The New King

Chapter 9: The World Goes Round, Sometimes Too Fast

The morning was calm, somewhat, for the young king today. The guards were finally back to training at a decent pace, Claudia has gotten very good at being high mage, and Viren is still whining about being in the dungeon.

So, all in all, it was pretty good. Pip was more annoying than usual, but he can deal with it if it means he was distracted from the elf situation.

He still can't find those elves, no matter how hard he tries, or how many scouts he sends, it doesn't matter, it's like they fell off the face of the earth!

But no matter, he has a kingdom and pets to take care of after all! Pip is a normal occurrence these days, but Bait normally likes to hide in the secret passages nowadays.

It must remind him of Ezran, Callum could understand that. He misses his brother too, they were both just processing it differently.

But Callum can't hole himself up in the walls, he has a kingdom to run, and an elf to try and understand.
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Recently, Pip seems to have gained a bird friend, and it now crashes into his window often to visit Pip. After attempting to deliver a letter from the dragon queen, the bird had recently recovered from flying into a palace window and had become a menace. So yes, of course, Pip had made friends with the phoenix.

This has caused the young king to always keep one of his windows slightly ajar, so as to not harm the bird further. Opeli has taken to calling the bird "Tik". Tik has become a constant near Opeli, nearly always following the advisor, and when not, playing with Pip.

This was one of those times. She had recently entered Callums' room while he was doing paperwork, and practically jumped at Pip, knocking the songbird off of his post near the king's desk. The two Xadian birds had started to cause a ruckus in the king's chambers, so he had opened the window more, and they immediately flew outside, leaving the king to his own devices yet again.

He may soon regret letting them out of his sight, but he could care less about guards getting harassed by the royal birds now. The first stone the Dragon Queen had sent was his focus, paperwork finished mere minutes ago.

He had confirmed that it was in fact a primal stone in a less than preferable way, as in setting a chair on fire after asking Claudia if he said one of her spells right while holding the small object. He no longer has the chair.
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He had been doing research on dragon eggs recently, as to check if they were supposed to take this long to hatch. Many ancient texts mentioned that it could take centuries, and others say that it needs the right conditions, which happened to be a giant storm.

He had been contemplating if it was a good idea to try and hatch the thing, seeing as though if it just sat collecting dust, it would be doing the exact same thing Viren did, but if he was to hatch it, that would mean he would have to either find a storm that big or cause one.

If he tried to find one, he would have to leave the palace in the hands of a regent, and it may take longer than he should be gone, but if he caused one, he would need to get far away from civilization, still leaving a regent, just for a shorter amount of time.

He doesn't even know if it would work, and he could die in the process. All in all, he would need to think about it more. But for now, he had to go back to find out who let the elves out.
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Pip and Tik apparently know how to rile up guards, because Soren had brought in the two creatures, complaining about how they interrupted the training of the guard. The captain had walked in with burnt hair, and the king could see a few guards behind Soren with more burns and scratches, so he could assume the birds tried to fight them and won. He would need to give them treats after this; it was hilarious!

Opeli had come to collect Tik, and Callum told her to give the bird a gift for making such a hilarious situation, which surprised the advisor, but quickly recovered and laughed along with the teen.
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The travel across the Xadian lands was hard, but Runaan had recently recovered, and their pace was quickened now that they didn't have to haul him along. Rayla couldn't wait to get back home to Ethari, she needed to talk to him about some recent revelations she was having.

Killing the prince and king was wrong, but it did allow her something she didn't have before, sympathy for humans, and fear of a king who couldn't hurt them anymore.