A bath of blood and wakfu

Chapter 13 | Conversation

"Ah. I am sorry.", Amalia wanted to close the door behind her, already walking backward out of her own room:"I didn't know you were still here." She had originally come here to go to sleep after she spent the last three hours explaining the severity of their situation to Armand and getting ambassadors of the sadida kingdom that were equipped enough to send messages to all of the other empires.

"Amalia, stay.", The eliatrope hesitated before continuing:"If you don't mind... I don't really want to be alone right now." She looked back at him, a little uncertain:"Are you sure?" "Yeah, I think I've been alone more than enough.", the eliatrope nodded, still laying in the princess's bed.

Amalia now stood in the middle of her room, eying her best friend, unsure what to do with herself. "How did it go with Armand?", Yugo tried to make her best friend feel more comfortable, as he could clearly see that something was off.

She sighed, rolling her eyes:"Armand was unbelievable as always. He immediately went on and on about other unimportant stuff, before even letting me talk! He even tried to talk me into another potential marriage candidate, can you believe that?"

Yugo laughed:"Honestly, I am not even surprised." "Well, when I finally got to talk though, we quickly got things sorted out. After all, getting the leaders of the world of the twelve to assemble for political matters is something he has to do way too often." "So they will come?" "Hopefully. But I don't think they will ignore a message like that.", She gave her guess, looking down at the floor:"The date of the meeting is set to be in exactly one week from today."

"Do you not want to sit down?", Yugo got the blanket off himself and sat cross-legged on top of it. Her eyes scanned him from top to bottom before she sat down at the very other end of the bed. "Why are you staring at me like that?"

"You need new clothes.", She remarked neutrally. Yugo looked down at himself, his shirt tightly sitting on his chest, and now that he paid attention to it, his pants too sat uncomfortably tight:"You are right. I didn't really notice." "I'll ask someone from the palace staff to get you something that fits." A small smile appeared on the Eliatrope's face:"Thank you, Amalia." She smiled back, some hesitance in her mimic.

They both knew that his new, older appearance was the elephant in the room, but neither of them were eager to start that conversation. It is not like either of them knew what they would say anyway. This was just how he looked now, it was different, but still him. That was just how it would be now.

Still, despite that Yugo's heart felt warm like it always did when he was with Amalia. In the past hours, that he had been alone, he could not get the white dimension out of his head, but now that he was talking to Amalia, his mind finally felt a little more at piece.

"Do you want to talk about what happened?", And there his peace went again, and he was painfully reminded of the one thing he just wanted to forget:"No. Not really. But what was that about the guy that Armand tried to talk you into?" She sighed, not having expected anything else. It was the same as when someone tried to mention Nox or Qilby to him, he would do everything in his power to avoid the conversation.

Usually, she would just go with his distractions, and let him take his time until he wanted to talk about it, but this she felt like she should dig deeper. If Yugo was distracted or had something on his mind, that he felt like he had to talk about when the mechasms were already here, it could get them in trouble.

"What's that on your hands?", Amalia had already noticed the burns before, but she was waiting for the right moment to ask him about it. While the Eniripsa healed them to a certain extent, some traces still remained. The princess closed the distance between them, trying to reach for his hand, but Yugo had already pulled it away in time:"Oh, I don't know, I probably just fell somewhere or something." He prayed, that she would let it go, but knew better than that.

She had been eyeing his hand the whole time she was in the room, and even earlier when he was still unconscious. "Yugo.", She extended her hand, politely urging her best friend. The eliatrope was torn inside, but ended up surrendering, showing the sadida his hand:"It's really nothing." Yugo avoided her gaze, but could still feel how upset she was. "How did that even happen?", she asked, in as calm of a voice as she could manage.

"When I first tried to use Stasis, I didn't really know how to. And there wasn't exactly anyone to teach me, so I just had to try and try, until I figured it out.", he tried to explain while looking at anything, but the princess in front of him.

"Does it still hurt?", She tried to keep her composure, although all she wanted to do is scold him for being so reckless with his body. "Just a bit.", Yugo did everything he could to not think about the pain, and while it worked for the most part, he screamed in pain, when the Sadida princess went ahead and unexpectedly touched his palm. He pulled away, looking at her wide-eyed face:"It does not seem like it only hurts a bit."

"Are you sure, you don't want to talk about the things in the white dimension?", there was a short silence. "There were no things Amalia.", he spat out the word things, as if it was something dirty. "That was the worst part. There was nothing anywhere. Just me.", he shut her down.

Yugo closed his eyes, leaning back against the wall behind him. But just seconds later he opened them again. He was scared of closing his eyes, sleeping, just resting for a second. Whenever he closed his eyes, he involuntarily had to think about the white dimension, scared to end up back there, scared that Qilby would jump out from somewhere and take him back to the white hell.

It was haunting:"Say... For how long was I in there?" "What do you think?" "I-... I don't know.", his voice broke, embarrassed to admit it:"I couldn't sleep, or rest in any other way there. There was no way for me to keep track of the time. It felt like forever, months? years? But how long it really was? I have no clue." "Fourteen days.", Amalia struggled to get those words out, already knowing how devastating they will be for Yugo.

And they were. Only fourteen days? For him, it had felt like a lifetime, a lifetime of unending desperation, and fear that he might never make it back home. But here? Here it had just been another fourteen days:"Oh." His voice took on a more monotone tone, trying to suppress the devastation he felt:"At least I didn't waste too much time then, and we will have longer to prepare."

How could just fourteen days be stuck in his head like that? He had lived through thousands of days before. "Can we please not talk about this anymore, Amalia?", he asked the princess, wiping the tears out of his eyes.

"Of course.", the princess's throat felt dry, feeling sorry for her friend, as she did her best to change the topic:"It was an Osamoda prince." "Osamoda prince?", Yugo did his best to focus on what Amalia was about to tell him. "Yes! The poor man didn't even know what hit him when I started yelling at Armand. He just stood there, all quiet."

Amalia told him all about the prince, and in fact all the different princes that Armand had tried to get her set up with during the past few months before she started ranking them, and asked Yugo to judge her ranking. They had a blast, and just for a bit, it got the eliatrope on some different thoughts, away from Qilby, the white dimension, or the upcoming crisis.

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Authors notes

Hey, I know, this is super off-topic, but I just found out (while reading the making-off artbook of season one) that they DIDN'T KNOW what they would end up putting under Yugo's hat.

LIKE WHAT. You want to tell me, that you just didn't know? I don't even know why that's so shocking to me, but the exact way they put it was 'We didn't know just what to put under his hat though... And to be honest, we still don't know'.

But either way, thanks so much again for reading, and thanks for listening to my little rant.