Wakfu
Worthy of the Crown
Chapter Nine
Shame
"Whatever is begun in anger, ends in shame."
-Benjamin Franklin
Yugo flew like lightning, faster than a thought, faster than time. Stasis blasts filled the air, but they had no more chance of hitting him than an army of Cras aiming at a mosquito. His friends, though, they were the ones at risk. With one lucky shot, they could disappear, their presence ripped from his mind like his heart from his chest. He wouldn't let that happen. He would not let that happen!
He'd have to make Adale stop. He couldn't just ask him, he'd have to terrify him. The whole reason they were on this quest was because the World of Twelve was afraid of what his people could do. Well, maybe they should be afraid.
Prince Adale still sat on the beach, mildly annoyed at the inconvenience of the ordeal. How dare he? How dare he sit in comfort, sipping his tea while people died? They're not dead yet, Yugo reminded himself. Not yet, not ever!
The guards didn't have time to react, the prince barely had time to notice before Yugo bowled into him, hurtling both of them into the sand. "Call them off!" he shouted, grabbing the man by the collar.
The prince blinked, disorientated, focusing on Yugo on top of him, realizing who he was. "Stand down," he ordered his men. "You're likely to kill both of us if you fire." His guards lowered their weapons. Yugo barely noticed them.
"Not them, them!" he said, pointing at the ships. "Tell them to stop firing at my friends before they kill someone!"
"And I suppose you'll kill me if I don't?" the prince sneered. "I don't know if you've thought this far ahead, boy, but if you kill me, there won't be enough dust left of you to make a man sneeze."
Yugo screamed and blasted a nearby Steamflex with a Wakfu beam. Wakfu wasn't as destructive as Stasis, but he could carve through stone when he wanted to. "Listen to me, Prince Adale. I will know the exact instant when my friends die, the exact instant!" He still remembered that moment in Nox's clock when he felt Pinpin die. He wouldn't let that happen again. "But I don't know what I'll do next. You can end this right now. No one has to die, Adale. Call—them—off."
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Death rained. The essence of death, destruction, chaos, and entropy filled the sky. The captain steered the ship and Adamai maintained a shield to block the Stasis blasts. Amalia watched, feeling useless. Afraid, too, that they could all die at any moment, but mostly useless.
A blast crashed into Adamai's shield, but instead of stopping, the forcefield shattered and the beam tore through the ship's hull. Adamai screamed and collapsed on the deck. He didn't move.
"Captain!" Amalia called. "We're hit! We're taking water!"
"I'm busy!" the captain called back from the steering wheel. "Fix it!"
She ran over to Admai. "Wake up!" she said. "I know we never really got along, but the captain really needs your help right now." The dragon groaned, but his eyes didn't open. Amalia looked down through the hole. It was only a few feet wide, but water poured through fast. If she could find a way to plug it...but she didn't have many plants that could handle saltwater. But she did have...
She grabbed her doll and jumped overboard. The flow of the water dragged her through the hole, and when it was half way through, she had her doll inflate, clogging it. The doll flailed its oversized limbs, but the water stopped pouring in. Amalia sputtered for breath, reached out, and found the second thing she was looking for.
Seaweed.
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Children have no capacity for violence. That was what Prince Adale's father, the king of New Sufokia, always said. They are free to rant with anger because there's nothing they can do with it. An adult can nurture his anger with cunning and patience, but the anger of a child is as vast and insubstantial as a cloud.
But looking up at the angry child standing over him, he remembered that clouds are full of lightning.
And lightning only needs to strike once.
"Give the order," Adale said. "Cease fire."
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Adamai woke up with the sort of headache you get after giving yourself brain surgery with a sledgehammer. The sky was clear. That was important. He couldn't remember why, but it was good. He yelped when he saw that the entire boat was covered in seaweed.
"Yikes! How long have I been asleep?"
"Huh, you're up," Amalia noted. "All good things come to an end, I suppose."
Adamai ignored her. The throbbing in his head was way more irritating than she was. "We escaped," he realized. "What happened?"
"Oh, you took a nap in the middle of the fight, and I ended up having to repair the ship," Amalia said offhandedly.
"If I hadn't lasted for as long as I did, there wouldn't be enough ship to repair. But I'm glad you finally found your calling as a carpenter."
"You were both admirable," the captain intervened. "If it weren't for you two, my ship would be at the bottom of the ocean. You have my gratitude."
Adamai snorted at the compliment. "Yugo's the one who saved us. All we did was buy him time."
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"You got what you wanted," Adale said stiffly. "Now, kindly get off my island." He stood up slowly. Yugo didn't stop him. Standing up seemed like a terrible reason to kill someone.
Yugo realized that he was out of his depth. He never thought that he'd end up in a hostage situation, and definitely not on the aggressor's side. "Not yet," he said. "If I leave, you might send your ships back after them. I have to give my friends time for you to lose track of them."
The prince rolled his eyes, annoyed at the inconvenience. "Give us some space," he ordered his men. "You're making the boy nervous and twitchy." The soldiers backed away, and Adale turned back to Yugo. "You may stay if you must, but I have work to do. I hope you don't mind if I sit down."
What would a real hostage taker do in this situation? "Um, okay, I guess."
The prince ordered a new cape that wasn't dirty and called for a series of reports to look through, and a cup of tea. "I'd offer you a cup as well," Adale said, "but I imagine you'd decline." Yugo didn't respond. "You know, while I was in that temple of yours, I noticed a painting depicting dragons with a tribe of humans wearing long, colorful hats."
"Those were Eliatropes," Yugo explained. "I told you, dragons are part of my people. The dragon that I'm traveling with, he's my brother."
"Indeed? I'll contemplate the biological mechanics of that another day. Ever since our first meeting I knew you'd be fascinating. Do you remember what you said to me back then?"
"Uh, something about not shooting at Phaeris?" he guessed.
"'I mean you no harm,'" Adale said. He laughed. "I had you surrounded and outnumbered with weapons that you could not possibly have comprehended, and your first words were, 'I mean you no harm.' Most would have apologized and promised to leave, and a bold few would have tried to bluff their way through with empty threats, but you? You tried to reassure me."
"So?" Yugo asked, not getting the joke. "What's your point?"
Adale sipped his tea leisurely. Out of all of them, his position was the most precarious, but if that bothered him, he didn't show it. "There is no point, only observation. Although I might speculate that your arrogance will take you to your grave very soon if you're not careful."
"My arrogance?" Yugo repeated. "I'm not the one who went out of his way to attack Phaeris."
"I was prepared for any possibility," Adale replied. "I believe I have proven as much. And if the dragon proved too powerful, I could have retreated, assuming the beast couldn't swim."
"And if he could?"
He shrugged. "It was a slight, though necessary risk." His expression darkened. "That island was necessary to my people beyond question. For too long have my people been trapped at the bottom of the sea. For too long have we lived beyond the touch of sunlight where a single engineering error could drive us to extinction. For too long have we been cut off from the world that is our home." He relaxed suddenly and smiled. "But that's not something I expect you to understand."
Yugo opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. He understood, far more than he wanted to. He wasn't a boy talking to a prince, he was in a meeting between the champions of two nations. And knowing what drove the man, did he really want to fight him? Could he? "We don't have to be enemies," he said finally.
Adale set down his cup and laughed mirthlessly, shaking his head. "Yes, Yugo, we do."
"What? Why? If this is about what happened to your ship—"
"This isn't about what you've done, it's about what you are, and what I am." The setting sun cast long shadows across his face and the air grew chill. "There are dragons older than mankind, and they still think this world is theirs. They lurk in their caves and on obscure islands, hoarding treasure like an Enutrof and care nothing for the human race beyond the rare virgin sacrifice."
"But no matter what power they accumulate in their lives, it dies with them," he continued. "The power of my people lasts forever. What one Sufokian scientist discovers, a thousand scholars can learn. We innovate, we improve, we bury history under the mountain of progress."
"The dragons, your people, are of the past."
"We are the future."
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The captain steered the ship into the shore of Moon Island. It was a miracle that the ship didn't sink or fall apart entirely. They didn't talk much during their trip back. Amalia spent the whole time looking back at Oma Island, where Yugo had surrounded himself with an entire hostile army. Adamai assured her that Yugo was fine, but he kept on looking back all the same as well.
"They don't seem to be following us," the captain noted. "But I'd like to get my ship patched up and away from here as soon as possible."
"I'll get help," Amalia offered. "We have friends on this island."
"I remember you calling the Sufokians your friends," the captain said.
"Our friends here are nothing like those guys," Amalia said. "They're a tribe of Sadida Kannibals who worship a monkey with a magic hammer."
The captain shook her head. "I don't know how you find these people."
"Well, while you're all working on that," Adamai said, "I'm going to go check on Yugo."
"If anything happened to him..." It was Adamai's fault they got in trouble with the Sufokians in the first place.
Adamai snorted. "He's my brother, remember? He's not going to die just because you turn your back on him for five minutes." He jumped off the ship and flew away.
Amalia turned to the captain, who was inspecting the ship. "If I'm not back in half an hour, then I probably got caught up in a spontaneous Sadida monkey party. Don't come looking for me."
As much as she wished she were serious, she doubted she could enjoy herself if her life depended on it. Yugo went and did it again. He left her behind. He'd be back, of course. He might come back half dead and barely able to walk, but he'd come back. And next time they were caught in an impossible situation, he'd be all like, "Hey look! Mortal peril! Last one there's a grouchy gobball!" and he'd race off faster than anyone could keep up with him. And one day he wouldn't come back. And she'd be left behind for good.
A tower shone in the moonlight as it reached up toward the stars. It marked the Kannibal village that she was headed to. It wasn't Yugo's fault that she couldn't keep up. When he got into those little moods of his, no one could. Amalia had her strengths, not in combat, but with people, and on this island, she had connections. And when Yugo came back—he had better—she'd give him a piece of her mind that he wouldn't forget.
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No one saw a white scaraleaf in the night sky, and even if they saw Adamai, they wouldn't be able to hit him. The Sufokian fleet had such bad aim, they couldn't consistently hit anything smaller than a mountain, although it might take something that size to threaten them. No, his own safety was the last thing Adamai was worried about at the moment.
Yugo was fine. Well, alive, at least. His Wakfu hadn't left the world, and he didn't seem to be in great pain. Adamai could feel his brother's presence in the back of his mind, guiding him like a compass.
It wasn't his fault, no matter what Amalia had said. If you were being shot at with incredibly large guns, then whose fault was it? Obviously, the people with the incredibly large guns. And so what if he was a bit blunt with the snobby little human? Wisdom, not power, demands respect, and that bunch of humans had proven little beyond their own foolishness. And now they had his brother.
How had that happened? He was the dragon brother, raised by Grougaloragran the Eternal. Grougal protected his brother with extreme prejudice, but when Adamai tried, he was lucky if he only got stuck as a tofu for a day. What was wrong with him? Why was it always Yugo who saved everyone?
He found Yugo standing on the beach surrounded by torches. And armed soldiers. The prince himself sat on a chair next to him with hardly a concern in the world. Odd. Yugo's hands weren't tied, so he wasn't a prisoner, but he wasn't fighting either. He was just standing there.
Adamai turned into his human shape that was more adept at magic and fell to the ground next to his brother, throwing up a shield to block the Stasis rifles.
"Stop!" the prince yelled to his soldiers. "What did I say about shooting at me? I know you think you're good enough to hit something next to me, but you are not. You, you, and—who else fired? Was it you or you? Be honest. It was you?—and you will all report to General Mofette when your shifts are over for discipline."
The three soldiers mumbled something inaudible. "What was that?" the prince asked.
"Yes, your Majesty," they said in unison.
"And Frida? I trust you to come up with something...appropriate."
The General replied from an open Steamflex on the outside of the ring of soldiers. "With pleasure, Prince Adale."
"And nonlethal."
She hesitated and her shoulders slumped a bit. "Yes your Majesty."
Yugo turned to his brother. "Did everyone make it out safely?"
"Ieko s'naweerveh tub, piesh dab neh s'pish uthz."
Yugo mouthed the draconic words slowly, translating them. "Well that's good. You can tell me the rest on the way back."
"You are leaving?" Adale asked. "Excellent. As pleasant as this ordeal has been, I cordially invite you to get off my island and never return."
Adamai snorted. "You couldn't pay me to come back here." He turned into a Scaraleaf and Yugo jumped on his back.
"I'm sorry it turned out like this," Yugo said to Adale.
The prince stood up, turned his back on them, and left without a word. The brothers flew.
"Keep an eye on their guns," Admai instructed. "You don't need good aim to be lucky."
"They won't fire," Yugo assured him, but he stayed alert all the same. "Hey, Ad, what's a virgin sacrifice?"
A what? "It's, um, a Sacrier marriage ritual," he said.
"You sure?"
"Pretty sure. Why?"
Yugo shrugged. "No reason. I get the feeling Adale doesn't know much about dragons."
They reached Moon Island, a black crescent silhouette in a sea of reflected stars, and landed by the ship where several masked Sadidas were repairing it. Yugo spotted the Captain, jumped off of Adamai's back, and landed on the ship.
"Captain! You made it! How's the ship?"
"I had a feeling you'd turn up alive, Yugo," the Captain replied. "And the ship's fine. She just got a scratch, nothing more."
Yugo peered down through a hole in the deck that a group of Sadidas were fixing. It was too dark to see, but he suspected that it went all the way down through the hull. "Just a scratch? There's a hole through it!"
"We've been through worse," the Captain replied flippantly. "Amalia was worried that the Sufokians might catch up with us, so these Kannibal people offered to work through the night to get it fixed by morning. Honestly, I think I'd rather face one real sea monster than a fleet of mechanical ones."
"Unlikely," Adamai said. "Grougaloragran would have torn the ship in half on principle, and then decided if he trusted us on his island."
"Grougal only did that once," Yugo protested. "And you weren't even with us back then."
Adamai snorted. "And I bet you think that your ship was the only one to sail there."
"Anyway," Yugo said. "Have you seen Amalia around here?"
"Yeah, she went that way towards that ridiculously tall totem over there with a Kannibal named Focus or something."
"You mean Fucus?"
The Captain shrugged. "Sure."
"Botan Fucus, he's the chief," Yugo said.
"Really? I thought the monkey was the chief."
"No, the monkey's their god. Botan Fucus is their chief."
"Well, that does make a bit more sense," she conceded. "No, wait, it doesn't, but that doesn't matter. You should go see Amalia. She seemed pretty worried about you."
Yugo frowned. She was worried about him? Why? He wasn't the one being shot at. "Alright, I'll see you later then." He waved goodbye and ran off into the woods. Adamai followed, and soon they ran into Amalia walking side by side with a local Sadida.
Az darted into the air, crashed into Yugo's face, and fell into his pocket. Yugo laughed. "Did you miss me, buddy?" In response, Az jumped out of his pocket, flew around his head a few times, and dove back in. Yugo turned to the Kannibal. "Are you Botan?" he asked. "It's hard to tell by just your mask."
The masked man nodded. "It is I, Yugo. On behalf of the tribe, I welcome you once more to our island."
"Thank you for offering to fix our ship again," Yugo replied politely.
"A repaired ship is nothing compared to what you and your friends have done for mine. If you had not helped free us from Willow's tyranny, we never would have survived the following scourge."
"Scourge?" Yugo repeated. "What happened?"
"As I was telling Princess Amalia just now, shortly after you left, we were attacked. They were like a swarm of locusts made of steel, draining the life itself from the island. We held them off as best we could, but in the end they left on their own accord."
Adamai nodded. "Those must have been Noxines. We fought their master when he attacked the Tree of LIfe. You don't have to worry about them coming back. He got what he deserved, right, Yugo?"
Yugo shuffled uncomfortably. "I can't say what anyone deserves, but he won't be coming back." Amalia hadn't spoken since they got back. She just stood there like a statue. "Hey, Amalia, are you alright?"
"Chief Fucus?" she said. "Could you go on ahead? I'll catch up later."
"As you wish, Princess Amalia." The chief continued on his path, leaving the three of them alone.
"Amalia? Is something wrong?"
Amalia took a deep, calming breath. Then she screamed. "WHAT IN SADIDA'S NAME WERE YOU THINKING!"
"Uh, what?"
"Is something wrong? Yes, something's wrong! What's wrong is that you tried to get yourself killed again! You can't do that, Yugo. You're not invincible."
"But—"
"No buts! Never do that again! Promise me that you will never do that again!"
"I can't!" Yugo blurted out. "I promised your dad already that I'd look after you, and I saw one way to get everyone out of there alive, and I took it."
Amalia stopped dead. "You...promised my dad...that you...would look after...me." She palmed her face and groaned. "Darn it, Yugo, do you know what this means?"
"Uh, that your dad cares?"
"All my life, I've always had a chaperone, a body guard, a baby sitter. I thought that this was my chance to finally leave home without one. It's bad enough to be stuck with a baby sitter when you're nearly fifteen years old. It's even worse when the baby sitter is younger than you.
She turned and walked off into the forest. Yugo didn't follow her. He plopped down on the ground and stared into the empty shadows.
"You know, there's something that I've always liked about that girl," Adamai said lightly. "Oh, wait, never mind. No there isn't." Yugo didn't even crack a smile, so he tried again. "She'll come around. Tomorrow morning, she'll realized the irony of acting like a child for being given a baby sitter, and she'll—"
"It's not that," Yugo said. "She was worried about me. You can't blame someone for caring."
Adamai disagreed, but he didn't' press the point. "So what is it?"
Yugo looked at him with sad, worried eyes. "I convinced Adale to stop firing at you by threatening him. I told him that if any of you died, I'd kill him."
What's wrong with that? Adamai almost asked him that, but he stopped himself just in time. They were different, not just in who they were, but who they wanted to be. "Well congratulations," he said instead. "You told a lie. I didn't think you had it in you."
"But that's just the thing," Yugo protested. "I don't think I was lying."
"You can tell it's a good lie if you manage to fool yourself." Yugo gave him a flat look, so he decided to pull back a bit. "Look, if you don't believe me, we can test this scientifically."
He scanned the woods for suitable prey, jumped into some bushes, and came back with a frantic gerbil. He handed it to Yugo. The creature panicked for a bit, then calmed down in the crook of the boy's arm.
"Now, I want you to kill it," Adamai instructed.
Yugo looked up in shock. "What? Why?"
"For science. Let's pretend, for the sake of the experiment, that this is an evil gerbil. It will kill your Tofu, your friends, and destroy this entire world unless you kill it first."
Yugo looked down at the small creature. "I can't."
"Why not? It will grow old and die in a few years, it has no intelligence compared to even a human, no imagination to dream. If you snapped its neck, who would care?"
"I won't!"
"And yet you think you can kill a man."
"That's different!"
"Yes," Adamai agreed. "By several orders of magnitude. I know you were upset. If something happened, you might have handed out a few bruises, maybe sunk a ship, but you wouldn't have killed anyone. You like humans too much. I doubt you could kill one if your life depended on it." Yugo didn't seem to agree, but he didn't argue either. "Well, get some sleep. We still have a lot to do tomorrow." Adamai turned and walked into the night, leaving his brother to work out thoughts that only he could deal with.
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a/n Yugo's response to all this will come in the next chapter. As usual, you telling me what you think of my story is the most effective way of me knowing what you think of my story. The beginning quote was a toss up between Franklin and two others. The others included Magneto's line from the X-Men, "We are the future, Charles, not them. They no longer matter." Also there was Hamlet's "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an Angel! In apprehension how like a god!"
I also spent a lot of time editing Suricatessen's story, "Kings and Shadows." If you haven't heard of it, I'd strongly recommend looking it up.
