I couldn’t stop asking myself: what was happening?!
The roots growing around me kept my eyes and ears shut all the time, but I knew something was very wrong.
Once we came to our hiding place to report the success of our mission, Grace invited us to the treasury, where she used her magic to raise an altar of some sorts, and carry it to the top of the Bear Mountain’s skull while she also spoke of the success of her mission, and how the Great Games would happen as planned. Once we got to the top of the skull and found Glance and Gaillardia, however, the old tree woman quickly imprisoned us with her wooden spell, and kept canceling any of our tries to conjure our own spells to break free. Since then, at least two hours must have passed, it was after sunset for sure, and I felt many tremors and vibrations, as if terrible earthquakes were happening one after the other. For some reason, breathing was hard, and each time I filled up my lungs, my head hurt.
After all this time, however, the hard wood filling up my ears and covering my eyes started to move, and finally unimpeded my senses once more.
“Aspen, sweethearts, are you okay?!”, I screamed, starting to look for my boyfriend and friends immediately. I found them beside me, also kept in place by hard tree roots.
“Mari! I’m fine, and you?!”, Aspen locked his eyes on me, and I felt immediately better knowing that he was safe.
“What… is that?”, Splash asked, looking up. And only then I noticed that, even though it should be night, there was plenty of light around. Had I miscalculated the passage of time?
“Uh…?”, I mumbled. For I was not mistaken, and the moon was high up in the skies. But a person floated right above us, emitting intense light. “G-Grace?”, she looked way younger and more beautiful, but there should be only one tree person around us.
“That has never been my real name, child. My name is Anog! And I’ve ascended to godhood. I stand side by side with the same beings that I saw reshaping this world”, she answered, stopping just above me. “And now I shall punish those who tried to stop me before”, she smiled, her new and beautiful form failing to hide the ugliness of her smug.
“Kids, get down!”, Gaillardia said, conjuring an ax, and hurling it over our heads straight against Anog.
“A teacher should never hurt their apprentices!”, Glance shouted, passing his fingers over one of his belts, and conjuring an obsidian spear, which he hurled at the floating woman too.
“Meaningless resistance”, Anog laughed, as the projectiles stopped in the air right before reaching her, stopped by a strong gush of wind. “Let me show you what real magic is!”, she said, raising one hand up, and conjuring such a bright orange sphere of flame, my eyes and brain hurt when I tried to look at it, and we all were forced to turn our face away and cover our ears. “This is… divine punishment!”, Anog was about to hurl the ball of flames on us. Blood was dripping from my nose, forced to breath in the air heated by powerful the magic. Looking away from the flames, I stared into a distant lake, regretting our failure. I could only hope that at least Coyote was safe…
Then a white light up near the lake. And in the next instant, Anog was screaming in pain: “Aaaurrgh!?”.
I looked back, and I saw the goddess holding the stub that was her left arm, dripping sap from the open wound.
“What is that?!”, Anog shouted, looking at the direction of the lake, and we all saw the blinking light from before greatly into a star in itself. “Coyote, you fool… So, you’ve chosen death” the goddess conjured a new arm for herself, and straightened her back. “Very well, god of death. Come!”
“What… Don’t tell me, Coyote has…?!”, I feared the worst.
“Vaarugh!”, the Bear Mountain beneath my feet, to my surprise, roared, and stepped forward, alive, shaking the earth with each step.
The shining white star at the distance quickly flew upward, and there was a black spot at its center, like an eye staring straight at us.
The Bear Mountain gained up speed, and Anog started to fly forwards too, and both forces were rushing towards one another.
The others and I were pushed away from the skull of the Bear Mountain by the sheer strength of the wind at those speeds, and were forced to hold onto the fur in the creature’s neck, but in no time, I could see the center of the dark star approaching: Coyote was there, looking eerily impassive… with his hair totally white.
“COYOTE!”, Anog shouted, and conjured a huge tree that grew vertically from her arms, hitting the flying white-haired boy straight in.
“No!”, I screamed, already with tears coming to my eyes.
The tree burst into flames, however, which quickly moved up the tree trunk and almost got onto the goddess, when she unmade her conjuration, and revealed an unharmed Coyote. Then, we were close enough for the Bear Mountain itself to attack, however, and the thing clawed at my friend with its huge paw. Only for the paw to get stuck in the air, and break its claws, as if it had hit an immovable object.
“Ugruh…!”, The Bear Mountain groaned, its paw being pushed to the side by a simple hand gesture from the flying white-haired boy.
“You can’t beat the two of us!”, Anog shouted coming down to the head of the Bear Mountain, and touching it with both hands, from which sprouted thousands of roots that entangled themselves on the bones and leather of the undead god controlled by her, and fused themselves with the creature for its next attack. “Bear Mountain, destroy him!”
The huge god below us got up on its hind legs, standing hundreds of meters over the flying Coyote, and then it brought all of its weight down with a dive using both paws reinforced by huge thick thorny roots.
“…Four Deaths”, Coyote said.
