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This article contains plot and/or ending details.

The surface of the lagoon water began to tremble and shake.

Moving sinuously, the Great Lion emerged from the foliage at the far side.

–Book Quote from Chapter 6: Cabaro[1]


Rise and Fall is the sixth book in the first series, written by Eliot Schrefer. From left to right, Briggan, Conor, and Cabaro are depicted on the cover.

Official Summary[]

SUNDOWN

Deep in the desert there sits a beautiful oasis, ruled by a monarch unlike any other in Erdas. His name is Cabaro, the Great Lion, one from the twelve Great Beasts, and he reigns over a kingdom of animals, jealously guarding his golden talisman. No human has ever set foot in the Great Beast’s territory. The journey to his oasis is impossible. 

As a team, Conor, Abeke, Meilin, and Rollan have achieved the impossible before. But now that team is broken—the friends scattered by a devastating betrayal.

The young heroes and their spirit animals have already sacrificed much in their quest for the talismans. But with the world crumbling all around them—and a ruthless enemy opposing their every move—their greatest sacrifices are yet to come.

Sneak Peek from Against the Tide[]

Deep in a vast desert waits one of the dangerous of all the Great Beast: Cabaro the Lion. With the team shatter, winning the giant lion’s talisman seems impossible. But what choice do they have?[2]

Plot[]

The book starts with Abeke and Meilin, their ankles chained together in a closet in a Conqueror ship. Shane comes down, who has been bringing them food and water throughout the boat journey, and takes them out onto the ship’s deck. They’ve arrived at a stronghold in Nilo. Abeke spots Zerif, Aidana, and (as they’ve just discovered) Shane’s sister, Drina, among the Conquerors' ranks. Abeke and Meilin are then forced to their knees and kicked into the water by Zerif, despite the two being weighed down by iron chains. Both Shane and Drina panic at this while they do their best to swim, though the exertion is almost unbearable. They make it to a sandbar, and from there, they see General Gar and Grahv, his crocodile spirit animal.

Meanwhile, Conor, Rollan, and Tarik travel across Nilo, searching for Okaihee. Rollan, using his newfound abilities with Essix, looks through the gyrfalcon’s eyes and watches as an elephant breaks through Okaihee’s palisades. They assume that it is a Bile-fed elephant. The team runs into the village, and a girl comes up and presses a sharp stick against Rollan’s windpipe, but soon relents and tells them that her name is Irtike and that Chinwe, her mother and the Greencloak they’ve been searching for, is dead. She also reveals that Abeke’s father, Pojalo, is the new chieftain.

When they speak to Pojalo, it’s clear he wants nothing to do with his daughter and denies them help in finding Cabaro. A scrawny lion slinks into the hut with them, but it’s quickly defeated by Briggan and Essix. Conor is outraged and defends Abeke to Pojalo which Tarik and Rollan are proud of. The team is dismissed by Pojalo and they set off for the Golden Lion. They encounter hundreds of travelling baboons and are nearly trampled by them before Irtike reveals herself, having followed them with the help of her naked mole-rat spirit animal. Rollan says that it’s uglier than a walrus and nicknames him Snake Eyes. Since Snake Eyes helps Irtike to sense tremors in the ground and knows which direction to head, they let her lead.

Meilin dreams about Jhi, fighting the Devourer, Gerathon, and the Bile. She thinks that she is strangling Gerathon in her dreams, but it is in fact Abeke. When she wakes up and sees the wounds on her friend, Meilin apologizes, ashamed. Shane comes in soon after, instructing the girls to put their spirit animals into passive mode and go up with him to see General Gar, and if they refuse, he’s been ordered to kill them.

Conor, Rollan, Tarik, and Irtike were all sleeping in a partially charred hut, except for Conor, who lies awake. He watches as hundreds of birds cross the sky, lulling him to sleep. When he wakes, Essix seems to have found something. They follow her, coming to a rise overlooking a narrow pass through the cliffs where a recent bloodbath had occurred. Animal carcasses are strewn across the ground, crushed against the sides of the cliffs by the passing animal herds.

Conquerors run through the cliffs, blending into the wildebeest herd on their steeds. A wall of ostriches protects the passage to Cabaro from any humans and kick the Conquerors’ helmets, killing them, when they attempt to pass through. Since no humans are allowed to pass, the team makes the decision to send their spirit animals to Cabaro's oasis alone.

Tarik tells Rollan about his sister, Reima. Briggan and Essix set off with Rollan watching through Essix's eyes. The spirit animals reach the oasis soon after, and Briggan, enlarged by the Slate Elephant, has to topple several palm trees to break through the forested barrier around the oasis. Once they reach the center of Cabaro’s territory, the Great Lion himself walks into the clearing with his lionesses. He taunts them for a bit because they’ve become spirit animals and at their smaller sizes. He tries to convince them to join him in his oasis, but Essix goes for the talisman instead. Cabaro’s lionesses attack, and a pack of wild dogs follow. Rollan is then abruptly ripped from Essix’s eyes to look at the army of Conquerors approaching the canyon.

Back in the Conqueror camp, Shane puts a sack over Abeke’s and Meilin’s heads as they’re taken into a courtyard. Gerathon and Gar are there. The serpent speaks to them about the war, and Meilin loses her temper a few times and shouts at her. Gerathon retracts her fangs and allows a drop of venom to fall to the ground. It lands on Drina’s foot, and she says “So foul” as she tries to shake it off. [3] Yumaris helps to keep Drina still as Gerathon takes control of Iskos, her spider spirit animal, and forces him to kill Drina. Shane, angered by his sister’s death, helps Abeke and Meilin escape onto his family’s ship, but Meilin refuses to go. She knows that she can’t, since Gerathon can control her whenever she wants, and Abeke and Shane leave without her.

Meanwhile, the others watch as the Conquerors slaughter all of the attack ostriches and take their armies through the narrow cliffs. Irtike senses the hoofbeats of dead Conqueror’s horses, and they ride on them after the Conquerors, hoping to surpass them. Unfortunately, with the help of Essix, Rollan senses another army of Conquerors behind them, with Gerathon up front.

They reach the oasis, ahead of the enemy, and find Briggan just emerging from the forest surrounding it. He is badly injured, but still manages to guide them to the center of the oasis where Cabaro lies. Tarik beseeches him to flee with the Greencloaks, but he doesn’t listen. The Great Lion talks beguilingly with them as he edges closer to Briggan before pouncing, cutting off his windpipe. The lionesses go towards them, but Conor reaches Cabaro and sinks his axe into his side. This only infuriates him. Wild dogs arrive next, and just after Conor calls a bleeding Briggan into passive state, the Conquerors arrive.

Meilin, in a much less intense situation than her friends, sits in the corner of a customs house, waiting for the Conquerors to discover her. She decides to go back for an armory she saw on the run there, and Jhi takes out a young guard when Meilin doesn’t attack him. When they reach the armory, she finds a pair of manacles and pits them on them, hiding the key that unlocks them. When Meilin admits that she’s ashamed of how she treated her, Jhi comforts her, lying next to her so that she wouldn’t be alone. As the first Conquerors barge into the armory, she tells Jhi how lucky she is that she summoned her.

Gerathon arrives in the oasis first, killing two lionesses before Cabaro lunges and grabs her from behind the hood. She whips him away and he lands between Conor and Rollan. He sends Rollan flying with a huge paw, and Tarik finds Rollan and the team splits up. They travel through a canyon, but Cabaro sends a boulder down as Gerathon and Gar approach, trapping them in. Gerathon lunges at Rollan, but Tarik puts himself in front of Rollan and is bitten instead. Rollan is forced to leave Tarik, who has no chances of surviving, but manages to seize his green cloak before retreating. He uses the Coral Octopus to slip between the boulder and onto the other, safer side.

Meanwhile, Conor and Irtike flee into the trees. They climb up a cliff and reach the summit of the oasis. From there, they see Cabaro, and vice versa. He runs for them, but Irtike uses her powers over the earth to form a sinkhole, trapping The Great Lion in the soil. Conor grabs the Golden Lion and they follow Essix to find Rollan, huddled on the ground with Tarik’s cloak. As they go to climb down the canyon, they find it bustling with Conquerors. Cabaro leaps from the sinkhole without Irtike holding him in anymore, distracting the enemy while the team tries to escape again, but Gerathon blocks their path down. They find themselves trapped between the serpent’s jaws and the Conquerors, so Conor uses the Golden Lion and roars. They were still trapped, though, so Irtike uses her powers again and collapses the entire cliff, covering the oasis in sand.

As the team flees the oasis, they come across Tarik and Lumeo in the sand. Irtike buries them and renames Snake Eyes Mikak.[4] They also stumble upon Gar and find that, instead of his crocodile spirit animal, he has a wolverine, the spirit animal that Shane claimed to have.

Abeke and Shane travel in his family’s boat towards Greenhaven. Abeke promises that she won’t let the Greencloaks hurt him when they get there.

While Abeke and Shane dock, Tarik’s Funeral commences. Many of the Greencloaks stand and speak about him, with Olvan being the last. After he speaks, Rollan goes up to the sarcophagus and sets the Granite Ram and the Coral Octopus inside, revealing that he’s becoming a Greencloak in Tarik’s honor.

Lenori comes in and asks Conor to follow her. She brings him to Abeke and Shane, and Rollan comes out, asking Shane about his wolverine. He shows them his spirit animal tattoo when pressed about it. It is the tattoo of a crocodile, and he turns out to have been the Devourer all along. Abeke is stunned as Shane hops on top of Grahv, and he rushes into the place where Tarik’s Funeral was being held. He takes them by surprise, knocking Greencloaks against the wall as he advances towards the talismans. Rollan manages to hop onto Grahv’s back, inching his way towards Shane, while Shane and his spirit animal fight Olvan, his moose, Conor, and Briggan. Abeke tries to get a shot at Shane, but Rollan moves into the way.

Suddenly, the room goes black. Halawir comes in, his wingbeats causing a ferocious wind that blows everyone backwards. At first, they think that Halawir is there to aid the Greencloaks, but he helps Shane up and flies away with him when he seizes the talismans.

Afterwards, Conor and Abeke look out at the ocean. Conor assures Abeke that it wasn’t her fault that Shane betrayed them, and they talk about her family before they hear a noise in the hallway. They see someone leaning into Tarik’s sarcophagus, and it takes Abeke nearly shooting him to realize that it was Rollan. He reaches in and takes out the Coral Octopus and the Granite Ram, signifying that there was still hope so long as they have the two talismans and each other.

Trivia[]

  • The time period between Wild Born and Rise and Fall is a few months, as revealed by Abeke.[5]

Gallery[]

References[]

  1. Rise and Fall, page 75
  2. RiseFallSneakPeek.jpeg
  3. Rise and Fall, page 89
  4. Rise and Fall, page 155
  5. Rise and Fall, page 86

Navigation[]

List of Books in the Spirit Animals series
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Spirit Animals (Series 1)

Fall of the Beasts (Series 2)

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