“Keep a better pace, Mags. You’ll fall behind at that rate.”

“Then you slow down,” Magic scoffed, hands tightly curled around the reins of his goat with nearly enough force to indent the straps into his skin. “My goat decided to stop.”

Mira wrangled Jeralt into turning around, fighting for control by yanking on the reins. “Again?”

He felt his teeth grind.

Bjorn was laying on the ground, frozen in place with his limbs tucked beneath him, still and silent. The only noise that broke the silence were his huffs.

Magic couldn’t contain his frustration and nudged the goat’s face with the persistent urgency of trying to wake someone from a deep slumber. As if being stuck in these star-forsaken tunnels wasn’t bad enough, he’d been stuck with a goat that was so easily spooked that it stopped working. The idea of being stagnant in this labyrinth set his skin on fire and Magic was doing what he could to keep his wits about him. He held onto the animal’s neck for dear life in addition to the reins, sank his fingers into the goat’s coiled fur just to occupy his mind, get himself away from his surroundings, his own head.

But this was the third time that Bjorn had gotten spooked by something in the caverns and fallen to the floor in a matter of minutes. There was no pocket watch to accurately tell the time, though Magic was at least certain of that much.

He’d thought that when Clemont said there were issues with the delivery that the boy had meant there was something wrong with the cargo. Not the goat carrying the cargo.

“What did he hear?” Mira asked, yanking on her reins to get her goat—Jeralt—to stop. It was unsuccessful and instead of forcing the animal to heel, she forced him to trot around in circles.

“I don’t know,” Magic replied, clinging to Bjorn’s neck and patting the side of his face. Still, the goat did not move, did not even look back in his direction. “There’s nothing here aside from the damp air and the lack of space and the—”

“Focus on the goat, Mags.”

“I can’t breathe, Mira. It’s tight in here and it’s cramped, and—”

“Work on getting Bjorn to move. Don’t focus on the tunnels.”

Stars, was he trying, but was a lot harder than Mira made it out to be. The darkness, illuminated only in small patches from the lanterns, made it feel as though the walls were closing in on them, getting narrower and narrower and it terrified him. He knew his sister’s advice was supposed to distract him from everything, but the air seemed more difficult to breathe, the earthy tang in the air transmuting to ash on his tongue.

It almost made him vomit, but he restrained himself.

Magic took a breath, as an attempt to steady his nerves and distance himself from the sensation of something crawling in his skin and the rolling nausea of his stomach. He absently coiled Bjorn's fur around his finger.

“C’mon,” Magic murmured, his face pressed against the side of the goat’s horns. They scratched at his face, the lanterns they’d mounted to them wavering slightly. “C’mon, boy, get up. Please, get up and move.”

The animal made a tiny, defeated-sounding bleat.

A few paces ahead, Mira was wrangling her goat, trying to get it to pause. Clemont had bargained for Louisa to let go of Jeralt for this particular errand and, though Louisa was unhappy about it, pouting the entire time it took to pack the goats’ satchels (complete with a compass, food, water and snacks for the animals), obliged with the boy’s requests.

Jeralt didn’t seem too pleased about this trade, either; Magic could hear the goat’s angered bleats echoing off the narrow, dirt walls—Bjorn screamed back, creating an echo chamber of noise that made Magic nervous in a way he shouldn’t have been. His eyes immediately went to the walls, hoping that the sheer force of the shouts wouldn’t weaken the very structure of the caverns and collapse in on them.

Squeaking emerged faintly from the distance—which direction it was coming from was hard to tell between the screaming contest of the goats. But that argument was disrupted by the arrival of a bat colony, their shrieks shrill and defensive. They were nothing more than blobs of black, bombing to the ground in rapid succession. Magic placed his arms over his head to shield his face from the tiny pinpricks which snagged in his hair, unwilling to risk being scratched in the face by the bats’ tiny weapons.

A little ways ahead of him, he heard the sound of a struggle. Peering over his arm, he found Mira waving around the lantern she’d taken from off of Jeralt’s horn as if it were a shoe to wave away flies. It was partially successful; the bats changed their course at the sight of the flickering flames and fled. Magic fumbled with Bjorn’s lanterns and did the same, creating arcs of fire that sent the bats fluttering away.

Through the amber glow on Mira’s face, he saw the relief in her eyes, as she hooked the lantern back on the Jeralt’s horn. The goat made a fuss about it, stomping his hooves into the dirt, but didn’t resist. “Good job,” she said.

“Your idea,” he replied, hands shaking as he secured the light to Bjorn’s horns. To his relief, the goat shuffled around, and Magic was grateful to be above ground. “I just followed.”

“Either way, it seems like Bjorn has stopped taking a nap.”

“Please don’t tell me he was sleeping.”

“Oh, no, he wasn’t,” said Mira, pulling on her reins to force Jeralt in the direction of the Western District. “His eyes were wide open, but he looks a bit better now. See if he’ll listen.”

Magic sighed shakily, snapping his reins, silently willing for Bjorn to move. Graciously, the goat did, shaking his head as if to rid himself of whatever fear that had immobilized him before. Once Bjorn began to move, his hooves clopping on the packed earth, Magic gingerly wrapped his arms around the animal’s neck, rubbing the fur between his fingers.

He didn’t know how long this particular trek would take them, though he imagined—hoped, rather—that it would be quicker than going on foot. Despite the healing tonic he’d been forced to drink, Magic didn’t think his limbs would’ve been able to carry him through the winding, narrow tunnels that he despised so much. Even making it this far on foot would have been a surprise in its own right.

Magic forced himself to focus on the surrounding sounds. The crackle of the wax from the candle in the lantern. The slosh of moist dirt from beneath the goats’ hooves. The very faint melody Mira was singing in the distance. He wasn’t able to make out the words because of how softly she was speaking—something about willows and wind—but it was just loud enough to give him something to grab onto, to avoid the sensation of something pressing against his back, the smothering sensation that reminded him so vividly of the Elnoiran and Chromian marketplace.

He dared not look at the fire, only listen to its voice.

He dared not look ahead, only take in the scent of fleece.

If only it were an easy thing to separate oneself from the body. Magic would have preferred that to the raging discomfort, the sudden quiver in his limbs—

Bjorn gave a wild scream, tearing Magic away from his own head. The goat bucked backwards, shrieking. He struggled to keep hold, tightening his grip. This only seemed to further irritate the animal and, in the midst of the chaos, Bjorn charged through the tunnel, ramming through weakened walls with the sheer force of his body.

Debris clanked against the lantern, ricocheting to pelt Magic in the face. He knew he should be taking better hold of the reins, turning Bjorn around and trying to force him calm. He knew that he should be getting the goat to heel, distract him with something to redirect and refocus.

He did none of those things. Magic felt his limbs lock, his blood turn to ice. Fear had him in an iron grip and the only thing he thought to do was wrap his arms tighter around the goat’s neck, burying his face into the coiled fur, which burned his face as it swept along his skin.

The animal struggled and fussed, standing backwards and threatening to tip over and throw him off. Eventually, Bjorn’s resistance faded and the creature went down, signaled only by the sound of his body thumping onto the dirt.

A second set of hoofbeats were fast approaching. Each hit upon the earth made Magic’s heart lurch and he struggled to get air into his lungs. The sound of low bleating in the distance rang in his ears. Everything was too loud, too irritating.

“Mags!” Mira shouted, the noise echoing through the tunnels. He could hear the frantic patter of her feet against the ground and he tucked his chin to his chest, his forehead brushing the back of Bjorn’s neck. Every muscle in his body went rigid. “Mags, let go. You’re gonna suffocate Bjorn that way!”

Suffocate? Magic slowly lifted his head. Vaguely, he registered Mira tugging at his jacket sleeves, wrenching his hands free from the goat’s neck. Immediately, Bjorn took a deep breath and shook his head from side to side, huffing and surveying the area. Magic hadn’t realized that he was cutting off the animal’s airways. He just didn’t want to be tossed and left to wander through the caves on foot. With an unsteady hand, he reached out to the goat, a silent, apologetic plea. Bjorn sniffed at his palm, considering the offer for a moment before nuzzling Magic’s hand with his snout.

He couldn’t help his relief. And Bjorn, as if he understood, pushed his forehead against Magic’s hand and closed his eyes.

“What happened?” asked his sister as Magic tried to keep his focus on his riding companion, tried to focus on the plush fur despite the pins and needles in his limbs. “We were making such good progress.”

Magic took a break, sinking Bjorn’s fur, adjusting his glasses so that they weren’t crooked when he looked at his sister, shrouded in shadow from the faint light of her lantern behind her. He tried to recall the moments before Bjorn’s sudden rampage, what he could’ve possibly done to irritate the animal. Sitting a bit straighter, Magic swept hair out from in front of his face and looked around. Everything seemed in order. The satchels weren’t damaged. The lanterns were still in place. The only thing that felt like it was in the wrong spot were the reins, which hung limply from the sides of the saddle.

So if it wasn’t the reins he was holding onto, then what was it?

Bjorn huffed, blowing an uncomfortable hot stream of air into Magic’s face, as if he were annoyed or angry.

You’re going to suffocate Bjorn that way.

He hadn’t been holding onto the reins at all.

“His fur,” Magic mumbled, gingerly holding onto the reins. Stars, he’d tortured this animal for less than a minute by tugging at fur. No wonder Bjorn had been so eager to get rid of him. “I pulled at his fur. And that angered you, didn’t it?” he asked, directing his speech to the goat, who gave a loud bleat in return.

Mira planted her fists against her hips, chin tipped up as she took a deep breath through her nose, exhaling in a long stream of controlled air. “Well, now that we’ve calmed down Bjorn, are you ready to get back on track? Jeralt is getting restless and I don’t know how much longer I can get him to listen to my commands.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Jeralt gave a long, loud bleat, scuffing the ground.

“Yeah,” Magic said, stroking the fur on Bjorn’s face as the goat stood back up. “Just … I need to get out of here, Mira, I don’t—”

“Once I get back to Jeralt,” she said, “I want you to talk.”

“Talk? About what?”

“Anything. Tell me anything you want.”

And when Magic heard the discontent screaming from Mira’s goat, that was exactly what he did.

He spoke, often in circles, just to avoid the reality of their location. It often cycled back to Ori, her myths, her stories, the pebble offerings he would put outside his window just to get the bird to appear and the disappointment he often felt when he woke up to see that the rocks had not been replaced with zirca coins.

Mira pushed the conversation to keep him talking—and to remind him to speak up, since he’d kept his face buried in Bjorn’s fur to avoid looking around.

It was hard to tell how long they’d walked through the tunnels—it felt far too long—but the sight of the Western District was enough to bring Magic away from his own head.

The District was a wide expanse of rock and cliffs, the sound of far away rushing water echoing along the rock walls that made it feel like the town was stuck in a permanent rainstorm. Neon lights were mounted, somehow, to the top most part of the canyon, illuminating the scorched rocks in harsh white. It was a poor mimic of natural light, a raging spotlight that put every single ghostly human on display as they floated from one part of the District to the other.

From their spot at the cavern’s end, the goats’ hooves toeing the edge of a plateau, the village seemed miles away and just as far down. Magic didn’t know how the goats were going to navigate the cliffs; he supposed they’d have been trained for this given that they were errand running goats and not just standard housepets despite being treated as such. He rubbed his palm along Bjorn’s horns, easing away the burning sensation of panic that settled on his limbs before looking over at his sister.

Mira’s eyes were wide, taking in the sight and he very vividly recalled the shine in her eyes when they first left Chrome. The same sparkle that was present when she first told him of the idea, though the mischief in them had faded for pure awe. This was what his sister had been waiting for. The splendor of travel.

For a brief, fleeting moment, he truly wished he could share the sentiment. All being here did was make him feel ill.

He felt bad being the one to jar her from her own amazement. “Mira,” he said, and she turned quickly to look at him, eyes wide. From the way the light caught, her eyes were a consistent gray. “Where do we go from here?”

“Clemont said Central, right?” she asked, pivoting Jeralt towards the right with a bit of struggle. “We have to go through the Western District to get to where Jovie and Vallian are.”

“Don’t forget, Bjorn has somewhere to go first.”

“Ah,” said his sister, her voice trailing as if to hide the fact that she had indeed forgotten about the parcel Clemont had asked them to deliver on his behalf. “Where was that again?”

“Western District,” Magic replied. “Near the library.”

“Right. Then let’s get a move on. This person’s already been expecting this mail for ages now, I imagine. Wouldn’t want them waiting more than they have to be.”

Magic tentatively looked over the cliffside, grimacing. The distance from the top of the cliff to the nearest visible road—which was more a trail of worn out dirt—made him uneasy. “Are they gonna get us down there in one piece?”

“I don’t see why not. Goats are good with cliffs.”

Magic glanced at his own goat. He had no doubt that Mira’s would excel. As for Bjorn, who knew.

With a bit of struggle—and waiting for Bjorn to get back up after being startled by squeaking bats or the sudden rush of wind that howled from the spaces between the rocks above—the two of them hiked down the mountain with relative ease, rewarding the animals for their efforts with a seed mixture placed in the satchels specifically for the goats.

Every now and again, Magic had to remind his sister to wait; if it were up to her, she would have charged straight into the main part of the Western District and, though Magic desperately wanted to join her in that (the more he could keep moving, the better), Bjorn’s lack of consistent walking made it very difficult for him to keep up.

The fact that they had a package to deliver made this all the more frustrating, which Magic was surprisingly okay with. It was better to focus on this job and their destination after. It gave his brain something else to chew on.

People in the Western District marketplace parted for them as they paraded through on goatback and Magic found that he much preferred riding through the crowd than being stuck in it. For one, Magic enjoyed being in the company of a huffing animal who moved its head to give itself space, but it confused him as much as it did reassure him. Bjorn didn’t need that much room; he was already large and bulky.

As they walked, Magic noted the animal’s grunts and bleats as people—even small children—ran up to Bjorn to bask in his mere presence. And yet, though the goat paused in recognition of the strangers, he shoved them away gently with his horns, stomped his hooves in an attempt to startle them. It felt more like Bjorn was intuitively making space for the comfort of his rider and as the goat walked a few paces behind Mira and Jeralt, Magic found himself scratching the goat’s neck and chin the same way one would praise a dog for performing a trick.

He’d never seen animals with this much emotional intelligence. The only equivalent he could think of were the horses back home, and they weren’t nearly as expressive. Even the birds and strays paled in comparison to the behemoth he’d somehow befriended.

“Thanks,” Magic mumbled as Bjorn stamped a hoof on the ground to scatter a group of older children reaching their hands out to pull at the satchels and bags slung over the saddle. The goat responded with a high-pitched bleat, pausing briefly to lower its forehead against Magic’s hand; he felt his stomach flutter, but in a different, slightly warmer way.

He caught up with Mira, who had stalled at the edge of the crowd and was leading Jeralt in circles and Magic had a feeling that the goat was being stubborn again. But when his sister popped on the reins and Jeralt actually listened, he realized that Mira had just been looking for something to do. So she chose to make her goat get some extra steps in.

“Took you long enough,” Mira said, patting her goat on the head. “I was beginning to wonder what was taking you so long.” Then she paused, stared at him for a bit, and grinned. The neon lighting from the mountains turned both of her eyes the same pale shade of gray. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah,” Magic replied. “Why?”

“You’re smiling.” Immediately, he frowned, squinting at the observation. The amusement in Mira’s face disappeared in every feature but her eyes. “Don’t look so disappointed, Mags. I’m just glad, that’s all.”

“That I know how to smile?”

“To be honest, sometimes I feel like you’ve forgotten how to make that expression. More seriously though, I don’t know what you saw on the walk here, but I’m glad it was enough to distract you for a bit.”

Magic leaned over to look at Bjorn’s eye, watching the animal blink softly. He patted the goat’s snout, giving his riding companion a good pet on the bridge of his nose before returning his attention to his sister. “Clemont said that the person awaiting the package was in a small house to the left of the library.”

Mira hummed, looking from left to right. “If the libraries are anything like they are in the northern Droidell towns, I imagine they probably have the little domes on top. The northwest and the far north aren’t terribly different from one another that way. Their architecture kind of co-evolved.”

“I don’t remember that being in the history textbooks.”

“They weren’t. Dad told me about it when he gave me Mom’s ring. That was the first time I saw it and I didn’t know where he had it made. So it ended up being a whole hour long discussion about how he nearly ran the bakery into the ground just to get this ring made for my mom.”

Magic raised a brow. He’d never pinned Benji for the splurging type, though after witnessing Mira be reckless with her cash on several occasions, perhaps the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree. “And how did that work out for him?”

“My grandfather nearly killed him,” Mira said simply. “But he got lucky with the prices of ingredients that year and ended up making most of the money he lost back. So he got to keep the ring and his livelihood.” She paraded Jeralt around in a circle again, pointing east, though her arm kept changing because of the way she was facing. “We should find the dome building. That’s the biggest landmark.”

And so they walked. The crowds were less of a swarm this time around than they were just groups of people walking past and ahead of them. Some cast strange looks in their direction—many of which Bjorn and Jeralt scared off by stomping their hooves or loudly screaming—as though they’d never seen anyone who had lived in the sun before. They stared at him and Mira as they clomped through town on their goats.

It almost reminded him of the disdainful looks he received as a child from other kids, the ones adults shot his mother as they walked down the street to run errands. He should be used to the looks by now, but there was a mixture of confusion and awe in their eyes that made it slightly more bearable and different from being home.

He matched his sister’s pace, Bjorn occasionally trotting ahead and nudging his horns into Jeralt’s face. The grumpier goat only snorted and bleated in response, which made both Magic and his sister laugh. Mira attempted to get Jeralt to walk faster, but her insistence only resulted in the goat’s stubborn refusal to move anywhere; for once, Magic found himself in ahead of his sister, who groaned and cursed at the loops she had to steer Jeralt in just to get him to cooperate.

After what felt like a tedious, but ever so slightly amusing hour of travel, Magic saw it: the dome shaped building in the distance that made up the Western District library, which meant that their actual location was somewhere up ahead.

Bjorn made a long, high-pitched bleat and paused in his tracks, eyes focused straight ahead. Magic leaned over, one hand on the saddle to keep himself in place, his other hand gently pressed against the goat’s shoulder. The only time Bjorn had ever stopped was out of fear. He’d never seen the goat be so fascinated or in awe that he … stopped moving.

Not again, he thought, patting the creature’s limb. “Bjorn, what’s wrong?”

“Don’t tell me he got startled again,” said Mira, approaching on his right.

“If he did, he’d be on the floor. It’s something different. He sees something up there.”

He wasn’t looking at his sister, but he didn’t have to be to hear the confusion in her voice. “Bjorn wouldn’t happen to be staring at the man running towards us, would he?”

Magic felt the panic on his skin all over again, his eyes wide as he lifted his head.

Sure enough, an older man was hobbling down the road, a walking stick in one hand, his other raised high above his head, waving as if he were trying to flag them down. Without warning, Bjorn reared a little on his hind legs, a high pitched scream emerging from his mouth. Jeralt rose, too, and Mira yelped in surprise. As if they had challenged each other telepathically to a race, both goats sped off, galloping in the direction of the stranger.

Mira screamed; out of the corner of his eye, Magic could see her fumbling for the reins in a desperate attempt to get her companion to heel to no avail. Magic braced himself against the goat’s body, arms wrapped around his neck, though was careful not to strangle him like the last time.

The man held his free hand out in front of him as Bjorn approached and the goat slowed to a bouncy trot—Magic could feel himself rising out of the saddle a little with each bob. “Easy now, Bjorn,” said the man, stroking the goat’s horns. He looked over to Magic’s right, scratching Jeralt’s chin. “You, too, old man.”

Bjorn made a low sound that Magic could only pin as being very similar to a cat’s content purr. Jeralt only huffed, kicking up dust with his hooves.

“I’m sorry,” Mira said, shaking with the reins in her hands, “but who are you?”

The older man smiled, resting his walking stick in front of him. Now that he was a little closer, Magic could see the creases in the stranger’s skin, the pale white of it glowing in the strange neon of the Western District. It almost gave him the appearance of sparkling, the same way that vampires did in the stories he read growing up and he almost half expected to see sharp, needle-like teeth when the man grinned.

“Name’s Alaric,” he said, allowing the two goats to press their foreheads against each of his shoulders. “I’m the poor sap that’s been waiting for my last package—Bjorn here’s kept me waiting the last year and a half for my mail.”

“How do you know the goats?” Magic asked, though, based on how stupidly affectionate the animals were towards the man and their willingness to be pet and chided by the stranger, he thought he had an idea.

“Me? I raised them. And the package in Bjorn’s satchel is an important one to me. Would have made things so much easier with the new goats.”

Magic raised a brow, reaching for the mail in the goat’s pack. He briefly paused and made eye contact with the man, his heart stuttering a little, an unsettling split of green and white boring into him. Magic handed over the parcel in silence as his sister shuffled uneasily in her seat. “What’s so important about the mail?”

A crooked grin spread across the man’s face—not in malice, but in amusement. “How do you think I got those two to be as loyal as they are?” he asked, digging through the contents of his package, and when neither Magic nor Mira answered, he pulled out two vials from the styrofoam.

A deep hue of blue radiated and glowed from inside the glass, fading into a deep purple at the bottom. Magic thought he saw white dots flicker and disappear inside the mixture. For all he knew, he could have been staring at the sky at night, the familiar midnight hue that gave the stars vibrancy at night.

“I share with them,” said the man, slowly shaking the contents of the vials back and forth, “the power of the Spectacle.”