6. Spark of Innovation

The upside of a forest permanently cast in darkness, is that fires are easy to see. Easy to count, easy to size up. As they all fought to extinguish them, instead of merely running, it wasn’t hard to spot the difference and realize they were beating the forest fire.

They had lost at least one third of the forest, nearing half of it. Mere ashes and black fingers pushed at their back. And the firefighting work was hard—if it could even be called that—so Alix set out to build tools for everyone to use. By trusting Feria’s godly sight and scent, they explored further and found a small cave and a smattering of rocks.

Alix had no idea whether it was day or night. He could not easily judge time in the usual ways, but that was no issue.

After being freed from Pendulum Prison, dear reader, he’d been fascinated by those pendulums and eventually figured out how to use one to tell time. In a sense, Alix carried with him the very first watch. This shows how far ahead he was of his time, but might also help you understand how later events unfolded. Tragic or not, that’s for you to decide.

“We have about six hundred swings before the fire reaches this place,” concluded Alix.

Prebuha stalked the cave restlessly. In most spots, the heat was too much to bear for long, which made her dry skin itchy. She immediately addressed her tribe. “Any of you who are tired or hurt, you can rest here for a bit. Everyone who feels capable, keep fighting the fires.”

Feria was about to address everyone too, then closed her mouth. Not a single protest. Not a single thing to add herself. The tribe had effortlessly shifted to Prebuha’s new command, even before she finished speaking, and had set up a long line to haul water from … somewhere. It was too dark, and too misty, to see further than a tail’s breadth in all directions.

Without tools, however, they used an inefficient method that involved Gosti cupping their primitive hands and desperately hoping not too much water spilled.

“It seems Ismaraldah was right about you after all,” she mumbled. “Should’ve visited Harap when I had the chance. Ugh, deadheart time travelers. Always turn out to be right.”

Then she went inside to meet Alix and help create tools.

Even a goddess had no certain foothold in that pitch-black darkness. She had to find him by noise, as Alix loudly banged stone against stone.

Feria assumed he tried to chip them into hollow stones to carry water, or to throw on top of the fire and suck away the oxygen needed to burn. But with Alix, you never knew.

“I know it’s hard,” she said, trying to cut through the noise. “But you shouldn’t let our son do whatever he pleases. So young? Such power? Freezing someone in the same state forever, how does that even work? And then using it on others behind our backs?”

Alix briefly stopped torturing the stones. “He’s smart, maybe smarter than I, and he can clearly defend himself. So why would he need to stay at our side at all times? Report on his every move? Let him … study the universe too.”

“I love you both,” said Feria, “so, so much. Darus almost lost access to his magic due to overwhelming emotions. If I lost any of you … the grief …”

“Then let’s make it permanent!” said Alix excitedly. “Ask Permiox to fix our love forever, as it is now.”

Feria nudged his cheek and sighed. “But what if, tomorrow, we’d love each other even more?”

Whenever Alix stopped clanging stones, silence smothered Feria like a blanket. Suspicious silence. No more crackling of fire. The fur on her back stood right up, and her connection to the web of life tingled like a struck guitar string.

Were they still fighting outside? Were they all dead? From in here, she only saw the darkness she’d grown used to by now.

Clang. Alix tried a different stone.

As she turned to the entrance, Prebuha already entered, smiling.

“It’s working,” said the sloth, moving her claws in a clapping motion. “The fires are going out, one by one. Aside from some major burns, my folk seem fine. But we can’t be sure yet, because without the firelight, it’s too dark to see everyone’s faces.”

Feria smiled. “Great news. Thank you—”

Clang.

“Aha! Fascinating! Did you see that!?” exclaimed Alix.

He slammed the stones together once more. Initially, Feria was surprised, as the stones themselves were unaffected. At the next collision, though, she noticed a spark. If smacked together with enough force, tiny glowing freckles, like dust made of starlight, shot away from the impact.

Sparks not unlike those that started and spread fires.

Sparks not unlike the ones they had to capture before, after thunder or scorching sunlight on a dry day.

Alix tried again with different stones. It worked with all of them, as long as enough force was used, and they didn’t break too easily. In the utter darkness of this forest, the sparks were easy to spot and to follow. In daylight, none would be any the wiser.

“Indeed! The energy of the impact … nowhere to go … stone won’t bend … so has to be converted into heat. I should’ve seen it before!”

Alix paced around the cave, creating spark after spark, looking for something to ignite with them. A few twigs and leaves scattered around the entrance would have to do.

Prebuha left, then returned. “Yes. Fires seem under control. It’s all just … black now around here. Emptiness and ashes.”

“We’ll rebuild, my siblings will certainly want Amor to grow,” said Feria. “At least we all surviv—no, Alix, love, come back, leave your experiments for another—”

Alix had stumbled to the entrance, and a bit further, looking for dry unburned wood. He was a lone fox in the darkness, struggling to light that first spark.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

The log held by his tail ignited.

“Glory be the remover of darkness,” muttered Alix.

It ignited violently, fully, sending out a shockwave and suddenly revealing all the surroundings. Like sunrise in a heartbeat. Like an explosion of the senses.

A pack of jaguars, tigers, and other felines intimidating even if you only saw half of them, had completely surrounded them.

Silently. Sneakily. A rhino stood further away, sharpening their horn against a tree. They didn’t lick their lips, they didn’t crouch waiting to pounce, they didn’t even look at Alix.

The Alchemist yelped anyway, dropped the log burning his tail, and scrambled back.

“You’re undoing all our wo—” yelled Prebuha.

“Why,” yelled Feria, “do all of you walk into fire voluntarily!? Have your brains burned? Is the life we gods created that foolish? Go away! Save yourself! What were you thinking, coming here?”

Prebuha scratched her temple. “Yes. Why did you come for us? To save us? But why stay under cover of dark—”

“You pretend well,” said a jaguar. “You play innocence. You lie with grace, sleazy sloth.”

“What?” Prebuha looked around for support. Feria was just as surprised, holding her husband and son close. It was up to several Gosti to try and extinguish the new fire, while still taming the old ones.

“Kill them! Vengeance!” cried the jaguars in unison.

They closed any gaps in their encirclement. Prebuha’s tribe bunched up around her, only half of them remembering they practiced this and holding formation. The attackers made a run for them, lashing out at throats, legs, and tails as soon as they could.

“Who are you?” shrieked Prebuha, keeping her claws in front of her for defense. “What have I done to—”

Panic broke the formation that had little promise anyway.

Prebuha saw the animals most dear to her scatter in different directions, barely escaping teeth and claws.

The largest jaguar wanted her all for herself. She defended ferociously, catching his claws in hers, screaming louder than him, swiping his entire body to the side when he dared leap at her.

Feria jumped into the brawl, closed her eyes, and tried to distinguish one heart from another. Friends needed to be spared; foes needed to be stopped.

Everyone had forgotten the fires.

The jaguar finally pinned Prebuha to the floor. Smelly, hot breath washed over her face.

“The Jagu tribe sends its regards,” whispered the attacker. “May the Asha tribe forever die.”

Jagu? Asha? The words sounded familiar. They floated in Prebuha’s brain, making connection after connection, further and further back, until—

The jaguar bit into her neck.

Someone kicked the jaguar off of her, then kept guard.

“Asha … those were my great, great, great grand ancestors,” she mumbled to nobody. “If it wasn’t even longer ago. They still …”

Her eyes prickled from the heat, fires returned at full force. The Gosti had given up; Alix’ new sparks created danger on too many fronts.

When they finally focused, she found a deer standing over her. One with a scar on his face and mean black stripes along his side.

“Eat my antlers!” he yelled.

“Deer deer!” yelled his friends in unison.

As the jaguar went in for a second attack, the deer lowered his antlers before hem and successfully broke the charge.

Permiox sent a spell slithering through the chaos. It froze the rhino mid-charge, but just after his horn got stuck in a fallen tree, turning him into a rhinoceros that would forever run but never move forward.

Alix could not extinguish the existing fires fast enough. He had only just learned how to create new ones.

And so, cackling somewhat maniacally, he forced another wall of fire into existence. This one, though, separated his family and Prebuha’s tribe from the so-called Jagu tribe attackers.

Everyone was instantly on their feet and running. The jaguars would find a way around the fire at some point and continue the chase.

Prebuha was left wondering how they could still want vengeance for something that happened thousands of years ago. And whether it was more wise to freeze her life now, before they actually got their retribution.