Meilin moved on instinct. The Bile had held her back for so long that now, to have full control over her entire body and mind, she felt completely exhilarated. She broke into a run, then stepped lightly off of Jhi’s back and made a graceful, flying leap toward Kovo. Her arms hooked around his neck. He swung wildly to shake her off but Meilin kept her balance on his shoulders. She whipped off the sash tied around her waist and yanked it tightly around Kovo’s eyes, blinding him. He threw his fists out around him, striking at the air. “Go, Jhi!” Meilin cried out.
Jhi lunged toward Kovo – but not before Kovo managed to throw Meilin off his back. She hit the ground hard. Stars exploded before her eyes. Kovo swung his staff at Jhi, forcing her back, and slammed the staff into the ground again. Light burst from the crook in all directions. Meilin and her friends cried out at the brightness and threw their arms up. Meilin felt her bond with Jhi tremble, as if a string between them had just been violently plucked. Panic rushed through her. She struggled to her feet and staggered toward Jhi.
The panda looked back at her, also shaken. Uraza, Briggan, and Essix all shuddered in place – and Uraza’s violet eyes flickered for an instant, turning colorless. The cobalt blue color of Briggan’s brilliant eyes faded too. For a moment, it seemed as if all of their bonds would break.
No, they can’t, Meilin cried silently. She braced herself for the worst.
Suddenly the light from the staff flickered and died. Confused, Meilin glanced at Kovo. What she saw made her mouth drop open. Another figure had lunged at Kovo, someone riding on the shoulders of an enormous crocodile. The crocodile’s jaws were open, and his roar was directed at Kovo.
It was Shane.
Shane.
I must be hallucinating, Meilin thought, struggling to understand.
Shane let out a furious yell at Kovo, one full of anguish and anger. His crocodile snapped at Kovo. Its jaws clamped down on the gorilla’s side. Shane slashed out at the ape’s face with his saber. The blade sliced into Kovo’s eyebrow, cutting deep. Kovo roared in pain. He spun sharply, yanking Shane and the crocodile with him. Meilin tried to shake the shock from her system.
Shane won’t be able to hold Kovo back for long, she thought.
Then she realized that Shane was shouting something. Something at them. “Get him!” he yelled.
Jhi moved with terrifying speed. She lunged at Kovo with her jaws wide open. Her attack forced him backward. Meilin couldn’t believe how fast Jhi was moving – this was the warrior side of her, the side that Meilin had always whined to see but that Jhi had kept hidden until the moments when she knew she had to unleash it. In that instant, Meilin felt an indescribable sense of pride in her spirit animal.
Jhi had always been the true warrior. The warrior who turned to peace and kindness first, and struck only in love and defense. The wise warrior. What Meilin should have wanted to be all along.
Jhi’s claws raked across Kovo’s chest before he could get out of the way, leaving four deep red gashes. He roared. Shane ducked the swipe, then rolled and grabbed Kovo’s leg. It didn’t take a huge amount of force – Shane’s move was enough to trip Kovo. He fell heavily.
Nearby, Conor rose. He put his hands on Briggan’s fur, as if to strengthen their connection, and Briggan managed to stagger back to his feet. Meilin marveled at how regal Conor looked. He and Briggan charged Kovo as one. Rollan and Essix did the same – Rollan sprinting forward, Essix following him in the air, ignoring her wounded wing. Abeke and Uraza charged at Kovo too. Uraza jumped for Kovo’s arm, the one that brandished the staff. Her jaws closed on it. At the same time, Briggan grabbed the arm in his teeth. Together, the two yanked hard.
“Essix!” Rollan shouted. Essix dove for Kovo’s face, forcing him to throw his other hand up to defend himself. Attacked from all sides, blind and fallen, Kovo finally dropped the staff. It rolled once, until it lay at Meilin’s feet.
“Now, Meilin!” Conor shouted.
Meilin bent down and seized the staff. She tossed it to Conor. Kovo let out a roar that sounded more desperate this time. But he couldn’t stop Conor from taking the Platinum Elk off of his neck and looping it around the staff. Kovo’s voice suddenly turned pleading.
“I could have saved you all!” he cried from where he lay on the ground. His eyes darted from one of the Four Fallen to the next, disbelieving. “If you do this, we will all perish! You will destroy the Evertree, and you will all die!” His gaze switched to Meilin, Rollan, Abeke, and finally Conor. “You will forever lose your spirit animals.” His voice held in it a terrible tone of finality.
Conor hesitated, just for a second. Meilin swallowed hard as she met Jhi’s gaze. Even in her warriorlike state, Jhi’s expression was as calm and steady as ever. Meilin could feel the wisdom in her gaze, and it broke her heart. She knew what Conor had to do.
Finally Conor returned Kovo’s look. “I know,” he answered. His voice did not tremble at all.
Then he pressed the Platinum Elk tightly against the staff. The talisman vanished in a halo of light, and threads of bright silver lit up on the staff. It started to glow. Conor pointed it at the Evertree.
Kovo’s struggles turned frantic, but the others held him firmly down. “No! You can’t! Stop!”
Conor ignored him. He lifted the completed Staff of Cycles, took a deep breath, and rammed it into the ground.
A BRILLIANT BOLT OF LIGHTNING STRUCK THE WOUNDED Evertree. Abeke ducked down and covered her ears, but the explosion tossed her easily to the ground. It shook the entire crater. Sparks of fire flew from the Evertree, quickly igniting on each of its lower branches. The giant tree groaned in agony, shuddering, and then an enormous crack split the entire tree down its middle. Abeke winced at the sight, as if the lightning had struck her instead.
Kovo let out one final, anguished cry. Then he too vanished in a flash of light and reappeared as a dark wound on the dying Evertree’s side.
He was gone.
The Evertree tilted heavily to one side. Golden sap streamed from its wounds, painting trails of tears down the trunk and pooling in the dying grass around it. Overhead, the sky’s dark clouds turned jet-black, swirling in spirals around the dying tree. For a moment, it seemed as if the Evertree might still stand, engulfed in flames. But then it gave a final groan, followed by an earsplitting crack. Abeke took a step back.
The Evertree fell.
It fell slowly, in the way a giant would fall, with all the weight of the world on its shoulders. Its silver and gold branches snapped, burning, and as the tree crashed to the earth in a storm of splinters, the clouds overhead finally split open with cold rain – gathered since their battle at Muttering Rock. There the tree stayed, spent, its life slowly leaking away, limbs bleeding. Abeke looked on as a torrent of rain gushed from the skies, hissing as the sheets of water hit the Evertree’s furious flames. Lightning streaked across the sky in jagged rivers. Rain poured down Abeke’s face.
She couldn’t tell if it was rain, or tears.
From where Kovo had once lay struggling on the ground, Uraza crouched at the wounded Briggan’s side. The wolf’s strength was finally sapped, now that Kovo was gone. Conor had already hurried to his spirit animal, wrapping his arms around the wolf’s neck. Essix landed nearby, limping, and hobbled over to join them. Jhi sat beside Briggan, her head bowed, and Meilin stood silently next to her. Slowly, Abeke walked over until she reached Uraza. She leaned down, petted Briggan, and placed her head against Uraza’s chest. A deep, empty feeling weighed against her.
From over Uraza’s shoulder, she noticed Shane sitting some distance away. He looked dazed, his eyes locked on the Evertree. She couldn’t be sure, but his expression seemed genuinely tragic.
The colors in the sky began to change. At first, Abeke thought it was the same thing that had happened while they were at Muttering Rock – but this time, the colors were brilliant and bold, not dark and ominous. Bright scarlet and gold, green and turquoise, a rainbow of light that swirled and sparkled among the clouds.
The colors blended together seamlessly, magnificently, into ribbons that trailed from the sky over them all the way to the edges of the horizon. It seemed as if the life in the Evertree had left the physical world and bled into the heavens.
Abeke could hardly bear the beauty of it.
As Abeke stared in awe, the colors began to shift into shapes and silhouettes. They solidified into a vision. Abeke’s eyes widened. She gasped, and her hands tightened against Uraza’s fur. The vision intensified, spreading until it covered the entire sky. She saw a beautiful golden land; a clear, breathtakingly blue ocean; a sky glittering with stars; a world young and pristine. The beginning of everything. She saw a tree sapling with silver bark and golden leaves growing from the new soil of a dying volcano. She felt the life that the Evertree’s roots breathed into the land, the beginning of the world. She witnessed the birth of the Great Beasts that emerged from this newfound energy, and their sacred oath to watch over the world and guard it from harm. The way things used to be.
The way things were now. She saw the deep, profound connection she shared with Uraza – manifested in threads of light that tethered mankind to the kingdom of beasts – that they all shared with their spirit animals and with every living thing.
She saw death … and she saw rebirth.
Somehow, Abeke understood it. She understood all of it. She tasted salt on her lips, and she no longer questioned whether or not the water running down her face was rain or something more.
This is the end, Abeke thought. She looked to Conor, who knelt over Briggan, his tears flowing freely, and the realization finally hit her that this was the moment when she might lose Uraza. The thought made her gasp in pain. She turned back to her leopard, who met her gaze with steady violet eyes. Then she wrapped her arms around Uraza’s neck and hugged her tight. The memory flooded back to her of when she’d drank the Nectar of Ninani so long ago, and how she’d felt when she first saw the sleek golden leopard. How much they had experienced together since then. How much they had won and lost. What would life be like without her?
“Thank you,” Abeke whispered into Uraza’s fur.
Uraza didn’t respond. Instead, she stayed calm and still. Abeke could feel the tremor of her purr, as if her spirit animal was telling her that everything would be all right.
Abeke closed her eyes and waited for the end.
CONOR DIDN’T KNOW HOW IT WOULD HAPPEN. WOULD Briggan disappear in a flash of light, just like the others had? Would the dying Evertree reclaim him, somehow? Or would he simply die, the way Conor had seen sheep die before, the way so many who’d crossed their paths had already died? Conor ran his hand absently through Briggan’s fur. He bowed his head and braced himself. He’d always sympathized with those who lost their spirit animals, and he’d told himself to be ready for this moment ever since he first felt it during his visions.
But I’m not ready. He could never be ready. And now, the time had come.
The visions continued to shift in color. Through them, Conor saw each of the Great Beasts as they once were – Tellun, Rumfuss, Arax, then Kovo, Gerathon, and Halawir, then the others, all settling into the far reaches of the world. They vanished from sight, leaving behind bright balls of energy that swirled around the image of the once mighty Evertree. Conor saw a vision of Uraza appear in all her glory, a full-sized Great Beast. She appeared to walk toward them, and as they looked on, she turned her violet eyes toward where Abeke and the real Uraza sat.
A vision of Jhi soon joined her, as large and magnificent as she once was. Mighty Essix soared down toward them. And Briggan … an image of Briggan as a Great Beast appeared in the sky last, the elegant and towering shape of a beautiful wolf, loping easily up to the others and stopping at their side. The vision of Briggan looked down at Conor, then at the wounded version of himself that lay on the grass. The vision gave a single nod.
Then, all the colors in the sky faded away. The clouds returned to normal, and sheets of rain continued to pour down.
He looked down at Briggan, who gazed up at him with a bemused expression. Our spirit animals will not die, Conor suddenly realized. The wolf pushed himself up to a sitting position, still wounded, but otherwise alive. “You’re going to be okay, aren’t you?” Conor said hoarsely to Briggan.
Briggan nodded, just like his vision had.
Stunned, Abeke looked back and forth between Conor and Briggan. “But – I thought you said …” she began, “that our spirit animals didn’t live through this journey. I thought the other Great Beasts all sacrificed themselves. Uraza –”
“– had already given her life once.” Conor finished the sentence, finally understanding what the vision in the sky had meant. He broke into a huge smile as he faced the others. “The Four Fallen won’t need to sacrifice themselves again.”
Silence.
Until Rollan broke it with a huge whoop. He flung himself around Essix’s neck, to her startlement, and hugged her tight. They all broke into cheers. Conor threw his arms around Briggan’s neck. He couldn’t tell if he was laughing or crying, but it didn’t matter. Relief flooded him. Briggan was alive! So were the other Four Fallen. Even through his grief at the Evertree’s death and the sacrifices of the other Great Beasts, at least his spirit animal was going to be okay. They had defeated Kovo. That was what really mattered.
“Hey – there he goes!”
Meilin’s voice shook Conor out of his moment. He glanced over to where Meilin was pointing to a figure fleeing from them. Shane had taken advantage of their celebration in order to sneak away.
“That little coward –” Rollan growled, picking himself up and getting ready to chase after him.
Abeke was the one who grabbed his arm and held him back. She shook her head. “Let him go,” she said.
“Really?” Rollan exclaimed. “After all that!”
“We’re no better if we have no mercy,” Abeke replied, watching Shane’s back as he ran, stumbling, away from them. She took a deep breath. “He won’t bother us again.” Conor knew she was remembering the moment during their battle when Shane had thrown himself at Kovo in an attempt to buy them some time. All of his anger at the former Devourer seemed to diffuse.
So they stayed where they were, looking on until Shane became nothing more than a dot on the rainy horizon.
“Now what?” Meilin asked as Conor finally pushed himself up onto his feet. She stared sadly at the fallen Evertree. “The Great Beasts are gone.”
Conor’s attention shifted to the Staff of Cycles. It still lay in the grass near the Evertree, right where he had dropped it. He walked over to the staff, Briggan limping at his side. Conor reached it, picked it up gingerly, and studied it. The staff no longer looked as silver and glittering as it once had. In fact, it looked like any ordinary spiral of wood, even like his shepherd’s crook. Only small hints of luster still glinted along the shaft. Otherwise, it had turned wholly unremarkable.
Conor stared at the fallen Evertree. He walked over to it, where the golden color of its leaves had already begun to fade. He bowed his head in reverence before the twisted trunk and branches, then put the Staff of Cycles gently down in the dirt where its roots emerged from the ground.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Tears sprang to his eyes.
A ripple seemed to go through the earth, but Conor ignored it, thinking it was just the wind and rain beating against him.
Then he felt the pulse again. It was like a wave had moved through the ground beneath him, the heartbeat of something living. Of the land itself.
He frowned, looking around. His eyes settled on the Staff of Cycles – which once more had started to glow a faint silver color.
Gradually the glow traveled to the Evertree, spreading along the length of its branches and trunk until it engulfed the entire mass of broken wood. The glow left the Evertree, then pooled into the ground around it. As everyone looked on, the torn earth from where the Evertree’s roots had ripped out now began to part. A bright light emerged from somewhere deep in the so
il, revealing something small, new, and green.
A seedling!
It was nothing more than a slender stalk of a plant, still curved in infanthood and emerging from a split seed, its two delicate leaves tipped with silver and gold. The first hints of roots extended from the seed’s cracks, reaching toward the ground, growing thicker and stronger with each passing moment. Conor sat down beside Briggan and watched in awe.
A new beginning. A new Evertree.
Conor had a feeling that, someday, when the Evertree became whole again, the other Great Beasts might return once more to Erdas. The cycle would begin anew. His arm tightened around Briggan’s neck, and calmness filled his heart. Someday, Briggan might evolve back into his Great Beast form. Conor didn’t know if he would be around to see it, but … that was okay. Everything would begin again.
THE RAIN DIDN’T LAST LONG.
Soon the clouds began to clear, revealing first a pocket of gray light, the hints of dawn, and then the brilliant gold and faint blue of a beautiful morning. Water beaded on the grasses of the crater, turning into a million sparkling gems under the light. The breeze brought with it the first true scent of summer, something sweet and fresh, nothing like the oppressive air that had seemed to hover over them for the past few weeks.
It felt as if a spell had lifted from all of Erdas.
Rollan smiled as they made their way down from the crater and out toward Nilo’s southern shores. Essix soared above them, while Uraza loped ahead toward the water. Briggan and Jhi stayed with Conor and Meilin. The sun felt warm on Rollan’s face, and at the sight of the blue ocean, a wild joy built up in his chest. He broke into a run. The others followed behind him, cheering and laughing. Rollan blushed when he saw Meilin sprinting beside him, an enormous smile on her face. She flashed a grin at him, and his own smile grew wider.