A bath of blood and wakfu

Chapter 5 | Fallen

They had gotten to the Sadidas Zap, faster than they ever managed to before. Once they stepped out of it on the other side, a wave of destruction unfolded in front of them. "He has the Eliacube back.", the enormous amount of fallen trees, and crushed houses made it the only reasonable explanation. "But how is that even possible!?", Yugo was just as irritated as his brother.

Everywhere they looked, they saw fallen-over trees, the tree stems littered with holes. It was an unspeakable amount of disorder, that they hadn't experienced since Ogrests chaos hit the land. They had assumed, that Qilby was still weakened from their last encounter, but the truth seemed to be far from it.

"There they are, I found them!", a high-pitched voice rang through the woods. "Not true, I saw them first!", A second one interjected. Both of the brothers looked towards the direction the voices came from, immediately recognizing them:"Flopine? Elely?"

"You've brought the kids?", Adamai questioned, as soon as he could make out Eva's figure from in between the trees. "It's not like we have a babysitter at hand in case the world is ending any second.", she huffed back at him, to which Dally added:"And no one can protect a kid better than an Iop anyways!" "Well, I am honestly not too sure about that...", Evangeline sighed, holding their youngest son at waist height:"But there are more important things we should worry about right now. Do we already know where Amalia is?"

The twins both shook their heads before Adamai answered:"We just got her two minutes ago." "We need to find her fast.", this was the first thing Yugo had said since they found Eva and her family. While he would usually be overjoyed, whenever he got to see them again, there were other things on his mind at the moment:"We should spilt up, so we can find her faster." "I don't think we should just split like that, or we might end up encountering Qilby one on one.", Eva noted, while Yugo already itched to run off again. "But if we all stay together, we'll never find her in time.", he protested.

Adamai took back the word, for once siding with the Cra:"What's the point in finding her, when we won't be able to save her?" "We could use the signal arrows.", Flopine interjected, getting the rest of the group's attention. The cra mother wanted to reject the idea right away. Signal arrows, - like most special arrows -, could only be shot reliably by a trained cra. Which meant that she had to send Flopine separated from her with Yugo and Adamai. A risk she wasn't sure she was willing to take.

"Signal arrows?", Adamai looked back and forth between the two Cra. "There is no way I will let you go off on your own Flopine. That is way too dangerous." "But Mom. I am not alone, I'd be with Yugo and Adamai.", he fixed his stance, getting out his bow:"And it's for Amalia after all." Her oldest son always knew how to convince her:"You are right." Then she sighed again, trying to convince herself, that she was not making a mistake:"We'll split up into two groups. One of them will have me in it, the other one Flopine. If either of us can find Amalia, we will shoot one of the arrows into the sky, and it will send out a light signal, accompanied by a small bang. This will assure, that the other group knows if one of us finds Qilby."

"That's a great idea.", Adamai agreed to the plan. "Okay, let's go then.", Yugo urged, as they split up. Evangeline, Percidel, and their two youngest kids wanted to head for the Tree of Life, - a place that Amalia had used as a hideout before as well. Yugo, Adamai, and Flopine decided to head toward the Palace instead.

"Can you take Flopine onto your back, Ad?" Adamai nodded, transforming into a form that resembled an oversized beetle more than anything else:"Get on, and hold tight." Flopine was hesitant, but then put his bow away, before holding tight onto the dragons' horns:"Woah!"

They soon got towards the tall tree in the middle of the forest, where Amalia as well as the rest of the royal family lived. For a while, they just roamed through the palace, first Amalias' room, then Armands, and afterward the dining room. None of it brought any success. Even the palace guards were nowhere to be found.