Wakfu

Worthy of the Crown

Chapter Eleven

The Return of the King

"Put aside the Ranger. Become who you were born to be."
-J. R. R. Tolkien

The world was white and endless. There was no sensation, no feeling of the floor he stood on, no warmth nor cold, but Yugo shivered all the same. He hated this place.

"Where are we?" Amalia asked.

"Nowhere," Adamaï answered. "It's called the Blank Dimension, but it's nowhere by definition. Nothing for as far as the eye can see."

"It's roomy," Ruel said, stretching. "And clean."

"We won't be here long," Yugo said. "Another portal will open up in a few minutes. Sometimes it takes a while. Time gets funny here, so...oh no." In the distance, Yugo saw a slight spec, the one other person in the whole dimension.

Qilby approached timidly, desperately, his one hand clutching a yellow flower. "Yugo...please."

"Keep your distance, Qilby," Adamaï growled. The dragon bore too many scars to forget the traitor's crimes. "We know what you want and you know you can't leave."

Qilby kept his eyes on Yugo. Yugo wanted to turn away, but he couldn't. He owed him that much. "You can't leave me here!" Qilby begged. "I didn't leave you!" He swallowed hard and choked out in a whisper, "I didn't leave you."

"That's Qilby?" Amalia asked. "What happened to him?"

"Justice," Adamaï replied. "Rounded to the nearest possibility."

"He's starting to look his age," Ruel noted.

"You never wanted to talk about what happened," Amalia said. "I thought...I thought you just killed him."

"Kill me?" Qilby repeated. "Kill me?" He laughed so forcibly it almost sounded like a request.

"It wouldn't do any good," Adamaï explained. "He'd just return to his Dofus and torment his sister until they hatched, and then he'd try to destroy the world again."

"I wouldn't," Qilby protested. "I swear I wouldn't. Please have mercy!"

"Mercy?" Adamaï snapped. "Why don't you look up 'draconian' in the dictionary sometime? And while you're at it, look up 'genocide.' You tried to destroy my world three times, twice with Mechasms, and once with Shushus. You deserve no mercy."

Qilby fell to his knees, his one hand still clutching the flower. "You don't know my curse," he sobbed. "None of you ever knew."

"No," Adamaï admitted. "All I know is that when you were free, my home, my people, and my world were in danger. And now they're not."

A portal opened up next to them, and Qilby eyed it with a desperate hunger. "If you try to follow us," Yugo said, "ten thousand orphans will send you back." Ruel and Amalia went first into the portal, then Adamaï, and Yugo entered last, never taking his eyes off of Qilby, and Qilby never took his eyes off of him.

He didn't care what Qilby deserved. He didn't care about his crimes. But as long as Qilby put everything and everyone he loved at risk, there was little he could afford to give him. That didn't make it any easier, though.

Part of him hoped it never would.

WWW

In the pit, there was nothing. And then there was God. Xelor, once known as Nox, had become more aware of the limits of his near omniscience as those limits continued to diminish. And the concept of a place beyond his realm of cognisance, beyond time, a stagnant world with life without death, it intrigued him.

He had gone back there. Xelor floated in the spot where the portal opened, where reality slowly mended itself. He had gone back to where they were, and if they were there, then she had to be somewhere near there, if she even still existed. And she was the secret to finding them. And as long as he had been alive and ever since he died, it had always been about them.

WWW

Yugo stepped out of nothing into a world forever young. Since his fight with Qilby had first brought him to the small worlds of Emrub, he had returned several times to the Islands of the Mists with Adamaï. He had never gotten used to it. The red-brown dragon, Balthazar, navigated their way, but they were never in any real danger of getting trapped in the Blank Dimension like Qilby. No, what bothered Yugo was that Emrub was the end of his journey.

Ever since he had received the message from Grougaloragran, he had been trying to find his real family. Finding his brother on Oma was only the halfway point. Emrub, with its ten thousand orphaned exiles, was the end.

He had found his people, but not his family. If he had found thousands of little brothers and sisters, he'd have been ecstatic, but instead, he had found a kingdom. No, not even that. When the children saw him, they did not see a king, they saw a savior, and that hope, focused for millennia outside of time, had formed a gap between them larger than any Yugo had shared with his enemies.

"Oh, wow," Amalia whispered, dumbstruck. "Where are...wow."

"Those are a lot of hats," Ruel noted.

The Eliatropes crowded around the portal for a better look, the smallest children on the shoulders of the taller ones. On nearby planetoids, more children gathered to watch them arrive. In the distance, Balthazar floated on a cushion with the Eliacube.

Adamaï rose into the air, beaming with the enthusiasm he always bore when he was surrounded by his people. "People of Emrub, may I present the Brotherhood of the Tofu! Or at least most of them. The green one's Amalia, the grey one's Ruel. They're easy to get mixed up, but you'll get used to it."

"We're what?" Amalia protested reflexively. "Where are we?"

"Emrub," Adamaï explained. "And these are the Eliatrope people."

Yugo watched them look around in wonder as he remembered his own reaction when he first arrived. "This is Locke," he explained, introducing them, "and that's Volten, over there is Raphen, the little one is Bina—"

"I'm not going to remember all of them," Amalia said.

"And the dragon over there is Balthazar. He's pretty much in charge. Hi, Balthazar!"

The brown dragon's scales turned white as he approached them, the Eliacube slowly orbited around the space above his head. "Balthazar welcomes you, and you are free to return any time you need to," he growled. "But this is the first time you have returned in the company of...others."

Amalia took a step back, and Ruel eyed Balthazar and the children warily, as though wishing he had his shovel. The Eliatrope children also watched Yugo's friends with concern that they had never shown Yugo. Of course, they knew Yugo and Adamaï before they came here, albeit past incarnations of the brothers, and they even personally knew Qilby, and hated him for that knowledge. But Sadidas and Enutrofs? Their exodus had happened before the twelve gods had even found their world.

"They're my friends," Yugo said firmly. "If it weren't for them, I wouldn't have gotten anywhere. Besides, there's no rule against them coming here, is there?"

"None that you have made," Balthazar replied. "Balthazar only asks you to be cautious in whom you bring to this sanctuary."

"You can trust them as much as you can trust me," Yugo assured him. Balthazar nodded slowly, satisfied. He had probably examined their auras, too, but you couldn't always judge someone by that. Sometimes good people were tricked into doing terrible things, and being pure evil hadn't stopped Rubilax from helping them save the world, but it didn't hurt to check.

"We're not going to stay here long," Yugo continued. "We got in trouble with some people that we don't want to fight, so we're going to give them time to get tired of looking for us before we go back when their guard is down."

"If you have departed from a place of conflict, Balthazar can send you to a place of safety," the dragon said.

"No no no," Yugo said quickly. "I left Az back in Enutrof, and Amalia had to leave her doll behind so it wouldn't get confiscated. We're fine, really. We just need a place to wait."

WWW

Fortunately, Emrub was designed as a place to wait. At least, that was how Ruel understood it. It wasn't a bad place for waiting, and he had spent more than a month already doing just that. Now, his cell was...cozy. It wasn't nice, but it didn't have forced labor like they did in some of the prisons he'd been incarcerated in. But Emrub was incredible. They had worlds—or "islands," as the kids called them—that he could leap to if he had a running start. And if his hip wasn't bothering him.

"Hey, kid!" he called to a passing Eliatrope. "Have you seen Yugo around here?"

The Eliatrope, a boy with dark brown hair and a yellow hat, looked only a few years younger than Yugo. His eyes began glowing blue and he pointed at the ground. "He's right there. Do you want me to take you to him?"

Ruel followed the boy's finger. Either Yugo was on the other side of the world, or on one of the islands beyond. But he didn't need to talk to Yugo at all. What interested him was that the boy offered to take Ruel to Yugo, not to bring Yugo to him. Yugo was a young Eliatrope, and Ruel was an old Enutrof, and wasn't half as quick.

Ruel saw two possibilities. Either only Eliatropes were important in their culture, and they wouldn't inconvenience one of theirs for a foreigner, or Yugo was very important indeed. He remembered Qilby say something about the Council of Six, but what did that mean?

I need to find a way to talk to the nanny, he thought. But he doubted that Balthazar would be as open as a random child, not without a heap of goodwill. What would a dragon want that I could give?

"Mister?" the boy asked. "Is there anything else?"

Balthazar was here to watch over the children, so maybe he could give them something? He didn't have anything to give them, but he was Ruel Stroud. He could sell a man his own doorknob, and more than once he had. "Yes, actually. Yugo told me you and your friends helped him in his fight against Qilby."

The boy looked uncomfortable—a distaste for violence?—but he stood up straighter. "I wasn't much...Yugo did all the work, and he didn't really need anyone besides Shinonome."

Shinonome? Wasn't that Qilby's dragon sister?" Interesting. "Well, yeah," he said easily. "But what does strength matter? You need strength to end the fight, but to start it, you need courage."

"The Traitor," the boy said. "He killed my...our parents. I couldn't just watch him win."

"I think your parents would be proud of you," Ruel said softly. The boy nodded, and his eyes watered. They were digging deep here. Good. But tread softly on hallowed graves. "I've traveled a lot through the World of Twelve, and Yugo is the bravest man I have ever met." He didn't know if there was a culture that had saving the world as a rite of passage into manhood, but there should be. "I've been following him since he started trying to find his real family, and I didn't know what he'd find or if I'd still be around to see it."

Ruel knelt down and put a hand on the boy's shoulder. "But after coming here and hearing about all you've done, I can really see the family resemblance."

He expected the boy to be flattered, but the kid was stunned speechless. You want courage, kid? I can sell you that. "There's a game I sometimes play," Ruel said, moving on quickly. "It requires courage more than anything, so of course Yugo was a pro at it as soon as he started. In fact, if you get some of your friends together, I'll show you how to play. I think it'll be right up your alley. Official matches need gloves and shields, but really, all you need is a ball..."

WWW

Far above the main island, Adamaï floated with the Crimson Dofus. Of course, all he had to do was turn around, and he'd be far below the main island, for all the difference it made.

He always spent most of his Emrub visits with Shinonome. She had her brother's flawless memory, so even in her Dofus, she remembered things that Balthazar had never learned. At least that was the idea. But whenever he asked her about complex spells, she would always say, "Why don't you ask Balthazar about that?" or "Balthazar would be able to explain that better."

And yet, he kept coming back to her. It wasn't because he thought she'd be lonely. The children loved Shinonome as much as they despised her brother. No, what always drew him was that she had a brother who still lived. Grougaloragran, Phaeris, and Balthazar had lost their siblings millennia ago, and while they all could teach him how to be a dragon, only Shinonome could teach him how to be a brother.

"How'd you do it?" he asked softly. "I mean, saving our people and an entire world is pretty noble, but if Yugo became a raging psychopath, I'd probably follow him into madness just to stay with him."

"And if you were the one who lost your way?" She didn't have a voice he could hear, but he could share her thoughts.

Adamaï smiled ruefully. "He would die with me."

"And you would be together. In madness or in death."

"But how are you together? He's in another dimension."

"We share captivity. Neither Shinonome nor Qilby are free, and in that we are one."

Adamaï looked down at the world. Or up at it. "He's never going to forget it," he said. "Actually, neither are you. Goddess, I don't know which is worse."

"He is the brother of Shinonome," she explained. "Shinonome had to save him, no matter the cost. That is the meaning of the sibling bond."

"Is it?" he asked. "I don't know. I never met Yugo until a few months ago, but my whole life I knew I would. I would think about it all day long, about what it would be like to have a little Eliatrope brother to look after. When I did meet him, yeah, he was bigger than me, but I was still stronger. I was raised by Grougaloragran himself, and I knew who we were and what we were supposed to do.

"Only, I wasn't. We'd end up fighting for our lives and for the fate of the world, and I'd be the first to fall. I would always be looking out for him, and he'd end up saving me. Sometimes it's like...I don't know. I get the feeling sometimes that I need him more than he needs me."

"And do you need yourself, Adamaï?"

"What do you mean?" he asked. "I don't need myself. I am myself."

"It is the challenge of the proud to be a part of something great. Before you hatched, Shinonome knew you. You need no servant, and can suffer no master. Your brother is not greater than you, nor is he less, nor do you need him to be. He is incomplete. You must be what he is not because the day will come when you must do what he cannot."

Adamaï thought about his brother's strengths, and his own strengths. He thought about his brother's weaknesses and, with more difficulty, his own. He thought about Shinonome, facing her brother and shutting down his hopes and ambitions, even his freedom as well as her own. Then he looked down at the main world where several children were organizing a team sport, or maybe he looked up to it, or maybe he just looked across to it.

And he began to understand.

WWW

Amalia couldn't wrap her head around Emrub. There were over ten thousand people in the little world, and only one clothes store, and it only sold hats. Amalia knew more than anyone how to manage a state, and any community needed a balance between residence, industry, and commerce, and there was no way that one hat shop could supply everyone.

Of course, in the whole time she was there, she hadn't found anywhere someone could eat, sleep, or use the bathroom, so maybe Emrub was just weird. Well, she knew it was weird, but at least it was consistently weird.

"Yes, it's green, but it's not the right green," she said, trying on a long, bow meow eared hat in front of a mirror. "No, I changed my mind. What do you have in brown?"

"I have a selection of browns for you," the Eliatrope shopkeeper said. "Also, there is a changing stall in the corner for your convenience."

"I'll keep that in mind," Amalia said. As if she needed a changing stall to take a hat off. She picked up a brown hat—not a dirty brown, a rich, healthy brown. The price tag had the number forty five on it. "Forty five what?" she asked. "Kamas?"

"Original thoughts," the Eliatrope, Rettah, replied. She looked to be maybe ten, far too be running her own business. She wore black pants with a white shirt, and had a black and white striped hat. Amalia could imagine her sixty years later living alone with too many bow meows. "I also accept forgotten dreams."

"Oh," she said. "I think I'll just try it on." It looked good on her, but so did her hair. She needed a hat that looked good, but wasn't so long. "How many hats do you have, anyway?"

"Including the ones in storage?" Rettah zapped to a book at the front of the room. She didn't jump through the portal like Yugo did, she just walked through. "One million, two hundred fifty six thousand, four hundred and six."

"Wow, that's...quite a bit."

Rettah didn't move from the book. "I made each one," she said softly.

"You must have a lot of time on your hands," Amalia noted. "Do you have any other...styles? Not different colors, but..."

"Do you know how long that takes?" Rettah asked. "One million, two hundred fifty six thousand, four hundred and six. Do you know how long that takes?"

Amalia put the hat back on its shelf and started to understand why no one else was shopping there. "You know what, this is a bit outside my price range, but thanks for everything."

"I have to get out of here."

"Yeah, some fresh air might do you good," Amalia agreed. "I think I saw Ruel organizing a Boufbowl game, maybe you should..."

"No, not this place, this world! This everything! It has been now for far too long, a single moment, stretched and torn across infinity. Not even Balthazar can sustain that. If the king does not deliver us before Dragon Break..."

"Yeah, if you're waiting for Qilby to free you," Amalia said, edging towards the exit, "you're going to be waiting a long time."

Rettah's head turned toward her slowly. The whole time she had been there, Amalia had never seen her blink. "Why speak you of the Traitor's name? We have no king but Yugo."

WWW

"GOOOOOAAAAAALLLLL!"

Yugo watched as Lyren broke through Ruel's defense and scored for the Black Nivlacs against the Orange Sebbohs. If Yugo knew more about Eliatrope culture, he might have recognized those terms. Probably animals from the Eliatrope home world.

Ruel laughed and congratulated the opposing team. During official matches, Ruel wanted points like he wanted Kamas, but in friendly games, he just liked playing.

Balthazar floated behind Yugo on his cushion. At first, Balthazar watched just in case someone got hurt—it was Boufbowl, after all—but now Yugo thought he just watched because he enjoyed the game. And of course to supervise Yugo's training.

They never found anything they could use as a ball. The only thing that was close to the right shape and size was Shinonome's Dofus, and no one had even suggested that. So if they couldn't find a ball, they decided to make one. Yugo had borrowed the Eliacube and gave the kids a Wakfu ball to play with.

Part of him wanted to join the game instead of just supplying the equipment and watching, but he felt like they'd feel more comfortable with him at a distance.

"Yugo!" Amalia called. "There you are." She sat down on the grass next to him. "Who's winning?"

"No one," he replied. "No one's keeping score."

"Ah." She paused. "So I talked to that Rettah girl at her hat shop."

"The Mad Hatter?"

"Yeah, definitely. Wait, you call her that too?" She couldn't disagree that the name fit, but it seemed mean by Yugo's standards.

"It's not an insult. Not just anyone can go crazy here. It's a mark of a strong mind."

"So...she's just smarter than everyone?"

"She keeps track of time. Balthazar can shield everyone's minds so this place still seems fresh and new, but when people start recording things, they start getting anxious." He smiled ruefully. "That's why we don't keep score. People might get nervous if they they looked up from a game and saw a four digit scoreboard."

"Four digit...Yugo, how long have we been here?"

He looked at her. "Do you really want to know?"

"Yes, I want to know. If we get back and find out that Armand already became king..."

"Not that long," Yugo insisted. He looked around to see if anyone was listening and lowered his voice. "Ruel's team is winning by three hundred points."

"Three hundred—" Yugo gave her a sharp look. "Three hundred points?" she whispered. "I thought we've only been here a day!"

"It's a lot to take in, I know. I'm sorry for not warning you about Rettah. Balthazar asked me if I thought it would be best to, I don't know, destroy her hats or something, but I'm hoping that they won't be here much longer. Ideally, her friends would get her out of her shop and give her something else to do besides making hats, but it's hard to get people here to take things seriously."

"Huh," Amalia said as the situation sank in. "I was wondering why she said you were a king."

On the Boufbowl field, the ball vanished, and the Orange Sebbohs crashed into the Black Nivlacs. They fell into a pile of thrashing limbs squirming for a ball that was no longer there.

"What happened?" one of the players asked.

"The ball. Kala had it a second ago."

"I did have it. Then it just disappeared."

"Did you zap the ball?"

"No, I did not zap the ball."

"Because that's cheating. There's no zapping in Boufbowl. Right, Ruel?"

"I didn't zap it! This time."

"Sorry!" Yugo called out. "I, uh..."

"It's halftime," Ruel interrupted. "Everyone, take five."

"Five what?"

"I don't care, anything! Just take five of them."

"Oh, Sadida," Amalia whispered, looking at Yugo. He was cursed with the poker face of an honest man. "It's true, isn't it? You are a king!"

"Hello, all," Ruel said, approaching them. "So, what are we talking about?"

"Did you know about this?" she demanded, turning on Ruel.

"Yes."

"Wait, you did?"

"Probably. What exactly is it?"

"Yugo's the king!"

"You mean officially? Good job, kid. I figured you were, but I assumed it was one of those, 'In all but name' things."

"It's more complicated than that," Yugo insisted. Where was Adamaï when he needed him? He'd know how to explain it. No, on second thought, Adamaï would make it sound like Yugo was a God Emperor instead.

"How is it complicated?" Amalia asked. "Do you have any idea how much easier this makes things? I would have asked you to fake it if I thought you'd go along with it."

"Yes, but I'm not really a king," Yugo explained. "You can't be a king without a kingdom, right?"

Ruel looked around. "So, a few small planets aren't enough for you?"

"Those are outside reality. They don't count." He was explaining this poorly. "When I'm king, I'll have to take care of everything, and I'm not ready for that yet."

Amalia laughed abruptly. "That's not what being a king means. My dad's a king, and you know what he says about being a king?" She dropped her voice an octave in imitation of King Oakheart. "'I'm the king, and that means whatever I say it means.' And then he goes and eats a giant sandwich."

"Yes, but your kingdom has children who have parents, they have traditions that they're used to. You're dad has a status quo that he can maintain. I don't even have that, and I only have one chance to set one up. It's a lot of responsibility, and...and I'm terrified."

I'm terrified.

He had never admitted that, not even to himself, but now that he did...well, his inner demons didn't run away, but finally he could look them in the eye.

"Well, that's a first," Ruel said. "Though, not that I know a lot about running a kingdom, I was only a mayor for one term, but maybe it's better to be more cautious with the lives of thousands of subjects than with your own life. And besides, you already saved the world twice, well, Nox might have stopped after taking out the Tree of Life, but Qilby, certainly."

"I didn't defeat Qilby," Yugo said. "And I didn't defeat Nox either. He killed me, and went back in time far enough to bring me back. Qilby was toying with me the entire time, and lost to Shinonome, not me."

Amalia and Ruel looked at each other. "Well, what does beating people up have to do with ruling a kingdom?" she asked. "You're an Eliatrope, not an Iop. Besides, that's what armies are for."

"Look, I'm not saying that I'll never be king, I'm just saying that I'm not ready yet. Even Balthazar says that it will be a while before I can be king."

"Balthazar did not say that," the dragon said softly from his floating cushion. "There is a role your people need you to fulfill require wisdom and understanding that you have not yet gained. But the limits to your abilities do not limit who you are. You are not ready to lead us, Yugo, but you have always been our king."

Yugo looked up at the old, wise dragon and at his friends, who had always stood with him. He looked up at the specks and ribbons of light, his people weaving their magic in the sky.

And he began to understand.

"See, that's what I've always been trying to tell him," Adamaï said, fluttering down to them. "But he's always like, 'No, that's a bad idea. I know what I'm doing. I mean, I clearly have no idea what I'm doing, but trust me. I know what I'm doing.' Maybe you'd take my advice more if I started talking in the third person."

Yugo's face broke into a grin. "Hey, Ad. Where have you been this whole time?"

"Chatting with Shino. You?"

"Boufbowl."

"I still need to play that sometime. It sounds wonderfully violent. So, are we ready to move on or what?"

Yugo took another look at his people in the distance. He had wanted to bring his friends here even though there were easier ways to get Ruel out of jail. Without completely understanding it, he had needed to confront something. And he had.

"Yeah," he said with a smile. "We're ready to move on."

WWW

The Eliatropes had gathered around Balthazar's portal to see them off. Their hopes and dreams didn't seem as overwhelming as they once had. They stepped into the Blank Dimension and waited for the next portal to open up.

"So the next portal will take us back to my prison cell?" Ruel asked.

"That's the plan," Adamaï replied.

"And Balthazar couldn't make it, I don't know, appear outside the cell instead?"

"It's complicated," Yugo explained. "Balthazar is doing this from another dimension, so he needs a signal to latch onto. He could take us to Phaeris or Grougal, no problem, but without someone, he's just reopening the portal we first came through."

Amalia looked around nervously. "Do you think he'll show up again?"

"Qilby?" Yugo shrugged. "It's a big place, so not always."

She frowned. "So, how long are you going to leave him here?"

"There's not really much else we can do with the Traitor," Adamaï said. "I mean, we could move him to Emrub after everyone else leaves, but I doubt that would make much of a difference. Sometimes I think it would be better just to kill him. It wouldn't change his situation much, but after he returns to his Dofus, Shinonome can hatch."

"Then what do we do with baby Qilby?" Yugo asked.

"We banish him again, just like before, or we kill him and send him back to his Dofus. I didn't bring it up because I didn't think you'd like the idea of killing babies."

"No," Yugo agreed. "No I do not."

"And after a few generations of that, we might let him go and then he'd try to kill everyone again, only then he'd be justified," Adamaï mused. "I thought that maybe after we fill the world with Eliatropes who know better than to trust him, we could let him back in the World of Twelve, but we'd have to cut off his other arm just to be safe, and even then he might find a way to lick the Eliacube, and then we're back in the same situation."

Yugo frowned. "I noticed your ideas tend to be a bit..."

"Draconic?" he suggested.

"Have any of you heard of the fruit of Aisenma?" Amalia asked suddenly.

"Aisenma?" Yugo shook his head.

"It's one of the four Trees of Death to counterbalance the Tree of Life," she explained. "They'd make whoever ate their fruit do stuff like grow old, go berserk, or go mad with hunger. I'm not an expert on ancient Sadida lore, but I'm told that the fruit of Aisenma could make you lose your memory."

Yugo looked up quickly. "Really? Does your kingdom have any?"

"No. It's a divine weed of doom. We destroy it whenever we find it. There haven't been any sightings since the Ogrest. You know what? Forget I said anything. I shouldn't have brought it up."

"It probably wouldn't have worked anyway," Adamaï said. "If dying doesn't make him forget, I don't think a death fruit would. Besides, knowing Qilby, he might pretend to lose his memory for a few decades just so we'd let our guard down."

"We could test it on Shinonome," Yugo suggested quickly. "You know she wouldn't try to trick us. Adamaï, if this works, we wouldn't just be able to free Qilby, we'd be able to save him!"

The portal opened into the World of Twelve. Yugo made a note to stay alert for rumors about Aisenma. After all, he thought, what kind of king would I be if I can't even save a single, desperate soul? He dropped a flower he had plucked from Emrub onto the white, empty realm, and stepped through the portal.

And onto a pile of gold.

Around the pile of gold, Yugo saw more piles of gold, and under the piles of gold, Yugo suspected that there was a mountain of gold. They were in a massive stone room that made Grougaloragran's horde look like pocket change.

"Enutrof's purse," Ruel whispered, his face a mixture of shock and rapture. He gasped for breath, clutched at his heart, and fell over.

"Ruel?" Yugo asked hesitantly.

Amalia sighed in annoyance. "Seriously, Ruel? We're going to do this now?"

"What's going on?" Adamaï asked.

"Ruel's faking a heart attack again," she explained.

"I don't think he's faking it," Yugo said.

"Oh, come on, Yugo. How gullible can you be? How many times has he pretended to have a heart attack, and how many times has he actually had one?"

"Yeah, but all those times, my dad wanted him to pay his bill! No one's making him pay for anything!"

Amalia looked at Ruel's prone figure, starting to worry. "You may be right." She picked up a handful of Kamas and threw them at him.

"What are you doing?"

"If there's anything that can bring that old skinflint back, it's gold."

"Oh, right." He picked up a handful and threw it too. The coins bounced off his old friend, but Ruel didn't move. "Amalia, this isn't working! Do you know the kiss of life?"

"Yeah, I think so—I mean, no, no, definitely not, no way."

"He might die!"

"He's lived a good life," Amalia replied. "Besides, there's no way he'd rather go than on top of several thousand tons of gold."

"The kiss of life?" Adamaï snorted. "Out of my way."

"Wait, do you know how to do it?"

Adamaï rolled his eyes as he approached Ruel. "The kiss of life is for amateurs and romantics. I'm a dragon." He rubbed his hands together until electricity arced between them. "Clear!" he shouted, slamming his hands onto Ruel's chest. Ruel jerked upright, gasping for breath, and looked around.

"Enutrof's purse," he said.

"You already said that," Amalia said. "And don't die again. We're...still not sure where we are."

"No, that's where we are! We've died and gone to Enutrof's purse!"

"That's your afterlife, Ruel, not mine," Amalia replied. "If we died, I should be in Sadida's garden, not some underground pile of gold."

"And Yugo and I should have returned to our Dofus." Adamaï shook his head. "We should be back in that prison cell, but..."

"Although, that was an awfully small cell," Yugo said. "It could barely fit the first time, so maybe that threw off the portal and Balthazar sent us here instead."

"Yeah, but then we should have gone right outside the cell, not to the nearest pile of gold."

"Unless," Yugo said, and then he felt it. It came like a smell he couldn't place, like a song from some half remembered dream.

"I felt it too," Adamaï said, and they both darted toward the source. Yugo opened his eyes to the color of life and saw it lying there, abandoned in the horde like it was nothing more than gold.

It was round and about the size of Yugo's head, a rich, shimmering turquoise. Why send us here? Balthazar would need something, a signal he could latch onto. Or someone.

Yugo knelt down in the gold and reverently put his hand on the lost Dofus of the Eliatrope hero Nora and her brother Efrim.

I found you.

WWW

a/n I thought about starting out this chapter with another Neverland quote, but I couldn't find any that fit, so I decided to plagiarize Tolkien instead. It's always a safe bet. This chapter is a bit longer than my usual ones, but I couldn't think of anywhere earlier to stop. Anyway, thank you to everyone who left reviews, and I apologize for taking so long. On a side note, I may or may not be receiving a book deal, so if I take an unseemly amount of time updating, it may or may not be because I'm writing something for money. Or I could just be lazy. There's always that too.