Ardex looked at the journey ahead and saw absolutely no obstacles in his path. In truth, he barely saw anything at all. Plants hadn’t evolved yet, the only living beings were simple bacteria, and the most exciting thing was a babbling brook made by Gulvi.

When the tiger-shaped god stepped over the running water, however, a gust of wind blew him backwards. A stab in his belly, a ringing in his ears. He woke up some time later, stuck upside-down in the dirt.

“Oh I’ll fix this,” brother Darus said in a playful voice, “just watch me. Right?”

“This was my first attempt,” groaned Ardex. “You’ve already had countless attempts.”

“Yes. Which is exhausting. So I’m going to bed.”

“Lazy wolf,” mumbled Ardex.

Darus didn’t respond. They’d had the argument for a million years now and neither brother seemed eager to change their ways.

A million years. And all that time, Ardex hadn’t liked it here even a single day, because there was nothing here. They’d invented DNA, they’d created enzymes, they’d managed to get some sort of tiny living creatures wriggling at the bottom of the ocean.

And then they were stuck.

Those bacteria provided just enough life force to keep the demigods alive, dear reader. There is, however, a crucial difference, between living and surviving. Between being lazy and conserving your energy.

Ardex gave himself a running start. Fires erupted under his soles as he ran, faster and faster, to leap over the invisible boundary again.

As he jumped, suspended in the air, he believed he’d made it. Jus for a heartbeat or two. Then something snapped in his face, his body contorted, and a magical blast made him curl up like a ball and roll backwards.

Back to their cage. Back to the only patch of Somnia they were allowed to roam freely. But who are what was stopping them?

“You think it’s Father again?” Bella asked.

The Goddess of Wisdom, a large beautiful racoon, tentatively stretched out her paws. Trying to touch or press whatever invisible wall lived along the river. Once she found it, her hand jerked back, as if she’d accidentally held it over a fire.

Ardex grunted. “Must be Father. Doesn’t even trust us when we’re on our own planet at the other edge of the galaxy.”

He looked to the left. Darus’ Impossible Wall, which he’d made in a panic so long ago, obscured that part of the world. Even if they were able to climb it, something would stop them at its peak.

He looked to the right. Endless beaches quickly vanished into a uniform sea.

He looked forward. Even though nothing should be able to stop them, even though the wind wasn’t even blowing and the sun lit the empty space condescendingly well, they just could not move past it.

Ardex bellowed in rage, burning several carpets of bacteria. A trio of red flames erupted from his mouth.

“Calm yourself! You’re killing—”

“I am calm!”

He stomped the earth again to create ten flames of different colors and sizes. They all lashed out in different directions, trying to grab the invisible wall. Or, as he hoped, overwhelm it.

A few sparks. Some warping of the air. And, perhaps he’d imagined this, the river on the other side splashing against the sand with a little more volume.

When him and Bella tried to cross, though, the result was the same as ever. Upside-down in the dirt; dazed and sleepy.

Bella kept sleeping. Ardex felt like doing the same, but chastised himself. He would not sleep until Father’s cage was broken. He would not tire and he would not ever stop breaking—

His eyelids drooped and he fell halfway into the river.

The cold water shook him awake once more.

“Why!?” he cried to the innocent blue sky. “Why must gods sleep? Why do gods tire? This is foolish! Let us come home, Father!”

As a youth, Ardex had often seen his Father sit on his throne in a trance, eyes half-closed, studying and listening to other parts of the galaxy. He was certain Father could hear them and see them if he wished.

Increasingly, it seemed, he didn’t wish to do so.

Ardex stomped, and roared, and bit, and jabbed, and nothing made so much as a dent. It only tired himself, until he wasn’t even able to lift his paw or breathe a tiny fire.

He heard his siblings approach from behind. They’d walked the entire length of the invisible wall, looking for any gap or weakness. Yes, their cage was rather large, spanning half a continent. But did a prisoner really care about the size of their prison? Did a bird love being in a cage if it was made of gold?

Birds. He missed them. Oh how long it would take before they’d have birds again on this world. Hopefully not another million years.

“Please tell me the good news,” Ardex asked over his shoulder.

“Erm, well, you see,” started Eeris, a tall giraffe and Goddess of Flora. “Good news you say? My, what a question, let me think—”

The pink fox Feria, Goddess of Fauna, stepped forward and spoke without emotion. “It’s hopeless. I’m leaving for my own throne, and so is Eeris—”

“Aaarrgh!”

Ardex dug deep into the earth and found a final spark inside him, a final explosion of energy as if he pulled it right from Somnia’s lava core. He took a deep breath and blew out a sustained fire that seemed to last for hours.

It hammered the invisible wall. It sent purple hurricanes of plasma into the air, covering the bacteria with magical stardust.

Until, at last, his throat ran dry and his sister Feria had to catch him as he fell. Most of his other siblings were long gone, staying at their own thrones, calling Ardex foolish for still trying.

Just before falling asleep, however, he noticed the tiniest change. A part of the river had seemingly moved by a paw’s breadth. Some wall segments didn’t distort his vision anymore, but let him see straight through.

It closed itself, like a scabbing wound, but he was sure of what he’d seen.

He fell asleep, more tired than he thought gods were allowed to be.

When he woke up, he didn’t know where he was.

Ardex couldn’t believe his eyes. Nor his ears, which repeatedly heard his siblings confirm the truth. He had slept for an entire moon cycle and still felt groggy. A moon cycle lost! One in which they could’ve made more progress creating complex life!

They had not broken through the barrier. Quite the opposite. Their cage had shrunk as a large chunk of their continent had withered.

Eeris, in her quest for trees and pretty plants, had built a tiny toy forest out of sand, stone and bacteria. Sure, they looked like trees, but they were not the same thing. It was her pride and masterpiece, after laboring for thousands of years. The only real highlight of their planet.

It was completely erased. That’s why he hadn’t recognized it.

Despite not living, the trees had shriveled, their make-beleaves turned black. The ground had turned from friendly dirt to hard black stone, which even Darus couldn’t soften. They had named the entire area the Withered Willows. That’s how long Ardex had been asleep—they’d already come up with names for their disasters.

“Whoever made those invisible walls,” said Feria, “they didn’t like your attack.”

“All the more reason to keep going.”

He spoke loudly and with confidence; his body didn’t feel ready to breathe fire for a while. Surely he should be able to keep going. If he never needed sleep, or rest, he’d already have transformed this planet into a lively paradise years ago.

“Can’t those bacteria help us?” he asked. “They sure have nothing better to do.”

Feria picked up a few of them and studied their movements.

They covered the land as colorful carpets, dear reader, but your human eyes wouldn’t be able to see them. They were larger to the eyes of gods, which always saw living beings as connected like a gigantic spider web of life. Even so, they didn’t even cover half the space yet, for they moved and duplicated too slowly.

“Bacteria are weak,” the fox said. “They are simple cells that still live off of sunlight. That barely gives them enough energy to wiggle.”

Ardex paused. He had noticed that standing in sunlight made him feel more powerful too, and his fire run hotter. On the other hand, the dolphin Gulvi hated it and felt weak in sunlight.

“Where do we get our energy?” mumbled Ardex.

Everyone shrugged. Energy was a strange thing. You couldn’t grab it or hold it in your hands. You couldn’t study it and none of them had “energy magic”, if that was even a thing.

And yet, nothing ever happened in the universe without energy. It seemed the most precious resource, even more important than oxygen or water. If you had none, nothing happened. If you had a lot, things happened faster.

Eeris sat amidst her shriveled trees and cried. The Withered Willows used to dwarve her, tall as she was, but now she stuck out like an awkward lighthouse.

“We should … we should just stop,” she said. “Stop attacking the wall.”

“I absolutely will not—”

“Sure. What if Father destroys your precious Throne next? It’s over.”

“We don’t even know if it’s Father,” said Bella, trying to make peace with hand gestures.

The prospect of an unknown enemy wandering around Somnia frightened Ardex more than his moody Father. And when he’s afraid, he has to do something. Usually the activity selected was fire and destruction.

“I am going to attack until we have a gap. Let whoever built the wall be angry.”

“No!” Eeris stood and wrapped her neck around his ankles. “Can’t you just be reasonable for once? Instead of applying your useless fire to every—”

“Being reasonable gets us nowhere! More energy, yes, that will do the trick.”

“And where will you get it?”

“From whatever dark corner of Somnia that keeps it away from us.”

Ardex ran away. Bella tried to stop him again.

“Please, stay. We need everyone’s minds and abilities if we are to figure out—”

“Then where are the others? Why aren’t you kicking lazy Darus out of his bed of stone?”

“He’s … you know how he is. Never serious. Would just make jokes and play pranks on us, it’s tiring. But your abilities are neces—”

“Really? You suddenly need my ‘useless fire’?”

Shaking his head, he pushed Bella aside and ran away even faster. Always the same. All those years and they still thought he was a dumb soldier and nothing more. While his powers were stronger than theirs! He could do everything on his own, if he wanted. He didn’t need them.

He followed the invisible wall. Sometimes it hugged a river, or a cliff, or a suspiciously well-matched crack in the earth. Sometimes there was no trace of it and Ardex accidentally ran into it to receive a painful reminder. It was a creative wall too: it never pushed you back in quite the same way.

He felt for energy. Regularly, he stopped at a new location, closed his eyes, and tried to feel his magic. Was it stronger here? Did he feel more energetic? Was this a secret energy source?

Most of the time, he felt nothing. Every patch of dirt was the same, water was certainly not the place for a fire god, and the Withered Willows were dead and lacking energy entirely. Standing there, it almost felt as if the breath was sucked out of him.

Then energy surged through him, shocking him with the added buzz and excitement.

He’d arrived at a clearing he’d never seen before.

In a world without trees or plants, dear reader, you might wonder how there could be a clearing. Well, this one was made of stone. They seemed to have fallen from the sky and landed in a rough circle. But Ardex had seen chaos and emptiness for a million years now, and he knew: this was no accident. These were placed on purpose.

Upon his approach, Ardex oh so cleverly ignored the clear warning signs carved into the stones—red triangles with skulls inside.

And within that clearing he saw the thickest, most colorful carpet of bacteria he’d ever seen. It was impossible to even enter the clearing: most gaps were clogged by busy bacteria.

Ardex lay flat on his stomach to study them from close range. He had the eyes of a god, but not the nature-sensitive eyes of Feria and Eeris. No, stop thinking like that. His eyes were every bit as godly as theirs; he had all the power he needed to solve this problem at once.

To him, it seemed that these bacteria were simply better. More energetic. Faster. More eager to actually make things happen.

Any time he’d blink, ten more bacteria had found each other and strengthened each other. They seemed to do a handshake. Sometimes, the bacteria absorbed sunlight, as Feria had said. They’d briefly darken the area around them and grow slightly larger, as if eating a sunray.

And then sometimes they’d absorb something left behind by other bacteria. Tiny particles, glowing like stars to Ardex’ eyes, gobbled up eagerly.

He grinned and carefully grabbed as many of these bacteria as he could. They were linked so tightly that he could throw them onto his back as actual carpets, although he ripped some in the process. His massive tiger body could still only take a small percentage of all living beings in the clearing.

Yes, yes, he felt the energy.

His body jolted awake and he felt he could go on for days. For many moon cycles! If they could use these bacteria, they’d have infinite energy soon!

He threw the bacteria at the invisible wall, like throwing pebbles at a window to start a burglary.

“Eat! Devour it! Break it!”

Instead, they all died instantly. Ardex’ heart stopped in fear of Father’s retribution for this attempt.

The back of Bella’s fur was lit up by powerful distant flames. She’d been looking for Ardex to tell him they did not find him useless and they did need his fire and energy. Eeris rebuild her Withered Willows all alone, for everyone else was either gone or stuck in a fiery debate about exactly how to rebuild it.

They’d all completely lost the energy to investigate the wall. Or do anything remotely hard. Failing to progress for a million years does that to a god.

At least the flames told her Ardex’ location, although he should really stop—

A scratching sound. Shuffling sand behind her. She looked back and saw nothing strange, but the noise continued, louder this time.

Then she spotted a hole in the sand. The path she’d just walked—a perfectly fine, sturdy piece of dirt—had suddenly become a deep hole with ragged edges.

Another hole appeared, closer to her.

Another hole, as if an invisible giant ran towards her, the dirt unable to support his massive feet.

Bella could only yelp and take one more step. Then the next hole appeared, wide enough to swallow the entire Throne of Tomorrow if it wanted, and sucked her in.

“Help!”

Her screams were stifled by piles of dirt falling on her head. As she fell, the shrinking hole showed a blue sky with faintly red clouds, lit by Ardex’ angry flames.

Then she saw only darkness.

The hole still wasn’t satisfied with its size. It grew deeper, and larger, and shifted around as if it were a living being. She tried a few more cries for help, but could barely hear herself, especially with clumps of dirt in her throat.

Until the hole spit her out.

She rolled to her feet, agile and on full alert. She used her tail as a shield.

No attack came. The area was as silent as Somnia had been for a million years. Uninhabited, unlived, unremarkable.

No, it was even more silent. She couldn’t even hear the others speak or the crackling of Ardex’ flamebreath.

They had assumed that other things, like their bacteria, were able to cross the wall just fine. That it only stopped them, the godchildren. But now she saw the truth.

She had appeared on the other side of the wall—and it held not a single living thing.

Her knees buckled. Her tail drooped. The fear of being unconnected to life crept through her. It made her instantly exhausted and hopeless, as if she only now realized she had not slept for months. She searched, within herself and outside herself, but found no thread of the spider web of life. The wall kept that out too.

As far as her body was concerned, she was in a dead universe. And so it died too.

“Help! Help me!” she screamed.

She entered the hole, but it had shifted again. It stopped after only a few steps. She had to leave once the roof collapsed and almost covered her in thick layers of mud.

Why was it always her? Why was it always the one goddess without strong magic?

No. Don’t think like that.

Her magic was being smart, and clever, and knowing everything about everything. She just had to find the wall again. She just had to find the patterns in the holes, then take one that brought her back.

If only her legs would keep working for that long.

As before, her body started disintegrating. Just a few magical shreds came off of her tail and floated to nowhere. Like smoke from a fire; like its dead ashes too. That’s how much the gods needed life force around them to stay alive.

Lacking any life or objects, it was easy to look far ahead. The shifting sands had stopped for a bit, but now they continued. Why? How could she predict it?

She ran to the nearest hole, but it had closed itself again when she reached it. She was closer to Ardex, though, who still ran around breathing fire.

Without warning, another bite was taken out of her surroundings. The white stones that shimmered in sunlight were suddenly dark gray or cut in half. The smooth pebbles, softened by years floating in the river, or scrubbed by sand, had become spiky and angular.

Then it stopped again. The sands shifted to make up for the gaps, the wind blew things back into their proper place—or at least, that’s what Bella hoped—and the area settled.

The next time the holes appeared, the answer was abundantly clear.

The hole appeared precisely when Ardex made his next flame.

Bella couldn’t believe it. As her tail disintegrated and her vision started to swim, she had to chuckle at the thought. Ardex even destroyed things unknowingly, from a distance, by accident.

Her disbelief had to be dislodged by cold hard facts. The next flame created another hole, and so did the next. They matched perfectly. It was impossible to deny the connection.

Whenever Ardex created fire, he destroyed another part of Somnia.

Ardex came closer. He seemed to be carrying something. His firebreath hadn’t been in anger or directed at the wall; no, he had panicked eyes and a wild uneven step.

“Ardex! Here!” Bella tried again.

He couldn’t hear. Fortunately, he was close enough now to see.

His panic multiplied. He dashed straight into the invisible wall, as if pure willpower could shatter it. It did not even bend.

Once Ardex had pulled himself out of the dirt again, he asked Bella many questions, but she could hear none of them. The wall dampened every sound. It made the world feel dull, your ears sick and your eyes tired.

Not just dull. Without a connection to the spider web of life, Bella was nothing.

“Keep breathing fire! Do big ones! QUICK!”

She made wild gestures with her fading paws, hoping he’d understand. But she barely understood herself. How could Ardex do this? How could this bypass the wall? How did she communicate that?

Instead, doubt and indecision passed over his face, and then Ardex waved goodbye and left her to wither alone. So much for being a family and sticking together.

As Ardex ran back to Feria, he was surpassed by a boulder. The large stone ball, glowing a faint blue-purple, nearly flattened him. The emptiness of Somnia, at the time, meant there were no obstructions and it would keep rolling for quite a while.

Unsurprisingly, it was his brother Darus, God of Earth and Stone, that passed him by next. He never knew that lazy wolf could run so fast.

“My boulder!” cried Darus. “Come here! Come here!”

It would be another long stretch of running before the boulder slowed down and was eventually stopped by Feria’s paw. Darus hugged the blue stone as if it were his child, even though Ardex had not seen it before. It must have been a recent creation of his. A big one, too large to carry or lift.

Ardex gave Darus’ typical antics no further thought, except for the obligatory and practiced scowl.

He dragged the remains of the odd bacteria from his back and showed them to Feria. The only sibling of his that always seemed ready to help her family. Bless her. He should tell her that more often, but the burning words always died on his dry tongue.

Most of the weird bacteria had died immediately when separated from the regular bacteria. The ones who survived didn’t move much.

He needn’t ask. Feria instantly recognized they were different. She cradled a few in her paws and studied them closely.

“This is extraordinary,” she exclaimed. “They are like reverse bacteria. Upside-down, inside-out. Look, there’s this tightly wound thread running inside of them, which the others don’t have. I proudly name this new invention … Mitos.”

“A fine name,” said Ardex hurriedly. “But can you explain? Can you explain it fast?”

Feria had difficulty looking away from the beings before her. “Why?”

“Bella is somehow trapped on the other side of the invisible cage.”

“What?”

Darus and Feria followed Ardex at a blistering pace.

“Where did you find these?” Feria asked. Even at this speed, she moved elegantly and never out of breath.

“A weird clearing of stones. I suspect some magical site built by whoever made the wall.”

They leapt over three hills at once, their paws perfectly synchronized. Then they saw her.

Bella was still banging against the invisible wall. Her eyes were wide and tearful, her body halfway gone because she had no connection to life anymore.

Feria threw herself against the wall too. She thought she could touch Bella’s paw, even as the wall tried so hard to separate them.

“We’ll get you out. Don’t you worry.”

“Might these … reverse bacteria be the answer?” asked Ardex.

“Maybe. Remember how regular bacteria get their energy from sunlight? They suck it in, and out comes movement and a bit of oxygen. They are completely independent and can create their own energy, but it’s very weak.”

Darus had already spotted the clearing Ardex had talked about. He sauntered to the stones and, being the specialist, inspected them closely—at least, once he was done juggling them.

“Well,” continued Feria, “these new bacteria do the reverse. They draw in oxygen and convert that to energy—much, much more of it.”

Ardex frowned and spoke before thinking, an unfortunate habit. “And then they poop out sunlight?”

“No. No, that part’s different. Or, well, sunlight is a kind of energy …”

Feria noticed the connections between regular bacteria and reverse bacteria. The first were see-through, translucent to the point they didn’t have their own color. The others were thicker and filled with more solid particles, which gave them a red-orange form.

“It means the red ones can’t survive independently. They need the oxygen expelled by the others. That’s why they only survive when connected, and not when separated.”

“Not just survive—they thrive!” Darus called. “Have you seen this, Feria? More bacteria in one place than anywhere else in our cage! You could decorate your Stone Gardens with just half of these things!”

“There will be no ‘decorating’ anything until we solved—” grumbled Ardex.

Bella kept saying something; none of them could figure it out.

Normally, dear reader, this would never ever be an issue. Gods didn’t communicate by speaking with their mouth; that’s just something I translate for your convenience. They communicate as gods do: energy signals, tapping the web of life, reading minds, adjusting winds. But even those powerful magical tools were completely blocked by the invisible wall.

It wouldn’t be long before Bella’s face had vanished too, turned to shreds as she could not access the spark of life.

Ardex bellowed and opted for the fire solution again.

“No! Don’t anger Father even more!” Feria yelled. “I’d like to keep my Stone Gardens!”

Selfishness too? From Feria, of all siblings?

Just like Eeris had her Withered Willows, Feria had been working on her Stone Gardens for a million years. The animals she loved so, the animals she remembered from Father’s lessons, but made of stone and sand. Which meant they were unmoving statues that would never start moving. Still she would not want to see them destroyed like Eeris’ forest had been.

Ardex grunted and held his breath again.

To their surprise, however, Bella nodded eagerly and smiled at them.

“You … want me to do this?”

When Ardex started again, Darus was the first to realize why.

The stone he was inspecting turned from white to dark grey. As if it was killed. As if Ardex had hollowed it out by drawing on its material.

Or in your world, dear reader, you might say it was a battery and Ardex had drained it to create the hottest possible fire. Energy has many names and many forms. I just wish I understood that earlier than this story.

“I know you joke about me never turning up for Father’s lessons,” said Darus. “But I am certain about this one. It’s the first law a god like me needs to know.”

“What law?”

“The conservation of energy.”

“You’re making that up, brother,” Ardex said.

“No, no, I remember that too,” Feria said.

She leaned against the boundary again, which refracted their vision as if they were swimming underwater, but was otherwise invisible. She kept trying to hold Bella’s paw. Even as it faded and the Goddess of Wisdom trembled.

“You can’t create something out of nothing,” said Darus. “Any time you create fire and heat, brother, you must take something else away somewhere. It needs fuel. It needs to be offset with a payment.”

“I don’t believe that. Isn’t magic—”

“We call it magic because we don’t understand what we’re destroying to perform a spell. Not yet.” Feria clamped Ardex’ mouth shut before he could spit fire again. “Which is why we shouldn’t use it with complete disregard, setting things on fire at will!”

“Oh. Great. Just great. I’m the only one making progress here, and still you want me gone!? Why don’t you go back to your little Stone Gardens and sit around while your family dies, huh!?”

“I did not say that,” said Feria, calmness itself.

“Fine. I’ll stop using my fire, completely, permanently. Let’s see how you get Bella back now.”

“She is not a bargaining chip. She is scared to death!”

“Woah, woah, woah,” yelled Darus. He dropped the stone he was holding, then jumped into the water.

Feria caught it, then dropped it too. The stone buzzed, moved, jerked around like a frenzied mosquito trying to escape a trap. She couldn’t describe the feeling—the stone wasn’t particularly hot, or cold, or heavy—but touching it was too painful.

“Your … your anger has recharged it. It’s at least good for something!”

“Don’t coddle me.”

“No really—”

“Don’t bother coming after me again with your lies about working together.”

Ardex walked away, too angry to care for Bella. Without his Heavenmatter to control him, which were objects they all had to leave behind when Father suddenly banished them, the fire inside him sometimes got the better of him.

“And look at that,” Darus said, now a distant voice, so jolly and careless that Ardex could almost strangle his brother. “Another boulder like mine. Hidden behind the stones at the back, instead of proudly in the center. Something must have dislodged it.”

“Or … someone,” answered Feria. “Say, Darus, where exactly did you get that first blue boulder of yours?”

Feria would not leave Bella’s side. If she were to die alone—no, she wouldn’t think about that. It was not even a possibility! And where were Cosmo and Gulvi? Why was Eeris too heavy to forcefully drag her out of her Withered Willows? Her siblings always said they’d be back the next day, and they never were.

Darus had to execute the plan alone. It was a wild guess, but those were his specialty.

He found his first boulder at the top of his Impossible Wall. A similar stone clearing as Ardex had found was present there, and hundreds of years ago a glowing blue boulder had shown up. The others didn’t know he’d discovered the special clearings way earlier than Ardex, for they had never asked.

Just as they didn’t know he’d accidentally crossed the invisible border once. He was ashamed to say it, to be pushed aside as one big furry joke again. Especially because he accidentally stumbled back before exploring the other side. Keeping this secret, it took him all those hundred years to figure out that touching the boulder probably inspired that freak event.

The blue stone was so hard to dislodge, though, that he used too much power and accidentally sent it rolling downhill this time.

He wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

Feria made a simple observation. If the boulder wasn’t there at first, then someone had actually placed it or used it. The same person who had hidden the boulder at the other clearing. She said the stones strongly reminded her of Father, which just confirmed their belief that this cage was Father’s doing. Even after a million years, he would not stop punishing them—and they didn’t even know for what crime they were punished.

Their theory? Father wanted to be able to pass through the walls himself, if need be. The invisible boundaries were the lock; the boulders were the key.

They tried this key-lock solution at the clearing near Bella, but it didn’t work. Maybe because Ardex had destroyed it too much already, or his anger had depleted the batteries there. More likely, the boulders only worked on their original location.

Darus thought their best chance was using this specific boulder to unlock the mountain side. He had made the Impossible Wall, he was aligned with the stone and the dirt, he was certain he could figure it out.

And so he stood at the foot of his mountain, ready to roll a boulder all the way to the top.

Eeris had laughed at the silly idea and refused to help. After much trouble, they explained it to Bella with gestures, but the Goddess of Wisdom made a face that radiated her belief that this plan wasn’t so wise after all.

Ardex returned. His face had cleared up, his anger soothed. It was always like that. Anything you said would just make him more angry, but leave him alone for a time, and he was like brand new.

“Why … why are you rolling that up the hill, brother?” His voice was guilt-ridden. “Is, erm, Bella looked after?”

Darus stopped himself before telling the truth. It would just make his brother go crazy again. He’d tell him that rolling boulders up a hill was a joke. He already envisioned Ardex setting all the boulders on fire or throwing them against the wall a hundred times.

For every fire of his, they knew now, another part of their land would shrivel or wither to fuel it. As usual, Ardex would just get in the way.

“Surely,” Darus said in a light voice, “you remember the match of Boulder Ball we planned for tomorrow? At the mountaintop?”

“This is no time for games!”

“According to you, it’s never been a time for games in a million years! Which makes it the perfect time for games.”

Ardex’ frown deepened. “This is foolish. Why not use your magic?”

“It’s not easier. Using magic takes energy too. Making a boulder float without touching it is harder than moving it by simply, well, touching it. I thought you knew this? When you breathe fire, you always groan as if you’re terribly ill or going mad.”

“I do not. That’s a powerful magic cry.”

“Sure.” Darus grinned. “It’s okay to cry, brother. I would too if I looked like you.”

“Not that kind of crying.”

“Say, if you’re so strong … maybe a little helping paw? Boulders are heavy. And slippery.”

Ardex grunted. Then he put his massive tiger body behind the boulder.

It rolled up the mountain smoothly, but it was still a long way to go. It was not called the Impossible Wall of Darus for nothing. Afternoon came and went, the sun set, and still they kept pushing and rolling the boulder higher and higher.

Exhaustion made them shiver; their strong pushes turned to limping. And all that time they fought gravity. They fought the desire of the boulder, so it seemed, to slip from their grasp and roll back down. As if only the floor was its home.

But they kept going. They could always see the top, always see their goal, and they had each other.

Even if Ardex lamented how weak gods were, dear reader, he was still a thousand times stronger and faster than you would be. The Wall is a proper mountain, make no mistake. Cosmo still struggled to fly to the top. But they were able to push that boulder all the way in less than a day.

“Come on, brother,” Darus said with teeth clenched.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw an odd shadow at the mountain top. An irregular shape that clearly moved. But he was too exhausted, straining too much as he held the weight, to look closely.

“One more push! One more step!”

They made that final push.

The stone inexplicably slipped from both their grasps.

“NO!” roared Ardex.

Stones did not listen to voice commands. It picked up pace with ease and rolled back down again. Pushing it uphill was a constant battle; roaring downhill was what it always wanted to do, and it did so fast.

“Ah well,” Darus said with fake cheer. “Say, let’s try that again.”

Ardex wanted a break first. He studied the clearing of stones up here and found it to be nearly identical. After a long silence, Darus lay on his stomach beside him. As the sun rose, they studied how it interacted with the stones full of warning signs.

“I know what these are,” Ardex mumbled, staring ahead. “These are Marker Stones.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Like you ever believe me,” he whispered. “Like you’d listen.”

Darus bit back a joke and said: “I am listening now.”

“Father keeps watch over the entire universe. He sits in his throne, eyes half-closed, and can see or hear any planet he desires from there. How?”

Darus grinned. “By placing a stone Marker on some of them. Stone—always got your back.”

“This planet was of special interest to him. That’s why it has multiple Markers. That’s why he probably sent us here in a panic and not, well, anywhere else.”

Darus’ grin disappeared. His longing gaze tried to see through the stone, as if it were a portal back home. As if Father would jump out any second and tell them this was all a joke. A bad one. Yes, even Darus had revised his opinion that all jokes were good.

“So you really think he still watches? He returns once in a while to observe us?”

Ardex grumbled. “Animals are easier to observe when caged.”

He could almost understand what his Father had done. He was trained by Him, given powers by Him, and oh so similar to Him. If Ardex could cage his siblings, they would … they might … actually stick together. Not walk away.

But it was this one way in which he’d always differed from Father. Once Somnia teemed with life, once he ruled a beautiful planet, he would never force unjust laws on his subjects or put them in a cage.

That’s what he told himself almost every day, dear reader. Of course, as the rest of this saga narrates, the messiness of life led him down wildly different paths. I sometimes wish I’d acted and saved this dysfunctional family, instead of letting things develop however they develop. Freedom, total freedom, has its downsides.

As the sun rose, they leapt down the mountain with massive magical jumps. Going down was always faster than going up. When Darus lands a jump, he doesn’t break his bones, he breaks the stones.

From the foot of the Impossible Wall, they tried pushing the boulder uphill again. All went smoothly. They cooperated well and doubled their pace from before.

Just before they reached the top, it slipped from their grasp again and rolled back down.

They tried once more. Anger and frustration fueled them more than any lie about wanting to play Boulder Ball with their family. Darus liked his games, but not that much. They had unspoken rules by now about where to step and which dangerous edges to avoid.

They reached the top, made sure to have a firm grasp for the final few steps—and it still slipped away and rolled back down.

They’d wasted so much time and energy on this. Ardex was certain this was Darus’ plan: keep Ardex away from the others, make sure the grumpy firegod didn’t get in the way. But it could anger him no more. He was bad luck.

It was not that he didn’t need them—they didn’t need him.

He strolled away from Darus, head hanging low and lacking a destination. He felt powerless. He was, ever since he learned that to create fire, he had to destroy something else. To create energy it had to be taken away from somewhere.

A theory so inconvenient he still chose not to believe it.

He desperately hoped the others were having more luck saving Bella. He renewed his quest to generate more energy somehow.

Gulvi gave up, out of luck. And out of ideas. The dolphin had no issue racing through any body of water, but as soon as he approached the invisible wall on this side—

The water current picked up again, smashing into him and creating a cloak of bubbles. It forced him back the way he came. And he knew that the faster he swam, the stronger the current would be.

What was out there? What was on the other side of the ocean that his family were not allowed to see? The thought just made him even more eager to see it. He had claimed this ocean as his throne and named it the Dolphin Pass, but he could really only use a tiny fraction of it before the boundary stopped him.

Alas, the dolphin could not trick the invisible wall. It would always find a way to push him back where he belonged.

He fell still and let the current push him back. Along the way, he noticed a large collection of blue-purple boulders. They seemed a bit too smooth and too large to be natural. He decided to ask Darus if he’d been trying to invent a ball sport to be played underwater again.

As he resurfaced, footsteps splashed through the shallow water nearby. Gulvi could recognize all his siblings just by splashing alone—and this was Cosmo, a great bird and God of Air and Space.

He wasn’t having much success either.

He kept launching himself from higher and higher objects, flapping his great wings at a speed that blurred them to Gulvi’s eyes. And he could fly fast, yes, and he could reach high, but he could not get over the invisible wall. Perhaps it was also an infinite wall.

And in the end, even against a bird, gravity would always win. Cosmo’s wings would tire and he’d be forced to fall back down to the earth. He was so tired of trying to pass the invisible wall that he’d chosen to rest his wings and crash land in the soft sea.

Gulvi rested his fins too and let the water current bring him to his brother.

When they left, they disagreed with the others about how to overcome the wall. Gulvi was certain there had to be a gap somewhere on the wide ocean. Cosmo scoffed when they questioned his ability to fly over it. They made a fuss, called Ardex an ugly sour cat, and left without a word, many moon cycles ago. Now they longed to return, with slight shame drooping from their faces, and get new ideas from their siblings.

“Sometimes, I think,” Cosmo said, his gaze distant. “If nature wants it to be that way, why don’t we just let it? Stop struggling against it. If everything is supposed to fall to the floor, why do I keep trying to fly?”

“Nature doesn’t want anything, silly,” chattered Gulvi. “It just is. It’s those who can manipulate energy that can think about wanting. I just, tsh tsh tsh, go with the flow.”

Yes, that’s true. Gulvi had said something smart, he told himself. The world was whatever it was. It would always return to staying the same and doing nothing, because that’s how it all started. You had to apply energy to create change.

He was quite proud of that, as he was pretty new to saying smart things. With the disappearance of Hanah ever since they landed here, he was technically the youngest of them all. A toddler on the time scale of gods. A smart toddler at—

Something stirred in the water. He wasn’t used to bacteria doing this much, and when he looked, his suspicion was confirmed: these were no bacteria. Long blobs in different colors radiated from a boulder. They were thick and round at one end, but pointy and thin at the other, like Cosmo’s beak.

Or … arrows?

Unease crept through his fins. These creatures did not interact with the water. They did not create waves, nor bubbles, nor push things aside. As if they weren’t just slightly see-through but also slightly pass-through, like a ghost.

The water current grew in power again, removing Gulvi and Cosmo from the beach.

“Look!” Cosmo said, following the oblong creatures with his sharp eyes. “They align themselves with the current. Do you think these are some kind of magical fish? Creating the currents?”

Indeed. Their pointy end pointed exactly in the direction of water flow. And when the water changed, they’d swivel and point in the right direction again. Wherever the current was strongest, the creatures had the brightest colors and were least transparent.

Or was it the other way around?

“No. They don’t create the waves. They show them; they are them?”

Both of them dove into the water to catch a few of these arrowheads. This was a mistake. Their jump stirred the water and sent waves away from them, which the arrowheads promptly displayed.

Then Gulvi noticed a few that stayed nearby. They didn’t align with the water, no, they sprung out of a carpet of bacteria. A moving carpet. And as expected, the arrowheads aligned themselves with the direction in which they moved. As if predicting where it was going to go next.

“Oh, oh, can I name them?” Gulvi chattered. Indeed, when nothing happened for millions of years, godchildren were bound to develop an obsession with giving any discovery a fun name. “I can give smart-sounding names too, just like you. I call these … Sizzlefish. No, no, that’s not good enough. And they’re not just in the water. I call them … Enyrgias.”

“Never mind the name!” said Cosmo. “Why didn’t we see them before?”

“Why would we?” replied Gulvi while chasing them. “The laws of the universe have always been the same, always there. But we’re only discovering many of them now, aren’t we?”

Cosmo’s feathers scratched his chin. “What do they mean? Where do they come from? No, little brother, don’t touch them!”

Gulvi had already tried to hug a group of them, but he was right: they were like ghosts. Untouchable. Maybe not even there at all.

“Dear Enyrgias,” said Cosmo. “What are you? Can you talk? Could you please use your strength to break the invisible wall?”

No response. They didn’t really expect one. The Enyrgias simply showed the movement of water and bacteria, and when that died down, they vanished too.

No, they didn’t vanish. They just moved.

Gulvi followed the strongest current of them all. It was easy to find: it had the most and brightest Enyrgias.

That powerful wave hit one of the boulders. This completely stilled the water; but now the boulder flew through the water, almost crushing them. All the Enyrgias from before had jumped ship: they now circled the boulder and displayed how that object was moving.

Once the boulder reached the surface it shot into the air.

Gravity slowed it down quickly. But as before, the Enyrgias didn’t disappear. Even as the boulder hung in the air, still, ready to fall down, it was surrounded by the same number of creatures as before. As if the boulder had saved up energy by slowing down in the air, and would unleash it soon by falling back down.

Cosmo was the better mathematician of the two. After seeing this happen several times, he confirmed.

“They always stay the same. They may jump to different objects, or change, or convert from water to air. But the number of them, at least in our close vicinity, stays the same.”

“It’s like Feria and Darus said,” Gulvi stated, his excitement slipping away. “All the energy there’ll ever be has already been created. Everyone is just using it and then giving it back in a different form. The current state of the universe … is the only state of the universe.”

Yes! Another smart quote! Bella should start writing these down. Where was she anyway?

“But that doesn’t mean,” said Cosmo, “we can’t try and grab a larger slice of energy before having to give it back.”

Feria ran onto their beach. She told of an ambitious plan that needed their help. A last attempt to save Bella, who had almost disintegrated.

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.

Feria found Eeris first, who still refused to leave her Withered Willows area. The Bacteria Barricade had grown so tall and thick that only she, with her long neck, could still place more bacteria on top. She had not taken any Marker Stones.

“Probably Darus,” she said. “He said something about going underground. He thought he’d be able to bypass the wall that way—we hadn’t tried it before.”

Silly Darus. Foolish Darus.

They soon found pawprints in the sand and traced it to a large hole in the floor, not far from where Bella was. When Feria tried to enter, dirt flew in her face. Otherwise, the tunnel was already impressively deep and completely dark.

“Darus?”

“Yes, my favorite foxie?” said his cheerful voice.

“Are you okay? Do you have—”

“Yes, yes, just a bit tired. It’s fine. I know stone. I was born in it, molded by it. I can handle the Marker Stones.”

“I don’t know if—”

Darus’ tail moved faster than it ever had, cutting out large chunks of dirt. The wolf was out of her sight, even deeper into his tunnel, before she could ask more questions. She was hesitant to follow; she didn’t have Darus’ powers and would be blinded and in danger.

Darus achieved something. Bella’s cries for help were suddenly audible. The tunnel acted like an amplifier for it.

“Bella! We’re coming. We … we … we might have a way …”

Might. Maybe. Perhaps. She couldn’t bring herself to lie to Bella, nor tell her the truth about their miserable situation. She couldn’t forcefully tell Darus to stop his dangerous operation, but also wouldn’t pick a side and jump in.

Always the middle-woman between her siblings running to different extremes.

Then Bella cut out again.

“Keep going, Darus! Don’t stop!”

Cosmo helped Eeris reach the tallest points of the bacteria barricade. They’d achieved so much. It cast a shadow so tall it even darkened the Throne of Tomorrow far away from here. While working on that wall, night felt permanent. They’d used all the bacteria that lived and connected them with their busy Mitos counterparts.

Their wall buzzed with excitement. The Enyrgias streamed from it at all times, as bacteria shifted, converted sunlight into a tiny bit of energy, or replicated themselves.

Yes, the regular bacteria didn’t create energy, they converted it too. When Feria focused on the sunlight, she could see tiny Enyrgias traveling in its rays. As if the straight sunrays were a track through the solar system and the Enyrgias were forced to move along it.

But it was not enough. The invisible wall held firm. With every movement, bacteria broke again, and the Mitos lost their oxygen supply.

“We must collect all the Marker Stones and those boulders,” said Feria. “We must hedge our bets.”

Lacking Ardex and Bella, she wasn’t actually the eldest godchild. Darus, Eeris, and Cosmo outranked her. The way she assumed command, though, was as natural as can be.

Gulvi and her traveled as fast as they could. Boulders were rolled towards the foot of the Impossible Wall. The Stone Markers were thrown into the many rivers—neither of them wanted to touch them ever again—and fished from them just in time.

She tentatively placed a Marker Stone against their bacteria barricade.

Instead of giving more energy, however, it violently sucked it away again. The number of Enyrgias actually shrunk, and rapidly so.

“Must be it,” said Feria. “If you already have energy, it will take it from you. It only gives it away if you lack any. Powerful magic; dreadful magic.”

“We must roll a boulder uphill again,” said Gulvi. He eyed the waterfalls that Darus had carved into his Impossible Wall; the only way for a dolphin to get up. “Maybe this time we’ll get to the top and we can unlock our cage with the boulder as the key.”

“It’s a far stretch. That lock-key idea is just a theory. You laughed the first time I explained.”

Gulvi had found a tiny spot through which Bella was still visible. Her body had vanished, turned into smoke and ghostly tendrils. Her face was all that remained, and it looked pained.

“Energy is also just a theory!” cried Gulvi. “We need any solution we can get!”

And then Ardex returned.

He was furious. Every step shot fires from the earth. His bright red eyes almost spit fire themselves, and his tusks scraped the stones as he walked past.

He roared, and roared, and burned everything around him until only ash blew in the wind.

Ardex would never change, would he? Feria yelled at him to stop, but he didn’t listen. His fire had already burned a slight hole in their barricade.

“This won’t help! Stop getting in the way!” yelled Feria.

“I am helping! I am not in the way!”

“It’s—”

“We are gods. We should be able to create more energy!”

“We are gods, yes, we’re supposed to understand the universe’s limits.”

Ardex’ anger spilled over into her. This was all his fault! A hole he created, because he’d destroyed something to breathe fire, is what made Bella stuck on the other side. He always did this! He always just did stupid things and thought being a god meant being selfish! He always—

As Feria wanted to scream at him, she noticed her Marker Stone had recharged.

And she felt hollow. As if a black hole was growing inside her, suffocating her heart. Her anger had sucked the energy from herself and given it to the stone.

She realized what Ardex was doing.

“No! Stop!” she shrieked. “You’re destroying yourself!”

“I know what I’m doing. I am not as dumb as you all think!”

“We don’t think you’re—it doesn’t matter. Stop it!”

“See? Bless you, Feria,” he said the kindest words in the most aggressive of ways. “Even now you can’t lie to me!”

He crafted his most threatening fire yet. And in the distance, the Throne of Tomorrow groaned and crumbled. He’d drawn the energy precisely from that location, and one of its towers sunk into the earth.

He kept piling on the anger. The Marker Stones recharged happily. Even the boulders, which hadn’t really cared before, buzzed with energy and rolled away of their own accord. They shone their own light now, and almost looked like the first birds taking to the sky.

Ardus groaned and shriveled. He fell on his side, too weak to stand, but kept his anger. He was well-trained; he could stay angry for days. He cried in pain and couldn’t move his legs anymore, but still he aimed his fury at the bacteria barricade.

It shimmered, and danced, and moved, and even seemed to fly, as he was able to set the invisible wall ablaze without coughing a single flame in its direction.

The bacteria turned translucent in their power. They saw Bella fully now; writhing on the floor just like Ardex. The two eldest gods about to wither away like they were never there, all because of stupid Father and their stupid banishment and their—

“NO! No! Ardex! Please!”

Feria jumped on top of him and tried to push him out of his daze. Tears welled on her cheeks and fell heavily on Ardex’ snout.

Just a single teardrop was enough to shake Ardex out of it. It sizzled on his fur, as if boiling in a pan. His eyes met Feria’s and saw his younger sister crying for him as if she died herself.

All the anger was gone. All the conviction that this was the right thing, and his family would thank him for the sacrifice and move on, was instantly gone.

Feria sniffed and gave Ardex a kiss. “Are we really willing to die for each other, but not willing to live for each other?”

Silence.

“But what then?” croaked Ardex. “I can’t let Bella die. And whatever we try, the wall bends, but never breaks.”

Gulvi, Cosmo, they all confirmed it. Even Eeris had left her throne when she heard the bone-chilling plea of her Green Sister.

They all returned to say that, despite massive energy from the recharged Enyrgias, the current still pushed them back and godly birds still fell back to earth. Despite two types of bacteria working together, keeping each other energetic with their oxygen handshake, a miraculous new development for Somnia—it wasn’t enough to push through.

Ardex remembered Mother’s tales about Sizzlefish, a cursed being performing a useless task they could never complete. He knew what was happening. Father had designed his cage to make it seem as if you could get close. To make it feel like you were almost able to escape.

But in the end, you never did.

He was right all along. Father had banished them to Hell—so he’d show him Fire in a way he didn’t expect. His children, his family, actually working together and overcoming his punishment.

Once the others explained the Enyrgias to Ardex, he was able to see them too. But the other part of their explanation, that they showed movement and that’s that, didn’t feel right to him. Something that didn’t move could still have energy, could it not?

The number of Enyrgias always had to stay the same throughout the universe. So what when the wind stopped blowing and the waters developed no waves? What of all the time before the gods existed here? The amount of energy had to be the same back then, but nothing moved.

Ardex caressed a boulder. He slowly pushed it up the hill, just to see what happened. It took him effort, of course. He had to put energy into pushing that boulder, because gravity tried to pull it down.

So where did the energy go? If it had to be “conserved”? He leaned against the boulder, perfectly still, a tree’s length above the ground. And he saw that it was still surrounded by Enyrgias. Boulder not moving—still pulsing with energy. How?

His siblings lay at the feet of the Impossible Wall, defeated. He had a great overview of the area from here; the Impossible Wall perfectly opposite their Bacteria Barricade, with Bella stuck behind it. It was up to Ardex to give the final jolt of energy and come up with the final plan, before …

“Listen up! If we … if we all push boulders up the hill, at the same time, then surely they can’t all slip out of our grasp!”

“That’s foolish—”

“You’re getting better at joking—”

“DO IT! Just try! Believe me for once. Trust me, just, for once, please? All of this could’ve been prevented. If Darus had felt free to explain his discoveries to us without being laughed away. If Bella hadn’t wandered off alone. We are a family.”

Feria instantly grabbed her boulder.

After some hesitation, the others followed her lead. Without knowing why, probably all thinking about Mother’s story of Sizzlefish, they grabbed a boulder and pushed it higher and higher.

Being surrounded by your siblings, who also struggle with their own boulder, did not make it any easier. But it did make it more bearable. Ardex, still weakened from his fury, fell behind more and more.

At some points, Feria considered dropping her own boulder just to help Ardex move his paws again. The saber-toothed tiger said it wasn’t needed, even as his voice was failing.

Feria trusted him. As she trusted Darus to be making headway, maybe already creating a hole on Bella’s side. She, Eeris, Cosmo and Gulvi were together in the same place for the first time in a while, and she didn’t know why, but she teared up at the realization.

And they strained, and cursed, but kept rolling their boulder further up the mountain.

The sun set. They had to walk the final stretch in darkness. It was easier when they focused on the Enyrgias: their arrow-shaped bodies would reveal their paws and the boulder by showing the energy acting on it.

Eeris’ long neck gave her an advantage. By digging her heels into the mountain, she could push her boulder to the top without moving there herself.

At least, until it started slipping from her grasp. Time seemed delayed. The world staggered, as everyone saw what happened, saw the boulder slowly slide off her snout as if it was suddenly made of ice, but nobody was able to stop it.

Eeris simply stopped pushing it. As long as she didn’t make that final push, the boulder would just about stay within reach.

Everyone else froze too. This was pointless. Why push further, if that next step would just make the boulder roll back down?

They called to Ardex below. He still had a long way to go and was swallowed by darkness.

Feria looked at the Bacteria Barricade behind him. The regular ones and the Mitos were falling apart more and more. And even when they did find each other, that small burst of energy the Mitos created—from the oxygen the other expelled—was not enough to attack that wall.

What was Ardex’ plan?

He shuffled to a plateau that jutted from the Impossible Wall. The tiger, God of Fire and Death, looked dim and wary.

“Yes, yes,” he said. “You were all right. We can never create more energy than already exists. Never create more matter than the universe has right now. Now that I know where to look, I can see how every firebreath of mine has to pull energy from somewhere else.”

His words echoed across the valley. His siblings stood in anticipation, straining to keep the slippery boulders in their grasp. If they made no decision, the boulders would make the decision for them—roll back down and probably flatten Ardex along the way.

“But …” said Ardex with a grin.

Feria had forgotten how much she loved that mischievous grin.

“That also means that energy used, an action taken, a boulder moved to a higher location … is never lost.”

He let go of his boulder on purpose. He nodded to the others to do the same. Feria took her final step to the mountain top and the boulder slipped from her fingers of its own accord.

The boulders picked up speed. They rolled faster, and faster, and faster, as they aimed for the floor again. Gravity pulled on them. It made them twist rapidly enough to slide, twist, twirl, and break all other stone in their path.

“Energy is not necessarily movement,” Ardex said. “Every point in space has energy, simply by virtue of being there and not somewhere else. Like stretching a rubber band: if you let go, the band snaps back, because you put it in a position where it contained energy.”

“Or,” continued Ardex, as the boulders neared the ground. “The further you remove a boulder from the floor, placing it in a high position, the more energy it stores to be used. The energy you used to put it there in the first place is now converted.”

And once they let go of their boulders in that position, the stone balls were eager to use that energy and start rolling back down. The Enyrgias that had swarmed around them at first, were slowly converted into speed and collisions with other objects.

A barrage of five massive boulders stormed the ground below. Their speed surpassed what the eyes of gods could follow, and they often lost sight of them in the night.

But they’d aimed well, though their target was obviously quite large.

The boulders made straight for the Bacteria Barricade and slammed into it with overwhelming force.

The night sky lit up. The invisible wall crackled as if thunder inhabited it, as large swaths of bacteria exploded into the air. Some even landed near Ardex’ feet, even though he was up on a mountain. Other parts of the barricade were pushed deep into the dirt, as if a meteor had carried them and struck there.

A gap appeared.

A large gap. Too large to patch it up immediately. A gap that showed Bella, crawling on the floor, her limbs turned to dust, biting her lip and trying her final push.

She stumbled through the gap, groaning, moaning, head first.

She was swallowed by the bacteria barricade—then spit back out.

Her siblings ran down the mountain without care for their own safety. One might have thought they were wild boulders themselves.

Her connection to life restored, dust and particles swarmed around Bella and repaired her body. Her gray and weary face lit up again. It even produced a smile bright enough to see from up high.

By the time Ardex cradled her in his arms, she was almost able to stand on her own feet and talk.

Feria kept her distance and looked past her, for something else had changed too.

The impact of the boulders had squashed several bacteria together. They’d been crushed and blended with such force, that a regular bacteria and a Mitos were now merged.

Some Mitos had found a new home inside the regular type of bacteria.

They could never lose each other again! The bacteria that converted sunlight into oxygen could instantly, without loss, give that to the Mitos. Which ate the oxygen and converted it back into piles of energy.

The consequences could be easily spotted at once.

Those handful of new bacteria were the only ones to survive the crash. But the life force on Somnia had only diminished briefly, for the new bacteria immediately repopulated the land. They called them complex bacteria now, but would surely have many a debate about a more fun and exciting name.

They hadn’t broken out of their cage, not permanently. But this time, the colorful carpets of bacteria stretched across the entire space with ease, and Enyrgias swirled and danced around them in droves.

Within a short time, all of Somnia underwent massive changes. The explosion of these complex bacteria pushed a lot more oxygen into the atmosphere. It would be first step to creating a habitable world for more animals. Now that cells could generate more energy, they might be able to sustain larger beings, like insects, worms, bunnies. And, if they dared dream further, perhaps huge lizards.

This extra oxygen also entered the ocean, of course, where it interacted with all the metal at its bottom. It started to rust. This pushed even more oxygen and other gases into the atmosphere. Over time, it created a protective layer around Somnia that they would name the omni-oxygen zone, abbreviated to ozone.

Thanks to the explosion of energy captured by Somnia, the Enyrgias were all around them. They could spot them easily now, as they showed the movement of objects, or swarmed around something that was about to fall down due to gravity. They felt like living beings, they felt like creatures they could talk to and understand. So far, however, they remained a mystery.

They named this new part of every cell Mitochondrion. A combination of Mitos and Khondron, the god’s name for particle. It still felt more apt to name things the gods created using Father’s native tongue.

The invisible walls had repaired themselves swiftly. They were no closer to breaking out of their cage or actually getting one of those blue boulders up the mountain. For a while, however, this did not bother them. In fact, having so little space brought them closer together.

“Admit it,” Bella said to Ardex, nudging him. She had made a clean recovery, which had been a true worry for her siblings, for she had always been the weakest and the only one mysteriously without magic. “You were wrong. You can’t get more energy than there already is.”

“If you all admit you were wrong too.” Ardex looked dead serious. “My powers are as valuable as yours. Perhaps even more so!”

Bella kept her paws before her, crossed over her heart. “Well … maybe sometimes … a little force or destruction is what’s needed. A little … blind, naive hope in the face of overwhelming obstacles.”

“Or maybe,” Feria said, “we should learn from our creatures. Two completely different bacteria that could not live alone, but became more powerful than anything when merged. A revolution for this planet!”

Feria suddenly looked a young girl again, cheeks pink and batting her eyelashes. “We try to be godly. We try to not step on each other’s toes—oh, look how tolerant we are of each other’s magic and opinions. But we think too far ahead, uselessly so. Assuming things, instead of just communicating. Maybe … maybe … there can be a revolution for this family too?”

They all laughed and gave Feria a friendly nudge.

“We’ll surely try,” said Bella softly. She, more than most, knew how much living beings could be set in their ways, and she lacked the energy to explain that now.

“Well,” said Ardex with a steamy sigh. “Don’t hold your breath waiting for Father or Mother to show up, if that’s what you mean.”

“I actually think I will,” Feria mumbled. “Keep hoping they come back for us.”

“But as long as they don’t,” said Ardex softly, “let’s assume we’re on our own. Let’s assume they watch us, built the cage, expect us to do something. Let’s show them how they should’ve treated their own family.”

Gulvi chattered as he resurfaced from his bath inside the Throne of Tomorrow. He had nowhere else to go after Ardex made half the building crumble by drawing too much energy.

“Has anyone seen Darus?” the dolphin asked.

“Probably snoring somewhere,” said Ardex with a grin. “Or hugging a precious stone of his.”

“Playing hide and seek with bacteria, I reckon,” said Cosmo absently as he cleaned his feathers.

“Ha, tsh tsh,” said Gulvi. “That lazy bum has for once earned it, I say!”

They had carefully collected all remaining Marker Stones and placed them in a secret vault. They regularly guarded it, perhaps waiting for Father to show up and trap him.

Instead, a few nights later, Eeris spotted a shadow too late and before she knew it … all the Marker Stones were gone.

Darus stood underground. His body still rested on the numerous Marker Stones he’d taken with him. He’d been forced to drop them, though, scattering them in a circle before him.

Within that circle, a silhouette shone. A ghostly appearance that had trouble staying there. Darus would still recognize it instantly.

“That’s thrice you’ve cheated death now,” the voice said. “It is not natural.”

The silhouette faded. A soft wind was enough to contort it, and the jagged holes seemingly gave Mother dozens of eyes. Her communication sounded like speech under water.

“It’s hard to be here. Too far. Too painful.”

The silhouette seemed to shift between Mother and Father, or was it both at the same time?

“I see they left you alone again. To die a death not worthy of a god like you, Darus. You know you’re the most powerful, and they trample you like sand underfoot. The banishment stands.”

Darus did not respond, because he could not respond. He’d gone too far, dug too deep, held the Marker Stones too long. And their effect had been even worse than expected.

They’d severed his connection to the Energy web entirely. Darus was an unmoving statue, an unthinking slab of stardust, as no energy was able to move him anymore.

“Look at him,” Mother and Father said, pity in their voices. “No different from a boulder, a pebble. The God of Stone turned to Stone.”

Why had he done it? Why had he kept touching the Marker Stones, kept digging? He knew why; the silhouette had read his mind perfectly. He wanted to show what he could do, show he was stronger than Ardex, be the hero and reclaim a worth place within the family. Show he was not a lazy wolf—a snide remark he’d heard for thousands of years now.

And so the godchildren are a reminder of the fact, dear reader, that wounds do not always heal over time. Sometimes they harden and become impossible to dislodge. Unless you apply enough energy.

“Well, I guess conversation is going to be hard like this. Pity. All this effort to reach my children once more, and I can’t even speak with them. Goodbye, Darus, God of Stone.”

Darus could not wave goodbye. Darus could not tell them to stay. He was a statue now. Life eluded him; time did not matter to him. Thoughts were non-existent. Nothing was going to change his world. Without energy, he could not even wonder if his siblings would ever rescue him. Perhaps that was for the best.

Though the question remains, dear reader, if time is what allows energy to do its magic—or if energy creates the illusion of time. If your body would never receive energy again, it would never do anything again, so nobody would be able to tell how much time passed by looking at you. If the waters had no current, if the wind didn’t blow, every moment would look exactly the same. If Darus looked like the exact same statue, now and in a million years, would you say time has passed? Would you be able to tell?

Sometimes I wonder if we’re not just all statues of stone and stardust. It’s the application of energy that helps us fake being alive and move through time. And then I remember I am one of the creators of this universe—I know the answer but will never tell. Personal reasons.

As the ghostly Mother-Father appearance had said: the banishment stood.

And so it was that life continued …