Braiden threw his arms around Augustin, finding the wizard’s neck soaked in sweat, his chest rumbling from unbridled laughter.
“You did it!” Braiden shouted, hugging him tighter.
Augustin squeezed back. “We did it. You, and me, and our new friends, the othergoats.”
He looked remorsefully at the six that he’d hurled like cannonballs across the valley, scratching the back of his neck.
“I do feel bad for them, though. They’re only sleeping, right? Please tell me they’re only asleep.”
Braiden looked nervously around the valley floor, mentally counting off the rest of the othergoat herd still standing by the edge of the large crater, that one same onyx-eyed othergoat standing motionless in their midst.
“All accounted for,” he said. “They blew that crater in the ground with a much larger collision. The elemental knocked nearly the entire herd into each other. It looks like exploding too much exhausts them.”
“When an othergoat expends all its flame,” a woman’s voice said, “it must sleep and replenish its inner warmth. It is when they are at their most vulnerable.”
Braiden and Augustin stared at each other wide eyed, one quietly confirming with the other that they must have heard the same haughty, commanding voice. Augustin fell to his knees and threw his head back, gazing at the sky.
“The goddess Ybura speaks! She makes her voice known even from this starless sky.”
Braiden looked up, squinting against the sun, watching for a radiant starry woman to emerge from a gap in the clouds. Augustin tugged on his trousers and glared.
“On your knees,” he hissed. “It’s very rude to goddesses, or so I’ve heard.”
“The goddess Ybura has not graced Yhip Valley in millennia. Her hand may have touched the earth in ages past, but it is no goddess to whom you speak. Behold.”
Augustin frowned as he picked himself back up again, dusting the dirt from his knees, glancing around in bewilderment. But Braiden suspected that he knew exactly who — or what — was speaking to them.
He swallowed thickly, turning to face the othergoat herd, his gaze automatically going to the eerie one from before, the one that stood as still as a statue, that stared into his heart with a pair of eyes as black as darkest night.
And then it opened its third eye, baleful and glaring golden from the center of its forehead. Augustin gasped. Braiden clutched for the wizard’s arm to stop from fainting or falling.
“It isn’t often that those who walk on two legs come to our home,” the creature said, without moving its mouth or expending breath. “Even less often that they offer to help.”
The voice reverberated inside Braiden’s skull, as if transmitted there directly, whether through the golden eye’s magic or some ancient form of othergoat telepathy. Augustin rapped his knuckles against the side of his head, clearly experiencing the same thing.
“We are grateful for your assistance, in any event. Our only defense is explosion. Then follows the exhaustion. And then, when the inner flame flickers out, expiration. We are glad. Say thank you, children.”
As one, the entire herd bowed their heads low, sending a thrill down Braiden’s spine. The sensation of mingled delight and fear must have mirrored what that one othergoat had felt mid-flight, the first one Augustin had fired as a living cannonball.
Augustin bowed back, deep and low, and Braiden awkwardly followed suit. As comically off-color as Augustin could be, Braiden always found himself impressed with how the wizard could so easily slip on the trappings of etiquette.
He’d dealt with royalty, after all, like that time he’d helped the sleeping trickster princess of Il-venesse. Smiling to himself, Braiden remembered how Augustin had also taken the lead when greeting and dealing with both Grandest Mother Magda of the Underborough and King Emeritas Ileli Emeridan.
“The timing of our arrival was fortuitous,” Augustin said smoothly. “In truth, we came to find and fight monsters made of wind, to harvest their leavings. But we had also hoped to witness your kind and to learn, friend. If we may call you friend, that is. Unless you go by a different name? I am Augustin. This is Braiden.”
The othergoat blinked all three of its eyes. “We bear no names. We only know each other by the differences in our coats, and horns, and smells. We may look exactly alike, but we can tell each other apart. It is the way of the upright, not of othergoats, to give and take names.”
“Naturally,” Augustin said, bowing his head again without missing a beat. “I apologize if I have caused offense.”
“Unnecessary. No offense caused, no harm done. You said you came to learn, and so I teach. But if a name you require, then a name you shall have. I am the progenitor of this herd, we othergoats of Yhip Valley. You may call me the Mothergoat.”
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Augustin said.
“Pleasure,” Braiden echoed, bending his knees and clasping the long hem of his traveling tunic, finding himself halfway between a bow and a curtsey.
“You are the first upright visitors we’ve had in too long a time. Unusually helpful, too. When others hear the sounds of our joyous detonation, they go fleeing far away from the valley.”
Upright, she’d said, as opposed to human. Very thoughtful for someone who didn’t much mingle with the races of Aidun, taking all its two-legged peoples into consideration. Braiden thought he could learn a thing or two from the unexpectedly inclusive yet frankly very intimidating Mothergoat.
