“Who said that?” Vex shouted, his back arched and fur standing on end like a frightened cat. Kellen stumbled to his feet, summoning an orb of sun mana in his hand. An instant later, an archway appeared across the canyon. It was made of blue gray stone and whistled with a strong wind. When the gust faded, a bird appeared perched on top of the rock arch.

It resembled a red-tailed hawk, but with sweeping orange-red head plumes and a long, trailing tail feathers of a matching color.

“I said that!” the hawk-like creature said. She shook her head and rustled her feathers, clearly irritated. “What’re you doing, throwing mana workings at poor mana spirit just minding her own business?”

“I… we didn’t see you there,” Kellen said. “Sorry.”

The hawk lifted her wings in a shrug. “Eh, you couldn’t have really hurt me. I’m a mana spirit. Hitting me with a mana working is like trying to stop the wind by blowing back at it.” She spread her wings and floated down to the sand just in front of Kellen and Vex, then gave a deep bow, fanning her wings out. “My name’s Chirp.”

“I’m Kellen and this is Vex.”

“Dude,” Vex said in a corrective tone. “I was just going to say we need no introduction.”

“Well, I’ve never heard of you before now,” Chirp said. “But then again, I don’t get out much. Or ever. I haven’t been out in ever.”

“So you’ve been trapped inside the totem since…” Kellen suggested.

“Yep! Ever since the Wild Mother first trapped the Storm Horse inside of here,” Chirp said. No matter what she talked about, she had a chipper, singsong voice, like an over-enthused cheerleader but less annoying.

“Well, we forgive you for not knowing us,” Vex said. “We only just got here.”

“Oh I know,” Chirp said, twisting her head around to check her tail feathers. “I know everything that goes on inside the totem.”

“You do?” Kellen’s hopes soared. “Could you tell us how to get out of here, then?”

“Nope!”

“Why not?” Vex asked, lowering himself into a pounce.

Kellen stepped between them. He didn’t know how Mana Beasts and mana spirits interacted, but it was best if Vex didn’t try to eat the new arrival.

“Because I don’t know how you get out of here,” Chirp said. “I’m a mana spirit. I can go anywhere I want in the totem whenever I want. Well, almost anywhere I want. There’s this one place—”

“Okay, okay,” Vex said, shaking his head. “Could you just stop talking for one second?”

Kellen gave him an incredulous look. “Really? You’re bothered by someone talking nonstop? Is that annoying to you? Do you not like it? Is it hard to think?”

Vex rolled his eyes. “I see what you’re going for there and I’m not falling for it.”

“You two are strange,” Chirp said.

Kellen sighed. Out of the three of them, he knew who would lose their sanity first if this kept up. “Okay, Chirp.”

“That’s me!”

“Is there anything you know that might help us get out of here?” Kellen asked. “I know you don’t know how, but we’ll take any help we can get.”

Chirp cast her eyes at the ground, looking thoughtful. “Well, you’re supposed to figure that out on your own, but you might want to try walking through that arch right there?” She lifted a wing, pointing to the structure she’d been perched on.

Kellen blinked.

“In all fairness, that wasn’t there before,” Vex said. “Though point taken.”

“No problem!” Chirp fluttered up into the air, eye level to Kellen. “Maybe I’ll see you around!” The hawk spirit turned and began to fly away.

“Wait!” Kellen and Vex shouted together.

Chirp laughed. “It’s funny when you do that.”

“You said you can go anywhere you want inside the totem,” Kellen said. “Can you give us directions? There are some other people in here too. Would you take a message to them for us?”

“Sorry, no can do,” Chirp said.

“Why not?” Vex asked.

“Well, there are rules inside here, you know,” Chirp said.

“Like?” Vex prompted.

Chirp shrugged. “No idea! I’m not the one in charge inside here, the Storm Horse is. And she said no helping humans. I mean, that’s open to interpretation, but you do not want to make her angry.”

“We’re trying to help her,” Kellen said, hoping to convine the mana spirit to change her mind. “There are people in here that want to hurt her. Can you take us to her or give her a message?”

Chirp made a loop in the air, then fluttered again in front of Kellen’s face. “Nope!” she said, cheery as ever.

Vex groaned. “Oh, for crying out loud.”

“The Storm Horse is asleep, silly,” Chirp said before performing another pair of loops. “I can’t tell her anything. She just told me that one day humans would come in here. And if they did, I’m not supposed to help them. I think I’m breaking the rules just by talking to you, but you’re much nicer than those people with the white paint and the funny clothes.”

That description could only be one group. “Those are the Snake Cultists,” Kellen said. “They’re the ones trying to hurt the Storm Horse.”

“Well, good luck if they wake her up,” Chirp said. “She’s been asleep so long she’s bound to be testy once she’s awake. Now, are you going to go through that arch or what?”

Vex cleared his throat. ”I realize I’m not usually the voice of reason in this dynamic duo but perhaps we should consider that this might be a trap?”

“It’s definitely not a trap,” Chirp said. “I’m a mana spirit. You can trust me.”

Vex’s eyes narrowed. “That’s exactly what you would say if it was a trap.”

“As much fun as this is,” Kellen interrupted. “I’m willing to risk it.”

“Are you sure?” Vex stared at him. “Normally you’re the one who’s like ‘it’s a trap’ or, ‘what if a terrible, painful death awaits us on the other side?’ Stuff like that.”

Vex had a good point there, but Kellen didn’t see any point in hanging around debating about the issue further. If Chirp could be believed, the Snake Cult were inside the totem itself, not just the cavern underneath. There wasn’t time to waste.

Though it looked like the same canyon on the other side of the arch. Kellen shaped a sun mana orb in his hand and lobbed it through. It vanished in a spray of sand and sunlight on the far side of the arch.

“You should be careful where you throw those things,” Chirp said.

Taking a deep breath, Kellen walked toward the arch, Vex at his side. He took one step up to the entryway, then a second. For a brief instant, his foot landed on the sand of the far side and he thought nothing had happened. When the rest of his body carried through, however, he found they were standing on a floor made of clouds.

Kellen pinwheeled his arms in surprise and turned to step back through the archway. Chirp was hovering there but the arch was gone.

“Oh, wow!” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you to come here. This is neat—I haven’t visited this place in forever!”

Vex stretched a foot out and pawed and the swirling clouds in front of them. Rather than passing right through it, the clouds squished down, like walking on snow. He took a hesitant step forward, then another. When his weight held, he turned back to Kellen and motioned with his head.

“Come on! It’s bouncy!”

Kellen forced himself not to close his eyes and took a single step forward, half expecting to plummet to who knew where. As Vex had said, the clouds held them. Kellen took a few more steps to catch up to Vex, then looked around. The plane was a vast expanse of clouds, beneath and above them. It stretched on in every direction, the horizon far wider than Kellen imagined the inside of the totem should be. The gray clouds swirled and rolled. Kellen saw a flash in the distance and heard a quiet peal of thunder as well as the faint pattering of rain.

“How does this place work?” Kellen asked, knowing Chirp probably couldn’t or wouldn’t answer him. “Does that archway always connect the canyon we were in to here? Did we go up or down?”

“I don’t know how the doorways work,” Chirp said. “I don’t use them! I mean, I know it looked like I came through but really I just popped from there to here. And I guess I can answer your second question, since it isn’t really helping. You’ve gone up.”

Kellen shaped a sun mana orb again and tossed it away from them. It sailed through cloudy atmosphere and then bounced off the ground when it hit the clouds forming the ground. Like a ball thrown in zero gravity it continued to bounce and bounce until they lost sight of it in the distance.

“Let me try!”

Vex opened his mouth and a triangular prism of light shot forth. Unlike Kellen’s ball, it held its trajectory until it too passed beyond their sight.

Chirp made a nervous sound to get their attention. When they looked she was hovering in the air, head darting this way and that.

“What’s the matter?” Vex asked.

“I… umm… it’s probably nothing,” she said. “Yeah! We’re fine. Just… don’t do that anymore, all right?”

Kellen’s guard went up at once. He stretched out with his mana sense but felt nothing aside from endless, rolling aura of storm mana. But Chirp still looked just as nervous.

“Let me guess,” Vex said. “You can’t tell us why we should stop doing that? Isn’t telling us not to do something the same thing, even if you don’t give a reason?”

Chirp’s wings fluttered faster. Was it Kellen’s imagination or did the wind just pick up?

“Oh no,” the hawk said “This is bad. This is bad, bad, bad.”

“What’s bad?” Kellen asked as he reached with his mana sense again. Nothing had changed.

Before Chirp could answer, a deafening roar split the clouds. Kellen yelled out and fell to the cloud-covered ground, clutching his ears. Beside him, Vex did the same, covering his tufted ears with his paws. The entire world resounded with the roar, which boomed at them like thunder mixed with an angry lion and an exploding speaker that had the bass cranked all the way up.

It carried on for several seconds, then stopped as soon as it started. When Kellen opened his eyes and lowered his hands, the clouds were churning faster and the lightning looked closer.

“What in the hell was that?” he croaked at Chirp.

The hawk didn’t answer, darting all around them like a mother hen trying to round up her errant chicks. “You woke up the Thunder Beasts!” she screeched. “Oh, I should not have said that. I shouldn’t have told you to come through the gate. I know I’m not supposed to help but I like you guys and I’m really sorry about this.”

“What are the Thunder Beasts?” Vex practically screamed at her. “And why didn’t you say something before if you like us so much?”

The floor of clouds quaked, then started rolling as if they were on the open ocean at the head of a hurricane. The sensation reminded Kellen of being the smallest kid on the trampoline when you feel down and nobody would stop bouncing long enough for you to get up. He fought just to get his knees underneath them, then flew sideways, smacking into Vex and crashing to the cloudy floor. Both continued to struggle to find their footing without success while Chirp hovered above them, speaking in an endless apologetic chatter.

“What have I done? What have I done?” She zoomed back and forth, tail feathers whipping in the growing wind. “Maybe if I leave, they’ll calm down. Good idea, let’s try that!”

With a zap, she popped out of sight.

“Great,” Vex said when the ground slowed long enough for him to spread his feet out underneath him. “There goes our tour guide.”

Kellen’s head spun. It took him a moment to realize the ground wasn’t shaking and bouncing anymore. “It seems like things are calming down. Maybe she overreacted?”

In answer another roaring scream filled the cloudy skies overhead. The distance between them and the storms above seemed to stretch until they were hundreds of yards apart. The boiling clouds rolled together, slowly taking shape. Kellen stared in horror as the form of a massive combination of a mountain lion and a rhinoceros filled the sky overhead.

“I’m guessing that’s the Thunder Beast,” Vex whispered.

Lightning-filled eyes snapped down to their exact spot.

“Run!” Kellen screamed.

They stumbled to their feet, tripping and tumbling as the clouds beneath them simmered and came to a boil. Kellen chanced a look back and saw an enormous feline head tipped with a sloping y-shaped nose horn swooping toward them. A fanged mouth the size of a gymnasium opened and swallowed them whole.