5. Hearts of Stone

Feria fell to her knees and felt drained. She’d searched the forest all night and only found three Giant Foxes. Two dead. One looking equally dead.

“No, no, no!”

She dove onto the riverbed to pull Alix’ body to the side. He’d gone gray and still again, like he had when they didn’t give him enough food.

She pressed him against her and listened for a heartbeat. There it was. Faint, slow, almost reluctant, but he lived. More and more, it seemed he was the final Giant Fox to do so.

“Alix. Can you hear me?”

Feria recklessly struck out around her and killed four mice creeping up a tree trunk. She held them before Alix’ snout and tried to feed them to him. The scent woke him up and he drowsily accepted the dinner.

“Mother?” croaked Alix.

“No. No, I’m sorry, love. Just your regular Goddess of Fauna.”

Alix giggled. “You are not regular. I studied you.”

“I am sure you did. Please stay alive now. Please don’t walk away.”

“You sure? I have …” His head fell back into the dirt, his eyes closing. “… quite an upkeep.”

Feria studied his head. It was unusually large. Something must have gone wrong with his genes. He was born with a far larger brain than other foxes, which made him smart, but also made him expend energy at a ridiculous pace.

Feria gave a kiss on his forehead. Alix looked confused, as if he had never even imagined the act was possible.

“I know what you feel,” Feria whispered, as she pulled Alix to his feet. “Our parents wanted to get rid of us too. At least, that’s the conclusion Darus and I reached. Now here we are. Bickering, not trusting each other, and regularly almost dying because we leave each other alone.”

Alix stared past her. “Fascinating!”

“Well, I wouldn’t say—”

She followed his gaze.

“The stars. There are so many of them. And they make shapes, you see that?” Alix climbed a small tree to get a closer look. “I wonder what’s out there. Must be more planets like ours, right? Maybe there are more gods! And you could be friends! Or find new family there!”

Feria couldn’t suppress a smile. “Maybe. Would be nice, wouldn’t it? To get advice from other stumbling gods. To try again on another planet if we fail here …”

Alix pointed at random objects around him. “This place stinks. Mothers kill their sons. Half of life is trampled before they’re one year old, the other half is big as a mountain. And even they aren’t safe from freak creatures like the Smasher. Surely, on other planets, everyone just lives in peace and harmony?”

“I … I don’t know, Alix. Maybe this place stinks. But it’s the only place we have.”

“No. I don’t accept that. I will either change the world … or I will just fly to another one!”

Alix studied the universe once more. Once his gaze could flee the twinkling stars, they settled on a path of stones.

Stones that used to be whole, but now they were broken open. As if someone tried to steal the heart from inside of them.

Feria hesitantly walked up to one and sniffed it from all sides. “What do you think that is?”

“Saltstones. Very strong. Only Darus can manipulate them, as far as I know. Not actually that much salt inside of them.”

“How do you know all this?”

Maybe he secretly had the Book of Meaning. Bella had only recently claimed it again, as it had been hidden by the animals from the gods. But Feria doubted it; his thoughts seemed to go even beyond wat Bella dreamed.

“There’s one property, though,” said Alix, “that I discovered in most stones. Saltstone, flintstone, and more.”

“And that is?”

Alix walked up to the first stone. A hole in the center betrayed that it had stored something inside, but it was gone now. He rotated the object in his paws, several times, until he was satisfied.

He removed the energy from his brain and pushed it into his paws instead. At that moment, he was a very dumb but very strong fox. Then he struck the stone at a precise location.

It fell apart into two perfectly equal parts.

Alix grinned. “Magic commences at my touch.”

“You can do magic?”

“No, no. It’s just science. If you strike just the right place, these stones break predictably. Even without that much force.”

Feria tried it too. After a bit of practice, she managed it.

Then she remembered what was supposed to be encased in Saltstone.

The ground trembled. The broken stones danced before their eyes, rolling away from them or chipping once more. The wind picked up.

There was that twinkling again. The faint burst of Enyrgias that exploded from the Smasher and trailed it like a burning star.

“There! Into the cave!” Feria yelled.

“No, no, no,” Alix protested. “It won’t be enough. Won’t be enough.”

Feria dragged him there anyway.

For several heartbeats, they lay pressed against each other, merging with the walls.

Then the stone walls exploded and washed over them like waves.

Feria curled herself around Alix. Her animal magic quested outwards, searching for the Smasher’s heart, so she could stop it. She felt a tiny tapping at the edge of her powers, but it slipped out of her grasp.

They rolled from the cave, through the trees.

Silence returned; then the ground split open and a hail of dirt and broken twigs hurled them from their place.

Alix was frozen again. He slipped from her grasp.

“Alix!”

His featherweight body easily flew over the treetops, to land far away.

“Help!” Feria screamed. Her magic felt the souls of the trees, and the insects scuttling to safety inside them, and the faint heartbeat of Alix, and then—

The Smasher. It was a living being, she could feel it clearly now.

She opened her eyes and willed herself to see further, without success. Even as another wall of stone exploded, even as trees folded in monstrous winds, she saw nothing that actually did it.

Until something collided with her stomach and sent her flying. She instantly knew it felt wrong. An energy that shouldn’t exist, an arrogant rebuttal of the laws of physics. Weak and close to fainting, she grasped for the Smasher anyway. She held tight, oh so tight, as it buzzed between her paws.

An insect? A new type of bacteria? Even smaller? She couldn’t contain the energy and took the animal between her stronger teeth instead.

She crashed back to earth.

A sea of fire erupted above her. Ardex had arrived; Bella held her paw on the other side. They cleared the area and made sure she was safe.

They didn’t need to. She had caught a Smasher, now dangling from her teeth.

As they ran back to Darus, they picked up Alix. He was fascinated by the broken stones. Even more so by the Marker Stones hidden in a hole, which had been extracted from the broken Saltstone.

There was debate about picking up the Marker Stones, but Bella thought it too dangerous. Besides, Alix insisted he could free Darus without it.

When they returned, Darus was unconscious. He was wounded. Maybe from a fight, maybe from trying to free himself anyway.

What most of them couldn’t understand, however, was the species of the Smasher and how they worked.

It was a small, tiny, frail Gosti.

Though it looked absolutely harmless now, Ardex created a fiery cage for it.

The Gosti looked at them with glassy eyes, as if woken from a stupor. Then they recognized her: it was Mami. The Gosti that influenced their decision to let the dinosaurs die so long ago, befriended the legendary dinosaur Donte, and led to the Stone Dinosaurs.

Alix stroked his long whiskers. His pink fur turned to different colors as he explained how to free Darus.