E parked the car beside all his other cars and sighed as he stepped outside.

“What’s wrong, E?” Sheryl asked. She had taken the form of a red rock that sat on his right shoulder. Her legs dangled near his collarbone while her arms held onto him, keeping her in place. “You sound upset.”

“Worst drive of my life,” E said. He turned around and stared at the car with Sheryl. Lindyss and Erin were fighting each other in the backseat with Vur stuck in between them. And behind the car, attached by a hook, there was a giant wagon with a dragon sleeping on top of it, her head tucked underneath her wing. “I’ve done my best to forget about it, but these last two weeks were more stressful than my whole time as king.”

Sheryl grunted in agreement. “Are all humans like my contractor?” she asked. “The world’s a very scary place if they are. No wonder why Az never left the volcano.”

“No,” E said. “If every human was like Vur, then dwarves wouldn’t be the race in power. You just happened to contract with the most abnormal person in existence.” He glanced at the rock sitting on his shoulder. “Regretting it now?”

“Nope!” Sheryl said and threw her arms into the air. “I’m almost a volcano elemental already. There’s so much mana inside of his body, it’s amazing. I’m evolving a hundred times faster than I was inside the volcano. I think Az forbade us to contract with people because he was afraid of us advancing past him. But he died and has to restart as an ember elemental, so ironic, isn’t it?”

“You treat death pretty lightly,” E said. “He was your clan master, right? Shouldn’t you be a little more upset? I’d be upset if my people didn’t care one wit for me after I died.”

“Death is just a new beginning,” Sheryl said. “Sure, some memories are eaten, but you get to pick which ones you give up.”

“Eaten?” E asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” Sheryl said with a nod of her rocky body. “Eaten. Like how you eat berries, the Wisty eats memories. You meet her every time you die.” She paused and put a finger to the crack which represented her mouth. “Oh, but you wouldn’t remember meeting her. I heard she eats all of your memories if you’re not an elemental or fairy.”

“Huh,” E said. “This is my first time hearing about this Wisty. What does she look like?”

Sheryl tilted her head. “An octopus?” she asked and furrowed her brow. “With millions of billions of legs taking souls all the time. That’s also why it takes so long to come back to life. The queue takes forever—unless a living person helps you skip it. We call that the fast track.”

“And all of this is real? You’re not making this up?” E asked. “I feel like I should’ve heard about this before considering it answers the question of what happens when you die.”

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Sheryl rolled her obsidian eyes. “Haven’t you heard the saying, ‘elementals and fairies are as trustworthy as farts during a stomach cramp’? It’s up to you whether you want to believe me or not about the Wisty.”

“You stupid apple-shaped elf! Why are you so hateful!?” Erin’s voice rang through the air. A second later, the car burst into pieces as Lindyss turned into a hippopotamus. Vur tumbled on the ground, rolling to E’s feet. He spat out a clump of grass as he sat up and looked around.

“Can’t you do something about your aunt?” E asked as he offered his hand to Vur. Sheryl hopped along his arm and melded back into Vur’s shoulder, disappearing into the yellow runes. Vur grabbed E’s hand and stood up.

“Do something? Why?” Vur asked and tilted his head. “It’s been forever since Auntie made a new friend.”

E stared at the hippopotamus who was flying in the air, trying to chomp the fleeing fairy queen into bits. “If that’s how she treats her friends, I don’t want to see how she treats her enemies,” he said.

Vur rubbed his chin. “About the same,” he said. His brow furrowed. “Maybe Erin’s actually not a friend.” He shrugged and turned towards the dwarf’s palace. “So when’s my coronation ceremony?”

“It should be ready in about a week or so, as long as nothing’s gone wrong,” E said. “Then I’ll finally be able to pass all my work over to your aunt, right? She’s the one with the hobby of ruling kingdoms?”

“Yeah,” Vur said, ignoring the screaming fairy in the background.

“Your Gloriousness!” a voice shouted from the palace’s entrance. Dozens of dwarves rushed outside with a cannons trailing behind them. Within a few seconds, all the cannons were primed and loaded in a neat line, pointing at Lulu, who was just beginning to wake up. “Just give the order and we’ll blow it away!”

“No!” E said and ran towards the palace with his hands in the air. “Bad! Stop! Lulu is a guest!”

Lulu blinked twice before craning her head towards the cannons. “Oh,” she said and poked one with the tip of her tail. “Are these the thunder shooters that scared my mom away? How do they work?” She picked one up and peered at it, fiddling with everything she could. “Kind of heavy for such a small thing, don’t you think? Why don’t you use a lighter material like kalyterium? And this powder is pretty crude; the explosions won’t be clean at all. But the sound it’ll make would be pretty loud. No wonder why Mom called them thunder shooters. But the actual projectile should’ve been this ball right? Interesting. Oh? There’s even smaller fragments inside this ball. Wow, that’s pretty neat, but why not fill it with plague-infested insects? Or explosive mayjorbs?”

The dwarves stared at Lulu with wide eyes as she dissected the cannon within seconds. One of the dwarves looked at E and asked, “D-did you bring her here to help us create better weapons for the war?”

“The war?” E asked. “What war?”

“You, you don’t know about the war, Your Gloriousness?” the dwarf asked with a strange expression on his face.

“No,” E said and straightened his back. “Who’d we declare war on?”

“The humans declared war on us,” the dwarf said. “They struck first.”

E recoiled. “What? Are they stupid?”

“Quite the opposite, Your Gloriousness,” the dwarf said, expression grim. “While we were retaliating, they struck at the vital points in our infrastructure. Mooney’s territory has been completely isolated and disabled. We fear he’s already fallen in battle.”

“Ridiculous,” E said and turned towards Vur. “Sorry, but it seems like your coronation ceremony will be delayed for a while.” He nodded at the dwarves. “Let me see the war room. It better not be slacking.”

“I’ll come too,” Vur said. “I’m good at strategy.” He glanced at Lindyss and Erin, who were still bickering with each other, before shrugging and following after E.