Even though she had been perfectly happy to have continued building her spells and training, Elin couldn't help but feel excited as she woke up the next morning.
She had all her things packed, essentially twice over with how many timres she'd rechecked to make sure. She'd also had Kim look at her worriedly a few times the night before.
Now she was ready to head out and continue seeing more of this world. She was confident that she'd be able to more than just be the one healing this group, although she still had to admit to herself that she'd still need to hold herself back, since she was still the one who would primarily take care of any injuries with her magic, when possible.
As she got dressed, she didn't even mind it as Kim glared at her from the bed. She was in high spirits and was certain Kim couldn't bring her down with her grumpy attitude this morning.
"What're you so excited about?" Kim groused at her as Kim started to get up and get dressed, after helping Elin finish putting her magic dress on.
"We'll be off to see somewhere new!" Elin declared, practically dancing as she moved away from Kim.
What she couldn't decide was if she was more excited about heading out to try and defeat the fire dragon or if it was the fact that they'd be going somewhere she hadn't been before.
"Is that all it'd take to get you happy?" Kim asked, her tone suddenly shifting to one that made Elin pause. She'd heard that tone before, but hadn't been able to figure out what it exactly meant.
As Elin looked at Kim, she saw a soft smile on Kim's face and an affectionate look in her eyes, but otherwise her expression was unreadable. Even though there was something else in it that Elin could pick up on, but couldn't identify.
She couldn't help but start wondering what that might be. While it didn't dampen her spirits about continuing on somewhere else, she couldn't help but let her attention change focus to trying to figure out what it was about Kim's expression that she couldn't figure out what it meant.
Then after both were dressed, they left Elin's room to head out to get breakfast. Elin felt like she was walking on air while Kim plodded along behind her, her expression having returned to being grumpy.
When they arrived in the dining hall, Jonas was already there, though Elmo hadn't yet arrived. As Elin started eating, she couldn't help but listen to the conversation that Kim started to have with Jonas.
"So, what'll you do if Elmo doesn't show up?" she asked calmly, not reaching for any of the food just yet.
"If he doesn't show up, I'll have to assume that he's chosen to stay here and train more," Jonas replied. "None of you said anything about if you'd be coming, that I recall at least, but I also did say that I'll be leaving no matter what anyone else choses."
Jonas paused as he took another bite of what he was having for breakfast before continuing. "While we did agree of what we'd do to get ready to leave this morning, if anyone of you changed your mind about leaving, even if you had originally committed to leave with me, that would be your choice, and I wouldn't bother to try and stop you."
"Well, he's your boyfriend, so I couldn't really care less," Kim remarked.
"Whatever," Jonas said, sounding annoyed, but Elin couldn't help but wonder about the slight coloring of his cheeks.
She'd never seen Jonas look like that before, so she was curious as to what it was about, but she also knew she probably wouldn't get an answer if she said anything. Besides that, she couldn't help but wonder if it was something she'd understand anyway.
Elin was about done eating when Elmo finally showed up. However, when he arrived, Elin thought she'd hear Kim or Jonas asking him if he'd changed his mind. Instead, Kim merely went on him about getting up so late.
"Did you really have that much to pack?" Kim taunted. "Or did the preparations wear you out that much?"
Elin glanced at Kim and had to stifle a giggle. Kim looked like she was bored and going on anything possible to entertain herself at the moment. Which Elin couldn't help but find amusing.
"Oh, it wasn't that," Elmo said, yawning. "I stayed up late trying to figure out where we'd be most likely to find the fire dragon."
"Oh?" Jonas asked, looking more interested in Elmo's arrival than he had a moment ago. "What'd you find out?"
Elmo sat down and took his time collecting a plate of food from the selection before him. Only then did he look at the others.
"I couldn't find anything specific about 'fire dragons,' but I did find that there's a number of dragons to the mountains in the north and the mountains to the southwest," Elmo said as he sat down with his plate.
"Which indicated what direction would be better for us to try to go with?" Kim asked.
Elmo shook his head. "I couldn't find any information about which mountain range had what kind of dragons. All I could find was that those were where the dragons primarily lived. If we took more time to search the library here, maybe we can find more out, but I can't say for sure if we would," he simply replied, his gaze on his plate of food.
"At least we have it narrowed down to two locations," Jonas remarked. "Now we need to select one and hope we got it right."
Elin was about to take another bite of the turkey leg when he stomach told her that it was done. That it didn't have more room. So, as she set the leg down, she thought she could at leas say something.
"Well, maybe if we knew more about the mountains we could decide then," Kim said, preventing Elin from saying what had come to her mind.
"Or it would be just as much of a waste of time as looking for what dragons were in those places," Jonas remarked, although he sounded rather disinterested.
"Are you saying we shouldn't even check?" Kim growled.
"There isn't any guarantee that we'll find anything helpful on that front, either," Elmo commented, holding a turkey leg in his hand and using it to emphasize his point.
"If you really want to take a look yourself, you're still welcome to stay," Jonas said as Kim opened her mouth to respond to Elmo's statement. "I still plan on leaving this morning, regardless of if any of you accompany me."
Kim didn't seem to have anything to respond to that with, so she closed her mouth, though Elin suspected that she wasn't happy about having to do that. Yet, she still saw that as the perfect opportunity to ask what she had wanted to before Kim went on about what details of the mountains they could learn about.
"Which mountains are closer to us?" Elin asked after a minute when she was satisfied that no one else was going to start up another tangent.
"Uh, I believe the mountains to the southwest are closer," Elmo replied, pausing in his eating for a moment. "I think they're about a week's walk, where what I could read about the mountains to the north, they were about a month's walk. So…" Elmo paused, clearly doing calculations in his head, "…maybe about six hundred miles to the north is the Sachena mountains and the two hundred miles to the Wistena Mountains to the southwest."
"Why'd you need to estimate?" Kim asked. "Didn't the books have that info as well?"
Elmo shook his head. "I only found the books that said what the mountains were called. I had to ask others in the palace here to learn how far away they were. They didn't have any maps, so I couldn't say how far any of them were," Elmo explained. "All I got was an estimate about how long it'd take to walk there from some of the soldiers who'd been to those different mountain ranges."
"Makes sense," Jonas said, nodding. "At least that's useful for us to decide which mountains to go with."
"How so?" Kim asked, sounding skeptical.
"Simple. We now know how far away the mountains are from here. Even if it's a rough estimate. Unless there's other precipitating factors, such as maybe a bog or swamp on the way to the mountains in the north that would slow us down that we don't know about, then it would be clear which would be closer to us, and which would be more likely a location for the people in charge of this stupid competition to have the dragon appear."
"You think they use logic when deciding things?" Kim scoffed.
Jonas nodded decisively. "I do. If they had the dragon appear to the mountains to the north of here, how long do you think it'd take us to get there? Naturally, we'd be estimating about a month. So, it would be a month of us traveling there, which I have a feeling would be too slow for their viewers," Jonas replied.
"Fine. I'll accept what you're getting at," Kim said, sounding a little annoyed.
"By the way, good question, Elin," Jonas said.
"So, we leaving after breakfast?" Elmo suddenly asked, as he set his plate down, already empty of the food he'd put on it earlier.