Thousands of years ago the Gods waged an epic war. The effects of it were visible in the mortal realm in the forms of earthquakes, tsunamis, plagues, forest fires, and hurricanes. Civilizations fell and the mortals were plunged into chaos.

Even then, they still worshiped and prayed for help.

Nobody knew what started the war, but everybody knew that it ended when the Gods descended to the mortal realm. When they first arrived, they were treated with reverence and awe. They were given the finest clothes, the freshest foods, the most lavish homes, and the love of all. They had temples and statues built in their names and so many stories that every generation grew up with knowledge of each of the hundreds of Gods that lived among them.

Living beside their creators, the mortals thrived.

At first, the mortals travelled across the world to only ask for the Gods’ blessings. Then they created pilgrimages and started asking for the Gods’ advice. Then they invited the Gods to their homes and lavished them with gifts while asking for help. And then they demanded the mahee – the source of all magic, the core of the Gods, the one thing that raised them above humanity.

The first three were easy to give and each of the Gods loved the mortals enough to always answer their prayers. The last was impossible to share.

The mortals did not believe them.

Neither did the mahee.

* * *

Demons did not exist. They were gone. Demons did not exist. They were gone. D’Argen had to keep repeating this to himself as he ran away from the creature chasing him, otherwise, he would have completely ruined the task at hand.

He opened his mahee – the source of his magic – a little wider, putting more speed under his feet, as the cheetah chased him down through the open planes of the Oltrian region. The sun was high in the sky, beating down on him and making him sweat under his layered robes, and the flat ground was dry under his feet as he ran, sending flecks of dust and stalks of grass up with every step he took.

He was approaching one specific spot with a single rock, barely large enough for him to stand on, sticking out just above the grass. It was the only visible indication of where his three companions were hidden. D’Argen sincerely hoped it was the right rock because there were at least three more not that far from it and with the angle of the sun changing and him running around in circles, he was starting to get confused.

“Can’t I just—”

“No!” The shouted answer interrupted him before he even finished his question as he passed by. It was the right rock.

The answer also worked in distracting the cheetah as it slowed to a stop and looked back at the seemingly lonely object.

D’Argen took the moment to slide to a stop himself, creating two deep furrows in the dry ground from his momentum, and then turning around at the last moment to face the wild cat. It blended perfectly into the background, a coat the same light shade as the ground with dark spots that looked like the dappled shadow from the single tree D’Argen and his companions passed hours ago when they first came to the remote Oltrian region. The two dark stripes from the inside of its eyes running down to frame its jaws only reminded D’Argen of the demons from millennia ago that opened mouths larger than him to try and eat him whole.

Demons did not exist anymore. They were all gone. D’Argen was there when the last of them fell and drenched the ground in their foul blood more than five thousand years ago.

The cheetah’s ears twitched and its nostrils flared.

D’Argen flinched.

D’Argen’s hidden companions kept quiet with the cat so close.

Abbot, God of Light and the most talented artist in all of Trace, was able to use his mahee to bend the light around him and the other two in their party to keep them completely invisible to the naked eye. When D’Argen heard the quick scratches of chalk on paper, he realized that it was not Abbot using the magic but Lilian.

The group was in these fields so the artist could draw the cheetah for the castle records and with the creature standing right in front of him, he was clearly concentrating on that. Although Lilian, God of Spring and one with the wind, could not hold the spell as well or as long as Abbot, they were clearly doing a fine job of keeping the small group hidden from the cat.

A moment later, Yaling, God of Music and the third of his companions, used her mahee to muffle the sound of the quill completely until even the cheetah did not hear it. Barely a moment after that and the scents of their mahee at work were also hidden under a spell that D’Argen had only recently learned about. It was one of those few that the gods of any aspect could use, so he could not tell which of his companions employed it.

As the cat searched the spot, D’Argen did not dare move, not wanting its attention back on him to start the chase again. He may have been the fastest living thing in all of Trace, but he still needed to stop and make sure his lungs were working properly. His mahee could only do so much to give him the speed and endurance he needed to run for so long. The distraction from his three friends afforded him the time to calm his heart and breathe in fresh air, preparing for another chase around the hot plains.

The cat was smart. Too smart. It clearly knew that D’Argen was the most dangerous thing to it at the moment.

D’Argen understood that his break was over once the cat’s head swivelled back to him. It looked at him the same way those voided demons did, back during the demon wars when they kept D’Argen on his toes for days at a time.

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The cat’s stance opened wide and D’Argen matched it, ready to push off into another run as soon as the cat pounced. It approached him slowly though, hackles raised, head down, tail gently swishing against the dried grass under its soft paws.

In response, D’Argen hunched over. The long dark hair from his ponytail brushed the ground, collecting dust and debris that would be a pain to wash off later.

The cheetah lifted one of its cheeks in a snarl.

D’Argen opened his mahee. The moment the scent of his magic reached the cat, it pounced. D’Argen pushed off to the side, turning the furrows into a crater, and ran off again. He passed so close to the cat that its swipe tore at the flaring skirt of his robes and pulled a few strands of his long dark hair out. Fortunately, it took the cat much longer to change direction in order to chase D’Argen down again. His scalp tingled from the lost hairs.

If it were not for the sharp claws and fangs, D’Argen would have thought it was playing with him. His three companions, safely hidden behind magic and watching him running around like an idiot, probably found it all hilarious.

“Can you make it jump, please?”

The shouted question came from the rock. Of course they dropped the sound spell to give him orders.

D’Argen could only roll his eyes in reply. He did not trip only because his mahee made sure he was always steady on his feet. Unfortunately, that same magic wrapped around the cheetah as well and gave it his speed and endurance, allowing it to keep running after him even hours into this chase.

D’Argen was faster than some voided cat! This was not a speed demon from millennia past. He could open his mahee wider, too wide for the trail of his scent to make a difference, and leave the cat behind in the dust. The only reason why it could keep up with him and get so close to snap at his heels was because, somehow, it was able to use the scent of his mahee to run faster. This was one of the reasons they were still here.

D’Argen dropped his centre of gravity and bent his knee lower on the next step then pushed hard against the ground in the following one so he would jump high into the air. Fortunately, the cheetah followed the motion, jumping unnaturally high after him. He had barely landed on the dry ground when he heard the “Thank you!” being shouted from the distance. The cat was probably too far for the jump to have been properly visible. Another shift had D’Argen making a wide circle with the cheetah following closely as they ran back to the spot where his companions were hidden.

Out of curiosity, he opened his mahee just a tad wider. The scent of the ocean drifted after him and right over the cheetah. When the magic touched his feet and he sped up, so did the cat. This was the first time he had ever even heard of something other than the gods using magic. True, the cat was only using the scent he left behind as he ran, but even that had been unheard of until now.

It was not faster than him and cheetahs were not known to run for so long, but D’Argen feared it would endure longer than him. He already felt his thighs quaking and his feet hurting after hours of running.

The cheetah’s maw snapped so close to his flying robe that he could have sworn he felt it. If not for him forcing his mahee just a tad wider to increase help his balance, he would have been tumbling head over heels with sharp fangs and claws already tearing into his body.

The close call had him open his mahee just a tad wider, adding another burst of speed. The cheetah matched him without an issue. D’Argen could hear it breathing down his neck as it took in the scent of his magic and used it for its own, keeping up with his unnatural speed. He opened his mahee wider still, but this time did not use it to quicken himself. Instead, he brought his hands up in front of him. He could not remember the chant for the new spell to save his life, even if he had the air to breathe it out while running, but he remembered the finger movements that guided the mahee into an unfamiliar spell.

D'Argen ran another circle around the patch of dry grass before the spell was completed. When the scent of his mahee faded behind him, he waited for the magic to fail at his feet as well. It did not. The cheetah did slow and D’Argen pushed faster, leaving the cat behind in the dust. He slid to a stop right in front of the rock where his companions were hiding and hunched over, arms on his spread legs and head down. He was breathing heavily, trying to get more air in his lungs.

“You got it yet?” he asked while gasping.

“Almost, I promise,” Abbot answered him and though he could not see his companions he knew that the man was smiling wide.

“I do not,” Lilian answered and they sounded frustrated. D’Argen always trusted Lilian to be on his side even if that was true only half the time. “I cannot figure out how it is using your mahee at all!”

“That spell just now? Stop it,” Yaling said in a terse tone. “If it cannot take your scent, I cannot figure out how it is doing it.”

D’Argen straightened himself and noticed the cat was once more stopped, crouched low to the ground and staring at him. Its mouth was open and, even from so far away, D’Argen could see its heavy breaths. He was glad to note that it was getting tired as well.

“I do need you to keep running though,” Abbot spoke up again. “I have enough sketches of it still, but I would like to record it in motion.”

The cheetah’s ear twitched but its large eyes remained focused on D’Argen. The runner groaned in annoyance, placed both hands at the back of his waist, and bent back. The action caused something to snap and pop, releasing the tension he felt there, and this time when D’Argen groaned it was in pleasure. He released the spell at the same time and let the scent of the ocean fade away into the heat of the plains.

“Okay… and you said… jump?”

“Well, I need to see the cat jumping a few times,” Abbot replied but his voice sounded distracted. “A bit closer, preferably.”

D’Argen had nowhere specific to glare.

“If you could do that and…” Abbot’s words trailed off as D’Argen shot off once more, the cheetah hot on his heels. It passed right in front of where his companions were. Abbot better well be close to done with his stupid sketches. D’Argen was tired and this voided cheetah was becoming too much of a pain. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that demons were easier to outrun than this thing.

D’Argen was successfully able to get the cheetah to jump multiple times, two of them right in front of the spot where Abbot and his other two companions were hiding. He was also able to get it to pounce and though his robes were almost completely destroyed, his skin remained unscathed from claws and fangs.

Two more laps and D’Argen’s head started hurting from lack of oxygen. The cat started taking more breaks as well. On the following break that the cat initiated in a patch of grass, it crouched so low to the ground that even with D’Argen looking right at it, he lost track of it multiple times.

“Are you done?” he growled out to the rock. He was hunched over to try and breathe but his eyes remained focused on the spot where he last saw the wild cat hiding.

“Oh? Yeah, yeah. All good.”

“All—” D’Argen cut himself off. He wanted to shake Abbot. He shook his head instead though kept his eyes focused on that seemingly empty spot where the cheetah had been a moment ago. “Lilian? Yaling?”

“I cannot do anything more from here,” Lilian answered

“We should try to catch it,” Yaling added in.

“Alright, get ready,” D’Argen said, and he knew the smile on his lips looked feral. Time to show this voided cat what it really meant to have the mahee and why even the demons feared him. He found a hard purchase for his feet, dropped his centre of gravity, and then opened his mahee as wide as he could. In the blink of an eye, he was gone, leaving behind only a deep crater where he had stood a moment before.