Journey to the Trinity Tree

Envy sat before the tree, the expression on her face almost bored as she stared up at the goddess. Her golden eyes glanced around the area, dancing about as they landed on feline after feline before settling back on the main attraction. The mixed reactions of the crowd were interesting, to say the least.

Some lashed out, actually throwing themselves at the tree and attacking it before they calmed, some leaving after and others sitting down now that their anger had been vented out on the closest thing they had to the source and they could think clearly, rationally. For those that didn't calm, they were eventually dragged off the tree and tossed aside, scolded for their rash decisions and sent away (or escorted away if getting dragged off did nothing to calm them from their childlike tantrum). Others of the remaining champions began to insist that they were not angry and had no intentions of attacking the goddess, but that they believed they ought to be receiving some sort of reward for risking their lives for her. Whether they asked for riches, good fortune, or something else that was equally ridiculous didn't matter. Envy was just as wistful for a reward of some kind, but she had no intentions of angering the goddess who was currently under attack and providing them with their shelter. She was the one who brought them there, as far as Envy knew, and because of that, she was most likely the one that would let them go home. She was not going to do anything that would jeopardize her opportunity to return to the portal once everything was said and done.

Finally, those that wanted rewarded trickled away, and those who cowered under the goddess' stern expression and presence disappeared as well, leaving only those with legitimate interest in speaking with the goddess in the tree behind. Envy could care less for who else had remained; the golden she-cat had information she wanted to retrieve, and once she had that, she was fine to leave the goddess to her own devices (what she did with her free time since she was stuck in a tree, Envy didn't know, and she did not particularly care about finding out either) and continue preparing for the next attack.

There were questions posed out of fear. Cats and lions alike were afraid, and they asked the blatant questions, the ones about getting back home or what would happen if they died here or other time wasters. Once those were out of the way, the better questions came. Who had sent the army? Why were they coming? How would the champions know when they were going to attack again? Where had the rest of the champions gone? What was the mysterious feeling last night?

None of them were bad questions. In fact, they were helpful, but none of them got to the root - no pun intended - of what Envy wanted to know. The questions being posed didn't dig deep enough to expose anything, and though she had wondered if she'd even have to open her mouth, it was evident that Envy would have to ask it herself if she wanted to be told what she wanted to know.

"Why have you brought us here to serve as your champions, when there is an entire city of citizens underground willing to fight for you? Or, even better, why not summon creatures of your own to fight for you, like your enemy seems to be doing? Why bring us, creatures from completely different realms than this one, to fight for you?"

It was the only thing that Envy truly wanted to know, because she firmly believed that, depending on the answer given, it would give her all the information she needed on the goddess before her. There was no way to know whether this goddess was just as bad as Pride. Granted, it would not be in the same way that her leader pulled the wool over everyone else's eyes; it was evident that, regardless of her answer, she was indeed a real goddess. However, despite making herself appear to be benevolent, there was no way of knowing that for certain. The golden she-cat stared back at the tree, silently awaiting her response. If the goddess was a charlatan akin to Pride, it would certainly give her a new approach to the situation; she would suddenly be attempting to skin a very different cat, and she might have to do so without arousing the suspicions of the other champions.

So, she awaited her answer, because if the goddess did not give a satisfactory one, if she did not have a good reason for summoning strangers from another world to fight for her instead of beings of her own creation or those that already lived beneath her, Envy was more than willing to go digging to see just what dirt she could find about the goddess in the tree and her city underground.

There was a second tree.

Out of everything that Kina had expected when she followed the thrumming that she couldn't shake, she was not expecting another tree. Danger? Probably. And she supposed she did get that in the form of the army that surrounded them on all sides, though they currently seemed lifeless and showed no signs of attacking the many champions that had followed the call. But, when she'd envisioned the call potentially being hostile, Kina had envisioned it leading them into a trap, not leading them to the potential reason for them being summoned in the first place.

But the thrumming in her bones that had led her here felt like the same one that had led her to cross over in the first place. If she trusted the first call to be good, then she ought to trust this one to be, and if that was the case, then the tree in front of them was the reason for their summoning for a completely different reason.