As Sai’s senses returned to him, the ?rst thing he noticed was the faint chirping of a nearby bird. Opening his eyes, he quickly realized he was no longer in the Grand Library. Amy, Cylus, and even Michelle were nowhere in sight. He found himself instead standing alone on the branch of a giant tree. The smooth white birch bark beneath his feet re?ected the light of the intense sun above and gave him a ?at smooth surface to stand on. Looking over the edge, he realized immediately how extremely high up he actually was. Millions of equally smooth branches stretched out beneath him. Sai’s mind raced, trying to explain how he’d ended up here. Had he traveled through another warp gate? Had the book consumed him after all? Then it clicked. This was it; he had entered into the tome’s trial. One thing was for certain: he had been found guilty, and Michelle had saved his life, at least for the time being.
The chirping of the distant bird rang out again and caused Sai to come back to the present moment. He looked around, and his eyes were drawn to a smaller branch that jutted out from the one beneath his feet. A tiny, brownish-grey bird, like a ?nch, jumped around at the tip of the branch and tweeted as it looked at Sai.
Sai tilted his head curiously at the oddity. “Hello?”
It tweeted again and jumped up into the air before ?ying right past Sai and into a large, dark hole in the trunk of the tree behind him.
“Wait!” Sai raised his hand as he stepped toward the pitch-black hollow. The bird’s chirping echoed from somewhere deep inside the tree’s trunk. Placing his hand on the outside of the hole, he peered in. He could feel some kind of invisible, intangible force pulling him toward the ominous darkness. Hesitantly, he took a step inside. As he delved deeper, it grew darker and darker until he could no longer see his own hand in front of his face. As he walked onward, the chirping of the bird began to grow louder, and in the distance, a small light appeared. It grew larger and larger until ?nally; Sai found himself stepping out the other side of the trunk.
Instead of stepping out onto another branch, however, he stepped into what looked like a vast, dry savannah. The bird from before ?ew out ahead of him and landed on a small, scraggly tree nearby. He watched the bird as it landed, and though he couldn’t quite put his ?nger on it, there was something different about it this time. Perhaps the shape of its beak, He thought. He walked toward it, and with every one of his steps, the bird hopped to a higher branch.
Suddenly, the bird’s chirping stopped, and a soft, disembodied male voice ?lled the air. “The works of nature are to those of art.” The ground began to shake, and from the tree’s hollow at Sai’s rear exploded a stampede of animals charging toward him. The small opening was rent wide as the animals poured out onto the plain. A proverbial zoo, hundreds of different animals headed straight for him. Every animal he could imagine- Lions, elephants, zebras, deer, bears, red pandas, and many, many more bore down on him. Sai turned to run, and the small ?nch from before took off ahead of him. He chased after it as the animals gained on him with every step. They were on his heels when the bird dove into a dark hole in the ground just ahead of Sai. Without a thought, he dove in after it just as the animals were about to trample him.
He gasped, trying to catch his breath as he plummeted into the deep darkness. Again, a spot of light appeared ahead of him, and without much choice in the matter, he fell through it and into a world of ice. He landed on a large pile of snow, which cushioned his fall. He tried to rise to his feet, which immediately slipped out from under him. As the snow shifted beneath him, he realized he hadn’t landed on a flat surface. Instead, this was the steep incline of the side of a glacier. Suddenly, he began sliding down the side of the great mountain of ice and out onto a flat, snow-covered field. Again, he pulled himself to his feet. This time, however, the small finch was nowhere in sight.
The world grew quiet, and the voice came once again. “We will now discuss in a little more detail the struggle for existence.”
The ground shook again, but this time it wasn’t some giant stampede. Instead, a large lumbering animal loomed over him. It resembled an elephant but covered in a layer of thick, brown woolly fur. Its ivory tusks were long and curved. It was apparent to Sai that this animal was far more gentle than the ones from before. Sai met its gaze and almost unconsciously raised one hand to touch its long trunk, which hung low to the ground. Shockingly, the gigantic creature let out a horribly pained cry and reared backward. Sai stumbled back just as its massive tusks swung out violently, barely missing him. The massive creature turned to face an unseen attacker. The sound that came next made Sai’s stomach drop. It was a deep bellowing roar, unlike anything he had ever heard. Sai scrambled backward in the snow and caught a glimpse of the would-be attacker. It was a huge cat with teeth as big as butcher’s knives, and worst still, it wasn’t alone. Other members of its pride approached and lunged at the huge creature.
Mammoth, Smilodon. The words seemed to materialize unprompted within Sai’s consciousness. He was sure he’d never heard the terms before, yet here they were, and he recognized their meaning.
“No.” The word escaped Sai’s lips without warning and drew the attention of the largest of the cats. Stepping from around its main course, it slowly made its way toward Sai. Stumbling backward, he fell hard into the fresh white powder. The huge animal got into a low crouching position as it inched closer. Before it could leap, the mammoth ripped around and, with one massive tusk, threw the creature off to the side in an amazing display of raw power.
Sai scrambled to his feet and began to run full-bore in the opposite direction. A loud booming cry echoed out of the cloud of whipped-up snow that had been created in the struggle. Suddenly, something exploded from the frozen dust and was charging right for him. As it cleared, the cloud Sai could ?nally make out what it was. This was no smilodon like the others; it was a huge ?ightless bird, and it was breaking its way through the throng. Sai’s mind screamed to run, but his legs wouldn’t obey. The bird skidded to a stop in front of him, and the two’s eyes met.
It lowered its leathery head, and Sai raised his hand to touch it as he realized he recognized this creature. “You?”
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This was the same bird from before. However, this time, the changes it had undergone were undeniable. It was at least nine feet tall and had small wings held at its side. It had a large head which was marked with distinctive blue and red skin, which led down to a thick beak that could easily be used to crack open nearly anything it wanted. Its long, powerful-looking legs ended in extremely sharp talons which dug into the fresh snow. It was obvious this animal didn’t belong here, in this frozen world, but it had been called there by some unknown force to aid Sai.
“Titanis.” He named it as the word materialized in his mind, just as it had with the smilodon.
The moment between the two was broken as the mammoth collapsed into snow, which was now dyed a deep crimson from the attack. The cloud began to settle as one of the large cats climbed over the heaving mass to spot its next target. One by one, more cats appeared around the dying animal. They moved closer as they geared up for another attack. Sai stepped back in fear. The bird nudged him with its head as it crouched down. Sai looked at its back and then back at the approaching pride. Deciding to take his chances, he threw his leg up over the bird’s back and steadied himself by grabbing a tuft of feathers near the base of its neck. The bird sprang up in a fraction of a second, and they were off.
They sprinted off across the frozen tundra at blinding speed. The pride of wild cats chasing them, winding through every twist and turn. They sprinted around the edge of the glacier and burst onto another huge, open plain. Claws dragged across the ice as one of the smilodons jumped out from behind a nearby snow drift and straight into Sia’s path. The cat’s intimidating stance lasted less than a fraction of a second. Without a moment of hesitation, the massive bird lifted one of its large taloned feet and stepped down hard on the snarling monster’s neck. The subsequent crunch of bone made Sai’s stomach churn as the full weight of the strike registered. The cat went limp instantly, and the bird continued on without breaking its stride.
As they crossed the ?eld, another huge mountain of ice came into view. A large cave entrance was nestled at its base. As they approached, Sai felt the rumbling of the Earth yet again. He looked up just in time to see it. A huge cloud of snow and ice was barreling down the side of the mountain toward the mouth of the cave. They had to stop; otherwise, they’d be crushed under the impending avalanche. Looking back, Sai could see that they were still being followed.
Weighing his options, he realized quickly that if they stopped for even a minute, they’d both be cat food. In that moment, he decided, giving a quick kick to the bird's side, he shouted, “Go!”
The two raced even faster now for the cave's mouth. With no more than seconds to spare, they crossed the threshold just as the avalanche crashed down and sealed the cave entrance. They were safe now, but the titan of a bird kept on running. The cave was pitch black. The avalanche had cut off any and all light that may have been pouring in before, and now they were running blind. Suddenly, they hit a bump, and Sai bounced into the air for only a moment. Gripping at the feathers, he found his hold again and pulled himself back onto the creature. The enormous shoulders felt different somehow, though, much wider, and the feathers seemed less full, yet fuzzier.
They continued to run, but it felt as if they had slowed down. The heavy stamping of the bird's feet had been replaced by even louder thuds. As they ran, another light appeared in the distance, and before Sai knew it, they were bursting through an exit that they could no longer ?t through. They exploded out of the trunk of a new, enormous tree. An explosion of bark and wood shards showered onto the ?oor of a dense forest covered in ferns and large conifer trees. The air was warm and wet. Sai felt that it was even harder to breathe here, and looking down, the breath left his lungs entirely.
No longer was he sitting atop the back of a giant bird, but instead, he found himself straddling the neck of a forty-foot-tall tyrannosaurus.
“He must have changed again when I was bucked off for that moment,” Sai murmured to himself. This world, however, was to have a much shorter existence than the previous ones.
The voice from before echoed out once again, this time more violently. “Nevertheless, so profound is our ignorance, and so high our presumption, that we marvel when we hear of the extinction of an organic being; and as we do not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world, or invent laws on the duration of the forms of life!”
At the exit of this line, something much more terrifying than anything before appeared. A ?aming mass of stone the size of a city roared across the sky. This time, there was no running, no thinking, no escape. The monstrous animal he was riding reared back and sent Sai tumbling head over heels down its back and onto the ground behind it. The impact of the enormous asteroid made all the previous rumblings feel like gentle breezes by comparison. In an instant, the entire world was vaporized before his eyes, and Sai was being carried away by a blast wave that had deafened him before he could even realize what was going on. He had no idea what had happened to his new friend, but it was clear he had shielded Sai with his gargantuan body moments before the impact. Even all of that wasn’t enough to prevent him from being swept up by a massive shock wave of dust and ?re. All he knew was he was sailing through the air, blasted backward through the same hole they had come through. On every side of him, images ?ashed in the darkness.
Land-dwelling reptiles with huge sails on their backs. Animals that crawled from the sea onto land. Deep, sprawling oceans full of armor-plated ?sh, some the size of city buses. All these images ?ickered by in an instant, but Sai could feel that these weren’t just visions. These were each differing eons separated by millions or even billions of years, and Sai was ?ying past each in a matter of seconds. Before long, the strain on his body and mind began to feel like too much to handle, and he blacked out.
After an unaccounted-for amount of time, he awoke. He was lying on a round slab of hard stone with several puddles of unknown liquid pooling around him. A primordial sea stretched out on every side of him
He sat up and grabbed his head, which ached from the explosion. He took a deep breath and realized. He wasn’t actually breathing; nothing entered his lungs as he inhaled. He wasn’t suffocating, though; something strange was happening here. It was almost as if he was here in the moment but also not at the same time. He could feel the ground beneath him, but it didn’t feel like he was affecting it in any way. He got to his feet and walked toward one of the nearby pools, which lay all around him.
Then the same voice rang out again, much more affectionately. “There is grandeur in this view of life. Whilst this planet has gone cycling, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being, evolved.”
Sai knelt down to touch the strange liquid, and although his hand made no impact on the substance, something became clear to him. Even here in this desolate land of nothingness, life existed, struggled, and grew. Closing his eyes, he could feel the presence of life’s most simple single cellular forms.
As he opened his eyes, the presence faded from him, and he found himself lying once again on the ?oor of the observatory atop the Grand Library. A light green colored tome lay clutched in his sweaty palm.
