came out of nowhere.

“Why do you save her, Gold Dragon elder?” Raltaak asked.

Dammit! It was bad news, to say the least. “Raltaak?!” I called as I turned to empty space.

As if responding to my voice, a cloud that vaguely resembled a human shape appeared way to the right of where I’d been looking. “This is quite an odd place,”

Raltaak commented, his form still hazy. “It wasn’t easy finding you.”

Was that his real form? I also realized that the weirdness of our surroundings was possibly just altering his appearance. Either way, there he was, and that meant I had to deal with him.

He’d known the Claire Bible was our objective. He’d probably come via a different route from a very different place.

“By the way, Gold Dragon elder,” Raltaak said with a tone casual enough for a dinner-date. “I’m afraid this girl is being used by Hellmaster, and thus I would like to dispose of her now as a reasonable precaution. You don’t object to that, do you?”

Raltaak talking about killing me in the same tone he’d use to order a drink was really starting to piss me off. But I figured I was screwed, since Milgazia probably wouldn’t be able to help me.

Believe it or not, Milgazia did try to help me. “One thing,” he said to Raltaak, “before I reply to your request. If this girl were to choose to oppose Hellmaster and Xelloss, I think it would no longer be necessary to slay her.”

“I can’t accept that,” Raltaak replied. “Without knowing the details of Hellmaster s scheme nor the girl’s role in it, there’s no telling what sort of damage she may cause. There is even a risk that accepting your proposal may be in accordance with Hellmaster’s scheme.”

Milgazia deliberated on that one. After a few seconds, he gave a nod.

“I see,” he said. “Then I cannot hand her over.”

It was the best news I’d heard all day. Yeah! I thought triumphantly. You tell him, you wonderful hunk of mythology!

“Oh?” Raltaak asked. “And why is that? Surely you’re not siding with Hellmaster and Xelloss.”

“No. However, Xelloss is at the opening of the path from here to Dragon’s Peak. I don’t know what he would do were something to happen to the girl; he might well slay my comrades as reparations for my giving you Lina.”

“Then give him an excuse,” Raltaak answered calmly. “Tell him that I came suddenly and spirited her away.”

Milgazia shook his head. “There’s another reason why I must refuse.”

“And what is that?”

“Your reckless behavior,” Milgazia said evenly. “You’re willing to slay this girl, ignorant of the circumstances, merely as a precaution.”

Raltaak paused. “What if you’re mistaken?” he asked.

“I may be, yet I don’t care. Your comrade, General Rashatt—he asked if we might battle against the Ruby Eye of Kataart together.” Milgazia locked his hard gaze on the hazy priest. “Certainly I believe that if you two, we dragons, elves, and humans banded together, winning may be a possibility. But the incident with this girl has made matters clear to me; you are willing to kill others easily, as a precaution or convenience, and thus wouldn’t hesitate to use us as shields for yourself were we to fight against the Demon King of the North.

“In short,” he said in closing. “My reasoning behind refusing your request is that I don’t care for your reasoning.”

“Dragon,” Raltaak said shortly, “while I would certainly use humans as shield, I would not use you.”

“It is the same,” Milgazia said in a beautiful shoot- down.

Raltaak made a slightly frustrated murmur. “To be blunt, dragon, I do not understand. To battle together is to make use of each others’ might; it’s inevitable that roles should be assigned according to ability. Humans have numbers but aren’t capable of harming demons, and thus are well suited to being shields. In addition, I’m not sure why you care about how we hope to use them.”

“The fact that you speak those words so easily is itself the problem. You are hostile toward Ruby Eye at the moment, but you will forever be demons, both with and without a spirit, living to bring destruction. In the end, that is a path we will not walk together.

“There is an even greater reason why you will not slay this girl: she wishes to live. That is the greatest factor.”

Raltaak made another murmuring sound. “So be it,” he said at last. “Then I have no choice but to eliminate her without your consent.”

I was pretty sure that signified the end of their philosophical argument. Time to start punching, I thought.

The concept of a fight in that place with those guys was unsettling. Would I even be included? They’d talked about me plenty, but neither of them had looked at me during most of their argument.

But first, believe it or not, the guys started trash- talking each other.

“Do you have some means of stopping me?” Raltaak asked, his tone almost as brush-off as always. “Perhaps you intend to sacrifice your own body.”

“No,” Milgazia replied. “There is always a way, and a hope, no matter how faint they may be.”

… Okay, so maybe that one was a little too inspirational to be trash-talk.

“Oh ho,” Raltaak hummed. “Do show me, then.” “There is not much to see. Only my doing this.”

The words had barely come out of his mouth before Milgazia dropped my hand, slapped a palm on my back, and shoved me. I stumbled a few steps in surprise.

“What?” I blurted as I regained my footing and whipped around. I blinked.

The three of them were gone. No Raltaak, no Milgazia, no Claire Bible.

“Um, hello?” I stared into space for a second, really confused. I eventually realized that Milgazia had probably made me disappear as opposed to the other way around. It explained why he’d shoved me all of a sudden, at least.

But that left me with a serious problem: now I was alone in the Maze of Crazy, a place where even Mazoku got lost. Maybe that would make it harder for Raltaak to find me, and it would definitely deter the priest from starting a fight with Milgazia alone, but it still left me lost in the Maze of Crazy.

Great, I thought sarcastically. Now what do I do?

I tried to think logically about how to get out of the illogical setting. Milgazia had said he only knew the way in and the way out—that probably meant he didn’t know where I was now. And since he was always talking about hope and believing in yourself and stuff, he probably expected me to find my own way out. I definitely hoped that wasn’t the case; I literally couldn’t tell up from down in that place, and I doubted I could wing it like a demon could.

But if demons could do it… maybe that meant he’d send a demon to find me? Maybe he’d go back to the entrance and send in Xelloss. If that was the plan, I had plenty of time to wander around blindly. Not my favorite pastime, I’ll admit.

I hoped Milgazia was fast. Raltaak was probably looking for me, too, and Xelloss being a stronger demon meant nada if Raltaak got a good enough head start. Milgazia had to go back to the entrance for Xelloss, and that might take—

“This way,” Xelloss suddenly called out of thin air.

I blinked. I hadn’t been standing there and thinking that long, had I?

“Huh?” I looked around, but I didn’t see him. I even closed my eyes to try that trick—but still, no Xelloss. The only thing I was sure of was what direction his voice had come from.

It all felt too fast. If time was messed up in that place, I really hoped I hadn’t been lost for days on the outside or anything.

“Xelloss?” I called back.

“This way,” he repeated instead of answering me.

I hesitated. That was definitely Xelloss’ voice, but demons could easily mimic voices. I was afraid of following “Xelloss” and ending up at Raltaak.

You can’t worry about too many “what-ifs,” Lina, I reminded myself.

You can when you’re nearly killed about a million times a day, I retorted.

I sighed. Get off your ass and go.

With that decided, I followed the direction of the repeating voice. I eventually realized that I was no longer seeing things like the rock walls and stuff that had been around Milgazia—now I was just wandering in pure senselessness. I absently wondered how long I’d been doing that.

Suddenly, someone grabbed my hand. A figure in black appeared in front of me.

“Well done,” Xelloss said. He smiled his little smile.

I sighed in relief. “You’re pretty fast,” I remarked.

“I came as soon as I heard from Mister Milgazia. You seem to be safe.” He raised his eyebrows. “And Mister Raltaak…?”

I shook my head. “He may be around here, but I have no idea.”

“Ah. Well, then let’s get you back to the others for now.”

I furrowed my eyebrows. “Then we’re done with the Claire Bible?”

Xelloss shrugged cheerfully. “I don’t know. But I brought you to it, and I have no further orders, so that part of my job is done.”

Not really into your job, are ya?

“I dunno,” I said. “I had more things to ask the Bible.” It had gotten cut off when talking about the Sword of Light, and I hadn’t had the chance to even ask about Zel.

“Allow me to be blunt,” Xelloss said. “If Mister Rashatt and Mister Raltaak both come into this space at the same time, I may not be able to protect you. In normal space, you have means of escaping or fighting, but we could easily be separated here—and one of them may find you before I do.”

Crap.

As much as I wanted to go back to the Bible, Raltaak was possibly still lurking around it somewhere. And Xelloss was right about me being screwed if I got lost again.

“Fine,” I murmured at last. “Let’s get back for now.”

Xelloss smiled. “Well, then.”

I let him lead me by the hand in whatever non­direction we were going. It wasn’t long before the current landscape suddenly became more defined and a faint light hit my eyes.

We were back on the rocky mountain path. My party was there, just like I’d left them.

“Hi,” I said with a wave.

“Lina!” Gourry cried, running up to meet me. “Are you okay?!”

I smiled. “Xelloss and Mister Milgazia took care of me. I couldn’t look into everything I wanted to because that prick Raltaak butted in, but them’s the breaks.” I crossed my arms confidently. “I’ll go back when things calm down a little. It’s not like the Claire Bible’s going any—”

“Get down!” Gourry suddenly knocked me to the floor.

KA-BOOOM!

An explosion erupted from inside the cliff that acted as the Bible entrance. Giant pieces of rubble were deflected before they could rain down on us; it looked like Xelloss and Milgazia had raised defensive spell barriers immediately.

What now?! I thought angrily. Cut me some slack—I just got here!

As the roar of the explosion finally trailed off, a lone silhouette walked out of the lingering dust. Three guesses who it was, and here’s your hint: HE SUCKS.

Xelloss coughed into a fist. “You’re really being very persistent this time, Mister Raltaak.”

“Mm… it seems that I can dally here no longer.” Raltaak looked unusually serious. “I think it’s time that we settled this. Wouldn’t you agree, Sir Xelloss?”

Xelloss smiled. “I wouldn’t mind that at all, Mister Raltaak, Mister Rashatt.”

Rashatt?

“You seem confident,” Rashatt suddenly said from behind us. I whipped my head to him.

I didn’t know when he’d gotten there, but there he was. He was wearing his dragon armor and carried his sword in one hand. Since he was behind us and Raltaak was in front, our group was essentially penned in.

“My abilities have fully recovered from your assault,” Rashatt announced. “Who knows how the match might proceed?” He glanced at Milgazia. “Gold Dragon elder, surely you won’t raise a hand against us?”

Milgazia returned Rashatt’s look with a chilling gaze of his own. “That was never my intention from the beginning,” he replied promptly. “I simply refuse to participate in a dispute among demons if it results in the one-sided slaughter of the powerless.”

Powerless? For a fleeting instant, I realized he was talking about saving me at the Claire Bible—and I bristled a little at the connotation that I’m weak. But, to be fair, I wasn’t really on Raltaak’s level… and compared to dragons and demons, humans can’t do much.

Man, I thought. Maybe I should hang out with a less apocalyptic crowd.

“If possible, I don’t wish to raise a hand against you, either,” Raltaak said as he looked at us lowly humans. “But if Xelloss loses, I’m afraid you’ll be next. You did assist Xelloss in interfering with Sir Rashatt and me.”

He thrust his right hand out in front of him, the palm facing down. “Since I don’t wish to waste effort on you,” he continued, “this opponent will take care of you while we settle things with Xelloss.”

A black hole suddenly popped open from the rocky ground below his palm. A pair of balls—one pale gray, the other vivid red—slowly floated up to hover unsteadily in front of Raltaak. Each ball was about as big around as the circumference of my arms.

I knew the real form of those things. I narrowed my eyes at Raltaak.

“More Mazoku, huh?”

“That is correct.” The balls quivered in front of Raltaak, hovering about as high as his chest. “They may not appear to be much, but they’re mightier than your earlier opponents, Gduza and Dugld. They would introduce themselves if they could hear or speak to humans.”

“Look at me caring,” I snapped. “We’re not gonna know them for long, anyway.”

“I suppose not. Well, then.” At Raltaak’s verbal signal, bloodlust blanketed the area.

I clenched my fists. Bring it on, baby.