“Tell me about where you come from, then.”

Thaumiel walks behind Hunter and Oriana, only following the wagging tail of a dog that stayed between the two groups. He keeps pace, instead, with the stranger that had slowly become a traveling companion. He can’t pinpoint exactly when – perhaps it’d have to do with the way Arcturus always seemed to appear in the dungeons just as the Knights entered, or the way he smiled and seemed to eagerly await whatever lay ahead. 

“I don’t think our kingdoms are all that different, truth be told,” the starry-pelted courser chuffs in response, ears brushing back in slight embarrassment. “We aren’t even all that far apart. Walls keep us, sure, but at the end of the day, we share the same sky, no?”

“That isn’t … I mean …” Thaumiel grows sheepish. “Y’know, people tell tales.”

“Like?”

“Like that you’re nocturnal.”

“Surely, you can’t think that's true.” Arcturus balks.

There’s genuine laughter that the two share. “I don’t know! To be honest, you’re the first of Retrograde that we’ve come across.”

“Not common in the dungeons?”

“Not particularly. Mostly, we deal with … the monstrous kind, of course, but also strangers and the unaligned. People that worship unspeakable things, or coursers that only wish us ill will. I’m fairly used to either complete hostility or having to rescue one of our own after having fallen unwillingly below.”

“The children of the sun tend to do that,” Arcturus says idly. When Thaumiel lifts his head in a way that suggests curiosity, he elaborates. “You have a calling here – knighted or not. I see your citizens here more than anything else.”

“And you? You never really answered me, that first night.” He doesn’t want to press, but that’s also half a lie. He feels hungry for that knowledge. The piece of the puzzle that hasn’t made sense.

Ducking underneath a fallen archway, Arcturus pauses for the rubble. It gives him time to think; to knit things together. He slows their paces to be farther back from Hunter and Oriana.

“There’s an old tale, from back when this castle was alive with tall-men and the strange beings that walk on two legs.” Arcturus navigates the words like one would navigate an old-growth forest. Reverential and quiet, somewhere in awe. “The Wild Hunt. A great cacophony of horse and men alike, chasing after spectral prey. They engage in an everlasting hunt that’s both a celebration and a call to arms. Some say you can still hear the thundering of hooves and the cheering of huntsmen in these halls – whether its a good omen or a sign of desolation, it’s up to interpretation.”

Arcturus looks onward, into the darkness, at something not there. “When I was a young foal … well. It was the first kind of music I’d ever heard. I don’t think I’ll forget it.”

Thaumiel thinks he can draw meaning between those words. In a way, it lights a fire of camaraderie that he really shouldn’t be stoking between him and a member of his opposing kingdom. But to know someone else could possibly share that calling – that had to be it, right? He didn’t think the people of Retrograde felt that kind of pull. No– he thought they regarded this place with ambivalence.

“That is to say,” Arcturus continues, when he feels as though Thaumiel had not spoken for long enough and was waiting for the conclusion to his thought. “I am nothing but a transient wanderer. Perhaps no different from yourself. I have no desire to return to the surface for as long as I feel such a pull.”

“It doesn’t stop it from being scary as all hells – when we clamber up to the top and are one fewer,” Thaumiel admits. “I didn’t think I’d see you after the first time.”

“And here I am.” He states it like it’s a fact of life. No different than how water falls from the sky in rain or that the sun rises in the morning to cast light upon the dew. 

“Yet here you are.”

He can hear barking up ahead – he’s not sure what’s drawn the wolf’s attention, but he’s too enraptured in the conversation to notice. There’s a scattering of bats up ahead that seem like just enough of a reason for Thaumiel to keep pace with Arcturus instead.

Arcturus knows, of course. He can feel the shifting of the earth as he steps forward. He knows what chamber they walk into, and what side Oriana and Hunter already find themselves on. 

He sees Thaumiel’s lantern, attached dutifully to his side, flicker in the cold wind that blows from down below. He wonders if Thaumiel would do well in darkness. If his eyes would adjust. If he, too, could see the stars that hide there.

The courser – void hiding behind the moon – presses anyways.

“You feel the same, don’t you? That … calling.”

Thaumiel nods in a hesitant manner. “I do. I just … don’t know what for. I thought it was simply my duty as a Knight – to seek out something to restore this fallen kingdom to its former glory. But…” 

It felt blasphemous to say, in some strange way, that there was something deeper calling to him.

“Don’t feel the need to explain yourself. I understand.” Arcturus flashes a sympathetic smile. “I’m curious then – would you ever consider staying?”

“Staying?” Thaumiel halts in place. Arcturus hides a frown at that. It’s easier for him to feel the moving floor up ahead in that way. “What do you mean?”

“You leave the dungeons after a day of adventure. You aren’t …” Arcturus pretends to search for the right words. “Living it, you know? Perhaps your mind would change.”

The heraldic courser feels the words, hears them, weighs them in his mind. What they mean is a secondary thought; one he isn’t sure he’s quite yet ready to grapple with. 

His presence here is his duty. Not a selfish quest – it couldn’t be, could it? At the end of the day he breached the surface to come home to his Kingdom, his land, his people. His calling down below was secondary.

He opens his mouth to speak as such, but it’s as if Arcturus can sense the mental pushback he’s about to receive. The other turns his head towards the other side of the chamber, suddenly stuttering as the floor beneath them shifts far quicker than it had been.

The grinding of stone against stone pierces the air as deep grooves form beneath platforms – a great depth opens between the two groups of coursers. That is what the wolf barks at, Thaumiel realizes. He hears Oriana calling to him now, too.

“Get over here!” He can hear her heart pounding in her chest just from the words. “Jump!”

It’s shocking to Arcturus, then, when he feels Thaumiel nudge him forward first. The knight roughly pushes against his flank, urging him to action first. He’d been watching and waiting from the side for so long – behind Thaumiel as he fought that spectral courser, behind him as he tested poisonous waters and treaded upon dangerous walkways. Never had Thaumiel urged him first.

“Go, you– get across before the gap is too wide.” Is he nervous about his ability to leap? Does he not think he’d be safe again at the bottom? Arcturus knows where this void leads, and yet – yet he actually feels the fear instilled in him at Thaumiel’s urgency.

He doesn’t have to hear it twice – he urges his hooves to pound into the earth and push him to a broad jump. The cobblestone is harsh to connect with on the other side. He barely avoids clattering into the mercenary there, but for once, his mind is occupied.

For once, Arcturus turns to look behind.