Tinuviel was walking in front of Xalan, in clear view, where he could see everything that she did. There was a very practical reason for this, he didn't to end up with a hair cut like Xina's. Or worse, considering the ever curious elf already had a hair sample. In fact his traveling companion was of greater concern to him than potential enemies. Enemies he could fight, but Tinu was a sort of natural disaster waiting to happen. She never waited long.
Xalan had never really taken full advantage of his mazoku-born endurance, or really appreciated it, until travelling with Tinuviel. Being able to operate perfectly fine on about an hour of sleep a day was certainly a plus, though he dread what might eventually happen in that one hour. The one consolation he had was that Tinuviel's presence seemed to mollify the various humans they met on the road. Not as well as the obviously royal Amethyst, but well enough to avoid trouble.
Xalan occupied his mind as they traveled with trying to figure out why Jol was so taken with the girl. It kept his mind off what might be happening to remainder of his friends. Right about now Amethyst and Jolrael were probably facing an army of dead creatures with whatever force they could muster from Zephilia. As for Xina, she was playing at fighting Zangulus until whoever Janus had signaled arrived to distract the hunter.
"Are you sure they live around her somewhere," Xalan asked. "I don't really see how you can be sure this is the region."
"Hmm? What?" Xalan sweatdropped.
"This Celina person, are you sure we're in the right place?"
"I have no idea." Xalan facefaulted.
"What do you mean by that?" he asked, climbing back up on his staff.
"What do I mean by what?"
"What do you mean that you have no idea if we're in the right place." Xalan prefered to have a plan for things, this random hopping around was too unprepared for his tastes.
"Well, they're in some little town called Zenla, which they said was the far eastern part of Zephilia," Tinuviel thought about it some more as she set an odd looking rock into one of her pouches.
"So you have no idea where we are, or where we are heading." Xalan knew how to find his way back to where they'd split from Amethyst and Jol, but that would be admitting defeat. Not mention it was probably a battle zone by now.
"That's not true."
"Okay where are we then?"
"About a mile from that place," she pointed. Xalan looked and saw the top of the building peaking out over a hill.
"Let go of my tail," he said without turning around.
"But..."
"Just let go of my tail, please." Tinuviel let go of his tail and sighed frustratedly. It was only a few minutes later that they were at the building, which turned out to be an inn on the edge of a small town. Xalan let Tinuviel go in first, less chance of starting a ruckus that way. Once inside he found an empty table and sat down, he considered deepening the shadows about him a little, but nobody really batted an eye at his entrance, so he didn't bother.
"Welcome to the Happy Candle, can I take your order?" Xalan looked up to the waitress.
"Mom!?!" he gasped in surprise before he noticed several differences between this woman and his mother's human form. There was no streak of silver in her hair, for one thing, and she seemed younger by a few years. That said a lot, his mother claimed memories that Jol and Amethyst claimed were sixty years old, but looked she only about twenty-five. Finally, there was an innate quietness and passivity in the woman that was completely unlike his volatile mother.
"Gomen," the waitress said nervously. "What did you say?"
"I'm sorry, you look like...." Xalan started.
"Celina-san, its you!" Tinuviel said suddenly.
"Hmm," the red-head examined the pair and tried to figure out where she knew the girl from. Then it hit her. "Oh, you're that girl from a few years ago. You disappeared in the middle of dinner, what happened."
"I don't know," Tinuviel sounded confused. "One moment I was studying this odd tree behind your inn, the next thing I know the tree was in Beleriand along with me." Xalan sweatdropped.
"But I didn't feel any magic," Celina said. "Are you..."
"Excuse me, but if you're this Celina person," Xalan suggested. "She says you know where to find a weapon of light."
"Why would you be interested in that? What good is it?"
"We need it to fight this undead thing that wants to rule the world," Tinuviel piped up. "He's of somewhere probably recuperating from the transformation, it was a really interesting spel. What little I caught of it at the end anyway..."
"Have you tried talking to this monster and settling your affairs that way?" Hearinng such sentiments come from such a close copy of his mother was thoroughly freaking Xalan out.
"I don't think that would work," Xalan said nervously. Then a customer called out and Celina blushed furiously as she looked towards the call.
"Gomen, but I have to go," she bowed formally. "I guess we can talk about this when the common room closes." She hurried away, arms swinging in a demure fashion that further seperated her from Xalan's mother.
"She's...nice," Xalan said. Then thought to himself, "Almost freakishly so."
"She's a really powerful sorceress," Tinuviel explained then. "That's why she looks so young."
"Celina asked me to get your order, since she forgot," they looked up at the sound of the shy voice. Before them was a tall woman dressed in a manner to hide what Xalan suspected was an incredibly shapely body.
"Hello, Gracia-san," Tinuviel waved cheerfully.
"Tea, please," Xalan ordered, silently grieving that nobody made tea as well as Filia did. "And lamb, as rare as you can make it." Tinuviel couldn't decide what exactly she wanted and settled for a sample of everything.
It was an hour or two later that common room was cleared out and Celina and Gracia came back to sit down with Xalan and Tinuviel.
"Excuse me, but what is your name?" Celina asked the kage-kitsune.
"Xalan Metallium." The women seemed to flinch at the name.
"I thought all the Metallium mazoku were destroyed."
"I'm only half mazoku, my mother is..."
"Lina Inverse?" Celina interrupted nervously. "Gomen, but you said she looked like me right?"
"Yes....are you related to my mother at all?"
"Well, maybe you should ask her that." She said nervously and quietly.
"Oh, this is Lina-san's son," Gracia declared suddenly. "What does he want?"
"We're here for that weapon of light you said you had," Tinuviel said suddenly.
"Isn't that up in our room some where?" Celina asked Gracia.
"Your room, singular?" Xalan asked, and both women blushed. Xalan blinked and then blushed furiously himself. "Never mind."
"Well, let's go up and look for it," Tinuviel declared, and the other three were greatful for the subject change. The room in question was quiet large, in fact it seemed to be a lot bigger than it should have been. There was no bed though, it seemed more like a study of some sort. Xalan opened the door to what he thought was a closet to find a hallway. A long hallway with a row of three doors on either side and one door at the end. Two magical lights hung along the hallway on either side.
"Umm, what's going on?"
"Oh," Celina seemed embarrassed. "We played with the dimensional boundaries a little."
"How are we supposed to find anything in this," Xalan asked as he opened another door to find a vast freezing room full of meats and other such foods. He couldn't see the far wall. "This could take days."
"Well, we don't have to go in all the rooms," Gracia suggested quietly as the two women opened the door at the end of the hallway. Xalan noted, but tried not to, the single double bed in the rather plain bedroom. Tinu didn't have the same sense of tact or even much common sense.
"You know, I've been wondering why you have just the one..."
"Here it is," a furiously blushing Celina said. She picked up a gauntlet of some sort with three sockets above the wrist.
"That's the light weapon?"
"Hmm, this?" Celina looked at it a moment. "Wait a minute, you're right. Light come forth." Three blades of light extended from the sockets, from a claw gauntlet.
"Oh my," Gracia said. "We've been using it as a torch." Xalan facefaulted.