"They must be alot further out than we thought," Xina said as Val landed at the edge of a familiar twisted forest. Xina took a small leap off of Val's dragon back and stood on the ground next to him.
"Luna-sama said they were at least a week out," Val's voice rumbled as he walked behind a particularly thick group of trees.
"I wish Xalan were here," Xina muttered. "He's better at this sort of stuff than me."
"I hope he and Tinu found what they were looking for?" Val, now in human form, added. Xina narrowed her eyes.
"Well he's with Tinuviel," Xina growled under her breath. "He's got to be having a lot more fun the rest of us."
"Actually, I think I'd rather face that mazoku brat over that," Val said as he came from behind the trees, adjusting his clothes a little.
"What? You don't like Tinuviel?"
"As in like a girlfriend?" he asked startled. "No!"
"But she's so beautiful!"
"She's annoying," he corrected. "Though I'm getting a little used to that. Why do you ask?
"No reason," Xina answered happily. "Now, should we head out on foot and see if we find them without being seen?" Or do we head back to camp?"
"We have most of the night left, lets go a little further?"
"Hai!"
Like most beings that actually seek power beyond the limits of their kind, Roquen was a fool. When he first tried and succeeded to tie a spirit to a physical body he was elated. When the creature failed to return quickly from its test mission he was annoyed. When he found himself unable to successfully bring down other spirits without completely destroying some aspect of their mindsm he was frustrated, but dealt with it. When he checked back on that abberation and found that it had been slowly reforming its body, he was confused. When he finally recognized that the thing was becoming a spectral version of the late queen of Sailoon, he laughed. When her daughter showed up opposed against him, he was amused by the irony. The cardinal rule of magic and power in general never occured to him. Surprises are never good news.
"FLARE ARROW!!"
The thought that undead usually couldn't cast spells passed through Amethyst's mind as the firey arrow struck her. Her mind tried to use that thought in an attempt to blank the fact that she appeared to be fighting her mother. Fortunately for the shock frozen chimera, the flare arrow did little more than char her clothes and throw her back against a rock.
"I...I was just a baby!" Amethyst stammered as another arrow struck and she had to shake her head clear.
"You know its true," the specter accused, walking toward the now kneeling chimera. "You know its...." she wouldn't let herself say that this was justice, she wouldn't do it. "Why don't you defend yourself?"
"I'm sorry," Amethyst pleaded before her mother, now standing directly over her. Amethyst noticed now a translucent quality to the dead queen's body, only parts of her seemed to be dead flesh.
"Zelgadis understood, but I wouldn't listen," Amelia whispered. "And you know too. Why don't you cast a spell, any spell?" The specter forced Amethyst to look up into her dead eyes. She shivered as the death-cold hands touched her stone skin. Through tear-filled eyes she was finally forced to see her mother's pleading eyes.
"Any spell?" Amethyst asked, she was getting colder. The specter's touch draining her vitality. "You who are not of this world..."
"Finally, coming to your own defense?" the specter smiled tauntingly, but her eyes encouraged her daughter on.
"By the light of purity I possess, I bid thee, begone to the nexus of our two worlds! MEGIDO FLARE!" Amethyst and her mother's specter were enveloped in a flash of white light. The young chimera cringed as the specter screamed in pain, at first thinking that now she had killed her mother a second time. In moments, before the spell vanished, the scream became a cry of freedom and triumph. Then the light was gone and with it Amelia's specter.
In spell-induced calm, Amethyst was able to logically examine the matter. Her mother had been one of the best sorceress's of the time. If she had really wanted to kill her daughter, she would have used something other than a flare arrow. Of course this was just on top of the look in the specter's eyes. A look Amethyst had half-suspected was her imagination at first.
"And she told me to defend myself," Amethyst finally said. She shivered, still cold from the specter's touch. Finally her eyes narrowed, merely annoyed for the moment, she was still too calm for anything else. "The necromancer."
"Amethyst! Are you okay?" she looked up to see Jol standing on the rock above her. "I felt something over here?" She smiled.
"I'm fine Jolrael-san," she answered calmly. "I had an encounter with a ghost and had to cast a megido flare around me. I do feel kind of cold though." She didn't want to say that she had recognized the ghost yet. "It's making me kind of tired, with the megido flare I think I might do like Xina-san always does and go to sleep."
"Do you need help?" He sheathed his sword as Amethyst stood up unsteadily, but caught herself.
"I don't feel like anything is seriously wrong," she looked to Jol.
"It doesn't seem that way to me, either," the swordsman agreed reluctantly.
"Okay then, all I need is for you to take the watch early and then I can get some sleep. Is that okay Jolrael-san?"
"It's perfectly logical." He nodded watching her walk sleepily but straight and in control.
"Okay, and by the time the megido flare where's off I'll have thought about it too long to freak out." Jolrael didn't know what "it" was, but that statement certainly sounded optomistic. He was only mildly apprehensive about it, however, as she slept peacefully upon lying back on her bedroll.
Zangulus couldn't believe his luck as he came upon fresh tracks moving towards the undead army without looked like some concern for stealth. He smiled as he noted the occasional staff point bored into the ground. She came this way, he could feel it in his bones. The fox-girl had come this way, and she had the staff.