10. Epilogue

Arlar wished he had never touched the Windgustwing. Yes, his eyes were great, good enough to always find his way in Traferia. Or the way back to Garda, joined by the Pricecats. He was faster, bigger, stronger than other birds.

But he pooped gigantic seeds. His eggs were so large that he couldn’t build a nest for them. And he felt now what Cosmo meant: the object was so strong that it broke your brain. With each day he spent close to it, he had more trouble thinking, talking, living. As if he increasingly stopped understanding how life worked.

He had chosen this, however, because these powers would help them defeat the gods.

“So why did we flee? We could have won!”

Arlar knew his tone was too loud and angry. Pushing his sharp beak into Kajar’s face would not help his mood either. But in a fight, Arlar knew he had a good chance of winning, and the leader of the Pricecats knew it too.

“We have won.” Kajar’s nails scratched three stripes into a stone. “We now own three Heavenly Objects.”

Arlar’s beak fell open. “You did it? You found it?”

Kajar laughed sharply. “Tibbowe found the right spot. His soldiers washed away the dirt. Well, well, I don’t say no to gifts like that. After some searching, we found Darus’ Heavenmatter.”

“And then …”

“I gave the command to fall back.”

“But if you had slaughtered them all, which we could have done, they would never—”

“Which of us knows the secret? The way to defeat the gods?”

Arlar took a step back, eyes cast down. “You. You, oh great Kajar. And the wolves? They did not return.”

“The wolves will go underground … to come back up at the right time.”

Kajar sauntered away. Here, in Garda, they had no mais or grain. A quick chain of experiments, though, had revealed something else they could harvest: rice.

It demanded cutting down quite some trees and flooding large areas. Oh well, Kajar didn’t mind some destruction.

Arlar could see it now. They could have an army of thousands, until the end of the war, as long as they ate plants. In the old days, everyone had the same job: find food. Since the war, everyone had a new job: fight for your army.

For the first time, however, jobs could now be different. The most worthless fighters stayed behind to take care of the Gardens. They still had to find a good name for it, because Faraway Makers of Rice wasn’t it. Perhaps it could be shortened to farmer.

Of course, they couldn’t take the gardens with them to every battlefield. Arlar still hoped to convince Kajar to not race to another continent again to wage war unexpectedly.

Kajar counted his golden coins and threw some of them to Arlar. “We need to go back to Origina.”

Arlar sighed. Since he touched the Windgustwing, his sighs had become whirlwinds that pushed animals aside.

“They also have agriculture now. And they don’t have to move, because Origina is their homeland. I heard they’re building a large palace in Traferia for Tibbowe, planning to turn it into something they call a city. Thanks to your abduction of Bunjo, the bears how now officially declared themselves on the side of the gods! This is madness!”

“So we go back to take revenge on the Bearchitects,” Kajar said instantly.

They didn’t understand exactly what the Heavenmatter did. During the fight, each time thunder had struck it, it had changed things around the world. Plants grew more quickly. The ground could take more seeds. Even non-magical seeds now blossomed in at most months, not years or centuries.

Some time ago, a merchant even passed through their territory who claimed they now grew potatoes somewhere. But, alright, he also claimed to have come from Compana, a continent he had never heard about.

Kajar had tried and tried to create plants that grew meat, but the Stone of Destinydust was incomprehensible. For now.

“Even more reason to go now. While they don’t live in solid homes yet. While they haven’t invented some powerful weapon yet. Before more Split Species appear, such as the unpredictable Gosti.”

“Can you at least tell the secret? Why we do it like this?”

“You really think I’d just give away this information … for any price?” Kajar’s nails tapped Arlar’s feathers. “The first step: collect all the Heavenly Objects. The second step: make sure this war is dragged out for as long, long, long, long, long as possible.”

Arlar was desperate for more information—Kajar turned away. “All this talk of food makes me hungry. Hungry like a horse!”

And so it was that life continued …