Rickety floorboards creaked underfoot as Brittle spun around, searching for something, anything to give an indication as to where he was. The luminous glow from his hollow eyes bathed the unfamiliar room in pale, green light. Amongst the looming shadows and strange, towering contraptions, he saw what looked to be several long tables spanning from one wall of the room to the next. The air was hazy and thick with the smell of cedar and sawdust.

Something along the back wall glimmered as his gaze swept past. Hands pulled to his chest, Brittle crept tentatively closer. His heart dropped when he realized the divider was lined with horrible instruments of every shape and size. He saw mallets and chisels, saws with fierce, iron teeth both big and small, and the sort of wicked hand tools that showed up only in a bog log beast’s worst nightmares.

And yet, this was no nightmare, Brittle feared.

“Gilly?” His voice was dwarfed by the sheer size of the cavernous room stretched around him. Brittle turned his back to the wall of unimaginable horrors, hunting for an exit or some small window in which to squeeze through onto the outside. He didn’t know where he was, but every fiber of his being urged him to put as much distance between him and this mysterious workshop as possible. “Mara? Sir Thomassin?”

His pitiful voice echoed around him. “Edvin?”

Fear pulled tight around his throat as the room went inexplicably cold. Brittle’s rickety legs trembled, threatening to give out beneath him. His gaze swept uselessly along the shadowed walls, looking for the source of the bone-chilling draft. His frantic breaths turned to puffs of frost as his gaze jumped from one wall to the next. Hope sank at the revelation that there were no windows at all. There was nothing but endless, planked walls adorned in wicked tools.

“Anybody?” Hot tears stung Brittle’s clammy face as they fell and splattered onto the creaky floorboards between his cork bark toes. “Hello? Is anybody there?”

“What are you sniveling for, boy?”

Panic surged through his hollow bones. Brittle whipped around, but saw no one. Although the disembodied voice didn’t thunder and boom, he knew to whom it belonged. The familiar tone scraped like sandpaper against his brittle bark. “Why are you doing this?”

“You wanted to know what happened to your precious family, didn’t you?”

“That didn’t give you any right to lognap me!”

“How else was I going to show you? None of the others would have offered you the truth. They would have been content letting you live the rest of your life never knowing what truly happened.” Gabor’s fingers snapped – the sound was akin to a sundried bone cracking in two. On his command, the room filled with yellow, sickly light. The god loomed over the top of Brittle. “I, however, am not afraid to show you the truth. The world in which you live is a dark place. It’s time you learned.”

Oil lanterns hung from hooks along the walls, illuminating the full expanse of the cluttered workshop. Brittle still didn’t know where he was, but he liked the room even less so in full light. There were tables and saws and bare poles of wood stacked in haphazard piles along the walls. Everywhere he looked, there were wicked woodcarving tools of every shape and design. Curled cedar shavings littered the marred floorboards.

Brittle spied an open doorway behind Gabor. He kept his gaze locked on the monstrous god as he picked his way towards it, placing one careful foot over the other. “You’re not a god, you’re a shameless trickster,” he said, bark bristling in anger. “My family’s not here.”

“Not as you would recognize them, no,” Gabor admitted. He watched Brittle’s efforts with a look of smug pity wrinkled across his stupid face. With a wave of his fingers, a wooden chest appeared, hovering in the air before him. The iron lock disintegrated beneath the god’s touch as he drew the lid open with a creak. His hooded eyes took in the chest’s contents as he spoke, voice rumbling deep in his chest. “Admittedly, there isn’t much of them left. Humans are greedy, you see. But you and I will make do with what we have.”

Collecting the items from the chest, Gabor withdrew his hand and then extended it in Brittle’s direction. His large fingers uncurled, still half obscuring the objects proffered within the palm of the god’s hand. “I suspect you will recognize them.”

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Brittle felt drawn to the god’s hand. He tried to fight the urge to move closer, but it was no use. It was as if his legs were operating independent of his will. Slowly, one foot in front of the other, he edged nearer. The yellow light from the oil lanterns sparkled and shined against the cut, polished gems held loosely within Gabor’s outstretched hand.

The weight of the world came crashing down all at once. The fear, the hope, the dreaded feeling in the pit of his gut that he’d never see Mama again, flooded every hollow within Brittle’s wooden body, drowning him from the inside out. A searing pain he’d never felt before burst within his sinking chest. He choked on the suffocating pain, certain his emerald heart had just shattered into unrecognizable pieces.

A single word escaped Brittle’s mouth in the form of a weak whimper. “No.”

Gabor selected a red ruby from his open palm and held it to the light, inspecting it with a scrutinizing eye. The gem cast shimmers of red amongst the sickly, yellow workroom. “Bog log beasts.” He rolled the name, as if savoring the way it curled across his tongue. “Unsightly beasts gifted with hearts made of precious stones. Lovely in theory, I suppose. Until mankind learns of it, of course. They never could just leave things as they were. Always striving for more, demanding better, taking it by force when denied by those who know better.”

Brittle wished the floor would open up and swallow him again. The rickety boards held regretfully solid as he sank to his knees instead, unable to release the scream raging within his shattered soul.

“A shame about your people, my boy. You have my condolences.” Gabor placed the jewels back into the wooden chest and closed the lid softly. “This is the consequence of being born of ill fortune. Until your goddess learns to embrace what she was created to be, anything she wills into existence will be doomed to suffer.”

Gabor paused, mouth pulling along the edges in an expression of feigned pity. “Yourself included, I’m afraid.”

With a wave of his hand, the wooden chest dropped from the air and struck the floor with an uproarious slam. The sound carried, reverberating from each windowless wall. The final, phantom echoes were just beginning to fade when a set of slogging footsteps drew nearer. A bedraggled human appeared at the open doorway behind Gabor, rubbing the sleep from the dark bags beneath his eyes.

He stood straight when he saw Brittle. Cursing beneath his breath, the man twisted his body around and yelled, “We’ve got a loose one in the shop!”

A voice hollered back but Brittle couldn’t make out what they said.

“How would I know how it got inside? Just get in here so we can take care of it.” Turning to face Brittle, the man selected a hatchet from the wall and slowly advanced, slinking forward in a crouch. “Now you just stay right where you are,” he crooned. “Prolly came lookin’ for the others, eh? Well don’t you worry. Ol’ Slim here will take good care of you.”

Brittle tried to stand, but his legs were sluggish, as if caught in quicksand. He looked pleadingly to Gabor, but the god simply stood to the side with his arms crossed, content to do nothing.

“You brought me here to die?” Brittle screamed.

“If it is any consolation, your death will be the flame that sparks the greatest fire mankind has ever seen. While she will blame me, I’m certain, Mara will finally be driven to punish humankind for the vile acts committed against her precious beasts.” Gabor shrugged, adding, “Sometimes fate just needs a little push, is all.”

The human was still advancing. Two more men arrived and fanned out, each grabbing a different implement from the wall as they moved to encircle Brittle. The trio paid no attention to the God of Champions, as if he wasn’t there at all.

“Get back!” Brittle shouted at them, searching, desperately for an alternative way out. “I’m not the monster, you are! Shame on you!”

From their eager grins, Brittle suspected the big meanies felt no shame at all. At least not for a wee bog log beast. Abominations of the natural order were not afforded neither pity nor mercy.

Brittle tried to appeal to their better senses anyway, if only to stall for a few seconds more. “What would your mothers think?”

“She’ll think nothin’ but the world of me when she gets a nice emerald necklace for her birthday,” Slim said as he charged, swinging the cruel hatchet.

Brittle spun out of the way just to feel the iron tooth of a chisel score a gash across his trunk, ripping his coat of moss lichen from his back. Brittle dropped and rolled out of the way, escaping the clutches of the third man. He scurried beneath one of the long tables as quick as a mouse. Scuttling all the way to the back, Brittle pressed himself flat against the adjoining wall, watching with bated breath as three sets of filthy boots steadily drew closer.

There was nowhere to run, and no way out. He did the only thing he could think to do. “Blessed be the Great Maker.” The words, soft as a whisper, caught in Brittle’s throat between sobs of fear and terror. “For She who stubs Her toe grants strength to those with heartwood thick and true. Wherever we may wander, She hobbles too. Deliver me the courage to brave the perils ahead through and through.”

The surrounding yellow light dimmed as the men closed in.

“...For when my body takes its final breath, I pass knowing I made the Great Maker proud, in both life and in death.”