Slayers: Chaos

Chaos 18

Slayers: Chaos

Episode 018: Disbelief! Unexpected Revelations

The Seyruun castle's land was noisier than usual with guards running about and Philionel in full king gear giving instructions, and sometimes shouting them across the courtyard. His eyes landed on Lina, whom the gate guards recognized from her numerous frequent visits to the city and did not question when she led her little group into the royal property. "Miss Lina," Phil walked over to her with a stern look upon his face. "I do hope you are not the one to blame." Because when a town was blown up, usually Lina Inverse was involved. Yet this was not only massive property damage, it was a massacre.

"It wasn't me!" Lina immediately defended on automatic. Then she paused and curiously inquired. "What was it that I didn't do?"

King Philionel let out a breath of relief, fully believing in Lina's words. "I'm glad it wasn't you, I figured it couldn't have been. It was too harsh, even for you. A town at the Coastal States was destroyed, there were no survivors."

Silence overtook Lina, Gourry, Filia and Xellos as they pondered on the revelation. "Who did it and why?" Lina inquired, her face growing serious. She knew that trouble was afoot, but she wasn't expecting such a large scale attack, at least not so soon.

"We don't know," Phil confessed with a frown. "Seyruun is making its best effort to rebuild the town in remembrance to those who once lived there, pay our respects to the family members and friends who had dear ones in that town, and overall keep the situation calm. It's only been a little over the year since the world was so dangerously close to ending. People can't take another disaster like that."

"Fear is thick in the air," Filia observed with a serious and perplexed face. Beast Master had not mentioned having intentions of launching such an attack, thus she concluded that this was the doing of someone else.

"Indeed," Phil nodded gravely. "But we can't let our spirits be crushed!" He tried to cheer them up. "How about we go inside and have ourselves a nice meal to recover our energy?"

"Now you're talking!" Lina cheered. Her theories and worries about the disaster were thrown to the back of her mind for now, as food occupied her most prominent thoughts. Since Phil had not made any peculiar comments about Xellos and Filia, Lina assumed that he was informed of their state beforehand, so as to not cause unneeded questions to arise.

As the group was about to head inside the Seyruun castle, Xellos spoke. "Wasn't Luna there?"

The mention of her sister's name made Lina's head turn towards him in alarm, her gaze scanning the area for signs of danger, like a wild animal fueled by adrenaline. "Was Luna where?"

"At the Coastal States," Xellos revealed. "I saw Luna right before my little quarrel with Filia and she said she was heading to the Coastal States. She was invited to a party by a black dragon."

"Luna was there?" Lina mused over what this could mean. It didn't seem right at all. "The timing must be different. Maybe Luna got there and left before it all happened or she decided not to go. Maybe the dragon's party was moved somewhere else, dragons don't go out to human towns all that often anyway." Logically, if the Knight of Ceifeed had been there, the disaster would have been prevented.

"Do you think Luna is alright?" Gourry asked with genuine concern.

"She's fine." The thought of Luna being unable to handle a battle simply did not compute for Lina. "I'm sure there's a logical explanation, we just don't know it yet." Her stomach growled, "and we won't be able to figure it out on empty stomachs, so let's eat!"

While Lina and Gourry walked next to Philionel, talking about what they were looking forward to eating, Xellos and Filia lagged a little behind. They looked at each other analytically with suspicions in their eyes. Perhaps it was time for a report, they both silently mused. Thus, after the meal, they each took a moment alone to update their respective leaders, or at least those who they thought were their leaders, on the overall progress of their journey and the things they had heard.