—Sally—

  After a few seconds of falling down the escape chute, I stopped being able to see the top of the tunnel. As soon as I couldn’t see the serpent glaring down the hole anymore, I giggled with delight.

  The constant rush of adrenaline was suddenly freed of the terror that’d caused it, and it felt exhilarating. With a—only a bit manic—laugh I spread my wings, the recently healed limbs feeling as good as new.

  I squirmed out of Orion’s grasp and joined him in freefall, and a new type of joy—one that I’d never known before—filled me, rising with the sensation of wind coursing past my wings.

  “Onay! opstay ityay Sally!” Orion cried out desperately, but I ignored him, too high on the endorphins rushing through my veins to give up this opportunity to try out flying.

  The feeling of the air billowing into my wings was like nothing else I'd ever known before. My body somehow knew that it had been made for this, twitching and moving itself into an arrow-like shape aimed downwards. I barely had to think or consciously guide the muscles into position, my body did the hard work for me—the opposite of learning to walk.

  There were no contradictions between how I desired, but now had to move. I didn't have to mentally remap every familiar movement onto a strange new body. I suppose flying—even if this version was mostly falling—was easier than walking, as I didn't have any memories messing with what my muscles already knew.

  With my lowered air resistance I sped ahead of Orion, quickly descending below him. I then spread my wings a tiny bit, allowing them to catch some of the air rushing by me, and be dragged back to eye-level with the Ranger.

  For the first time since being born into this world, every part of my body was fully under my control, every instinct snapping into place. Every time I so much as twitched, it felt purposeful and defined. There were no wasted movements, and my body slid through the air without the toil and struggle that even walking usually gave me.

  Fortunately, the wind quickly stripped off all of the foul-smelling liquid that'd been sticking to me. I ignored it as perfectly as I did before, as if it was only a bit of cave-lake water. Maybe if I pretended that it didn't happen, then maybe it never did.

  I rolled through the air, spinning and doing barrel rolls with an Olympian’s level of control and dexterity. I used my new-found skills to loop around the flailing Ranger, feeling a dangerous amount of happiness at how our usual interaction had been reversed.

  Luckily the tunnel had widened, expanding from the width of a tree to at least five metres in diameter, saving Orion from coming into contact with the walls. Which wouldn't've been pretty at terminal velocity.

  But Orion wasn’t taking to flying—technically falling—as well as I did, and he'd begun to lose control, rotational momentum slowly building as he began to spin.

  First it was front flips—about one every couple of seconds—but he did try to stop the nauseating motions by windmilling his arms in the opposite direction. Not the best choice. He had overcompensated while trying to stabilise, and sent himself flipping backwards, even faster than before. It looked terrifyingly fast and uncomfortable for a human.

  I decided to repay some of my debt and help him, snaking onto his moving body and gripping his shirt by the back of his collar. By carefully extending my wings, they caught only some of the wind—avoiding taking on the full weight of the Ranger and losing the new limbs. Through careful management, I was able to control his fall.

  After only a few seconds, Orion’s spinning was halted as I brought him upright, also forced to continuously adjust my wings to micromanage his movements. I’d only been using them properly for the first time for a few minutes, but already they felt more natural and instinctive than my own legs, I knew exactly how to move them to get the result I wanted. It was a feeling that felt so familiar, like I’d been dreaming of this my entire life and today was the first time I’d remembered it when I woke up.

  “Ank-youthay, ank-youthay.” Orion muttered to himself, a hand reaching up and patting my tail in thanks. I let him for a second before I tore it free, needing it for control and balance to combat the violently gusting wind.

  Once I settled Orion, I was forced to sit still for long enough to have a concerning thought.

  We’d escaped Ulun’suti, but where exactly were we going now? I hadn’t thought too much about it earlier because I trusted Orion enough at this point to think that he’d have a plan, and the fire escape sign was a good omen. But… what was at the bottom of this hole?

  I twisted my neck around to peer down past Orion’s shoulders, and saw that a faint light was below us, marking some change in the previously uniform tunnel. More importantly it was rapidly getting closer, speeding towards us like a bullet train.

  Which wasn't good.

  I'd told myself that it was my instincts that made me let go of Orion and spread my wings as far as they could go, though the act of self-preservation didn't feel that pure. But even with my perfect reaction time, it only managed to slow my fall by a slim margin before the light at the end of the tunnel engulfed us.

  I froze in shock as we passed over the bright boundary, and found myself in a cavern. It wasn’t anywhere near as massive as the one we’d just fallen from, but it was about fifty metres wide in diameter, with a roof that only went up ten to fifteen metres. It also had a more natural structure, the stalactites hanging from the roof were just that, rocks and not ancient trees.

  But what made this cave as interesting as the underground lake, was the torches. They were varied as their number, and hundreds of them were simply lying on the rocky floor, dumped and abandoned. However, they were burning like they’d just been lit.

  Some were simply scrawny branches that’d been ripped off a tree, fire eating at it from one end, and others were thick wooden poles, their ends wrapped in cloth that’d been dipped in ignited oil. Many were made of stone, fire spewing out of the end of the stone stakes with square ends, some of them were unadorned, while some sculpted with engravings in ivory stone.

  Directly below us was a gap in the sea of lights, a circle a couple of metres wide that was rushing towards us, but nowhere near as fast as before. It took half a second to realise that our fall had been slowed by some supernatural force, but the floor was still moving up at a terrifyingly fast pace.

  Orion smacked into the ground a millisecond before I did, bouncing painfully off the stone as I landed on his thighs, the meaty limbs cushioning my fall far better than anything else here could’ve. I bounced off of the human-shaped cushion and landed onto the floor next to Orion, and with a quick look at him, I saw that we were both mostly uninjured from landing. The aftermath of the whole experience felt a bit too familiar to the last time I fell off a cliff to be a coincidence.

  I looked around us for any immediate threats, but only noticed a gap in the torches laying all around us. It made a path a metre wide, and led through the sea of fire and to the edge of the cavern walls. Something made of gold glinted in the darkness at the end of the path, and I’d bet that it was the end of our journey in this mountain.

  An excited yip escaped my mouth before I could control myself and I got up to go explore the path. I glanced back at Orion to confirm that he was doing the same—walking that is, not making foxy noises. I waited for him to get up before I bounded down the path, the Ranger limping after me, his bruises from the landing probably hadn't had a chance to heal yet.

  We soon found ourselves standing before a prison cell, golden bars layered horizontally and vertically across the stone wall. The bars were sharp-edged hexagonal cylinders with geometric patterns carved into them. The dizzying complex markings were etched into the bars with only straight lines, every change in direction a sharp turn, and they never bent in arcs.

  Behind the bars was an empty, square recess into the mountain wall about three metres deep, but barred behind them was nothing but air, with no prisoner in sight.

  Well, it was a bit inaccurate to call it empty, as there were two items sitting on the floor, and a mural painted on the back wall. One of the items was a wooden mask made of thick bark, rustic and cultish, the only marks on it being two eye-holes and a crescent moon carved onto its forehead.

  The other item was a cloak, thick and coarse brown wool that had smooth flowing patterns embroidered into the cloth, a style opposite to the ones carved on the bars, but the most significant thing about the sheet was the coins. There had to be hundreds of coins, all silver and round, with square holes punched through their middles, each one with a string looped through said hole to tie them to the cloth.

  And the painting itself was mystifying in the strangest of ways. It wasn’t that good to be honest, but it evoked memories of those ancient murals, the ones found in Egyptian tombs and on Greek pots, showing stories and myths that I’d never seen before, the hard and thick lines telling a multitude of tales.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  There was a scene of a dragon gobbling up a crowd of Tolkien-like dwarves, but their skin was ebony, and blacker than human skin tone could be. Next to it, separated by thick black lines declaring they were different stories, a giant anaconda—covered in rainbow feathers instead of scales—was fighting a black-as-night panther.

  Yet another picture showed a person with pale skin and red hair, lines of blue paint tattooing their body as they danced with a skeleton. The bones had been filled with flowers, its eyes—that should've been in those sockets—had been replaced by two blooming yellow flowers.

  But the strangest sight of all was the centrepiece, the largest one, and a brutally simplistic scene of an eclipse. Though the usual arrangement of the heavenly bodies had been reversed, the sun covering half of the moon. But where the uncovered crescent of the moon should've been, there was a body.

  On top of pale blue disk was a shrivelled corpse, dead and mummified, its shoulders and face exposed while the rest was covered by the sun, hiding any meaningful details about the person. I had no idea if it used to belong to a boy or girl, I couldn't tell you anything about the cadaver—other than it was dead.

  Though the manner of death was shown, a hilt of a dagger sticking out of the corpse’s back. And with how the picture was drawn as a whole, it made the eclipse look like a coffin, the sun being the lid that was slowly being pulled over the moon—the box containing the corpse.

  Before I could try and dissect the scene any further, the gentle ringing of metal rustling distracted me, and I looked for the source of the sound.

  My attention was directed back down at the two items on the floor, and I felt unnerved when I saw them start to move. They both began to levitate, the pleasant clinking of coins echoing through the cave as the sheet rose—as if gravity had lost its hold on the items.

  With the mask still floating upwards, the sheet suddenly fell after rising two metres, but instead of returning to the floor, it was landed on an invisible body. The brown cloak rang out like a waterfall made of coins, and a completely average figure was revealed by the contours of the cloth. Their gender was unidentifiable and the only things I could decisively say about them, was that they weren’t skinny—a bit pudgy—and they were kind of short. Though my perspective on what's tall or not had become twisted because of Orion.

  The thing that fascinated me about this spectre was that they were still invisible, even though it had a cloak covering them now. The gaps in the sheet at the bottom showed a complete lack of feet, and it seemed that the only thing capable of interacting with their existence was the sheet.

  Then the mask moved, settling on where the figure’s face should’ve been, and within those two empty eye-holes of the mask, two ghostly blue flames ignited. The pale embers—the colour somehow specifically reminding me of moonlight reflecting off of a lake—trailed upwards. The smokeless flames stretched half a metre upwards, and flowed unnaturally. Their trail lacked any of the dancing movement wicks usually have, and made me think of blood, a viscous flow that pooled upwards instead of following gravity.

  A cough broke me out of my shocked state of staring, though the noise calling for my attention was distant and muffled, like hearing someone speak underwater.

  “tHe-re you aRe, my Ex-pected Visi-tors.” A strange genderless voice mused, the off-kilter and echoing voice emanating from the general direction of the prison cell.

  “To-ok you lonG en-ough” The entity laughed, bowing at the waist while keeping those two ghostly eyes locked onto us, the coins on their sheet loudly announcing their every movement.

  [Using [Appraisal – Lvl 1] on: --- ]

  [Just a sheet and a mask.

  Nothing to see here! :) ]

  The response I got from the [Appraisal] was a new type of strange, and peculiar enough that I tried again.

  [Using [Appraisal – Lvl 1] on: --- ]

  [Don’t be rude, you can just ask if you’d like to know more about me.]

  I looked away from the screen hovering in front of me to see that they were staring at me, their mask now distinctly facing towards me, still holding their bow.

  “Go oN, ask.” They mockingly commanded as the straightened back up, and a realisation began to coalesce, screaming that this wasn’t anyone or anything lesser than the thing upstairs.

  “Oh, Be-Fore we con-tinue, Yo-u’ll wanT to Cut oFf th-at pock-et.” They added, pointing as best they could under the thick robe towards Orion’s chest. I looked at where they pointed, and saw a black blood stain on the flap of his jacket pocket.

  Orion, upon seeing the stain, quickly reached to his waist and pulled out a mundane hunting knife. Using the serrated edge to cut off the corrupted cloth, both a piece of his jacket and a-a… a butter knife? Fell to the ground just outside of the cage.

  But seriously? What kind of person would bring a butter knife to a dungeon? Adding to that, who’d have a special pocket in their jacket for cutlery?

  “ThE criSes is ad-veRted, tIme For intRo-Duc-tiOns!” They announced dramatically, the cloak jingling merrily with their enthusiasm.

  “I aM the gOd of tHe mooN, Gu-iDe of the Dead, waRden of tHe thI-ngs oF nigHt, and a deve-Loper on tHe side. Tho-Ugh, since being lock-ed up, most of tho-se are on-ly ti-tles now.” The Moon god mused, my jaw dropping as I realised that I was staring at a god. A bit anti-climatic though, I was expecting something a bit more-

  “Bit moRe wh-at?” The Moon god asked, interrupting my thoughts with their words and the unspoken implication that they could read my thoughts.

  “Im-pRiso-Ned oR not, I a-m stI-Ll a gOd.” They continued, the fact that they spent their godly power on sassing me was annoying.

  “Owhay areyay ouyay alkingtay otay?” Orion asked, the Moon god’s mask moving to look at Orion.

  “WhY saLl-y of co-Urse, who el-Se?” The Moon god jokingly responded, their tone distorted enough by whatever magical effect it had that their voice sounded almost mocking.

  “Atwhay ? Utbay look! E'sshay ustjay anyay infantyay akedray?” Orion questioned, a strange slip of fear worming its way into my brain from the conversation.

  “Hmm… Yo-u sA-y tha-T Sal-Ly is 'Just a female Drakeling'. N-AY, She’s mUch mor-E.” The Moon god replied, leaving me feeling perturbed with how they echoed Orion's words, somehow perfectly replicating the sound and intonation of the end of his previous sentence while translating it perfectly. The god mockingly exaggerating the incorrect pronoun out as much as they could.

  Why? I doubt that they did that for no reason, and they were responding to Orion… Oh! Did Orion think I was female? While I'm flattered that he could make such an assumption, it's an incorrect one, and I should correct it—even if I couldn't understand his words well enough to explain it.

  "Th-Ere Migh-T be a lang-Uage baRriE-r, tHo-ugh writing alW-ays woU-ld've Wo-rkEd." The Moon god pointed out. While the implication of us being able to communicate through English letters was an extreme revelation, I remembered a detail which only added to the evidence of Orion's mistaken understanding of me.

  My name makes so much more sense if Orion thought I was a 'girl'.

  He'd assumed that I was just a 'random little drakeling'—which I couldn't blame him for—but he'd tacked the word 'female' onto that . I felt a shudder of nervous trepidation go through me, knowing that another thing had been added to the awkward pile of things that I'm going to have to explain to him.

  The conversation where I have to tell him that I'm not some 'tameable' animal, and not really an infant drake either—mentally at least. And the cherry on top, not a girl either. If he's anything like me, he's going to be disappointed that the 'tameable female pet' he found wasn't any of those things. I just have to hope that he wouldn't take that out on me. Maybe he would abandon me and force me to survive on my own, though there was much worse he could do.

  Even if he made a mistake, it’s not my fault he’s a moron, so why would a freak like the Moon god care?

  What even are you? Do you even fall into the categories of boy or girl? Cause you definitely don't sound like either gender, and there’s not anything left other than that.

  The Moon god’s humour disappeared as it refocused on me, its anger tainting the very air as the fiery wisps that made up its eyes lengthened and writhed in agitation, the ends of the flames touching the ceiling a metre above it.

  “You th-Ink you ha-ve the rI-ght to mock me? You, of all the path-etIc peo-ple from ea-rth I’ve wIt-nes-sed, you trY-ing to mock me about wh-at the Sun gOd stole fro-m me is an iro-nic joke that fate itse-lf doeSn’t hAve the gAll to make."

  "Just be-cAuse yOu’re on tHe oth-er siDe of the-se bAr-s chi-ld, y-Ou ar-en't sA-fe fro-m mE.” The Moon god threatened, and it only occurred to me then that—even if it-they deserve it—it wasn't a good idea to make fun of them.

  “Opstay! Iyay on'tday owknay atwhay eshay aidsay, utbay…” Orion intervened, stepping in between me and the looming god. But his intervention seemed to work, and the god had paused its approach, freezing in place—as if remembering something, or listening to someone.

  They then retreated, taking back the couple of steps they took towards me and then smoothing out the unwrinkled robe with invisible hands.

  “My apO-logies, I’ll stop both-Ering her.” They declared magnanimously, like they were doing me a favour. They then cleared their throat, the sound still strange and disconcerting.

  “Be-fore I se-nd you o-n to the ex-it, you hav-e ea-rned the ri-ght to a rewa-rd.” They said professionally, like reading off of a script, their voice also lost some of its warbley quality as they calmed down.

  “… Ateverwhay ouyay inkthay isyay estbay.” Orion answered while I tried to mentally scrounge up an issue that I needed a god to fix.

  “Ah, the-n yo-u may h-ave my old w-atch. It will gu-ide you we-ll.” The god declared, like i-they weren’t currently handing Orion a cracked and battered leather wrist watch. Even my parents would've known better than to buy it, even if they were offered a discount on it.

  Then I remembered the thing that’d been blocking my process from the very start, even more than not being able to communicate with Orion.

  This stupid broken system.

  “My cre-ation isn’t stupid… Tho-ugh it does seem like so-me-one bro-ke it.” The Moon god admitted, they then moved as close to me as the bars would allow and crouched. Their mask coming to a stop an uncomfortable few centimetres away from my face.

  “Hmm… I see, the-re’s a cla-sh. My co-mplim-ents to who-ev-er set up this men-tal mesh aro-und your so-ul, fantast-ic work for a tr-ansiti-on betwe-en bo-dies.” They complimented… my brain?

  “No-thing, noth-ing. but the re-ason why your Pa-th is fa-iling to manifest prop-erly is beca-use the S-un god’s ‘impr-oved’ fr-amework is in a lo-gic loop.” The Moon god explained, and while their fingers were invisible, I could feel the mocking quotation marks they made with them.

  "The S-un's fram-ework is tryi-ng to gi-ve your Pat-h to Orion, b-ut it can-'t. It do-Es noT hAvE perMis-sioN. So inste-ad its stop-ping eith-er of you from acc-essing it, lead-ing to our litt-le limbo.” The Moon god finished explaining. Leaving me wondering why they were spending so much time explaining it instead of fixing it.

  “I wi-ll no-t be fix-ing this…” The God declared, disappointment instantly rushing in to fill the gap where the hope was. It looked like even they couldn't fix it.

  “Oh, do-n’t misund-erstand, it’s n-ot that I can’t, I’m si-mply not bother-ed to.” They corrected, and in response I glared at them.

  “Oh do-n’t lose yo-ur head, I’ll illu-minate th-e way forward. Thoug-h you m-ay not like it, beca-use you’ll hav-e to tru-st him.” The god grinned using their words, not letting me get in a thought edge-wise as they clapped their invisible hands, my vision going blank upon hearing the thunderous sound.

  I do hope that the Moon god's speech isn't too annoying to read, I had enough fun writing the first time I did it that I decided to stick to it, but it got really annoying after a while. There are only so many random capitalisations and random hyphens I can do before getting a bit bored of it. Hope you all enjoy!