towerofanimus

Characters: Zelgadis and you!
Setting: Room 1-6, or elsewhere in the dorms
Format: I'll reciprocate whichever
Summary: Zel wakes up
Warnings: Zelgagrumping

This wasn't what Zelgadis expected would happen when he woke up. In fact, even the waking up part was a jolt; he still has a spell about to be released in the back of his mind, and he remembers that he was falling, like he tripped over a rock or something, but it doesn't make any sense that he would suddenly be in a place like this.

For a few moments, he strains to move, or yell, or cast a spell, or anything, but nothing happens, as if there just wasn't a connection between his mind and his body. It occurs to him that maybe he did actually die in battle, and he stops flailing at his unresponsive limbs so he can instead try to think a little bit about what all of this means. It doesn't take long for him to notice that he can move again, though, and with the quiet repose of a man who has accepted his own death, he calmly sits up and looks around the room. It's quaint, really, if a bit melodramatically gloomy.

Then he finds the notes, and shortly afterwards, the collar around his neck, and his calm mood drops all the way as far down as the tower goes. He hastily flips through the contents of his trunk, the laughable representation of the world he was plucked from, and grabs his sword. The familiar weight of it sitting around his hips is just one more sensory input in this rapidly solidifying consciousness, and he storms into the hallway with a renewed energy. He's pretty tired of getting jerked around.

"What the hell is going on here?!"

He's not expecting magical answers to drop out of the walls, but shouting lets off a little bit of steam.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That voice is one Lina hasn't heard in a long time - and given the nature of the tower, she's half-inclined to think she imagined it at first, but curiosity is something she can't just ignore, and after stepping out of her own room, she looks down the hallway.

And lo and behold, there is indeed one grumpy blue fellow.

Part of her wants to run up and hug him, but her pride won't let her. (That, and she knows that running up to hug Zel will likely end up in unwanted pain. Plus, Zelgadis has never been one for that kind of thing.) So instead, she opts for an obvious question.

"Zel? Is that really you?"

"Of course it's me, Lina, wh--"

There's a brief pause as he catches up to what he's saying. The flash of memory is clear; it was only moments ago, to him, that they were facing Phibrizzo together. Oh boy.

"So, you ended up in this place, too, then?"

"I've been here for months, Zel," Lina answers as she steps up - and getting closer, Zelgadis will likely notice that Lina's sporting less ornate shoulderpads and lacks the talismans she recently picked up. (At least, recently to him.)

"And I ask 'cause this place likes to be a big jerk and use illusions on people, so for all I knew, you could've been a hallucination," she adds.

"Months? That's strange." And he does notice that she's dressed differently; if he was the sort of person to remember what other people wore, he might have noticed that she looked more like she did months ago, to his memory, but all he knows is that she's not outfitted the way he thought she was on the other side.

He turns and thoughtfully taps a knuckle on the wall, making the sound of stone hitting stone. "I'll assume it's quite powerful magic holding this place together if even you haven't found a way to escape yet, Lina. How do you know I'm not still an illusion? How do I know you're not?"

Zel's words cause a sheepish look to come over her, and her posture slumps a bit. "Well, there's a powerful something keeping me from busting out, I know that - whether it's magic or not remains to be seen. As for illusions..." She sighs, and shrugs. "We...are and aren't at the same time, if that makes any sense."

"Honestly, I'm not even sure I'm not an illusion myself. I'm pretty sure I'm dead, Lina, and if you're here, then you're probably dead, too. It can't be long before we'll see Amelia, and Gourry, and the rest of them."

He gives her a small, bitter smile; a defeated-looking Lina was a rare sight, even if it was just a defeat that she hadn't yet turned into a victory. She was certainly not the same as when he last saw her.

"But this is a pretty strange place to end up after dying."

"Dead?! I'm not dead, I was in the middle of dealing with Rezo's cheap knockoff before I wound up here, there's no way you guys should be dead!"

Then there's a momentary pause as Lina remembers the whole thing about people showing up from different time periods.

"...what happened before you showed up here, Zel?"

"Rezo's copy? I guess you really meant it when you said months. That was almost a year ago for me."

The thought brought back a flood of memories as he recalls everything between that battle and now, and all the things this Lina wouldn't know. including how that fight even ended. Did she really need to know all of that? He turns to the side, his expression dark.

"It's kind of a long story, but we won that fight. As for the one I just came from, we weren't doing so well."

"I know that much," Lina answers in a more solemn tone as she folds her arms. "Though not the details. Gourry never was good for those," she adds, trying to look amused over it, but it's not something that's easily done.

So she changes the subject.

"What kind of trouble did we get into this time?"

"Gourry? He's here, then?"

Zel rubs at his chin; if they were all ending up here from different times, this could get complicated fast. There's something to be said about not messing with the past in order to preserve the present, but then again, what wouldn't he give to pass along some critical pieces of information to his own past self, if given the opportunity? If their world was destroyed during that battle, though, he had a pretty good idea of how it happened, and even he didn't want to be the one to tell Lina about it.

"We were fighting Hellmaster Phibrizzo. And losing."

"He...was," Lina says awkwardly, much like a kid who got caught stealing something. "He was here a little while before I got sent home - I can only assume he was sent back at the same time, but only I've come back as far as I can tell," she explains with a frown.

The mention of Phibrizzo, however, does not elicit the surprise Zelgadis might expect - in fact, she smiles a little. "Well, I guess we have a tendency for things to look bad just before they turn out alright, then - Gourry mentioned that we beat him. Or, well. He tried to, but you know how that doofus is with names..."

01

Dorms!

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