The hills that spread between Nex-Ho and the Wildfree Forest were tall enough that, by the time they had jogged to the top of them, Ember was puffing and panting. Goat Who Wrestles, his sagacious mentor and the tutor of the Vengeful Crystal Hawk Style, was sitting on a platform that rested atop Ember's head like the world's largest, least comfortable hat. Ember, who knew that he could leap half a league in a bound and tear houses out of their foundations, knew that he could have carried Goat without sweating – and his two Lunar Wives, June Devilborn, and maybe more. But doing so would have made his anima flare as the energies of the Unconquered coursed through his dragon-lines.
And Goat had, at the beginning of the hike, said: "Whatever you do, Sunboy, do not flare your anima."
"Oh? Is this is a martial arts training thing? Like, control your anima, control your spirit! Control your spirit...whoaaaah!" Ember had kicked at the air so aggressively that a concussive wave of compressed air had snapped out from his foot and smashed into a dumpster that was left by the wall of Nex-Ho, sheering it in half. "Oh, uh, oopse, uh-"
Goat had snorted, then hauled out his palanquin hat, then jammed it onto Ember's head, and said: "No. We just don't want the Fae to know you're the Unconquered."
"Will they be upset?" Ember asked.
"Oh, no, they'll be
delighted
," Goat had said. "You'll be the one who won't enjoy being devoured by the greedy mouths of ten million million fae for the next two centuries."
And so, Ember's neck and shoulders felt like one big knot of tension and sweat beaded on his forehead and his shoulders and dripped from his fingers. His whole chest, in fact, was glistening like he had been oiled. He wanted to bend his head forward, to try and catch his breath. But doing so felt like it might snap his neck right off, considering the weight balanced on his scalp. Goat, who was smoking from his pipe, blew out a small dragon of smoke, which winged into the sky before finding a cloud to lay upon and take a nap.
"I'm honestly moderately impressed!" Goat said, puffing again.
"Really?" Ember asked.
Goat blew out the smoke cloud of a small, three breasted woman, which floated in the air before dispersing. "No, most Unconquered would have been able to handle this with ease, even without flaring their anima. At least, from the stories." He chuckled. "Lets hope they were all exaggerations, or else you get to be the worst Unconquered, eh?" He clapped his hands. "Mush!"
Ember groaned and started down the hills towards the Wildfree Forest – which looked a great deal like the Wildfree Forest that had spread to the north and east of Rataka Village. Ember almost went cross-eyed trying to remember the map of the Land while also avoiding skipping in mud, tripping on rocks, or running into stunted trees that had managed to grow into the hillside. He sprang over a small creek and landed with a grunt, the palanquin hat rocking on his head. "Question!" he gasped out. "Wild...free? But...Rat-" he gasped. "Taka!"
"Every Wildfree Forest is Wildfree Forest," Goat said, tapping at his pipe, then breathing out a ram that ran through the air. "The same way that all pure ocean is Pure Ocean – they're a metaphysical concept intruding into our world, a middle ground between raw chaos and the ordered reality of the Sun, the Moon, and the Gods." He chuckled. "Watch your wits."
"I'd be able...to watch my wits...if Chirp...and Xora...could come...and...help!"
Goat snorted. "Yes, I'm quite certain that your Lunar Wife and your Lunar Saris..." Goat's voice grew more gentle on the second word and Ember felt a teeny bit less like stabbing him in the junk. Goat respected Chirp. Now, if only he'd respect
Ember
, they'd be good. "...are going to let their Unconquered Husband head into the Wildfree Forest, court the Queen of the Fae and screw her brains out so hard that she'll give us free passage through the deep chaos, without following."
Ember slowed as he came to the bottom of the hill and the foreboding wall of the Forest. Trees spread out to either side – thick and heavy with leaves, with bark of near midnight black. The space between the trees was shadowed, making the lances of light from the sun overhead seem all the brighter. He could taste an otherworldly spice on the air, and his tongue tingled in his mouth, as if he was already chewing on the forbidden fruits of the fae. He shook his head – and Goat yelped, his pipe clattering over the edge of the palanquin hat and to Ember's feet.
"Hey!" Goat snapped. "I only have six hundred of those left."
"How do those all
fit
in your loincloth!?" Ember asked.
"As if I put my soulgem on my
forehead
where anyone could see it," Goat said.
Ember, who hadn't even thought to look for Goat's soulgem – as no one in Rataka had had one until he had been incarnated as the Unconquered – opened his mouth. Closed it. "Right." he said.
Note to self,
he thought.
Never ever ever see Goat naked. Also, investigate your inventory!
He knew that he had at least one possession of the Third Unconquered in his soulgem. Maybe he'd have something from Good King Bahul in there? Or something from the First Unconquered? Or the Fifth! Or...any of them! But then Goat's foot clomped against his hat – rattling the whole structure. "Forward!" He said. Ember wanted to glance back over his shoulder, to see if he could see Chirp and Xora. But instead, he started forward, walked between two trees, and stopped short – the hat catching on both trees and tugging off his head. He had a second of horrified shock at the sudden lack of a weight on his neck – and then-
Crash!
Ember slowly turned around and saw Goat sprawled in the wreckage of the hat, his legs canted wide, his palms spreading on the ground behind him. His beard had a huge splinter stuck through a large tuft of it, and his bald pate gleamed in the sunlight that beat down on him from overhead.
Goat spat his pipe out and stood. He picked the wooden splinter from his beard and flicked it away.
Ember tried to say 'sorry' and 'oopse' at the same time, but the words choked in his throat like two rickshaws slamming into one another in a busy street and all that came out was a strangled 'sopse!' but before he could get a real word out, Goat smirked at him. "I was wondering how long it'd take, my student." He walked past Ember.
"Yes!" Ember said, loudly. "I
meant
to do that."
Goat stopped, turned to face him, then reached out, grabbed Ember by the ear, and dragged him into the Wildfree Woods.
As the two of them vanished, Chirp and Xora peeked up and out of a pair of bushes. Xora glowed faintly with a pale, silver aura – paradoxically making her rather easy to see...
if
you could spot her in the preternaturally perfect hiding spot she had chosen, guided by the essence of the Moons, which coursed through her veins the same way that the power of the Sun flowed through Ember. She cracked her knuckles so loudly that Chirp ducked for cover, before emerging back out of the brushes, blushing furiously.
"I'm seriously considering..." Xora paused. "Um..."
Chirp blushed. "Kicking Goat's butt?" they suggested.
"W-Well, I mean, I don't want to kick anyone's butt," Xora whispered, her head ducking forward slightly.
"Oh!" Chirp said, their ears perking up slightly as they bared their fangs. "You
hold
him, I kick his...you know...man bits."
"The dick?" Xora asked.
Chirp blushed. "I was trying to be, um, a bit more circumspect."
"He'll be circumspect once I'm done with him," Xora said, frowning. "That's what folks from the Desert of Glass do, I hear."
"...what?" Chirp whispered.
"They take some glass and-" Xora held up a finger, then mimed sawing the tip off.
Chirp gaped, her ears pinning back. "Really?"
"Not the whole tip!" Xora said, hurriedly. "Just...the skin part."
Chirp gaped even harder. "Why?!"
"Their god gives them superhuman strength for doing it," Xora said. "They can fly. And shoot mana blasts out of their eyes."
"Oh," Chirp said, blinking. "Okay, that makes sense."
The two of them realized that Goat and Ember were now distant shadows in the dimness of the forest. Chirp nodded. "Okay," they said. "Lets use our animal forms to track them." They flashed with silver light, becoming a small, fuzzy, flat nosed bat with even more pronounced fangs than they normally had. They flapped around – and Xora blushed, rubbing her hand along the curved fin that sprouted from the back of her neck. Chirp squeaked, in the tongue of the bats:
"Oh! Right!"
They flashed back to their humanoid form. "Lets just sneak."
"Yeah!" Xora's body glowed silver as she channeled mana into her – and despite being nearly six feet tall and clad in heavy muscle, managed to creep through the woods without making a noise, nor disturbing a brush. Chirp followed after, their body swiftly being almost impossible to see in the deep, brooding darkness that dominated between the trees.
Together, they followed – towards the heart of the Wildfree Forest.
***
"And then the Bonies came around the hill," Goat said. "And the only person standing between them and the village was me and Junie. So, I looked at her, and she said...they won't eat me if they're busy eating
you
. And then she started to run. Now, normally, most people would take that as a good reason to get upset. But you see, they don't call em Bonies because they're covered in bones."
"Wait, they're not covered in bones?" Ember asked, trying to keep up with his sifu in both the physical environment of the Forest – which had grown thicker and wilder with every step – but also the space of his seemingly endless panoply of war stories.
"Oh, no, they are," Goat said.
That was when the young person stepped out from around the tree. They were the same height as Ember and looked somewhere between male and female – they had the facial features of a woman, but the short, well tended beard of a man. The fact that their skin was a crystal blue and their hair was sea green wasn't actually a definite indicator that they were a Fair Folk – as there were humans with blue skin and green hair all over the place. It was something subtler. Something that was almost indefinable – ineffable. It was in tiny movements, in graceful cant of the head, in the liquidity in the eyes, in the alien emotion that flitted through them.
Ember
knew
that this person was a fae, from their head to their toes.
"Greetings!" the fae said, bowing almost in half, flipping one hand wide. "I am the Greeter. You are almost at the Goblin Market – might I ask your name?" They stood, smiling at Ember, who smiled back.
"I'm Ember," he said, holding out his hands.
"May I have your pronouns?" Greeter asked, taking Ember's hand.
"Uh, sure," Ember said as Goat choked on his pipe. "He him?"
