They came around a rather large oak tree, re-entering the clearing that held the remains of their first aborted campfire. Amnestria had taken the lead at the start, prepared to track back to where they’d initially encountered the dragon last night. Their passage through the forest was easy enough for a child to follow though – a wide swath of shattered trees and gouged earth that marked their path – so her skills weren’t really required.

It had taken them roughly fifteen minutes last night to make it from the site of the initial attack to the clearing where the dragon now lay. This morning, it took two hours to make their way back through the ripped up forest, traversing the uneven ground littered with downed branches and felled trees. They couldn’t ride through the rough terrain, so they were all exhausted and in need of a break. Amnestria had no intention to rest, however.

Oskar walked forward a few yards, surveying the scene. He watched as the elf headed immediately towards a large tangle of trees, peering at the ground and seemingly following her own tracks back to where she had lost her bag last night. She started to dig through the branches, and he turned slowly, surveying the treeline, keeping a watchful eye for any possible threat.

Marent and Rando clambered into the clearing then. They had been traveling fifteen yards behind Oskar and Amnestria, to avoid everyone falling prey to any ambush the group might encounter – a lesson they’d learned many years ago. Rando seemed irritated; apparently Marent wasn’t as stimulating a conversationalist as Amnestria had been, her reluctance to engage with the man notwithstanding. For his part, Marent seemed outwardly as calm and disinterested as ever, though Oskar knew him well enough to see the annoyance in the dwarf’s eyes.

Rando immediately wandered over to help Amnestria, and Marent headed in Oskar’s direction. He took up position at Oskar’s side, facing back the way they’d come, watching their rear. Rando was lifting large branches at Amnestria’s instruction now, seemingly not pleased with having unintentionally volunteered himself for heavy manual labor. He turned and looked back, gesturing towards the two men on watch before being harangued back to work by Amnestria. From what Oskar and Marent could hear, apparently she trusted Oskar’s skills at keeping watch more than Rando’s, so no matter how strong Oskar was, she wanted him and Marent covering their backs as they worked. Rando picked up another large branch, a sour look on his face.

“She’ll make him pay for that suggestion t’other day, lad, dinna fash yourself about it. He’s already regrettin’ it,” Marent commented idly as he scanned the trees. “An’ some heavy lifting after a rough hike through the woods – during which he never shut it, by the way – might quell his ardour for a bit.”

“Aye, weel, I never could stand to see people forced to deal wi’ attention of that sort.” Oskar glanced down at Marent, just in time to catch the dwarf looking up at him.

“Aye lad, I know.” They shared a quick smile before turning back to their respective watches, faces returning to blankness. “D’ye think we’ll find that lyre yon bard’s so keen on?”

“Ten to one we find pieces of it,” Oskar hedged, unsure if the mythical instrument would have survived the insane dragon’s rages. “As opposed to finding the thing undamaged.” Rando had found them as they traveled back home to Vorum, on their way to resupply before heading back to the battlefield. Since they would have had a few weeks of down time before heading back out, they had agreed to adjust their plans, and assist the traveling bard in recovering a lost family heirloom.

Rando’s grandfather had been the leader of the Bardic College of Khom Ringean, the dwarven province with a high percentage of human citizens, and as a sort of badge of office, had carried an enchanted golden lyre. The man had traveled with a group of adventurers well into his elderly years, and had fallen in battle against an ancient silver dragon. The rest of the party had been forced to flee, and the grandfather’s body was never recovered.

Rando had shown no apparent urge to find his grandfather’s body for sentimental reasons – he merely wanted to recover the lyre. He had offered them their choice of loot from the dragon’s hoard as payment, once the lyre was located. It was a deal too good to pass up. Aside from savings, their working funds had been severely depleted during the war; lack of proper adventurer’s pay, in addition to a high demand for healing potions and expensive spells…

Before setting out into the forest, they’d heard stories of the dragon they were stalking. The creature seemed to revel in destruction beyond any normal dragon’s proclivities. One farmer told them of how the beast had destroyed his croft and barn, spending at least twenty minutes tearing every stone from the foundations before moving on. She had then slaughtered every cow in his field before eating one, and carrying another off seemingly for later, all while the family hid in terror.

“She’d never bothered us before sir, not once,” the farmer had explained, wringing his hat in his hands as Amnestria waited patiently for him to finish. Oskar stood nearby, watching Marent assess the health of the farmer’s children. Malnourished, but uninjured. “Oh sure, she’d snag a sheep or goat every now and then, but usually only when game’s been scarce. We never have to worry about goblins with a silver dragon living nearby, so we never begrudged her...”

While dragon attacks were not an entirely unknown occurrence, such destruction from a Silver dragon was unheard of. Aside from the ingrained good nature of such beasts, Silver dragons were known as intelligent creatures – causing such mayhem was a guaranteed way to ensure that a party of adventurers would be sent out to deal with the threat. The beast’s obvious disease-induced mental deterioration explained the oddity, however.

Commotion from ahead drew Oskar’s attention for a moment – apparently Amnestria could see the strap of her bag, and if Rando would just lift the damn log a bit higher she’d be able to crawl under and grab it. Rando was cutting up rough though, apparently at the limits of his own strength, and unable to perform any better, even for the sake of impressing Amnestria. Oskar sighed, and quietly started forward. He stepped up silently behind the more slender man, reaching out with one hand and gradually adding his own strength to Rando’s.

The trunk of the tree began to rise, and Amnestria glanced at Oskar, an eyebrow cocked questioningly. Oskar put a hand to his mouth, pantomiming a yawn, and then gesturing forward. She grinned, stifling it quickly. Rando seemed to take heart at his sudden newfound strength – maybe he thought the smile was for him – and put even more effort into lifting. Oskar heaved accordingly, and Rando was able to get the branch onto his shoulder, lifting with his legs and bracing himself under the weight.

Amnestria hunched over, and darted in under the branches, into the commodious space that Oskar’s presence had provided. She picked up her bag, and started sorting through the contents, making no move to exit from under the mass of quivering tree above her. Every now and then she would toss a broken bit of crystal to the side, sighing ruefully at the loss. Rando was visibly strained with the weight of the branch he still held. Oskar glanced back at Marent, who was shaking his head with a hand partially covering his face. Oskar let a bit more of the weight come down on Rando’s shoulder.

The man grunted, turning red as he struggled manfully to keep the tree from crushing the seemingly distracted elf standing under the thick trunk. “Am-ness-tra… hurry...”

Amnestria looked up, blinking. “What? Oh, right. Tree.” She continued digging through her bag as she began to pick her way through the branches. Just short of actually leaving the danger zone, she stopped completely, appearing to be absorbed in a catalog of their potions. “Don’t tell me we lost the--”

“MMMMPPPPPHHHHHHH!” Rando wordlessly expostulated, face alarmingly purple.

“Oh!” Amnestria laughed, stepping out of the shadows of the tree and standing straight again. “Sorry, it’s just that these were really expensive.”

Rando let out a wordless grunt of relief as he dropped the branch, staggering back out of the way, tripping over a furrow of earth and landing on his ass. He lay on the ground gazing blankly up at Oskar, who was standing there with one hand holding the tree up, unconcerned with it’s weight.

“You – my friend – are STUPID strong,” Rando gasped. “Nobody needs – to be – THAT strong.”

“Och aye,” Oskar agreed. “Started trading my brains for muscle a few years ago. Lost the intelligence t’ realize what a bad deal it was, an’ just kept on.”

“Gods fucking dammit!” Amnestria was yelling. She quickly knelt in an undamaged bit of grass, and carefully began pulling bottles and broken shards of crystal from her bag. Marent had ambled over, though he still kept watch around the edges of the clearing. Rando lay on his back, seemingly having given up for the time being. “We lost ALL the healing elixirs, and most of the augmentations. The only ones left are the two flying potions, water breathing, and that one we never could identify.”

The bottles glistened with the remains of spilled potions, mixed patterns of red and blue, with the occasional swirl of opalescent white. Amnestria had nicked a finger on a broken bottle, and a tiny pearl of blood was oozing from the cut, bright crimson against the shimmery red of the spilled healing potions. She wiped it impatiently away on the grass, pressing the cut against her pant leg where it showed through the armor, blotting and applying pressure. She looked decidedly upset, and Oskar set the tree down, approaching cautiously.

“There’s a small stream a ways over there, lass.” Oskar took the emptied bag, shaking the last of the broken bottles onto the ground. “I’ll rinse this out, and we can get moving again, aye?”

~~

They’d replaced the remaining potions into the leather loops lining the inside of the now damp leather bag, which would keep them from breaking under normal circumstances. Now that they had escaped the destroyed portion of the forest, they could ride.

The horses they’d rode in on had all scattered last night when the dragon had arrived, and Oskar spent less than a minute whistling for them before giving it up and raising his hands. As he began casting the spell, he could feel the slight pressure in his head – where he’d maintained the presence of their horses throughout the night, even through sleep – dissipate.

Four horses, all equipped with riding gear, appeared abruptly with a sudden outrushing of wind as the large bodies displaced the air. Marent immediately approached the small gelding – he wouldn’t ride a pony, but luckily Oskar could tailor the spell to suit the people accompanying him.

Amnestria claimed the tall, long-legged mare with the golden mane and tail, and Oskar mounted the heavy bodied stallion that was most suited to carrying his weight. Though not very tall for a human, all that muscle and armor he packed on weighed a good deal.

Rando was left with the patchy swayback that eyed him censoriously. He looked the horse over before throwing his bags across the beast’s back, and mounting. As he reigned his horse in beside Marent, he looked Oskar in the eyes.

“I’m starting to think you don’t like me very much,” Rando said lightly, seemingly unconcerned. “Either that, or you like me so much you can’t help but joke around.”

“Oh, the latter, to be sure. Almost as much as I like my best friend here,” Oskar said pointedly as he moved off with Amnestria, to resume their search for the dragon’s lair.

~~

Marent and Rando took the lead this time, followed at a distance by Oskar and Amnestria. Rando had interviewed the surviving members of his grandfather’s group, studying their maps and plotting the route through the forest even before tracking down the three of them. He supposedly knew right where the dragon kept her lair, and led them with confidence.

Marent had tried suggesting that the bard concentrate on his tracking. He tried ignoring the man, hoping that he’d take the hint and leave him alone. He finally had to resort to bluntly informing Rando that he needed to keep watch while Rando led them through the dense, mostly pathless forest, and that Rando’s constant conversation was distracting. It worked, and Rando fell silent, concentrating on the forest around them.

The man irritated him. He finally understood what Amnestria and Oskar had seen much earlier. Granted, the entire point of his endless questioning was that he wanted to help Oskar, to help him learn about his lineage and become more powerful. If he did have hidden powers unable to be used yet, knowing about them, and what he could do to unlock them, would be very advantageous. If he’d had access to some of that power years ago maybe – but no, there was no use dwelling on the past.

“There should be…” Rando stood in his stirrups, looking around intently. “Do you happen to see a rockfall? Just past those oaks, we should have come across it by now. Coming down from the hill.”

Marent looked up the steep incline. It was too steep to take the horses up, though not impossible to climb. He hoped they wouldn’t have to.

“Rocks, aye? Gi’ us a moment, might be they’re covered in moss.” He turned in his saddle, looking around. Oskar and Amnestria came around the stand of oaks just then, glancing quickly at the two motionless riders. Marent signaled with several short, choppy motions, and Amnestria nodded, signaling back. She dismounted, and began moving through the underbrush at the base of the hill. Oskar continued watching for threats.

“Th’ lass’ll find em, if they’re here t’ be found.” Marent pulled out his aleskin, taking a swift drink, eyes on the treeline.

“Do you people ever think you spend too much time on watch?” Rando was looking back and forth between the two of them, bemused. “I swear, you never pay attention to what you’re doing, for fear of missing what’s around you.”

“D’ye remember when that dragon came up on us last night?” Marent finished drinking, and glanced at the bard before returning his eyes to the forest. “We’d started t’ set up camp. We’d left it late, since we had t’ travel so long to make it t’ a reasonable campsite in the first place. All of us were helpin’. Nobody was payin’ attention. We assumed we were safe.”

Rando looked away, chagrined. “Yes, well-”

“If we’d been keepin’ watch like we usually do,” Marent continued, “We would probably have seen her comin’. It wouldn’t have been long, but we would’ve had a few seconds t’ spare. Cast a few spells, gotten into a better position, kept hold o’ the potions...”

Rando raised his hands, defeated. “Yes, yes, alright! You know better than me, I already know this. I should have known better than to question your methods.”

Rando looked around, and then pulled out his own waterskin. He stepped down from his horse and stretched, walking back and forth a bit as they waited. He finally turned to Marent with a decided look on his face. He opened his mouth to speak, but Marent cut him off with an impatient gesture.

“Lad, just leave it. I cannae tell you anythin’ else, and I guarantee that Oskar doesn’t have the information you seek. He probably wouldna be as patient with you as I have, either.”

“I – well, actually I was going to ask something slightly different. It’s obvious that you and Amnestria both think my pursuing the topic of his ancestry is a bad idea, so I’m prepared to drop it.” Rando met Marent’s eyes directly. “I know my overly-eager prying questions have been irritating you – you have my apologies.”

“Well.” Marent was slightly taken-aback. The man seemed sincere. “Thank you for that. What was yer question, then?”

“I’ll not dig into his history any longer, or attempt to elicit answers pertaining to his bloodline. I understand that you don’t know me, and may not wish for a stranger to dig into his past. However, I DO wish to learn more about Bloodragers in general. My question is: would he mind if I asked him more about what he can do in general? The texts at the college are scant, to say the least, and I’d dearly love to expand our knowledge-”

“Look,” Marent sighed tiredly. He was getting sick of dealing with this man. “You try askin’ him. I cannae guarantee that he’ll tell you what you want to know, but he probably won’t tear yer head off, so ye’ve got that goin’ for ye.”

Just then, he caught motion from the corner of his eye. Oskar was signaling to him. Target acquired. Return.

“They’ve found it,” Marent said as he tucked his aleskin away and turned his horse. “C’mon.”