Setting off due north was the quickest route to reach dragon country. Though that wasn’t the main reason Illyxa had decided to take it. The bigger concern on her mind was running into supply caravans for the Alliance armies. They wouldn’t likely respond well to a goblin, a gorc, and a half dragon hanging out near their supply lines.

They needed to carry extra food for the trip, not much to hunt out there in the deserts, but that was doable. Especially as Hyi could purify any of the water they encountered in the mostly dried lake beds to the north.

At least it wasn’t too much further north before they hit the prairies. The lands where the land was cooler and so it took less rain to not be a desert. Then there’d be game to hunt.

And so they set off, loaded down with supplies.

As they marched, the Halflet bard happily joined the Goblin marching songs. The Elves seemed rather less than pleased about the extra singing, but both Goblin-y gals were thrilled.

They also let Pin have some solo songs of his own, however. He had a beautiful voice. Soft and vibrating in a way that was mildly hypnotic. And could probably be more hypnotic if he put real effort into it. That was the primary magic of bards after all.

Eventually, however, the travellers were forced to stop due to a sight before them. A vast expanse of rolling dunes made of blinding white sands.

“That hurts just to look at,” Fuan muttered.

“The White Dunes. We’ll have to stick to travelling at night,” N’ratha replied.

“Mhm… or wear eye protection,” Illyxa said, before tracing out a small summoning circle in chalk on the rocky ground beneath them.

“Eye protection?” Hyi asked.

“Goblin magic,” Illyxa said, before beginning a quiet chant.

A few moments later the summoning circle flashed with green flame, before it receded and revealed a small pile of odd looking eye glasses. Illyxa passed them out, the others mystified by the odd material they were made of. They felt almost like horn, yet colourful. Then, for the parts that went over the eyes, they seemed almost like stained glass, yet there was something warmer and softer about the material than compared to glass.

“What are these?” Pin asked, while sliding on his set that had eye pieces shaped a bit like flowers.

“I dunno,” Illyxa replied with a shrug. “We goblins found a way to summon them some years ago, and they’re useful. Much like story food we don’t know where they come from. Perhaps the workshop of Vansence or one of the other gods? They’ll work for our needs, though. Mostly because I hate trying to sleep in the sun.”

Gragya nodded, sliding on her own pair, where the glass-like part was more reflective and stretched from one side to the other. “They’re also pretty cool looking, if I do say so.”

“Mhm!” Illyxa added, sliding on her own, which were shaped like rounded five pointed stars.

Hyi and N’ratha accepted that and put theirs on without complaint. Fuan, however, saw an issue with his own.

“These do not have that… shaded glass,” he said, holding his eye glasses up to show that they were entirely made of the opaque material. The sections for the eyes were merely slotted to make it possible to see while wearing them.

Illyxa stared up at them for a moment, before snatching them from his hands. She then produced an odd silvery roll, from which she noisily pulled off a few sections and stuck them to cover most of the slots.

“There we go. Like northern snow goggles,” Illyxa said, handing the eyewear back to Fuan.

“And what, may I ask, is this odd substance you stuck to it?” he replied, gingerly holding the glasses as if they might bite him.

“More goblin magic. Don’t worry about it,” Illyxa said with a casual wave of her hand before turning and setting off towards the dunes.

The others hurried after her, leaving Fuan to begrudgingly wear the sticky eye protection and mutter curses under his breath as his eyebrows got caught up in the gunk. He also wasn’t sure how well it was actually working as eye protection, but he soldiered on.

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The dunes took two days to cross. Two days of irritation for Fuan as he swore he lost at least one quarter of the hairs on his eyebrows. The others all seemed quite happy with their eyewear, however. To the point they kept wearing them on sunny days after leaving the dunes.

The rest of the trip north was fairly uneventful, however. Standard travel affairs of setting up camps. Arguing over food. Running through practice in one’s arts in the mornings. Then walking until their feet were sore and repeating the whole process the next day. Sometimes they stopped to hunt or forage, but they mostly went off the supplies they carried.

Pin spent much of the time asking the cousins of the accomplishments, while also deflecting questions about himself to insist he was an uninteresting story teller. N’ratha was little more forthcoming with her past, at least after her childhood. She told enough of that to let the others understand she did not care for her draconic father, who had been something of a womanizing tyrant collecting human maidens for his ‘collection’.

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“How did you get away?” Hyi asked, concern in her voice.

N’ratha shrugged. “Father had family business elsewhere. Long enough for mother and one of his other wives to get me and a few of the kids out of the complex. I was fairly young, so I don’t remember the details. But we got out.”

“And then?” Hyi asked.

“We moved somewhere. I lived there for a while. Then I met Pin and left,” N’ratha replied.

Illyxa gave her a brief once over. “You know, if I cared, I’d probably bite you for being so evasive. Luckily I don’t.”

“How can you say that?” Hyi asked, her eyes going wide.

Illyxa shrugged. “I don’t care because it doesn’t affect my trust in her.”

“Appreciated,” N’ratha replied.

Hyi shook her head, mumbling something about not understanding goblins.

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Eventually, the quiet of the wild prairies ended. They heard the sounds of battle carrying over the land just as trees began to dot the endless expanse. The small party moved more cautiously then, not sure quite how far the sounds had travelled. The behaviour of sound was a magic all of its own, sometimes spreading endlessly while other times you could stumble blindly (or, more accurately, deafly) onto a battle.

Keeping lower in the now rising grass and gently sloping hills, they found a ridge after a few minutes and snuck up the side. Reaching the crest, all were surprised by what they saw.

Vast numbers of soldiers spread out from one horizon to the other. Trenches and other earthworks had been built. Arrows and magic spells were lobbed between the vast yet thinly stretched armies. After a few minutes of watching, a group of dragons swooped over what had to be the Alliance lines, the green dragons belching stinking clouds of toxic gasses upon the soldiers below. The assault was broken, however, by gryffin or pegasus riders flying in from somewhere to the south east. Enough to not only drive the smallish green dragons back, but to also release aerial death of their own upon the kobolds who tried to breach the recently formed gap.

The deaths on both sides seemed to cause no change in the lines, merely a further thinning of the troops to either side as they attempted to plug the weak point.

“They must have both tried to outflank one another,” Illyxa muttered, eyes narrowing to try to scan the horizons. “We should keep going east. We’ll stay back from the front and hope this ends before the land does.”

“Before the… surely it will?” Hyi replied.

“Ehh… the gap between the Dividing Ranges and the Great Inlet is fairly narrow here,” N’ratha replied. “Not quite as thin as the land on the western side, but still only about two dozen leagues, not counting Lake Korza.”

“Still, the armies cannot be that numerous?” Hyi said.

“The northern border on the west of the mountains is heavily fortified. The dragons maybe have slipped through a crack to start this war, but a counter offensive there would be throwing armies against a wall,” Fuan replied. “It makes sense to send the bulk of the armies around, to try to strike the soft underbelly of the draconic realms. I had also heard talk of a full mobilization.”

“And the dragons have no qualms about throwing more kobolds at any problem until it goes away,” N’ratha added.

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As such, they travelled east. In doing so, they found burnt out towns and villages, the buildings sized for kobolds. Apparently the Alliance forces had managed to enter the southern edge of the draconic domains, and had pillaged quite thoroughly.

Quietly, Illyxa thought how foolish it was to burn the villages and lose the farmers there, but… she knew humans, dwarves, and elves tended to view kobolds worse than they viewed goblins, and they’d burned many a goblin village just for existing. They had odd ideas about the undying ferocity of other peoples. As if not worshipping their gods was proof one lacked any morality whatsoever. Never mind how little morality those who worshiped the Twelve showed…

She could tell, at points, that they were being watched. That there were Kobolds out there, hiding in the tall grass. Gragya whispered confirmation she knew it as well. A few hungry and now homeless farmers were unlikely to make trouble for a band of adventurers, however. Especially as confusing a group as they were, loyalties unclear to outside observers.

Every so often they had to hide, however. Not from Kobold refugees, but from forces flying overhead. Dragon raiding parties headed south or Alliance forces heading north. Moving around reserve encampments further slowed progress towards the East.

Still, as they went, Illyxa’s hopes of being able to go around decreased. Until eventually, they reached the coast. Staring at the cold waters of the Great Inlet on the horizon, she saw there was one option now.

“We’ll have to go south. Find a town where we can get a boat,” she said, hating the idea.

“Wouldn’t that have been faster to start with?” Hyi asked. “Walking through Dragon country seems fairly slow and dangerous.”

“Yes… but there’s no sea monsters on land,” Illyxa replied.

“Sea monsters?” Hyi asked.

N’ratha nodded. “The Great Inlet is full of them. Draconic lands have dragons, but you can see them coming. You can’t see much in those murky waters…”

“Between me and Illyxa we could survive an attack, but it’d be a headache,” Gragya replied.

“Anyway, nothing to be gained by complaining about it. We just need to get travelling,” Illyxa said.

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They found a fishing village after a few hour’s walk. Unfortunately it was crawling with Alliance soldiers. The docs were being used to land great transport ships. Ones large enough to fight off any sea monsters.

Considering the military presence, it was unlikely there were any inhabitants of the village left, and almost certainly not fishermen to hire a boat from.

The next village, which they encountered near to sundown, was a burnt out husk. Whether the alliance forces had burned it in their initial invasion or dragons had burned it to deny them the port no one in the group could guess.

Either way, though, it provided some shelter. They decided to set up camp in one of the more intact buildings.

As they were cooking, Illyxa did notice both Pin and N’ratha seemed unhappy with how the detour was going. Which Illyxa felt was evidence the home N’ratha have lived in after being in dragon country was Mezora. Which made sense. It was a city known for its large half dragon population.

It also left Illyxa suspecting that there was more to N’ratha leaving that just love.

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The next day they had to rush and hide from a raiding party of dragons. Moving cautiously on the way further south, they found the dragons again, circling over a port defended by alliance soldiers. The ongoing battle was not the party’s problem, even if Hyi tried to talk them into helping.

“Look at the architecture,” Illyxa said. “That’s a kobold village, but the soldiers are human. The kobold peasants deserved our help more than those soldiers do.”

Hyi opened her mouth to argue, but it died in her throat.