The next day, Treeg led Margo through the plains, steering them around the domineering bluffs. He kept one hand on his satchel and the other tightly wrapped around the strap.

  “Those noble boys yesterday,” Margo piped up, balancing with both her arms outstretched behind Treeg. “They called you Blem. Why's that?”

  He turned on his foot to look at her curiously, keeping the same pace he had held before while walking backwards.

  “You really don't know?” he asked.

  Margo shook her head.

  “It's what the people of Fable call us. Blems, or blemishes,” Treeg said darkly. “They don't think we're human enough to be a part of their great and powerful territory.”

  “But why wouldn't you be human enough?”

  Treeg turned inwards towards the base of the bluffs. The jagged rockwall loomed high over their heads. Margo marveled at the distance between herself and the top, a few stray birds zipping through the air above. Treeg pressed his hand into the surface, and it rippled like curtains blowing in the wind under his touch. He pulled it aside, revealing a narrow crevice shrouded in dark on the other side. Silently, he walked through, letting it fall behind him. Carefully, Margo followed, watching over her shoulder as the fabric melded to stone again.

  The encroaching darkness only lasted for a moment. Then, thousands of amber yellow lights rose from the floors, hanging in the air around Treeg and Margo as they passed through the cavern. They trudged deeper and deeper downwards, until finally, they came to stand at the mouth of a wide cave. Inside were pillars of stone, towers built from floor to roof in ornate spirals. Carved diamond-shaped windows revealed more of the floating orbs decorating cramped living spaces and homes. There were people inside the cave, populating the strange spindly towers and walking the ground floor. They all wore the same verdant green cloak as Treeg, the leaf insignias hand sewn into different places on the fabric. Most were older, adults with tired and gaunt expressions. They hardly glanced at Treeg and Margo as they passed through, Treeg shouldering his way through a few folks seemingly too exhausted to step out of his way.

  Margo found herself deeply enamored with the strange new people around her. The woman sitting at the base of one nearby tower had her hands deep in a bucket of water, wringing out what appeared to be a bloodied sheet. Her dirty brown hair hung in twisted ringlets, with twigs and leaves horribly tangled in between locks. The downtrodden state didn’t interest Margo so much as her head; because, where a face should have been was instead that of a white goat, with a meager rounded nose and a pair of yellow eyes. Her horizontally slit pupils focused on the motions of her hand in the bucket, ringing the sheet out with her fuzzy human hands.

  “Many of us are half-breeds,” Treeg explained, once he caught where Margo’s stare had gone. “Where magic mixes, so does blood. That’s what I heard once.”

  “You mean a goat and a human made a--”

  “No, no,” Treeg laughed, seeing Margo’s cheeks go bright red. “Not like that. Places pick up magic just like people and animals do. When a lot of different entities dump their spells and their incantations in the same place a lot, that creates a field of energy that the location latches onto. Sometimes, it affects the creatures born in the area.”

  He nodded towards the goat woman. “Lillian over there had two goat parents, but she was born between the boundaries of Fable and Callistus, the Kingdom of Bears. They call it the Callistian Veil, because the magic in the air is made from centuries of bears fighting humans. You can actually see it at night.”

  Lillian smiled at Treeg, a soft, welcoming mewl escaping her lips as she heard her name. Treeg nodded back. “She’s really nice. She’ll fix your cloak if you bring her a handful of grass from the top of the cliffs here.”

  Margo hummed in affirmation and awe. Her wide-eyed gaze bounced between each new passerby crossing her way. There were a couple of dog-eared children chasing each other on all fours around the towers. There was a couple with bird wings, carrying a delicately wrapped egg and cooing at it through their fleshy beaks. Everywhere Margo looked, there were people sporting animal traits and features in the streets. But most astounding to Margo besides these figures were the overabundance of completely normal looking humans walking the streets with them.

  “Do all Blems have some kind of animal blood?” she asked, eyeing Treeg for a tail as he walked stoically ahead. “Do you have any?”

  “No and no,” Treeg answered dryly. “The magically-altered of us only make up about a third, I’d say. Most of us are just people who got caught crossing the border at the wrong time.”

  His tone was low and gloomy, and Margo could feel the tension in the air looking about the faces of the merely human. It seemed to hang on the backs of each person, forcing them to keep their gazes down to the dirt. There was chatter and the occasional laugh or two, but it was plain to see that everyone here was miserable. Living in the dark against their will, Margo couldn’t find it in herself to blame them.

  After several minutes of walking, Treeg’s incessant pace finally came to a halt. “Here we are,” he said, and Margo was surprised to see the corners of his mouth rising slightly.

  Standing in front of them was the widest tower Margo had seen yet. It stretched on, just shy of reaching the walls of the cave. The smooth stone was carved to look like it was twisting up in smooth, fabric-like motions, as though someone were pinching the top and pulling it like a silk scarf. There were no windows, only a doorless, diamond-shaped passage revealing a winding abyss of black.

  “This is where Granny Ophelia lives,” he said softly, reaching down to unlatch his satchel. From inside, he took out a jar of water, blowing bits of dirt off the silver rim. “She’ll like you, probably. She likes the weird and crazy ones.”

  “I’m not weird,” Margo protested, following behind with an offended pout. “Or crazy!”

  “That’s alright,” Treeg replied with a chuckle. “That’s what Granny says too.”

  The hall beyond the diamond-shaped doorway seemed unnaturally devoid of light, far unlike the one they had entered through the first time. There were no walls to follow either; instead, Margo clasped onto the ends of Treeg’s cloak, pinching it between her forefinger and her thumb. Treeg strode confidently, his cloak billowing behind him. Margo couldn’t feel his presence as he moved. It was as though they were completely overtaken by the seeping darkness of the cave itself.

  A nearby noise startled Margo. It was the sound of a fox whining, somewhere close to her foot. Something furry brushed by her leg, and she yanked Treeg’s cloak.

  “What was that?!” she whispered, eyes helpless and wide with panic. She tucked her arm into herself. Treeg’s voice came from ahead, but he sounded distant in the shadows.

  “I thought you were Margo the Hero,” he teased lightly. “Didn’t think a little echo would spook you so easily.”

  “I felt something,” she hissed.

  “It’s just Granny Ophelia’s shroud,” Treeg said casually, as if that explained anything. “It’s all in your head. Just keep walking forward, she’s just up ahead.”

  Margo reached out to pull him closer, but where Treeg’s hood should have been, she only felt air instead. The piece of fabric between her fingers suddenly felt wrong, too. Where Treeg’s cloak was leathery and stiff with age and grime, this material was thin and coarse, strings coming apart in her hands as she rubbed it between her fingers. It was some sort of wrap, she realized, like the kind she had seen the Doctor use for swollen ankles and broken wrists.

  A frigid hand gently covered her own. It glowed in the dark, a disembodied gaseous form wrapping around her wrist and leading her. Margo swallowed hard.

  “Treeg?” she called.

  There was no response. The hand yanked her forward. Margo tried to fight it, reeling back and looking behind for the exit, but that had disappeared too. Thousands of glowing hands emerged and pushed her forward, ushering her further and further along. She tried to cry out for Treeg again but a hand clamped over her mouth and silenced her. The hands shoved her, until suddenly she wasn’t walking anymore, but falling, falling down into that long unending night. Margo’s limbs splayed out, as she tried to reach for something, anything to catch her before she hit the cold, hard ground. But there was nothing.

  And then, all of sudden, there was light.

  The room she found herself in was warm and wooded, a pocket of comfort carved out of the black she had somehow escaped from. It looked to be the inside of a small cabin, taken right out of the illustrated books from the library back in the facility. There was a crackling, rustic fireplace in the center, with carved wooden knick-knacks and statues on floating shelves beside it. The floor was covered in a dull emerald rug, tattered with wet footprints. A cozy-looking bed stood just to the right of an oak wardrobe, and on the other side was a rickety rocking chair, where Treeg stood before its inhabitant.

  The woman couldn’t have been anyone other than the Granny Ophelia Treeg had mentioned before, Margo thought. She met all the right criteria for a fairytale grandmother-- a face that sagged with heavy wrinkles and crow’s feet, a knitted maroon tunic that looked like it hadn’t seen the sun for decades, and stark white hair spilling over her hunched shoulders. Instead of hands and feet, she bore the great paws of a bear, her ebony claws neatly curled in to avoid scuffing the wooden arms of the rocking chair.

  But in her cloudy, unfocused eyes, Margo could see stars. Night turned to day and to night again, Granny Ophelia’s head nodding gently along with each passing moment as Treeg carefully held her chin up to trickle the water into her mouth.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled softly. “I got held up by the river.”

  “Is she okay?” Margo asked dumbly, hesitantly stepping closer. Water leaked from Granny Ophelia’s mouth, dripping down her wrinkled, terracotta-skinned neck.

  “She is for now, but she doesn’t have long,” Treeg sighed. “She’s old, the oldest in the cave actually. It’s because of her that we’re all still alive.”

  Margo tilted her head to the side, examining Granny Ophelia’s lifeless expression skeptically. “You mean she fights off the villains?”

  “She tells us when the villains are coming,” he replied, dabbing at the stray droplets with a nearby yellowed handkerchief. “Her true magic is divination. She can see the future.”

  Gently, Treeg reached for Granny Ophelia’s paw, tracing his fingers over the back of it and following the fur pattern carefully. “That was when she was still moving around, though. A few months ago, we found her sitting like this, and she hasn’t budged since.”

  Margo knelt in front of the rocking chair. She mirrored Treeg, taking the other paw in her hand and brushing it gently. It was warm and soft, and Margo could feel the steady beat of Granny Ophelia’s heart pounding through the center.

  “The others say that it’s her time. That if she wanted to stay alive, she would fend for herself just like everyone else does. But Granny Ophelia has done so much to keep this place together. I just don’t want her to die less than she was, you know?”

  Margo nodded, tearing up at Treeg’s words. Slowly, she leaned down, kissing the middle claw of Granny Ophelia’s paw. In an instant, Granny Ophelia’s mouth dropped open, her sclera a murky twilight of dark blue and violet. A choked gurgle echoed from the lowest part of her throat, blood dripping down the sides of her mouth. Treeg jumped into action, trying to steady her shoulders as he frantically cried out, “Granny!!”

  The paw seized and twitched in Margo’s hand, but the claws dug into her wrist, keeping her tied to Granny Ophelia’s body. Granny Ophelia’s head lolled to the side, meeting Margo’s eyes and sending chills down the girl’s spine.

  “It’s you,” the old lady cooed. Her voice poured out from her mouth sickeningly sweet, making Margo feel nauseous and dizzy at the same time. “It’s you, it’s you, it’s you!”

  “Do you know me?” Margo asked over Granny Ophelia’s hysterical cries.

  “Granny,” Treeg pleaded. “You have to calm down, you’re going to--”

  Her face snapped to Treeg’s, slamming her forehead against him with wide eyes. The stars sparkled as she stared into him. “You mustn't cry, Treeg. Play the fool long enough for the king to grow fat and old with sloth. There will be a lock, and you will have the key.”

  She pushed Treeg back, and he stumbled onto the bed with an awestruck look. Granny Ophelia cupped Margo’s face with her massive paws, Margo’s wrist bleeding between them. Unlike she had done with Treeg, her touch was gentle, almost somber as she pressed her head to Margo’s. The twilight had ended in her far-off eyes. The dusk was beginning, and with it, the twinkling stars were snuffed out one by one. Black tears trickled down her sagging face.

  “You will lead us,” she whispered, reverent and desperate and shrill. The statement was so biting in her tone that it made Margo flinch into the claws pressed against her skull. Granny Ophelia brought her closer with a wicked, terrifying smile. “You will show us peace. Only then will you find it yourself.”

  With those final words, Granny Ophelia sunk back in her chair, lifelessly rocking once again. Treeg quickly bounded back, his hands roaming over her as he checked her pulse, his ear pressed against the tip of her nose as he listened to her breathe. He clutched at the leaf sigil sewn into his cloak, giving a sigh of relief.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  “She’s alive,” he said, raising his hands slowly. “Everything’s alright. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

  “What did,” Margo paused, staring at Granny Ophelia before turning uncomfortably back to Treeg, “What did any of that mean?”

  Treeg shrugged. “Who knows. Granny Ophelia’s magic has been acting up ever since she became like this. Even the shroud she uses between here and the entrance started getting into people’s heads.”

  Margo frowned sourly at that. “So what is the super creepy hallway back there supposed to do?”

  “Make it look nicer,” Treeg replied nonchalantly. “Like in here, but with flowers or whatever. Honestly I never really paid attention.”

  “And it doesn’t bother you now?”

  “I guess I still don’t pay attention.”

  Margo groaned, crossing her arms. Between the horrific hands and the terrifying prophetic witch, she was starting to regret following Treeg here. Treeg grinned, patting her on the shoulder and walking back towards the entrance. “Come on. There’s still more to see.”

  “More of this, or fun stuff?”

  “Fun stuff. If you’re as brave a hero as you seem to be, that is.”

  “Oh,” Margo said strongly, chasing after him. “I am.”

  …

  Over the course of several days, Margo would welcomely find her place among the cave-dwelling Blems. Lillian would adorn a spare cloak around Margo’s shoulders, smiling with all of her squarely-shaped goat teeth. “Might be a bit big for you, mwehh!”

  Aside from the incident with Granny Ophelia, most of her time in the cave felt normal. She slept in a cot across from Treeg’s at the top of one of the spires, and whenever she felt too lonely to sleep, she would wake up and cross the room to the nearest window and gaze out at the underground town. The floating golden orbs at light never seemed to turn off-- likely the result of the constant magic being used by the Blems, she assumed-- and she loved counting them one by one until her eyes were too heavy to stay open.

  During the day, she and Treeg attended to various tasks, typically running errands for the other Blems. Occasionally they would pop in to attend a school led by the eccentric Xireal. Xireal was an eight-foot tall behemoth, with the upper body of a man and the heavy bottom of a large crocodile. He stood on his two crocodile legs with an impressive prowess, balancing himself comfortably on his tail when he needed to sit. Xireal’s scales ended just below his bulging gut, where his skin became a dark toffee color.

  Given that Xireal was so tall and his class was rather empty-- usually less than seven students attended on a good day-- he chose to host his lectures in a cave that branched off from the main one. This cave had a high ceiling, lined with pointy stalactites at the very top. It opened out to a ledge, a hole in the bluffs that allowed the sun to come in and naturally illuminate the downtrodden wooden desks of the makeshift classroom.

  “Can anyone tell me what the difference between a race trait and true magic is?” Xireal asked, standing before a makeshift chalkboard as he scrawled out the words in great swooping lettering. Perplexed by the silence, he cleared his throat and asked, “Well, why don't we start with just what true magic is then?”

  “True magic is the magic you were meant to do,” a giraffe-headed elk piped up. “It's what you're supposed to be best at using!”

  “Very good, Kethell. And it takes up less…?” He motioned with his arms, conducting the whole class for an answer.

  “Mana,” the class replied.

  “Mana, excellent,” Xireal echoed with a tone of approval. “Now why does mana matter?”

  “Because if you run out, you can't use magic,” Treeg answered diligently.

  “And?”

  “And if you can't use magic, you can't protect anyone,” Margo said, crossing her arms and making as heroically solemn a face as she could manage. Xireal snorted at her scrunched nose and upturned pout.

  “If you can't use magic, you can't do anything,” Xireal emphasized, underlining the last word several times on the board. “That's why it's important to rest and recover every day. You never want to be caught in a tough situation because you overextended the day before. Does that make sense?”

  A chorus of half-attentive murmurs and nods came in response. Xireal chuckled. “Listen, all you really have to know is if you can use your true magic, use it. Be creative. Don't just use fire magic because you need a fire. There is always a more cost-effective solution to your troubles.”

  Xireal waddled to the other side of the board, tail dragging behind as he tapped the white piece of chalk under the phrase race trait. “Who can give me an example of a race trait?”

  Treeg’s hand shot up. “All humans can use incantations.”

  Xireal nodded, writing the word down on the board with an arrow pointing to humans. “Spot on, Treeg. What's another?”

  “Elk can cast using area magic,” a shy pig answered with a snort from the back. “I've heard they can even talk to the land.”

  Xireal wrote ‘Area Control’ next to elk. “Anyone else?”

  Margo raised her hand, heart swelling with pride as she announced loudly, “Ogres can change their size! Their skin has an enchanted plasticity.”

  The classroom fell silent. Even Xireal looked bewildered, his hazel eyes wide with astonishment. Then, Kethell cackled, wagging a finger at Margo.

  “Ogres aren't real, stupid!!” Kethell mocked, her long tongue flopping outside her mouth as she laughed. “Is your brain as pink as your hair?”

  Margo’s cheeks flared. “They are too real! My brother Kara is an ogre!!”

  This statement only caused more laughter from her other classmates, frustrating Margo further. “He is!! I'm not lying!”

  “It's alright, Margo,” Xireal hushed, giving a stern look to the others and silencing them with a raised finger. He lowered himself slightly, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Your brother sounds strong.”

  “He is,” she said, glaring at Kethell. “Because he is an ogre.”

  Kethell sneered. “Xireal, tell her that she's wrong. She's just being weird, as always.”

  “Kethell, keep it up and I'll be speaking with your parents,” Xireal said. Kethell’s shoulders sank as she crossed her arms, pouting in her seat. He smiled apologetically at Margo. “While Kethell isn't being very kind about it, I do think you might be a bit confused, Margo. I'm betting your brother Kara used a lot of enhancement magic to make himself big, like an ogre. It's a very special type of magic, you see, and I think--”

  “No!” Margo interrupted, jumping out of her seat and knocking her chair over. She stared brazenly at Xireal's startled face. “Kara is an ogre. And I'll show you!”

  Margo hadn't changed her body since saving Treeg. It hadn't occurred to her to try, since all she was doing with Treeg was going to school and performing menial tasks around the cave. There was no need to be a fox or a bird, not when just being Margo suited her just as well. Her bones cracked defiantly as she willed the transformation, a momentarily brutal pain. She closed her eyes over the roar of her flesh tearing, picturing Kara’s ogre form in her mind. His scaly pink flesh rippled down over her own, nubby hands and legs shooting from her sockets and hitting the ground. When she rose to her new height, she towered over the rest of the class, with even Xireal far below her now.

  Margo’s gaze fell on the panicked Kethell. Her lower jaw had extended out of her mouth, revealing a viciously fanged overbite. Narrowing her single eye at the quivering giraffe, Margo's voice shook the cave walls as she lowly bellowed, “See? I told you.”

  Kethell screamed, backing up on her hooves and sending an electrical current zipping through the air. It nailed Margo in the foot, causing her to wobble on her new legs. Unlike the fox and the bird, this new body felt insurmountably heavy, as though Margo's human body was encased inside a mountain of rock. She tried to balance herself by throwing out her arms, but her arm dragged against the side of the cave and shook the stalactites above. A loose one fell free in the commotion, crashing into the back of Margo's vulnerable head.

  Margo toppled backwards. She howled in pain as her body broke through the edges of the hole, and suddenly she was tumbling down the rocky side of the bluffs. She tried to make herself smaller, back into a bird, but her bones were still expanding out, trying to meet the full transformation she had forced them to begin.

  Something soft broke her fall. Margo stared up at the sky in wonder, as the surface that caught her began rising back up towards the ledge she had fallen off of. She rolled her head to the right, looking down in amazement at what had caught her.

  It was a cradle of wood, with an endless amount of leaves keeping her body comfortable and secure inside. The tree groaned under her weight, and slowly, Margo calmed herself long enough to shrink back to her human form just in time to greet Treeg waiting for her at the top. He offered an outstretched hand to her, his eyes brimming with worry.

  “Are you okay?” He asked.

  “I think so,” Margo replied, looking back to the receding tree. “Was that you?”

  Treeg nodded bashfully as Xireal approached from behind with a smile.

  “Your buddy here moved fast,” Xireal cooed, as Treeg blushed silently. “Almost as fast as you did. That's a very powerful ability you have there, Margo.”

  “Thanks,” Margo said proudly, then caught a glimpse of the damage she had done to the classroom. Most of the desks appeared to have been stepped on and trampled on her fall, a few destroyed by falling stalactites. The rest of her classmates seemed to have run off entirely. Sheepishly, she offered a brief apology to Xireal. “My bad about… All that. I guess I need to figure out how to control my true magic a bit better, before I try being an ogre again.”

  Xireal frowned thoughtfully down at Margo. “Your true magic?”

  “Yeah, the shape-shifting stuff. That's my true magic,” Margo replied. “I picked it up when I was on my own, and I'm really good at it usually.”

  But Treeg shook his head, grabbing Margo's arm with a cautious look. “My trees eat up mana, Margo. You would've changed back once I caught you if that was magic.”

  “Well maybe I used so little your tree wasn't hungry,” Margo argued. Treeg glared at her, crossing his arms.

  “That's not how it works!”

  “No, I think this might be a teaching moment, actually,” Xireal interrupted with the clap of his hands. “I would've liked to finish the lesson with the others, but I suppose they'll just have to finish it next week.”

  Xireal led them towards the board, picking up his piece of chalk and picking up exactly where he left off. “Though every species has a different trait tied to their magical abilities, they all have one thing in common.”

  In great, big lettering, Xireal wrote the words ‘COSTS NO MANA’.

  Margo's eyes grew wide. “Really?”

  “Look at yourself right now Margo,” Xireal said. “Do you feel tired? Like you've exhausted your mana and you can't manage a simple light spell?”

  “I guess not? My head hurts, mostly, but I think that's just from bumping the cave.”

  “Exactly.” Xireal snapped his fingers, pointing directly at her chest. “A transformation of that size would take a ton of mana, even if it was your true magic. But you completely overwrote your body without wasting a drop, which means…”

  “It's a race trait,” Treeg finished, staring dumbfoundedly at Margo. “But, what race shape-shifts? I've never heard of one like that before.”

  “I don't know,” Xireal remarked, a passionate lilt to his words. “You are something beyond me, Margo. But I'm betting whatever you are is something unimaginably powerful.”

  …

  That night, Margo stood over the diamond-shaped windowsill, gazing down at the city with a hollow feeling in her chest. Hearing she was special should've felt good. Her whole life, that was all she had wanted to be. Never in a million years did she think she could be as strong as Kara, but now she could take his form at will, punch the way he punched, hurt the way he hurt. Wasn't that basically the same?

  “What're you moping for?” Treeg asked from his cot. “You impressed Xireal and put Kethell in her place. I'd say today was a huge win for you, and the rest of the Kethell-Eat-a-Rock Club.”

  “I just,” Margo sighed, leaning back against the wall and feeling the breeze against her shoulders. “I just feel like the more I'm out in the world, the less I know about anything.”

  “I mean, you did show up not knowing anything,” Treeg pointed out with a smirk. Margo scowled.

  “I don't mean like, actual knowledge stuff, I mean me. I don't even know what I am,” Margo huffed. “And I still don't even know what my true magic is!! It's so annoying!”

  “Well whatever your true magic is, I'm sure it won't be half as cool as you turning into a giant ogre and scaring Kethell like that.”

  Margo trounced back into her cot, pulling the thin, ratty blanket over her with a loud frustrated exhale. She heard Treeg sigh, his cot squeaking as he rolled out and sat on the ground beside hers. Slowly, Margo slipped out, joining him on the cold stone with a shiver.

  “I don't get you,” Treeg said.

  “Because you have your true magic!” Margo whined, exasperated and ready to wrap her hands around his throat. “You do trees, which is yeah, kind of sad given your name--”

  “--Hey!!”

  “But you know who you are, Treeg,” Margo finally uttered defeatedly.

  “And you don't?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  Treeg snorted, then shouldered her lightly. “I know who you are. You're Margo. Margo the Hero. Just keep being that until you don't want to be anymore.”

  Margo closed her eyes, the sounds of the fox-led parade beginning to trumpet through her mind. Dreamily, she mumbled, “What if that's all I am forever?”

  “Well,” Treeg whispered. “There are a lot worse things you could be.”