7. Wall of Wrath

The godchildren had been collecting Mitos, those strange reverse bacteria. The busy bees were their largest source of energy, but they required regular bacteria to feed on.

At first, they’d joined them one by one, but this was too slow and too fragile. A slight wind, a misplaced paw, and they would all break and die.

It wasn’t what they needed anyway. They only needed the energy to break the wall and get Bella back; or rather break their cage for good and bring life to Bella.

And so they started moving all the bacteria they found. They moved them to the wall, placing them against it, piling them higher than Eeris’ neck. Most of them concentrated around the spot in front of Bella.

Feria disagreed with this, as they couldn’t see Bella anymore through the wall of bacteria. Her disagreement was noted, and fully ignored.

The wall had become so thick they couldn’t know if Bella still lived. But the others insisted it was the place to break.

Even so, most portions of the entire wall, which stretched from one end of the continent to the other, received a layer of bacteria. That’s how many there were; that’s how large their cage was.

Darus returned to help. He explained that Ardex knew those special stones were Marker Stones, and also that he had no clue of that tiger’s current whereabouts.

“Of course! If only I’d known sooner,” said Feria. She dropped her work to grab a Marker Stone. It was still painful to hold, but now she knew why. “These stones sense energy. When they do, they send a signal back to Father, and he knows there is probably life on that planet. Somehow, these stones tap into the Energy field that connects us all.”

“Great, nice,” Darus said, “but I’m only interested if it helps us right now.”

“I don’t know. Maybe?” Feria froze, torn between building their Wall of Wrath and studying the fascinating stones. “We need Ardex. He could recharge these with his anger.”

“I can get real angry for you, if you want?” Darus said with a grin.

“No you can’t. You’re too sweet.”

“Aw thank—say, is that even a compliment?”

“I need to test a theory.”

Feria took a shining white Marker Stone, which they saw as proof it was “charged”. She could not hold it, so she kicked it ahead of her, and slung it large distances instead.

After a not insignificant journey, she arrived at her Stone Gardens. She’d created detailed and lifelike statues of her favorite types of animals, which just happened to all be closely related to the fox family. She had created wolves, dogs, bears, but not a single insect or bird.

It was hard, though, dear reader, as she only had her memory of Mother and Father’s lessons to work with. All those creatures didn’t exist on Somnia yet, and would not for a long time. How could they, when living beings could barely create enough energy to sustain a tiny bacteria cell?

She lifted the Marker Stone and placed it on top of a bear statue. The bear she’d made from stone and sand. It had always worn the same face and the same outstretched paws, as it would forever do.

Or …

As soon as the charged stone touched the bear, it came to life.

It blinked. It shuffled its paws. It looked at Feria expectantly.

“Mother?” the Bear spoke, a deep gravely sound.

“I … I am not your mother. Or, no, I am. I made you. Does that make me …” She pointed at their invisible cage, now cast in shadow by their own carpets of bacteria. “Please attack it.”

The bear made a run for it. It looked unnatural, every step nearly identical. As if the bear had saved an animation for walking inside of it and the energy it received merely played it back.

When it crashed into the wall, a tiny gap appeared.

“Yes! Yes—”

The gap closed itself immediately and spit out the bear. The Marker Stone was dislodged, and as soon as that happened, the bear was a statue again.

Feria tried again with other animals. They all came to life upon receiving the gift of energy to spend. They all ran at the wall, made it hurt and buckle, but never broke through. She hoped Bella saw this and knew they were coming for her, knew to be ready to jump when a gap did appear.

Having seen her creations come to life, it was increasingly hard to pull the energy away from them. To let them die. But did they really die? They never lived in the first place, or did they?

She had drained the Marker Stone completely and only found one upside: the wall could break if you blasted enough energy into it.

Gulvi and Cosmo returned, one using a river of his own, one using the empty skies.

“Look!” said Gulvi. “They’re over here too! They’re everywhere!”

“What are you—”

“Enyrgias! Little creatures that show you the energy of everything around us.”

“I don’t see—”

Cosmo grabbed one of her stone creatures in his claws and lifted it up. “Look at it. Don’t you see the change? The further I pull it away from earth, the more energy it stores to fall down. The Enyrgias I spent to carry this thing are moved onto this heavy stone.”

She couldn’t—yes, she could!

They had unlocked something in her vision. Something in her feeling for nature and the web of life they shared, which she’d always had, but she needed the push to open up to it.

Slowly she understood what they meant. Enyrgias were everywhere. She could choose not to see them. Right now, however, she had the same instinct as Gulvi: grab them and study them up close.

As something moved, the Enyrgias showed where it went. If it hit something else, they just jumped to the new object. Energy was converted, never added or removed. If she kicked a stone, the energy from her leg jumped onto the stone, becoming the energy that flung it through the air.

With one exception.

Any Enyrgias that came close to the Marker Stone were violently sucked in. They didn’t become different energy. They didn’t make the stone buzz, or emit light, or become magnetic. They were just removed as if gobbled up by Father back home.

This confirmed they should stop touching those objects. Immediately. Forever.

This became a real issue when they returned to the others. They had all gone to work on different parts of their bacteria barricade, probably after another disagreement about where to go next.

And they’d taken all the other Marker Stones with them.