Sight Through Spirit

Another Slayers fanfiction by A. Stitt ("AmberPalette")

Disclaimer: I do not own Rezo Greywers, Shabranigdo, Zelgadiss Greywers, Amelia Wil Teszla Seyruun, Ozer, Xelloss Metallium, Hellmaster Fibrizo, or any of the other characters of the anime and manga "The Slayers." These are the property of Hajime Kanzaka.

Most of my Slayers fanfiction centers on Xelloss and his love/hate interest from the third season of Slayers, Filia Ul Copt. But this time I wanted to write something different. After watching the first 13 episodes of the fourth season of Slayers, "Slayers Revolution," I became aware of how fascinating and tragic the character Rezo the Red Priest is. I decided to take a crack at a fiction surrounding his mysterious origins, his descent from sainthood to madness, and his hopeful redemption. Because the fourth season suggests that Rezo is, at least in soul-form, still alive, when long thought dead, I realized this character has again become salient to the current fandom.

I owe great thanks to Mallory Bellinghausen, Roxy Cybelle Gil, and Elise Nishikawa for the brilliant Slayers rpgs which inspired this fanfiction and encouraged it to continue.

Read and enjoy!

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Prologue

In the absence of martyrs there is the presence of thieves
Who only want to rob you blind, they steal away innocence and peace.
And I know they are wrong when they say I am strong
as the darkness covers me.
~Jennifer Knapp

"Faith is as fragile as glass." ~King Mvemba Nzinga, who became Alfonso I, letter to King Joao III of Portugal, 1526.

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He knows that sainthood is a lie. Because hate has visited him and wrenched him out like a bloody washcloth and left him stained. Like the Red that makes his name famous. He knows sainthood is a lie, but he wishes to whatever God still acknowledges his existence that he can still aspire to fulfill the expectations that sainthood demands. He wishes to just be good enough.

He shouldn't even be alive. That his veins course with a living pulse is itself an aberration. Lina Inverse killed him. No. That is not wholly accurate. Rather Lina Inverse asked his help to kill the very ma-oh that he rebirthed, the ma-oh embedded in his soul and oozing out his useless eyes…and when he accepted, the process necessitated his death.

Either way…he should be dead. Should be. But shoulds are useless, frustrating things.

In his wanderings through the endless dark mist that is his blindness, Rezo Greywers remembers much that was, and even more that should have been. And the thirst to repent makes his mouth as arid as bits of shredded up cotton.