Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
A myriad possibilities raced through Braiden’s mind. These explosions did not approach the volume and violence of the great, powerful kaboom that blasted open the entrance into the Weathervale dungeon.
Maybe it was a team of engineer dwarves. They were always up to their necks in mining work, weren’t they? Blasting new passages in the rock here and there, using their complicated machinery and potent explosives, strong enough to bore into any mountainside.
Perhaps it was alchemists taking advantage of the valley’s remoteness, testing a new batch of dangerous exploding potions? Braiden had heard of those, quite useful for adventurers who craved all the power of a fireball without needing to know how to actually cast one.
His tongue swept between his lips, his mouth dry all over again. Why deny the most likely possibility? He turned the details over in his mind. The valley’s conditions were ideal for othergoat accommodation: a cool and constant wind, plentiful vegetation.
Yhip Valley formed a narrow enough pass for a herd of a reasonable size to feel safe, more or less bordered and defended on either side, able to spot threats approaching from either end of the valley.
Braiden’s hands trembled as he held the spyglass up to his eye, the distant images wavering. He steadied his breath, hoping it would help steady his grip. And there they were, past the crest of that ridge, black spots swarming the emerald green of a verdant valley.
“I can’t believe it,” Braiden said, his muscles stilled, the tremble only present in the sound of his voice. “It’s the othergoats. They’re real.”
“So we’re not under attack?” Augustin rubbed the sleep from his eyes, hands on his thighs as he squinted toward the far north. “They’re under attack? What kind of cruel, barbaric crafter would use fireballs to harvest their fleece?”
Braiden twiddled his fingers. “Actually, I don’t think they’re being attacked with explosives. Knowing how othergoat wool works, I’d say they’re quite well defended from fire.”
“How do you know? We can’t even see what’s going on over — gods, did you see that flash? Bright orange and glaring, like a bomb going off!”
“No one is bombing or throwing fireballs at the othergoats. I may have forgotten to mention. They, uh, tend to explode on their own when they’re agitated.”
Augustin stared at him in wide-eyed incredulity. “You forgot to mention that your fabled othergoats have a tendency to catastrophically self-destruct under stress?”
“No no no, it doesn’t actually hurt them. It’s more like a defense mechanism. Some goats head-butt with their horns, some goats faint. Othergoats — that’s how they ward off predators.”
Augustin’s frown etched even deeper lines into his already stormy face. “And you couldn’t have mentioned from the start that we should have brought oven mitts to make sure you didn’t burn your fingers shearing one?”
“I did bring mitts,” Braiden said sulkily. “Moongrass ones that protect the hands from — ”
“That’s hardly the point right now, Braiden!”
“All right, I’m sorry! I thought maybe saying it out loud might jinx the fact that — never mind. I’m not sure why I didn’t tell you before.”
Braiden knew, of course. It stemmed from the part of him that secretly worried that this, of all things, would be the fantastical thing he’d always dreamed of that might have no foundation in reality.
It was silly, thinking back. The burrowfolk had turned out to be very real and not merely the stuff of legend. Moongrass filament was at last a method of making his weaving magic more permanent, the way the old masters crafted their threads.
It was strange to have come this far and still be so fearful of disappointment, whether that meant disappointing those he loved or disappointing himself. Why couldn’t the othergoats, of all things, be as solid as all the other wondrous things and entities he’d already seen and met?
Another bang shattered the air, rattling the very teeth in Braiden’s skull. So yes, the othergoats were very much real, and solid, and apparently extremely volatile, too.
Braiden chewed his lip, remembering all his party’s exploits. No sense barreling headlong into danger when they didn’t even know what danger they’d be up against.
What could have penetrated Yhip Valley to pose such a threat to the othergoats? The valley’s walls were too steep to normally descend, flanking the othergoat herd on either side, leaving them free to watch only the northern and southern passages for signs of threat.
But what if the threat had come from above?
“Elementals!” Braiden shouted.
“Where?” Augustin ripped the spyglass from his grasp, almost putting his own eye out in his hurry to look down its barrel. “Where are the elementals?”
“Haven’t spotted them — can you even see air elementals with the naked eye? But we need to hurry. Something’s attacking the othergoats from over the ridge. It, they — whatever — something is distressing the herd. We need to go to them. Now!”
Braiden gathered his leftovers as Augustin pulled on his boots, cursing the whole while. They scooped up their possessions, and without uttering another word, Augustin scooped up Braiden, lifting off the grassy hilltop with a single whooshing wind spell.
They soared for Yhip Valley at top speed, and not halfway toward the ongoing cacophony of explosions, Braiden found that he no longer needed a spyglass to locate the othergoats.
There they were, erratic, panicked black specks zigzagging aimlessly around the valley’s grassy floor. This wasn’t at all how Braiden imagined his first encounter with the fabled creatures, but there wasn’t going to be a first encounter if they didn’t hurry and help them against their attackers.
Except — what was attacking them, exactly? Distressed animals would know to flee as far as they could go, generally far, far away from anything with sharp talons and snapping jaws.
This didn’t make sense. The othergoats were scattering instead of seeking safety. Braiden clenched his fists. Had he guessed correctly about air elementals after all?
“Augustin,” he shouted, eager to make himself heard over the flutter of the wizard’s cloak, the howl of passing wind. “What do air elementals look like?”
The wizard said nothing for a tense moment. “W-well, you see, it depends on the balance of elemental essences. The rockwalkers we fought in the dungeon were merged from earth and ice, while the giant elemental was fused from air and ice, and so — ”
“Augustin! Please answer my question. What does an air elemental look like?”
“Like not much at all,” Augustin blurted out. “They’re made of air, after all. Maybe if you look hard enough, you’ll notice how the air ripples around them, or maybe they pick up bits of dust and leaves.”
Braiden would have pinched him if he didn’t think the wizard might react by accidentally dropping him straight down to the valley floor.
“And you didn’t think to tell me about this before?” he yelled.
“Pot, kettle!” Augustin replied. “We’re exactly the same, because I’ve never actually encountered a pure air elemental, either. We’re both going off things we’ve read in books.”
Then they’d just have to wing it, the way they almost always did, down in the dungeon, and now up here in the sky over Yhip Valley.
Drawing nearer and nearer, Braiden could see the othergoats even better, the gloss of their gorgeous coats, the gleam of their beautiful ebony horns.
How majestic they looked, these rare caprine creatures of such —
Kaboom.
Off went one of the othergoats, a burst of orange flame erupting from its very fleece, turning the creature into a walking fireball. Its detonation could have seemed spontaneous, except Braiden knew that something external had to have caused it.
Whatever had frightened the othergoats was still nearby, and it was up to them to find it and stop it, and — oh, gods.
Another explosion, and this time, the othergoat in question had been standing too close to the others, setting off a chain of detonations. Braiden flinched, covering his eyes from the succession of blinding flashes.
They were still in the air, but he knew that the ground must have trembled from all the exploding. Sure enough, the chain of explosions had gouged the valley floor, carving out furrows that incinerated the grass and left only scorching earth.
The othergoats might have been unharmed by their flamboyant defense mechanism, but this was still a harrowing experience for the animals, and could anything good come out of them gradually destroying their home environment?
Another chain of explosions like that — one sufficiently close to the valley wall — could cause blowback from splintering, shattered rock. All the tremors could attract even deadlier predators, or worse, trigger a landslide.
“Drop me off,” Braiden shouted. “Right about here.”
“Are you sure?” Augustin shouted back, incredulous.
“We’ve done this before. Well, sort of. You dropped me by accident the last time. Just do it, Augustin! Trust me.”
Braiden’s stomach lunged as he suddenly dropped out of the air.
His heart pounded as he summoned a flood of magic from the font within his soul, channeling it through his hands, sketching downward and sideward swipes with his fingers, generating a great sheet of cloth sturdy enough to work as a sail, enough to resist and capture the wind.
It worked exactly like the first time, Braiden gripping the ends for dear life, the cloth ballooning into something like a mushroom or the top of a jellyfish. It slowed his descent enough for him to make safe landfall, as safe as he could be in this gauntlet of violently exploding wildlife.
Augustin whooped his wordless congratulations from somewhere above. Braiden quickly learned that kicking his legs and shifting his weight helped him maneuver his trajectory, at least enough to find a spot close enough to assist the herd, but just out of range of potential death by explosion.
Gods, this was why nobody had ever domesticated the othergoats. He’d read about all the explosive stuff, but this was ridiculous. And not one source had mentioned the smell, either — not unpleasant, really, like woodsmoke with a sharper, darker edge of something burnt.
Still, a warning about the chained combustibility of othergoats would have been nice.
Braiden’s eyes swept the valley, scanning for signs of imminent danger, and yet the deadliest things in sight were still the extremely volatile othergoats.
He glanced longingly back up into the sky, suddenly regretting his request to be dropped into what he now realized was a mine field of living, bleating bombs.
What good he could actually offer here on the ground with his woefully lacking knowledge on herding animals was anyone’s guess, but Braiden had never been especially wise. Cautious, a bit cowardly, and headstrong, yes, but not particularly the cleverest in matters of self-preservation.
Perhaps that was why he felt a kind of kinship with the othergoats, who even now were racing in all directions, slamming and butting into each other by accident, kicking out at nothing with their hind legs. As if Braiden needed a surer sign that their attacker was an air elemental.
Or worse — what if there were several of them?
How could anyone really tell, now that Augustin had confirmed that the creatures were essentially invisible?
Augustin who himself was having a hard time of it up in the air, yelping nervously as he spun in wobbly, involuntary cartwheels through the air, buffeted by powerful winds from an unseen adversary.
Wasn’t this supposed to be Augustin’s field of expertise? Impossible as it was for Braiden to grasp, the wizard knew the wind like the back of his hand. This must have been some truly powerful elemental to evade his arcane senses so successfully.
Or elementals, Braiden thought again, his stomach sinking as he spotted a half dozen columns of rapidly whirling wind among the othergoats, like miniature tornados harassing the animals by whipping up dirt and rocks and grass.
Dust devils were a natural phenomenon, that much Braiden knew. But six, maybe seven of them, all pursuing the scattering othergoats like bullies on a playground?
Braiden gulped, rolled up his sleeves, and waded into the fray.