Chapter 26: Tapestry of Stars

When Yurian returned to the hotpot restaurant, Marianne and the rest of the team were already in their private room, boiling their soup base.

"Yurian, where's Libby?" Marianne asked as her eyes darted around him for the small girl.

"I came back alone. I didn't see her." Yurian replied nonchalantly as he set his coat aside and sat down at the empty seat.

"You left a poor girl wandering around the street alone?" Marianne was shocked as she froze in the midst of putting a pork belly strip into the soup. "That's quite unlike you. What happened?"

"I said, I didn't see her," Yurian said irritably. He nimbly poured a dishful of mushrooms into the soup and pretended to ignore the looks of his friends. "Have you guys packed up the provisions for tomorrow?"

"Yes," Sylvester slowly moved his gaze away from Yurian and drank his orangeade. "Alistair and I placed the provisions onto the carriage and bought some food supplies from this restaurant too. Henrik said that we would have to travel by carriage for quite a distance before reaching one of the nearer spatial gateways, so we should be expecting around two spatial shifts, and the rest will be travelled by carriage, for a total of about five days."

"Five days?" Yurian groaned. 'That's even longer than the time we took to travel from Aureden.'

"There's no choice since Sir Quille only managed to obtain middle class access to the spatial gateways. He will disguise us as his helpers, and we will be travelling with a group of certified mercenaries from the Red Blade Troop." Alistair continued, his chopsticks poking at the ingredients in the hotpot impatiently. "We set off at seven tomorrow."

"We've been talking about this before you arrived, Yurian," Marianne pouted in thought. "When we first left Aureden, Alistair predicted that the Demon Spirit had used most of its powers to escape from its imprisonment. But it should have recovered from its injuries or magical depletion by now. Why hasn't it start to rampage and bring forth disaster in Clomodor? According to Sylvester, his informants have not been receiving irregular reports."

Yurian frowned. "I cannot give you a conclusive judgement. Even as a member from the Omkaran house, our experience with such a powerful and seemingly conscious spirit has been rare. Perhaps it is amassing power for another gimmick. Or it could have been restrained by some other circumstances? According to what the palace envoys said, the Demon Spirit does not have any magical attribute, so technically, it is not bound geographically. I am most worried that it would find its way to a city, where its too dense to see any effect of the Demon Spirit until it's too late."

The table was gloomy for a while.

"Let's eat first then," Alistair finally broke the silence as he placed a pork belly stripe onto Marianne's plate.

Yurian observed their interactions from the side of his eye, as his mind started to wander.

When he got back to his room, Yurian could not fall asleep.

He turned to his side and looked out the window, where the crescent moon rested against the starry night sky.

With the massive numbers of lights in Aureden, it was uncommon to be able to have skies dark enough for all the stars to be seen.

But the skies in Enzak were dark enough for the stars to shine, just like back in Bylonia. Dark enough for him to remove his mask and return to where he belongs.

He stared silently at the tapestry of stars, his thoughts unknown.