Lone Gold, Daring Purple ✓ | LGBT rep, self-discovery, runaway

20: Exceptional at skipping stones, of course.

The stables were in a barn a ten-minute walk from the main hall where Cypur woke up. The air was fresh. Winds carrying the scent of an autumnal season blew his cape, making it flap in the breeze. The dark blue silk with its golden edges shimmered depending how the light touched.

"That's a nice cape you got there," Daero said as they trekked through the field.

"Thank you, I designed it myself." Cypur did a little twirl so Daero could see it from all angles, carefully constructed so the ripples were smooth and magically enhanced to be hard to tear.

Daero gave a laugh. "Impressive! I do wish I had one of those but," He swished his fluffy indigo blue tail behind him, "tails get in the way. They move on their own accord, too."

Cypur thought Daero's tail was kind of like a cape, but he kept his thoughts to himself. He had just offended Kirlan on his way out, joking how Kathula kind of looked naked without clothes. It was hard to tell what would offend a Kathula. But he couldn't help it. He had never been around one. Seeing Daero laugh wasn't as strange because Cypur did know some Halfhuman Sorcerers who had rather feline faces.

They soon came upon a large brown barn, almost as wide as the main hall. It sat before at a lakeside and beyond the lake were more fields and gray, rocky mounds that kissed the clouds. He had never seen mounds that tall before.

"You have big mounds here. Almost as big as Drazlesk Mound." Cypur squinted his eyes, trying to see how high the top actually was.

"They're mountains," Daero said.

"Those are?" Cypur had never seen one in real life. Sure, he'd seen paintings and pictures, but there was nothing taller than Drazlesk in the Fourth Ring.

The high-roofed barn had the typical livestock in low-fenced arenas—pigs, cows, and goats. The next room had five horses and three ponies swishing their tails eating grass or prancing about. Cypur fantasized riding a horse and how awesome his cape would look. He told Daero, but the Kathula Sorcerer shook his head.

"Capes on horses is a bad idea," Daero said. "Can get tangled up if you try to shoot arrows or draw swords, daggers even, and it can startle the horse." He turned left down a narrow hallway where the floorboards creaked.

At last, they came to an arched door. From his upbringing, he knew that often arched doors in Elgana signified a place that had magick in it. For some reason, magick and arched doors liked each other. There was even a census done years ago that discovered magick behind arched doors was stronger than magick worked behind any other door shape. Cypur didn't believe it no matter how many Sorcerers claimed it to be true. Many classroom doors at Academy were rectangle.

Beyond the arched door was a cavern of a place with high-rise vaulted ceilings much like Academy. The hall stretched out wide, circling around the cavern like a small arena. Two arched doors sat on either side of the walls, so high that he had to crane his neck back to see the top. Claw marks grazed the hardened dirt ground and across the ceiling as if some battle had been fought here.

"So, I've captured your Faud. After—"

Cypur whipped around. "How?" Even he couldn't get it under control, and it was his Faud.

Daero answered with a grunt and a shrug. "It took a liking to mine as they are the same reptilian types." He grabbed a set of keys by the door. As he jingled the keys, looking for the right one, Cypur heard a squeal coming from inside followed by a short growl unfamiliar to his ears. That had to be Daero's Faud. It was still hard to believe that a Kathula could have a Faud even though Daero did explain how he had zero Kathula magick in him after his Sorcerer magick canceled everything out.