"What's that supposed to mean?" Gilded said.
"Did you hoard anything recently?" Caerwyn asked. "Had any trouble flying?"
"…And what if I did?" Gilded said, suddenly wary.
"That explains it, then," Caerwyn said. "The domain tags dragon fledglings. To keep them from wandering off before they can fly, you see. If a fledgling gets too close to an exit, or wanders off too far, the domain teleports them back inside. It's for their own safety. A tumble off a mountain is no way to start a flying career."
There was a pause.
"I'm not a dragon fledgling!" Gilded said, appalled.
"Aren't you?" Caerwyn said jovially. "Golden Magic, hoarding tendencies, I watched you buy a few mountains of crystals from this young dragon yesterday…"
I couldn't help it. I lost it.
Next to me, Llewellyn had turned his face away, containing himself with visible effort. Gléonwon meanwhile had puffed up a bit, looking proud of his commercial prowess.
"That's not—" Gilded spluttered. His face was on its way to becoming the color of his hair. "I'm clearly not a dragon! That was for an experiment!"
"The domain doesn't concern itself with the reasons for the hoard, my boy. Just the hoard."
Llewellyn was trying very hard to keep a straight face.
I couldn't blame him. This was hilarious.
"You cannot be serious," Gilded said. "I'm twenty-nine! I'm a person! I've been doing Magic since before I could write! Before the System even showed up!"
"Of course," Caerwyn said pleasantly. "But the domain believes you can't fly yet. Which, to be fair—can you?"
Gilded opened his mouth, then… closed it.
Llewellyn let out a noise then tried to rein it in again. I bumped his shoulder.
"Do fledglings usually argue this much?" I asked Caerwyn, just to mess with Gilded, who sent me a murderous look.
I grinned.
"Oh, constantly," Caerwyn said cheerfully.
"I can manipulate gravity," Gilded said. "That gets me pretty much everywhere!"
"Until you're falling off a cliff and your only option is whether to fall down or up," Caerwyn said pleasantly. "That's not flying."
I couldn't fly either. I checked my wrists, just in case, but there was nothing there. I guess I needed to work on my hoarding tendencies.
"Manipulating gravity sounds hard," Gléonwon interjected. "Flying is easier."
"This is—" Gilded started, then caught himself, apparently remembering he was addressing an actual god, in the god's actual domain, while marked by said god's actual magic. He took a breath. His voice came out strangled but polite. "Respectfully. I would like to be untagged, please."
"Would you?" Caerwyn said. "Fledglings under my care historically thrive."
"I agree!" Gléonwon said to Caerwyn's clear delight. "And it's a good temple! I really like it here!"
"Please?"
Caerwyn scratched his beard. "It's not that I don't want to untag you, my boy. It's just not that easy."
Gilded made a sound I'd only ever heard from Penguin mid-tantrum. He breathed in, visibly reassembling his dignity.
"I am calm," he announced. "I am extremely calm."
Llewellyn lost it. I covered his mouth with my hand and he just snickered harder.
"Shut up," Gilded said. Then, to Caerwyn, with the last of his composure: "How does one graduate from fledgling status?"
"Traditionally? First flight."
"I don't have wings!"
"That does complicate things," Caerwyn admitted, scratching his beard. He didn't look particularly bothered by the complication though. "You can do Magic, right?"
"I have wings," Gléonwon said thoughtfully. "But before I could fly they were floppy."
Penguin, who had been following this entire exchange with rapt attention, suddenly chirped. Then he waddled toward Caerwyn and started flapping his flippers as hard as he could.
He lifted off, wobbled about a meter up, and hovered, flippers going frantically.
"Would you look at that!" Caerwyn said, delighted. "A flying penguin! Best coalescing of the last five hundred years, I must say!"
Penguin chirped, glowing under the praise, then flapped harder, rising a bit more, trembling with effort.
"Oh. I see," Caerwyn said, pondering. "An artifact is helping with the liftoff."
Penguin dropped back down somewhat, deflating a little. I'd already taken a step forward when Caerwyn picked him up. Penguin let out a small chirp.
"Hey," I said. "He can use an artifact if he wants to."
"I'm not criticizing," Caerwyn said. He was still looking at Penguin. "It's a fine artifact. Well calibrated, too."
"Thank you," Gilded said morosely.
Well, he'd been the one to fix it, so I guess that was alright. Or was he thinking he should have kept it after all? But Tiernan had said it just made you lighter. Penguin could probably fly with it only because he had flippers.
"But that's why you're showing me, isn't it? You want to fly properly, without aids."
Penguin chirped energetically, looking happy Caerwyn had understood.
Ah, damn; I hadn't realized that was what he wanted! I felt a bit guilty about it.
"Well," Caerwyn said, stroking his beard. "It seems the domain tagged the wrong student. Fortunately, I have space for two."
"Two?" Gilded said. "No. Absolutely not. I refuse to attend flight school!"
Penguin chirped in Gilded's direction.
He was right; flight was useful.
"You're my favorite here," Gilded told him. Penguin chirped again, happily. "But I'm not taking flying classes with you!"
"Can we refocus on something for a moment?" I asked. Though I'd totally go and watch Penguin's flying classes. Even more so if we could come and annoy Gilded. "What's missing from this room? You seemed upset earlier."
"Oh," Caerwyn said. "Quite a few things. My carving tools. Several dragon-shaped crystals. The key to the Temple of the Cosmos. And Innishae's Foundation Stones, of course."
…The what?!
My head was spinning.
"What's the Temple of the Cosmos?" Llewellyn asked, frowning.
There was a pause. Then, instead of answering, Caerwyn's gaze landed on me.
Uh? What now?
I held his gaze, but… something inside me was going weird, as if I was dissolving myself. Flashbacks of the time in the void assaulted me at once.
Llewellyn must have sensed something through the bond. He moved to step in front of me, sword drawn, looking ready to fight a literal god.
Gilded yelped.
"Are you insane?! I'm sorry, he clearly has no manners—"
The air changed.
Before I could pull myself together or say anything, my stomach dropped, every hair on my arms suddenly standing on end.
Then the same Wave of Fear from last time came crashing through the caves, making the itch in my chest flare madly.
Penguin shrieked and turned into a sugar glider, climbing up my leg and diving into my pocket.
On his sword, Llewellyn's knuckles had gone white.
I put a hand on Penguin to shield him.
It wasn't here yet but it was about to crash, we were about to be sucked into it, we were about to be—
Caerwyn straightened up and vanished in front of our eyes, dissolving in a burst of Magic then coalescing into a small dome shielding us all. The Wave of Fear crashed over it, swirled, then moved on, leaving us untouched.
There was a long pause, then Caerwyn's shield retracted and he recoalesced in front of us, looking somber.
We were all still shaking.
"What," Gilded said, wine-red hair sticking up in all directions and pressing against Gléonwon's trembling flank, "the hell was that?!"