6. Guilt Trip

Alix stepped over the bodies of the Gosti that had defended Darus against the tiger. As if they were mere lumps of dirt in his way. He was more interested in their special twigs.

“Fascinating!”

He took the longest and thickest twigs, and combined them into one even longer and thicker twig. At this point, it might be called a stick instead.

He placed the stick underneath the large boulder. Below it, he placed a tiny rock, which acted as a tipping point: by pushing down his end of the stick, the other end would come up.

“Great,” Ardex said. “You’ve made an uneven seesaw. I hated that thing in the Heavenly Palace.”

The gods all watched Alix with distrust. They wouldn’t laugh at him if he failed, no, just as they didn’t laugh at Darus and his suggestions anymore after all the bad that had happened. Gods could learn and change, albeit on larger timescales.

But only Feria was confident and encouraged him.

“By studying the universe, I learned that the force you need to move something, is larger if that thing has a larger mass. In other words, if it’s heavier. That’s why we can’t move this heavy boulder, because none of us can produce that much force. But we can throw a stone or kick a leaf with ease, as it’s light.”

“So?” said Ardex.

“But what we really care about is energy. The energy needed to move something is equal to the force times distance. If one end of the seesaw moves a long distance, well, then we only need a little force to move it.”

“I am not following,” said Ardex.

“I will show you then.”

He jumped on his end of the stick. It meant a drop to the ground of about twice his size. His weight provided the force, and it did so over a long distance.

The other end of the seesaw, because the tipping rock was placed so close to it, only moved up by a tiny bit.

In earlier stories, dear reader, you learned about the Conservation of Energy. The energy you put in must be the same as what you get out. Energy is never added or lost. So, to transfer the energy of Alix’ jump over a shorter distance, the universe MUST create a larger force to compensate. If the same force pushed on the boulder, then energy would have been lost somewhere, because the distances are not the same.

A force so large that it nudged the boulder from its place. Not by much, of course. It only moved the boulder a little bit. But it was just enough to grab Darus from underneath and pull him to safety.

All the Enyrgia that Alix pushed into the stick had merely walked to the other side: energy transfer. But because the other side moved a smaller distance, the Enyrgia were now bunched up in a tight space, overcrowded and crawling over each other. That created quite the explosion of force on the boulder.

“I call it a lever,” said Alix.

So far, only the gods could see the Enyrgia, but Feria thought Alix was suspiciously good at knowing where those little critters would be. She smiled at him and mumbled: “Magic commences at his touch.”

The other gods looked after Darus and congratulated Alix. Ardex, however, reignited his fiery cage around Mami the Gosti. She seemed more herself now and looked ridden with guilt.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I can’t stop it. I can’t stop it!”

“Can’t stop what?” Ardex pushed his tusks close to her face. “After all we’ve done for you. After helping you travel the world in search of Nisah, the dinosaur that saved you, you start mercilessly smashing everything! How do you even do it?”

“Those stones,” Mami mumbled. She tried to grab Ardex’ fur, as she’d done many times before when her and the godchildren were better friends. He didn’t let her. “Those weird stones gave me so much energy. I could move incredibly fast, fly even, just by touching them for a bit.”

Realization dawned on Ardex. When a Marker Stone was empty, it sucked out all your energy. Darus had left with empty Marker Stones that day, which is why he turned to stone. But when it was already full, touching it actually released the energy and gave it to you.

“Indeed,” said Ardex. “The Marker Stones. You should never have touched them.”

“And now I’m always shivering, buzzing, moving around. I can’t sit still anymore.”

“Your own fault.”

“I’m sorry!” Mami cried into her tiny webbed hands. “I just … I just thought … and Donte really missed Nisah … and he wanted the dinosaurs back … so I thought that if I could break the Stone Dinosaurs they might come alive …”

“It’s okay,” said Feria. “You made a mistake and now you’re cursed—”

“It’s okay!?” Ardex roared. “She’s an even larger threat than the dinosaurs ever were!”

“And so are you!” said Feria. “But we don’t lock you up, do we?”

“I am a God of—”

“Fascinating! But it still doesn’t make sense,” said Alix. “Whenever you attack, nobody can see you. Even if you move fast, you should be visible.”

“Those Marker Stones also gave me another curse,” muttered Mami. Without so much as a warning, she was suddenly gone.

“She’s still there,” Ardex said confidently. “Nothing escapes my fire prisons.”

Alix pressed his face close to the floor. His keen eyes studied the dirt patch where Mami had stood just now. Then he gasped in surprise.

“You’re right,” he said. “Neither is she invisible. She has shrunk.”

Once they knew where to look, the godchildren could circle around Mami and see a tiny, tiny Gosti rolling around. Her return to normal size was so sudden and unnatural that Bella fell backward in surprise.

“Still doesn’t make sense,” said Ardex. “Larger animals are stronger, we all know that.”

“Yes, why are they stronger?” Alix said, looking at the saber-toothed tiger as if asking a dumb pupil a question. “Because they are heavier. So they must be stronger to move themselves and their muscles must be able to create much more force.”

Alix fearlessly approached Mami and tapped her on the head. “Could you shrink once more, please?”

She did.

Alix, even Alix with his weak paws that often lacked energy, could pick her up easily. Toss her around like a leaf in the wind. Mami’s protests about this treatment were in vain.

“Don’t you see?” Alix asked. “Don’t you understand?”

Feria did. Her mouth hung wide open as she picked up Mami’s featherweight body too.

“You just said that moving something heavy requires more force or energy. Mami can make herself unbelievably light. And when you’re that small … even a little bit of force can make you go fast enough to chip flintstone.”

Yes, and they’d dropped their guard.

Mami was energized again and shot out of Ardex’ fiery cage. Her tiny body punctured the walls like a bullet, and nearly punctured Alix too.

She was gone before they could catch her.

They knew how she worked now. How she could strike stone or animals with incredible force. That didn’t mean they knew how to find or stop her. They had to wait for Darus to wake up and figure something out.

Feria looked at Alix; she stared at him. And she saw the smartest animal that had ever graced Somnia. Forget the Gosti! Forget large carnivores! He would be their future.

She gave him a task. To roam all of Somnia and find another Great Fox. So that she might bear his children and the species would not go extinct. These brains had to be preserved. And Feria would go with him as personal guard. For she knew how vulnerable Alix was when he put all his energy into his brain, and he needed a constant supply of lots of food.

Alix accepted, but for different reasons. He already plotted a way to steal those Marker Stones before the godchildren could hide them again.