“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.
