The next morning I woke up earlier than I expected, the sun had just risen over the horizon. I thought about getting some more sleep but I just wasn’t tired. I got out of bed and began stretching when I noticed Tara. While she was sleeping last night flowers had sprouted up around her. The flowers surrounding her and the pale light cast from the Fairy mushrooms reminded me of the scene in snow white when she was in the coffin before her handsome hero came to rescue her. She let out a small snore that ruined my image of a perfect princess. I checked over at Lance’s bed and saw that he was already gone. Once I got outside I saw Lance standing near the lake. I began walking over to him but a small rustling drew my attention towards the side of the tree.
Ifrit was seated by the tree staring down at a sunflower. I hid myself behind the tree silently watching what he was doing. He carefully raised his hand over top of the flower, letting it linger for a moment. He then lowered his hand and gently tapped the flower’s petals. Instantly the flower burst into flames. The fire god let out an audible sigh and with a sweep of his hand extinguished the flame. He just stared at the burnt flower for a moment, his expression revealed his disappointment.
“Good morning Ifrit” I said, letting my presence be known. He gave me a small glance before continuing to stare at the flower.
“I thought this would look better if it was red” He explained without me asking. I stepped forward and took a seat next to him.
“If you have an idea for the flowers you should say something to Tara. She is the only one who could change the flowers.” I told him. He gave a small huff and stood up glaring at me.
“Yes I know Tara can create flowers and trees. My sister can make clouds, and blue face can create lakes and rain. Why am I the only one who can’t create anything that can last?” he vented angrily.
“Well that’s how the elements are. Fire isn’t an element that can last forever, without something to burn fire will just die out.” I explained calmly, “Besides Lance and Evan can’t create anything either”. The fire God was not happy with my answer.
“I don’t care about them. Lance created the flow of time and I’m not even sure if that overgrown salamander is a God.” He turned and left after that, leaving me no time to respond. Ifrit did have a good point; he didn’t have the ability of creation like the others. It seemed a bit unfair; after we finish more of the world today I’ll come up with a way to help him. He also had a good point about Evan. Was he a god or just a dragon? I guess it wouldn’t make a difference; dragons could live for many years giving the illusion of immortality. I left my earlier concerns behind me and went to see what Lance was doing. I found the time God picking apples near the lake.
“Oh good morning young master” he said to me, surprised to see me up this early “I was just coming to wake you for breakfast” he told me by handing me an apple. I took the small fruit with thanks and took a bite. The sweet taste of the fruit was still delicious, but I wasn’t that hungry. A small splashing came from behind me and I heard Nesso walk over to us.
“Good morning Nesso” I greeted Nesso. The water God gave a small grunt in response.
“Still as silent as always,” Lance noted.
“So Nesso do you have any ideas of what to do today?” I asked, the water God shook his head no and wouldn’t look directly at me.
“Is something wrong Nesso?” I questioned. One God was already upset with me. I didn’t want to be on another God’s bad side. He gave a jerky nod, his face darkened turning almost purple. Before I could say anything else he jumped back into the lake and remained below the surface. Lance let out a small chuckle beside and had a suspicious smile on his face.
“Let’s wait for the others to wake up before we make any more plans,” he said, changing the subject. We began making our way back to the tree. I couldn’t shake a weird feeling from how Nesso and Ifrit had been acting. I understood Ifrit’s feelings about his lack of creative abilities but I didn’t know what I could do for him. Nesso was just acting plain weird; I had no idea what could have caused that kind of behavior. My thought was interrupted by a small tap on my shoulder. Sylph was floating beside me, a mischievous smile played out across her mouth.
“Good morning Sylph” I said, drawing the attention of Lance who also greeted the wind goddess.
“Morning” she said with a giggle then pointed to the sky. I looked to where she was pointed but there was nothing to be seen.
“What” I began but was cut off by a large wind blowing into me. The wind grew stronger and I was blown off my feet. I whirled past an astonished Lance and was sent up by the wind. The wind pushed me higher and higher away from the ground. I let out a cry for help but the wind pushed back any sound I made. I whirled around to look at the sky and couldn’t believe what I saw. A large cloud shaped as a tower floated above me. I stared at the immense tower before me; it looked as big as the Eiffel tower in France. A green streak flying around the tower grabbed my attention. It moved across the tower, readjusting any parts of the cloud that threatened to break off. Once the tower looked to be in order did the streak slow down and I saw it was Evan. He had grown again now he was the size of a horse with wings larger than me. The wind forced me closer to the tower shaped cloud. Evan noticed me and flew towards me.
“Hi Phanes, what do you think?” he asked, proud of his work.
“It’s amazing. When did you have time to do this?” I answered
“Well we started work last night” Sylph said, rising up next to me. The wind was now only pushing enough that I wouldn’t fall.
“Yeah and Ifrit helped by giving us some light from his fires” Evan added.
“That’s great you guys did a great job.” I told them, amazed at how far they had gone.
“Thanks,” Sylph said, sounding a little embarrassed at the praise “but we still have a problem. No one can stand on the clouds”
“No one could live here without falling down,” Evan commented.
“Do you have any ideas?” Sylph asked. This was definitely a problem, they needed a material that was light enough that it could float on clouds but strong enough to support people. I think I’ve read about something like that in a book but I couldn’t remember the name of it. Maybe I could just create something with those properties.
“Alright let me try something. I need to get closer to the tower” I told them.
“Alright” Evan said and swiftly flew below me. The winds then stopped and I fell down onto his waiting back. It was a nice fit between his neck and his wings. The dragon flew me over to a cloud that looked like a drawbridge they had on castles. Now closer to the cloud I put my hand inside the cloud. I let out a small gasp; the cloud was cold and wet. It felt like I had my hand in fog, not at all like the soft fluffy pillows people imagined them to be. Getting over my initial shock I got to work and concentrated on the cloud. It was larger than anything I had changed before and it was also the first time changing it into something I had never seen before. I pictured the large cloud in my mind hoping that my memory of it from a moment ago would give me an accurate perception. I watched the white tower change little by little from being made of clouds to a pink stone that I hoped would stay in the air. The new material looked almost like marble but was a pale pink in color. I watched the tower change inside the floors but the large cloud below it would remain the same, giving the image of a tower sitting atop a cloud.
I felt the cool cloud surrounding my hand turn solid, trapping me to the tower. Like I had hoped the tower was now made out of a pink stone that showed no sign of falling out of the sky, my now trapped hand looked to be my only mistake. Sylph was flying above us examining the newly transformed tower.
“Um Evan, I have a bit of a problem here” I said. The dragon who had been taking in the tower looked back at me. Immediately he began laughing, his trembling back shook beneath me.
“Cut it out, it's not funny” I called. The dragon laughed a bit more before quieting down.
“Well what do you think was going to happen if you stuck your hand into something you were changing?” he questioned letting out a series of chuckles.
“I didn’t think about it” I admitted “I need to find a way to get out of it”
“You’re a God aren’t you? Just do what you think is best” the dragon pointed out. He was right, I am a God. I can get out of this wall no problem. I stared down at my hand determination plastered across my face, but as I looked at the problem, my determination changed to frustration.
“I don’t know what to do. I wasn’t trained to be a God.” I shouted letting out my anger.
“Well you like changing things, change your hand into a cloud and then change it back.” This was an interesting idea, but it still had its flaws. I have never used transmutation on myself or any living thing. I might be able to do it but then there was a risk of my hand. The cloud could drift away leaving me handless or even if it stayed my fingers could switch around and be out of place when they change back.
“No to dangerous” I decided. I didn’t want to break the wall since Evan and Sylph had worked so hard on the tower. If my hand was smaller I wouldn’t have this problem. This gave me a new idea. Something that Gods in every mythology had been capable of, shape shifting. I could change into something smaller that would be able to squeeze out of the hole and then I can change back. I let out a triumphant grin out the resolution. Now I just need an idea of what to change into. An animal would be the easiest to get out of the hole, something small. I closed my eyes and tried to think of a small animal. The first animal I thought of wasn’t ideal but it would work.
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I imagined myself shrinking, getting smaller and smaller. I felt odd warmth across my body and my hand came free of the hole. I opened my eyes and saw my transformation had been a success; I was now a small white mouse. I was still seated on Evan who now looked gigantic from my small size. I guess that the dragon couldn’t feel me through his tough scales because he twisted his neck to see what had happened to me. I waved to get his attention but he didn’t see me. He turned his entire body around and turned to the hole my hand had been caught in. I lost my balance and was thrown off of the dragons back. I fell through the sky flailing for something to grab on to. The warm sensation spread through my body again and I was back in my original form. I let out a shout for help hoping Evan or Sylph could help me in time but the ground was fast approaching. I saw Tara and Lance not too far away but they weren’t close enough to help me. As the ground grew closer I braced for impact, but nothing came. Shocked, I looked forward and saw that I was hovering a foot above the ground.
“That was a close one” a voice called. Lance and Tara were running to me. Lance reached me first; he looked like he was trying not to laugh at my situation.
“It’s a good thing I stopped your fall” he told me. He carefully turned me so that I would land on my feet and then with a click of his wristwatch I fell down the last foot. I managed to remain on my feet though I wasn’t very steady.
“How did you-oof” I began to ask when Tara reached us and cut me off by tackling me into a large hug.
“Don’t you ever do that again” she scolded as if I had done it on purpose.
“Did Sylph take you up just to drop you back down?” Lance asked
“No it was an accident, I’m fine” I reassured them. Tara let me out of the hug but still held me at arm’s length.
“Then what were you doing up there?” she questioned.
“Evan and Sylph needed my help on something they were working on and I got a little stuck” I revealed.
“If you were stuck you wouldn’t have fallen out of the sky” Tara said skeptically. I told them of the tower made of clouds and my embarrassing mistake that ended with me rocketing towards the ground. By the time they stopped laughing Evan and Sylph were coming down towards us.
“Hey how did you get down here so fast?” Evan asked oblivious to my fall. I gave another brief description of what happened.
“Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you call” Evan apologized.
“It’s okay you couldn’t have known,” I told him. Evan looked better knowing I didn’t blame him.
“So you guys built that castle in the sky you were talking about” Tara said changing the subject. “I would love to see it”
“Yeah well it’s more like a tower but if we can get Nesso and Ifrit we can all go up and check it out” Sylph said. Everyone liked the idea so Tara and Lance went out to find the other Gods. While they were gone Sylph brought up an issue.
“How are we going to get everyone up there? I can’t carry them all on the wind” she told me. She was right. I doubt Evan can carry more than one person at a time. We needed an easy way for people to travel to the floating tower. I thought of a legend where a goddess had connected the home of the Gods with earth through a bridge that could work.
“I have an idea, could you show me the location of the tower” I requested. Sylph pointed to a small cloud high in the air. The tower was well camouflaged from the ground; no one could tell the cloud held a large structure on it. I focused on the cloud trying to think of how I should do this. I rubbed my hands together though and a small red spark shot out between them. As I continued to rub my hands, different colored sparks shot out of my hand. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and purple. The exact colors I was hoping for. I began rubbing my hands faster and the sparks came out faster and brighter. I focused on the far away island.
“I hope this works” I muttered under my breath and whirled my arms as if I was throwing a ball to the cloud, but instead of a ball it was beams of light. Seven beams of different colored light shot out of my hands and arched up to the cloud. The light source fell from my hands and sank into the ground creating a perfect rainbow bridge connecting the ground with the floating tower.
“Wow, how did you do that?” an astonished Evan asked.
“That’s incredible,” Sylph cheered.
I smiled back at them “Well it looks cool but I’m not sure if we can walk on it” I carefully stepped onto the rainbow half expecting my foot to go through the light, but it felt solid. I walked on it a few steps and began jumping on it to make sure it was sturdy enough for everyone to walk across. The bridge looked like it would hold. Each color was about a foot long so everyone could fit without worrying about falling off.
“Alright everything looks good” I revealed to Sylph and Evan.
“Thanks Phanes this is great” Sylph praised me.
“Great, now we just have to wait for the others,” Evan said. I took a seat on the rainbow bridge and watched as the two flying gods spent their time doing aerial tricks in the sky. The way they moved looked almost like a mesmerizing dance.
“We’re back” a voice called. I had been so caught up in watching the dance that I hadn’t noticed that Lance and Tara were back with Nesso and Ifrit.
“That’s new,” Tara said, referring to the rainbow bridge.
“Oh yeah I just made it so we can all go up to the castle” I explained. I stood up and called Evan and Sylph to come down. Once everyone was ready we set off to the tower in the sky. Sylph and Evan flew on the side of the bridge. I was on the latter’s back to give the others more room on the bridge. It took us a while, 13 minutes and 34 seconds according to Lance, to get to the cloud. When we made it to the cloud we found a bigger problem, my bridge had only made it to the cloud, not the actual tower which was another 10 feet away.
“How are we supposed to get over there?” Ifrit asked irritated, while the others admired the large structure. Sylph flew forward and into one of the many windows on the tower. Within seconds the large drawbridge was being lowered down. It lined up perfectly with my bridge allowing easy access to the castle. Sylph flew out and made a pose.
“Welcome to my tower in the sky.”
Once I was inside the tower I saw it looked a lot bigger on the inside. The inside of the tower didn’t really have much to look at, after passing the drawbridge we entered a large corridor that rose all the way to the top. A spiral staircase snaked across the walls leading up to the highest floor. Next to me Tara let out a small disapproving sigh.
“Is something wrong Tara?” I asked
“Well I’m just not really comfortable being this far away from the ground.” She admitted. Sylph who had overheard floated above us.
“Well let me give you a quick tour then we can head back down” she offered. Everyone agreed and Sylph went about showing us the tower. The tour probably would’ve been short even if Sylph didn’t hurry, there were only ten rooms and all of them were bare. The corridor was big enough for Evan to fit but none of the room’s doors were big enough for him to fit in so he had to fly out in the corridor. Oddly enough the top room, the one that Sylph said was going to be her bedroom, had a large opening that could easily let in a dragon.
When questioned about this Sylph answered “It’s so I can easily fly into my room after a long day” but the fact that she couldn’t look at us when she said it revealed this as a lie. I noticed Ifrit had maintained a frown during the whole tour which grew deeper at the sight of the bedroom but I didn’t say anything to him. He was still kind of scary to me and the talk earlier had made me worry about him even more. After the tour was officially over we made our way back down to my rainbow bridge. As the others began their descent Evan took me for a tour above our world. I felt bad leaving the others like that but I really liked flying with Evan and now that I had a better view I saw we had a lot of work waiting for us.
The large tree where it all began sat in the center of the lush field of grass surrounded by dead ground. A lone rain cloud was drifting across the outer fields keeping the grass alive. Nesso‘s lake fitted in nicely with the apple trees growing next to it. I looked over at the rainbow bridge and saw that the others had made it to the bottom. An uneasy feeling grew in my stomach when I looked at the group.
“Evan take me back down to the bridge” I requested “quickly” the dragon obliged without a word. Turning around my uneasiness grew worse and the closer we got to the group the worse it got, the erratic motion in the group revealed an argument was taking place. Back at home I usually wouldn’t get involved in drama. I would give people their space and let them work it out themselves, but now I felt like I had a responsibility to help however I could.
Evan and I arrived in time for Ifrit to shout “Here’s what I think of your grass” and shoot a stream of fire across the ground burning all the grass before him.
“Stop” Tara cried out, obviously hurt from the destruction of her work.
“Ifrit” I called as I jumped off of Evan. I couldn’t believe he would act like this. When he saw me the fire on his head grew larger and his face changed into a mask of hatred.
“You” he said venomously pointing at me “it’s your fault. You made me this way. You made me so that I couldn’t create anything.”
“No I didn’t mean for you to not be able to create anything” I told him which was true I didn’t know why he wasn’t able to create like the others.
“It’s still your fault” he shouted and swung his arm sending a wave of fire directly at me. I couldn’t move the hatred I felt from him had made my legs go numb. I heard the other Gods yell as the flames came closer. Just before the flame hit me a lone figure jumped in the way to block the wave.
“Tara” I shouted as the flames slammed into the earth Goddess. When the flames hit Tara it looked like they had hit an invisible wall blocking them from going past her. After the initial force of the fire attack passed the fires died down, leaving Tara standing with her back to me. Nobody moved even Ifrit looked surprised at the goddess’ sacrifice. Tara turned back to look at me. Her face was now covered in soot and gave me one more warm smile before shattering into a shower of golden sparks. I watched the sparks fade away a cold numbing travel through my body, floating in the center where the sparks were was the diamond mushroom I had used to create Tara. Ifrit was the first to recover from the shock
“That” he said pointing at the diamond “That’s what allowed her the power to create.” he walked forward till he was in front of the mushroom. I could only watch as he grabbed the diamond out of the air. He carefully looked it over before placing it in his mouth and swallowing. The effect was immediate: his color changed from red to an earthy orange and one of his eyes was now brown.
“Yes” the fire God cheered as he looked over his new body “This is perfect, I can feel the power flowing through me.” He looked at me with a triumphant smile and said “I’ll be back but next time it’s your core I’ll be taking” he began to walk away. Nesso charged forward; his lower half was now a stream of water pushing him forward. Ifrit waved his arm and a large wall of earth rose up blocking the water god’s path. Nesso couldn’t stop fast enough and crashed into the wall breaking into a puddle. Thankfully he wasn’t hurt and quickly began to reform.
“Till we meet again,” Ifrit said. Fire erupted across his body and he rose off the ground. He shot across the sky leaving a trail of dying flames behind him.
“I got him,” Evan said and began to rise off the ground.
“No!” I yelled “Let him go” I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt. Evan silently landed on the ground but continued to stare at the fire arch. I couldn’t believe this, a small pain started in my chest, Ifrit had tried to kill me and Tara had saved me. She sacrificed herself to save me. This was entirely my fault. My vision started to darken and the world spun around me.
“Phanes” cried a male voice I had never heard before. His voice was deep and smooth. He probably would’ve sounded nicer if he wasn’t so panicked. Before I could see who it was I blacked out.