Discovery number one: there was a second palace in the room neighboring the one with the first palace (Cepheus), which felt a bit excessive to October, but it would not question this too much. This one was prettier than the other one, anyway; it was not weirdly dim in a way that begged October to set things on fire (to light things up, of course), and it was wreathed in pretty pink-gold light.

Discovery number two: there was a portal in the palace. October didn't think much of anything happened when it went through it at first. There was just a brief warping as it was suddenly subjected to... something. It wasn't sure what, as its surroundings before and after it interacted with the portal remained exactly the same.

When it tried to find its way back out, though, it emerged from the palace into a... room...? that was not at all like Pegasus. October flew in several circles, trilling in confusion. It looked in every possible direction, but none of them looked like the room it had just come from. Similar, yes, with the meadows and forests, but not the same. The familiar herds of Meadow Deer, for one thing, were nowhere in sight.

And... that giant flaming orb up above, which hurt its eyes to look at... could that be the sun the Three Kings had described? No, that couldn't be right, hadn't they said it was of a place far from here? So how could October be seeing it now? But it did look exactly like their stories said. October tried looking at it again, but it was so bright that even it, who was used to the pain of fire magic, could not bear it for long. They blinked and averted their gaze again, bright spots burned into their vision that would take minutes to fully fade.

There was one last thing left to test. The sky—was it truly a 'sky' with nothing above it? This was unimaginable. It tried to fly higher and higher, to see if there was truly no rock ceiling, but its wings tired and flagged before it would have even reached the height of the ceilings in one of the normal cave rooms. Still, its golden eyes found no rock above in sight.

Surely the Kings would want to know about this! It must be exactly the place they had told of in their stories. Now if only October could find the way back...

The answer must be hidden in the palace somewhere. That was the last place it had entered before emerging into an entirely different place. October returned to it, sailing straight through an open stone window. The massive open hall and many windows in all directions disoriented it, but eventually, they found their way to the 'back' or whatever wall it was they had seen the portal by earlier.

Helpfully, it was still there.

October threw itself through once more without hesitation. Once more, it found itself in a room that looked exactly like the one it'd just been in. But this time it knew to be suspicious of what appearances seemed to suggest. And there was a sense of staleness in the air that it had never noticed before, but had become painfully obvious since it had taken its first breaths outside. Truly outside, where there were no rock walls to keep it in no matter how large the largest of the rooms in the caves were. It burst out another window, into the Secret Refuge, and then into Pegasus where it beelined for Orion. The room of stars was far, but not so far that a bird could not reach it within the day by flight.

exit