The moment, the anticipation of the inevitable, was agony.

  Frostfire was reveling in it.

  The Fire Cat Pokémon circled the stone-still Kirikai, drawing his tongue across his fangs. The fur on his back poked up in clumpy spikes, revealing the red-hot fire glands at the tips. Aldina's lips curled into a wicked grin.

  C:\gods\aldina> 'Sun, we're going to destroy you so utterly you're gonna sink below the ground and lie here among the corpses. There could be a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE tomorrow, and all the other dead people could rise up out of the dirt again, and you'd still stay there. That's how utterly annihilated you're both gonna be.'

  Her energy had risen to a boil. Kirikai could sense its mighty tremble - and yet she still would not allow him even the slightest sip. The swagger was plastered on, all for show, and all of them knew it. Frostfire most of all.

  C:\gods\sun> 'No reason to get so agitated. It's just a battle.'

  C:\gods\aldina> 'I just was being hyper-bowl-ic. Calm your tits. Now, Harmony -'

  Frostfire's fangs in his flipper. Kirikai rattled backwards, desperately attempting to shake him off. It didn't work - the force of Frostfire's bite was quite impressive, and as the Litten hung on his disgusting sandpapery tongue lapped over the skin his fangs had pinched. Again Kirikai begged for something from Aldina: even the mere trickle she had given before would suffice. His stomach rippled with a budding queasiness, and he pleaded with his own body not to give out on him now.

  C:\gods\aldina> 'Harmony.'

  The disappointment in her voice killed him.

  Even when Frostfire released his grip a few moments later, the sting still persevered. Kirikai blinked at the punctures, hoping what he was seeing was but a trick of the moonlight - gleaming drops of liquid welling up to stain his fur. Breathe, he reminded himself. Breathe. You need to calm down. You need to calm down you need to calm down you need to - it wasn't working. It wasn't working, it wasn't working it wasn't wasn't wasn't wasn't

  "Stay strong. Stand unyielding. Do not be afraid to show the world your true power."

  Tauros' words. Who he was. He knew who he was, or at least believed he did, and he knew he wasn't weak.

  To his back there was Frostfire. To his front there was Frostfire. He saw double, triple, a thousandfold. Frostfire was everywhere at once, and he was but a Pichu caught in his paws, helplessly awaiting the snap of his neck. It would be a mercy.

  Claws now, raking his side. Another image, a recollection of the week before - his bones slamming against the headstone, the clockwork doll standing over him in triumph. Vision out of focus. Blood the same. Blood all the same, fuzzy, flickering, flecked with eigengrau.

  Claws, fuzzy, red. Fangs, fuzzy, red. The energy as still as one of those corpses' hearts. Even if Aldina did change her mind now, he doubted he possessed the strength to harness it. From what he could make out from the light of the concealed flame, the proxy in her hair, a stunning yellow hibiscus, had yet to show any sign of decay. Not that he could get a good look, anyway - one of Frostfire's attacks had grazed his forehead, and he closed it eyes to prevent the ooze from trickling into his eyes.

  C:\gods\unknown_location> 'I didn't even know they could bleed.'

  Kirikai didn't recognize the voice speaking, but he did detect the mockery in their tone. He found it easy to reconcile it if he imagined it coming from Frostfire's jaws.

  C:\gods\sun> 'Of course they can. They're alive, too. What did you think?'

  Fuzzy, fuzzy, slick, glistening. Fuzzy, fuzzy, crackling, static...

  At last, as if to answer Kirikai's prayers, Frostfire stopped and sat in the dust. His whole body rumbled with short purrs between panting breaths. A rack of ribs jutted from his chest, and even the outline of his own fire-producing gland was visible just above where his heart should be, swollen from repeated use. The edges of his mouth curled into a sly smirk.

  "Who," he said in broken, garbled gasps, "are you really fight-ing, naaa? Harmony -vasaa? "

  So he could speak. Just not well - his intonation was even worse than Kirikai's. And Kirikai understood the insult embedded within the honorific -vasaa. 'Water-lover', in a culture where water was sin.

  "I'm fighting you," Kirikai said. Had he been aware of its equivalent word, he would have thrown in an 'obviously'.

  Frostfire guffawed. "Naaa... na, not you would like to be activated, Harmony-vasaa?"

  "Um... pardon?"

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  "FASS-ILL-IT-TATED," Frostfire yelled loud enough to startle the gathered gods. Spurts of cinder escaped his nostrils, and he leapt to his paws, re-energized.

  Kirikai reflexively shut his eyes at Keon's awful screech of a giggle.

  C:\gods\keon> 'What was that, its war cry?'

  Sun shrugged. He shifted his feet, seemingly as antsy as the others, but still had yet to verbalize a single command to Frostfire.

  C:\gods\sun> 'Wish I knew.'

  Frostfire continued to pace a ring around Kirikai, his flanks swaying from side to side. Now he slipped behind the Popplio’s back and into his blind spot, and in any normal circumstance, Kirikai would have moved to cover his vulnerability. But his curiosity gave him pause.

  "What are you asking?"

  "A puff of air only feeds a spark so long, yaaa," Frostfire said. "Something you want, I have; something you have, I want. Simple."

  "...And that is...?"

  "Demons, naaa," Frostfire said. "Masters. Switch."

  The demons had found the white kitten, and now they all knew.

  It had never been in the burning ones' tradition to punish the ones who spawned a white kitten, so long as they did not attempt to spare its life. It hadn't even been unheard of for legendary leaders themselves to have them. He-Who-Swims-Through-Fire-Like-Rivers had also had a white-furred kit, and his name was remembered fondly even a hundred years after his death. So it wasn't that He-Who-Wears would be seen as lesser for having one - at least not among those who already respected him.

  But as a consequence of his hesitation (for, as he pleaded to the others, it was hesitation, and not unwillingness), He-Who-Wears had ensured his son would live. And not only would he live, but he would live as the demons' slave.

  In other words, he had condemned him to a fate worse than death.

  No. A fate worse than death would be to remain in the jungle. To lie catatonic atop a bed of foliage, coughing your lungs out from the noxious fumes choking the air, helpless to prevent your tongue and the underside of your paw-pads from spoiling a putrid yellow. To watch all those you've ever dared to love suffer the same fate.

  This was... marginally better than death. Marginally.

  Timbira boasted his idiosyncrasies; lounging around the ranch in mid-morning when the sky-fire was kindest; or at midnight, soaking up the moonlight his Fairy-Type deified so much. No matter what hour of the day it was, every time He-Who-Wears caught sight of him, his body shape seemed more and more to take on the roundness of a Sealeo's.

  Now, He-Who-Wears did not seek him out intentionally. This was what he told both Timbira and himself. Timbira, for his part, was much more kindly and eloquent when he was faced with only one Incineroar and not fifty.

  The kitten was his favorite topic of conversation. He-Who-Wears never was able to determine whether his nearsighted little eyes truly were blind to all the Incineroar's squirming. Rattata cloaked themselves against the darkness of jungle detritus; Timbira opted instead for his shroud of joviality.

  "It is ice you loathe," Timbira said one particular morning. "I heard one of your Torracats curse on its name."

  The two were out in the field, by rows of a newly sown crop neither of them knew the name of but, like most things on the ranch, was not endemic to this place. Murkrow circled high above, wishing to peck at the seeds, but the fully-developed Pokémon's presence cowed them, and they dared not descend. Behind the fences hung many trees of a variety Timbira called kamani. Their bark was quite dark; even darker than He-Who-Wears' own coat.

  He-Who-Wears huffed and turned his head to the side. He knew precisely who Timbira was referring to - those delinquents, who had taken all the wrong lessons from his deferral. The ones who cursed him, too.

  "Ice is a rarity," Timbira continued. "A treasure, made in the Above, by the gods. Not these gods, but our gods' gods. It is holier than holy. This is truth," he insisted. "Look inside yourself. It is there... or is it that you believe no truth exists in you?"

  "You know nothing, Timbira-vasaa," He-Who-Wears said, and permitted a wayward naaa to trail his words.

  Timbira nodded, quite nonchalant. "I know. I am forced to wonder why it is I find your kind so fascinating. It seems to me you have meticulously crafted your values to be as opposed to the gods' as possible."

  "We hold to nature," He-Who-Wears said, puffing up with pride. "Nature crafted us. We are in its debt."

  Timbira let out an odd little high-pitched squeal. "Foolish He-Who-Wears… do you not understand that the gods are nature?"

  "So are we. And you."

  Something out in the meadow caught Timbira's attention, and he turned away, silent. He-Who-Wears chuckled in triumph - his thoughts, so easily stolen. How pathetic.

  Although, perhaps he couldn't blame him. At this time of year, the kamani bore large globes of ripening fruit, which hung tantalizingly over the fences. The maroon skin of the fruit shimmered with morning dew. Sometimes the littlest Littens and the foolhardiest Torracats would come here to bat at them, like they once had with the thick threads of ivy winding around slabs of bark.

  Passing by a river, catching a glimpse of a shimmering Milotic warbling in its too-sweet siren-speak. The Milotic were creatures of legend to the burning ones; even their mere presence, they said, could calm a restless heart. His mother told her kittens stories of one that had seduced a clan leader and enticed him to fall into the river with it. On that day, the river had been swollen from a fading tempest; its rapids irate. The leader lacked even the ability to tread water, and the Milotic had rippled away, leaving him to his fate.

  They called him a fool. The greatest fool to ever walk the jungle.

  But something had driven He-Who-Wears to wonder: had he been happy in death? Perhaps even the brush of his lover's cream scales on his soaked skin, even her snippets of song struggling through the thickness of the water, would have been enough to drown his fears. He hadn't known where these questions came from, and he didn't want them rattling around in his brain. But it seemed any attempt to evade these thoughts only incited more to invade.

  The tale had been with him the day he'd come across the thickest vine he'd ever seen, its end splitting into four leafy cords like a drooping flower's petals. He remembered pouncing and biting down and expecting sharp scales to pierce the inside of his cheek. He remembered his eyes trailing the sickly green scores and looking down to the plant matter on his claws, and padding away, abashed.

  The fences kept them from really getting to know the taste of the kamani's fruit. He'd had to break up a scuffle between two Torracats from Clan Gryaan who had been arguing over which one would get to have the only one they had been able to paw out from under the fence. His mere presence had been enough to make them stop, but not for the reason he'd prefer.

  "He won't even obey the natural laws himself. And he has the gall to tell us to? Our savior is a hypocrite."

  He-Who-Wears let out a hefty sigh, arose onto two paws, and left Timbira to his ruminating.