"That," Caerwyn said, looking around as if to make sure we were all okay, "was fear."
"Yeah, thank you," Gilded said, still clinging to Gléonwon. "We gathered as much. Whose fear? Fear of what?"
Caerwyn stroked his beard, looking bothered. "I guess it is getting worse."
Llewellyn was slowly lowering his sword, though his knuckles were still pale around the hilt.
Caerwyn did something with his hand and the lingering feeling suddenly lifted entirely, bringing back… uh, ease and what seemed to be Caerwyn's signature warmth.
Damn. Much better. I'd love to be able to do that.
"What's getting worse?" Gléonwon asked, relaxing as well.
Caerwyn watched us all breathe in relief, looking satisfied. "How much do you children know about Magic?"
Children?
Well, I suppose to a god thousands of years old we might look like children.
I felt Llewellyn step behind me, pressing his front to my back, seeking contact.
That felt… very good. I pressed back into him. Penguin let out a tiny content chirp from my pocket, rubbing his face against my side and Llewellyn's hand went to him, rubbing his head, then… landed on my waist.
"Our skill level is different," I said, exhaling. "But we can all use it, though mostly through the System apart from Gilded. And we also know that Pure Magic is what everything is made of."
"Pure Magic," Caerwyn said. "Yes. That's a nice way to put it." He smoothed his beard down. "What you might be missing is that, while it makes up everything, Magic is… how to put it… asleep at the wheel, for the most part."
I frowned. We met Sleeping Magic before in the form of the Shard and the Pool, but somehow that didn't seem to be what he was talking about.
"Ah, no," Caerwyn said when I asked, shaking his head. "What I mean is that the Magic that makes up all existence is often in a state akin to sleep. It keeps creating, with all sorts of yearnings and fears arising within it, but without any real awareness of what's happening."
That… couldn't be a good thing.
"It's not an exact comparison," Caerwyn said, "but think of it like this. When we dream, we forget that we're dreaming. If it's a good dream, then that's wonderful. But if it's not, if it's a nightmare, it can be scary. When Magic's creation goes well, you get dragons, wonderful sculptures, trees, food, this mountain, me, you... All of it is Magic making things up. Unfortunately occasionally, when things don't flow smoothly, or it wants different things, it… tangles," Caerwyn said. "You've seen the tangles. You've severed a few, I believe."
Oh!
The Knots.
Well!
I mean, based on what we knew, none of this really came as a big surprise. Still, it was weird hearing it put like this.
"I'm not following," Gilded said, frowning. "That fear came from the Knots? There isn't a Knot here."
"No," Caerwyn said. "I mean that they're both symptoms of the same thing. Magic sometimes tangles and it gets scared. Normally, from Magic's perspective, there's no being born or dying, you see, there's just coalescing and dissolving. It's all there is and it makes up everything. But occasionally it can… forget. When that happens, you get phenomena like the ones we just experienced."
Well.
So that was why gods could recoalesce.
I thought back to the nothingness. At the time, I'd felt my choice had been whether to let go into the Magic Field and forget who I was or hold on. But… apparently Caerwyn could dissolve without forgetting. Could have been the same for me too?
Still, I wouldn't have wanted to risk it. I'd wanted to come back because I had people I loved. I didn't really care about anything else here.
"But these Waves are new," Llewellyn said, frowning, still pressed against me. "I've been fighting Knots for seven years and had never seen one. And now it's already the second."
"Yes," Caerwyn said. "Something seems to be making it worse."
Penguin chirped, apparently asking if he could tell what that was.
Caerwyn shook his head. "I've been dissolved for too long."
He did seem quite troubled.
Meanwhile, Gilded seemed to have recovered enough that he was now fuming.
"All this nonsense—dreaming, non-dreaming, whatever—and I'm still marked! Did you really just say all that with a straight face and still expect me to take flying classes?!"
***
The biggest problem of Gilded's current predicament was that, while we could leave just as we did yesterday, even though we couldn't teleport from inside the caves, Gilded… couldn't.
"So you're just going to leave me here?!" he asked, appalled.
Well, what did he expect us to do?!
Penguin chirped in support, looking a bit contrite.
"We're not going to move in here with you," Llewellyn said.
"And you're not alone," I told him. "Both Gléonwon and Caerwyn are here with you and we'll be back for Penguin's flying lessons soon."
Gilded let out a noise like a tea kettle.
"Are you leaving already?" Gléonwon asked, swishing his tail sadly. "Didn't you want to check the books?"
"Books?" Caerwyn asked.
Right! I'd forgotten about the books!
"And you could always start your lessons now," Caerwyn told Gilded. "There are plenty of platforms here you can practice safely from."
Gilded let out another noise.
"We could go and see them now," Llewellyn said.
We just had to find our way out like last time. Penguin could probably guide us easily, but… I took my phone out, just in case. I pulled up the photo of the map and tried to figure out where we even were relative to the temple.
"Give that here," Gilded said, leaning over my shoulder. "We're here. The big cave should be… hm. That way, then down."
"Or," Caerwyn said, "you could all follow me. I built this place."
…Fair point.
***
Caerwyn set off at a cheerful pace, hands clasped behind his back like a tour guide. Gléonwon trotted after him immediately, tail swishing, while Penguin poked his head out of my pocket to watch the reliefs.
"Did you carve all of these?" Gléonwon asked, staring up at a wall of dragons mid-flight.
"Every single one," Caerwyn said, pleased. "That one took me a decade. See the wing angle? Very hard to get right in stone."
"It's beautiful," Gléonwon said, looking excited.
"You have excellent taste, my boy."
Behind me, Gilded was muttering something about gods and their fixations, though he'd also slowed down twice to look at the carvings properly.
"What's that thing he did? Toning down the fear?"
"What?" Gilded said. "No, that's not what that was. He turned his protection up. That's why we were less scared."
Uh. Well, I supposed that worked too.
Gilded went off to investigate more carvings and Llewellyn fell into step beside me.
"We should be home making out," he said, grumbling.
I grinned at him. Well, that was the perfect plan for later.
When I pressed my shoulder against his and answered through the bond with—um—additional plans, Llewellyn's ears went fully red.
He was right, though. Why did we have to be here and deal with this when we could be home and—