The battle is over, and the Grul lies on its back, looking to the sky. Fiend lunges at the beast, filled with rage and pain. Before he can land a lethal blow, I grab him. He squirms in my hands, clawing the air toward the creature as I struggle to get Fiend in my chest. He gives in and stays in my chest, confused as to why I am stopping him.

  My chest has a little hole I formed so that he can breathe, but I don’t know if he needs to. He came back from the dead, so he needed air. He is still breathing, and I feel his heartbeat. I don’t need an answer. The only way to test it is to put his life at risk, and I won’t. A mere second ago, he was dead, killed by the beast. Fiend swims up to my hand. We stare at each other’s eyes, and at that moment, Fiend gives in, swims through my arm, and fires out my back to sprint toward Emanuel. One eye was focused on Emanuel, and the other was scouring the land.

  Emanuel's eyes were filled with pain, their hands filled with blood, and their throat was dry, and he was unable to say what he wanted to. I place my arm on his shoulder and nod. He rushed to hug me where his tears mixed with my goo.

  “You’re safe,” I reassure him.

  I let him cry for a while. One reason is that he needs this out of everything that happened in the last few minutes. The other reason is that my other eye was still scanning the area until I found what I was looking for. When Emanuel left for training, he had his satchel full of basic survival supplies in case he got lost, and for some reason, I couldn’t track him through my slime bracelet. Luckily, it landed at the base of a tree. I recovered it and looked inside. From it, I pulled out my long rope. I tied one end around a tree, and the other I took back into the pit.

  The Grul's eyes locked on me. It thrashed about, expecting the worst. I stretched my arms and tied the rope around its foot. This was not easy, as it continued to resist. To it, the fight was restarting. Once tied, I left the pit and headed back to Emanuel. I grabbed the end of the rope and pulled with all my strength.

  “What are you doing?” Emanuel says with a shaking voice.

  “Flipping it back over,” I respond, continuing to pull the rope. God, that thing was heavy.

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  “It tried to kill us. It killed Fiend!”

  “It was defending its home and were out of the pit. Why does it need to die?”

  “He killed Fiend. Why aren’t you mad?”

  “I am mad! I thought he was dead and I was prepared to kill that creature. Of course, I am mad at it. I am also mad at you!” My voice shakes the ground. Emanuel steps back, his lip quivering and words tremble.

  “Why are you…mad at…me.”

  Anger swells inside me as Fiend hides behind Emanuel's shoulder. I can feel my slime boil. During the fight, I saw it. In my mind, I saw the shield bashing through the Grul. If it didn’t, I could have kept punching it over and over. It was a vivid movie or planned thought; it was worse. It was instinctual. The cognitive thought was to pull away. To show mercy. That requires repeating over and over in my head. It needs to overpower the pain anger, anger, and bloodlust for revenge.

  I am a god, one who needs to show mercy, but this rope in my hand is heavy. It takes so much of my will to get my arms to move. I can leave it on its back, but I shouldn’t, right? No matter what happens, I need to repeat myself and show mercy. If Emanuel were telling me this story, I would want him to do it. Be the better person. He is a kid, though, so I need to be better. However, how do I stop myself from being angry?

  “You ran into here when i told you to stay out,” I say to him.

  “I was being chased by the Root Booters that attacked Fiend,” he says. I know, and that’s valid.

  “It doesn’t matter. What’s the point of all the trading if woodland animals can manor you.” I say, knowing it is wrong to do so, but the rope is heavy.

  “You can’t blame me for this. We were attacked.” He’s right again.

  “You know there were other options. It was you who chose.”

  Fiend squeak from inside my chest. He stares at me with his anger shifting toward me. I look down to see Emanuel holding back tears. His anger is dwarfed by the sorrow painted on him.

  I turn to the rope, and with one last pull, I flip the Grul over from his back. All three of us stare at it in silence, waiting for one person to make a move, but neither of us did.

  The Grul turned its back to us and limped back to the pool of deep purple. It soaks its wounds in the viscous purple before submerging itself.

  I can feel the eyes of the Root Booters surrounding us. With Fiend's ears perked, he notices them, too. Yet again, no one makes a move. It makes sense. They were afraid to even come near this clearing, and we just beat the source of their fear, usurping it and taking the crown as the king of the forests.

  I expected that at this point, Emanuel would break into a rant about how either a god becoming a king is a demotion in title or how we are the strongest ever to set foot on this dirt.

  He didn’t. On the entire walk back, Emanuel didn’t say a single word. I thought he would talk about when we reached the campsite, but he didn’t.

  Emanuel didn’t talk to me for the whole night.