Zelgadis surveyed the forest around him. Where is she? He thought irritably.
"Surprise!" Someone shouted behind Zelgadis, and slapped him on the shoulder.
"Amelia!" Zel shouted. "Don't do that to me again!" The princess looked at Zelgadis with tearful eyes, but the human/golem/Mazuko wasn't buying it. "Now Amelia, don't start crying again." Zelgadis sighed in exasperation. "You're nearly twenty-one years old. You don't need to resort to tears to get your way." Zelgadis chided the young woman. "Have you seen Lina?"
"I thought she was going to meet you here."
"She was, but now, I don't know where she is."
"FIRE BALL!!!" Lina's voice echo through the forest. "Leave him alone! FLARE---"
"Would you stop it you nitwit? I'm not going to hurt him or you!" An equally annoyed female voice shouted at her. Zelgadis turned to Amelia.
"Stay right here." he told the princess sternly. Then he raced to where he heard Lina shouting. Zelgadis looked over at where Gourry sat shaking his head. Lina stood in front of him with her sword drawn, and her eyes blazing with fury. "Lina!" Zelgadis shouted as he too drew his sword. Zel drew his cloak's hood over his head, and made sure his veil covered the lower half of his face.
"Zel stay back, this bitch is mine." Lina growled as she looked at the figure standing before her. She wasn't even carrying a weapon! The cloaked female shook her head.
"Stop this before it gets out of hand." The woman said softly. "I don't want to hurt you."
"Hurt me?" Lina barked and she charged forward. But she slammed into an invisible magical barrier. Lina unsteadily got to her feet.
"Lina!" Gourry cried as he too stood up. The pair both wavered, and tried to walk towards each other. But just as they got when in reaching distance, they both fell to the ground.
"NNNNOOOO!!!!" Zelgadis cried as he ran over to his friends. He checked their pulses, and found them both deeply asleep.
"They are both under a Sleep Spell, they will be alright." A soft voice came from behind Zelgadis. Zel whirled around, and stared into the veiled eyes of the woman who had so efficiently knocked out his friends.
"You." Zel snarled as he jumped to his feet, and brandished his sword. "Fight me witch."
"I am not a witch!" The woman said sharply showing her first sign of temper. "If I had known people were so rude, I would have stayed asleep." The woman muttered under her breath softly, but Zelgadis' sharp ears caught her words none he less. The woman held her right hand in front of her body, and murmured a few words. A sudden blast of wind hit Zelgadis head on. The woman stood in the center of the tempest with her eyes closed. Zelgadis felt his cloak fly from his shoulders and the veil over his face fall to his feet. Suddenly, she woman raised her hand into the air, and her veil and cloths seem to life for a moment, and then ice cold rain fell down from a cloudless sky. "Hopefully that will cool you down." The woman said dryly as she opened her eyes. Behind the veil that covered her face, the woman's eyes widened, and she gasped in shock. She slowly back away as her eyes filled with tears. The woman stumbled over a rock, and fell back. "No." she breathed as she shook her head. "How could you!" Tears trickled down her cheeks, and the woman glared up at the sky. "Damn you Rezo!" the woman shouted as she shook her head so abruptly, the tears flew off of her face and the hood of her cloak slipped off of her head and her long hair blew free from it's confines and drifted around her face. The woman's hair was the most unusual shade of black he had ever seen. Actually it couldn't be qualified as black. It was a strange mixture of gray and charcoal colors. It looked as if someone had applied a shine of silver to her dark gray-black hair. The woman continued to look at Zelgadis unblinkingly. "He did this to you." The woman's question was more a statement.
"Who?" Zelgadis asked softly. "Rezo, the man known as the Red Priest. He did this to you even after he swore upon his staff that he would never subject another person to that kind of torture. Beneath her almost translucent veil, the woman's eyes blazed with such anger and hatred, Zelgadis took a step back. "Where is he? Where is the Red Priest?" The woman grabbed Zelgadis' shoulders in a surprisingly strong grip.
"Why do you want to know?" Zelgadis asked suspiciously.
"Because I am going to kill. I don't care is I have to hand him over to the Hellmaster himself. Rezo will pay for what he has done to you…" the woman trailed off. "And what he did to me." The woman's voice was so soft; Zelgadis could barely hear her. Zelgadis reached out a hand, and ripped the veil off the woman' face. She gasped and instinctively tried to cover her face.
"You aren't fully chimeraen." Zelgadis' tone was almost accusing.
"No, I found a partial cure, but it didn't work all the way."
"How, please tell me where you found this cure?" The woman shook her head and looked Zelgadis strait in the eyes for the first time. Her eyes were an unusual mixture of lavender and gray.
"Trust me on this, the price is too high." The female chimera turned around and wrapped her veil around her face once more. Then she twisted her long hair, and covered it with a hood.
"Wait, at least tell me your name. You are the first chimera I have come across."
"I go by the name Khirah." The woman chanted something softly, and disappeared in a small plume of lavender smoke.
"Khirah." Zelgadis rolled the name around on his tongue. "You and I shall meet again my lady." Zelgadis sat down under a tree and brooded until Lina and Gourry woke up.

Unbeknownst to him, Amelia had watched the incident with the female chimera. So she knows a cure for Zel's curse huh? Amelia silently made her decision, and conjured a small mirror, and scryed until she found the woman named Khirah
"I don't trust her." Amelia mutter to herself, never once stopping to think that jealousy could be clouding her judgement.

Khirah stopped that night in a small grove of trees. She had just gotten her fire going, when she had an uninvited guest stop by.
"So Khirah, you're back in this plane again?" The Trickster Priest asked in honeyed tones. "What a pity." Khirah's eyes narrowed in anger.
"Don't mess with me Mazuko unless you want me to wipe the floors with you?" Xellos laughed.
"I must say, that this realm hasn't been the same since you left. I have never met a person who had the audacity to challenge me especially a mere mortal. Except for that impudent little whelp Zelgadis."
"If you think that I am a mere mortal Xellos, then you are welcome to take a crack at me. But we both know that my powers in shamanism far exceeds you powers in black."
"But that was a long time ago, I have gotten ten times as strong."
"And who's to say I have either?" Khirah sardonically. "Now Xellos, unless you have some message from you master, do leave so I can eat my dinner in peace." Khirah had the pleasure of watching Xellos' eyes flash before he left, and she sat there for a long time and thought about the past day's events First she woke up from a supposed eternal sleep, then she got attacked. And then she met a chimera like herself, and to top it all off, she now had to deal with Xellos. All in all, she had had better days.