8. The Invisible God

The stairs creaked and squeaked under the weight of hundreds of feet. The structure wobbled across the landscape like a sleepwalking giant. The final steps were hastily put in place, while clouds sent all the calamity they had.

Endless rainstorms soaked the steps. Hailstorms gave Dilova a headache, even when she was only halfway up. Her leg ached, but she didn’t even dare fly small stretches, because the clouds also sent gusts of wind from the side.

And the higher they climbed, the more Dilova began to doubt if she even wanted to reach the top. While thunderstorms tried to strike the animals above her, guided by her father, she stood still halfway up the stairs.

Why would I want to get up there? she thought. The Ghostbird is gone. The sky is really empty now. And Father can believe what he wants, I know now what the Ghostbird really was. No protector of a Supreme God. I don’t think that Supreme God exists.

“We’re out of materials!” someone shouted from above. Dilova saw silhouettes sliding left and right, dodging large hailstones that knocked chunks off of the stone steps. The silhouettes grabbed onto each other whenever someone nearly fell, and now they came back down.

“Take it from the bottom steps, we don’t need those anymore,” her father called. But if there’s nothing up there, she thought, Father will die soon!

Eeris grew trees under her feet to keep up with the creatures on the stairs. She now rose past Dilova.

“Go back down,” said Eeris.

“Not without Father.” Dilova found strength in her leg again and hopped over the steps. Eeris tried to help, but her trees also swung wildly in the winds, and before long the stairs were higher than any tree could ever be. The goddess jumped next to Dilova, which tilted the stairs even more sideways.

“Exactly what I was afraid of,” Eeris mumbled.

Raindrops made Dilova’s wings too heavy to use, while Eeris carefully stepped to avoid slipping. They crept ever closer to the front group.

They were now so high that they lived within the clouds, so high that the bottom of the stairs was no longer visible, so high that Dilova already felt like she was floating.

A scream came from the air. Followed by more shrieking. Out of the silhouettes between the clouds came two Equids. They had slid off the stairs and were falling to the ground, too far to rescue, too fast to survive.

Dilova didn’t dare look at how they hit the earth far below her.

“Dad!” she called. “It’s too dangerous! You’re going too far!”

Fiante paused for a moment. Just a few more steps, maybe a daring leap, and they would rise above the highest Cloudbeing, the Chiefcloud.

“We mourn the loss of Erin and Drogin,” he said. “They were, sadly, not worthy in the eyes of the Supreme God! But they gave their lives for a noble cause!”

The stairs trembled, as if they had developed their own heartbeat.

“The turtles,” said Eeris. “They’re getting close.”

A rabbit slipped and fell off. Dilova jumped for it and grabbed its fur with her foot, but the rabbit was too heavy. She desperately flapped her wings, but the only way was down, aided by snowflakes covering her. Her body did a somersault to shake off all the snow.

It helped. Still she kept falling.

But she also kept trying.

There was so much air below her, that she would be able to glide down for an hour. An hour to try and figure out how her wings worked, before hitting the ground. That gives me an idea, she thought.

Until Eeris stuck out her neck and threw her back onto the stairs, along with the rabbit, closer to Fiante.

“I fell. I’m not worthy in the eyes of the Supreme God,” said the rabbit, its ears drooping.

“But you were saved, weren’t you?” said Eeris with a smile. The rabbit accepted it, but still walked down the stairs.

“Listen to me,” Dilova called up, “there’s nothing up there. The gods want what’s best for us. How many more have to fall?”

Fiante looked at his daughter and frowned. He laughed and turned away to hammer the final step.

“Good one, Dilova!”

“She’s right,” said a Gosti, whose eyes grew even bigger when they saw the tall emptiness below. “I quit.”

“You’d give up now?” said Fiante, genuinely surprised. “So close to the end? So close to freedom?”

“If path to freedom is littered with dead Gosti bodies, then wrong path.” The Gosti formed one group, like a puddle created from all the droplets around it, and flowed back down the stairs.

Eeris looked proud. “The Gosti are truly our most intelligent creation yet.”

“Your loss!” Fiante called. Dilova could almost touch him. She reached for his hind leg, but the last step was finished and Fiante immediately took it.

The whole staircase shook with ever footstep of a Proto-Turtle. The clouds somehow found new strength to blow, pester, and send lightning bolts. Creatures grabbed each other’s paws, fur, mouths, even teeth, to eventually waft off the stairs as one living garland.

A garland attached at only two points: Fiante at the top and Eeris at the bottom.

Fiante wanted to take the final leap. As long as the garland held him, however, he couldn’t even move his foot.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

With a jerk, he tore himself free from the garland. Eeris was the only anchor keeping everyone aloft, and that was untenable, even for a goddess. The animals spun in circles, as if the stairs had grown wings with which it wanted to take flight, as Eeris groaned and growled.

Everyone watched as Fiante stepped through the final cloud.

And didn’t come back.

The cloud attack slowly abated. Is that good? Is that bad? Are they giving up?

The animals dug their claws into the stairs and found grip. Most took a quick look back, at Eeris, at the bottom of the stairs barely holding on.

But then they looked ahead and followed Fiante. So sure of themselves, so focused on what lay behind that final cloud, that they didn’t hear, or didn’t want to hear, Fiante falling right past them out of the clouds.

He tumbled down screaming, so fast it seemed someone had flung him away.

“Dad!”

Dilova found strength, somewhere inside her, to keep going. She didn’t look at where she wanted to go, she only looked at the stairs, and climbed up, one step at a time, until there were no more steps left to take.

This plan better work, she thought. She spread her wings … and let herself fall from the highest step.

She dove into the air, heading for her father.

But first she had to swoop past Cosmo hurtling up the stairs like a fiery arrow.