3: Sairaag, the Place Where Illusions Dwell

“I’ll do that.” I thanked her, finished my juice, and walked out of the place.

All in all, the experience was … surprisingly normal. I still gripped my arms and shuddered.

These people could all be Hellmaster’s minions, I reminded myself. And I didn’t want to wander around a place filled with those, obviously. But it was either talk to the weirdly normal townspeople or walk around aimlessly, and neither plan sounded like a great idea.

I was trudging along, wondering what undesirable option I’d have to try next, when a familiar voice suddenly called out over the city noise.

“Miss Lina!”

I blinked and turned. There, by the nearby street in white-accented priestess robes, stood a dark-haired vision of loveliness I never thought I’d be so happy to see.

“Sylphiel?!” I shouted. I pushed my way through the crowd to get to her faster.

“So you’re safe,” she said. “That would mean the Chaos Dragon minion who was after you is … ?”

“Taken care of,” I confirmed. “Have you seen Amelia and Zelgadiss? They should’ve gotten here three days ago.”

Sylphiel’s face fell. “About that,” she said quietly.

Oh, crap.

“What?!” I demanded. “Did something happen?!”

She swallowed. “Actually … they’ve been missing since yesterday.”

“Missing?!”

She gestured to the road. “Let’s walk while we talk,” she suggested grimly, setting off down the city street. I swallowed and let her lead the way.

Sylphiel simply frowned for a second. “I arrived here about five days ago,” she said at last, her voice quivering a little. “Not a single thing has changed since before the city was laid to waste. I went to the temple, as if someone were calling me, and there … there…” She covered her mouth. “There was Father, coming to welcome me home, his smile as kind as it was the day he died.”

Ouch. I wanted to console her, but I wasn’t sure what to say. “Sylphiel,” I mumbled sympathetically

Sylphiel’s shoulders shuddered a little as she walked a few steps in front of me. “That isn’t … very fair, is it? Everyone here can’t be alive, but it still feels like the city’s destruction was nothing but a bad dream.”

She fell into silence for a second, then sighed. When she started talking again, her voice was firmer.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’ll return to the matter at hand. Since I truly did wonder if this Sairaag was an illusion or reality, I briefly investigated it. I found that the most suspicious place is in the center of the city. Here,” she added as she suddenly stopped.

I looked around. At some point, we’d traveled past the road and come to the city’s center. Flagohn had originally been rooted there, but now …

“Huh,” I muttered thinly, letting my gaze trail up the giant building in front of us.

Despite being massive, the building wasn’t tall—it was only about a story high. What was unusual was its girth. The place was about as big as a city block, built of gray-colored stones and almost resembling a kind of temple. It was like it had been put there to replace the vanished Flagohn.

Weirder still was the lack of windows and doors. The round building didn’t have a single one—and that meant no entrance, either.

“I’d heard from a nearby village that this appeared suddenly,” Sylphiel explained. “It’s extremely suspicious, and, if I’m guessing right, where Hellmaster is lurking with Mister Gourry.

“But you can see that there’s no entrance, right? I even used a Levitation spell to look at it from above. I asked Fa— the people in the city, but all I got was ‘I cannot answer. For those who can guess, no explanation is needed; for those who cannot, no explanation will suffice.’ ”

Woooow. Do they speak in verse, too? My day just kept getting better and better.

I set my jaw. “That sounds like Hellmaster, all right,” I muttered.

“Yes. Then, two days ago, Miss Amelia and Mister Zelgadiss arrived at the city. On the first day, they investigated this building and lodged at the temple with me.” Her voice lowered. “They left to investigate further yesterday morning. They haven’t returned since.”

I took another long, hard look at the building. “Investigate,” I repeated. “Hn … that might mean they found a way in and decided to try it out.”

“Like a hidden door?” Sylphiel offered.

Hidden doors are pretty common on mysterious stone buildings. It was easy to imagine Amelia and Zel finding one.

Sylphiel frowned. “But if that had happened, I think they would have returned immediately to tell me.”

I gave her a thin smile. “You can be pretty naïve, Sylphiel. Amelia only needed one guess to figure out how you feel about Gourry; she was worried that you’d let your feelings go to your head. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t tell you to keep you from running in alone.”

Sylphiel opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She looked away.

Looks like I hit her where it hurts.

“Anyway,” I went on. “Let’s just find the entrance. That’s what’s important now, right?”

I drew in closer to the building and started to inspect it. The place definitely looked all stone, but I had no idea what kind; it didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen before. I couldn’t find any seams in the outer wall. There were pillars here and there to support the stonework, but a quick check showed that there probably wasn’t anything inside them.

I was getting more baffled by the second. As I mentioned, I’d expected Hellmaster to find me in Sairaag— not something I really wanted, but that still would’ve been something. I’d come all this way, through all the crap the demons could throw at me, and the only thing that greeted me was a fat, ugly hideout that was too good for a door.

Well, you know what they say: if you don’t see a door, make one. (That’s what I say, anyway.)

I began chanting a spell. I borrowed power from my talismans, augmenting my attack power.

“Dam Brass!” I called.

Dam Brass is usually used to pulverize an enemy into dust. With an augmentation on it, it was sure to do a number on a stone wall.

BWING!

I gaped. My Dam Brass hit the wall and bounced right off. The stone wasn’t even scratched.

Seriously, what else?!

That meant it had a ward, just like Rashatt’s in Lualdo City. At least I knew how to break that. I chanted the Amplification spell, then started reciting words for the Ragna Blade.

The Ragna Blade had sliced up Rashatt’s field like my knife on a holiday ham. I was sure it would work now. Well … mostly sure. But it was worth a try, right?

At almost the exact moment I began chanting the spell, a low sound cut me off.

KOOOOO.

With a dull, heavy scrape, part of the wall opened into the building.

The surprise door actually pissed me off a little. Stupid Hellmaster I thought bitterly. He just wanted to save his precious Evil Hideout.

At least I didn’t have to waste my magic energy. I stopped chanting and took a closer look at the door. A thick darkness stood right beyond it, like a black curtain had been pulled across. Ignoring the shocked look on Sylphiel’s face, I took a step inside.

The instant I broke past the dark boundary, my field of vision opened. I stopped, dumbfounded.

“H-huh?” I mumbled.

I was staring out at Sairaag again. Sylphiel was staring back at me, equally confused.

“What the … ?” I turned my head back to see the dark doorway behind me.

Sylphiel cleared her throat. “Um,” she began. “What just… happened?”

I didn’t have a clue. I’d definitely walked through the doorway, but it looked like it had popped me back out.

Can doors do that? I wondered stupidly.

I decided to do a test.

“Hang on,”I told Sylphiel, then walked through the door again.

And came back out, facing her once more.

“Um…” Sylphiel frowned. “What are you doing, exactly?”

I grumbled and scratched my face, turning back to the wide building. “I guess Hellmaster doesn’t want me in. I wish that ass would make up his mind.

“And it’s not like I was circling around in there,”

I clarified. “I just walked straight in, then ended up back out. I guess space is twisted inside it or something.”

“Twisted space?” Sylphiel repeated. “Can he do such a thing?”

“It’s all the rage with high-rank demons.”

I thought back for a second. A nasty demon had shut me in an infinite warped space in Saillune City once upon a time, and I’d escaped easily enough. But getting out from the inside and getting in from the

outside were two very different things. I couldn’t use the same trick.

“But why’s he shutting me out?” I brought up again.

“Hellmaster’s the one who called me here.”

“Maybe he’s not actually inside.”

Oh, no. I needed a lead—she wasn’t taking my lead away from me!

“I’m sure he’s inside,” I said quickly “Mostly sure. Anyway, he said he’d be waiting in Sairaag, and what else could he be waiting for?”

Sylphiel let out a breath. “I suppose,” she said quietly. “And Hellmaster Phibrizzo’s aim is to use Mister Gourry so you’ll use that spell, right? And then he’ll make it run amok so it can consume the world in darkness.”

“Um … yeah,” I mumbled back. I looked away and furrowed my eyebrows.

Everything pointed to the Giga Slave. It was the spell I’d used to destroy one of the seven pieces of Ruby Eye Shabranigdu. Another piece of Ruby Eye, said to be sealed in the Kataart Mountains, known as the Demon King of the North … he knew, didn’t he? That I, a human girl, could control the spell that drew power from the Lord of Nightmares.

According to legend, Ruby Eye’s body was split into seven pieces and sealed in the fight with Ceipheed the Red Dragon God. If that was true, since they were from a single existence, it made sense for them to share memories and a consciousness. The Demon King of the North had probably figured out that my Giga Slave could run wild and return the world to nothingness— and then had set up the whole plot that I’d been dragged through for so long.

Still, there were a few snags in it for him. One was Chaos Dragon’s estrangement. Another was my not possessing exact knowledge of the Lord of Nightmares. Let me make an analogy: a while back, a particular foe miscast a spell and made a Flare Arrow that looked like a really thin carrot. The Giga Slave I’d used earlier had apparently been as close to the completed version as the Carrot Flare Arrow.

So Phibrizzo had taken control of the project, used me as bait to draw out Gaav, and had Xelloss lead me as far as the Claire Bible. He’d known I would go after information on the Lord of Nightmares in an effort to break free of all the Mazoku manipulation. And then he’d taken Gourry and forced me to come meet him in Sairaag.

And then there was the whole thing with Rashatt. Phibrizzo had sent him (under the guise of still being Phibrizzo’s enemy) to push me into using the complete version of the Giga Slave and lose control. But I’d seen through Rashatt’s act, so that only left Phibrizzo with one last card to play.

Gourry, If I didn’t cast the spell, he could always threaten to kill Gourry.

I swallowed. If that was Phibrizzo’s master plan, why couldn’t I get into his damn house? Rashatt was gone, but I doubted he’d sent another assassin after me. Actually, he didn’t have a reason to send any kind of assassin after me.

“Whatever,” I blurted angrily. “We’re not getting anything done here today; more holes are just gonna let us in and spit us out.”

“I suppose,” Sylphiel replied. “Then… will you come with me to the temple?”

I hesitated for a second at that. But what did it matter, really? As long as I stayed in the city, Phibrizzo could find me anywhere.

“Please,” I said at last. “And, uh, thank you.”

I heard a faint, heavy sound behind me. When I turned back to the building, the entrance had vanished back into the stone wall.

★★★

“So you’re a friend of Sylphiel’s?” Sylphiel’s father asked. He smiled kindly at me over the dinner table. “Welcome.”

I nodded at him, still unsettled by the whole experience. Sylphiel was staying at a temple of Ceipheed in a corner of Sairaag, one where her father was high priest. We ate dinner with him, he and Sylphiel made conversation … I could see what she meant when she’d said the destruction of Sairaag seemed like nothing but a dream.

Her father was a gentle guy, from what I could tell. He was over forty and had a thick, black moustache. No matter which way you looked at him, he seemed like a perfectly normal man.

And it wasn’t just him—the priests and priestesses attending the temple, the worship services, and the statue to Ceipheed were all as they should be. Not a single thing looked strange or out of place, which was weird considering they weren’t supposed to exist.

The rules of etiquette were pretty vague when it came to staying in a non-existent house. I decided to play it simple and pretended everything was normal.

Besides, I thought. What’s being suspicious gonna get you? I needed information, and getting hostile would only make things harder and more exhausting.

I wasn’t sure how much Sylphiel’s father could tell me, anyway.

First order of business: I had to figure out how much he knew. As the high priest made light conversation with me, I nodded at the appropriate times and waited for the right moment to start digging.

“Mister High Priest,” I squeezed in at last. “Do you know what the building in the center of Sairaag’s for?”

Sylphiel threw me a sharp look. I knew she didn’t like me asking, but I had to try—even if it meant getting her father to admit their city held Phibrizzo’s stronghold. She probably couldn’t stand that a guy who looked like her father was being treated like he was, but what was she gonna say? She knew that her father was really dead.

I expected a bunch of reactions from the guy, but the only one I got was one of distaste. His face looked constrained.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “But I… cannot say.”

“And why not?” I asked rudely, bringing some asparagus wrapped in smoked salmon to my lips.

He looked to the table. “Because I cannot answer, no matter how hard I try.”

The fish froze when my hand did. Sylphiel, too, stopped her utensil in midair.

“You can’t?” I repeated.

He nodded. “Without the aid of magic, can humans breathe underwater? In that very sense we cannot answer that question.” His voice dropped after that, a pained smile curling his lips. “It’s pathetic, isn’t it? Even we find it to be so.”

I suddenly realized something. The guy had self-awareness—as the high priest of Sairaag, and as a person. He also knew that Phibrizzo had constructed him and that he lived a fleeting existence. If Phibrizzo was controlling his actions, I could phrase my questions right and get a ton of info out of him.

Maybe I shouldn’t, I decided after a minute. It would be cruel to do that to the high priest, and he probably couldn’t give me anything but the information Phibrizzo wanted me to know.

I sighed and sunk in my chair. Without any better ideas, I went back to eating dinner.

★★★

I moved my things into Sylphiel’s room that evening. Since I was staying in there with her, I picked the nearest chair and sank into it with a sigh. I stared out at the city through the open window.

“So?” I asked after a while, throwing a weary glance her way. “What are you planning to do now?”

Distant city noises and a cool breeze blew in from the window. Sylphiel, still standing in front of the doorway, turned her eyes away.

“Do?” she asked. “I … I wish I could save Mister Gourry, but the truth is I’ve done nothing but wander around since I arrived here. And now that I’ve been unable to do what I set out to do before you arrived …”

She swallowed. “Miss Lina?” she asked quietly. “If Hellmaster uses Gourry to force you into using the forbidden spell, do you honestly think you’ll cast it?”

Silence stretched out between us. There was no easy answer to that one, so it took me a while to decide what to say “I don’t know,” I mumbled at last. “If you’d asked me that before I knew the true nature of the Lord of Nightmares, I’d probably have just vowed to cast it and not let it run amok. But now, to be honest… I’m not sure I can control the completed version.”

“Then …” Sylphiel gave me a pleading look. I slowly shook my head.

“I already said it, Sylphiel—I’m not abandoning Gourry.”

Sylphiel looked to the floor. “I suppose not,” she breathed.

We both got quiet again. For a while, the only sounds in the room were the light shuffle of the breeze and the faint sounds from outside.

I was the one to break the silence. “Let’s go,” I said firmly.

Sylphiel looked up. “Excuse me?”

“To the building. Let’s check it out one more time.” I let a breath out of the side of my mouth. “I doubt I can get in, but it sure beats being stuck in a room and hashing out ‘what ifs.’ ”

Sylphiel stared at me a second. Then, slowly, she gave a faint smile.

“I … suppose,” she admitted. “I’ll go with you, Miss Lina.”

“Good.” I stood up and turned to the door, my mantle fluttering out behind me. “Now let’s get our butts back there.”

★★★

By the time we reached Phibrizzo’s building, a surprise was waiting for us.

“What the hell?” I breathed, staring dazedly at the structure. Sylphiel, by my side, was just as perplexed as I was.

“The door’s open,” she noted quietly “Um, why is the door open?”

You heard it, kids—after all that, the freaking door was open.

We approached the doorway cautiously. It was just like that invitation I’d expected from Phibrizzo in the first place.

It didn’t make any sense. The place had rejected us with warped space that morning—why suddenly let us in? I doubted it had time-controlled access or anything. The whole situation was getting more frustrating and stupid.

“Why was it shut earlier?” Sylphiel asked, as if I hadn’t already asked myself that a million times.

“Maybe they were getting the red carpet ready,” I answered dryly. “But whatever the case, I think they’re

ready for us. What says ‘come in and find me’ more than an open door?”

She hummed an affirmative and cleared her throat. “Well,” she said. “Then I’m going in with you.”

I figured that was coming.

I gave her a pained smile. “Let me guess,” I said. “You’re coming no matter what I say.”

She gave me a pained smile back. “Yes.”

I rolled my shoulders and turned back to the door. Okay, Hellmaster, I thought. You wanted me here, so here I come. I took a deep breath, braced myself, and stepped inside the door.

Tap.

My foot hit the inside of the building like in any other doorway No warped space, no nothing. I slowly walked inside, Sylphiel a half step behind me.

We’d entered some kind of unexciting corridor. The gray-colored walls, identical to those on the outside of the building, arced forward and to the sides like a spread-out hand.

“Okay.” Without hesitation, I headed for the right. Sylphiel frantically tried to follow my steps. “H-how do you know that’s the right way?” she asked.

“I don’t,” I answered simply “But they probably all lead to the same place. Phibrizzo probably split the path to make us separate, or agonize over our choice, or get all worked up like we’ve been doing all along. So why worry? He’ll make sure I get to him; we’re not gonna wander in here forever.”

Sylphiel thought about that a minute, then gave a hesitant nod. “All right,” she said, obviously still worried.

The two of us walked silently down the dim corridor. You’d expect a place like that to get darker the farther in, but there was no lamp or magic light around—just a dim, consistent brightness. Not that the walls had phosphorescent moss on them or anything. There was just some kind of … moderate mix of light and dark in the area, making our surroundings dim.

After a while, we finally came across something to break the monotony—a door in the building’s interior wall. It was a really normal-looking door, probably made of the same material everything else was. It had a doorknob. Not the greeting card I’d expected, but a regular, plain doorknob.

It worked the same way. “I think we’re supposed to go in,” I commented.

Sylphiel gave me a small nod. I slowly turned the doorknob and the door opened without a sound.

The room beyond was pretty strange. A rounded pillar stood in the center of the huge circular room. Or was it a pillar? It was pretty thick around, and it connected the ceiling to the floor.

“What… is that?” Sylphiel whispered.

A figure seemed to float in the center of a pale blue crystal. I stared at it, confused … and then realized what I was looking at. I sucked in a breath

“Mister Gourry?!” Sylphiel cried. She ran to the crystal and pressed her hands against it.

My palms began to sweat. It was Gourry, all right, floating in the crystal with his eyes calmly closed. I honestly couldn’t tell if he was okay or not. Oh, man.

“Mister Gourry!” Sylphiel cried, her fists pounding on the crystal’s surface. “Mister Gourry, please!” He didn’t even twitch. I doubted he could hear her. “Don’t bother,” came a boyish voice from inside the crystal pillar. “That’s just an image, you know.”

I froze. Gourry’s form suddenly shuddered, warped, and vanished. The next instant, a small silhouette took his place within the crystal.

“Phibrizzo,” I snapped.

Sylphiel gasped. “Wh-what?” she breathed as she stepped back from the crystal. “You mean … that little boy?”

Phibrizzo smiled brightly at her. “Nice to meet you,” he chirped. “I don’t know your relation to Lina Inverse, but are you what humans call a ‘friend’?”

Sylphiel’s mouth fell open, I could see her start to tremble. “Y-you’re …”

“I think she said it already-—I’m Hellmaster Phibrizzo. I’m one of Lord Ruby Eye Shabranigdu’s five retainers, the master of this Palace of Hell and of Sairaag, City of Ghosts.” He gave a little bow. “I doubt we’ll know each other long, but it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

I tried to fight off the chill that ran up my spine. “What did you do to Sairaag?!” I demanded. “What happened to Flagohn and all the people here?!”

He smiled again. “That tree,” he said simply, “broke into pieces when I arrived. I guess it grew by absorbing miasma, but absorbing my miasma broke it. Since normal humans couldn’t get close to something like that, I built the city and then stuffed away all the miasma nearby”

I thought back to the Miasma Forest.

So that was why the miasma there had been neutralized.

“After that, I used the hole the tree left to build this Palace of Hell.”

I swallowed. “And the people?” I asked. “Are they illusions?”

“Those?” Phibrizzo shrugged. “All I did was summon and give physical form to the souls of a bunch of people who died here recently. I put a few restrictions on them, though.”

Sylphiel covered her mouth. “Then Father…” she gasped in a broken voice.

“He died a long time ago,” Phibrizzo said with cruel indifference. “They may have will, but they’re still my puppets. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice.”

Then … they were ghosts. Souls given physical form were ghosts. Sylphiel’s father, the lady at the shop, and all those people in the streets were ghosts.

Phibrizzo had taken inspiration from Sairaag’s nickname and had made a real City of Ghosts.

I gritted my teeth. “You have bad taste,” I spat. “Was keeping us out of here this morning just another one of your schemes?”

Phibrizzo nodded from inside the crystal. “Sure,” he said. “Playing … ‘petty tricks’ or whatever you call them can be a lot of fun. You should’ve seen your face when you’d realized you’d been tricked!”

“Your Rashatt thing was a bust, though.” I glared daggers at him.

“Oh … that.” He winced a little. “I was glad to have him as my fetch-boy after Gaav was destroyed, but I never thought you’d beat him so fast. What a bad actor, huh? I almost feel sorry for Gaav.”

Sylphiel suddenly clenched her fists. “Never mind all that!” she screamed. “What about Mister Gourry? Is he safe?!” “The man? He’s fine; he’s in suspended animation inside a crystal I created.” Phibrizzo raised an eyebrow at Sylphiel. “So does that mean he’s your … ?”

“That’s none of your business!” Sylphiel yelled. Phibrizzo shrugged. “Whatever; I don’t care. He’s in the innermost part of the crystal pillar that runs through the Palace of Hell. If you think you have a chance at getting him back, go ahead and get him.”

“Oh!” Phibrizzo added, almost as an afterthought. “Since I’m going through all this trouble, there’s one more thing I wanted to show you.”

He snapped his fingers.

Phibrizzo’s form vanished from inside the crystal.

An image appeared in his place: a guy and a girl, both wandering aimlessly through familiar gray corridors. I blinked. “Is that Amelia and Zel?!” I exclaimed.

“They came here yesterday,” Phibrizzo’s voice called from somewhere. “But they were a little early.”

“What’d you do to them?!”

“Relax,” Phibrizzo said. “I didn’t kill them—yet. I want to first teach them that you humans are ants next to me.”

Sylphiel looked up from staring at the image. “Have they been wandering in circles in this place?” she asked breathlessly. “Since yesterday?!”

“Sure. But I tinkered with time, too. In their eyes, they just walked in a little while ago.”

Sylphiel recoiled. “You can control time?!”

“He’s lying.” I didn’t move my hard gaze from the crystal, but I also didn’t want Sylphiel to panic. “He probably just threw off their sense of time and slowed their body functions. That means they don’t feel time.”

Phibrizzo made a humming sound. “Well, sure, if you want to bore people with details. Anyway, speaking of time—it’s about time those two joined us.”

The Amelia and Zel in the image suddenly stopped walking. A door blocked their path; although there was nobody in the hallway, the door slowly opened on its own. Amelia and Zel glanced at each other, hesitated, then finally walked through.

The crystal’s display conveniently switched again, this time showing us what Amelia and Zel saw. They were in a broad, rounded room that looked a lot like ours. A little Ways ahead, a small silhouette stood behind the crystal pillar that ran from the floor to the ceiling.

I tried to stay calm. I don’t like the looks of this.

“So you were waiting for us,” Zelgadiss said lowly, his voice hanging in the air of our room. “Sorry about the delay.”

The Phibrizzo in the image smiled. “Oh, I’m not waiting for you. Lina Inverse is about to join us from above.”

Amelia jumped. “Lina?!” she cried. “Already?!” “Already.” Phibrizzo’s smile turned sinister. “And now I can show you all how futile this fight is.”

“Oh, no!” Amelia, despite the fact that she was trapped in the clutches of Hellmaster in his Palace of Hell, slammed one fist against her waist and pointed at Phibrizzo confidently. One of her eyebrows raised in accusation.

I resisted the urge to slap my forehead. Dammit, Amelia.

“No matter how much power you possess,” she declared, “no glory will ever come to Evil! Know that with the Fires of Justice that burn within each of us, the day your scheme is realized is eternally postponed!”

Phibrizzo hummed again. “Does that make your party ‘Allies of Justice’ or whatever?”

Amelia froze, her finger still pointed. She obviously deliberated over whether or not she could call us all “do-gooders.”

“Y-yes,” she said at last, nodding her head firmly. “All except Lina.”

Hey! I growled at the image.

Amelia thought I hadn’t heard that! I mean, I don’t consider myself a superhero or anything, but her saying it was just rude.

“This ‘Justice’ you’re always talking about,” Phibrizzo said to her. “You mean human justice, right? We demons think returning the world to nothingness is justice.”

“It’s useless to try and trick me with nonsense!” Amelia shot back. “A heart that believes in Justice will never stray from the path!”

“Nonsense? We’re two sides of the same coin. You want existence; we, destruction. That’s the difference between us.”

Phibrizzo crossed his arms. “You might say that there are a lot of inconsistencies to our demonic existence. But nothingness has nothing but nothing itself. We choose a very consistent, perfect system of complete darkness— that’s what makes us Mazoku.”

Amelia didn’t even blink. “I said I’m not listening!”

Or you don’t understand, I silently added.

“Besides!” she added. “If you want destruction, why don’t you destroy yourselves?! No one will mind!”

Hellmaster sighed. “You don’t get it,” he said. “We don’t just want destruction for us, we want it for everything. It doesn’t mean anything unless the world itself is destroyed.” He shrugged. “Not that I really expected you to understand. We don’t understand why you want to continue existing … there’s been that fundamental gap in our understanding all along.”

Zel spread his feet. “Then we’ll have to settle this by force,” he concluded darkly.

“Right.” Phibrizzo perked up again. “But to be honest, it’s stupid to fight you head on; I’d just blast you to bits before you could chant a single spell. Since that’s boring and lame, want to play a game instead?”

Amelia paused. “Game?”

“Sure. The rules are simple: both of you face me and attack, and I can’t do anything but defend. I won’t even touch you. If you can destroy me, you win; if you can’t, I win.” Zelgadiss narrowed his eyes. “Those are … generous conditions,” he said after a second. “If we win, do we get Gourry?”

Phibrizzo smiled and nodded.

The crystal behind him made a strange little noise before displaying an image of Gourry.

“He’s in suspended animation inside the crystal pillar in the lowest chamber of this Palace. He’ll be released if you beat me, and you can go take him home.”

“And if we lose, we die.”

Phibrizzo laughed and shook his head. His eyes locked on Zel.

“If you lose,” he said simply, “you’ll know that humans can’t beat me. That’s enough for me.”

That’s enough?

As I watched Phibrizzo smile again, I realized what he was doing.

He wanted to show me. The thing with Amelia and Zel was to prove that I needed to use the Giga Slave on him.

Amelia shook out an arm, then pointed at Phibrizzo again. “Fine!” she shouted. “You’ll regret your reckless, overconfident speech soon enough!”

Oh, the irony.

Amelia and Zel began chanting spells. Phibrizzo, creepily enough, looked almost giddy to take them.

I’d seen enough. “Sylphiel,” I said, throwing a glance her way. “We’re going!”

She nodded firmly. “Right!”

We ran for the crystal pillar while Phibrizzo played his twisted game with Amelia and Zel. I wasn’t about to just sit there while he screwed with their heads. I wanted to find and save Gourry, obviously, but I didn’t expect us to get that far yet—just hooking back up with Amelia and Zel would be a good start.

I swung around the pillar, expecting to find some clue about how to follow Phibrizzo there. What I did find made me stop.

There was a hole open in the floor with stairs leading down.

It was stupidly easy. I hesitated a second, but then realized that the Palace of Hell existed according to

Phibrizzo’s will. If he wanted us down, there’d be stairs leading down.

But it won’t lead to Gourry.

I figured that the stairs would bring us to his “demonstration of power.” I was getting pretty sick of him jerking us around, but what could I do? Besides, that meant we’d probably find Amelia and Zel.

Sylphiel and I nodded at each other. Without saying a word, we ran down the stairs that led to Phibrizzo.