Kiara rested for a while. I observed that some of the stones had partially fused with one another. They were still burning hot, so I pushed them with a branch. It was impossible to move them. They had become a single structure. The overall shape was far from a boat, just a pile of interlinked stones.

After some time Kiara was feeling better and wanted to have a second go at the stones.

“It’s not needed,” I said.

“There are still lots of gaps between the stones,” Kiara argued. “What if we are exposed to the liquid through those?”

“I think your spell has proved itself,” I told her. “You don’t need to perfect this test boat, we are not going to carry it to the town anyway. No need to strain yourself, give your best when we design the main boat.”

We returned to the village, where we spent some time with the two kids. Some zombies stole confused glances at Kiara, but kept their tongues in check. I was still technically their king since I had not publicly broken my ‘marriage’ with the zombie queen.

“What after we make the real boat?” Kiara said to me later on in the day.

“We use it of course,” I told her. “What else? We will go to the place where the time bomb is. I am sure we will get some clue or the other.”

“And what if you get some clue that leads you away?” Kiara asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked her. “Leads me to some different place?”

“Yes,” Kiara said. “We are dependent on the evilese that we get from the zombies. What if we get some clue that leads us to some distant place and we cannot return? We will turn back to eviluns eventually. And even after we become eviluns we will still need to find some way to get evilese.”

Okay, so there was a big hole in my plans that I hadn’t even thought of. We could carry evilese with us, but that would run out in a short time.

I grabbed my head and pretended to sob.

“Why is it that everytime we make any progress, we hit a roadblock?” I lamented to Kiara. “I wish Pook was here! I could have asked him to store a great ton of evilese in himself, and we would never run out of it!”

Kiara blinked like she had solved all sides of a rubik’s cube in record time.

“But I can be your Pook too!” she said with a clap.

“What?” I asked, not seeing any logic in her words.

“Think!” Kiara said, snapping her fingers. “Unlike you I don’t need to stay in the game world!”

I didn’t understand her. In fact, I wondered if she was trying to mock me over my inability to return to the real world. Kiara guessed my thoughts and cuffed her forehead.

“That’s not what I mean, my darling idiot,” she said. She shifted closer to me and placed her hand on my shoulder. “What I mean is that I live in the real world. Am I right?”

“You are,” I said, narrowing my eyes trying to understand her.

“And you can just throw that fancy gold dust and make a portal to me. Am I right?”

“Yes,” I said, though I still missed her point.

“And that’s it!” Kiara said with a bright smile.

I looked away and replayed her words in my head. And then it suddenly dawned on me. My eyes went wide.

“See?” she said, nodding. “I can store all the evilese that we would need in my house! Right there in my refrigerator if need be!”

“You are a genius, Kiara,” I said to her.

“Now don’t get all excited,” Kiara warned. “First we would have to ask permission from the zombie queen. I wonder if she would allow.”

“But she has to, right?” I said. “If she is allowing me to have the village evilese when I am staying here, then she shouldn’t have a problem letting you store it, right?”

Following our breakthrough, we rushed to the zombie queen. Bolsh, the prime minister, was with her. I noticed that the two of them were sitting rather far away from each other. Previously, during their daily discussions on village affairs they used to sit like inseparable soulmates.

“We need to speak with you,” I said to the zombie queen.

“Sure,” Dieana said to us. She eyed Bolsh like he was a lowly creature. “I am afraid I must relieve you of your duties for today.”

Bosh didn’t speak a word. He got up and immediately scurried out of the room. I suspected there had been a clash between the two. Perhaps Bolsh had attempted to come too close to Dieana, and she had shown him his place?

“We were wondering if you could give us a little bit of evilese for storage,” I said to Dieana.

“For storage?” the queen said with a frown. She looked paler than usual and had a morose air about her.

Kiara expounded what we had in mind. For almost a minute Dieana was silent, her expression unreadable. Then she shook her head.

“I can’t do that,” she said, twirling a quill between her fingers. “You are seeking a substantial amount of evilese. My people need it. We might face an unexpected shortfall in production. Now, I am sorry, but it’s not something that I can allow.”

We hadn’t expected that reply. The zombies had countless farms and a great reservoir of evilese. Besides, the amount we sought wasn’t anything ‘substantial’. It would hardly equate to a drop in the pond of evilese the zombies possessed.

We tried to convince the zombie queen but she just kept shaking her head, and sensing that she might lose her cool with us, we retreated to my room.

“We were being a bit too optimistic,” Kiara said, crestfallen.

I shrugged.

“We will have to find some other way around,” I said. “But that was still a genius idea.”

I hugged and kissed Kiara. She had been in the game world for pretty much the entire day, and now she returned to the real world. I remained alone, replaying the conversation with the zombie queen, when there was a knock on the door.