Fight, Bleed, and Fly

"little child, be not afraid
though rain pounds harshly against the glass
like an unwanted stranger, there is no danger
I am here tonight

little child, be not afraid
though thunder explodes and lightning flash
illuminates your tear-stained face
I am here tonight

and someday you'll know
that nature is so
the same rain that draws you near me
falls on rivers and land
on forests and sand
makes the beautiful world that you'll see
in the morning

little child, be not afraid
though storm clouds mask your beloved moon
and its candlelight beams, still keep pleasant dreams
I am here tonight

little child, be not afraid
though wind makes creatures of our trees
and their branches to hands, they're not real, understand
and I am here tonight

for you know, once even I was a
little child, and I was afraid
but a gentle someone always came
to dry all my tears, trade sweet sleep for fears
and to give a kiss goodnight

well now I am grown
and these years have shown
that rain's a part of how life goes
but it's dark and it's late
so I'll hold you and wait
'til your frightened eyes do close

and I hope that you'll know...

everything's fine in the morning
the rain'll be gone in the morning
but I'll still be here in the morning"

--Vienna Teng

Xellos Metallium crouches forward, arms slightly extended at his sides, still as death. His eyes are open, drinking in his prey. Only his mouth moves. "Last chance, Sherra. Give the child back or I'll attack you."

"Misery is roiling off this hatchling like ocean waves." The most frightening thing about General Sherra Grausherra is her utter impassivity, coupled with soulless determination. Her voice is the best manifestation of this terrifying match, next to her visual appearance: a drawling, relentless monotone, high and cold. Her tongue slowly curls around each syllable as though slipping around a wet icicle, memorizing its smooth surface. "Xellos, do you enjoy his malaise?" She smiles a weirdly keen smile down at the child wriggling under her arm, particularly weird coupled with her dead voice. Her poisonous jade eyes glisten like green fire encased in sleet.

Val whimpers, grimacing. "I'm sorry, Xel," he forces through his little white fangs. "I'm sorry, don't hate me!"

"Val, it's fine—just give me a minute." Xellos's eyes shift in his otherwise motionless head. He speaks through a determined smile.

"Yes, don't apologize, hatchling," Sherra drawls. "You've alleviated my…boredom."

"I never took you as someone who entertained trifles, Sherra." Xellos can match his peer for coldness, but not for colorlessness. Every word he speaks lilts with carefully composed venom, smugness, and malice. It is enticing, lethal, like him.

Nevertheless, Sherra appears unimpressed. "This is no trifle. I am not here to idly poke a stick in the cage of the Lesser Beast, the aberration, and his contrived little family. I am here on orders."

"Oh?" Unstable giggles emerge as champagne bubbles in Xellos's throat. He takes a step closer, eyes red, a hot fiery aura igniting his olive skin, fire to Sherra's sickly blue-green aura of ice. "Ahaaaaha! Then carry them out."

Her lip curls. "I shall."

"Then you stand fast? You won't hand him over?"

"No."

"As you wish."

And, staff-less, with his bare hands, with a keening, bloodcurdling cry, Xellos lunges.

He is very fast, a purple streak. So fast that it dazes Val when Sherra jerks out of his way.

The smell of oranges burns Val's nostrils. It mixes with a smoky sweet smell, like too-strong incense, like a lit pipe. It gets stronger and then weaker again as Xellos darts to and fro, calculating a hole, a weak spot, in Sherra's defenses.

Sherra trips on Val's tail, dangling at her feet. The child howls in pain as she stumbles, and curses.

Xellos pounces.

There is a ripping sound as Xellos's fangs take out the whole right shoulderpad of Sherra's armor, as well as a chunk of skin. Someone inhales sharply.

Xellos laughs louder, perversely excited. He spits out Sherra's shoulderpad and a mouthful of her black blood, at her feet. "That's you in five minutes!" he sings, wiping his mouth. "How droll! I think I shall take you a piece at a time! And I haven't even cast a spell yet!"

"Sadist." Sherra's voice is now distantly sardonic. She draws her sword and hurls it at Xellos's head.

It is his turn to feint. He whirls in a circle and ducks. The sword, a lesser demon, lodges into the stone wall, pinning his cloak. Xellos fiercely shrugs out of it.

He screams again, and in that noise there is the occasional deranged giggling. Sherra peals out an appreciative return screech, colder, higher, as she dodges him a second time.

Stainless steel and brass pots and pans clang to the counter, off the open ice box, to the floor. Xellos leaps onto the cutting board on the counter, knocking potent-smelling onions and lemons off on to the floor, flinging strainers and utensils out of his way. Tomato juice spills and stains the white towels, and Val's stomach lurches. He wishes he could smell his father's citrus scent over the mixed kitchen contents and the metallic odor of Sherra's bloody shoulder.

Sherra takes a butcher's knife and flings it at Xellos. It sinks in his chest and he laughs scornfully, dislodging it without a scratch. His false skin pops back into place with a warbling sound. "Try again!"

The female demon focuses, shrugging off his taunting smile. It is then that magic enters the battle, as Sherra flings a spell in the form of an ear-popping, arctic shockwave.

Val squeals and covers his ears, hair roiling wildly at the mercy of the wind.

Xellos cackles, teleporting out of range. His palms cup near each other, as if he is stroking an invisible sphere. A white hot light with a red aura heats up in that space—a new spell. "Again!" And he hurls a sea of twisting red-black cones at her.

They begin to dance around each other, each anticipating the exquisite, poetic attack-moves of the other by milliseconds, each in perfect step with the other. Red and black colored spells that lack incantations careen off the walls, missing their targets each time.

It's like a deadly waltz.

Xellos works Sherra back into a corner opposite the ice box, taking her apart as promised, piece by piece, until there is a bit of her bleeding black from all four limbs. Still she holds on to Val. Despite having the upper hand by sheer, innate power, Xellos is panting with the labor of taking out so formidable and skilled a foe as a fellow mazoku general.

Xellos crouches forward for the final of many devastating blows.

The beauty of his features, beneath those glossy pageboy bangs, is lost to the most savagely contorted snarl of glee that can be imagined in Val's darkest of nightmares.

Vicious wrinkles hide his nose, cheeks, forehead, and most of his eyes. Those eyes are two vivid red slits and his remaining face is almost nothing but distended white fangs. His panting grows, almost as if he is erotically charged by his unabashed hatred for his current enemy, as if he is feasting gluttonously on his own negative energies.

A monster.

Suddenly, Sherra holds up her free hand, and goes down on one knee in surrender.

Sherra is a prudent demon.

"You may be shocked to realize I have no intentions of harming your hatchling, as…invigorating as this has been."

Xellos freezes. Slowly, he straightens. His features reappear, smooth as marble. His fangs disappear. His eyes return to amethyst, distinguishing again between whites, irises, and cat pupils. "What?"

"There has been sufficient evidence for what I was sent to ascertain, I think. We've been at this for half an hour, after all, and my schedule is rather full." The female mazoku actually manages to glance at a silver pocketwatch hanging from her belt, under her swishing blue braid. She stands stiffly, still holding Val under one arm, and kicks some onion peels out of her way.

Val looks hastily between the demons. His heart deafens him. "Xel…?" he pleads.

"…Sherra, why ARE you here?" The testiness of Xellos's voice is, remarkably, almost imperceptible. His fingers flex at his sides in little involuntary spasms, the only thing betraying his rage.

He glances at Val, a trace of anxiety surfacing on his features, as if it has suddenly occurred to him that the child will be frightened of him after seeing his savage breed of rescue efforts.

On the contrary, Val struggles insistently, trying to reach for him.

The blue-haired mazoku laughs—a cold, quiet, breathy sound, an arctic breeze in pine trees. "Beastmaster Zelas was tired of having a mopey lovesick general," she nods at Xellos, "so she cajoled Lord Dynast into lending me out to her to do some jobs you've been neglecting."

"Bullshit." Xellos's anxiety vanishes, and his smile is tight. "My performance is impeccable. Always. No matter what."

There is somehow no emotion on Sherra's face, even when she is smug, aside that strange intensity of her eyes. "Alright, I concede that. Truthfully, word travels fast among demons—after all, gossip is a sin—and Lord Dynast sent me to test you."

Now it is Xellos's turn to laugh—that giggle, high, cold, and scornful. His staff materializes in his right hand, the red orb glowing, and he begins to twirl it menacingly, warming up for the killing strike that had been delayed moments ago. "What is it with people 'testing' me these days? The dragon elders testing my fitness as a father, Lord Beastmaster testing my loyalty, now what? What is left to test?"

"Your l-o-v-e." Sherra's fangs reappear as she spells out the loathed word. They are fangs like Xellos's, only thinner and smaller, and less lupine. More like the fangs of an ermine.

Xellos cocks his head. "I should think that fairly well established by now. Haven't I become the black sheep of Lord Shabranigdo's 'grandchildren'?"

"Which brings me to the more significant connection being made with this test of your you-know-what towards this child." Sherra nods at Val still stiffly dangling under her arm. Val whimpers and reaches for Xellos again.

Xellos instinctively lunges to reach the child. Sherra begins to mirror every menacingly graceful gesture that Xellos makes with his staff, the dance again initiated.

Xellos recoils, the bridge of his nose wrinkling. He is clearly unused to an almost equal opponent. He is even more unused to not getting his way. "Val, it will be alright," he growls.

"Not necessarily." Sherra reads his thoughts. She speaks in a colorless monotone. "My fellow military leader, coercion and sweet-talking won't always save you, or the person you…care for. You now have an Achille's Heel. That is why it would have been better never to fall in…affection…with Filia Ul Copt and her son."

"I'm really not in the mood for small talk." The feral rumble has not left Xellos's otherwise velvet voice. "What were you saying, about this connection between Lord Shabranigdo and my love?"

He forces the forbidden word through his lips, and the toll on his astral body is immediate. It manifests in his illusive physical shell: in the graying of his skin, in a cold sweat, in the way he abruptly staggers down on one knee and gulps for air. A vein pronounces against his forehead, through his bangs.

But it's done the trick—Sherra is so stunned that she drops Val.

The child falls with an "oomph!" to the floor, eyes dazed.

"VALTEIRA, COME HERE." Xellos roars this, lashing to his feet and opening his arms to the boy.

Val recovers quickly. He vaults into his father's grasp and clings with all four limbs to his torso. And for the first time since their argument, Val is sobbing, producing a great wet blob on Xellos's shirt.

Sherra's face becomes very pale and very constricted. She cocks back her head regally, like an ice sculpture of a noblewoman, sheathing her sword. "Clever," she hisses.

"I try." Xellos follows her eyes to Val curled around his waist. He wraps his cloak around the child's clinging, shivering form. "You don't have permission to look at him."

Sherra scoffs. "You don't have permission to bestow or withdraw permission."

"You only think that because you can't begin to comprehend a parent's powers. Now, Sherra, to the point, and this time I mean it."

"The wild claim has cropped up that you have spoken to the Lord of Nightmares herself, during your bargaining for Lord Darkstar's—ah, that is, Gourry Gabriev's—now-destroyed sword. I see the pendant around your neck furthers this claim." Sherra nods coolly at the gold adornment swinging on Xellos's neck, the pendant embossed with the sun, the letter L, and the long hair. "That is her mark, is it not? The mark of L-Sama?"

"Yes." He smiles a bit too patiently. "Keep going. You're getting there."

"It is a mark for the Source of All. But it is also a mark for something you are now enabled to experience, since the Lord of Nightmares shared a certain revelation with you."

"Correct."

"A revelation that the universe is not meant to be returned to chaos, by mazoku or anyone else, because if it had been, the Lord of All would have done so herself."

"Excellent."

"Therefore there is no reason why mazoku should be forbidden to feel certain emotions that directly conflict with a desire to destroy all life."

"Yes. Eureka. Bingo, and precisely."

"And the fact that you fought with me—someone who could, with effort, actually kill you…"

Xellos arrogantly rolls his eyes. "Sure. Heh."

Her face becomes sour. "…Your hubris is crippling..."

"I know." Now he mock-pouts at her. "But it's just so damned justified."

Sherra sighs and continues. "...At any rate, the fact that you would fight a formidable adversary, rather than take your usual self-preserving path of least resistance, is the closest I can come to obtaining empirical evidence of your capacity to possess l-o-v-e."

"Which also starts with L, as you astutely observed." Xellos winks at Sherra, tapping the gold pendant with the L embossed in the center.

"L-Sama's gift to you."

"No, not exactly. I would have already felt it for Filia and Valteira had I never learned the great secret: that Lord Shabranigdo's objective for his children is a mistaken one. I am simply a freak of nature. However, having known all along that Lord Shabranigdo WAS mistaken, I have never felt the compunction or the disloyalty that unwitting others of our race THINK I should feel. And so I have doggedly pursued my two dragons, knowing I am in no way betraying my maker."

"But Xellos." And Sherra is smug again. "Wouldn't you have divided your loyalties anyway, if Lord Beastmaster had not believed you, if she had wished to further punish you for devoting yourself to the she-dragon?"

Xellos stares at his colleague for an eternity. His lip curls up on one edge like the rosy tendril of a sinuous flower petal. He presses a finger to that lip. "Can you keep a secret?"

"That's your forte. But I can indeed."

"Alright. Then yes."

Sherra's smile is no longer amicable. "Well, I'll keep that secret. But that doesn't mean I won't act on it."

Xellos's muscles tense, fiber by fiber. He reaches into his robe, and begins to pry Val loose, sliding the child around to his back. He buys time talking. "Does this mean you will tell Lord Dynast your slant of my claim?"

"Oh, I'll tell him you're sincere, fear not. Say it again, Xellos. Say THAT word."

For a fleeting instant, Xellos's ego has the better of him. "Love," he slurs, sloppily, like there's something too hot burning his tongue. Again he leans forward, again he is weakened. Behind him, Val pushes to keep him from falling backward.

Xellos recovers enough to straighten—and to realize his mistake. "Ah. Shit. Heh."

Sherra nods. "Mm. Lord Dynast told me to eradicate you if it turned out you were a traitor. And based on your little 'secret,' you are. You just use L-Sama's revelation as a convenient tool. I'd rather not have you for an adversary the rest of my immortal lifetime."

Xellos emits a silent laugh, head slowly lulling back. "Ahhhh, but to rid yourself of my animosity, you need not necessarily pacify me. You could just kill me, now that you've tricked me into weakening myself twice."

"Precisely." Sherra's emerald ice eyes have a hungry sheen. "I could just kill you. After all, the Beastmaster is the only one of Lord Shabranigdo's children who really believes your egomaniacal story."

"Right now, that is," Xellos retorts, but the carnivorous growl has already returned to his voice, and his fangs, like Sherra's again gleam. He strains to summon what energy he still has. "Why gamble? Why commit suicide by killing me? Why commit suicide, heh, by even TRYING to kill me? I, who have the power of TWO of you, Sherra?"

Val now clings to Xellos from behind, lodged to his back, safer than he was when lodged to his chest. Xellos reaches back and sharply pokes him, gesturing towards the open kitchen door, towards escape.

The child shakes his head and holds fast, at first. Xellos pokes him again, and, with a soft whimper, he begins to climb down to his father's legs to the cold stone ground.

"I have some tricks up my sleeve. I have something you don't, Xellos."

"Entertain my curiosity, Sherra. What advantage does Dynast Grausherra's general have over me?"

"I have the freedom to be selfish." And Sherra draws another, unfamiliar weapon from her belt. She dives for the fleeing Val.

Val screams.

"NO...!" Xellos is too fast for Sherra, and she is counting on his precarious speed.

She is counting on him to leap in front of Val, and she is counting on him to run right into the burst of magic—not black magic, but WHITE magic—that erupts from the end of a small dagger in her concealed right hand.

It works.

Xellos lets out an aborted shriek, a howl of agony with which he rarely honors a foe.

He crumples face forward onto the dragon temple floor.

"Not my son, bitch," he spews around a trickle of viscous black goo oozing from his mouth.

He convulses once or twice, struggling to rise, smiling repulsively, the black all over his lips. His eyes carry all the loathing in the universe.

Sherra snorts, standing over him. "Well, that does prove it," she murmurs, scratching her chin.

"P-proves what, my dear Sherra?"

"Well. Riksfalto, Deep Sea Dolphin's general, believes your claims even less than I do. She loaned me this white magic vessel, with a charm that blocks harm to demons wielding it, in order to try and finish you off. Dolphin's priest, Huraker, won the dagger at a card game in the same town you helped Luna Inverse relieve after a massacre. "

"Spectacular," Xellos spits.

Sherra gives a sarcastic curtsy. "We covered our tracks because some of the Beastmaster's wolves were there that night, too, and hungry. Otherwise you might have suspected foul play from your colleagues for months."

"P-pity I miscalculated," Xellos stammers. "Inverse suggested that massacre was Riksfalto's work…But...agh…that is what happens when you care for someone more than yourself…I don't expect you to understand, Sherra. It is a c-curious feeling, newborn even to me…"

"Good. Because I don't understand." Sherra dislodges her sword from the wall. "Prepare to die, Xellos Metallium. Nothing personal."

Val was running from the room for help, but when he hears this he turns, and freezes. He is suddenly transfixed with the weirdly distant observation that mom's blood was red all over her, and dad's blood, mazoku blood, is black all over him. And that, either way, it is blood.

And Val can't move.

But then the bogey ladey arrives.

Lina Inverse enters the room with a roared Elmekia Lance. It strikes Sherra Grausherra in the chest and forces her backward with an angry snarl. Her sword clatters to the ground.

"ONE OF THESE DAYS, I'M GONNA END YOU!" the redheaded sorceress roars, emerging from a somersault to land in front of Xellos and Val. "MILGASIA! CAST A CHAOTIC DISINTEGRATE, NOW!"

As Lina's loyal company of Luna, Amelia, Gourry, Zelgadiss, Naga, and Sylphiel coil around the demon and his hatchling, each firing up some manner of astral spell, Milgasia looms in, white robes billowing, arms gesticulating. He chants in a strange, gutteral language of holy words.

"CHAOTIC DISINTEGRATE!" he bellows, propelling the spell, a white and sparkling fire of holy magic, devastating to a dark astral body, directly at Sherra's head.

Sherra hisses, her ermine fangs bared and her eyes suddenly crimson, teleporting just out of range of the spell. "I know when I'm not welcome," she coldly quips. "Very well, I suppose I'll suffer your existence, Xellos, since it seems you've made friends. Lina Inverse, I will remember your threat."

"Glad to hear it," Lina growls, with an angry smile. "I'll be counting down the days till I see you again, ya frigid bitch."

"Get lost!" Gourry barks, simultaneous with Amelia's screech of, "Leave in the name of justice!"

"Go screw an icicle," Zelgadiss rumbles, his sword still pulsating red with an Astral Vine. Naga laughs her strange, birdlike giggle.

Luna, the other big sister present, licks her sword tip tauntingly at Sherra and, under her lavender bangs, tartly wiggles her eyebrows. "I'll be Ceiphied, you be Shabranigdo, Grausherra, and we'll see if I can split your soul into seven pieces, eh? Gimme your best shot, I dare you."

Lina's smile remains. "That sounds fun, big sis. I wanna watch. Because I have Sherra's word that she won't forget my threat."

Sherra returns Lina's acid expression. She backs to the doorway, against which leans Filia, bandaged and frail, transfixed with fury.

Suddenly, the dragoness lifts her fists and beats on Sherra's cold hard armor. "I-I-I'll th-threaten y-you MYSELF!" she forces from her damaged throat. Somehow, in this instant, Filia is truly terrifying. "G-gettaway f-from MY MONSTER! AND GET AWAY FROM MY SON!"

Sherra, irritated, raises her arms to block the dragoness. With a sharp fizzle, she finally disappears.

Filia blinks.

A moment of silence.

Then everyone, except Val and Filia, erupts in laughter.

Filia crouches at Xellos's side. Her lip trembles.

"Filly…honey, you almost got butchered a few months ago, don't make a habit of getting demons pissed at you," Xellos croaks very softly. "Fisticuffs isn't generally a good way to exterminate a monster…"

"S-SHUT UP, I LOVE YOU," Filia bawls, struggling to turn him over and hug him—getting black goo from his side all over her white robes.

Val shrinks away to a corner the minute she succeeds.

Lina is standing nearest the child. "You okay?" she whispers.

Val shakes his head, expression stony.

At least she's not the bogey lady anymore.

"Why don't you go hug your dad?"

"Coz every time I'm with him he gets hurt," the child mumbles. "And I said I hated him. And that was real bad of me."

"Really bad," Xellos, who has remarkable hearing, corrects Val's grammar softly to himself, across the room. His eyes, amethyst and clear and bottomless, rove, searching for the boy, growing frustrated.

Filia bends over Xellos, brushing his cheek with her soft honeysuckle-scented hair. Her face rests beside his, her body reposes against his on the cold hard floor. Her hands wonderingly trace the perfect contours of his face, as if it is the first time she has ever seen her lover.

If possible there is more adoration, now, in her cornflower eyes, than before—the adoration and gratitude of a mother who has truly recognized how much someone has done for her child. Her fingers stop at his lips and trace them tenderly, brushing away the black blood.

She stares at it on her fingers almost as if she had never realized Xellos could himself be destructible, or vulnerable.

Xellos moans softly, mouth both sore and wanting at once, and shivers. He sighs, craning his neck up to touch Filia again until she obliges, placing her finger back on his mouth. Then he smiles, lips wrapping moistly around that finger, suckling it once. "Is he alright?" he asks, at the end of this quiet gesture of intimacy.

Filia smooths her monster's violet hair off his forehead and kisses it. Then she nods. "Y…yes. You…r-rest or I'll ki-kill you myself."

Xellos smiles again, and there are dimples on that face which seems so impossibly innocent and angelic, at times, on a demon.

And then he closes his eyes.

"He misses ya," Lina persists, in the corner, to Val. She bends over. "And Xellos doesn't miss anyone. So that's sayin' something."

Val doesn't move.

By now Xellos has slipped into unconsciousness. Milgasia gently pushes Filia aside and lifts the mazoku who killed a third of his own race a millennium ago into his arms.

Things change.

Milgasia carries Xellos down the hallway, the company trailing behind, Filia seizing Val's hand tightly until they arrive in her room.

"He will be alright," Milgasia mutters. "The wound is not as bad as it looks. Just some rest. Only black magic can properly heal a monster, so he will just have to leech off of some of our negative spiritual energies for the next several days."

Filia nods, wiping her eyes, and opens her arms to Val, imploring his presence.

Val runs into his mother's arms and doesn't let go for a long time.

When that moment passes, he timidly kneels next to Xellos, who reposes on a bed of down feathers next to Filia's hanging hammock. He realizes how strangely beautiful and frightening and wonderful his adoptive father is. He realizes how much he has always had, without realizing it, how devoted Xel really is. He feels like there is a bubble lifting in his chest where there was once lead and nausea. Light and warm, very much like when Xel eats his bad feelings. He feels guilt from a past life that was not his lifting away permanently.

He realizes that he really does matter that much, to both his mom and his dad—so much that both would bleed and bleed for him, and bleed and bleed some more. They really do love him. Maybe that means he is a good boy, after all.

Val curls up on Xel's chest. He feels his mom's gentle hands caressing his hair, and his eyes slowly slide closed. Real safety surrounds him again. He doesn't even waken when two of Milgasia's priests come to remove Xel's black-stained shirt and replace it with a clean white tunic of their own.

The tunic is unbuttoned down to the navel. Val stirs, an hour or so later, still surrounded by mom and her friends, and looks directly at the place where Xel's tattoo of Zelas Metallium has always been branded in black over his heart.

There is something else there now. Superimposed over it, a tattoo of two encoiled dragons, one gold and one black.

Val does not know why, but his eyes are wet and stinging, and his own chest hurts very badly.

He looks up at his mother's face, and Filia is crying, too. She smiles gently at her son and nods. She puts her hand first on her own chest, and then his, and then over Xel's tattoo. Xel stirs restlessly, but remains asleep.

Milgasia is there now, sitting with his legs crossed, next to mom. He is squinting very hard at Xellos's face. His gold-and-flax eyes grow vague.

"You really can read minds?" Zelgadiss murmurs, hand cupping his chin.

"He can," Lina affirms.

"Yes…Ten generations of my family…" Milgasia nods absently, then turns to Val, eyes refocusing. "The new marking has been there over his heart since he chose not to harm you, Val, when the Beastmaster tempted him to do so. It brands your…father…in equal allegiance with you and your mother as he is with Zelas and the Monster Race."

"H-how?" Filia musters.

"By speaking to the Lord of Nightmares herself, and learning of the inherent flaw in the way Shabranigdo interpreted her plans for the universe." Milgasia smiles wryly at Filia's horrified expression. "I am sure he will explain himself, when he wakes up. Your Xellos loves to…gloat. You should hear the thoughts in his head. He's very unguarded when he sleeps. Pity he almost never needs to. I would repeat more for you, Filia, but I believe you might be a bit…embarrassed…if this crowded room hears of his more colorful fantasies about the two of you." He smiles wanly.

Filia flushes a predictable scarlet, coughs, and fans her face.

Lina and Naga cackle, Zelgadiss makes a disgusted noise, and Amelia looks stricken. Gourry blinks.
"Will he leave me?" Val whispers suddenly, through his teeth. "Now that mommy's awake, and now that I've told him I hate him? Coz look—he loves me, and I said I hated him. That was so bad."

Filia jolts. She shakes her head sharply, taking his face in her hands, kissing it over and over.

"I think it's highly unlikely, Valteira," Milgasia adds, voicing Filia's thoughts, and squinting again at the slumbering Lesser Beast.

But Val is still afraid. He crawls off of Xel's chest and trudges to his room, where he falls asleep under mom and Xel's ever-thriving orange tree.

Filia pokes the writing tablet fiercely.

She has exerted her injured throat talking too much the past week. Milgasia and her mother have forced her to write messages as opposed to further straining her larynx.

Xellos, his head in her lap, smiles in a way that shows both his dimples. As it does only with Filia and Val, that smile reaches his eyes. He looks like he is trying not to burst out giggling at his lover's frustrated, flushed face. It only comes off looking like he has a case of indigestion.

Filia smacks the tablet with her palm, and some of the chalk message gets erased. Tears of frustration spring to her eyes.

"Ahaha, Filly, honey, I'll just read your palm, then…ahahaha get it? Now I just need a crystal ball and some Tarot cards…" He takes her hand and turns it over, lips moving silently with the words. "…No. I don't think so."

She strikes him on the arm.

He wails in mock pain. "Cruelty! VIOLENCE! My woman is beating me!"

She starts crying.

"Filia, sweetheart, come onnnnn." He sits up gingerly, and kisses her. "Look. What you said here." He points to the tablet. "I have to disagree. I am on the mend now, and, more importantly, so are you. I think it would be best if I went away for a couple of weeks, so he can…just…you know, cool down. I'm sure there's a lot of work I have to catch up on anyway. It's good to keep the Beastmaster's good graces these days."

Filia shakes her head and punches Xellos in the chest.

"Ow." Now he really does wince. "Easy on the left hook."

"You probably deserved it." Filia's mother glides into the room with a tea tray. Aside berating his preference of Darjeeling tea over Chai, the aging dragoness, who is aware of his identity, species, and status, seems to have nevertheless taken an alarming liking to Filia's "husband."

"Don't gang up on me again," Xellos whines.

But Filia is already furiously scrawling a new message.

Xellos reads it. "…Yes. That is what saying 'oranges' means between us. He made it up. But this is for the best, Filly. I am never gone forever—I'm not his biological father, and I'm not, in the name of seven hells, Gaav. I will do better by the boy than both of them. YOU can tell him that."

"You're leaving? How monsterish of you," Filia's mother snips, primly stirring too much sugar into their tea.

"Not forever, Madam Ul Copt." At times, Xellos's patience exceeds mortal capacities. "Just a week or two."

Filia sighs sharply, cheeks poofing out. More writing.

More reading. Xellos grins fangily at the mother, covering his mouth to stifle a guffaw. "She told me to ignore you."

Out the mother stalks, leaving her tea behind her. Her tail swishes, popping into view.

"It's hereditary," Xellos snickers.

Filia waits until her meddling matriarch is gone to attack the tablet again.

Xellos reads. "No, actually. I don't think it would be best if I said goodbye first. I don't want to force him to talk to me when he still doesn't seem to want to."

Still more writing. This time Xellos pauses before he looks at Filia, but when he does, his face is strangely fierce.

"Of COURSE I do," he breathes. "Both of you. More than my own life. Never ask me that again, as if you don't already know it."

Filia writes two words now, in all capitals: "THEN STAY."

Xellos sets his jaw. "No." He struggles to his feet. "You know how I hate ultimatums. I had better leave before he wakes up, on that note."

"It will hurt him," Filia manages to rasp out loud. Her cornflower eyes are desperate.

Xellos pauses. He looks over his shoulder. Something in his return gaze inspires great pity in his lover. He smiles that congenial smile—and there is no happiness in it. "It will hurt me more," he says, lifting an eyebrow.

But this is what he needs. The unspoken words of a real father hang in the air between them. Filia does not agree, but now she understands, feeling those words, and their selfless intentions. She nods, and lets him go.

The air shimmers and fizzles with teleporting magic. And Xellos leaves.

Not five minutes pass before Val, wild-eyed, stumbles into the room. "HE LEFT!" the child screams. "HE LEFT, I know he left! The orange tree is all brown and dead!"

Filia reaches for her son, eyes pained. Her other hand scrambles for her writing tablet.

"No, mom!" Val tears away. "No, I gotta catch him! Where'd he go?!"

Filia scrawls frantically, holding up a finger. "W-wait, honey…" she rasps. "…Can…explain…"

"I CAN'T wait!" the child screams. "I can't let him LEAVE! He thinks I hate him! He'll never come back!" He whirls on his heel, and careens out of the room.

Filia puts down her tablet and struggles to stand. She stumbles after her son, leaving behind the beginning of a long explanation halfway written. But the words that are already there are sufficient, if difficult to believe: "Because he loves you…"

Tears douse Val's cheeks, cascading, flooding his skin, fill his mouth with salt, as he runs. He runs faster, faster, harder, to leave Valgaav behind, to be Valteira, to be the person who deserves Xellos Metallium as his dad. He sheds Valgaav and anger and self-hatred like snakeskin…

… "Never doubt yourself, Val…"

He wipes his nose—snot and tears run miserably. He keeps running, running. All around him stalactites and outcropping become the splattered and blurry brown-black haze of spilled paint….

… "Oranges, you weird and precious child of mine…"

He must catch Xel…

… "Alright, my little task-master…"

He will….

… "I will respect your judgment of me. You made it with much forethought…"

"I hate you" : the biggest lie Val's ever told. Words he has to take back. Words that make his young heart ache with a pain that should be too keen for his years.

… "To 'pants' or not to 'pants,'…" Laughter. That weird giggly cackle of dad that tickles Val's stomach, and makes him laugh too.

Val hasn't heard it in weeks…

…"I love you, dad…" Maybe there's hope. Maybe Xel remembers Val saying that…

Somehow his wings open…

…"Flap your wings vigorously. That means really hard. Now step off the tree branch…"

He runs faster still, scowls, leaps up into the air, in a gracious arc. The impact of his feet with the earth too is delayed for just jumping. The pause between impacts grows each time he leaps upward, still flapping.

Val looks up and sees sunlight: He is approaching the tall, narrow open doors of the subterranean temple. He is seeing light for the first time in months. Fresh air beats against his face as he runs. He runs through the cathedral of the dragon race, paying no heed to its marbled floors and pillars, ignoring the roiling red statue of Ceiphied. None of this matters to a little boy with something to prove to his father.

And then he sees the back of a purple head…as one of the two most important people in his life rises into the air and begins to glide away, not seeing him, not hearing him...a little too far away…

… "It's okay, Val. I'll catch you…"

Val isn't sure when he started shouting, but he knows his voice is already hoarse when he realizes he is screaming "XEL! XEL! WAIT!" over and over.

Val's heart drops into his feet and rises like heat into the sky all at once. His chest becomes strangely light and his feathered ebony wings flex out their full span. He thrusts them up and down, twice, harder than he ever has:

FLY. COME ON. FLY!

And then Val is soaring.

He hardly stops to think on this triumph: He is still trying to catch dad. Xel is always at least fifteen feet ahead, not hearing, not seeing, and any second, Val knows, he will teleport, and there will be no way to catch him…

… "When we get you to fully transform, you'll be able to REALLY zoom…"

Fine, then. Val knows what he has to do.

The last ancient dragon will claim his birthright, and change into his true form.

There will be a pure ancient dragon on earth again, for the first time in over a millennium.

Val closes his eyes and concentrates.

He still sees Xel flying ahead, in that wobbly, cold, neon-and-black void that attacks your retinas behind your eyelids.

He draws a deep breath and flexes his muscles, his bone, his cartilage, all of it in one willful burst of energy.

That is all. Something inside Valteira Ul Copt bursts.

He enters a cloud behind the ever-ascending Xel, and his skin is assaulted with a tangy flavor, with the cold piercing impact of the cloud's ice crystals.

Then something encoils Val's skin and embraces the warmth left under his pores, buffers the touch of the ice.

For a moment Val thinks Xel has come back and is holding him.

He feels sleepy. But he doesn't feel like he's plummeting. No. He's still rising…and the freedom is incredible…euphoric…perfect….

A pause.

Silence, stillness. Deceptive peace.

Xellos stops twenty feet over a particularly fat cumulus cloud, utterly alone to his own knowledge, to adjust his knapsack and gaze at the red orb on the tip of his staff. "Guess I should call in to work," he mutters humorlessly. His chest is so heavy somehow. How weird, this feeling of being…connected. Invested. Deeply.

It was a bit easier before he had a secretly sentimental side.

A lot easier before he had any modicum of a conscience.

Oh well. Life.

Maybe blowing up some innocent bystanders might take off this glum edge.

Or causing a small civil war. No, too high-maintenance…

Pillaging a temple…nah.

Probably just slitting a stray bandit's throat will do the trick. If Lina Inverse has left any for him to kill.

Whatever.

A distant rumbling, shifting, flapping explosion: thunder?

"…Eh?" Xellos peers more keenly through the orb at a swiftly approaching black figure.

A feathered black figure.

Small but graceful, slender but still tender with babyfat, dark as midnight, scaled and feathered—an ancient dragon hatchling fully transformed. It lets out a shrill, sweet little roar, puffing out ringlets of smoke indignantly at Xellos's head.

Xellos drops his staff. For some reason he can't see. He can't see at all, and his eyes are burning in an alien way. But it's not an entirely unpleasant sensation.

He simply sinks, like a bullet, back to the ground. His jaw has not lifted from its slack position since he spotted his child's approach.

Yes. His child. His child, flying. Transformed. His incredible child.

Well. Marvels never cease for the wandering and impish soul.

And oh my. Xellos's smile is making his face hurt.

Val extends all four talon-feet at Xellos as he plummets after him.

He tackles Xellos with such force that there is a handsome male mazoku-shaped crater in the grassy knoll under their two bodies.

"…Okay, OW…rewind, please…" Xellos grumbles, voice muffled.

"DON'T LEAVE!"

The words flow from a streamlined ebony head with a feathery crest, mingling the features of a deer, a falcon, and a gecko lizard—all attached to a long, swanlike, scaly neck. The sight of a large black lizard talking in such an animated fashion is almost amusing.

The voice belongs to Val.

"Don't leave, Xel! I'll stop being a jerk, I swear! Or..or.. MOM hates it when you leave! D—don't leave for HER! PLEASE, Xel! I'll do anything!"

Giant gold eyes, red-rimmed and moist, implore the monster's mercy, as Val the ancient dragon shifts weight and scurries off of his father.

The mazoku eases gingerly out of the hole that his body made upon being crushed under the horse-sized dragon hatchling. His awe and, strangely, his reverence, for Val have not yet dissolved.

"Look at you," he breathes, still grinning, still gawking elatedly. And then, louder, "Look at you!" as he charges the boy, dusty and covered in grass, and embraces Val around the scaly black neck, dropping his staff. "AHAHA! VAL! You transformed!"

Val wriggles out of Xellos's grasp. The impatience on his reptilian face would indeed be comical in another situation. "WHO CARES? Are you LISTENING?"

"Of course! Of COURSE I am, but Val, for a dragon, this is a big deal!"

There is a green flash of light and Val is in human form again, except for his right arm, which remains a scaly black talon. He scowls at it, redfaced.

"I don't care."

"VAL! Of COURSE you care! Seven hells, did you show your mother yet?"

"Nooo. LISTEN. It just NOW happened. When I was tryinna catch up with YOU."

Xellos is speechless. A myriad range of emotions flicker and quickly vanish across his face before he settles for something that mingles attentive and gently amused. He clears his throat. "Ah, um…Val, I'm listening."

"…I was telling you not to leave me."

Xellos guffaws. It's a strange shaky laugh, the same kind of laugh he made when Filia first awoke from her coma. "Val!" he scoffs, his sunny face fighting a grimace of realization and pain. "Val, you CAN'T have thought I was leaving for GOOD…"

"I thought you were mad at me." Val glares harder at his hybrid leg, flexing his fingers. It won't change over.

"Oh, damn and blast. Filia was right again." Xellos snorts. "I'm not mad at you at all. The opposite, really. I thought YOU were mad at ME. I was just going away to give you space."

"I dun want space. Space sucks. I hate space." Val's lip trembles.

"We're just a couple of freaks then, aren't we?" Xellos pads over to the hatchling and removes his gloves. He puts a hand on each side of Val's talon-arm. "Come on, goofball. You always had trouble with this one. Even before you were reborn." His eyes are very soft. "All you have to do is breathe in and out a couple times and calm down. Then you can …sort of pull back…the way you pushed out to change into a dragon."

"Don't call me a goofball. And I'm not doin' anything until you say if you're leaving or not."

"I…" Xellos whets his lips. "I WAS going to go tie up some loose ends at work."

"You're leaving."

"…Nope."

Val looks up, quietly gasping, suddenly hopeful.

A warm, citrus-smelling hand presses lightly and tenderly against Val's cheek. "I," Xellos pledges in a calm and matter-of-fact voice, "will never leave you forever. Never. Never. Ever. Clear? I already told you that. And work can wait a few more days, as things now stand." He cocks an eyebrow and smiles that dimples-smile, with the warmth reaching his amethyst eyes.

"Kay. Then…fix it." Val closes his eyes, leans into dad, and inhales oranges. Trusting implicitly.

Xellos chuckles, and it's a smoky, wry sound. "Yes, yes, child of mine. Inhale, exhale…picture your arm shrinking…there you go…very good! Fixed! You have impressed and moved me more than you know. And I have seen a lot of things, so it takes more than a trifle to impress ME."

"Xel…what made you um…love me?" An embarrassed question, quietly mumbled. Val's ears droop.

The mazoku only misses a beat or two before replying, "A lot of things. But chief among them?" His eyes meander and his mental gears rapidly work. An opportunity of the benevolent sort occurs to him. To his own astonishment, he takes it. "You are the reason why I met your mother."

Just then, Filia appears behind a rock outcropping, watching and listening. She smiles in relief, panting for breath, and presses a finger to her lips when Xellos gazes over and realizes her presence. Her eyes are moist and it is clear she has witnessed her son's great rite of passage in his full physical transformation, as well.

Xellos and Val are standing where the newborn Xellos and the teenaged Milgasia stood over a thousand years ago—right after Xellos destroyed hundreds of golden dragons with one flick of his wrist.

But this is a very different sort of conversation.

"…huh?" Val wrinkles his nose.

"Yeah. Think about it."
"I'm TRYIN'!" Val snaps, scowling so hard that his face turns magenta.

"Don't have a stroke, little Buddha," Xellos chortles, ruffling the aqua hair of the child attached to his leg. "See, the simple way of explaining it is, when you were Valgaav, your mother and I were both drawn to you in order to champion our side of the war between the gods and monsters. A never ending and painful war for all factions, with no known cause, simply orders and directives to carry out by 'nature.'"

"…Yeah?"

"Well. I just found out how wrong that assumption is. The guy I work for—the guy MY boss and mother works for—was wrong. So was the guy your mom used to work for. And when you were Valgaav, you actually helped your mom and I realize this. You brought us together, made us work together to keep the world going. We would have never met had it not been for you, Val."

"…Really?"

"Yes. You're the mediator. You're what's between dark," Xellos points to his chest, "and light," and Xellos points to Filia.

"Oh." Val glances back at his mom, waves, absent with thought, his frown decreasing.

"You're not gray, though. You're COLORS. You're the way things SHOULD be, Val. You're the mix. You're the reason. The reason for everything. Or at least you're the first person who understood it. And I'm confident it will come back to you, that reason, in this life. Your mom and I will help you understand. Neither of us is going anywhere. I promise."

"Xel," Val whispers shakily, "I only get parts of what you're s-sayin', but I just wanted t-to say I don't hate you…"

"Oh, Val." Xellos chuckles again. "Buddy, I know that. I know. Believe me, I know the taste of REAL hate. You don't even know what that is yet. I shall try and make sure you never do. I may not succeed, but it is still every parent's…wish."

"Coz you're my night light. Mister Gourry said so."

Filia approaches, kneels between her boys, and wraps her arms around both their waists. She looks smug somehow. Knowing. Wiser than she was before Val hatched from his egg.

Xellos gnaws his lip with a brief wave of frustration. "I….Hrm…"

"I know, Xel. Oranges." Val buries his face in the monster's shirt.

"…Oranges." Xellos grins. "An orchard of them. All yours, kid. Growing all year round. Heh. What a metaphor run wild we have on our hands…"

"Peel 'em for me." Val rubs his face into that safe, familiar smelling shirt like a kitten, grinning and sniffling, and probably getting snot and tears all over Xellos.

Xellos however is quite proud of the tear blob on his chest from the earlier battle. He doesn't mind at all. "Yes, O Lord Valteira," he snickers.

Filia sighs happily and kisses both her lover and her son on the cheek.

"Welcome back, mom," Val whispers.

"No. What? REPEAT that in the VERNACULAR, please," Lina roars. "Brevity is the soul of freakin' wit!"

"What about shoe soles?" Gourry blinks.

Lina approaches a state of apoplexy. She gyrates at the blond swordsman, making wordless, strangled sounds in her throat. Finally, wringing her hands, she gurgles something that sounds vaguely like, "GRAHHH, NO!"

"I don't know what's going on or who these people are," Naga grumbles, gesturing her ever-present beer mug at Xellos, Filia, and Val, "but where's the bloody brewery in this cavern?"

Milgasia chuckles dryly.

"You guys, stop horsing around and listen, this has enormous implications for universal pacifism and JUSTICE!" Amelia chirps this claim at a supersonic pitch, pumping Zelgadiss's arm via their entwined hands.

Zelgadiss grunts and nurses his migraine, rubbing his rocky temples. "His ego," he murmurs, voice a disillusioned moan. "His EGO. How will we LIVE with it? Xellos, a priest of L-SAMA?"

Filia, with Val snoozing in her lap, sighs. She glances towards the seat next to hers, at a closed-eyed Xellos, who has that inhumanly patient smile on his face.

Luna, on Lina's left, turns smirking to the yin-yang couple and their child. "You're just waiting for the peanut gallery to stuff it, aren't you?"

"Yes," Xellos and Filia reply in unison. Then they grin at each other rather wickedly.

"I'M just waiting to DIE," Zelgadiss groans, head between his hands.

"Then I'll grace you with a reasonable facsimile, and become arrogantly long-winded," Xellos purrs.

"How is that NEW?" The chimera snaps back.

Xellos's lip quirks. "Heh. Always happy to ruin your day, Zel. So everyone shut up, if you please." He bats his illegally long, thick black eyelashes at the so-called peanut gallery, who all gawp back.

"Heh. Thanks. Now. How to put this simply…?"

"Start with the Gorun Nova, honey," Filia suggests, her voice still a touch raspy. She resettles herself in the mazoku's arms, a mirror of Val in her own.

Xellos's jaw twitches, but, characteristically, he indulges his lover. "Why thank you, sweetheart. I was at a loss as to where to begin. Let's go back to the Fibrizzo Campaign, about six years ago. Lina and Gourry have no memory of what happened after Lina cast the out-of-control Giga Slave, but I have an inkling."

He smiles kittenishly as the sorceress and swordsman lean in simultaneously, accidentally bump heads, and furiously blush.

"Everyone on the same page?"

"Yes," Lina snaps, rubbing her skull.

"Okay. So I bargained with something of equal worth in return for the retrieval of the Gorun Nova—the sword of light. Namely, I offered the Lord of Nightmares my services. This is when she bestowed upon me her greatest secret: The mazoku view of the L-Sama is inherently incorrect. She doesn't WANT the worlds returned to the Sea of Chaos. They were suddenly just...there. Spawned out of her at random and without her conscious choice. However, if she wanted them back…"

"She could do it herself," Lina breathes, awestruck despite herself. Her garnet eyes are wide.

"Exactly, Lina!" Xellos beams at the human who has always been his prize pupil. "She could do it herself. But she HASN'T. Indeed, Fibrizzo's plan SHOULD have worked if the mazoku view of her was correct. It was why Fibrizzo was so surprised by her actions, when she eliminated him for meddling with her plans and so aptly threatening world destruction. It was why, really, he panicked at the last moment, realizing he wanted to be destroyed no more than any other creature that exists in this world. I can certainly sympathize. After all, I am not only concerned with my own continued existence these days, but also that of a certain pair of dragons of whom I am most fond."

Now it is Filia's turn to beam, fingers entwining with those of her demon lover.

"How long have you known this to be true?" Lina demands—her voice quieter than usual.

"For some time. Ever since you defeated Fibrizzo."

"All through the entire Darkstar Campaign?"

"Yes."

"Is that why you were so insistent upon saving our world? Not just so that your race could destroy it, but because you knew destruction isn't your race's ultimate objective in the first place?

"Yes."

"So you've been shitting us for years, feigning a lust for world destruction. Deliberately thwarting yourself when you got too close. You knew I was coming to stop you that day when you were trying to break the Ancient Dragon temple barrier for the final Darkstar weapon, to take it to Zelas."

"Heh. Yes. Yes, Lina, I knew you were going to come jump on my head. You're not a goddess of subtlety. It DID hurt, though, if that helps you feel better."

Lina shakes her head slowly, grinning, unable to retain her rage at Xellos when her admiration of his cunning so greatly eclipses that rage. "Damn. Ha."

"So what does this implicate for you, Xellos?" Luna croons. Her own maroon eyes are just as intense as those of her younger sibling.

"Well. I am no stranger to mixed loyalties, and the concept of being in on one of the fundamental secrets of the universe that even the mazoku and shinzoku don't know…heh, I admit it tickled my fancy incredibly. L-Sama, heh, wellll…"

"Oh, gods damn it. Here comes the gloating," Zelgadiss mumbles from his arm-cushion.

Xellos grins fangily. "Ahah. Yes well. L-Sama would gain an incredibly capable and subtle agent in this world to prevent her from needing to be disturbed by such things as what happened with Fibrizzo again. Hence this." He dangles his golden necklace, with the L and the sun, and the woman's tendrils of hair, in front of their eyes.

"You mean to tell me, that when word of this secret spreads to Shabranigdo's children, the mazoku lords, the war between the gods and monsters may come to an END?" Luna, for the first time in her life, is breathless.

"One can hope," Xellos replies. He takes a sip of his tea, peeking open one eye. "For many personal reasons," and he smiles a crooked dimpled smile at the sleeping Val, "one can hope."

Filia kisses him. "I've turned him good," she croaks, grinning mischievously and proudly at the rest of the company.

"I am not rising to that bait," Xellos grumbles back at her. "Anyway, you know better."

"One can hope," she quips, turning his own words against him. Her tail wraps around his arm, the tip tickling his nose.

"Jeez. Woman. You're good." He pretends to bite at that tail-tip, and then he cackles. "But no. As a priest of L-Sama, I TRANSCEND such petty discriminations as 'good' and 'evil.' " The glimmer in his eye suggests he is still joking as well. "What am I really? Sore wa himitsu desu. Heh."

"Sore wa my ass," Zelgadiss grunts.

"What will Zelas do?" Amelia is the one to timidly ask this question.

"She will be ready to make dialogues with the agents of Ceiphied soon, I wager," Luna mutters, stroking her chin. "Yes. This will be an exciting new age, whatever happens."

"I think you are correct, Dame Inverse," Xellos nods. "I believe, if I may entertain a metaphor, that the high noon battle has been fought, that twilight has come, and it's time to turn out all the lights, and rest."

"Not the night light." Val, suddenly awake, yawns, stretches, and climbs over his mom's arms, into his dad's. He smiles, burrowing down.

Filia looks like she might explode into a thousand little maternal rainbows at any instant.

"You think so, Siddhartha?" Xellos smirks at his persistent little companion, hoisting Val higher so that the child can flop against his chest.

All eyes are on this child. This remarkable child, with the power to enhance an infamous monster's reluctance to assist in world destruction. This amazing child.

"Whozat?" This child, Val, yawns. His fingers trace the place on Xellos's chest where he knows, under Xellos's shirt, there is a brand of eternal loyalty, to himself and his mother. Then his hand falls still against that spot.

Xellos chuckles. "Sorry, o great master Valteira, would you prefer Shakyamuni? Or perhaps just Buddha?"

Val giggles. "I don't get it."

"It means you are a visionary, Valteira," Milgasia gently explains. "It means you are an agent of good change. I would have to agree with your father." He exchanges a meaningful glance with Xellos.

Xellos winks at him. "My thanks, Supreme Elder. Heh."

"Oh." Val yawns again.

"Your dad's a weird guy," Lina snickers.

"Nuh uh." Val seizes a lock of Xellos's hair almost viciously.

"Ow, heh." Xellos cocks an eyebrow as his head is yanked down and to the side.

"My dad," the child retorts insistently, "is a perfect dad."

There is only a moment of awed silence before the entire table erupts in a loud "AWWW." Lina grins and clasps her hands together teasingly, Amelia makes the same gesture sincerely, Gourry sends Xellos a thumbs-up, and Zelgadiss rolls his eyes and smiles.

"Here's to a new era!" Luna crows, clinking beer mugs with the company.

"CHEERS!" everyone shouts.

Xellos turns the hue of a tomato. "Damn it," he mutters. But he's grinning so broadly that he resembles the Cheshire Cat. "My child, you are evil."

Val tugs on the hair, as if to assert his powers over his dad. "I AM your son, Xel." Now his little black tail join's Filia's golden tail around the arm of one of the most powerful monsters in their world.

"Insanely logical, too," Xellos cackles. "Good point, little Buddha. I think you win again."

"Of course I win. Coz I have you and mom. Oranges."

"Always," his parents say together. Again, they grin at each other. Again, they kiss, while the rest of the company continue to toast and drink various good things.

"Here's to your life, Val," Xellos breathes his own new toast, with that ancient and knowing and mysterious smile, when their lips pull apart.

He touches a hand to the top of his son's head.

Valteira is already asleep, dreaming only sweet dreams for the first time since his rebirth, with the sunlight that is his mom and the night light that is his dad forever watching over him.