Rosalea walked with Nira behind her along the edge of the steep hill, and finally she saw a bit of a path. “I am going to lift you down with magic, all right?”

Nira snorked at her and danced; Rosalea patted her reassuringly, and then she wrapped caelus magic around the mare and hardened the air, making a secure grip on her before she lowered her to the path below. For herself she just sat down and slid downwards.

Even with the snow over things, she noticed there were pretty little purple flowers that seemed to be trying to continue to grow, and it reminded her a little of Briar’s garden that he maintained even through the winters. The little walk way was narrow, more of a game trail than an actual trail, but they followed it downward until there was a way to reach the river that flowed between this hill and the other one - which looked a little more like a cliff than this side did. Rosalea called up a terra bridge, not inclined to take on the swift flowing cold water. Nira preferred that than the invisible Caelus magic moving her. Once on the otherside, it was a bit of a difficult climb up to a road that wound its way toward Miron.

Rosalea was sweaty and dirty by the time she and Nira were up on the road. She had an impulse to saddle Nira… but realized that everything Ulric owned, when he died, had gone back to the earth. That included his saddle and Nira’s bridle.

“I am so going to look like I stole you,” Rosalea sighed as she summoned a brush and began to clean Nira up, something the mare was happy to enjoy.

Rosalea called a little water from the river, warming it with her Caelus magic, and freshened herself up. Her hair was all snarls since she had been barely taking care of it in the heavy grief she still carried about Ulric, so she took time to wash and dry it. She rebraided it, and… holding it close for a moment, stuck the ebony hair stick Ulric had gotten her through it, making a bun.

Well, for Nira’s sake, I need to make the best of it. After making sure there was definitely no one nearby on the road, she took time to change into a good tunic and one of her better riding skirts. Then she climbed up on Nira, even without the saddle, knowing she could direct the mare just fine with her words. She looped the lead around the back of Nira’s neck, hooking it to either side of her halter, as if it was a set of reins.

“All right, let us take you toward town.”

Nira huffed. “I hope that one day I will get used to the smell,” she complained, snorking several times as they began to move.

As they advanced, the drop off toward the river became dramatic again. Rosalea peered down it as Nira picked her way along, the shape of the cliff making her feel uneasy. It was almost as if a huge chunk of the earth had been ripped away from this place, leaving a jagged and ugly scar that dropped into the valley below.

It was obvious by the stumps left that the area had once been covered in the robust colorful trees on the other side of the gorge, that there had been aggressive logging around the town. The smith-sulfur smell grew stronger the closer they came to the town, and as she started to be able to see the walls of the town, the more blackened and ugly the surrounding area became.

There was a loud noise, like a bang, and then a roar, and Nira danced with sharp agitation that made Rosalea’s heart try to escape her throat as the edge of road loomed near. “Stop that!” she all but growled. “You want to fall off that cliff? I know I do not.” Rosalea clung desperately the the mare’s mane, with no saddle on, she felt very vulnerable to falling off.

Nira snorted at her and walked a little more steadily. Rosalea worked on breathing and relaxing her body, and giving Nira some of the reins back. Then the smell came. It was awful, it made her eyes water and Nira snorted. As they rounded a bend around a hill, she could see what had happened.

Higher up on the mountain, there was a building, and Rosalea could see a huge stone bucket had dumped over, which had caused the boom, and the hiss was molten rock going down the hillside, somewhat toward the town. Rosalea scrubbed her eyes as the stone attempted to catch fire, but did not, so much of its kind had been dumped down the hill. I never thought about where metal comes from. Or how it is obtained, she thought, summoning her veil from earth storage and tying it about her face. It helped stop the smell of the scorched earth from reaching her nose.

The glimmer, like hellfire on the hill, slowly died out and things returned to the ugly black they had been. Rosalea, feeling more educated about it, was not certain she approved. The life in the forest and surrounding the town was wasted. And, closer to the town, where they were dumping the mining waste, the water boiled and ran red, orange, and yellow. She checked her belt, looking for the ironwood handle of her dagger. Something about the town itself made her extremely nervous.

The walls had once been made of a whitewashed wood, but it was all covered in soot and urine. The streaks of yellow and black made her skin crawl. The pair of guards up on the wall turned weapons on her as she neared them, each looking very aggressive.

“Name your purpose,” one called out, and Rosalea put her hands above her head. Had she been an ordinary human, this would have rendered her somewhat defenseless. Being a magic user, it was possibly the most dangerous position she could have her hands in. It enabled her to do anything with her magic. However, it was likely that they did not know what she was.

“I am a traveler, I seek supplies,” she called out.

“Travelers do not often come here, how do we know what you say is true, woman?”

The accent was thick, consonants slurring together and vowels taking their time. It took Rosalea a moment to decipher it. “I am heading to the far east, for the coast. I have lost my way, and I am unsure where I am. If I have trespassed somewhere I do not belong, I mean nothing by it.” She spoke carefully. Who knew how odd she might sound to them, and how hard she might be to understand?

They conferred a moment, and lowered their weapons. Rosalea put her hands down, and they lowered the gate. As she rode past it, she wondered why they bothered with a gate, the walls were in such terrible disrepair that anyone determined to get in could do so by simply walking around the gate to where the wall caved in.

The town was on the cliff side of the gorge, but there was plenty of room between the cliffside and the town. Part of her had wondered if the cliff was there because of the evident mining, or at least refining that was occurring, but now she had doubts, it was more jagged than she expected mining to look. It also did not look natural in the odd ways that it was jagged, so she began to wonder if magic was involved in some way.

The town was even worse off than the walls. Most structures barely stood, leaning perilously against other buildings, wall boards and windows broken and missing. Everything was absolutely filthy. The children that she saw about were dressed in rags, and the place reeked of filth. All faces she looked at were smeared with the black soot-sludge that clung to everything here.

It made the hair all along her skin stand up. She rode to a shop and carefully dismounted. The people that loitered there were thin, and had a rough-lean look. This was a place she wished she had not come. However, she did need to know where here was. So, casting a look to the people about her, she slowly entered.

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Everything about this place had hinted at poverty to her. When she looked about the shop, it announced it. The flour in the barrels was dirty and looked like it might have rot. It was priced almost as high as she had seen cinnamon priced elsewhere… almost like it was gold. The weapons the shop offered were warped and cheaply made, which she found surprising, since this town was a place where earth was mined for metal.

The store keeper watched her warily. He leaned against the wall, as if expecting something every moment to go wrong. Rosalea looked about, she would buy nothing here. “Do you carry maps?” she asked softly.

He spat on the floor. “Whatcha woman need a map for?” Rosalea said nothing, she turned to walk out. She did not need to be treated like this, she could look elsewhere. “Wait, woman. I gotsa map.”

Rosalea turned back, raising a brow. He dug in something, producing a tattered piece of vellum and putting it on the counter. Rosalea drifted back, he unfolded it for her. “Where ya going?”

“East. Where is here?”

He pointed to the map. Miron. The location was in the Dyran Woods, deep, almost in the center. She was far north of where she thought she was, only a matter of a hundred miles from the Jagard Mountains. She was quiet, studying the map. This also meant that she was deep in the mountain wilderness, and so the nearest city was perhaps hundreds of miles further east, or practically that far to the south. He smirked at her. The Mystic’s woods are a lot larger than I thought. “Lost?”

She looked up, and decided how she wanted to answer that. “Yes, a little.” She admitted.

“You’re a lucky wench. If you had missed this town, you’d a been kilt by the demons in the woods, that’s for sure.”

“Demons?” It was the first time she had heard the derogatory term applied to something that wasn’t an Ieshan. At least, I am somewhat certain he cannot be referring to Ieshans.

He grinned at her. His teeth were brown and he was missing one on the side. “Beasts bigger than the horse of yourn.” His accent was worse than the guards. “No matter, if you want ta be getting east, you’re going to have to go back where you came and head south and take the road like a proper person.”

Rosalea was silent for a heart beat or two as she considered that information. Fen is much bigger than a regular wolf. I wonder if some mystics are even bigger. “I see, and is this the only town in the wilderness?”

He spat again. He must have some chew in his mouth or something. . Rosalea was feeling a growing sense of disgust. “Sure is, and we ain’t going to last long at this rate.” He laughed. Rosalea gave him a few copper pieces, bowed and walked out. Men, who had been coming nearer and nearer her horse scattered.

“It’s a visitor? I thought all visitors knew better…” someone was whispering.

Rosalea frowned. Something about this place reminded her of Mire, whether that was the closed off way that people were acting, or something else. This place would give Kaylar eye twitches, she thought, thinking of all the perfect order he put into things. The perfect shapes of towns, the white washed walls, the beautiful cleanliness. This place was disgusting. Still, the merchants had mentioned that the border patrols had been extended because of news of a dragon.

Rosalea turned her head and met the eyes of the whispering women, and it made all become silent. It was time to get out of here. She was safe from any other dragon spells because she already belonged to Kaylar, but she did not really want to run into the one all the same.

She climbed back onto Nira, her mind made up not to leave the mare here. Several tense steps passed in silence, but Rosalea was aware of being stared at, and the guards on the gates seemed amused as they watched her. I remember Rhainnon did not tell me about Mire until we were outside of it. She did not warn me about it.

She kicked Nira gently, sending her into a trot toward the gate as all the hair on the back of her neck stood up. Because the dragon binding spell is also designed to be a trap, and when people stumble into it, it has a chance of closing. She tried to hurry Nira toward the gate, but a large shadow fell over the ground; a shadow that made her heart skip a beat. It was huge, and it had large wings stretching out further than she could see. A dragon! Half of her hoped that somehow thinking of Kaylar had summoned him, and that she was not about to see a dragon willing to keep a town in the condition that this one was in.

Of course it was not Kaylar. The dragon that flew near was a deep, blood red, with gold markings. It looked at her, and she at it, and she felt the spell try to settle on her, the same one that Kaylar had been able to cast by looking at her.

Then, her hand burned. It burned so much that she screamed for the pain of it, like her hand would sear itself off, and when she looked at it, Kaylar’s mark was burning with a glow that obliterated her view of anything else. Her scream caused Nira to rear, and Rosalea slid right off of her and on to the ground.

The dragon dove for her with an angry shriek. Rosalea tried to use magic to construct a barrier, but she couldn’t concentrate through the sharp pain in her hand and the pain of landing on her back on the ground. She felt talons closing about her body and all the wind squeezed from her body and the world nearly black itself out from the beast’s grip.

Through force of will, and nothing else, she managed to keep her consciousness and the spell in her hand calmed down. They were flying, she was watching the ground go dizzyingly by, and it made her want to throw up. The dragon screamed, and there was something that came up from somewhere deep in the trees- was it lightning? Someone was firing it from the ground? How could that be?

Whatever it was, however impossibly it came, the dragon was not able to dodge it. As he or she stooped to dive away from it, the sizzling brightness arced over and struck it. The dragon spasmed, and Rosalea was falling. The lightning had gone through her, but it was not the first time, and she knew how to pull it through herself and safely out without feeling quite so zapped.

Still, she was definitely rattled, and so she did not know where the dragon went, but that it kept flying, and she had the immediate issue of falling. The dragon did not dive for her, and if she met the ground at this speed, she would die. She struggled to get some focus, and flailing as she fell, she managed to reach out to the trees she was nearing. Catch me, oh please! She motioned them toward her, the branches shook themselves, sluggishly coming to life, and two or three trees reached toward her. Rosalea floundered as she fell through the first, small branches, crashing hard into the middle ones, and coming to a stop in lower branches. She coughed and was winded and one of the trees lowered her to the ground.

Oh thank you, she thought, shaking as she was deposited in the grass and green fronds curled about her in a friendly manner. I am sorry for your injuries, she thought to the trees. She got little back, but sleepy age, and as she looked up, she realized they were the tallest trees she had ever seen. They did not answer, but then trees usually didn’t. The trees retreated back into the restful, sleepy matter of growing ever taller. Rosalea slumped back into the grass, and let go of the magic she had managed to call and worried about breathing for a while.

For several moments, all she could do was feel her heart beat and the rush of her blood through her body as her terror dulled itself and eventually drifted away. Then she realized she was substantially bruised, especially about the middle, and that her leg and hand hurt. She slowly sat up, feeling about her leg, finding herself to only be bruised. The skirt she wore was really ripped and leaves were stuck in her hair. She pressed against her ribs, good, nothing broken when it had grabbed her or when she had fell. The dragon hadn’t meant to kill her, perhaps?

Then her hand. It looked a little red, but despite how the brand had come to life and crackled with energy to push off the other dragon, she was not harmed. I probably got extra special attention from that dragon because she ended up sensing Kaylar’s spell. I hope that does not cause Kaylar trouble. Still, after all that pressure, she was not certain the dragon did not manage its spell.

Even though she was bruised all over, she stood slowly to test it, I am going far from this place, I have no intention of staying here, and no dragon can keep me here. She took a step away, and then another. She faced a different direction. But no matter which way she achingly tried to take herself, she felt no spell, nor shadow of one try to stop her. She slowly sat again, she hurt so badly all over. She flopped onto her back on the snow, she was still too filled with adrenaline and covered in throbbing bruises to feel cold.

Her lips twisted into a lopsided smile. Good thing that once something belongs to Kaylar, it always belongs to him.

She was silent. Nira. I lost her. And where is Fen? She looked around, she was deep into the trees. Where am I?

What direction did the dragon fly? The town was going away from them, but she couldn’t rationalize which direction that was, nor how far they had gotten before… The bolt of magic! She had forgotten about it for a moment in all the other issues she was trying to deal with. Someone had fired at the dragon. But who? And why? Was it because it was carrying a human off? But it had come from somewhere here in the forest… and the humans were confined to the town scared of demons?

What a mess I have wandered into, she thought. She had been here several minutes, but there had been nothing. No one had come. These woods were achingly silent.