Only a few short seconds after the unanimously cheerful shouts, the mood quickly changed.

Various emotions could be felt in the air. Anger, fear, dread, confusion, but the majority felt even greater joy than before.

The four children began furiously searching for the source of the ethereal voices, which was unexpectedly difficult due to the unnatural echo that was always following them.

Eventually, Peter found his way to the entrance. After opening it he saw four small animals in the doorway. They were a rabbit, a puppy, a small bird and a weirdly fuzzy snake.

{Hello.}

Guided only by instinct he immediately picked up the bunny and hugged it tightly.

{Alright, alright I'm happy to see you as well. You can put me down now.}

The reunion was cut short by a very grumpy sounding Anthony who was clearly not pleased by the sudden arrivals.

"Sorry to interrupt, but I think our guests owe us an explanation before I let anything more happen."

The group of animals started making their way inside, but while Anthony turned away all of them were snatched up. By the time he turned back around, the “interrogation couch” had turned into a petting zoo. He looked over to Helen with pleading eyes.

“Don’t look at me. I’m honestly surprised to still be myself., so I’d rather not involve myself with whatever is going on.”

While that was going on, Peter looked down at the bunny in his lap. He was absolutely overjoyed about the presence of the small animal, but he also learned to be suspicious of things. Especially if they seemed too good to be true.

“So… how come you’re here, and why now?”

{Whew, for a second I thought you were going to ask something harder. We are here because of your birthdays and we can do so because there is only a year left until the big event. In the meantime, we are free to move around in these forms.}

Meanwhile, Anthony grabbed James and began the interrogation before all the tension was lost.

“Now that you have made yourselves at home, would you mind explaining who you are?”

The dog and the bird looked at their rabbit friend expectantly, while the snake didn’t care and was grumbling to itself while coiled up.

{Fine I’ll do it. My name is Nyx, goddess of the night, the dog is the underworld goddess named Hel, the grumpy snake is Quetzalcoatl and the bird is an alicanto.}

“An?”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

The bird answered sheepishly, clearly embarrassed by the situation.

{Actually there are three of us. I would be the silver alicanto, you can call me Argus.}

“We’ll keep that in mind. Back on topic, you said something about an event a year from now. What is it and should we worry about it?”

This time the dog, Hel, answered.

{One year from now a portal will open up to another world. All of our champions who wish to participate will have to go to the other side and find another portal to continue. The plan is that eventually all of them will end up at the same place, but that’s a long time away.}

"That's it?"

{I'm not sure what you mean.}

"No cryptic suggestions, no need to coerce you into answering, nothing?"

{Oh, that. We can say whatever we want as long as it's not too specific. Also, none of us has time to come up with riddles. You can ask whatever you want.}

Every mortal in the room just sat in silence. Even those who were otherwise in good spirits, and the one true immortal was holding his head in annoyance.

"Fine, I give up. Do whatever you want."

They sat around for a while longer, asking some questions from time to time, but it was safe to say that the undead goddess' nonchalance killed the mood pretty effectively.

No one was particularly tired but after a while everyone decided to go do their own things. The Drage family went back home with their new snake. James, Sarah and Drake were still capable of being tired so they decided to retire for the rest of the night while Peter elected to spend the night talking with Nyx the guardian angel.

Anthony still had some work to do so he made his way to his office. The year might have ended but his job did not. After finishing the last report of the year he already had to prepare for the first report of the new year.

While looking through his notes, he noticed two of the shadows in the room being larger than they were supposed to be. At that moment one of the shadows shrunk down to its original size and out of it came a small black rabbit.

The animal form of Nyx was a pitch black rabbit with small white dots scattered through her fur like little fluffy stars. Aside from the interesting choice of animal it fit the goddess of night perfectly.

“I’m guessing this isn’t the real you?”

Even without his old ability, Anthony was more than capable of noticing small details in the behaviour and appearance of others. In this case the shadowy rabbit had a few spots missing compared to the one he saw earlier, which really left a sense of emptiness on a monochrome animal like her.

{Technically this is just as real as all of my other appearances. However, you are right in guessing that I am a separate entity.}

“Get to the point please, I still have work to do. What do you want from me?”

{I’m simply curious. You have no connection to the twins, you are an independent entity and cannot be forced to protect them since you lost your star and it’s not like you’re particularly religious. Certainly not religious enough to follow the word of some god.

So I’m curious, why do you choose to protect them even against your own best interest?}

Anthony was taken aback by the question. He knew that gods were supposed to be different from humans in terms of worldview but he never expected that difference to manifest in such a way.

“If that’s all you want then I’ll answer. I am their father, I chose to take up that role and I will continue to protect them because it is my duty. Admittedly I already failed once, but that’s just another reason to continue trying.

Does that satisfy your curiosity?”

{It does for now.}

With that she started to disappear but was interrupted.

“By the way. Why exactly are you a rabbit.”

“I just thought Peter would like it. And Hel already took the wolf.”