“Hold tight!” Bui said, placing me on her back.

I closed my eyes and clung to her tight as she made great strokes with her good arm, propelling us towards the opposite bank, swimming diagonally across the river. Within a minute we reached the other bank.

My clothes and hair were dripping water. The image of Bono’s corpse was still painfully fresh in my mind. Bui pulled herself out of the water sluggishly. I feared she might fall and never move again.

But the girl still had life in her. She pushed herself up to her feet, and waved at the great numbers of monsters still waiting near the fallen bridge on the forest side of the river. She instructed them to move deeper into the woods.

I was saddened to spot quite a few evilun corpses. The players must have had all the fun in the world shooting spells at them.

With great strides that were powered only by unfaltering determination, Bui took me towards my palace, towards safety.

She didn’t shed a tear over Bono though I could clearly see Bono’s headless corpse reflecting in her eyes. At one point, we rendezvoused with the monsters moving away from the river. I was very thankful to see that Kiara was unharmed.

I gave her a sombre nod, but her stare was fixed at the swelling on my shoulder. My shoulder had gone numb, though if I made a sudden movement it pained as though the teeth of ten piranhas were penetrating my flesh all at once.

The Skhites reached their village and I asked them to remain inside for some days. We reached the palace that the Skhites and Hornies had built for me with so much affection. The Hornies departed to the dome. My servants and guards, plus Kiara remained.

Bui fell on her knees.

“Get down,” she said to me in a deprived voice.

I climbed down from her back. The movements that I had to make triggered fresh stinging pain on my shoulder, and I grunted and bit my lips.

Kiara came swiftly to me, and so did the physicians of the Skhites and the Hornies. I wished I still had health vials. But I reckoned I would have to undergo treatment the old fashioned way. Would they be able to fix Bui’s stump? After losing so much blood it was a spectacle she hadn’t passed out. Stone girls were tough.

I had thought Bui would lie down and allow the physicians to attend to her. Instead she rose back up.

“Where are you going?” I said.

“I need to mourn him,” she replied, but her voice was very faint. She began to stride away from the palace.

“Wait!” I cried. At this rate she would kill herself.

But Bui had only taken a few steps when she stopped. Her gigantic frame shook unsteadily. A strong breeze came from nowhere. The great Bui crashed with so much force that the ground shuddered.

Several of the physicians ran to her. They raised their arms to indicate that Bui was alive. I exhaled in relief. Perhaps it was best that she had fallen unconscious. She could be nursed by the monsters.

I was taken to my room. Nobody spoke a word about all the things that had gone horribly wrong today. Providing treatment to me was everyone’s main focus. Kiara stayed by my side, whispering gentle words. I thought of Bono, the stone giant and recalled his happiness on meeting Bui, and my heart sank.

I thought of the elf king, and a great tide of wrath swept over me.

***

It took me an entire month to get to a point where I could move around without suffering jabs of pain.

Bui, thankfully, despite losing gallons of blood, had not succumbed to her injuries. She was recovering though she remained feeble. She was being treated by the physicians on the courtyard.

Although she rested on the ground for most of the day out of weakness, I could see in her eyes a fierce light. A light fuelled by anger.

She was cooperating with the physicians so that she could recover as fast as possible. And once she did, she would avenge Bono.

In the intervening month the players had rebuilt the bridge, and flocked as usual to hunt monsters. I asked my subjects to avoid them as much as possible. The Skhites’ protective charm on the palace obstructed players from easily finding its location.

As the days passed the Evilese reservoir of my monsters shrank but there was still enough to last a while.

I became more and more troubled regarding where exactly I had faltered which had led to the current predicament. I had farmed evil crops so my monsters needn’t risk their lives. I had sought the elf king to end the conflicts and herald peace. I had done everything in my power to be a good king.

Yet, why was everyone suffering? Why did Bono die? Why was everything so bleak?

Some nights I couldn’t sleep because of my thoughts. They would go round and round my head; I felt like my skull was going to burst.

One day I decided that I had had enough. I needed answers and there was only one place where there was any chance of finding them.

“Can I accompany you?” Kiara asked, when I told her that I was setting off to the place where I believed I would come face to face with my faults, and find ways to fix them.

I declined.

“Just go back to work.” I retrieved the pouch of gold dust to send her to the real world. “You have been feigning sickness at the office for way too long.”

Kiara slapped my hand and put the pouch back in my pocket.

“I will just wait here,” she said.

I caressed Kiara’s cheek and kissed her on the forehead.

“Bye,” I said. “Don’t worry. I should be back by tomorrow.”

I left her standing at the main door of the palace. Bui was still stretched on the courtyard. She opened her eyes a chink.

“Where are you going?” she asked me in a whisper.

“I will be back,” was all I told her.

My shoulder forced me to move in a hunched manner. The monsters looked at me with much sympathy. I was their king, yet I was barely more than a cripple anymore. I kept moving, ignoring their pitying faces as best as I could.

As I found out, I had steeply miscalculated the time required to reach the hill where the sage lived. I had forgotten to take my slow pace into account. The whole ordeal turned out to be very exhaustive.