A knock at the door was what woke up Roxane early the next morning.
As her golden eyes sprung open, she felt Diana stir from her sleep as well. When she lifted herself up from the ground she was rubbing the sleep from her green eyes and Roxane couldn't help herself to laugh at the sight of her friend's extremely unkempt silver hair. She could only guess how badly she looked.
"Is it time to go?" Diana asked and soon after asking, her mouth opened wide into a yawn.
Roxane answered her with a nod. She gathered the cloak that was on top of them and gave it to Diana for her to wear over the badly ripped dress of hers. She still wore her wedding dress and Roxane wanted to cover it up as quickly as she could.
She reached out to smooth out Diana's hair as best she could and did the same to her hair. Then she got off the ground and helped Diana up from the ground as well. She shook the dust off of the wizard's cloak before pulling it around her. She figured the man wouldn't take it back in the state it was in.
Roxane grabbed her satchel and when she went to grab the black stone from where she placed it, she was met with nothing but black ashes.
"What's wrong?" Diana yawned again. Roxane only shook her head.
"It's nothing. Let's go." She moved past Diana and slid the door away from the entrance to where the two could slip on through.
"It's good that you two are up. I was about to knock again." Upon seeing the two women emerge from the shack, Thatcher stands up from the ground. He looked tired, his grey eyes that normally would be brimming with life looked dull to her. Roxane noted the dark circles underneath and figured he had almost no sleep last night.
"It's going to take a while before Xavier can receive reinforcements, the most he could do when he wakes is to send the word out about four fugitives." Thatcher continued. "I am worried about the High Priest though. You two know him best, what do you suppose would be his first course of action?" He asked Roxane and Diana.
Diana shook her head, but Roxane was the one who spoke.
"The High Priest is nothing but a figurehead for the temple. The same could be said for any of the High Priestesses. They'll wait for the prince to wake up and have him handle it. I don't think the other people of the temple would go after their Saint."
"They would if they thought the Saint was kidnapped." Roxane's head turned to the side just as the wizard appeared next to them. He looked as haggard as Thatcher, the only difference being that when she looked at him her heart jumped inside her chest.
Bewildered, she angrily told her inner thoughts to calm down. He was just one man, she said to herself. A man that looked like he had rolled around on the grass several times.
"Either way," Thatcher said, oblivious to Roxane's inner turmoil, "we'll need to start heading out. The first village we reach is about an hour or two away from here. It's a long way from here to Zerentha." As soon as he uttered those words, Roxane's sharp golden eyes cut back to him.
"What did you say? Zerentha?" She said, feeling all sorts of emotions as she looked at the wary Thatcher. Zerentha sat far east from Solstine. If someone from Solstine wanted to go to Zerentha they would have to cross the ocean. Unfortunately for her, the ocean was one of her biggest fears. She could distinctly remember the stories she would hear from her past in which giant sea serpents would shallow dragons up whole.
Roxane swallowed hard. She had never crossed the ocean, and she had never hoped she would, but their destination was Zerentha and there was no other way to reach the eastern side of the world. Not unless she wanted to draw attention to herself and make the trip in her dragon form, although even that was not plausible since she has grown out of touch with her other form because of how infrequently she would transform. She was also not accustomed to being in her dragon body for large amounts of time so a trip of that length would be inconceivable either way.
"We're not going." She said the words quite matter-of-factly that Thatcher's face twisted up in confusion.
"What?"
"Look Thatcher, Diana and I are extremely grateful for your help in escaping, but we never signed up to do anything else, much less travel halfway across the world."
Thatcher shook his head in horror at her.
"No, you don't understand. We need the Saint to come with us. This is about something much bigger than a whiny Crown Prince who wants more power. This is about something far more dangerous!" His voice grew an octave higher at the end. He was desperate and for an unknown reason.
He drew back, almost as he also noticed he had lost his composure.
"The real reason why we came with the envoys to the temple was to help the Saint escape, yes, but we also need the Saint. There have been numerous sightings of things to come if we don't figure out what it could mean. To do that we have to make sure the Saint isn't being exploited for other people's personal gain."
Roxane felt herself get angrier by the second and every time he did not say Diana's name. Her golden eyes looked like a cat's as she burst out, her harsh words split the air between them.
"I don't give a rat's a** about any sightings you might have seen. How are we to know you two aren't going to exploit Diana just like all the others?" She shook her head more aggressively. "No, we are not going to Zerentha."
"Roxane," a voice from the side of the two spoke up and she whisked her head to the side and glared at the wizard, "think about this rationally. If we wanted to harm you two, wouldn't we have just kidnapped Diana and left?"
He spoke the truth but Roxane couldn't get the image of the deep pitch-black waves of the ocean out of her head.
"Even so, why would Diana need to care about such things?" There was still anger in her voice, but at least some of it had dissipated.
"Because of what the sightings have shown us, it could lead to a much bigger disaster." Thatcher looked at her angrily as well. "A disaster that could potentially rival the disaster that shook the world many centuries ago. The very one your ancestors, the first dragons, left right after it took place." His grey eyes went to Diana then.
"We need you, Diana. With you, I am willing to bet we could figure out what exactly is heading our way. There has to be some sort of correlation between when your powers first manifested and when we first started to see the sightings."
A very distressed-looking Diana bit her lips, her troubled emerald eyes went to Roxane.
"Don't. Don't tell me you want to go along with whatever these two say." She felt her heart shrink in size as she stared defiantly at Diana. "You have never asked for this, for any of this. You don't owe anyone anything."
"But he's right Roxane." She sadly placed her pale hand over her heart. "I feel it here, inside my heart. I know this might seem so incredibly stupid to you, but I have never felt filled with such a purpose before. I want to go Roxane. I have to go."
"And I would feel much safer if my great dragon protector would accompany me, and be by my side."
Roxane heard herself groan as Diana quickly went closer to her, grabbing her hand like when they were children. Despite what Roxane wanted to believe, it was true, Diana's eyes were lit up with a fire that Roxane hadn't seen for some time now. She found herself something she truly wanted to pursue.
"Damn it, damn it all," Roxane said and her eyes reverted back to normal. "Very well. If you really want to be the death of me." Diana ignored the last bit, as Roxane was only being difficult. She grinned at Roxane as if saying she was the victorious one.
"Good. Let's be on our way then." Thatcher released the breath that he had been holding. Perhaps he did not want to fight a dragon to get to Diana, and for a very good reason too. She would have annihilated him, the wizard too if it really had come to it.
They didn't need to walk far, as the forest gave way to a dirt road. Since it was still early morning they found a farmer who was on their way into the village to take his vegetables to the market. A couple of coins and the farmer let them hop onto the back of the wagon.
"Haven't you four heard?" The farmer made small talk from the front seat of the wagon as they rode along the bumpy road. "There was quite a commotion last night up in the mountains over there where the Goddess of Kara's temple is. I could have sworn a heard the roar of a dragon."