Between Duty and Love

Chapter 4 - Gods and those above

3rd Person POV

 "So no one knows what happened, and the only one that might know disappeared." The pyro archon summarized.

 "Do you really need to be so dramatic?" The hydro archon asked.

 "I do believe that the events that transpired were drastic enough for this kind of reaction." She snapped back.

"Enough." The Tsaritsa finally spoke up.

 "Well, aren't you a little too calm about this?"

 "I'm not calm. I'm just more interested in something else entirely. So yaksha, where is Barbatos?"

 Now all eyes turned to Xiao.

 For the first time, all archons, both new and all had gathered. The odd one out was Xiao, who had been called because of the mark on his neck.

 "He should be in the spirit realm." He said.

 Even as he stood among six gods, he still held his head high, not faltering for even a second.

 "The spirit realm? Why would he go there?" Kusanali asked.

 "Barbatos is a wind spirit." Morax spoke up.

 "Wind spirit? Even then, as one who had ascended to godhood, he should be hated by the rest. That's just how spirits are." As she spoke, the hydro archon saw Xiao falter. He clearly didn't know this piece of information.

 "That is unless his presence here had a meaning from the beginning."

 "What do you mean."

 All eyes were on the Tsaritsa once again, but this time too, she spoke to Xiao.

 "Where is Istaroth?"

 "What?!"

 "Her?!"

 "The God of Time?"

 Her question caused quite a big uproar. The only ones that were somewhat calm were she herself, Raiden Ei, Xiao, and Morax, who was just looking at Xiao questioningly.

 "I don't know."

 "You don't know?"

 "She left saying that she needed to look for her mother." Xiao spoke calmly.

 His calmness, however, did not transfer over to everyone.

 The moment his words dropped they all heard something break, and when they turned around, they found Raiden Ei with tea and powder all over her hand.

 "She said she needed to look for her mother? Why?"

 "An explanation, most probably."

 "An explanation? Is that so..."

 Now all the attention had turned to her.

 To have such a big reaction, she had to know something.

 Ei obviously sensed the underlying question in their gaze and uttered a few shocking words.

 "The one Istaroth calls her mother is highly likely to be Primordial One."

Istaroth's POV

 Among the people I knew, there was one person who could give an answer to my questions.

 Mother.

 We don't really get along, and we definitely don't meet often.