It was dark the next day when we finally crossed the plains. A small copse of trees and bushes, drier, taller, and warmer, with less foliage carpeting the ground than the forest I lived in, greeted us, and the sound of dragons mingling reached our ears. Qassot became twitchy.
"I'll sit this one out."
"You're not going anywhere," Riselus rumbled.
"No really, I'm from this place, and they don't… um… I'll just stay behind."
Dracoa grabbed Qassot's tail with her teeth, inducing a yelp of pain and surprise, and threw her into the clearing. We soon followed. The clan recognized Qassot immediately. Concerned, stern, and curious faces peered at us, mainly at Qassot. An old, large dragon, scales furrowed and traced with age, stormed up, fuming.
"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN AND WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY SPELL SCROLL?"
"Uh…" Qassot started, nervously looking around, "Well…"
It took a long time to get the leader to stop yelling at Qassot, who clearly did not give two quails about his spell scroll, but cared quite a bit about his opinion of her. After she had gotten away, many other dragons of various shades of blue swamped us and began to ask a constant stream of questions.
"Who are you guys?"
"Wow, you're so small and fluffy. What are you?"
"Why are there bushes on your back?"
"Why don't you have any legs?"
"Why is the leader so mad at you?"
"Don't scuttle away yet! You didn't answer my question!"
"Why isn't he answering my question?"
"I think he fell asleep."
"What?"
"You look like a dragon, but where are your legs?"
"Maybe we could try moving around without legs."
"SHUT IT!" the leader suddenly bellowed. "Do NOT pester the visitors!"
There was a collective sigh of disappointment.
"Now that I'm done being angry at this one," the leader snapped, gesturing angrily at Qassot, "Why are you here?"
"There is an army of some sort roaming around attacking everything near Ysk Mountain-" Riselus began.
The clan began to rush around and pack up their various belongings.
"I didn't finish," Riselus muttered.
The clan leader leaned towards us. "We're a warrior clan," he whispered, "So we've been kind of battle-hungry for a while now."
"Why don't you just fight each other," I wondered out loud, remembering the one time at Qade Valley where there was a wrestling competition. It was pretty fierce, and a red dragon won overwhelmingly.
"We do that," the leader said, "They're bored of it."
"Do you guys really have nothing better to do other than fight?" I asked. It seemed strange. They could be sunning themselves on a ledge, wandering around the forest eating berries, flying around trees randomly, or even swimming around.
"Are you really telling a warrior clan to not fight?" Dracoa asked scathingly, "That's like telling you to stop having wings."
I yelped and scampered into a bush. "Leave my wings alone, I like them."
The clan was very efficient. By the time Dracoa had gotten Qassot to fish me out of the bush, the entire clan had left the clearing behind without a trace of them ever living there and started across the plains.
"Okaynowthatthatsdoneletsgohomenow," I said quickly, starting to follow the dragons out of the forest.
"We're not done," Dracoa said.
"What else were we supposed to do?"
"Find Azor."
"But why?"
Dracoa wrapped me in her tail and threw me deeper into the forest.
An hour or so later, we emerged from the forest, heading south, to find a mountain range on the other side of the Krie River blocking our way. To our right was more forest and to the left was a lake. We decided to go right. We followed the mountains through the straggling outskirts of the forest. We came to a place where the mountains came down to meet the sea as the sun was going down. There was a straight cliff face down to the sea, hundreds of gyts below, the river making a beautiful waterfall. We began to discuss how to get around the mountains.
Riselus said we could follow the river to pass through the mountains. I was not comfortable with it. Wet fur was problematic and did not dry well. Qassot was fine with it, since she had grown up swimming with the Krie Clan. Even Dracoa could swim. Riselus was so big, he walked on the muddy riverbed. I stood on Riselus to avoid getting wet.
We headed back the way we came until we reached the lake, hidden behind some bushes and rocks. Riselus stopped so suddenly that I tumbled into the water with a small splash. Qassot had to swim down to get me. Luckily, I could float. At first, I was confused. I was going down slowly, then I suddenly started going up at manic speeds; spinning and turning over randomly and uncontrollably, shooting out of the water so high that I would have spread my wings and taken flight. Once I got out, I noticed that my fur held air pockets. It was still light and fluffy, albeit wet on the outside. The others rested and gave Dracoa some time to find the end of the river. It seemed to be invisible. I took the time to have fun in the lake, diving in and out and letting the air bubbles in my fur pull me out of the water and launch me into the air.
Well, I wanted to do that, but Dracoa gave me an angry look when I bumped into her.
By the time we dried off, the sun was slowly setting, casting a lengthening gloom through the trees and a few outlying mountains.
"Found it," Dracoa said, "Follow me."
She led us over to the other end of the lake, where she had found a small hole in the rocks where the lake drained under the mountains.
"Where does that go?" I asked. I didn't like the look of the dark hole.
"The other side of the mountain," Dracoa said.
"Hopefully," Qassot added. "I don't want to get lost under some mountains and never be seen again."
I shivered.
"Let's get going, it's not like we have anything better to do," Riselus grunted.
"What about sleeping?" I asked.
"No," Dracoa snapped, "It's not night yet.
"That was probably the longest sentence I've heard you say so far, Riselus," Qassot commented.
Riselus sighed and started moving towards the hole.
It was a tight squeeze, especially for Riselus, who had to shove some rocks out of the way, making the current faster. The water became deep and sluggish. Since I could float, I used my wings to propel myself forward, but I couldn't control my spin very well. I ended up flipping over and around quite often. I couldn't tell if I was going the right direction, either. The darkness was complete - no light filtered through the small entrance.
The darkness opened up briefly in the form of an opening in the roof of the cave to reveal that we were indeed underneath the Raik Mountains, traveling in an extremely steep valley, and I was indeed very far behind the others. I scrambled to catch up. Taking one glance at the mountains before the view disappeared. Night had fallen. I saw a massive mountain with a shoal of black birds flying in a ring around the top. It was flat on the top and was emitting a strange dark smoke that floated off with the wind and dropped small particles everywhere. I quickly got away from the sight and reentered the watery deep through the mountains. It was colder and darker than Ysk Mountain when it snowed.
A little while later, far ahead of me, Qassot spoke up. "I think there's a ledge here. Let's rest."
"Is it large enough?" Dracoa asked from my left.
"I think so," Qassot responded. I followed her voice and crashed into the wall of the cave. I poked my head out of the water. The darkness was so complete I couldn't tell if my eyes were open or closed. I reached my leg out and felt around. There was definitely a ledge, sitting low in the water. I carefully pulled myself out.
I shook the water off and rested for a while, before I was begrudgingly dragged into scouring the cave and river for fish and squid by Qassot. I grabbed a loose rock from the ledge to bring myself down to the riverbed. Strangely enough, there was light at the bottom of the deep passage. Tiny points of light attached to the tails of some creatures swimming around. With this light, I found shellfish. I loosened a dozen and they floated up to the surface. Then, I released the rock and I floated up. On my way up, I saw Qassot chasing tiny fish before they swam into a tiny crevice leading deeper into the mountains. A brief image of a network of submerged tunnels leading deep into the darkness and pooling into a large cavern flashed through my mind. I shuddered. I didn't want to get lost in something like that.
Dracoa got lucky and found a large squid. I dove down to see if there was anything else. I saw some peculiar fish; black, siphoning what little light there was in the deep darkness, until there was a moving patch of pure black, with slightly shimmering scales and hundreds of deep red eyes. They got in little arrow-shaped groups and nipped at me with their sharp teeth, causing air bubbles to shake loose. I quickly got out of the water before they could bring me down to the bottom.
After eating, we went to sleep. Well, I tried to, at least. I kept seeing tiny red lights in the darkness, even with my eyes closed.
We woke up cold and shivering and continued down the river.
At the end of the next day, we had finally emerged out of the "uncrossable" mountain range into a massive desert. We didn't walk. Swimming was faster, since the current now accelerated as it exited the mountains. The river began to speed up and pulled us along twice as fast as before. Four days after we left the mountains behind, we came to a fork in the stream. One way curved sharply to the right and the other took a more-or-less straight curve to the left.
"So…" Qassot started.
"Let's go left," I said.
"Why?" Riselus grunted.
"Just seems right."
Qassot got distracted by something shiny on the riverbed to the right.
"Don't look at me," Dracoa said when I turned to her to make a decision, "I don't know the right way."
I shrugged and started down the left branch.
We traveled for a while before Qassot suddenly said, "No, no, NO! Wrong way!"
"What's wrong?" I asked. The current had pulled me to face away from her and I could not turn back.
"I've flown up to the top of the mountains we crossed four days ago."
"And?" Riselus asked.
The river began to go faster and a faint rumbling began to be heard. I slowly spun around.
"I've seen a GIANT whirlpool at the end of a fairly straight river. That's what is at the end of this! WRONG WAY!"
Suddenly, the rumbling became unbearably loud. We all turned back and swam for our life, but the river overpowered us. It pulled us along, faster and faster. The rumbling noise became louder. A flash of panic jolted through me.
"WE'RE GONNA DIE!!!!" Qassot yelled, panicked.
"JUST SWIM THE OTHER WAY," I yelled back, frantically flailing around in the water.
"Why don't we just climb out?" asked Riselus, who had planted himself firmly in the gravelly riverbed and was calmly watching us freak out. All panic was immediately extinguished. I climbed out and turned back towards the fork, shaken to the roots by the terror of being drowned by a whirlpool. We walked back over to the fork in the river and got back in. We swam along the other river - or, in my case, spun down the river - until it reached the sea. Mountains one way, desert the other way.
"So… a dead end!" I said cheerfully, "Cool, let's go home."
Dracoa thwacked me into a small sand dune with her tail.
Riselus grunted in annoyance. "We can try and get around the mountains."
"I don't think we can swim in the sea," I replied, now soaked in sand.
"Sure we can!" said Qassot, "It's just water."
"We can stay near the shore," Riselus suggested.
"What if there is nothing behind those mountains?" I said worriedly. "Can't we just assume Azor doesn't exist?"
"Then we look somewhere else," Dracoa said from her position near the shore, "And no, we can't."
We traveled around the mountains, following the shore. Sure enough, it was just like swimming in the river, but the much stronger current kept trying to bash us against the rocks at the feet of the mountains instead of pulling us downwards. Soon, the mountains gave way to rolling, green hills carpeted with trees. The white, snow-capped mountains disappeared and let a calm, bright plain of tall, whispering, swaying grass and tall white flowers.
"I don't think there's anything behind these mountains," I grumbled. "Who would want to live there, anyways?"
Qassot swam up to me. "I would! I like the ocean. It's nice to swim in."
"The ocean's making my fur feel grainy," I complained.
"Good thing I don't have fur, then," Qassot replied cheerfully, "Scales are so much better!" She began to show off her swimming skills by diving beneath me and shooting up on my other side. The ripples caused by this made me start to spin even faster.
"Stop playing around," Riselus grunted from behind us. "You're too noisy."
"Well there's nothing to see," I said dizzily, "So what else can we do?"
"Swim."
"Help…" I groaned, "Too… much… spinning…"
Qassot didn't stop.
"Look over there," Dracoa said from the front of the group. "Told you there was something here."
A castle - more like a fortress - appeared, governing the surrounding valley. On the topmost tower, a circle of curved spikes sat around a glowing orb which spread stabbing rays of light everywhere. Many-towered and pale-yellow-stoned, with the orb sitting as a watchful eye above. We slowly clambered onshore and walked up, leaving wet squelching footsteps on the pristine beach. The castle seemed to grow as we approached, shining in the afternoon sun.
We glanced at each other, all thinking the same thing. He's real. A blinding flash from the orb drew our attention. It warped, fractured and broke with yet another flash which blurred our senses.