The Cure

Line-art phase of a colored fanart.

When I began this work the intention was to submit it as one piece of two to a LiveJournal community called TheSlayers. A huge number of talented fanartists and fanfiction authors are sending two works per person in a published book that they will be sending to Hajime Kanzaka himself this July. For various reasons, I am no longer participating in this project, which I suppose saddens me, but life goes on.

The subject of this drawing is the cure that can be found even while the body is still diseased. This is a subject with deep personal resonance for me.

Rezo Greywers was a blind sage, priest, and scientist who traveled the world healing all manner of illness. But perhaps because evil gains most by targeting and breaking good people, a demon possessed him from birth, sleeping until he was far older. Over a century after his birth, while his soul was under siege by the worst and strongest demon in the world, Rezo (back of image) turned Zelgadiss (front of image) into a chimera, willfully misreading the love and devotion of his great-grandson as consent to use him in an experiment to cure his sealed-shut blind eyes.

It turned out later that Rezo's body was responding to the demon god Shabranigdo's presence inside it, and sealing his own eyes shut, as doing so was some kind of auto-immune response that kept the demon god dormant inside him. Shabranigdo could only escape if Rezo overrode his own body and opened his eyes, so Shabranigdo made Rezo obsessed with that goal in order to escape out of him. Zelgadiss, Rezo's only surviving family, was the obstacle to this goal, the only person or thing that Rezo might consider more important than sight. So Shabranigdo compelled Rezo to betray Zelgadiss in this painful fashion, successfully alienating a previously idyllic father-son bond. As it later turned out, Rezo didn't even know how to reverse Zelgadiss's transformation to a chimera.

Rezo paid for caving to the demon god's wishes, dying twice a martyr helping the heroes of the Slayers storyline kill Shabranigdo when the demon god was born out of him. The second time Rezo died, in the manga, his dying words were to tell Zelgadiss "the light of you...and your friends" embodied the light his eyes had always wished to see. In the anime, the sacrificial, selfless nature of Rezo's intentions this time around was made clear, Zelgadiss realized the magnitude of Rezo's suffering and resistance before the demon god drove him to madness. His companion Lina said "Aren't parents great?", Zelgadiss whispered "Yeah, that might be," and in response his companion and love interest Amelia asked "what about Rezo-sama?" With a soft sweet smile Zelgadiss simply nodded, looked to the sky, and said, "yeah, it's fine."

This was a moment of forgiveness, and to my mind, it was a moment of liberation from within the cage of Zelgadiss's cursed body. Unlike his great-grandfather, who wasted so much of his life obsessed with curing his body, Zelgadiss was granted the gift of not making the same mistake. I envision this reconciliation with his beloved father figure and spiritual guide did a great deal to heal the scars previously inflicted, scars far more profound that his stone skin.

For this reason I draw the spirit of Rezo hugging Zelgadiss, in humble contrition and tears, while Zelgadiss, still a chimera, nevertheless feels a freedom as if the rocks and wires and blow demon imprisoning his body are actually lifting away.

I hope you enjoy this. When it is done it will probably be my coup de grace image of this father-son duo. More than anything else, I wish they'd had a chance to reconcile without Rezo dying. In my world, Rezo resurrects a second time, without any Shabranigdo to battle and be tormented by. Who knows? Maybe someday. One can only hope.

Slayers (c) Hajime Kanzaka, JC Staff, Funimation.