When they got back to the clearing, it was to three very worried creatures calling their names loudly into the trees.

  “Where have you been?” Rogue cried when he saw them. “We’ve been so worried!”

  “I told you they were taking a morning flight!” Liraz said. “But no, neither of you believed me.”

  “The ratio between the time that they were gone and the amount of danger in these parts was slowly increasing, which made us worried,” Maximon said. “We’re glad that it was nothing.”

  “Actually, it wasn’t nothing,” Kira said. Then she went on to explain how they met Laila’s family and what had happened, with Laila wincing at every sentence.

  “Woah. You have a crazy, bloodthirsty mother with two gremlins for siblings?” Liraz asked when Kira had finished, eyes wide. “No wonder you’re so grumpy all the time. So sorry!”

  Laila chuckled. “At least you’re apologizing. I appreciate the comparisons, though. My siblings are definitely gremlins.”

  “But they won’t go after us anymore, correct?” Rogue questioned.

  Kira shook her head. “I scared them pretty good.”

  “So we can keep going, then,” Maximon said. “Part of the day is already gone. We have a few hours of lost time to make up for.”

  “It was worth it,” Kira said fiercely. “They deserved a little reminder of where they stand in the world.”

  “Let’s keep going, then,” Laila said. And when she took to the sky, she barely cleared the treetops instead of going to the clouds, clearly keeping an eye on them. Kira smiled.

  For two days they traveled, crossing rivers and lakes, and entering the Savannah in Beyda. Rogue kept glancing around, looking for more of his kind, but they only found a few cougars and servals, who kept their distance. Kira felt bad for him, and felt her hopes rise with his every time they saw another creature.

  “We’ll come back,” Kira promised. “We’ll find them.”

  Rogue smiled, a determined look in his eyes. “We will.”

  On the third day, they entered the Jungle.

  Hot, humid air blasted them from all directions, baking them from inside out. Kira found herself always panting, trying to get rid of the heat. Birds and bugs chirped and buzzed in a cacophony of noise that assaulted Kira’s sensitive ears. Moss and mud was everywhere, and quicksand as well. Vines draped from branches far above them, and only filtered sunlight reached them from on the ground. Ferns reached towards them from below.

  “Woah,” Liraz said. He immediately raced for the brightly colored fruits that hung on various trees, coming in all shapes and sizes.

  Rogue grinned. “Welcome to my old home.”

  “This is the best place I have ever seen,” Maximon said. “It’s got the perfect temperature and everything.”

  “I don’t know about the temperature,” Kira said. “But it’s definitely something.”

  Laila touched down on the ground next to them. “This place is huge. It stretches for miles and miles, just green trees. No wonder there’s a prison hidden here—it would be so hard to find.”

  “Then let’s get searching,” Kira said. “Cyfrin said the structure was at the northern tip of the Jungle. We’ve got a long, long way to go from here.”

  After about a day, they found a large clearing full of snakes.

  “My brethren!” Maximon said cheerfully. “Hello!”

  But the snakes didn’t respond.

  “H-hello?” he asked again.

  “Maximon…” Kira said soothingly, walking up beside him. “They aren’t sentient snakes. They’re the Dragon-given snakes, which means they don’t have souls like other creatures.”

  “No,” Maximon breathed, shaking his head, his eyes wide. “No, they’re real, and it’s my fault they’re this way. I left my fellow snakes, and they’re coming back to get me.”

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  “Maximon, calm down,” Kira said sternly. “They are not attacking you. We’re in the Jungle, remember?”

  But Maximon wouldn’t listen. Liraz tried flapping his wings in front of the distressed snake’s face, but his eyes didn’t see them.

  “I’ve never seen him like this,” Rogue said softly as they watched Maximon thrash on the ground. “It terrifies me. What are we going to do?”

  Kira gazed up at the trees, watching the sunbeams filter through. “We need to keep moving. We should comfort Maximon while we walk. And maybe getting him away from the other snakes will snap him out of it.”

  “Good plan, Flufftail,” Laila said. “Only, how are we going to carry him? He’s moving more than a weasel with too much energy.”

  “You could pick him up with your talons,” Kira suggested. “Or Rogue and I could sling him over our backs and walk like that.”

  “I’ll carry him,” Laila sighed. She hovered in the air and gently grabbed Maximon’s body with her talons. It took both of her feet to pick up the middle of his body, and Laila grunted with the effort.

  “Do you need us to…?” Kira asked.

  “No, I got it,” Laila said, flapping hard. “We’ll just need to rest more often.”

  “Hang in tight, Maximon,” Rogue said.

  By sundown, Maximon’s mental state had not improved. He continued to mutter and hiss words and apologies under his breath, his slit eyes flickering and darting from one place to another while never seeing anything.

  “What can we do?” Liraz asked, looking shaken. “I want the old Maximon back.”

  “I know, Liraz,” Kira reassured. “It will be okay.”

  “We tried talking to him,” Laila said. “We tried punching him into sense. We tried splashing him with water. We tried waving food under his tongue. What else is there for us to do?”

  “Maybe Kira can use her magic,” Rogue pointed out. “Like, a flashing light in his eyes that brings him back?”

  “I could try,” Kira said hesitantly, not wanting to raise any hope. “Only, I don’t know how to make flashing lights. I can only do lightning and healing.”

  “Try healing him, then,” Laila suggested.

  Kira walked up to the writhing snake and placed a paw on his wiggling body. She took a deep breath, then channeled her magic gently into him. His body relaxed, and Kira took a step back, amazed that it worked.

  But two seconds later, Maximon returned to wriggling, and Kira’s face fell.

  “Why didn’t it work?” Liraz asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kira said, clutching her tail in between her paws. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know! What did I do wrong?”

  “Maybe you can’t heal mental problems, like grief,” Rogue guessed.

  Grief…

  “No, Deya could calm grief,” Kira argued, pacing. “There has to be some trick to it.”

  “Do you remember how she did it?” Laila interrogated.

  Kira stopped pacing and squinted into the distance, trying to recall the feeling of peace that had come over her. There had been a breeze, and colors, and…music.

  “I think it’s…singing,” Kira realized.

  “Like what you did in the arena?” Rogue questioned.

  Kira nodded. “I might be able to recreate it.”

  “We’ll keep quiet,” Laila said.

  Kira breathed in and out, trying to forget that she was sitting on a muddy jungle floor while one of her friends thrashed next to her, and summoned the memories that triggered her magic.

  She remembered Deya falling into the fog as she called lightning and tried to protect her but failed. I left, too, when I could have helped. I don’t know what you’ve faced, Maximon, but I feel you.

  She remembered her mother’s whispered words as she bled out on the Big Field. I left my family and my fellow creatures in a bloodstained landscape.

  And then she sang it out, without words, but with emotion, like she had before. She sang with everything she had, not for herself or even for Laila, Rogue, or Liraz, but for Maximon. She couldn’t lose him, and she wouldn’t.

  Kira didn’t know how long she sang for, but when she opened her eyes, the scenery had completely changed. Soft grass had grown under their feet, along with bunches of colorful flowers and vines. Butterflies fluttered around them, and the sunlight seemed to reach them easier than before.

  But the biggest change was Maximon. He had stopped thrashing, and was now awake and coiled up in a ball, looking reinvigorated and humiliated at the same time.

  “Thank you,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me…”

  “It’s okay,” Kira said, walking over and sitting down next to him. “Do you want to talk about it? We won’t judge you.”

  Rogue, Laila, and Liraz came over as well, and they all sat in a circle, looking attentively at Maximon.

  The snake took a deep breath. “I come from a place where food was very scarce. The alligators and crocodiles dominated the swamp I lived in, taking almost all of the food for themselves and their companions. The snakes were forced to live in the woods, out of the sunlight and where rats or mice never walked. We were dying slowly, not able to live off of the worms and field mice that we found. But one day, I decided to change things. I ventured into the alligator pool and swiped a bunch of rodents for my fellow snakes, and they were forever grateful. From that day on, I was seen as sort of the leader of things around there. Everyone looked up to me, and while it was a lot of pressure, I never broke or failed them. I promised I would never leave them, and they believed me. I was terrified of leaving them.

  “But then, as I was gathering more mice, one of the alligators spotted me. He grabbed me and smacked me against the ground until I could barely breathe, then took me to the arena.

  “I never fulfilled my promise. I left them alone, in a cruel world, where the alligators would always be on the watch from now on. I always wonder how things are going, or if they’re all dead by now.”

  There were a few minutes of silence after that.

  Then Liraz fluttered over to Maximon and hugged the snake’s body with his wings, gazing up at him with wide, dilated eyes. “We still love you, Maximon. Your snakes would understand if they knew what you went through.”

  “Really?” Maximon said quietly. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive,” Rogue said firmly.

  “Then let’s get going.” Maximon etched a determined look on his face and slithered in front of them, with everyone trailing behind. And Kira knew that day that everyone in their group had gotten just a little bit closer.