"Shrouded? What are you doing here?" The massive lime green dragon stared down at them, looking back and forth as if waiting for a response.

Once Caeden overcame his surprise at the giant magic lizard's sudden arrival, he answered. "We came to this continent to visit some ancient ruins, but our ship was sabotaged. It exploded and flung us both here." It was at that moment that Caeden truly appreciated truth speech. Their story was absurd from a normal perspective, but the dragon would have to accept what he said as true.

Despite that, the aggression he could feel rolling off the magical creature dimmed only a little. "You speak the truth, but shrouded are known for twisting words to suit their own ends. Half-truths and technicalities. Do not think your words can sway me so easily, child." It growled at him.

For a moment, Caeden felt guilty because the dragon was correct. He wasn't telling the whole truth. But then again, he wasn't here to harm any dragons. This one's wariness wasn't protecting his people in this instance, even if he had good grounds for his suspicions.

"Ok, how about this? My companions and I came to this continent without any intention of harming or even interacting with dragons. Nothing we have done or planned to do should bring any harm to dragons. We just want to get to our destination, look around, check some equipment, and leave." Caeden stated everything as plainly as he could without directly referencing either Forged Infinity or the Central Management System. He didn't want any angry dragons getting interested in a system that had threatened to melt down and blow up a continent much bigger than this one the last time he encountered it.

The dragon let out a snort that Caeden's communication sense interpreted as a sign of disbelief and incredulity. He didn't want to believe Caeden's words, didn't trust them. Which was fair, from Caeden's basic understanding of the actions shrouded took in their attempts to take over the continents. It was a slaughter that bordered on genocide. There used to be nearly a hundred continents populated by dragons. Now they were down to barely a dozen.

"You speak plainly." The dragon sounded surprised at his own words. "Such promises are not easily given, and any falsehoods in such open statements would not stand the test of my truth speech. Very well, passing shrouded. You can-" He cut himself off, massive body tensing up. "Cursed child!"

Caeden realized his gaze had fallen onto the infant dragon around Caeden's neck. "Wait, let me explain!" Caeden rushed, trying to clarify before the situation spiraled into a fight they would lose.

The dragon didn't let him, hissing in rage. "This is why you come to our home, to bind our lost spawn! Have the shrouded not lain enough curses at our feet? You cannot come here and pluck the fruits of labors sown in our blood and pain, even if it was done by your own hands. Shrouded shall not use us as tools for their sick wars!" A stream of bubbling hot mud began to spill from between teeth the size of Caeden's enhanced arms. The dragon was enraged to the point that he was frothing at the mouth, ready to blast both of them with dragon breath.

Desperately, Caeden pushed Physical Enhancement into his throat. His only hope of getting himself and Cat out of here alive was forcing the irate lizard to understand what happened. "IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!" Caeden's voice boomed out, the air vibrating under the force of his words. Cat clapped her hands over her ears and nearly buckled over under the assault. In contrast, the hatchling only shifted to wrap tighter around his neck.

The raging dragon recoiled just as much, if not more than Cat did. Though Caeden suspected it was the truth in his words that stunned the magical creature more than the physical impact of his shout. Pressing his advantage and knowing he now had the dragon's attention, Caeden continued in a more normal tone. "I found his egg by chance under that log over there. I picked it up, and he hatched. This all happened less than ten minutes ago. I wasn't looking for dragon eggs, and I was curious why one was out here on its own. I'm sorry about what happened, and I'll do my best to remove the connection so the hatchling can return to his parents."

The dragon looked stunned, wholly unnerved by Caeden's words. All his rage had vanished, and only confusion and uncertainty remained. "His…parents? What are you talking about? How could you not know?"

Now it was Caeden's turn to be confused. "Know what?"

"That hatchling is a cursed child of unhallowed lineage. He is the culmination of your people's efforts to exterminate dragonkind bearing fruit. Were you not told? Do your forebears not tell you what was done to dragonkind after we agreed to your people's treaty?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Caeden answered honestly. The information Captain Saorise had pulled ended with the Treaty of Scales.

Once more, the dragon growled, but the tone was different this time. "Come with me, young shrouded. I will show you the horrors your forebears have wrought on my people. So that you may know the hatred burning in the heart of every dragon on every continent. For we all deserve to understand the hatred of our enemies and the sins of our fathers."

Without another word, the dragon marched off on his six beefy legs into the jungle, plant matter slipping past him by some kind of magic instead of his bulky frame mulling it down. With no real options, Caeden grabbed Cat, who was just now recovering from his shout and pulled her along. He wanted to know what had been hidden from him. What had the Central Authority done to the dragons?

{}

Lily stroked her fingers through Sky's soft plumage, letting the Roc preen at the attention. She deserved it. Sky had managed to lead the three dragons investigating the crash site on a long chase that lasted several hours and took them farther and farther away from the cloud Lily and Erik were riding in. Without the baby monster, the chance that their exit was discovered would have been astronomically higher.

Instead, they slipped away easily. A combination of thick, rising fog and concealment sense managed to disguise their passage from the distracted dragons. Along the way, Lily picked up Snowball on his own little cloud and brought it up to join the one they were flying in now. Finally, Sky slipped her pursuers and rejoined the group. Now Lily had successfully snuck everyone who landed with her out from under the dragon's noses.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

But they weren't in the clear yet. Unlike the cruiser, Lily couldn't keep this cloud moving forever. She was limited by how much shroud she had and maintaining a cloud big enough to hold two humans, a bear cub, and a Roc was draining a lot of her reserves. She could hold for a few hours at a time before she needed to stop and recharge, which meant descending back down to the ground.

She wouldn't be keeping them up here that long, either. Completely emptying her reserves right before entering a possibly hostile area was a terrible decision. She was forced to head down when she still had enough left to hide or fight for a reasonable amount of time. The cloud was also slow compared to their ethership, barely moving at a third of the pace. All of this meant that their journey across the continent was going to be much slower than originally planned.

Including the necessity of stopping to find food to eat, they would be lucky to reach the structure in a month. Lily wondered how Caeden and Cat were going to manage. Their fastest travel option would be one of Cat's Brutes, but that wasn't an inconspicuous mode of travel. Then again, neither of her missing teammates had much in the way of stealth abilities. They would struggle to hide in the best of circumstances.

Lily pulled Sky close, cuddling with the bird. She was overwhelmed and overstressed. She and Erik didn't mesh well without Caeden to act as the intermediary, she couldn't get them where they needed to go fast enough, and she had no idea where her boyfriend and roommate were. Worse, she couldn't find any good solutions to the situation. She wanted to hunt down Cat and Caeden, bring their team back together. But she had no way of finding them or even knowing which way they went. She wanted to race for the structure and ignore everything else, but she didn't have the power or resources for that either.

So she was stuck. The best of her bad options was doing what she was doing now. Moving slowly and carefully, trying to avoid anything and everything until her group slipped past whatever searches would come looking for them. All Lily could do was run away.

She stewed in that knowledge for the hours it took her shroud reserves to fall low enough that she knew it was time to land. She kicked Erik awake from where he had been sleeping the entire time. Caeden had told her how heavy a sleeper he was, but she had thought he was exaggerating. She literally kicked Erik in the jaw, and he dodged in his sleep. After several attempts, she landed a solid hit and got him moving.

"Why do we need to go down anyway?" Erik yawned.

"I'm using my shroud to keep this cloud in one piece and move it in the right direction." Lily huffed. "I can't keep it up forever."

Erik shrugged before his stomach let out a loud gurgle. "I'm hungry."

Lily sighed. This was like working with a five-year-old. "Well, that's another reason we have to go down. All the food exploded with the ship."

Erik nodded, suddenly shifting to a serious expression. "We need food. Do you think dragons have popcorn?"

"I highly doubt it."

"Bummer. How are we going to get food, anyway?" Erik asked.

"We'll have to hunt, suppose." She didn't see any other way about it. She could use her investigative sense to identify any edible plants, but a diet lacking in meat would be unlikely to contain enough protein for them.

"Dang, that was always Cat's job. Her ghost dudes could hunt super well." Erik looked disappointed until his face suddenly brightened. "Oh, that's an idea!"

Before Lily could ask what he was talking about, Erik's sigil manifested, hovering over his torso. A white rendition of a human heart that was constantly being ripped apart and stitched back together as fast as it was destroyed formed as thick bands of Stitch flowed from Erik out into the sigil. Within seconds, Sauma took form.

"Hello, master. Hello, Lily. It's wonderful to see you both again." The arachne smiled at them both. "Taking on a corporeal form is such a novelty. I've spent the last eighteen years as a theoretical concept residing in Erik's soul. You think I'd be adapted to it. But returning to my Incarnation form is such a pleasant change of pace."

Sauma's legs and hands flickered as she talked, weaving a robe around Erik, who had started violently shaking the second she took form. After the web robe was done, Sauma also flicked out hundreds of almost undetectably thin web fibers in all directions. "There, master. The defensive net is in place. Once we reach the ground, I'll be able to establish some food traps that should produce results quickly. Though I'm afraid I have no way to cook what I catch."

"I can handle that," Lily said, catching on immediately to what Erik had been thinking. Sauma was a web-weaver arachne specialized in traps and bindings. She would be a perfect hunter in the deciduous forest they were passing over. Lily wished she had the map Captain Saorise had sent with them, but it had been lost with the ship. She knew there was a mountainous area and another grassland bordered by a swamp between them and the desert the structure was in, but she didn't have exact directions.

Landing on the ground, Sauma immediately went to work reinforcing their position among the trees with thick webbing while laying traps in the distance with less ostentatious threads. She could project those web strands over an incredible distance while still controlling them to a fine degree. It didn't take long for her to snag several birds and a magical variant of the common tree squirrel that seemed much larger than normal and carnivorous if the bird it was eating was anything to go by.

Quickly, Lily had a fire going. One of the things she had put time and effort into on their trip around the last continent was finding a way to use Cloud to make a fire quickly. After all, she could easily make clouds of flammable gasses. Having a way to generate what was ostensibly her greatest weakness would help tremendously in the long run. It would be an excellent surprise against unwary enemies.

The process proved difficult, but she managed to make a tiny cloud of triethylborane. It was a chemical that was liquid at room temperature and spontaneously combusted on contact with oxygen. She surrounded the triethylborane with a larger cloud of hydrogen and easily lit her spall campfire. She was close to turning that process into a mnemonic, but she wasn't there yet. As it was, it took her almost three minutes of quiet concentration to get her shroud to form the necessary chemical. It just wasn't something you'd ever find a cloud of, so it took a lot of willpower to force her domain to work with it.

She used an ice knife to gut and skin the magic squirrel. With investigative sense, it was surprisingly easy to tell where to cut to efficiently and quickly clean the carcass so that all she was left with was edible meat. It was when she had put the meat on a stick and set it over the fire that Sauma and Erik suddenly tensed and jumped to their feet. At least, Erik jumped. Sauma was already standing since spiders didn't really sit.

"Several large, powerful monsters are approaching." Sauma informed her.

Lily was on her feet with Erik in the next moment. "Which direction?"

Before Sauma could even point, several dragons burst into the clearing, roaring as they charged.