"What is that thing?!" Hichy asked.
"I don't know, but it's unbearable," his sister replied. "It sounds like chalk screeching on a blackboard mixed with a shovel scraping across the ground."
After a huge glide, Melio landed straight in his master's arms to take refuge there. With his fur bristling in terror, he covered his snout with his paws and dug his claws into Hichy's shirt.
"What was it the governor of that tribe of unwashed people said already?" the twin asked. "He told us about Odilphins, two-headed eagles, and what else?"
"Giant porcins."
"Right, porcins. You think it's that?"
"How should I know, you triple idiot? We've never seen one in our lives."
"It's horrible. But with our powers, we're not risking much. A few screeches aren't going to scare us."
"Except we don't know what's behind them."
"Come on, it's not..."
The shrill cry rang out again, even closer and more frightening, so loud that Hichy's ears began to buzz. The intensity of the sound was such that he felt as if his head were about to burst. When the unbearable screeching finally stopped, a dreadful ringing echoed in his ears. His sister's lips were moving, but he could hear absolutely nothing. When he tried to speak, he didn't recognise his own voice, and the sensation was deeply unpleasant.
"..."
"What are you saying? Speak louder. I can't hear anything."
"..."
"What?! I take it back. It's a long-range attack. And I have the feeling it's far more dangerous than an Odilphin's claws. It looks either like a magical power or a weapon of mass destruction."
Inata waved her arms through the air, but he couldn't make sense of it. Then she pointed up at the sky, grabbed him by the sleeve, and they leapt together as high as they possibly could to try to find where the sonic attack was coming from. Once at the peak of their arc, they looked in every direction, but caught sight of no trace of any animal. A giant porcin should have been visible from very far away.
The third attack was even more terrible. Blood flowed from their ears, already completely deaf, and the wooden structure of their house shook under the blast. A few planks came loose and fell to the ground. If the intensity of the sound really increased in proportion to the square of the distance that separated them from its source, as they had learned in books, then the next assault could be fatal to their hearing.
Inata began gesturing wildly again, both palms forward as if she were pushing something back, and Hichy finally understood what she meant. They positioned themselves back to back and, before the next sonic explosion destroyed everything, gathered molecules of nitrogen, oxygen, and argon to form an airtight barrier around them. Since sound was carried through the air, they could only oppose it by neutralising the air's movements.
They had barely had time to put it in place when an incredible force slammed against the invisible wall they had raised. They had to deploy all their strength to hold it back. And yet they still couldn't identify the source, which seemed to be coming from every direction at once. Without that desperate move, their eyes would have bulged from their sockets and their brains would have exploded.
They had only a few instants of respite before the next attack, like facing waves that kept rolling in, higher each time, ever more dangerous. The upper floor of their house was swept away as if by a flick of the finger, and they were thrown backward under the pressure of the air loaded with that diabolical cry. They barely had time to tighten their protection around themselves to avoid the worst. But the enemy was still nowhere to be seen. Out of breath, collapsed on the ground, they realised that the next one would be fatal.
"...," Inata tried to say.
"...," Hichy replied.
What did she want, and why was she gesturing like that? They had only a few seconds left before the terrible outcome. Inata raised her fists as though she were boxing in front of her. She didn't want to give up, even though the situation seemed utterly hopeless.
The best defence is attack, Hichy thought.
His sister nodded. In a fraction of a second, they gathered a volume of air measuring several million cubic metres, compressed it into a ball a few metres in diameter, and, before the next cry could tear straight through them, released that enormous quantity of gas like a bomb. The shock was appalling.
Their house, the palisade, the forest, everything around them vanished instantly. The explosion had swept everything away for several kilometres, and aside from a few roots here and there, absolutely nothing remained. The stripped earth formed an immense crater in the middle of which they stood. Their backpacks had been blown away along with the rest of their home, and they found themselves utterly destitute. As for the animal or thing that had attacked them, it had fallen silent.
Melio lifted his snout, but disoriented by his deafness, he stumbled and didn't know where to go. The twins lay down directly on the ground to recover their strength. The slightest step would have been too much, and both of them had gone beyond their limits. It took several hours before they began to hear sounds again, and they would bear the aftereffects of that terrible ordeal for a long time, the tinnitus haunting them for many months.
"The most terrible enemy is the one you cannot see," Inata remarked, speaking as loudly as possible so her brother could hear her.
"You're right. Because you can't hit it."
"So, do you still want to plant your vegetable garden here?" the twin teased.
"Certainly not. I've changed my mind. This place is a country of total nutcases. Let's get out of here as fast as possible."
"Phew! I was really afraid you'd put down roots here and never want to leave again."
It took them many leaps to find vegetation again and climb out of the crater. Radioactivity aside, they had caused as much damage as a nuclear bomb might have done. Nature had been deeply wounded and scarred, which was made plain by the large number of animal carcasses they came across. Few had been able to withstand that shrill cry that tore their eardrums, and the few survivors were dead as well.
It was in front of one of those corpses that they came face to face with the governor and about ten members of the native tribe.
"It's a catastrophe!" the old man wailed. "Why has Mother Nature taken so many healthy individuals? It is only with great regret and infinite sadness that we are going to be forced to eat them. And you, what are you still doing here?" he asked, turning toward them with a menacing look.
"Do you want us to do it again?" Inata asked, ready to send them flying with a simple backhand.
"We were attacked by a dreadful scream," Hichy explained.
"That of the giant porcin?" the governor asked.
"A porcin screamed like that?" Inata exclaimed.
"Who else?" the old man asked. "But what I don't understand is who killed it and how they managed it. Wouldn't you happen to be connected to this new aggression against the nurturing mother?"
"Are you sure it's dead?" the twin asked. "And first of all, what does a porcin look like?"
"It's about this high," the governor replied, holding his hand level with his knee. "It has a little beak and purple feathers."
"That's what you call giant?!"
"Compared to a normal porcin, yes, it's gigantic."
"And that didn't rupture your eardrums?" Inata asked.
"Why would it have ruptured our eardrums? The giant porcin only lets out a small nasal cry, but it's extremely dangerous to a great number of species. We have never understood why so many animals died in its path."
"It must be because of our cat hearing," Hichy said. "We did well to neutralise it."
"What did you say?"
In the absence of an answer, the old man and the members of the tribe around him stared open-mouthed as the two children and the cat leapt into the sky.
"Now we're like them," Hichy said. "We have absolutely nothing anymore. It's ultimate degrowth."
"We still have our clothes," his sister replied. "And above all, we don't smell as bad as they do. And our powers? No one will ever be able to steal them from us."
Hichy pulled a face. They were prisoners, not inside the world they came from, but outside it. He would have far preferred to remain locked inside the clearing where he had grown up. Why did all good things necessarily have to come to an end?
"What we need is a plane to go faster. It's tiring, leaping around like this," he complained to his sister.
"Excellent idea! We could build a wing or even an airplane."
"Out of wood or metal?"
"I think we could make something even lighter."
"Out of titanium?"
"No, you big dummy. What is as light as air and could serve as our raw material?"
"I don't know. I give up."
"Think! Air, of course, you triple idiot. Look."
Using her powers, Inata formed a little carpet of air beneath their feet that allowed them to glide and slow their fall even more. The distance they could travel with each leap increased greatly. All that remained now was to find a way back to the centre of the disc.
They chose a place far enough from the local tribe and close enough to the belt of debris to rest a little and put their plan into action. This time, they didn't bother crafting a multi-storey house and settled for a makeshift shelter. They certainly had no intention of lingering any longer in that cursed universe.