8. Together or Not

Ardex ran with Hanah, side by side, looking for the next place where the gate would appear. She could feel it clearly. He barely could, but just enough to keep up with her. The Hespryhound had given up long ago: he slept on the beach somewhere. Hanah claimed Feria could also find her pet based on feeling, once she finally returned from her travels with Cosmo.

“I can do it,” he said. “I can convince the others to want to go back. We leave this planet alone, as you apparently desire.”

“I don’t like that,” Hanah said, running over the next hill. “Manipulating other beings. Convincing them to do something they didn’t actually want to do.”

“They just haven’t thought about it long enough,” Ardex said quickly. “They don’t even know the gate exists yet!”

“And why not? Because you kept it a secret?” Hanah pointed at a dot on the horizon. Ardex saw the gate, but also another sequence of dots. Darus, Eeris and Bella ran over the beach. They headed for the gate, but didn’t seem interested by it. If you didn’t look too closely, he guessed, it was nothing more than a pile of stones.

Ardex showed Hanah his left paw, mostly shredded, and his left tusk—for his right tusk was gone. “Because their experiments had to continue, or we all die! That’s why I stayed silent. But now I know fleeing is the best solution, maybe the only solution.”

Hanah’s Heavenmatter had to appear this time. That gate could spit out her powerful Soulsplitter any time now. The name was terrifying, because it could be used for terrifying things, but Ardex had only seen his sister use it for sweet things.

He didn’t understand how it worked. Only that, after each use, the world had a lot more living creatures, which were healthier and stronger. He assumed you could use it in the opposite way too: to remove all living beings in one quick snap.

It was exactly the object they needed to strengthen the Movelings. Ardex did not know if he wanted that, though. Hanah also didn’t seem to want that. She had created a ridiculously powerful gate, and then realized she couldn’t control it. A connection to Father, the Chiefgod? What if that gate suddenly appears on Dalas? All those creatures could just walk into the Heavenly Palace and …

That’s why she ran to the gate. To protect and close it. To prevent her Soulsplitter entering the wrong paws.

Like Ardex’ paws, who wanted that object very badly now.

When his family noticed Hanah, they immediately turned around and ran to her. Synchronized, as if they prepared this. Bella pushed her Movelings in the water just to give Hanah a warm, long hug. Hanah accepted it, briefly, but wanted to continue, her snout already pointed at the gate. Her eyes studied the small group of Movelings left, full of sorrow and pity.

Ardex came between them. “You are going to kill our Movelings, aren’t you?”

Hanahs eyes turned red as her fur. “I would never willingly erase life! So you really don’t know me at all.”

She stepped away from them. Eeris lay down her neck like an obstacle; Hanah leaned on it, but didn’t climb over it. “If you want complex life, if you want it faster, then I have to accept that. But I tell you, time and time again, that you should not want it. Enjoy every day you have and don’t hurry.”

“Hurry? We’ve been waiting for millions of—”

“It should have been billions of years! But no, your impatience means we have less time to enjoy life now.”

“Less time?” Bella’s voice wavered. She approached Hanah warily. “You … you already know when life ends?”

Hanah shook her head. “Not exactly,” she whispered. “Fortunately not.”

Ardex shuffled to the gate. Any moment, any moment, he thought. Then the Soulsplitter will come out of this thing.

“But … but …” Bella looked around her as if she was lost. “We are so close. Only one characteristic left. This is the final place, the final group of Movelings.”

“It won’t work,” Ardex said immediately, his paw resting on the gate. He tried to play relaxed, but his body was stiff from tension. “And what then? Then we’ll have too little Lifeforce to keep ourselves alive. Might it be better if we … return to the safe palace?”

He tapped against the gate. Bella understood first, then Eeris, then Gulvi in the river, and lastly Darus. “Say, how often has Father said sorry? If it’s fewer than ten thousand times, count me out!”

They all looked at Hanah. She nodded. “I am certain this will bring you beck. Step in, enter the vortex, return to your safe bed. The choice is yours.”

Bella grabbed her sister. “Won’t you join with us, my dear?”

“No. But I will be fine, really.”

“It’s together or not at all,” Eeris stated confidently.

Ardex had foreseen this. Hanah said she couldn’t go back. Father was angry at her. So “together or not” had to mean “not”. He felt the gate shake, as if the water started boiling. He placed his body in front of it.

“I must admit,” Eeris said, “that I have no idea how to accomplish the last characteristic. Our Movelings need to bear children. Procreate. Only then you can be certain of survival in the future. But how?”

“As I said—”

“No, Darus, cutting them in half won’t help.”

“Why not!? You want to turn one thing into two things, so you—”

“They are not stones!” Bella pushed Darus to the floor. “They are living beings! Who feel fear, and pain, and …”

Hanah smiled faintly. “So … they are already alive?”

Ardex didn’t like this. After a hundred heartbeats of silence, Eeris placed the last Movelings in the water. Without doing anything, without Hanah casting any spell, they only now realized some were already procreating.

The pudding cut itself into two. One pudding turned into two smaller, even more misshapen ones. Which slowly turned into four, then eight, and so forth—so slowly that it could take years before each of them had multiplied.

The gate shook, as if the air played it like a drum. Ardex turned around. The purple vortex opened, briefly, and sent a perfectly spherical ball of light straight at him. The object bounced off his tusk and rolled over his face, until his feline reflexes grabbed it in his right paw.

Ardex held the Soulsplitter over his head. “We must go back! Home is where we belong, not this stupid planet! The Heavenly Palace! Think of the gardens, the clouds, the buildings, never in danger—did you all forget!? If you don’t go with me, I will destroy all Movelings!”

Movelings were already dying, turning into tiny dead beings that sank to the seabed. The gods shredded further, Gulvi barely recognizable as a dolphin.

“Stop! Stop!” Eeris and Bella tried to rip the Soulsplitter from Ardex’ claws, but he was too strong. Darus pulled stones out of the ground to bring Ardex off balance, but the Firegod simply burned all land around him to ashes.

Hanah saw it all happen with tired eyes. She did not stop it. Ardex saw the final signs of life disappear from Somnia, and knew his family had to follow him back to the Heavenly Palace soon.

Bella saw the same thing—but felt the opposite. Panic and defeat. The palace was beautiful, yes. But she wanted to be here and experience adventures with her sweet and funny siblings.

Darus growled at Ardex, but walked to the gate. Eeris did the same. Gulvi swam around it, fins tingling with excitement, trying to already touch the gate and be back home.

Bella heard the loud wingbeats of Cosmo nearby. Him and Feria would already be mostly chipped by now and on the way back. Was it really that bad to go back? If Ardex wanted it? If everybody wanted it?

Her shiny black raccoon legs stepped into the water—

And she pulled everyone back to shore. Like a mother dragging their children back home after running away.

Yes, it was bad. Father had banished them; they wouldn’t just go back to him. And now Ardex wanted to do the same: use violence to get what he wanted. Her voice was neutral, but loud. “We are not coming, Ardex. We are not going back.”

The world turned into a painting of gods leaning on other gods, lacking enough paws to stay upright themselves.

“The more we long for home and a perfect solution forever,” Bella said, “the more we ruin our chances on this planet.”

Ardex’ nails dug into the Soulsplitter. A deep sigh flowed through the godchildren, Hanah most of all.

The gate crumbled.