Alix’ family was certain that a boulder the size of a hill would stop the Smashers. The defense had landed in their lap by sheer luck; a waste product of Darus, God of Stone, experimenting with his magic. They could not have moved that boulder into position in a million years, not even with a million foxes. As it was, there were only four of them: Alix, his sister, and his parents.

Now the boulder perfectly closed off the den they’d dug deep into the dirt. A wall between them and everyone else. Between them and the Smashers.

How wrong they were.

Alix studied an insect crawling over the stone. The purple fox had memorized a long list of all insects he’d seen and their behavior, just like he’d studied all possible types of rock and their properties. The stone that protected them, he knew, was unbreakable. Not even a mammoth at full speed would make a dent.

The family shivered in the dark. Relaxed and confident, but still cold. Since the asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, all of Somnia had been plunged into an ice age.

As it happens, dear reader, cold temperatures lead to larger animals, such as mammoths. The disappearance of dinosaurs—large monsters that carelessly trampled you underfoot—also helped. Alix was not a small fox as you know them today, but a much larger ancestor that the godchildren called Giant Foxes. Their whiskers long as tails, their eyes like those of owls.

“Get away from the boulder, Alix,” his mother hissed.

He didn’t respond; his body proved immovable. Not because it was frozen, but because it lacked the right chemistry to do so. All his energy was used to keep his eyes open and his brain running. Even if he wanted—and he really didn’t—he would lack the willpower to reposition his paws.

Yes, this was a Silverfish insect. He’d seen them before. He admired them. Efficient they were, their gray bodies hard to see against the gray—

The boulder shook.

Alix rolled backward and hit the wall hard.

The boulder shook again. Dust fell on his head. Chipped stones and clanking pebbles rained into the den.

“They can’t get through,” said his father confidently.

“Alix, Firaxa, come here, let me hold you,” said mother.

His sister cuddled up to mother and enjoyed her warmth. Alix still poured his energy into his brains, not his limbs. He lay against the wall, crumpled, and stared at the ceiling—at the beginnings of a crack in the boulder.

The crack deepened, widened, shot over the surface like a snake chased by fire. The boulder groaned, but held firm.

“Alix!” mother hissed, her voice wavering.

Father started digging a second exit for the den. They always did that, but now they had lacked the time. The Saltstone Smashers could move faster than any feline, break objects thought unbreakable. The fox family only noticed their presence in time because Alix had calculated they’d come here.

“Let him do his thing,” father groaned. He gave his son a weak smile. “He’ll save us in the end. Trust him. Trust his intellect.”

Mother and sister dug too, accelerating the process. “Or he’ll doom us all! He’s a statue!”

Despite being thrust in darkness, the den still seemed to throw shadows. Somehow, they were an even deeper black than nothing, as if the existence of light was rejected altogether. The shadows hung closest to father, who dug ferociously.

Alix tried to think. He was certain they couldn’t break the boulder. The force it would take … no animal could produce that. Even gods would struggle, he imagined. They barely understood forces themselves.

Alix had studied the universe until his eyes were too tired to see; still the universe had its surprises. It’s why he kept studying.

A loud thud and a crack.

The den shook. The boulder shifted. Alix’ nostrils were clogged by dirt, his paw locked beneath a chipped-off rock.

One crack became two, became four, became no cracks at all.

Because the boulder was gone.

A handful of cut rocks flowed into the den and threatened to crush Alix. His energy had run out, to the point he closed his eyes and lay still.

He heard a swoosh, and another one. His mother cried out. In the darkness, nails clashed with nails, teeth bit into fur, and his father bellowed with rage at the attackers.

Paws danced around him, flattening the earth or pushing rocks deeper into it. Some were lifted with immense effort and thrown at the attacker. They rarely hit. The Smashers moved too quickly and were impossible to spot in the darkness underground. Instead, the rocks clanged off of walls, sending ghostly echoes into Alix’ ears, until one of them hit him in the head.

He had no further memory of that night.

When he woke up, he lay on a warm back. The gait of his carrier jostled him left and right, until they stopped by a tree and he slid off.

Warm breath blew into his face. It seemed to invigorate him, unfreezing him with a bit of energy.

His mother stared into his eyes.

“Your father … your sister …”

Mother’s eyes were glassy, on the verge of dropping tears, but foxes were unable to cry in that way. Even Giant Foxes, who had to be descendants of Feria.

Instead, she looked away and loudly howled at the moon, until Alix felt deafened.

“Your ffffault,” mother hissed, tongue frozen. “Unbreakable, was it?”

“I admit new information has come to ligh—”

“Don’t talk like that!”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re … you’re … smarter than all of us!” Mother nudged him further into the forest with her snout. As if she still tried to hide him from the Smashers. “You are not. You are weak. You can’t even lift a paw, and your teeth would not even hurt an insect!”

Mother pushed him further and further, howling and crying after every effort. She had killed a squirrel and ate some of it to regain strength. Alix reached out to do the same, his body begging for food, but mother pushed him aside.

“And all this time, your diet is that of a dinosaur,” she said. “For years, you’ve eaten ten times as much as father. And it ruined us.”

His sister. His father. The Smashers had taken them when they should not have. He’d done all the calculations! They had to be small creatures for the calculations to work! A Giant Fox had to beat them easily. Had to. Should have. His brain felt like soup.

“I need to experiment further on—”

“You,” hissed mother. She gave him a final shove that sent him rolling off a cliff. “Need to die.”

His final energy was wasted on confusion. On his mother’s furious face, on finding out where he was, on deciphering why she would kill her own son.

He had studied the universe; he had not studied his own species nearly enough.

It seemed he was about to study the Dolphin Pass from below the waves.

The wolf Darus, God of Stone, inspected the fractured boulder and concluded he was going insane. He turned back to his siblings to tell them.

“I can’t explain it,” he said. “I would need to charge myself, collecting energy for many days, before I’d be able to destroy a boulder of this size. You sure, Feria? None of our animals have magic themselves?”

A pink fox elegantly hopped onto the stones. “None. They lack the intelligence for it too.”

The godchildren had just visited the Garden of Stone Dinosaurs. A large area with giant dinosaur statues that had been there for thousands of years, ever since they went extinct. Those dinosaurs were covered in lava rock and always looked as if they might come alive any second.

Not anymore, that was. The Smasher had visited there too and destroyed all those magnificent statues. Which seemed odd to Darus, as the Smasher attacks had been very focused so far, only targeting living creatures for food.

The godchildren walked on. They all shivered, but the cold was the least of their problems. This area felt devoid of life. Near their Throne of Tomorrow, you could look anywhere and see creatures. In fact, they had to regularly deal with insect plagues now.

Around here? Any sign of movement was met with cheers. They often spotted Gosti, tiny ghost-like creatures with large eyes that hung from tree branches, but not much else. They took great care protecting those little pre-monkeys, because they were the smartest life they had so far.

In fact, they’d let them weigh in on the decision to remove the dinosaurs back then—a mistake, such has been proven. The ghosts themselves, however, were uninterested and shied away when gods approached.

Bella had refused to come with them. She had been disconnected from life force several times in the past and still felt weak because of it. She went wherever animals and plants went in abundance, and it was not here.

“This is what you get,” Ardex said, grumpy. “By allowing carnivores to do as they please.”

It had been long ago, dear reader, that they decided to stop working against meat-eaters. To allow animals complete freedom to live, but also to take what they needed. At first, things seemed fine. But ever since then, they’d been fighting to keep the balance anyway. It had taken them a while to find the mysterious Fleshfeasters because Ardex actively hid and removed them. Which made Feria wary …

“Out with it. Communicate. And please, be honest with us,” Feria said sternly. “You too, Ardex. You especially. Have any of you secretly seen or helped these Saltstone Smashers?”

Ardex grunted.

“Oh come on,” said Darus. “We know better now.”

“Do we?”

Feria tapped against the stones. Even in their broken form, they were too heavy to move. But out there, somewhere, a creature lumbered that easily ripped these apart. And it had already made several species go extinct.

“Too often it seems we know nothing,” said Feria in frustration.

“Well, say, we’re not that—wait, is this about the foxes?” asked Darus.

“No. Yes. A bit.” Feria studied the surroundings. “I discovered that Giant Foxes had evolved on their own in this area. Majestic creatures. Beautiful! But now I haven’t seen a single one in months. And most animals can only really survive at the place where they started.”

“We all have our favorite animals,” said Ardex. “I like tigers, who would have guessed? But we can’t let it cloud our judgment. Over and over, we interfere with nature … and we only make it worse. Some way, somehow, an animal will figure out how to defeat the Smashers. They have to. It’s their survival instinct.”

“And what if they don’t? Then all life dies. Then we die.” Feria gave Ardex a look of disgust. “Of course, the God of Death would not mind.”

Ardex breathed fire. “How dare you—”

Darus stepped between them. “Stop that. If we don’t act in unity ourselves, how can we expect our animals to do so?”

Darus had not forgotten his time as a statue. He’d touched the legendary Marker Stones for too long, which had sapped all his energy and disconnected him from Enyrgias: the magical creatures that make everything move. Or, rather, that show where energy is and what it’s doing at all times.

He’d spent years as a frozen god. As if made of stone, not able to move, or think, or feel, until his family finally found him and saved him. He would never forget how long it took them to do so. They were too busy enjoying the new powerhouse bacteria they made and having fun without him. They also missed their one chance to speak to Father again.

Despite Darus loving stone, being one himself was a fate worse than death, he’d often remark. You still lived, but were unable to change anything. Or did that mean he had actually died for a while?

Since then, he had taken fewer risks and barely left his family out of his sight.

Feria suddenly cried out and leapt from the stones. She dove into the frozen river. Her impact easily broke the thin layer of ice.

Her siblings followed her dark silhouette under water, until she resurfaced holding a ball of fur. A Giant Fox, who looked more like a dying shrimp.

Feria held him close. Her warmth transferred to him and seemed to charge him like a battery; like a Marker Stone. His incredibly long whiskers unfroze and his fur turned a richer shade of purple.

He opened his eyes. Curious, glistening, keen eyes. They studied Feria’s face until they recognized her, then the fox seemed satisfied.

Feria carried him back to the nearest throne, which was her own: The Tree of Life. She took the scruff of his neck between her teeth, and all that time he didn’t stir, not even a little, which made her worry about his chance of survival.

Once inside, he suddenly came to life. He climbed around her throne and studied every single part of it. The leaves, the wood grain, the small pockets of magic. The tree harbored thousands of species and gave them all safe homes, far above the ground and always surrounded by blossoming plants.

“Fascinating,” he mumbled. “Just fascinating.”

“Who are you?”

“I am Alix. You are Feria.”

“What happened to you? Your family?”

“Do you have any food?”

Feria glared at his behavior. Still she gathered a pile of large insects for him.

He gulped it down with one bite. “Perhaps you have, erm, much more food than that?”

She shook her head. “You don’t need it. You’d upset the balance.”

“Yes I do.”

“No you don’t. Act this offensively once more and I will throw you back into—”

He cried desperately. “I really need food!”

“That’s it—”

Alix’ body fell limp. He careened out of the tree at a dangerous height, making no attempt to save himself.

Darus sprung into action to prevent it. He prodded and nudged Alix, trying to prove this was an act—but it wasn’t.

Curious, Feria gathered much more food for him. She emptied her personal storage, which held ten times what a fox would need.

Only then Alix started talking.

He pointed at a Megarioth outside. These giant ground-dwelling sloths were everywhere now. Their bulbous arms held massive claws and their tail was so thick and heavy that they created new dirt trails wherever they went. You knew they were near when trees shook and dropped leaves like seasons were changing.

They had no enemies, not even amongst the tigers or lions.

“He’s in trouble,” Alix said. “I’ve studied the Smasher for a while now. Its patterns. Its movement. It’ll kill him before the sun has risen.”

Darus and Feria stared at the massive creature. They frowned, imagining how on earth it could be in danger.

Then the Megarioth cried out and stomped something below him.

Darus thought, just for the briefest moment, that he saw a flicker of light and a black silhouette dance back into the night.

The gods jumped from the Tree and chased it.

Feria had the keenest eyes and tracked the attacker into the dark forest. Darus had the swiftest feet. Following her directions, he tried to trap the Smasher with stone walls and rolling boulders, or with the trusted technique of a well-aimed bite.

He did not catch anything.

“You still see it?” he yelled.

“Faintly,” Feria admitted. “Only when it moves, it leaves this yellow trail.”

She climbed higher into a tree. A large family of Gosti cried out and stumbled away from her, some even leaping to a different tree with complete disregard for their safety. Only a few of them stayed, and that was because they played dead.

“Did you see anything?” Feria asked the Gosti. “You must have. You’re in the trees all the time. And your eyes are huge.”

They slowly shook their head. Why were they scared? Did they still fear punishment for their role in making the dinosaurs go extinct?

She was losing the Smasher.

Ardex had arrived and set the scene on fire. The night light gave Darus a direction to go, but the wolf still stumbled blindly into potential danger. He bit in every direction and wagged his tail fast enough to create a shield at his back.

“Where are you?” he bellowed. “Show yourself!”

The Megarioth staggered, cried again, then started its descent. As if the body had just … shut off. A giant creature that seemed felled by an invisible mosquito.

Ardex and Feria had to move out of range. Feria followed a few Gosti to another tree, while the God of Death joined Darus.

The Megarioth closed his eyes a final time. He flattened several trees and unlucky animals that couldn’t escape his looming form. The ground sloth was no more. His claws jutted out of the dirt like a garden of knives, his tail a new hill.

Then Feria spotted it. He had a hole in his body. The Smasher had not just run into him, it had actually cut through him. This was insane. Unthinkable.

“Darus!” she yelled. “Fall back! It’s too dangerous!”

Too late. Darus howled in pain.

Feria shot from the treetops and landed besides Ardex. In the distance, several more trees suddenly bend in half, as if folded in two by the hands of a giant. That was the last Feria saw of the weird, semi-glowing form she assumed was the Smasher.

Darus’ body had no holes. But he was stuck underneath a giant stone. The Smasher had broken it off of a nearby mountain and made it land on the wolf. His fur had quickly turned from brown to gray, his eyes dull.

Oh no. No, no, no. That was the same look he had when he was a statue for years.

“Say, I am fine,” Darus said, trying to sound playful. “No don’t hurry to save me, just stand there looking shocked, it’s all fine.”

Feria gently touched his fur and kissed her brother on the cheek. Even so, they could not move that boulder.

They would normally ask Darus to do it, but he could not access that magic now. His power had been a bit all or nothing before, admittedly, but after being disconnected from energy that long he seemed afraid to really use it. To spend the energy on it.

The slightest obstacle made Darus lose touch with his magic, and it saddened Feria more than she could say. Her buddy. Her endless well of wolf optimism, now run dry. She hadn’t realized how much she depended on him specifically until she couldn’t anymore.

Ardex’ fires made a ring around Darus, as he strained to unpin his brother. Darus was groaning in pain, his leg squashed by the heavy stone. Just a paw’s length of movement would be enough to set him free, but the saber-toothed tiger could not do it.

Alix climbed over the Megarioth and entered the circle. With every step, he seemed to think about stopping altogether and just sitting down.

“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. No, Ardex, you’re not moving that boulder any time soon.”

“Who are you,” Ardex spoke through clenched teeth, “and how dare you speak to gods like that?”

“It’s fascinating.” Alix eagerly ran to him to explain. “I’ve studied this for years and found the answer.”

“Go back to your family,” Ardex roared, “and keep your clever answers to yourself.”

Alix stopped tapping. His tail fell flat.

“I lost my family,” he mumbled. “And my mother got rid of me. By now, she has probably been taken by the Smasher too.”

He sniffed, then hit his own forehead repeatedly.

“I could have saved them. If my brain was working.”

In these times, dear reader, groups and families were still uncommon. The Giant Foxes were one of the first to live like that, but even their groups had only a handful of beings. By studying them, Feria had noticed one single truth: you’re not supposed to lose them or be kicked out. That meant certain death for a social animal.

Alix turned around and shuffled away.

“I guess nobody wants me.”

“That’s right as fire,” Ardex said with a grunt.

Feria glared and kicked her brother. She chased Alix, but when he wanted to, that clever fox could be very quick to disappear.

“He won’t survive the night,” Feria said. “You know that.”

“And we can’t play favorites. If he has no claws to defend himself, if he has no dangerous tail or teeth, then he isn’t a strong addition to life anyway. Nature will take care of it. Some carnivore will take care of it.”

Feria flared red. “You disgust me.”

“You know I’m right.”

“Say, sure, forget about me,” Darus said again, sounding less cheerful than before. “Not like I can feel my legs or tail or anything.”

“The thing doesn’t move,” said Ardex, giving a final push.

“And that’s why we needed Alix!” cried Feria. “He … he might be the last one of their species.”

She focused her vision to see the Enyrgias around them. Oblong creatures that represented energy. They showed energy stored in objects, where it was moving, and what forces acted on it.

Ardex was swarmed by them. He put a lot of energy into every push of the boulder, but it still didn’t move. All the Enyrgia he used … just jumped onto the stone and spread themselves across the surface, all equally far from each other. Compared to a giant stone, the number of Enyrgias suddenly felt very tiny. Only one of them for every paw’s breadth of stone.

Of course that wasn’t enough to move the stone.

She felt close to a realization; she was sure Alix could have just told them.

“I’m going after him,” Feria said. “We can’t let such a brilliant animal, even smarter than Gosti, go extinct.”

“Don’t leave me,” Darus yelled. It was the cry of a baby, desperate and pleading.

Feria froze. Ardex tried to comfort his brother, still pinned below layers of stone.

“Haul Bella off of her throne,” said Feria. “We need everyone for this. I don’t care how scared she is.”

“What was it you said again, little sister? We must be more kind to our family? You have an odd way of—”

Feria was already gone. She tracked Alix into the night at a dangerous speed.

Bella, a shimmering raccoon, studied Darus for mere heartbeats and knew what to do.

“You look just like you did when you touched those Marker Stones. I’m confident this Smasher uses the same power.”

“Impossible,” Ardex said. “Isn’t that so, brother?”

The wolf could barely speak from the pain. He regularly cursed his brother for sending away Alix.

“Yes, yes, yes.” said Darus with difficulty. “I encased the Marker Stones into larger Saltstones, which are nigh unbreakable. Then I hid them where nobody will ever find them. And then, if we all kept our promise, didn’t tell anybody about their existence.”

Bella kept circling the clearing. She didn’t trust the darkness, didn’t trust what she couldn’t see behind her back. The Goddess of Wisdom knew that being smart could not defend her from a physical threat, and she never fully recovered from being disconnected from life force for many days.

Then her gaze went upward, to a constellation of yellow Gosti eyes looking down on them.

“Ardex, could you please bring some Gosti down so I could talk—”

Ardex buried his nails into the tree trunk and shook until Gosti fell out. With them came a rain of dead leaves and suspiciously straight twigs.

“Start talking, you useless creatures!” said Ardex. “You must have seen the Smasher—”

“Well, that’s, thank you, brother.”

She picked up a Gosti. They were tiny, not much larger than mice. They had slowly adapted to living in trees, but even now their hands did not have claws or nails. You could crush a Gosti by accident and not even notice.

“Why are you scared of us?” Bella asked, her voice as sweet as possible.

“Do we need to answer that?” the largest one said. “Look at us. We have not a sharp tooth, not a spiky tail, not a claw. Please put us back into the tree, before a tiger shows up.”

“We can protect you.”

“Like how you unleashed carnivores on the world? Like how you let the dinosaurs die?”

Bella kept smiling. “But you are special.”

“Yes. We’re smart enough not to trust the promises of gods.”

“Can we get some respect from our own creatures, please?” roared Ardex. He stepped up to the Gosti and proved their point about being weak and defenseless.

There were also dangers in the trees, though, such as predatory birds. And they would need to come down sometimes for food. These Gosti were small, but they were far from underfed or at risk of extinction.

“Please, be honest with us. We will not punish you and,” she glared at her brother, “Ardex will not attack you. Do you know the Smasher? Tell me all you’ve seen.”

The ghosts looked at each other. Finally, the most talkative of them decided to step closer.

“They say they’re huge. Their large muscles allow them to break anything, win against anyone. They have to eat a hundred fish a day to get the energy for that.”

“If they’re so large, why can’t anybody see them?”

“Don’t look for a body, or a tail, or teeth. Follow the energy. Follow the destruction in their wake.”

Follow the energy. Yes. They should see where the Enyrgias were strongest—most numerous—and follow that trail.

In the distance, several trees suddenly dropped. A series of loud cracks hammered their ears. The earth shook; birds fled from the scene; a fox howled. The Smasher had struck again.

“I’m sorry, what was your name again?” Bella asked of the talkative Gosti. “You seem to know things.”

“Garith. They call me Garith the Wise. Garith the Megabrain. And Garith the—”

“No we don’t,” said some of his brothers behind him.

Bella accepted it anyway. She looked behind her.

“Sorry … Darus … we must urgently …”

“Don’t leave me alone!” He tried to wriggle free from the stone again, despite knowing it to be in vain. “We talked about this! Why does nobody ever listen to me!?”

“Darus. Tell us where you hid the Marker Stones.”

His expression darkened. “No. It was supposed to always stay my secret, to protect—”

“This family,” said Ardex. He grunted and scraped his tusks against stone. “All talk about being honest and strong together; never any evidence of it.”

“Darus!” yelled Bella. “Tell us now!”

“No! You will leave me alone again.”

But they left him alone anyway.

Ardex and Bella followed the evidence of the Enyrgias. They ought to pile up and shine brighter than the sun whenever they came close to those powerful Marker Stones.

Sure, they asked the Gosti to look after him.

Brave Gosti with not a claw nor a sharp tooth.

Not long after, a tiger entered the clearing. The common enemy of all beings in this time period, like most felines.

“Oh no,” the tiger said with a grin. “So scared. Few mice in my way. God trapped and helpless. What do?”

Silence returned to the clearing. So did painfully dark shadows, clinging to Gosti and tiger alike.

Darus sought a final ounce of energy to chase off the tiger. He found none. The Smasher attack had really drained him. It had almost severed his connection to Enyrgia again. At least, that’s what a fearful voice screamed at the back of his mind.

The tiger lashed out.

The nearest Gosti ducked. To dodge the claw, and also to pick up a twig.

For just a few heartbeats, they were able to stand on two legs and hold the twig. It was an unusual twig. Almost perfectly straight, stripped of any knobbles or notches, and sharp at the end.

They thrust the twig at the tiger. It punctured their side and wounded them.

“Unfair!” the tiger screamed.

The other Gosti had picked up their personal twigs too and thrust them forward, circling the tiger, annoying him from all sides.

His claw connected with one of them, killing it instantly.

Garith wanted to land another attack, but had to stand on all four legs again. With twig between his teeth, he was less effective.

“Fair now!” the Gosti yelled, holding their twigs as if they were nails growing from their fingertips.

The tiger roared and bit. Another Gosti perished.

The others found the strength to stand on two legs again and thrust their sharp sticks once more. The tiger was collecting serious wounds now and looked unsure of himself, his eyes losing focus.

Darus could do nothing to help. According to him and Ardex, gods weren’t supposed to help. But he’d surely have liked Alix to get him out of this situation long ago.

With a desperate lunge, the tiger killed three Gosti at once, and slapped the twig from Garith’s paw.

He had to return to all fours again. His makeshift weapon had snapped. A final thrust made the tiger fall, but he took Garith with him.

As if nothing had ever happened, the clearing returned to silence, and Darus was truly alone. But a handful of Gosti had brought down a tiger, and left behind a set of sharp and strong twigs.

Then he heard the frightening crack of something Smashing nearby flintstone as if it was nothing.

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.

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.

Many years passed. In those years, Feria and Alix traveled together to the furthest corners of Somnia. This was no small task, but also not as big a task as it could have been. They were still surrounded by mysterious, invisible barriers that prevented them from going too far. They couldn’t go further South, they couldn’t cross the Dolphin Pass behind the Impossible Wall in the West, and if you swam into the Sultry Sea it would just spit you back onto land.

Crassa, a black crow, watched the pair of foxes amble into her forest. She watched them with hatred in her eyes and sharp stones ready to throw onto their heads.

“I will get you your food,” Feria said, playfully nudging Alix. “You try to find another fox. Also, we’re close to the invisible barrier here. Mind taking a look? Surely you can figure out the secret?”

Alix laughed. “I’ll try, I’ll try.”

Feria’s gaze was pulled up. She looked straight in Crassa’s eyes, then moved her focus to the nest full of eggs beside her.

“Stay away!” yelled Crassa, a shrieking and shivering voice. “Gods should not take their animal’s babies! You are monsters!”

“I don’t do it with pleasure,” Feria admitted.

“It’s unfair! You should not favor one animal over—”

Feria yelled. “But we need the food. Alix is worth a thousand of you.”

Crassa crowed loudly, forcing Feria to protect her ears with leaves, then started her rain of rocks. The sharp objects, as large as Alix’ paws, crashed into his back. Feria dodged them effortlessly and furiously ran up the tree, biting at Crassa.

The weight of the stones wasn’t the issue. It was their sharpness.

Feria backed down when she noticed her and Alix were bleeding heavily. Crassa had an entire stockpile of sharpened stones.

And so did the crows living in all the other trees.

The rain of rocks turned into a storm of stones. Their fox fur was pelted from every direction, cut and scraped until Alix couldn’t remember where he was. A small river of blood ran from him, seeking to merge with the Dolphin Pass up ahead.

Feria roared, accessed her magic, and drew energy from all the hearts of the crows. Which stopped them.

Their eyes bulged and they fell from their branches. Feria had not killed them, only made them faint. All except Crassa—she could not keep such a dangerous crow alive.

With a guilt-ridden heart, Feria took some of her eggs and fed them to Alix.

Alix didn’t accept them. He sunk into the dirt, cleaning his wounds in the water. His eyes had lost their keen gaze for when he studied the universe.

“I am not worth it,” he mumbled. “All that food.”

“You are. Trust me, you are.”

“How can I be fascinated by life and animals … and allow you to kill dozens of them just for me?” Alix picked up one of the stones that the crows had thrown. “Fascinating. How did they get it this sharp? Have the Gosti tools spread to the birds too? Mami, again?”

Feria was used to Alix suddenly jumping to different topics now. She brought his attention back.

“Sometimes,” said Feria, “there are no perfectly good choices. And still a choice must be made. But we need brains like yours, we need to save the Giant Foxes, to maybe find better solutions one day. The crows would just use their brains for finding food and surviving, nothing more. The tigers would just use their brains for killing. You think further ahead, even if it takes a lot of food to give you enough energy for it.”

Alix’ face was painted in disbelief. “You really think I am worth all that?”

“You are. Absolutely.”

His pink fur turned pink and red. His drooping whiskers stopped touching the ground, and instead briefly weaved through the much shorter whiskers of Feria.

And so they traveled further.

They traveled to ice sheets, to tropical rainforests, to thick forests and barren grasslands. Their ice age was coming to an end, but variety existed even within an ice age. Pockets of land that were warm and filled with life, and pockets of land so jagged and hellish you couldn’t even stand there.

At some point, food would run out, or everyone would figure out that Alix could not defend himself. That all his food went to his brains and nothing else. And then they’d leave for a different territory.

Everywhere they went, the plants and animals were radically different. Only one species appeared wherever you looked, and when you least expected it: the Gosti. How they’d done so, especially with the lack of trees, was a mystery.

Feria had been hesitant to take Alix to all those places. But Alix had the power of adaptability. When they were in freezing cold territories, Alix would repurpose the fur from animals Feria killed. When they were in dry territories, Alix would save any rainfall in a hollowed-out stone, which he called a bucket. The fox’ body was small and flexible enough to adapt with it.

And so Feria held hope that they’d find at least one female fox in those habitats.

When they came close to the invisible barrier, the area was a wasteland. Trees were cut in half. Stone walls had crumbled and shattered. The Smasher problem had not gone away; no, they were certain there were multiple Smashers now. Animals fled to their Throne in droves, and they all requested they solve the issue.

They still didn’t know how. When they’d gone to hide the Marker Stones again, Darus noticed a few were missing. As long as the Gosti had all that energy, they could keep smashing.

Feria’s fur stood up, her spine tingling. She did not like to linger here, especially not with Alix weakened.

She looked out over the water and saw the faintest hint of another continent in the distance. Somnia was much larger than the tiny area where they’d been trapped. The area that had given her so many terrible experiences and memories already, thanks in no small part to Ardex and his stupidity. Oh, how she longed to remove that barrier and go there. Get her own patch of land without family troubles.

Alix, however, wanted to sleep. He did that a lot, to recharge energy. Sometimes he said he wanted to sleep five times a day, even as the sun shone bright.

For the first time, Feria could not suppress her urge. Her need to snuggle close to him, for warmth, for safety, like a shield around him. Maybe it was because they’d known each other for so long. Maybe it was because he was wounded and shivering.

She held onto her only chance at saving the Giant Foxes with her paws wrapped around him.

That’s why she woke up when he left her grasp.

He sauntered silently to the invisible barrier, just a few steps into the water. She smiled, thinking he was going to study the universe again and have something magical happen.

Instead, he stepped sideways and met up with a few sinister looking Gosti. They’d brought with them sticks, sharp stones, a very large magical dog … and a female Giant Fox.

Feria almost gave herself away at the excitement of finding another fox. She kept to the shadows to listen in on Alix’ meeting. She was slow and drowsy, though, and only caught the last part of it.

“We can’t thank you enough,” a Gosti said. “It used to take us months to find a good twig and sharpen its tip.”

In this time period, dear reader, animals were finally able to communicate with each other. Even different species mostly spoke the same language, from one end of Somnia to another. This was mostly thanks to doves who also spread like wildfire and wouldn’t shut up. But the gods were thankful, as more communication meant more cooperation. Though this was a cooperation Feria didn’t like to see …

The female Gosti showed Alix some chipped stones. They used to be larger, uneven rocks. The ones that are so common you couldn’t walk through Somnia without stubbing your toe on them. But thanks to his technique, striking them in just the right place with another stone, they had been able to give the stones many sharp edges.

Once they had sharp stones, the most difficult step, sharpening the point of twigs was peanuts. And so the first spears were born. An invention that spread like wildfire among all animals that could hold stone or spear.

“But there had to be a first stone,” said Alix. “To break the first Saltstone. To start the cycle of tools. Did Mami give you one?”

“No, no, that was this one.”

She procured a smaller stone. It was faintly orange, less sharp, but strong enough to hit another stone and break it. They revered that stone as if it were God: the so-called First Stone that made all the other tools possible.

“Fascinating,” said Alix.

It was his stone.

Years ago, he’d created this one during his experiments. When he discovered that the stone was near unbreakable in some places, but would chip nicely if hit in a different way. While traveling, his parents had lost that stone, and he’d been sad about it for months. He’d told the story to Feria many times. Mami must have found it and used it to break the first Saltstone and get access to the magical Marker Stone within.

“And so, as thanks, we did as you asked,” the Gosti said. “We gave all the Gosti a quest, and we searched far and wide, and we found a single remaining Giant Fox in all of Somnia. Her name’s Bellafax.”

She pointed at the pink-green fox, who hadn’t taken her eyes off of Alix. He did the same to her. A stern inspection. Studying the length of her fur, the details of her large eyes. Her much thicker tail wouldn’t have looked out of place on a beaver, but it seemed to be missing a part.

“Smasher attack,” Bellafax mumbled, pointing her snout at her tail. “Don’t worry. I’m not sick or anything. I’m healthy, and strong, and—”

“It’s fine,” said Alix. “I am just glad you’re alive. That I am not the last one of my kind.”

She smiled and finally approached him. “So am I.”

Feria’s breath caught in her throat. Her heart stopped. This was the moment. These two foxes had to like each other and get children, or the Giant Foxes would die when Alix died.

The two sniffed each other. They licked each other’s ears and stared in each other’s eyes.

“You must understand I am … hard to live with,” said Alix.

No! Silly fox! Feria was about to jump from her hiding place and stop him with some dating advice.

“They’ve told me. I don’t mind—I’ll find all the food you need.”

“My own mother,” Alix swallowed, “did not even want me. I am sickly.”

Bellafax froze. Her eyes glossed over.

This was going wrong—

“Nor did mine. She only saved herself when the Smashers came. Don’t worry, Alix. You are a legendary presence in Somnia and I’d gladly be with you.”

In this time, dear reader, love did not exist yet. There was only the natural feeling of wanting to stay alive and bear children. The feeling that you needed to be with an animal of the opposite sex to do so. Alix did not love Bellafax, and she did not love him, because they were incapable of it. But they trusted each other enough to make it work.

As if by unspoken agreement, Bellafax switched sides to stand beside Alix. She leaned against him, much like how Feria had snuggled against him earlier when sleeping.

Alix turned to the Gosti again. “And the other part I asked about?”

They smiled and waved for him to follow.

“We discovered the new hiding place of the Marker Stones. Our silly joker Darus just put them back where he hid them the first time! Where Mami broke them out through immense effort and with the help of Donte. As if he wants us to find them!”

They followed the Gosti up a hill, along a winding river, into an area increasingly built on stone. There, high above the ground, was a cave. The opening was once perfectly round and smooth, but now stood jagged and at risk of collapse. They’d broken into the place again, and had used Alix’ so-called tools to break out dozens of Marker Stones.

“Fascinating,” Alix mumbled.

“And you’re sure this will work?”

“Not sure. But magic usually commences at my touch. And I think we have just the right tools.”

The large dog that stood with them, however, did not follow. It was a familiar dog. It was not even a dog, in fact, it was the Hespryhound. Feria’s Heavenmatter and pet, which had accidentally arrived from the Heavenly Palace many years ago. The one who accidentally introduced the carnivore problem and made it worse, for he had accidental magic to turn plant-eaters into meat-eaters at a touch.

Hespry the hound had felt the presence of his owner long ago.

Feria dwarfed in his presence and was swallowed by his warm hug.

“What are you doing with those creatures?” Feria demanded. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Are you not happy we found your fox? Keep Alix en Bellafax alive for a few more years, and the species is saved.”

“Well, that part is a little unsure now with him making plans behind my back.”

She climbed onto the Hespryhound. She could barely see Alix in the distance. He inspected the glowing Marker Stones, laid out for him like a gift.

“What’s his plan?”

“It’s ridiculous.”

“What is it?”

Her Hespryhound sighed. He know how she was. Feria could never just let things happen without interfering. “You’ll make it worse. Just let him fall on his face.”

“You know the gods can do a lot of good by interfering.”

“And just as much bad.”

He refused to take her further towards the cave. He stood still as a statue, his eyes lost and his thoughts somewhere else.

“I thought I was doing good when I helped the carnivores. Just as I thought I was doing good when I applied my magic a final time. A lizard called Higgis requested I turn him from a meat-eater back into a plant-eater. I had never tried before.”

He blew out a long breath. It created swirling clouds in the cold night sky.

“It went wrong. Very wrong. I don’t know where Higgis is, as he hid himself from the world, afraid he might end it. Let it go, Feria. Alix will kill himself in the attempt, but at least you won’t make it worse.”

Her heart broke at his words. She missed the friendly, jumping, careless dog that had once chased her through the Heavenly Palace. She had no time to mourn that dog now.

Feria jumped from his back and ran for the cave. She whistled. A high, piercing whistle that she knew could be heard by any of her siblings nearby.

“Tell me what he’s planning.”

“You told him he was amazing. You told him he was worth killing dozens of animals to bring him food. Well, now he truly believes he’s better than the rest. That he—”

A warm light erupted at Feria’s back. The sun rose. The landscape quickly bathed in warm, yellow light. And still they were outshone by the glow coming from the Marker Stones.

Alix and the Gosti were moving them to the top of this small mountain. Bellafax looked over her shoulder, spotting Feria and pleading with her eyes.

Then the world inexplicably went darker again; sunrise turned to sunset.

Enyrgia congregated around the Marker Stones, swarming them like an insect plague. The brightness of it, the squashing of so much energy in so little space, hurt Feria’s godly eyes. The creatures seemed shocked themselves. Shocked there could be so many in one place.

Shocked that they were sucked out of the sun.

“Stop it!” Feria climbed the mountain, skipping large parts at a time. She reached for Alix, both physically and with her magic. “Alix!”

“Why?” asked Alix, and he seemed honestly confused. “It’s better this way! I won’t need food ever again! Nobody needs to die!”

Feria had trouble finding her path over the stone mountain. She slipped and tumbled back down, only to be saved by Bellafax.

“Are you insane?”

The sun was weakening quickly. Its rays were bent, twisted, until they all disappeared inside a Marker Stone. Sucked in. Ripped away.

Alix had placed them all in a circle, connected like points of a star. He’d figured out a way to connect them and put them in full view of sunlight. He’d figured out a way to recharge the Marker Stones with the energy of the sun.

“You’re going to destroy the sun! It would kill everyone!”

“No, no, no. It’s worth it, right? You said it yourself!”

Alix bathed in the energy, stood amidst the Marker Stones. He closed his eyes, faced the skies, so he didn’t even have to see the darkness creeping over the rest of Somnia.

“Ah. Such wisdom. Such power. My mind’s full of ideas, Feria! Great ideas already!”

“And if you kill us all,” Feria said. She clenched her teeth and made the final leap to the top. “Then who would be there to see all those great ideas?”

She was close enough now to tap into his life force. To see his beating heart, his soul, like a dot on the spider web of life. Even if partially obscured by the piles of Enyrgia enveloping him.

She could have stopped his heart and ended all of this. Bellafax stood next to her and pleaded that she’d save Alix, pleaded she would not be the final Giant Fox there ever was.

Feria could not do it.

Her indecision lasted long enough for the Gosti to touch the Marker Stones too and turn into Smashers again.

The mountain rumbled and slid away from underneath her feet.

She rolled to the side and grabbed a branch. Multiple Smashers effortlessly created holes through the mountain, tunnels that weren’t there before. They precisely aimed for anyone but Alix. What had he done to earn this loyalty? Promised the Gosti they could use the power too?

Another Smasher split her side of the mountain in two. The crack widened and traveled until it split Feria’s branch and sent her tumbling further down.

“Can … can he really do that?” asked Bellafax. She clung onto Feria and, even without sunlight, cast a disturbingly dark shadow over the goddess’ face. “Can he … capture the sun?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. He’d at least weaken the sun and make it die far earlier. This is not natural.”

Boulders tumbled down as if thrown by the clouds. Feria held Bellafax tight and let herself glide downwards.

“Bring yourself to safety. Bring your—”

Her siblings arrived. Cosmo, a giant bird, had the best hearing of all and the fastest travel speed. He needed no explanation and dove straight at Alix, followed by a flock of angry crows.

The Smashers used their immense speed to shoot them out of the sky. One by one, crows fell dead around Alix’ paws. Cosmo twisted and danced in a panic to avoid it all.

Night had fully returned now—too soon, of course, and unnatural. They fought by the glow of the Marker Stones. The sun still tried to rise, but any time it slipped over the horizon, any time a few sunrays hit an animal’s fur, they were sucked into the Marker Stones again.

Buzzing with energy, Alix swatted Cosmo aside.

“Don’t attack him!” Feria yelled. “Take away the Marker Stones!”

She couldn’t find Bellafax anymore and hoped she had hidden herself well. Again she climbed, her eyes trying to find Alix all the time.

“Please, listen to me,” she said, as sweetly as she could. “You know we need the sun to survive. We’re a family.”

“Are you? The gods who can never agree on anything? Who’d leave Darus alone, slowly dying underneath a large boulder? If even the gods can’t be a family, how can you expect it of your humble servants?”

“We’re not perfect,” Feria said, reaching for the first Marker Stone at his feet. “But we try. You would be dead thrice over if it wasn’t for somebody coming in to save you!”

Alix pretended not to hear. Nothing was going to change his world. Nothing was going to change how much energy he needed for his brain and how the universe had only a limited amount. This was the solution.

Feria grabbed the first Marker Stone. It burned her paw as she cast it aside, to tumble down the mountain.

Darus showed up behind her. He had recovered from the incident and was now master of Stone again. All or nothing magic, and fortunately, it was all whenever Feria was in danger.

He caught the rocks thrown by the Smashers and sent them back from whence they came at the same speed.

Gosti after Gosti was tossed from the air. Their speed broke everything in their path, which is why Darus aimed for them to land in the ocean. Even if it meant they’d drown.

“Get out of there, Feria!” screamed Darus. “This is my domain. You’re vulnerable.”

“This is my fault,” she cried.

In pitch-black darkness, she fumbled around and touched another Marker Stone. She knew that, for it sent shivers through her entire leg. She kicked it away from Alix too.

The entire mountain wobbled and staggered. As if a stone giant had woken up and tried to stand, but all the creatures seeking foothold weighed it down.

And when you’re heavy as a mountain, it doesn’t take long for you to lose balance and fall.

Alix tried to compensate by moving the heavy Marker Stones. Feria, Darus and Cosmo shifted to the other side of the mountain too.

They might have been able to put it upright again, if it weren’t for the Smashers carelessly flying past them. Cosmo had to let go. Darus had to improvise and transform the stone into a shield. Feria felt the life force of the Smasher and stopped their heart, with tears in her eyes.

Yes, dear reader, Giant Foxes could not cry like humans. But godly foxes could. And what happened next would forever bring tears to Feria’s eyes as she slept at night.

The temperature dropped dangerously. Without sunlight, Darus had to keep moving or his paws would be frozen to the stone. He took another Marker Stone between his teeth, and another, and threw them all out of Alix’ reach.

“Just a little more, just a little more,” Alix mumbled. He already glowed with energy. The sun had capitulated to its new master.

Feria nudged Darus aside. She would not lose him for a hundred years again, because he touched those cursed stones for too long and was disconnected from Enyrgia.

Instead, she’d do it herself.

But Darus would not let her do that.

They kicked each other away from the Marker Stones. Cosmo was the only one grabbing them in his claws and dropping them into the sea. With every single one, sunrays hesitantly returned, but Cosmo’s feathers had grown gray.

And now he dropped from the sky like a statue.

“NO!”

Feria jumped straight after him, even though she could not fly. Darus rapidly built a bridge of stone through the air, connecting the mountain to where Cosmo was falling.

In doing so, he sealed the small mountain’s fate. One hole too many. One Smasher too many. One unbelievable imbalance too many.

It toppled over.

Alix lost his balance and fell amidst a rain of stones, cast in darkness. His eyes danced around, confused, unseeing, as if suddenly realizing what he’d done.

Below that rain of rocks stood a female Giant Fox named Bellafax, who had hidden herself well, but not well enough. She couldn’t be blamed for expecting a small mountain to stay upright instead of toppling. She couldn’t be blamed for anything, just as even in her final moments, she couldn’t blame Alix for needing that much food and trying to capture sunlight.

She was nevertheless crushed by the attack, holding all the Gosti in her embrace.

The Pendulum Prison had been an immense undertaking. Ironically, Alix helped build his own cage, adding clever tricks to contain his energy and keep out anyone else.

Hiding the Marker Stones had proven useless. Given enough time, which they surely had, someone would find them. Destroying them proved impossible so far.

Instead, Darus searched for the most remote island they were allowed to reach. There, he carved a large hole in the stone, with deep cliffs around it, like a moat around a castle. Only these cracks were so wide and deep that only gods could scale them.

To finish it off, they hung pendulums around the prison. Enchanted clouds, higher in the sky than any known bird, held massive boulders by ropes made of vine. The boulders swung back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, like a ticking clock. Anybody who wanted to enter would need impeccable timing and speed, or risk being swatted aside.

Normally, such pendulums would swing less and less over time, until they fell silent. Alix had been imprisoned with so much energy, however, that they could keep swinging at exactly the same pace until the sun would die.

All Smashers had perished. All Marker Stones, as far as they knew, were out of the itchy paws of their creatures now.

It took Feria a year before she visited Alix. She had fought ferociously to keep him alive, for they needed his brain. And to his credit, he’d helped them out a lot since. But she couldn’t look that mad scientist in the eyes and forgive him.

“I am sorry,” he said again as Feria approached. “I am not an evil fox, please believe me.”

“And your own madness made you the only fox left. We almost lost Cosmo too.”

Silence. Alix studied some insect crawling over the wall of his prison. Feria still admired him, even though she tried not to.

If her family hadn’t been bickering so much, if Ardex hadn’t treated him like garbage, would this disaster have been prevented? As her Hespryhound said, were the gods and their family issues—their never-ending interference—really the cause of all that was bad?

“How … how is life in prison?” she asked softly.

“Fascinating.”

Feria grinned. “I’m sure it is.”

“The pendulums give me ample time to study more Enyrgia, and forces, and other laws of nature and universe—”

“You can see them?”

“Indeed? I even became friends with a weird one, look—”

She ran up to him, following his gaze to a weirdly shaped Enyrgia on the wall.

“No. No, I shouldn’t,” Feria said mostly to herself. She froze. “What you did can’t be forgiven. We are not … acquintances anymore.”

A single pendulum had been slowed down to let Feria through. She walked away through the space and asked Darus to energize the pendulum again.

“Oh, are the animals enjoying my tools?” Alix yelled after her.

Friends with an Enyrgia. Massive advancements, such as tools, for all of Somnia in just a few years. Alix was special.

The possibilities nagged at her. The godchildren were still no closer to breaking out of their invisible cage. She wanted away from her family. She wanted to find other continents. Hoping against all reason there’d magically be more foxes there.

She wanted him at her side. He was right; this place stinks and nothing was going to change her world like this. Nothing was going to change her family, not after millions of years. She had to build a new family, forge her own path.

She exchanged a glance with Darus. She didn’t even need to say the words. Darus’ contempt for how his family had treated him, and ignored his stories about Zyme, could be read from outer space.

None of their siblings were around. They wouldn’t approve of her visits anyway and condemned her publicly for trying.

Darus slowed several pendulums again, until they fell still.

Feria walked away, leaving a wide open gap for Alix to escape his prison.

“See for yourself.”

The next few days, Alix nearly jumped on top of every creature they found.

Birds took stones inside their beak to break eggs, when their children had trouble hatching, or to break walls keeping them from food.

Gosti could rapidly create all sorts of twigs for all sorts of purposes. Some were sharp and used for spearing other animals; some were thin and long and allowed them to reach deep inside beehives. The Gosti were able to kill increasingly larger animals, after which they’d use their sharp stones to cut open their bones to eat the nutrient marrow.

The proto-monkeys had even started a trade with schools of fish. They gave them finished toolstones so they could break shells and mussels; in return, the fish told them where the waters were safest for fishing.

“Fascinating,” Alix breathed.

Every heartbeat of every day, Alix’ theories about force and energy were proven. The tools amplified the force of your arm or beak. By changing how far you needed to move, by using a different material at contact, animals could suddenly achieve more with less energy.

He excitedly told Feria about his next theory about sharpness. About how those spears could cut through things because all the force was concentrated on just the tip, instead of a larger area. All Enyrgias on a tiny tip, instead of a larger flat area. He promised he’d do more experiments and present his final theory to the gods. A theory of motion energy, he called it.

Feria forcefully told him he was never to see or meet her siblings ever again.

Darus and Feria met up in secret. Their meeting, however, had one other surprise guest: Hanah.

The youngest godchild, who had disappeared when they first landed on Somnia. And whom had rarely showed her face since. She had repeatedly told her siblings to slow down. Don’t interfere. Enjoy life as it slowly develops and figures things out, instead of rushing through. Hence why she didn’t help or visit the Throne of Tomorrow.

“They’re whispering,” the red panda said. “The number of animals supporting the gods is shrinking. They say you’re just fighting amongst yourself. The big felines say it’s not fair that you’ve given the smaller animals tools to defend themselves. The small animals say it’s not fair that you gave all that energy to a single fox, or that you even kept him alive.”

She glanced at Alix. In all those years, every glance his way, even the mention of his name, was overflowing with anger. But Hanah looked kind, as she always did.

“Don’t try to stop us,” said Feria.

“We can’t do it anymore, Hanah,” said Darus. “Ardex, Bella, they mean well, they’re family. But we get in each other’s way and they’ve left me for dead numerous times now.”

“I am not here to stop you. I am here to help you.”

“How? Do you know more about the invisible barriers?”

Hanah grinned and flopped childishly with her tail. “At least some of them were made by me.”

“Unbelievable!” Darus exclaimed, crushing a stone in his paw. “Our family is working against us literally all the time!”

“Tut tut, don’t be like that. I thought you understood me, Darus. Zyme, remember? Let life do what it wants, at the pace that it wants.”

“So why help us now?” Feria said, her anger rising. “Why not let us fumble around in the dark until we happen to find the solution to your cage?”

“Because, with Alix at your side, you’d have found it tomorrow anyway. And … I worry about you.”

They followed the red panda until they reached the barrier. She’d chosen a spot on the Impossible Wall of Darus. But it was one of the lowest locations, very close to the Dolphin Pass. It was the shortest distance to the continent at the other side.

A Glyptodoth passed them by. A giant armadillo with a carapace that covered its entire body from head to toe, and made it look like it could curl up and roll away at any moment. They were herbivores and regularly used by other animals as a shield against predators. They were almost walking shelters, reaching for the legendary look of dinosaurs but falling just short.

That is, until the Gosti with their spears could suddenly kill one by hitting between the holes and notches in the shell. The tools had made the battle fair—for now—sharp stick against natural armor.

The Glyptodoth species had also evolved seemingly out of nowhere.

Hanah looked around until she found a blue, perfectly round boulder. It glowed without moonlight.

“Ha! Say, we were right!” said Darus. “Those are the key.”

Hanah mumbled something, stomped the dirt with her tail, and the blue boulder sent a blue shockwave ahead of her.

It was over in a heartbeat. They could see clearly now. No distortion, no magic barrier, nothing to stop them from going over there.

Hanah grinned and hugged her siblings. Feria knew it was useless asking her to stay, but she still tried numerous times. The panda even hugged Alix so hard it made him uncomfortable.

“Well. Here’s to hoping,” Feria said. “Hoping we miraculously find another fox.”

Hanah frowned, turning extra red. “Sister. You do remember you’re a female fox too, right?”

“I … I can’t … are you suggesting …”

Alix was already fascinated by every part of the beach. An entire new part of the world that nobody else had seen or visited before, or so they thought. He and Darus jumped around and yelled excitedly about the shape of rocks and the feeling of sand.

“Just promise me one thing,” said Hanah. She pulled her own Heavenmatter, the incredibly powerful Soulsplitter, out of thin air. She caressed the glowing red orb. “When you find a way to destroy the Marker Stones, do it. And perhaps, as thanks for what I did tonight, you would help me figure out a plan to keep my family safe.”

She had tears in her eyes. “I worry about you.”

Then she disappeared, climbing a tree until she was lost in the dark canopy.

“How … how are we supposed to cross the water!?” Feria yelled after her. “We can’t swim that far!”

“Oh you’ll figure it out!” said Hanah’s distant voice. “The others won’t know you’re missing for weeks!”

Darus pulled stones from the bottom of the ocean to create a precarious path. As if magically walking on water. They’d need to place their paws with precision, but they’ll eventually reach the other side.

The three of them left Origina for the first time, to visit a new continent they’d later call Garda. The sun would rise again, at least they managed that. As for what they’d see in its light … that much was unknown, but it was sure to be fascinating.

And so it was that life continued…