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“We’ll go back then! Thanks for housing us!”

Tiamat and Selene saw us off outside the temple, and we left in high spirits. Unlike on our way here, returning was not difficult at all. We just used Flight Magic to go in a straight line back home. I took care of keeping everyone together, Diaria kept the wind away around us, and Ciel did the flying. She wanted to show me her progress as soon as possible. Her control was far more stable, and she could activate it swiftly. She also only needed a handful of words instead of a chant for it, and I could see her not needing that with a bit more practice.

“Let’s go!”

The two dragons quickly turned small like peas behind us while I waved at them, and Ciel vigorously accelerated further, mountains passing below us at incredible speed. Her speed was on a whole different level, compared to how she was before her training with Selene.

“This is amazing, Ciel! You’ve gotten so fast!”
“I’m surprised too, actually. I didn’t think it would be this different.”

Karin praised her progress, and Ciel replied humbly, but she smiled brightly, unable to hide her happiness. Though anyone would be happy noticing they had gotten so much more powerful. I also could not help smiling, seeing her reaction.

Together with Diaria’s assistance, it took Ciel two days to carry us all the way to Surfour. During the latter half she did get tired and struggled a little, but she is not so weak as to complain and cry about that. I tried offering to help too, but she refused and kept moving on until we reached our destination.

“We’re backkk!”
“We’ve only been away for one month, but somehow it feels like it was so much more time.”
“Let’s just go back home and rest. It wasn’t really comfortable to sleep there, so I just want to pass out for an entire day.”

We landed at the entrance of the city. There was a large crowd of people waiting to hand in their paperwork to enter, and they all turned to stare at us, since seeing someone use Flight Magic was very rare. Soon after a guard pushed his way through them and approached us.

“Hello, gatekeeper. It’s been a while.”
“It has, indeed…anyway, there’s no time for chit-chatting right now! You haven’t heard?”
“?”

Not understanding why he looked so agitated, all of us tilted our heads. He really got impatient seeing our clueless faces, so he just took my arm and dragged all of us into the city.

“W-wait, what’s going on? What happened?”
“You shouldn’t be here. Just follow me.”

The people lining up looked bothered seeing us get inside, but the gatekeeper ignored them and led us away from crowded streets. He walked through alleys and vacant backstreets, until he stopped at a place with little onlookers.

“It should be safe here…hopefully.”

He looked around carefully as he said that. We let ourselves get dragged here just to go with the flow, but now I really wanted to know what had happened.

“Tell us, what happened? Did we do something?”
“No, you had nothing to do with it, and I doubt the citizens of Surfour have anything to say against you. But a lot of people came lately that would think otherwise.”
“…What do you mean?”
“Let me explain from the start. It happened around one month ago I’d say? Just a bit of time after you left on your trip.”

Basically, soon after we left to train at Dragon’s Nest, there was a large political disturbance in the center of Bordaule, basically the capital. An insurrection led by the crown prince, Stied. He claimed the king’s health had deteriorated so he was acting in his place, but the king had been seen in good health just days before, so having him shut away suddenly made everyone think it was an insurrection so Stied could have control of the country. Obviously prince Magna opposed it, but Stied’s motivation was more relentless than he expected, committing unthinkable atrocities without qualms.

“I wasn’t in the capital so I don’t know the exact details, but apparently Prince Magna was killed. Stied answered with merciless violence against anyone who opposed him, and I hear a lot of other people died too, nobles and commoners of the capital alike.”
“…”

Everyone there looked at Luvias with worry. She was silent, struggling to understand everything she had heard, her face drained of color. I was shocked too, a month ago no one would have expected things to take a turn like that. I could only imagine her emotions, trying to understand how so much happened in the time we were away.

“But there should have been a lot of people opposed, right?”

Ciel asked. She was right, everyone knew there was an internal power struggle between Magna and Stied, both of which had roughly the same amount of supporters. Magna’s side would never let that go down. If Stied used force, they would pick arms too, they had to.