Xelloss had thought that he would find himself far more in control of things this time around, having no need to show his hand early but what he desired had not changed - and in a way, that was highly unsettling to the mazoku. When he smiled, people trembled for the smile was unsettling and vague in what it promised and those promises were seldom anything that would benefit anyone but Xelloss himself - but when he scowled, the whole of the mazoku race, barring his mistress and the other two Dark Lords tended to take off running.
It was not sexual frustration that he felt, he knew (liar), when it came to the shaman but it was something more. He had been kept busy for ages, had been punished time and time again for what he had done and yet still like a moth to the flame, Xelloss returned over and over to study those blue eyes, tracing his gaze across the stone that curved in dark formations over the blue hide. Rezo had wrought a thing of beauty out of his grandson and sometimes Xelloss could not help but wonder what it was that made Zelgadis so devoted to him even now, years after the death of Aka Houshi Rezo. Jealousy was an ugly thing for any mazoku to feel, but the little ones squabbled it out without hesitation, fighting among one another for the rights to what they wanted.
He was more than they were, bestial things that lesser mazoku could be; it was like comparing the creation of a candle flame to the perfection of a star and Xelloss was the fourth brightest star of his kind, burning bright and strong. Jealousy should not have been within his capacity of emotions at that, but jealous he was of the Shard that had created Zelgadis Graywords and it was enough to make him snort. He was a skilled dissembler, playing off almost everything to everyone and not even his mistress knew everything that went on in that cleverly scheming head of his. Xelloss never lied - but never did he offer the whole truth either most of the time.
But to have been spiteful enough to inflict a blizzard on the young man just so he could sweep him back to his quarters on Wolfpack Island was to say several unkind things about the emotional turmoil the mazoku was undergoing and the simple fact that he was undergoing anything of the sort at all after twelve hundred years and more was enough to make Xelloss nearly have a fit. He was not made to understand emotions in the least and by all means, he knew that feeling them should have been impossible or nearly so. Truth be told, the Beastpriest wasn't entirely unconvinced mazoku could not feel emotions, for how else would they be able to comprehend the more positive range that humans felt which harmed them so, but thinking of that meant thinking of Zelgadis asking if his feeling positive emotions sickened the priest. He had smiled and shrugged and said that it wasn't enough to perturb his health, had smiled through the suspicious looks, but had placated that suspicion by pointing out that unless Zelgadis could display those emotions with the same depth and clarity that Amelia could, Zelgadis' positive feelings wouldn't ever be of concern to his health.
More alarmingly, those emotions never had been of alarm.
Xelloss cursed and kicked at a rock as he sat on the winter-swept shore of the Island, barely feeling the cold he had claimed he didn't want to go out into in order to return Zelgadis to his wintering grounds and the scowl he wore darkened. The young man was impossible - but at the same time, Xelloss couldn't blame him, given how things had been. He had saved his life, only to be yanked out of it by his mistress and she had been wroth in truth by his actions. One little mortal could not be worth the life of her priest-general and Xelloss had been duly punished for what he had done not just at her hands but at Dynast's as well. A small shudder ran over the dark-haired man and he felt the scars rippling the skin of his back twinge. Zelgadis had told him he could appear however he wanted and how Xelloss had smiled and deflected when he had said they were worn for his own purposes as a reminder.
In truth, he was blessedly thankful that Zelgadis could not see him properly on the Astral plane, was thankful that the young man had no idea of where and how to look at the bodies of Mazoku to be able to understand what he was looking at. Xelloss' wounds were not, as he'd played off, completely healed. Miasma still leaked from his flesh, unseen and unnoticed by mortals, but oh his kind noticed it. He was not above baring his teeth at those that gave him sidelong looks, as if wondering if cannibalizing him would be possible. He had no reason to fear them, but the priest was, after all, a wolf - just like his mistress. And like his mistress, Xelloss was not above ripping throats out. There were two worlds he played parts in, two worlds of playing parts and he knew he was not everything that the humans thought he was. Maybe out of them all, Lina saw more than her friends ever would where he was concerned and he knew he scared her.
Sometimes, Xelloss scared himself.
But he was not sure what he wanted Zelgadis to be anymore; formerly, the young man had been but a distraction to indulge himself with, a distraction of pretty eyes and slender, muscled limbs and tasty, tasty emotions. When he had found himself fighting emotions that should not have been, however.. Xelloss regretted that time he had lost when he had rescued his young man from the laboratory in Dynast's lands, regretted what he had damaged and he hated that regret, looked at the rivulet of dark blue emotion entangling his thought process with sheer disgust. Mazoku weren't supposed to know regret. But regret he did and the pain he had caused, he knew, the lack of trust on Zelgadis' behalf - he could not say he did not deserve that lack of trust now. It was wiser to not trust him and be wary than actually even think about it. But he had lost something because of the punishments, something he had been discovering, had just begun to discover, when his mistress had called for him.
He could not say how long she had spent whipping him, peeling his body down to the bone, for monstrous' forms were not permitted in Zelas' realm. She demanded they appear human and as a human, he had been punished. For the first several days, Xelloss had managed to remain glib in the face of her anger, of her rage, and he had never been sure why she had cared so much about this, about what he'd done - but perhaps it was not him that she was angry with but the boy who had managed to become something more than a distraction along the lines. His relationship, if it could even be mockingly called that, with Zelgadis alarmed her. And it was most telling.
It was Dynast, though, who had stripped him down to the very core. He didn't kill Xelloss and had not weakened him, but that recovery had taken far longer than Xelloss was willing to say; for he was still recovering, still feeling the way Dynast had inflicted those hurts upon him. The irony had not escaped Xelloss: he had nearly killed himself trying to save Zelgadis' soul from unraveling due to the experiments done to him and he had in turn been nearly taken apart by his mistress and Dynast for being so foolish as to drop his orders for his own personal gains. How the mighty fell.
Cold winter winds whipped at the shoulder-length hair he was endowed with and Xelloss stood. It was time, it seemed, to go sigh through another awkward evening with his young man. Not even this solace could soothe him and with cheeks and nose made ruddy by the icy, katabatic winds blowing over the shore where icy spray hissed through the half-frozen surf. It was cold indeed, the blizzard he had yanked out of place without thought or care for the weather systems he had impacted. But he had found no answers in his solitude as to what he was to do and to know that he would spend another day of dealing with demands to be returned, to go back, and finding excuses to not do so was not something he desired any longer. He wanted to find resolution, somehow, and return to what they could be.
Ha. Foolish dreams for a foolish man.
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