10. Epilogue

For hours and hours, Chamtaid and helpers had carried leaky buckets of water. Not much was left when they reached the fire, but enough to slowly fight back the flames. Dilova’s restaurant was saved. So were most of the homes in Amor, except the largest ones in the Richersoul district.

One might wonder why they didn’t carry water using objects that did not leak. That might have had something to do with a wayward fox spell that drifted through he firefighting efforts. They tried cups, they tried carts, they tried everything, but they all leaked at exactly the same rate and in exactly the same way. While some had wanted to give up, a chameleon shrugged and kept going anyway, and soon the only occupation in Amor had been that of a firefighter.

Still, Amor saw many casualties. Food became even more scarce. Materials were lacking to rebuild most homes, as they had been used to create weapons or repair the city wall after another fight.

It was by no means the darkest day the gods had ever experienced. But it was another one, and the sheer number of souls lost started to weigh on them.

The jeweler’s shop was one of the homes that was destroyed again in the fire. Nobody had expected the rhino to be alive. He had been sitting on the floor, unmoving, still mumbling how much he didn’t care. When they removed the rubble, though, they found he didn’t even have a scratch. The walls had collapsed in such a way as to create a small tent of safety around the jeweler.

“Goodness. What are the chances of that?” said Ollimo.

In response, the rhino merely stared into the distance and mumbled: “Nobody defeats the Tamli kings.”

In the days that followed, many victims of Alix had recovered their passion. Somebody reminded them of why they woke up every day, of why they did what they did, and at some point the color would return in their fur.

Everyone except the jeweler. His home was gone, his business gone, and nobody could pay for luxuries any time soon, anyway. He had no answers.

Dilova briefly tried to recruit him as her second waiter, joining her father with his broken mind. But where her father had good days and bad days, the rhino only had … nothing days. As they sent the rhino back to Garda, where the Tamli civilization could care for him, they met Boaris again.

The boar took one good look, then sighed as if he’d seen this a million times before. “Well, that’s the risk you take, isn’t it?”

“What?” asked Ollimo. Permiox sat on his back, and he had personally saved him from the collapsing building. Alix, however, could not be saved. “Why can’t his passion return? Permiox claims his father did nothing different.”

“Why, Ollimo, do you and your father risk your life, and work so hard, to fight fires?”

He knew the answer with certainty now. “Because we feel it’s the right thing to do. Because it saves the lives of the innocent.”

“Why did the jeweler have so many diamonds, and gold, and the biggest house?”

“I … don’t know,” said Ollimo.

“I suppose he wanted rewards,” said Boaris. He greeted the godchildren in the distance with a grim expression. “But if you only do things because others reward you for it, with thanks or money, then you put control over your life in their hands. You’ll stop doing anything when rewards do not come. You … die when nobody is there to see you and applaud you.”

Ollimo shivered. Feria ran up to him and hugged her son before he even touched the ground. A grim nod by the elephants confirmed her worst fears.

They say Feria’s wail was audible as far as her personal throne in Garda, and its echoes reverberated through the universe until even her cursed Father, sitting smugly in the Heavenly Palace, all the way on the other side, suddenly felt his heart stop and a sense of dread that nothing could dispel.

She and her son retreated and were barely seen again for the remainder of The First Conflict.

The gods, and their troops, had all but abandoned Amor. Ruby was still chained, stuck inside the net, and on her way to Pendulum Prison. And she was still fighting those chains.

Amor assigned official firefighting duties to the elephants. They quickly received the money to build a proper fire truck, and animals from all over the Amori Republic arrived to offer their special services. Camels proved extremely useful in storing water. Giraffes were great for sticking their head in hard-to-reach places. Miraculously, their fire alarm network now actually included an extra bit of information telling you where the fire was taking place.

Surely, they said, Amor would never burn again.

The family of gods had barely spoken, until Ruby was safely secured inside Pendulum Prison. A beacon of engineering and energy containment that not even a massive dragon-like creature could escape.

Ruby pleaded. She pushed herself against the boundaries, even as it hurt her, to look in Ardex’ eyes.

“No,” was all he said after a long silence. “Rules are rules. Laws are laws.”

“We can … look the other way,” tried Feria.

“I know you can,” said Ardex with a sneer. “I can’t.”

“Please,” said Feria. “Don’t let me grieve alone. Don’t push us even further apart.”

She looked around, feeling as if she spoke for all her siblings.

“You pushed us apart when you made your own fireflickering throne on another continent!” bellowed Ardex. “When you ignored our own laws to have Alix—”

“Don’t you dare say his name!”

Feria cried again and stepped away, making herself as small as Gulvi. Her youngest brother, a dolphin, God of Water.

“If there was ever a time for unity,” said Bella, a beautiful raccoon, soothingly. “It is now.”

“Amor is half-dead and half-ruined,” said Ardex. “My … my first child to be is …”

“And the love of my life has perished,” mumbled Feria, “alongside thousands of souls in Amor alone. Even Chamtaid, carrying leaky buckets until the end of time, makes more progress than we do.”

“Because we’re flying between two streams,” said Cosmo, “and can’t pick which one to follow. We fight, we kill, we defend ourselves. But we don’t use all our power, and we don’t do what needs to be done, because it would kill too much life.”

“So?” said Ardex. He glanced back at Ruby a final time, as his first true love smashed her massive wings into the pendulums.

Ruby had been convicted easily. Initially, based on the detailed eye witness account of the elephants. But the number of unlawful and dangerous missions of the so-called Rescue Squad stretched back for years. Even the assassination of some leaders turned out to be her doing.

And so Ruby, the firebird who vowed to deliver freedom for all, would never be free again. Nothing was going to change her world.

Steam left Ardex’ nostrils. “So? Which stream do we choose? Do I go to Amor right now and mercilessly burn the whole thing to the ground? Or …”

“We retreat,” said Bella, when nobody else wanted to say it. “Preserve life, ignore all else.”

“I mean,” said Feria with a lump in her throat, “that’s what they want, isn’t it? Keep fighting so much, so long, that there’s not enough life force left to sustain us. I agree fully with Bella. We stop giving them what they want.”

“How?” said Ardex. “We can’t even stop our own civil war. Gulvi’s fanatic fishes are probably killing Feria’s fox loyalists as we speak.”

“Every war is a civil war,” said Bella immediately. “We all descend from the same parents, long long ago. Every war is selfish, and self-destructive, and silly. We’re all the same family, that’s a fact.”

“If nobody remembers their common ancestors, because it’s so long ago,” said Ardex, his fur spiky from rage. “Then you are practically a different folk. That’s a fact.”

“How long is that?” asked Bella. “Give me a number.”

Ardex shook his head and played with his second Heavenmatter. A frozen flame called the Flamefeaster, which he carried hidden in his fur. Some time ago he’d asked Ismaraldah, the Time Traveler, to modify it and save him from tears. It seemed he was still right to ask for that curse. It was the only way, the only way …

He thought of Ruby as he touched it.

“No more battles,” mumbled Feria.

“No more battles,” mumbled Ardex.

There was no God of War, but he would’ve been the ideal candidate. He’d helped Alixader the Giant, planned their earliest battles, learned from the best tactical fighters—a group of Gosti that called themselves Gorrillas.

“No head-on fighting,” he continued. “No unleashing of powers if it could kill innocents. We hide. We sneak. We take cover. So long as nobody touches us, nobody dies by our paw. Gorrilla warfare.”

For the first time in some hundreds of years, it seemed they all agreed on something.

The gods retreated. Everyone loyal to them was told to flee, to hide, to leave nothing behind but save themselves. They would not be sharing their whereabouts anymore. They would not be meeting the enemy head-on for a large battle, despite still having the largest magical powers.

Though unspoken, it seemed they all agreed on the consequences too. They might lose The First Conflict; but it would be a victory if they saved most life on Somnia in doing so.

And so it was that life continued …