6. The Opposite Of Love

At around noon, when merchants had just recovered from recent fighting and dared open stalls again, a building in the Farmor District inexplicably broke in two. The building had been a storage, mostly filled with grain, and responsible for feeding half the districts.

What nobody had seen, except an elephant with keen eyes, was a large bird taking to the skies with a large stone a few moments earlier. The bird struggled. The weight regularly swung her off her path, but she put in the energy to raise the boulder higher and higher. Until, hidden among the clouds, she could let go.

By the time the stone had reached the ground, it had picked up so much speed that the building had no chance at all. Gravity, Alix the Alchemist had reportedly said, felt like an energy exploit.

That was Ollimo’s assessment after a quick study of the scene. Alone. His father still didn’t feel like helping, or doing anything at all. He couldn’t be in two places at once, though. This meant he had to allow a distracting fire on the other side of the city to persist.

He’d struggled to get here. The streets around the temple were still full of debris, but also full of animals sitting on the stones with that same glassy look as his father. Mumbling how everything didn’t matter, and they didn’t care, and they didn’t feel like doing anything. All those animals had been previous visitors of the temple, some even its owners.

He could identify the bird criminal now. But did he dare follow her? Would the same happen to him? Was it already happening? Almost every second, he asked himself if he still cared. If he still wanted to help the Amori, to save them from fires. How much he was willing to give.

Asking the question just made it worse. He remembered their thankless glares, how his father and him had to live outside the city and barely had food, and realized more and more he was not willing to risk it. Nobody would help. He might die. He wasn’t strong enough alone.

He didn’t know how his father had managed it all these years; his own tusks slumped as Ollimo fled the scene, moving away from the trail of the criminals, and back to father.

Ardex was surprised to see Ruby on time. No, she was early to their secret meeting around Tresmo the Gigant.

Ruby immediately flew into his embrace. Sparks punctuated the warm collision.

“I am pregnant,” she said. No, Ruby was not one to dilly-dally around topics. Only fire churned her on, ever forward, towards a better tomorrow—Ardex had recognized that long ago.

“That … that …” The great God of Fire was speechless. He only allowed himself a little smile and a mumble: “That is wonderful.”

“Are you not happy?” asked Ruby, withdrawing her embrace.

“I am! But the implications … I’d need to introduce you to my siblings … and, and, when our child is born, whose side are they on? And their power must be so great that—”

Ruby hopped forward again. “Yes. Introduce me to the other godchildren, now, tonight! I am ready to fully switch sides.”

“Oh. That’s … that’s a bit quick, isn’t it?”

Ruby rolled her eyes. “What are you afraid of?”

“For one, those criminals running around Amor. Crumbling a temple. Dissecting the entire grain storage! Does Amor not follow its own laws? Are they fighting us for the right to be abused by criminals!?”

“I … believe you should thank those criminals,” said Ruby, pretending to study the dead fire that permanently burned around Tresmo. “Amor has no choice but to surrender now, doesn’t—”

“We’re not letting anyone starve,” said Ardex resolutely. “We already set up ways to smuggle grain into the city some time ago. Rules are rules.”

“Even in—”

“Even in war. Especially in war.”

Ruby scoffed, but didn’t feel like angering Ardex over this point. Once their plan had succeeded, mighty Amor would fall to the godchildren, and it would surely break the resistance on this side of Origina. If there was one thing that a never-ending war was never good for, it was freedom.

“Though I admit the rules bind us too much,” said Ardex, following Ruby’s gaze to study Tresmo. The mighty tree seemed to prefer sleeping over anything else, for his cage of fire made him feel lonely and in pain. Still, he sometimes wondered what the tree had seen and heard, whose side they were even on. Since that fire long ago, he had sprouted children too—four more Gigants growing all over Origina. If they could somehow get those sentient trees on their side …

“This war feels like Mother’s story of the Dontaids,” said Ardex.

“Never heard of it.”

“Creatures from another planet, another universe, she claimed. As punishment for some misdeed, their home planet was set on fire. Any time they filled a bucket with water, though, it would always leak. No matter how hard they worked, by the time they reached the fire, barely any water would be left inside the bucket. And so they could never make any progress—never extinguish all the fires.”

“Yes, continuing this fight is useless. It will only lead to more deaths, not more victory.”

“That’s not what I said. I am your god! I can’t roll over and let our enemies walk all over us.”

“It’s what you meant in your heart.”

Ardex gave Ruby a final passionate kiss, then turned around and spoke over his shoulder. “When this war is over, I will introduce you—and our wonderful child to be—to my siblings.”

More and more, Amor had built itself around Tresmo. Ardex had to ask his brother Cosmo to drop him here, for he couldn’t find any gaps in Amor’s city wall anymore. In due time, he believed, Amor would be so large that he couldn’t enter in secret at all. Though that might not come true. Amor might actually shrink soon, for a fire was burning in one of the districts and it didn’t seem like anyone was putting it out.

When the saber-toothed tiger returned to the camp of the godchildren, his eyes were suddenly more attuned to all the children. To the fathers among them.

To the happy family of Feria, Alix and their son Permiox. They were cracking jokes now about Alix’ beard, while their son returned happier than ever because they discovered a new insect. Feria, Goddess of Fauna, was more than happy to study it with him and figure out if it really was a new animal species.

He gave them such a bright smile that Feria returned a frown, as if expecting him to explain why he was in such a good mood.

His sister Eeris, Goddess of Flora, was visible on the horizon by her long yellow neck. She had called them all here in the first place. Amor was closest to her throne, and she worried about how quickly it expanded.

He made for her, but stopped.

Eeris lowered her neck to nudge some animal far smaller than her. The boar, however, violently pushed her away and kept walking.

“Please, Boaris, we never see each other,” said Eeris. It was no secret she was jealous of her green sister Feria and how loved she was by all her demigod children.

“Oh my, could that be on purpose?” was the angry boar’s retort. “Let me go. I’m leaving this hellhole. Always fighting, always pretending to be oh so righteous, always the same. You pretend to be noble, you pretend to be wise, but you only want power, and thanks, and the compliments of all your servants. Or you would not have refused the help offered by the Delja.”

“But Boaris—”

The boar escaped through a thicket far too dense for Eeris. She had to use her magic to instantly tear the bushes apart, make them grow some other way.

“There must be some deserted island nobody else can find,” continued Boaris. “And diamonds grow on trees, if I’m lucky.”

“We want you here,” said Eeris. “You’re one of us, darling. You’re a demigod and we—”

“Don’t care. Don’t want to hear. You can all do whatever you want, you’re all going to die soon anyway, leave me out of it.”

The boar tried another thicket as his escape route, before giving up.

“You don’t really believe that, do you? That those power-hungry wolves of Amor would be better for this world than, oh, I don’t know, the godchildren who created all this life and give you endless love?”

“Endless—you really dare—” Boaris turned around. He dumped his canvas bag on the floor and caused a minor, local earthquake. “What you gave me is the opposite of love!”

Eeris’ long neck fell slowly, as if the power to keep it upright was fleeing her rapidly.

“How can you say I gave you the opposite of love? There is not a hateful bone in my body, not a vengeful breath in my lungs! I didn’t do anything to you, ever, I didn’t obstruct you. I gave you the freedom to find your own path.”

Boaris grabbed his bag again and raised his voice. He was drawing the attention of the entire war camp now.

“The opposite of love isn’t hate. Hate means you still care. Hate means there is still fire and passion. The opposite of love is indifference.”

Boaris ran away as quickly as he could. Being a demigod, that was a respectable pace, a surprise to any who saw his bulky boar shape.

But his own words, screamed at his mother, echoed in his head.

And just as he had successfully fled the Amor region, he slowed down, more and more. And then he sighed and turned around. He had knowledge about some “criminals” and their big plan for tomorrow. He still screamed—so he still cared.