Lina exited her tent and sat down reasonably close to Zelgadis, who was reading by firelight.

"Hey Zel." She spoke, but he jumped at the address.

"What?!" His airy tenor voice let out a yelp as he slammed the book shut on his thumbs. "OWWW!"

"Here, let me." Gently, Lina clasped his hands between hers and wove a minor healing spell, just enough to kill the pain. A bright scarlet blush spread across the azure face of the chimera, and he quickly jerked back.

"Thanks." Putting a hand to his forehead, he tried to shake the Dis orientation away.

"Zel?" What's wrong?" Worried, she touched his shoulder.

"Nothing, it's just..." With a sigh, he waved away her concern. "Don't worry about it, Lina. Get some rest or something." The quisiness had seeped into his voice now, even though he fought it tooth and nail.

"Zelgadis, are you feeling okay? You look kind of pale."

"I'm fine, Lina, really. You don't have to - " Before he finished his sentence, his slit-pupil eyes rolled back and he surcame to the darkness of the Second Seal.

"Zel!?" Her scream brought Gourry and Ameria running again, but this time, it also summoned a Mazoku Priest who had lost his Trickster's smile.

You wish to be strong, Zelgadis? Hauntingly painful memories flashed through the dark void of the Shamanist's mind.

I'd rather die than join up with Harsh words, hurled insults that battered and bruised him, no matter how hard he tried to ignore them.

Mazoku!

Demon!

Villain!

Vile creature!

Accursed! Each torment so much worse than the last, so very brutal to the heart of glass locked behind the stone.

Heartless. That one... he had acquired that when ruthlessly searching for information on a cure. That one... that one simple word was now ringing in his every being, defining him as what he feared to be most of all. A monster.

"No!" He screamed at the darkness, crying in protest over and over. "NO! I'm not! I... I won't be!" He lashed out at the lightless environment before realizing...

It was a part of him.

The void that choked him, drowned him in it's essence of despair, was a part of him that he had harbored since the transformation.

"No... Please..." Color and light separated from the nothingness, and revealed itself to be a mirror image of himself, right down to the two rock chips by his nose.

"Pathetic." The copy snorted, standing face to face with the original. "You have the power to conquer any kingdom and defeat almost any enemy, but you're too scared and lonely to use it. Just look at the otheres, they use their power for personal gain, but you... you're a monster. You hide everything behind your cold mask of apathy, everything but your desire to become one of them."

"I... I will be one of them again!" Tears welled up in his eyes as he threw a punch at the duplicate, who phased through it as Xellos might have. "I'm not a monster! I have heart... I..."

"You don't even believe yourself." The other smirked. "Your a monster, with the heart of a monster. You've condemned yourself to a hell of your own creation where no one can help you."

And his laughter came as the emptiness flooded...