Slayers: Chaos

Chaos 25

Slayers: Chaos

Episode 025: Tragedy! The Guilt Of A Loss

While the gluttonous duo, Lina and Gourry, focused on eating the accidentally over baked bread, blueberry muffins and cinnamon rolls, Pokota slipped out of Sylphiel's house to search for her. Xellos didn't have much else to do, so he went out to take a look around Sairaag.

Xellos walked through the gloomy foggy atmosphere. A few merchants had ventured out and were halfheartedly setting up their products on displays in booths in the marketplace. A few shop owners had opened their businesses' doors and sat behind deserted counters leaning on their elbows with the same lazy expressions. It was amazing how a change in the weather could give or take away stamina. It wasn't so much a matter of the temperature, but the mood of the day. It was a purely emotional reaction that affected the core functionalities of those beings called humans in more powerful ways than it should be physically possible.

Xellos made it to the outskirts of town and curiously approached the reviving Flagoon. He heard the echo of a female voice and became more intrigued about what was going on in the cavern. He saw an umbrella near the cavity's entrance that had been set aside and a few more paces deeper in, a basket carelessly thrown on the ground as if the one previously carrying it was in a hurry.

"Medicine! Medicine!" Filia teleported suddenly, making Xellos take an instinctual step back away from the basket. The monster spotted the basket and hurried to pick it up. While healing magic closed wounds and provided energy for the body to fight off diseases, it couldn't heal what the body was unable to heal on its own. It wasn't a cure for an illness, it was healing, it sped up the process and gave the body some help. Yet if the body could not produce what was needed naturally, with healing magic it still wouldn't.

"Filia?" Xellos' perplexed voice made Filia lift her eyes from the basket she was rummaging through to look at him. "What's going on?"

"I don't have time for you now raw garbage," Filia snapped. She found what she was looking for in the basket and shoved the basket and the rest of its contents into Xellos' arms, just because he was there. "Amelia is giving birth a little way that way." She pointed her finger towards the deeper corridors of the cavern. "So don't go in there!" She warned threateningly. "The only man allowed in there right now is Zelgadis, no one else, got it?"

Xellos nodded slowly, caught off guard by the sudden revelation, "got it..." He knew that Zelgadis was hiding something, but he didn't expect it to be the approaching arrival of a child.

"You better." With one last glare of distrust directed at Xellos, Filia teleported once again and was gone from his line of sight, presumably back to the cave chamber where the birth was taking place.

xoxox xox xoxox

Meanwhile, Pokota had asked around town, but no one had seen Sylphiel that morning. A few people mentioned that she was tending to a patient near the old Flagoon and might have gone there. Using that as a clue, Pokota headed there. He arrived at Flagoon a short while after Xellos, having taken his time to ask and search around town. He entered and saw the umbrella which Xellos had seen not long ago. A short way deeper in, Pokota saw Xellos sitting on the ground with basket next to him. A woman's pained screams echoed, but all that Xellos did was calmly eat a sandwich he had retrieved from the basket.

"Xellos!" Pokota accused, wondering if he should just ignore the golden dragon, who used to be a monster, and simply rush in to see what the yelling was about. "How could you just be sitting there eating with all that screaming? What's going on?" Another shout followed and Pokota started running towards the next chamber.

"Stop!" Xellos called out.

The Taforashia prince reluctantly halted his rush and glared back at the golden dragon with urgency. "What's going on?" He once again demanded to know.