Vivi and Embralyne materialized onto a stone platform identical to the last, seemingly down to the cracks in each pillar and every weathered contour.
The process of teleporting while clamping down on her magical senses threw her off balance more than she had expected. Like riding a rollercoaster while keeping her eyes closed—a markedly different ordeal. After a second of vertigo, she shook the disorientation away and looked around.
A guard stood ready for their arrival, dressed in a pristine uniform bearing the colors of the royal family: whites, grays, and oranges. Upon their appearing, he rushed forward and bowed deeply in front of Embralyne.
Notably, he was human, not a dragon. While these lands teemed with a variety of powerful beings untouched by time, that didn't mean mortals were totally absent. Humans, in fact, far outnumbered the scaled nobility that made up the realm's upper class. Even here, dragons were hardly so numerous that one would be posted to guard a teleportation platform at all hours of the day.
"Welcome back, Your Highness. I take it your mission was a success."
"Indeed," Embralyne said haughtily. "It took longer than I expected, but I found what I was looking for. Please rise."
The man straightened. He studied Vivi with cautious interest, his gaze lingering on her face, then flicking toward the manacles around her wrists. She could only imagine the capture of a rogue was an event of some significance, but he asked no questions of the draconic princess. Holding this post, even if he was human, meant he was probably high-status himself—and certainly high-level—but Embralyne was still royalty and thus beyond interrogating, for all that Vivi sometimes forgot what such station entailed, socially speaking.
"I'll be heading to the Palace immediately, so there's no need to send word," Embralyne told the man. She began striding confidently away. "Your assistance is appreciated."
He bowed again. "May all proceed favorably, Your Highness."
Vivi followed after the woman. Unlike the previous teleportation platform, the one in the Sky-Pillar Range hadn't been dropped seemingly in the middle of nowhere. A paved pathway led through the lightly forested area. The two of them passed a small but well-maintained guardhouse as they went, and before long, they had walked out of view of the gatekeeper, past the trees and shrubbery, and into a wide-open clearing.
With foliage no longer blocking Vivi's sight, the Sky-Pillar Range sprawled out in front of her.
The crowning source of wonder was, of course, the floating islands dotting the bright blue expanse as far as she could see. Unlike the paltry chunk of land the Thaumaturgical Institute had lifted in a demonstration of braggadocious sorcerous might, some of the islands hovering here were true behemoths of soil, stone, and vegetation—miniature continents ripped out of the ground and left nonsensically suspended miles overhead. Even the very smallest of the masses easily matched the manmade one in Meridian.
Always hard to compete with Mother Nature, she mused.
There were no clouds to be spotted in the great blue expanse—since, as a matter of fact, they were beneath her. She strode to the lip of the clearing and peered over the edge. Sure enough, enormous mountain ranges poked through a fluffy white sea, and civilization clung to their slopes: a human city teemed far below, difficult to make out even with her keen senses.
She had been wondering whether the majesty of the Sky-Pillar Range would hold up to what she remembered, and it very much did.
Embralyne's words interrupted Vivi's marveling. "I can take those manacles off."
She turned and tilted her head in surprise. "Already?"
"The gatekeeper knew I would be returning with a prisoner, so the façade was mostly for him. Only the Lord Commander of the Royal Guard will know why I've left, otherwise. The mission was hardly public knowledge." She huffed. "Besides, it would rather defeat the purpose if I dragged along the Sorceress with her senses dampened, wouldn't it?"
Vivi perked up at the hidden admission. "You think I might be able to discover something passively?"
Embralyne pursed her lips, clearly displeased with herself at the accidental reveal, then gestured for Vivi to raise her hands.
Still not willing to share, then.
Vivi held her arms out, and Embralyne slid a key into the manacles' lock. Vivi rubbed her wrists once freed. Though brief, she hadn't enjoyed suppressing the natural flow of mana in her body. She was glad that the affair had ended quickly. She had prepared herself to tolerate the unpleasantness until an audience with the Dragon King, but it seemed she wouldn't need to.
"I also don't intend to carry you in claw all the way to the Palace," Embralyne added dryly. "Despite how some grievances remain between you and my family"—her eyes narrowed into a glare to accompany that statement—"the Sorceress is not a hunted enemy. So I won't show such disrespect."
Vivi wouldn't have felt too disrespected being hauled off in a dragon's grip, to be honest. She would have found the experience rather interesting. But her standards were skewed.
"Thank you," she said instead.
Embralyne shrugged and began walking toward the center of the clearing. It took Vivi a second to realize what the dragon had planned. When understanding dawned, Vivi straightened, intrigued.
With a flash of light, Embralyne transformed. In a moment, a beast was towering over Vivi, its body covered in smooth, dark-gray scales. The dragon planted forelimbs wide against the ground and unfurled a pair of broad wings, pale membranes stretching between long, sturdy bones and casting a shadow over her. Horns—much the same as Embralyne's halfdragon form, but grown—curved from the beast's skull, and its eyes, that familiar smoldering lava-like orange, looked down at Vivi with their usual haughty regality.
The dragon was huge—by human standards for a beast, at any rate. Adult dragons were never truly small, no matter the humor Vivi found in Embralyne's attitude toward their shared plight of 'size challenges.' In this form, the princess dwarfed grown elephants the way elephants dwarfed men.
"I can't overstate how satisfying that is," came Embralyne's soft sigh, the words shaped and projected through magic. She stretched her wings wider and quivered in seeming pleasure. It was a rather catlike behavior, to be honest. "I was cramped in that form for far too long."
Vivi sympathized. She also preferred being in her own body. Thankfully, she wasn't here on a weeks-long mission. Flying to the Palace and talking to the King shouldn't last more than a few hours, assuming nothing went wrong.
Which is never a safe assumption, admittedly, she thought with a flicker of exasperation.
Embralyne launched off the ground with several powerful flaps of her wings, making grass flatten and keel over all around them. "Let's go over the ledge so that the gatekeeper doesn't see me flying off without you in claw." Before Vivi could answer, the dragon propelled herself past, then plummeted sharply out of view.
Vivi cast the appropriate spells and followed. She caught up to Embralyne momentarily.
"I can cast haste on both of us," she offered.
"No need to rush." Embralyne's tone was almost indolent as she basked in the sun, gliding forward lazily. Her mood had already improved since their initial meeting, and assuming her true body had apparently raised her spirits further.
And while Vivi hated to interrupt the clear satisfaction Embralyne was taking in limbering up after so long stuck in a human transmogrification, she had little choice. "I'd rather get to the Palace and link to the scrying table as soon as possible. Out of an abundance of caution."
A huge reptile-like eye cracked open. The image was slightly surreal. She'd known the whole time, of course, that Embralyne was a dragon. Holding a conversation with one of the legendary creatures while they were in beast form still felt a little odd, though.
"Yes, I suppose that's true. Very well then."
Taking that as implied permission, Vivi wrapped them both in [Stride to the Horizon]. The sky islands blurred past, miles of distance eaten up in moments as the spell hurled them forward at breathtaking speed. Embralyne led the way, knowing her homeland by heart.
Vivi watched the human towns, villages, and cities clinging to the mountain ranges below sweep by. The Sky-Pillar Range held a great many people, though not a sliver compared to the enormous, heavily populated mortal kingdoms.
Humans only, though. Vivi was sure some of the long-lived races had snuck in and settled in alcoves throughout the region, but the vast majority of people dotting the mountain peaks belonged to humanity. She didn't know the full history of why that might be, but she did know dragons didn't generally welcome the long-lived into their lands.
Perhaps the arrogant race appreciated how fleeting the lives of humans were.
It was a rather heavy-handed metaphor, to be honest, how dragons dwelled high in the air in floating castles, palaces, and sprawling estates, watching over their mortal subjects below. This society was segregated by class—a strict hierarchical rule, even more so than the mortal lands, with dragons the absolute rulers and humans the subjects who served their lords and ladies.
No matter how well treated and near-idyllic these lands were, Vivi couldn't help but have mixed feelings on the dynamic. But the mortal kingdoms hardly ran on democracy themselves, and while the concept of noblesse oblige existed outside of the Sky-Pillar Range, there was no denying that dragons took their duty far more seriously.
Or rather, Cinereus forced them to, else he would begin separating heads from shoulders.
A benevolent tyrant, the man she was heading to meet.
Her thoughts brushing against the Dragon King and his infamous iron rule, Vivi grew concerned for a different reason. "How do you think your father is going to take your intervention at Prismarche?"
Embralyne was quiet for a long moment. Unfortunately, a dragon's expressions weren't nearly as easy to read when not in a humanoid form. "Not every instance of unlawfully traveling to the mortal lands has resulted in execution," the princess said at last.
Which was an ominous answer.
"The level of involvement is taken into consideration. I have little doubt my people sneak into the mortal realms to peruse the foreign world with at least some regularity. Why else would your people have so many rumors of such a thing happening? But the degree to which they meddle is the king's ultimate concern, even if examples must be set and all known violations will be punished."
Embralyne didn't sound particularly hopeful about how her father would receive the news, then. Especially since the princess had done more than 'play a minor role.' Which Vivi had expected, but also felt her stomach sinking at.
"That decree against interference exists for a reason," Embralyne continued. "My father says that Fate is neither good nor evil; it simply conspires to pull events together, much as you remarked earlier. The more powerful or important a person is, the more likely they are to be tangled up in its weave. And indeed, we faced only one Cataclysm's invasion across a thousand years, under his guidance."
A snort, with a plume of black smoke erupting from the dragon's nostrils.
"This further supports his theory, does it not? Thanks to what I did at Prismarche, how thoroughly I intervened in matters that did not involve us, here I am escorting the Sorceress back to the heart of my lands. Drawing in my father against his will. Would that have happened had I not enmeshed myself despite his orders?"
Vivi wanted to reject Embralyne's reasoning, but after consideration, she frowned instead. Truthfully, she had been putting off visiting the dragons for a number of reasons, and that probably would have continued if not for Embralyne defending Prismarche and their subsequent interactions.
"I would have come to you eventually. The timeline just moved up."
"Either way."
The conversation ended there, with Vivi not feeling reassured about her original concerns.
Surely the Dragon King wouldn't be too harsh on his daughter. But what would Vivi do if she found out he did intend to be? She truly believed it wouldn't come to him executing his own daughter—that felt ludicrous—but in truth, she didn't know Cinereus well, and while she did see him as an honorable man and ruler, he was also undoubtedly ruthless. As a king of such an arrogant and willful race needed to be.
They soared for a few minutes before Embralyne restarted the dialogue.
"I won't be escorting you in as a prisoner, but refrain from speaking or drawing attention to yourself until my father has made a decision on how to proceed. A new face at the Palace will be intriguing, but not unheard of. Not enough to cause a commotion on sight. There are three known clans of white dragons, and one of them is especially reclusive—you'll be assumed a hermit of theirs, or something similar."
Vivi hadn't considered the possibility of stirring up intrigue simply by wearing a halfdragon form, but she supposed that was naïve. Dragons were hardly a dying breed—Vivi had no idea what the number was, though she expected between one and five hundred called the Sky-Pillar Range home—but they also weren't so common that new faces were inconsequential.
"The bigger interest, truthfully, will be that you're accompanying me," Embralyne said. "Regardless, we should be able to arrange a meeting with my father without you attracting undue scrutiny."
"I'll keep to myself and let you do the talking, don't worry."
"That would be for the best."
Silence settled once more, and this time Vivi let the dragon enjoy herself as they blurred along. Despite the hurry, Embralyne was clearly basking in getting to stretch her wings for the first time in a while.
The Sky-Pillar Range was only a fraction the size of a single human kingdom, so it wasn't long before Embralyne began slowing. Vivi refocused her drifting thoughts and peered into the distance.
There, coming into view, was the Dragon King's palace.