There was something almost poetic about the emptiness of this place. If he thought about it, Pan might have seen the town somewhere in a dream – somewhere which might have explained its vacant desolation. Perhaps in his dream, there had been bustling life here. There had been shopkeepers and patrons. Girls dancing in the square to a musician’s lute. Boys dipping their braids into inkwells in a classroom while ignoring a teacher’s lecture. But this was not a dream. It was magic, pure and simple, raw and empty. The dreamer in him was pragmatic enough to know that life was a delicate thing, and that it could be erased in an instant, leaving only the bones of an abandoned city in its wake.
He walks alone, down the alleys which might have been frightening to some but to Pan every twisting turn in the road offered more chances at adventure. Shadows hug his sides, humming of magic as they brushed past and left him again in quiet curiosity. And Pan presses onward, finding his way to the abandoned castle and stepping unabashedly across the threshold and into its darkened halls.
Following the rust-hued stone, he passes all wonders of places. To his left, a door swings open, revealing a room filled from top to bottom with water. Curiosity has Pan stepping into it, a bubble surrounding him as he sinks deep into the blue hues but is never touched by its wetness. Where he walks, the carrier bubble simply rolls him along in the tide as he passes all manner of strange plants and fishes. Along the far wall, he sees another door, reaching to open it and falling into a room built entirely from ribbons of mist.
He walks across them, incredulously wondering how he doesn’t simply fall through the cloud-like floor, turning to watch the way light and shadows play across the illusion. When he walks and should move forward, instead his steps take him up, up, up, until at the top of the room, the ceiling simply gives way to another illusion.
Here, he finds a room entirely made of mirrors, each a window into another place or dimension. He gazes through one to find a snowy wonderland, the glass melting at his touch to brush him with a touch of cold. In the next, a desert stretches far as the eye can see, unforgiving and harsh with heat. Another window shows a world built entirely of food – with cotton candy clouds and broccoli trees, a river of cider and tiny houses built from nuts and berries. He turns once more, finding a world not unlike this one, but built entirely upside down – with roads where the skies should be, and endless sky filling the space where the ground would sit.
As he sits and contemplates which world to enter first, the floor parts once more, giving way to a second creature. Pan grins widely at his new companion, a spark of interest meeting his eye as he gives the male a quick study. Some might have questioned where the stranger had come from, but the boy simply shivers excitedly and asks “Well, which way should we go next?”
The island whispers to the boy as he walks through it. His heart clatters behind his ribs in nervousness, in quiet delight. His connection to this place lies in the core of it. He remembers still when time stood still here, how he grew up used to a world that did not move, but stayed so utterly still.
Leonidas listens to the islands whispering, he lets it push him, chase him, tug him this way and that. The island magic leads him to the castle, with its many strange rooms and unearthly magic. There is nothing normal here, there is no woodland place in which to rest his head. Yet, as much as the grass and the trees are home, so too is this strange, curious island.
In fact the islands grip upon him sinks deeper within the boy than his love for the wilderness of Novus. This island is bound to him, and he is bound by it. Its magic sits deep within the threads that tie him together, that keep his heart beating.
Through room after strange room, Leonidas wanders. He does not question the strangeness, not even when he too steps into a sunken room filled with water. His wings flare, his feathers useless in the water. But that is the strangeness of magic, is it not? The water slicks off his feathers as if he were a waterbird. Leonidas swims, elegant, curious and breathing. How he breathes is another mystery the boy thinks nothing of. Instead, slowly, carefully he watches his surroundings and lets the tide push him from room to room.
Until, suddenly, the water pushes him up, up towards the surface, where a ceiling should be but only light gleams as if it is the sky. He emerges, dry from the water and is lifted up, up, up until the water turns solid and dry beneath his feet. There, before him, a young boy stands, as if he has been waiting all this time. Leonidas’ skull tilts and down his long dark nose he gazes at the boy, “Do you not let the island tell you where to go?” The elder boy asks, curious.
Leonidas’ magic tugs him, directs him on to the next door, down the hall of slick black glass and doors that yawn open onto dying suns. The wild-wood boy walks to the appointed door and nudges it open. A universe held fast within a room. It claws at the walls, it sinks for an eternity down beyond the floor, and yet the room contains it, holds it fast. It bleeds like ink, it splatters itself with stars like white paint. Galaxies are icing smudges across its black, endless ink. The wild-wood boy looks to Pan and thinks only of his mother as he steps into the room and tumbles, down, down, down past stars and moons and planets and down, down to where the floor rises to meet him and never, ever touches his feet.
Pan shivers with excitement as his companion steps into the room, his grin wide and welcoming as he sizes up the boy. There is something achingly familiar about him, but the scaled boy was certain he had never seen Leonidas before. Still, he cannot shake the idea that something seems to call to him in the way the boy watches. Perhaps there are some expressions which he makes which are reminiscent of Florentine, but Pan cannot put a finger on it, even as he shakes away the itching thought, focusing instead on the adventure before them.
“How does it show you?” he asks, even as the ink-and-gold Pegasus opens and door and tumbles through it, drawing a gasp from Pan as he steps incredulously toward the galaxy room, staring through its darkness toward Leonidas as he grows smaller and smaller in the distance. Throwing caution to the wind (or what little caution Pan has, for he generally leaps before he looks), Pan steps into the darkness, allowing himself to fall down-down-down and letting the magic catch him as he squeals with glee. "Wait up!”
He tries to run toward the second male, finding that his motion is more like swimming as he dances through the darkness. Stars float around him, burning brightly as they light up the darkness and he makes his way toward Leonidas. In his chest, his adventuring heart sings, as the boy stares breathlessly at endless sky. He flops onto his back, letting his mane splay around him as he watches the stars for a moment, letting the wonder of it catch the breath in his throat as he tries to let the magic wash through him, telling him where to go. He squints his eyes, trying to feel for the magic as his friend did, falling up short, for there is no magic in his veins.
But there is adventure.
He takes a second glance at the nebula, filing it into memory before he turns regrettably from the splendor to find the next magic door. "C’mon… I think I see something over here…" He follows a shaft of light, growing as he nears and sees that the glow begins to build a door. Reaching out, he fishes for the doorknob, finding it and pushing his way through into a room of blinding light.
For a moment, the boy can see nothing but the white hot light. But as he blinks it away, he finds himself in a room filled floor to ceiling with diamonds. Some are as big as a fist, others a fine pale sand, but prisms throw from every faceted face where the light meets it, painting the room with rainbow hues. At his back, he feels the stranger emerge beside him, turning to stare at Leonidas with an excited expression on his face, eager to see what the second boy thought of such wonders.
Leonidas feels uncomfortable in the way the other boy watches him sometimes. It is as if he knows something that Leonidas does not. As if the forest boy’s appearance is strange. He tries to ignore it, fill himself up with what the island whispers to him.
The ivory boy asks him how he knows what the island tells him. Leonidas’ brow furrows. Are there truly any ways to describe instinct? He cannot explain the way the island whispers to him, just as he cannot explain how the woodland whispers to him too. He pauses upon the edge of the door that opens into the galaxy of dying stars that flings itself out into endlessness. Leonidas turns his gaze to the pale boy with his smile that is a thing born of fairytales. He frowns as he thinks of words (of which there are none) and finally he presses a tine to the other boy’s breast.
“Here,” The elven youth murmurs. There, where he feels his heart beat. Listen, he should say to Pan (and yet does not), listen to the trembling cadence of your heart. Leonidas does not stop to think that it might only be the fact that he was born here, amidst the wild roots and vines of the island, when Time stopped moving, that means he hears how the island whispers in his blood.
Together the boys fall through the doorway and cascade down, down, down. The paler boy floats, as if this is not his first time tumbling between worlds. Leonidas watches him, intrigued, enchanted.
Then Pan is swimming away, toward a beam of light like a moth into a flame. The wild wood boy follows him, drifting past stars and planets until his feet touch upon a glittering room. This is the first place he is quiet, in awe. He presses his lips together and feels how his ears fall firmly to his skull. They are beautiful, yes, but the remind him of shame. He thinks of Aspara, of the necklace he chose for her. It has diamonds in too. She hated it. She got angry at him. Leonidas never wants to see a diamond again, no matter the awe that slips like a shiver down his muscling spine.
Without a thought Leonidas storms across the room, diamonds singing shrilly as his feet tap upon them. The room fills with the sound of angelic ringing. Without a pause the youth shoves through the next door and falls out into a land of lava as crimson and bright as his shame, his sadness, his anger. He looks back to his companion from his place within the new dystopian room and wonders if he will still follow.
Leonidas suggests that Pan can feel the way to go in his heart, and he grins even wider… for the boy was an adventurer, and his wanderlust always seemed to lead him somewhere more. More wonderful. More magical. More mysterious. The castle was all of these, a true wanderer’s paradise. He wanted to take it all in, to roam in every world. So as he tears across the sky, he lets his heart be the guide – just as the other suggested. And finds himself in a place so bright, it couldn’t be real.
Pan was entranced with the diamonds, gathering a handful and letting them fall from his grasp in a shower of sparkle. Even Oliver seemed to be caught in the wonder, skittering forth from his satchel and gathering up a stone-sized diamond in his grasp before returning the treasure to the bag for safekeeping. They would have gathered more, but the screech of hooves against the jewels is enough to bring their marvel to a screeching halt. He turns to find Leonidas fleeing with anger, flinging open another door and letting a blast of heat wash over them.
”Be careful!” he screams at the boy… but it is too late, for Leonidas tumbles into the land of fire. With a mask of horror, Pan follows, unwilling to let his new friend perish in the heat of the flame. “Don’t worry! I’m coming!” Heat singes at his nose, smoke burning his eyes as down, down he tumbled. When his feet should hit solid ground, instead he finds himself suspended, warm but not unpleasantly so, shielded by some kind of strange magic. Where he should have burned, he simple tickles with an uncomfortable sheen of sweat, searching through the magma-laden world to find Leonidas once more.
“I don’t like this place… let’s get out of here.” With urgency, he looks for an exit, but does not immediately find one. Instead, there is a gaping hole in the floor, filled to the brim with bubbling magma, seeming to beckon them in. “Do you think we’re meant to jump into the volcano?” He shivers with concern, not entirely trusting of this new world but finding no other way. ”You first…” he gulps, half ashamed of the nerves which creep along his neck. But Leonidas had gotten them into this world, so then, it was only right that he would find his way out.
They stand together for a moment more, contemplating the leap, before the lava bubbles quicken and explode into a shower of sparks. With a scream, Pan closes his eyes, pinching them tight and expecting the end… but the magma turns into a harmless shower of rain, and as he opens his eyes on this world again, Pan sees only a grand room with rich tapestries on the walls and a regal throne standing ominously atop a dozen stairs.
“What is it?” Pan wonders aloud at the creature who sits upon the throne, even as he takes an involuntary step forward, drawn toward it as he presses closer to his winged companion, unsure of what might happen next.
The younger boy cries out behind him, the sound of his shock and fear ricocheting off the walls. Leonidas does not stop, not when his confusion, his hurt push him over the edge. He is reckless in his youth, hormones fuelling the wilder side of him. Not for a moment does the older colt think just what he might lead the younger boy into…
Maybe that is why he grins, free as a mountain breeze as the ivory boy throws himself from the lip of the volcano and down into its molten maw. Leonidas feels the heat upon his throat and chest as he watches the lava bubble. The volcano blinks as the younger boy falls into it, it blinks and stone steps rise up from within the lava.
Lava runs like red, glowing blood down the open steps. Steam rises but soon, all is turning to stone and Leonidas too topples himself over the edge of the volcano. The heat scolds his skin, but then it is gone, lost to cold dark stone. He lands beside his young companion and tilts his chin up, too brave, too boldly, to stare with golden eyes upon the monstrous king atop its throne.
The creature watches them, proudly, vainly. Its many eyes blink, its wings of blazing lava reaching from wall to wall across the room. Rich tapestries hang luxurious, silver thread glowing like starlight, every colour coming alive in the light of the monster-king’s wings. The wild-wood boy stares at the king and there is no respect within his brave-bold eyes. He does not know to bow to kings or queens or monster-kings of strange islands.
What is it?
The boy whispers beside him and Leonidas continues to drink in the creature that presses its imprint upon the back of his mind. Its skin glows bright as the sun could ever wish to glow. From its arms vines fall as if he is a wood, his skin the sun to grow the leaves. The great king’s mouth opens and a tongue of fire sparks in the darkness. The yawning, gaping darkness.
The great king grins, his teeth like stars, his opened maw like the endless black of the universe. “It is everything.” Leonidas whispers as he sees worlds within the monster’s mouth. “Do we live in there?” The fae-boy asks his young companion.
Suddenly the beast is rising, reaching for the children who dared fall into his throne room. And the floor begins to open and they are tumbling into the earth, down, down, down, into water, into a room submerged and upside down. Leonidas swims for the window and it is pressed tightly shut. The monster king looks down upon them from the floor above them. Leonidas watches, little more than a golden fish held within a bowl.
The glass shatters and they spill out into the silver flowing river of the island and behind them, the room, the volcano and the monster king are gone. The Glowstone City rises up around them, only their drenched bodies speak the truth of their adventure.
Pan stares at the creature on the throne, struck speechless for a moment while he tries to take it all in. It watches with too many eyes, grins with too many teeth. As unnatural as the abomination is, Pan cannot look away, though his face is fraught with horror instead of awe. It is everything, Leonidas whispers and Pan shivers with an uncomfortable feeling creeping up his spine. For if this was everything, he wanted no part of it. Just looking at the beast upon the throne was enough to turn his stomach topsy-turvy, as he wondered what god had dreamed up such a thing. He swallows hard, pressing closer to Leonidas as if the two could take on the world together, bravery lost as he stands helpless before the throne.
Do we live in there? he asks, and Pan can only shrug. For there is some familiarity in the world between his jaws. But before he can ponder the thought for long, the king gives chase, and Pan knows only to run. He does not turn back to check on Leonidas, but instead tries to flee as quickly as possible, even as the floor begins to swallow him whole. Down he falls, and the boy squeezes his eyes closed tightly, unwilling to see what would come at the end. Not for the first time, he prayed to whatever god would listen, casting his final goodbyes to the universe with little more than a whimper.
And he splashes into the cool water, jolting him from the thought with a shock of surprise, as he twists and turns in the current. Pan fights his way to the surface, calling to Leonidas as he pulls himself ashore, shaking off as he shivers on the riverbanks. With a breathless gasp, he looks to the sky, seeing a brief flicker of the creature in the clouds, before they fade and leave only the two boys beside the stream, tranquil and still.
Clearly shaken, he offers a half-smile to his companion. Well… that was… unexpected. He swallows the last word down, even as Oliver peeks out to scold him for such risks. I guess… I guess that’s it? It seemed anticlimactic now, looking back at the castle in the distance… and yet Pan felt a yearning for home, eager to leave this strange and magical place behind. I’ll see you around?
But he doesn’t wait for an answer, turning to leave this place behind, without a second glance.
The golden boy swims to the bank, his golden hair a shock of wealth upon the silver of the water. Pan, the ivory child, is also beside him. Together they climb upon the bank. Leonidas’ limbs are trembling, his mind is full of yawning black and galaxies held between divine tooth and jaw. His chin tips up as his eyes look up into the blue above them and wonders of the stars at night and the black between them. Was that just the inside of a monster-god?
When his chin tips down at last, it is to see the other boy fleeing. Leonidas watches him go as silver drips off the edges of his ribs. Oh, he thinks, at what point was the strange island’s magic too much? For him it was when the glass did not break and his lungs cried out in desperation. They were ready to gasp and fill themselves up with water, just in the slightest hope that it might have been air instead. And when he thought he could hold off their instinct no longer, the glass broke, spilling them out into open air and a flowing river. The island did not want him dead. Not yet. Not yet.
The wildwood boy stands drenched and a lone upon the bank and gazes down the way that they had come. There is no trace of volcanos or gods, nor windows into rooms filled up with water. There is nothing at all but the taste of strange magic, lingering like metal upon his tongue.
Leonidas turns, alone, as ever, toward the bone bridge and the mainland beyond.
