It was an hour and a half before Vestele returned with the princess. Of course, the topman Captain Dawson had up in the crow’s nest spotted them as soon as they came into view, and I flew down to the dock to greet them. Now, I just had to convince the princess to look the other way when it came to the ship’s crew.

I nodded to her as she stepped lightly off the carriage. “Princess, I trust your absolutions went well?”

“Yes, thank you. It is good to feel clean and pure again. And what about the ship? Were there any problems claiming it?”

“No, no problems claiming it. With the former owner dead, the Captain was more than willing to sail under us, provided that plunder and glory was in the future. But it was a ship that had been taken by a Necromancer, and she oversaw the… creation of the crew.”

The Princess stilled. “Are you saying…?”

I nodded. “Yes. The crew is comprised entirely of intelligent undead, I’m afraid. And, since none of us know how to sail, that leaves us needing the current crew.”

“I see. This is most unfortunate.”

“Yes, which is why I did you the courtesy of meeting here, upon the docks. I know your vows say that you cannot touch or loot the dead, and must cleanse yourself after fighting them. But what about simply being on a ship with them? You could stay in the hold, keep the horses company. Would that work?”

Findelye nodded slowly. “Yes, that would not break my vows. Accepting shelter in return for caring for the horses would make things easier. And my vow does not compel me to seek out the undead, or destroy them where I find them. Their unnatural state is no fault of their own, I know. But it would be best if they were somewhere… away from me, until we reach Silverwood.”

I smiled, and then motioned to the ship for some of the crew to start loading things up. Looking back at the Princess, I said, “Great, then, we’ll just get you settled in the hold, along with the horses and the wagon, and be ready to go. We will set out as soon as everything’s loaded, so that there aren’t any unfortunate questions we have to answer about why the town is suddenly lacking in leadership.”

“Oh, fewer questions than you might think. While I was getting cleansed, I offered a confession at the temple of Ilmater. The priests said that they would take care of that burden.”

I chuckled. “Typical of that lot, I guess.” Ilmater was the god of martyrs and those who suffered, after all. Taking on burdens was their whole thing.

At any rate, soon everything was stowed belowdecks, and the Black Wraith pushed away from port. As promised, as soon as the sails were let out, they were filled, as though a heavy wind was at our backs, even though the night was calm. As I made my way to my cabin, the Captain told me that, by the time that the sun rose over the water, Breledo would be well out of sight.

When I rose the next day, and stepped out into the midmorning sun, I saw that we were no longer sailing the sea, but flying over it. As the Captain had said, the ship was enchanted to fly! I had sailed before, and flown under my own power more times than I could count, but the act of sailing the skies was a novel experience for me. I had to say that I loved every second of it.

Which is why I was more than slightly displeased when, just past midday, a cry went up from the lookouts above. “Dragon! Off to port!”

The Captain looked at me as I joined him on the quarterdeck, pulling his ‘eye’ from the spyglass in his hand. “Well, lass, it be looking like the ‘troubles’ in Thedra are worse than we been thinking. That’s a red dragon, and an old one, judging by the size of it, but something’s different about it. The thing has bird wings, which looks damn foolish on a dragon. Problem is, the priest? He says that means it is a half-celestial.”

“How in the infinite planes of the Abyss did a half-celestial red dragon come to be?”

Dawson laughed, and said, “Well, lassie, when a celestial and a dragon like each other very much…” He laughed again as I idly slapped his shoulder. “Truth, though? Not sure. Depends on which side was doing the giving and which the receiving, if’n ya catch my drift.”

“Well, either way, will the dragon be a problem?”

“Well, now, the lads could take the beast, in time, but with its spells? Not to mention the breath? That’ll do a number on the Wraith before we could take it down, or make it leave. Even with our own spellslingers dishing it back, since dragons are able to just shrug off some spells like they weren’t there.”

“And I don’t suppose that there’s any way the dragon will just let us leave quietly, is there?”

“Not likely, lass. I’ve never heard of a dragon of that type living on the Shellnigan Sea. And, with how old that beastie is, you can bet that I’d have been hearing about it, if it lived in these parts.”

“So, it recently came to the area, then?”

“Seems like. If’n I had to guess, I’d say that it came through that damn portal the idiot mages opened up in Thedra, hoping for some valuable slaves. Seems no one thought to make sure that one of those prospective slaves couldn’t jam the portal open, leaving the door wide for an invasion of the material plane. Dragon likely came through there, and is exploring behind the lines.”

By this time, the others had joined me on the quarterdeck. Vestele sighed, and said, “Well, the four of us, together, should be able to do something about the dragon, if we want to keep the fighting away from the ship. But the dragon is going to be far faster than we are in the air, but perhaps not as maneuverable.”

Fartooth chittered. “If we’re going to face the dragon away from the ship, we should probably get off sooner than later. It looks to be coming fast.”

I looked at the Captain, and said, “Can we outrun him?”

Dawson nodded. “Aye, that we can. The dragon may be fast, and can fly against the wind, but the Wraith? She is the wind!”

Captain Jack Dawson’s Profession (Sailor) Check: 1d20+40 = 51 (Success)

Turning back to the wheel, he spun it sharply to the right, and called out, “ALL HANDS TO THE LINES! GIVE ME FULL SAIL! We’re running fast, now! My Blackie is allergic to dragonfire, so I don’t want an angry lizard trying to burn us out of the sky!”

The Black Wraith turned sharply in accordance with her master’s command. And, once again, the enchanted sails proved their worth. The Dragon was flying hard, trying to get us in range of his breath, no doubt, but the Wraith’s turn forced it into a chase, instead of an interception.

Once again, the enchanted sails more than proved their worth. The wind was ever at our backs, as far as they were concerned, and the dragon began losing ground immediately. After a moment, Siora began dropping Solid Fog spells behind us as we ran. The dragon hit the first one, and all but stopped, to the point where it began to fall out of the sky, recovering about halfway to the waves below.

Dawson laughed, “Good thinking there, girlie.” The wheel turned, as the captain flew into a bank of clouds. By the time we burst out the other side, we had effectively lost the dragon, with no hope that it could catch us, even at a dead sprint.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw the dragon finally turn away. I was sure that, if we were forced to, that we could have taken on the dragon, but I was far from convinced that it would have been a bloodless affair, and I couldn’t se any way for the ship to avoid getting caught in the crossfire, unless we flew off the deck, and they left us behind. Which would make the whole thing effectively a suicide mission. And I wasn’t a fan of suicide missions when I was the one taking them on.

The Captain nodded as he saw the look on my face. “In a straight brawl, the lads and I could probably take down that dragon, but fire is no friend to ships like ours. We’d likely end up crippled, at best, even if we took down the beast. No, far better to run, and fight another day. Preferably after we’ve found a way to fireproof the Wraith.”

I chuckled. “No sense standing against the storm, just to prove you can, when you can ride the storm, take a bit of a delay, and still end up ahead, at the end of the day, right?”

“Just so. Glad to see y’er head’s on straight. Too many people get a taste of power, and they think they’re the biggest and the baddest. Don’t know when to fight, and when to run.”

“Those types tend to be lousy adventurers.”

“Lousy pirates, too.”

“Good fodder, though, especially if you can convince them that there’s a crusade needing to happen. Then, they’re just tripping all over themselves in order to see who can be the first one to die gloriously in the name of their god. Damn fools never even stop and ask if the one pushing the crusade actually follows their god or not.”

“HA! Sounds like you got a story there, lassie! Care to share with the lads?”

I chuckled, and said, “Well, story time usually requires something to wet the throat a little, no? I don’t suppose the necromancer had any goodies that might ease a storyteller’s tongue? For her personal use, and all?”

“Fylson! Grab a couple of those bottles of Thedran Dark out of the cunt’s cabin! The ones she used for ‘celebrating’ when we stole those airships for her. No sense letting it all go to waste!”

One of the hands scampered off the deck, disappearing below. Not long after, he returned, with several bottles of red wine. The Captain handed them over, one to each of us, and I pulled the cork. The wine smelled positively divine. A long swig, and I could easily say that the taste matched the smell.

Melinda’s Perform (Oratory) check: 1d20+31 = 49 (Success)

“Well, then, if you pirates and ne’er-do-wells are that interested, then I guess I have no choice but to tell a tale worth such a fine vintage! So, this was back, oh, just a year or two ago. Who here knows about the time that Thedra tried to make an expedition to the Spellbane Sands, trying to find the relics of Old Narferil?

“Ah, I see on some of your faces that Old Narferil isn’t all that familiar to you. No matter, I can tell that story first, and ooh, is it a beauty. See, this story goes back, almost four thousand years, and it has all the best kind of things in it. Crazy mages reaching for more than they can grasp? Oh, yeah. Goddesses? The Lady of Mysteries plays a role!”

I saw that I had an interested audience, so I took another swig from my bottle, and said, “Now, back in the days of Old Narferil, when it wasn’t called ‘Old’ Narferil, but the Narferese Empire—yeah, I know it doesn’t really flow off the tongue, but they named it in Narferese, and supposedly it sounds a lot nicer in that tongue. Wouldn’t know, myself, since the number of mortals living on this plane who can speak Narferese these days can be counted on a single hand, with fingers to spare. Even for Four-Finger Alen over there!”

That got a round of laughs, so I pushed on. “Now, back in old Nerferil, as I said, there were a bunch of mages. Whole damn place was run by mages. Stories say that the whole people, all of them could use magic, to some extent. It was literally in their blood, you know?

“And, with magic in the blood, their mages were able to do some crazy things. The liked to chop the tops off mountains, flip the things over, float them in the sky like an airship, and make cities on them! Honest, Frostmaiden smite me if I’m not telling the truth about that.

“Now, mages being mages, they weren’t content with just a little bit of power, you know? They wanted it ALL! So, one mage, the most powerful of the lot, gets it in his head that he’d have a whole bunch more magical power if he just went and snatched the source of all magic and made it his! No lie!

“This’d be where the Lady of Mysteries, Mystra, comes in. As I’m sure all of you know, Mystra is the goddess of Magic. Back in those days, before she died and was reborn in the Great Troubles, she was on her first ‘incarnation’, see? And she kept all magic safe, and made sure that everyone could use it. That Mystra didn’t give a damn about what you did with magic, so long as you didn’t fuck with the source, that Weave she was always putting together.

“And, I can see some of you already figured out where this is going. That crazy powerful mage wanted to get all the power. But to do that, he had to go up to a goddess, rip her prized possession out of her hands, and take it for himself. Smart as this mage was, he was also stupid enough to think it would work.”

I took a breath. “Well, it did work, for all of a second. But the source of all magic isn’t meant for mortal souls. It burned him up from the inside out, turned him to stone. And when he became stone, all magic just… stopped.

“That’d be bad enough on its own. But all those cities, all across Narferil? They were held up by magic. They crashed, killing most of their people, as well as anyone unlucky enough to get a city falling on their head. Bad times to be in Narferil, I’ll tell you.

“But then the backlash hit, and burned away what life was left, leaving a magical desert behind that eats magic, and some say actively hunts any fool magic user that steps in there. And Thedra, in their wisdom, decided to send a group of mostly mages to round up ‘volunteers’ from the nearby towns, and force them into the desert, as scouts.

“Now, what does this have to do with me? Well, I’d been passing through, and one of those ‘volunteer organizers’ decided to ‘volunteer’ me, and didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Too bad about what happened to him later, though. Not a nice way to go, I promise you.”

“Now, there we were, on the edge of the desert, and…”