The voices seemed to come exactly at the break of dawn and the beginning of night, signaling the turning of the stars. Grae thought that made some strange sense; perhaps the gods in their powers were bound to the heavens. Perhaps they even lived on those fiery stars, in burning palaces and golden thrones.

It was fanciful, but it amused him to think so.

Gods. Magic. How the humans had fallen. How he could save his fellow dungeonborn…

There were so many questions, and it was a relief to Grae that no answers were nearby. Instead, he could enjoy the sight of the world rolling by as the wagon found a road, the constant jostling and jumping of the wheels hitting stones ceasing as they settled onto flat land and found a rhythm.

In that lazy rhythm drifted past, tall towers of bark coated in climbing pillars of ivy.

And slowly, they entered into a new landscape. A rolling countryside of hills, sloping up and down and away towards the horizon, each valley a basin of green grass rippling under the wind. In the distance he saw human homes. Not animated, murderous ones, but simple cottages built into the hillsides, smoke puffing from their chimneys.

He saw the remnants of the old earth. There were windmills- Oriole had named the funny winged towers for Grae as they waited for the wagon to be ready- and strange roads that were lifted above the earth on pillars, with cupped sides.

“What are those?” He asked his two companions.

“Aqueducts.” Larktongue answered. “Roads for water. They carry it, down from the mountains, like a riverbed of stone.”

“Fascinating.” Grae agreed. These ‘aqueducts’ were broken apart, long stretches lying in ruin and disrepair…

Still. He could see spindly little structures of wood built around the enormous stone legs, and cottages constructed like birds nests hanging from the underside. Humans made their homes even in the shadows of great disasters.

“Why are some of the human houses…” Grae searched for the word. “Hungry? And these ones are not?”

Larkspur winced. It was Greenleaf who answered. “They made city-hearts once. Not sure what for. But these hearts… went wrong?”

“Ah. So the old cities with hearts are possessed, and the new ones…”

“New ones only scary because they have humans.” Greenleaf said, with a nervous smile.

He asked plainly. Outside, the sunlight illuminated the pale yellow stone of an aqueduct sloping down a hillside, and rising back out of the valley towards the horizon in the far distance, the shadow of its peak meeting the clouds that rippled through the blue sky.

It was a scene of mesmerizing scale.

To Grae’s near-sighted eyes, accustomed to the cold, dark familiarity of a dungeon, where the walls were never more than an arm’s reach away…

It was impossible.

It took long moments of staring, trying to fit the bright colors and distant horizons together in his mind, before he simply burst out laughing. Greenleaf did too, out of pure high-strung energy.

He could tell she was afraid of returning to human lands. They all were, except perhaps Sarcer, who was foul-mouthed and rough and impossible to gauge.

“Why have you come with me, Greenleaf?” He asked.

“Because…” She paused, squirming in her seat, and then glanced up with a sudden, hard-fought determination. “You can do magic! I have… I have a Constellation, the Open-Eyes. When I hatched, I heard the voice, but…”

“Ah, you’ve never been given Stars, have you?”

She shook her head.

Of course not. The humans would never give their slaves magic, any more than they’d give them weapons.

“Listen, Greenleaf. There’s more to magic than these little trinkets.” Grae gazed out the world. “A long time ago, I met humans who could do… terrible, wonderful things…”

“Impossible things…”

“There were humans who used magic, to sharpen their swords and armor their skin. And then there were wizards. They could turn the air into a hail of blades. Make the earth turn to mud and drag you down. Their power may have begun with the Stars and Constellations given to others, but they didn’t end there.”

“I have to become like that.”

Anyone could dip their hands into the well of magic and drink. Grae wanted to swim in magic, to breathe magic…

He wanted to know what his maker had known, the arts of creating life of nothing…

As the countryside rolled by, Grae’s eyes began to dip shut, and he slipped down under the veil of sleep.

---

He woke when the wagon lurched to a halt.

It was darker outside, a comforting blue shade as the night-star shone in the sky above.

Larktongue and Greenleaf looked up fearfully as they came to a halt alongside a cottage, a low house that extended out of the hillside into a rooftop of thatch interwoven with green vines on which scrawny apples grew. The home was a part of the earth, spilling out of the hillside, its windows and doors circular.

An orchard of squat, fat trees sat along the banks of a river. Their trunks were encrusted with thick golden shells of wax and honey. Golden bodies fluttered from hive to hive; the bee-song in the air was a beautiful murmuring chorus.

“Keep- keep your hands off me!” Oriole snapped, being hauled forward by Sarcer.

“Keep your voice down, pinkskin.” Sarcer hissed. “And get the cage open.”

“What’s going on?” Grae asked. “Why have we stopped?”

“I need supplies. For the horses. And do you want to eat rotten meat all the way to Tingate, or do you want cheese, honey, wine?” The man fussed. Sarcer had a dagger to his belly, ready to cut him at the first sign of betrayal as he fumbled at the keys. "Besides, I came this way before. They're expecting me. They’d be suspicious if I just rolled on past."

The cage door swung open.

Grae stepped out into the light, shielding his face.

As he did the door to the cottage swung open. Out stepped a tall, fair-bearded man with a young child in his arms, and an older daughter lurking behind him, her face hidden behind huge circular lenses.

The moment the young one saw him, her face lit up. “PIG!”